How do you spell Jap?

Be sure to read this characteristically intelligent piece in the Japan Times by David McNeill about the lurking racism in British and American media coverage of the Lindsay Hawker murder. A few extracts:

This story brimmed over with the best front-page ingredients: a violent crime with a hint of salacious color, a beautiful victim and a poisonous, clever villain who got away. It also had one other, more troubling component: race.

. . . To prove that underneath the stiff salaryman suit of everyman Japan lurks a slavering fantasist, several foreign journalists were dispatched to interview white hostesses in Roppongi, Tokyo's "social hub," as it was described in a British newspaper. After explaining that Hawker had been "repeatedly beaten over several hours" in a flat owned by Tatsuya Ishihashi (sic), The Daily Mail said that many of the hostesses were also worried about "weird" Japanese men.

"While some British women described the attitude of the men they encounter here as strange, uncomfortable and unpredictable, others talked of the awe and mystique Western women hold for the Japanese male," the reporter wrote.

The "taller" and "more liberated" British women have to "constantly put up with unwanted male attention — such as the endemic groping on trains."

"They want you to belong to them, but there is a frustration there because they know they can't have you," said one hostess. "The Japanese are so very different to us that I wonder if we will ever really understand them," said another.

Step carefully through the minefield of racial cliches. The devious, inscrutable Japanese man too cowardly to come out and ask for what he really wants: to have sex with an Englishwoman. And ask the obvious questions: Why visit a club district to investigate the life of a language teacher; why should a place designed to exploit and magnify sexual fantasies for money yield honest insights into racial relations; and what did the men think? We don't know because the reporter never bothered to interview a single Japanese person.

. . . A group of agitated Japanese bloggers dubbed this "Japan bashing." A less kind description might be racism.

My own contribution to this debate is here. I agree with Dr McNeill about the vein of prejudice that ran through much of the reporting. Active anti-Japanese racism, in Britain at least, is much less noticeable than it was when I first visited Tokyo 20 years ago, as the recent visit of Emperor Akihito demonstrates. On his previous visit in May 1998, he was booed by former British prisoners of war and their families; this time around, he was virtually ignored. But there is still a will, close to an enthusiasm, to believe the worst about Japan for which tragedies like that of Lindsay Hawker provide an outlet; and a lazy contempt for standards of accuracy and analysis which would always be applied if this were a story out of the United States, say, or western Europe.

To me this was most obvious in the indifference to the correct spelling of the name of the suspect, Tatsuya Ichihashi. So far, I have seen the following variations on this not particularly difficult name:

Ishihashi (Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail)

Ichihachi (The Sun. Er, and The Times. Once - it wasn't me!)

Ichi-hachi (People)

Ichahachi (The Sun, again)

Ishihashni (Mirror)

Ichinashi (Daily Star)

One British colleague recounted to me how his editors continued to mis-spell the name even after he had corrected them. The British papers are prefectly capable of digesting Litvinenko, Ahmadinejad, Ronaldinho and Shilpa Shetty. Why such a struggle over four syllables which are written exactly as they are pronounced?

It is not, I suspect, that the British press hates Japan or despises it or feels actively superior. Almost as depressing, it just doesn't give a damn.

[Image above, of Hirohito looking remarkable like the Cat in the Hat, by Dr Seuss. The whole, very interesting story is told here.]

Comments

[Singee]

Interesting link on Dr Seuss, but the author of that piece appears to be confused as to when Hitler's most "prolific" years were.

[Barbara Suzuki]

As if we Brits do not have enough murderers in our own society -

I am British and have been married to a Japanese for the last 25 years. We married because we found so much in common in our ideas and outlook, that we were attracted to one another as human beings. Nothing to do with how we differed in superficial looks.

Misfits, perverts and sociopaths operate in all communities, and should be checked and punished by the greater human family acting as one in designating what is acceptable and what is totally unacceptable behaviour. Nothing to do with how people differ in looks.

Let's get post-race post-haste.

[Aceface]

"group of agitated Japanese bloggers dubbed this "Japan bashing." A less kind description might be racism."

I would say why not practice some decent journalism(and spelling) on Japan issues first,instead of making new added meaning to the term and parting shot a satire upon some miscellaneous argument in the Japanese blogsphere.

I suggest some of the Brit journalists gotta come to our kisha club and do the boot camp work from all the beginning.

[Fair enough - but David McNeill's piece makes some good points about the racism of plenty of Japanese journalists too.]

[Andrew Milner]

Sure there's racism, but there's also ignorance and stupidity. Brits that re resident in UK, you know those risk averse losers, simply do not realise that the J-word is a racial slur that is as offensive as the N-word. So six years ago I got this petulant message from BBC newsreader Sian Williams, asking, "Well how do you pronounce Junichiro Koizume?"
Hadn't got the heart to tell her, but basically "You are just too thick love, to get to grips with a syllabic-based language when you entire experience has been working with a stress based language”. Silk purse; sow’s ear.
And can anyone forget the team of thickos BBC sent to cover the World Cup football tournament? Rob Bonnet's pronunciation of "Osaka" has to be included in the annals of "errors of the truly retarded". I suspect they never get out of the hotel bar.
So essentially what do you expect? That Brits resident in UK are stupid is a given; educated but ignorant, but they are also narrow-minded. And when they do emigrate, they seek their fortune in the former colonies. Sounds like a win-win to me. Sure as hell we don’t want them here.
Now why does everyone take an instant dislike to me?

[Jez Walton]

Japanese calling anyone racist is a bit of the pot calling the Kettle black really if your honest.

[elizabeth schumann]

Dear Mr. Parry, Ischibashi, or whatever, is a TRANSPOSITION. It is trying to reflect a name in a foreign, latin alphabet. Names are not written in stone, Mr. Paris, as you would be if you lived in France, the 's' being silent. And I suppose your few lines will set the issue of 'racism' straight. Well, thank god for that, Mr. Puri!!

[I don't know whether you've studied Japanese, but as a language it has a relatively small number of sounds and a very simple system of pronunciation. Unlike Chinese or Korean, there is really just one standard for transliteration which has long been widely accepted. In this system. there is only one way to render the Lindsay Hawker suspect's name: Ichihashi. RLP]

[hazh]

Nonsense article, and typical of the kind that bleat about racism, without presenting any valid argument at all. I'm quite astounded that former prisoners of war protesting about the Japanese Emperor visit should be taken as example of racism. Amazingly stupid and ignorant about the suffering of former prisoners of war who have a right to protest about their ill treatment. And mispelling equals racism?

Whatever?! If L.Hawker had been killed by a man from Africa, the Middle East or South America perhaps the story would not have even been covered from this angle. Racism is ok for some races and not for others?! That is what seems to be the theme of the day...racism is wrong no matter who it is aimed at and the source ostracized as and when.

[Add]

It is interesting that you should suggest there to be an element of racism in the British or western press. Have you actually read a Japanese newspaper where even government ministers ludicrously blame "blue-eyed foriegners" for Japan`s increased crime rate? They are unashamedly rascist. Japanese society is full fo paradoxes.

[Lillian]

What I have noticed is that there is an appreciation of, Asian culture, much like that of African culture, it exists in a landscape where the people who created it, are not present, or the ones who are there are western educated. The viewpoint is always from a Eurocentric Worldview. Japanese culture is not seen from a Japanese perspective, it is seen through the eyse of someone who is disconnected from it.

[Alex]

"On his previous visit in May 1998, he was booed by former British prisoners of war and their families; this time around, he was virtually ignored."

Now that only means former British POWs are dying out. And I agree with HAZH on this matter. I cannot imagine a leading British correspondent in Asia citing POWs protesting against horrible treatment by Japanese soldiers as a sign of racism. I take it that you are ignorant about Japanese attrocity during WW2. Just hope that your ignorance is not deliberate. By the way, my father-in-law was one of those POWs but as far as I know, he did not hold any grudge against any Japanese other than his captors.

[Mark Bellis]

Come on, Richard, you're linking to an article by a University student who doesn't know the difference between World War I and II! (Also, she seems to think all mustaches look alike)

I think that's supposed to be Tojo ( http://nashlinks.com/tojo.jpg) not Hirohito (on left www.friedwire.org/hirohito.jpg ) - that's pretty much the standard caricature of him that was used throughout the war.

Seuss did engage in Anti-Japanese racism - see http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/pm/1942/20213cs.jpg
I've heard that Seuss regretted this and The Whos in the post-war "Horton Hears a Who" are supposed to be Japanese that Seuss wanted to "rehumanize" "A person's a person, no matter how small".

Ichihachi would be the way Ishihashi would be written in French - maybe they were taking copy from the AFP wires?

The BBC pronounced "Junichiro" Ju Nich Iro . Without help, they couldn't be expected to know that it's Ju n i chi roo

Also, Jap only became perjorative during WWII, particularly in the USA - It was widely used before (even by George Bernard Shaw) - even the word Japanese was so hateful that Japanese-Americans just called themselves Nisei (some today still describe themselves as Sansei ). I think the war's behind us now, so if you're using 'Brit', 'Jap' is just fine.

Nigger is always offensive when used to describe a black person by a non-black, since the word is associated with slavery - negre (rather than noir) was the word the French used to describe African slaves, so it implies social inferiority.

(NOTE - the Tojo photo is really "Tojo Yamamoto" the stage name of a Japanese-American wrestler ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tojo_Yamamoto ) - it would be very funny if you could insert either photo - Thanks, Mark)

[Mark Bellis]

But Ichihashi is the way that it's written in French here - http://www.aujourdhuilejapon.com/article.asp?IdArticle=1085
, which is funny, because if it was transcribed into French, it should be Itchihachi ...... I'm stumped!

[sheppardben1@hotmail.com]

This article states that British POWs formerly held by the Japanese were guilty of racism when they demonstrated during a visit to Britain by the Emperor of Japan. Does Mr Lloyd Parry really hold this eye-popping opinion?

[No, that's not my view. I have often been impressed by the tolerance and broad mindedness of many of the former POWs, some of whom I have met on their visits to Tokyo. But I agree that the accusation of racism is implicit in that sloppily phrased sentence. On reflection, I'd amend it to: "Active anti-Japanese feeling [rather than racism], in Britain at least, is much less noticeable than it was when I first visited Tokyo 20 years ago".

Thanks for drawing attention to this.

RLP]

[shrek]

The Guardian discussed all this months ago, and as someone previously said, in general, Japanese calling others racist is certainly the pot calling the kettle black, and yes, I am married to an Asian, and yes, I have lived full time in Asia for about 17 years.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alastair_harper/2007/04/reinventing_yellow_peril.html

[nick may]

The original David McNeill article you link to seems simply to make the bald assumption that Ichihashi is guilty.

He may well be - the evidence does seem very strong - but until he has been tried in a court of law and found guilty, he is innocent - and no journalist who is trying to take the moral high ground regarding standards of press behaviour should forget that.

So - isn't McNeills article simply an example of the

> lazy contempt for standards
>of accuracy and analysis

you rightly despise?

[Anon, London]

Maybe instead of pigeon holing "all japanese" men as "weird" - these so called white hostesses should realise that what they do is a form of prostitution. If they hate it so much why don't they leave and find a "proper" job unstead of selling themselves? In fact I think these women are "weird" - get a life and do something productive, don't pigeon hole a whole nation. I suppose as well as being prostitutes they are also ignorant.....nice mix.