Pff, Sulu could act circles around Mr. Miyagi.

I have nothing against all the tarento you mentioned but Tamori did annoy me at times. Whenever there was a foreigner in the show he would do the most he could to ignore him/her.

Kazu Makino gets her name written in katakana too by the way.

There are (pure) Japanese talent who choose to have their geimei (stage name) written in katakana. I'm not sure Yoko Ono specifically chose that route.

"I say, let's bring this idea to America and call Fareed Zakaria "that foreign commentator" and make Natalie Portman teach Hebrew on PBS."

That would make me very interested in learning hebrew.

19th century ideology that being Japanese is based solely on racial purity.

again you're mixing up your paradigms. if you want to call it 19th century ideology then you have to specify 'western' 19th century. if you're talking about a japanese ideology and want to place in in a temporary framework then you could call it 19th but also 20th century, even 21st century ideology. don't you get my point, how many times, in how many ways do i have to repeat it.

if you keep switching ad lib frameworks according to what you consider the most enlightened common denominator (something like this i didn't phrase this very well) you're obviously gonna end up in constant frustration. :-)

don't you get my point, how many times, in how many ways do i have to repeat it

Consider that I understand your point and am intentionally ignoring you.

Fine, there was a paradigm in the West that nationality was based on racial purity, and for some wacky historical reasons, that particular ideology has gone out of vogue in the rest of the world.

The thing I forgot to mention in the piece is that if you take one look at the current crop of elementary school kids in Tokyo, you'll realize how dated the idea of "gaijin talent" will become in the next decade. There are thousands of African kids who speak perfect Japanese, if not tens of thousands of non-Asian "foreigners" who have lived their whole lives in Japan. They will be so common that rarity will no longer be the deciding factor for fame.

Let's say it this way: if you went to a foreign country and Milli Vanilli was still perceived as the pinnacle of cool, you'd be a bit disappointed. Not just because MV were a fraud, as much as they were not very good in the first place.

Same with ideas of Racial Essentialism. These were never very good ideas, academically or otherwise. Maybe they still make some sense in Japan, but I don't think they are particularly profound from any angle . You can still believe in Marx's "Labor Theory of Value" but anyone knowledgeable can tell you why that idea doesn't reflect reality. That too is a 19th century "Western" idea that nobody should be holding on to.

I do have to admit that the Japanese have almost always been obsessed with the "difficulty" and "uniqueness" of their own language. Tokugawa Ieyasu supposedly had a ball making William Adams say Japanese words in his foreign accent. He was perhaps the first gaijin talent.

When I read article's like this, about the Japanes'e need for racial "purity" or what have you, I often question my love for japan. Why respect someone who simply thinks of you as a henna gaijin wheather you understand them or not, while you receive/respect them for learning your language & customs w/ open arms? As someone who has dedicated much of his life to the study of Japanese cultural & social customs, how do you reason with this paradox?-Jed

Jed,

Being white in Japan makes you a star, whatever you're doing. We're secretly whores for attention like that. It's racism, but hey, at least the person staring at me on the train will alert me if something accidentally falls out of my pocket and is left behind.

Geez, I'm actually trying to encourage the attention. Did the article mention me?

As someone who has dedicated much of his life to the study of Japanese cultural & social customs, how do you reason with this paradox?

Well, I am not friends with "the Japanese" as much as particular Japanese individuals, who for the most part, don't believe in antiquated ideas of racial determinism. There are awful, racist Americans too, and on the whole, Americans get up to equal buffoonery. I do believe, however, that the Japanese media and other authorities should be a little more reflexive and objective towards their own positions.

Consider that I understand your point and am intentionally ignoring you.

i was actually hoping you'd ignore me by not actually bothering to reply to my last entry.

Milli Vanilli was still perceived as the pinnacle of cool, you'd be a bit disappointed.

yes but should that minor dissapointment lead to a crusade?

... I forgot to mention in the piece is that if you take one look at the current crop of elementary school kids in Tokyo, you'll realize how dated the idea of "gaijin talent" will become in the next decade. There are thousands of African kids who speak perfect Japanese,

why mention it, why not actually make it the point of a piece and have like, one in ten or one in twenty entries on a positive tone. i mean shouldn't you if you really care about the stuff you're writing about?/yet rather than telling you how or what to write i should ask myself why do i bother reading this knowing that it's always the same spiel just different variables.

antiquated ideas of racial determinism

the Japanes'e need for racial "purity"

in all but very extreme cases i really don't think that's the crux of the problem. especialy not now. less to do with color of skin, shape of the eyes or kind of accent than the level of success or failure, willingness or unwillingness to understand and accept certain cultural codes, patterns of communication, clue in on hints etc etc and if Japan is different to the US in this the difference is one of degree not kind.

Ah, gotta love those gaijin tarento. I don't think Devilman and Gozu would've been half the films they were without the inexplicable cameos by Bob Sapp. But anyway... I think the most curious (not to mention excruciating) "foreign talent" moment I've seen here was a slot on a variety show where they had three of the buggers interviewing other, fresh-off-the-boat gaijin... in Japanese. And, of course, laughing at every mistake their hapless interviewees made.

yes but should that minor dissapointment lead to a crusade?

Milli Vanilli was a bad metaphor in so much that the dominant mode of Racial Essentialism in Japan does hurt people - just probably none of us posting on this board in English from 1st world or European countries. Most of the White men in Japan are willingly or inadvertantly exploiting this cultural property, and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

i really don't think that's the crux of the problem. especialy not now. less to do with color of skin, shape of the eyes or kind of accent than the level of success or failure, willingness or unwillingness to understand and accept certain cultural codes

I certainly believe discrimination in America is more about socioeconomics than race at this point. Knowing the right manners or behavior is generally an issue of pecuniary status (so sez Veblen).

If Japanese companies have truly stopped passing around the burakumin books and engaging in discrimating hiring practices against Japanese-Koreans, maybe you are right. But the problem for a long time in Japan is that no matter how "Japanese" you looked on the outside, revelations about racial or social impurity would cost you your job.

And we get back to the issue that these entertainers - whether born in Japan and completely fluent in the Japanese cultural code - are still known as "foreign" talent. You can succeed in Japan by adopting Japanese manners, but there is a very visible cap on the ultimate level of success or social-acceptance.

FWIW, the wife and I were talking the other day about how in TV dramas and movies there are for the most part no "normal" foreign characters even in the background. Now admittedly we make up a very small percentage of the workforce, but neither of us could think of even one show where a foreigner was a normal background character as opposed to a mometary oddity in the foreground (like the "executive" type who shoed up briefly in the film version of Densha Otoko). What makes this odd is if you go around Otemachi/Marunouchi, we are very visible and even in the rust belt one horse town where she comes from you can see some non japanese working "normal" jobs.

Good point. Again, I think this is the last era where the concept of "gaijin talent" still makes sense. In the future, they'll just be called "talent."

Fine, there was a paradigm in the West that nationality was based on racial purity, and for some wacky historical reasons, that particular ideology has gone out of vogue in the rest of the world.

"African-American"

Touche. But in Japan, you're not "American-Japanese" or "Pakistani-Japanese" but just "foreign."

I had some students go to England, then come back and write essays. One said, "I've never talked to so many foreign people…" (Or more likely, "I don't talk so many foreigner." I forget the exact wording.) But that's a mistaken usage of the word foreigner. She probably talked to relatively few foreigners in England; she probably mostly talked to English natives. To her, the word foreign means "not like me," but really the word means, "not from this country." So, when she was in England, "foreign" indicates her, not the people around her. Whereas, gaijin always means non-Japanese, no matter if the gaijin in question are in their home nation.

Anyhow, it was a subtle error that prompted some food for thought on my part.

but of course one of the really interesting thing to do here would be to run numbers on the 'token non-japanese' that are appearing on japanese t.v. (the ranking in question) as a percentage of the total non-japanese population of japan and see which racial/ethinic groups are being over/under-represented and which are not.

English speakers are a tiny, tiny minority in Japan compared to other groups (Koreans, Chinese, Brazilians…), and yet which language is NHK news simulcast in?

Hooray for discrimination that helps me!

Part of the "problem" may be the jimusho system. AFAIK, everyone who appears on a TV show is provided by various "talent agencies" and I really doubt they want to sign up many people who dont fit the market demand.

The other part would be I really doubt there are that many non-japanese actors here who would 1) be able to make a living doing TV 2) be willing to subject themselves to how they would be typecast.

I for one actively avoid being quoted in or appearing in any domestic media due to an incident that happened years ago. I wont go into the details here but dont mind telling the story face to face. Once bitten twice shy as they say.

You're comment about Bobby - that he keeps the image of Africans back a couple hundred years - is entirely accurate, but I want to defend him...a little bit. I have long had a problem with the treatment of blacks, particularly of non-Western upbringing on Japanese television. That is, the 'let's poke 'em with a stick and see if they are human' attitude with which most geinojin treat Africans (and occasionally other creeds of gaijin).

However, while doing this, Bobby does mock patronizing attitudes with which Japanese often treat foreigners in general.

In the standard vareity show with Bobby, he sits there and everyone (Japanese geinojin being everyone) tries to make sure he understands the Japanese being spoken or if he understands the cultural references or if *gasp* he has ever eaten x japanse cuisine. Bobby's "comedy stylings" are based on his turning their patronizing around and, basically, saying, "Yeah, I know what you are saying and I chose these random words or homonyns, what do you think I am, illiterate or something?"

Bobby, by looking dumb as ****, brings out the patronizing (i.e. oh you can't possibily understand this cause you are not Japanese, we need to help you, which admittedly, it is occasionally helpful) attitudes towards foreigners. In turn, he takes advantage of them and makes fun of the geinojin in question launching a joke at them or proving that he didn't need to be helped. He proves himself the wise fool.

In total though, I think his negative points count for more than these positive ones, nonetheless - it is somewhat nice to see a foreigner with good Japanese upstage talent by virtue of the talent's patronizing.

"Is This Anything?" - David Letterman

I don't see much of a discussion of what 's novel vs. what's substance except for marxy's stating that when Japan raised foreigners are completely common ... well I don't have to finish that.

Someone can easily rank what's novel, it's easier than ranking what's substantial and then get more ratings as people will come out declaring the novel have no talent but tarento are novel. (and maybe marxy secretly hoped to be one and was ignored)

"I've never talked to so many foreign people…" (Or more likely, "I don't talk so many foreigner."

this , quite typical situation is really a case of lost in translation and rather than attach racist meanings to it'd be more to the point to compare it to the way many japanese people mistake their 'comming' with 'going', or 'r's for 'l's. you can be sure that any japanese person is quite aware that they're the foreigner if they're in a foreign country.
As Carl said the english term 'foreigner' and gaijin or gaikokujin do not 100% equate semantically. The term gai-jin literally means to a japanese person someone who's not in their own sphere and it is semantically correct to use it both inside and outside japan. I have actually heard many japanese people contemplate exactly this kind of situation and what would be the best way to phrase it both in english and in japanese. The gai-jin thing is part of the uchi-soto cultural and linguistic paradigm - which to someone accustomed to the pragmatic, flexible and unambiguous english language, where in a matter of five years or so, you can change he to s/he and solve all the related social issues as well - contains hair-raisingly non-PC stuff but also stuff like uchi no neko (our cat) uchi no kimochi (my own feelings) etc.

bilingual Marxy, when he should just take a point (it seems he can take a point that's less than 95% identical to his own if it comes from, or concerns black-americans) and shut up (ok, this is his blog) in his endless BUTs keeps comming back with stuff like But in Japan, you're not "American-Japanese" or "Pakistani-Japanese" but just "foreign." - looking for perfect equivalents as if other than the topic actually discussed at the time everything was actually identical and perfectly conmeasurable. And simmiltaneously reminding or reassuring the rest of us that America is actually the best.

Marxy, if we want the Japanese to change their evil ways we must start with the language. they must be stopped from using an antiquated language that's racist, sexist and ageist to the very core. And convoluted. And think of all the political science they could learn at school using half the cerebral energy that goes into memorizing the kanji. If they actually spoke english we wouldn't have any of this crazy shit on tv.

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speaking of tv there was a tv show a few years ago that had discussions going to levels of intense debate and questioning rarely seen on japanese TV. the people involved were mainly all types of gaijin and kitano takeshi was running the show or marginally involved in it. does anyone know what it was called?

_____________
of yoko ono. i have actually seen her name appear in magazines as 小野洋子 more than once. I don't know if there was some sysyem to it. Come to think of it it one might have been an old 60s 70s mag, one saying 小野洋子 born on XXX in XXX .
on katakana. i think there is a legal aspect to this: if a japanese person lives outside japan, renounces their citizenship gets married or whatever so they don't actually have a honseki and all the other family registry papers in Japan anymore their name ends up written in katakana by default. i don't know if this might apply to yoko ono.

they don't actually have a honseki and all the other family registry papers in Japan anymore their name ends up written in katakana by default.

This may be true, but I think most of us have been in Japanese language classes where the nisei or sansei kid tries to write his last name in kanji and the professors basically tell him that he can't do that. In order to become a Japanese citizen, you have to take on kanji, so it makes sense that losing your kanji means losing your citizenship.

One of my big pet peeves about Japanese television is that comedy shows will often write everything a foreign person says at the bottom of the screen in all katakana. Meaning: they are speaking the sounds of Japanese, but not real Japanese.

(and maybe marxy secretly hoped to be one and was ignored)

See, if I really wanted to a foreign talent in Japan, I'd join a jimusho and dye my hair blond and get an earring. And I'd surely have to get rid of about 75% of the content of this blog.

tries to write his last name in kanji and the professors basically tell him that he can't do that

if you went to russia or serbia and insisted on writing your name as you normally do, (because it'd appear more sensible to you especially since the alphabets contain some 90+% same characters) you'd get the same response. You could write it but it would would be katakana-ized as latin within cyrilic. Like i said before if only everyone spoke and wrote english...

In order to become a Japanese citizen, you have to take on kanji
do you? i didn't know. are you sure?
even if so there must be some loopholes. i found that just about every seemingly immutable, shikata ga nai, kind of system has it's loopholes and undoing in-built. For example there's an increasing number of young people who refuse to register their child according to the confucian? family registry system instead registering the child as a seperate 'head of family', something along thesed lines and not a simple process. Nonetheless, while still functioning within the 'antiquated' framework and accepting the lingo the result is closer to, if not actually an über- version of, classic western notions of 'individual'. My bigger point here would be that if you stop freaking out about the appearence of things and give a bit of credit and respect to things as they are you'd find that in some areas you actually might have more freedom to move than in those protestant countries. in other respects less in other respects different types of freedoms of different types of movement etc. thank god these kind of differences between places on this little planet of ours still exist.

____

i've seen plenty of foreigners: proffessors, economists, political analysts or just regular dudes speak on japanese TV (in japanese) and have what they were saying listened to seriously and the subtitles were in kanji and hiragana plus katakana for katakana words.
Comedy and entertainment in general does serve a particular function, go to freud / someone above has already pointed out ambiguities in the Bobby character.

In Bobby's defense, doesn't he usually appear with another African, who acts more normally, and that American who also teaches English on NHK? In that context, he couldn't be taken as representative of his race or nationality. It's people like the kiss-ass American who I find more obnoxious--in his book "Standard Deviations" Karl Taro Greenfeld compared them to the birds that pick things out of crocodiles' teeth.

In his transition from fighter to talento, bobby was always babysat by thane. Whoever thought up that combo is the warren buffet of the foreign markets.

Thane has been largely absent from tv for so long that I think bobby only lost on a technicality.

A lot of the Japanese people I know equate gaijin with white in a number of circumstances. For example, if a woman had a gaijin boyfriend and then brought home a korean man, or a middle-eastern man, her family would be quite surprised. or... My half-japanse coworker constantly received drawing of herself from students in which she had blonde hair and blue eyes.

A lot of the Japanese people I know equate gaijin with white in a number of circumstances.

I think everyone does this. It only takes one trip to the Immigration Bureau to realize that "white people" are way over-represented in the collective mind.

But why would you put a non-Japanese Asian person fluent in Japanese on a TV show?? Who wants to see that??

Bob Sapp sure went as fast as he came.

I'd think it's Yoko's choice to have her name written in katakana.

Bob Sapp sure went as fast as he came.

Yeah, he ranked very, very low on the list for how big he was a couple of years ago.

I remember back in the 1992 Winter Olympics (I think), Kristy Yamaguchi went up against Midori Ito in figure skating.

The Japanese press wrote "Yamaguchi" in katakana, as if to say, "Traitor! No kanji for you!"

Right. You're not technically allowed to write your name in Kanji if you're not a Japanese citizen or something lije that. Check out Japanese textbooks - they write the Nisei students' names in katakana, even though everyone would know what the kanji would be.

Bob Sapp sure went as fast as he came.

That's because there's only enough room for one talking, dancing monkey on Japanese TV.

Gotta rotate the stock to keep it fresh.

And to all the others commenters who defend the Japanese portrayal of "foreigners" on TV here, I very much doubt that if on the TV's of your respective home countries if the Japanese were all depicted only as stereotyped images you'd be quite so sanguine. If you only saw the Japanese depicted as bucktoothed, malapropism spouting, psychopathic samurai or coyly seductive Geisha, I very much doubt that you would defend this practice in the name of diversity.

Do you guys remember that weekly TV segment in which (I think) Thane Camus stopped Japanese on the streets of Shibuya and asked them to say a particular Japanese phrase in English?
The Japanese invariably got it wrong. Hilarity ensued.

Well, about five years ago, when the above segment was still running, an agency sent me to audition for a variation of that show in which gaijin would be "randomly" stopped on the street and asked to say a chosen phrase in Japanese.

It was a mass audition, and we were broken into groups of five to go meet the makers of the show. When my group had its turn, we were sat in front of a video camera and asked basic questions in English, to which we were meant to respond in Japanese.

The members of my group spoke sufficient Japanese to respond correctly to the basic questions, so a member of the production team told us that that was fine, but we must pretend to not understand.

We were given some examples, and three of our group were asked to have a go.
The one example I remember hearing was:
"What kind of pets do you like?"
"I like dogs."
"OK, that's good, but 'I like to eat dogs' is much funnier. Can you say that?"

We were then told that the show would present us as people randomly stopped on the street and that we must be willing to pretend that we could not understand and to come out with the most ridiculous responses possible.
Only the people who came up with the most outrageous responses would be chosen for screening, so say the silliest thing that comes to mind, they said.

We were then asked to sign papers saying we were willing to play along. Call me a spoilsport, but I didn't feel like being their monkey.

When I told my then girlfriend about this experience, she said a mutual friend of ours (a Japanese girl) had appeared on the original "Say it in English" version and had similarly been hired through an agency to be "randomly" stopped on the street. She, too, had been told to flub her response.

I knew it. This country is only pretending to be awful at English for the sake of comedy!

J. - If that story is true, this would further the argument that media manipulation (yarase) is commonplace in Japan. By controlling what viewers perceive as "reality," television producers intentionally or inadvertantly create the dominant perception of the real world. Foreigners, of course, cannot speak Japanese. And the Japanese, of course, cannot speak English.

geez marxy, quite an epoch-making arguement developing under our very eyes.

geez alin - it must be so rewarding to be an Internet troll.

what's an Internet troll?

I have spent all morning pondering your last statement above and if i undestood it well the implications are shattering. you are actually suggesting that the media is lying to us and you might be right.
I don't think i'll ever be able to watch tv or read a paper the same way ever again. If I had only been semi-aware the breadth of scope and depth of insight in the research going on here i would have never disrupted it with my silly thoughts. please accept my appologies in retrospect.
I am so thrilled, I might even be able to use the insights gained here in my own undeveloped country.

marxy: I think this is a modern day version of "keepin em down on the farm" as it were.

My friend said that when he was in school in Kyoto, some friends of his, all big fans of SMAP, got on one of the SMAP shows one time. The set up was that they were shown in the street, then one of the guys says, "hey, I'll take you all to Kyoto for a tour!!" (Where they already were, of course, but it was implied that they travelled from Tokyo. Maybe they had an establishing shot of a train or bus or something.) Then they pretended to see for the first time temples they had seen before and pretended to learn a SMAP song, which they knew. Also, the whole time, they pretended not to know what SMAP is, in spite of being big fans.

So, yeah, it's all a set up. On the other hand, SMAP is fun, right?

Well, no. I am deeply offended when media do the following two things:

1) Represent paid advertising as independent editorial (this is illegal for broadcasting in many countries, including Japan!)

2) Represent fiction as having "really" happened. Editing reality into a story is grey zone, but showing viewers an "actual event" and then making it up is called a "hoax."

The question is - are there ethical concerns in these two issues or just my own moral "beliefs"?

david,
just a quick jab here before a go to bed, but regarding your points 1 and 2...i enjoyed the fact that your recent MXUT (did i get the call letters right?) thing does both of these in a very tng. in cheek way.
personally speaking, i miss this kind of humor (sometimes) or the potential thereof here sometimes. in the general media it virtually is non-existant. if fact, one of the few times i could witness it at all was UT's performace that we went to in shimokitazawa. (i'd love to go again soon, btw.)

david,
just a quick jab here before a go to bed, but regarding your points 1 and 2...i enjoyed the fact that your recent MXUT (did i get the call letters right?) thing does both of these in a very tng. in cheek way.
personally speaking, i miss this kind of humor (sometimes) or the potential thereof here sometimes. in the general media it virtually is non-existant. if fact, one of the few times i could witness it at all was UT's performace that we went to in shimokitazawa. (i'd love to go again soon, btw.)

"J. - If that story is true".

I'll verify what J. said. I had the same experience...

"Foreigners, of course, cannot speak Japanese. And the Japanese, of course, cannot speak English."

A perception that I exploit to great advantage.

Radio MXUT did not receive money from any sources to play songs. We are payola free. I think people would have probably paid us not to play that George Michael track.

The "reality" of the DJ space is so skewed and unrealistic that no one could possible understand it as have had "really happened." I'm not anti-satire. I'm anti "dramatized reality" presented flatly as "reality."

thinking that the people deserve the truth, or at least the best information available is an idea on the wane... strauss and whatnot.

the government program of ward and june and "benevolent lies" in japan was not overturned in the sixties, owing to the failed student rebellions. it only intensified over time. what is particularly heinous to me (and you?) is that this normative fiction/benevolent lie culture is now being turned into an engine of profit rather than societal welfare. or that's my take.

if only the rioting students had ganbatta'd.

if only the rioting students had ganbatta'd.

You're are right about the failure of the 60s counterculture to change Japan, but you are placing the blame in a classical Japanese manner: they didn't exert enough effort. That was not the problem at all. The problem was that they did not have a cohesive philosophical goal, other than vague plans for socialist revolution. Everything descended to infighting and then intragroup lynching. Tokyo Univ students occupied Yasuda Hall in 1969... to protest their university president not resigning quickly enough. Thanks, dudes. One of the reasons that the mid-60s American Civil Rights movement worked is because middle America decided that hosing down black children was not something they could support. Anyone in Japan who saw Asamasanso footage on TV in '72 could no longer support Leftism.

The 60s was not just about the counterculture or student protestors, however. This was Ralph Nader's golden era, and there was a general Progressive pushback against big business. Most of this was overturned in America by the Reagan 80s, but these issues - consumerism, environmental issues, payola, RICO laws - at least were put on the books and sewn into the national consciousness.

the ganbaru thing was a gag... but I don't profess to be knowledgable about japanese history, nor at all scholarly about things here. my take is essentially amateur, based on my experiences here.

I think portraying fiction as fact is largely untroubling here because of a lack of belief in, or concern with objective truth as compared to preserving functional systems. comes from a lack of history of human rights if you ask me... but ya didn't.

I wasn't correcting you as much as I was correcting the gag.

It's interesting that you included Yoon Son-Ha but not BoA or Kaneshiro Takeshi. I wonder what makes them "not" gaijin?

They're called the seinentai on Waratte Ii Tomo (currently Ivan and John)-- not to be confused with the 1980s boy band sensation Shonentai.

>The September issue of monthly entertainment magazine Nikkei Entertainment - with Kuraki Mai on the cover and a completely unrelated Kuraki Mai advertisement on page six -

This is no exception. As someone who's been involved in the music biz here for 10 years now, I can safely say that there is NO SUCH THING as independent music/arts journalism here. The concept does not exist. Front cover placement, interviews, even reviews are all dependent on the amount of advertising money spent. And if the ad is bought, you can practically write the piece yourself. Depressing. But it may also explain why certain talentless J-Pop stars manage to create the impression that they're taken seriously.