I recently saw Bobby on 笑っていいとも！ and was thoroughly offended at the way he was treated by Mori. I wondered what people would think if he turned around and started speaking in the "baka-voice" to his little white helpers (John and Ian?)

There was a similar quote, if not even more ignorant in Lonely Planet's guide to China which had me baffled and amazed for years. This from a Chinese university student: "There's no racism in China. We don't have any black people."

Marxy:

You may be interested in the latest post on the blog of Gary Becker and Richard Posner on how Japan leads the way on a socially efficent retirement policy.

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Vali

no question that bobby intentionally cripples his language ability for the cameras. he makes so many mistakes with funny consequences, and they most often stem from replacing a really basic vocabulary word with a much more complicated one to accomplish a (usually dirty) pun.

But in one sense, at least he's replacing bob sapp, who despite having lived in japan for a long time can't muster more than "gomen nasai" and clown faces. He also has a better back story than bob sapp... although they both come to the 芸能界 from the world of k1.

Like in the states, black people are associated first and foremost with violence and crime (and fuuzoku) in japan. Now the rising star lets them attatch stupidity to the list of stereotypes that black people are welcome to fulfill.

oof that came out a little bad.

that is to say, the black people represented in the media in both the states and japan are those associated with violence, crime, fuuzoku...

Bob Sapp seems a little more "stately" than Bobby. Or at least, his humor seems good natured.

if I were relentlessly good natured about japan, I might suggest that bobbys failings and struggles represent the japanese media taking another interest in how different and fascinating their own culture is, and that it's not really harmful at all. Through this lens they might start to understand their own attitudes a bit better.

I'm not though.

The Japanese have been obsessed with hearing foreigners speak pidgin Japanese, even since the Tokugawa period. I would gather it stems from the strange pride that, no one without Japanese blood could possibly master our incredibly difficult, obscure, and idiosyncratic language. Like, no one in my town in Ohio has this particular European Dinosaur Jr. bootleg.

Bobby would be more acceptible if there were other fluent Africans on TV, but according to the dominant media message here, Whites are super intelligent - even learning our impossible language - and Blacks are silly natives.

I am with you here. I like Bob Sapp. He always comes off as good natured and, despite being a former NFL player and K1 participant, intelligent. He seems kind. He makes the Kano sisters not look so overstuffed. He likes cats (or at least that is what it says on the back of the box of the Bob Sapp action figure I have).

Bobby is Japan's Yakov Smirnoff just not as funny.

I have run into several people, almost always from Japan's large East Asian neighbor, who have tried to claim that racism is a Western concept brought to Asian when Japan adopted European colonialist ideas. They like to pretend that it never existed in practice or as a concept in East Asia and blame it both on Westerners and the Japanese. The sentence that almost always follows this statement is either about how Westerners stole their ancient technology or that the Japanese are really just Chinese people who moved to an island and got hoity.

I can't respond authoritatively to your statements about Japanese racism, but something very much bothers me about your last paragraph (that in fact runs through many of your entries) -- that you compare a racist Japan to a multicultural US -- "America is equally guilty ... but we fortunately have the chance to know real-life African-Americans ..."

DO "we"? I think this glossing over of race-relations in America is just as much of a sin as making surface the "cool" of blacks elsewhere. It's further insulting because of the deteriorating social status of African Americans here; many major US cities have seen a sharp drop in African American populations, as the people and their concerns have moved further into the periphery (both physically and politically). Not to mention the fed-supported discrimination towards other ethnic groups (post 9/11, 3rd world immigrants). You'd think that a nation that prides itself as the most open and free (and has been 'familiar' with African-descended since the era in which they were imported as slaves) would be considerably more understanding of blacks as individuals and a people group, but unspoken racism exists. The US is not a land of multicultural goodness.

You make a correct point that the US can be more tolerant (towards certain groups) and colorful as a whole, compared to Japan. I agree it's very disturbing to see Sambos (bc they remind us of a time of incredible racism in the US) having grown up in PC America. But I don't believe it's helpful to make generalizing statements.

Racism in East Asia can NOT be understood in the same terms as racism in the US. They have a completely different understanding of how it exists in the US (internationally known as a country with a deeply racist history) and in their own nations. Blasting Chinese racism is also indicative of previous commenters' own disturbing prejudices -- how can you possibly judge a nation on a few remarks you read / heard without understanding it contextually, only as an outsider?

I think you raise a lot of good points, and my aim was to look at the nature of Japanese racism towards blacks - which I think is based more on ignorance than downright intolerance. I didn't mean to excuse 300 years of American racism, but I will say that there is absolutely some truth to the "myth" of American multiculturalism, however broken it might be. I do have friends of many ethnic backgrounds and there has been a lot of progress in the last 50 years to increase the public dignity of America's diverse races. Is this just lip service? That's a harder question.

Since the Japanese confuse race with ethnicity with nationalism, it's a bit to pull off "racism" without talking about "statism" and "culturalism." There is serious xenophobia against anything not legitimized within the JAPAN race-language-nation-culture structure, and I find it absolutely relevant to ask if the Japanese government does anything to fight against this demolishing this process.

"Blasting Chinese racism is also indicative of previous commenters' own disturbing prejudices -- how can you possibly judge a nation on a few remarks you read / heard without understanding it contextually, only as an outsider?"

Claiming that Chinese racism is too complex to be understood by outsiders is interesting. Outsiders are the targets of such racism and who better to understand it that its victims. Defending Chinese racism only clues us in to your ethnicity.

Apologism is an equally disturbing prejudice.