Today “Asian Hatecrime” is a very serious and urgent issue in some western countries, particularly in the USA because of the spread of Covid-19.
But the victims are not only Chinese Americans, but also us, Japanese.
However, in Japan, people do not consider
this problem to our issue.
Why don’t Japanese people act for other Asians in Western countries? If you want to know the reasons, you have to understand the black part of our society, and our twisted pride. Today we are going to study them.
Japanese people think it’s the Chinese’s business
In fact, Japanese channels treat this issue as “Asian Americans suffer.”
This means that “it’s not Japanese Americans’ or Japanese people’s problem” for us.
Seems like a very strange idea, doesn’t it? We are also Asians but we are not like that according to many Japanese people.
Now I am going to share the opinions of my Japanese friends about this problmea.
“Japanese people also suffer from this discrimination, but it is because the racists could not distinguish between Chinese and Japanese. If they understand that we are Japanese, they don’t do much harm.”
“The targets of the racists are Chinese. Japan is considered by a friend of Western countries. There is no reason to discriminate against us.”
Unfortunately this is not the case. Many natives in Europe and the U.S. cannot distinguish between China and Japan, moreover some people think Japan is a part of China. Do you already understand that Japanese people think people from other countries know more about Japan than the reality?
If other Asians speak Japanese without a typical accent, I can’t tell them apart. I swear it.
Actually Japan is some islands far away from Europe and USA, but for us they are central of the earth.
So I call this phenomenon that Japanese people evaluate Japan more than reality as “White of Honor Syndrome” because Japan used to be happy to be “White of Honor” in South Africa.
But life is hard, reality is getting bad with us. Already many Japanese are affected by Asian Hatecrime.
Case 1: A Japanese temple was burned down by a racist.
In Los Angeles there is a Buddhist temple for Japanese, but it was burned by a racist. Even if a racist burned a holy place for us, can we say that racists choose their object, and do nothing to Japanese people? No way!
If you want to know the details, check out this video.
Case2: The 8 hooligans used violence on a Japanese pianist and broke his arm in New York.
September 27, 2020, Mr. Unno, a very famous pianist, was returning home by subway. Then when he tried to leave the station, 8 hooligans break his arm by violence.
One reason he became the object of violence was that he was Asian. Now Mr. Unno continues to do rehabilitation but he may not be able to play piano as before.
As these cases, Japanese people are also the victims of this phenomenon. But Japanese people can’t admit it because we think that we are another level compared to other Asians.
Aren’t Japanese people Asian?
Basically Japanese people think that Japanese people are superior to other Asians. The basis of their blind faith is the very strong economic strength we had.
For example this graph is of GDP in Asia in 1978. Japan was much better than China and India. Then Japanese began to consider themselves the king of Asia. In addition a country began to treat Japanese as “honor whites”, and they fulfilled the pride of Japanese.
This country was South Africa.
At this time South Africa was in the racist “Apartheid” policy, and the colored race was worse off than Westerners. However Japan had a lot of money and South Africa wanted to trade with Japan. That’s why they treated us as “the white people of honor”.
Ironically some Japanese were happy to be “White of Honor” because they considered it was a symbol of Japan’s development.
In reality we have inferiority complex to the westerners as we can understand from this attitude and we want other countries to admit that Japan can enter the “White Club”.
That is why for these Japanese, Asian Hatecrime is a foreign issue.
As you can see, many Japanese people are completely unaware of the world outside Japan. Japan, this country has certainly developed economically, but it is still not an international country. I think this fact can be understood from this incident. What about in your country? I look forward to your opinion and comments.
