Possibilities and Limitations of J-POP culture in U.S.

The cultural relashionship between Japan and U.S.
has been always like a homely looking high school geeky girl
have a totally one-sided love
toward a handsome star football player.
Of course, he does not notice her a bit.
So she does everything to get his attention, even giving him money.
And this poor girl has been having an obsessive fantasy
that he does care for her even he does not show any sign of it.
No matter what he does or say,
she tends to interpret that it is out of his love for her.

Even before the war, hip Japanese boys and girls
immitated American latest hip cultures
like foshion, music and dance.
In '20s and '30s, those hip boys and girls were called
"Mobo(Modern Boy)" and "Moga(Modern Girl)".
Their fashion was immitation of flappers and
they danced to jazz.

Her name is Midge Williams and she went to Japan in 1933
and she not only sang in clubs in Japan
but also recorded five songs for Japanese Columbia
in English and Japanese about 75 years before Jero
(American Black Enka singer who is now populr in Japan).

Ever since those times, Japanese have been always in love
with American culture.
And their wishfull thinking has been always
America also liking Japan,
which had been far away from the truth
except those so-called Japanophiles.
So I kept writing the vast mojority of Americans
have no interest in Japan or Japanese cultures.
But then, if I go to DVD stores' anime section and game shops,
they carry tons of Japanese titles.
Hmmmmmmm......
So I decided to investigate what kind of Americans
like those Japanese animes, mangas and other J-pop cultures,
and what kind of cultural phenomenon this is all about.
And what is gonna happen after this?
Will U.S. accept more Japanese other pop cultures as well?,
or will still the racism prevent that?
I believe anime and manga were accepted
because their characters do not look like Asians.
In '60s and '70s, Japanese monster films were popular in U.S.
because the stars of those films were cool monsters,
not ugly flat-faced Asians.

Today I went to New York Anime & Manga meet up group,
and had a good time to talk with people, American otakus.
Though I am still working on the subject of Chinese immigrant,
I am really looking forward to
talking to more anime and manga people next month.

Are Japanese Girls Really Sluts? Part 3

This time I like to talk about infamous "Yellow Cab".
About 20 years ago or so,
there was a rumor in Japan that
Japanese girls were called "Yellow Cab" in U.S.,
which meant anybody could get a cheap and easy ride.
I had never heard such a thing in New York city.
However, it was true and still is true that
some Japanese girls are acting like big sluts
for White men and Black men in this city.

Here in New York city,
many Japanese girls who date with White men or Black men say
they did not come to U.S. to look for boy friends and
it was just a coincident for them to meet White or Black men
and fall in love.
Really?, then why do all Japanese girls
who date with non-Japanese men date with Whites or Blacks?
I have never seen Japanese girls date with Arabs or native Mexicans.
This means they obviously choose men.
And if they choose them, it is hardly a coincident.
At least a part of the reason they come to U.S. is
to hunt White or Black men if it is not all.

Not only in New York but also in Japan
it is a well-known fact among male Gaijins
that it is easy to find Japanese girl friends
because they do not have to go to girls, girls come to them.
When I lived in Tokyo, I met a male Gaijin who had said
that he had been doing "Hyakuningiri" and it was almost accomplished.
"Hyakuningiri" means that a Samurai slashs and kills 100 men
with his sword.
So guess what it meant for him.
I also met a White guy in New York, having been in Japan,
who said that Japanese girls looked very shy
but they were sexually very agressive.
"Japanese women invited me to their apartments and cooked for me,
and after that they fed their bodies to me too."
I also met a very nice looking Black guy in my neighborhood gym,
and he said that Japanese girls were oriental delights.
I bet many Japanese girls made a line in front of his door,
he was a gorgeous looking guy.
A few years ago, I was walking down the 8th street,
and recognaized two Japanese girls in very elaborated fashion
walking in front of me, who appeared to be early twenties.
When they stopped at the trafic signal,
I stopped right behind of them.
Then suddenly an Italian looking White guy came and talked to them
with a few Japanese words like "Nihon no josei ha kwaiine"
(Japanese girls are cute) and those girls followed him.
I was stunned, just stunned
because he was obviously a stranger to them.
I can go on and on about these kind of stories.

But why do Japanese girls do that?
Not only girls but also many men in Japan
have been so in love with
American and European culture for such a long long time.
A small island nation like Japan
has been always yarning for glamorous culture from abroad.
Once it was toward China for many years
and now it was toward U.S.(and Europe).
And Japanese media keeps feeding people
tons of glamorous, trendy or shocking images
of American culture like music, films, TV shows and fashion.
Therefore having sex with White or Black men
for some Japanese girls
means being f**ked by glittering glamorous American culture,
putting them into their own bodies and being one with them,
being one with something they have been longing for years.
As the result of that, some Japanese girls,
who have White or Black boyfriend or husband,
even feel like they have become higher existences
than average Japanese.

To be continued

dehumanization

Last month it was about Korean community in New York,
And this month I am writing about Chinese community.
Though I did not want these two articles to be too similar,
they are becoming very different naturally.
After all, they are very different immigrant communities.
Chinese immigration are the one of the more traditional sense.
As they are mostly poor in their own country,
they come to U.S. for the financial opportunity.
Of course, Koreans come to U.S. for the same reason as well,
but the most of them are from the middle class,
or maybe the lower middle class, I guess.
Japanese do not come here as immigrants of the traditional sense
because Japan is no longer poor
just like Irish and Italians do not immigrate to U.S. any more
with a massive number.
Since I had wondered why Koreans kept coming to U.S.,
I did not hesitate ask them why.

And this is what they said....
1) Although the country of Korea itself may be no longer poor,
Korean society still has a big gap between rich & poor
and even lives of the middle class are not very stable
socially and financially.
2) Korean parents believe in their kids' education religiously.
As in Korea, passing the entrance exam of good schools is
even harder than in Japan,
affluent parents send their kids to U.S..
The families cannot afford that, they move to U.S. as immigrants.

But unlike '80s and early '90s,
when Korean small business owners thrived in U.S.,
moving to New York no longer guarantees financial success to them
because of the steep rise of
the residential and business rent in this city.

On the other hand,
the Chinese immigration has exploded in New York city.
Now along with the ones in Manhatan and Queen,
we have a new Chinatown in Brooklyn as well,
the picture above is the Chinatown in Sunset Park of Brooklyn.

Well, for the last and this month,
I have talked to many Koreans and Chinese.
The one thing I have learned from that is something very simple,
the mutual communication is the most important.
If you talk to people you do not know very well,
you can tell they are the same humans just like you are.
yeah, you say of course you know that.
But the reality is that we are so segragated by the race,
the language, the religion and the cultural background.
Even in the city like New York
where people from the all over the world live,
knowing someone outside of your own community is very difficult
unless you are very very interested in other people
for one reason or another.

And we tend to see other people with stereo type images.
But why do we do that???
There are many reasons why.
As it takes too long to explain everything,
I am not going to do that here, sorry, some other time.
However, the one thing I can say is that
stereotyping is dehumanizing.

Criminals dehumanize Victims
because if they think the victims have
the same emotions and feeling like theirs,
it is much harder to harm them.
Think about it when you see other people
with stereo type images next time.

People in Chinatown do not look like Japanese
not because of the race
but because of their economical conditions.
We just do not have
the massive number of underclass people like them in Japan.
And the poor immigrants do not paticulary look good.
Time to time, I go to Chinatown to get fruits, veggies
and some fish, but I never had made much conversation with them
becuase they hardly speak any English.
I have to admit that
I had been seeing them with stereo type images.

I talked to the guy in his '20s, who came to U.S.
about 6 years ago from the small town of China
because he did not want have a life like his dad.
he paid $60.000 to the smuggler and worked 12 hours a day
as a waiter every day to pay off the debt.
Now he is happily debt free.
Well, I could not help asking him how he had done that.
Because he worked for a long long hours
and lived in a tiny dormroom with his roomies for years.
Now he likes to improve his life by going to school
but his long shift hours prevents him to do that.
He was a young guy just like any other in Chinatown
but I felt very close to him after listening to his story.
I de-dehumanized him......
And that made me feel good.

The American Pit Bull Terrier

I had never seen a PitBull when I was in Japan,
even never known or heard about this breed.

Then the first time I saw one, I hated it.
I wonder what kind of nuts likes to own
this ugly mean looking dog.

Eventually, I realized that people like
street kids like to have this dog
because they feel empowered
by owning and showing off this powerful and mean looking dog.
I guess that it is basically a same idea that
Japanese gangster, Yakuza used to have Bulldogs or Boxers.
I have also heard they use this dog for dog-fighting as well.

So for a long long time,
PitBull had been the Dog breed that the least I wish to own.
But then, a few years ago I heard the very disturbing
and sad fact about this breed,
which is that very very few of them, which were surrendered
to the animal shelter, can get out of there alive
because nobody wants them.

Because most of people who want them are not animal lovers,
PitBulls are usually neglected and mistreated when they grow up,
and that makes them even more vicious, mean and out of control.
I heard that not only for them but also for most of other breeds,
obedience training and early socialising are keys
to make them great companions for humans.
However, people who like to have Pitbull tend to neglect all those
and simply dump them when they do not want to feed them anymore.
So PitBulls end up in shelters tend to be undertrained,
bad-behaved and agressive.
No wonder nobody wants them.

I feel so sorry for them who have to be put to sleep for nothing.
Why do they have to get the death sentence for the mistakes
and stupidity that humans have to be blamed for?
Now I know PitBulls are the biggest victims.
Animals and people who do not have the power to speak up,
they always fall to be victims of abuse and exploitation.
I have seen lots of them in this city, lots of them.
So many people, they simply do not know.
Because people with power and money know how to exploit others
without stering much public attention, concern and controversy.
Therefore animals and people without power are suffering quietly
and dying quietly.
Now I know what I have to hate is not PitBull.

The Bells

Warning: this slide show is too cheezzzzzyyyyy.

This has been one of my favorite songs for a long time.
Laura Nyro did not write this song,
actually written by Marvin Gaye
and originally sung by the Motown group called the Originals.
However, I heard Laura's one first,
and it is from her album called "Gonna take a miracle"
on which she covered her favorite R&B songs
from the days she grew up in Bronx as a jewish girl.

Sometimes it makes me laugh to think
that now I am actually living in the city
where Laura and so many other musicians
who I idolized when I was young.
And when that laughter ends,
I start thinking who I am, what I am, what I am doing here
and if this is real or not.
Deep in the night, I am all alone,
suddenly everything loses its realness and meanings.
I have never been good at drawing the line
between the reality and the fantasy.
And I think I stopped chasing my fantasy a long time ago.
Then who am I?, Why am I here?
Once I was running around to find something even I did not know.
Those days had gone before I realized it.

Do you love me, do you love me,
do you love me cause I love you
Oh Baby
But it's one thing I want you to remember
If you ever leave me, I believe I go insane
Darling I'll never hear the bells again
Never, never, never

It is supposed to be a love song,
but now it sounds to me like
something deep inside of me is crying out, screaming
desparately to cling to my last piece of sanity?,
innocence?, or motivation to live?
I do not know.

Sometimes I feel like being a ghost already.
My existence in this world has already become
so ambiguous that it makes me believe
the death will not change much.

I'll never hear the bells if you leave me
I'll never hear the bells

Will I go insane if "blank" leaves me?
"Blank" has become really blank
and that dose not freak me out.
It's strange.

Yes, We Have a Very Rich Mayor

Wednesday, I went to the rally of Coalition
to protect Chinatown and Lower East Side
from Blomberg's racist rezoning plan.
As I planned to write about Chinese community in New York,
some of organizations that I had a contact with for that
suggested me to come.

Now the huge gentrifications are going on
in many areas of this city.
Powerful developers buy out the many lands and buildings,
bulldoze them and build high rises for offices
and luxualious apartment complexes.
But there is the strict zoning law in this city
to prevent those activities,
to protect neighborhood.

However, things are changing because of our rich mayor.
He has been modifying this law in favor of developers.
As the result of that, for the last few years
so many high rises have risen up in Lower East Side,
which you can rent an apartment with the rent like
$4.000 to $10.000 a month.
And now the mayor likes to allow the same things to happen
in Chinatown as well because Chinatown is located
in the walking distance from Wall street area.
He said that the city will build
the affrodable housings there,
but they are for the people who makes $60,000 a year.
Since Chinatown is pretty much poor Chinese immigrant slum,
most of their residents make a very little money,
which means they have to move out.
And go where?
In this city, it is a very difficult task now
to find one bedroom apartment under $1.500 a month
even somewhere far away from the center of the city.
Certainly people who can afford to live in high rises
do not want to live near the poor Chinese immigrants.
So this project is about pushing away poor colored immigrants
to make more money for riches.

When Michael Blomberg announced that
he would enter the race for the mayor,
very few people said that they would vote for him
according to the survey at that time
because he was a well-know figure in business community
but not in general public.
However, after that, he placed so many ads on TV
by using his huge resources
and won the seat of the mayor.
he basically bought it.

Last summer, during I was doing some field reserch,
means talking to lots of strangers,
I talked to a middle aged woman
who appeared to be a middle class and educated person
and she said she loved this mayor so much.
So I said to her that I do not understand
why the educated person like you do not understand
the simple logic that
rich politicians do their politics for the riches.

In my tiny home town in rural Japan,
most of town congress men are either factory owners
or big whole sale marchants.
In rural Japan, people are very very naive
and they admire rich people only because they are rich.
So they vote for them.
As the result of that,
the unequality like big wage gap between men and women
can never be solved.
But still they vote for them.

The election is for people to choose the politician
to do politics for them.
And that is the very important basic
for this system of democracy.
Considering that, in my little town,
this system is obviously not working.
And I had never dreamed that the same thing could happen
in the world most famous city called New York.

Think about it.
Do you think you can be super rich like Blomberg
if you are just a honest hard worker?
I think only the people who are good at
manipulating and exploiting other people
can be rich like him.

The very sad trend of this society right now is that
you have to be the one who exploits
if you do not want to be exploited.
I do not want to exploit anyone
and I do not want to be exploited either.
But that is becoming more and more difficult point to stand on.
It is very sad.
And not many people are talking about it
including media which of course is controled by money
in this society.

8/9 1945

When I was 10 years old,
I went to Nagasaki's peace museum as a school trip.
At that time, I did not realize
but I was profoundly traumatized by that experience.
Ever since then, I have had a fear that
someday I will have a horrible death by the nuclear attack.
Especially after 9/11, that had become more real to me.

If you go to YouTube,
you can find many Hiroshima-Nagasaki related videos.
Then if you read the comments on those videos,
many of them are like either "Japs deserved those" or
"Nuclear attacks on Japan were totally justifiable".

If you visit the peace museum of Hiroshima or Nagasaki
just once,
You realize those could not be justifiable no matter what.

We all remember how much we were horrified
by the images of 9/11 that we saw on TV.
But being compared with
what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
9/11 was rather the much smaller incident.
Just think about it,
at that time, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
the entire cities had become like 9/11.
Those were clearly beyond our imagination.

From my writing career, I have learned a few.
And two things people hate to know about
no matter how true they are are
something makes them feel guilty
and something can destroy their fantasies.
Many Americans do not want to believe U.S. could do
such a horrible things to other people
for unjustifiable reasons.
For them, America has to be always right.
Well then, of course,
Japanese schools even do not teach their kids
what Japanese did during the war
and they like to believe they were the victims.
So not only Americans do, Japanmese are worse.

Yeah, at least American schools,
they teach their kids about
the bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
but without almost no details.
They have seen the images of those mushroom clouds
but never seen the images of
what happened under those clouds.
Once you see the whole piture,
you can tell they were not justifiable.

I will never go back to the peace museum,
I do not want to,
once was enough for me.
But I believe everybody should visit once
if they have a chance.
This is not about who is right or who is wrong.
This is about the truth should be told
and not making mistakes any more.

Are you offended because you do not believe
America could make mistakes?
Hello, this is the country
where Blacks had been lynced until the end of '60s.
And the most recently
U.S. has killed tons of innocent Iraquians for oil
and for the totally unjustifiable reasons.
Have you ever thought about
how many people grieving there and
how many kids starving now
because they lost their fathers?
Now you are really offended
because you started to feel guilty
and you wanna hate and curse me.
Yeah, Americans are always right,
the greatest people of the world.

Sigh........