A shocking clip of racial exclusion in Japan. I know people who have been to and lived in Japan and they never mentioned this.
I think I should have posted this in Mundane. Sorry for the mistake.
Odd. It’s blocked here. Can you give a summary?
Its just a bunch of stills of various signs saying stuff like “Japanese Only!” and “No foreigners allowed”…stuff like that.
I don’t recall signs like that when I was in Japan, but its been over a decade for me. Anyone who thinks the Japanese love foreigners though is delusional. They are as ethnocentric as the next country…which is to say that, at some level, nearly every country I’ve been too (including the US) has a distrust of foreigners. Its just more difficult to figure out who the foreigners are in the US than it is in Japan. 
-XT
So off to MPSIMS it goes.
[ /Moderating ]
I laughed at the last ‘scene’…which was exactly the same as my local pool club (without the Japanese!)
So it’s supposed to be a surprise that the Japanese have a culture which is miles away from ours? You’re not going to successfully tackle that by insisting on getting pissed in their nightclubs.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever heard of the country of Japan. It’s very well known.
I vacationed there about 5 years back and didn’t find this attitude to be much of an impediment. It’s mostly confined to the older generation; anyone under the age of 60 seemed genuinely happy to see us, and the teenagers all waved at us and flashed us peace signs, even on crowded city streets. The older generation was suspicious and untrusting, but I think it would be hard for us to relate to their feelings for us, culturally and historically. I was ok with it. The only thing I remember not being able to do was swim in the pool at our hotel. No gai jin!
I lived in Japan from September 1990 to February 1996. I saw plenty of “Japanese Only” signs at a number of establishments.
Everything I’ve ever read about Japan indicates that they are kind weird … extremely ethnocentric on the one hand, and very interested in and willing to borrow from other cultures as well.
When my family and I went to Japan back in September, my brother tried to sample some authentic nightlife, so he found a back-alley bar and got a drink. According to him, they made him a target of mockey, and he eventually decided it was smarter to leave than finish his beer. He got the same response at a pachinko parlor. I personally never encountered any Japanese Only signs or any overt unfriendliness, but I stuck to the Approved Tourist Areas.
I remember this quote from the 2002 World Cup in Japan:
“‘Given the exceptional mood of the event, we must also face the possibility of unwanted babies conceived by foreigners who rape our women,’ says Takayoshi Konno, who is in the same Liberal Democratic Party as the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi. Mr. Takayoshi told the Monitor that he sees no reason to feel any less worried even though England will not play in his town.”
I lived in Japan 8 years and never once saw such a sign. My guess is that almost every one of those signs was for underworld-type places in which prostitution or something close to it was going on. Quite a few of them looked like signs in front of “Snacks,” or drinking parlors with varying degrees of female companionship.
I’ve been to a heck of a lot of places in Tokyo, Osaka, and elsewhere (including an infinity of bars and restaurants frequented mostly by Japanese) and never saw such a notice.
Which is not to say I didn’t encounter tons of racism in Japan–just not much in public places.
That’s what I figured as well (I’ve never seen such signs, either). One of the signs looked like the kind in front of capsule hotels (since it prohibited people with tattoos from entering), but that one didn’t prohibit foreigners from entering, just people who didn’t understand Japanese.
I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if such signs are common in areas near American military bases.
Some clubs in Korea have signs specifically forbidding US military from entering. They started to spring up a few years ago, after two girls were run over by a US army tank and anti-American feelings were running high. I don’t think it necessarily means the owners are racists so much as that they don’t want to deal with trouble, but the trouble itself is definitely based on racism.
Racism in Korea usually directs itself towards white male/Korean female couples, rather than white people in general. They’re all nice to you until you start dating their daughters/sisters. Although I’m sure this happens in other countries as well - the “can’t have them furriners datin’ our wimmin” attitude.
Heh. I like the one that says “Prohibited for goin to with FOREIGN LADY who are waiting on the lord”
Delightfully surreal Engrish…
All I can say is you must frequent places different than I did…I never saw such a sign (in English) when I was there. Granted, I was usually in Japan for a few months at a time, not years at a time…but I was there fairly frequently, and I did, um, go to the more seedy type parts on occation (in Tokyo especially).
I wouldn’t, however, be surprised by such signs. As I said, the Japanese are easily one of the most ethnocentric people I’ve run into.
-XT
Those signs have been placed on certain establishments for approximately 55 years. Establishments in certain districts are required to post such a sign if they are placed on the “Off Limits” list by the local area commander.
The worst type of racism here is directed against Blacks.
I lived in the northern most prefecture on Honshu for 7 years. In Aomori, the only place where I ever saw anti-Westerner behaviour was in the town of Misawa which had an American military base. Taxis wouldn’t pick up white people at night time and quite a few bars said no gai jin signs - I’m assuming it was due to drunken behaviour. Where I lived on the other coast, they loved having the gaijin frequent the bars.
I did notice in Kobe, there were no gaijin signs in some bars.
Quite frankly - Japanese don’t have bouncers in bars because people almost never get out of hand when drunk. Even if someone throws a punch, it doesn’t become a brawl etc. Whereas, we can’t say the same about westerners when drunk.
Ironically, in many of those establishments depicted in the video, some of the staff are non-Japanese.
Some are whores, too.