Knowing that it’s a cite for what I said, you know what it says, but sure. The third paragraph is:
His son, Hikoma Ueno (1838-1904), opened a camera store in Nagasaki and became Japan’s first professional cameraman. At first, people said, “If you get your photo taken, it will suck out your soul.” And there was not very many people who would want their picture taken. But in 1874, Hikoma took Japan’s first picture of the night sky and pictures of the West-South War–letting people know how the war went–and continued to work towards gaining acceptance of the device.
That’s true. One should always consider the source. A Jewish man telling Jewish jokes; that’s funny. But a Nazi telling the same jokes? Well, suddenly that’s not so funny anymore.
Hitler: So ze Jewish Samurai, he slices ze air wiss hiz katana but ze fly eet is still zere! And zen ze lord looks at him unt he says, “Eet is still zere. Why did you not kill ze fly?” And ze Jew, he says, “Ahah, but look closely lord, you vill see zat he has lost his left nut.”
Was Merry Fucking Christmas prior to Trey’s marriage?
Now I heard that in Japan
Everyone just lives in sin
They pray to several gods
And put needles in their skin.
On December 25th
All they do is eat a cake
And that is why I go to Japan
And walk around and say…
Hey there Mr. Shintoist
Merry fucking Christmas
God is going to kick your ass
You infidelic pagan scum.
For the record, “Merry Fucking Christmas” was aired in Season 3 (about 12 years ago), and Trey married Emma Sugiyama in January, 2006 – in a ceremony conducted by Norman Lear, of all people. Link.
And Mr. Garrison is the biggest D-bag in all of South Park (John Edwards notwithstanding), which is saying something.
It seems more of a quibble about the definition of “soul.” The article asserts a belief in a continuation of consciousness from life to life. It’s certainly different from what a Christian might believe (an energy-like being that uses a body as a shell), but it’s within the bounds of what a philosopher might think. In fact, I find myself agreeing with a lot of the Buddhist viewpoints, and at least I had always considered “soul” to really be what the article is explaining.
(Btw, I think when someone claims that animals, blacks, rocks, etc don’t have souls they’re saying that they don’t even have consciousness – that they don’t experience anything, do not feel pain. This is used as justification for cruelty.)
Sorry to necropost like this but actually one idea springs to my mind about the source of the joke that Japanese have no souls. Well, it is common knowledge (Richard Tames’s books amongst really many many others) that the christianisation of Japan back in the 16th cent. did not go as smoothly as it was meant to. Not delving into the details much further, let us note that the Japanese language has actually been called a Satan’s invention by the early missionaries, owing mostly to the fact that they found it extremely hard to learn… My knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church is unfortunately insufficient and I don’t know if any such idea (that Japanese have no souls) has arisen, so… anyone thinks it may be a good guess nevertheless?
It was just a throwaway joke. In the South Park universe, God and Satan exist.
The creators use this conceit for humor, having God or representatives of God make statements implying that most or all major religions are completely wrong.
For example, in one episode (more than one, I believe) an angel informs everyone in Hell that the Mormons have got it right, and they’re the only people who go to heaven (and it turns out that Heaven is really boring and slightly annoying because it’s full of Mormons).
