Hiragana Times: Subtle nihonjinron

[Taiko666]

While perusing the Hiragana Times I came across the following article.
http://canpan.info/open/news/0000001138/news_detail.html
At first glance it seems like a perfectly innocent little piece about the relative vagueness of the Japanese language and the importance of verb endings. But no... we have

1) the old chestnut about the Japanese 'race' originally being peaceful farmers relying on teamwork, thus discord was avoided by not expressing one's feelings. The implication of course being that other 'races' (=foreigners) must have been barbarian hunters.
2) "English is practical and logical. Subtle nuances are expressed through voice tones and facial expressions"
- The more I reflect on this absurd assertion the more angry I become. What on earth was the author thinking? Quite apart from the fact that English is not particularly logical, to say that subtle nuances cannot be expressed through the language alone is complete and utter nonsense. It's laughable, incredible, ridiculous... (I'd better take a deep breath and continue
3) While continuing the attack on English, the article is rounded off with a cheap jibe about the quality of American (=foreign) food (I presume they mean MacDonalds) compared to 'delicately cooked' Japanese food (I presume they don't mean Yoshinoya.)

This article has put me off the Hiragana Times for good.

If even language learning aid publications like the Hiragana Times produce such insulting nonsense, is there any hope that nihonjinron will ever go away?

 

[Han Chan]

I have also been amased and troubled by the stereotypes promoted by the magazine Hiragana Times. When I asked for why the various more or less racist stereotypes were printed - like "the japanese are a clone-like race". The Editor Katsuyuki Hasegawa told me that these ideas were actually his own and that he have allready published several books "trying to help forigners understand the japanese". I had thought that the articles describing the japanese according to very negative stereotypes had to be written by racist forigners but some of them were actually written by a japanese. Actually I find that many of the articles printed in Hiragana Times are so stereotypical that they do not help anybody at all - rather they help creating new and reinforcing old stereotypes.

This a link to the thread I started the other day about Hiragana Times:

Hiragana Times: "Japanese are a Clone-like Race"

 

[Ewok85]

of which the taste is often flavored by toppings

Hahaha, I have more sauces and toppings in my home now than I did back home - theres a topping for just about every Japanese dish imaginable. Japanese is nowhere near as colorful and rich as English - ever heard of a thesaurus?

 

[yukio_michael]

This is the second Hiragana Times article that I've heard recently that had some rather quizical things to say about the nature of the Japanese--- The last one speculated that the Japanese were different because they had "different "clone-like" genes" than other races---

Japanese is nowhere near as colorful and rich as English - ever heard of a thesaurus?

You realise this when you find that in common speech there are only a specific group of words that are not just common, but insitutionalized for saying "I'm leaving!", "I'm home!", "I'm sorry", "Please", & "Thank you"... etcetera.

 

[Mycernius]

1) the old chestnut about the Japanese 'race' originally being peaceful farmers relying on teamwork, thus discord was avoided by not expressing one's feelings. The implication of course being that other 'races' (=foreigners) must have been barbarian hunters.

I was always under the impression that the Japanese were hunter gathers for a lot longer than Europeans and the Chinese. Wasn't it the Chinese/Koreans who bought agriculture to Japan?

2) "English is practical and logical. Subtle nuances are expressed through voice tones and facial expressions"
- The more I reflect on this absurd assertion the more angry I become. What on earth was the author thinking? Quite apart from the fact that English is not particularly logical, to say that subtle nuances cannot be expressed through the language alone is complete and utter nonsense. It's laughable, incredible, ridiculous... (I'd better take a deep breath and continue

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Sounds like the guy has never seriously looked at English, with all its silent letters, different ways of spelling and grammar, or even its variants ie: American English, British English, Australian English.

 

[yamada]

If even language learning aid publications like the Hiragana Times produce such insulting nonsense, is there any hope that nihonjinron will ever go away?

When an English class starts as an elementary school compulsory subject, it will be less.