I read the interview -- yes, Patrice, I periodically buy a WIRE ;-) -- and found it more jingoistic than racist, statistics aside. Didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth,
Well, you can call me old fashioned, but I always get a bad taste in my mouth when people talk about wanting the people to "wake up" and realise the ongoing "invasion" which is threatening their "race". Racist? Well perhaps not. It's not really a big part of the interview so he doesn't dig too much into it, but I think from what he is saying there is certainly not very far to saying that the "pure" japanese race is supirior to the new "westernised" version, which would be racism, right? Of course, I will give him the benifit of doubt becuase of the language thing and possible mistakes in the translation. But I also remember the Japanese "tradition" of racism and supiriority feelings.
Haino's remarks must certainly be seen in the proper context. As far as I can tell, he is a strong advocate of tradition; (...) His lyrics are not even in contemporary Japanese. He must feel that a culture which he loves is disappearing, and that what replaces is is often not very worthwhile.
What if he was an American country singer who was a "strong advocate of tradition" and were singing songs in an old hilbilly dialect about the good old days when you could call black people niggers without anybody complaining. Would you also be so kind to him and say "He must feel that a culture which he loves is disappearing, and that what replaces is is often not very worthwhile."? If Haino was just talking about culture, I'd say, okay fine. I'd probably even agree with him. But he said "race", which is what worried me.
Furthermore, it is definitely true to some extent that the Japanese have changed even physically from these cultural influences.
Okay, I obviously didn't explain myself very well, because this has also been picked up elsewhere. I didn't mean to say that the Japanese have not changed in the last years. They certainly have, and somebody posted the following link which has some background information on it: http://www.sumitomo.gr.jp/english/discoveries/special/84_03.html It's ridiculous in my opinion, because why does it matter if they change a couple of centimeters? Races change. It's just how biology works, as far as I'm concerned.
(as George Bush thinks, but his remarks about this are carefully filtered out the news reports in the US, as when he recently asked the Brazilian president if they "also had blacks in Brazil?").
I don't know how carefully they are actually filtered. I saw his entire 4. of July speech on CNN and it certainly had a fair share of his "remarks". I almost swallowed my tongue when he talked about the vicitms of September 11. and claimed that "all of them were American". Not exactly "racist", but still mindnumbingly ignorant and offensive. Certainly far more worrying than anything from Haino's mouth.
On the subject of Haino's supposed racism, you would be surprised to find out just how many people outside of the USA feel that their culture has been invaded by the USA -
Surprised? Why? We have pretty good statistics on this, for example Gallup International. It's no secret. _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com