{"id":17447,"date":"2024-06-02T18:16:40","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T01:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17447"},"modified":"2024-06-26T23:52:53","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T06:52:53","slug":"incidents-of-confrontationalism-toward-nj-on-the-rise-debito-org-argues-that-this-is-bullying-disguised-as-a-reaction-to-overtourism-and-advises-pushing-back-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17447","title":{"rendered":"Incidents of confrontationalism toward NJ are on the rise. Debito.org argues that this is standard social bullying of foreigners being disguised as a reaction to alleged “overtourism”. Push back at it."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hi Blog. \u00a0This is just a quick personal post as what’s happening to others is also happening to me.<\/p>\n

We’ve had plenty of reports in recent months of people being confrontational towards NJ (Resident and Tourist), or people who look like NJ, accusing them of all manner of cultural slights and faux pas.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, we’ve had a confrontation at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto<\/a>, and enough tourism in Kyoto and Mt Fuji to warrant bans on people going to certain places<\/a>\u00a0— even the recent overkill of a local government putting up a screen to block a view of Mt Fuji around a convenience store<\/a>, with predictable accusations that foreigners are spoiling everything. \u00a0Halloween in Shibuya even became a target<\/a>, with drinking in the street made out to be a foreign-imported problem (seriously?!).<\/p>\n

Some of this is inevitable. \u00a0For quite some time now we’ve had grumbles about Chinese consumers’ spending habits in places like Ginza<\/a>. \u00a0And whenever foreigners are about, they tend to be the first people blamed for any problem due to “cultural differences” that are automatically at odds with Japan’s putative “uniqueness”. \u00a0They’re a soft target.<\/p>\n

It even happened to me yesterday in front of Tokyo Station. \u00a0Some ojisan (now they’re actually younger than me) decided to jump his place in line for taxis in front of us, and then cursed me out when I told him that that wasn’t acceptable behavior. \u00a0When I cursed him out back, he told me to speak “proper Japanese” peppered with a few “omae”s to establish his dominance. \u00a0I told him to get lost and to eat shit, and he jumped into the cab and fumed as the doors closed. \u00a0The people behind us in line apologized to me (thanks; appreciated, but not something you’re responsible for), and a visual survey of the crowd behind me revealed no hairy eyeballs being directed at me. \u00a0They saw his line jumping too. \u00a0So I got the next cab and got on with my day.<\/p>\n

But the lesson I took from this incident is that, since bullying is a cultural standard in Japan due to the hierarchical nature of everything here,<\/a> there are plenty of bullies who naturally believe that anyone who looks NJ is on lower social rung. \u00a0Seeing me as a soft target, the bully yesterday decided to enforce that.<\/p>\n

And while he didn’t accuse me specifically of being a tourist, it’s easy nowadays to justify the standard bullying that happens to NJ as a reaction to overtourism.<\/p>\n

We as Visible Minorities and NJ Residents should be wary of that dynamic and push back at it. \u00a0Don’t let overtourism become leverage for bullying. \u00a0Make it clear that rules are rules, rudeness is rudeness, and Cool Japan is no longer cool when it becomes knee-jerk disrespectful.<\/p>\n

After all, tourism is what Japan wanted. \u00a0“Cool Japan<\/a>” and all that. \u00a0And now you’ve got record levels of visitors (not to mention NJ Residents<\/a>, by the way). \u00a0So live with it. \u00a0Deal with it (as I’ve found Japan generally has, successfully<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But definitely don’t blame people who look “foreign” for doing what Japanese do too. \u00a0I mean, just about everything foreign tourists do here are what Japanese also do at home — from littering<\/a> to being loud in public to shoplifting (theft by Japanese is by far the largest crime in Japan<\/a>), etc. etc. \u00a0And it’s especially true for Japanese abroad, due to a philosophy of tabi no haji wa kakisute<\/em><\/strong> (“shed your shame when traveling”, with both positive and negative connotations).<\/p>\n

Lose the racism and quit the bullying. \u00a0And stand up to the bullies when necessary. \u00a0Debito Arudou, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

======================
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We’ve had plenty of reports in recent months of people being confrontational towards NJ (Resident and Tourist), or people who look like NJ, accusing them of all manner of cultural slights and faux pas. In recent weeks, we’ve had a confrontation at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto, and enough tourism in Kyoto and Mt Fuji to warrant bans on people going to certain places — even the recent overkill of a local government putting up a screen to block a view of Mt Fuji around a convenience store, with predictable accusations that foreigners are spoiling everything. \u00a0Halloween in Shibuya even became a target, with drinking in the street made out to be a foreign-imported problem (seriously?!).<\/p>\n

Some of this is inevitable. \u00a0For quite some time now we’ve had grumbles about Chinese consumers’ spending habits in places like Ginza. \u00a0And whenever foreigners are about, they tend to be the first people blamed for any problem due to “cultural differences” that are automatically at odds with Japan’s putative “uniqueness”. \u00a0They’re a soft target. And “overtourism” is now being used as a means to empower bullies who want to push foreigners around.<\/p>\n

It even happened to me yesterday in front of Tokyo Station, when some ojisan decided to jump the line in front of me for taxis and then curse me out for saying something. Mayhem ensued…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,54,22,52,26,73,4,13,56,46,11,65,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-pinprick-protests","category-cultural-issue","category-hate-speech","category-ironies-hypocrisies","category-japans-blame-game","category-japanese-government","category-media","category-nj-legacies","category-practical-advice","category-problematic-foreign-treatment","category-racist-images-in-media","category-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17447"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17479,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17447\/revisions\/17479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}