{"id":2128,"date":"2009-01-16T07:29:53","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T22:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=2128"},"modified":"2015-02-21T08:43:15","modified_gmt":"2015-02-21T18:43:15","slug":"gregory-clark-argues-in-japan-times-that-antiforeigner-discrimination-is-a-right-for-japanese-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=2128","title":{"rendered":"Gregory Clark argues in Japan Times that “Antiforeigner discrimination is a right for Japanese people”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Handbook<\/a>\"\\\"<\/a>\"Foreign<\/a>\"\\\"<\/a>\"\u300c\u30b8\u30e3\u30d1\u30cb\u30fc\u30ba\u30fb\u30aa\u30f3\u30ea\u30fc\u3000\u5c0f\u6a3d\u5165\u6d74\u62d2\u5426\u554f\u984c\u3068\u4eba\u7a2e\u5dee\u5225\u300d\uff08\u660e\u77f3\u66f8\u5e97\uff09\"<\/a>\"JAPANESE<\/a><\/p>\n

Hi Blog. Y’know, life is never boring. Here’s yet another piece about the Otaru Onsens Case<\/a>\u00a0in yesterday’s Japan Times.\u00a0\u00a0This time from that person with a demonstrably bad record of dealing with the facts, Gregory Clark<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clark provides no surprises as he rides his “bathhouse fanatics” hobby horse<\/a> once again, and gets (as he has since 1999<\/a>) the same old facts wrong. Actually, he gets even more facts wrong this time: \u00a0despite calling himself “closely involved” in the case, he gets the very name of the exclusionary onsen wrong. \u00a0He even forgets once again (after repeated past public corrections that were even printed in the Japan Times<\/a>) that there was more than one plaintiff in the successful lawsuit<\/a>. And that one of those plaintiffs is a Japanese.<\/p>\n

The rest is self-hating anti-gaijin invective with errors and illogic galore. \u00a0If the Japan Times isn’t bothering with fact checks anymore, they should just put this bigoted old fool out to pasture. \u00a0Clark is not worth the trouble to print or debate with anymore.<\/p>\n

Still tracing his arc to irrelevancy, Arudou Debito in Sapporo
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Excerpt follows. \u00a0Full article (new updated link 2015) at:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/opinion\/2009\/01\/15\/commentary\/antiforeigner-discrimination-is-a-right-for-japanese-people\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The Japan Times Printer Friendly Articles<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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Antiforeigner discrimination is a right for Japanese people (excerpt)<\/div>\n

http:\/\/search.japantimes.co.jp\/cgi-bin\/eo20090115gc.html
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By GREGORY CLARK<\/div>\n
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“Japan\u00a0girai”<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 dislike of Japan \u2014 is an allergy that seems to afflict many Westerners here. If someone handing out Japanese-language flyers assumes they cannot read Japanese and ignores them, they cry racial discrimination. If they are left sitting alone in a train, they assume that is because the racist Japanese do not want to sit next to foreigners. If someone does sit next to them and tries to speak to them in English, they claim more discrimination, this time because it is assumed they cannot speak Japanese….<\/p>\n

Recently they have revived the story of how they bravely abolished antiforeigner discrimination from bathhouses in the port town of Otaru in Hokkaido. Since I was closely involved, allow me to throw some extra light on that affair.<\/p>\n

An onsen manager who allegedly had earlier been driven to near bankruptcy by badly behaved Russian sailors had decided this time to bar all foreigners from his new enterprise. The activist [sic] then filed a suit for mental distress and won \u00a53 million in damages. In the Zeit Gist and letter pages of this newspaper, some have criticized these excessively zealous moves by the activists. These critics in turn have been labeled as favoring Nazi-style discrimination and mob rule. Maybe it is time to bring some reality to this debate.<\/p>\n

Otaru had been playing host to well over 20,000 Russian sailors a year, most arriving in small rust-bucket ships to deliver timber and pick up secondhand cars. I visited the wharves there, and as proof I harbor no anti-Russian feeling let me add that I speak Russian and enjoyed talking to these earthy, rough-hewn people in their own language. Even so, the idea of them demanding freedom to walk into any onsen bathhouse of their choice, especially to a high-class onsen like Yunohara [sic], is absurd…<\/p>\n

It is time we admitted that at times the Japanese have the right to discriminate against some foreigners. If they do not, and Japan ends up like our padlocked, mutually suspicious Western societies, we will all be the losers.<\/p>\n

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Y’know, life is never boring. Here’s yet another piece about the Otaru Onsens Case that came out in yesterday’s Japan Times. This time from that person with a very questionable record of dealing with the facts, Gregory Clark.<\/p>\n

Clark provides no surprises as he rides his “bathhouse fanatics” hobby horse once again, and gets (as he has since 1999) the same old facts wrong. Actually, he gets even more facts wrong this time: despite calling himself “closely involved” in the case, he gets the very name of the exclusionary onsen wrong. He even forgets once again (after repeated past public corrections that were even printed in the Japan Times) that there was more than one plaintiff in the successful lawsuit. And that one of those plaintiffs is a Japanese.<\/p>\n

The rest is self-hating anti-gaijin invective with errors and illogic galore. If the Japan Times isn’t bothering with fact checks anymore, they should just put this bigoted old fool out to pasture. Clark is not worth the trouble to print or debate with anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,36,5,26,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-business-practices","category-bad-social-science","category-human-rights","category-ironies-hypocrisies","category-otaru-onsen-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128","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=2128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}