Thursday, February 15, 2007

Japanese Govt condemns scurrilous publication

Just when you thought the Gaijin Hanzai thing had died down, the Japanese Govt has written letters to the author and publisher, demanding an apology for the "groundless claims" and "disrespectful descriptions" contained therein.

Oh no, actually that letter was in relation to a scandalous book which dared to state the obvious about poor "birth-giving machine" Princess Masako. There's still been no peep about the racist magazine in the Japanese press.

Funnily enough, another old humdrum story of everyday ignorance and racism got a new airing recently. This concerns an advertisement for English teachers in some out-of the-way place, with the job requirement: "Blonde hair blue or green eyes and brightly character". Well that rules out old baldy here (on two counts). As someone pointed out, most schools don't actually want English language instruction, they want a stereotypical gaijin so that the kids learn to not be scared - it's an acting job, not a teaching job. Anyway the advert came and went ages ago, there was a fuss on the whinging gaijin mailing lists (can you tell I'm a member?) but just now some journalist decided to write about it for some reason. The minor back-story is that the Bureau of Human Rights in Japan basically blew off the complaints that were made at the time but suddenly decided to get all investigative on the very day that a journalist started poking around several months later...that's your taxes working for you, folks (the resident-in-Japan ones).

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