Japanese attitudes towards immigration vs UK

[xenon]

Anyway, I'm off for the evening.

Where are you going? Anywhere nice?

 

[RevolutionSound]

It's still hanging on for now, but in 50 years time there will be no traditional British culture. Maybe you're right though. Who cares about sentimental things like history, culture, and identity? Fuck the British. Fuck the Japanese. Right?

Is British culture a static eternal thing?

 

[RevolutionSound]

Actually I said it would be a shame if it were spoiled by "the homogeneous blob of global corporatism" - i.e. a nowhere 'culture' in which people are just economic units, shifted around as global Capital sees fit. Everyone just be a replaceable cog.

I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word "corporatism".

 

[barlimo]

This is what they are facing, by the way. Simply allowing it to happen, and proposing as a solution the replacement of the Japanese by non-Japanese people, amounts to nothing less that a soft genocide.

View attachment 433007

What do you suggest the Japanese do other than import immigrants? And BTW the same situation will be felt by all developed countries eventually.

 

[krtek a houby]

Is British culture a static eternal thing?

He probably thinks that's undergoing a soft genocide or replacement, or whatever other dubious nonsense he's coming out with.

 

[bcuster]

What do you suggest the Japanese do other than import immigrants? And BTW the same situation will be felt by all developed countries eventually.

Incentives to increase births?

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

What you think people are going to adopt Japanese culture by merely setting foot on Japanese soil?

Most weebs try to do it without even visiting.

 

[barlimo]

Incentives to increase births?

Might play a part but incentives cost money and as I understand it Japan is financially already in the shit having massive debts.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Pretty sure they didn't have mega-cities, Nintendo etc back in 18th Century Japan.

Nah Nintendo was 1889.

 

[mojo pixy]

It would be a shame if Japanese culture were to be absorbed into the homogeneous blob of global corporatism. It seems perfectly reasonable for them to limit immigration as they see fit.

Do you feel the same way about Britain? (I'm assuming you're British, if not then wherever you identify with / are from)

 

[mojo pixy]

Cards on the table, I don't care at all. As pointed out above several times, culture is an emergent phenomenon and constantly evolving and changing in some way or another. Sometimes very fast. I mean, imagine eg living in Britain in like 600AD when there were angles and saxons and danes all "immigrating" quite aggressively. Those Romano-Britons must've been fucked off when these forrins started showing up and taking all the best hilltops and demanding weregild and stuff. And what an ugly language they spoke, weird forrin gods, the lot.

Sorry we were preserving culture, I forgot. Let's start again shall we?

Oh burtabraham have you ever heard of the Ainu?

 

[Idaho]

Incentives to increase births?

They don't work.

The only way to increase the birth rate is to aggressively stamp out eduction for women and to also reduce their wealth. The more educated and wealthy women become, the less children they have.

 

[bcuster]

They don't work.

The only way to increase the birth rate is to aggressively stamp out eduction for women and to also reduce their wealth. The more educated and wealthy women become, the less children they have.

I'm finding conflicting studies on this. I'll say, at first thought, I don't agree

 

[barlimo]

They don't work.

The only way to increase the birth rate is to aggressively stamp out eduction for women and to also reduce their wealth. The more educated and wealthy women become, the less children they have.

Dream on.

 

[krtek a houby]

They don't work.

The only way to increase the birth rate is to aggressively stamp out eduction for women and to also reduce their wealth. The more educated and wealthy women become, the less children they have.

Actually, this is the kind of thing that the far right espouse here. Some of the hardcore nationalists are also raging misogynists and bemoan women in the workplace, women in politics and women having equality or any say, whatsoever.

And it's not just the far right, the centre right LDP have a few guys who regularly make the news for making sexist gaffes. Yoshiro Mori being one of the repeat offenders.

 

[Idaho]

My experience of living in Japan made me realise how confining the gender roles were for everyone. I'd no more like to be a Japanese salariman than a Japanese housewife. Tradition is nonsense, generally speaking.

 

[Elpenor]

My experience of living in Japan made me realise how confining the gender roles were for everyone. I'd no more like to be a Japanese salariman than a Japanese housewife. Tradition is nonsense, generally speaking.

I’ve probably related before one of my Japanese colleagues told me that she had no intention of ever living in Japan due to the gender inequality.

I think I read somewhere that Japan has some guest workers who come in on a time limited basis with no right to remain, but immigration as in permanently settling is relatively rare.

 

[JimW]

This is the Japan that adopted vast swathes of Tang and Song culture wholesale and made it her own but is going to fall because of a relative handful of Filipinas and Brazilians doing the crap jobs.

 

[DotCommunist]

Is British culture a static eternal thing?

Kiss me quick hats and faded saucy postcards, echoes of the music hall and vaudeville tradition vie with the strains of elvis in his vegas years as teddy boys who have the guts of elvis in his vegas years tap out rothman royals onto the the pub carpet- the threadbare one with the garish patterns that hide a thousand sins. Cigarette machines and belisha beacons, jumpers for goalposts, the shipping forecast. All these things will be lost, like tears in rain etc

 

[Fez909]

like tears in rain etc

another British tradition (or two)

 

[Rimbaud]

This is what they are facing, by the way. Simply allowing it to happen, and proposing as a solution the replacement of the Japanese by non-Japanese people, amounts to nothing less that a soft genocide.

View attachment 433007

My son is mixed race, it doesn't mean I've been genocided, he is still my son.

Gene pools and cultures shift and evolve. Given that we live in a world of global communications and global travel and easy translation technology it is inevitable that there will be an accelerated pace of mixing as time goes on.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

We should all go back to Africa.
We don't belong here.

 

[danny la rouge]

Culture is a tricky thing for some people to get a hold of. It's an important thing. Humans are culture bearers. We cannot exist without culture. And it's vital to our functioning, to our mental health.

But "my culture" is what I was brought up in and around, and what I do now. These are important to me. They contribute towards my a sense of who I am. Along with all the other things that do that.

So, I am attached to my childhood memories of things we did, things that were said around me, things we ate, traditions we held.

I continue some of them. I make a clootie dumpling each Hogmanay. I have a nostalgic fondness for Scottish plain bread, although I very seldom buy it.

But I don't go to church every Sunday, as my parents did and still do. I don't have some of the social attitudes they do. I like different music from them. I don't dress like them.

Culture is not static. It moves. Things become dated. We can look back on old films and enjoy the insights into the society they came from, but we can often also cringe at attitudes they display, or find the humour dated and corny.

It is not "soft genocide" to no longer think TV continuity people need clipped RP accents. It is not "soft genocide" to eat bagels for breakfast on occasions instead of porridge. It is not "soft genocide" that my wife is English and that my children have a side of the family that comes from the Potteries which thinks of an oatcake as a type of pancake rather than a type of cracker.

Culture is not biologically determined. It is necessary that we have culture, but which culture we have is not carried by genes. As far as I know, both sides of my ancestry come from Ireland. I don't sound Irish. I don't speak Gaeilge. Tracing it all further back, we no longer speak Indo-European, or Proto-Indo-European.

I was speaking at a party at the weekend to a couple from Argyle. The husband is English, the wife Kenyan, the son speaks with a West Highland accent. He also speaks Swahili at home with his mother. This is good. Being bilingual is a useful skill. Connecting with his mother's culture is a good thing. But Swahili too is a product of change, of mingling of cultures. It contains a high proportion of Arabic, as well as Portuguese and other languages. It is to a large extent a trading language, a language that evolved from the meeting of cultures, a sort of naturally formed Esperanto. Some of the history it comes from is uncomfortable, and is closely linked to the slave trade. But despite that history, Swahili is one of the working languages of the African Union.

There is nothing in this West Highland child's biology that makes him more suited to Swahili than, say, Scottish Gaelic. Nor is there any reason his classmates shouldn't learn Swahili. It might not come in very handy, unless it spreads in Argyle. Although language learning is in itself a useful skill. But there's no biological reason Swahili shouldn't be the lingua franca of the West Highlands. There are practical reasons. But only as things stand. Should those material circumstances change, then why not? The West Highlands has had Pictish, Irish-Gaelic, Norse, Scots and English language influences on it in the last two millennia, and we know not what before that. Who knows what will come next?

Is this not dismiss culture and history? Of course not. But culture and history are stories of change. Change is the only constant.

 

[danny la rouge]

As a footnote, when I was speaking to this couple, the party began an impromptu session of a dance known to me as “the Slosh”, which often accompanies the song Beautiful Sunday. Neither the English man nor Kenyan woman had encountered this dance before, and they wondered how everyone knew it. I’ve known it for 50 years. It’s definitely part of the culture I grew up in. It’s like a line dance but existed long become line dancing of the Country variety took any hold in Scotland.

My wife was also mystified by it when she first encountered it, and that’s how I knew it wasn’t common in England.

I should like to introduce it to Japan. I’m sure it would prove immensely popular.

 

[Sue]

Culture is a tricky thing for some people to get a hold of. It's an important thing. Humans are culture bearers. We cannot exist without culture. And it's vital to our functioning, to our mental health.

But "my culture" is what I was brought up in and around, and what I do now. These are important to me. They contribute towards my a sense of who I am. Along with all the other things that do that.

So, I am attached to my childhood memories of things we did, things that were said around me, things we ate, traditions we held.

I continue some of them. I make a clootie dumpling each Hogmanay. I have a nostalgic fondness for Scottish plain bread, although I very seldom buy it.

But I don't go to church every Sunday, as my parents did and still do. I don't have some of the social attitudes they do. I like different music from them. I don't dress like them.

Culture is not static. It moves. Things become dated. We can look back on old films and enjoy the insights into the society they came from, but we can often also cringe at attitudes they display, or find the humour dated and corny.

It is not "soft genocide" to no longer think TV continuity people need clipped RP accents. It is not "soft genocide" to eat bagels for breakfast on occasions instead of porridge. It is not "soft genocide" that my wife is English and that my children have a side of the family that comes from the Potteries which thinks of an oatcake as a type of pancake rather than a type of cracker.

Culture is not biologically determined. It is necessary that we have culture, but which culture we have is not carried by genes. As far as I know, both sides of my ancestry come from Ireland. I don't sound Irish. I don't speak Gaeilge. Tracing it all further back, we no longer speak Indo-European, or Proto-Indo-European.

I was speaking at a party at the weekend to a couple from Argyle. The husband is English, the wife Kenyan, the son speaks with a West Highland accent. He also speaks Swahili at home with his mother. This is good. Being bilingual is a useful skill. Connecting with his mother's culture is a good thing. But Swahili too is a product of change, of mingling of cultures. It contains a high proportion of Arabic, as well as Portuguese and other languages. It is to a large extent a trading language, a language that evolved from the meeting of cultures, a sort of naturally formed Esperanto. Some of the history it comes from is uncomfortable, and is closely linked to the slave trade. But despite that history, Swahili is one of the working languages of the African Union.

There is nothing in this West Highland child's biology that makes him more suited to Swahili than, say, Scottish Gaelic. Nor is there any reason his classmates shouldn't learn Swahili. It might not come in very handy, unless it spreads in Argyle. Although language learning is in itself a useful skill. But there's no biological reason Swahili shouldn't be the lingua franca of the West Highlands. There are practical reasons. But only as things stand. Should those material circumstances change, then why not? The West Highlands has had Pictish, Irish-Gaelic, Norse, Scots and English language influences on it in the last two millennia, and we know not what before that. Who knows what will come next?

Is this not dismiss culture and history? Of course not. But culture and history are stories of change. Change is the only constant.

This.

Well apart from the oat cake as pancake thing. That's obviously madness.

 

[danny la rouge]

 

[krtek a houby]

As a footnote, when I was speaking to this couple, the party began an impromptu session of a dance known to me as “the Slosh”, which often accompanies the song Beautiful Sunday. Neither the English man nor Kenyan woman had encountered this dance before, and they wondered how everyone knew it. I’ve known it for 50 years. It’s definitely part of the culture I grew up in. It’s like a line dance but existed long become line dancing of the Country variety took any hold in Scotland.

My wife was also mystified by it when she first encountered it, and that’s how I knew it wasn’t common in England.

I should like to introduce it to Japan. I’m sure it would prove immensely popular.

There's a community dance that's performed each year at the neighborhood festival, the bon odori. It's a simple feel good gathering and something I'd never experienced until visiting Hawaii, years back. Yes, culture travels and tends not to genocide people.

Why some fear the natural movement of it (culture) is baffling.

 

[Gromit]

Japan is very resistant to change. Not just social change but any change.

The government only just stopped using floppy discs. There was a concerted effort to phase them out otherwise they'd still be using them.

 

[krtek a houby]

Japan is very resistant to change. Not just social change but any change.

The government only just stopped using floppy discs. There was a concerted effort to phase them out otherwise they'd still be using them.

We still use fax machines as well. It's not the end of the world in comparison to other problems in the country (as described on the Wtf, Japan?
thread)

 

[klang]

It's still hanging on for now, but in 50 years time there will be no traditional British culture. Maybe you're right though. Who cares about sentimental things like history, culture, and identity? Fuck the British. Fuck the Japanese. Right?

What us trad british ir Japanese culture? Who represents it or is allowed to partake?
What makes a people indigenous?

What are the benefits if a stagnant culture?
Has there ever been one?