tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post1795359597084758454..comments2024-03-23T19:16:01.555-07:00Comments on Can it happen here?: Whither Japan? and some thoughts on accountabilityjaninsanfranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07548452260456734928noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11093162.post-7676517864673127402014-08-19T09:51:35.342-07:002014-08-19T09:51:35.342-07:00There is so much to think about here. Japanese-Ame...There is so much to think about here. Japanese-Americans have their point of view based on the unfair treatment during the war and their eventual success as a "model minority."<br />I was in Japan in 1992 and found it completely alien and yet understandable (??????). I would have to write volumes here to explain this! I think it's because I was staying with a family and had three weeks of day to day interaction with them. This was a teacher exchange.<br />You could look at Musings (on my sidebar) and read about the travel experiences in Japan of my friends Kay and Art and her mother. They also have relatives near Fukishima and went to visit them after the disaster.<br />Two other fragments of thought here:<br />A nascent feminist movement was totally crushed in the 20's. Hence the "submissive" Japanese woman, so beloved of western men. <br />And the best thing I've read about Japan, and I can't remember the source, is that they industrialized without modernizing. I'm thinking about a Japanese friend who lives in Portland who goes back every year to her family in southern Japan to celebrate a day honoring her ancestors, even though she and her husband are, as they say, as poor as churchmice. They also visited the house in China where her parents, "new colonists," lived until they were chased out.<br />Weird, eh. This very liberal and intelligent woman does not in any way judge her parents for their opportunism. I actually experienced some of that mentality, I must say,in Germany among people who styled themselves as victims of the war. <br />Just fragments, as I say.Hattiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13297404386730167834noreply@blogger.com