Recent comments

"Japan is one of the world's largest economies, firmly among global leaders in infrastructure, technology, education, health, social systems, and living standards."It takes all of 3 minutes to debunk most of these claims, though your point about 'one of the world's largest economies' is vacuously true, given the population. "Firmly among global leaders in ... social systems" is particularly misguided. You might want to ask one of the nearly 100,000 people who hold a Japanese "entertainer" visa what they think of your claim. 

Hello Kitty was quite obviously copied from Miffy and Musti the cat. The Sanrio guys had no orginality at all, and they still don't. All their "new" characters are just wonderfully marketted copies of things invented by others.

Hi Traveler, thanks a lot for your warm regards on my site. And wow... I find it disconcerting that someone would write that. I mean seriously... Japan only got hit with the most destructive natural disaster the country has ever dealt with, killing tens of thousands of people, and they can't even send in their own remote-controlled radiation-detecting robots to avoid more human casualties? What a bunch of pussies. Right? Well, considering that Japan pays for about a tenth of the U.S. government's debt (around $800 billion) I'd say what's sad is the loss of life, and what's embarassing is that idiot's attempt at journalism. For a country like America that prides itself on being the world's largest economy, 47% of their debt is owed to foreign countries. So that seems to me like the sort of statement that would precede an apology, on par with the malaysian cartoonist and the family guy writer. But I won't hold my breath...

Counters? I assume you refer to "counter words" for indicating number of objects (and not the formica type of counter). And by "killer", I assume you mean "tough to learn", not "awesome cool". 

You're right, they are a rich topic with lots to memorize, and perhaps deserve special mention – though it also has to be noted that a speaker of English (and many other languages) will be familiar with the concept, if not the breadth of these counter words. Hmm, I think I'll toss up a quick post on counter words soon. Thanks for the idea!

Hi! Thanks for the thoughts:

I'll have to put off any mea culpa just yet, as I'm not sure what fault you're pointing at. Yes, I've said that Ishihara makes a number of "the Japanese are such-and-such" assertions without backing those up. But I can't be guilty of the same, at least within this article of mine, because I haven't made any such assertions. My text is wonderfully free of any assertions along the lines of "the Japanese are..." or "Westerners are...".

I do assert that the Gov's claims of "unique sensibilities" and what not are silly. And, true, I don't follow that with evidence for my claim of "how silly". Yet here's the kicker: I can do that. The claim of (for example) "unique Japanese sensibilities" is the assertion that's being made, and it's entirely upon the claimant to provide evidence. Until then, the listener does not have an obligation to properly argue against what hasn't been properly argued for in the first place. (Or as wittier minds have worded it: "What is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.") 

There is, though, an assertion of mine in a separate article, which you mention a bit later. I'll address that below.

True. And practitioners of disciplines like sociology should be honest in recognizing that weakness, and be very careful of presenting claims as fact when the topic at hand is, unavoidably, not subject to rigorous scientific methods. (If nothing else, a claimant simply noting that his claim is opinion or conjecture would go a long way to removing any objection on my part!)  

You're referring to my response to the claimed "paradox" of some Japanese web designers making ugly web pages while some Japanese artists make beautiful art. I stand by that response fully!

The claimant doesn't say that Japanese people making beautiful traditional art and Japanese people making ugly web sites are the same individuals – in fact, he contrasts long-dead artists from the 19th century and so, with (obviously) modern-age web designers. So my statement is spot-on in that regard, though I insert a "generally" to cover modern-day artists as well, who certainly could double as web designers. Yet even then, I believe it's reasonable to depict the two groups as generally non-overlapping. Traditional artwork and web design are both time-consuming disciplines; how many people could seriously pursue both? (Sure, a professional traditional artist could dabble in web design – but the resulting ugliness of a dabbler's site wouldn't even be a surprise, let alone a "paradox"!)

The claimant's point is not that the individuals making lovely art and the individuals making ugly sites are the same people, but rather that they're from the same country, and thus it's strange that they should vary so much in the quality of their artistic expression. And that's the point to which I have to say rubbish. At least until someone provides good evidence that national origin is correlated to quality of artistic expression.

On that topic:

My fault is in not making my meaning of "sense of aesthetics" more clear. Yes, shared background will lead to shared experiences in aesthetics, quite possibly some degree of shared preferences, and so on, as you suggest; I can't argue with your general gist there. Rather, by "sense of aesthetics" I mean the factor that's the focus of the "paradox" claim: the quality of artistic expression. Artistic ability. Or in very plain terms, one's goodness or badness at art and design.

A claim that this factor is connected to nationality does need to be backed up by evidence. Hence my response to the "paradox": If there's no evidence that nationality/ethnicity/"culture"/whatever is an indicator of individual artistic/design ability, and if the individuals making lovely traditional art are not the same individuals making ugly web sites, then no paradox has been demonstrated. We just have both good artists and bad ones, which is what's expected. "Some people make nice art and some people make ugly sites" is not a paradox. 

That's all there was to my point.

Getting back to my Ishihara article, and wrapping up:

Let me note that my exhortation to those making sociological claims – "Prove it" – is not an ideal choice of words. The scientific method that I hold up as an ideal doesn't typically deal with "proof", and in fact acknowledges the difficulty of ever "proving" anything (outside of mathematics). Rather, the scientific method seeks to work with evidence, not "proof" per se.

My words "Prove it" are arguably okay as colloquial usage, but my request to claim-makers should be re-worded as "Provide evidence". Mea culpa on that!

My thanks to you for providing me the chance to revisit the article and discover that area for correction. And thanks for your thoughtful comments overall!

If you're referring to the "Easy, liberal..." comment: 

I'd reply to that, too, but I don't know what that commenter means to say!

Easy, liberal....

Well, a Kitty vs Miffy discussion makes for a pretty tame – and awfully cute – sensation. : )

Regarding whether Kitty is a copy cat, I'll stick to my comment that as Miffy's design is so simple, Kitty has to be forgiven somewhat; anyone wanting to make a simple character design will unavoidably create something that contains traces of Miffy. I think we agree!

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Or to add a wee more: If the subject in question is "uniquely Japanese" in some definable way, then great, let's call it such. My beef is that 99%* of the "uniquely Japanese" claims I'm handed seem to be actually about as "unique" as metabolizing oxygen.

*Not a measured statistic, but it gets the point across.

Kaizen as a translation for "repent(ance)"? Hmm, sounds odd to me; looking at possible words for repent(ance), there's kaigo 悔悟, but that's a completely different kai- from that of kaizen. Same with kaikon 悔恨. I'm stumped for another possibility.

Possible explanation for the shopkeeper's odd response:

1. She was simply wrong (perhaps not terribly literate w/ the kanji, or nearsighted, or just having an odd mental lapse?)

2. The poster was wrong, with kanji saying something other than kaizen 改善. 

3. Going out on a limb here a bit, but: Various Buddhist sects (and other religions) commonly repurpose words for their own use; perhaps she held to some sect that uses kaizen in a unique sense related to repentance? Or, as you suggest, perhaps she intentionally skewed the word toward your theological interests?

I don't know the answer, but thanks for the interesting story!

I'm familiar with the argument you make, and was always curious: if Japanese and Korean aren't necessarily related, why do some people claim they are? The frustrating thing was that I could never get a clear answer. I'd ask seemingly knowledgeable people about the possible relationship, and would always hear both "Oh, sure, they're related; it's obvious" and "Oh, no, there's no relation!" Huh? Which is it?

So I did the only thing I could: I began classroom study of Korean, to find out for myself.

The result? After learning Japanese and studying Korean, my impression could be summed up with this: "Good lord, these are practically the same language. With different words."

Seriously: At the basic level, they're essentially the same language, right down to the same word order and the same particles (Korean equivalents of wa and ga and o and all the rest) and pretty darn similar verb forms. They aren't "kind of" similar; they are massively, overwhelmingly similar in structure/grammar (which for both is quite unrelated to Chinese; Chinese influence is not a possible explanation).

But some caveats: My Korean courses of a few months hardly took me to an advanced level. I can only claim that they're practically the same language at a basic level; how far they diverge at a complex, advanced level, I can't say. And clearly, my use of terms like "practically the same language" and "massively similar" is anything but precise and scientific. Until I can point to measurement criteria + data for making the related/unrelated claim, I'm just stating opinion.

Still, I remain quite amused by those speakers of the two languages who insist there's no relationship. (Who – if I let myself get all ad hominem about this – are largely older, politicized "patriots" with lots of personal emotional investment in the "my nation is oh-so-unique" meme and in ancient "the other guys are lame" rivalries.) Using the sprachbund defense, the Japanese side is essentially claiming that Koreans – the people just across that small pond, with whom Japan is most intricately tied, both ethnically and culturally – just happen to have a language that's nearly a structural/grammatical clone of Japanese (in ways that have nothing to do with their shared exposure to Chinese).

Or in other words: "My language is special! No one else can have one like it! Especially not those bums!" (I don't claim to be so familiar with the reverse claim made by similar parties in Korean, though I'm told it's similar.)

Well. It's much too big a topic for this comment, and please note that I claim no magical knowledge that tells me Korean and Japanese absolutely are close linguistic relatives. Maybe the amazing similarity is some cosmic coincidence.

I only say that a study of both languages makes the claims of non-relation sound awfully suspect. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you study both Korean and Japanese, and see for yourself!