Repeated attacks on Asian masculinity in the guise of "reporting" about Japan

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Not gonna bother to repost the content here, you can go and waste 5 minutes of your life reading them if you want. Basically a bunch of articles about how Japanese men are all weirdo virgins who go on dates with anime dolls. All these stories smell of Japanese public relations firms planting stories in the Japanese-language media to promote someone's latest male-advice book about "草食系男子" (grass-eating men), and then the American press picking up the story in translation and running completely out of context with it because it serves their own agenda.

One blogger analysed the "2-D men" story below and found that the statistics Katayama used (like 25% of Japanese men being virgins) are in fact fraudulent:
http://www.mutantfrog.com/2009/07/27...me-fetishists/

Love in 2-D (about guys who allegedly "date" anime characters), by Lisa Katayama
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/ma...pagewanted=all

Huge numbers of examples of this genre ...
Japan's 'herbivore' men shun corporate life, sex, by Yumi Otagaki
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1833201

The Herbivore's Dilemma: Japan panics about the rise of "grass-eating men," who shun sex, don't spend money, and like taking walks., by Tom Miller
http://www.slate.com/id/2220535/

In Japan, it's the men who want to be skinny and cute, by Kaori Shoji
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/st...7017.html?_r=1

There's even a Wikipedia article about this alleged "草食系男子" phenomenon, which conveniently lists a large number of books on the topic at the bottom.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8D%...94%B7%E5%AD%90

Again this closely resembles the whole "yellow cab" panic from two decades ago (about how all Japanese women working overseas were allegedly sleeping with every foreigner they met): a load of bullshit designed to be controversial in order to sell someone's dumbass book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_...Japanese_media

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Coverage of the "yellow cab" phenomenon was noted as early as 1987, but it received a major boost from Shōko Ieda's 1991 publication of her book Yellow Cab, which featured interviews and reporting on young Japanese women overseas.[11] (Her research assistant George Sarratt later denounced major portions of the book as fraudulent.)[12]

[VV o n g B a]

yeah, i've noticed this too and wondered how much context was lost. i'm glad somebody was in the position to fact check some of her stats.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

And today the NYT helpfully brings us the other side of the "sexless Asian guys, slutty Asian girls" coin:

With Jobs Scarce in Japan, Women Become Professional Flirts, by Hiroko Tabuchi
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/bu...28hostess.html

[SunWuKong]

Originally Posted by AliBabaIncorporated

And today the NYT helpfully brings us the other side of the "sexless Asian guys, slutty Asian girls" coin:

With Jobs Scarce in Japan, Women Become Professional Flirts, by Hiroko Tabuchi
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/bu...28hostess.html

^i think the article mentioned about three times that hostesses do not have sex. or that they may be pressured into having sex. to that, i say, "yeah right". at least do not claim it so definitively, or reference the people who say that hostesses do not have sex.

[Sunflare]

Kind of ironic how many of these idiotic newspaper articles are actually written by other Asian American journalists. Talk about getting a slap right in the face.

[Banana]

They don't think before acting. It's normally called "Foot in Mouth disease."

Either that or they don't care except for getting their name on the by-line.

[Sunflare]

Originally Posted by Banana

They don't think before acting. It's normally called "Foot in Mouth disease."

Either that or they don't care except for getting their name on the by-line.

Then these heartless Japanese American journalists spreading this yellow peril influenced hype about Japanese culture clearly don't care for the interests of Japanese people here in the states or abroad. Let alone the white American journalists who write stories on Japanese life like they have such insight.

I'm sure that most Japanese would actually scoff at the questionable material these sellouts and idiot expats express in the newspapers and in their blogs.

These people in the media have their audience believing that most Japanese men cannot get girls and are humping hapa realdolls or something, when that is just a bunch of hype. I never met a Japanese man in my whole entire life who is as socially stunted as these articles would depict Japanese men to be.

They have people believing that there must be a complete utopia of unified white worship going on there too in Japan with the majority of women there who are all sex freaks, undercover geishas, and yellow cabs when that is not entirely true either. I'm pretty sure many Japanese women there would freak out and run at the sight of a gangin rice-chasing perv, and would prefer to date other Japanese men with some sense of normalcy when it comes to romance.

The western media (particularly the NY Times or the Washington Post in this case, as well as, the entertainment industry, and the bloggers on the internet) at it again conjuring up more lies about Asia. Even the Japanese media is, in part, to blame for this major illusion they painted on Japanese life as well.

Most Japanese men and women, as far as I truthfully know, are really, in fact, living very healthy, perfectly normal and productive sex lives. Just like most APAs in the United States and Asians elsewhere in the world, more or less.

[snailpoo]

Originally Posted by AliBabaIncorporated

And today the NYT helpfully brings us the other side of the "sexless Asian guys, slutty Asian girls" coin:

With Jobs Scarce in Japan, Women Become Professional Flirts, by Hiroko Tabuchi
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/bu...28hostess.html

But aren't there cnn and msnbc articles about the same trend here in America?

With all of these stories, isn't the annoyance not so much that the article points out one peculiarity in Asia, but rather some yokel who misconstrues it to mean that every Asian must suffer from whatever the article is reporting?

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Originally Posted by Sunflare

Let alone the white American journalists who write stories on Japanese life like they have such insight.

I'm sure that most Japanese would actually scoff at the questionable material these sellouts and idiot expats express in the newspapers and in their blogs.

for the record, the guy who debunked Lisa Katayama's bullshit statistics is, in fact, a white male expat in Japan ...

Originally Posted by snailpoo

But aren't there cnn and msnbc articles about the same trend here in America?

About women taking to stripping to pay the rent? Sure. About fat losers who sit in their mom's basement reading comic books instead of getting a job and a girlfriend? Not so much, and certainly not with a patently ridiculous statistic that 25% of the male population have never had sex ... If nothing else, a fact-checker would catch that and laugh in Katayama's face if this were an article about the US. But when it comes to Japan, they can't be bothered to use the most basic logic, as long as the article fits with their prejudices.

And this alleged "international reporting" is supposed to be one of the print media are good at and that we're gonna miss when they've all gone bankrupt and the "journalists" of this calibre have been forced to take to stripping to pay the rent, or are sitting in their mom's basements reading comic books instead of getting a job and a girlfriend.

[Sunflare]

Originally Posted by AliBabaIncorporated

for the record, the guy who debunked Lisa Katayama's bullshit statistics is, in fact, a white male expat in Japan ...

I dared to even google info on this writer. She actually *is* an Asian American woman. Born in Tokyo, Japan. Now lives in San Fransisco, CA. If I did'nt believe it before I sure as hell do now.


Lisa Katayama

Here on this blog she toots the whistle on her incredible achievement of getting her article published in the NYT:

http://www.tokyomango.com/tokyo_mang...t-is-nisa.html

So yeah, some random fact-checking white expat dude came forward and proved to have teh superior knowledge of Japan, making any prior knowledge she has on her own culture in her own country, that she was born in obsolete??!

I think I can laugh and cry at the same time on this one. Girl broke my heart.

[SunWuKong]

come on people. stories about Asian societies actually being normal don't sell papers.

[Zdrav]

It is entirely possible that the writer does not equate herself with the Japanese subjects about whom she is writing about, and therefore has no second thoughts about writing such unflattering articles about them. After all, she's a sophisticated New York Times writer and they're just a bunch of weirdo Asian-Asians.

[MarshalStealth]

Lisa Katayama is a tech journalist and an expert on Japanese culture.

http://ignite.oreilly.com/2009/05/li...-and-toys.html

How many YW forum members can "out-expert" her?

[BillBlythe]

Asian women punking Asian men?

that's shocking.

[AngryABCGirl]

Originally Posted by BillBlythe

Asian women punking Asian men?

that's shocking.

I suppose what goes around comes around.