Re: [tlug] OT: interesting NY times article:High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Shin MICHIMUKO writes:

 > Hm, many of Japanese should improve the attitude for people from other 
 > countries.

Actually, I should have been more careful.  I don't really think it's
that big a problem of Japanese *people*, certainly no more than racist
attitudes are a problem for US people.  It's not the Japanese people,
it's the so-called "elites" and the bureaucracies and their rules and
policies.  My family has been watching an NHK jidai-geki called
"Atsu-hime" about the Satsuma clan at the time of the Black Ships.
One character describes the original two-port treaty with Perry as
"opening the door a crack", to which the lord responds "if we do not
prepare carefully, that will end in the door being blown off".  I get
the feeling that in some (fairly small but important) segments of
Japanese society those attitudes have not changed much for about 1000
years.

I should also say that it's often not even a matter of discrimination.
If you are a stranger in a strange land, knowing that your mother
could get sick back home or that you might decide you want your son
growing up able to speak his native tongue, being able to accumulate
wealth is far more important than if you are a Japanese who can plug
into the social security system and your family and social networks
relatively easy.  Americans and Chinese understand that drive for
security through wealth, but Japanese opinion-makers (at least) seem
to distrust it intensely (in foreigners and in Japanese).