Japanese Racism (Part 6)

Note: Please see Part 1 or this will not make any sense at all!
http://insidejapan.blogspot.com/2007/03/japanese-racism-part-1.html

I didn't include all of the sentences of his (sorry, I've gotten used to using "his" - I'm not sure of the poster's gender but it makes typing my ideas out quicker). second day because most of it was just background, but I'll include the rest of the bits here..

"This morning: I’m walking along the train platform waiting for the train when a short Japanese woman walking in the opposite direction, wearing a cough mask, and probably in her 60s starts shaking her hands at me, making cross and ‘x’ motions. I thought she was practicing her conducting skills."

This brings me back to the original post - maybe the person writing this is racist. Those weird Japanese people - they wear cough masks, they're short, and too many of them are old. I don't know. It just has a tinge of weird "other-ness" to it.

I'm definitely going to have to get into the "cough mask" thing in another post. Suffice it to say - when you have a cold or feel sick in any way, would you want to wear a surgical mask that impedes your breathing? Most people would say no - but in this country it's normal - and it involves thinking of the people around you - and them not catching whatever you have. Maybe she should've taken off the mask to share the germs in her racist x-motions towards this person.

And finally related to this blog post from this person, the 'x' motions that a Japanese person makes (see my previous post on Japanese body language) usually just mean "no." What could've been the circumstances? Was she homeless and he was standing in her "place" in the station? Was he standing in a dangerous place? Was he standing in a spot where the train doors wouldn't be aligned? Was he too close to her and she was signalling that? Or maybe she was just old and crazy.

Who the hell knows! It's entirely overdetermined. (Overdetermination, the idea that a single observed effect is determined by multiple causes at once (any one of which alone might be enough to account for the effect)).

So, that's my rough analysis of his blog post. There were about 1,000 replies to his post on various sites. Next, I'm going to make Part 7 and on ward dealing with the good and bad of just the replies on his actual blog, starting tomorrow.