Ghost in the Shell movie trailer. Why? :/

[warpus]

Nope I would not think so. Especially not in Japan where they did such a splendid job of keeping foreigners out in the first place. What kind of signs are you thinking of?

By "signs" I mean any sort of hints or indications that xenophobia is so rampant in the country.

I mean, I'm a white guy, I don't speak any Japanese aside from hello and thank you, and I don't look Japanese at all. If the country was so xenophobic you'd think I would encounter even just one example of xenophobia, somewhere, considering I visited 8+ cities, big ones, small ones, I walked around everywhere, walked into random bars, restaurants, down random streets, into random shops. And nowhere did I ever encounter any xenophobia. Quite the opposite, I always felt very welcome wherever I went and whenever I asked random people for help, they were always super friendly and helpful.

Maybe "xenophobia" is not the word you are looking for?

Xenophobia - intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries.

If it was so intense or irrational, why didn't I come across any of it at all? You could tell I was foreign just by looking at me from a mile away. It's not like people thought I was local. And yet I didn't encounter any fear or hate. Just people happy to help me and hang out with me.

Heck, a random guy at a restaurant even paid for my meal! I was just sitting there eating, next thing you know I get a tap on my shoulder, and as the guy is paying for his meal and pointing to my food I realize he is paying for me. I had no idea why, we weren't even talking. He just wanted to. On another occasion the guy beside me offered me some of his sake.

So yeah.. if it's so rampant, why did I not encounter any of it at all? Why did I encounter the opposite of xenophobia instead? Did I just get incredibly lucky?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

There is no country on earth people aren't friendly to white tourists.

And even if that kind of complexity isn't covered by the very simple definition you found - it is entirely possible to be xenophobic while still welcoming the exotic foreigner here and there. What matters is the big picture. If you were part of some immigration wave to Japan - you may have had quit different experiences. Of course that is entirely fictional, since Japan is not going to allow this to happen in the foreseeable future. Making the few foreigners they have funny little curiosities..

 

[Akka]

Well, as I said in the previous post, you have to take into consideration the specifics of the context and culture. In this case :

You're white, so part the "best ranked race".
You're mainly visiting the cities, where people are much more used to see foreigners.
Being an extremely homogenous people, Japanese tends to start by assuming that someone not asian looking is a tourist, not an immigrant. Not to add that it's more difficult to become a japanese citizen in the first place than in most of the West (reinforcing the a priori that you're a tourist). People tend to mind tourists much less, obviously, and you're more likely to arouse curiosity and interest than defiance. Especially as, as weird as it might seem considering the amount of wee-abo on the Internet, Japan is actually a very LOW-tourism place : it's about 6 millions a year. They aren't swamped enough in tourists yet to find them annoying.
Even if the person actually minds, Japanese society has, as said, an EXTREME amount of social pressure toward conformism, and a very high level of unspoken, contextual communication and face-saving politeness. It means that most of the time, even if the person dislike seeing you, they'll cover it with social graces.

So yeah, if you're a white tourist in big cities in Japan, you're going to enjoy a very pleasant and polite experience. If you're a Korean trying to become a "true" Japanese in a small village... it'll be rather harder.
And obviously, as usual it's about trend. Plenty of people in Japan are open-minded, and I did encounter a select few who were openly rude (a very select few, granted).

There is no country on earth people aren't friendly to white tourists.

I've heard quite different accounts of people visiting China

And even if that kind of complexity isn't covered by the very simple definition you found - it is entirely possible to be xenophobic while still welcoming the exotic foreigner here and there. What matters is the big picture. If you were part of some immigration wave to Japan - you may have had quit different experiences. Of course that is entirely fictional, since Japan is not going to allow this to happen in the foreseeable future. Making the few foreigners they have funny little curiosities..

Yeah, there's a lot of that, as I said above (though in a more verbose and probably more confusing way).

 

[warpus]

The thing is I visited large cities and small. I realize that this probably doesn't change much in your minds, but

intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries.

If that is the definition of xenophobia we are going by, then Japan is definitely not xenophobic. Maybe anti-immigrant is better term to use? I mean, you can't on one hand say that Japanese people have an intense hate of people from other countries while at the same time saying "Wellllll not alllll of the countries, all the white ones don't apply".. Well then, it's not "other countries" then, is it? It seems to be a lot more specific than that.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think that most japanese people would have guessed you are a tourist, and usually even xenophobes don't mind those much.

 

[Kyriakos]

Back to the trailer, hm, iirc in GITS1 the robot was a robot always, and not a robocop-type situation which seems to be the plot in this trailer? In GITS1 the intro is the building of that robot anyway.

And the robots in the anime had a "ghost", ie something vaguely resembling a "soul" for humans, but it was (at least in the anime) a computer matrix-effect tied to the character of the 'puppet master'. I don't know if in the manga or in later GITS anime this changes, but it looks strange to me to alter it in the movie

 

[warpus]

I think that most japanese people would have guessed you are a tourist, and usually even xenophobes don't mind those much.

Look at the definition of xenophobia, it doesn't make that distinction.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Tourists spend money, and if you are a tourist in a smaller town it is even more likely that the locals are in touch with revenue generated through them

Besides, if you want to use 'xenophobic' as meaning fear of strangers, you have to mean all strangers too, which i think is rather unlikely to be true even for literal neo-nazis who would like some other white people.

 

[Traitorfish]

Jeezo, but these goal-posts are moving at some speed.

 

[Kyriakos]

Jeezo, but these goal-posts are moving at some speed.

My point is that even obvious uber-racists won't really hate ALL other races -or at least all other ethnic groups-, so it makes no sense to have that as a prerequisite

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Look at the definition of xenophobia, it doesn't make that distinction.

Are you really that kind of dumb?! I am just randomly shaking my arms, men... I am so angry because you prove to be just as dumb as I always thought while so many people seemed to think else.

Xenophobia is about a FEELING! Feelings can not be divided into two categories covering ALL of the world as your definition just did. Feelings are - wait for it - contextual. Your definition got no context. It merely serves as a very rough template to be applied APPLIED APPLIED on an actual context. How can you not see this?

I ask you what kind of sign of discrimination you saw. You respond: "a sign of discrimination". Until your very last post leading to this post of mine you apparently were utterly and unfathomably unable to even imagine what this thread is even about.

Yes I am angry about such lack of grasp. Because I am angry about people in general. Because they can vote and are irresponsible about it. And while I mostly ignore ignorant sways on my life - when I get involved, I get angry about it. Deal with it. Grow up. Get smarter. Or go screw a granny for all I freaking care. But don't touch the hedgepig I encountered on the corner of the street the other day or I will freaking kill you.

 

[abradley]

Just my opinion, it and $100 might get you a cuppa most places in the world.

Japanese and xenophobia.

The Japanese don't think their superior, they know they are.

Have done a lot of traveling and feel most non European people feel they ( their society) are inferior to us (Western Liberal Society) and show it with hostility. Not the case with the Japanese, they react to us like parents to children ... accept our silliness like an adult accepts childish silliness.

So if I'm in Lagos, for example, a Nigerian might give me poor service to prove he's my better. In Japan the Japanese may give me good service proving he's superior.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

There is no country on earth people aren't friendly to white tourists.

That's so wrong it's funny

~

On the topic of Japan and racism, consider the following:

Tokyo is the biggest metropolitan area in the entire world. There are lots of foreigners who live there, people are used to seeing foreigners every day and, as Warpus pointed out, there are no open signs of xenophobia (extreme and irrational hatred).

Why is this? Pretty simple, because areas with a lot of tourists and or immigrants also tend to be less xenophobic. This is a correlation observable in many parts of the world, not just Japan. Now obviously there are some parts of Japan where xenophobia might be common, rampant even, because a decent chunk of the country is still rural where often times people don't speak (or care to speak) English and get little to no tourists or even immigrants.

You could make this a cultural issue, but the way I see it it really isn't. This is much more of a local issue. Maybe in the older population the notion of Japanese superiority is still instilled, I wouldn't know.

It is also important to note that strict immigration laws don't equate to xenophobia. There could be dozens of other reasons for those.

Another person mentioned the hatred for Korean laborers, this however is true. But it also works the other way around. It seems that in Korea a lot of people, especially younger people, adore japanese culture but have an irrational hatred for japanese people. At least this in grounded in a historic event, I have no idea where japanese hatred for Koreans comes from. Propaganda maybe? Pretty sure in almost all of japanese history it was them subjugating Koreans, not the other way around..

 

[FriendlyFire]

If it was so intense or irrational, why didn't I come across any of it at all? You could tell I was foreign just by looking at me from a mile away. It's not like people thought I was local. And yet I didn't encounter any fear or hate. Just people happy to help me and hang out with me.

Heck, a random guy at a restaurant even paid for my meal! I was just sitting there eating, next thing you know I get a tap on my shoulder, and as the guy is paying for his meal and pointing to my food I realize he is paying for me. I had no idea why, we weren't even talking. He just wanted to. On another occasion the guy beside me offered me some of his sake.

So yeah.. if it's so rampant, why did I not encounter any of it at all? Why did I encounter the opposite of xenophobia instead? Did I just get incredibly lucky?

You were only a tourist, if you lived in Japan there are many areas which are more backwards
In fact Japan still holds onto the old caste system in some areas which is weird considering Japan is the worlds most hitech and modern country. Subject such as discrimination and racisim are taboo and not really discused in the open and generally a sensative topic. Mostly this exist with the older generation

The more modern metro and forward looking like of like America

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Back to the trailer, hm, iirc in GITS1 the robot was a robot always, and not a robocop-type situation which seems to be the plot in this trailer? In GITS1 the intro is the building of that robot anyway.

And the robots in the anime had a "ghost", ie something vaguely resembling a "soul" for humans, but it was (at least in the anime) a computer matrix-effect tied to the character of the 'puppet master'. I don't know if in the manga or in later GITS anime this changes, but it looks strange to me to alter it in the movie

I know at least of Kusanagi that she is a mostly robotic cyborg, she has a human brain inside of a robotic body.

 

[warpus]

You were only a tourist, if you lived in Japan there are many areas which are more backwards

I don't doubt that. You could say the same thing about many other countries.

The point is it's not fair to call Japan a xenophobic country when a foreigner can spend a month there, visiting and exploring many cities, walking into random establishments, etc. and not having encountered ONE case of xenophobia of any sort.

"Oh, it only happens in backwards rural parts of the country. And you're white so nobody will be xenophobic towards you. {And this exception and that..}"

Got it. Japan is not a xenophobic place, but some parts of it might be. Sometimes. Towards some people.

 

[Akka]

I don't doubt that. You could say the same thing about many other countries.

The point is it's not fair to call Japan a xenophobic country when a foreigner can spend a month there, visiting and exploring many cities, walking into random establishments, etc. and not having encountered ONE case of xenophobia of any sort.

"Oh, it only happens in backwards rural parts of the country. And you're white so nobody will be xenophobic towards you. {And this exception and that..}"

Got it. Japan is not a xenophobic place, but some parts of it might be. Sometimes. Towards some people.

*shrug*
I made a detailed post about the fact that japanese "xenophobia" is both expressed in ways that are rather different than what we're used in the West, and is also attenuated by a culture of politeness, indirect communication and face-saving. It's still pretty real, but it's not overt nor confrontational.

 

[aelf]

Why are people upset that a white girl got the part? The girl in the original looks white too, duh

No? It's an anime convention that characters' looks are ambiguous in relation to their actual ethnicity/identity. For example, large eyes are almost always preferred, even for Japanese characters, even though that's not a particularly Japanese trait.

I specifically looked this up and apparently in the manga it is said that that both the mayor and the main character prefer European bodies for some reason. So it is in fact accurate, if my information is (I have no idea, never read any Manga).

It's never clearly stated, AFAIK. But the creators approve of the casting, so it's a moot point. I don't like Scarlett Johansson because, well, boring typecasting. Would have preferred a Japanese actress to stay true to the spirit of the character, but I'm not likely to watch the film anyway unless the reviews are great to save myself the disappointment.

 

[warpus]

No? It's an anime convention that characters' looks are ambiguous in relation to their actual ethnicity/identity. For example, large eyes are almost always preferred, even for Japanese characters, even though that's not a particularly Japanese trait.

Great, so the movie is sticking to convention 100%.

*shrug*
I made a detailed post about the fact that japanese "xenophobia" is both expressed in ways that are rather different than what we're used in the West, and is also attenuated by a culture of politeness, indirect communication and face-saving. It's still pretty real, but it's not overt nor confrontational.

If I can spend a month in a place without noticing a single sign of something.. at all.. and it's all internalized.. then...

I mean, if you're told "This country you're going to - they hate bacon", but bacon is on sale everywhere. Every single store you go into, there's bacon. You look around, everyone's always eating bacon. People are handing you free bacon. There's bacon commercials on TV non stop. The hotel you're staying at gives you free complementary bacon.

So yeah alright, maybe deep down inside they really hate bacon, but in practical terms I wouldn't call them bacon haters. It wouldn't make sense to.

 

[Akka]

Whatever. It's about subtle nuances, so it's not going to fly unless you're receptive to begin with