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The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#41

Post by xrd »

kochikame wrote: post #20
barry-cotter wrote: post #3

My god, it must be so unpleasant to be the kind of person who thinks about that for the hours necessary to write an essay like the one he wrote ten years ago, and to continue stewing on it for ten years. I’ve lived in China for more than seven years and I definitely have an empty seat beside me on the metro more often than Chinese people and children and tourists say 老外(foreigner) regularly enough. So what? Life is g…

Baye McNeil is famous for finding racism where there usually isn't any.

Now you are famous to me for finding absent racism in Baye McNeil. Congrats!

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#42

Post by josephg »

55555 wrote: post #25
josephg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, but I also notice how different the expectations and standards are around race in the west. If we transplant some of the things said above into America, I notice I have a very different reaction. Eg, “[Because he’s not white] he’s never going to be American. If that bugs him, why not go home? Nobody is making him stay in America.” “[Immigrants] are just foreigners living in America with a chip on their sh…

> Eg, “[Because he’s not white] he’s never going to be American. If that bugs him, why not go home? Nobody is making him stay in America.” No, because America is not a racially homogenous society. Japan mostly is. Japan's residents are 98% japanese and most of the other 2% are other asians.

Hm, I’m doing a gut check on that by swapping in another western country which is more racially homogeneous than the US to see how I feel about it:

> “[Because he’s not white] he’s never going to be Norwegian. If that bugs him, why not go home? Nobody is making him stay in Norway.”

My ears still flag that as racist.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#43

Post by ddiq2 »

spats1990 wrote: post #31
ddiq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "unfair treatment," it's perfectly normal for people to feel more comfortable around their own. They don't know if this guy knows train etiquette, if he has body odor - only around 10% of East Asians do, or maybe it's just that he's wider than the average Japanese person, as it appears so from his picture. He's a guest in their country, and it's impudent for him to think he has the right to be sat next to at…

It's more complicated than that though, because: 1. he may not be in a position of being able to leave easily after this long--a random example could be a significant other who does not speak English well. 2. the attitude this comment takes (and I've been living in Seoul for the last four years so I've spent a while thinking about this[1]) is absolutely unacceptable to most people if placed in a western context. Diff…

There may be some cases where it's more complicated, but this isn't one of them.

Japan is the country of the Japanese, and they have no obligation to even let this guy live in his country, much less put up with his whining.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#44

Post by paggle »

Sure, Japan is a ~monoracial country and there isn't the level of racial awareness there that you have in the US. I feel like you have to accept some of this if you choose to live in Japan as a person of color.

I experienced this myself when I wanted to do the "teach English abroad for a year" thing in Japan after college. I have Top 1% English skills and have won literary prizes for my writing in college, and speak in a normal American accent that you might find in a news anchor. But everyone wanted a white person.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#45

Post by laurieg »

As a visible minority in Japan, experiences like this are extremely commonplace. In fact, I think the frequency is the most troublesome part.

Every time you step out of the house there is someone there to remind you you are foreign. Just moments ago I bought some donuts and the woman in the shop awkwardly gestured at me instead of speaking to me.

Obviously, this is not the end of the world and it's nothing to lose sleep over but I would advise people thinking of coming to live in Japan that attitudes and norms around race are quite different.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#46

Post by RaiseProfits »

solidasparagus wrote: post #35
RHSeeger wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, would you be ok with someone telling a non-us citizen black man in the US "If you don't like people acting racist toward you, go back where you came from"? That is fairly widely considered inappropriate in the US (though not universally).

It's rude to say that to someone, but as a foreigner if you can't come to terms with the face that you ARE an outsider, leaving's your only alternative (America's pretty diverse so eventually anyone can become a local, but in many places the visual difference will always set you apart). I've been the foreigner before and there's a big gap between not being treated like a local and being actively encouraged to leave.

It’s still racism even if it’s culturally acceptable.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#47

Post by legohead »

I experience this empty seat phenomenon in America, as a regular white man. I noticed it in college. Nobody would sit by me unless they had to, but they were never obvious about it either as far as I could tell. It just seemed like I had some social forcefield around me that pushed people away.

I told me wife about it, and we had a laugh. But over the years it continues to manifest itself. I send me wife pictures of me at a full conference with empty seats only around me. I set up experiments to test my theory. At the airport, or even at work, I will deliberately sit in a middle section that would force people to sit next to me. Yet time after time, the seats next to me are the very last to be taken, if at all. I've tried being extra approachable (smile a lot), dull, aloof, be on or off my phone, etc.

I am a good looking skinny guy who has excellent hygiene. But I have some negative social forcefield I can't explain.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#48

Post by hervature »

rdl wrote: post #8

I'd never sit in the last or even last 10% or so of seats on a subway train, as a healthy middle-aged man who isn't escorting a child or something. I'd also be highly suspect of a man who did that, and would be reluctant to sit next to him if I were disabled/woman/with-child/etc. Much more so in Japan. The illustration also shows him seated in a 'priority seat' where I'd never sit even if the train were empty. (This…

No/low priority doesn’t mean forbidden. Also, how is a healthy man different than a healthy woman? Both genders have the same ability to stand?

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#49

Post by RaiseProfits »

ddiq wrote: post #33
RHSeeger wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, would you be ok with someone telling a non-us citizen black man in the US "If you don't like people acting racist toward you, go back where you came from"? That is fairly widely considered inappropriate in the US (though not universally).

Out of curiosity, would you be ok with a non-citizen Japanese person lecturing you on why Americans are bad because they don't have the exact same outlook and attitude as Japanese people? Because that's what the author of this article is doing.

If that outlook is “is it ok to treat this person as a lower class of person”, then you should stand up for your values. Not all cultural relativism must end with blind acceptance.

Re: The empty seat on a crowded Japanese train

#50

Post by flukus »

theroo wrote: post #18
ddiq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "unfair treatment," it's perfectly normal for people to feel more comfortable around their own. They don't know if this guy knows train etiquette, if he has body odor - only around 10% of East Asians do, or maybe it's just that he's wider than the average Japanese person, as it appears so from his picture. He's a guest in their country, and it's impudent for him to think he has the right to be sat next to at…

He’s black. Did you read that part?

Honest question, Are Japanese any more likely to be racist against black people than white people? Or a Chinese person?

Usually racism (the hatred variety at least) comes from a degree of familiarity. You won't find a lot of KKK members in Scandinavia and you won't find much antisemitism in areas with no jews.

American race relations are not universally applicable.

Edit - added negation operator.

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