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Google Earth Raises Discrimination Issue In Japan
Hugh Pickens writes "The Times (UK) reports that by allowing old maps to be overlaid on satellite images of Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, Google has unwittingly created a visual tool that has prolonged an ancient discrimination, says a lobbying group established to protect the human rights of three million burakumin, members of the sub-class condemned by the old feudal system in Japan to unclean jobs associated with death and dirt. 'We tend to think of maps as factual, like a satellite picture, but maps are never neutral, they always have a certain point of view,' says David Rumsey, a US map collector. Some Japanese companies actively screen out burakumin-linked job seekers, and some families hire private investigators to dig into the ancestry of fiances to make sure there is no burakumin taint. Because there is nothing physical to differentiate burakumin from other Japanese and because there are no clues in their names or accent, the only way of establishing whether or not they are burakumin is by tracing their family. By publishing the locations of burakumin ghettos with the modern street maps, the quest to trace ancestry is made easier, says Toru Matsuoka, an opposition MP and member of the Buraku Liberation League. Under pressure to diffuse criticism, Google has asked the owners of the woodblock print maps to remove the legend that identifies the ghetto with an old term, extremely offensive in modern usage, that translates loosely as 'scum town.' 'We had not acknowledged the seriousness of the map, but we do take this matter seriously,' says Yoshito Funabashi, a Google spokesman." The ancient Japanese caste system was made illegal 150 years ago, but silent discrimination remains. The issue is complicated by allegations of mob connections in the burakumin anti-discrimination organizations.
Every society has its pariahs. Japan has few immigrants, so they can't just look down to Mexicans, Turks or whatever pariah-immigrant group you might have in your country.
It seems to be part of human nature that we need someone to look down at, to make us feel better about ourselves. Akin to "well, I'm not that good, but HE is WAY worse off". I'm not saying that it should be that way, mind you, I hope we can eventually overcome this flaw and compare ourselves against those that achived more, not less, but I find it time and again in people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But I am much more interested why are Eta/Burakumin/Shinheimin/whoever treated this way by people who cannot possibly remember the Edo period.
For the same reason that african american citizens still get regularly handed hateful scorn by racist morons who clearly weren't alive before the Emancipation Act?
One of the main things a map communicates is the relationship that the landscape of our world has with human beings, as such it will always be, on some level, an observation or a statement about people almost more than landscape. When you think about it, the first human imposed addition to any map, borders and walls, are just demarcations of division. Once you have these on a map it doesnt take long for the mere annotation or position of these to be the catalyst for violent conflict (look at the India / Pakistan border commission in the 40s, a line on a map drawn by a man who had never been there resulting in the deaths of millions, or the status of israel in western maps versus palestine in middle eastern maps)
It really shouldnt be surprising that google earth has caused some controversy, they already label Taiwan as a province of the People's Republic of China, so they have already made political statements with the program
Yup...
I once saw a black man complain about being called "African-American"; he was a citizen of the UK whose family had immigrated from Jamaica or Haiti or something. He has no objection to being called "black", but considers himself neither African nor American, and finds that label offensive.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Thomas Jefferson was not alive during civil war; or after, though that may change someday.
First off, the post wasn't saying the US didn't have discrimination. It was saying it didn't have the burakumin discrimination Japan has.
Second, you're a fool to conflate discrimination in the US with that of Japan. I've lived in both countries, and the racism in Japan is orders of magnitude more insidious than in the US.
Granted, I'm white, so you could say that I'm just not "in touch" with the discrimination that exists in the US (and people will likely argue this against me here), but from a numbers standpoint, the discrimination in Japan is so bad that people don't even understand that discrimination is offensive!
There was a famous letter to the editor written in Tokyo a few years ago, "Do not treat us like wild animals." It told a story of a white lady who was out in nature. Some Japanese adults ran up and asked to take a picture with her because she was white.
No, I take that back: THEY ASKED BUT DIDN'T WAIT FOR AN ANSWER. They just took pictures with her.
In any case, the responses to the letter were basically like "chill out, lady. It's an honor. We just think white people are so exotic and foreign!" Etc.
Oh, and restaurants DURING THE FUCKING WORLD CUP banning foreigners from entrance.
Oh, and restaurants and hotels and other businesses hanging signs EVEN TO THIS DAY that say "no gaijin allowed." "Gaijin" is a term applied uniformly to non-Japanese, even those who have Japanese citizenship and speak fluently, so long as they are not racially Japanese (as distinguished from ethnically Japanese).
Oh, and there are tons of racial Koreans who are third-generation born-in-Japan, but Japan still won't let them get citizenship. The official position is not racial, but you'd better believe it's really because of the very hostile relations, traditionally, between Japan and Korea.
Oh, and the government recently RESCINDED an apology for forcing Korean women to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during WWII. Why did they do this? BECAUSE "THE KOREANS VOLUNTEERED."
Not to mention living in Japan as a foreigner fluent in Japanese (having passed objective tests administered by the government there), and having people pretend they don't understand your FLUENT JAPANESE for the lulz.
Japanese university-educated people don't even know why Chinese people are upset with Japanese people (protip: WWII). They are just not taught the facts. The base of the ruling party in Japan are right-wing farmers in Japan (and the yakuza!); reconciliation is not in their interests.
And the assumption that everyone white speaks English (I guess you could criticize Americans for thinking this, too ;)).
Recently, the government of Japan offered money to Japanese citizens who have Brazilian ancestry money to RENOUNCE THEIR CITIZENSHIP and move out of the country.
The list goes on and on. And I didn't even include the topic of this article, the burakumin-discrimination problem that is so bad that people who are seventh generation descendants of butchers cannot get hired by companies like Toyota because they are "untouchables."
Look: Japan is an awesome place to visit. The people there are almost uniformly friendly. I loved my time there. But the racism there is so bad compared to in the US. People in the US are at least aware of racism. In Japan, racism is so accepted that many (most?) people don't even see a problem with it! My first visit at a university club, the first question I was asked was (literally): "How big is your cock?" (!!!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza#Burakumin
Discrimination = Bad news. When honest people are forced out of honest jobs because of petty race or ancestry issues, they invariably turn either to immigration or the underworld.
Thing is, this might be creating an excuse for those carrying a prejudice against Burakumin; "Marry our daughter? Hell no. Er, no, of course it's not because you're Burakumin, we're progressive like that. It's just that your family might have Yakuza links! Yeah, that's it, honest."
Funny you should pick that example. When film was being developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, there was a problem: it was difficult to make photographs that showed both light- and dark-colored faces effectively.
The white face was taken as the essential image that film had to capture effectively, and a lot of technical effort went into developing film stock that showed the white face well. "Exact reproduction" produced a "beefy" look, so the film was modified accordingly[2].
In other words, if black people had developed film, film would look different and have have different chemical characteristics from what we have today. You cannot just point to the technology and say it is "neutral", to be used for good or bad purposes. During its development, the creators of every technology encounter choices that cannot be made solely on technical grounds. Those decisions always end up embedding human values - as does the technology that results.
Here's another story I read somewhere. Early computers could only represent uppercase or lowercase letters. The first choice of the technicians was to go with lowercase, because that is much easier to read. But this was overruled: because then God would not start with an uppercase letter. Now whether this particular story is true or false (it sounds too neat to me), it is certainly representative of how many technical choices are made.
As for the burakumin, I once spoke to a Japanese woman about them. She had married an American and was living in the U.S., but she said that she would certainly never have considered a relationship with one. Not because she herself was prejudiced, but because doing so would place her outside mainstream Japanese society. We have heard this before. If you haven't, I recommend watching the film Gentleman's Agreement. I won't claim I know the best solution for Google in this particular case, but a knee-jerk response of "technology has no values" brings us no closer to any kind of truth, and represents a failure to understand our relationship to technology.
[1, 2] The quotes above are by Frederick Mills and Dvaid L. MacAdam respectively, quoted in the article "Making 'white' people white" by Richard Dyer, 1997.