Time to "pure"-ize the Sumo

[bolt_krank]

[Kanchou]

This smacks of racism and pointless xenophobia.

"Can't be helped?" More like "fabricated issue"

[2triky]

All current sumo wrestlers will have their genealogies scrutinized to see if they are true descendants of the Yamato Race. Nazi purity laws will serve as a working model.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Maybe I've got the wrong idea, but it seems like they're saying "Even if they've got citizenship - they're not Japanese !"

As far as I know - once they've got Jap citizenship, it means they've renounced their previous one. Shouldn't that be enough ?

These questions are pertinent to a host of other threads, IMHO. The JSA's stance is typical of wider Japanese society. Even if you do take out citizenship, you're not really "Japanese" unless the blood of Yamato runs through your veins, as the Japanese have proved time and time again.

[bolt_krank]

Going back a while, aren't Japanese decendants of Mongolians ?

[Ketou]

Going back a while, aren't Japanese decendants of Mongolians ?

Not to mention Sumo is likely a form of Mongolian wrestling.

[TennoChinko]

What is the exact definition of 'foreign-born' that the Sumo Association is using?

Although highly unlikely, I wonder if it might unintentionally also exclude children of Japanese parents born abroad.


Of course, biographical details have been regularly and conveniently faked for many former sumo and pro-wrestling greats. In his heyday, Rikidozan was provided with a fake Japanese name and biography that claimed he was born and raised in Kyushu. In fact, he was a proud sometimes troubled & conflicted North Korean, Kim Sin-rak. Same goes for his successor, Antonio Inoki ... he used to claim he was a Japanese-Brazilian. Now his wiki entry claims he was born in Yokohama to a prosperous well to do Japanese family. The apparent truth is that is he was closer to his 'master', Rikidozan, in more ways than one -- he is also ethnic North Korean but was born in Japan albeit in the less prestigious environs of Kawasaki.

[Kanchou]

I wonder if the Japanese stable owners are going to start using some American-style litigation and sue the shit out of the JSA for racial discrimination and unfair business practices. This is pretty much the equivalent of the NFL telling a franchise owner that they can't hire the players of their choosing based on some arbitrary policy decision against foreigners.

[omae mona]

[BO-SENSEI]

[Coligny]

[Greji]

What's next? Japanese baseball teams limiting foreign born baseball players.

J-baseball has been doing that for years Bochan. It was not until relatively recent years that they would allow more than two fgs on a team roster. i don't know remember what the current rules are, but they are still restricted as to how many fgs they can carry on the main team and on the 2gun rosters.

[eddie]

another nail in the (big ass) coffin of sumo 'rasslin'

[Yokohammer]

What a disappointment. I was hoping the Sumo Kyokai dinosaurs wouldn't be pea-brained enough to try and pull something like this off.

Yes, it legitimizes the concept that even if you have acquired Japanese citizenship, you aren't actually Japanese, and that it's perfectly normal that you should continue to be marginalized as a "gaijin." Japanese-ness cannot be acquired. It is a trait only transmitted through the immutable law of blood lineage. All ye who hope to be accepted here, abandon hope!

Really pathetic. Japanese wrestlers can't win, so rather than figure out ways to get stronger or deal with it in other ways (Mainoumi did it, fer chrissake), they come up with the most obtuse, lame excuse to shut out foreign wrestlers so they can once again have Japanese yokozuna. And this has the highly undesirable consequence of legitimizing the type of thinking outlined above, and that will naturally trickle out into the rest of society.

Bad, bad move, Sumo Kyokai. Very sad indeed.

[TennoChinko]

The sumo world x Harry Potter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_universe#Blood_purity

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

:three:

Actually, someone should remind the JSA that if you have too much pure blood, you end up looking like this :three::three::three::three:

[wuchan]

Not surprisingly, Debito's already on the case...

http://www.debito.org/?p=6026

He is on the case because he is Japanese.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Screwed-down Hairdo again.

[maraboutslim]

Yes, it legitimizes the concept that even if you have acquired Japanese citizenship, you aren't actually Japanese, and that it's perfectly normal that you should continue to be marginalized as a "gaijin." Japanese-ness cannot be acquired. It is a trait only transmitted through the immutable law of blood lineage.

To be more accurate, it's not the blood per se. It seems to require being raised from a child in Japan and therefore acquiring all the cultural traits that come from being raised here. There is very little variation in education and family/cultural rituals here and so being raised here and learning the standard shit that everyone goes through, having these "traits" and practices ingrained into oneself via experience is the backbone of the "wa" of Japanese society.

The belief is that if one has not been raised in this standard way, whether they are debito or a russian sumo wrestler or a pure blood japanese raised abroad, then they have not acquired Japanese-ness.

I'm not saying I agree this is something that the Japanese should really be worrying about in this day and age, but I am saying it at least makes sense when thought of in this manner instead of the inflammatory manner that comes from thinking of it as a "blood" issue and something that one can only be born with. It's precisely what happens after one is born that truly makes one Japanese in this society.

[amdg]

To be more accurate, it's not the blood per se. It seems to require being raised from a child in Japan and therefore acquiring all the cultural traits that come from being raised here. There is very little variation in education and family/cultural rituals here and so being raised here and learning the standard shit that everyone goes through, having these "traits" and practices ingrained into oneself via experience is the backbone of the "wa" of Japanese society.

So why do people who were born and raised in Japan, who went to Japanese schools, who look Japanese, who follow Japanese customs, speak no other language than Japanese, get discriminated against?

[Kanchou]

To be truely Japanese in the eye of the Japanese you have to be ethnically Japanese, usually with at least one "truely" Japanese parent (ie, you can get away with one kikokushijo parent as long as all your grandparents were 'true' Japanese), you have to have lived all of your childhood in Japan, you have to have been born there, and you can't have decent English, because then you're just a kikokushijo, or worse, a foreigner if you're not 100% pure ethnically... unless you're not in Japan any more, at which point you are nisei.*

And don't even get started on bunraku and ainu people.


*Addenum: if you're a mongoloid, speak fluent Japanese, have a Japanese name and passport, never speak your native language or any other besides Japanese, don't tell anyone you're naturalized, and no one knows your parents' names, congratulations: you are Japanese!

[Dragonette]

To be more accurate, it's not the blood per se. It seems to require being raised from a child in Japan and therefore acquiring all the cultural traits that come from being raised here...
The belief is that if one has not been raised in this standard way, whether they are debito or a russian sumo wrestler or a pure blood japanese raised abroad, then they have not acquired Japanese-ness.
... It's precisely what happens after one is born that truly makes one Japanese in this society.

OK, so then it's not racism so much as good old-fashioned xenophobia, and does make sense in a badly twisted way, something like the way kids are raised in weird cults. Well yeah, it's much easier to brain-wash a kid in the first few years of its life.. later on, when common sense takes over, passive-agressiveness is harder to teach.

And when subjects are thoroughly brainwashed, this kind of incident will crop up with predictible regularity, giving the media plenty to write about without having space/time to cover the more concrete problems that are really wrecking Japan, (pun intended) -and the wa is preserved!


But what about the kids that you FGs have fathered/mothered?:banana:
Even though they are J-born and raised, I'm sure you must have infected them at an early age with a few free-thinking FG ideas, rendering them unfit for true J-sheepledom, and a potential danger to the culture at large!

[Yokohammer]

To be more accurate, it's not the blood per se. It seems to require being raised from a child in Japan and therefore acquiring all the cultural traits that come from being raised here. There is very little variation in education and family/cultural rituals here and so being raised here and learning the standard shit that everyone goes through, having these "traits" and practices ingrained into oneself via experience is the backbone of the "wa" of Japanese society.

If only this was true, then it actually would make some sense.

Unfortunately, and as amdg accurately points out, there are way too many cases of discrimination against people who were born and raised here to make it so. That's why so many 2nd and 3rd generation Koreans who were born here, who look Japanese, and speak no other Language than Japanese have had to hide their backgrounds in order to avoid discrimination.

And the buraku-min* and Ainu people Kanchou mentioned ... who are ethnically Japanese but sadly excluded from the purest of pure Yamato line ... you might want to do a little research into how they've been treated.

*Make sure you don't look up "bunraku," them's is puppets ...

[maraboutslim]

So why do people who were born and raised in Japan, who went to Japanese schools, who look Japanese, who follow Japanese customs, speak no other language than Japanese, get discriminated against?

The only way this happens is if they are, uh... sticking up? (like the nail)... for some other reason. If they can't be distinguished from the majority japanese culture, then they will not be discriminated against. I agree with Kanchou: "if you're a mongoloid, speak fluent Japanese, have a Japanese name and passport, never speak your native language or any other besides Japanese, don't tell anyone you're naturalized, and no one knows your parents' names, congratulations: you are Japanese!" Mess up on any one of those, and bang, you are not Japanese.

[maraboutslim]

BTW, are you guys really of the opinion that members of a group do not have the right to self-determine who meets the criteria for membership into their their group? I mean, shit, surely the Japanese get to decide who is Japanese, don't they? Why the hell else should what anyone else thinks about it matter?

This is a wholly different issue from how people should be treated and if, say, a Korean or Canadian in Japan should be treated any differently on a legal level than a Japanese (I tend to think they shouldn't). But culturally, groups should have the right to define themselves however they want and associate with whomever they want and like whomever they want, and so on.

[Kanchou]

The term "Japanese" is somewhat unique (not that the Japanese themselves are as unique as they like to suggest that they are) as they are one of the only nationalities that is also almost 100% an ethnicity as well, with maybe 1% being foreign-born Asians, and maybe 10% being Japanese-born people who aren't "pure" (or at least not ideal) Japanese (Koreans, Ainu, Burakumin, etc).

So while their definition of their group might differ somewhat from what we perceive it to be, it's generally a much stricter definition than what say, an American thinks of what it means to be American.

That doesn't mean their definition is wrong, per say, but it also doesn't mean we're wrong for making fun of it. We may also be justified in laughing at an inbred hick who doesn't consider immigrants to be "true Americans." And if you think about it, we as a country don't allow foreign-born citizens to become president, so it's not like we're totally innocent of xenophobia.

[Yokohammer]

Interesting discussion.

The issue of how accepting the Japanese are or should be toward immigration and "outside influences" in general is tricky.

On the one hand they consider themselves to be a monolithic (pure) race and are reluctant to bow to the norms of the outside world, while at the same time enjoying the benefits of acceptance in the international community. Sort of a "have their cake and eat it too" situation. Japan's position of relative economic and technological strength (which is admittedly waning a bit) is due in part to their own diligence, but also to a very large degree to free access to the world's cultural/philosophical/technological/economic resources.

On the surface it appears that the government understands that in order to continue to grow and compete on the world stage Japan needs to be more open and create a more accepting environment for immigration, but at the same time the government is reluctant to make the necessary changes at the most basic level ... like implementing anti-discrimination legislation, for example.

There's no turning back. Japan can't go back the "sakoku" era. The only way is forward and the problems impeding that progress seem to be approaching critical mass. Growing pains of a sort that will have to be overcome effectively or the system will collapse under the weight of its own myopia.

Having said that, one of the interesting things about this country to me is that there are plenty of very intelligent, forward-thinking Japanese who really do understand these problems and would love to see change. Unfortunately the inbred ruling class is not quite so enlightened, and seem to be too caught up the battle to further their own positions to worry about where the country as a whole is going. The strong "undercurrents" that work to keep things stagnant are kept invisible, behind layer after layer of bureaucracy, making it very difficult to weed out the real problems.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the time being.

[2triky]

^ As you alluded to, when you have a gerontocracy that dominates the political landscape for more than 50 years postwar, it is difficult for fresh thinking to overcome the inertia of the past.

[Ketou]

BTW, are you guys really of the opinion that members of a group do not have the right to self-determine who meets the criteria for membership into their their group? I mean, shit, surely the Japanese get to decide who is Japanese, don't they? Why the hell else should what anyone else thinks about it matter?

This is a wholly different issue from how people should be treated and if, say, a Korean or Canadian in Japan should be treated any differently on a legal level than a Japanese (I tend to think they shouldn't). But culturally, groups should have the right to define themselves however they want and associate with whomever they want and like whomever they want, and so on.

Sure, but is it really beneficial to define yourself as exclusive? Most countries have laws to prevent to discrimination because the laws not only protect the minorities from majority protectionism, but also they work as a catalyst to create social change. Having no laws is a tacit approval of discrimination and shows that the group feels the benefit of discrimination outweighs the detriment.

So they may have the right to self-determine and decide who is in their group, but we also have the right to view them as antediluvian and crass.

[Kanchou]

Sort of how like the Boy Scouts can choose who can be a member, while the gays and atheists can bitch about it.

[maraboutslim]

Yes, but there is a lot more going on in many of the comments here than simply ridiculing or viewing the Japanese as "antediluvian and crass." There's a sense of wanting to belong anyway. Kind of a "jews for jesus," or gays who want to still be catholics or whatever. Seriously guys, why do some people have such a desire to "belong" to a group that pretty much by definition excludes you? I guess it doesn't bother me because I've never been one who felt much need to belong to anything. It's much easier as the one and only member of one's own group.