In Defence of Japanese Culture

[child of Thor]

They also make(i'm finding out ), a selection of great video games, without which the gaming world would be culturally poorer.

[Q Classic]

you didn't know this earlier? the have many of the biggest gaming comanies in the console world, not to mention two of the three largest gaming platform companies...

and yoko matsugane? not that attractive, at least from that photo.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by pchang


Those CANNOT be real

Who cares??

[Q Classic]

her face isn't all that attractive, her boobs are too fake, and she looks far too... porn-star ish.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
you didn't know this earlier? the have many of the biggest gaming comanies in the console world, not to mention two of the three largest gaming platform companies...

not until last week when i got my first japanese console and Zelda - Orcarina of time, i've been impressed
I was a shameless 'Gaijan' (?), only ever owning British and USA computer systems - i can see even just by this one game that Japan has its own unique culture.
So he could use that as an example

[Q Classic]

i see... makes sense. japan doesn't have the presence in computer gaming that america does, so if you've never owned a console before...

and it's gaijin.

however, saying a country has a culture after having experienced just one video game is kinda silly...

[child of Thor]

as is his friends arguments seems a fair comparison of silly arguments for/against

[Theben]

Originally posted by Evil Knevil

Thanks for the advice everyone, but I'm specifically interested in counter-arguements. I utterly agree that he's speaking bollocks, but I need examples:

"Japan is just a poor copy of China..."
" What about xxx"

You guys fill in the blank

It's been said already. The geographical location of Japan is what tends to set it apart when people look for comparisons, in that it's pretty freaking obvious where the cultural influences come from.

What your friend doesn't seem to grasp is that EVERY ****ING NATION on the planet has been culturally influenced by its neighbors, whether by the sword or trade. Moorish influence in Spain. French in Russia. Greek in Mali (yes, it did.) Mongol in Persia. China in Europe.

And don't think for a minute it was all one-sided. The Japanese re-influenced the Chinese when they altered the original concept, such as in religion (espec zen buddhism) & art. Plus more current marketing policies.

But I also think your friend is pretty far gone and won't see anything valuable about Japan even if you shove it under his nose. You need to get at the underlying issue, assuming you want to dig that deep.

[Q Classic]

zen came from china, though...

[Q Classic]

But I also think your friend is pretty far gone and won't see anything valuable about Japan even if you shove it under his nose. You need to get at the underlying issue, assuming you want to dig that deep.

probably got dumped by a hypernationalist japanese *****.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
zen came from china, though...

That'd be the "altered original" thingy.

probably got dumped by a hypernationalist japanese *****.

dunno... I once worked with a guy who wasn't 'all upstairs', and his 2 favorite topics were hockey and 'those damn japanese'. TDJ being the ones we fought aginst in WWII... and this was in 1990. Seeing as he wasn't old enough to have been in Vietnam, let alone WWII, I never grasped his reasoning. For which I am thankful.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Snowflake

To teach and learn a Chinese character for a Chinese is no more difficult than to teach and learn a English word for a westerner.

I'm sorry, but that sounds just plain wrong to me.

If it were just as easy, why do Chinese students require years of grinding rote-memorization to become literate?

Being able to pronounce a word you've never seen before is another enormous advantage of the western writing system. However, not having verb tenses truly is a big plus for Chinese grammar.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
her face isn't all that attractive, her boobs are too fake, and she looks far too... porn-star ish.

I like the 'slutty' look

[Arrian]

She's fugly. And I generally think Asian women are hot.

As for the moron whose bigotry is the subject of this thread, perhaps you should just ask him a simple question:

So what if Japanese culture is all borrowed? Why should I care?

Ultimately we all borrow from each other. As the citizen of a nation that has all but perfected the art of borrowing things from others ( ), I see nothing wrong with it.

-Arrian

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

It's debatable that a logographic system is superior to a phonetic system. Instead of conveying sounds, it conveys meanings directly. Thus, it's more compact and has a higher information density.

Actually, I think that's not true.

A proficient speaker of English also gets the meaning more or less directly from the appearance of the word, they don't mentally "sound it out". Most of the time, the shape of the word is recognized and processsed directly into meaning without use of phonetic cues, so I think the information density level is about the same.

On the other hand, character-based systems suffer from the serious disadvantage of being divorced from the spoken language. With character-based writing systems, you have to memorize additional unrelated data (i.e. the pronunciation) for each character.

With phonetic languages, the verbal and written languages reinforce each other, instead of being more-or-less unrelated parallel codes.