Waiting for an apology?

All Nippon Airways made what they thought was a funny commercial, but ended up apologizing for their "white face."

Are you waiting for your apology for yellow face?

I'm waiting for an apology from M. Night Shyamalan and Paramount for the 2010 "The Last Airbender."

How about Cloud Atlas Productions for the 2012 "Cloud Atlas"?

A Possible Cure for Yellow Fever

With Katy Perry's recent AMA performance, yellow fever has become the hot topic among Asians and Asian Americans. I've called it the Asian Babe Syndrome where guys, usually white, but not necessarily so, seek out Asian or Asian American women hoping for compliant and unconditional love.

That may or may not include BDSM if only because the man is seeking a submissive partner. When I was still dating, I got a few emails from male doms looking for a female sub--something I didn't get when I didn't identify my race or lied and alleged that I was white or black.

The cure of the man looking for a geisha is a heavy dose of reality. I recommend a spreadsheet in place of spread eagle legs, showing how much it costs to support a real geisha.

Numbers, I know, can be boring and as Americans are historically lacking in math skills in comparison with most of the world, probably a better way is to show rather than tell.

There are two movies I recommend:

1. "In the Realm of the Sense" which is inspired by the real case of Abe Sada or Sada Abe.
2. "Audition" which is a movie that strikes terror in the hearts of many men.

Sada Abe was a Japanese woman born in 1905 and became famous, after a brief attempt at being a geisha, for cutting off the penis and testicles of her lover, Kichizo Ishida, in 1936. She kept those organs because she wanted a part of him that gave her vivid memories. They had been engaged in torrid sex and Ishida was stranged as a part of erotic asphyxiation--so during sex to intensify his pleasure.

Nagisa Oshima's 1976 "In the Real of the Senses" is about that incident and includes nudity, unsimulated acts of sex and violence. You can watch it on HuluPlus.

It should be noted that the woman who played Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda) didn't enjoy a respectable film career, but the man (Tatsuya Fuji) was able to go on into legitimate films. 

The 1999 "Audition" is based on a book by a man, Ryu Murakami. A widowed middle-aged man, Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi)  pretends to audition women for a movie, but is actually auditioning someone to date and be his new wife. His friend Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura), a film producer, helps him but has a bad feeling about the woman, Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) that Shigehara chooses. 

Abe did it out of love. Others, like Ecuadorian-born Lorena Bobbitt, cut their lovers penis off out of spite. In Orange County (Garden Grove), Katherine Kieu, who was born in Vietnam, drugged her husband, cut off his penis and then threw it down the garbage disposal. That was in 2011. The couple had only been married 16 months. She was only recently sentenced to life in prison in June of this year. 

In an earlier case in Guangzhou, Mainland China, a husband, Lin Mouru, suggested that he, his wife and their three kids live together with his mistress. That was in 2008. By 2009, his wife, Xie Mouman, asked for a divorce. He refused. She alleges that he threatened her and their kids. In February of 2009, she cut off his penis and then fled the scene. She was captured two days later. She was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison.

You might be able to buy "love" but that unconditional love depends upon your bank account.  Asian and Asian American women are not butterflies or chrysanthemums, but human beings who can be just as angry and bloody as other women. 

Dating and Asian American men and women

Justin Chan of PolicyMic.com recently posted the question: "Are Asian Men Undateable?" The answer is both yes and no. Instead of moaning about it, there's plenty Asian men and Asian American men can do about it.

Chan notes that the website "Are You Interested" surveyed 2.4 million interactions and noted that their male users favored Asian women.  Chan's article seems to be a response to Cherylynn Low's 13 November 2013 "Asian Women Don't Get Luckier on OkCupid, We Get More Harassed."

Chan worried about being rejected (Don't all men worry about that except those extraordinarily vain few?).  He mentions a UCLA Bruin who wrote "I feel cheated out of a myriad of romantic experiences that could have been brought to fruition were I not an Asian male." Does that comment make you think the writer, John Shim, was looking for a relationship or a notch on his score card?

When I first read both of these articles, I thought that not much had changed since I started dating. Because of my stalker ex (despite a restraining order in place and one arrest), I didn't post my photo. I was told this would greatly decrease the number of responses I received. However, as a Japanese woman, I received about 20-30 a day. So I decided to experiment. Without a photo, if I used the same profile and wrote Asian, I got about 30 responses per week. If I did not identify my race, then I got very few. If I identified myself as black, then I got none.

What I also noticed was that if I politely declined men, as an Asian woman or as a Japanese woman, I received more nastigrams---even if the decline was for something as simple and impersonal as geography. I didn't want to date someone on the other side of the country. This kind of outrage never happened if I didn't identify myself as Asian or Japanese. Some men in their nastigrams would tell me that they had had my mother, sister, cousin for a buck when they were in Asia. I got the distinct feeling they felt I should be honored to have received their attention.

Further, I was more likely to get complimented for my English even though I clearly stated I was born in the U.S. Of the men who responded without knowing my race, when I revealed my race, there were some who would claim that they could tell from my writing that I was a non-native speaker of English.

As a Japanese or Asian American woman, I also got asked my bra cup size by white men, sent photos of erect penises by white and black men, and received unwanted advice from Asian men about how I should behave. Some were greatly offended that I was willing to date men of any race. Some wanted to teach me how to be more Asian.

If nothing has changed since I was dating and it seems not much has changed since Mickey Rooney played Mr. Yuniyoshi in the 1961 "Breakfast at Tiffany's" then there's no use in whining about it. If "Frances Ha" and her best bet for a good relationship both call themselves "undateable" maybe there's something undateable Asian American men are missing. Get up and make yourself more dateable.

Dating as practiced in the United States is filled with facades building up false expectations. For Asian and Asian American men, I recommend they turn away from this often artificial dating practice and cultivate other aspects of socializing with the gender of their preference.

First, I think that Asian American men must deal with the disconnect between what their parents teach them, particularly parents from an older generation. Many Asian American parents value their sons above their daughters. So the Asian American man may get to order his sisters and mother around at home and his mother may tend to his every need, but he's not the object of adoration outside the house within the larger general American population. Asian American women will be sought after by men of various races and in higher demand than Asian American men.

That means, you can't treat Asian American women unkindly. You can't take them for granted. You can't treat them like your mother and you can't let your mother or father treat them poorly either. You may be king at your home, but you're not one of the golden princes of the American social scene.

One way to deal with this disconnect is to understand what is generally acceptable. You can glean this from reading Dear Abby or various other advice columns and the comments posted on those columns.  Read Miss Manners or Emily Post. Good manners will get you noticed.

In my opinion, some Asian American men are the worst of both cultures--they adopt the most sexist aspects of their respective Asian culture and add it to the sexist aspects of the American culture. They become super sexist. That, in my opinion, isn't sexy. What is sexy is a guy who is interested in what I'm interested in without being paternalistic or condescending. The interest, however, must be geniuine.

As a geek and someone who has been in the geek culture, this is the same advice I'd give to my science geek friends. Many geek subcultures that are predominately male. If you want to attract the few women in that culture, you have to be better than your competition.

If you want a woman who looks a certain way, then you better be able a good match for her. Be a Ken to her Barbie. If you're a jeans and T-shirt guy, don't expect to get a fashionista.

If the competition is too rough in whatever culture you're in, then you need to find activities that put you together with more women. My hobby of rock collecting is predominately male. However, you can be like Rosey Grier, the former football player, and take up hobbies like macrame and needlepoint. You could take dance classes. Don't be one of those leering guys in the yoga class, aerobics or zumba class. People notice and you'll be labeled the creepy guy.

Most of the dance classes have more women than men. Of course, when I emphasized that I wanted a man who danced, I got a lot of hate email from men who told me that there were no heterosexual men who liked dancing and that John Wayne never danced. If that's your prejudice, you might need to work on yourself. John Wayne did dance in a movie and there are plenty of heterosexual men who dance. Remember, Fred Astaire was balding, didn't have the kind of physique that makes you want to rip his shirt off, but he was attractive to women. I've seen short men, men with paunchy stomachs, balding men and even older men who don't have the Donald Trump big bank account advantage being swooned over by women who want to dance.

My husband, who I met through Argentine tango, believes that Asian men need better PR and after a recent U.N. study made headlines, that may be true and there's a lot one can do about the bad PR. More people must be willing to speak out and not accept ghastly yellowface or the whitewashing of history. That's a campaign that won't help your immediate needs on the dating frontline, but one that needs to be fought just the same. Don't be the always ranting angry guy, because that's also unattractive.

Women must also be willing to speak up. One thing that personally turned me off of many men, white and black, with yellowfever was how they spoke about Asian men. I reminded them that my father was Asian American, my grandfathers and uncles were and are Asian American. My brother and cousins are Asian American. Every derogatory statement they said about Asian and Asian American men was a negative comment about my family.

Being undateable may just be a state of mind. Things at the movies have changed since my parents time and the era of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" despite the yellowface in "Cloud Atlas." Besides Bruce Lee, we have Bi (Rain), Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat, Poreotics, Jackie Chan and a former part-Japanese Superman in Dean Cain and part-Asian Booboo Stewart ("The Twilight Saga: Eclipse") and part-Asian Dan Southworth ("Act of Valor"). While it's true that Asian Americans face different problems on the dating scene than Caucasians, Latinos and African Americans, there's always something one can do to improve one's chances and opportunities and in doing so, on a local level you can help define the new normal.

Defining normal: Asians and human sexuality

How do we define normal? That's a question we need to consider anytime we read newspaper articles or listen to reports. Are Asians and Africans--both nationals and ethnic communities--used in defining what is normal? Or are we allowing white Christian men and women to be the standard.

Recently I had a heated discussion regarding two Facebook postings of articles. One article was about Asian men and the other was not. Both articles were posted by white American women. Consider what both articles mean in regards to being normal. 

The first was a study conducted by the U.N. I don't fault the U.N. so much as the way journalists reported the study with catchy and sometimes misleading headlines. The resulting headlines I'm referring to included: "Nearly A quart of men in some Asian Countries admit to rape, study finds" or "1 in 4 men surveyed in Asia-Pacific say they committed rape" or "Rape widespread across Asia-Pacific, UN study says." The study itself is flawed, covering only six (Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Papua New Guinea.) out of 49 Asian countries. Notice that the study doesn't cover India or any country West of India such as Afghanistan. The study doesn't cover the economically powerful South Korea or Japan.

Yet there were other flaws to the study such as the respondents not being representative.  The title "Rape widespread across Asia-Pacific, UN Study Says" is from NPR and not some yellow journalism rag. Bloomberg.com used the headline "One in Four Men Surveyed in Asian Study Say They Raped." Imagine what kind of misinformation could be spread by other headlines and careless readers.

When a post by a white woman hit my Facebook page, I looked at the article and looked at the original source and made sure everyone commenting on that particular post knew that the study didn't represent Asia. Asian men are from one continent but they come from different cultures and different religious communities.

Limited research is always a problem but consider this: How many studies are Asians and Asian American left out of? Asians make up 60 percent of the world population, but we make up only 11 percent of the population in Los Angeles. Yet why wouldn't we want to add our voices to that 60 percent?

When discussing another recent issue brought up by an article posted (again by a white woman), research on mental health and human sexuality, I raised the lack of research into non-white communities such as Africa and Asia as problematic. I was told that this was a ridiculous concern. The study was reported by the Huffington Post as "BDSM Correlated with Better Health Mental Health, Says Study."  The Huffington Post writer cites other sources such as LiveScience and Reuters, but it doesn't seem that the study has anything to do with the United States. The study was done through online questionnaires using 902 BDSM practitioners and 434 people who practiced non-kinky sex, but it was done by a psychologist, Andreas Wismeijer,  at Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands. As the lead author, Wismeijer admitted that the study was limited.

The study is somewhat limited by a self-selecting response pool and by the fact that BDSM practitioners could have been answering in ways to make themselves look better and avoid stigma, Wismeijer said — though the fact that the participants didn't know the reasons for the study ameliorates that concern somewhat. The findings are reason for mental health professionals to take an accepting approach to BDSM practitioners, Wismeijer said.--LiveScience.com.

The Netherlands has over 17 million people. As the Netherlands has that Black Peter tradition and the possible limitations of the language spoken, Dutch, I would question how representative this study was of Europe and then of the world in general. From the three articles I read, it wasn't clear that the study went beyond the borders of the Netherlands or hit any English-speaking communities. The study did use the largest BDSM forum in the Netherlands and the so-called vanilla sex practitioners were drawn from "a women's magazine website, a personal secret website and a university website." Using those three sources, they were only able to find 434 people, that's less than half of the BDSM practitioners. Not good.

Yet even if we consider the studies representative of Europe, just watching movies like "Stranger by the Lake" or "The Warmest Color Is Blue" should indicate European attitudes (French in the case of the movies) are different from American attitudes toward sex and nudity. Why should we believe that this small limited study done in the Netherlands has anything to do with the United States and anything to do worldwide attitudes?

My points are:

1. We shouldn't allow news items that roll up Asia into one monolithic culture to go by without comment. Six countries do not represent the 49 Asian countries and are less representative if you add the Pacific Islands. The concept that Asia and the Pacific (and sometimes North Africa) can be seen as one cohesive culture is Orientalism at its worst.
2. A study of white people by white people, particularly in a nation that is predominately Christian (Protestant or Catholic) is not representative of the world and does a disservice to the peoples of Africa and Asia as well as people of other world religions such as Islam, Hindu and Buddhism. While "The World Factbook" lists Christians as 30.59 percent of the world population, Muslims as 23.2 percent and Hindus are 15 percent. Together that's 33.2 percent. Buddhists are only 7 percent. The majority of the world isn't Christian (and doesn't celebrate Christmas).  The largest ethnic group  in the world is the Han Chinese (18 percent worldwide) and Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language (14 percent to 5.52 percent for English).  The next most populous ethnic group is Arab. The Arabs are a panethnic group from West Asia and North Africa. As 1 out of 5 people in the world are Muslim and a large percentage of the world population is Arab, both Arabs and Muslims and even Arab Muslims should be included in any study that is meant to determine worldwide norms. 
3. If you want to claim that a small study of white people should apply to peoples of the world, then conversely a study about people in Asia or Africa should apply to all peoples of the world. That means instead of saying, Asian men, the headlines in the U.N. study should have said simply "1 out of 4 Men Surveyed Say They Raped."

Where we have seen movies such as "21" and "Emperor" whitewash East Asian Americans out of historical events--major and minor, we can also see Asians and Asian Americans being whitewashed out of research and data used to define normal. Minorities are part of normal in the United States. Asian Americans may only be 5.6 percent of the American population but we are the fastest growing ethnic group. There are cities in California where Asian Americans are a majority and citizens of those cities shouldn't be held to a measure of normality that was defined by research that excluded them. 

Moreover, Asia holds a little over 60 percent of the world population. If religion and culture define attitudes toward sex and other emotional issues, and the largest religion in Asia is Islam, followed by Hinduism and Buddhism, then sexual practices and attitudes of these populations should be part of any research on human beings so we understand what is average and what is normal. The true norms of the world may not be the norms of America or Europe. The true normal in this global community would best be defined by including research on Asia. 

Just as the U.N. research of 10,000 men in nine sites in six countries doesn't represent Asia or Pacific Asia as in the case of the rape, then less than 1,500 people in the Netherlands doesn't represent Europe, America, Africa or Asia in regards to sexual attitudes and mental health. 

According to world demographics, research on what is normal, mentally or physically, should include both Han Chinese and Arabs, Christians and Muslims as a significant percentage of the research subject pool. 

What we, as Asian ethnics, as Asian Americans, as non-Christians need to ask for is a new normal. 

'Unconditionally' brings geisha to AMA

Sunday night (24 November 2013)  I wasn't watching the American Music Awards. I'm not a fan of people, too often women, acting like spoiled teenagers trying to get someone, anyone's attention by bad behavior.  So I missed Katy Perry going geisha to promote her new single "Unconditionally."

Tuesday, I read Jeff Yang's blog entry on the matter. There where things that made me cringe and that's not just because of Katy Perry.  Yang's title surely is a lift for businesses like the Scottsdale, AZ "Geisha A Go Go" which gets a good rating in Urban Spoon and even has a Facebook page.

Really, if anyone wants unconditional love, get a dog. Not a cat, not your mother. A dog. My dog always loves me even when I'm putting him on a diet. He even becomes needier. Even after people dump their dogs at the animal shelter, some really loyal dogs keep looking for their best-beloved master until their last breath.

As for your mother,  if she's like mine comes with a martyr complex chained to well-practiced passive-aggressive ploys to evoke guilt and/or shame, there's nothing unconditional about that. Japanese may have a shame culture, but I get the best of both--European-centric American guilt combined with Japanese filio-piety shame. That's some very restrictive apron strings.

What boggles the mind is that men think a woman, any woman, would want to center their world around them, especially when entertaining me is part of their commercial enterprise. Yet I feel the need to correct some parts of Yang's column as well as comment on Perry's performance.

Calling Katy Perry's performance Cirque du Sayonara is a disservice to the French Canadians who have given us back the circus in a guilt-free manner. We can enjoy the circus without feeling bad about the animals. PETA won't be protesting. PETA members may even be in attendance. Now those French in France...they do have some part of the blame for America and Europe's infatuation with sexually-easy Asian women.

The original Madame Butterfly was Japanese, she was the creation of a French man (not unlike "Miss Saigon") and she wasn't a geisha. The naval officer Pierre Loti wrote a semi-autobiographical novel in 1887 called "Madame Chrysantheme."  John Luther Long's short story, "Madame Butterfly" followed in 1898. The Giacomo Puccini opera premiered in 1904.

This is very different from the musical "Miss Saigon" whose protagonist is a pure prostitute and she must be saved by a man, preferably a white man. That kind of story gets filed under "white man saves the world" variant of "white man saves the girl." "Miss Saigon," was written by French man Claude-Michel Schonberg and Tunisian-born Alain Boubil and was supposedly based on the Puccini opera "Madame Butterfly."

As Yang states, "Miss Saigon" does portray white men as saving an Asian women from evil and just wimpy Asian men.  All too true and from my experience, some men see themselves this way when they try to find the Asian girl of their dreams. There are men who specifically seek an Asian bride.

In all of these incarnations--Madame Butterfly and Madame Chysantheme, the Japanese woman was a disposable wife. She was treated like a prostitute--bought for temporary pleasure and convenience. She was not a geisha. I suppose men can look at foreign women, particularly non-white, as disposable wives, but that's not what a geisha is.

A geisha is an entertainer and an artisan. She has to entertain men and she usually, like all artists, needs a sponsor. Usually that involves sex. You need to have a pretty sizable bank account to have a monopoly on your favorite geisha. A good geisha is aware of the nature of commerce, her business. One wonders how well Katy Perry knows her business. Was this her ploy of getting attention? Then mission accomplished.

In her AMA performance, Perry gets on stage dressed in a kimono with long fluttering sleeves that suggest a young girl, typically one that has never married. Her eyebrows don't have that accent grave and aigu upward slant that I detailed in my (dia)critical essay but if you check out the performers around her, their make up took up that Fu Manchu makeup folly. The costume includes white tabi socks, but has a Mandarin collar (that's Chinese in case you're knowledge of geography and ethnicity is limited. She has the slit skirt that is typical of China or Vietnam.  So the costume designer has crossed the kimono with the cheongsam (qipao) and Perry walks as if she's in an Vietnamese ao dai which would conceivably be split up to her waist.

Having worn all three, a slit makes it easier to walk but Perry needed lessons on walking with a slit skirt. Slit skirts don't go well with tabi socks. Ao dai and cheongsam usually have pants under them. Remember Asian women were wearing pants before it was proper for American and European women. Japanese women also wore pants (monpe) at times for things such as farm work. You can't, after all, work in a kimono.

If you don't know how to walk in a kimono, you will give onlookers some unfortunate crotch shots. I'm not sure who to blame for the backup dancers providing crotch shots in the Perry performance. Performer? Costume designer? Choreographer?  If you need help on the kimono walk, I suggest watching onnagata in kabuki. That's how I learned. The traditional feminine walk of a kimono-wearing Japanese woman is distinctive and it takes practice.

Perry's performance suggests she is in Japan. The background of red torii gates and bonsai trees with the gigantic Hokusai-esque wave on fans are suggest Japan. Her performance included five-petaled confetti which I suppose were meant to be cherry blossoms, except cherry blossoms are not usually orange or yellow. In poetry, cherry blossoms represented samurai and the brevity of their lives. In general, cherry blossoms symbolize something ephemeral. Red torii gates also have a place in love stories and a different kind of foxy ladies than we'd talk about in America.

Her pre-show Instagram shows her with her hands pressed together in a salutation that is probably more Thai than Japanese. Although should you be visiting a temple or shrine, hands pressed together as in prayer can be seen in Japan. I don't think Perry's kimono/cheongsam pose is about prayer. She seems more like she's making that stereotypical "ah so" greeting.

The geisha has specific dress codes as did courtesans (a different category in pre-Meiji Japan). Hollywood wouldn't know that considering the travesty that was the 2005 blockbuster movie, "Memoirs of a Geisha." If the book was a betrayal of a real geisha by the author Arthur Golden (it was the subject of a lawsuit), then the movie was a betrayal of American-Japanese relationships by falling back and supporting old stereotypes, including that World War II tradition of having Chinese actors portray the main Japanese characters (Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh portrayed the main female roles to Japanese actor Ken Watanabe's portrayal of the protagonist's true love).

What was the problem? Japanese actors weren't Japanese enough? The Steven Spielberg produced film was directed by Rob Marshall and the dance in the movie had almost nothing to do with Japan or the geisha culture.

The geisha certainly does capture the imagination of American men but the definition that Americans have of the geisha says more about Americans and their prejudices than it says about Japan. The Merriam Webster doesn't define a her as compliant. That's our connotation.

Somehow the American stereotype of the geisha makes Japanese women seem more compliant--even among Asian women. Yet why do Americans and Europeans insist on seeing Asian women as compliant sexual objects when they have and do have women of courage and strength. Is this a remnant of old imperialism, the Orientalism that the late Edward Said wrote about?

The retired geisha who Golden used for information wasn't exactly compliant. She, Mineko Iwasaki of Kyoto, sued Arthur Golden and his publisher Alfred A. Knopf over the 1997 book. Iwasaki then wrote "Geisha of Gion," her autobiography that was published in 2002.

The geisha don't represent Japanese women. They are only a small segment of the Japanese population just as the samurai class was.  When we think of the United Kingdom, we have the formidable Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. However, when Americans and Europeans think of the first novelist in the world (Murasaki Shikibu) or the courageous woman warrior Tomoe Gozen, concubine of Minamoto no Yoshinaka or the crafty and politically astute Masako Hojo?

As for geishas, have movie-goers forgotten that 1976 Japanese-French production "In the Realm of the Senses"? "In the Realm of the Senses" is based on a real case where a Japanese woman. Sada Abe, sliced off the penis of her lover, Kichizo Ishida. According to her sister, the real Sada Abe did want to become a geisha, but only worked briefly as an apprentice before becoming a legally licensed prostitute. This penis-slicing was pre-Bobbitt, occurring in 1936. She also took his testicles. American Lorena Bobbitt maimed her then-husband John Wayne Bobbitt in 1993.

Japanese women aren't all geisha and even geisha aren't compliant, even when confronting a man or even a white man. Having a geisha require money, more than you'd need for a prostitute.

Is what Katy Perry did racist? If her costume was food, we might see it as a creative fusion unless it was done out of ignorance, then it would be mishmash Orientalism. Yellowface has continued to be acceptable in movies as we saw in "The Last Airbender" or "Cloud Atlas." Then we also has a whitewashing of history where East Asians and especially East Asian Americans are whitewashed out of history--major (e.g. the movie "Emperor") and minor (e.g. the movie "21"). Not much has changed since Mickey Rooney was Mr. Yuniyoshi in the 1961 "Breakfast at Tiffany's."   Perry's performance was an update of old-style Orientalism that rolled up East Asia into one confused image of the compliant woman.  Just because other women have done it doesn't make it okay.

If you want unconditional love, you can always buy it. Try the local animal shelter or a reputable breeder and you can find a dog (try a beta or an omega and not an alpha dog) who can provide you with unconditional love. Yes, I would have preferred seeing a dog (and not a bitch of the human kind) at the AMA performance and it would have been perfect symmetry against Miley Cyrus' cat.

If you want unconditional love, don't look for it in Japan or East Asia. Don't look for it in my cousins who were born and raised in Japan. The women in Japan and Asia are human beings not disposable paper dolls and they have the same faults and weaknesses, virtues and strengths as women everywhere.



"Unconditionally"

Oh no, did I get too close?
Oh, did I almost see what's really on the inside?
All your insecurities
All the dirty laundry
Never made me blink one time

Unconditional, unconditionally
I will love you unconditionally
There is no fear now
Let go and just be free
I will love you unconditionally

Come just as you are to me
Don't need apologies
Know that you are worthy
I'll take your bad days with your good
Walk through the storm I would
I do it all because I love you, I love you

Unconditional, unconditionally
I will love you unconditionally
There is no fear now
Let go and just be free
I will love you unconditionally

So open up your heart and just let it begin
Open up your heart and just let it begin
Open up your heart and just let it begin
Open up your heart

Acceptance is the key to be
To be truly free
Will you do the same for me?

Unconditional, unconditionally
I will love you unconditionally
And there is no fear now
Let go and just be free
'Cause I will love you unconditionally (oh yeah)
I will love you (unconditionally)
I will love you
I will love you unconditionally 

Race and Taxi Cabs: Beyond Danny Glover

Most people know who Danny Glover is. The TV and film star was in the "Lethal Weapon" movies and in 1999, he filed a complaint against the City Taxi and Limousine Commission about discrimination.

The problem with black men and taxi cabs has also been explored in the tap-musical "Bring in 'da, Noise Bring in 'da Funk" with another Glover. Savion. In Danny Glover's case, five yellow taxi cabs passed him by while he, his college student daughter and her roommate tried to wave them down in New York. Glover was born and lived in San Francisco at the time.

There is more than black and white to the cab situation. As we made our way to the airport in a cab, our cab driver, an Armenian man with a heavy accent, told us how black women had tried to cheat him. The man had been a cab driver for over two decades and had most recently driven director Woody Allen and his former stepdaughter now wife Soon Yi Previn Allen.

The cab driver mentioned that he didn't want to be racist, but in his experience, it had always been black people, particularly women, who tried to cheat him or bully him out of his hard-earned dollars. In one instance, the woman caught the cab and then claimed she just needed to go inside the house to fetch the cash. When the woman did not return, he went knocking on the door. She threatened to call the cops. He told her to go right ahead.

In the second instance, he related how he had been waiting for a long time at a casino when a black woman came and told him he owed her money. He owed her change and she threatened to call the police. The police did come and he calmly told them to check his hood or his engine. If the woman's claim had been true, his hood and engine would be hot. However, since he had been parked and no record could be found through his dispatcher, his hood was cool.

So while we left Los Angeles feeling sorry for cab drivers, the cab drivers in Buenos Aires left us feeling hostile. In our small group, we often took taxis. One would go with the two German-speaking Swiss women. The other with us, two East Asian ethnics. In all cases, except once, the cab driver we took charged us more--even when we were with the Spanish-speaking guide. We would leave first and arrive last. In one particularly offensive case, our cab left first, but he kept surging ahead and then getting behind the cab carrying the other two people. He could hardly be lost because we were going to a very central ara. He stopped at the traffic light to talk with the other cab driver then went back to his zigzagging, meandering strategy.

There was another cab ride when my heart just dropped because I knew we were being taken off the route on side roads, but with the language barrier it was hard to express my doubt. Further, the German-speaking white women weren't having the same problem--with or without the Spanish-speaking guide.

The last cab we took, we looked up the route on Google maps and checked the mileage of the alternative routes and gave instructions by the shortest route. I spoke to the cab driver in Spanish and spoke to my husband in Japanese, a language I was pretty sure most cab drivers wouldn't understand.

As a result, I have no sympathy for the cab drivers of Buenos Aires. I know that the same thing could easily happen to me in New York, but over the span of ten days to have only one cab driver be honest and give us a good fare, one that was better than the cab with the women, is highly suspicious.

In Los Angeles, I know the roads and how much it should cost to get to LAX so it's hard to know if that sort of racism exists here. I'd warn all East Asian Americans and East Asians to be wary of cab drivers in Buenos Aires--more so than white people. In many cases if it's relatively safe, I'd rather walk.

Writing about Asia and Asians: American Black and White on Asian Black, Yellow and Brown?

I was recently struck by an article in "The New Yorker" titled "Images Spark Racism Debate in Thailand." The author, Newley Purnell, states "In Thailand, which is largely ethnically homogenous, many see racism as a Western issue—something for multicultural societies like those in the U.S. or the U.K. to debate. " Further it noted that in 2010 "non-Thais grew to nearly five percent of the population." 

Purnell actually begins the article with an American--an African American from Atlanta, Georgia, but why should the Thai be listening to Americans on the topic of racial sensitivity? What do Americans know about racism? What do Americans know about Thailand?

The images in question involve a model turning black after eating a Dunkin' Donuts. Presumably, Dunkin' Donuts wants you to eat donuts so turning black is a good thing, but it wasn't so good in the eyes of others. The ad campaign was considered racist. 

I thought the protest and at article leading with a comment by a person from Atlanta were a curious way of talking about Thailand because I have been to Thailand. Thailand is 75 percent ethnic Thais. Yet just what does that mean? There are also Thai Chinese who are about 14 percent of the population and smaller groups such as the Khmer, the Mon, Vietnamese, Hmong, Mein and Karen make up the remaining 11 percent. Then there are the foreigners from Europe, North America and India.

Comparing that to Japan, I learned that Japan counts people depending upon their nationality so that while 98.5 percent of the population is listed as Japanese, this style of census taking doesn't break down multiethnic members of the population. Further, the statistics don't differentiate between the multiethnic society that originally make up Japan--the Ainu, the darker-skinned "Polynesian-type" Jomon versus the lighter-skinned Continental Yayoi type. 

Then comparing Thailand to a European nation such as the United Kingdom, we can see that Thailand is more diverse than the United Kingdom because as of 2011, 87.1 percent of the population was listed as white (excluding Irish Traveller/Gypsy). Asian or Asian British are 7 percent of the population and black or black British are 3 percent of the population with British mixed being 2 percent. 

Thailand is more diverse than the United Kingdom although since history has divided the country by Catholic versus Protestant, that might be another issue. The United Kingdom is 71.6 percent Christian and 15.5 percent agnostic or atheist. In Japan, 96 to 84 percent of the Japanese are considered Buddhist/Shinto according to Wikipedia. In Thailand, 97 percent of the people are Theravada Buddhist with Muslims being 10 percent. Christians and Hindus make up less than 5 percent of the population of Thailand. 

Muslims only make up 2.7 percent of the United Kingdom population. 

In the United States, about 76 percent of the population is Christian (51 percent Protestant and 24 percent Roman Catholic). Only 1.7 percent is Jewish and 0.6 percent Muslim.  The USA is 72 percent white and 13 percent African American and 5 percent Asian American. 

So in Thailand, Muslims make up a larger percentage of the population than they do in the United Kingdom or the United States. 

These statistics would seem to indicate that Thailand is more diverse than the United States or the United Kingdom in terms of ethnic groups and the homogeneity of Japan can also be questioned. 

So I don't feel that explaining the lack of perceived sensitivity to black or African American issues can be blamed on the relative homogeneity of Thailand and I think other explanations should be used for Japan as well. Perhaps, it is rather a matter of Americans feeling they can somehow tell another country how it should act, particularly a country that is predominately non-white? 

One could suggest that this is a matter of African Americans unwittingly taking on the mantle of the "White Man's Burden" as outlined by Rudyard Kipling or distasteful remnants of Manifest Destiny.

When I was in Thailand a few decades ago, I saw black people there. They were NOT African Americans from places such as Atlanta, Georgia. Rather, they were Asians, people from India. It might be more important to see how Asian Indians feel the ads in question. The article notes that nearly five percent of the population is non-Thai and that some of these are "low-wage migrant workers" from neighboring countries, but they are not African Americans from Georgia. So this article is mixing up race and race identity. What an American thinks is probably less important than what a dark-skinned person from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh or Malaysia thinks. 

And one then has to wonder why we as Americans haven't taken a serious look at the Dutch and their long tradition of black face, Zwarte Piet? In 2001, Time magazine carried an article that criticized the Japanese, including toy and gift manufacturer Sanrio for its black Sambo toys.  Apparently in 2001 and even now, Dutch Swarte Piet toys are okay and not worthy of an official protest of any kind. The same year, jam and marmalade maker Robertson's retired its character Golly. 

It seems, however, that the original tale of  "Little Black Sambo" is largely a problem for Americans. Now the story goes under other names such as "The Story of Little Babaji," "Sam and the Tigers," "The Boy and the Tigers" (with the boy renamed Little Rajani). In Japan, the boy has become a little black puppy. 

Just what do African Americans know about racism if Sambo under another name is not protest worthy. And then, just what do African Americans know about blackness in Asia? 

Asian American Miss America shows that we're still not exactly apple pie

I haven't paid attention to the Miss America contest for a decade or two, not since I've stopped being entranced by Barbie dolls and high heels. Yesterday, suddenly I got another slap on the face. A Chinese American friend and the beloved George Takei commented on the incredible explosion of racism toward the first Indian American Miss America: New York's Nina Davuluri.

I guess I was just thankful that people didn't assume Davuluri was Native American. Davuluri is dark-skinned and has dark hair. Davuluri's parents are Telugu and born in India. Davuluri was born in New York. She's American as any white person, but much more culturally aware of her heritage than most. She watches Telugu movies and learned Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam dance.

Her aims are not scholarships to finish her bachelor's degree. She has already graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Brain Behavior and Cognitive Science.

I've complained about whitewashing because in America it seems hard for Asian Americans to play Asians or even Asian Americans. Maybe people don't know what real Asians and real Asian Americans look like.

Check out the Buzzfeed collection of racist tweets. Ironically, some people like Jessica Ayres claims they are not racist, but "this is America." Yes Jessica. This is America where an Asian American has a hard time finding work playing an Asian or an Asian American, but really, we are Americans in this America. Some Asians came over with the first settlers (e.g. Armenians).

Armenia straddles that questionable territory called Eurasia and can be considered European, Asian or both. India and Armenia do have a history. Armenians have been present in India since the time of Alexander the Great. The Telugu people are numerous enough that the language is the second most spoken in India--the first being Hindi (not English).

Telugu designates an ethnic group, but not a religious group. That means the Telugu are not necessarily Hindu, Christian, Buddhist or Jainist. And why would being a member of any of three non-Christian religions or Islam make any person less American?

This IS America. Specifically, this is the United States of America and we do have people of all races beyond black and white. What does being an ethnic India, a Telugu, have to do with 9/11? Is this a problem of selective learning or are these people a product of a poor educational system that doesn't teach people what Islam is and where Arabs live.

Arabs have been in America since the 15th Century. They came with the Spanish explorers. While it is unknown when the first Muslims came to America, it could have been as early as the Spanish explorers or Islam could have come with the slaves that were kidnapped from Africa and brought to North America. Being Arab and Muslim

We do have a black president serving his second term. We haven't had a white woman and we will probably have to wait until we do before we can see an America that might accept an ethnic Asian, particularly one who cannot pass as Caucasian or WASP, for that office.

The first recorded Asians in North America were Chinese and Filipinos in Mexico in the 1600s. Filipinos jumped ship in 1763 and entered Louisiana. The first Asian Indians were in the U.S. in 1790. How long do Asian Americans have to wait for acceptance. How long to Arabs and Muslims have to wait until they, too, can be seen as American?

Vanessa Williams became the first black Miss America in 1984, but had to resign after nude photographs of her were published in Penthouse. Since then seven black women have worn the crown.
Who thought the Miss America pageant would be a sign of progress? Certainly not Gloria Steinem.

Will it take seven  Asian American Miss America's until Asian Americans are American as apple pie?

The gauntlet of good grammar

Learn how to write English well and you'll soon be able to discern the racist bullies from the mere and generic bullies. Nothing drives a racist crazier and into raging hysteria faster than having their superiority challenged.

Throw down the gauntlet of grammar.

Consider the nastigram sent by someone named James Wasser. I wrote a few articles about the police officer who shot a dog in Hawthorne.

• Viral video incites mob mentality threats of violence
• Police kill dogs: A Tale of Two Cities
• Police shoot, kill dog in Hawthorne

Apparently James Wasser disagrees with what I wrote. Instead of writing in the comments section, he sends me a personal email with the subject line: "youre a horrible writer."

His message? "you write like a child. Ive blocked google results from examiner.com due to your garbage articles."

Just how many errors do you see and does your child compose better emails? I hope your child does compose better emails and has a better understanding of Netiquette, but I'm not sure at what age one learns to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence. Is that first grade? I admit I sometimes channel my inner five year old. My husband will attest that happens, perhaps too often. 

One's inner child can help with such things as language learning. My Japanese language professor at UCLA told us it was a kindness to correct people's language errors. How could I resist?

Wasser quickly shows that he's really a racist underneath all that lack of sophistication by his reply: "Did you learn the English language as a child in your foreign land? "

Do you think he also uses that quaint phrase "You speak English good" or "You speak really good English" when he attempts to pick up a non-WASPY person for reasons of racist romance?

Language can be a weapon. Learn English well (not good). That will drive the racists into a hysterical rage which will probably leave you and your friends laughing. 

I don't think when people disagree with Leonard Maltin's writing they intimate that English isn't his native language. That also probably never happened to Roger Ebert (except in South Africa where he was speaking and writing American and not English).

When I was learning to debate in Japanese, we were told to say things like "this is just my opinion" or "that's interesting that you believe that, however" or "that may be so, but" and yet when I was watching an American debate camp the goal seemed to be humiliate your opponent. Isn't that in part like a bully culture? You could see the bully culture at work when people were calling for the death of three to four officers over the shooting by one officer of a dog. That makes so much sense. Ask that the police put more value on the life of an animal such as a dog and yet devaluate the human life. Four human lives for the life of one dog.

Don't threaten just the officer that shot the gun, but the two other officers who were there and didn't make or encourage the decision and then add in the public information officer (Scott Swain). There is nothing like international hysteria. One has to appreciate the thoroughness of the mob when they decided to include the Glendale Police Department and Swain's Art Supply store in Glendale. I guess they thought Los Angeles was a small town and all things Swain must be related? 

Mob violence and death threats are part of a bully culture and could be considered domestic terrorism. We might have done away with the lynch mobs in Los Angeles, but we still have a culture of violence here (e.g. the victory mob violence after a Laker championship) and obviously the culture of violence exists in the world at large and online. 

I believe the bully culture begins with a lack of respect and with attempts to intimidate much in the way James Wasser attempted to intimidate me by insulting me instead of attempting to express his disagreement with my views and respecting mine. Because he so easily indulged in a racist twist, one understands that he is the kind of person who doesn't respect the humanity of people of different color and ethnicity.

The concept of respecting another's opinion isn't just something I learned in my Japanese debate class. I learned it also in a University of California community program for gardeners. We were told that we only spoke for ourselves and we respected everyone's opinion. How would that be so bad or do people really prefer this kind of hysterical rage where one threatens art stores in one city because of an incident in another city?

My mother was right when she said choose your friends well. Wasser, I feel sorry for your friends. As for those much more fortunate than Wasser's friends, when you are troubled by the haters, throw down the gauntlet of good grammar. As people become more hysterically mad, as they begin to foam at the mouth in a racist or sexist rage, the exchange can become more amusing. Once they use the race card, the sexist pig card or the threat of violence bully card, you have won. Take your bow, leave them burning with their ridiculous hate and you can have a good laugh. 

My mother was also right about name calling which in college I learned was argumentum ad hominem or a logical fallacy. Mr. Wasser, like many readers, feels that by attacking me personally he is attacking my arguments. Yet what is there for one to defend or refute when one isn't clear on what Wasser disputes? He wins the argument, he seems to think, by making none? 

So, dear reader, don't get angry and start name-calling. Or if one must be name calling say something interesting like a Dorothy Parker or an Evelyn Waugh. With Wasser, there was nothing left to do but throw down the grammar gauntlet to give a verbal slap in the face of racism. 

Johnny Depp, Tonto and Native American culture: Who decides the real and the fake?

If Johnny Depp believes he's Native American, then is that more important than if he actually is or not? And does the exact percentage make him more or less Native American? How much does that matter for the movie "The Lone Ranger"?

• My review of "The Lone Ranger"

I ask this as someone who has been challenged as being East Asian American enough by other East Asian Americans, specifically Japanese Americans because I didn't measure up to their prejudices of how a Japanese American should act. Oddly enough, I was only faced with these accusations when I left my native San Diego and moved to Los Angeles and Orange County. 

I am 100 percent Japanese ethnicity, but for some, including my ex-husband and former in-laws, that wasn't enough. There are other East Asian Americans who had earlier attempted to delineate what was true and false (e.g. Frank Chin and the editors behind "Aiieeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers").

Depp's assertion that he was part Native American comes long before he was cast on Tonto. According to Ethnicelebs.com, Depp made this claim first in 2002. That was the same year that shooting for the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie began.

It should be noted that Depp probably has little way of proving that he is Native American. Not all Native Americans have been tested and testing that may prove membership will not necessarily distinguish specific tribe membership.

According to a 2006 Slate Magazine article about genealogical testing:

Admixture testing works best in groups like African-Americans, whose ancestors in Africa and Europe lived far from each other. Most of the ancestry of today's African-Americans can be traced to West or Central Africa, with a minority from other parts of the continent. (Gates' family is a bit exceptional in terms of origin.)

But for other groups things can get a lot more complicated. Many amateur genealogists are interested in whether they might have a Cherokee ancestor, for example. And for some people, admixture tests can give a relatively accurate answer about Native-American ancestry. But other people, including Greeks and Ashkenazi Jews, may have "Native American affinity," according to the tests, even if they and their ancestors have never been to America. As far as anthropologists know, there were no lost tribes connecting Greeks, Jews, and ancient Americans. So, maybe this "Native American affinity" reflects the scattering of alleles by prehistoric Asian nomads to the ancestors of Greeks and Jews as well as to American Indians. Maybe the SNPs that they share gave these groups a leg up in fighting diseases.

There another point that the Ethnicelebs brings up. Depp seems to have African ethnicity in his background. I had heard that during less enlightened times during American history, people hid their African heritage by claiming American Indian heritage instead. In any case, according to Ethnicelebs, Depp has both African American (3/2048) and Native American ancestry (1/2048 Powhatan Native American descent).

If Depp's claims of ancestry are true, it wouldn't be enough for him to be considered Native American, but that 3/2048 would have, in a different era, been enough to have him considered black. Yet there is another problem within the Native American population. Native American populations mixed with white and African immigrants. White and Native American intermarriages have occurred since the 1700s. Yet to be an official member, an individual must have 1/4 or more ancestry within a federally recognized tribe. Yet who is recognized and who is not?

In researching this article, I was surprised to discover that Rosa Parks was also part Native American. The Wikipedia article on Black Native Americans notes that " African Americans are using DNA testing to find out more about all their ancestry. Native American identity has historically been based on culture, not just biology." Further, Native American groups have excluded Freedmen from membership based on the early 20th-century Dawes Rolls (Cherokee freedmen controversy).

As I mentioned above, I am 100 percent Japanese by ethnicity, but most people will not guess that I am Japanese American. The natural state of my hair (wavy) doesn't help. This and other factors has led other Japanese people in Japan to consider my second and third cousins in Japan as not Japanese.  Traditionally, wavy hair was stigmatized in Japan. So I might not be able to pass as Japanese and if I were an actor, I might not be cast as Japanese. I might be cast as Chinese or Filipina. 

I'm also not Buddhist, Taoist or a follower of Shinto which might also make me seem less "real" Japanese. Still in Japan, my relatives embraced me and pointed out characteristics that made me part of the family. This was particularly true for my father's side of the family. I remember this when someone tries to tell me otherwise and pejoratively label me a banana. What gives that person the right to tell me s/he knows how a true East Asian ethnic or Japanese ethnic should act?

My friend once told me that he believed he was full Chinese from Vietnam, but was traumatized to learn that he was part Vietnamese, particularly since his father looked down on the Vietnamese. So just who are we: What we are or what we believe we are? And just how much is enough?

If Depp isn't Native American enough either culturally or by blood is one issue, then the other issue should be can he pass? What about Iron Eyes Cody who passed despite being of Italian (Sicily) ancestry? Cody lived his life as a Native American and married a Native American woman. He was also honored by the Native American community in 1995 despite his lack of ancestral ties to the Native American community.

The Irish, Comanche and Cherokee Micki Free, a Native American musician.

So much has been made of the bird in Tonto's hat. The painting that inspired the make-up has a crow, but not in the Native American's hat because he isn't wearing one. Fashionista know that bird in hat are old hat--something that Marie Antoinette popularized. According to the blog by jmongeon, women in the 1900s adopted this fashion long after Marie Antoinette had lost her head in 1793.

So much has been made of the bird in Tonto's hat. The painting that inspired the make-up has a crow, but not in the Native American's hat because he isn't wearing one. Fashionista know that bird in hat are old hat--
Actually, I've also seen a few Hollywood hats off to Tippi Hedren and Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" in West Hollywood during the 1990s. Bjork may have had a swan dress in 2001, but other women in the 2000s have re-visited the bird or bird nest hat. What could be more steampunkish than re-adopting the stuffed animal hat of yester-year for a bit of high fashion today? That model with the bird nest and wings was from a 2006 fashion show.

Now, I'm not saying that the Native Americans copied the fashion of White American women. Yet we need to ask: Did Native Americans wear bird in their hair? Apparently some did as seen in these photos of Crow (Apsaroke) Native Americans from the past.
See these old photographs of Crow (Apsaroke) Native Americans.

One of the commentators, Sonny Skyhawk, has passed for Native Hawaiian and Mexican so that was reasonable enough for him. He was, by his own logic, taking away a job from a Native Hawaiian. Those Mexican roles are easy to rationalize because many Mexicans are mestizo or part Native American, even if the mixing was a long time ago, just as seems to have been the case with Johnny Depp ancestry. In a different era, Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban played Native American roles as well as East Asian (a real stretch). 

The movie "The Lone Ranger" had a supervisor and Depp was adopted into an Comanche family. At least from the perspective of one recognized Native American (William "Two-Raven" Voelker) and then one person who perceives himself as Native American (Depp), the movie portrayed Native Americans in an acceptable fashion. But like everything else, that's just an opinion of two different people.

• My review of "The Lone Ranger"

Why we should love Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto

There are plenty of reasons to love the Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto. Two weeks ago, he made remarks about comfort women has caused a ripple in the international waters of women issues.

I'm not really clear on what Hashimoto actually said, because when I worked from the Rafu Shimpo I noticed that sometimes statements made by politicians were taken out of context. And sometimes, the media gets caught up in whatever sounds good and sells papers and gets good ratings.

When I first wrote about the issue of comfort women, it was in an essay published in the Rafu Shimpo called "The Rape of Conquered Women." At that time--just before the Los Angeles Riots, there were two claims that are no longer touted today: The comfort women was something unique to the Japanese and that even the Nazis hadn't used sex slaves. One of the favorite witnesses for English language articles was Seiji Yoshida. His accounts and his book were widely criticized by Japanese historians (who were then in turned bitterly criticized for being Japan apologists).

As it turned out, neither claim was true. The Nazis did have sex slaves--taken from the Jewish, gypsies and other political prisoners. The exploitation and sexual enslavement of women from conquered populations has a history that goes back further than 415 BC, which was when "Troades" or "The Trojan Women" was first produced. Greek playwright Euripides wrote the tragedy during the Peloponnesian War. In 1971, Katharine Hepburn was Hecuba, Vanessa Redgrave was Andromache and Genevieve Bujold was Cassandra. Irene Papas was the infamous Helen.

After the publication of my essay, men, mostly I suppose Korean, threatened my colleagues and myself. Ironically, a man threatening me with violence or rape because I held an opinion he didn't like puts such a person on the same level of men who rape during war. Fear is a way of silencing dissenting voices. Rape is a way of silencing women and disgracing "their" men.

The rape and enslavement of conquered women during 415 BC was one of the perks of war. What about in 1930-1940s when the Japanese committed the war crimes supposedly associated with the comfort women. I propose there are several problems in revisiting these acts and interpreting them.

1. Racism in the Allied Countries such as the U.S. allowed for the rape of non-white women by white men without much fear of punishment. 
2. Institutionalized racism affected national and international policy.
3. The attitudes toward rape tended to blame the victims.
4. The attitudes toward women protected as property.
5. Because women were treated as property within certain cultures and societies, the concern was not about how women were treated by how women were treated by others.
6. Similar war crimes committed by the Allied troops against the women, including "rescued" comfort women, complicated the issue and made it more likely to be ignored.

According to Associated Press reporters Mari Yamaguchi and Malcolm Foster,  Hashimoto's most recent statement clarifies his position. He "meant to say military authorities at the time, not only in Japan but in many other countries, considered it necessary." From my understanding of Japanese history, this is true. One of the first things they provided for foreigners in Yokohama after the opening of Japan was a whore house. There was a concept that men needed to have a sexual release and this wasn't only present in Japanese culture. The British also held that attitude and brothels were a part of their experience during World War I. 

Probably what should outrage women in Japan is that he suggested in a recent visit to Okinawa that the U.S. military make better use of the legal sex industry "to control the sexual energy of those tough guys."  

You might have been misled by more recent articles. In Japan Today, Washington's Jen Psaki supposedly denounced the comments Hashimoto made on Friday (17 May 2013), however Psaki's comment were on 16 May 2013. 

The full transcript reads:

QUESTION: Hi, my name is Takashi from Japanese newspaper Asahi. Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto recently made a comment on the so-called “comfort women” issue, arguing that even though it is unacceptable from the moral perspective value, but the comfort women were necessary during the war period. And he also argued that it is not fair that only Japan is criticized by the United States and other countries, because there are other country military that were provided sexual service by prostitute. And do U.S. has any position on his comment or criticism against the United States? 

MS. PSAKI: We have seen, of course, those comments. Mayor Hashimoto’s comments were outrageous and offensive. As the United States has stated previously, what happened in that era to these women who were trafficked for sexual purposes is deplorable and clearly a grave human rights violation of enormous proportions. We extend, again, our sincere and deep sympathy to the victims, and we hope that Japan will continue to work with its neighbors to address this and other issues arising from the past and cultivate relationships that allow them to move forward.

QUESTION: Do you describe this issue sex slave or comfort women?

MS. PSAKI: Again, I don’t know that I’m going to define it. You kind of laid out the specific details there, and we have described this issue in the past as comfort women[ii].

The U.S. State Department didn't reply to Hashimoto's additional comments. According to JapanToday.com, Hashimoto reply to Psaki via Twitter was:

Let me go straight to the point. When America occupied Japan, didn’t they make use of Japanese women?

I can’t help but point out that it is unfair for America to criticize only Japan by putting aside acts by its own country.

The United States should face what the US military did against local women, in particular Okinawan women when they occupied Japan.

The U.S. State Department (Patrick Ventrell, the acting deputy spokesman) didn't actually reply to these statements in the Monday daily brief:

QUESTION: Something about Japan’s comfort women? Osaka Mayor Hashimoto continued to argue that the American troops utilized women for sexual purpose during the occupation period in Japan, and even later – especially in Okinawa. And he also argues that the United States is unfairly criticizing Japan by putting aside what they did to local women during and after the war period. And I was wondering if you have any comment on that.
MR. VENTRELL: I didn’t hear who you said at the beginning that said this.
QUESTION: Osaka Mayor Mr. Hashimoto.
MR. VENTRELL: This is something that Jen addressed at the briefing last week and gave a very robust condemnation of those remarks. I really refer you to what Jen said last week. But we already condemned those.
QUESTION: But I thought what she condemned last week was his comments about them being a military necessity.
MR. VENTRELL: Yeah. Is this a new --
QUESTION: This sounds to be – this seems to be something new.
MR. VENTRELL: I hadn’t seen these new remarks. Let me --
QUESTION: The mayor says that the U.S. troops used– whatever term you want to call them – during the occupation.
MR. VENTRELL: Let me look in. I’m not aware of new remarks by the mayor of Osaka, more that we had a strong reaction to what he had said previously. Let me look in and see whether we’re aware of any subsequent remarks.

While the article goes on to assert "There is no mainstream evidence that modern militaries other than Japan employed a formal sex slavery system." it also continues that "Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower is among credible sources who say American troops committed multiple rapes of Japanese women during the occupation and that press censorship muted reporting of these crimes."

What the article means by formal is hard to define. If by modern, Dower could refer to the early modern period of the 18th Century. There is ample evidence that the Nazis had sex slaves and they kept good records. There is also evidence that the British military in India kept and promoted military brothels. Brothels were lawful in British India until the 1930s and created racial and class conundrums, particularly when European prostitutes came. To put this in the context of the history of Japanese aggression,  first Sino-Japanese war was in the 1894-1895 and the second was in 1937-1945 with minor incidents beginning in 1931.  And what about the American military in Vietnam or in Korea? A 2009 UCLA thesis by Elya Filler looks at the role of Japan's comfort women system in the contemporary sex industry, but doesn't indicate where the Japanese got this idea.

When Commodore Perry opened Japan in the 1850s, Japan had been in seclusion for 200 years. It had no modern army, navy or airforce. Where did it learn modern warfare?  Military brothels were already being used in Europe and Asia by the British and French.

I do not believe that we as Americans or former Comfort women from Korea have the right to pressure the people of Osaka to find a new mayor, particularly since he has raised the issue of comfort women and attempted to expand the conundrum of the comfort women from an Asian point of view.  We've had mayors accused of sexism such as New York's Michael Bloomberg and Warren, Michigan's James Fouts. Fouts added that public employees should buy American autos. Bloomberg and Hashimoto are men of the 2010s. Men and women in the 1930s and 1940s in America were conditioned to accept:

1. All women want to be raped.
2. No woman can be raped against her will.
3. If a woman was raped, she was asking for it (perhaps by the way she was dressed or by being out late at night or drinking alcohol).
4. Rape can be enjoyable as in if you're going to be raped, you might as well  relax and enjoy it.

Susan Brownmiller noted in her book "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape" that gang rape was found in many cultures as a measure of control for women who strayed from their prescribed social roles. The 1975 book has a chapter devoted to war and notes that during the Occupation of Japan there were incidents of rape. 

A more recent article by Terese Svoboda, noted that the U.S. government concealed information about rape and that the reasons were not just political but also racial. The punishment of black soldiers for rape was more extreme. 

Another article online draws from Svoboda as well as other researchers and newspaper reports of the time. There is also mention of Korean comfort women being raped by U.S. forces.  While the article is new, the information is not. I was aware of the rape of Japanese comfort women by the Allied forces a few decades ago from sources written in English. 

Although Hashimoto has backpedaled in a long three-hour statement, his original assertions should indicate why the issue of the comfort women is more complicated than has been presented to Americans by the media. Further, South Korea seems more concerned about their women's treatment by Japan as opposed to the concept of comfort women or the current plight of foreign women in Korea who find themselves under similar circumstances. That seems to hark back to the ancient concept of rape as a crime against property and not a person. According to Wikipedia, South Korea supplied comfort women to American forces in Korea and according to the New York Times, some of they want apologies and compensation. In a 2009 New York Times article, the women called the South Korean government hypocritical, something that is perhaps not lost on many Japanese.

Hashimoto bravely continued to assert:

Based on the premise that Japan must remorsefully face its past offenses and must never justify the offenses, I intended to argue that other nations in the world must not attempt to conclude the matter by blaming only Japan and by associating Japan alone with the simple phrase of "sex slaves" or "sex slavery."

As L.A. Asians, shouldn't we be concerned about the rape or sexual slavery of all Asian women during war or colonialism or even times of peace? That is the conundrum of the Korean comfort women. The issue should reach beyond Japan and reparations for crimes committed under imperialism has far-reaching implications. Imagine if Great Britain had to pay reparations to all the countries that had been under the British Imperial empire, including the women who became sex slaves.