Biden takes surprising swipe at japan during donor dinner. Labels the nation xenophobic

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Yes, Japan is xenophobic. And yes it's dumb to say it out loud. And yeah, most nations and people are in fact xenophobic. Even the forum clearly favours some demographics groups over others, giving depending on who it happens, some issues or crimes are not equally judged.

For Japan specifically, there is a big reason why they are xenophobic (and that applies to more countries) and is a point of view i can respect, in that over the course of human evolution and human history, xenophobic people tend to do better than xenophiles in the long run and survive as a culture, as the more xenophile ones will be absorbed into / eradicted by others.

Japan was no stranger to that, and has been on both sides of the medal (since it also has been part of the imperialist/colonialist side and done its fair share of geno-related crimes), but the nation itself adopted a very strong isolationist and in lots of ways xenophobic mindset centuries back into history, especially after its experiences with christian missonaries from Spain & Portugal, importing several things that destabilized its society, such as guns and religions which culminated in widespread domestic unrest.

Consequentionally, sakoku law was introduced. Sakoku law meant the country went in isolation for 250 years (experiencing no wars at all!). Japan remained as such until the USA opened the country by force. Dramatically behind on technology and other social sciences and practices, it resulted in the country having to adopt a western model in no time, looking specifically towards Germany given the two countries had a lot in common at the time, both having an emperor and being relatively new on the global stage. The rest is history, but it's that background that is very important in understanding why Japan went fascist.

I personally am a xenophile, because personality-wise i'm open to exploring and learning new things, and i am curious as a key personality trait that defines me. I need variation in life, and like to explore how other people or cultures solve or deal with several aspects of life. But i do understand the benefits of being xenophobe in particular in maintaing a culture and ironically also diversity, since if everyone does the same thing, there eventually would be no differences and culture at all, and it would be assimilation. This is in fact actual very contradictory because assimilation is what right wing parties actually advocate for out of xenophobia, because they consider their culture superior over another (which is racism). While i'm pro-diversity and like different cultures co-existing next to each other. The feeling I have today though is that it is very hard to do so. Social concepts such as globalization definitely have something to do with that.

A good example of how xenophobic is beneficial is the North Sentinelese tribe which today is a tribal reserve, and where everyone who attempts to enter the island is outright killed, as the American missionary John Chau experienced. I'm in favour of preserving cultures and our differences (though not by force, since it has to be individual choice), but it's also why i'm anti-forceful assimilation.

When people are against immigration this can be for different reasons. Japan today still has a unique vibe that makes it culture look unique that many other cultures basically have lost in the west, sometimes by force, such as the native american ones.

I think people generally are too oppressive in imposing norms, values and behavioral patterns over other people. America behaving as the world police imposing regime change, and telling other people and country how to lead their lives and countries, that's not how I believe it should be done. And it results mostly in detoriorating relations, especially with countries that are not our allies yet and probably leads to ironically anti-American sentiment over the world.

The irony is that telling another nation is xenophobic also is in a way xenophobic.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Xenophobia is basically the prisoner's dilemma in action again. If two cultures are xenophile, than yes obviously xenophile is preferred, but if another nation/culture being xenophobic threatens your existence as a culture than xenophobia is the preferred response. Xenophobia can both lead to other cultures being wiped out or looked down onto because of hate but also protection of your own which sometimes is necessary, which well even this century still shows us unfortunately.

It's better if everyone would be xenophile, but just like with economic equality and communism (communism vs capitalism), is humankind even ready for it? If most are xenophobic, it's basically a fairytale to suddenly change that human nature and make us all xenophiles.

My point being that there is nothing wrong with being xenophobic if it purely means preserving your own culture, but as long you're not directly threatening other cultures its existences, than i think people make it into a bigger deal than it actually is. Japan isn't behaving this way on an international stage, and has a fairly isolationist mindset today, mostly following western concensus but not being agressive itself. It barely has a military as a consequence of WW2 too today.

There's nothing wrong with xenophobia in its core, but when you start threatening other people, cultures or countries than it is. It's when it becomes racism, discrimination, colonialism or imperialism that it becomes an issue, but again it's not the easiest subject to talk about.

People condemning Japan for being xenophobic are mostly hypocrite theirselves because it basically implies you don't have a high opinion of the Japanese yourself either. It's sort of a paradox.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

And aside of that, from a diplomatic point of view, telling your ally is xenophobic is just not done. Never. That's pure incompetent diplomacy.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Xenophobia is basically the prisoner's dilemma in action again. If two cultures are xenophile, than yes obviously xenophile is preferred, but if another nation/culture being xenophobic threatens your existence as a culture than xenophobia is the preferred response. Xenophobia can both lead to other cultures being wiped out or looked down onto because of hate but also protection of your own which sometimes is necessary, which well even this century still shows us unfortunately.

It's better if everyone would be xenophile, but just like with economic equality and communism (communism vs capitalism), is humankind even ready for it? If most are xenophobic, it's basically a fairytale to suddenly change that human nature and make us all xenophiles.

My point being that there is nothing wrong with being xenophobic if it purely means preserving your own culture, but as long you're not directly threatening other cultures its existences, than i think people make it into a bigger deal than it actually is. Japan isn't behaving this way on an international stage, and has a fairly isolationist mindset today, mostly following western concensus but not being agressive itself. It barely has a military as a consequence of WW2 too today.

There's nothing wrong with xenophobia in its core, but when you start threatening other people, cultures or countries than it is. It's when it becomes racism, discrimination, colonialism or imperialism that it becomes an issue, but again it's not the easiest subject to talk about.

People condemning Japan for being xenophobic are mostly hypocrite theirselves because it basically implies you don't have a high opinion of the Japanese yourself either. It's sort of a paradox.

I think you actually mean Japan preserving its homogeneity since culture is always changing due usually to technological changes.  

I don't know much about the Japanese culture but I'm sure it's different with the internet than pre internet. So, if a society/nation wants to keep its status quo culture it needs to do what you said and implement a Sakoku law (China did the same thing in 1421.)

Of course the other thing I always get back to is that Japan can choose to keep its homogeneity if it likes, but they need to understand the consequences of that choice, which is of a declining population due to a low birth rate and, most likely, a declining economy as a result of that. That's essentially what Biden was saying.

I also dispute that immigrants change a culture since culture is determined by the local environment and by a shared history. The 'culture' of the immigrant changes far more. However, that's for a different argument.

Perhaps it's homogenity i meant, because yes i'm aware culture evolves due to advancing time as well.

And there are definitely not just pros but a lot of cons too, the ones you've said but also in history reduced rates of technological spread.

And I also agree that the culture of the immigrant changes far more, than the culture of the country they settle in, definitely so.

But for Japan, what doesn't really help is their language which is excessively hard to learn for any newcomer since it has little in common with basically any other language, as it is sort of a language isolate (chinese and korean languages will have some things in common but at the end it's a language isolate group). Island nations also generally are more succesful in controlling immigration to a certain limit.

And i generally consider immigration a good thing, it's just a difficult debate, but i just don't think it's appropriate to say a country is xenophobic because of it.

Sakoku law also today would never work because the closest to sakoku law one can get is basically shutting down your country in the same way countries like China do, which basically always results in an authoritarian state or regime (Iron Curtain sort of was Sakoku Law too for the population).

[LAKISYLVANIA]

But for Japan, what doesn't really help is their language which is excessively hard to learn for any newcomer since it has little in common with basically any other language, as it is sort of a language isolate (chinese and korean languages will have some things in common but at the end it's a language isolate group). Island nations also generally are more succesful in controlling immigration to a certain limit.

The irony is that Chinese has more than just some things in common with Japanese, the Kanji characters.

I was referring to the kanji.

But they're not part of the same language family. The writing system was introduced by China, but Japan eventually also used hiragana for where kanji characters could not be used in their vocabulary and katakana was introduced for loanwords.

The kanji also don't stand for the same things, like one kanji in China means something else in Japan. Korea used kanji too for a while, until Sejong created the hangul system to help with literacy in Korea.

Sure, the languages have obviously had a lot of influence on each other due to proximity but other than they belong to different groups.