I agree with Jeffrey Snow's remarks in his Dec. 2 letter, "The media's view of foreigners" -- about the media's successful role in brainwashing the Japanese public about immigrant foreigners. Politics, the media and the public are awash in mistaken notions about foreign crime, the relationship between terrorism and foreigners, and the role, intention and efficacy of fingerprinting us. Listening to Japanese talk on these issues is like listening to a cascade of hogwash. Japan is equally awash in a plethora of weird domestic religious sects that defy the Western imagination and constitute a more imminent threat of crime and terror in this country.
My point is that it seems uncannily easy to brainwash Japanese. People are naturally gullible because they want to believe something as well as believe in something, and they will believe anything at all if it sounds convincing (which is easy enough).
Why do Japanese have a weakness in this regard? Japanese culture has a long history of importing and adapting foreign ideas and technology. But it seems they do so insufficiently. Stuck with an unfortunate language filled with vague (aimai) expressions, they lack the ability to critically analyze things and then logically espouse their own ideas.
Rhetoric here amounts to unembellished repetition of a single point (an antique cultural import from China, I suspect). Just listen to political candidates campaigning. Completely void of substantive ideas, they simply shout their names repeatedly. Listen to a Japanese person trying to debate a point -- whaling, fingerprinting foreigners, pressing for sanctions against North Korea, etc. They start by stating their conclusion and then repeat it again and again without offering a logical progression of sound points to fill out the argument that lead to the conclusion that they started with.
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