[bokumo]

No, because it is not racist.

The author has lived in Japan and studied Japanese for a long time. If you read some of his other posts for context you will see that he deeply admires and loves the Japanese people and their culture.

This article appears to me to be a cathartic rant about Japanese being so difficult to learn that even many Japanese don't master their own language. I lived in Japan for about 3 years and I can corroborate that Japanese people struggle with their own language. For example, the development of word processing has made the problem even worse. When Japanese people consistently use computers for writing they call themselves "Wa-pu-ro baka" (translation "word processing idiot") because they quickly forget how to write kanji by hand.

Actually it is two rants in one. The first rant is about how college level educational standards are very different in the U.S. and Japan. Although I never attended university in Japan, I've met many Japanese college students and their stories corroborate the author's claims of ridiculously easy grading standards.

[nicolas_t]

Well, the author who has studied Japanese for a long time didn't even pass the JLPT level 1, so a) he mustn't have studied very hard b) he's not good enough at writing and reading Japanese to be able to comment on it.

Regarding word processors, it is true that a lot of people cannot write kanji by hand but that's orthogonal to literacy. I can barely write legibly in the latin alphabet and that's purely because I almost never need to write by hand but that doesn't stop me from consuming books or writing.

In term of the level of universities here, he does have a bit of a point, the undergraduate level in a lot of universities is very low (it gets better in graduate classes though) but, in my experience, good universities like Todai or Kyodai are much better... That's hardly a problem limited to Japan though, I've seen liberal arts degrees in other countries that weren't worth much more than the paper they were printed on.

And, lastly, I agree with Yifanlu, his claim about writings, movies and music is laughable and show a lack of culture from someone who claims to like Japanese culture.

It's not because someone has been living in a country for x years or that someone claims to admire the culture of the country that that person is not racist. If he makes racist comments then he is racist (a cultural racist to use the correct term in this case) ..

[yifanlu]

I have lived in America for a long time and can speak English fluently. However if I say "Americans are stupid, and most people don't know how to speak their own languages properly." even though it may be based on my observation living here for over a decade, it is ignorant at best and racist at average. I'm showing my feeling or superiority when in fact I'm the stupid one because I don't understand regionism and slang.

But that's besides the point. Just because you lived there and learned the culture (who's to say how well) doesn't mean you can't be racist against them. Otherwise, there's a lot of colonists who we own an apology to.

I've read the author's bio on their site and even there it downplays Japan and Japanese culture and up plays the author themselves.

[abjwam]

Reminds me of the "I have a black friend" argument.

>"It’s probably truer to note that a significant segment of the population isn’t accustomed to reading, or thinking, at an adult level"

This claim is ridiculous. There is no way you can construe this as anything other than racist.

[glandium]

It also completely goes completely opposite from my own experience, which is that on average the Japanese people I know are more literate in their language than the French people I know are literate in theirs (including myself). That sure is anecdata, but it's about as much anecdata as the OP.

Edit: I should mention that I live in a "relatively" small city in Japan (180k inhabitants), that many qualify as "inaka" (countryside), although I wouldn't. So the population of Japanese people I know is not necessarily biased towards highly educated people.

[texthompson]

I've never seen anecdata before. Thanks for sharing that word, love it. :)