[alephnan]

I dislike the CCP and their recent wave of propaganda as much as the next person

But I find it inconsistent to call China out for this instead of Japan. HackerNews has a tendency to jump through mental gymnastics to justify that Japan is perfect and can do no wrong. I say this after just leaving a Japanese museum 30 minutes ago that had blackface figures on exhibit

Either don’t call any country out for whaling or start by calling the countries typically deemed as more developed, advanced and progressive first. In other words, be moral relativist or if you should to be a moral absolutist then don’t pick and choose countries to exempt

[blitzar]

People are simply mistaking Japan and China.

HackerNews has a heavy US skew. From public statments of holders of the highest offices of their country - "they are all pesants" is the extent of US knowledge about Asia and if they knew what a map was they would point to the region inhabited by only pengins and suggest they should bomb them back into the stone age.

[_t9ow]

> point to the region inhabited by only pengins and suggest they should bomb them back into the stone age

Or levy tariffs on the penguins.

[doodlebugging]

>HackerNews has a tendency to jump through mental gymnastics to justify that Japan is perfect and can do no wrong. I say this after just leaving a Japanese museum 30 minutes ago that had blackface figures on exhibit

This is an interesting comment that seems to suggest that exhibiting blackface figures in a museum context is inappropriate or bad. I have never been to Japan and have not seen this display so I can't comment on the contextual layout.

I am left wondering how future generations can ever benefit from the mistakes of their ancestors if those mistakes are not documented and available to serve as teaching moments.

Maybe this is why it is called a cycle of life - we erase or bury all the uncomfortable stuff so that our kids and their kids have no idea that we (our societies) already suffered the consequences of crossing that bridge long before they came around.

I would argue instead that museums are the best context for displays like blackface where they can put everything into context for future generations and perhaps as a people we can concentrate on solving new sets of problems with each successive generation. That would sound a lot more like progress to me.

[alephnan]

Sure, I agree with you completely.

It’s just there are people (Americans) who offended by this and riled up about progressive issues such as feminism, for which Japan is behind even China, but then shut that part of their brain off when they decide they want to idolize Japan.

The context is that it was a museum of retro items. The imagery is very similar to the backlash that the Pokémon Jynx received such that it has to be redesigned for the American market [1]. I don’t think the Japanese have any malicious intent, but perhaps unaware (and I don’t blame them) that the visual motifs offend some people.

Another example is social justice warriors recently being offended by the “Manji” symbol present in Japan from Buddhism and other religious for thousands of years, but were later appropriated by the nazis into the swastika. Japan had to change their digital maps recently because of this. [2]

[1] https://lavacutcontent.com/3-pokemon-redesigned-due-to-racia...

[2] https://japantoday.com/category/poll/should-japan-stop-ident...