I finally had some time to sift through the thousands of unread entries in my RSS reader today, and came across some fairly interesting stuff. One of the things that really put me in an apprehensive mood was a post by Joi Ito (which in turn was posted by several other people) about 3 weeks ago, which can be found here. The post contains an image of a recently published book with the text (in Japanese) “Oi Nigger! Don’t be touching a Japanese girl’s ass!”, which was apparently about “foreigners committing crimes” in Japan. In fact, from what I can tell (I haven’t read the book or seen anything from it myself, except that one screen), the book is talking about the problem of foreigners committing crimes in Japan, with images and such.

The thing got a huge amount of attention, and the author of the book made a response to the international audience in Japan Today, here.

I’m not sure what to think of this all. I knew racism existed in Japan (against everyone not Japanese), and I do not have any illusions (like so many other people who are planning on moving there) on ever being seen as “Japanese”. No, I would rather be seen as “Kalle”, and I would rather see people as who they are as individuals, and to hell with belonging and becoming.

But this is just… wow. It smells and looks and feels like the racism of half a century ago. Where am I headed again? And why? I hate having to ask myself those questions when I’ve been set on this plan for over a year already.