Calling a spade a spade

It’s about time.

Writing in the Japan Times, David McNeill makes the case that overseas reporting about Japan, specifically about sex crimes involving Caucasian women and the country’s sex industry, is debased by racism.

Some cherry-picked sentences:

(T)he reporter never bothered to interview a single Japanese person…Again, no Japanese voice is allowed to interrupt the sinister narrative…A group of agitated Japanese bloggers dubbed this “Japan bashing.” A less kind description might be racism.

McNeill is primarily discussing the coverage of the Hawker and Blackman murders. I usually don’t deal with police blotter stories here, because I seldom read them to begin with. Also, my standards for charges of racism are different than those of other observers. (It’s not necessarily racism just because different nationalities are involved).

In these instances, however, it certainly seems as if racism is being used to season the soup.

There’s a lot more where this came from, but it’s a shame so few people are trying to call the offenders to account.