Japanese customers who attempt to eat at one (unnamed) Western-style restaurant in Jilin, China (in the former Manchuria), will be turned away unless they first apologize for Japan’s occupation of China during World War II. Japan’s Kyodo news service, via a July Reuters dispatch, reported no apologies so far. [Reuters, 7-12-05]
That is absolutely ridiculous! Hmm maybe all Irish pub owners in England should refuse to let punters in unless they apologise for things that happened loooong before they were born…oh wait…that would be silly wouldn’t it, expecting someone to take responibility on an individual level for acts they played no part in perpetrating. Meh! by the looks of your post, no one has apologised yet, so I wonder will the amereican company give in - any good capitalist would surely?
Yeah it is a bit, but considering Japan won’t even officially recognise the countless acts of massacre that were comitted by their troops during the 30’s, i say good on em. (My Grandpa was a Jap POW so you can understand why i feel this way)
But…
You’re all right about the new generation thing, they shouldn’t have to apologise, the government should be doing that.
Are the differences (*putting it as delicately as possible*) between the appearance of a Chinese person vs. a Japanese person SO great that you would know whether or not the next customer was Japanese or Chinese just by looking at them? Especially at a restaurant located in China? Seems to me like they’ve got their work cut out for them… figuring out what nationality the next Oriental customer is just by looking at them!
If this seems silly, is Black History Month any sillier? Hey, Americans are still coming up with new ways to “apologize” to the black communities for slavery. I guess in this instance though, rather than being forced to apologize it’s more like “Let’s do something first, so no one says something later..”
Well if you are asian yourself, it’s not hard to tell the difference. But for others, I understand why it’s hard.
I am chinese by the way, and I find this just unfair! The later generation did not do anything and does not deserve this. I wouldn’t want to suffer for something my race did, the ones who should apologize are the ones who contributed to the crime, or the government who are brainwashing it’s people. But not the people themselves.
The owner must have suffered a lot to have such a biased hatred for the japanese.
Not really. People can become racist just because they see a lot of racism around them and in the media. However, I Personally think it was stupid of Japan to make those “nationalist textbooks,” which they don’t even officially agree with, considering how many countries still have a general hatred of the Japanese, and they were asking for something like this to happen.
Mark-N-Jen, I tried really hard to find a website that showed the different races and their names, but it seems as if it’s too touchy a subject for anyone to make a website about it. Pansies.
Well… I really don’t care what anyone says… China is a burgeoning “capitalist” newborn so to speak, and I just don’t see them stopping to ask EVERY Oriental customer that walks through the door about their nationalities. And then to expect every Oriental person, IN THE ORIENT, to be carrying around some paperwork denoting their place of origin. They’re just going to be glad customers are there and will be too busy trying to succeed to notice whether someone is Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Cambodian, or probably even Phillipino… hell they’d probably barely notice if a Westerner walked in, much less one of their own.
This story is bogus in my opinion, as far as meaning of content, it did serve it’s purpose VERY well though… To generate “FREE publicity” for a new, and now very infamous Chinese capitalist-hopeful!!!
People can be over touchy. Happened in my office recently to hilarious consequences…
We have a huge mix of nationalities where I work so it was decided to have one of those cringeworthy cultural appreciation seminars. Basically a guy who works here who is IRISH-American made a formal complaint against a Scottish guy who also works here. He felt his cultural heritage was not being respected. It seemed like a serious issue so we looked into it… his grief was that the scottish guy habitually called him “chief” (note he calls everyone this, male or female, from the Indian director to the Polish receptionist) which apparently disrespected him because of it connotations with Native American culture. The mans name is SEAN…bridge….too…far.
