Show me the way from home.
Jun. 25th, 2010 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarasvatiSometimes the strangest thought-trains occur to me. I was sitting comfortably, reading Mori Kyoko's memoirs, Yarn: Remembering the Way Home, and I came to a passage about her grandfather walking through the rice paddies in Japan.
And then, unbidden came them memory of trying to converse with my father about something I was interested in: at the time, this was the Pokemon video games. I mentioned how the game was set up so that most often, random encounters only took place in tall grass.
He asked if I was sure that it was just tall grass. Confused, I told him that was what the game said, that was how it had been presented, and I didn't see any reason to think otherwise. He clarified his question, saying that he knew the game was made in Japan, so he thought that they were probably rice paddies instead of patches of grass.
I couldn't begin to wrap my brain around why this would have occured to him as a serious consideration. Did he think Japan didn't have grass? Did he think that all there was to Japan were the things that Westerners think of as "typically Japanese?" Rice, slanted eyes, chopsticks, kimonos, sayonara. Did he think that was all it took to understand the essence of Japan, of every Japanese person?
He denies that he is racist, of course, even when he calls the Chinese students "chinks." He doesn't mean the term in a derogatory fashion, so how could it be taken as such, he reasons. He will glare daggers at me if I say the word "nigger" in an academic or historical sense, but still talks about "damn chinkies" and eating "chinky food" for supper. It's okay for him to be this way, because he means no offense and so nobody should have any reason to take offense.
I can't expect much of this man. He is, after all, the same man who had a legitimate discussion with me about why he thinks the Bible should be a central book for every religion, because it teaches good ethics and has much to teach people. I argued that the same could be said for just about any religious book, which he dismissed as a valid argument because he hadn't read them and so couldn't judge.
He hasn't read the Bible, either, I should say. He's not religious, let alone a Christian. He's one who demands indeniable proof before he'll let himself believe.
He's the same man who insists that "soduko" is just another pronunciation as "sudoku", and one that's just as correct, because according to him, a 'U' and an 'O' are pronounced the same way in Japanese. He bases this on the band "Shounen Knife", and since he pronounces shounen with a short 'o' (as in 'hot' rather than 'oh'), then the same must stand for all words.
All these memories, triggered from a single line in a single book, a line that has nothing to do with racism or stupid parents or stupid people in general. All of it, from "rice paddies."
And then, unbidden came them memory of trying to converse with my father about something I was interested in: at the time, this was the Pokemon video games. I mentioned how the game was set up so that most often, random encounters only took place in tall grass.
He asked if I was sure that it was just tall grass. Confused, I told him that was what the game said, that was how it had been presented, and I didn't see any reason to think otherwise. He clarified his question, saying that he knew the game was made in Japan, so he thought that they were probably rice paddies instead of patches of grass.
I couldn't begin to wrap my brain around why this would have occured to him as a serious consideration. Did he think Japan didn't have grass? Did he think that all there was to Japan were the things that Westerners think of as "typically Japanese?" Rice, slanted eyes, chopsticks, kimonos, sayonara. Did he think that was all it took to understand the essence of Japan, of every Japanese person?
He denies that he is racist, of course, even when he calls the Chinese students "chinks." He doesn't mean the term in a derogatory fashion, so how could it be taken as such, he reasons. He will glare daggers at me if I say the word "nigger" in an academic or historical sense, but still talks about "damn chinkies" and eating "chinky food" for supper. It's okay for him to be this way, because he means no offense and so nobody should have any reason to take offense.
I can't expect much of this man. He is, after all, the same man who had a legitimate discussion with me about why he thinks the Bible should be a central book for every religion, because it teaches good ethics and has much to teach people. I argued that the same could be said for just about any religious book, which he dismissed as a valid argument because he hadn't read them and so couldn't judge.
He hasn't read the Bible, either, I should say. He's not religious, let alone a Christian. He's one who demands indeniable proof before he'll let himself believe.
He's the same man who insists that "soduko" is just another pronunciation as "sudoku", and one that's just as correct, because according to him, a 'U' and an 'O' are pronounced the same way in Japanese. He bases this on the band "Shounen Knife", and since he pronounces shounen with a short 'o' (as in 'hot' rather than 'oh'), then the same must stand for all words.
All these memories, triggered from a single line in a single book, a line that has nothing to do with racism or stupid parents or stupid people in general. All of it, from "rice paddies."