PC: Japanese Style

If you looked at the title and thought I was talking about the personal computer, the whole concept of political correctness has failed. OK, I'm bound to have critics hounding me for making such a broad statement on such little evidence, but I see that as evidence of PC's failure in America and beyond. That is not to say that women's rights have not made progress in recent history. One group recently wrote a paper for President Obama to show the areas where progress needs to be made. I'm all over the concept of pay based on merit and not on sex, color, or political affiliation.

With that ode to women's rights out of the way, it's time for some PC bashing (not the kind that happened in the movie Office Space of a fax machine). PC is about altering the structures that inhibit the thought process through words. For example: the word "chairman" automatically includes the meaning that women cannot attain that position. To me, this is absurd because before PC activists drew attention to the concept, I associated the word with mankind a.k.a. human beings. It didn't matter if a woman became chairman because women are humans too.

However, English isn't the only language to experience this. Discriminatory (sabetsuteki) words are often avoided; I am usually corrected if I use one. Examples of this include chieokure (retarded); gaijin (foreigner, but literally outsider); and the reason I thought of this topic, shikimo (color blind). The correct words are shogai no aru hito (handicapped), gaikokujin (literally outside country person), and shikijyaku (color deficient). As you can see, it is very similar to the way words were changed in English to be less "discriminatory" toward people of certain conditions. As a colorblind person.....color-deficient person, I am supposed to take offense at the implication that I cannot see color, when I really can, just not the same way you can. However, do two people really see the same color? That's like asking how many licks it takes to eat a tootsie roll pop (that owl bites it in the commercial, so it is not 3!).

To put a Japanese spin on PC, you first have to understand the writing system. In Japan, they have a syllabic alphabet they use in conjunction with Chinese characters that were imported into Japan I believe during the Tang Dynasty of China. All of the Chinese characters have pronunciations that can be written in the Japanese syllabic alphabet. Chinese characters themselves are made up of "radicals" or different parts that you see often. One such radical is "river" represented as three lines (like a picture of a river). Words that have something to do with water or flowing usually have this radical in them. In fact, the character for flow as the river radical in it. However, the character for the verb "to decide" also has it (because ideas flow? The idea character doesn't have it though!). I always point to the word "to be troubled" as a perfect example of a character that doesn't make sense. It is made up of the "tree" radical and the "mouth/entrance" radical. For sure, a tree in the mouth is troubling, but I have proposed having the "person" radical above the "fire" radical because that is troubling.

This all relates to PC because there is a "man" radical and a "female" radical. One recent blog I read had a "study" in it which concluded that most of the almost 800 characters that contain the "female" radical have negative connotations while there are no characters that use the "man" radical. Right off the bat, I can think of a character that uses the "man" radical: yuki (bravery). Also, when I think of characters that contain the "female" radical I think of characters like suki (like) and sakura (cherry blossoms). However, to really think that these radicals affect connotations of women, I am highly skeptical. These may be vestiges of misogynistic ages past, but to say it affects connotations is like believing Hiroshima (literally broad island, but is located on the main island of Japan) really is an island because it says so.

If you don't catch what I'm saying, you can sum it up this way: languages are dynamic and changing and the meaning of words comes from socialization, not from etymology. The word sinister etymologically comes from the Latin word for "left-handed" but I don't associate left-handedness with evil because I was educated to the modern definition as evil. Similarly, Japanese people do not look for horses when they go to Gunma Prefecture (Gunma= herding horses). Drawing attention to the words make actually do harm because it draws awareness to discrimination that wasn't discrimination until it was deemed as such. No woman was denied a chairmanship because the title was chairman, it was socialization that attached being a man with the position and not the word; and this needs to be stopped! I hope there are lots of female chairmen in the future that earned the position in an egalitarian workplace!

Why the Obsession with Walking Robots?

Last spring, I worked on a project for a class measuring the risk of building an assembly plant in Southeast Asian countries for the Honda Robotics robot Asimo. In the process, I began to appreciate the robot that could walk, push carts, climb steps, and as it turns out, calculate its own path and determine if someone is going to walk in front of him so he can stop. It's amazing how much the little guy that measures somewhere in the 4 feet tall range can do.

But now this article in the Japan Times talks about how Japan plans to send a walking robot to the moon. Why a walking robot? The ones on wheels aren't good enough? The article says they are sending it to show how their technology can be applied, but I take that to mean they are showing it off to legitimize the time and money they have applied to developing it.

Why is there a need to have a robot with legs walking around in space. Humans had no control over their shape, but if they had, would they have chosen legs? Are legs the most efficient way to get around? There may be a study out there called "Legs are the Most Efficient Method of Moving," but I haven't read it. If it is so efficient and agile, why don't we replace the wheels on cars with legs? OK, I'm going overboard now, but you see my point. I respect the work they are doing with robots and think there might be some psychological reasoning for creating robots in our image; yet I don't think we need to send them to the moon because we can. For that, we should focus on the most efficient model for the task out hand whether it be sifting through moon dust or collecting rocks. Hey, isn't that Mars robot doing just fine?

Japan Gives Immigrants Money....to go home

Some of you may have read this story in the BBC about the Japanese government paying immigrants of Japanese decent to go back to their homes in Latin America. I read this story yesterday in either the Japan Times or Japan Today, and attached to the article was a comment section for people to voice their opinions. One common thread in the comments was that it was just another example of the Japanese government descriminating against foreigners. I for one wish that the government would pass a law outlawing blatant descrimination e.g. not being able to rent an apartment because I am foreign, but this is a little more complex than it may appear on the surface.

Japan's labor system prides itself on providing permanent jobs for its Japanese employees. This means that when it is time to trim fat during a recession, it is the temporary workers (usually foreign) that lose their jobs. The problem is compounded by the fact that the employer provides housing, thus creating a situation where one day you are working, and the next you are on the street. Having lots of people living on the street is not good regardless of their nationality.

So, the Japanese invented a way of getting rid of this problem by exporting laborers back to their country, right? Well, this is actually more of a common practice than one my think. Spain started doing this in July of last year to give agriculture jobs back to Spanish people. Malaysia has a tendency to round up Indonesians and send them home without a cash bonus, although it is more lax on these measures when there is a need for more labor (as in 2005).

I haven't drawn any correlations on the numbers, but I'm willing to bet that countries expel more immigrants when times are rough than they do during boom periods. It is quite interesting that the Japanese have chosen this method to send immigrants back home, but it isn't just another case of Japanese descrimination; they are emulating practices of other countries' attempts to stabilize the labor market. They target it at immigrants because Japan can't send Japanese home to some place that isn't Japan. Though, immigrants of non-Japanese decent will be sent home without the money putting Japan somewhere between Spain and Malaysia in their policy.