"Ken!"
Posted on 04/25/2014 2:30:57 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
"Ken!"
I was at a gathering once there where a foreign feminist asked a Japanese housewife why they didn't compete with men more. She replied sweetly "We don't want to step down and give up the freedom we enjoy."
Oh, man, the stories I could tell. When I went to Japan there was a pool to see how long it would take me to get married. When I returned still single eight years later the pool was whether I was gay or not. Neither one. You just have to understand it isn’t how it appears.
Holy crap, that’s exactly what I was going to put.
The Artillery Man in War of the Worlds described a Victorian England not all that different:
All these—the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way—they’d be no good. They haven’t any spirit in them—no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn’t one or the other—Lord! What is he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to work—I’ve seen hundreds of ‘em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they’d get dismissed if they didn’t; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn’t be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world.
Almost sounds like Marrying a Japanese woman is like Marrying a Klingon woman....
...
"They are a clever people..."
Martok: We are not accorded the luxury of choosing the women we fall in love with. Do you think Sirella is anything like the woman I thought that I'd marry? She is a prideful, arrogant, mercurial woman, who shares my bed far too infrequently for my taste. And yet... I love her, deeply. We Klingons often tout our prowess in battle, our desire for glory and honor above all else. But how hollow is the sound of victory without someone to share it with. Honor gives little comfort to a man alone in his home... and in his heart.
..
General Martok: My Lady.
Sirella: You've put on weight, and your hair is going gray.
General Martok: My... deterioration is proceeding apace.
Sirella: I thought you would be in your grave by now.
General Martok: [laughing] I shall endeavor to die. This year, if possible.
“Ah baby, I’m kind of asleep,” I mumbled, “and it’s pouring down rain.”
“I forgot my umbrella,” she said. “Bring me one.
“Yeah, just stop at 7-11. They’re like five bucks.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll just get wet. Forget I asked you. Don’t worry about me.
And people doubt that the Jews made it to Japan and influenced them in ancient times...
That sorta exchange would make a Jewish mother weep with pride if her daughter was a Japanese Housewife!
IIRC, most Kamikaze were college students. Employment prospects were even worse in 1945 than now, I guess.
[ As strange as this may sound, the setup has the practical effect of making all Japanese children be the product of single-mother households, with all the symptoms and results that one sees in such households in the US—but with two major differences.
First, the woman gets her money, not from the government, but from her husband’s work, so even though she may be passive-aggressive, she knows she can’t just walk away and try to go it on her own—and she doesn’t expect the other Japanese taxpayers to subsidize her lifestyle.
Second, she knows she has to get the sons to finish their education and go into successful careers, otherwise they’ll never leave home,
]
In some ways sounds like how it used to be in this country decades ago if your father had a job that always kept them working and the mother was a bit of a shrew.
Some decent chucks of Japanese culture today came from the 1950’s and Douglas MacArthur’s influence in re-building Japan after the war.
Some parts of this could very well have come from 1940s-50s american culture.
Here is something you may find interesting:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4072320.ece
“The benefits of drinking green tea and eating raw fish are extolled in a new study showing that Japanese women live longer than any others. “
Note: They don’t mention Japanese Men....
I wonder why :)
There’s a bit of indirect evidence that Jews did make it to Japan when they traveled east after the second diaspora.
If you aren’t homo or hetero, what are you?
Yer thinkin’ of the female ninja magic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYmTJYdeTw
(this is a really weird Japanese video so you might not want to click the link!)
Apparently on the night before their one & final mission many Kamikaze pilots took brush to paper and penned elegant haiku verses in perfect Kanji script describing their imminent ascension to the realm of the gods while thanking the Emperor for making such a glorious ending possible.
Takes education to do that, IMO.
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