here are some common sense reasons for those of you who think there is/was no looting and that the reason there was not was due to some sort of japanese higher ethic.
bullshit.
1. Entire towns were washed away. In the hardest hit areas, there was little left to loot and few left to loot it.
2. the scope of the disaster is so great —it isn’t as if the media is going to stop and figure out whether any electronics stores have been ransacked. The proper response to anyone crowing about a lack of looting in Japan should be, “How do you know?”
3. the entire idea of there being no looting plays into our preconceptions about Japan, a nation where — I’m sorry to be the one to tell you — there is indeed crime, indeed poverty.
4. tsk-tsking over the supposed lack of looting in Japan is a not-so-sly way for people to voice the kind of ugly racial prejudice that some of us just itch to articulate, to wag a finger at americans.
5. I saved the best point for last —
THERE IS LOOTING IN JAPAN, as reported in the Japanese media.
From a website of Kyodo News, Japan’s version of CNN, headlined, in Japanese:
“In Miyagi, police report 40 robberies by those taking advantage of the earthquake.”
The text, translated, reads:
“According to police on the night of the 13th the morning of the 14, approximately 1 million yen in cash was taken from the Miyagi City Home Center. There were robberies at a convenience store and a food store, and robberies at approximately 40 other stores by those taking advantage of the earthquake amounting to 1.65 million yen.”
I’m not expecting these facts to change anybody’s mind. Because bigotry isn’t about fitting your worldview around reality, it’s about finding examples of reality that fit your worldview, and if the looting-in-Japan claims stop doing the trick, it’s on to something else.
bullshit.
1. Entire towns were washed away. In the hardest hit areas, there was little left to loot and few left to loot it.
2. the scope of the disaster is so great —it isn’t as if the media is going to stop and figure out whether any electronics stores have been ransacked. The proper response to anyone crowing about a lack of looting in Japan should be, “How do you know?”
3. the entire idea of there being no looting plays into our preconceptions about Japan, a nation where — I’m sorry to be the one to tell you — there is indeed crime, indeed poverty.
4. tsk-tsking over the supposed lack of looting in Japan is a not-so-sly way for people to voice the kind of ugly racial prejudice that some of us just itch to articulate, to wag a finger at americans.
5. I saved the best point for last —
THERE IS LOOTING IN JAPAN, as reported in the Japanese media.
From a website of Kyodo News, Japan’s version of CNN, headlined, in Japanese:
“In Miyagi, police report 40 robberies by those taking advantage of the earthquake.”
The text, translated, reads:
“According to police on the night of the 13th the morning of the 14, approximately 1 million yen in cash was taken from the Miyagi City Home Center. There were robberies at a convenience store and a food store, and robberies at approximately 40 other stores by those taking advantage of the earthquake amounting to 1.65 million yen.”
I’m not expecting these facts to change anybody’s mind. Because bigotry isn’t about fitting your worldview around reality, it’s about finding examples of reality that fit your worldview, and if the looting-in-Japan claims stop doing the trick, it’s on to something else.
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