As the community of people of color in the United States and around the world continues to protest and fight racism and oppression, Japanese citizens continue to wonder what the problem is. Despite the growing population of foreign citizens in the United States, the Japanese still do not have much experience on racism issues, so they may not understand very well the origin of these protests.
However, when Japanese-American singer Hikaru Utada spoke on the subject, she helped spark a necessary debate among Japanese internet users about the importance of these movements and the existence of racism worldwide. She published this on June 4, expressing that she hopes these protests will become "a historic advance for humanity."
日本で生まれ育った日本人からすると人種差別っていまいちピンと来ないかもしれないけど、今アメリカで起きていることは未来の世界史に載るような歴史的な局面かもしれない…というかそうであってほしい— 宇多田ヒカル (@utadahikaru) June 4, 2020
"The issue of racism may not be immediately understood by Japanese born and raised in Japan, but what is happening in the United States right now is actually a movement that will surely go down in history ... Or I sincerely hope that it will. be ", published.
アメリカの、黒人に対する差別というのは、単に人が別の人種の人を見てなにか差別的な感覚を抱くっていうような人種差別の話ではなくて、国家・社会の仕組みの根深い問題。アメリカの黒人の歴史・現状を全く知らない人も、ある程度知っている人も、もっと知ろうとする機会になるといいな。— 宇多田ヒカル (@utadahikaru) June 4, 2020
He immediately added the following response to his post: “The racism against people of color that occurs in the United States is not simply the fact that people are a different race and therefore have discriminatory thoughts about them. . It is a problem that has deep roots in government and society. I hope that people who are not very informed about the history of the black community and the current state of affairs will take advantage of this as an opportunity to learn more about it. "
The original post garnered more than 200,000 likes and 36,000 comments and retweets, and sparked an interesting debate among Japanese netizens, who typically don't have a chance to discuss racism and discrimination. Although some held contrasting views, most agreed that they were very interested in the situation and expressed sympathy for Utada's views.
However, there were also those who pointed out that the idea that "there is no racism in Japan," which many Japanese blindly believe, is false, given the many incidents of discrimination among non-Japanese Asians, as well as between the black community and foreign visitors.
"I am a Japanese born and raised Japanese, but I have never believed that racism does not exist in this country, even since I studied in primary school."
“I am Japanese born and raised in Japan. I think it is sad that Japan has been the protagonist of a large number of acts of racial discrimination recently, and that it has become a nation where, in fact, this issue does come to be understood. "
"Miss Hikaru, the same level of oppression is occurring in Japan."
“My husband is a person of color. In Japan, if he puts his hands in his pockets because he is cold, he is detained by the police and they ask him to know what is in his hand. "
They were some of the comments published before Hikaru Utada's tweet. In addition, the singer was heavily criticized for having omitted mention of the Chinese government's acts of oppression against the inhabitants of Uighur and Tibet, or for ignoring that June 4 is, in fact, the anniversary date of the protests. from Tiananmen Square in 1989, the date the Chinese army dissolved the mobilization of Chinese students through force.
Source: SoraNews24
