The Last of the Last How Masabumi Hosono's Night was forgotten

[monica e. hall]

This reminds me of a day once when I was curled up peacefully on the lounger in the sun, reading a good book, and a wild fundamentalist burst through the garden gate, called me 'sister' and began ranting about original sin. The only connection he had to religion that I could see was that he did look rather as Jesus might have after 40 days and nights in the wilderness. I'm afraid I laughed then, and I laughed again today. Took ages to get rid of him too.

 

[monica e. hall]

On second thoughts, you're right Phil. Jan is an interest, and I like a spot of controversy. Not sure he'd see it that way exactly, but never mind.
Re Inger's point that racism is not the sole prerogative of white Anglo-Saxons, my Indian newsagent (first generation Brit) gets very exercised on the subject of asylum seekers, particularly those from Eastern Europe. "You and I work hard and pay our taxes, Monica, and we're overcrowded enough as it is!" he roars. "Why should we pay for Rumanian riff-raff to come over here living on benefits and shoplifting!" I'm afraid I laugh at that, too, but he at least has the grace to laugh with me.

 

[Dennis Smith]

Jan, or Who Ever you are,

How dare you call me a racist, you don,t know me and I certainly DO NOT want to know you. I have been at sea for nearly 20 years and have sailed with Officers and Crew of many nationalities, and I've had problems with 2, one who was a total idiot and one who hated me because of the British Rule in India - none of which was anything to do with me - I wasn't born then.

I could rant on far longer, but I won't, It's not right to say that anyone on this site is racist without you having personal knowledge of this "FACT". I have communicated with many folk on this site and have found absolutely no sign of anything that you seem to exist.

As has been stated earlier, if there is a problem, then I think the problem is yours.

Best - Naa

Disgruntled

Dennis

 

[Michael H. Standart]

And with all that out of the way, how about we get back to discussing Mr. Masabumi Hosono and check the contemporary politics, current events, issues and causes du jour at the door. There are plenty of other forums where that can be discussed, a lot of which thrive on that sort of axe grinding.

This is not one of them.

Thank you all for your co-operation in this matter.

 

[Tarn Stephanos]

What a strange thread!

Well, Jan, all I can say if your opinion of the ET board is so low, why poste here?
I frankly found your comments insulting...

Be nice...

Hi Eric, good to see you- I had to smile when I read your desription for of a liberal , as it is the very defintiton I would ascribe to concervatives...
But to each his own...the diversity of individals and points of view is one of many things that makes the ET message boards a very special place indeed....

And Jan, I believe you made the comment "racism may not be excused on the basis that it happened in a different time frame".

Well, if you expect the people of 1850 to have 'known better', and have held the same notion of right and wrong as you and I, then Im afraid you'd make a spotty historian.
Different periods in history had different values, and different notions of right and wrong...

Regards


Tarn Stephanos

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>I had to smile when I read your desription for of a liberal , as it is the very defintiton I would ascribe to concervatives... <<

And objectively speaking, both sides would be right when they accuse each other of trying to muzzle the opposition. Extremists of every patch seem to be all for freedom of speech so long as the one doing the speaking agrees with them. When they don't, out come lables like Pinko Communist, Socialist, racist, chauvanist, fascist, Red, "Reich" Wing Republican, Feminazi, Envirowhacko, Demogogue, baby killer, Anti-Gunner, Gun Nut, traitor, anti-American or anti-[insert name of nation-state here], Enemy of the People, and other assorted names. In short, the extremists of any stripe will say whatever they think will get the opposition to "Toe the line."

Quite a pity since such lables are often misleading and do not address the question of whether the propositions or ideas being offered are valid. And I wonder if anyone here has any idea just how slippery such terms as Liberal and Conservative really are in a historical context and even a modern day context? You can be one hundred percent certain that in actual practice, they have nothing to do with the dictionary definitions.

>>Well, if you expect the people of 1850 to have 'known better', and have held the same notion of right and wrong as you and I, then Im afraid you'd make a spotty historian.
Different periods in history had different values, and different notions of right and wrong... <<

Tarn, please be very careful where you go with this as some of this is tending to personalize things to the point of ad hominum attack. I know this isn't your intent, but as potentially explosive as this topic is, one would be well advised to tread carefully.

Having said that much, overall, I think you have a very good point. To clearify, one is on very dangerous ground when judging past cultures and societies by modern day standards of right, wrong, and assorted cultural values. Doing so assumes that they had certain insights and understanding we have now which in fact is far from a given.

Bluntly, they had their own ideas for better and for worse. We don't need to approve of them, but we do need to understand them. Further, while we need to be mindful of the lows (By our reckoning!) that past cultures sank to, we need to be just as mindful that this doesn't take away from their achievements.

Climbing off my soapbox for now.

 

[Tarn Stephanos]

Hi Michael

I just find it amusing liberals and conservatives often use the same words to describe each other - "sheep", "enemies of freedom", "advocates of fiscal irresponsibility", etc....

For a hoot, check out the yahoo message boards sometime, the battles that go on there are quite amusing...

But its true, both sides, on the extreme, advocate opression- leftest liberals want to censor anything that would offend anyones hertitage and keep ours a religiously neutral society, wheras right wing concervatives would censor anything that would question America,
and they would prefer America to be a Christian nation..

At some point these opposite extremes actually join...

Id wager to say most Americans are in the middle, moderates, that hold both conservative and liberal views..

The liberals vs. conservates war reminds me of the Liliputians, who wared with a neighboring kingdom over which side of the egg to open. It left Gulliver perplexed, for to his eyes, these people were all the same...

I have a mother who is a liberal,a liberal African American step-father, I'm liberal, and have a liberal brother..but my biological father and two other brothers that are conservatives, and one brother a hardcore right wing Christian fundamentalist- Hes totally pro Christian, anti gay, pro Bush- Im pro gay, pro seperation of church and state,anti Bush, etc...

So I have had the concertvative vs. liberal battles at home...
I love my brother, but dont agree with his views...
I have concervatave friends and aquaitances, and might not agree with them...

I know some of my ET friends are concervative, but whats it matter..we share the love for Titanic..

I agree with Jesse Ventura who is an independent, and feels the Democrats have gone to the far left, and the Republicans to the far right..and the moderates from both sides are left high and dry because the third party candidates are all but ignored by the press, and dont have a chance...

The lables are an ugly thing..Those brandishing the lables seem to forget there are moderates of both parties..and indeed, there are actually liberal Republicans, and Concervative Democrats..

To be an effective historian, one must not only learn what happened in the past, but what were people were thinking, and WHY they held such views.

Why didnt some of the 3rd class make it to the boat deck? Even when there was no barrier, some accounts suggested that some 3rd class felt it was thier job to wait for instruction, and not thier place to venture into first class. Was it rational? By todays standards, no. But by 1912 standards? Perhaps that was the norm...


Judgeing the past based on contemporary values is in a way akin to the idea of ethnocentrism, the tendency of past anthropologists to judge cultures with the preassumed notion that thier western homeland was superior all ways to the land being explored.
Thus any anthropologist knows ethnocentrism must be left at the door, or all of thier findings will be tainted...
One must go into it with an open mind and with minimal preconcieved notions.
Same thing with being a historian...People of the past had different sets of values...

That being said, looking back at 1850, I condemn that 'peculiar institution', which was slavery, but I do not do so with the expectation people in 1850 had the same set of values or appreciation of individual liberty we have today.
Through the grace of God and determiniation, generations would come to rise up against the shackles of opression, and I applaud any and all movements everywere demanding the end of opression.

I could condemn the people of 1850 because women were not allowed to vote- but the notion of the equality of men and women was by an large an alien concept to people of that time..
But again, through time, the sufferage movement and feminsim, women attained the vote, and equality...

Here is one thing thats silly....Some years back..I believe in Washington DC, a high school named George Washington High had a name change. Why? Because George Washington owned slaves.

Arthur Conan Doyle used heroine...should his 'Sherlock Holmes" books thus be banned?
I think not......
My head is starting to hurt, I hope this makes some sense...


regards


Tarn Stephanos

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>I just find it amusing liberals and conservatives often use the same words to describe each other - "sheep", "enemies of freedom", "advocates of fiscal irresponsibility", etc.... <<

Ahhhhhh...yes....more lables. Same old thing too. One way or another, this sort of game is as old as politics itself.

>>For a hoot, check out the yahoo message boards sometime, the battles that go on there are quite amusing... <<

Uhhhh...no thanks. People who confuse whatever party line or brain-dead slogan they're chanting don't strike me as entertaining.

>>Why didnt some of the 3rd class make it to the boat deck? Even when there was no barrier, some accounts suggested that some 3rd class felt it was thier job to wait for instruction, and not thier place to venture into first class. Was it rational? By todays standards, no. But by 1912 standards? Perhaps that was the norm... <<

And if such is the case, I don't think anyone would have given it a second thought. The rationale in all likelihood would have been something along the lines of "This is the way it's always been and always will be."

>>Judgeing the past based on contemporary values is in a way akin to the idea of ethnocentrism,<<

To say nothing of anachronistic, which is something I've been trying to get across for several years now.

Jan makes the point that the culture of 1912 was racist, and he's not wrong either. It was everywhere, all pervasive, and just the way things were. What he seems to be missing is that this wasn't a trait peculier to European based cultures and societies. The Japanese had a few notions of their own along these lines that weren't very pretty. I wonder if we're supposed to condemn Japanese culture as in toto because of that?

Some might argue that we should, but I don't think I'll go there.

 

[Jan C. Nielsen]

Now we're getting somewhere, Phil Hind acknowledges that discussion of a controversial subject such as "racism" is appropriate in this forum --- as it should be. I guess people can call me names, but I can't call them names back. So be it. And Michael, I condemn racism elsewhere all the time. Regarding Japanese, have you read Iris Chang's "Rape of Nanking"? Racism is not a "trait peculiar to European-based cultures." But in my view that doesn't get our nation, or society, off the hook.

 

[monica e. hall]

Are we getting somewhere, Jan? Where is this discussion? All I've seen yet (still) is you accusing all of us of being racists, and then of accusing us of being in denial when we object to your simplistic rhetoric. People are suspicious of strangers because of an atavistic desire to protect their own, whether it be family, village, city or nation. Some societies would have done much better to be a darn sight more suspicious e.g. the Polynesians when Capt. Cook et al came calling, or the Caribb Indians when the Spanish arrived. Anyone over the age of 10 would understand this, and most people I know on this board and off it try very hard not to let racism affect their dealings with other people. What else can they do? Wear sackcloth and ashes, do penance in public for not being perfect? I think what's really getting up peoples' noses here is the very strong sense they get that you get a buzz from kicking everyone else off the high moral ground. Anyway, I can't waste any more time on this non-discussion. Got to mark students papers, and try very hard not to let my knowledge that they are ethnic minorities for whom English is a foreign langauge influence me into giving me more marks than they strictly deserve. Is that racism? Well, yes, I think it probably is.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Regarding Japanese, have you read Iris Chang's "Rape of Nanking"?<<

Nope. I've been concentrating my studies on maritime history, but I'm not unaware of this particular atrocity. There was a pretty damning documentary on it that was presented on the History Channel that had me reaching for my airsick bag.

>>Racism is not a "trait peculiar to European-based cultures." But in my view that doesn't get our nation, or society, off the hook.<<

I never argued that it did. However, I have to be mindful of the fact that our own culture wasn't...and to some extant....still is a player in this particular game. There are others out there that have been (and still are) far worse. And as Monica pointed out, I'm not about to do some sort of pennace for the mistakes and or crimes of my ancestors. I'm accountable for my mistakes and mine alone. Not those of others.

Regardless of that, I see little point in blanket condemnations of a people of a particular age who simply ascribed to the values, beliefs, and mores of their time. They were who they were for better and for worse. We can't change it, but hopefully we can learn from it and avoid some of the same mistakes.

When you get down to it, that's a good part of what historical study is all about.

>>Now we're getting somewhere, Phil Hind acknowledges that discussion of a controversial subject such as "racism" is appropriate in this forum .<<

MmmmmmHmmmmm...Jan, let's be mindful of the whole of what Phil said, to wit:

This thread is as good as any to discuss racism so bring it on. But please do it with respect rather than contempt for those us us who might wish to follow or participate in the debate.

IOW, it was an invitation to air it out here and not an invitation to drag it out elsewhere.

It would also be well for everybody to know that if this thread degenerates into a slugfest of personalities rather then the issue itself, nobody will have to wait for Phil to shut it down. I'll do it myself the instant I find out about it. I'm aware of the fact that racism of any patch is an emotional issue. Understandably and indeed justifiably so , but from where I sit, the usual round of lables and name calling which attends these discussions only serves to aggravate problems rather then promote understanding. It's because of that that I believe that the more emotional the issue is, the greater the need is for objectivity and cool thinking.

By all means, discuss the matter, but keep let's keep it clean.