Regarding your authentic food article, I’m somewhat curious as to why you did not really address Mr. Dong’s other arguments. Granted, defending yourself from accusations of racism do top the list of things to do, but I do believe he made several other good points.
For instance, Kanji. Does the Japanese use of Chinese characters fall under exploitation? Or is it only when a purchase is involved? What about the wonderful Sesshu, and his clearly Chinese influence. Or the Tang-dynasty style building architecture. Or Zen-sect Buddhism. Etc, etc. I am sure you can provide some insightful clarifications to this matter.
On a related note (or perhaps the same), I think Mr. Dong mentioned that rather than being exploitive, it was more likely to be a blending of cultures and ideas, ie internationalism. I’m curious, if Japan had successfully colonized Korea, and Korean culture was successfully oppressed, would it then be considered exploitive for the theoretically ex-Koreans to be making sushi?
But in reality, Japan was beaten back. But their mark still remains. Are Korean variants of Kendo considered exploitive? A transaction would probably occur there in modern times. Hopefully I don’t sound aggressive; I am merely curious about the clarifications.
By the way, I am somewhat new to your site, so perhaps I overlooked something. It has a clean design, but I do feel that your discussion section could be significantly more organized. As it stands, it seems like all the comments are lumped together, regardless of which topic is being responded to. This seems to thwart discussion. Of course, if it’s really only meant for just you (and the responder) to discuss, then I retract my suggestion.
A Random Comment from December 4, 2003
Hello Dyske,
Regarding your authentic food article, I’m somewhat curious as to why you did not really address Mr. Dong’s other arguments. Granted, defending yourself from accusations of racism do top the list of things to do, but I do believe he made several other good points.
For instance, Kanji. Does the Japanese use of Chinese characters fall under exploitation? Or is it only when a purchase is involved? What about the wonderful Sesshu, and his clearly Chinese influence. Or the Tang-dynasty style building architecture. Or Zen-sect Buddhism. Etc, etc. I am sure you can provide some insightful clarifications to this matter.
On a related note (or perhaps the same), I think Mr. Dong mentioned that rather than being exploitive, it was more likely to be a blending of cultures and ideas, ie internationalism. I’m curious, if Japan had successfully colonized Korea, and Korean culture was successfully oppressed, would it then be considered exploitive for the theoretically ex-Koreans to be making sushi?
But in reality, Japan was beaten back. But their mark still remains. Are Korean variants of Kendo considered exploitive? A transaction would probably occur there in modern times. Hopefully I don’t sound aggressive; I am merely curious about the clarifications.
By the way, I am somewhat new to your site, so perhaps I overlooked something. It has a clean design, but I do feel that your discussion section could be significantly more organized. As it stands, it seems like all the comments are lumped together, regardless of which topic is being responded to. This seems to thwart discussion. Of course, if it’s really only meant for just you (and the responder) to discuss, then I retract my suggestion.