larvatus prodeo

P.J. O’Rourke: Foreigners Around the World ( Read more... )
Racial Characteristics:
Resembling the Chinese in many respects but mercifully less numerous. Their idea of a good time is to torture people, preferably by inserting a glass rod in the penis, then doing the predictable thing. And this is only for captured business competitors. During time of war, they resort to more drastic measures entirely. They have no new ideas of their own or any native creativity, but they are able to copy everything we do quite nicely, considering the color of their skin. Their diet consists principally of fish, which they do not cook or even, in many cases, kill. It’s rumored that they know of sex acts peculiar unto themselves, and with any luck, so it will stay. The most frightening thing about the Japanese is that we’ve tried the atomic bomb on them twice and it doesn’t seem to have much effect.

Good Points:
Frequently commit suicide.

Proper Forms of Address:
Nip, Jap, dink, gook, yellow rat.

An Anecdote Illustrating Something of the Japanese Character:
There was once a half-Japanese, half-Polish businessman in Tokyo who attempted to export miniaturized dildos.
( Read more... )
P.S:
Allied prisoners often reported on individual cases of mistreatment they had personally witnessed: Kanburi No. 2 Coolie Hospital, where “coolies were kept standing for hours with weights tied to the penis” — apparently for sport; Kinsayoke Checking Station, where coolies undergoing rectal swab examination for dysentery were, “one after the other, kicked violently by the Japanese medical officers”; Niki Camp, where members of a Japanese hygiene unit, during routine examinations, delighted in inserting glass rods into the vaginas of Chinese women patients; Upper Concuita Camp, where “sick coolies were used for the practice of judo and thrown over the shoulders of Japanese.” At Concuita, too, fifty to sixty workers were killed with doses of morphia and potassium permanganate.
    “These instances could be multiplied,” Crawford said, “ad nauseam.”
    Repeatedly, the Allies protested the mistreatment of prisoners of war and others in the Thai-Burmese camps. As in a game of badminton, the Japanese foreign minister of the day swatted back the diplomatic shuttlecock, dismissing the accusations as lies. On July 24, 1943, for example, the defendant Mamoru Shigemitsu, through the Swiss ambassador in Japan, replied to one protest by observing that “competent authorities … inform me that the prisoners of the Thailand Camp are equitably treated; furthermore, those who are sick have received the best medical treatment in the prisoners-of-war hospital.” Shigemitsu’s “competent authorities” were officials of the War Ministry. But repeated Swiss requests to visit the camps as a neutral power were denied. “So far as the matter of visiting the camp is concerned,” Shigemitsu wrote, “authorization will not be given for the moment.” It never was.

An exchange in the letter archive of this month’s Poetry commemorates the contribution of self-described “hyphenated American poet” Marilyn Chin to the rectification of names in response to publisher Joseph Bednarik’s criticism of her translations of Vietnamese poetess Ho Xuan Huong. Bednarik wonders as to which Nym character means “boo hoo” in Chin’s rendering of Ho Xuan Huong. In reference to another translation, he states: “I don’t see how Chin’s versions add depth or nuance to the work. Frankly, they read like someone noodling around in the margins of someone else’s book.” Chin responds:

The first two characters in the quatrain are onomatopoeic, mimicking the sound of a woman’s crying. Therefore, “boo-hoo” is an accurate translation, both semantically and tonally. I was aiming to capture the edgy, satirical attitude so ample in Ho’s work.
    Perhaps Joseph Bednarik is not conscious that “noodling around in the margins” is an appalling and problematic expression, fraught with demeaning sexist, racist, imperialist overtones, and born out of the very hateful stuff that Ho Xuan Huong so pointedly and whole-heartedly fought against in her poetry and in her life. All ugliness revealed, perhaps we could finally cut through his pernicious smugness and have that real discussion regarding how many Western cultural imperialists does it take to plunder Wang Wei and who, if anyone, should have the rightful claim to an Asian woman’s poetry. “Noodling” could have been an unfortunate slip and not unconscious hatred; but he might as well have said “flied-licing.” Perhaps Bednarik and his press believe that the white male patriarchy must forever colonize the translation of Asian poetry and that I, a dark-skinned Asian woman poet, should not be “noodling” where I don’t belong.

I agree with Marilyn. It’s high time we ethnic minorities put an end to taking it on the chin from the imperialist hegemon. Tolerance for slurs is a slippery slope tilted towards disenfranchisement. Let us relentlessly chip away at each chink in the armor of white male patriarchy.

Он же гвайлох.