Yesterday, I exposed a few of my more minor (ha) quibbles with the book Hi, my name is Loco and I am a racist. Today, we crank it up one notch to the things that really irked me:
That stuff about racism (in Japan).
I am a little hesitant to dive into that murky swamp of a topic, especially considering it has already been covered to exhaustion on practically every Japan-related English-speaking blog, resulting in previously mentioned wave of publicity for the book (exhibit A, on your screen).
For all its merits, I just don’t think Loco’s book is very good at addressing the ever-fascinating problem of Japanese racism. I doubt I would do any better, and I am too lazy to even make an articulate summary of my problems with his approach, so I’ll just randomly throw a few items here: