Where have all the New York Japanese gone?
Mar. 8th, 2006 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusAnecdotal observation: I've been working as an unreliable tour guide at the Whitney for a week now and I've only seen two Japanese people.
Hypothesis: New York, once a playground for the Japanese, especially art and culture tourists, has seen a heavy disinvestment by Japanese visitors in recent years.
Speculation: If they're not coming any more, why not? Is it fear of terrorism? Is it because the city just isn't what it once was? Has the (now ending) recession in Japan kept Japanese tourists closer to home? Are Asian destinations now trendier than American ones? Are fewer travel articles about New York appearing in Japanese magazines?
Statistics: The New York Times reports in 2004 "a 30 percent drop in overseas visitors to the United States since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001... Fear of terrorism contributed to a 12.6 percent decline in Japanese tourism to the United States." The ITA Office of Travel, reporting in 2003, noted declines in Japanese tourists to the US of 7% per month, although found that rate slowing.
Observations: I've been walking around Manhattan checking out Japanese haunts. Had dinner at Saka Gura on 43rd Street with Karl Haley on Sunday night. Takashi Murakami came up and congratulated me on being in the Whitney. Well, he's still here, anyway! Stuyvesant Street still has its little cluster of Japanese businesses: Panya, Hoshi Coupe and Sunrise Mart. And Sunrise Mart now has a new branch on Broome Street. It's doing very well... but whereas most of the visitors to their St Marks branch seem to be Japanese, most of the customers here are well-heeled Caucasian SoHo shoppers popping in for a snack.
Advice for travellers: Apparently Japanese tourists in the US are easily ripped off because of their "trusting nature". Innocents abroad details why. "Con games ("shinyosagi" in Japanese), in general, appeal to the weaknesses of people to separate them from their money," this page tells us. "Con artists lean on Japanese trust, innocence, desire to help, or greed." It's strange to hear trust, innocence and desire to help being described as "weaknesses", ne?
Home truths from abroad: In a Japan Today vox pop about how Japan can be a more friendly place for visitors from overseas, an old man called Endo says: "Nobody is going to visit a country that is cold and selfish. When I traveled to the U.S. and South Korea, the people were really kind and helpful. It almost brought me to tears when I had to leave and say farewell to the people whom I met during my short stay. People will come, regardless of government policy, if a nation possesses an 'affectionate heart.'"
Conclusion: Further research needed -- must check out the art schools, and the Armory Show, which opens tomorrow. Look, there's Popeye turning Japanese on the poster!
Hypothesis: New York, once a playground for the Japanese, especially art and culture tourists, has seen a heavy disinvestment by Japanese visitors in recent years.
Speculation: If they're not coming any more, why not? Is it fear of terrorism? Is it because the city just isn't what it once was? Has the (now ending) recession in Japan kept Japanese tourists closer to home? Are Asian destinations now trendier than American ones? Are fewer travel articles about New York appearing in Japanese magazines?
Statistics: The New York Times reports in 2004 "a 30 percent drop in overseas visitors to the United States since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001... Fear of terrorism contributed to a 12.6 percent decline in Japanese tourism to the United States." The ITA Office of Travel, reporting in 2003, noted declines in Japanese tourists to the US of 7% per month, although found that rate slowing.
Observations: I've been walking around Manhattan checking out Japanese haunts. Had dinner at Saka Gura on 43rd Street with Karl Haley on Sunday night. Takashi Murakami came up and congratulated me on being in the Whitney. Well, he's still here, anyway! Stuyvesant Street still has its little cluster of Japanese businesses: Panya, Hoshi Coupe and Sunrise Mart. And Sunrise Mart now has a new branch on Broome Street. It's doing very well... but whereas most of the visitors to their St Marks branch seem to be Japanese, most of the customers here are well-heeled Caucasian SoHo shoppers popping in for a snack.
Advice for travellers: Apparently Japanese tourists in the US are easily ripped off because of their "trusting nature". Innocents abroad details why. "Con games ("shinyosagi" in Japanese), in general, appeal to the weaknesses of people to separate them from their money," this page tells us. "Con artists lean on Japanese trust, innocence, desire to help, or greed." It's strange to hear trust, innocence and desire to help being described as "weaknesses", ne?
Home truths from abroad: In a Japan Today vox pop about how Japan can be a more friendly place for visitors from overseas, an old man called Endo says: "Nobody is going to visit a country that is cold and selfish. When I traveled to the U.S. and South Korea, the people were really kind and helpful. It almost brought me to tears when I had to leave and say farewell to the people whom I met during my short stay. People will come, regardless of government policy, if a nation possesses an 'affectionate heart.'"
Conclusion: Further research needed -- must check out the art schools, and the Armory Show, which opens tomorrow. Look, there's Popeye turning Japanese on the poster!
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 03:44 pm (UTC)i sneaked in the biennal one day before th eoppening and when i got out i saw you there talking to some guy.
ha! that was funny
byeeee
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 03:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 03:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 04:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 04:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 04:18 pm (UTC)Feeling that way myself.
I am just here to pimp Soba-Ya on 9th as much as possible to the readers of your LJ. A terror that underlies my life is that they will somehow go out of business. But, any time I go there, most of the people in the restaurant are Japanese-from-Japan. A good sign!
Also Aburiya Kinnosuke.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 04:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 04:25 pm (UTC)what?
i was just going to say...
Date: 2006-03-08 05:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 06:14 pm (UTC)(Hmm, isn't it more a weakness when you want to abuse a person just because of your own greed?)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 07:12 pm (UTC)Not Popeye
Date: 2006-03-08 07:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 07:15 pm (UTC)If it's of any interest, I'll back up a little: SF was the first city in the US to have a major Japanese involvement, and by 1940, Japantown (a few blocks west of where I live) covered some 20 city blocks. By 1942, when all Japanese-Americans had been relocated to internment camps, Japantown became a ghost town. The City decided to house thousands of the people who had moved here from the deep South to work in the shipyards--into the now unoccupied housing there, which changed the neighborhood from Japanese-American to African-American. After the war, these people weren't willing to return to their former homes in the South.
When the internment camps were closed in 1945, the former residents returned to find their neighborhood quite changed, and many of them--feeling unsafe in their own homes--moved away rather than stay and face any conflicts; a tendency they brought with them from Japan. Due to a number of factors, the size of Japantown shrank to what it is now--about 8 blocks. And now, Japantown Center--the three-block-long mall of Japanese shops and restaurants that anchors Japantown--is up for sale.
The first group to express interest in purchasing it is a Chinese consortium. That doesn't bode well for the Japanese character of Japantown. Already Chinese and Koreans have bought up stores and other properties in the heart of Japantown, changing its character. And stores are already suffering under the impact of shoplifters and general thuggery from the Western Addition spilling over into what was previously an honest, safe neighborhood. If the mall sells to anyone but another Japanese group (or an unusually sensitive buyer of other ethnicity), San Francisco's Japantown is doomed. It deeply troubles me to see the community threatened like this.
I have many Japanese friends who live in SF, most of whom came after the Bubble burst, or during our internet boom--but have stayed on. For all its problems with homeless people and scam artists, San Francisco probably feels safer to many Japanese people than does New York, and perhaps less overwhelming. We may get a more broad cross-section of Japanese tourists as well; I suspect that many of New York's Japanese visitors fall within a narrower demographic.
And I entirely agree that it's a shame to see such positive qualities as trust, innocence and helpfulness referred to as "weaknesses". I appreciate these traits in my Japanese friends, and feel somewhat protective towards them, to try to maintain those qualities. They're traits that people of all ethnicities and nationalities would do well to emulate.
Sorry this was so long-winded! You raised a number of interesting points, and I just wanted to share the perspective from the other coast.
Re: Not Popeye
Date: 2006-03-08 07:22 pm (UTC)Come to Vancouver
Date: 2006-03-08 07:34 pm (UTC)A short bus ride out of the city to Richmond will bring you to the asian malls where you can shop at Daiso, the huge Japanese dollar store (here everything's $2CAN). I think this might even be the first Daiso opened in North America.
And I'm moving to the UK soon. I think I should have my head examined.
-neil
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 08:11 pm (UTC)When market pressure comes to bear and Japan comes up short, they tend to give up and go home, rather than stay and fight for it.
I have never been to Japantown in SF, but I really would like to go someday...even if it's only to see a bunch of people that look like I do.
Re: Come to Vancouver
Date: 2006-03-08 08:11 pm (UTC)How do they get into the country?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 08:19 pm (UTC)Also, please visit SVA sometime! It would be fun to interview you for the radio station 'zine.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 08:30 pm (UTC)Actually, the laugh is on the Dutch in this case, because they paid the wrong tribe. They gave a king's ransom of guns, axes, and other valuable goods to the Canarsies, who lived in what is now Brooklyn; it was the Weckquaesgeeks who lived on Manhattan Island. The Dutch then waited until intertribal conflicts (many of which they instigated) and successive waves of epidemics weakened the Weckquaesgeeks to such a state when, in the 1640s, with the aid of the Canarsies and other tribes on Long Island, the Dutch exterminated most of the Weckquaesgeeks.
In case anyone cares...
Date: 2006-03-08 08:44 pm (UTC)Of course, what went on with the Louisiana purchase—which sparked off about fifty Indian wars over a century—makes what happened on Manhattan look quaint in comparison.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 09:06 pm (UTC)If you bear in mind the extremely low crime rate in Japan (especially violent crimes) and the way that you don't have to worry about thieves nearly as much, it's intuitive that the Japanese would want to establish little safe havens for their own kind. I can't blame 'em a bit.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 09:48 pm (UTC)"Dear Japanese, DON'T TAKE THE BLANKETS! Sincerely, Native Americans."
Cor blimey, that were terrible....
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 09:50 pm (UTC)And the Japanese do it because they are inherently racist, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 11:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-08 11:20 pm (UTC)Every nation and every ethnic group is inherently racist, from WASPs to the Japanese to African-Americans; that's just the way that our species evolved. Of course, it's nice if we can overcome this, but it's fatuous to think that racism only works one way, or that only some groups are culpable. I assure you--as racially self-preferential as the Japanese may be vis-a-vis other groups, most other groups are towards their own as well. Perhaps nations that have long histories of immigration (such as the US and Australia) should be held to a higher standard of inclusiveness.
Re: Not Popeye
Date: 2006-03-09 12:41 am (UTC)Re: Not Popeye
Date: 2006-03-09 12:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-09 01:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-09 02:26 am (UTC)have you only walked by st. mark during the day? quickly? looking down? been to astoria lately?
i don't think you really have any basis for this, other then, for some reason you feel like bashing on nyc. though its an odd way to bash. but it's what you seem to do anymore when you come to nyc. just me?
trevor
musicrelated.net
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-09 06:48 am (UTC)weaknesses
Date: 2006-03-09 06:57 am (UTC)as jung says, in the shadow lies the gold as well as darkness.
every culture has its blind spots. in japan some kinds of honesty (the type that make you lose face) as seen as showing weakness. so is putting your family before work. saying no. standing up to your unreasonable bully of a boss. seeking justice. etc... all weaknesses in japan, but glorified elsewhere.
in japan one day i ran to help a distressed woman who was screaming and trying to escape from a car. everyone else was ignoring her. after the incident i wasn't commended, but got an icy reception and i was made to feel childish for getting involved in someone else's problems.
don't like the idea of 'weakness' in general - bit of a slippery concept.
Re: Come to Vancouver
Date: 2006-03-09 06:58 am (UTC)Re: In case anyone cares...
Date: 2006-03-09 09:54 am (UTC)I watched that Nick Broomfield film about Eugene Terrablanche the other night and couldn't help thinking that it was possibly only the South African greed in keeping black slaves that had stopped them achieving the eternal white-only paradise they dreamed of.
In America of course, they did the job properly. They wiped out all the rightful inhabitants AND kept black slaves.
Apparently The Dutch have the purest Hittite Aryan dominator genes on the planet.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-09 11:29 am (UTC)And yet, let me predict that it is the result of the Japanese being collectivists and the Americans individualists! And when, in a few years' time, the Japanese return in large numbers, this will also be because the Japanese are collectivists and the Americans individualists. One binary to rule them all!
Re: In case anyone cares...
Date: 2006-03-09 02:04 pm (UTC)Apparently The Dutch have the purest Hittite Aryan dominator genes on the planet.
A fact expressed in the height of their public urinals. I was in South Africa two years ago, and the blessed things came up to my chest!