Comment by aclimatt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aclimatt | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'm not sure how that's relevant. As others pointed out, even if it's very niche, it still exists. Yes, there are a number of articles fetishizing all of the "weird" aspects of Japan and perhaps in some way making them seem pervasive to people who haven't visited, but this article is doing absolutely none of that. (And even if it were, that's not the point.)

I'm going to gather you didn't make it past the first few paragraphs, because the entire point of the article, particularly in the last third, is an analysis of reality and what constitutes real relationships. The author tries to use this subculture to evaluate the context of families, unconditional love, and how money may or may not change the equation. For that reason, I think it's one of the best articles I've read recently, as it's a thought-provoking insight into human needs and the realities of modern relationships.

Give it another read. Just because the story takes place in Japan, doesn't mean it's about Japan.

I think adding perspective is extremely relevant.

If I did not read sdrothrock's comment, I really would have a completely different view of Japan and Japanese society.

I often feel a lot of these Western articles on various Asian cultures to be quite disingenuous.

The point of the article is entirely different if this was a common occurrence in Japanese society versus it being based on a tiny, niche, that affects less than 0.1% of Japanese people.

As an analogy, imagine a Japanese article talking about "American family relationships" based on child beauty pageants and Honey Boo Boo.

>I often feel a lot of these Western articles on various Asian cultures to be quite disingenuous.

Half of it is people that haven't lived abroad, and are not familiar with different cultures (or are only shallowly familiar) not being able to image a different way of life and set of values as "normal".

Another half of it is media wanting to paint a story such as that is larger and more impressive than it actually is.

> I'm going to gather you didn't make it past the first few paragraphs

I actually did and remain completely unconvinced despite the frame. There's another article from a few more months ago that was a lot more convincing and even wrote a positive comment reinforcing its content and pointing out how pervasive a problem loneliness can be in Japan and how the society really prevents people from making friends.

I would argue that the "point of the article" being buried in the "last third" isn't really the point, especially when the title is "Japan's Rent-a-Family Industry."

> I'm not sure how that's relevant.

To this point, my problem is that popular news focuses so much on "Japan is weird" and "Japan is exotic" that it creates and maintains an image of Japan as an ineffable other, which does a disservice to both the Japanese people and also to people who work with Japanese people and even really encourages a kind of subtle racism on both sides, where Japanese people are Japanese "because they are" -- they're just quixotic and traditional and exotic.

I say it encourages this on both sides because there's a movement among Japanese people called nihonjin-ron, which itself is an attempt to find things "uniquely Japanese," from the length of the large intestine (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10109809) to squatting ability (http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthread.php?20037-Western-Kne...) to an apparent inability to learn English.

These kinds of articles are often enthusiastically pulled up as "oh yes, Japan is totally unique, see this!" and only serve to make a completely artificial barrier between cultures, one that is heightened by the fact that these articles are almost always the only ones that make popular news by virtue of being "weird."

>I'm not sure how that's relevant. As others pointed out, even if it's very niche, it still exists.

It still exists in the US too. So there's that.

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/rentafriend-lets-buy-frien...

Besides, no information makes sense in isolation. Knowing that X exists or Y happened doesn't say much, if anything at all.

Why it exists, how prevalent it is, etc, is far more important.

"People eat dead babies in Finland" doesn't say anything -- it's actually downright misleading.

But:

"Two weirdos satanists pals stole a stillborn baby from a hospital in Finland and ate it" put things in the right perspective.

(P.S The Finish story never happened -- it's an example).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com