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Word or no Word, its part of the culture, atleast from my small sliver from way over here in the US.

Remember the scenes from 'Grave of the Fireflies'? During the fire-bombings, the boy, Sieta, would run and loot the homes of fleeing civilians. Powerful imagery indeed, but he was looting.

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In that case, was invading other countries also part of their 'culture'?

What was that even supposed to mean?

My point was to highlight the subtlety of the CNN statement, alluding that the very concept of looting is alien in the Japanese culture, so much so that a word does not exist for the act. It is false, of course but the announcers lack of syntactical skill is used to make a semantic interpretation of the Japanese, and directs the audience to make a equivocation: African-Americans loot.

No one here is saying it, but as an African-American, that is what I heard.

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