RE: Vice Japan’s Snapchat Story
featured on snapchat’s explore page today is a vice Japan documentary on the cemetery slums of the Philippines that is incredibly exploitative and gross and doesn’t even manage to translate the Tagalog spoken in it accurately.
and yeah, we already knew Vice was problematic but this is a prime example of the racial hierarchy that exists within Asian communities…Southeast Asians are seen and treated as subhuman and this is a prejudice that we also experience from other Asians and that should be acknowledged.
not coincidentally, it is the same Asians who look down on us that are also responsible for the socioeconomic situation that these countries finds themselves in.
as the number one export partner to the Philippines (Source), Japan has definitely played a hand in its economic exploitation, both at home and overseas.
“To this day, Japan is the Philippines’ top donor of so-called official development assistance. Japan is also the Philippines’ top foreign investor. Japan is among the top countries in the world in sponsoring the education of Filipino scholars, while its cultural diplomacy is among the most extensive.”
“What is not widely discussed here, however, is that most of these resources from Japan were actually loans and were, in fact, linked to Japan’s quest for export markets after the war. Japan tied these loans, which were mainly used for infrastructure like highways, to contracts with Japanese contractors and suppliers. On the Philippine side, only a small clique of influential Filipino contractors and businesses benefited from the postwar largesse. Most Filipinos thus did not benefit substantially from reparations.”
“According to one study, Japanese “reparation payments to the Philippines were relatively less efficient than in other countries.” In fact, according to another study, the reparations “provided investment mainly to private-sector projects for reaping short-term profits, leaving long-term profitable key industries with insufficient capital.” The result is that the Philippines did not develop its industries, a defect whose impact is still felt today. Worse, according to historians, the way the loans and reparations money and goods were utilized ushered in the era of bureaucratic corruption that is now so prevalent here.” (Source)
overseas, the exploitation of Filipino migrant workers, namely woman, is still on the rise with the trafficking of of Filipinas playing a prominent role in the Japanese sex industry.
“According to government statistics, the export of workers from the Philippines accounts for $1.1 billion in foreign currency annually-more than any other source.”
“…hundreds of thousands of Filipinos routinely leave their country for all sorts of jobs in faraway lands as domestics, nurses or other occupations lined up by the government`s program to export workers. But more often than many officials in the Philippines like to admit, the government-sanctioned worker export program also serves as a pipeline feeding pretty Filipinas to Japan`s thriving sex industry.”
“Japanese men are afraid of being refused by Japanese women,” said Dr. Sussumu Oda, a Tsukuba University psychiatrist and professor of mental health who believes the sex industry will continue to prosper in Japan. “However, they feel superior to other Asian women culturally and economically. Paid sex usually satisfies a man`s desire to control a woman.” (Source)
and there is little government intervention.
“There is a thriving and largely self-regulated adult entertainment and prostitution industry that generates huge revenue (and is connected to organised crime ). The authorities largely tolerate these activities, which allows a significant space within which traffickers can operate… The concept of ‘victimhood’ and coercion is not fully accepted in Japan amongst public authorities: women working in the adult entertainment industry are generally regarded as voluntary participants, whatever their circumstances. The definition of trafficking is narrow in many official circles and investigation into, and combating of, trafficking is not as rigorous as it could be. Traffickers take full advantage of this.” (Source)
so good job, Vice, on producing another documentary that is essentially just “poverty porn that doesn’t really address the underlying causes behind it.“ (-kylethecinephile)
all this really does is confirm my beliefs that “asian solidarity” is only extended towards Asians from more “developed countries”(namely, Japan, Korea, and China) and that the discrimination I will continue to experience as a Filipinx-American will not just be at the hands of White people, but other Asians.
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
jacobvanloon
2087
dailybridgerton
titsay
