Animal welfare in Japan.

[Staticnz]

Criticising a culture is not racism.

There is a huge difference between me saying, in Japan people generally treat animals badly...or yes, I think it is true, animals are treated badly in Africa. Yes, I'm sure that's true...at least by the people. There are ALL KINDS of messed up things in Africa, many of them stemming from poverty...child abuse, unsafe sex, severe problems with education, religious violence.

But you're saying if I said, generally people have little regard for the lives of animals in Africa, that has ANYTHING to do with something intrinsic to the African 'race'? That's YOUR leap of logic, not mine.

If I said, Africans treat animals badly, because that's the way the people are...THAT would be racist. If I said the overall culture puts little emphasis on animal rights and the poverty and education system leads to abusive behavior...that's a FACT, based on simply opening your eyes and looking at reality. I want you to go tell all the child slaves in Africa that they don't have a problem, because criticizing that would be racist. That would be saying, oh you are child slaves because you are African. And because your masters are African, that's why they do it. NOTHING of the sort is true. It's so unfair for you to assume I think that way.

It reminds me of people who criticized the Iraq War in the United States. The right wing always said, if you criticize the war, you are against the troops, against AMERICA. If you are against George Bush, you hate FREEDOM. It's all talking points that stifle dialogue. And the thing to me, is there is genuine real racism out there and it isn't hard to find. Instead you seem very trigger happy in regards to that term, but maybe you just feel a defensiveness when people criticize Japanese culture.

I have no problem saying Africa is totally screwed up and many of the people that live there DO have backwards and ignorant behavior...but it is BECAUSE OF SOCIETY, and WORLD POLITICS. The race of the people has NOTHING to do with it, except perhaps in the racist attitudes they themselves have had to endure from imperialistic races like our own!!

I never implied the way Japanese people treat animals stems from anything intrinsically 'Japanese', which would be the definition of racism. It's you that needs to figure out what racism actually is. By your standard no culture can ever be criticized for any reason especially if it isn't your own one, because that means you are automatically either ignorant or racist, no matter what is staring you in the face.

Another example, if I said crime rates for African Americans is higher...well...that's a FACT. If I divorce it from the reality of poverty, social ills and historical precedents, it becomes racist. It has nothing to do with African Americans BEING African Americans...it is a SOCIAL and CULTURAL climate. America is riddled with social problems and malignant, unhelpful attitudes, fostered by mainstream culture. You just claim racism in a knee jerk, reactionary manner.

[word]

What Staticnz actually said:

I think there are still all kinds of prevailing mainstream attitudes in Japan, and other countries, indeed around the world (it isn't like China is good on animal rights, in fact they could be one of the worst in the world) , that are extremely subtle in how they play out from day to day, thus are hard to question, and are often tied to culture in a way that insulates them from criticism, whereas they stem more from a long term lack of care or activity in a certain area, therefore the creation of various assumptions that lead to not really caring much for the welfare of animals.

What William MacDonald implied she said:

"All Japanese are cruel to animals and Japanese society is backwards."

This is what William MacDonald likes to do. It is the textbook definition of the straw man fallacy.

People on this thread made HUGE, SWEEPING statements about all Japanese.

Yeah, kinda like you did when you made it clear that Japanese law enforcement officials were "likely" to be corrupt.

Clearly you don't know what racism means,

"The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races"

If Staticnz said anything about "all members of [the Japanese] race (what is "the Japanese race," anyway; is it "distinct" in any way from "the Chinese race" or "the Korean race" or "the Vietnamese race" in any truly scientifically quantifiable manner? It seems to me that Staticnz is talking more about mainstream (which inherently implies the existence of opposing "streams") Japanese culture, which is an important distinction), then I would be forced to agree with you. But s/he didn't, so I don't.

Just to put this in context, if you said that all Africans were cruel to animals and the society was backwards you'd be accussed of racism so fast your head would spin. But it's okay to say that about Japanese people? That's b/s.

No, it's not okay to say that about Japanese people, or any other people. S/he didn't say anything of the sort, though, so it seems fairly silly to go waving your lance at that particular straw man.

[Staticnz]

Although some comments have been too over-generalised in this topic, it is not even debatable that Japan has an animal welfare problem, which has manifested itself to posters on this board in a variety of situations across Japan. If that wasn't enough, a quick search on google provides a range of well-sourced articles to back this up.

It may not be wise to make rash generalisations, but the experiences that posters here have alluded to are representative of a well-documented issue.

I think people make over generalized statements in any discussion. I do so, but so do others. I don't think we need to intimately research everything we are going to say if we are having a somewhat casual discussion based on personal experience.

I merely wish people would discuss such generalizations or statements on their merits, and come up with some decent reasons as to their wrongness. Instead of just getting offended and heated about it.

I think something is not automatically wrong if it is over generalized. It is flawed, perhaps NOT representative, but may still contain a whole lot of truth that isn't discounted just by getting pissed off. You have to come up with some counter information to it. I think if somebody is intelligent it should be intrinsic to their argument that exceptions are many. In my general statement about animal welfare I stand by the substance of a general attitude in society...but of course, I acknowledge the many far reaching, NUMEROUS exceptions. To not do so would be unreasonable.

[Lianwen]

I was just curious as to what OP has done after reading our suggestions.

Isn`t it about the animal`s welfare in the end? Not who`s right or wrong or racist or a monkey`s uncle?

[Staticnz]

Yeah, y'know, ironically enough...I think a lot of the problems in Africa stem from other races being RACIST AGAINST THEM. I certainly think so many cultures and races around the world treat African people as inferior and it has compounded the exploitation of their resources, the corrupting of the governments, the terrible record on education and health...so many of their problems are due to racist exploitation by other cultures. Japan has a different history, a different set of problems, a different context. Society and culture is not a black and white, simplistic issue.

[Staticnz]

I was just curious as to what OP has done after reading our suggestions.

Isn`t it about the animal`s welfare in the end? Not who`s right or wrong or racist or a monkey`s uncle?

Well, my plan is to write a letter to the occupants of the house just saying I was concerned about their dog. So, anonymously. Maybe it will make them feel like they should treat him better.

I'm going to get my Japanese teacher to help me with the Japanese.

[Liz Okinawa PA]

Hi Staticnz.

I feel you, first of all. Good luck writing the letter; social pressure might do it, it's worth a shot.

In the meantime, I comfort my animal-loving self by donating to the pet shelters here. Do you know about them/have their links? JAWS is helping the animals hurt in last year's earthquake, and there's a good rescue group in Kansai, the name of which escapes me right now. They set up in front of Takarazuka station (in Hyogo) a lot of weekdays with dogs and a donation bucket.

[word]

Also, what is your aversion to paying? Perhaps you think it's more "moral" to preserve your "purity" and watch the puppies die than to compromise a little and save the puppies?

Nope, it's because I want to discourage such behavior in the future. Offering a financial incentive to a person drowning puppies will only encourage them to do so again.

"They're entirely within their rights to tell you to get the hell off their property and then take their anger out on the animal" is what you wrote. According to most accepted interpretations of English grammar, that means "they're entirely within their rights to tell you to get the hell off their property AND they're entirely within their rights to to then take their anger out on the animal." If that's not what you meant, then you really need to correct your sentence, sir.

Well, this is embarassing... for you. Do you not understand the function of the word, "then" when posing a hypothetical situation? It denotes a consequence. What's so amusing is that you just used it in the final sentence of your post. "And then", serves a similar function, and removes the need for me to use a comma (which in U.S. grammar seems to be optional).

LOL.

Time for a basic English lesson, it seems.

Let's look at the second part of that sentence. "To take out their anger on the animal." Is that a complete sentence? Of course not. It's an infinitive, as is "To tell you to get the hell off their property." You still need a subject and a verb to make a complete sentence. Because you are a fluent English speaker, you provided the necessary components, the subject, "They," and the verb, "are." "They are..." what? "They are within their rights." (Here, "within their rights" functions as a prepositional phrase). They are within their rights to ...what? You provided us with two infinitives, "to tell you to get the hell off their property" and "to take their anger out on the animal." These infinitives share the word "to" in this case, but this is, of course, a completely acceptable way to use infinitives; for example, "I like to run and swim" generally means the same thing as "I like to run and to swim," it's just an easier way of saying it.

So, what you typed clearly indicated that you believed that a person was "within their rights" to "take out their anger on the animal," which, of course, was quite wrong. The fact that the situation was hypothetical doesn't matter. The fact that you were "denoting a consequence" is meaningless; I don't really know why you're bringing that up. Of course you were indicating a potential consequence; that wasn't the issue I had with what you said, it was that you were clearly, obviously claiming a person had a legal right to "take out their anger on the animal," and according to Japanese law, he or she does not.

Let's take a simplified version of the sentence:

"He is happy to sing and dance." Clearly, this sentence indicates that he is happy to sing and he is happy to dance. Happy is an adjective, and the infinitives "to sing" and "to dance" function as qualifiers for "happy." He is not happy to stub his toe, so the infinitives offer clarity to the sentence. Let's knock it up a notch: "He is within his rights to sing and dance." We have replaced the adjective with a prepositional phrase which functions as an adjective. The infinitives "to sing" and "to dance" still function as qualifiers for "within his rights." He is not within his rights to stab a baby, so the infinitives offer clarity to the sentences. You claimed that a neighbor was within his rights to tell you to leave and to take out his anger on an animal.

If you had provided a second subject and verb for the second infinitive, you could've avoided claiming that a person was "within their rights to abuse an animal." For example, you could've said "They're well within their rights to tell you to get the hell off their property, and then they could possibly take their anger out on the animal." However, since you didn't offer a second subject and verb, the you forced the infinitives to share the first subject and verb. The sentence could be interpreted in no other manner other than "They are within their rights to take their anger out on the animal," a statement which is clearly untrue.

I strongly suspect you didn't mean to say this. No biggie; I make mistakes, too. We all do. I'm really confused as to why you're refusing to acknowledge and correct this mistake. I seriously hope it's not because you didn't actually understand the way you used those two infinitives.

Also, I've explained the meaning of this sentence several times and clarified the meaning for you, since you clearly found the grammar a little difficult.

As you can see above, I understood the grammar quite well. I worry that you did not. I would think that one would ensure one had used English appropriately BEFORE one mistakenly belittled another person for failure to use it properly.

Once again you reveal your complete ignorance of Japan. In Japan charges are bought by the alleged victim, and the police are then required to investigate under the legal assumption of "guilty until proven innocent" - in other words, if they can't find sufficient evidence to dismiss the charges then they have to have it over to prosecutor to decide whether to press charges.

Of course, which is why one should be very careful not to break the law. I'm a bit curious as to how far you would carry this, though. If you saw someone setting the school on fire, would you call the police? If you did, you run the risk of the perpetrator claiming that YOU started the fire, not he. According to your logic, it is "far more likely" that you will be arrested. Are you, then, encouraging people not to report crimes they witness?

As such the Japanese law enforcement officials are not corrupt, they're just following procedure. The corrupt ones are animal abusers who abuse the legal system to file malicious charges.

Ah, so who gets to decide what qualifies as "malicious charges"? You?

Do you even know the meaning of the word, "assumption"? It means, "A thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof". I have plenty of evidence of your behaviour on these forums, and none of your behaviour in your community.

And that is why you should not be assuming things about my behavior in my community, because you have no proof that I am "certain" to act in a certain way within it.

Dealing with this issue in Japan requires a lot of finesse, finesse that you clearly lack.

Again with the assumptions. Le sigh.


Edited for clarity!

[Staticnz]

I just want William to name one country from anywhere in the entire world where there isn't at least one cultural or social idea that is stupid and has sway over much of the population.

Because I a. don't think such a country exists, and b. think that if he named any country that has a problem I could say that's because he's racist against the people there.

[teabot]

Isn`t it about the animal`s welfare in the end? Not who`s right or wrong or racist or a monkey`s uncle?

this thread has been pretty derailed. if it's not actually benefiting the discussion, and it's mainly between two participants, why isn't it taking place via PM?

[word]

... so you'd let the puppies die because you don't want them to kill puppies in the future. Except that the puppies dying wouldn't achieve this objective at all. It would in no way help you to help these puppies or future puppies. Worst case paying the guy will just make him approach you again next time, which will save more puppies (although put a dent in your wallet). Unfortunately you can't stop the breeder breeding puppies (it's his business and no law exists against it).

I don't believe you're thinking this through very well.

What are the person's motivations for drowning puppies? I can see two potential options: either they are a psychopath and enjoy drowning puppies, or they are seeking to dispose of financially detrimental property. If they are a psychopath who enjoys drowning puppies, then why would they take your money? You'd have to offer them enough to offset their sick enjoyment, and even then, there's nothing to prevent them from breeding more puppies to drown; if anything, you've just encouraged them to breed and drown more. If they are seeking to dispose of financially detrimental property, then you have suddenly proven to them that they can make money off of said property after all, and they will be further motivated to breed more puppies. If a person is a psychopath who enjoys drowning puppies, then there's probably not much you can do to motivate them to stop, other than calling society's attention to their actions. If they're seeking to dispose of financially detrimental property, why would you pay them to do so? It seems like it would make far more sense to call society's attention to their actions and help them understand that what they're doing is (1) horrible and (2) not financially beneficial. Assuming they can be motivated financially, this is a far better solution in the long run. It's the same reason why people shouldn't buy puppies from puppy mills in the first place (hence, the need for education about puppy mills that I advocated). Buying an animal from a person who put that animal in a bad situation is not "rescuing" the animal, it's placing even more animals in the same danger, because you've provided a financial incentive for the breeder to do so.

It seems like you're saying the best thing to do would be to allow someone to extort money from you by threatening to drown puppies. Is that actually what you're saying?

If I wrote, "Then police officer legally arrested the suspect and then proceeded to drag him into the car and beat the living daylights out of him", then the first clause relating to legality does not apply to the consequent action. The same principle and grammar apply to my statement.

No, it doesn't, because you added a verb before the infinitive in THAT example. See:

"The officer legally arrested the suspect. The officer proceeded to [beat] him (illegally, presumably)." Two different verbs.

See, because you added the verb "proceeded", the same grammar principle does not apply. In that example, you didn't actually use two infinitives, but even if you had (say, "The officer proceeded to legally arrest the suspect and then proceeded to [beat] him"), it the grammar principle still does not apply because while the two infinitives share a subject, they don't share the same verb nor do they modify the same word or phrase. In your first statement, they qualified the same prepositional phrase, "within his rights."

I'm starting to think you actually don't get this. Tell you what; I'll make a diagram to help you understand. May take me a minute, but I think you deserve it.

Of course, which is why one should be very careful not to break the law. I'm a bit curious as to how far you would carry this, though. If you saw someone setting the school on fire, would you call the police? If you did, you run the risk of the perpetrator claiming that YOU started the fire, not he. According to your logic, it is "far more likely" that you will be arrested. Are you, then, encouraging people not to report crimes they witness?

I'd be sure to get evidence that the other person was doing it, a quick snapshot with my cellphone camera would ensure that I had proof of the other person's guilt and that I wasn't involved. Perhaps I may seem a little over-cautious, but I'll relate a quick story.... When you irritate people who know the legal system here a LOT better than you (e.g. Japanese natives vs a foreigner) then the likelihood of you getting into trouble, regardless of your intentions, gets much higher. You can be careful, have someone filming the whole thing, etc... and still end up breaking a law you didn't know existed... so my advice is to be cautious and try not to irritate people.

If you have a problem with the advice... well, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I don't look forward to reading about your arrest and deportation since you clearly won't listen to good advice. I think it would be very bad for the JET programme and ultimately lose a lot of your fellow JETs their jobs.

Ah, I see, so you are encouraging people not to report crimes they witness, barring a very specific and unlikely set of circumstances. That's interesting advice to see posted here on Official.

[word]

this thread has been pretty derailed. if it's not actually benefiting the discussion, and it's mainly between two participants, why isn't it taking place via PM?

I dunno, there have been some very interesting points made in this discussion. William has encouraged readers not to report crimes and spread some unfortunate misinformation; I think it's pretty important to discuss these things, don't you?

[dhsensei]

If I wrote, "The police officer legally arrested the suspect and then proceeded to drag him into the car and beat the living daylights out of him", then the first clause relating to legality does not apply to the consequent action. The same principle and grammar apply to my statement.

Some strange things going on. This statement does seem to come across as two separate things, but the first "They're entirely within their rights to tell you to get the hell off their property and then take their anger out on the animal," seems, in my mind, to be connected. Is it the use of past tense? Lack of present continuous?

"The police can legally arrest you and then proceed to drag you into the car and beat you."
That gives me the whole 'joint statement' thing again...

EDIT: Saw Word's explanation. So it's just the verbs that effect it?

I'd be sure to get evidence that the other person was doing it, a quick snapshot with my cellphone camera would ensure that I had proof of the other person's guilt and that I wasn't involved.

Nowadays, people might want to be careful with this, privacy rights and all that.
With a good lawyer that person could probably sue you, or run you through enough legal hoops that you give in and pay a settlement. Especially if the police case against them fails.

[word]

Here's that diagram I promised, William MacDonald. I do hope this helps clear things up.



Now do you see what you said?

Edit: Please don't be thrown by the added "[to]" in your sentence; I added it for clarity only. Its absence doesn't change the sentence, nor does it make the infinitive anything else.

Edit edit: To teabot and the others who may question the validity and purpose of this thread... this discussion spawned a conversation and lesson about infinitives with my JTE and another English-interested teacher that lasted for more than an hour and was actually a lot of fun! You never know how these sorts of things are gonna play out!

[word]

I don't believe you're thinking this through very well.

You posed the situation as a dog breeder trying to dispose of unwanted property. Now you're trying to change the scenario. This is pretty much a declaration that I'm right since you can't prove your point within the original scenario.

Actually, no, I'm just trying to figure out what sort of motivations you're assuming a person might have for drowning puppies. I can only think of two, and both are incompatible with your "solution" of paying for the puppies (in the long term). It's quite possible that I've failed to correctly assess whatever motivations you've assumed of the puppy-drowner. Please enlighten me.

Simple acid test, I remove the verb. The officer legally arrested the suspect and then beat him.

... and your point disappears. You can clearly see that the two actions are related, but not both covered by the initial legality clause.

You didn't remove the verb. You removed the infinitive.

Let's leave the infinitive in and see what happens:

"The officer legally arrested the suspect and then to beat him."

See, what you were doing to make it "work" was removing the verb "proceeded" and changing the infinitive "to beat" into the verb. In your revised sentence, you have simply removed ALL the infinitives (from two in your initial statement to one in your example statement to none in your revised example statement--LOL!) in order to make this work. In doing so, you completely change what you were originally trying to say.

I'll tell you what, let's use a combination of your original statement and your new statement to try to help you understand your error:

"The officer was within his legal rights to arrest the suspect and then severely beat him."

See how that doesn't work? Please check my diagram if you're having trouble seeing it. LOL I dunno, at this point, you've argued the point so long, I guess even if you do understand your error, you may be too proud to admit it. Even other folks are starting to weigh in against you on this; I'm starting to think it's worth its own thread. It's an excellent exercise in proper English; I've thoroughly enjoyed this!

Once again my solution is well thought-out and far better than your non-existant solution.

All right... so what would you do if you didn't have your cellphone? Or if it was dark and your cellphone picture of the perp turned out so blurry and indistinct that it was completely useless in terms of perp identification? Would you report the crime?