Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "The Dark Truth of Youth Sports" video.

  1. Ok... first and foremost, before people start criticizing Japan and japanese culture, you should know that very likely, your own country is similar or even worse when it comes to children abuse and harassment in schools and youth sports. Look it up before criticizing, you'll probably be surprised. In countries like the US, some statistics say that 1 in every 10 students say they have been bullied, abused or harassed. Reports of teacher related violence and abuse are on the hundreds of thousands yearly, and on the rise for the entire past decade. This is a problem of the majority of developed countries, not something exclusive to Japan. Because I hate how much international press coverage loves to fetishize japanese culture problems, while avoiding putting a mirror to see how badly things are in their own country. It's often a footnote, if even that. The focus is on bad bad Japan that has all these problems that are so foreign to our culture - bullshit. You don't just go selectively fishing for cases that happened in the past decade around the entire country to make it seem as if it was something that happens everyday. That's incredibly biased. Imagine if you went full 7 years collecting exemplary cases of child abuse in US schools throughout the entire country. It'd be an endless list of cases. Pages and pages and pages long. Did you need to pick another case from back in 2013 to correlate with this one? Did you look up for governmental measures taken against bullying and harassment problems which helped lower suicide rates and school bullying over the past decade? Did you look at statistics to tell your story or the objective was to vilify or use japanese culture as a pinata in the first place? Other topics often covered like suicide and overwork also often falls in the same category. IT'S RAMPANT in Japan. And then you look at actual statistics, you quickly see how it plummeted in recent years while the suicide rates in countries like US, UK, and some other European countries have skyrocketed. Or worse, the so called weird Japan... weird fetishes, subcultures, and whatnot. People don't even realize that their own country likely has even weirder or problematic fetishes and subcultures, often hidden, active tabboo status to this day... it's just more comfortable to close your eyes to your surroundings and criticize countries and cultures that are on the other side of the globe, particularly Japan, the linchpin of the west. Now, understand - it's not that this isn't a problem in Japan, but it's often covered as if it's something exclusive to japanese culture when it really really isn't. And foreigners love to feel entitled to criticize a single aspect of a culture they don't understand, they don't participate in, and they only get a one sided analysis of. That's not what people should be doing, and that's not a proper way of covering a different culture and country. The only reason why this is so shocking is because it contrasts a lot with a country that has little crime, and violence is kind of an exception. Yes, japanese schools historically have a problem with bullying and abuse, but statistically, other countries have it way worse. In some cases, unimaginably worse. And I'm not talking about masked governmental statistics, I'm talking about independent ones. It's just that in general, people don't think the situation is as bad in their own countries, because they don't get this specific type of treatment or tactic while treating uncomfortable topics that the international press uses to picture foreign cultures. So think a bit about it before making labels and criticizing other countries that you don't really know a whole lot about. Ok, with that said, this comes from cultural elements, from vertical structures, from permissiveness or conformity, seniority chain, family structure, the importance education and teachers are given in japanese society, and other factors. Which do understand, are also factors that have influence in other countries. But often, the problems in other countries are different, but the results are the same or even worse. Everything from racism, sexism, abuse of authority, religious influence, paternalistic culture, broken family homes, cultural permissiveness, mainstream pop culture, among several other things can and often result in cases of children abuse in schools, suicides, etc. It's good to be critical of particular cases that happened and the vices that are being kept instead of solving and making sure they never happen again, but this is different from slamming an entire other country, feeling superior, and criticizing the entire culture when your own culture allows for worse to happen. Cases like these needs to stop happening. Abusive teachers have to be arrested, parents have to monitor their kids better, and there must be a way for a culture of better monitoring and reporting to arise there. And like I already said, it's not that nothing was done so far. Anti-harassment and anti-bullying laws have been introduced in Japan (look it up), there have been actions to scrutinize schools and teachers better, and changes were made - it just wasn't enough for this unfortunate case. And perhaps, the system will never be perfect. But more can certainly be done. It's up to japanese people though, I won't pretend I know enough to judge.
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