Catalysts and Consequences (Part 3)
What all this means is that the introduction of wet rice agriculture took a region that was relatively stable for nearly 10,000 years and in the span of 1,000 years rapidly stratified and centralized it. The conditions in Japan were not adverse to the presence of agriculture, rather they were so hospitable throughout the country that it took a very particular and rich alternative to disrupt the existing subsistence methods in place. That alternative, by its very nature, was an advanced and intensive form of agriculture that demanded a cohesive, community-driven approach for its to succeed. As Duus remarks, “Geography and technology conspired to produce a stronger sense of communal interdependence in Japan” (1993; 18). The research here has shown that despite the productivity and superior output of rice cultivation, it was not capable of displacing the indigenous populations in the north nor was it limitless in what it produced – and both are signs that indicate environment still determined the success of farming in Japan. Furthermore, the nature of this complex and resource intensive form of farming brought forth an increasing demand for rice by a growing population as well as a demand for a strong, centralized authority to direct it.
As Diamond’s thesis argues – the fates of human societies are guided by the conditions they encounter and create through their interactions with their environments. Given what my research has shown, I believe Diamond is correct in his assertions that environment and circumstance do indeed shape the developments human societies undergo – and the interactions between societies as well. Not only was wet rice agriculture revolutionary in Japan, but rice itself goes on to become the foundation of the early Yamato state’s economy (Ohnuki-Tierney 1995; 228) and later was a key resource of the Tokugawa Shogunate a thousand years after that (Tsukahira 1996; 15). Duus says it was land and not money that was the primary source of wealth, but it was really the rice itself that became powerful in Japan (1993; 32).
For the predecessors of the modern Japanese, the Jomon era of Japan was a lengthy period of stability ruptured open with (to borrow a few words from Dr. Brown in Back to the Future) ‘the promise and the perils’ of intensive agriculture, and it was extraordinary in its repercussions.
Works Cited
Aikens, Melvin C. and Takayasu Higuchi.
1982 Prehistory of Japan. New York: Academic Press, Inc.
Bleed, Peter and Akira Matsui
2010 Why Didn’t Agriculture Develop in Japan? A Consideration of Jomon Ecological style, Niche Construction, and the Origins of Domestication. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17: 356-370.
Crawford, Gary W.
1992 The Transitions to Agriculture in Japan. Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory (Monographs in World Archeology No. 4). Madison, Wisconsin: Prehistory Press.
Diamond, Jared
2005 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (Revised Edition). New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Duus, Peter
1969, 1967, 1993 Feudalism in Japan, 3rd ed. New York: McGraw Hill, Inc.
Imamura, Keiji.
1996 Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on insular East Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko
1995 Event and Historical Metaphor: Rice and Identities in Japanese History. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 1. No. 2: 227-253
Shinoda, Minoru
1960 The Founding of the Kamakura Shogunate 1180-1185. New York: Colombia University Press.
Tsukahira, Toshio G.
1966 Feudal Control in Tokugawa Japan: The Sankin Kotai System. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press.
Zeanah, David.
2011 Classroom Lectures: Origins of Agriculture. California State University, Sacramento.
Catalysts and Consequences (Part 2)
According to Duus, wet “rice agriculture could feed a much denser population”… and it was much more reliable then the farming in Europe that relied upon rainfall to sustain crops (1993; 17). However, because only 13% of Japanese land area was suitable for farming (Imamura 1996; 5), the most productive farm land – “swamps or irrigable plains” was quickly developed and soon conflict arose over the food supply and land that could supply it. Diamond notes that there is a influx of skeletons suffering violent trauma/cause of death after agriculture flourishes in Japan (Diamond 2005; 442). Settlements expanded out onto the upper edges of river valleys, and into the surrounding hills, because “development of rice fields increased to such an extent that these areas were required for cultivation”. Furthermore, the shrinking land mass available for farming could be compound by the shortage of water to feed it. (Imamura 1996; 179-180). As noted in class lectures, overpopulation and warfare are two of the results of agriculture and the development of complex societies (Zeanah 2011). Previously, the Jomon period lifestyle supported a (relatively) impressive population of 250,000 estimated foragers and a society that changed comparatively little in “ a fragile, rapidly changing contemporary world” (Diamond 2005; 439-440). But when broad spectrum foraging shifts from people using a cycle of multiple resources throughout the year to a new resource/foodstuff – rice – and ultimately intensifies straight into not just agriculture but intensive agriculture, the cycle is perfectly illustrated. This intensification leads to population growth, which leads to a demand for further intensification (Zeanah 2011). Diamond refers to this cycle as autocatalysis (2005; 285). Perhaps more importantly, it also (eventually) demands a strong center of control and influence to direct it.
There is no literal, definitive break between the Jomon and the Yayoi cultures, because cultures intermingle as one shifts into decline or dominance. However, Imamura’s research sets 500 BCE as the emergence of the Yayoi identity in the archaeological record (16; 1996), and by 200 BCE we see increasing social stratification via burials – whether by the presence of grave goods made of bronze, or specially constructed burial mounds (funkyubo) in parts of Kyushu (14; 1996). Imamura suggests that perhaps the earliest sites were fortified with moats because conflict arose when immigrants from the mainland (likely Korean) settled in the country, although he notes that not all sites feature moat construction. Instead that there are concentrations of their presence in the archaeological record diachronicly implies surges or periods of heightened tension between different sites. (Imamura 1996; 180). In the History of the Wei Dynasty, Chinese records note that “the land of Wa” (China’s name for Japan) was divided into many small “countries” or entities ruled by local chieftains or warlords by 297 CE (Duus 1993, 14). With the influx of wet rice agriculture and immigrants came other changes and ideas as well. Duus states that “with continental contacts came not only technology but also ideas and institutions as well”, including Chinese writing (still evident in the Japanese kanji or complex word-phrase character symbols today), Confucianism, Buddhism, and “the Chinese conception of… centralized monarchy” (1993, 15).
Increasing political unification becomes evident when burial mounds (funkyubo as mentioned above) adopt a more elaborate, uniform style known as Kofun, and imply that whoever ordered their construction were “able to command the labor of hundreds of people over periods of months or years” (Aikens and Higuchi 1982; 334). Starting in the 3rd Century CE, the Kofun period would last until the start of the historical period around 600 CE (Imamura 1996, 16). Duus elaborates on the manpower required and the implications kofun tombs bring in the archaeological record, as they are first found in archaeological record upon the fertile Yamato region of central Honshu and then spread across the country:
The sudden emergence of these mounded tombs,
requiring the mobilization of considerable manpower,
technical skill, and material resources suggest that a
powerful warrior clan or group of clans had emerged
in the Yamato region and then spread their power to other
parts of the country (Duus 1993; 18).
Duus goes on to elaborate the power of the Yamato state was won first by sword and then through the blood ties and kinship with the existing tribal leaders, chieftains, and lords. Through the descendants of the first heads of the Yamato state, the government would gradually begin to exert more control over increasingly distant holdings, eventually appointing some farmers as suppliers for the state itself (Duus 1993; 19-20). In 645 CE, the Taika Reform absorbs all lands as property of the state in an effort to curtail individual clans’ powers and to ensure an equitable distribution of resources (Shinoda 1960; 16). Land was then allocated to individuals over the age of six, with censuses every 6 years to reallocate land as needed – the intent being to feed each “commoner household” (Duus 1993; 21-22). This was to ensure that farmers would in return provide some measure of labor, rice, and locally produced goods to be taken to the capital as a form of taxation and revenue for the government (Duus 1993; 24).
Catalysts and Consequences: Transitions to Agriculture in Japan (Part 1)
What determines the course of a given culture? What shapes how and why a people develop? If the meandering and innumerable paths of history have shown us anything, it is that the human race can adapt to almost any environment and circumstances they encounter throughout space and time. However, because each society faces different challenges, circumstances, and advantages inherent to their environment, they do not develop identically. Rightfully so, each society responds and adapts to the peculiarities and specificities of circumstance, as each unique situation demands and a different behavior and adaptation. Humans adopt and abandon cultural practices, technologies, even population centers as environment and resources shift. Sometimes, they seem to “ignore” or simply do not develop the technologies of a neighbor or contemporary because that facet of culture is not relevant or significant enough to warrant it. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, author Jared Diamond argues that environment and geography are key components that determine how and why societies develop the ways in which they do. Instead of some strand of DNA or mutant strain that makes one culture or society “superior” they are simply products of their respective environments. In Prehistoric Japan, the environment was so rich and stable in resources that its inhabitants developed a relatively complex society but had no need to adopt or develop agriculture – despite its presence in nearby Korea and China. It is not until wet rice agriculture comes to the region that a new era of development is triggered, shifting the country from ten millennia of stable foraging into a millennium of dramatic change.
In the revised edition of Guns Germs and Steel, Diamond addresses Japan, which he remarks is “the most important geographic lacuna of my book” (Diamond 2005; 426). He admits that the difficulties have been twofold – one is that at the time of the book’s initial publication (1997), information in key areas of Japanese research (language and genetics) were still developing. The other was that the Japanese themselves have done an ‘admirable’ job in obfuscating their own origins and any ties they may have to mainland Asia, and in particular with Korea. The feeling, simply put, is mutual – neither people wishes to admit any connection other then the possibility that they brought culture to their counterpart, whom is inferior and clearly better off for the enlightened conquest of their betters (Diamond 2005; 426-430). Diamond spends addresses several theories on the origins of and consequences of agriculture in Japan, some of which I will attempt to corroborate throughout the text.
The end of the Ice Ages in Japan is identified as the Jomon period, for its cord marked or ‘cord motif’ pottery (Aikens and Higuchi 1982, 95). According to Imamura, this time frame can roughly be defined as 10,000 BCE until about 200 BCE when the Jomon are succeeded by the Yayoi (16; 1996). Since the Jomon period the Japanese Archipelago has been isolated physically from the Asian mainland by sea and ocean, but it was still close enough to Korea (and by proxy China) for contact to occur between populations, and its position in the North Pacific meant there were abundant marine resources for the indigenous Jomon population (Bleed and Matsui 2010; 359-360). Furthermore, many Jomon sites were situated in such a way that various foodstuffs and resources were constantly becoming available throughout the year, even as others shifted off-season (Bleed and Matsui 2010; 359). Diamond remarks that it is “the wettest temperate country in the world”, with up 160 inches of rainfall per year, and that “despite thousands of years of dense human occupation, everyone’s first impression of Japan is of its greenness”, which still remains over 70% forested today (Diamond 2005; 430-431). Also of note is that only 13% of Japan’s landmass is actually suitable farmland, because the majority of it is comprised of steep mountain ranges (Imamura 1996; 5). The Pacific and the waterways of Japan provided a great deal of resources for the Jomon culture, which helped to compensate for the lack of red meat found in the Jomon diet (Bleed and Matsui 2010; 359-360). The livestock present was mostly used for draft work, and while deer and boar were hunted in regions of the country, the primary protein sources was from fish (Imamura 1996; 8). The country’s plentiful cycle of resources, along with the richness found in the Pacific Ocean, meant that the Jomon had no reason to adopt to or inadvertently develop agriculture to manipulate their food supply. The environment of Japan was inherently suitable to stable hunting and gathering lifestyle.
According to Bleed and Matsui, plants and animals suitable for human exploitation and management must also be rich enough to outperform alternative resources (2010; 367). Applied to agriculture, this suggests that the agriculture available previous to wet rice farming did not meet this condition (as Diamond explains below). As we have discussed in class, the Diet Breadth Model examines and ranks foods/resources a given forager should consume based upon the searching and processing time each different choice requires (Zeanah, 2011). For Jomon Japan, this would mean that existing resources were superior in returns to those needing agriculture or required less work then the use of agriculture would require. As Diamond puts it, “Early Korean agriculture could not compete with Jomon hunting and gathering”, because those techniques and practices available in nearby Korea (across the Tsushima Straight) were less fruitful then the preexisting subsistence strategies in place (2005; 440). Therefore, the Jomon maintained what was essentially a foraging society until the appearance of Wet Rice Agriculture in 400 BCE (Crawford 1992, 121).
While Imamura discusses several proposed routes and methods of diffusion from China to the Japanese archipelago, one via sea and islands south of Japan and two essentially via Korea, Diamond only addresses the issue of diffusion via Korea and the Tsushima Straight (Imamura 1996; 129-130). Imamura contends that one of the more direct routes would (via islands or jumping from China to the tip of the Korean peninsula and on to Kyushu) would make more sense given rice’s weakness for poor growth in colder climate. But the delay in the adaptation of rice in Japan does give some weight to the idea that it took time for it to arrive (Imamura 1996; 132-133). Considering that wet rice agriculture spreads significantly farther north when it reaches Japan, it is certainly plausible it did in fact spend time diffusing north from China and into Korea, and then (intentionally or not) become more resistant to the cold as a result. Diamond comes to a similar conclusion.
One of the key principals reiterated throughout the course was that agriculture spurs change (technologically, culturally, and in population size), but that it also inherently demands more work then foraging. When agriculture took root in Japan, it was because several things had changed – the varieties of rice introduced were now more successful in colder climates, and irrigation/paddy farming methods came with it (Diamond 2005; 444). Far more then simply putting seeds into the ground, wet rice farming required “canals, dams, banks, paddies” (Diamond 2005, 441). Furthermore, wet rice agriculture suppresses weed growth and constantly supplies the plant with water (Imamura 1996; 214). This implies, no, requires, a certain level of organization. Diamond details several theories of how agriculture possible came to be in Japan: one claims all that happened was a transmission of knowledge and the improved rice strains, another argues for a massive immigrant population from the mainland via Korea, and the third attempts to blend the two together and suggest that this new Yayoi culture simply outgrew and outperformed the original Jomon (Diamond 2005; 444-445). According to class lectures, foragers may respond to the presence of agriculture by adopting it themselves, by being absorbed into other populations (marriage, etc), marginalized into fringe regions, or somehow develop a symbiotic relationship with the farming communities around them (Zeanah 2011). Given the course of research that Diamond conducts, it seems likely the Jomon were indeed displaced and or absorbed into the greater Yayoi population.
Diamond’s examination of morphological data between Korean, Japanese, modern Ainu, the Jomon, and Yayoi skeletons seems to suggest that the strongest resemblances come between the skeletal features of modern Japanese, Yayoi and Korean remains (Diamond 2005; 445-446). However, it would also seem reasonable, based upon the Diet Breadth Model and the hierarchy of foods that there would be some adoption of rice agriculture by indigenous populations when rice proves more potent then the existing resources (Zeanah 2011). Furthermore, it is also clear that Jomon societies did persist despite the advent of wet rice farming in the country. As Diamond’s book argues, geography shapes the development of any society, and in the northern portions of the Japanese archipelago, on the island of Honshu’s Tohoku region, we see a definitive “line” in the archaeological record where wet rice agriculture is not consistently present (Imamura 1996, 138). After expanding across the country, paddy style wet rice farming only extended as far north as it was productive enough to displace subsistence methods as the primary means of food acquisition. Just like the lack of adoption of earlier forms of agriculture throughout the country, the Jomon of the north either did not assimilate into Yayoi style farming culture or were not displaced by it because it was not as effective as it was in the south. Despite adaptations to the cold and the potential of intensive wet rice farming techniques, rice farming and rice crops were not universally superior to the indigenous subsistence lifestyle.
Bring a Towel
Even on my last day in Japan, the August heat still got to me.
“… Oh, and you’re going to want to bring a towel.”
My brain stopped as it processed this last bit of advice from my adviser. I shifted in my seat as the ice in my drink shifted, slowly melting in the warmth of an early summer day in California. We were in Davis, where my adviser had graciously agreed to meet me after I had ecstatically emailed her a few short days ago telling her I’d been accepted into the 2012 PEACE Program at Hiroshima City College in Japan. We were chatting about my host family, some basic survival skills for being a greenhorn gaijin (foreigner) in Japan, and I’d drifted off for a second.
“What was that?”, I asked her. She repeated the statement.
“You’re going to want to bring a towel. Most public bathrooms in Japan don’t have paper towels, and the summer months can be pretty humid where you’re going.”
The gravity of her statement was lost on me.
“Oh, okay,” I replied absent mindedly, deciding to throw some handkerchiefs in my bag and call that that a week before leaving. I’m surprised I remembered – most of July ended up being a blur as I waited for the end of the month to near. The flight there was a blur, although I was lucky that I left at 6 a.m. from the west coast on a Saturday, with one layover in Hawai’i, my arrival at 6 p.m. masked the loss of a day rather well – all in all, it was 13 hours in the air, with another 3-5 probably trapped in Sacramento, Hawai’i, and Osaka. It wasn’t until I walked outside into the balmy dusk of my first day in Japan that it hit me. Literally. I didn’t even hear the sound of the cicaidas that first night, thanks to the humidity.
I’m told that if you’ve ever been to The South in America, Japanese summers somewhat familiar – very, very, humid. I can’t even tell you what temperature it was, only that I immediately regretted dressing in “nice” clothes for my flight. It was less than a ten minute walk from Kansai International across the breezeway to the Nikko Kansai Hotel, but by the time I’d gotten to the counter and signed in, I was a human puddle. I spoke no Japanese, and winced as I dribbled on the carbon copy papers of my sign in receipts. Sweat was rolling off my eyebrows, my nose, my arms, and it was air conditioned in the lobby.
I meekly took my paperwork, bobbed my head, and dragged my soggy self for the nearest bank of elevators, dress shirt rolled up and laden with a duffel, backpack, and a hard bottomed luggage crate. I peeled off my clothes as I crawled into the shower and surrendered myself to its merciful downpour of clean water. This time, my advisers words were heard – clearly.
If you’re going to Japan in the summer, bring a towel.
The Work of John Ostermiller 
Resident Racism: Colonialism and Ham Fisted Advocacy in Resident Evil 5
Recently, National Public Radio (1) referenced work by Polygon (2) on the history of Street Fighter II and its alleged flagrant racism. The article touches on the company’s use of ethnic, cultural, and national stereotypical (some may argue iconic) imagery as the basis of its world spanning roster of fighters: the burly Russian wrestler who fights bears (Zangief), to the Sumo Wrestler E. Honda, to camo clad American Soldier Guile, to the not-so-subtle nods to Mike Tyson (M. Bison in Japan; renamed Balrog in the U.S.) and Bruce Lee (Fei Long). NPR has fostered a discussion on its website regarding the merits of the games biases and stereotypes, and the commentary reminded me of another game by published Capcom that sparked some controversy a few years back: Resident Evil 5.
The Resident Evil series is popularly known for its movies starring Milla Jovovich, which have little in common with much of the game series aside from early nods to setting (Raccoon City), enemies (zombies, Albert Wesker, Nemesis), and some characters (Jill Valentine), etc. But much of it are merely nods to the lore of the video games or even just borrowed names – the movies are beginning to match the number of games in the series, but they are wildly divergent in scope and tone. For myself, I was never much into the Resident Evil games because I detested the camera and tank like controls that made moving through the world and seeing what you were fighting a frustrating experience. Much of that changed with the advent of Resident Evil 4 – suddenly you weren’t fighting mindless zombies, but inhabitants of a sleepy Spanish hamlet that fought intelligently, communicating with one another and swarming you for multiple angles – zombies typically don’t put up knocked down ladders or leap across rooftops to cut off your escape. For a series that was wearing thin on the premise of George Romero’s shambling undead, it was a unique change of pace that moved the game out of plodding, nail biting “survival horror” and more into the realm of a survival-action shooter.
But these weren’t the only changes for the series – yes, Resident Evil 4 would take players to Europe and introduce new elements to the series in terms of a new, mind controlling parasite, but it’s much anticipated sequel pushed the franchise in new directions: Africa.
In the broadest terms, the protagonists of RE 5 are sent to Africa as part of a new taskforce responding to changes in the game world in the wake of the Umbrella Corporation (the villainous entity behind much of the world’s zombie troubles) and the events of RE 4 which saw another teammate rescuing the president’s daughter from kidnappers and the aforementioned parasites in Spain. The BSAA (Biosecurity Assessment Alliance) sends your team to Kijuju, Africa to track down stolen and/or missing technology that could be used to create a biological agent for sale on the black market. In development since at least 2005 and released in 2009, RE 5’s narrative of stolen weapons grade material in peril draws certain allusions to the War on Terror and the Collapse of the Soviet Union – missing weapons grade nuclear material, biological agents and “Weapons of Mass Destruction” were of grave concern to the world at large. But it’s hard to focus on the plot of a series notorious for its incomprehensibility when you are sent to a fictional country named, of all things, Kijuju.
Credit goes to Capcom for not simply placing the setting in Africa (not-a-country), but it goes out the window when they choose to name their fictional local Kijuju. Immediately, it evokes imagery of witch doctors and “bad ju-ju” – racial and cultural stereotyping that seems out of place with the seriousness that Capcom purports. Coupled with the use of the phrase “majini” – said to be Swahili for ‘bad spirit’ similar to the Japanese word majin – for the setting’s parasite infested inhabitants, the premise of the game bodes ill for the commentary it attempts to make on colonialism and exploitation of native groups.
Early press for the game was less than ideal (3): concerns were voiced of a white man shooting out a village full of African “others” – they are dangerous, inhuman. Imagery of cleaver and sickle wielding villagers, slavering and wild eyed, is prominent in early footage (4).
If that wasn’t enough, consider an entire sequence set in a rural village – arguably, the space contains diary journals written before the villagers were infected with the mysterious ‘plagas’ parasite: the premise is that an outside organization came to the village, offering vaccination and other medical treatment – but that instead of inoculating the villagers from an unnamed illness, the journals scattered throughout the village tell a different story. Slowly, the elders of the village became easily irritable, then paranoid, until finally dressing and adopting traditional garments and ceremonial regalia as fear grew and eventually chaos reigned. While early portions of the game are reminiscent of the squalor of Somalia and Mogadishu (see: Black Hawk Down), these rural areas are simply killing grounds for the white protagonist where dark skinned “zombies” wait in grass skirts and wooden masks, fodder for the player to mow down before progressing further into the game (5). These aren’t people in a village with actual lives, but monsters to be defeated.
It’s hard to say if the producers of Resident Evil 5 were tacitly aware of the racially charged overtones of the game in the same way that Westerners (and particularly Americans) would be, given that they have struggled with such discrimination and bigotry in different ways than Japan has. Japanese culture itself has its own struggles with racial identity (7) – its relationship to the West and mainland Asia could fill volumes on its own – but in the context of this article we will focus on media portrayals of foreigners, particularly those seen as racial minorities.
Many protagonists in anime are nominally Asian (and often Caucasian), but the ranks of secondary characters, villains, and minor background parts are filled with stereotypical minorities – often with Afros, exaggerated facial features, or other trappings of the blaxiploitation era. But knowing how culture, particularly American Popular Culture, has been and often still is commoditized in Japan and elsewhere for its exotic novelty and freshness, it becomes hard to say that Resident Evil 5 is knowingly and willfully bigoted towards Africa and Africans. It’s one thing to attack American media for portraying Africa as a “Dark Continent” full of dangerous natives and terrors in the jungle, but it’s another to place that same level of awareness on a culture that has been exposed to second and third hand experiences of another cultures, frequently divorced of the implications and context of the environment it was created in. If anything, I would draw the conclusion that Japan has instead shown us a dark reflection of our own cultures: one that struggles with a legacy of racism and imperialism to this day. This isn’t an absolution of a Japanese video game made, at times, in poor taste, but it is a call to stop demonizing artists out of hand when they casually play with elements they’re not as familiar with as we are.
— Sources —
(1) The Original NPR Story
www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/03/16/290119728/street-fighter-ii-most-racist-nostalgic-video-game-ever
(2) The Polygon Article
http://www.polygon.com/a/street-fighter-2-oral-history
(3) Press Commentary
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/04/10/newsweeks-ngai-croal-on-the-resident-evil-5-trailer-this-imagery-has-a-history/
(4) Early Footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpIWhAAiNRc
(5) Resident Evil 5: “The Marsh, The Village and the Oil Refinery”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aDJBYxphnE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcAdZRit7AY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AwKbB_wNyw
(6) Blackface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface
Blaxploitation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaxploitation
(7) Is Japan a “homogenous” nation?
http://japanfocus.org/-chris-burgess/3310
March 16, 2014 | Categories: Anecdotal, Cross Cultural, Japan, Popular Culture, Racism, Uncategorized, Video Games | Tags: 4, 5, africa, african, analysis, Anthropology, bigotry, biohazard, cold war, Colonialism, culture, evil, Japan, japanese, kijuju, majin, nemesis, not-a-country, NPR, plagas, popular, racism, resident, social commentary, street fighter II, swahili, video games, wesker, wmd, zombies | Leave a comment