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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   1549 thread views

Transnational Thursday for June 13, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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In Kyoto they simply do not let tourists enter certain sidestreets in Gion.

How do they tell a Korean expat living in Kyoto apart from a Japanese tourist from Sapporo? Or a Japanese-American tourist?

Anyone not there at the teahouse by teahouse invitation would constitute a tourist. Which is to say, foreigners or non-Japanese are not prohibited in principle qua being foreigners or non-Japanese, but if the purpose is to take photos and gawk, one would be considered a tourist. If one has a teahouse reservation, etc., of course entry would be permitted, regardless of nationality.

Japanese tourists don't count as tourists obviously, tourist just means gaijin. For the rest they get excluded. I doubt a Japanese-American could get past a real Japanese person, even at a glance(ignoring that racially pure Japanese-Americans are almost non-existent).

Any of the people you listed (Japanese, non-Japanese such as a Japanese American, etc.) would be welcomed in these areas if they had been invited or if hey had themselves made reservations at a teahouse. This would be relatively rare, I expect, because unless one speaks Japanese quite well the whole experience of sitting and being entertained by a geiko would be quite mystifying and wasted. Like a deaf person given a ticket to a symphony. It would be largely pointless. I know an American who used to frequent the tea houses and sit with the mamas--he was a filmmaker and photographer and for whatever reason they took to him. He spoke, as far as I knew, little Japanese, but somehow communicated and even came out with a few books of photography for the girls working at the time (upwards of 15 years ago now.) So someone like him, he would be allowed around. It's the clueless influencers who want to livestream their walk through geisha-land for their gazillion followers who are unwelcome. Or anyone just there "to look."

Why should they even try?

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