Cutter wrote on Jan 31, 2021, 18:31:
It's a Polygon article obviously they're going to construe anything that isn't part of their groupthink as racist and bigoted. Never mind the fact that the Japanese are probably the most xenophobic people on the planet. Never mind that every country has its own organized crime - the Yakuza as it applies to Gibson's work. This just the typical snowflake whinging. Just another assault on white men who aren't white guilty liberal extremists. It's clear they've never actually read anything by Gibson or Stephenson. Their works are the very opposite of what the idiot author is contending.
Japan is certainly more xenophobic than the west, But all non-western nations are more conservative and xenophobic.
After living in Japan for several years though I really don't think it qualifies as "The most" xenophobic. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be hard to find a country that was much worse.
They love western culture for the most part, If you're Chinese or Korean you'll probably have more problems. North Korean ICBMS and CCP threats of war aren't helping much.
This is a terrible article though, I agree with you its obvious they've never read any William Gibson.
The author also assumes that because cyberpunk depicts a future with an Asian cultural influence that its somehow promoting a "fear" of Asians which is an insane takeaway. They're also cherry picking the shit out of history and games, leaving out a whole bunch of inconvenient points that mess with their conspiracy theory.
Some of these polygon articles are a weird sort of racist hipsterism. Where the authors seem to seek out something currently popular in culture and try to lay claim over it based on their ancestry, regardless of if they were actually raised in that culture or contributed to it in any way or not. Its like they think it gives them some kind of power.