White Cafe
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This is just too funny. (Thanks to urB4N for posting.) Evidently there is a cafe in Japan where Japanese women go to get served by white guys. According to the presentation, the owner came up with the concept by walking through Shibuya and asking 200 Japanese women what they wanted. They apparently “all told her the same thing,” that they wanted a cafe where the waiters were “male, good looking, would treat them nice, but most importantly, were Western.” And so owner’s dream was consummated with Butler Cafe that employs only white guys as servers!
By the way, it’s interesting to note the dual terminology that CNN uses. On the top bar, it says “lah[reporter’s name].white.cafe,” but throughout the program, they avoid using the term “white;” they refer to the white guys as “Western.” If you look at the servers though, they’re all white as snow. That has to be a media relations thing; you can only imagine the outcry if CNN made a story about how Japanese women prefer “white” guys. With “Western,” you can blame the pro-white racism on culturism! This lets people say, “It’s not because of my race, it’s because of my culture! And who doesn’t love other cultures! Culture is good, maaaannnn!!!”
Also, it’s pretty interesting to see what qualifies as a white ”Prince Charming” in Japan:
(Though I’m not a woman…maybe “Prince Charming” really is as hot as he thinks…)
I really don’t know what to say. This is something that is taking place in Japan, and as Asian Americans, there isn’t much at the present time that we can do. So rather than get bent out of shape over what we can and can’t control (though as always, it’s fine to vent!!!), I’d just like to dedicate two music videos to some of the people involved.
First, here’s one for Mr. White and Sexy above:
“I’m Too Sexy” from Right Said Fred.
Second, here’s one to all the non-white men from western countries who have been excluded from the white cafe:
“Where is the Love?” from Black Eyed Peas
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nskripchun
6:04 pm | Jun 30, 2008“Being a gentlemen is embarrassing for Japanese men” -Cafe owner Yuki Hirohata.
“Being a sell-hating person is embarrassing for the rest of us human beings” -Me.
Good observations about the story’s use of the word “Western”, jaehwan. Obviously, if an Asian American or African American person were to walk into that cafe, they wouldn’t be getting a job. It’s not a Western cafe… it’s a WHITE cafe.
But yeah… leave it to Japan. After all, it’s the land of maid cafes, and hostess/host bars…
Liang
7:06 pm | Jun 30, 2008This is so laughably pathetic. I am not one to impose my viewpoints as an Asian-AMERICAN on native Asians, so I will not call the entire nation of Japan a conglomerate of white-worshipping whores. But god damn, the fact that such a place exists really makes it hard for me to do so.
I suggest we go to Europe and open up a Shogun Bar, where buff Asian guys dressed up as samurai, ninjas, and Shaolin monks serve white chicks. See how quickly we get our asses beat.
Xian
7:19 pm | Jun 30, 2008I don’t see this as a story. The story here is that CNN decided to highlight this cafe and call it a “Western cafe”.
There are thousands of cafes in Japan. Some of them have bondage themes or penguin themes or monkey themes or white dude themes.
There are problems with it, but I fail to see how placing whites in an exotified subservient role makes Japan a group of “white-worshippers”.
If you want to see “self-hating” set up the ninja bar and look in the mirror. What do you think “Asian themed” stereotyping restaurants are?
After WTFV (watching the fucking video), this is even more clear–the customers aren’t going “going ga-ga” or “swooning”, they look bored.
The white dude look demeaned. Who would serve a racial majority group and dress up in a outfit and say “Yes, my princess?”
And who the fuck believes that ALL 200 women demanded white male waiters? By the law of averages in the most racist society imaginable, at least 10 of the women would demand white FEMALE servers, right?
Once again, the only news here is that the American media sees the demeaning of whites and reports it as “Asian women going ga-ga”. (Who the fuck says “going ga-ga? Probably someone who would think that they are hot saying, “Yes, my princess!”)
Notice too the frequency of unattributed quotes, “The women here say, “SOME SHIT I MADE UP!”
Nothing to see here.
Candide
8:32 pm | Jun 30, 2008Exactly what I think. This evidently got filtered through “White Guy’s Fantasy”.
A while ago on this very site, there was a news article about a cafe chain (in Japan or Korea) that employs hot Asian male waiters due to popular demand after a successful Korean movie or TV show in which the female protagonist meets her dream guy in the same setting.
Also, there are plenty of bars in Japan where they employ hot white chicks to serve Japanese men. Why don’t Western media report that?
uRB4N
8:53 pm | Jun 30, 2008The title of the link that was on the CNN main page was EXACTLY what I called the title:
“Asian women seek white, groveling men”
So, J, your original assertion that American media wouldn’t dare put “white” as the title is wrong.
jaehwan
12:02 am | Jul 01, 2008skrips:
It’s funny how language often functions as a means of hiding a deeper message. I’ll bet somewhere there must be a dissertation on how language masks racism. Maybe Pinker wrote something about it…
urB4N
Haha…I got direct service via your link, so I skipped the main page. Sorry. You’re right, urB4N. And that is crazy. But you did notice that they avoided saying “white” in the video. So maybe writing about race is more politically correct than saying it? It would be pretty bad if they had an Asian female reporter talking about Asian women seeking white, groveling men.
Kuroyama
12:17 am | Jul 01, 2008Liang…
I might suggest that if the men are as buff as you suggest, that THEY would be the ones passing out slaps. Not the other way around.
ODDITY
The wife and I have been watching THE CLOSER. A detective show usually involving murder. so weve been renting episodes from the local video shop (national chain) that imports them. Japan is usually years behind the US. (Battlestar Galactica just got here a couple of weeks ago) But the shop only imported to like, episode 8 or so of Season two. No more after that… which we thought was odd, but whatever.
Sick of waiting, we download seasons 2 and 3 and resume watching. Lo and behold…
The NEXT episode in the lineup is about a white guy who marries Japanese women (he finds them easily because Japanese men beat them)… take them into his home, loves them for a time, then kills them and dumps their remains (using Japanese traditional ropes and knots) into lakes, bays, what have you. They even went so far as to say that all the women looked exactly alike.
Im willing to bet that episode NEVER sees light of day over here. Id rent it just to see how they translate the English (sometimes they avoid unpleasant or hard to understand language - so I wonder how they will translate “those Japanese women look exactly alike!!” “they could be twins!” “…my Japanese husband beats me…”
uRB4N
8:30 am | Jul 01, 2008It’s now the top viewed video on CNN’s video list.
mobbdeep
12:40 pm | Jul 01, 2008here we go again. anti-cnn.com is a better site.
when i talk race and asian male issues with non asian girls, they think i am a psychotic paranoid crazy asian man. I give them examples of this and that and they don’t wanna hear it.
They are all racists. SO I am the crazy one seeing things huh?
Sure.
Instead of focusing on articles about victims of the quake in China, they will do this.
Media is worst than ever now. Breaking story my ass. F CNN F Western media
Western ahhahahha. This is not cowboys and indians here.
They are sneaky and tricky as always.
TheMac
5:29 am | Jul 02, 2008In addition to what I said in the thread, this is just generally sexist (also, again, dumb idea).
RebelAzn
3:03 pm | Jul 03, 2008The intention of this story does nothing other than to stroke white male egos. There are plenty of strip joints and hostess bars in Japan featuring white women, how come they never do a story like that? The media here is pretty pathetic in that sense. They can take any subset of facts and blow it up like it is the reality.
There is a documentary film about white women working in Japan as hostess called Tokyo Girls or something. Anyway, there are plenty but no one in the west make any media news about that.
analogisnumberone
5:53 pm | Jul 03, 2008Well, this is the white media we’re looking at. They’ll continue to beat us over the head with racism until we beat them out of the broadcasting realm. Why not have a letter writing campaign about the racism in thier coverage? Maybe also start a campaign to have more black anchors on the air too? How about more black employees too? Pressure is the only thing that works. How about it?
kikiandlala
7:45 pm | Jul 04, 2008Actually the Western news media DOES talk about white girls working at hostess bars. Especially during the Honore Blackman murder case. But even before then, news shows have talked about it - it’s just that it’ll be on documentary-specific news shows like CBC’s Passionate Eye or ABC’s Dateline rather than dinner news.
denacali
10:51 am | Jul 08, 2008Too freakin hilarious, especially the music vid dedications