It looks like fans of the local ball club in my hometown of Orange County, the 2002 World Champion Angels, have been inspired by Korea's sea of red fans during the 2002 World Cup. Witness the "We are not L.A." t-shirt.
Protesting the Angels' new owner's idea of changing the name from Anaheim to Los Angeles to attract a wider television audience, despite the city of Anaheim being one of the anchor cities of 3,000,000-strong Orange County, Angels fans have been sitting in the stands with their bright red shirts letting Arte Moreno know that Orange County is not an offshoot of Los Angeles. Anaheim is miles from the Los Angeles County border, and probably a good hour's drive from the actual City of Los Angeles.
I have no hatred of Los Angeles, but OC is no more a part of L.A. than it is a part of San Diego. Period. It's dumb and we OC-ers are pissed.
Anyway, this post is just a shout-out to all my homies in the O.C. (which, prior to Fox's "the O.C.," was never referred to as the O.C.), home of the Anaheim Angels, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, UC Irvine, Mission San Juan Capistrano (with its annual return of the swallows), South Coast Plaza, Dana Point, Laguna Beach, Disneyland, Richard Nixon's birthplace and museum, the beautiful but deadly Ortega Highway, some great beaches from Huntington Beach and Seal Beach to San Onofre, Little Saigon, and of course a very, very large Korean-American population.
Yep, got to do something about it. O.C. is such a mundane name. People have to come up with new area name.
ReplyDeleteJust like Twin city, or something.
Annaheim and Irvine should set up some kind of zone that encloses two cities and call the area with one name. How about Disney cities? Or, Sunshine cities?
Disney city Angels.
Disney city Mighty Ducks.
Mr kushibo,
ReplyDeletesince the marmot has banned me from his blog, I take the liberty of responding on your posting, on yours.
while the BBC writer may have taken creative licence in lumping the Korean,Chinese and SouthEast Asian experiences under Japanese imperialism, the underlying causes of resentment and opposition are the same?
The Japanese attempts at cultural annihilation, the slant towards racial superiority, organised terror and brutality as a weapon, aka Nanjing, rankle till today - from Seoul to Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur.
The Chinese Assembly Hall, a collective body of clan associations in the country, is even now - with the help of liberal Japanese lawyers - undertaking legal action against the Japanese government, and voiced its objections to the new textbooks.
It is true that today's Japanese are mostly pacifist.
They have mostly been shielded from the horror their forefathers wreaked on others, and prosperity has also given them little to be angry or nationalistic about.
But nationalism is never far from patriotism; so find me a Japanese who is not patriotic and proud of it?
The voices of reason or dissent can always be shouted down if people and passions are enough roused?
There were dissenting voices in Japan against militarism in the 1920s/30s, too. Mr Kushibo, history has its lessons.
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in China to demonstrate - unfortunately, in less than TV-friendly ways that have been exploited by partisan media.
Those thousands probably are the lightning rod of hundreds of millions.
By the same token, one textbook, used by a miniscule 0.01 per cent of japanese schools, can also represent a `silent majority' of people unable, or unwilling, to come to terms with their past, and help the wounds to heal, for everyone.
A final point: having read allthe wire services since the demos began, none have mentioned that the protestors were bussed to and fro to the Japanese missions. Your sources must be excellent.
Best
HatsuMomo
I'm not really sure which side you're arguing from or against (if any), or what viewpoint you're ascribing to me (if any), but I want to say I'm neither pro-Japanese nor anti-Chinese in this matter.
ReplyDeleteI think the complaints are generally justified, although the violence is not, and I often point out to other people in my field that opinion in Japan is by no means uniform, with many or most finding themselves in disagreement with the right wing.
As for my "excellent sources," I gleaned information about people being bused to the sites from various blogs. This one, for example, mentions the students getting back on their university buses when the demonstrations were over around 6 p.m.
This other blog says the protesters left on specially arranged city buses.
I cite the blogs in part because I can't remember what news article it was where I first read about the protestors being bused in.
Dear Mr Kushibo
ReplyDeleteI appreciated the critical thinking in your first post, and - depsite your slight pro-Japan bias - am sure that you took a position of equanamity.
Much is often made,by Western media and activists, of the omnipresent power of the CCP govt.
The first reaction to the storming of the US embassy after the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy was typical: the party organised it.
It was only later when the spontaneity of the protesters anger was recognised, and the rise of mainland Chinese nationalism has come increasingly into view.
The Chinese government may - or may not - have a hand in the current protests. But perhaps China critics should also note that many party members in their 50s and 60s, even 40s, have an emotional connection to the events of the Sino-Japanese war, when their families might have been victims.
In this case, vox populi merely runs concurrent with the government aim, which is to deny permanent SC status to a country with diminished responsibility.
Mr Kushibo, the view on both sides of the Pacific about China and Japan is vastly different.
The jury is still out on whether rising China will be a threat to the region.
In Japan's case, there is no doubt. Its WW2 record is well within living memory, and kept alive through oral tradition.
The actions of the Japanese government - such as the textbook revisions - can only confirm that,under the outward pacifist mantle, the hawkish mentality of Japan is intact.
For the West, it is easier to forgive Japan because the engagement with them was limited to ``theatres of war'' from which the Allies emerged victorious, with atomic bombs thrown in for good measure.
For Asia, everywhere was a ``theatre of war'' because nothing was sacred to Japanese troops.
You ask which side I write from.
Hatsu = budding, fresh =Zhu
Momo = peach = Tao
I hope that helps.
It isn't about race, or nationalism. All victims of Imperial Japan's brutality deserve as much honour, respect and dignity surely as the Japanese interred at Yasukuni whom Koizumi, blithely, claims to pay homage to, for their sacrifices in their unjustified war.
Never to be forgotten are people like Mrs Sybil Kathigesu, a brave Indian doctor in British Malaya tortured almost to death in front of her 10 year old daughter, for helping resistance fighters.
best
HatsuMomo
What makes you refer to my view as slightly pro-Japanese?
ReplyDeleteSeal Beach is great. But it's a little more like Long Beach (which I would say feels very different from Los Angeles, although a bit like other L.A. County beach communities) than Orange County. Well, maybe Seal Beach feels like Huntington Beach.
ReplyDeleteYou're right that there's a clear separation between OC and San Diego thanks to Pendleton, but the hills/mountains also provide a clear separation between OC and L.A. County if you're going north, and between OC and the Inland Empire if you're going east.
Going along 405, you do go through a big stretch of nothing, which is the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, which does provide a big mental barrier between OC and L.A. County (although that means Seal Beach is back on the non-OC side of this mental barrier).
It's only when you go along I-5 or the 91 that you have wall-to-wall city, but even then, when you leave OC you're still a long, long way from the city of Los Angeles. In fact, I know people in Cerritos who think of themselves as more like OC than L.A., even though they're in Los Angeles County.
I don't think it's historically accurate to refer to OC as L.A. sprawl. OC grew up with Santa Ana as its center. Sure, Norwalk, Lakewood, and Cerritos grew up in the post-war L.A. boom, but the neighborhoods they meet on the OC side grew up as the OC population boom radiated from Santa Ana. By the same argument, you will eventually have to say that Sacramento is part of the Bay Area.
Anyway, I like L.A., but having been in Irvine as long as I have, I do not feel at all like we're a part of that, even if you can drive along the Santa Ana Freeway into Los Angeles County and not notice right away you've left O.C.