Essays in Idleness

So in my Traditional Japanese Culture class, we recently read a group of thoughts by Kenko called Essays in Idleness. In one of the first passages, he admitted that he was just doing it because he was bored in his self-imposed secluded state. I'm not really secluded, but I do have thoughts in my idleness. Therefore, here is the first installment of Essays in Idleness by Yagi Sensei.

1

During this semester, International Cinema is going to be showing "Letters from Iwo Jima," which was directed by the great Clint Eastwood. But it also reminded me of some controversy some months ago involving Eastwood and Spike Lee. It's at this point that I feel that I need to put in a disclaimer; I am not racist. I don't have a problem with black people. However, I do have a problem with stupid people. Spike Lee just happens to fall into both categories.

Spike said that he thought it was offensive to make a WWII film and only showing a few black people. Here is a little fact-check for the guy.

The reason that there were no black people featured in the film Letters from Iwo Jima is simple. There were no black Japanese soldiers. The population of Japan is 99% ethnic Japanese, and it was more so in the 1940s when the film takes place. Duh.

The reason I took time to enter this is that I feel that all people - famous or not - need to find something better to do with themselves than whine and complain. Particularly if you have no knowledge of why something is the way it is, just keep your mouth shut.

In the words of Mark Twain, "It is better to live in silence and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Yagi Sensei