Cultural Misunderstandings During World War Two

Good morning/afternoon everyone, thank you for inviting me to this lovely multicultural festival, it’s a great honour to be speaking to all of you today. As you can see behind me, I’m going to try and clear up some misunderstandings in regards to Japan and how they were depicted during World War 2. You might be asking like “oh, why would she be teaching us about how they were misunderstood in WW2? Why not teach us about how they are now, in modern times?” And very good question! Thanks for asking! It’s because the portrayal of Japanese culture through texts at that time influenced a whole generation of Australians into forming cultural misunderstandings about Japan that still linger today. Australia was not the only country that was brought …show more content…
However, this isn’t because I’m trying to paint the Japanese as victims, and I’m not saying that not one Japanese person set a single foot wrong, because I know that they did many treacherous things during the war. Despite this, I want to show the attitudes held towards average Japanese citizens due to the stereotypes made about them during this time. I wish to point out that the negative stereotypes of Japan that originated around about the time of World War 2 still linger within the minds of Australians, and cause cultural intolerance and misunderstanding towards …show more content…
Sometime last year our family hosted a Japanese student for a week, and we took some photos over to show our Grandparents what a great time we all had. Looking at the photos of her, my Grandfather blurted out, “She’s pretty good-looking for a yellow-fella. Not any of those big teeth and tiny little eyes like the rest of them.” Because he’s my grandfather I couldn’t really say anything back to him, but he’d basically just stereotyped an entire nation by their