“I remember a few years back John Byrne talking about he was able to draw the different Asian races and make them all distinct. He said he drew Chinese people with squintier eyes, large mouths and rounder heads than the Japanese and Koreans. He drew Japanese people with more pronounced portruding upper teeth, narrowers eyes, flat heads and flatter noses. He said the Koreans should be drawn shorter, stockier and with very flat, rounded faces and broad noses with more rounded eyes but not European type eyes.

Japanese people should also be drawn lankier than the other Asain races. He was very well-thought out when it came to drawing different races of people and it showed in his work.”

Not so much from the poster, but from Byrne himself, because he wasn’t know (particularly early on) for having distinctive faces. Particularly his women, who all looked the same, just with different hair styles/color. Try and tell the difference between Steve Rogers and Clint Barton. He might have liked Asian faces because he obviously was exaggerating them more.

I doubt Walt Simonson is Norse, but he always seemed to have a fairly strong grasp of a lot of their belief system.

For that matter, I was raised Methodist and have since become an Agnostic, but I’ve read the Qur’an and the Rg Veda, and taken classes on “Eastern Religion” in general, so it’s hardly impossible that someone could read text outside of their own personal belief set. ESPECIALLY when that person is a well-read writer who is basically looking into other cultures for story ideas that will resonate with readers on an archetypal level.

In the same sense, a lot of “Jesus-allegory Messiah” stories aren’t necessarily written by Christians, either.

>>> Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans are of the same ethnic stock. This is a well established, tho’ usually ignored fact.

Actually, there’s at least a fair amount of biology and linguistic studies involved that suggests the Japanese may not be the same racial stock as most other Asian cultures, or, at least, if they are, the divergence point was much farther back than others. Certainly enough to make the issue far more murky than you’re portraying it as.

>>> Most Asians pride themselves on being able to tell each other apart, but they are almost always wrong.

Oddly enough, I’ve got about an 85% success rate at telling whether or not any given person of Asian descent is Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or “other” (“other” generally being one of the many Southeast Asian cultures), and I’m of Irish/German stock. Considering I’ve long since attributed my own skill at such to be derived from extensive experience dealing with people from those backgrounds (and thus, knowing what features are more common in a given group), I have no question that Asians who are constantly interacting with other Asian cultures would easily be able to tell where someone is from by sight alone, at least with a better than even rate of success.

>>> I can produce quite a few blonde blue-eyed italians though if you like?

Even that says a great deal about heritage and location, though – if you meet a blonde blue-eyed Italian, there are SIGNIFICANTLY high odds that they either from northern Italy, are directly descended from northern Italians, or are of mixed stock in their recent family history.

>>> Shucks, I can even produce black swedes if you like.

Odds are you that would have been a much more difficult feat had you attempted to do so in 1940. And likely nearly impossible had you done so prior to 1800 or so. The modern ease of travel and lowering of socio-cultural barriers is currently making possible racial patterns that would have been unthinkable (if not seen as a complete abomination) only a few hundred years ago.

In the case of the pamphlet we’re referring to, Japanese cultural xenophobia prior to WWII would have seriously limited any real interbreeding, and thus limited the crossover of traits that would have resulted with other Asian cultures. In other words, it would have indeed been possible to identify Japanese attempting to disguise themselves as other Asian groups (like the Chinese), albeit with some degree of error (ie, some Japanese managing to pass as Chinese, and some Chinese being wrongfully accused of being Japanese). It would certainly have far better odds than a simple 50-50 coin flip, though.

>>> It is wrong to say “That´s how a japanese looks, and you need to know that to distinguish them from the good guys”.

Realistically, though, when you are at war with the Japanese, they are, by the very definition of the term, not the “good guys”. At least not from the perspective of the culture fighting them. And when they are in an occupied country (China), and you are attempting to fight them, there is a significant need to be able to tell whether or not that local peasant who brings food to your troops is a harmless Chinese peasant who hates the Japanese and welcomes you as their enemy, or a Japanese saboteur trying to poison you. One of the major disadvantages to US troops fighting in Vietnam was that both sides were literally identical in terms of language and appearance, making detecting enemy agents hiding among supposed allies far more difficult.

No matter how culturally advanced or sensitive people in the year 2008 may consider themselves to be, the fact remains that if you see someone who is clearly matching every single physical stereotype of a group of people you are currently fighting a war against, there is almost certainly a response to that appearance that generalizes behavior and creates suspicion. I suspect you’d be hard-pressed to find too many Americans who DON’T have a twinge of suspicion or fear (at the very least!) if they’re getting onto a plane with someone who is clearly Arabic and dressed in traditional Muslim garb. And if you’re a soldier in a warzone, on the alert against sabotage, you’re obviously going to be more wary when dealing with dedicated Muslim Tariq al-Nureddin than you are with Bob Smith from Wisconsin.

One can dispute whether the insulting presentation of the information was necessary, but the information itself was clearly utilitarian – and useful. And even the presentation itself was hardly all that different from the similar demonization of the enemy present in nearly every aspect of American war propaganda during WWII, including the presentation of Germans and Italians in the media.

So… not at all?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_drop_rule

The cultural insensitivity lies, however, in the attribution of certain values to these differences… It´s not necessarily wrong to say “That´s how a japanese looks”. It is wrong to say “That´s how a japanese looks, and you need to know that to distinguish them from the good guys”. Things get even muddier when one remembers that phisiognomy, the study of ethnic traces and physical features, was once very closely tied to racial persecution… accordingly to the way your head was shaped, you could be a natural born criminal, or a member of an inferior race. Sadly, when Milton Caniff produced his pamphlet, these ideas were still pretty much disseminated.

Skipping to my point: knowledge per se is neither right nor wrong. It´s a tool, like a hammer. It could be used to build something good or to blunder someone to death. So, the problem does not lie in the hammer; it lies in the way it was used.

PS: If one thinks it´s “cultural insensitivity” to debate the physical traits of japanese and the chinese, consider this: chinese (and koreans) will get much, much more seriously offended if you accidently call them japanese. For most of them, the insensitivity is the inability to tell the difference; not the opposite.

As the the “How to Spot a Jap” comic I never have had much success in differientiating between the different Asian ‘races’. I’m reminded of a Bruce Lee movie (The Chinese Connection?) where there is a Japanese man working as a cook in the kitchen of a Chinese martial arts school. Bruce was somehow able to determine that the man was Japanese by his nipples???

Is it cultural insensitivity to state that there are general characteristics that can be determined for various groups and subgroups or is it willful self-ignorance to deny it? I honestly don’t know…

It was originally a pickup line Ben used all the time. Uncle Ben actually said it to Gwen and Norman Osborn just before menage a trois. Gwen passed the message to Peter.

Really, you must have missed an issue….

Nah, you can.
YOU may not be able to do it, but Asian people can.

Europeans are from the same stock, but Germans all have distinctive features, as do the French.
In long established countries there’s a whole lot of inbreeding going on.
That’s why some characteristics common in certain countries people don’t appear in others.

Japanese people should also be drawn lankier than the other Asain races. He was very well-thought out when it came to drawing different races of people and it showed in his work.

You DID have a good point to begin with, that this did not qualify as an urban legend, but Kevin Church seems to think you said just the opposite, and you seem to have responded on THOSE terms, leaving me somewhat puzzled. But “how many people had heard the story” is CRUCIAL to the definition of urban legend; not the number itself, but the story must be widespread, and the people have to have heard it as an unconfirmed story rather than KNOW the facts. I sometimes doubt that Brian understands this, as my posting on the “Superman/eye–test” CBUL item’s thread (#49) indicates. Let me repeat my statement there that I nevertheless enjoy this feature, and mean no offense to him.

I sure can’t. They all look alike to me.

“Gimme your prof’s number when he can produce a green-eyed red haired Italian with freckles. Being half-Italian myself, that is something I would like to see! 9D”

I have seen a few, but they are Disney Comic Book artists so they don’t count. I can produce quite a few blonde blue-eyed italians though if you like? .. and there is no shortage of red-headed green-eyed greeks.
Shucks, I can even produce black swedes if you like. Everything from brown haired fair skinned to bushy-eyed coal black all over.

It was covered by Boing Boing, the most-read blog out there and Caniff was named specifically:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/07/wwii_us_military_com.html

Also, re: Spurgeon – if you’re not visiting ComicsReporter.com as a daily read, you should start. Here’s the original blog post where it was linked:
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_sunday_magazine070906/ ”

Wow…it was on a blog. MUST be common knowledge then… :rollseyes:

My point was that you’re splitting hairs, and did it in a way where you just kind of came across like an ass.

The Caniff story addressed a story/rumor/”urban legend” regarding his involvement with a WWII comic. How many people had heard the story beforehand is irrelevant, as is whether or not some blog also discussed the story.

So, please just enjoy the column and save the snide remarks…