I found it interesting because I was easily led to the article's final position, that the "no foreigners" policy of these onsen was justified (and I even argued that fairly strongly on Momus' blog entry (http://imomus.livejournal.com/428737.html) linking to the article).
I'm still ambivalent and oscillating.
Whenever I think of the well-reported Japanese propensity to racism I lean away from thinking this ban is justified, and whenever I imagine Russian sailors gatecrashing a pleasant bathhouse I lean back towards supporting it.
And then of course there are the subtleties about how one would implement a house rule that really would just solve the gatecrashing problem without being in-principle racist, which are raised in the article.
I think within the POC/unpacking-the-knapsack framework (need a better term for this) the "answer" would clearly be that this ban is unacceptable. Whilst that degree of moral certainty is pleasant when one can latch onto it, I don't presently feel it myself.
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I'm still ambivalent and oscillating.
Whenever I think of the well-reported Japanese propensity to racism I lean away from thinking this ban is justified, and whenever I imagine Russian sailors gatecrashing a pleasant bathhouse I lean back towards supporting it.
And then of course there are the subtleties about how one would implement a house rule that really would just solve the gatecrashing problem without being in-principle racist, which are raised in the article.
I think within the POC/unpacking-the-knapsack framework (need a better term for this) the "answer" would clearly be that this ban is unacceptable. Whilst that degree of moral certainty is pleasant when one can latch onto it, I don't presently feel it myself.