今朝の毎日新聞のコラム(「余録」)を読んで知ったのですが、"Japan bashing", "Japan passing"に引き続き、"Japan dissing"という表現も登場したようです。
ググッてみたら、すぐに当該記事
が出てきました。
冒頭四段落を引用します。
For an alliance that is more that half a century old, the U.S.-Japan relationship has had a surprising amount of ups and downs. Tokyo and Washington have at times praised each other, lashed out at each other, ignored each other, or, in their current phase, simply dismissed each other.
The cycle began in the early 1970s with the "Nixon shocks" that opened the United States to China and took the dollar off the gold standard, leaving Japan politically insecure and economically weakened. Trade tensions heated up in the 1980s and early 1990s, with threats of trade wars, sanctions and protectionism poisoning the relationship. Brief fears that Japan would become the next superpower led to breathless (and completely wrong) books with titles like "The Coming War with Japan." To Japanese, these years became known as the era of "Japan bashing."
They were succeeded in the 1990s by "Japan passing," a period in which America turned its covetous eyes from Japan to China, the new superpower-in-making. When then-President Bill Clinton visited China in 1998 for nine days and didn't even stop in Tokyo, Japanese finally understood that the era of Japan was officially over. Being passed over was in many ways harder for politicians and opinion makers to swallow than was the bashing, which at least allowed them the chance to fight back.
Now Tokyo and Washington have entered a new era, which I would like to call "Japan dissing." Due to its missteps and inability to present coherent policies to its main partner, the government of new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has earned the opprobrium of the Obama administration and is increasingly being ignored. Once Japan's political elites figure out how low their stock has sunk on the Potomac, they may well wish for the days of bashing and passing. They face a Morton's fork between being ignored or being seen as a problem to which there is little solution.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704448304575195431417711568.html
なるほどね。日本に住む人間としては心地よい記述じゃないけど、こういう認識もある(あるいはこういう認識がどんどん広まっている)という事実は認めなくっちゃ。
■ "To diss"って「ディスる」(@練マザファッカー)のことだったのね
それにしても"dis"という動詞は私は知らなかったので、これまたネットで調べると
dis
also diss, slang, by 1980, shortening of disrespect or dismiss, originally in U.S. Black English, popularized by hip hop. Related: Dissed; dissing.
Online Etymology Dictionary, c 2010 Douglas Harper
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diss
という記述が。
何だ、これって練マザファッカーが使ってた言葉、「ディスってる」じゃん(笑)。
練マザファッカーによる「ディスる」という言葉の誇張した用法(てか、ギャグ)をご存じない方はYouTubeをどうぞ。
なるほど日本は今ディスられ始めているのね(汗)。
■愛国者として何をすべきか
このようなことを書くと、真面目な方々は青筋を立てて、「このMichael Auslinとかいう奴はけしからん!」とか「こんなブログを書く奴はけしからん!」とかすぐに怒ってしまうけど、怒っても仕方ないと思う。(このブログの作者 (つまりオイラ) がろくでもない奴だというのはそのとおりなのだけれど)
私たちは自分にとって嫌なメッセージが伝えられたときに、ついついそのメッセージを伝えてきた者を憎んで、それでウサを晴らしてオシマイにしてしまうけど、"Don't hate the messenger"という表現が教えるように、そんな直情的な反応をしたって、何の問題の解決にもならない。
私としては"Japan passing"という言葉の流行が、80年代バブル時代の流行語にもなっていた"Japan as No. 1"という幻想の「終りの始まり」 (the beginning of the end) だったと思う。
だとしたらこの"Japan dissing"をその思い上がった時代の「終りの終り」 (the end of the end) にして、同時に新しい時代の「始まりの始まり」 (the beginning of the beginning) にしたい。
国難に際しては、愛国者こそ冷静にならなければならないと私は常々思っています。