Tim Rogers vs. Freddie deBoer

Recently Gawker Media videogame columnist Tim Rogers wrote an unenlightening screed for Kotaku about the elements of Japanese culture he finds distasteful, prompting accusations of Orientalist racism from Freddie deBoer.  The internet has been aflutter with amateur anthropologists (including myself) throwing in their two cents in the form of comments.

Rogers's column is structured as a series of bullet-points which are reiterated here so you don't have to waste time reading the rambling descriptions under each: anime sucks, so many people smoke, everything in Japan has meat in it, the mandatory parties, some Japanese office traditions are genuinely terrifying, screaming is the message, the copycats, the up-givers, Japanese comedy is not funny, every Japanese pop song is about the same thing, Japanese movies suck, the passive aggression, shit be expensive up in here, no subjectivity, everything moves, stop apologizing to me, template conversations creep me out, I'm sorry it doesn't have very much stuff in it, the drink ticket system, tape, weird reservation rules, the weather, positive negatives, everyone's uncle, the emotion gestapo, the stereotyping, I don't like pachinko.  This list basically amounts to what foreigners living in Japan term "Japan bashing," but is it racist?  

I don't think so; Freddie deBoer does, basically equating Rogers's boring list of complaints with complaining that there are too many movies about slavery and Jim Crow.  Unfortunately, I read both articles.  The first one, the Gawker Media rant, is basically the shit that foreigners regularly complain about when they're drunk after the Honeymoon period is over and they realize Japan is not the perfect paradise of some sort or another that they envisioned: surprise, surprise, Japan too has problems.  If Rogers had actually gone out and shared ideas with other foreigners over beers instead of just playing videogames and not drinking, he would have realized how empty and stale his list really was.  That being said, all his points are valid; they're more or less along the same lines as the things sixties radicals criticized in the U.S.; but if a Japanese person were to write a similar article about America, he or she could structure it as: Americans broadcast loud, personal conversations at volumes for the whole world to hear, workers in the service industry exude hatred for their jobs, there is garbage everywhere, people steal, all that's on TV are trashy reality and dating shows, Hollywood movies are formulaic, everybody's fat, etc. - not really groundbreaking or relevant stuff, but certainly not racist.

Rogers's article comes from the same perspective of casting the Japanese as members of a rat race as The Cove, Rising Sun, and Lost in Translation.  I don't think Rogers is racist per se, if only because I tend to avoid accusing people of racism as it carries the same kind of force as comparing people to Hitler.  It is fair to say though that that Rogers's contentions are overgeneralized, unenlightening, and boring.  I can't believe I actually finished reading his column.  

DeBoer is right to contend that the Japanese are not there for Americans's entertainment, but if I were living in America, I'd be criticizing elements of American society, so if I live in Japan, isn't it fair for me to criticize Japanese culture and society without criticizing the Japanese race?  A film that basically said the same thing as Rogers just won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.  Wouldn't it make more sense for Freddie deBoer to criticize that or the countless other mainstream, post-disillusionment critiques of Japan than this random nobody writing a videogame column and bitching about smoking, noise polution, and a lack of options for vegetarians?