JP Only

[AmyRae]

DNO with proposing regional servers you're being worse than "JP-onry". Not only do you do refuse to play with JP yourself, but you're forcing everyone else to not play with people outside of their region either. Why can't you just play on an international server and just ignore everyone you do not want to play with and let other people decide for themselves?

Regional servers are not going to solve the problem. It's just going to hide it for awhile.

But it's an understandable reaction to something that seems intentionally offensive. The thing is, it would quite simple to organize Japanese language only linkshells and parties by simply avoiding any use of the Latin alphabet and the auto-translate feature entirely. That would solve the problem perfectly. No offense perceived, and so none taken.

What makes it upsetting is that a person who wants nothing but to invite Japanese-only language speakers to their group has to take that extra step to use 6 Latin characters (letters they would not ordinarily use) strung together directed at English speakers that "you're not welcome." And this exact phrase gets repeated several times over and over the years among certain Japanese that want to exclude non-Japanese speakers. That seems intentionally hateful.

It would be as though North Americans learned the kanji (never using it otherwise) to make it clear Japanese weren't welcome in their group, and made it easy to cut-and-paste into all their in-game correspondence so that it was repeated over and over in the game for the Japanese to see. The thing is, we would not feel so comfortable doing that. In Canada it would be considered a hate-crime. In the United States they're taught that this sort of attitude stems from a horrible past of civil rights abuses in their own country. We're taught to give someone who wants to join you a fair chance like everyone else.

So, in that light, I think the oft repeated phrase "JP Only" is offensive because it goes against my values and the values of my country, even if those who use the phrase don't mean to offend.