![]() ![]() Kim Stanley Robinson also includes the phrase in his book Red Mars. The Japan commentator Willard Price often made reference to the term in his dealings with the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s. Later, Bob Dunbar says the words to confuse searching Japanese soldiers. ![]() When asked what it means, he says it means "Let's get to work", not knowing its actual meaning. Shirreffs, the character Lieutenant Carney says the phrase. In the book The Hostile Beaches by Gordon D. The phrase is also introduced or explained by Japanese or Japanese-American characters in books such as David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars. The Japanese characters explain it to the westerner who comes to see its wisdom. James Clavell used the phrase in his novel Shōgun. Similarly, John Hersey's Hiroshima applies the phrase after efforts to assist fatally injured hibakusha ceased. The historical manga Barefoot Gen shows many of the citizens in Hiroshima using the phrase "Shikata ga nai" to explain why they accept the military rule, and the acceptance of the below-poverty conditions that cause many of their citizens to starve. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's Farewell to Manzanar devoted a chapter to the concept to explain why the Japanese Americans interned in the US during World War II did not put up more of a struggle against the restrictive conditions and policies put upon them. The phrase appears as an important theme in a range of books relating to major events in the history of the Japanese people. ( June 2011) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. This section needs additional citations for verification. to ensure positive economic and political prospects.' Non-Japanese literary references 'Japanese people listen to me because I'm always pushing what the possibilities are and how things can change. ![]() He encourages Japanese not to succumb to the shikata ga nai mentality but to get angry and start behaving like citizens. In a Business Week article, a Western businessman says of Japanese people: The phrase also can have negative connotations, as some may perceive the lack of reaction to adversity as complacence, both to social and political forces. This notion of suffering in part stems from shikata ga nai: failing to follow cultural norms and social conventions led to a life of little choice but endurance of suffering. The Japanese phrase shikata ga nai, or "it can't be helped," indicates cultural norms over which one has little control. In Asian American Women: The "Frontiers" Reader, author Debbie Storrs states: Thus, when Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) was asked, in his first ever press conference given in Tokyo in 1975, what he thought of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he answered: "It's very regrettable that nuclear bombs were dropped and I feel sorry for the citizens of Hiroshima but it couldn't be helped because that happened in wartime." Historically, it has been applied to situations in which masses of Japanese people as a whole have been made to endure during World War II, including the Allied occupation of Japan and the internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians. The phrase has been used by many western writers to describe the ability of the Japanese people to maintain dignity in the face of an unavoidable tragedy or injustice, particularly when the circumstances are beyond their control, somewhat similar to " c'est la vie" in French or "It Is What It Is" in English. Shō ga nai ( しょうがない), pronounced is an alternative. Shikata ga nai ( 仕方がない), pronounced, is a Japanese language phrase meaning "it cannot be helped" or "nothing can be done about it". ![]()
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