Asian identity crisis

tamson

Japan beat Denmark, but why didn't Asians cheer for the Asian team?

Japan beat Denmark today, though it was unlikely that many Asians rooted for the Asian team in the match. Regional loyalties in Asia are threadbare, say academics, which means there is little 'Asian identity.'


Japan beat Denmark today in a surprising 3-1 route. Few Asians likely cared.

Watching soccer can provoke profound questions, and one such occurred to me during a previous World Cup match between Cameroon and Japan: Is there such a thing as Asia?

All the Africans in the crowd with me were supporting Cameroon, though none was from there. None of the Asians was supporting Japan. Pan-African solidarity was evident. Pan-Asian solidarity was nonexistent.

Prasenjit Duara, an Indian professor of Asian history in Singapore, says that does not surprise him. "There isn't such a thing as an Asian identity," he says. While Africans have forged a common identity from a common landmass, Asians haven't. That's partly a factor of size and diversity: when the World Cup divides up the globe, "Asia" includes Jordan, India, Cambodia, and Japan, for instance.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/G ... -for-the-Asian-team