Koichi, I think you and the more reasonable of Wani’s subscribers understand that the best mnemonics are ones that STRONGLY connect the reading and meaning of a kanji. Your new mnemonic for 重 is the antithesis of that so I sincerely wish you hadn’t given in to those belly-achers. Any person can be heavy so there’s absolutely no connection between “heavy” and “Jew”. In the previous mnemonic, there were the elements of pockets and gold/money acting as breadcrumbs leading to the answer for the question of “What is heavy?”. Your new mnemonic erases the trail from question to answer, resulting in a mnemonic that’s no more useful than rote memorization.
To the people who precipitated this, please release Koichi and the rest of his subscribers from the responsibility of catering to your pointless and myopic whining.
Sincerely,
A Reasonable Jew
P.S. Below is what I was going to post in the original thread but it was closed before I could submit.
This thread is preposterous. While everyone’s harping from their platform of sensitivity, why not bring up mnemonics that use disparaging stereotypes of women (and occasionally men)? What about people who are offended by all the use of poop? Maybe there are some vegans out there who find frog skin and dead chicken imagery offensive?
The point is that caving in to an absurd demand like this is a slippery slope. If you’re really here to learn, you should complain about obviously lazy and useless mnemonics (which, despite being the minority, do exist to an annoying degree). And even to that, one could say “Make up your own, the tools are there”. So there aren’t any valid complaints to be leveled against the mnemonics.
Lastly, and even more pointedly, I am Jewish and I take absolutely no offense to these mnemonics. Is it because I’m insensitive to my own race and history? Certainly not. I used to walk an hour home from high school until my friend’s cousin suddenly started driving the two of us home. A couple of days in, we drive by a Yeshiva where the kids are just being let out and the cousin says some pretty heinous shit. After that I declined to take any more rides. So what’s the difference between that and Koichi’s mnemonics? Intention.
The cousin was the sort of person who drove around with window-rattling subwoofers and raged at other drivers from his seat while performing reckless driving maneuvers to get an inch ahead. I disliked this predatory scumbag from the start, but his comment about Jews made his aggression feel very personal. I’ve never observed Koichi’s behavior in such a fashion, but if his body of mnemonics is any indication of his personality (and how could it not be), then why on Earth would I be offended when this light-hearted jokester makes a reference to a silly stereotype?
I guess the question is: Can offense be taken if it isn’t given? I don’t think so. What I think when I see offense being taken baselessly is that the offendee is an attention-seeking, virtue-signaling, humorless BUTT, incapable of distinguishing subjective and objective reality.