Eyes wide shut: The media and the Abe-Bush press conference

BEFORE HIS VISIT to the United States this weekend, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a CNN interviewer that he thought North Korea’s Kim Jong-il is “a person who is capable of rational thinking”. He added, “I believe that the direction North Korea is headed is wrong.”

In their story, the Associated Press noted, “Abe’s aides could not be immediately reached to confirm his comments.”

Forging boldly ahead with their coverage of the vital issues of the day, the AP referred to the joint Abe-Bush press conference this weekend in the U.S. as a “show of friendship”. They reported that President Bush told Shinzo he “married well”, and invited him down to the ranch. In return, Prime Minister Abe said that he and his wife and George and Laura had a very wondsdfffffffffhtujoi

Oops, sorry about that. I fell asleep and briefly passed out on the keyboard.

After staring at all that irrelevancy, can you blame me? Besides, I nodded off for just a few seconds, but the entire American news media, including CNN and the AP with their millions of dollars in resources and equipment, sat stupefied while one of the biggest stories of the postwar Japan-US relationship sailed over their heads. Yet the AP thinks it’s necessary to confirm that Mr. Abe believes North Korea is headed in the wrong direction?

Why do they have to confirm what every sentient being on the planet knows except some addled South Koreans? And what difference does it make? Why are they even bothering?

Meanwhile, as they’re working the phones, their sources, and shoe leather, they’ve missed the bigger story staring them in the face. In the past two days, Prime Minister Abe and the government of Japan just issued its Declaration of Independence from the legacy of World War II, and in effect told Mike Honda, the U.S. Congress, and the rest of East Asia that if they don’t like it, they can take a hike. But the AP is spending its time trying to confirm that Prime Minister Abe thinks Kim Jong-il is rational.

Perhaps Shinzo should confirm with George whether the President thinks the AP is rational.

That’s a Buddhist temple?

JAPAN HAS A LIFETIME of surprises in store for anyone who lives here–including Japanese, as they will be the first to admit. Just when you begin to think you get a handle on things, you discover yet another passageway that you previously overlooked.

That was my feeling when I ran across this building while doing some research for a translation. It is the Shishikaku guest house at the Hozan-ji Buddhist temple in Ikoma, Nara Prefecture, built as part of the temple complex in the 1880s. This Japanese website blithely explains that priests in those days were in the habit of erecting buildings in the popular architectural styles of the day. Take a look at the site for some more photographs.

And yes, that is stained glass in the front door!

There are several similar Western-style buildings from that period preserved in Japan. Many were built for foreign guests or temporary residents, but one of the most famous is that built by Thomas Glover in Nagasaki, which is now a tourist attraction called Glover Garden. The Net has plenty of photos of the buildings, such as the one here. The house is itself is fine indeed, but what most sites don’t show is the view Glover had of Nagasaki. It’s on top of a hill in the city with a view of the entire town and harbor below. Here’s one view, but it doesn’t quite convey the sense it would provide to the resident of being King of the Hill. I’ve been there, and one of my first thoughts was how often Glover must have stood up there marveling, “It’s good to be king!” Or daimyo, perhaps–the view is comparable to the one the feudal lord had at the Karatsu Castle in Saga Prefecture, though that is a more rural area on the coast of the Sea of Japan.

Don’t overlook those links to Hozan-ji or the Karatsu Castle above–the’ve got some excellent photos.

Shimane Prefecture’s position on Takeshima/Dokdo controversy

Thanks to Occidentalism for bringing to our attention Shimane Prefecture’s publication and placing online a pamphlet presenting their position on Takeshima/Dokdo, which you can find here. I translated it last August, so they took their time to get it out!

It was reviewed by a man who worked for the Japanese equivalent of the National Archives (I think–I’ve forgotten exactly), who really knew his stuff, as well as being fluent in Korean. Therefore, this is probably what the Japanese government wants to say, but hasn’t said yet.

There’s a lot of worthwhile information in there, and when I was working on it I was surprised that the national government hadn’t been publicizing it more. Perhaps now they will.

If you get the chance, please read the introduction by the prefectural governor, if only to compare his attitude to that too often prevalent in South Korea.

During the course of my research on the translation, I often read materials in English written by Koreans on the issue, and came to the unfortunate conclusion that roughly 95% of the material on the Web about Dokdo from South Korea is utterly worthless. It is a congeries of outright deceptions and half-truths written by people who either know better or haven’t done their research, and parroted and recycled by adolescents and post-adolescents with too much time on their hands.

For the purposes of comparison, I think the official Korean position is here. (I can’t find the site I used last August for this document now.)

Finally, a translator’s note: Other professional translators will know what I mean, so it’s not as if I’m blowing my horn, but the English version wound up being more accurate and clearer than the Japanese. At one point, when I was discussing the revision with the Japanese government official who wanted me to change a passage, I protested that what he wanted to say slightly contradicted the original. He said, “Yes, I know, I’m going to have to talk to them (Shimane) about that!”

Matsuri da! (21): Divine sake drinking

IT’S NOT A Japanese festival unless there’s plenty of sake flowing somewhere, and at some places they dispense with the rice planting stuff and just hold a festival with booze as the centerpiece. One of these is the Doburoku Festival in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, which starts today and will continue for a three-day period. Doburoku is a milky white, very sweet form of sake that has not been fully pressed from the fermenting rice solids, which are left floating inside.

They don’t leave anything to chance in Chino, so they got an early start on March 25—a month ago–when they began to make the doburoku at the brewery on the grounds of the Gozai’ishi Shinto shrine. They ritually purified the tools, cleaned the rice, and then gradually mixed the ingredients. Each year’s batch is looked after by men specially chosen for the task by the shrine during last year’s festival. They will stay at the shrine to brew the sake, checking the temperature and churning it as necessary until it’s ready for consumption on the 27th. But first things first—agents from the Suwa Tax Office will come to inspect the sake on the 25th. Even in Japan, they have to render unto Caesar.

It’s no easy task to look after the sake as it’s being brewed. Temperature control determines the quality of the batch, so they’ve been dipping the thermometer in morning and night. If the tank gets too hot, they have to add ice. It’s a painstaking process that requires work and dedication.

Yet the men supervising the process tell reporters it’s an honor to be chosen, because it’s an experience that comes only once in a lifetime, if at all. They say that the sake becomes almost like a living thing during the brewing process But it’s all for a worthy effort—they hope everyone enjoys their tipple and has a righteously good time.

They’ve brewed 1,600 liters of doburoku for the shrine parishioners to enjoy. Imagine what it might be like in the United States if the elders of the local Baptist church brewed up 1,600 liters of bourbon whiskey every year with the church’s blessing. Holy rolling in the gutter!

The festival has been designated an intangible cultural property of the city. That’s because after everyone finishes downing all that doburoku, they can’t feel a thing!

Matsuri da! (20): Mud in your eye at a Japanese festival

THAT’S NOT an Al Jolson imitation the reveler in the accompanying photo is performing—he’s taking part in an event that reportedly began about 400 years before Jolson’s birth. That’s the Doronko Festival in Kochi Prefecture, which was held for a three-day period earlier this month. Doro is the Japanese word for mud.

There are several stories about the festival’s origin, but the most common is that it started during a visit by Yamauchi Tadayoshi, the lord of the Tosa domain in the early 17th century, that coincided with the planting of the rice paddies in the spring. As the feudal lord and his retinue were walking along a ridge next to a paddy, two women working in the fields accidentally splattered muddy water on the lord’s clothes. This angered his attendant, who was ready to whack the bumpkins for their impertinence. The daimyo stayed his hand, however, saying they were at fault for walking so close to farmers while they were working. He added that they should encourage the farmers rather than punish them. When the people working in the paddies heard this, the story goes, they were so overjoyed they started slinging mud at each other.

Regardless of the story’s veracity, that’s just how the people in Kochi enjoy themselves during the first week of April. The festivities start with a rice planting ceremony in front of the local temple. At the sound of the taiko drums, the rice planting maidens in period costumes gather mud into wooden buckets and then randomly slather it on the faces of the men. Legend has it that the men who receive this mudpack will enjoy good health for the coming year.

I don’t know if it’s effective for bringing good health, but it sounds like fun–if not good clean fun!

Matsuri da! (19): Ringing the bell at the Gon-Gon Festival

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING in the water in Himi, Toyama Prefecture, because 70-year-old Kiyoharu Hayashi has retained his crown as King of the Gon-Gon Festival. During this festival, held this year on the 18th at the Jonichi-ji Buddhist temple in the city, adult participants use a 50-kilogram pine log in a competition to ring the temple bell. (Traditional Japanese bells are rung from the outside and not the inside.) The person who rings the bell the most in one minute wins. The name of the festival, Gon-Gon, is the onomatopoetic representation of the sound of the bell.

Not only has Hayashi won the event several times, he also holds the record for the number of times he was able to ring the bell in one minute—96. When I’m 70, I’ll be happy just to hoist a 50-kilogram log up to my shoulders, much less whack a bell with it more than three times every two seconds for a minute without stopping. Hayashi received 10,000 yen (about $US 85) for finishing in first place.

There’s a kid’s division, too. Children of junior high school age or younger try to hit the bell five times with a 20-kilogram log.

The Gon-Gon Festival originated during a drought. The local farmers went to the temple and asked the priest to pray for rain. They were so excited when the rains actually came that they rushed to the temple and started banging on the bell. They obviously got a big charge out of it, because they’ve been doing it annually ever since.

If you’ve got the time, click on the link to the temple to view a Japanese page with three nice photos. One is of the temple itself, another is of the bell during the daytime, and the third is of a tree on the temple grounds that is more than 1,000 years old. In fact, the story goes that it was planted when the temple was founded in 681. The trunk has a circumference of 24 meters.

Wall Street Journal’s error typifies Western media approach to Japan

The Wall Street Journal interviewed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo before his trip to the U.S. next week. The interview by Mary Kissel is available only to subscribers, but I thought I’d check anyway. There is a preview, however.

Here’s what I found:

He (Koizumi) was a refreshing change after a string of faceless prime ministers that trip off the tongue like ticker tape: Hata, Murayama, Hashimoto, Obushi, Mori.

Obushi?

She wouldn’t happen to mean Keizo Obuchi, would she?

How can names “trip off the tongue like ticker tape” when your foot’s jammed squarely in your mouth? (And I’d love to hear the reporter smoothly reel off the names of those prime ministers without stumbling over or mispronouncing them.)

We can only hope that one of these days the Western media decides to apply the same basic standards of competence to Japan that it applies elsewhere.

Please, no excuses. People aren’t “faceless” to other people interested in basic human interaction. In terms of personal dynamism, that group would favorably compare with Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush any day. Ms. Kissel just never bothered paying attention to them.

And the least journalists can do is spell a prime minister’s name properly.

In 1963, Obuchi traveled around the world on his own, from January to September, taking odd jobs along the way. He decided he wanted to meet Robert Kennedy, so he just walked into the attorney-general’s office. Does that sound like a faceless man to you?

And it’s interesting that Tomiichi Murayama was included in that group of non-faced people. People are upset because they think Japan hasn’t come to terms with its actions in the war, and that Abe is a comfort woman denier?

Mr. Murayama is the prime minister who publicly delivered Japan’s biggest and most comprehensive apology about the war.

Here’s an interesting article about Murayama’s apology that appeared in the International Herald Tribune at the time:

Japan’s apology to its World War II victims Tuesday was generally well received by Asian leaders, but many veterans dismissed it as inadequate and insincere.

And:

President Kim Young Sam of South Korea…said he hoped that Korea and Japan could put the past behind them. The South Korean Foreign Ministry, however, urged Japan to make “more positive efforts” to examine its history.

And:

In China…(t)he Foreign Ministry called Mr. Murayama’s statement “positive” but regretted that there are many in Japan who fail to take a “correct attitude” to the war period.

That was 12 years ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

It should be obvious by now that these complaints have nothing to do with Japan, now more so than in 1995. Murayama was speaking on the 50th anniversary of the war’s end. The governments in other countries are just looking for a political and diplomatic edge, and the rest either don’t want to let it go, or don’t realize the people they’re talking to didn’t have anything to do with the war and don’t really care about it.

I’m tempted to wish Mr. Abe luck with American journalists on his upcoming trip, but I don’t think he’ll need it. He’s had quite a lot experience in dealing with the media’s kneejerk bias, basic incompetence, and disparagement of Japan.

Besides, he’s not faceless either.

Update

Infimum provides a link in the first comment to the entire article. Here’s another line:

“I’m so sorry I kept you waiting,” he says, in staccato, carefully rehearsed American English…

I’m so sorry to have to put up with journalistic conceits. For starters, the Japanese language tends to be staccato compared to English, so it’s natural that a Japanese speaking English would sound that way. Unless the author’s intention is to play off a Mr. Moto stereotype.

Would she tell us about funky speech rhythms if she interviewed an African head of state?

And I doubt that Mr. Abe had to carefully rehearse that phrase. The man lived in the United States for a year while attending university, boarding with an older American woman. He’s had more experience living abroad than any American president of the past half-century. Bill Clinton attended Oxford, but he didn’t have to learn a foreign language to do it, and the culture differential is not nearly as great.

We should understand and draw conclusions from the fact that the real objective of journalism is not to present the facts as a neutral observer, but to present a fable a particular media outlet has created to portray a situation in the light that it chooses. Whether the facts happen to correspond to the situation is irrelevant. The setting for the fable was already created before Kissel walked into the office. The interview was merely to fill in a few lines of dialogue.

It’s just infotainment without the info.

Royal on Japanese manga: Hoist by her own petard

FOREIGN MINISTER TARO ASO has a suggestion for Segolene Royal, the Socialist candidate for president in France, according to this Japan Times article .

Royal criticized Japanese society in a book published in 1989 for its toleration of violence and pornography in manga and animations. She also apparently complained about sexism in manga to Mizuho Fukushima, the head of the Japanese Social Democratic Party (former Socialist Party) when the latter visited Paris in December.

Aso, well-known for his enjoyment of manga, suggested that Royal might broaden her reading of the comics and discover the diversity of the genre.

Actually, I have a different suggestion for Royal: Put a sock in it.

The only reason to get upset about violent or pornographic manga is if reading that material leads to sex crimes against women. Interpol (headquarted in France) keeps international crime statistics. One of these is the incidence of rape per 100,000 population.

This website listed some of those rape statistics by country for 2004.

The numbers for Japan? 1.78. The rate for France? 14.45.

Mr. Aso also suggested to reporters that they not react so much to comments from foreigners about Japanese culture.

“Why are you worried so much if someone in France makes this kind of remark?” Aso asked

Indeed. Particularly when the remarks betray such ignorance.

Matsuri da! (18): Floats of unparalleled beauty

THOSE IN THE KNOW say it is one of the three most beautiful festivals in Japan, and it was held last weekend on the 14th and 15th in Takayama, Gifu Prefecture. That’s the spring version of the Takayama Festival, the name used for both the Sanno Matsuri in April and the Hachiman Matsuri at Sakurayama Hachiman-gu Shrine in October. The main event is a large parade featuring about a thousand people in period costumes and 12 of the most elaborate floats you’ll see anywhere.

This is a joyous celebration of spring’s arrival, so the brilliant colors, sounds, and costumes are no surprise. The parade is a panorama of people wearing hats with bird feathers playing gongs and drums, or others performing the shishimai, or lion dance, wearing headgear that resembles a lion’s head. This is followed by the 12 floats, photographs of which often appear in newspapers around the country over the next few days, and two of which you can see here. These floats are exquisitely decorated, both on the exterior for public display, and on the interior as well, concealed under the roof or behind the doors.

They are indeed elaborate. The story goes that years ago, the local artisans and tradesmen who had accumulated great wealth were prohibited from using that wealth to enhance their rank, so they applied it for more material pursuits, one of which was the festivals. As a result, these events became more extravagant as the years passed.

The decorations include carvings, thick woven curtains, lacquerware, and bamboo blinds. The floats also have various devices, such as moving marionettes. Nightfall does not signal the festival’s end; rather, each float is decorated with some 100 traditional lanterns to create yet another stunning effect.

The origin of the Takayama Festival is not definitely known, but there’s a letter dating from 1692 stating the festival had been held for the last 40 years. Some historians think it may date back more than 100 years before that.

These floats were built through a scheme seen in other festivals throughout Japan. Several households joined together to form a community, with each household making a financial contribution. Human vanity being a universal trait, the communities started to vie with each other to produce the most beautiful or elaborate float. Some floats in festivals in other cities are built specifically for competition to break up the others. You won’t see that here–the Japanese government designated Takayama’s floats as an important cultural treasure in June 1969.

For more Takayama Festival photos, take the time to visit the sites here and here.

A rare bit from North Korea

A FEW MONTHS AGO, the North Koreans discovered a German who breeds rabbits the size of beagles. They got the bright idea of importing a few as breeding stock to provide the population with a more plentiful supply of meat.

The idea turned out to be not so bright after all. First, the big bunnies eat about as much as people, which defeats the purpose of importing them. Then, the rabbits arrived in the country at a rather inauspicious time. Now the German refuses to sell any more of his rabbits to the North Koreans.

Read all about it here at Commentary.