A dongba workshop in Osaka

PEOPLE WHO ARE BORED and can’t come up with a way to fill their spare hours in Japan have only themselves to blame. In every town there is at least one, and usually more, of what are known as karuchaa sentaa. There, for a modest fee, a person can choose to learn or learn about something interesting from among a cornucopia of subjects in classes offered from morning to night, all under the same roof.

If you want to study art, you can dabble in watercolors, oil colors, sketching with pencil (regular lead or colored), charcoal, woodblock prints, ceramics, pottery, origami, wood sculpture, and stained glass–and that doesn’t begin to exhaust the list at only one center in a small town.

There are classes in natural makeup, mah-jongg for women, chess, go, shogi, tarot, feng shui, cooking (just about anything), yoga, chi gung, exercises for the lymphatic system, and martial arts. Budding musicians can learn how to play any kind of instrument, Japanese or Western (including harmonica and ukulele), sing any kind of song, or dance any kind of dance. There are even special classes for karaoke singing.

Those interested in foreign languages can apply themselves to English (at several levels of difficulty), Korean, Chinese, French, and Italian. It goes without saying that there are classes in calligraphy, as well as classes in what’s called pen-ji, or writing kanji using a ballpoint pen.

And if you live in the Osaka area, earlier this month you could have taken part in a dongba workshop for free at the National Museum of Ethnology (link also on right sidebar).

What is dongba? The word is used to refer to the priests, culture, and pictographic script of the Naxi, an ethnic group of about 290,000 people that live in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan. The dongba that drew the Osakans to the workshop was the writing system, which consists of the only pictographs in use in the world today.

The system is used exclusively by priests as a prompt for interpreting ritual texts during weddings, funerals, and other religious ceremonies. By some accounts, there are as many as 2,000 symbols. It cannot be used to represent the Naxi language, but since the Naxi now write in Chinese they don’t need to use it for that purpose.

Students at the museum’s workshop listened to a lecture on Naxi culture and the use of the characters, watched a practical writing demonstration, and tried to write a letter on their own with the script.

There is what the Japanese call a quiet boom in dongba at present. Its popularity is not hard to understand. As you can see from the accompanying examples, the glyphs are simple, unpretentious, and easy to comprehend, particularly for people who use ideographic characters to begin with.

It’s exactly the sort of thing the Japanese find attractive, and the characters are even used in this country on the labels of PET bottles and as motifs on merchandise.

Some dongba manuscripts have been registered in Memory of the World, a UNESCO program to protect cultural heritage that the body thinks is in danger of dying out. How like UNESCO and the UN! To begin with, there are more than 5,000 dongba texts in libraries in the United States and Europe. In addition, the first photo here shows dongba used in a Kirin advertisement, and the second photo shows a dongba decal (translation: I love you) stuck on a cell phone. Since the danger that the world will forget about dongba is negligible–at least the part of the world that already knows about it–one has to wonder if UNESCO just finds it a convenient way to justify its own existence.

For those with an academic temperament, here’s a paper (.pdf file) comparing the development of written Chinese with dongba that you might enjoy. It explains that the dongba pictographs are a relatively recent invention (18th century), and their use became widespread when the Naxi prospered from the opium trade and had more disposable income to produce the texts.

Sports and politics don’t mix

GEORGE JONAS EXPLAINS why it’s best not to mix sports and politics, using China as an example.

Li Yang and Crazy English: Crazy like a fox

SEVERAL ARTICLES about China’s Li Yang and his Crazy English teaching approach have appeared on the Internet over the past few years, and he also does business in Japan and South Korea, so people in Northeast Asia are already aware of him.

But his recognition factor outside the region is likely to skyrocket now that The New Yorker has given him their full treatment. They’ve used him as the face for this report on Chinese efforts to mobilize the population and encourage them to learn English for this year’s Olympic Games. China’s organizing committee has recruited Li to provide as many people as possible with as much English fluency as possible before the world pays them a visit later this year.

Some aspects of the article will be familiar to people in Japan—the Chinese attitude toward English education is reminiscent of the Japanese approach about 20 years ago:

China has been in the grip of “English fever,” as the phenomenon is known in Chinese, for more than a decade. A vast national appetite has elevated English to something more than a language: it is not simply a tool but a defining measure of life’s potential. China today is divided by class, opportunity, and power, but one of its few unifying beliefs—something shared by waiters, politicians, intellectuals, tycoons—is the power of English. Every college freshman must meet a minimal level of English comprehension, and it’s the only foreign language tested. English has become an ideology, a force strong enough to remake your résumé, attract a spouse, or catapult you out of a village. Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United States. English private schools, study gadgets, and high-priced tutors vie for pieces of that market.

There’s a good reason why that fever is raging, but if you’re from an English-speaking country and have never lived abroad, it might be difficult to understand the imperative to learn the world’s lingua franca.

(T)he gap between the English-speaking world and the non-English-speaking world is so profound that any act of hard work or sacrifice is worth the effort.

This quote from another article five years ago goes a long way to explaining regional attitudes and Li’s appeal:

“Don’t take me as China.” Li Says. “Take me as Asia.” Because Crazy English isn’t just for the Chinese. Li believes all Asian countries are facing the same problem of speaking “terrible”, “stupid” English. So it is not surprising that Crazy English would be popular in other Asian countries. “What is surprising,” he adds, “is that Koreans would want to learn from a Chinese.”

Yet another factor is at work, though Li is more blatant about it than some Japanese teachers and students I have known:

“One-sixth of the world’s population speaks Chinese. Why are we studying English?” he asked. He turned and gestured to a row of foreign teachers seated behind him and said, “Because we pity them for not being able to speak Chinese!”

Indeed, Li’s approach highlights one undercurrent in English education throughout Northeast Asia: using English as a tool for national development and catching up to the West. According to Mark Abley’s Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, Li’s personal motto is “stimulating patriotism, advocating national spirits, conquering English, revitalizing China.” He is also critical of the Chinese educational system for failing to instill confidence in the students. I’ve heard some Japanese teachers say the same thing almost verbatim.

What are some of the emotions Li is manipulating? This broader article on ESL provides a hint:

During a question and answer session with the crowd, one student told Li that he hated the Japanese for their rape and occupation of the mainland prior to World War II. The student then said he didn’t want to study Japanese because of this hatred.

“If you really hate the Japanese, then you will learn their language,” Li told the student and the crowd. “If you really want revenge against Japan, then master their language.”

Again, these are not exclusively Chinese attitudes—I’ve met a few people in Japan with an identical outlook, and undoubtedly there are some of the same type in South Korea. (Japan’s national successes have tended to dissipate the emotions that give rise to this mindset, particularly among the younger generation.)

Substitute Japan and Japanese in the above sentence with America/Anglosphere and English, and you’ll see one element of the driving force behind English education in this part of the world. The other half of this yin and yang combination is a sense of inferiority, with the concomitant chagrin over the injustice of being saddled with a sense of inferiority in the first place.

Calling the program Crazy English is a stroke of genius. It provides the students with the justification for liberating themselves from centuries of cultural conditioning that expected people to be reserved and act within a group context instead of being openly assertive as individuals. Crazy people get to do anything they want.

Therefore, Li Yang is not just an English teacher—he’s also a motivational expert. (In fact, he interpreted for Anthony Robbins during the latter’s tour of China.) The technique for which he has become famous is having the students rear back and shout English phrases–a method that worked very well for him during his own days at university. His method focuses first on pronunciation, and then progresses to the memorization and presentation of recitations.

That’s a logical progression because it reinforces the student’s budding confidence, both internally and in front of an audience. Eventually confidence grows to the point at which the student will no longer have to deal with foreigners while hobbled by a sense of inferiority.

The author of the New Yorker piece oddly overlooks this point, and in fact seems to misunderstand the confidence factor in foreign language study altogether:

He had harnessed something universal—the cloak of confidence that comes with slipping into a language not one’s own—and added a Chinese twist.

I’ve studied Japanese, watched other foreigners study Japanese, and seen (and taught) Japanese studying English for many years now. A foreign language is not a “cloak of confidence”—in fact, it’s usually the opposite, and that’s the reason Li employs his trademark technique. The confidence comes after one has mastered the language, and it transcends those occasions when one is speaking the language. That confidence doesn’t become part of the speaker’s wardrobe—it becomes part of the speaker’s skin.

If a foreign language is to be compared to an article of clothing, it more closely resembles a stage costume than a cloak because it allows the speaker to perform as someone else altogether. Scores of Japanese housewives have told me that they can say things in English they wouldn’t dream of saying in Japanese. But the mere fact that they’re speaking English doesn’t make it work–they have to get good at English first.

Watching this YouTube video of a Li lesson/performance (at least I think it’s him) makes things much clearer. Just like any good educator, he’s part showman, and he’s superb on stage. It’s also easier to see why he gets people to shout in groups: not only does it break down individual inhibitions and increase individual confidence, but the group energy and dynamics serve to amplify everyone’s confidence. Traditional Northeast Asian culture may emphasize the group and discourage individualism, but within every person everywhere is the desire to step into the spotlight and shine as a star.

It’s no wonder that so many people are so enthusiastic about studying English Li’s way. Even if they don’t become fluent in the language and never use it in a meaningful way, they will have tremendously enjoyed being a part of the experience and come away feeling good about themselves. That makes it worth the money they spend on his books, courses, and seminars.

And that’s what has made Li Yang famous, a cultural figure, and gloriously rich.

You didn’t think his motivations were exclusively patriotic, did you?

How (not) to deal with China

JOHN POMPHRET, editor of the Washington Post’s Outlook section, runs a blog on the Post website called Pomphret’s China. For his posts, Mr. Pomphret uses the experience gained from serving as that newspaper’s Beijing bureau chief for six years.

In his latest entry, he gushes over a linguistic device that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (who is fluent in Chinese) used during a recent speech at Beijing University. He suggests that Western countries could employ it as a model for dealing with China in the future. Mr. Pomphret seems to contradict himself in the post, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

The piece is headlined, “Australia to China: Let’s Not Be Friends”. It contains an explanation of the connotations of the word “friendship” as it is applied to foreigners in China today:

Rudd’s brilliance in the speech involves turning the Chinese term “friend” on its head. Friend (pengyou in Chinese) and frienship (youyi) are two of the most distorted concepts in modern China culture. In modern China, a friend is someone who will do you favors and who expects favors in return. A “foreign friend” is someone the Chinese party-state expects will carry water for them and NEVER criticize them.

Whenever a Chinese official called me “foreign friend” (waiguo pengyou), I knew some type of horrible deal would soon be asked or expected of me.

Here’s what Mr. Pomphret thought was brilliant:

So what did Rudd do? He went back — way back — into Chinese history, to the 7th century AD, and used another word for friendship (zhengyou).

“A true friend,” Rudd said, “is one who can be a zhengyou, that is a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship….A strong relationship, and a true friendship,” he told the students, “are built on the ability to engage in a direct, frank and ongoing dialogue about our fundamental interests and future vision.”

Clever perhaps, but brilliant overstates it by more than a bit. The contradiction is the declaration in the headline—let’s not be friends—with Mr. Rudd’s actual use of the phrases “true friend” and “true friendship”.

Mr. Rudd’s assertion that “a true friend…is a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship” comes across as empty political boilerplate. Read it over a couple of times and watch how quickly it evaporates. Then try to imagine how convincing the Chinese found it.

Mr. Pomphret’s enthusiasm for the Australian PM can perhaps be ascribed to a practice common among the mass media, in which a newspaper or broadcaster tends to lionize those people with whom it shares political viewpoints.

The blogger seems to have forgotten, however, that one G8 nation has considerably more diplomatic experience with China than the others. And he probably wasn’t aware that a prominent politician from that country also used the Chinese language to tell them to knock off the friendship talk and get down to brass tacks. Former Japanese Foreign Minister Aso Taro—who might well become Japan’s next prime minister—described his 2006 meeting with then-Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing during an interview published in the February issue of Shokun! magazine.

Here’s what Mr. Aso said. The translation is mine:

“The chief characteristic of the Chinese government’s diplomatic stance is to give priority to their own benefit. They’ll join hands with anyone if they think it will be beneficial to them. They are a formidable country in that regard. I’ll give you an example.

“This happened during my meeting with the Chinese foreign minister in Doha, Qatar, in May 2006. Talks (between our countries) at the foreign minister level had been suspended for some time. Li Zhaoxing kept going on and on about Japan-China friendship, but I just brushed it off and told him, “I’m not interested in that at all.” An approach and response based on emotions will at times be very damaging to the national interest.

“He seemed suspicious of what I was saying, so here’s what I told him. I said that what we needed was “Japan-China Mutual Benefit”, and we should both recognize that Japan-China friendship was a means to that end. I took out a piece of paper, wrote 日中共益 (Japan-China mutual benefit) in kanji on it and handed it over to him.

“When the meeting was over, he immediately came over to me and quickly extended his hand for a handshake.”

As Mr. Aso noted elsewhere in the interview, there hasn’t been any Japan-China friendship during 1,500 years of diplomatic relations. (He wasn’t taking a hard line; he was just stating the facts as he saw them.) But he also pointed out that an examination of the long bilateral relationship shows the Japanese can disregard a few years of chilly ties without having to worry about it.

Rather than follow Mr. Pomphret’s suggestion that the West use Mr. Rudd’s approach, the better course might be to take a tip from Mr. Aso and the Japanese experience. Bilateral friendship implies shared values. The Chinese nation is a totalitarian hegemon without a shred of respect for human rights. What advanced democracy shares such values as the forced sterilization of women and the absence of free elections?

The Australian prime minister knows enough Chinese to refuse the dubious distinction of “foreign friend”, and has enough wit to make a point by employing a linguistic gambit. Unfortunately, that is as likely to influence the Chinese as a Free Tibet bumper sticker.

Mr. Rudd suggests that friends look beyond benefit to engage in an honest dialogue. The Japanese foreign minister understands that the Chinese accept no nation as a friend unless they benefit from it, and they’re not at all interested in honest dialogue on someone else’s terms. He knows that for China, “the broader and firm basis for…sincere friendship” is their own self interest.

Mr. Rudd’s fluency in Chinese is an advantage when talking to university students in Beijing, but Mr. Aso’s more practical approach is an advantage when actually dealing with that country in a bilateral relationship.

That’s because he speaks their language.

Mac’s question about Japan and Tibet

FREQUENT POSTER MAC asked an off-topic question while replying to another thread. The question is so good, however, it deserves to be asked where everyone can see and hear it:

What face are the Japanese people going to show amidst all this Olympic Torch/Tibet/Human Rights kerfuffle? It’s a high stakes card to play, but I would say with China’s credibility on the way down, Japan have an opportunity to raise theirs. Whose example are they going to follow on this one?

Whose example indeed?

The Imperial warehouses

THE SMITHSONIAN in Washington D.C. is sometimes referred to as America’s attic. While it is primarily the repository for items of historical value, it is also the storage place for objects that are more curiosity than treasure and part of the country’s cultural legacy only in the aggregate.

There is a group of buildings in Japan that serve a similar function, though they are not open to the public and not widely known. That’s the Gyofu, a cluster of wooden warehouses on the southern end of the Fukiage Gardens in the Imperial Palace.

They were originally used to store the spoils of war. Each of the five buildings in the group has a name that ends with the suffix –fu. In each of the five was kept the booty taken from overseas in military campaigns.

Specifically, the Shintenfu was the repository for items from the Japan-China war, the Kaienfu was for items from the North China Incident (the start of the second war with China), the Kenanfu stored the items from the Japan-Russia war, the Junmeifu held the spoils from the Siberian Intervention (1918-1925), and the Kenchufu was the warehouse for the plunder and souvenirs from the Manchurian and Shanghai incidents.

The Korosei Rock, a symbol of the relationship between T’ang Dynasty China and Bohai (a kingdom that existed in Northern China and the Korean Peninsula from 698-926), was taken from China to Japan during the Japan-Russia War and is still standing in the front garden of the Kenanfu (the building shown in the photo). All the other items from overseas were returned to their countries of origin after the war.

The buildings of the Gyofu still serve as warehouses, however; they are used for the storage of the possessions of the current emperor, some of the art donated to the country by the Imperial Household after the death of the Showa Emperor, and the implements used for palace ceremonies.

According to those who have gotten a glimpse of the interior of these buildings, they just have an open space with no dividing walls or shelving. All the stored items are placed seemingly at random inside.

Though the buildings are old, they were solidly built and are still in good shape. The people responsible for their design and construction were part of the Takumiryo, a group of builders and craftsmen in the former Imperial Household Ministry. That group was also involved with the construction of other parts of the Imperial Palace and the Tokyo National Museum.

The Gyofu are located in a part of the palace grounds where entry is highly restricted, so they are almost never seen by anyone without a reason for being there. But there is one exception: the Suwa teahouse in the East Gardens, a popular site for strollers that is open to the public. The building is actually the Kaienfu, which was moved to this location and rebuilt. It was decided to move it in 1968 when the plans for the East Garden were formulated because its distinctively Japanese appearance was thought to blend in well with the surrounding area.

It’s a shame the rest aren’t available for viewing by the public, but they are just storehouses, so they wouldn’t be the most appropriate place for public exhibitions. Then again, there’s no reason why the Korosei Rock should still be there. It should have been returned to China long ago.

The Chinese would like to have it back, of course, but to their credit, they seem to be asking for the return in the spirit of bilateral friendship rather than making strident demands. Here’s the Japanese-language explanation of the history of the object and the Chinese viewpoint on the website of the Chinese Embassy in Japan, as written by Xinhua. China sent a team to this country to examine the rock, but the Imperial Household Agency, perhaps the most backward government organization in the country, refused to let them see it. They gave the team photographs instead.

It’s an object of historical and cultural importance from China that belongs in China. Why should it be sitting on a plot of land in Japan that most Japanese aren’t allowed to see? Indeed, returning it would be of great benefit to Japan, if only for the positive publicity it would generate among the Chinese.

Keeping it there does not reflect well on the Japanese government. I suspect the Japanese public would agree–if they knew about it.

Cultural commissars

THE JAPANESE SHOULD THANK their lucky stars they’ve kept their festival traditions alive over the centuries—and that no megalomaniac dictators decided to eliminate them in the name of progress. Otherwise, like the Chinese, they might be regretting what they’ve lost, as this article in the Asia Times points out.

Here’s what happened:

China’s late leader Mao Zedong had tried to erase many traditional Chinese celebrations by ordering the destruction of religious sites and outlawing folk customs. Everything “old” - from marriages to funerals, from folk medicine to folk music - was targeted.
But as communist ideology gradually lost its influence in contemporary society, Chinese leaders after Mao have tried to fill the void with nationalistic appeals for people to take pride in the country’s 5,000-year-old history and culture.

It’s not so easy to recreate the connection once the ties to the past have been severed, however. Many Chinese find the efforts to reclaim those festivals contrived and hollow:

“Any resemblance to the elaborate imperial sacrifices to heaven and Earth of the past was lost in these caricature performances of poorly trained traveling troupes from the provinces,” columnist Zhang Min wrote of his experiences at the capital’s Temple of Earth in the Beijing News. The exquisite works of artisans that once adorned Beijing temple fair stalls - Peking Opera masks, figurines made of painted dough and modeled on legendary figures, intricate kites and embroidered clothes - have now been replaced with “ubiquitous and cheap mass-produced trinkets”, Zhang complained.

The Chinese also faced an unexpected development. Other countries are claiming Chinese festivals and customs as their own for UNESCO registration:

The country saw one of its most treasured events, the Dragon Boat Festival celebrated in June, nominated and later successfully listed as an intangible part of the cultural heritage of neighboring South Korea. The listing angered Chinese scholars and officials who accused South Korea of brazenly encroaching on China’s cultural heritage.
Since the 2005 UNESCO listing of the Dragon Boat festival, South Korea has applied to have its ritualized Confucius memorial ceremony listed as another unique cultural heritage and is reported ready with an application for the listing of “Chinese traditional medicine” as “Korean traditional medicine”.

This touched off a different kind of culture war. Countries can get just as huffy about their rituals and ceremonies as they can about their territory:

“It is not enough to talk just about territorial integrity - China needs to safeguard its cultural sovereignty too,” argues literary scholar Bai Gengsheng. “Unlike material culture which is traceable, intangible cultural heritage can be very contentious and we must design strategies to preserve China’s heritage from being lost to other countries.”

This debate is fascinating because it highlights both the historical movement of culture in the region at large and some of the tensions that currently exist within it. Regardless of UNESCO bureaucratic fiats, no one can deny that the Chinese are the progenitors of much of East Asian culture that later became localized in other areas. The Japanese, to cite one of many examples, freely acknowledge the Chinese (and Korean) origins for gagaku, or Imperial Court music.

Chinese Overreaction?

But even some Chinese realize that when cultural traditions are replanted elsewhere, they adapt to the new soil and become transformed in the process. As this China Daily article points out:

Some Koreans working in China believe that the Chinese who are upset may be overreacting. A teacher surnamed Kim pointed out that the festival has been celebrated in Korea for more than 1,000 years, since it was introduced from China. It has been integrated with Korean culture over the centuries, so that celebrations now bear little resemblance to China’s.

The same article suggests that the Chinese who object may misunderstand the UNESCO process:

For all the pride the Chinese take in such traditions, however, they do not necessarily hold any proprietary rights over them.
“Unlike natural heritage sites, which are fixed and unique, the ‘masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity’ can be shared,” said Wu. “If UNESCO approves something as an intangible cultural property of one country, other countries may still apply. For example, mukamu is a typical music of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, but still UNESCO has approved Iraq mukamu and Azerbaijan mukamu as those nations’ intangible cultural properties.”

Choseon Chicanery

Be that as it may, the Koreans are not entirely blameless in this affair, as this brief article points out:

The Chinese domain name for the (festival) website (duanwujie.cn), however, was first registered by a South Korean company in October last year when the two countries had already competed against each other fiercely in a struggle that aimed to include the Dragon Boat Festival as a world cultural heritage of their own country.

It cost the Chinese $30,000 to buy back the domain name.

The Koreans have been known to do this before. They were the first to register the rights for the Japanese name of the alcoholic beverage shochu in the United States, for example, and used it to sell their own version of the drink, which they call soju. The Japanese had to buy those rights back, too.

Everyone recognizes that some cultural practices which originated elsewhere have long been a part of Korean life and have taken on a Korean identity. It’s another matter, however, to register the Chinese and Japanese names with the intent of scamming some cash. And everyone also recognizes that it’s pointless to expect people on the Korean Peninsula to chastise the grifters who scavenge off of the Chinese or Japanese while poking a finger into their eyes. They’re likely to be applauded instead.

The Source of the Problem

But some questions inevitably arise after reading these accounts: Why is anyone bothering to register their cultural properties, tangible or intangible, with UNESCO? Why should anyone think any organization has the standing to render judgments on a country’s cultural heritage?

And who is this all for, anyway? Neither the Chinese nor the Koreans need UNESCO’s “approval” for cultural validation, particularly for a festival that dates back a millennium in Korea and 2,500 years in China. The Koreans haven’t needed it to keep their festival alive, and the Chinese still have their cultural memory despite the social devastation Mao wrought.

A look at the UNESCO website for the project provides some hints.

Other than country-specific lists with brief explanations, the site is short on reports of what it has achieved with actual, on-the-ground projects. Yet it is packed with organizational trivia, rules of procedure, and vapid platitudes. Just the sort of thing to keep people busy without doing any real work. Here are some statements from their convention, which presents the reasons and objectives for their activities:

Considering the importance of the intangible cultural heritage as a mainspring of cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development…

When did intangible cultural heritage become a guarantee of sustainable development? It’s a toss-up which is worse: cutting and pasting political banalities to create a pleasant-sounding but meaningless mush of linguistic oatmeal, or inserting that phrase as self-justification into their convention as if it were an absolute scriptural truth.

An intangible cultural heritage guarantees nothing, least of all sustainable development.

And it’s no surprise that UNESCO should be so concerned about protecting—or enforcing—yet another mushy platitude: cultural diversity. It’s as if UNESCO were encouraging people to have sex. Cultural diversity is what happens when people are left to their own devices to interact naturally. Especially when the NGOs aren’t looking.

Recognizing that the processes of globalization and social transformation, alongside the conditions they create for renewed dialogue among communities, also give rise, as does the phenomenon of intolerance, to grave threats of deterioration, disappearance and destruction of the intangible cultural heritage, in particular owing to a lack of resources for safeguarding such heritage…

We have a winner in the contest for non-native English speakers to see who can write the longest sentence with as many clichés as possible.

The proposition that globalization threatens diversity is untenable. Globalization enhances cultural diversity, and examples abound. To cite one: trends in popular music over the last century on every continent except Antarctica.

“Deterioration, disappearance, and destruction” result from isolation and the rejection of outside influences. Nature loves a wide gene pool. So does culture.

Considering the invaluable role of the intangible cultural heritage as a factor in bringing human beings closer together and ensuring exchange and understanding among them…

If this is referring to specific local areas, they’ve got it backwards. A cultural heritage results from the pre-existing exchange and common understanding between people. And while multinational cultural exchange sometimes does result in bringing people together, it doesn’t ensure it. Exhibit A: the Dragon Festival registration story.

UNESCO also attempts to define what they’re talking about. Here’s one definition:

(d) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;

Perhaps the Chinese should register feng shui before the Koreans beat them to it!

Give UNESCO credit for trying to cover every conceivable base, however:

Close to half of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world are doomed or likely to disappear in the foreseeable future. The disappearance of any language is an irreparable loss for the heritage of all humankind.

The disappearance of any language is no more an irreparable loss for our heritage than was that of the pterodactyl. It just means that the language no longer has a practical use. If there were any benefits to be gained from its use, a language wouldn’t have to be protected.

After looking over this website, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the enterprise seems less about recognizing and preserving culture than it is about providing the transnational NGO jet set with a marvelous opportunity for self-congratulation and a chance to dress up and meet people from around the world on someone else’s tab.

If the plug were pulled on UNESCO tomorrow, Koreans would still celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, Nigerians would still play juju music, the Balinese would still dance, and the Japanese living cultural treasures would still make ceramics and perform kabuki—not to mention holding more traditional festivals than the public sector can count.

Bam Goes Bamian

Yet when a cultural heritage really was threatened, UNESCO turned out to have been all bumper sticker and no horsepower. When the Taliban used the 1,500-year-old Buddhas of Bamian for bazooka practice, as the third photo shows, the largest Buddhist statues in the world–a UNESCO World Heritage site–were turned into rubble.

Here’s what former Afghanistan leader Mullah Mohammad Omar allegedly said to a Pakistani reporter:

“I did not want to destroy the Bamian Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamian Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings — the Afghans who are dying of hunger, but they are so concerned about non-living objects like the Buddha. This was extremely deplorable. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddhas’ destruction.”

The Mullah is obviously a lunatic, but there is a point lurking in that nonsense. If multinational organizations think it’s important to save threatened cultural heritages, a good place to start would be to help the culture save itself. Their money would be a lot better spent ensuring that people had safe drinking water than by creating an artificial cocoon for a language or dance form that long ago lost its meaning for living people.

But laying water pipe has very little cachet. At a catered multinational cocktail party, it’s a lot more impressive to be able to boast that one helped save indigenous weaving and dying techniques, and doesn’t that blanket look lovely on the wall of the apartment?

The problem here is not the end, but the means. The ostensible aims of this scheme may be admirable, and I’d elbow my way to the front of the line to see some of the registered activities, but UNESCO is just as likely to get in the way of people devising their own cultural preferences instead of helping them. Like the pterodactyl, cultural practices become extinct for a reason.

The best solution lies where it always has—at the local level. Even the Marxist government of Cuba has kept its local musical culture alive while allowing it to evolve by incorporating outside influences. Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs has a robust program for preserving and utilizing cultural properties, as you can see here. Even Japanese villagers need little encouragement to continue holding festivals that are hundreds of years old and that only a handful of people see.

And they don’t touch off arguments about who has dibs on what is supposed to be the shared heritage of humanity.

Postscript: Here is the UNESCO page for registered Japanese cultural properties. The Japanese seem to be paying a lot of the bills for other countries, while noh, kabuki, and joruri don’t need UNESCO registration to survive. The Japanese government is also playing a leading role in restoring the Buddhas of Bamian.

Chiburger to go

SOME CRITICS LAMENT that people are reading less fiction than they once did, but I think those concerns are unfounded. People read just as much fiction as they always have—it’s just that the sources of their literary entertainment have changed. Nowadays, readers get their fiction from news articles instead of from novelists.

For the skeptical, here’s a story as absurd as any comic novel and which includes characters and passages that could have been invented by Jonathan Swift or William Burroughs. The Associated Press reports that the McDonald’s hamburger chain has opened a shop in Hacienda Heights, California, that incorporates the principles of feng shui in its design.

Feng shui (風水, fusui in Japanese) is the ancient Chinese practice of utilizing geography and astrology to determine the optimum location and positioning of residences, commercial establishments, and farms to receive and retain chi (気, ki in Japanese), or natural energy, to achieve harmony with one’s surroundings.

Some people consider it junk science, but it is being viewed with increasing respect by Western architects and designers.

Here’s how Brenda Clifford redesigned the hamburger joint:

With the help of a feng shui master, the designers added details that…include positioning the doors in a way that would block out bad spirits while keeping good ones inside…
The eight rows of red tiles near the food counter are another symbol of fortune, because the number eight is considered auspicious…
Clifford said she made the nearly fatal mistake of putting 44 seats in the dining area, until she learned that feng shui followers consider the number four a symbol of bad luck. So she added an extra seat to make it 45.

The outlet’s owners say they decided to incorporate feng shui principles because there is a well-known Buddhist temple nearby, which brings good luck.

Another factor in their decision is what the author calls the large Asian (read: East Asian) population in the neighborhood. McDonald’s has recently been implementing a policy of modifying shop designs and products to appeal to local communities.

And of course there is an unspoken third factor: combining two items unlikely to be mentioned in the same sentence—namely, the Palace of American Junk Food and Chinese cosmology–creates a media magnet that will reap publicity for the store owners, leading to increased customer traffic and higher profits.

The scenario has grown more common in recent years: Westerners encounter Asian culture and use the shells while throwing away the nuts. Other examples include the exercise regimen known as “power yoga”, a classic contradiction in terms that is laughable from the traditional perspective, and the perversion of Tantric yoga into a form of sexual gymnastics.

The objective of feng shui is to generate positive benefits that result in health, harmony, and abundance. While the Chinese certainly use the principles to foster success in their business enterprises, it would be difficult to imagine anything less conducive to health and harmony than the merchandise produced and sold by McDonald’s.

But let’s take a look at the article, starting with the headline on the MSNBC website:

Do you want fries with that Zen?

American author William Burroughs was known for the technique of cutting up and rearranging words, phrases, and sentences to create a non-linear narrative. It was one thing for the drug-addled Burroughs to razor through unrelated bits of prose and recombine them for the pleasure of avant-garde cultists. It’s another matter altogether when journalists employ the same technique because they’re too lazy to look in an encyclopedia.

Feng Shui originated several thousand years ago in China and was a local attempt to formulate principles for coexisting with the environment that are both philosophical and practical. Zen is a Japanese word for a specific practice within Buddhism. It also exists in China, where it is called chán, and where it is thought to have been developed in the 7th century AD. The original concepts probably came from India.

Zen has about as much to do with feng shui as Stonehenge has to do with Jesuits. A published article by working journalists that assumes the existence of one means the presence of the other? Straight out of Jonathan Swift or Evelyn Waugh.

The satirists also could have created the character of the designer, Brenda Clifford.

Meanwhile, the metal sculptures of a crane and Koi fish adorning one wall represent fertility and prosperity, she said.

The crane is a traditional symbol of longevity in both China and Japan. Koi—the Japanese word for carp—represent strength and endurance in both countries. The bird and the fish represent fertility and prosperity in much the same way a Big Mac represents nourishment.

But back to the journalists of the Associated Press. They’re still using the Burroughs technique of cutting and pasting unrelated words and phrases to create meaningless sentences:

The designs were…also done in a way that would help all customers tap their inner Zen.

And the way they take a noun from a foreign language and turn it into a new verb is almost Shakespearean:

Brownstein said he and his partners chose to feng shui the restaurant…

Who needs fiction after reading this two-screen marvel? Feng shui, food that isn’t food, a dizzy designer, a “professor emerita” offering junk education, and reporters and editors at the Associated Press better qualified to flip burgers than to write about them.

That has all the ingredients of an epic satire.

China’s income divide: More canyon than gap

IT’S ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA to take with a grain of salt the sort of journalism in which a reporter encourages the reader to extrapolate ideas about large groups of people based on interviews with a handful of individuals. Are the examples selected illustrative of a larger truth, or were they cherry-picked to promote an agenda or a particular point of view?

These questions are compounded when the subject matter is China, a country of 1.3 billion people. Yet, whether Max Hastings, columnist for Britain’s Daily Mail, is playing it straight or playing a riff on reality, his recent articles about contemporary conditions in the country are worth reading.

Of particular interest are two pieces that present the contrast between China’s dirt poor and glorious rich. Here’s a sample from the first:

…if you think you know what poverty means, you have not met Han Yuming. He is a citizen of a China which lives a century behind the new society of skyscrapers, teeming factories and highways.

He is 62 years old, earns less than £20 a month, and lives in a hut - no, let us be honest and call it a hovel - in the mountains north-west of Beijing, less than two hours’ drive from the glittering Olympic stadiums soon to be unveiled before the world.

The yawning chasm between rich and poor is the aspect of “new China” which most frightens its government and elite. Beyond the swathe of prosperity in the east of the country live 900 million peasants who possess no share in China’s wealth, and have scant hope of gaining one.

Some 135 million people eke out an existence on less than 50p a day; Yuming is one 500 million who have less than £1 a day.

And one from the second:

A Beijing businesswoman, whom to spare her blushes we shall call Hui, gave me a guided tour of her eighth floor palace.

The apartment is a riot of gilding; purple and green carpets; a library packed with new, unread and probably unreadable books; electronic gadgetry; pools of giant goldfish; vast gold mirrors; imperial-sized beds and sofas deep enough to drown in.

The dining-room table is permanently laid for eight. The massive sunken bath and Jacuzzi look in danger of falling through into the floor below.

A whole room is devoted to shoes, racked from floor to ceiling in a fashion that would earn the envy of former Philippines First Lady and shoe queen Imelda Marcos.

My hostess, a chunky 47-year-old, has made a fortune out of trading in pharmaceuticals…

She has lately discovered religion, and her apartment boasts its own Buddhist shrine.

“Before I became religious, I was always stressed, always pressured,” she says. “Now, my Buddha master tells me I should take it easier - and I do. Buddhism has taught me about my destiny.

“I’m successful because it’s my destiny. If you’re born into a poor family, then that’s another kind of destiny.

“Any time I have a problem, my Buddha master tells me what I should do…”

It was he, she says, who urged her to get into property development.

She is now doing that, too, with notable success. She employs a workforce which will soon be 100-strong and is thinking of buying a country house with a garden.

And while you’re at it, you might be interested in his article on the Chinese middle class, which is here.

Ozawa Ichiro’s foreign affairs

OZAWA ICHIRO, the president of the Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s leading opposition party, is considering a trip to South Korea to visit Lee Myung-bak on 22 or 23 February, just before Mr. Lee’s inauguration as president, according this Kyodo report. Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo also might drop in on Mr. Lee, but he would visit around the time of the inauguration itself.

The Japan Times eagerly suggests in its headline that Mr. Ozawa might upstage the prime minister by being the first to visit Mr. Lee. (The newspaper’s political orientation is such that they would be delighted if that happened.) Upstaging Mr. Fukuda might well be the DPJ president’s reason for making the visit, but the way Mr. Ozawa and the party behaved when he visited China in early December suggests another possible outcome: the visit could blow up in their faces like an exploding cigar.

Mr. Ozawa’s mentor was the late Tanaka Kakuei, the Boss Tweed of Japanese politics. Mr. Tanaka took a special interest in China, and this interest is shared by his protégé. The DPJ president regularly leads groups on goodwill tours of the country. During his tour last December, the group met with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Here’s the BBC report on his visit; the headline reads, “Ozawa beats Fukuda to China visit”, as if the article belonged in the sports section rather than the Asian news category.

Starting at the Beginning

This story begins when the Dalai Lama visited Japan last November on a tour to raise the awareness of the Chinese oppression of his Tibetan homeland. DPJ Secretary-General Hatoyama Yukio held a joint press conference with him during his stay here.

You don’t need a fortune cookie to figure out how the Chinese responded. They wrote this letter to the DPJ, which is still up on the website of their embassy in Japan. Here’s a translation from the Japanese of the good parts:

“We express our great surprise and strong dissatisfaction with Secretary-General Hatoyama’s statement of support for the Dalai Lama at the press conference.

“Under the guise of religion, the Dalai Lama is an anti-Chinese political exile working to break up the country.

“Ozawa Ichiro, the president of your party, will lead a large delegation to visit our country early next month.

“We most firmly request that you extend all due respect to China’s position toward Tibet so that a similar event does not happen again, and that relations between the DPJ and China can continue to develop soundly in the proper direction.”

The DPJ’s Response

As it happened, Uyghur human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer, who had spent six years in a Chinese jail, and who was forced to divorce her activist husband by the Chinese government, was also in Japan at the time. She had been invited to attend a study conference organized by Makino Seishu, one of the DPJ’s founding members with Kan Naoto and Hatoyama Yukio. A former lower house member, Makino has for years been an outspoken advocate for the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, and of democracy in Asia.

Ms. Kadeer (shown in the second photo with the Dalai Lama) soon found herself disinvited by the conference. A room for the meeting had been reserved since August in a building used by Diet members, but the party applied some pressure to Mr. Makino to avoid offending the Chinese. She did wind up addressing a study conference, but it was not one with direct DPJ involvement. That get-together was sponsored by three LDP members of the Diet instead: Nakagawa Shoichi, Eto Seiichi, and Hiranuma Takeo.

Those who attended heard about the Chinese imprisonment and execution of Uyghurs and their justification of their behavior by insisting it is part of the global war on terrorism.

Mr. Hatoyama admitted the letter had been delivered to the party, and that party leaders thought it best for the conference to be held at a different location. And so Mr. Ozawa’s Beijing junket remained on the schedule. He did miss a few days of the special Diet session extended to discuss the new bill for Japanese support of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, but the DPJ boss is not one to let legislative affairs interfere with his other interests.

Mr. Ozawa Goes to Beijing

Alas, Mr. Ozawa didn’t do himself any favors in Japan with his behavior. The DPJ leader can be arrogant at times, particularly when he thinks he has the upper hand in a situation. Indeed, The Economist of Great Britain has in the past referred to him as a bully. But his behavior when he met with President Hu bordered on fawning obsequiousness, according to several sources quoted in the 20 December edition of the weekly magazine, Shukan Shincho.

Photographs of the meeting show the often haughty Japanese politician beaming and sitting up straight in his chair like a child anticipating a special treat. Reports suggest that in contrast to his normally calm and deliberate speaking style, Mr. Ozawa’s voice was high-pitched and squeaky, even quivering at times, as he spoke to President Hu. Instead of the standard bland diplomatic boilerplate, he offered President Hu thanks that came across to some as unctuous toadying.

Two of the magazine’s sources were members of his own party, and they were not shy about speaking on the record. Watanabe Hideo said he found the whole scene too embarrassing to watch, and added that everyone in the traveling party should be ashamed of themselves. Oe Yasuhiro described Mr. Ozawa as behaving as if he were pledging fealty to a feudal lord in an old-fashioned tributary relationship.

Mr. Watanabe recalled that Mr. Ozawa had once given a press conference in which the DPJ president claimed that Japan was too biased toward the US and too fawning toward China. He quoted Mr. Ozawa as saying, “I will say what should be said to both China and the US.” He also remembered that Mr. Ozawa once criticized two-track diplomacy by saying that the conduct of foreign relations is the exclusive right of the government.

It should be noted that both Mr. Watanabe and Mr. Oe were members of Mr. Ozawa’s now defunct Liberal Party. That generally conservative grouping was part of the Liberal Democratic Party’s ruling coalition during the Obuchi Keizo administration. When other LDP members blocked Mr. Ozawa’s readmission to the party (to which he belonged for almost 30 years), he converted that into an opportunity to cross the aisle and join the opposition DPJ.

The two men are now among Mr. Ozawa’s harshest critics, perhaps because the latter seems to have blithely jettisoned his former political beliefs after becoming the leader of the generally more left-of-center DPJ.

Criticism from a Chinese Observer

Also criticizing Mr. Ozawa was the staunchly anti-communist Chinese-born journalist and critic, Shi Ping (third photo). Mr. Shi (who recently took Japanese citizenship) observed that the Ozawa-Hu meeting was given front-page coverage in the People’s Daily the next day. The article quoted Mr. Ozawa as using language that was both fulsome and excessively flowery to thank Hu for meeting him. In Japanese, his words were rendered this way.

日本国民は中国の最高指導者が日中友好に大変な関心を持ってくださったことに深く感動しています。

“The Japanese people are deeply moved that China’s supreme leader has favored friendly relations between Japan and China with his great interest.”

Mr. Shi characterized the Japanese visitor’s attitude as that of a Ginza hostess trying to curry favor with her customers. He thought that Mr. Ozawa’s approach was tantamount to positioning Japan as a Chinese vassal state, and that the description used by the People’s Daily was identical to those the paper prints when provincial Chinese government officials go to the capital to call on President Hu.

He also wondered how Mr. Ozawa could claim to represent the entire Japanese people, much less describe them as being deeply moved.

The account of the Ozawa-Hu meeting is noted with little more than a photograph in the English edition of the People’s Daily. Here is the Japanese version, which uses language more restrained than that described in the magazine interview. Mr. Shi, however, is talking about the Chinese-language version of the article, and the People’s Daily is known to change versions of their coverage depending on the language of the edition.

Is Seoul Next on the Travel Agenda?

But now Mr. Ozawa wants to visit South Korea in advance of Prime Minister Fukuda’s visit. What will he and the future South Korean president talk about?

The Kyodo article suggests one topic—Mr. Ozawa’s recommendation last week that voting rights be extended to Korean citizens resident in Japan for local elections. These Koreans citizens are the descendents of those ethnic Koreans who were either brought to Japan or came voluntarily to work.

In fact, what Mr. Ozawa actually said earlier this week was that he has favored for some time extending the right to vote in local elections to people with permanent resident permits, and that his party would introduce such legislation in the Diet later this session. The ethnic Koreans who would receive the right to vote are estimated to total about 600,000, while the figure for all foreigners with permanent resident permits, ethnic Koreans included, number about 950,000.

His suggestion was immediately seconded by the leader of the New Komeito Party, Ota Akihiro. This was significant because New Komeito is the junior coalition partner of the governing LDP. There has been speculation that Mr. Ozawa hopes to pry New Komeito loose from its ties with the LDP and entice them into a new governing coalition with the opposition parties.

New Komeito is the political arm of the lay Buddhist group, Soka Gakkai. A large number of their membership is thought to be ethnically Korean.

Japan’s citizenship laws are based on the legal concept of ius sanguinis, or nationality on the basis of family origin. This contrasts with the legal concept of ius soli, or nationality on the basis of the place of birth. In other words, the ethnic Koreans who were born and grew up in Japan, speak only Japanese, and often have never set foot on the Korean Peninsula, do not have local voting rights unless they become naturalized Japanese citizens.

Should Ethnic Koreans Have Japanese Voting Rights?

It is not the business of foreigners to recommend to the people of another country with a democratic system to whom they should or should not extend the right to vote. That includes me, who, as the holder of a permanent resident permit in Japan, would gain the right to vote if the proposed legislation were submitted and passed.

But to briefly summarize the pros and cons, those in favor would say that most of the ethnic Koreans born in Japan are virtually indistinguishable from a native-born Japanese with the exception of their passport. Those opposed, however, would assert that citizenship choice is in very real terms a pledge of allegiance. Though Japanese citizenship is relatively easy for ethnic Koreans born here to obtain, those who choose not to do so are pledging their allegiance to another country. In some cases, that country is, de facto but not de jure, North Korea rather than South Korea. Why should people who make that choice be able to vote in Japanese elections?

The Japanese public is of course aware of how easy it is for ethnic Koreans to obtain Japanese citizenship, so Mr. Ozawa deliberately tried to soften the impact of his proposal by including all permanent visa holders rather than specifying Koreans. Doing so would have the drawback of enfranchising some people with a deficient working knowledge of the Japanese language.

But why is this the business of future Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and why should Mr. Ozawa feel the need to discuss this issue him? Does he intend to fawn before the South Koreans too? Does he seriously think this will earn him goodwill from the new government in Seoul? Or is he simply running in a pointless one-man race to meet Mr. Lee before Prime Minister Fukuda does?

The Onus in Foreign Relations is Not on Japan

Many foreigners urge Japan to improve its relations with China and South Korea. The unspoken premise of their urgings is that the Japanese are somehow to blame for the state of the respective bilateral relationships not being as good as it could be. It is as if the Chinese and the Koreans were anxiously pining for Japanese friendship with open arms, while the Japanese are unable to respond because they cannot overcome some obsolete notion of tribal superiority.

If anything, the reverse is true. Both China and South Korea have partly defined their contemporary identity by demonizing Japan for its past behavior; China continues this policy even as Japanese generosity underwrites to a significant degree China’s economic growth. And if anyone in the region cannot overcome the obsolete notions of the past, it is the Koreans. Some members of their government and media seem to encourage anti-Japanese attitudes out of a spiteful desire to indulge the uniquely Korean sense of han, or grudges over past wrongs.

There is very little positive to be said about today’s China, other than the fact that some Chinese know how to make a lot of money. They are manipulated by a brutal, oppressive regime contemptuous of the concept of human rights.

Those who have eyes cannot fail to see that the Chinese are intent on reestablishing their ancient hegemony in the region in an East Asian version of manifest destiny. Meanwhile, North Korea has turned itself into the political equivalent of a suicidal religious cult.

If any politicians or diplomats in the region need to adapt to contemporary political realities, it is those of China and the Korean peninsula. They are the ones who need to readjust their behavior and attitudes toward Japan, whose actions—unlike theirs—have been exemplary for the past sixty years. To assert otherwise is to view the world through the wrong end of the telescope.

To suggest that the Japanese need to change their outlook and behavior toward their neighbors is to suggest that the Japanese need to conduct a regional foreign policy based on appeasement. Such a suggestion cannot have been made by clear-headed observers.

Is it the case that Ozawa Ichiro has fallen under the spell of appeasement? Why else would his party placate the Chinese after their leaders had the effrontery to talk to the Dalai Lama or a representative of the Uyghurs? Why else would Mr. Ozawa behave in front of the new Chinese emperor like a pupil being given a gold star at a student assembly? Why else would he travel to Seoul to discuss the voting rights of Korean nationals in Japanese elections?

Events over the past six months have demonstrated that it is not as likely as it once seemed that Mr. Ozawa will become Japan’s prime minister–or that if he does, his term in office will not be appreciably longer than that of, say, Abe Shinzo, without Mr. Abe’s unheralded accomplishments.

But if he does become prime minister, the reports of his recent behavior in China and the justification for his possible visit to South Korea do not bode well for Japanese foreign policy under an Ozawa administration.