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.

Meet Kan Naoto–DPJ poster boy

KAN NAOTO is one of the founding members and the acting President of the Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s primary opposition party.

He will always be remembered for his term as Health Minister in 1996. At that time he was a member of a small, now defunct party in a governing coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party. To his everlasting credit, he forced the ministry to release documents showing the government failed to stop the use of HIV-tainted blood products for transfusions.

This was remarkable in a country where both politicians and bureaucrats are particularly loath to admit mistakes. It was an honorable and courageous act.

This propelled him into the forefront of Japanese politics, and he was chosen to serve as the head of the DPJ from 2002 to 2004. That means he would have been prime minister had his party won a majority in a lower house election.

He stepped down from that position in 2004, however, when it was revealed that he failed to make payments into the pension fund while serving as minister. Problems with the pension fund are the third rail of Japanese politics, and improper handling of one’s accounts usually means temporary exile (at the minimum) from significant political positions. (Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo resigned as Chief Cabinet Secretary during the Koizumi Administration for the same reason.)

Mr. Kan’s pension problems were exacerbated by a particularly poor performance on a live Sunday morning television program featuring political topics. The excuses he tried to make for his behavior were so patently false that his position became untenable. He resigned as head of the party within the week.

He is still a leading figure within the DPJ, however, making him one of the most important politicians in the country. While it is unlikely that he will ever become prime minister, it is conceivable that he would be appointed to an important Cabinet post if his party were to form a government.

Unfortunately, however, he seems to lack the perspective and sense of balance one expects from a high-ranking government official. For example, Mr. Kan’s website features photographs of him during different phases of his political career. One of them was featured on a poster from his term as Health Minister, which he had created to promote the adoption of a public sector system for long term health care with professional care providers.

Mr. Kan displays the poster, which dates from 1996, on his website, so it would seem he thinks it shows him in a positive light. Here is the poster:

This image has not been Photoshopped. (Here is a link to his Japanese-language site.)

Only the large print on the poster is readable. It is not easy to explain exactly what it means, and that isn’t because Japanese is my second language; some Japanese on the web have expressed their befuddlement at the precise meaning.

The phrase on the right says, Omutsu wo suru hito. (People who wear diapers)
The phrase on the left says, Otsumu ni kuru hito. (People who get angry)

The Japanese love wordplay and are very clever at it. Note that the two sentences rhyme, and that omutsu and otsumu share the last two syllables, but reversed. Still, the connection between the two escapes me. (Otsumu by itself is a word for head used mostly by women and children. The phrase, ano hito no otsumu, wa ne…can suggest that the person being referred to is not right in the head.)

Many people in the Japanese blogosphere are aghast when they see this poster, not only for the image itself, but for the fact that Mr. Kan proudly displays it on his website. They naturally wonder how those adults forced to wear diapers would react when they see it, not to mention their family members. They also wonder what this says about Mr. Kan’s attitude toward people with health problems, as well as his overall judgment.

Some other Japanese have noted that had Mr. Kan been a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, he would have been swiftly removed from any party position for creating and distributing such a poster.

And here’s another probability. Many of you, both in Japan and overseas, are seeing this poster for the first time.

Had Mr. Kan been a member of the right-of-center Liberal Democratic Party, instead of the left-of-center Democratic Party, you already would have seen the poster regardless of where you live.

A long time ago.

NOTE: Thanks to Na-san for sending along the link.

Voting with invisible ink

MY FIRST RULE for this site is to post stories about Japan and northeast Asia exclusively. Sometimes, however, rules just beg to be broken, so I’ll make an exception for this story about the primary election held in Chicago, Illinois, on Tuesday.

Twenty voters at a Far North Side precinct who found their ink pens not working were told by election judges not to worry.

It’s invisible ink, officials said. The scanner will count it.

But their votes weren’t recorded after all.

“Part of me was thinking it does sound stupid enough to be true,” said Amy Carlton, who had serious doubts but went ahead and voted anyway.

This will not surprise many Americans–it was a Chicago election, remember. In the U.S. they still talk about how the Illinois votes that would have elected Richard Nixon as president in 1960 over John Kennedy are lying at the bottom of Lake Michigan. (True story: When Kennedy complained to his father several weeks after the election about how difficult it was to recruit and select the members of his Cabinet, his father replied, “You don’t have to take the job if you don’t want it, Jack. They’re still counting the votes up in Chicago.”)

The newspaper quoted Amy again:

Both women agreed that this election meant a lot. They had spent a good deal of time researching candidates.

“I have been voting since I was 18,” said Carlton, 38. “This is the most important election of my life so far.”

That explains a lot.

Back to Japanese subject matter later today!

Political correctness: Gaining traction in Japan?

JAPAN HAS ALWAYS BEEN OPEN to new ideas from outside its shores, and as this article in the Mainichi demonstrates, it makes no difference whether those ideas have merit or are emotional froth.

The city government of Oshu, Iwate, asked the JR East railway company to display posters in train stations advertising the Kokuseki Temple’s Somin Festival. This 1000-year-old event is what is known in Japan as a “naked festival”, though no one is in fact naked. The male participants wear loincloths.

JR East refused:

“It wasn’t just that it was out of line because there was nakedness; the pictures showed things that were particularly unpleasant for women, such as chest hair, and it was decided that showing them things they didn’t want to see was sexual harassment.”

This in a country where people still visit mixed-gender public baths, and where NHK television offers live coverage of sumo–six tournaments a year, 15 days for each tournament, three hours a day. The sumo rikishi wear loincloths not that much different from those shown in the poster (which you can see accompanying the article).

Vapidity is apparently contagious. Let’s hope Japanese society has enough natural resistance to these bacteria.

Endnote: Intrepid cultural explorers who would like to see photos of what goes on at the festival and who are hardy enough to withstand the potential sexual harassment can click on this site. It’s in Japanese, but there are plenty of pictures.

Matsuri da! (64): Frat party or Japanese religious rite?

IT’S A FESTIVAL conducted by a Shinto shrine, which makes it a quasi-religious ceremony, but one could be forgiven for thinking it more closely resembles a fraternity party from the movie Animal House.

That’s the Amazake (Sweet Sake) Festival, in which young men dress up as monkeys and have a high time by drinking locally brewed grog and then splashing it on each other. This year’s version was held on the 16th at the Sanno Shinto shrine in Uto, Kumamoto Prefecture.

They didn’t get the idea from watching a movie, either. The Sanno shrine has been conducting this festival every year in mid-December for the past 700 years.

Here’s what happens: 29-year-old men in the Sano district of the city are designated “parent monkeys”, and men aged 18 to 28 are assigned roles as their children, who have to serve them.
　
This is no ordinary drinking bash—it’s also a costume party. For the past 700 years, dressing up as a monkey has meant donning a red kimono, yellow sash, and white head covering. You’ll get the idea from the photo accompanying the post. The lads also go barefoot, but fortunately they aren’t required to pin a tail to their backsides.

There’s nothing particularly complicated about the concept. Similar shenanigans occur every weekend during the school year at universities around the world. The simians for a day meet at the shrine and start to drink. As the sake is passed around, they begin to chant “Ho-rai, ho-rai!” The more they drink, the rowdier they become, and eventually they start snatching away each other’s white sake flasks.

One thing always leads to another at affairs such as these, so it doesn’t take too long before they’ve graduated to splashing the booze on each other instead of drinking it. According to local custom, getting drenched in sake prevents illness in the year ahead.

That’s as good an excuse as any!

Not everyone is anxious to receive the health benefits to be derived from the drenching, however. Boys will be boys, and once they get to drinking and throwing sake around, it’s inevitable that a few of them will get carried away, start chasing the onlookers, and spill the wine on them, too.

One reporter interviewed a native of the area who works as a company employee in Tokyo, but comes back every year just to participate in the festival. He’s probably as healthy as a horse!

Another reporter covering the story spoke to 10-year-old Takuro Nakayama, who said he looked forward to being old enough to join in too. Now isn’t that part of what a religious institution is supposed to do—present a positive example for children to follow?

Take a look at this photo for another view of what’s been going on in Kumamoto since almost 200 years before Christopher Columbus set foot on the Santa Maria.

According to Christian tradition, Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish.

Just imagine the bash they could have thrown if he had come to the Sanno shrine in Uto!

BBC: Inciting racial hatred of the Japanese?

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent.
- Epictetus

THE UNITED KINGDOM HAS A LAW known as the Public Order Act of 1986. This website describes the intent of the law as follows:

The law covering criminally racist material makes it an offence to stir up racial hatred against a group of persons in Great Britain defined by reference to colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins.
This act makes it an offence for a person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if -
(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

The website notes that the government has not put the text of the law online, though it does sell hard copies.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as the BBC, is based in the United Kingdom and is the largest broadcast organization in the world. The BBC motto is, “Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation”.

They operate BBC News, which is the world’s largest broadcast news organization. They present news stories on television and radio, and place the text and audio of some of these stories on their website.

One such story is “Can Whaling Be Justified”. For this story, BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher—an appropriate name for a journalist covering a whaling story–will report on the Japanese whaling expedition from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza.

The BBC allows its audience to comment on the stories it places on the website in a feature called Have Your Say. This feature has been activated for Jonah Fisher’s reports on whaling.

Posters must follow certain rules when commenting in the Have Your Say area. Some of them are as follows:

No defamatory comments. A defamatory comment is one that is capable of damaging the reputation of a person or organisation.
Do not incite people to commit any crime, including incitement of racial hatred.
Do not post messages that are unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive.

When they refer to the crime of racial hatred, they are referring in part to the activities prohibited by the Public Order Act of 1986, as explained above.

To make sure that posters abide by the rules, the BBC moderates this message board. There are two types of moderation. The type of moderation in force for the whaling story is “Fully Moderated”.

Here the BBC defines Fully Moderated:

This is also known as pre-moderation. Every comment submitted to a fully moderated discussion has to be checked by a BBC moderator before it is published on the site.

The readers of the website can complain about comments the moderators have allowed. The BBC explains the purpose of this option as follows:

It is only for serious complaints about comments, namely that they are obscene, abusive, threatening, unlawful, harassing, defamatory, harmful, profane, racially offensive, or otherwise strongly objectionable.
The Have Your Say moderators will decide whether the comment breaks the House Rules. If it does, they will remove it. If it doesn’t, it will be allowed to remain on the site.

The following comments were posted on the Have Your Say area of the BBC website in regard to the whaling story. Because this is a Fully Moderated topic, the BBC moderators read each one first and thought that racial hatred is not “likely to be stirred up thereby”. Also, if any of the posters complained, their complaints were rejected.

I leave it to the readers’ judgment to determine whether the following comments comply with the law of the United Kingdom and BBC standards.

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING:

1. The names and countries of origin of the posters have been removed. However, the posts here were sent not only from Great Britain, but also continental Europe, North America, and Asia.
2. The posts are copied exactly as they appeared, including punctuation and spelling.
3. They are displayed here in alternating italicized and bolded text. This is only to facilitate reading and is not intended to imply a special emphasis on my part.

START QUOTED TEXT

two words….. Enola Gay. Worked last time.

How about we harpoon a few Jap Whalers to let them know how it feels to have an exploding warhead tearing through them.

Are we allowed to hunt Japanese? Seems only fair.

Would anyone shed a tear if the whaling boat had an accident and sank it? Not me.

During the second world war propaganda said the Japanese were a cruel barbaric race…maybe it wasn’t propaganda

It is barabaric and wrong and any nation that undetakes it under any pretext demonstrates its savagery and lack of civility.
No need to say more.
Or should we hunt nips for research?

maybe they would feel a bit differently if we said we wanted to continue our scientific pursuits on nuclear fision by droppin a bomb or 2 on hiroshima or nagasaki again?

so those Nipponese love whale, some love other fish and they eat them. now i heard that some cannibals love japanese, they have less hair and smooth skin and can be easily consumed. i heard they are easily digestable too.

the Japanese have a long histroy of hunting things to extinction. 1000 whales for “research” who the he*l do think they are kidding. A barbaric culture that care for NOTHING but themselves.

Japan, you are whale and dolphin murderers and we still see you as sneaky liars.

It also used to be part of the Japanese culture, that a member of the samurai class had the right to kill anybody non-samurai jhust for the hell of it, if they so wished. “I’ve just bought a new sword I need to test its edge, you peasant come here and bow your head” SWOOSH, THUD “Ooooh lovely sharp sword”, “You peasant remove that unsightly headless corpse and clean up the blood, unless you wish to go the same way”
The Japanese have always been a brutal race, just ask any former Allied POW.

Japan never did care much about life anyway

…can the Japanese justify the slaughter of whales for research that never gets published? Then again, some of them can justify the treatment handed out to WWII POWs and ‘comfort women’ so who knows what goes on in their minds?

Whales are not a necessary foodstuff. Why doesn’t Greenpeace buy an old russian sub and torpedoe the greedy people who want to do this? Seems an infinitely more civilised use for them than their original purpose. “You want to go whaling? Die then.” Easy.

Its surely time that we boycotted all products form Japan until they start behaving a little less like the savages that they obviously are!

It is not just the Whales. The Japanese are a bestial nation as proved over and over in World War 2. Look at what they did to prisoners and the nations that they occupied.
Their whole creed was that the Japanese nation was superior to all others and therefore could do what they wished.
We stopped that nonsense the last time with two buckets of instant sunshine at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Obviously time for another one - perhaps on Tokio? Or are they going to learn?

Maybe we should start eating Japanese; it could become part of our culture.

Would the Japanese feel that it was okay to hunt them for food? Their numbers have been replenished since 1945.

If the Japs carry on with the hunting of the other two species of whale, gunboats by the international community must be used to sink the whalers. Any deaths of humans is purely by the by.
We have a duty to protect any species under threat.

I wish the slowest and most painful death possible for whalers. ME ME ME is all humans think about. We should be extinct.

Japan is, and always will be a boil on the backside of the earth.
It is a country steeped in brutality, and covered in the blood of the innocent. I cannot understand why we have anything to do with these people. I would rather shake hands with Mugabe.

Maybe seeing as whales are quite big we could start whacking a few torpedoes into Jap fishing boats as I suppose subs look like whales from a distance and they may steer clear of harmless mammals in case they get blown up. Just a thought.

The time has come to make an example “pour encourager les autres”. Target practice the odd torpedo on a whaling ship. Forget the toothless old UN.

END QUOTED TEXT

The BBC notes that they’ve rejected 192 comments on this topic as of the time I wrote this post. If this is an indication of what they think is acceptable, one can only wonder about the content of the rejected comments.

“Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation” indeed.

BONUS SECTION!

I offer the following comments here for your entertainment. Some of them might leave you laughing so hard that your navel could boil tea, as the Japanese would say. Note the sheer number of errors regarding easily verifiable facts.

Reading them calls to mind the observation by former American Vice-President Hubert Humphrey: “The right to free speech does not include the right to be taken seriously.”

BEGIN QUOTED TEXT

Our planet is on overheat, rain forests are fading away, acid rains are common, animals are going extinct by handfulls and the Japanese continue hunting down whales like on a picnic.

Save the whales, the planet, yourselves. Use birth control.

What is it with Asians and their culinary fetishes to eat certian species into extinction because it will give them sexual fortitude?

Mankind is so brave that it has to destroy beautiful and harmless creatures who were here a longtime before we were and have more rights to belong on this Planet.
Sometimes I wonder if humans belong here at all.

How would we like it if whales hunted us, and we were powerless to stop?

Has anyone ever tried Sushi made with Spam? Would be a more ‘environmentally friendly’ alternative to whale meat. Prefer to see whales in their natural habitat than used for humankind’s greedy purposes.

Is whaling more dangerous and harmful to earth, than, ” GOLBAL WARRING, GOLBAL WARMING, GENOCIDE IN IRAQ, NEOCOLONIAL THUGGGERY OF REST OF WORLD RESOURCES, UTTER POVERTY, & LIVING IN “STOLEN LANDS, WITH ,LOOTED WEALTH ” OF REST OF “FREE AND CIVILIZED HUMANITY ” IN THE 21ST CENTURY?.
White Neocolonial masters&their mobs are responsible, for all the above harmful effects ,in the WORLD, ever since evil white terrorist colonila thugggery genocide living mobs, drifted out of their slums in europe.

Do whales have large or small brains?
Whales actually have fairly large brains compared to humans. Whether they are large overall depends upon how you look at it. That is, compared to the size of the whale’s body, the whale brain is similar in size ratio to human brain-to-body. Especially the toothed whales whose brains are largely built to process sound. By the way, they have no sense of smell!

Leave the whales alone.
Do not ignore climate change.
Be nice to your neighbour.
Do not drop litter.
Recycle.

I think Japan should be HEAVILY punished for its dishonesty. It disgusts everyone. I think the controled whaling of certain species is great! I use expensive cream made from whale that is not synthesized by any company - because an equivalent formula is not available. Doctors are amazed at how well my skin is doing. I use this cream rarely. Greenpeace is doing a good job hasseling the sneaky whalers. We need controlled whaling. Eat organic beef - hug a cow today. Mostly, be real.

The Japanese claim they ‘have’ to kill whales for ‘research’.
What utter poppycock!
They like to kill these magnificent creatures because they want a gourmet food!
These are the same people who catch sharks, rip off their fins, & throw their (sometimes still living) victims back in the sea to die in helpless agony - and for what? A bowl of SOUP!
Despicable!
And what happens when the whales run out?

I’m not in Japan, but am very surprised at the Japanese…they’re so conscious about life, and health, even to point of not using the term “nuclear” (using isotope, instead), yet would consider slaughtering whales. I’m shocked!

The Japanese don’t study whales, they eat them, to study an animal it has to be alive. Iv’e never studied my dinner.

How can it be justified so Japanese men can have an aphrodisiac?
Give Greenpeace Haproons so they can sink the Whaling boats.

Don’t sperm whales eat giant squid?
If I was a giant squid I’d want all sperm whales wiped out.
By saving sperm whales we are condemning squid to death.
makes you think…..

I highly recommend that all commentators watch Star Trek: The Voyage Home to see the potentially devastating impacts of not having any whales on the Earth….Analysis and reflection: these form the basis of SF and is no different then Shakespeare.

What a lot of drivel on here about the sentience, IQ, free-spirit etc of whales….If they are so clever why do they spend all their time swimming around sucking up plankton? They’ve done nothing in the way of art, literature, science or technology. They just swim around and can’t even breath underwater like fish, they have to keep coming up for air. Stupid animals that belong on my dinner plate. Yum yum!

Most civilized nations revere cetaceans, but a few nations massacre them under the pretense of science. The Japanese revere the crane. What if an Asian nation decided to do “scientific craning” and invaded Japanese airspace to harpoon cranes to satisfy their drooling barbaric instincts?. Japan- clear up your act of continuing sadistic, primitive, caveman-instinct-driven behaviour.

Killing whales could have a positive impact on global warming.

And when the Greenpeace ship reaches the hunting ground, they will be pinging the oceans with their sonar equipments to find out where the humpbacks are. They will ping so hard and so furious that the humpbacks will go berserk. And then some of them humpbacks will commit suicide.

I have committed my life to making the world a better place because of what the country of Japan allows so that their restaurants can serve what they consider a delicacy. Sadly, they often discard most of the whale except the fin. What a shame!

Dogs aren’t even safe over there…they eat them too.
——
Actually, it’s not the Japanese but the Chinese who eat dog meat…

I mean, like, the Japanese live in a really sick society? one that eats whales ? like, every day whales are, like, murdered so that people can eat their filthy raw whales, and, like, society is immune to that, so it’s just a short step to killing people? i like screw you, i’m killing whales today so i’m killing people tomorrow?
i campaigned and gave a flyer to a guy, and i’m like, “hey dude, like boycott Japan?” and he asks if I’m gonna protest in front of halal butchers so i said “you racist”

END QUOTED TEXT

“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.”

- Edward R. Murrow

All the better to hear you with, my dear

HERE’S THE ACID TEST for libertarians: Would you still oppose government funding of the private sector if the enterprise receiving the money tickled your fancy?

That’s not a theoretical question. Paradise TV in Japan, a satellite channel for adults, broadcasts news for the hearing impaired with nude sign language presenters.

Of course they’re female! But you’re missing the point!

The program received a subsidy from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, which is under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
As this article in the Mainichi points out, the government stopped supplying the money after critics objected to taxpayer funds being used for naked news broadcasts.

As the NICT website says, “The main objective of NICT is to give tangible form to ideas and there is no end to our investigations.”

They took the words right out of my mouth!

Libertarians will be gratified to know that the private sector is more than capable of providing these important services without government assistance. Paradise TV has decided to continue the broadcasts on their own.

The justification for their decision, however, has me puzzled:

“We heard many opinions about how important it is that the disabled be able to enjoy life the same way as those without disabilities,” a Paradise spokesman said.

I agree. But I’ve never needed my ears or sense of hearing to enjoy the undraped feminine form!

To provide in-depth coverage of this story, here is a link to Japan’s Paradise TV. Make sure you do not click on the left button if you are under 18 years of age.

Don’t forget: Examine the site with the proper philosophical detachment as you decide whether this is suitable content for taxpayer funding!

Mr. Lee’s yen for yen

POLITICIANS EVERYWHERE LOVE TO SPEND other people’s money, but here’s an idea that transcends the usual political chutzpah. The presidential candidate has a big idea–and he wants another country to pay for it.

Lee Myung-bak, the former mayor of Seoul who has a 30-point lead over his closest challenger in Thursday’s South Korean presidential election, floated his idea during an appearance on SBS-TV on the 14th.

You can see the brief TV report that appeared on NNN in Japan at this link. Here’s an English translation of what the Japanese news reader said:

Lee Myung-bak, the favorite to win the South Korean presidential election to be held on the 19th, said he would seek help from Japan to provide economic assistance to North Korea and improve the living standards of the people.

Mr. Lee promised that if the North Koreans renounce nuclear weapons, he would raise the annual per capita income of the people in the country to US$3,000. Discussing the source of the funds during a program on SBS-TV on the night of the 14th, Lee said he would ask international institutions and Japan for US$40 billion dollars in assistance. He described this as the primary source for the economic assistance to be paid when Japan and North Korea normalize diplomatic relations.

Notice that he left himself an out in the last sentence: “when Japan and North Korea normalize diplomatic relations”.

He’ll need one if he brings up that idea during his first Tokyo-Seoul summit.

Note: That’s a link to a brief story on a TV network website, so I don’t know how long it will last.

Nippon Noel: Eelectricity!

NOW HERE’S AN EXAMPLE of thinking outside the envelope. The Aquatotto fresh water aquarium in Kakamigahara, Gifu Prefecture, has set up a Christmas tree in their first floor lobby with lights powered by the discharge of an electric eel. The tree will be up until Christmas day.

Electric eels—which are more closely related to catfish than eels–discharge electricity when locating their prey or defending themselves. The specimen in the aquarium generates the juice when it’s been fed. The keepers have placed electrodes in the tank that detect and amplify the electricity to light up the two-meter-high tree.

The lights on that tree burn more brightly than one might suspect. The fish can grow from one to 2.5 meters long and weigh up to 20 kilograms. They also can generate up to 500 volts and 1 ampere of current (500 watts), and can be dangerous for adult humans.

Leave it to the Japanese to think of a way to use fish to make spirits bright during the holiday season!

Frog(s) Bridge

IF YOU WANT A PEEK into the Japanese soul, one small window might be the Frog Bridge in Inami-cho, Wakayama Prefecture.

Perhaps it would be more proper to call it the Frogs Bridge, because it actually has two frogs, as you can see from the photograph. It’s worth describing the background of the bridge’s construction, because people unfamiliar with the country might not be aware of just how characteristically Japanese this project is.

This Japanese-language profile of the municipality explains that Inami-cho is a small municipality in a beautiful natural environment surrounded by the sea and mountains. Many people in the area are commercial farmers of vegetables, flowers, and ornamental plants. It has a long history, and there are many legends and stories associated with the district.

Unfortunately, not many people know about the place, few visitors come from the big cities, population growth is sluggish, and young people tend to leave on reaching adulthood. The town received a grant from the government to promote regional growth and development, and one of the ideas they came up with for spending the money was the Frog Bridge.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The word for frog in Japanese is kaeru, which has several homonyms. Kaeru became the concept for the bridge’s construction. The inspiration came from the father of Japanese calligraphy, Ono no Tofu (no, not that tofu), who is also known as Ono no Michikaze. The story is told that he found the determination to become a calligrapher by watching a frog try to leap onto a willow branch. From this, he learned the value of effort, patience, and taking bold steps.

The municipality also explains there are five kaeru that are used as hooks in the naming of the bridge. These are:

1. kangaeru (Thinking)
2. Hito wo kaeru (Changing people)
3. Machi wo kaeru (Changing the town)
4. Furusato e kaeru (Returning home)
5. Sakaeru (Flourishing)

I can’t begin to explain how quintessentially Japanese this story is. They’ve managed to use a historical Japanese figure for inspiration and connected him to a unique, instantly recognizable public works project to gain some recognition for themselves in a positive way, and incorporate the Japanese love of wordplay in the process. When I was new to the country, unaware of how affected (infected?) I was by the sense of cynical irony so fashionable in the West, I would have rolled my eyes until they slid out of their sockets at the dorky, hellokittyishness of this bridge and the people who built it.

After so many years in Japan, however, I have come to realize that nothing grows out of cynical irony but weeds, and I’ve begun to appreciate the sincerity and the earnestness of the emotion behind the effort of the people of Inami-cho. I wish them the best, and if I’m ever in their neighborhood, I’ll be sure to stop by to look at the bridge and buy some vegetables or flowers. I’m sure they’re excellent.

Here’s a link to a close-up of the bridge plans, and here’s a link to several more photos; the Japanese writing on the bridge in the fourth photo from the top is the list of five kaerus explained above.