The Korean hue in Japan

ONE of the guilty pleasures this website provides is the chance to contribute to the disappointment of those people overseas, particularly in the West, who think it is a matter of received wisdom that the Japanese hate Koreans. It would be more pleasurable to think it contributes to their enlightenment, but that would assume they’re interested in being enlightened.

Page 38 of the 1 January edition of the Nishinippon Shimbun (which runs to 40 pages, with page 40 being an advertisement) has an article about the popularity in the Kyushu region of a Busan vocal duo known as Hue. The article reports that the duo, Kim Ji-hyeon (she) and Ryu (or Yu) Mu-yong (he), will make a concerted effort to extend their popularity throughout Japan this year. They’ll start with their first solo concert in the country in Fukuoka City on 6 March.

Once members of the Busan Municipal Chorus, they formed their duo in 2005 to perform what they call popera. Their repertoire seems to consist of pop music that requires sophisticated vocal technique, as well as some opera selections.

Hue’s first Japanese appearance was in Fukuoka City at a Fukuoka City – Busan Friendship Commemorative Concert in 2009. They’ve since performed here more than 10 times, mostly in Fukuoka City. That’s easily arranged, because the city is accessible from Busan by a three-hour jetfoil ship service, or dozens of daily flights that take less than an hour.

They were encouraged to step up their activities in Japan after Yoshida Fumi (56) formed a fan club for them in Fukuoka City. Ms. Yoshida cried when she heard them perform the Japanese song Sen no Kaze ni Natte with Korean lyrics. That’s a translation of the line “I am a thousand winds that blow” from the English-language poem Do not Stand at my Grave and Weep. The song, a tear-jerker suited to a semi-operatic performance, was originally released by the Japanese composer on only 30 privately-produced CDs. It became a national phenomenon in slow motion, however, and eventually inspired a special television drama with that name.

Ms. Yoshida’s fan club, which consists mostly of junior high and high school girls, turned out for Hue’s three Fukuoka City concerts last year, as well as a performance in Busan. Hue returned the favor with an expression of thanks to the club on their newest disc, which was released last fall. They also printed all the lyrics in Japanese and recorded the song Prologue, the lyrics of which are by Ms. Yoshida’s favorite poet, Yun Dong-ju.

Poet Yun studied English literature at two Japanese universities in 1942, but was arrested as a thought criminal by Japanese police and sentenced to two years in jail in 1943. He died in prison in 1945 in — get ready for it — Fukuoka. There’s plenty of information available about him on the Japanese-language part of the Web.

The newspaper report notes that the duo is almost unknown in South Korea.

Now roll all of the above information around in your head one more time and marvel at how amazing life its own self can be.

Here’s a YouTube clip of an appearance they made on Kumamoto television promoting a concert in that city in December 2009. The interview before and after the song consists of the pleasantries you might expect; Ms. Kim (who now has red hair) says she looks forward to seeing the local tourist attractions, such as Kumamoto Castle and Aso. It’s easy to understand why they’re popular. They’re quite talented, though the style of music won’t be to everyone’s taste. But that isn’t the point, is it?

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: They sing in English.

When they’re not singing in Italian, that is:

Afterwords:

Speaking of those in the West who either can’t be bothered or are too thick to get it, BBC introduces a Roland Buerk report this way:

South Korea’s K-pop music has overtaken Japanese music as the industry’s most popular genre in the country.

Relations between the two countries have been difficult after Japan’s colonisation of Korea in the first half of the 20th century.

But with the growing popularity of Korean culture, will attitudes to people of Korean origin, who make up a large ethnic minority in Japan, soften?

Let’s see…in the first paragraph, someone writes that South Korean pop music is more popular in Japan than Japanese pop music, but in the third paragraph asks if Japanese attitudes towards the Koreans living in Japan will change. Spit out that gum before you try walking, son.

Buerk even mentions the growing popularity of Korean restaurants in Japan, but still can’t see beyond the end of his nosenetwork’s pre-packaged narrative.

Further, he fails to provide actual statistics for his claim about K-pop dominance. Taking a mass media report on faith has been a suckers’ proposition for decades. Korean music could very well be the Top of the Pops in Japan, but he has to show us the numbers to be credible.

Finally, he still can’t competently pronounce Japanese place names, despite having lived in the country three years this month. Any native English speaker can learn proper Japanese pronunciation in a matter of minutes. Buerk’s failure to do so demonstrates his level of commitment to his assignment.

If you’re interested in seeing the clip, please hit the search engine of your choice. Links around here are reserved for serious journalism.

Betting on the bulls now legal

IN MOST Western countries where bullfighting is performed in front of spectators in the guise of an art form, the fight ends when the matador kills the bull in the ring. (They are killed outside the ring in Portugal after the fight.) Indeed, there are reports that as many as 24,000 of the specially bred bulls are killed every year in bullfights in Spain. The artistry is held to derive from the toreador’s interpretative moves while very close to the bull, which means that he is in danger of being gored or trampled. To minimize that possibility, the bull is tranquilized, weakened by laxatives, beaten in the kidneys, partially blinded by petroleum jelly, confined in darkness before the fight, and stabbed by picadors and other men immediately after it enters the ring.

Bullfighting is also performed in front of spectators in Japan, Korea, and China. There is one significant difference, however — in this part of the world, two bulls face off against each other rather than a drugged and blinded bull charging a bully wearing a funny hat, tight pants, and twirling a cape and a sword. The winner is determined when the other bull backs off and runs away, and both bulls survive the match.

This academic paper (.pdf) offers a brief but informative description of bullfighting in Japan:

Although bullfighting occurs in six Japanese prefectures – Okinawa, Kagoshima, Ehime, Shimane, Niigata and Iwate – it is most popular in the Okinawa islands, in the Amami islands of Kagoshima prefecture and in Ehime. In Okinawa, there are eleven bullrings and thirty games a year in six locations – Okinawa City, Uruma, Ginowan, Motobu, Imakijin, and Yontani. (On the island of) Tokunoshima (Amami), there are thirteen bullrings in Tokunoshima, Isen, and Amagi and twenty games a year. In Ehime, there is one bullring, in Uwajima and five games a year.

This is what happens after a bullfight in Spain:

This is what happens after a bullfight in Japan:

The winning bull’s owner, his family and supporters always spill into the bullring to show their delight by riding on the back of the bull and dancing with hands and legs while singing Waido-bushi.

In South Korea, meanwhile, a bullfighting festival is held every year in Cheongdo:

The age-old tradition of Korean bullfighting is no longer just a simple tournament. While it was once only basic bullfighting, the sport has developed into an international event hosting tournaments such as a national bullfighting tournament, a Korea-Japan bullfighting festival, a rodeo tournament with US Army force participants in Korea, a tournament by world-renowned professional bullfight champions and the national bullfight picture-taking tournament.

The Cheongdo Bullfighting Festival is held for five days in April in that city in the southeastern part of the Korean Peninsula, about one hour north of Busan by train. It attracts roughly 300,000 people, some of whom come from Japan. (The festival website has a Japanese page to facilitate visits.) In fact, bullfighting is part of the thriving non-governmental exchange between Japan and South Korea. Here’s another passage from that academic paper:

There has been an exchange program between Korea and Tokunoshima since 1999 when three Tokunoshiman black bulls were sent to Chongdo and fought against Korean red bulls. The match was named the ‘Korea-Japan match-up’ and attracted an audience of several hundred thousand in Chongdo. After the event, goodwill ambassadors from Chongdo were sent to Tokunoshima. Honorable guests were also sent to the Bullfighting Summit in Japan (the fifth in 2002, the eighth in 2005 and the ninth in 2006).

The bullfighting in Cheongdo isn’t limited to the five-day festival, however. There are matches every weekend throughout the year in a domed ring with a capacity of 12,000. There’s no telling how the bulls will behave, so a 30-minute time limit has been set for each match. Ten matches a day are held in the 31-meter ring.

The spectacle is popular enough in South Korea that, starting on the 3rd of this month, spectators can now wager on the bulls, with the chance to win anywhere from KRW 100 to 100,000. (The max is only about $US 87.00 or JPY 6,644.) It is South Korea’s first public sector gambling operation.

Here’s a look at the Cheongdo bullfighting festival with red bulls:

And here are some scenes from Tokunoshima bullfights with black bulls, though the last features a battle between le rouge et le noir. There’s also a scene of the happy supporters riding the back of one of the winners. The last one on the bull’s back might be about the same age (six) at which some Mexican bullfighting schools accept trainees.

As a rule, my position is that comparisons are odious, particularly comparisons between East and West. This is one of the exceptions to the rule.

Afterwords:

The title of the academic paper is Transperipheral Networks. While it is worth reading to learn about Japanese bullfighting, it was written to present a different argument. As so often happens in the social sciences, the argument is trite and already obvious to the average junior high school student:

The Bullfighting and cattle raising networks discussed in this paper show that major centres are not essential to cross-regional networking. In this manner, the seemingly ‘backward’ activity of bullfighting shares aspects with the more general globalisation of information in which every (facilitated) individual in the world can relate to each other through the medium of the internet. The formation of a ‘transperipheral’ network among the bullfighting areas thereby suggests another entrance to the world of globalisation that actively counters the massification and homogenisation of centrally-produced culture in favour of translocal difference.

Ah, well. On the one hand, it gives the three authors something to do with their time and keeps them off the streets. On the other, all the authors are affiliated with Kagoshima University. That’s a national university, which means the professors are paid with public funds.

Thermometers

HERE’S the headline for the article explaining Kyodo’s weekend RDD poll on whether Japan should continue to use nuclear power:

70% back Kan’s nuclear tack

Here’s the first sentence of Kyodo’s English report:

A weekend telephone poll conducted by Kyodo News found 70.3 percent of respondents support Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s call for a society that does not rely on nuclear power…

Now here’s the first sentence of paragraph 5:

On Kan’s idea for a society without nuclear power, 31.6 percent expressed support while 38.7 percent expressed qualified support for the idea.

Those 38.7% were responding to a Japanese question that translates nicely to, “If I had my druthers…”

Thus, if the headline writers had any integrity — yes, I know — the headline to this article would have been:

31% back Kan’s nuclear tack

The other 38+% are expressing the reflections from a passing cloud of emotion (as are some of the 31+%). In another two years or so, when they have again become accustomed to steel girders no longer falling from the sky, as Dashiell Hammett put it in The Maltese Falcon, that percentage is likely to be much lower. Indeed, if anyone other than the Kan Cabinet and the Democratic Party were in charge of the cleanup in the Tohoku region, the decline might be evident in fewer than two years (or the numbers might not be that high to begin with). Japanese reports suggest that the group with a growing antipathy to nuclear power consists chiefly of women upset with the amount of time it has taken to get the problems at Fukushima under control.

The downstairs thermometer in our house measuring the air temperature reads 31C / 88F at the moment. That’s a normal reading for Japan during the day in late July. It would be significant only if the reading were the same in late January here in the temperate zone. It is the same for this particular poll.

Give them an inch, and the news media will take it 15 miles into the next county if it suits their agenda, their fancy, or their guild’s membership requirement to exaggerate the gossip they’re paid to pass on.

That would be the real news item behind this particular story, had not everyone gotten wise to the game long ago.

Whale of a good time

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

WE’VE ALL seen websites and blogs where people upload photos of food they cook at home or eat at a restaurant. I’ve never done that before — it never looks as appetizing as the bloggers think — but let’s give it a try and see what happens. For example:

Whale chirashizushi!

Whale nikujaga! (stewed meat, potatoes, and onion)

Deep-fried whale skewers!

Whale stewed in citron juice!

Whale tongue stew!

Smoked whale hors d’œuvre! (Meat and hide)

And this unidentified lip-smacker!

Or this!

And this one too!

Some dietary ideologues would never be happy unless they were unhappy that somebody somewhere might be enjoying these dishes, none of which I’ve eaten but all of which I’d try. I’ve always liked the whale I’ve been served, including the meals my wife cooked with whale as the main ingredient.

Some other ideologues wouldn’t be happy unless they were unhappy about those barbaric Japanese butchers cleavering away at the sacred cows of the sea.

Their bad. Those photos come not from Japan, but from Ulsan, South Korea, where the local whale festival was held at the end of May. An annual event more than 10 years old, the festival runs for three or four days and attracts upwards of 250,000 people. (See this previous post on the festival for more information.) The Ulsanians developed a taste for whale during the colonial days, which will make another group of ideologues happy by reminding them of the unhappy days before they were born, but — who cares!

The theme of this year’s festival was a whale cuisine exchange with Kumamoto in Kyushu, with which Ulsan has long had ties. The Japanese were happy to attend.

The woman at right is from Nagasaki, the woman in the center is from Kumamoto, and the two women at left are chums from Hokkaido, whale-chomping centers all. The woman dressed in the traditional chima chogori operates one of Ulsan’s 20 whale restaurants. (It’s not possible to give an accurate rendition of her name because it appeared only as Shin in katakana in Japanese.) In addition to her crimes against humanity by serving cannibal fare, she was also the food coordinator for the internationally successful South Korean television show Daejangeum, known in English as “Jewel in the Palace”. Here’s a summary of the program from the show’s website:

“The miniseries…is based on the story of a real historical figure (Jang-geum) who was the first and only woman to serve as head physician to the King in the rigidly hierarchical and male-dominated social structure of the Joseon Dynasty. Daejanggeum, in English, ‘the Great Jang-geum,’ caught the attention of Korean TV viewers with its unique combination of two themes: the successful rise of a female, which is rarely covered in historical genre, and the elements of traditional food and medicine.”

The series was very successful on cable in Japan, and it has been rebroadcast several times. One of the spin-offs was a cookbook featuring the dishes presented on the program, which the woman in the photo surely had a key role in compiling. The cookbook was also sold in Japan, though it probably contained no whale dishes.

Maybe it should have. The theme of the show was traditional food and medicine, and the red meat of the whale contains the dipeptide balenine, which some athletes now take in supplement form because it improves blood flow and restores resiliency to muscle after workouts.

The Ulsan — Kumamoto connection dates back to the late 16th century when Kato Kiyomasa, the first daimyo of the Kumamoto domain in Higonokuni, participated in Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of the Korean Peninsula. Kato built a castle in Ulsan (of which a few foundation stones remain) that became the model for the Kumamoto Castle, which he also built. The latter structure was finished in 1607, but most of it was torn down during the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. It has since been restored and is now a major tourist site.

Some workers from Ulsan helped build the Kumamoto version, and legend has it that the view from the hill on the southwest side of the castle reminded them of home. That’s how the district they spied later became known as Urusan-machi. The area is now part of Shin-machi after a municipal reorganization, but the Urusanmachi name survives as one of the Kumamoto City trolley stops:

Meanwhile, action on the Festivus Balaena front will shift to Japan later this summer, as the folks at the Sumiyoshi Taisha, a Shinto shrine in Sakai, Osaka, decided to revive their own whale festival. Both the facility and the event are as old as the hills, or perhaps in this case, as old as the waves. The shrine is celebrating its 1,800th anniversary this year, and it was already a millennium old when they began holding the whale festival, which dates from sometime in the Kamakura period. That ended in 1333.

The event has been held only sporadically since the Meiji Era (which began in 1868). Once upon a time, it was offered every 20 to 30 years. That’s unusual for Japanese festivals, most of which are annual affairs. This year’s revival, however, will be the first in 57 years. It is held in supplication for sea safety, and originated in a dance to placate the unhappy fisherman who came home empty-handed on whale-hunting expeditions. The Osakans thought it would be an excellent idea to bring it back as a way to help calm the waters after so many people died in the Tohoku tsunami this year. One of the advantages of such a long national history is that when something new is called for, it’s always possible to dive into the past and retrieve something old that most people didn’t know existed.

It’s been so long since the last time, however, that most everyone forgot how to do it. The Sakai municipal government worked with local historians to study photos and jog the memories of festival vets who were around during the last big blow in 1954. The main attraction is a 27-meter-long bamboo and cloth whale float, which is roomy enough for people inside to open and close the beast’s mouth, move its tail, and spurt water. Meanwhile, people alongside will chant the whale chant and dance the whale dance. Megafauna fans in Sakai will get to see all this on 24 July if they visit the shrine, and on 1 August when the leviathan is paraded from the shrine to the city.

Said one historian:

“I’m glad they’re bringing it back. Several generations now don’t know about the festival, but I want them to enjoy the vitality and spirit of fishermen of old.”

And while we’re on the subject of of big game hunting, some of the pretend buccaneer/junior ideologues of Sea Shepherd are in Japan to do what they do best — irritate the hell out of normal people — by traveling to Iwate to take photos of the dolphin hunt. Iwate’s local catch accounts for more than half of Japan’s dolphin and whale industry by tonnage. It is also one of the three prefectures most seriously damaged by March’s earthquake/tsunami. The Mainichi Daily News explains what happened:

“Earlier this month, the members took pictures of a fish market devastated by the disaster as well as fishing boats and posted the photos on the group’s website, triggering anger among some local fishermen over their return to the town.

“A local fisherman said, ‘Dolphin hunting is not done in May. Many boats were swept away due to the quake and tsunami, and the fish market is also in a terrible condition. There is nothing left to take pictures of.’”

We shouldn’t be too harsh on the swabbies — you know they’re determined not to be happy unless they can be really unhappy about whaling or dolphining. If they had something productive to do with their lives, they’d already be doing it. After all, it takes more than a few degrees of eccentric warp to think one is doing the world a favor by getting in the way while the people who suffered one of history’s greatest natural disasters are trying to rebuild their lives and homes.

If it’s pictures they want, I can’t help them with dolphins, but I could send them the link to the Japanese site promoting whale cuisine where I swiped the photos above. All they have to do is ask.

Afterwords:

It was entertaining to re-read the comments on my old post to which I linked above. It’s curious how some people aren’t happy unless they aren’t happy that other people are happy about living in Japan.

*****
The Sea Shepherd recruiting song

White lightning in Northeast Asia

IN THE WEST, the primary consumers of sweet alcoholic beverages are usually either young people slightly above or below the legal drinking age, unaccustomed and ill-disposed to the taste of the real thing, or women a few years older. (Southern Comfort was the liquor of choice for the well-known juicehead Janis Joplin.) I’ve never seen an adult male drink a rum and coke. Daiquiris might be an exception, but they’re more tart than sweet. And I’ve never seen anyone drink a mint julep at any time other than the first Saturday of May — Kentucky Derby day.

Sweetness seems to be more to the taste of northeast Asians in their tippling traditions, however. While there are both sweet and dry varieties of Japanese sake, the original beverage was probably sweet. The Japanese version of white lightning, doburoku, is sweeter still. That’s a milky white form of sake that isn’t fully pressed from the fermenting rice solids, which are left floating inside.

Nongju

Sweet white lightning made from rice is another of the many elements Japanese and Korean culture have in common. The Korean analog is called makgeolli, and it shares several attributes with doburoku: It’s just as white, just as sweet, and just as likely to cause those who consume it to wake up the next morning convinced there’s an axe embedded in their forehead. The background story says it was originally brewed for farm workers to drink instead of water while in the fields, which might be the reason Korea has never been an agricultural superpower. It was originally called nongju, a name that translates as farm liquor. Japanese will recognize it from the kanji: 農酒. Both doburoku and makgeolli are 6-8% alcohol by volume, slightly more than local beers, but less than sake.

There are an estimated 40 different kinds of makgeolli, and rice is not the only farm product used to brew it. When then-Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio visited South Korea in October 2009, President Lee Myong-bak used makgeolli for the toast at the state dinner. That variety, however, was made from a purple variety of sweet potato known in Japan as satsumaimo. The Kagoshimanians of Kyushu use it to make their own hairy-chested version of shochu, which isn’t sweet in the slightest. This particular satsumaimo was created by cross-breeding the Japanese and Korean types. Using that beverage on that occasion was a brilliant idea, and whoever in the Blue House came up with it deserves a toast in their honor.

Most of the doburoku in Japan sits in a corner of the liquor store shelf gathering dust, while the South Koreans have succeeded in turning makgeolli into a popular commercial beverage, as we’ve seen before. Sales have gotten high rather quickly. A year or so ago (there was no date on the article), a Korean outfit called GS25 analyzed liquor sales at 3,700 convenience stores nationwide as of August and found that makgeolli ranked fourth, behind beer, shochu/soju, and whiskey, and one slot ahead of wine.

Those rankings might be a reflection of the type of customer likely to shop for grog at convenience stores. A survey conducted by the Lotte department stores in South Korea of liquor sales at their own outlets for a recent July-September period revealed that makgeolli was in third place behind wine and whiskey, and ahead of beer and Japanese sake. The ranking the year before was whiskey, wine, beer, sake, and makgeolli. Of course, you don’t need to see the stats from the marketing survey division to know that women do most of the buying at department stores. Another factor is seasonal and cultural—chusok, the Korean version of o-bon, falls in September, and makgeolli has become a popular choice for gifts.

Soju distiller Jinro ignited the boom by producing more marketable versions of the beverage. (There’s a good video with details at the link above.) Suntory is trying to do something similar in Japan, as they’ve brought out a slightly carbonated version in a can they call Seoul Makgeolli. It’s safe to assume Suntory thinks the foreignness of makgeolli will hold more cachet for young women than the familiarity of doburoku, the choice of hayseeds.

But before you hard guys snort with derision and reach for something more manly, get a load of this: A team at the Korean Food Research Institute announced last month their discovery that makgeolli has anti-carcinogenic ingredients in quantities up to 25 times greater than beer or wine. Specifically, they mean farnesol, which is also one of the critical elements that add aroma to wine.

The team made a point of examining liquors commonly sold on the market. The amount of farnesol in makgeolli tested out at 150-500 parts per billion, 10-25 times the 15-20 ppb of beer and wine. Their research showed the cloudiest parts of the beverage had the greatest amount of farnesol, so it was best to shake up the sediment before drinking it.

These tidings of good cheer come with the chaser of some bad news, alas. The head of the team said that a real effect would be achieved by drinking three or four cups about twice a week. I had that much one evening in Busan (and a similar amount of doburoku that I bought in Nagasaki and broke out at a party), and I’ll stick to other health maintenance methods. As Voltaire is said to have replied when declining a second invitation by the Marquis de Sade to another orgy after he’d enjoyed the first one: “No thanks. Once is philosophy, twice is perversion.”

That research team seems to have performed their task with single-minded devotion. There’s only a small amount of farnesol in makgeolli, which is 90% water, so it was difficult to extract and analyze. They had to develop new technology just to perform the analysis. Now for the unfortunate news: They used the announcement of their discovery as an opportunity to let their Korean little man complex out of the closet for some fresh air:

“Through this research, we developed for the first time the technology to analyze the farnesol from the traditional alcoholic beverage makgeolli. We thus obtained the basic technology enabling the scientific verification of the superiority of South Korean makgeolli.”

Use your new technology and run the tests on doburoku before you say that, guys. It’s the same stuff, after all.

*****
The Japanese and South Koreans also share a cultural taste for a more sedate beverage — tea, which some of them are using to further cross-strait ties. Chomu-kai (朝霧会), a tea ceremony group in Yame, Fukuoka, (a noted tea production area) last week welcomed the “tea culture research group” Unnim Chahue (雲林茶会) from Gwangju, South Korea, to celebrate 10 years of friendship. The chairman and six members of the Korean group hopped over to Yame for two days of tea parties and planting.

The Yame group was formed to promote interest in local tea using the tea ceremonies of the five major Japanese schools. Bak Guang-sun, the husband of the Unnim Chahue chairman, found out about the group when he taught at nearby Kurume University. He thought hanging out with them would be an excellent way to pursue his study of the tea culture in Japan.

The tea bushes they planted together will take four or five years to sprout drinkable leaves, and when they do they’ll have a friendship party and savor it together. Maybe as the night wears on they’ll switch to makgeolli/doburoku and conduct some research into rice culture while they’re at it!

Those who don’t want to wait that long to conduct their own research can analyze this previous post about a Shinto festival with doburoku, or this one about doburoku ice cream.

Here’s how Jinro is plugging makgeolli on Japanese TV. I’m tempted to buy some and invite the ladies over for a pajama party. That game looks like fun.

Meanwhile, Suntory imported Jang Geun-seok from South Korea to pitch Seoul Makgeolli, as you can see in this ad. The company’s choice in models shows they know exactly which market segment they’re trying to capture. Isn’t he precious? Isn’t that earring just darling? And what an adorable hairstyle!

If you’ve worked up a thirst after all this talk about booze, maybe it’s time to get on the ladder—i.e., go bar-hopping in Japanese—with Sabor de Gracia from Spain as they set fire to a few themselves.

Bar-hop far enough, and you might walk into this joint in England. (That’s a flash file.) Whether you walk out again in one piece is a different matter.

Letter bombs (17): Korean editorial

MATT IN YOKOHAMA sent his translation of an editorial that appeared in the 14 March Joongang Daily. I don’t know whether he translated it from Korean or the Japanese edition of the paper, but it’s worth reading. Here it is.

*****
Stronger Than an Earthquake

The whole world has been shocked by the huge earthquake that hit Japan last week. First, the world has been amazed by the immense damage the quake inflicted on the country. At least 2,000 people have died and more than 10,000 are still missing. In addition, the meltdown of a nuclear reactor in Fukushima Prefecture has raised serious concerns worldwide.

But the Japanese government has successfully evacuated about 210,000 residents in the area near the plant and has taken emergency measures to cool the over-heated reactor, which will help avert a much bigger tragedy.

More surprising, however, is the way the Japanese are coping with the huge disaster, as they do not appear shaken, even by fear of death. Japanese citizens escaped from ruins carefully guided by professional evacuation personnel. Even the disrupted bus and subway systems didn’t lessen their will to survive the disaster, as they trudged for hours to reach their homes. And the next morning, people went to work as if nothing had happened the previous day.

The world has often witnessed incalculable confusion and disorder following natural disasters in other countries. Some commentators even say that the looting and violence that come after disasters are more frightening than the disasters themselves.

This was not true in Japan, however. The Japanese people’s calm, orderly reaction to the unexpected crisis deserves our compliments and our envy. TV broadcasts around the world showed hardly any images of crying or screaming Japanese. In the face of nature’s fury, survivors patiently waited in line to receive emergency food.

The Japanese people’s response to the disaster can not be explained only by building designs meant to guard against such disasters. Disaster education and repeated evacuation drills were major factors in their response. It shows that a great nation only proves its character when faced with disaster.

Naturally, the view from Japan reminds us of our shameful response to tragedy – crowds yelling loudly whenever disaster hits. Even when flights are temporarily delayed, we rush en masse to the airline (counter) to complain about it. And whenever some mishap takes place, we prefer to blame the government.

We hope the Japanese people’s reaction will teach us all a lesson. We still have much to learn from Japan, and a long way to go before we become a mature, advanced country.

(end translation)

Thanks, MIY!

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Good news, bad news, and no news at all

HERE’S SOME good news: More South Koreans are ignoring their jingoist news media and taking the initiative to forge positive ties with Japan. The latest example is the Daejeon Development Research Institute, which signed a research exchange agreement with the Fukuoka Asia Urban Research Center in January. That’s not news for the Fukuoka center, however—it’s their third agreement with an institution from another country. Both cities are located on high-speed rail lines, and the institute in Daegeon wants to conduct joint studies of the use of high-speed rail to promote industry and urban development.

Speaking of high-speed rail, the Kyushu leg of the Shinkansen will be fully operational in a fortnight, and the Kyushuans are getting ready for an influx of tourists from both South Korea and China. Folks everywhere like the hot springs and the potential for year-round golf. The Nishinippon Shimbun of Fukuoka and the Tokyo Chizu Publishing Co. recently published a guidebook of Kyushu tourist destinations in Korean and Chinese for distribution at local airports and hotels throughout the region and at travel agencies overseas. The first print run was 100,000 copies each.

To make sure that those guidebooks get read, the mayors of Fukuoka City, Kagoshima City, and Kumamoto City visited Seoul last month to talk up their cities as tourist destinations. The three mayors spoke at a conference at which about 100 people in the Seoul travel industry attended.

*****
Here’s more good news, if the premise is correct: Eamonn Fingleton uses his own site and borrows James Fallows’s blog space to claim that the conventional wisdom of Japan’s lost decades is a myth and to challenge 10 public intellectuals pushing the stagnant Japan line to debate that subject. While Mr. Fingleton’s posts offer a couple of dubious assertions to go with some excellent points, it’s always good news to see someone challenge conventional wisdom, especially since wisdom is seldom present when the Western bien pensants hold forth on Japan.

What he says that people need to know:

* “(M)uch of what is reported (about Japan) in America’s major newspapers — and even more so on American television — is appalling.”

Repeat play city! If what you know about Japan you learned from the English-language media, then everything you know is wrong.

* “Japan’s surplus is up more than five-fold since 1990, and the Japanese yen has actually boasted the strongest rise of any major currency in the last two decades.”

* “Since the 1980s…the Japanese people have enjoyed one of the biggest improvements in living standards of any major First World nation in the interim.”

* “A story of extraordinary progress by Japanese manufacturing”:

“The reason you don’t hear much about Japanese manufacturers these days is that the best of them have moved from making consumer goods to concentrate on so-called producers’ goods — items that though invisible to the consumer happen to be critical to the world economy. Such goods include the highly miniaturized components, advanced materials, and super-precise machines that less sophisticated nations such as China need to make final consumer goods. The label on everything from cell phones to laptop computers may say “Made in China” but actually, via producers’ goods, highly capital-intensive and knowhow-intensive manufacturers in Japan have quietly done much of the most technologically demanding work.

“America’s current account deficit multiplied five-fold in the 20 years to 2010 and the reason in large measure is because American corporations have exited the producers’ goods business.”

He doesn’t mention that Americans have also abandoned the robotics sector, while the Japanese are one of the world’s leaders, if not the world’s leader in that industry. The only thing most Americans know about Japan and robots is that the Japanese love ‘em and Japanese robot stories provide snicker filler for their newspapers and blogs.

Mr. Fingleton shouldn’t be holding his breath waiting for the Japan hands to accept the challenge of a debate. For one thing, they’re Somebodies and he’s not. For another, having to defend themselves in a debate would expose their ignorance on the subject.

Still, give the man credit for treating them with deference. For example, on his own site he writes:

“I appeal to you — in the interests…of your own reputation for intellectual honesty…”

One of the men he’s calling out is Paul Krugman. The suggestion that Krugman retains any intellectual honesty should result in thick mucous dripping from computer monitors worldwide after the explosion of derisive snorts.

Mr. Fingleton’s post has begotten more good news. Economics professor Mark Perry has two posts with charts on his blog. In one, he notes:

“(W)ith economic growth in Germany and Italy and many other European countries that is comparable to Japan’s growth, we never hear about the “lost decades” in Germany or Italy or the U.K.”

In the other, he writes:

“Compared to 1980, Japan’s real GDP per capita in 2010 was nearly 70% higher, vs. a 66% increase for US real GDP per capita over the last 30 years. Japan had higher economic growth than the U.S. during the 1980s, slightly lower growth during the 1990s, about the same growth during the 2000s, and slightly higher overall growth during the entire 30-year period from 1980 to 2010.”

And here’s some late-breaking good news from the United States:

Consumer Reports has named Honda Motor Co., Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. (Subaru) and Toyota Motors Corp. as the best all-around automakers for the third year in a row in its annual auto issue…Chrysler Group LLC had the worst ranking. Mercedes-Benz, BMW and General Motors were also near the bottom…Toyota, which has dealt with massive safety recalls, fared well in the magazine’s top picks for 2011 across 10 different vehicle segments. Toyota had the most with three picks (the RAV4 small sport utility vehicle, Sienna minivan and Prius hybrid).

Chrysler and GM at the bottom, and Toyota near the top? If you can’t lick ‘em, slime ‘em in the media and sit on government reports absolving them of any blame.

Be that as it may, Mr. Fingleton should be careful about treading on thin ice himself. First, he tends to talk about “Japan” as if it were a monolithic entity. While that’s unavoidable to a certain extent, it only works if one is discussing international diplomacy. In every other context, however, this thing people call “Japan” doesn’t exist. That’s too facile a formulation for the breadth of diversity on these islands, and someone who’s been here as long as he has should know that.

More serious, however is his suggestion that the Japanese government is deliberately underestimating national economic growth to avoid foreign retribution for their trade surpluses. Worse, he offers no concrete evidence—it’s just a feeling he has.

If his assertion is true, it means that everyone in the Japanese government and media are party to history’s largest conspiratorial deception. Not only have they fooled overseas governments—whose experts can analyze economic and production statistics as well as Prof. Perry—they’ve also fooled the rest of the Japanese nation. The entire range of public debate among government officials, the political class, and the commentariat inside media and out is based on the premise of lost decades of low growth. His idea contains echoes of the Western conspiracists of the 80s and 90s who warned that the samurai Japanese businessmen were going to wreak economic revenge on the world for having been defeated in the war.

*****
Speaking of what passes for reporting on Japan and East Asia, Michael Turton at The View from Taiwan takes the AFP news agency to task for its “ethnocentric crap”.

“Superstition Still Widespread Across High-tech Asia, AFP reported today in article appearing in the Taipei Times. This tiresome feature reporting has been around ever since westerners first reported on Asia”:

(Quoting the article)
The services of witch doctors remain popular in multicultural Malaysia, while in hi-tech Japan, Shinto priests hold purification rites for new bullet trains and many entrepreneurs are said to seek the advice of palm readers and star gazers.

“Why is this a load of ethnocentric crap? Because you will never ever see a piece from AFP that writes about the west in a vein similar to the paragraph above:

The services of Christian faith healers remain popular in multicultural America, while in hi-tech Britain, Anglican priests bless new stadiums and many movie stars and politicians in both countries are said to seek the advice of astrologers.”

Mr. Turton’s observation is on the mark, but I’ll take it one step further. The F in AFP stands for France, where the news agency is headquartered. We’ll never see the AFP, or any other Western news outlet for that matter, write with such casual disparagement about the beliefs of the Muslims in that country, including the Shari’a punishments for theft, homosexuality, and (for the victim and not the offenders) for rape. Those media outlets won’t even say that Muslims are responsible for what has become an annual automotive auto-da-fe in France. They’ll only go so far as to call the perpetrators “youths”.

*****
Now for the bad news—Foreign Minister Maehara Seiji held forth in Tokyo for some institutional investors, and everything that came out of his mouth should have stayed inside it.

According to the Kyodo report:

“Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara vowed Monday that Japan will carry out fundamental agricultural reforms modeled after the European system of direct payments to farmers to help strengthen the local farm sector’s competitiveness and promote trade liberalization.”

What is this use of the word “reform” to describe pork (or a wealth redistribution scheme) for farmers? Were he serious about improving competitiveness and promoting trade liberalization, he would instead encourage agribusiness to replace the country’s dwindling number of people who farm exclusively for a living.

But then he couldn’t do that—when the LDP took a step in that direction with the Koizumi/Abe reforms, Mr. Maehara’s DPJ used as an election weapon the excessive representation given to rural areas in the Diet by promising to repeal those measures and provide subsidies to individual farming households instead.

What will he propose next—subsidies for every exporting manufacturer in the country to facilitate the import of competing overseas products?

“He pointed out that the direct payment system in the 27-nation regional bloc has “succeeded in achieving two goals at once: bringing benefits to the consumer by reducing high tariffs and making producers more competitive.””

Ben Franklin should have added a third certainty in life to go with death and taxes—a perpetual stream of drivel from politicos. Farm subsidies make farmers less competitive, not more. That system allows farmers to stay in business, but at the cost of reducing the purchasing power of every non-farming taxpayer, which is most of us. Imported agricultural products may be cheaper, but lavishing public funds on farmers means the city consumers will be able to buy fewer of them. As we’ve seen before, the companies in Japan who would operate agribusinesses believe they can be competitive internationally.

“Maehara said Japan needs to study accepting more foreign nurses and caregivers under free trade agreements.

More than a thousand Indonesian and Filipino nurses and caregivers have come to Japan since 2008 under bilateral FTAs, but only a few of them have passed the Japanese national qualification examinations to continue working beyond the initially set length of stay.”

Mr. Maehara seems to think Japan needs healthcare personnel incapable of effective communication with either physicians or the patients in their care, in places where the patients’ lives or quality of life are at stake.

As for a nursing shortage, that isn’t a problem in “Japan”, but rather in a few big cities in Japan. That’s the claim of my family physician, who should know. He’s the chairman of the prefectural medical association this year.

If Mr. Maehara is so concerned about a nursing shortage in the cities and so anxious to use public funds to fix it, he might take a hint from the ROTC program in the United States. The American government foots the bill for the university education of qualified high school students if they spend four years as a military officer after graduation.

Other than a lack of common sense, what’s to prevent the Japanese government from offering free rides to Japanese high school graduates for nursing school on the condition that they work for a certain number of years in medical institutions after finishing school? Everybody wins, and no one has to worry about the language barrier causing a medical accident.

The worst part of the news story is the implication that Mr. Maehara is presenting himself as a future prime minister. That won’t be news to the Japanese: He’s a failed former president of the DPJ, and the failed former Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito is thought to be grooming him for the job to succeed the failed Prime Minister Kan Naoto. If the party continues to mimic the worst aspects of the old LDP without its redeeming qualities and has Mr. Maehara replace Mr. Kan without an election, it would represent another failure of the DPJ to bring about the change in the conduct of politics they promised.

It also isn’t news that a political party which is doing its damndest to turn itself into a fictional entity would install another lightweight in the Kantei doomed to failure as prime minister.

*****
More bad news: Japan’s lower house passed the FY 2011 budget this morning, albeit with a few defections from the ruling party. That makes two years in power, two record-high budgets for the DPJ.

What happened to all those journos who kept telling us that Mr. Kan was a “fiscal hawk”?

Speaking of Mr. Kan, it will be no news to people who pay attention that he loosed on the public yet another absurdity that calls into question his daytime sobriety. This time he said he’d always doubted the feasibility of what passes for his party’s signature accomplishment—the removal of tax deductions for families with children from 0-15 and their replacement with direct cash subsidies from the government.

After all, a month or so ago he claimed that the adoption of the same policy was “epochal”. A year or so ago, Mr. Fiscal Hawk argued in the Diet as Finance Minister for the inclusion of that budget buster—JPY 5.5 trillion this year alone–in what was then Japan’s highest-ever budget. It was obvious to everyone they couldn’t find the money to pay for it when they stole the idea from New Komeito, and that finally seems to have dawned on even them. DPJ Secretary-General Okada Katsuya on the 28th said the allowance, which expires at the end of the current fiscal year, wasn’t permanent, and that the party might give it up altogether.

Now that’s good news.

*****
Finally, here’s the best news of all: I’ve gotten a handle on a post that I’ve been working on for two weeks. Look for it soon!

*****
This might be good news for beginning and intermediate students of Japanese. I received a note asking that I bring to your attention a website presenting Japanese-language study aids, as well as other observations. Here it is.

*****
There’s no better way to celebrate the circulation of all this good news than by putting the party in the hands of Chico Trujillo, Mr. Popular Music of Chile. Who knew that horn band cumbia and surf guitar would go together as well as green tea and ice cream? Chico knew!

And just wait until you see the man dance!

Still more true facts

SCROLLING THROUGH the comment section of an American website recently, I read a note in which the author blithely asserted, as if it were common knowledge, that Japanese and Koreans despised each other. There were dozens of other comments on that post, but nobody objected to his. The other readers probably thought it was common knowledge too.

The author of the note knew this, he said, because he lived in Japan for a couple of years. Ah, that explains it. A man of the world.

Meanwhile, here’s some uncommon knowledge about what’s actually been happening in this part of the world, where the Japanese and South Koreans are just a hop, skip, and a 30-minute flight from each other.

So far this month.

* Saga Prefecture and Jeollanam-do Friendship Pact

Saga is a small, largely rural prefecture with a population of about 800,000 between Fukuoka and Nagasaki and next to the Sea of Japan. The prefectural government this month signed a friendship agreement with Jeollanam-do of South Korea. Saga Gov. Furukawa Yasushi called it the first step in the prefecture’s plan to develop greater ties with regional governments throughout Asia. At the signing ceremony, Jeollanam-do Gov. Bak Joon-yung said he believed the agreement will help promote ties between the two countries, not just the two regions. It is Saga’s first friendship agreement with a local government from a foreign country.

* Starflyer Plans Busan Route

Kitakyushu-based budget airline Starflyer announced plans to begin roundtrip flights to Busan in July 2012. There are already many flights between Busan and Incheon in Korea and Fukuoka and Kitakyushu in Kyushu, as well as several high-speed ferries operating between the Port of Hakata and the Port of Busan. Starflyer intends to establish a niche in the highly competitive market with early morning and late night flights.

* Ferry Service Begins between Gwangyang and Shimonoseki/Kitakyushu

Gwangyang Ferry of South Korea will begin ferry service between the city of Gwangyang in South Korea and the cities of Shimonoseki and Kitakyushu in Japan. (Shimonoseki is in Yamaguchi Prefecture, just across a narrow strait from Kyushu.) The ferry will have a capacity of 740 passengers and make two round trips a week to Shimonoseki. It will also sail once a week to Kitakyushu on a trial basis. The operators see the potential for demand from travelers (and freight shippers) from the western and southern parts of the Korean Peninsula to Kyushu. Gwangyang is South Korea’s second largest container port after Busan. Currently, people traveling between the two cities by sea have to go through both Busan and Fukuoka City.

* Fukuoka City Sponsors Educational Homestays with Busan, South Korea

Fukuoka City sponsored 10 first-year junior high school students from Busan, South Korea, for a local homestay for six days through the 17th to provide them with an understanding of junior high school life in Japan. The students attended English and other classes at three junior high schools, and teachers from both countries took the opportunity to get better acquainted. Fukuoka City said its objective is to help foster children with an international perspective.

* South Korea’s Jin Air to Operate Budget Charters to Saga Airport

Low-cost carrier Jin Air of South Korea began to fly regularly scheduled charter flights from Incheon Airport in Seoul to Saga Airport for tourists, which will continue until 1 March. They plan to operate a total of 19 round trips in all. They are the first flights by any low cost carrier into Saga Airport.

* South Korean Baseball Team Shifts Camp from Miyazaki to Beppu

Last year’s foot-and-mouth epidemic among livestock in Miyazaki Prefecture (and the new outbreak of avian flu there last week) could have kept the Dusan Bears of South Korean professional baseball from their annual training camp in Miyazaki, but they came anyway for a shorter session. They’ll move to Beppu in Oita on the 26th.

OK, I’ll cheat. Here’s one from last month

* Record High for Air Busan’s Occupancy Rate

Air Busan, which launched daily roundtrip flight service between Busan, South Korea, and Fukuoka City last March, revealed they had a flight occupancy rate of 83% for the month of November, the highest monthly rate ever on the route. The rate from May to September ranged from the 60th to the 70th percentiles, but the higher yen and lower won began to have an impact in October. The increase came mostly from Japanese passengers.

OK, I’ll cheat again. This one includes China

* Regional Economic Partnership Agreement in Works

Ten cities in Japan, South Korea, and China, the members of a group promoting economic exchange in East Asia, held their fourth meeting in China and signed a memorandum agreeing to create an economic partnership agreement for the Yellow Sea rim region. The group includes four Japanese cities, including Kitakyushu, Fukuoka City, and Shimonoseki; four Chinese cities, including Dalian; and three South Korean cities, including Busan and Incheon. The idea is to create a free trade agreement of their own in the region without waiting for their respective national governments.

We’re going to be reading the inevitable Closed to the Outside World stories about Japan written by the bien pensants in the upcoming months as the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks get serious. Let’s see how many of these stories will be mentioned, particularly the last one.

******
American journalist P.J. O’Rourke has spent much of his career traveling overseas as part of his work. He once wrote that the best way to improve international relations was to sleep with someone from overseas.

In that spirit…

Reprise: The oppressors and the oppressed

THE MARMOT HIMSELF at The Marmot’s Hole links to this article in The Korea Times by Prof. Andrei Lankov about Korean members of the tokko butai, or the kamikaze squadron, during WWII. It’s well worth reading, not only for the facts it presents, but also because it leads to other issues that defy facile explanation. For example, here’s a previous post from March 2008 about an article in the Choson Ilbo of South Korea titled, Were Koreans Oppressors in the War, or its Victims? That piece is a review of a book released two years ago in South Korea called A Metahistory of Korean-Japanese Disputes over Historical Awareness. In addition to Korean kamikaze pilots, it also discusses such subjects as the lives of Japanese women who married Korean men during the period of colonization/annexation.

Here’s a passage from the Choson article:

The editors of this book are Kan-Nichi Rentai 21 (Korea-Japan Solidarity 21), a group consisting of Korean and Japanese intellectuals launched in 2004 to seek a new Korean-Japanese relationship appropriate for the 21st century. They are searching for a means to achieve solidarity by examining themselves and achieving a more mature viewpoint that transcends the antagonistic relationship that has arisen between the two countries. In brief, they now want to leave behind the intolerant nationalism with which one party views the other for a closer study of history. That’s why the authors of this book have chosen to step back from knee-jerk nationalism itself and develop a new viewpoint of their own through self-reflection.

Not all of those commenting on the Marmot’s post–which is here, by the way–are interested in leaving intolerant nationalism behind, however.

But then, they also probably wouldn’t be interested in this post about a South Korean history textbook from the New Right, or this post about the dream of Koreans relocating in Japan, or this post about the days when Japan and Korea were one.

Their discomfort is understandable. Crossing a minefield of inconvenient truths isn’t easy for anyone, especially when it contradicts one’s self-created identity.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Mango makgeolli: Another Japan-Korea love match

Makgeolli is a very healthy drink, it is a good addition to one’s diet, and it has been used by women to enhance beauty.
- South Korea President Lee Myung-bak

IF YOU THOUGHT the mango beer presented in a post last week was an unusual combination for an alcoholic beverage, wait until you read about mango makgeolli!

Makgeolli is a hyper-sweet, milky-looking liquor made from rice that’s traditionally drunk from bowls. Part of its charm is the fermented rice solids floating in it, so it’s usually shaken or stirred before it’s poured. The popular conception of makgeolli has long been one of hooch for hayseeds, and in that sense it might be considered the Korean version of white lightning. Every one of these aspects makes it an analog for the Japanese drink doburoku, which you can read more about here.

Lately, the Koreans have been devising ways to turn makgeolli into an upmarket beverage, and these include adding fruit flavors and pitching it to women. Enter stage left a Japanese businessman from Noshiro, Akita, who worked with a Korean makgeolli brewer to develop a mango makgeolli creation suited for the Japanese market. The entrepreneur, Tsukamoto Tamio, operates a business hotel in Noshiro where he first sold the drink.

It’s 20% pure mango juice, so you can imagine how sweet the combination must be. It contains no artificial coloring or aromatics. Enough people discovered and enjoyed it for him to launch sales on this Japanese-language website since last month. It’s also available at mass merchandisers in Noshiro and Akita City, and eating and drinking places in Noshiro.

The nature of the drink has made it popular among women, and they’re a market segment always appreciates a low calorie count. Mango makgeolli has 19.4 calories per 100 milliliters, compared to 40 for beer, 75 for wine, 110 for sake, and 135 for shochu. Another number that some might appreciate is the 8% alcohol by volume.

It costs JPY 735 (about $US 8.16) for a 750 ml PET bottle, and JPY 420 for a 300 ml glass bottle, which is shown in the photo. The one on the right has been sitting on the shelf undisturbed, while the one on the left has been shaken.

Mr. Tsukamoto is importing it through the Port of Akita, and he’s set up a two-way commercial enterprise by selling local items to South Korea over the Internet. Akita currently enjoys a high name recognition in Korea because it was one of the locations where the big-budget, blockbuster television series Iris was filmed. The espionage thriller was wildly popular last fall in South Korea, and it generated a surge of Korean tourism to Akita. The same phenomenon in reverse had Japanese visiting the shooting locations for such Korean TV dramas as Winter Sonata. (Iris is now being broadcast on Japanese television.)

These two YouTube videos present an interesting contrast. The first is a Korean video in English promoting the new varieties of makgeolli. It’s well done–perhaps too well done in places. One of the supposedly casual customers interviewed on camera is a young woman attractive enough to be a model whose blouse color just happens to match the color of her drink.

The second is a video of a doburoku festival filmed in Shirakawa-go Gifu. The environment is quite different from the first video, but just as fascinating. It’s easy to see the resemblance between the two drinks–even down to the October date of their respective festivals. It also reminds me that I’ve been negligent writing festival posts recently!

The Japanese aren’t adding fruit syrup to doburoku, but here’s a post about a company that came up with the bright idea to make doburoku ice cream.

Notice all the connections between Japan and South Korea in this story? None of them will particularly surprise the people of either country. To quote once again a South Korean speaking in Japanese that I heard on a live NHK radio program broadcast from Seoul a few years ago, the only ties between the two countries that aren’t flourishing are the political.

Out of the gate

WHERE WOULD a South Korean jockey of modest abilities go to improve his professional techniques?

Bak Jae-ho came to Japan.

Though he started racing in 2003, the 31-year-old jockey has chalked up a career record of only 37 wins in 684 professional races. With just three wins on 110 mounts last year, he decided to come to the Arao Racecourse in Arao, Kumamoto, for special training.

Mr. Bak was inspired to choose Arao after watching well-known Japanese jockey Nishimura Eiki beat the field by several lengths in an October 2008 race in South Korea. The Japanese jockey, who races frequently in South Korea, recommended that he hone his skills in Kumamoto. After receiving a three-month racing license, Mr. Bak hopped across the Korean Strait with his wife and son. Japan’s National Association of Racing says he is the first South Korean jockey to obtain a short-term license to race continuously in this country.

Said Mr. Bak, who usually works at the Busan Gyeongnam Race Park:

“Horse racing is extremely popular in South Korea right now. I wanted to learn the superior jockey techniques in Japan….I want to become as good as Japanese jockeys.”

One reason for the sport’s popularity on the Peninsula is that the government-operated tracks allow legal gambling. The fans started to attend in greater numbers when a new track was built in Seoul about 20 years ago.

Racing is also more lucrative for the winners in Korea than in Japan. The purses for single races can be as much as KRW 35 million, the Nishinippon Shimbun reports, or JPY 3 million (about $US 32,000). That’s about 10 times more than at Japanese regional tracks. No wonder South Korean jockeys spend their time at home—or that Mr. Nishimura worked about seven months in Busan last year.

Neither is the sport as profitable in Japan, and regional tracks are in the midst of a slump. Arao was once popular among people working in the local coal industry, but the mines closed and the workers have either moved on or can’t afford a ticket at the pari-mutuel window. The track was JPY 1.35 billion in the hole as of March 2009, and there’s talk of closing it down.

Bak Je-ho was scheduled to run his first race at Arao yesterday, but the absence of any news reports on the results suggests his nag finished out of the money again. That might soon change, however. Mr. Bak reportedly gets up at 3:00 a.m. every day to practice. Dedication of that sort is bound to pay dividends sooner or later.

Seoul food

THE SOUTH KOREANS are eager to promote the spread of Korean cuisine throughout the world. The Korea Agro-Fisheries Trade Corporation, which is behind the new program to teach Korean cooking, said in a press release:

(E)fforts will be made to open courses on Korean food in world-famous cooking institutions like the Culinary Institute of America and France’s Le Cordon Bleu.

So, what country did they choose to kick off their program and get it off to a good start?

Japan.

They’re going to offer 25 courses to the 1,300 students at the Hattori Nutrition College in Tokyo from April to December. They picked a well-known place, too–the students at that school served as assistants to the contestants on the Japanese version of the Iron Chef program, and the headmaster acted as the commentator.

Did somebody give you the impression Koreans and Japanese can’t get along?

Don’t believe it.

Sushi, cell phones, and the virtue of vagueness

ON MONDAYS, the Nishinippon Shimbun has a regular full-page feature with human interest stories covering East Asia outside of Japan. Some, but not all, of the stories have a Japanese element. Today’s feature has two main stories and three shorter ones. One of the main stories is about efforts to promote the more humane treatment of working elephants in Thailand, and the other is about the colorful exterior murals of Busan, South Korea.

Two of the shorter pieces are about Japanese-South Korean relations at the face-to-face level, and both are educational despite the lightness of the subject matter.

The first is about a special class in sushi-making held for the general public and sponsored by Japanese consulate in Busan. The instructors were a Japanese sushi chef from a local shop and his Korean assistants. It seems to have gone over quite well. The participants learned how to make the regular nigirizushi, as well as makizushi, the rolled kind.

Koreans have a similar rolled sushi dish called kimpap, but the roll is thinner than the Japanese variety. The students said they had difficulty figuring out how much strength to use when rolling.

Those who took part seemed pleased with the lessons, even discounting the fact that this was a sweetness and light piece. The newspaper quoted a female university student (aged 26) as saying, “I did very well, but that’s because they taught me so well. The sushi looks so good it’s a shame to have to eat them.”

Here’s the most interesting part: The class was open to 30 students. They received 100 applications, and had to hold a lottery to select the participants.

The Vague Club

The second piece was about a “language club” for Koreans and Japanese in Seoul organized by a 39-year-old woman named Chue U-yon, who works for a public corporation. Ms. Chue is a Busan native who majored in Japanese at university. She organized the club three years ago to give Koreans and Japanese a chance to talk to each other in social settings, and to use each other’s language. The membership has held steady at about 50 people, and they’ve met about 100 times. They visit restaurants, drinking places, and other sites of interest together.

The name of the club is the Emehue, or Vague Club (aimaikai in Japanese). Ms. Chue said, “I thought it was best if everyone understood each other by seeing the true faces of their neighbors, and kept the language vague. Differences are differences, and we can accept each other if the language is vague.”

Something must have rubbed off in her language studies–that’s a very Japanese concept.

She says the Korean members tease her by saying she’s perfectly suited to be the club president because she doesn’t speak as loudly as the other Koreans and doesn’t care for poshintang, or dog food (the kind people eat).

This month the club met at a Seoul bar and grill called the Dokdo, after the Korean name for the disputed islets in the Sea of Japan. Ms. Chue was pleased that the Korean club members listened seriously for the first time that night to the opinions of the Japanese members about the issue.

Despite her long interest in the country, some things about Japan still puzzle her:

“For example, when their cell phone rings, the Japanese press it up against their mouth and speak in a whisper. Why don’t they talk openly and boldly like we Koreans do? Are they saying bad things about other people?”

International understanding isn’t always easy, even with the best of intentions, is it?

So what?

A DISAGREEMENT between the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the opposition Liberal Democratic Party over the leadership of the Japan-Korea Parliamentarians’ Union is preventing the organization from functioning, the Kyodo news agency frets.

Former prime minister and LDP member Mori Yoshiro heads the group, but the DPJ thinks someone from their ranks should assume the chairmanship now that they are the party in power. Two possible candidates from the DPJ are the speaker of the lower house and the president of the upper house–in other words, two people in largely ceremonial roles for a role even more ceremonial and insignificant.

Of course the standoff is childish, but politicians are no less immune from childish behavior than anyone else, and more prone to it than most.

For some reason, Kyodo thinks it’s important.

In parallel with government-to-government contacts, the Japan group and its South Korean counterpart have contributed toward an improvement in bilateral relations.

Apart from regular exchanges of visits by the top leaders of the unions, lawmakers from the two parliamentary groups have helped lower political tensions that from time to time have gripped the two countries, mostly as a legacy of acrimonious historical ties.

Is it a coincidence they cite no examples of how these two groups have lowered political tensions? If there were any examples, why hasn’t Kyodo been filing reports on them all along? One would think the minimum standards of journalism would require them to offer their consumers brief descriptions of one or two instances in this article, but then they always expect us to take their word for it, don’t they?

What lowers political tensions between the two countries are ongoing daily business, academic, scientific, and cultural exchanges, as well as the brisk traffic in tourism. The cumulative effect of all that interaction, conducted with little or no fanfare, is the most important factor creating friendly ties between the two countries. Try the Japanese-Korean Amity category on the left sidebar for samples.

If the politicians want to search for the usual source of any tensions that arise, they should listen to recordings of themselves posturing for the electorate.

It’s typical of the dinosaur mass media to think that an idealistic-sounding excuse for political junkets to enjoy banquets with food and drink paid for by other people, and justified by self-important speeches written by aides and listened to by no one, would have as much of an impact on bilateral relations as the daily interaction of people in their respective fields of endeavor. It’s the same sort of illusion that pretends UN Security Council meetings, Copenhagen climate change conferences, and G7 or 8 or however-many-there-are-now summits have much of an impact on anything except the hotel and catering business.

While the two groups are harmless, albeit a waste of money, Japanese-Korean relations would not deteriorate in the slightest if they were to evaporate tomorrow. The people in both countries who actually are enriching and strengthening bilateral ties will continue to do so by pursuing their mutual interests.

Love Boat on the Korea Strait

WHAT IS IT with those folks in Fukuoka and Busan anyway? They keep confounding the people whose misconceptions masquerade as conventional wisdom and overturn every tired old cliche of Japanese-Korean relations.

Now they’re at it again. The accompanying photo depicting a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony was taken during the filming of a television drama in the Kushida Shinto shrine in Fukuoka City. The filming, which occurred on the 6th, is for a program being produced by MBC-TV in South Korea. The name of that program translated into English from Japanese from Korean is The Korea Strait Wedding War (玄海灘結婚戦争), while the Nishinippon Shimbun translated it into Japanese as The Great Japan-South Korea Wedding Operation (日韓結婚大作戦).

The groom in these telenuptials is a Busan native, played by Korean actor Im Ju-hwan. In the role of the bride, a Japanese woman from Fukuoka studying in South Korea, is Akiba Rie, who has appeared on Korean television before. Both characters have to overcome parental objections before the (presumably) happy ending. The character played by Im also has to overcome his self-doubt. He bolts during the ceremony at the shrine, declaring, “I can’t go through with it!”

And here I thought women were the ones who usually got cold feet at the critical moment. Most men who bug out hit the road before they show up at the church.

The Koreans say they selected Fukuoka for filming the Japanese scenes because it has close ties to Busan—which will be no surprise to long-time friends here—so it’s the best location for depicting mutual understanding between the two countries. They’ve already done some location work in Iizuka, and plan to film some more at a hotel and the local fish market, a Kyushu version of Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market. (Check the link on the right sidebar.)

Here’s the best part: The program will be broadcast on 1-2 March in South Korea. The first of March is a national holiday in that country commemorating the 1919 outbreak of the local movement for independence from Japan.

Actor and musician Hakuryu (literally, White Dragon), who plays the part of the Japanese father, said:

It is a ground-breaking step to take up the subject of international marriage between Japanese and Koreans in South Korea on 1 March. The show tastefully depicts the tension between the families.

Give credit to MBS for their gutsy move. Not every commercial enterprise dependent on public sentiment would behave that way in a potentially volatile environment.

Chon Je-won, the show’s producer, said:

I want to examine friendly ties between the countries in the future. Let the past be the past.

Said Ms. Akiba:

I hope that Japanese-Korean ties grow closer through this drama.

The program will be broadcast in Japan on the northern Kyushu regional network TNC in April.

*****
While MBC is on the side of the angels here, this might once again be a case in which the big institutions are behind the curve. There were 7,813 marriages in Japan between Japanese and Koreans in 2007, the latest year for which I could find statistics. The percentage of international marriages in Japan is close to 6%, and about 13% in South Korea, so the Japanese-Korean marriage rate in that country might be higher.

It’s a good rule of thumb that the people at ground zero will be way ahead of the folks in the corner offices on the top floors of corporate or government headquarters.

Afterwords:

Some people—the usual Diapered Ones, whose preferred form of entertainment is to indulge their coarser emotions—have already decided they won’t enjoy the program. You can have three guesses about the reason, but the first two don’t count.

The main body of the article includes a comment from the Internet that asks: “Do you know how much hurt this will cause for some people?”

To answer with a question: Do you know how little anyone else cares about your petty whining? The world around you isn’t responsible for your failure to control your emotional state, nor is it obligated to modify its opinions or behavior because of it.

The idea that a person’s employment depends on following the party line should have died with the various democratic people’s republics, not to have been preserved in a free market democracy.

A commenter to the main article identified as American Kim provides a more temperate view.

***
The actor/musician Hakuryu, a native of Imari, Saga, is a second-generation Korean-Japanese. The name on his birth register is Chon Jong-il. He also uses the name Takayama Sadaichi in Japan. Mr. Hakuryu/Chon/Takayama frequently appears on Korean television.