Hashimoto Toru (4): Twitter as a weapon

THE politicians with the greatest impact on their societies are those who understand how to breach the clamorous electronic thicket and speak directly to John Q. Public, both individually and en masse at the same time. They are the ones who part the waves in the carp- and shark-filled waters where they swim, and convert those creatures from predators into remora.

What you are about to read is an example of how Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Toru speaks directly to the Japanese public: Through an almost daily fusillade of messages on Twitter. That doesn’t seem possible, effective, or even interesting in theory, but in practice there are several sparks of genius and creativity to it. It’s much easier to be a Twitter follower than to actively follow a blog. The messages are compact and quickly conveyed. It’s the difference between being given a small confection as you pass through a room instead of seeking out a bakery and buying your own. Each of Mr. Hashimoto’s Tweets is like a pearl on a string; they’re one segment of a larger daily theme that includes two or three topics. They stimulate the desire to read the next, as if one were following a newspaper serial. They can be consumed individually on their own, but the overall structure of a greater narrative appears when they’re read in digest form.

The more you read, the more remarkable it becomes. He’s turned a medium of the trivial and ephemeral into a weapon. He clearly writes the messages himself, and the content of the messages themselves is always clear. This is not focus group-tested oatmeal, or the ersatz inspirational rhetoric framed by Styrofoam Greek columns that is the political equivalent of paintings on velvet. Whether he is speaking of his theory of government or kidney-punching a critic — which sometimes happens in the same Tweet — it is always frank, direct, and infused with a sense of practicality. Opponents won’t have to dig through the records to find words that can be used against him, but he’s transcended that process and rendered it irrelevant. Everybody already knows where he stands.

Since January, he has been the most followed person on Twitter Japan.

Here is a translation of a single day’s output in February. I’ll let the narrative speak for itself and unfold as it did that day, complete with time stamps. To briefly explain to those unfamiliar with the terms used in discussions about government in Japan, “community” here is 共同体, or a community in a broad sense. It can also mean collective or colony, as in an artist’s colony. The term “basic self-governing unit” is also a common term and point of discussion, and refers to a municipality.

*****
Our opinions are sometimes in opposition, but discussions on the telephone resolve them. People often meet face to face as part of One Osaka activities, and we talk and work out our differences then. When I was governor (of Osaka), a prefecture employee told me, “It requires two years of preparation for the Osaka governor and the Osaka mayor to meet.” That is the reality of the prefecture and the city.

posted at 02:07:49

Greenhorn scholars who know nothing of these circumstances continue to say they don’t understand the meaning of the Osaka Metro District concept. Why not just have meetings, is the intellectuals’ comment. No matter who the governor and mayor are, it is extremely difficult to reach an agreement that transcends competing interests between individual independent organizations with authority. That is the reality.

posted at 02:09:56

Osaka Prefecture and the city of Osaka now have a governor and mayor from the same political group. That enables judgments transcending the opposing interests of the prefecture and city. But situations such as these are extremely rare. That’s why the Osaka Metro District concept would create a system of regional government that incorporates greater Osaka and prevents the incompatibility of competing interests.

posted at 02:13:14

Today Governor Matsui and I talked about various things while having some oden. There probably won’t be another governor-mayor relationship like this again. That’s why it’s necessary now to systematize the relationship between the prefecture and the city. Putting that aside, a (newspaper) article has appeared which symbolizes how college professors are dreaming lambs surrounded by fantasy, who never accomplish anything.

posted at 02:15:48

There’s the college professor named Uchida Tatsuru or something. In the Yomiuri Shimbun on the 9th, he says we must aim for communities of a realistic size. He says my Osaka Metro District concept is a growth path behind the times. Then he says the urban model for the 21st century should be something like his aikido dojo with about 150 people.

posted at 02:18:24

This honorable gentleman (N.B.: 御仁, with deliberate sarcasm) cannot distinguish between the communities that create the sustenance for the citizens’ survival and other groupings. There’s no way that 120 million people can eat with just an aikido dojo (structure). The only community that can support an economy to maintain a mature country is regional government. A community whose axis is the mutual support of the residents is the basic self-governing unit.

posted at 02:26:44

Broadly speaking, there are two communities. There is the nation-state, which encompasses all of them. Mr. Uchida completely mixes up regional governments with basic self-governing units. Why does a scholar present such a childish argument? It’s because he only thinks and has never done anything. Mr. Uchida talks about an idealistic theory, and says the basic principle is to provide for every member.

posted at 02:29:02

Then he says I would write off society’s weak and its losers. What is the man talking about? When Mr. Uchida was the special advisor to former Mayor Hiramatsu (Mr. Hashimoto’s predecessor), he seems to have held something like symposiums. But if you ask what concrete policies he implemented, the answer is none. I’m uncomfortable blowing my own horn, but I established a system in which students can attend even private high schools for free.

posted at 02:30:57

As of last year, 4,000 children who had no money and once could only choose public high schools have flowed into private schools. That flow is expected to increase this year. Since I became mayor, I have begun work to implement programs to expand financial assistance for health care expenditures to third-year junior high school students, and to make prenatal checkups free. It’s been hard finding the funding.

posted at 02:33:53

As for how Mr. Uchida has provided for every member, and what sort of policies he’s implemented, he’s one of those scholars who completely leaves that part out. If a person would think of how to provide for the people of the prefecture and implement a policy in this Osaka, it would collide with the necessity to create a unified regional government of the prefecture and city.

posted at 02:35:22

If you would implement an economic policy in the city of Osaka, you run into the wall of the prefectural government and City Hall. But former Mayor Hiramatsu only did about the work of a ward chief. His special advisor was Mr. Uchida, who insists on a community of realistic size with absolutely no understanding of regional government. How will the people of the prefecture eat?

posted at 02:37:34

Apart from the community that creates the means for people to survive, in other words, a regional government…the axis in the community that supports the daily lives of the people, in other words, the basic self-government unit, is the mutual support of the people. Well, that would probably work at the aikido dojo of 150 people he talks about. There is an appropriate size for this basic self-government unit.

posted at 02:40:30

It is the size in which the mayor and city offices can be in close communication with the residents. That is the life of basic self-government units. Now, I’m the mayor of Osaka with 2,600,000 people, and it isn’t possible to be in close communication with the residents. That’s why it has to be divided into an appropriate size (i.e., breaking up the city/prefecture into self-governing wards). When Mr. Uchida was a special advisor, he didn’t accomplish anything, did he?

posted at 02:42:01

Mr. Uchida declares that a narrative linking the community is indispensable. Well, wouldn’t that have been good to do when he was a special advisor? People have to work to eat. The communities of units for working for a living, and the communities of units of self-support…in today’s Japan, there is no arrangement of the communities at all. The centralized authorities and the nation as a whole are just a rough estimate of a community.

posted at 02:44:45

Then in the Mainichi Shimbun on the 12th, he says the image of the leader sought is a paternal type leader. Here we go again with the dreaming lamb. How do we select a leader like that? There are only elections, aren’t there? Well, what is the distance between the leader and his connection with the voters? If you’re talking about having a close connection between the mayor and the people in a city of 2,600,000, it’s not happening.

posted at 02:47:52

It’s not possible, and it’s not possible to have the relationship between a leader and the residents in a community whose axis is mutual support. That’s why the size of the community is important. Can the leader and the residents achieve the father-child relationship of which Mr. Uchida speaks? That’s a conversation for the basic self-governing units. The size limit is probably 300-400,000 people.

posted at 02:49:55

In the Yomiuri Shimbun, Mr. Uchida tells us not to think about government units by size, and in the Mainichi Shimbun, he argues that the relationship between the residents and the leader should be that of father and child. He is the symbol of a person immersed in fantasy. You have to create a governmental unit in which the residents and the leader can create a father-child relationship. It’s not possible for that type of leader to emerge by leaving a local government on its own.

posted at 02:52:24

Mr. Uchida is not aware that governmental units are artificial to start with. Of course something artificially created can be artificially reworked. Mr. Uchida would probably want to roughly maintain the status quo. The leaders of communities can also be broadly divided into two types.

posted at 02:55:46

There is the paternal leader of the basic self-governing unit of which Mr. Uchida speaks, whose axis is human communication. Then there is the corporate executive-type of leader who provides sustenance to the residents, but has little human relationship with the residents. That is the leader of a regional government. The appropriate relationship between the residents and the leader will be determined by the type of administrative unit and its size.

posted at 02:57:28

There is no organization of Japan’s communities today, and that’s why the relationship between the residents/voters and the leaders is not suitable. Therefore, leaders cannot demonstrate leadership. (The) first (step is to) change the mechanisms. Rearrange the communities. Artificially created communities should be artificially reworked. That is the Osaka Metro District concept.

posted at 03:00:08

This is what I sensed by actually conducting the affairs of government. I understood that by serving as a governor, the head of a regional government, and as the mayor of a “specially designated city”, which combines (the functions) of a regional government and a basic self-governing body. A scholar who doesn’t do anything would never understand this. Mr. Uchida was originally a special advisor to former Mayor Hiramatsu. Do at least one thing before you start mouthing off!

posted at 03:02:32

Mr. Uchida rejects the idea of a businessman-type leader as the leader of a community. He has no awareness of the nature of a community, because he’s never done any real work. It isn’t the case that a businessman type can’t function as the leader of a regional government. How about taking a field trip for a day and watch the Osaka mayor and governor at work? The leader of a basic self-governing body is paternal.

posted at 07:35:01

There’s a sloppiness to this aspect of Japan today. Also, Mr. Uchida laments that Japanese organizations are dysfunctional; we have to provide authority and responsibility to leaders. That is the reorganization of population-based organizations itself. The city of Osaka has become a governing mechanism in which paternal leaders cannot arise. That’s why we’ll make the city of Osaka into a suitable basic self-governing body. (N.B.: An aggregation of them)

posted at 07:37:09

We will rework the communit(ies) so that paternal leaders can arise in the city of Osaka. This must be done artificially, through such means as transferring authority. The first step is the solicitation of ward heads. Ward head reform. Transferring authority from the mayor to ward heads. This will cause 24 paternal leaders to be created in the city of Osaka. We will eliminate the role of the mayor of Osaka. The ward head council, the first step toward that, starts today.

posted at 07:39:00

It would have been good if Mr. Uchida had put into practice any idea that would create paternal leaders in the city of Osaka when he was a special advisor. But scholars don’t do anything. They just complain. It is truly a frivolous, irresponsible business.

(end translation)
*****
* Remember, he does this almost every day.

* The terms paternalism and nanny-state are seldom used in Japanese political discourse. Whether Mr. Hashimoto actually believes that basic self-governing units should be paternal, or whether he is deliberately turning Prof. Uchida’s words against him, I’m not sure.

* Uchida Tatsuru is described on Japanese Wikipedia as a “thinker, martial artist, translator, and professor emeritus at Kobe College”. He’s a Tokyo University grad who is an “intellectual liberal” and thinks Article 9 of the Constitution should be maintained, though he admits the legitimacy of self defense. They say that even though he is regarded as a left-winger, he has “conservative aspects”. They are referring to his “criticism of Marxism (not a criticism of Marx), his criticism of the student movement, and his criticism of feminist ideology (not a criticism of feminism)”.

Brings new insight into the terms “liberal” and “conservative”, doesn’t it?

* It’s easy to see why he isn’t the candidate of the suit and tie and sober discussion crowd.

* The anti-intellectual jabs might be due in part to his academic background. He struggled to get into the university he wanted to attend, and studied on his own in Spartan conditions for a year after high school to pass the test to Waseda, which has an excellent academic reputation. He passed the difficult Japanese bar examination two years after he was graduated from university, and opened his own law office two years after that. He practiced civil rather than criminal law.

Undemocratic democrats

The Democratic Party of Japan had been holding meetings since mid-March to reach an internal consensus for a proposal to raise the consumption tax that their government could send to the Diet. Because the party consists of incompatible elements to start with, and there is strong opposition within the party to a tax increase, their consensus-building effort ended in failure. With the DPJ, it always ends in failure for major issues.

The leadership’s solution was to tell the dissenters to shut up and go home.

Most of the dissenters are aligned with Ozawa Ichiro, which means everyone knows they could flounce out of the party tomorrow, and no one knows how many actually would. It would be impossible to remain in power if they bolted, however, so the elements controlling the party contort themselves into asanas to prevent that, though most of them can’t stand Mr. Ozawa personally.

Therefore, they made some changes to the bill (which will be debated further in the Diet) to try to create a consensus, and suggested others.

The most ominous is that party leaders offered to eliminate the clause to continue raising the consumption tax beyond 10%. That means the national pols and the bureaucrats have a blueprint for feeding a big government, administrative state that they aren’t telling the public about, that the battle will continue indefinitely, and that there will be political blood gushing out of the elevators before it’s over.

One change they did include is a pointless clause asking the government to take the steps required to achieve 3% nominal economic growth and 2% real growth. Achieving that growth isn’t a prerequisite for a tax increase, however, which is what the Ozawa side wanted.

The discussions were heated and moved along parallel lines, as the Japanese expression has it. The objective was to come up with something allowing the government to introduce the bill in the Diet before the end of the fiscal year at the end of March. (The government finally did submit it on Friday, the last working day.)

To reach their deadline, DPJ leaders ended the final discussions without a consensus after meeting from 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Their opponents were furious. Some tried to prevent Maehara Seiji, who was conducting the talks, from leaving the room.

The opponents held a news conference to blast their own party and its methods. Some MPs are threatening to vote against it the bill in the Diet. Some resigned from secondary Cabinet positions in protest, though not all did (suggesting that Mr. Ozawa’s influence is still waning). Mr. Maehara insisted the procedures were on the up-and-up, and (owing to the nature of the Westminster system used in Japan) said that all party members had the obligation to hold their badges up in the chamber and vote yes.

Kamei Shizuka, the head of the People’s New Party, which still in the ruling coalition, made good on his threat to walk and took fellow member Kamei Akiko (no relation) with him. Not all the members of his splinter party left the coalition, however.

What we’re watching is the current system as it fractures.

Hashimoto trills

Hashimoto Toru thought this was a suitable topic to include in his Twitter messages for the day. There were 39 in the daily digest, and the first and last were references to his daughter becoming his Twitter follower after she got her first cell phone. Here are the ones related to DPJ conduct:

*****
First, there are the internal party procedures the DPJ used for the consumption tax increase. I wonder why they didn’t decide by majority vote? They should have exhausted the debate by now, so the only way to settle it after that is majority vote. The people with authority make the judgment whether or not debate has been exhausted. That seems to have been left up to policy chief Maehara Seiji. Did he decide by the amount of applause?

posted at 19:21:44

Political parties are now incapable of majority decisions. It would leave an aftertaste if they used that method. That’s why the decisions take the form of a group consensus. That is the principal culprit in (Japanese) democracy’s inability to make a decision. Decide by seeing who has the most votes. Those with fewer votes will comply because it was decided by majority vote. Anyone who doesn’t like that should leave the group.

posted at 19:23:23

Japanese have not received a proper education in this basic rule of democracy. The bad aftertaste remains because they haven’t received that education. Debate should be exhausted. Then, when the time is right, majority vote rules. There’s nothing at all unusual about this iron rule of democracy. But people are incapable of it.

posted at 19:24:44

After I assumed the role of governor, more than 98% of the decisions were made by common agreement following discussion. For the rest of them, however, when we couldn’t come to an agreement no matter how much we discussed it, we had a vote and went with the majority. That’s Hashism! So, how do you decide, you ask. That shows the fragility of Japan, where no distinction is made between politics and governmental administration.

posted at 19:28:46

After an interval of more than an hour:

As soon as the One Osaka group said the consumption tax should be converted to a local tax, both the LDP and the DPJ criticized us: Local governments mustn’t make demands! What will happen to the national revenue sources? We wrote about that in our policy program. We’ll give the regional tax allocations back to the central government. The DPJ’s tax increase strategy is a mistake, and it isn’t even a strategy.

posted at 20:46:04

The DPJ wants to raise the 5% consumption tax. That’s about JPY 12 trillion in revenue. If they want JPY 12 trillion in revenue, they should eliminate the regional tax allocation, in which the national government sends JPY 17 million to the regions. In exchange for giving that up, we would receive all of the consumption tax.

posted at 20:48:39

JPY 3 trillion of the regional tax allocation is the portion from the consumption tax, so the central government would receive a JPY 14 trillion revenue source if we traded. Increasing the consumption tax makes the people the other party (in the arrangement). That’s why people are opposing it, worried about an election. But eliminating the regional tax allocation makes local government the other party. That’s a struggle between administrative bodies. Therefore, logic can be used to prevail.

posted at 20:51:14

He switched to another topic, but returned about 20 minutes later.

The DPJ championed regional sovereignty, but they had no philosophy for making the regions self-sufficient. While they talked about regional sovereignty, they indulged the regions by distributing money. It was the philosophy of listening to the regions’ self-indulgence. Just give the regions the consumption tax and let them be self-sufficient. All they have to do is retrieve the regional tax allocation and chop down the subsidy. That is the road to Japan’s revival.

posted at 21:09:05

(end translation)
*****
One of the complaints about Mr. Hashimoto is that he’s fascistic (there’s no application of Godwin’s Law in Japan). There have been political cartoons with toothbrush moustaches and peaked military hats with crooked symbols. What they mean is that he’s dictatorial. With their exceptional ability at word play, the Japanese have taken to calling his policies and methods Hashism. Note how Mr. Hashimoto co-opts the phrase for his own advantage.

Speaking of dictators, Ozawa Ichiro was struck by the irony of the DPJ leadership’s decision to squash debate:

“They say I’m high-handed and iron-fisted, but the DPJ’s method of conducting party affairs is far more high-handed and iron fisted than mine. They must have a democratic debate worthy of the name Democratic Party, even if it takes time.”

Can’t win them all

The Osaka City Council voted on a bill last week that would put nuclear plant operation to a plebiscite of the residents. Mr. Hashimoto submitted the bill as directly requested by a citizens’ group. The bill lost, as only the Communist Party went along with his group. Both the LDP and the Communist Party submitted amendments to expedite its passage, but they were voted down too. The LDP said the vote should be limited to Japanese citizens, and the DPJ agreed. One Osaka and New Komeito disagreed, however, because they thought this wasn’t a mere expression of public opinion but a bill to determine specific policy. (I’m not sure I understand that logic.) One aspect left unexpressed is the substantial number of zainichi in the region (Japan-born residents with Korean citizenship), and the many zainichi who are New Komeito members/supporters.

Mr. Hashimoto said he would present a stockholder plan to Kansai Electric to distance the utility from nuclear power, in accordance with the citizens who signed the request. The city owns Kansai Electric Power stock.

As to what sort of plan he has in mind, Mr. Hashimoto attended a meeting of the Energy Strategy Council affiliated with the Osaka City government on Sunday and approved a stockholder plan to Kansai Electric to eliminate nuclear power entirely. He explained his reason:

“The only ones who could look at the (Fukushima) accident and remain unaffected are robots or those with little emotion…with the nuclear accident before our eyes, it is excruciating to put a lid on the fear and sense of revulsion of flesh and blood people.”

It’s a good thing no politician is able to win them all.

*****
Finally, another politician was quoted in my local newspaper as saying that the best tactic for the DPJ and the LDP now would be to hold an election quickly and prevent Mr. Hashimoto and One Osaka from settling on a slate of candidates. That’s the second day in a row I’ve seen that theory. While that tactic is understandable, it is a clear intent to subvert the popular will.

That will only make it worse. It’s impossible to say when it will happen, but I suspect the existing political parties in Japan will finally understand the meaning of “terrible swift sword”.

*****
He out-bops the buzzard and the oriole!

Japan’s cultural kaleidoscope (4)

JUST because the warts of the overseas media and the commentator-bloggers who rely on them think their folderol is insight doesn’t mean you have to fall for it. The national decline of Japan, if it exists at all, is greatly exaggerated. Here are a few short snorts testifying to the national vitality. The first is a translation of a brief article, while the rest are summaries.

Island hopping

Japan Air Commuter, a small Kagoshima-based airline serving the prefecture’s outlying islands, has hired its first female pilot, Hamada Eri (29). Her maiden flight was as co-pilot on two round-trip flights between Kagoshima Airport and the islands of Amami and Tokunoshima. After returning in one piece, Hamada said, “It was different from training. I sensed the weight of the responsibility for carrying passengers. I was very nervous, but it was a lot of fun and I was relieved when it was over.”

Hamada Eri

Her ambition to become an aviatrix originated when she was a student at Ryukyu University (Okinawa). While flying on commercial airlines to her home in Sendai (the northeast part of the country), “I discovered I liked the scenery from the cabin window and wanted to see the view from the front.” She enrolled at a flight school in Miyazaki City after graduation. She chose to work at JAC because she enjoyed her many flights over Kyushu during training, and because she wanted to repay the many people in the industry in Kyushu for their help.

The flights to the outlying islands are a lifeline for the people living there. “I was spurred by a desire to be of service on these flights, which are so important for their daily life.”

The Tohoku earthquake struck while she was still in training. The family home was washed away by the tsunami. While her parents were safe, a grandmother living in an institution died in the wave. She wanted to be near her family, but her parents encouraged her by saying, “We’re fine. You work hard in flight school.”

“I’m far from the stricken area (about 740 miles), but I decided to put forth my best effort along with all the people who suffered as they head toward recovery.”

Ms. Hamada is the 13th female pilot in the JAL group. “I intend to gain experience and become a full pilot, not only for my benefit, but also for the women who follow.”

—————–
A Japanese sentiment permeates every sentence of that article. For contrast, imagine how much self-importance it would have contained had the story originated in the Anglosphere instead of Kagoshima.

Tokushima seaweed comes home

Last year’s Tohoku disaster was also a disaster for Sanriku wakame, a noted product of Miyagi. To help rebuild the industry, a Tokushima Prefecture maritime research institute in Naruto sent local fishing co-ops some wakame spores last October that the Miyagians raised in Kessennuma Bay. The first harvest was last week.

It was a homecoming in a sense for the wakame because the folks in Miyagi shipped the Tokushima institute some of theirs in 2004 for cross breeding. The spawn from that mating is what Tokushima sent back. The spores grew to a length of two meters, though the water temperature this winter was lower than ideal. The quality, color, and thickness of the seaweed is good enough for it to appear on your dinner table soon. Local watermen harvested 400 kilograms on the first day. The harvests will continue until the beginning of April, when they expect to have hauled in a total of 3,400 tons.

Off to see the Iyoboya

The big maritime product in Niigata is salmon. The Niigatans like it so much, in fact, they established the nation’s first salmon museum in Murakami called the Iyoboya Museum.

Niigata was the Murakami domain during the Edo period, and it was there that salmon were first successfully bred in Japan. Since then, salmon has been an important part of local culture. Iyoboya is the name for the fish in the local dialect.

Iyoboya fanciers say the best part of the museum is the mini-hatchery. Starting at the end of October, the museum recovers salmon eggs and fertilizes them. The eggs hatch two months later. Visitors get to see the fingerlings, and if they’re lucky, the hatching itself. The museum is now raising 50,000 fish, give or take a few, which it plans to release in the Miomote River at the beginning of next month. The museum also offers views of the river through glass windows.

There’s a restaurant on the museum premises. Guess what’s on the menu!

Snow fun in Kamakura

The Kamakura winter festival has been underway since 21 January at the Yunishikawa Spa in Nikko, Tochigi. The event is held in small snow huts in a gorge along the banks of the Yunishi River, which sounds like just the ticket for those who get off on nose-rubbing. This is a hot spring town, so visitors can enjoy both the hot and the cold of it, dipping in the spa waters for relaxation after all the fun with snowmen, snow slides, snow hut barbecues (reservations required) and musical performances. If you’re in no hurry for spring to start, the festival will last until 20 March.

Let 100 dragons soar

There’s a lot of snow in Hokkaido, too — probably more than in Nikko — but that didn’t stop Sapporo kiters from holding their 35th annual kite-flying contest in the city’s Fushiko Park. The winner this year was Tanaka Mitsuo, whose design featured a 100-meter-long chain of 100 linked kites.

Mao Zedong once said, “Let a hundred flowers bloom”, but that’s got to be easier than getting 100 kites up in the air. Each of the hundred was 60 x 42 centimeters, made of bamboo and washi (traditional Japanese paper), and designed to look like a dragon. This is Dragon Year in the Chinese zodiac.

Rebuild it and they will come

They’ve been repairing the Izumo Shinto shrine in Shimane lately, the first major renovations in more than 60 years. The local carpenters know just how to go about it, too — the Izumo shrine has been rebuilt 25 times, the last in the 18th century, and also moved several times.

It’s the oldest shrine in the country, but ranks only number two in order of importance. (The enshrined deity is Okuninushi no Mikoto, the nephew of the Sun Goddess.) There’s still a fence around one part where mortals may not enter.

The repairs are being made in conformity with the original construction techniques. That includes softening thin sheets of Japanese cypress by soaking them in water, and then using them to thatch the 600-square-meter roof with bamboo nails. Preparations began in 2008 and the work won’t be finished until next year, though the current phase ended in February. Had I finished this post when I intended, readers nearby might have been able to glimpse the main hall. Alas, I was sidetracked by other work and projects, and now the hall won’t be on view for another 60 years. Attendance also required a dress code: t-shirts, sweatsuits, or sandals will not do for a visit to the abode of Okuninushi, even though the divinity was moved to a temporary site on the premises in 2008 for the duration.

Leg room

Naruse Masayuki of Tamana, Kumamoto, has presented a paper on the safety of his single pedal automobile system to the Society of Automotive Engineers in the United States. Mr. Naruse operates a company that makes industrial materials, one of which is One Pedal. That’s an all-in-one pedal for controlling the gas and the brake to prevent accidents caused when drivers step in it by stepping on the wrong one. There’s an attachment on the right side of the floor pedal for acceleration, which drivers hit with the right side of their foot to move forward. Stepping on the floor still brakes the car.

The pedal’s been around for awhile — the old Transport Ministry conducted trials that demonstrated its safety. Mr. Naruse has custom-fitted nearly 200 cars in Japan with the device, but the major automakers don’t seem interested. Said Toyota, “Technicians have studied it, but we have no plans to adopt it now.” One complaint is that it’s more difficult to keep one’s foot against the gas pedal to maintain a constant speed than it is to downpress a pedal. Nevertheless, SAE plans to hold trials in Tamana with 70 drivers of all ages and foot sizes.

Hokkii rice burger

Tomakomai in Hokkaido has the largest haul of the surf clam — that’s the spisula solidissima for you shellfish enthusiasts — in Japan. They’ve got to eat them all somehow, so they’ve begun promoting a clam rice burger made with what’s called a hokkii, which is also the city’s “image character“. (The name isn’t derived from the hockey puck shape.) It was created by college students who liked the clam and made it for their school festival, and used rice for the bun instead of bread. City officials must have stopped by for a taste, because they adopted the idea and sold 1,600 at a three-day event last year. They then conducted trial tastings and questionnaires to get the perfect recipe, and shops around town began selling it in mid-December. There are several varieties with different condiments, but most sell for around JPY 400 yen, which is not a bad price. The idea is to get more people to come to Tomakomai.

Goya senbei

They’ve got as many goya in Kagoshima’s Minamiosumi-cho as they have surf clams in Tomakomai, so a local hot spring resort developed a way to incorporate them in senbei rice crackers. They slice and dice them and knead them into the batter. Reports say they give the crackers a slight bitter taste. That makes sense — the goya is also called the nigauri, which means bitter melon. Several groups in the city, including the hot spring resort and the municipal planning agency, created the snack as a way to use non-standard goya and gobo (yeah, that’s a vegetable) that can’t be sold on the market. They’re cooked by Yamato-ya, a Kagoshima City senbei company, and 40-gram bags are sold for JPY 315 yen. That’s a bit steep, but some of the proceeds go to local welfare services. Give them a call at 0994-24-5300 to see if they have any left.

Strawberry sake

Instead of clams or goya, Shimanto in Kochi has a strawberry surplus. That was the inspiration for a sake brewer in the city to combine the berries with their sake and create a liqueur with two varieties, one dry and one sweet. The employees even filled the 500-milliliter bottles by hand, and you’ve got to wonder if they had the temptation to sample some. There were 1,000 bottles of the sweet stuff and 2,000 of the dry type going for JPY 1,600 apiece. The idea is to sell it to “people who normally don’t drink sake”, which is code for young women. They’re even selling it outside of the prefecture, so if the idea of strawberry sake appeals to you, input 0880-34-4131 into your hand-held terminal and ask for some.

Extra credit

The more serious drinkers in Aira, Kagoshima, don’t fool around with fruity beverages, and demonstrated it by starting shochu study sessions last month. Some stalls specializing in that particular grog have been set up near the Kagoshima Chuo station, and the people who will operate the stalls attended three training sessions. One of them included lessons in the local dialect for dealing with customers. (Kagoshima-ben requires listeners to pay close attention, and even then you’re not going to get all of it, sober or sloshed. That includes their Kyushu neighbors.) The scholars also examined the traditional process for distilling it, listened to lectures on the origins of satsumaimo (a sweet potato variety) and how it came to be used in the local shochu, and visited the Shirakane brewers. Now that’s dedication for being a liquor store clerk. There’ll be 50 of them working in 25 shops at the stall complex.

Really high

If the last story didn’t convince you that Kagoshimanians are serious about shochu, this one will. They’ve just marketed a new brand called Uchudayori, or Space Bulletin, made with malted rice and yeast carried aboard the international space station Endeavor last May for 16 days. It was developed by researchers at Kagoshima University and the Kagoshima Prefecture Brewers Association. (The university has a special shochu and fermenting research institute for students, and I sniff a party school subtext.) There are 12 different varieties because 12 companies used the base materials to distill their own well-known products, including those made with satsumaimo and brown sugar. Those interested in getting spaced out can buy a set of 12 900-milliliter bottles for JPY 24,000 yen, which is reasonable considering the transportation costs for some of the ingredients. Sameshima Yoshihiro, the head of the research institute, says it has a better aroma than normal. No, he didn’t say it was “out of this world”.

This'll beam you up.

Exotic booze

Did that space travel bring back an alien life form? The shochu kingdom of Kagoshima is about to get its first locally brewed sake in 40 years. Hamada Shuzo of Ichikikushikino (try saying that after a couple of hits of shochu) announced they have started brewing the beverage. They’re the only sake brewery in the prefecture, and the first to go into the business since the last one shut down in 1970.

That's where they make it, you know.

Hamada Shuzo remodeled their shochu plant last year by adding facilities for producing 60 kiloliters of sake annually. An affiliated company used to make sake in Aichi until 1998, so they’ll blow the dust off the old notebooks and apply those accumulated techniques and expertise. A Shinto ceremony was held to receive the blessing of the divinities before they began fermentation with 20 kilograms of rice from other parts of Kyushu. (Kagoshima rice doesn’t work so well.) The company hopes to cook up 800 liters by March.

The company says Kagoshima’s higher temperatures — it’s Down South — make sake brewing difficult, and the shochu culture took root several hundred years ago. I have first-hand experience that Kagoshimanians drink shochu in situations where other Japanese drink sake, and it took about a week to recover. Statistics from the Tax Bureau support that anecdote. They say 36,767 kiloliters of shochu were consumed in the prefecture in 2010 compared to 1,379 for sake.

The company’s idea is to use sake brewing techniques for shochu product development. They might begin full scale production later, but the sake is now being brewed primarily for research. Didn’t I tell you these guys were serious? They’ve also got a restaurant/brewpub on the premises, and they hope it attracts customers who’ll also take a shine to their shochu. Sales in the restaurant begin in May, and in shops after that.

Build it and they will come

The slender, the fat, and the shapeless

Former sumo grand champion and now slimmed down stablemaster Takanohana announced he was starting a program to build sumo rings throughout the country to promote the appeal of sumo. The first will be in Shiiba-son, Miyazaki Prefecture. (Takanohana’s wife, the former newscaster Hanada Keiko, is a Miyazaki girl.) Mr. T believes that sumo helps build character, and he wants to see the rings restored at primary schools and other sites around the country. The Shiiba-son municipal government will contribute funds to the project and manage the ring once it’s built. The construction will be handled by the local Itsukushima Shinto shrine under the guidance of the Japan Sumo Association.

Mr. and Mrs. T sometimes visit a local juku that seems to be more of a character training institute than an academic enhancer. When they were in town to make the announcement about the sumo ring, they attended a lecture by the head of the juku on the Yamato spirit. (Yamato is the older name for the original ethnic group of Japan.) The lecture included this message:

Live as the cherry blossom, blooming vividly with full force and quickly falling from the branch.
We cannot see the color, shape, or size of the spirit, but a person’s spirit manifests in his way of life, deeds, and words.
There are three important things in the way of the rikishi and the way of sumo: form, greetings, and etiquette.

That old time religion is still good enough for plenty of Japanese, and not just old guys who drink shochu and watch sumo. This month, a team from Saga Kita High School in Saga City was one of two selected for the grand prize in an annual calligraphic arts competition in Nagano conducted for high schools nationwide. It was the 17th year the sponsoring organization held the event, and the 17th straight year Kita High School won the grand prize. Kita students also won 11 of the 65 awards in the individual division. Teams from 273 schools participated and submitted 15,420 works.

The Kita girls have been getting ready since October. They practiced every day after school until 7:30, and voluntarily give up their free Saturdays. Said second-year student Koga Misaki, the calligraphy club leader, “We encouraged each other while being aware of the heavy pressure of tradition, and I’m happy we achieved our goal.”

*****
And don’t forget Okinawa!

TV or not TV

I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you–and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials–many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it.

- Newton Minow, to the National Association of Broadcasters on 9 May 1961 after his appointment as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

REMEMBER when parents would nag their children about watching too much television? Parents in today’s Japan, however, don’t have to nag — teenagers and young adults in their 20s are abandoning television in numbers that are alarming people in the industry.

The weekly Shukan Post provided the details in last year’s 11 November issue. They began by reporting that the highest-rated program for the week of 3-9 October was the long-running comedy favorite Shoten at 18.1% — the lowest rating for the leading program in Japanese television history. One week before that, shows with 12% ratings were ranked in the top 30. Ratings at that level were considered poor in the days when TV had captured everyone’s attention.

Some industry sources dismissed the numbers with the claim that more people are recording programs for later viewing, and that younger people are watching on portable terminals such as cell phones. Those aren’t the conclusions to be drawn from a report issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications last August, however. The ministry has been conducting surveys of television viewing by age group, and the results clearly show that the decline in viewership is more pronounced for younger, rather than older, viewers.

For example, teenagers in 2005 watched TV an average of 106 minutes per day. By 2010, that had fallen to 76 minutes, a drop of more than 30% in only five years. The turnoff was almost as pronounced for people in their 20s. The only groups spending more time with television than before were people in their 50s and 60s, and that only by a very slight percentage. The average decline over all age groups was four minutes per day.

An NTT Communications survey in March 2010 found that 14.7% of people in their 20s, part of the prime demographic for advertisers, said they seldom watch TV. Also, only 17.3% of the respondents recorded programs for later viewing, and the number of people watching on cell phones and other terminals was miniscule.

That would tend to refute any assertion that TV has been so dumbed down only an adolescent would watch it. They aren’t. The people watching are their grandparents.

There was a complete conversion in Japan last July to terrestrial digital broadcasts, and some evidence suggests people used that as the opportunity to “graduate from TV”, as the Shukan Post put it. According to Cabinet Office surveys, television ownership peaked at an average of 252 per 100 households, or about 2.5 per home, in 2005. That was down to 239 in March 2011. The market survey arm of the Jiji news agency found that 2.1% of the respondents still hadn’t gotten around to obtaining the required equipment for the digital broadcasts by October, three months after the conversion. That corresponds to about 2.5 million people nationwide. Also during that period, about 98,000 people had cancelled their contracts for NHK TV (which people are supposed to pay for).

Perhaps one of the contributing factors to the decline last year is that people are less likely to view television as a reliable information source after the 11 March Tohoku triple disaster. The Nomura Research Institute conducted a survey to discover which sources people found more credible and less credible post-disaster. The group whose credibility took the biggest hit was national and local governments, cited by 28.9% of the respondents. The second highest percentage was for private-sector television networks, at 13.7%. Oddly, NHK (TV and radio) was the information source that received the most votes for having increased its reliability.

*****
This is worth keeping in mind when one considers the amount of time people interested in political and social issues spend watching and complaining about what passes for news programming on the private sector networks in the United States, the megaliths and all the tabloid cableistas included. There’s also the continual undercurrent of resigned frustration in Britain at being forced to pay for BBC programming produced by people with a specific worldview shared by only a few.

Japanese television is really bad, goes the complaint of the auslanders — some of whom have no idea what’s being said. Really? Compared to what?

Television in the West is different only in the sense that a fast-food hamburger is different from instant ramen.

*****
I prefer educational television myself.

Legs

IT seems the Chinese waste just as much time on websites speculating about Japanese people as Western folks do, with roughly the same result: readers learn more about the writers than anything else.

Some Chinese language-fluent Japanese found a thread on a message board associated with the Baidu search engine titled, “Japanese women can really withstand the cold”. The thread’s original poster included photographs of younger women wearing short skirts on cold days. They thought some of the comments and interpretations were interesting enough to translate into Japanese, and here they are in English (along with a link to the photos).

* Japanese women wear school uniform skirts from primary school through high school except for physical education classes. Universities have no uniforms, so they wear skirts all year round to be fashionable. I don’t think it’s so difficult for them even when it snows and is very cold. In South Korea it was popular to wear long stockings above the knee, but the Japanese are very strict about enforcing the rule on socks below the knee. That exposes their thighs and knees to the cold. Aren’t Japanese women cold? Have they evolved to a level beyond the Chinese?

(N.B.: Most primary school girls don’t wear uniforms at all, much less skirts. The university I’m most familiar with does have a non-mandatory uniform for women. It’s an attractive black pantsuit with a white blouse. The fad last year was short cutoff jeans with long black pantyhose-type stockings. I didn’t have a problem with that at all.)

* They do that from the time they’re small. They’re probably cold, but they’re used to it.

* (Original Poster) Here’s the latest information! Japanese men also don’t wear many clothes. Most young company employees in the Kanto region don’t wear long underwear because they think it’s for old guys.

* They have really big legs.

* Japanese women have such big legs because they like to play sports from a young age.

* They’ll get sick when they get older. Like with rheumatism.

* Where I am the junior high school girls wear stockings. (I think that’s the usual practice.)

* It’s all culture. Generally, women who think they’re beautiful wear skirts. (Is that the general opinion?)

* They’ll have to be careful about arthritis. They shouldn’t damage their bodies just to try to look good.

(N.B.: If female arthritis is a problem in Japan, it’s escaped my notice.)

* Cold, cold! I’m cold just looking at them!

* They have big legs because they sit in seiza for a long time.

(N.B.: Not any more they don’t.)
*****
Here’s the Chinese page with the photos they were commenting on.

It used to be the practice of parents to have their children (until junior high) run around in short pants throughout the year because they thought it was a healthful practice that built up their strength. (At least here in Kyushu, where it’s not as cold as elsewhere.) That doesn’t happen any more, though short pants are the rule for boys at the one primary school in my city that requires uniforms. (Full-length dresses for girls.)
*****
Those thighs don’t look fat to me.

Blackballing the red ball

Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
- Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing

THOUGH some of us are loath to admit it, all of us love lowbrow humor. We always have and we always will. It’s marbled throughout the Canterbury Tales, the existence of Fawlty Towers and the Gong Show depended on it, and Shakespeare loved it, as the line above shows. In fact, the lowbrow humor in that play starts with the title: the word “nothing” in Shakespeare’s day is said to have been a euphemism for the female genitalia.

One of the highest forms of low humor results when some people try to engage in serious sociopolitical discourse. During his brief campaign for president of the U.S., for example, Herman Cain offered a proposal to rework the American tax system into three segments with a rate of 9% each, which he called the 9-9-9 plan. A few people otherwise inclined to support his candidacy were apprehensive, however, because turning 9-9-9 upside down results in 6-6-6…

There’s also the buffoonery of some Barack Obama supporters, convinced since 2008 that racism is the reason for every criticism of their man. That racism is found in charges that he acts too “professorial”, is “elitist”, “out of touch”, or “skinny”. Just as amusing is that they like to refer to this disguised nastiness as a “dog whistle”. (If that’s the case, how come they hear it?) Then there’s the whole topic of political correctness, which might as well be Comedy Central.

Anyone looking for laughs in Northeast Asia can dip into anything that Hatoyama Yukio says about anything, listen to the arguments that Ozawa Ichiro is being railroaded by prosecutors, or eavesdrop on the perpetual South Korean domestic conversation about Japanese phantasmata.

The latest installment of the latter circulated last month when South Korea’s Grand National Party, known locally as Hannara, was in the process of remaking its image. The party, which holds the most seats in the national assembly, changed its name to Saenuri in Korean and the New Frontier Party in English. They also adopted a new logo in conjunction with the new name, and the changes took effect this month.

The old design featured a red circle with a blue line underneath. Here’s what it looked like.

That’s an artistic representation of a human figure, right? Nah. This is South Korea. The posse irritati complained that the red circle in the logo was something that a Japanese company would use.

Some comments from the Internet:

* Doesn’t the red of the Hannara logo symbolize the Japanese flag?

* The Hannara logo is just like the Japanese flag!

* The Japanese flag is hidden in the Hannara party logo and Seoul city logo!

Apparently those wily Japanese imperialists and their traitorous allies will stop at nothing to sneak their national symbol into the very heart of Korean politics.

The criticism wasn’t confined to the Internet —- politicians never pass up an opportunity to stoop as low as they can to pick up a vote or two. Besides, they had evidence!

That shows a comparison of the party logo with those of a few Japanese companies. Residents of the region know that type of stylized human form has often been used in logos and symbols for close to 20 years now. (It probably started in Japan. Most regional fashions of that sort do nowadays.) The choice of some of the companies also provided unintentional humor. Herald Pictures disappeared into Kadogawa Herald Pictures in 2005. KKC Wellness (logo at bottom left) operates healthcare facilities in the Kinki region and is mostly unknown anywhere else. Finally, the red circle in all of those logos, the Korean ones included, is clearly meant to represent a human head.

Recall that one Koreanetizen referred to the Seoul logo, which some people have been indignant about since its adoption in 1996. It consists of a red circle to symbolize the sun and arty blue and green swatches to represent the sea and the mountains. City officials in Seoul have somehow managed to weather the criticism for incorporating the Japanese motif, and it’s still the municipal emblem:

The Japanese became used to all this long ago, so their comments were characterized by polite bemusement. One journalist wrote, “I can’t say I don’t understand” that the party symbol might be mocked for looking Japanese, but added that the idea any red circle = the Japanese flag is rather extreme.

Still, the Hannara/Saenuri/Grand National/New Frontier Party has to face a general election in April and a presidential election in December while down in the polls. Accusations that their logo contains the Mark of the Beast might offset any of the benefits of an image change. So their official logo now looks like this:

While we’re on the subject of national flags and symbols, it’s worth noting that the South Korean flag contains hexagrams from the I Ching. I’ve always thought that was a cool thing to put on a flag. Maybe it’s time for some of the local Dogberries to take up the I Ching for a remedial reading assignment instead of just looking at the pictures.

*****
There’s a reason both the Globe Theater and the Gong Show had groundlings. Who knows what they’d think in Seoul of that semi-sunburst at the back of the stage?

Snow scenes and cherry blossoms

SNOW is seldom seen here in Kyushu, and when it does appear, it seldom survives more than a day. That’s just the way I like it.

Snow on the ground is a daily companion a few months out of the year in other parts of Japan, however. One man told me about moving into a rental house in the northeastern part of the country in midwinter. He didn’t realize there was a fence around the property until spring came and the snow melted.

The opportunities for outdoor fun in Snow Country would seem to be limited to skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, and swapping frostbite avoidance strategies. That’s not how the people who live in that part of Japan see it, however, particularly the people of Yamagata. For example:

They play soccer in the snow.

For the past seven years, the folks in Yonezawa have a soccer tournament played on a snow-covered rice paddy instead of a pitch. They think it’s safe to assume there will be enough snow to hold the event every year. In addition to creating a chance to act goofy, the idea is to attract interest in the local Onogawa hot spring resort.

The rules have been modified to suit the playing conditions. The rice paddy pitch is 20 x 40 meters, the match is played with futsal rules with five members on a team (at least one of whom must be female), the players wear rubber boots instead of spikes, and using piles of snow to deliberately obstruct an opponent is not allowed.

The reports from Yamagata suggest the players of snow soccer have just as much fun when they fail as they do when they succeed. Footballers find it hard to run when their feet sink into the playing surface, and hard to stay serious when they fall on their face after kicking snow or air instead of the ball.

They go mountain biking in the snow.

For the past 17 years, the city of Higashine has staged a winter festival that includes an endurance race on mountain bikes over the local tundra. The bikers hit the trail on a special circuit laid out over 2.5 kilometers near another hot spring resort, and that location can’t be by accident. The course even includes jumps.

Contestants are divided into three groups: Men 50 and older, men 49 and younger, and women. Speaking of endurance, it takes about an hour to run the 2.5 kilometers, but that’s to be expected when tires are spinning in snow sherbet or in the air after the rider takes a spill.

They also have races with radio cars.

The engineering school of Yamagata University in Yonezawa sponsors a race over the snow for radio-controlled cars put together by the students. One of the objectives is to have students with different specialties work together on the same team, and this time five teams participated. It’s a timed race over a course that features jumps and other obstacles, and the course was laid out to require travel over snow of different consistencies.

All the entries were hot-rodded radio cars already commercially available. One team of students outfitted the wheels with belts instead of tires, and another added aluminum wings that rotated to bite into the snow and prevent slips. One team’s car didn’t get anywhere at all — the tires never got traction and they had to withdraw after the battery ran down.

Of course they have snow fights. In fact, in Hokkaido, they have international snow fights. With teams.

They’ve been duking it out in the snows of Hokkaido’s Sobetsu-cho over two-day competitions for 24 years now. The objective is to be the first team to reach the summit of Mt. Showashin. They’ve got more competition than the average gladiator match — according to reports, 150 teams with 1,500 members in all participate. That includes several squads from Europe, one of which last year was the winner of a similar event in Sweden. International exchange in the snow!

The Japanese media didn’t report on the rules governing the competition — there must be some — but this is what it looked like:

They don’t waste their time with mere snowmen, either. Back in Yamagata, they build snow monuments.

An estimated 70 snow sculptors in Oishida-machi created what they call a soba mascot in front of the JR Oishida Station. That’s the sort of monument people put up when they live in a town known for soba noodles.

The monument was 10 x 17 x 4 meters, with a “soba mascot” rendered on the front in a style of drawing traditional to the area called kotee. They also sprayed on the color, white alone being insufficient to create the desired effect.

The group consisted of members of the local Lions club, a construction industry association, an art group, and high school students. They also made snow slides and lanterns while they were at it. Odds are they made their way to a hot spring for a good long soak after all that cold weather work.

Speaking of snow lanterns, they make those in Yonezawa too. Those are for the annual Uesugi Toro Festival, a toro being a type of lantern. The event is held over wide area that includes the Uesugi Shinto shrine and Matsugamisaki Park. More than 103 local groups pitch in to make 248 of the snow toro, as well as a candle pyramid and 3,000 smaller lanterns of a different style.

In fact, the slogan for the event is “One lantern at each house”.

They even have flower festivals in the snow in Yamagata. With real flowers!

The festive winter flowers there are tree peonies, known as botan in Japanese, and the festival has been held for more than a decade at Takahata-machi. Perhaps for variation, they also had some flowers shipped in from Shimane, which is known as the peony capital of Japan.

The flowers are displayed on 35 straw mats that are a meter high. The main attraction is a six-meter mat with the flowers arranged in a special hina doll design. (Hina Festivals will be held throughout the country the weekend after next.) Adding to the fun are snow slides and peony miso soup with boar meat.

Yes, that’s what the report said. I read it twice to make sure.

Winter in Yamagata has several attractions for aesthetes as well as the type of people who play snow soccer. One of them is snow monster viewing at the Zao ski resort in Yamagata City. Local atmospheric conditions combined with falling snow means that the trees on the slopes are covered with hoar frost that hardens into unusual shapes. Snow monster fans from throughout Japan visit for the views, the skiing (on 14 slopes over 305 hectares with 42 ski lifts), and the hot springs resorts. There’s one outdoor hot spring at Zao that can accommodate up to 200 people at once, presumably of the same sex. Then again, the air’s so cold there’s plenty of steam, and people probably sink in up to their necks, so all that nudity would go to waste.

If all this talk of snow, ice, and numb runny noses has you longing for the warmer weather of spring, take heart — it’s already started in another part of Japan, despite the date on the calendar.

Way down south in Nago, Okinawa, they have a slogan: Spring in Japan begins here. That’s because for the past half-century, they have the country’s first official hanami, or cherry blossom viewing, at the Nago Sakura Matsuri at the end of January. Now that sounds like my kind of place.

In addition to the usual boozing, flower appreciation, singing, and more boozing, there are parades, dancing by women’s groups and other groups in period costumes, and performances by youth groups.

And I’ll bet they all relax at a hot spring when it’s over!

*****
Here’s a brief video of the Zao snow monsters in Yamagata.

Through one of the quirks of the Internet, one of the suggested videos at the end is of a bunch of people in France shopping at a department store in their underwear.

And the media thinks Japan is weird!

UPDATE:
Now here’s some good news.

Kumamoto, the leading watermelon-producing prefecture in Japan, just made its first shipment of the year on the 19th. Yeah, they were grown in a greenhouse, but they sure look good, they weigh four to five kilograms each (bigger than usual), they’re about 11-12 on the sweetness scale (average, and yes, that’s the first time I’ve heard of a sweetness scale too), and they’ll fetch JPY 4,000 – 5,000 in Tokyo and Osaka department stores. (If you have trouble believing that some people still buy produce in Japanese department stores, remember that the customers are of a small market segment that doesn’t worry about how much it spends.)

The shipment of 2,800 melons was sent out from Ueki-machi. They’ll ship an estimated 2.4 million by July. I’m ready now, but I’ll wait for summertime prices.

Suckers

“I have a lot to say,” said the fish, “but my mouth is full of water.”
- Georgian proverb

WHEN last we met, I promised that the next post would discuss Japan’s best options for responding to geopolitical conditions in East Asia. That post has required a lot of time to collect, translate, and organize the information, however. At the same time, my primary attention shifted to a large influx of paying work, which still continues. Finally, it has been difficult to resist the temptation to slide over to YouTube and watch and listen to the videos in the excellent Pakistan Coke Studio series.

The stimulus which pulled me out of that mini-orbit was the festival of cheap thrills in the English-language blogosphere this week touched off by another provocative bit of Japan-related flummery.

Specifically:

A startling number of Japanese youths have turned their backs on sex and relationships, a new survey has found.

The survey, conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association, found that 36% of males aged 16 to 19 said that they had “no interest” in or even “despised” sex. That’s almost a 19% increase since the survey was last conducted in 2008.

If that’s not bad enough, The Wall Street Journal reports that a whopping 59% of female respondents aged 16 to 19 said they were uninterested in or averse to sex, a near 12% increase since 2008.

Not only did everone fall for it, they sucked it up so quickly one could almost hear the kids loudly slurping the last drops of the beverage at the bottom of the cup through their straws.

Now really: Are the popular perceptions of Japan so warped that anyone anywhere 16 years of age or over could take that story at face value? I’ve regularly associated with Japanese kids of high school and college age — in the Japanese language — since 1984, and the idea that they have a widespread aversion to sex caused a snort louder than any straw slurp. But then I’m also familiar with the dissatisfaction many Japanese have with the inferior quality of local public opinion surveys, which seldom finds expression in English.

Some research on the Japanese-language sector of the Internet was in order. The first place I headed was the website for the Japanese Family Planning Association, which is the Japanese affiliate of Planned Parenthood. I spent a few minutes at their Japanese-only site looking for the report, but found nothing. Then I plugged their name into the Japanese version of Google News, but I still came up empty.

I returned to the original article, published by that paragon of accuracy and sobriety in journalism, the Huffington Post. The headline read, “Japan Population Decline: Third of Nation’s Youth Have ‘No Interest’ In Sex”. Part of their article is quoted above, including the claim that this is a “new survey”.

How odd that nothing about this new survey and its remarkable findings can be found on the Japanese Family Planning Association’s website or Google News Japan. The reason became apparent when I accessed the link at the HuffPo piece to a related Wall Street Journal article. Rather than being “new”, the survey was released in January 2011 — more than a year ago.

That explains the absence of stories in Google News; links to Japanese newspaper stories seldom survive longer than a year. After I added some terms to the search query, some information finally started turning up. It helped that the survey was sponsored by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare.

Nevertheless, it was curious how little information actually surfaced. Blog post links last longer than a year, but Japanese bloggers were rather uncurious about this report. Then I ran across this comment from University of Tokyo grad school researcher Furuichi Noritoshi, a sociologist who specializes in studies of contemporary Japanese youth. Mr. Furuichi — who is just 26 himself — wrote in the weekly Pureiboi:

The viewpoint is growing among young people today that it is “smart” (i.e., stylish) to behave as if one has little interest in sex. People think they should not superficially demonstrate that interest, even when they are interested. They even consider it a pain to put up with the generation that spun their tales of triumph, bragging about how many people they bagged. I suspect that viewpoint is reflected in the answers to the survey.

In addition, they only surveyed from 61 to 162 men or women in each generation. That’s a rather small sample size. Further, the response rate was only 57%. It would be difficult to gain an understanding of an entire generation from this survey alone.

N.B.: In Japan, “difficult” is usually a euphemism for “impossible”.

After that observation about the sample size, I knew I was getting close. Sure enough, the next site that turned up was the original Japanese-language report from the Ministry itself on the survey. (You can read the .pdf file here.)

Here’s how the survey was conducted: 3,000 people from the ages of 16-49 were selected at random from residential rolls. The association explained and distributed questionnaires to 2,693 people, eliminating from the original 3,000 those who were never at home or not at the address. They returned to pick up the completed questionnaire later, and received 1,540 (671 from men and 869 from women). That’s a recovery rate of 57.2%.

As page four of the .pdf file shows, they broke down the respondents into seven different age groups. For the age group of 16-19, they received responses from 61 males and 65 females.

In other words, the Internet was agog over a report that 22 males and 38 females aged 16-19 said either that they had no interest in sex or despised it. When the Huffington Post spun this story as “a third of the nation’s youth” disliking sex, they were basing it on the response of 60 self-selected people. The HuffPo also thinks 38 girls is a “whopping” number.

That explains why so few people in Japan took the survey seriously. We already knew there was little reason to take the HuffPo or Wall Street Journal’s coverage of Japan seriously, based on their track record. This story follows the pattern: Discovering the essentials of this survey took only 10 to 15 minutes, but then I was interested in the truth instead of entertainment.

Another peculiarity was the survey’s finding that only 6.6% of the boys and 1.6% of the girls had their first sexual experience at the age of 16-19. That’s not even close to the numbers from this data reported by Kyoto University for surveys of high school students in Tokyo over a 20 year-period. In 1984, the percentage of the no-longer virgin among the big city boys and girls in their senior year was 22% and 12% respectively. By 2002, a decade ago, that had risen to 37% and 46% respectively. (Yes, the girls were getting more action than the guys.)

Is this not curious? If a survey with findings that goofy were to appear in America, folks on the Internet would have mobilized immediately, and the information to refute it would have been found, presented, and widely disseminated in fewer than 24 hours. Recall what happened to Dan Rather of CBS News when he tried to use bogus documents to discredit George W. Bush in 2004. Just last week, an attempt to discredit Newt Gingrich among Republicans by deliberately misquoting his comments about Ronald Reagan was also exposed in less than a day.

When Japan is the subject of goofy surveys, however, the same people forego their critical facilities and become Grade-A suckers.

This phenomenon demands ruthless truth-telling, and it is not possible to be too ruthless. Here’s the truth: If you choose to believe what you read in the English-language mass media about Japan, you choose the course of ignorance.

Conrad the Gweilo

I read this report on the Instapundit website run by University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds. A rational man, Prof. Reynolds presented only the link and a quote, and offered no comment of his own. He did, however, later add a comment mailed in by an ex-blogger whose site he once enjoyed. The commenter identified himself as the former author of the Gweilo Diaries. That would have been “Conrad”, a man writing from Hong Kong who chose to remain anonymous even when active.

I bring up his comments only because they are a superlative example — even for the Internet — of a person unwittingly exposing himself as a horse’s ass through the confident assertion of ignorant nonsense. Here’s what he said:

As a preface: my wife — yes, I’m now married, monogamous and very content — is Japanese. Many of my friends and clients are Japanese. I speak passable Japanese and I am still intrigued (and sometimes repelled) by Japanese culture.

Here’s what he’s telling us: He doesn’t live in Japan, knows a few Japanese people, and is not fluent in the language. Any time spent in the country has been short and shallow. He might fool the linguistically challenged Americans (and himself) with this “passable” business, but there is no “passable” when it comes to language skills — you’re either fluent or you’re not.

What is “passable” supposed to mean? Passable is going to the dentist with a toothache and getting it fixed, explaining why Barack Obama is now so unpopular in the United States after the false euphoria of 2008, or describing the difference between an alpha male and a beta male without any English dialogue or recourse to a dictionary. Passable is being able to read the first 25 signs you see walking down the street. Passable is explaining to someone in English the content of a Japanese newspaper article selected by someone else at random.

His primary means of communication with his Japanese wife would seem to be in a language other than Japanese. My Japanese wife and I will have been married 25 years in May, and she does not speak English. One learns early that the choice is simple: either get fluent fast or live forever behind the eight ball. Passable is not an option.

And of course, if he could read or write Japanese, he would have mentioned it.

His admission that he is “sometimes repelled” by Japanese culture demonstrates a disqualifying bias. Somewhere in the world there is a nation that is the gold standard for culture, from which the Japanese are so far removed that their behavior is repellent? Or does that cultural gold standard only exist in the kingdom between his ears?

If you wonder why that would make a difference, try this perspective: Picture yourself as an American who is listening to someone commenting authoritatively about the United States, but whose culture sometimes repels him. The commenter doesn’t live in the US, speaks only “passable” English, and can’t read the language. He knows a few Americans, including his wife, with whom he converses in some other language.

Now ask yourself how seriously you’ll take whatever this man has to say.

We do learn, however, about the Japan of his imagination.

Young Japanese guys are as horny and desperate to get laid as any guys in the world. Probably more so, since only young Arabs get less actual sex.

The Japanese Family Planning Association survey found that the age at which the 50% threshold was crossed for the first sexual experience was 19, but Conrad the Gweilo in Hong Kong, or wherever he is now, knows more about the frequency with which people in Japan (and the Arab world) get laid. He must be a lucky man to have avoided arrest as a Peeping Tom for all these years.

Unfortunately, three lost economic decades has resulted in a plethora of un- or under-employed young beta men, without real jobs or prospects of success, and young women who look at these prospective suitors and despair.

Unfortunately Conrad the Gweilo seems to be under the impression that the years from 1980-1990 were an economic loss in Japan. He also isn’t aware of the statistics showing that Japanese economic performance in recent years has been comparable to that of other developed countries. Nor is he aware that the nation with a plethora of young beta men without real jobs has an unemployment rate just a skoche more than half that of the United States, where the official unemployment figures are just as fraudulent.

Then there is the deficiency in his reading skills. The report on this survey covered only the results for people from ages 16-19, when most kids are in high school, and many in the first year of college. It is not clear why figures dealing with full-time students prompted him to discuss un- or under-employment among young men.

His use of the term “beta men” is also noteworthy, especially in combination with the following:

Young Japanese guys who can’t attract women turn to magna, gaming, and juvinalia (sic) Young Japanese women, in a society without f*ckworthy guys, turn to fashion, girl friends and the passive/aggressive “cute culture” prevalent among Japanese girls. It turns out that economic stagnation if the enemy of hot sex.

Though the Pukka Sahib of East Asia has “many” Japanese friends and clients, he doesn’t have a high opinion of their masculinity. For all his extensive experience and knowledge, he seems to have overlooked the fact that the dynamic for interaction between the sexes is different here. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on him. Unable to read Japanese, he doesn’t have access to this information.

Nor is the cute culture among young Japanese women a recent phenomenon, but Conrad the Gweilo is probably too young to know that. Why he thinks the buzzword “passive-aggressive” applies to it is beyond my ability to speculate.

That facile use of the term “beta men”, by the way, also identifies him as someone who is likely familiar with what has been called the manosphere and the new masculine awareness. Yet it is strange how quickly he buys into this:

Many commentators in the Japanese and international media have laid the problem squarely at the feet of soshoku danshi – “herbivore men” — a term coined by pop culture columnist Maki Fukasawa in 2006.

One of the staples of the English-language manosphere is the presentation and takedown of articles written by women (especially pop culture columnists) publicly airing their dissatisfaction with contemporary men. As soon as one is brought up as the subject of a manosphere blog post, the author is pelted with a volley of spitballs and put in her place as a whiner frustrated that she isn’t hot enough to attract guys.

But when they turn the cyberpage and see the Japanese version of the same thing, the suckers swallow it whole. Perhaps that’s because American men are so studly compared to those geeky Japanese grass eaters. After all:

Once upon a time, video games were for little boys and girls—well, mostly little boys—who loved their Nintendos so much, the lament went, that they no longer played ball outside. Those boys have grown up to become child-man gamers, turning a niche industry into a $12 billion powerhouse. Men between the ages of 18 and 34 are now the biggest gamers;… almost half—48.2 percent—of…males in that age bracket had used a console during the last quarter of 2006, and did so, on average, two hours and 43 minutes per day. (That’s 13 minutes longer than 12- to 17-year-olds, who evidently have more responsibilities than today’s twentysomethings.) Gaming—online games, as well as news and information about games—often registers as the top category in monthly surveys of Internet usage.

And:

Today’s pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn’t say. He has to compete in a fierce job market, but he can’t act too bossy or self-confident. He should be sensitive but not paternalistic, smart but not cocky. To deepen his predicament, because he is single, his advisers and confidants are generally undomesticated guys just like him.

Single men have never been civilization’s most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with “Star Wars” posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust either give up on any idea of a husband and kids or just go to a sperm bank and get the DNA without the troublesome man. But these rational choices on the part of women only serve to legitimize men’s attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There’s nothing they have to do.

Ah, so sorry. That was Kay Hymowitz writing about American men.

Perhaps his time overseas has left Conrad the Gweilo behind the curve:

The US is not Japan, but if present trends of debt, unemployment, lack of mobility and stagnation continue, the end result will be similar.

Well, we know that the US is not Japan, but a report last year from the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the percentage of young Americans aged 15-24 with no sexual experience had risen from 22% for both sexes in 2005 to 27% for men and 29% for women. That’s an extra five years of prime sexual time beyond the ages referenced in the Japanese study. The percentage of high school virgins was 53% for men and 58% for women, not so different from Japanese surveys. In fact, that percentage for girls with their innocence intact is higher than the percentage for Japanese girls in the study of Tokyo I cited above.

What would Conrad the Gweilo make of the book Furuichi Noritoshi published last year? Mr. Furuichi wanted to examine why people were so concerned about Japanese youth when a 2010 survey found that 65.9% of men and 75.2% of women in their 20s said they were “satisfied” with their current lives.

Perhaps if he could read it, he might tell us.

Afterwords:

Please use this link to Instapundit to access the HuffPo and Wall Street Journal articles. Links are only for the legit.

Next time for the geopolitical post for sure!

*****
To say that the Pakistan Coke Studio videos are excellent might be an understatement.

Kiss

ONE segment on a Japanese television program tonight featured an experiment in kissing with participants from five different countries.

The program hired an attractive young woman in each of those countries, had each of them stand for an hour outdoors in an urban district with a lot of pedestrian traffic holding a sign that read, “Kiss me please”, and filmed the events that transpired. Of course they counted the number of kissers, but only kisses on the cheek were allowed. All of the models were very kissable. Women were free to kiss the model too. The results:

Italy: 24
United States: 11
Japan: 7
The Philippines: 4
South Korea: 0

That Italy was the champion by such a large margin isn’t surprising at all. Nor was it surprising that a large share of those 24 were old men who kissed quite stylishly.

Two of the seven Japanese kissers were young women who were photographed in the act by their women friends with cellphone cameras. One said she wanted to upload the photo on Twitter. Two college-aged men walked by the model, but only one kissed her. The other said he would be uncomfortable with people watching.

The South Korean woman attracted a crowd, but no kissers at all during the hour. One middle-aged woman briefly scolded her. A group of older men stood back and watched, but none could bring themselves to approach. Interviewed later, one of the men said he wanted to kiss her, but couldn’t because he was with his wife. The Japanese on the program thought the influence of Confucian culture might have been responsible for the Korean goose egg.

Some foreign residents and visitors say that Japanese television isn’t interesting.

Oh? Compared to what?

*****
Think I better dance now!

Nippon Noel 2011

CHRISTMAS customs in East Asia may lack the self-perpetuating momentum of the holiday in Christian countries in the West with a longer tradition, but the season and its symbols can still generate intense emotion in this part of the world. An example is the the steel towers decorated as Christmas trees that an evangelical group erects every year two miles from the North Korean border on the 100-foot-high Aegibong Hill. They were to have been illuminated on Friday, which would have made them visible to soldiers on the northern side of the border and residents of the North Korean city of Kaesong.

The decorations have caused periodic friction between the two countries — Bah, humbug might well be the North Korean national motto — and so were stopped in 2004. The group resumed the practice in 2010, but this year the Scrooges in Pyeongyang said they’d shoot out the lights and it would be the southerners’ fault if they did. Since no one has any idea of the leadership’s current state of mind up north, or even who constitutes the leadership, the South Koreans decided discretion was the better part of holiday virtue and will refrain from flipping the switch on the towers this week.

Fortunately, there’s a lot more peace on the Japanese part of the earth, and they can and do light all the Christmas trees they want anywhere they feel like it. The Japanese view Christmas as an excellent opportunity to stage a festival of light. Indeed, with all the imagination incorporated into the designs, their variations on the theme of tannenbaum might be considered a minor form of public art. Here are some of the best in 2011.

Tokyo

They’ve been partying since 13 November at the Aqua Christmas 2011 festivities in Odaiba. The sponsors have exhibited a seven-meter-high Marina Fantasy Tree that represents a Christmas tree rising out of the sea, which is a satisfying image for an island country. An added touch is that the colors change in coordination with the music.

They’re just as abstract over at the Shinjuku Southern Terrace shopping facility. Inside the tower are two switches that change the lights from red to green to blue to a Christmasy pink to yellow to rainbow, accompanied by stately bell sounds. They’re calling it the Kizuna Tree, with kizuna being the human ties that bond, and they suggest it’s an excellent way for couples to strengthen their own ties. Christmas Eve is the big date night of the year in Japan, and if a young couple were to stop by to strengthen their ties at the Kizuna Tree and wound up buying something before they left, then so much the better.

The cutbacks in power consumption necessitated by the Tohoku disaster forced people to use their imaginations and discover new ways to find the juice for the lights. The most frequently adopted solution is LEDs, but many places also use wind power, and some even went with vegetable oil.

Wind power was the choice to light up a 400-meter stretch of zelkova trees in toney Roppongi Hills. It’s the first time they’ve trimmed the trees for Christmas in this neighborhood, so they decided to get creative with pink and beige lights designed to look like a waterfall. Those lights don’t look pink or beige, and they don’t resemble a waterfall either, but that’s what the copy said.

Awareness of the Tohoku disaster is still fresh in everyone’s minds, and that’s why the trees displayed in the central concourse at the JR Ueno Station were decorated with ornaments made in the areas hardest hit in March. They were put together by women in Kuji and Rikuzentakata in Iwate, and Ishinomaki in Miyagi who were suddenly unemployed in the aftermath of the earthquake/tsunami. The operation was put together by a group in Saitama called Team Tomodachi to help those in the stricken areas. They asked the women to make the ornaments, which they then sold to remunerate them for their work. The material used was the leftovers from the process for manufacturing organic cotton products.

The trees themselves were put up by Atre Ueno, a local shop, with the help of the Tokyo and Sendai branches of the East Japan Railway Co. and Ueno Station.

Seven women from Ishinomaki came to Ueno in November to hang the ornaments with Atre Ueno employees. One of the women explained that she thought she wouldn’t be able to do it when someone approached her with the idea — she had spent her whole life processing wakame seaweed by hand, and crafts were not her hobby. The longer the group worked together, however, the more fun they had. She said that, on reflection, she lost a lot this year, but also wound up gaining something as well.

Kyoto

A look at some of the posts under the Christmas tag for a peek at Christmases past will show that PET bottles are a favorite choice as a tree material substitute. All the trees along this pedestrian walkway near the municipal offices in Nantan, Kyoto, were made with the preformed polyethylene terephthlate. The members of a local club found about 3,500 empties, which surely left them with sticky fingers. They weren’t too sticky, however, to prevent them from putting together 30 1.8-meter trees of six levels with 30 bottles, and two 2.4-meter trees of eight levels with 500 bottles, and then lining them up along the 200-meter pathway. If you’re in the neighborhood and want to see for yourself, they’ll be lit until 8:00 p.m. tonight.

Ibaraki

An executive committee consisting mostly of JCs got profligate with the LEDs a little further to the north in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, and used 200,000 to decorate a 200-meter-long row of zelkova trees at the city’s Tsuba Center square near the train station for the seventh year.

This year, they wanted the display to reflect the wishes for national recovery, so the lights spell out Gambaro Nippon, or Let’s Fight, Japan.

There’s another tree-based illuminated decoration at the Chuo Koen (Central Park) in the city. If you can’t make it there for Christmas, don’t worry — they’ll be up until 9 January, and that makes a few more than the standard 12 days of Christmas.

Nagoya

Santa will visit and a tree will be lit at the Noritake Garden, a ten-year-old park in Nagoya. Mr. Claus will again climb the chimney on the ceramics plant to plant a 12-meter-high tree there. The reduced supply of electricity this year caused by fallout from the Fukushima disaster will be offset by a solar power generator installed at the facility in October, capable of producing an average of 120 kW a day.

Osaka

Everybody likes Christmas surprises, so the Shinwa Construction Co. in Osaka has had a suprise for a different neighborhood every year for the past eight years. They use the front lot of whatever condominium that they happen to be in the process of building and put up a 12-meter-high Christmas tree with 30,000 LEDs with no warning on 1 December. Naturally, this keeps the Osakans wondering where the tree will turn up every year, and making a special trip to see when they find out. This year the tree was put up in Yodogawa Ward, but this photo shows one from about five years ago.

The company also staged a “Christmas Event” on the 22nd and 23rd with an artificial snow machine and stalls selling such Yuletide delicacies as oden and yakitori roasted o’er an open fire.

Kanagawa

Not all that gllitters is an LED. The 10-meter-high tree put up by the Ukai Venetian Glass Museum in Hakone consists of 70,000 pieces of crystal glass, which flash in seven different colors in the sunlight. Though it’s illuminated externally at night, as you can see in the video, the tree itself has no internally lit ornaments. The facility also added 60 candles and 180 lanterns to the park exhibit on 1 December.

Hokkaido

The northern island of Hokkaido is cold enough to pass for the North Pole — they start wearing jackets at night at the end of August — so Christmas comes naturally to the natives. The city of Hakodate is also known for the big trees at its Hakodate Christmas Fantasy. It’s so well known, in fact, that the city of Hirosaki in the neighboring prefecture of Aomori put up their own 20-meter tree at the site. Hirosaki Mayor Kasai Noriyuki explained the display was to promote ties between the two cities.

And hey, what’s Christmas without a fireworks display?

Kagoshima

The Kagoshimanians also got into the Christmas spirit by making three trees out of PET bottles, which they displayed at a big shopping mall in the center of the city. It’s the third year Yamagata-ya has put up PET bottle trees to enhance awareness of ecological activities and recycling. The main six-meter-high tree used about 2,800 bottles brought by customers and 6,500 LEDs provided by the store, and if you look behind the adult Santa in the photo, you can see one of the three smaller subsidiary trees. They got the store customers to help put them together and hang the decorations, which is a bit like Tom Sawyer getting his friends to paint the fence, though this was more fun and a lot less messy.

Fukushima

A cosmetics manufacturing and sales company way down south in Fukuoka City decided to help make spirits bright up north after a very gloomy year in Fukushima, whose name will now be forever associated with a nuclear disaster. That’s why they put up this big tree next to the JR Fukushima Station in the city. Trimming any tree with more than 40,000 LEDs is bound to brighten the neighborhood and spirits both. Said local resident Matsumoto Ryoko, aged 75:

Just looking at it cheers me up. After this difficult year with the disaster, these are lights of hope.

They’ll be lit in their city until 11:00 p.m. tonight, and hopefully in their hearts for many more nights to come.

*****
The year I came to Japan there was a musical tsunami in the form of Yamashita Tatsuro’s soundtrack to the movie The Big Wave. It hit #2 on the charts, making it one of the most successful soundtrack records in Japan. It was especially popular among people in their 20s and 30s, both because it was so well done, and because Yamashita himself was a favorite among people of that age at the time.

One half of the LP consisted of Yamashita’s tunes, and the other half of Beach Boy remakes that are more listenable than the originals, but then my taste lies in directions other than that of the Wilson brothers. He didn’t need any brothers for the harmonies because he overdubbed all the vocal parts himself.

Yamashita is (or should be) in the top rank of international pop music auteurs. Asked about his musical inspiration, he said he grew up listening to FEN (Far East Network), the radio station for American servicemen in this part of the world, which anyone with a transistor radio in Tokyo can hear. The production values of his music also recall uptown soul music, so if you can imagine a Japanese singer creating original material that mixes Beach Boy and soul music influences, then you’re close to the Yamashita sound.

Even better known than the original Big Wave LP is his Christas song, called Christmas Eve, which was released as a single the year before. It reached only #44 on the 1983 charts (the LP from which it came was #1), but it had miraculous staying power: it’s the only Japanese pop song to reach the Top 100 for 20 straight years. The single eventually sold 1.8 million copies, boosted by its use as the theme song for JR East’s seasonal commercials starting in 1986. The residuals alone must surely mean that all of his Christmases will be bright.

What better cyber-present could there be than an embedded video of the song with scenes from the commercials throughout the years? Here’s hoping that your real presents are as sweet as the girl waiting behind the train station pillar in 1989. メリークリスマス！

Winter beauty

THIS POST was timed to go up at 10:00 p.m. on a Sunday night in Japan. For 22 years, from 1978 to 2000, that was the starting time for the broadcast of the 30-minute musical program, Enka no Hanamichi. Enka is a style of music popular in Northeast Asia, and in Japanese the word is usually written with the two characters that mean “to perform” and “to sing”. An excellent description is found at Barbara’s Enka Site:

A friend of mine once remarked that these were “Japanese torch singers” and that’s a fairly good description. Enka songs are 1 to 6 minutes long, and are performed standing, usually wearing formal attire. For men this can be either Japanese or Western attire, for women it is generally a kimono. (Korean and Chinese women seem to usually sing Enka in glittering gowns.) The song lyrics are tragic yet philosophical, and sometimes even amusing. Drinking songs are common, usually to help “drown my sorrows”. Songs of love, separation, death and suicide abound. The subject matter of the typical lyrics involves tragic love and sweet resignation to the comfort of cherished memories of better times. Arrangements use a unique mixture of Western and Japanese instruments, from the koto to the electric guitar. Violins are common, but surprisingly, pianos are not.

We Western music lovers might imagine it this way… Team up a songwriter who writes old-fashioned Gypsy music with a romantic lyricist of an American blues or country music background. Then translate the lyrics into poetic but old-fashioned Japanese and arrange the music for a band made of half Japanese musicians and half European classical musicians, plus a harmonica and electric guitar. Then find a Japanese woman to sing the song in full kimono, but choreograph her performance as if it were an operatic aria. That would give you something close to Enka music…

Enka no Hanamichi was an elegantly done program — the production quality was so good, the singers would use their filmed appearances as promotional videos. Japanese television makes extensive use of the stereo sound function to present movies and television programs in their original language versions, as well as the dubbed Japanese version. This program used the same function to offer just the background music, which allowed the viewers at home to use it for karaoke. (Song lyrics are commonly printed on the screen for all types of music programs here.) The elegance, exquisite sadness, and sheer amount of talent involved meant the program was a fine way to spend a half hour on a chilly autumn or winter evening, after a bath and with a glass of shochu mixed with hot water.

I was reminded of the program after reading short article from a Wakayama newspaper announcing the selection of enka singer Sakamoto Fuyumi, a native of Kamitonda-cho, to receive a local award for her contribution to culture. (The characters used to write Fuyumi are “winter” and “beauty”. It’s also her real name; names of that sort for women are not uncommon in Japan.)

Her big break came when she appeared on an NHK program for amateurs. Songwriter Inomata Kosho, one of the judges, was so impressed with her performance he took her in as a pupil. (In fact, she became his live-in housekeeper.) Her first hit came at the age of 20 in 1987 and sold more than 800,000 copies. According to a Yomiuri Shimbun article too old to be on line, that was a record at the time for first releases, though I suspect they’re referring specifically to this genre. Since then, she’s released more than 30 albums and appeared on NHK’s famed New Year’s Eve Music Program, Kohaku Uta Gassen, more than 20 times.

Part of her appeal is her combination of sweet femininity with a certain gutsiness and unfeigned naturalness. Another part is that she really is a winter beauty: She won an award in 2006 for looking good in a kimono.

Ms. Sakamoto has maintained close ties to Wakayama, and when informed of the award, said:

I will continue to devote myself to the path of song with the hope that I can please everyone in Wakayama. Thank you very much for this honor.

You can hear and see all that for yourself in this YouTube video, which is another fine way to spend a chilly Sunday evening. Note how the instrumentation is a combination of Western classicism, rock and roll, and traditional Japanese music, as Barbara the Enka Lady explained.

And for yet another example of Japanese ecumenicism, as well as Sakamoto flexibility, here she is with Hosono Haruomi of Yellow Magic Orchestra in a group called H.I.S. performing Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze with Japanese lyrics.

Stick around to the end and you’ll see her in a brief interview. She looks good in jeans, too.

Ichigen koji (77)

一言居士
- A person who has something to say about everything

From tonight’s Shoten television program

Utamaru (the moderator of the panel of rakugo comedians, explaining the premise for the weekly joke contest): You’ve been out drinking with people from work and had too much, and now you want to go home early. I’ll play the part of a supervisor you don’t like. You say to me, “I’ve got to be going now because XXX”. I’ll try to dissuade you and say, “No, let’s go to one more place!” You continue the conversation from there.

Enraku (one of the comedians on the panel): Prime Minister, I can’t drink any more. I just can’t drink any more, so let’s call it a night.

Utamaru: No, let’s go to one more place!

Enraku: But we’ve done nothing but drink (i.e., swallow) all the American demands so far!

When one of the comedians comes up with a joke or routine that is particularly funny or clever, the moderator awards the comedian with a zabuton, or cushion for seating on the floor.

Enraku was awarded a zabuton for this joke.

Utamaru is in the pale green kimono at the far left, and Enraku is in the lavender kimono third from the right.

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Streetcar century

STREETCARS still wend their way through 19 Japanese cities, with the system in Hiroshima being the most extensive. Even Tokyo, better known for its urban rail network, has two or three lines. Osaka, Japan’s second city, has only one, the Hankai Tramway between southern Osaka and Sakai, and local residents celebrated its centenary on Thursday.

On one of my rare forays outside Kyushu, I rode the rails of the Hankai line on a trip to Osaka with my wife 11 years ago. It was great fun and as funky as the dickens — and if the car was 100 years old, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit. We took the tram from the Tsutenkaku tower, an Osaka landmark, to the Sumiyoshi Taisha, which will mark its 18th centenary in 2013.

Just as worthwhile as the visits to the tower and the shrine was the ride between the two. The tram passes through the back roads and back yards of southern Osaka, so there’s no quicker or better way to get a feel for the daily life of Taro and Hanako in the ‘hood away from the shopping districts and tourist destinations.

One of the sports dailies did us a favor by filming the small anniversary celebration and putting excerpts on YouTube. Excellent stuff! Reading the video captions, it turns out that the company’s oldest streetcar still in service dates from 1928. They’ve gussied it up quite a bit, however. It’s a lot prettier than the one I rode on, and that didn’t have a pink roof, either!

The station shown is the one at Ebisucho, a three-minute walk from Tsutenkaku. When I was there, the bulletin boards had small posters advertising a dodgy-looking punk rock/death metal nightclub nearby. That’s a model of Tsutenkaku behind and to the left of the first woman speaker. And danged if that violinist doesn’t sound as if she’s about to break into a version of The Orange Blossom Special.

If so, it speaks to her diversity. It’s Asai Sakino, a member of Japan’s Colegium Musicum Telemann.

Bare trees and lonelyhearts

ONCE upon a time, they say, university life for the Chinese was a combination of the military and the monastery. Students lived more than 10 to a dorm room and became ghouls, as my university’s slang had it, haunting the libraries and carrels until late at night. Had they the time, most still wouldn’t have had the money to pursue one of the primary extracurricular activities of Western students — pursuing the opposite sex.

Today, however, the partial application of market economics and the single child policy have made more Chinese financially comfortable, if not gloriously rich, and many students have refocused their priorities: Now, everyone’s got a love jones. Though the government still pledges public allegiance to communism, the first thing the students learn is that everyone is not equal in matters of the heart. The monkey on the back that comes with the love jones is that nobody is guaranteed to score.

As in Japan, a side effect of the increasing openness and prosperity in China has been the popularity of American-style celebrations of Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and a secular Christmas. But the lonelyheart Chinese students soon became frustrated when they saw those more equal than others having all the fun on Valentine’s Day (and perhaps Christmas, too; Christmas Eve in Japan has become a heavy date night for young lovers). Instead of moping, their solution was to create a celebration for themselves that has become a national phenomenon.

Most people attribute the origin to Nanjing university students circa 1990, and the festivities began to spread throughout society as they graduated. It gained momentum in the new century and broke out nationwide in 2005. Now the events of the day receive regular coverage in the media and have become a part of social life similar to Valentine’s Day in the United States.

That day is called Guang Gun Jie (光棍節), and it falls on 11 November. The first two characters are the word for stick (with the bark peeled off, by some explanations), and it was chosen to represent a tree trunk with no branches, i.e., someone with no spouse or children. The word has now come to be used as a synonym for single people. They picked the date of 11 November because 11/11 can be visualized as a row of four tree trunks without branches. (This sort of creativity is a trait common throughout Northeast Asia, by the way.)

What do all the lonely people do on 11 November? They try to get dates, of course, and if they can’t get dates they get goofy. Some of the goofiness is a bit more innocent than the baroque time-wasting schemes concocted by American college students. One example is this fight using pillows stuffed with paper scraps instead of feathers. The release of all that intensity is to be expected when people lack other outlets for their energy.

They also get risqué, for China anyway. In Chinese, the character 脱　(second from the right on the sign) also means to remove one’s clothes, as well as to break away from something (the sense in which the Japanese use it). These guys got all barechested to show how ready they are to break away from Mary Palm and her five sisters:

Nowadays, however, it’s not just for students any more. The public at large has gotten behind it, as you can see from the poster in the first photo, one of many of which were hung throughout the city of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. The folks in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, went so far as to hold a mass o-miai (marriage meeting) in a public park.

It’s also no surprise that the Chinese found a way to turn 11/11 into another shopping opportunity, and the event has become a golden goose for merchants. That raises the question of what people would buy to celebrate the day instead of the usual Valentine’s or Christmas presents, other than a fifth of liquor. Reports suggest there’s a lot of traffic in normal merchandise sold at special discounts. The big seller this year was the iPad.

Another question is whether the event has mushroomed into something that’s just as depressing as Valentine’s Day or Christmas for the people stuck with penny stocks in the sexual market. Here’s a message from a young woman on a Net bulletin board:

Everybody else has got someone, but only I am alone. I’m looking for someone to spend the holiday with. We’ll split the costs.

And yes, that facilitates the manifestation of the natural Chinese mercantilism in other ways, too. Here’s some bulletin board advertising:

I’ll spend the holiday with you for 8 yuan an hour. (JPY 96, which is about US$1.25 these days)

The Joseon solution

A more clever response to datelessness comes from those holding a losing hand in South Korea. They have a similar, informal tradition, but their solution contains more humor. The bare trees in that country, referred to as the Solo Squad (솔로부대, which Japanese will recognize as ソロ部隊), celebrate Black Day on 14 April. On that day, the folks who drilled dry holes on Valentine’s Day or White Day (14 March) dress up in their best black clothing and get together to commiserate with each other by eating jajangmyeon, a dish of white Korean noodles with black bean sauce, washed down with black coffee. Jajangmyeon is the Korean version of zajiang mein, a northern Chinese dish of thick wheat noodles with ground pork stir-fried in zajiang (炸酱), a fermented soybean paste.

In passing, it’s interesting that the Koreans have adopted the Japanese creation of White Day, despite the studied Korean ambivalence in some quarters for things Japanese. (There’s more of that going on than outside observers might think.) An important part of Valentine’s Day in Japan involves women giving giri-choko (obligatory chocolate) to their male co-workers on 14 February. The men are supposed to return the favor one month later, often with confections that are white. (Japanese merchants certainly one-upped their American counterparts in creating profit opportunities with that one.)

While Guang Gun Jie or Black Day might not appeal to everyone’s taste, they certainly are a more pleasant, innocent — and tasteful — response than the Western solution.

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Maybe the Japanese have the best solution of all. This is Rockappella from Hitotsubashi University in 2009.

What a dump!

IF you’ve got a world-class load of ashes to be hauled, and you’re anywhere near Komatsu in Ishikawa, you might want to take quick detour to see the world’s largest dump truck. It’s on display there at a facility built on the site of a former plant.

The world-class dumpster is the 930E model built by the Komatsu company’s American subsidiary, and it’s used for mining operations in Chile. It’s 8.6 meters wide, 15.6 meters long, and 7.3 meters high. The company says it can handle a load of about 300 tons. To put that in terms we can all relate to, Komatsu said that 7,400 primary school students could fit on the bed at the same time.

No, they didn’t round up all those kids for the facility’s opening ceremony earlier this year, but they did bring in some local grade schoolers to help. They were admitted for free and allowed to take turns sitting in the driver’s seat. Anyone else who comes by can take advantage of the same deal.

According to Komatsu, there’s more there than just one motherbruiser of a truck. They also use the site as a training facility and for other exhibitions.

Now admit it — wouldn’t you love to jump in the cab? I’d also love to start up the engine, mash whatever they’ve got for a clutch, and take it for a test drive/dump, but I’m sure Komatsu’s kindness or patience doesn’t extend that far for people who aren’t hauling a load out of a Chilean mine.

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Speaking of dump trucks, here’s a tag team match with the famed Dump Matsumoto. She’s the one who has bleached hair, is 5’4″, and weighs 220 lbs.

Prickly

EARLIER this week, a post from Prof. Shimojo Masao described a lawsuit filed by a South Korean citizen in New Jersey to prevent a school for Japanese students (enrollment: 90) from using a history textbook that states the islets of Takeshima are Japanese territory despite the current Korean occupation.

Those familiar with the conduct of affairs in Northeast Asia already know that behavior of this sort — over-dramatized, malicious pettiness made grandiose — is a not-uncommon attribute of the Joseon mindset. Yet another data point surfaced this week when Korean netizens fulminated over a scene in a Japanese television program. The drama was Boku to Sutaa 99 Hi, which translates to something like The 99 Days of Me and the Star. It was broadcast earlier this month on the Fuji Television network. One of the stars of the show is Korean actress Kim Tae-hee, who occasionally appears on Japan TV.

The scene at issue is brief. A child asks about the location of South Korea, and another actor spins a globe, points to the country, and says, “It’s here.” Those people with the time and the interest to give very extremely close scrutiny to fictional television programming noticed that the writing on the Japanese globe identifies the Sea of Japan as the Sea of Japan and the islets of Takeshima as Takeshima. Everyone else on the globe would consider that unremarkable, but the Koreans insist they’re called the East Sea and Dokdo, respectively.

This caused an uproar in the irritable bowels of the South Korean Internet, and the flatulence generated was sufficient to provide content for that country’s mass media. Someone on the net in South Korea claimed to have read a tweet from a Fuji TV staff member saying the network had used a graphic to erase those two place names to avoid giving offense, but that it wasn’t used in the final editing for the initial broadcast. The tweeter supposedly said it would be used in rebroadcasts and DVDs.

Fuji TV, however, denied they will alter the scene for rebroadcast and said their plans were to do nothing in particular. Fuji also reported that a producer looked into the matter and found there was no such tweet from a staff member. That’s only logical; this was a Japanese TV program broadcast in Japan, and it’s not as if many people off the peninsula are concerned about how to avoid offending the global network of Korean nationalist vigilantes. The first rebroadcast was very early in the morning today, and there’s been no word yet on what that showed.

What did the scene in the drama look like? Here’s a screenshot of how it was presented on a Korean website:

The report on the J-Cast website in Japan doesn’t mention whether or not Kim Tae-hee will be forced to wear the scarlet letter in her homeland for her contribution to this inexcusable affront to the national honor. She might already have some built-in credibility, however, because this isn’t the first time Ms. Kim has been involved in a political incident. In May 2005, the South Korean branch of the Swiss government’s tourism department filmed a video to promote Korean tourism in Switzerland, and she was the spokesman. One month before that, the international website of the Korean Broadcasting System (English-language) put up an apparently bogus page that suggested the Swiss government supported Korea in its territorial disputes. The Swiss denied the assertion. That same month, they confiscated a shipment of t-shirts with similar political messages being brought into the country by an employee of the South Korean branch at the Zurich airport. (See what I mean about over-dramatized, malicious pettiness?) The Swiss government stays clear of international territorial disputes and doesn’t allow proselytizing of that sort in the country. Everyone knows about Swiss neutrality, which is probably what attracted Korean interest to begin with.

During her stay in Switzerland, Ms. Kim is said to have worn one of the propaganda t-shirts. Her career on Japanese TV had already begun by that time, so to prevent any blowback she denied the charge to the Japanese branch of the Swiss tourism department. That’s not what people at the Japanese branch learned when they made inquiries, however.

After she returned to South Korea from Switzerland, her agents told the local media that she thought it was only natural to please the expectations of her Korean fans. Shortly thereafter, she visited Japan to promote a TV show. She told the media there that she had been a science major in school and needed further study in politics and history. She should also check the library for any books on how to concoct plausible excuses.

Those readers inclined to believe the puffenstuff they see elsewhere about the rabid nationalism of the Japanese should note that Ms. Kim has continued to appear on Japanese television since her small contribution to the Korean propaganda campaign. They might also speculate on what it would have meant to Ms. Kim’s career had the situation been reversed and she departed from the Joseon cultural party line while on an overseas trip.

When Japanese Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko visited South Korea last week for a summit with President Lee Myun-bak, one English-language newspaper ran the headline, “Japan seeks to smooth prickly ties with Seoul”. That’s an apt description, but none of the prickliness originates in Japan.

Indeed, we can improve that headline. It’s the job of newspaper headline writers to find short, punchy words that fit into a limited space and attract the reader’s eye. There’s a shorter alternative for “prickly” that would also improve its accuracy.

Just remove the l.

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Here’s an another update on the East Asian Ein Volk, Ein Reich front. Last week in a post about Hatoyama Yukio, I wrote:

Without exception, every young Japanese I’ve known with an interest in China who has gone to study or to spend an extended period of time in that country has returned with their illusions shattered following their encounter with kokumin who mainline on ethnocentric nationalism.

To see what causes the shattering, here’s an older article by John Derbyshire describing his experience on a Chinese-language mailing list for software engineers in the United States infected with the Black Plague strain of ethnocentric nationalism:

Bear in mind, please, that the writers of these e-mails are the intellectual cream of Mainland China, now immigrants to the U.S. Few do not have Master’s degrees; many have Ph.D.s. The average age is around thirty, I suppose. Their academic and professional qualifications, and their command of English, are sufficient to have impressed an American consul into awarding them a visa—no easy matter, allegedly. Yet for all this, their notions about national sovereignty were essentially those of the Ming dynasty mandarinate, and their knowledge of history a collection of false and preposterous clichés.

You have to read it to believe it.

These attitudes could be of significance beyond the circulation of a mailing list. Did any of those engineers know Kexue Huang, I wonder?

While he was working for two American chemical companies, a Chinese scientist was stealing trade secrets and sending them to accomplices for further research, assisting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) long-term strategic goals in the science field, according to court documents in a recent case.

There were also reports in Japan yesterday that a committee in the PRC’s National Peoples Congress began discussing a revision of the citizens’ identification law that would require inserting the fingerprints of all the country’s citizens on individual IDs. It would seem that the decision won’t require a lot of discussion, however. The Chinese began issuing new IDs in 2004, and one billion have already been distributed — carrying chips designed for the input of fingerprint information.

Consider what might happen when an entire nation populated by citizens of this sort, who view themselves as the flower in the center of the universe, decide that now is the time to bloom. Some overseas observers are unconcerned because they think a collapse of the Chinese economy and the resultant domestic anger might stop international mischief before it starts. They point to the observation of others that the Chinese real estate bubble is beginning to look as if it’s started to pop.

Then again, a pessimist might wonder if the rest of the world will follow the Chinese economy down the open elevator shaft, or if the Chinese leadership decides international buccaneering is the surest way to deflect internal dissent.

Or further still, if it is not a question of “either/or”, but a question of “both”.

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Let’s end with the rousing finale of Leni Riefenstahl’s cinema classic to keep our flagging spirits high.