More from Mac in No Shinkansen Sticksville

READER MAC enjoys sending occasional reports on the people he meets in a part of Japan he calls No Shinkansen Sticksville. It only goes to show the sort of interesting folks you can meet and have fun with if you look. Here are three of his latest. Two were appended as notes to a previous missive here.

*****
Still out here in ‘No Shinkansen Sticksville’ where the lack of any street lighting makes the tanktrap-like concrete ditches around the rice fields a major cause of untimely death of drunken ojiisan making their way home on rattling old rides.

I went to a slideshow talk of a very pretty, waif-like 21 year old who had just returned from a 5,000 km bicycle ride around eight East African countries … alone. By herself.

Yamasaki Mio had also clocked up to 6,000 km around Japan before marrying the handsome Yamada Kohei, a Japan Overseas Cooperation (JICA) development worker in Malawi, who had become famous for recording a Number One hit in the Chichewa language, Ndimakukonda. A love song about HIV (AIDS) he hoped would reduce the stigma of HIV there. All profits going back to support charity work there. The pair act as official goodwill ambassadors for Eritrean tourism. (See here and here, both in Japanese.)

Our local biker’s NPO has sent out thousands of bikes, recycled from outside of railway stations etc, to Mozambique, reducing gun crime by swopping them out for old Russian and American weapons left by the last civil war.

That’s not the story though.

Hanging around outside, I spoke to another slim young woman I had seen before playing tabla (an Indian percussion instrument) at a Hindu chanting session called a sankirtan down at the local guesthouse. She too had spent a couple of years abroad working with women in Pakistan, where she had learnt to play them.

Looking at her mamchari (single speed shopping bike), we had a good laugh at her expense because she had stuck a ‘Harley-Davidson’ chopper-style sticker on the back mudguard. We thought it was very funny.

No, she politely explained, she did actually own a Harley-Davidson Sportster as well … but was thinking of selling it now because it was not good for the environment.

Yup … just your average, quiet, sunny weekend in a racist, inward and conservative country like Japan filled with whacky geeks waiting to restore the Emperor and invade China again.

***
A short postscript to the above.

The woman with the Harley-Davidson – who like most women Harley-Davidson owners in Japan (yes, there are many) was waif-like and, aesthetically, would not have looked out of place at a department store cosmetic counter – had also spent time in Syria and Iraq as an aid worker.

The woman cyclist and AIDs worker were planning to ride the Silk Route from China to Turkey next, and then the ridge ride from North down to South America. And, on the basis of her record to date and sincerity, why should I doubt her?

Not only am I secretly impressed by the women who work and ride on Harleys in Japan (they have special day courses in how to pick the behemoths up – part of the driving test here – and ‘chop’ them low so they can reach the ground), you can imagine my thrill when the female pilot of a chrome-framed, hard-tailed, Shovel-head bobber, resplendent in a 60s bubble-visored Fonda helmet and style to match, actually waved at me as she rode past one day.

Of course, not all Japanese women like the fat, lowboy Yankee aesthetics. Others prefer the more lean, restrained British “rocker” style. And do they actually ride oily, old vintage Triumphs, Nortons and Enfields? They not only ride them but they apply themselves to fix and restore them. (See here, in English with a link to a Japanese site.)

Yup … On Any Sunday … in a racist, inward-looking and conservative country like Japan.

*****
I find it deeply touching that 20 or 30 individuals give up their days voluntarily to prepare and send off goods to a distant and culturally alien African nation, with whom they have no colonial debt for having screwed up in the past and may never see. The organization in question was recently bequeath a townhouse property by a little old lady, now deceased, who wanted to see some good coming of it and run it as an African cafe and Fairtrade shop.

- Mac

*****
Here’s the first paragraph of the website linked in the second report above. I have no idea who wrote it…:

It is always humbling to see the respect, the passion and the efforts Japanese people invest in their love of all things British. And generally done with an enthusiastic professionalism with which they make it very clear why in 60 years – and having been burned and nuked to the ground – theirs is the 2nd strongest economy in the world and Britain is slipping down to be a gutter of a Third World nation. The innate Japanese sense of understated cool, the appreciation of fine aesthetics, the sense of independent defiance that has set them apart from other…East Asian nations. It is something that a lot of Westerners find very difficult and try hard to diminish by using negative racial stereotypes.

…but he gets it.

If what you know about Japan is derived from the English-language mass media, then everything you know about Japan is wrong.

*****
Or, to paraphrase a quick jibe I just saw on another site:

“I’m reminded of the (apocryphal) Fleet Street headline: “Fog In Channel. Continent Cut Off.” In this case: Fog in Journalism Guild front yard. Japan cut off.”

More journo snickering at Japan, #4,625

HERE’S ANOTHER overseas correspondent in Japan wasting his own time and that of his readers at the breakfast table: Justin McCurry of the Guardian.

His latest article falls squarely into that old standby category of space filler: Japan as the Goofball Kingdom of East Asia. This one’s about how the Japanese are so desperate for companionship they’re renting “fake”, “phony”, and “bogus” friends.

Here’s the first sentence:

Best man Ryuichi Ichinokawa took his place before the assembled wedding guests, cleared his throat and for the next few minutes spoke movingly about the bride and groom.

So who’s the fake, Justin? This is a dead giveaway that McCurry has (a) never been to a Japanese wedding, (b) didn’t go to this one, or (c) doesn’t understand enough Japanese to understand what went on if he did. I’ve been to about 20 nuptials here, and I’ve never heard a nakodo (go-between), or what McCurry is referring to as a “best man”, speak “movingly” at any of them. Indeed, most people have trouble staying awake during those speeches.

Perhaps he means that Mr. Ichinokawa pinch hit for one of those people who give separate introductions of the bride and groom. They’re usually more interesting, because they give guests a glimpse of what the man and woman have actually done in their lives, but “moving” is not a word that applies to the ones I’ve heard.

After a successful debut making the wedding speech, the requests came flooding in, says Ichinokawa, who takes days off from his job at a toy manufacturer to go on assignment.

How much is a “flood”? Don’t ask the author. I doubt it would be enough to get his stockings wet. It’s probably not even the word that Mr. Ichinokawa used. People with full time jobs in Japan have a lot less discretionary time off than in the U.S. (and presumably Britain), and fewer opportunities to use them. Approval also requires a lot more explanation, both to one’s superiors and to one’s colleagues. Mr. Ichinokawa is unlikely to be devoting very much time to this sideline, which is apparent from this sentence:

He even managed to keep his wife in the dark about his extra-curricular activities until two months ago, when she spotted him in a cafe being interviewed by a Japanese reporter.

Keeping one’s wife in the dark about one’s comings and goings, particularly on weekends or holidays when weddings and school sporting events are held, is no easy matter in Japan. Yet a Japanese reporter knew about it and his own wife didn’t?

Note also that one Japanese news outlet found this phenomenon so unusual they decided to file their own man-bites-dog story about it.

The number of rent-a-friend agencies in Japan has doubled to about 10 in the past eight years.

It took as many as eight years to go from five agencies to “about” ten in a country of 127 million? Ah, sang McCartney, look at all the lonely people!

The best known, Office Agent, has 1,000 people on its books.

How many of these 1,000 people are active, and how much time they spend at this job, are more true facts that McCurry can’t be bothered to find out doesn’t tell us.

In recent months demand has surged for…

What constitutes a “surge”? Nah, don’t ask the author.

But as with the other members of his guild elsewhere, he does manage to find the space to practice sociology without a license:

The rise of the phony friend is a symptom of social and economic changes, combined with a deep-seated cultural aversion to giving personal and professional problems a public airing.

Snort! And what social and economic changes might those be?

Don’t ask the author.

As for being averse to airing one’s dirty laundry in public, the U.S. and Britain could certainly learn a thing or two—or three or four or five—from Japan. I know which cultural standard I prefer.

There are hundreds of fascinating stories McCurry could file about Japan if he would only bother to look. But hey, why do some real work when you can spitball your way through life?

Most puzzling of all is why McCurry thinks this minor “rent-a-friend” trend in Japan is worth writing about. The journalistic puffery employed to fill column inches is apparent before one is halfway through the piece.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on him. Maybe he led a sheltered life in England before his Tokyo assignment. That might explain why he’s so unfamiliar with the concept.

The lad seems to have never heard of gigolos.

Or prostitutes, for that matter.

Gender, liquor studies, and Japan

HERE’S A STORY that will either delight or terrify those post-adolescent, pre-adult males who think the surest way to win a young woman’s heart, or some other part of her anatomy, is to get her drunk first. For some eternal boys, the idea that liquor is quicker seems to have eternal appeal.

Drinkin' wine spo-de-o-dee: A cultural construct

But I’m not sure the lads have what it takes for this one. Women, as so often happens, are way out in front. You know how they say girls just want to have fun? Well, not only do university co-eds enjoy a good time, they also elevate it to the level of academic inquiry. Some serious female scholar/drinkers held a symposium at Kagoshima University on the 1st called The Women’s View of Shochu Boogie-Woogie, and isn’t the title alone enough to get you jazzed and thinking of a cooling fizzy beverage and other things besides? The objective was to examine the relationship between women and shochu, which Kagoshimanians are much more likely to drink than sake.

The panel consisted of four women, including a representative from a distillery and a wine sommelier. They discussed how the product Rento, a shochu made from brown sugar, incorporated women’s ideas of softness and gentleness in the marketing, including the name and the blue bottle. Rento doesn’t sound like a particularly feminine name to me, but if I were knocking back a couple of glasses with a female companion, I’d probably change my mind just to be sociable. They also discussed their theory–which they said was based on experience–that regardless of the type, liquor was an element in the creation of culture, including conversations and the general mood.

Doesn’t experiential research with such diligent scholars really turn you on? It does me.

The panelists said they regarded Kagoshima City’s Tenmonkan district, a large commercial and entertainment area in the city, as a college campus. In addition, they stressed the growing importance of conveying the knowledge and traditional culture of liquor to tourists and prefectural citizens alike, and by this point, it’s starting to sound as if the ladies were sharing snorts from a flask passed around the table during the discussion.

Preceding the seminar was an address by Koizumi Takeo, a visiting prof at KU, who described the large sake competitions during the Edo period, in which women went elbow to elbow with men to see how much they could drink. Women were the ones, he asserted, that nurtured the Japanese alcohol culture.

Either Dr. Koizumi has conducted some groundbreaking historical research, or the sly devil has come up with a new way to individually compliment a room full of women all at the same time.

Meanwhile, in more sobering news, a federation of shochu distilleries in Kagoshima reported that last fiscal year (which ran from July 2008 to June 2009), shipments of the local liquor staple were down by 1.7% from the previous year to about 149,500 kiloliters. They attributed this to price increases and concerns over the safety of the varieties made with rice. It was the second consecutive year-on-year decline after nine straight years of growth. Consumers, they said, were also downshifting to more inexpensive types.

Come on girls, get with it—there’s a culture that needs the nurture only you can provide!

Afterwords:
Prof. Koizumi talks about women taking part in drinking competitions during the Edo period (1603-1868), which reminds me of a previous post that mentions an essay by Hiraga Gennai titled Hohiron, or A Theory of Farting. The artist reported that 18th century Edoites used to meet for public thunder-farting contests to see who could make the most noise.

I can see I’m going to have to start doing some more reading on the Edo period.

Japan’s cosplaying Wiki-diplomats

“Embassies are relics of the days of sailing ships. At one time, when you had no world communications, your ambassador spoke for you in that country. But now, with instantaneous communications around the world, the ambassador is primarily in a social role…I would recommend we redo the whole embassy structure.”
- Ross Perot

A FEW WEEKS AGO, reader NB sent this message with a link to a Kyodo article:

“(Here’s) an item I’d like to see in another post.
What do you think about the Japanese government harnessing stereotypes about the Japanese and using “pop culture diplomacy” to sell themselves around the world as “cute” manga-reading girls in short skirts?”

Here’s the story in brief: The Japanese Foreign Ministry has appointed three people known officially as “pop culture ambassadors”, but known casually as “ambassadors of kawaii (cute), to promote the Japanese version of chewing gum culture to people in other countries. Their appointments will last for one year.

L-R: Misako-chan, Yu-chan, Shizuka-chan

The three are Aoki Misako, a model associated with the magazine Lolita Fashion; singer Kimura Yu, referred to by some Japanese as a “fashion leader” of the Harajuku type, and Fujioka Shizuka, an actress known for wearing designer brand high school uniforms.

Ms. Fujioka appeared at an event called the Kawaii Festa in Thailand in March to offer fashion advice. Japanese-language Internet sources suggest that the word kawaii has become part of the international lingua franca. A photo at the link shows a banner at the event bearing that title.

There’s a reason she was sent to Bangkok. School uniform-type outfits are now the rage among college-age Thai girls (the phrase “college women” no longer seems applicable) due in part to the local success of a Japanese anime.

The article quotes one young Thai (boy or girl, we don’t know; the article is sloppily written):

“You look very pretty in the uniform. I would like to go to Japan.”

The other two envoys to Global Youth Land visited the Japan Expo in Paris earlier this month, an event that drew more than 100,000 people last year. The Kyodo article says that cosplay has intrigued young people in France.

The word “cosplay” is derived from the Japanese kosupure, which itself is derived from the English words costume and play. It involves people dressing up in costumes as characters from comic books or animated cartoons and acting out those roles.

That the Japanese government has become involved with cosplay—there’s no better way to describe older females wearing high school uniforms as a fashion statement—should tell us that we’re dealing with a serious international phenomenon here.

Epictetus, a Greek philosopher born in the first century AD, had it right when he said, “Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and be silent.” That applies just as well to a person’s taste in the arts and his leisure time activities. As long as they’re not breaking any laws, how people to choose to spend their time and money is their own business.

The fashion aspect is not so difficult to understand. Women have always spent an enormous amount of time trying to guild the lily in ways unfathomable to men ever since there have been men and women, so this is just the latest chapter in a never-ending story.

Cosplay is not as easy for me to get my head around, however, particularly when males are involved. I’m one of those people who thinks that most people on the planet wake up every morning, put on a costume, and pretend to be the person whose name is on their birth certificate. Is that not a form of cosplay to begin with? But then esoteric philosophy is not a theme of this website.

On the other hand, reader Mac commented:

“What “better” or more commonly used PR is there in the world than using beautiful young women?”

Eat as becomes you…

An international phenomenon

I’d rather the Japanese had chosen other parts of their culture to present to the rest of the world—festivals, for example—but might there be a bigger picture that we’re missing?

Plug the word kawaii in English into Google and you’ll get 7,590,000 hits. Do the same with cosplay and you’ll get 24,200,000. Yes, I was astonished too. When the words kawaii and cosplay are so commonly known and accepted around the world, I think it’s safe to say we’re dealing with a phenomenon that transcends Japan.

Is this infantile? Yes, and that’s inescapably the truth. (That’s not preaching, that’s just an observation.) But infantilism seems to be the default position for a lot of people these days. Witness the global reaction to the recent death of the mega-infantile, Michael Jackson. Should we be shocked that every American television network chose to cover his funeral live, or should we just note that that’s how the modern world turns?

A few years back, an American comedian joked that Michael Jackson was the only example he’d seen of a poor black boy growing up to become a wealthy white woman. Jacko was so wealthy, in fact, that he could go beyond clothes and cosplay for years with his pigmentation and facial structure.

But even that does not tell the full story of conditions in the United States. Try this account from a Detroit newspaper:

“Two hearses jammed with stuffed animals left in memory of Michael Jackson were given a two-car police escort Friday to the toys’ burial at Woodlawn Cemetery…
Detroit Police officials said they couldn’t say how much the escort cost the city. The escort guided the hearses from the funeral procession through red lights.
Mourners had left the toys and other items at the Motown Historical Museum on West Grand Boulevard since the singer died June 25 at age 50. After sitting outside for three weeks, the toys were not safe to donate to a children’s museum or orphanage, museum Chief Operating Officer Audley Smith said.
“We have now concluded that it would be best to bury the items,” Smith said Friday morning…
At the cemetery, the toys were unloaded from the tops of the hearses and from boxes inside the vehicles. They were then placed into clear plastic bags and then inside donated vaults…”

The article reports that senior officers of the Detroit police are upset, but let’s not forget that someone in authority thought it was a good idea and executed the decision to provide a police escort to a hearse full of ruined toys given to a dead 50-year-old child, including the right of way through stoplights, to be buried in a cemetery.

This infantile reordering of priorities might be closer to the norm than we think. Consider baseball fans in the United States, who have morphed into something their parents and grandparents would have found unimaginable. Once upon a time, the priority for young American men in their 20s was to get married and get started on a career and a family. Those who were interested in the sport followed it by watching the occasional game on TV (most games weren’t televised) or listening on the radio, reading accounts in the newspaper the next day, and perhaps attending a handful of games a year.

The harder guys joined softball leagues—fast pitch—for summertime recreation.

Now, however, there are websites for baseball fans in which they analyze every play of every game with game threads during the action, and argue about player evaluations using such newly created statistics as VORP and OPS+. Those evaluations not only include the players on the major league team, but also every last player on each of a team’s seven minor league affiliates, with occasional examinations of the players in the Dominican summer league. The U.S. major leagues hold their annual draft of amateur players in early June; these fans already began talking about the June 2010 draft before the June 2009 page was torn off the calendar. Many are members of fantasy leagues, in which they create their own teams from scratch and play simulated games on a computer. When the lads actually do attend a real baseball game to watch real players in real time, they often wear the jersey bearing their favorite player’s name and number and a team hat. Some even paint their bodies and faces.

Is that whole subculture not a type of cosplay too?

Perhaps it’s time to draw conclusions from these facts, and one of the conclusions we may safely draw is that society everywhere—Thailand, Tokyo, or Toronto—has become more infantile. To say that 40 is the new 20 is already a commonplace observation.

Since things are thus, who among us would dare single out young Japanese females as somehow being a goofy exception? Suddenly, a magazine named Lolita Fashion doesn’t seem all that strange any more.

There comes a point when you realize there are only two choices—either live it or live with it.

Foreign Ministry involvement

But there is one aspect to this whole business I do find inappropriate. To wit: I can understand that the private sector would be anxious to leverage the zeitgeist for national PR, or to boost tourism. It’s good for business, after all.

But why is the Foreign Ministry wasting its time and our money on this?

One of the Japanese-language links sent in by reader Ponta contained this explanation, though it sounds more like an excuse to me:

(These projects select) people to serve in PR roles for the country or a region…Today, with the spread of the Internet, anyone can express their opinion to the world. The ideas of the general citizen have a much greater impact on relations between two countries. Rather than improve relations between Japan and other countries by limiting discussions and contact to diplomats, it is important to further mutual understanding based on a mutual interest between citizens.

The same entry reminds us that the cartoon character Doraemon was designated an “anime cultural ambassador”, and in that role, the feature-length movies in which the cartoon character appeared were screened in 65 countries around the world in five languages.

While Ross Perot’s 1992 suggestion that the concept of diplomacy be reworked has been shown to be prescient despite the initial ridicule it received, even Mr. Perot might be astonished to see that less than a generation later, the conduct of relations among nations has degenerated into a kind of Wiki-diplomacy.

The goldbricks of international diplomacy

The only response to the infantilization of culture throughout the world might be to sigh and shrug the shoulders, but the Japanese foreign ministry, like its counterparts elsewhere, still has serious business to attend to.

Unfortunately, the Japanese equivalent of Foggy Bottom doesn’t seem to be doing much in the way of attending to those issues.

* When the Japanese government donated $11 million to restore the Mesopotamian marshlands in Iraq that Saddam Hussein had purposely drained, then-Prime Minister Koizumi asked the Foreign Ministry to conduct a survey of local residents. The ministry said it would take a year to complete.

Not wanting to wait that long, the government turned to the Self-Defense Forces already in Iraq and asked them. The SDF personnel conducted the survey in their spare time and finished in a week.

* The story of the five Japanese citizens forcibly abducted and finally returned by North Korea more than two decades later is fading from public memory, but it’s worth remembering that Pyeongyang at first allowed the abductees to return only temporarily. The abductees didn’t see it that way, however. After having been captured while minding their own business in their own country and held prisoner in another, it was natural that they wouldn’t want to go back.

Yet the people responsible in the Japanese Foreign Ministry were upset by their decision and publicly criticized it. They insisted that Japan throw its own innocent citizens into the hellhole once again. Their justification was that Japan had to uphold its part of the deal with a country that’s welshed on every important international agreement it’s signed during its existence–and who were holding those people unlawfully to begin with.

Could they have been more wrong? The five abductees stayed and their family members followed later, demonstrating yet again that the hard line does work in diplomacy, especially with tinhorn bullies.

* One capability the Foreign Ministry does have is setting public policy without conducting public debates about that policy. Try this from a recent article in a Canadian newspaper:

“A Japanese diplomat once told me that his assignment in Canada was to acquire lessons on the merits of multiculturalism in an effort to convince the Japanese people that, for them also, immigration will fix the problem of an aging society.”

“For them, also”? Immigration without assimilation has never fixed any problem anywhere, much less “the problem of an aging society”. The problem they’re really talking about is finding a tax source to fund the social welfare services for an aging society when the birthrate is far south of the replacement rate and isn’t going rise in the foreseeable future—particularly when those of prime breeding age are adult kiddies in a cosplay world.

As the article points out, however, even the Canadians are realizing that immigration isn’t a solution to that problem. The result of that policy, as the Europeans are also starting to understand, is that the problem will cease to exist because the country as they have known it will cease to exist. Japanese like to cite the proverb, go ni ireba, go ni shitagae (in other words, when in Rome, do as the Romans do) as the model for behavior when living overseas.

What the dwindling native European population is discovering, however, is that their Muslim immigrants aren’t in the least interested in go ni ireba. To them one part of Europe is a lost area of the ummah, the Community of Believers, that once was theirs. As for the rest, the immigrants’ fertility rates will eventually incorporate that into the ummah too, while the Europeans fade out by cosplaying everything except traditional family life.

One phrase some Japanese use in public debates is the charge that if a certain person is allowed to continue in office, or certain policies are maintained/not adopted, then kuni ga horobiru, or the country will cease to exist. Often the use of this phrase is language inflation of the same type used in debates in other countries, too.

Except in this case Japan’s foreign ministry has apparently decided on its own, without telling anyone else, that the country must adopt a policy by which it really will cease to exist.

Try this instead

While Mr. Perot might have had a point when he said that embassies are obsolete, the foreign service does have a role to play overseas by speaking up for its country. Japan’s foreign ministry, however, is too often tongue-tied instead of calmly but forcefully making the government’s case, whether the issue is Takeshima with South Korea, undersea natural gas rights with China, whaling with Australia, or the comfort women issue with the United States.

The point here is not about agreement or disagreement with any of those policies. Instead, Japan’s Foreign Ministry does little or nothing to promote the stated policies of its own government overseas–and that is their job. It chooses instead to cosplay as diplomats in international conferences using the obsolete postwar paradigm of presenting the country as a responsible international citizen reborn. Sign up for everything, pay for a lot of it, and smile and say nothing.

But since 1945, Japan has been a more responsible international citizen than any other country whose name could be drawn from a hat. It’s time for the Foreign Ministry to draw that conclusion and take the initiative to make that point abroad.

Instead, they spend their time promoting Misako-chan, Yu-chan, and Shizuka-chan as the face of their country to that part of the world inhabited by childish spirits in adult bodies.

When are they going to stop cosplaying the role of foreign service officers, knock off the Wiki-diplomacy, and speak for Japan in the world?

Or have they become so integrated in the global infantile culture that we should forgive them, for they know not what they do?

Afterwords:

* The Canadian newspaper article is worth reading for several reasons, chiefly about how immigration won’t work. It also contains this classic bit of journalistic stupidity about Japan:

It’s true, for example, that by working insanely hard, the Japanese are able to maintain high productivity despite their low fertility rate. But a 17-hour work day in a Tokyo cubicle, where you feel guilty taking bathroom breaks, is hardly a family-friendly environment.

45 words, five mistakes resulting from sheer ignorance masquerading as knowledge.

* When I have occasion to mention Nakagawa Hidenao here, it’s usually in a positive light. But Mr. Nakagawa is one of the most prominent politicians to have taken a clear public stand in favor of large-scale immigration. We disagree. Perhaps I should start sending his office e-mails.

* Anyone is free to disagree with me about multiculturalism without assimilation, but I suggest to put your socks on first. I grew up in the United States speaking only English. My father’s father was born in what is now Belarus and was not a native speaker of English. My father’s mother was not exactly sure where she was born, but the family thinks it might have been that part of Romania held for a while by Russia. She too was not a native speaker of English. (She used to joke that she was Austrian; her birth certification said Austria-Hungary.)

Meanwhile, of my four great-grandparents on my mother’s side, one each came from Poland, Lithuania, and Bremen, Germany; none of them were native speakers of English either. The fourth, however, was from Canada.

I’ve been multicultural since I was zero years old.

* Why is it that Japan shies away from talking about the Europeans’ experience with immigration? Not all the immigrants are going to come from China or The Philippines. As someone who occasionally is called by public prosecutors in Saga and Fukuoka to interpret for illegal aliens apprehended when they were being smuggled into the country, I know that many of the people who would come to take the unskilled labor jobs will be from Muslim countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, statistics show that the most frequently used name now for male babies born in Brussels–the capital of the EU–is Mohammed. And in Amsterdam. And in Rotterdam. It’s creeping up the charts in England. Sometime around 2025, there will be more Muslim babies born in The Netherlands every year than ethnic Dutch. Huis ten Bosch in Sasebo might wind up being more Dutch than the European country in another generation.

It’s time for the Japanese media to start talking about this openly.

Thanks to NB and Ponta for the links!

Fukuoka-Busan: The gateposts of the Asia Gateway

IT’S A CURIOUS PHENOMENON that the farther people are from Japan and South Korea, the more likely they are to think folks in the two countries get along like dogs and monkeys, as the Japanese say about dogs and cats. If the articles and snide asides that the print media offer as infotainment are to be believed, it’s taken as a given in the West that the Koreans and Japanese can’t stand each other, and it’s mostly Japan’s fault.

But that’s not the picture that emerges in the part of the world where the two countries are closest to each other. It’s a mere three-hour boat ride or 50-minute flight across the Korean Strait separating Kyushu and the southeastern part of the Korean Peninsula. Here in Kyushu, it’s no big deal to eat a leisurely breakfast while listening to a Busan radio station, and then follow that with a leisurely lunch in Busan. In fact, I’ve done it myself.

It’s not as if I’m a trend-setter, either. That trip has become an everyday occurrence for people in both countries. The sister cities of Fukuoka City and Busan know better than anyone that their bread is buttered on both sides, and they’ve been working together to whip up more tempting treats.

That’s why the two cities have embarked on their Asia Gateway campaign for encouraging people in both regions to drop by and set a spell, and in the process drop as much money as they can afford. They took the next step in the campaign today when they launched the joint Asia Gateway website. Their concept for the overall tone of the site is that the two cities are actually “neighboring towns” where people regularly travel back and forth, rather than cities in foreign countries that people visit occasionally for business or pleasure.

Considering the state of modern transportation and the real people I’ve seen traveling across the strait, that’s no exaggeration. For starters, young single women in both countries think nothing of hopping on the boat for a weekend cross-strait shopping expedition.

The website is jointly managed by the Nishinippon Shimbun and the Busan Ilbo newspapers. The homepage is in both languages, and from there visitors can access the separate Japanese- and Korean-language content. The section created in Fukuoka for Koreans contains videos of local attractions popular with Koreans, as well as blogs. There’s also a map of the Tenjin district in Fukuoka City, Kyushu’s largest commercial area, translations into Korean of Nishinippon Shimbun articles, and information on the Kurokawa Hot Springs in Kumamoto, another destination popular with Korean tourists.

The ties between the two areas aren’t PR dreamed up by the respective Chambers of Commerce. Coming soon to the site is an interview with a bi-strait married couple. The husband is Japanese and lives in Fukuoka City, while his wife is Korean and lives in Busan. Now that’s my idea of bisexuality!

Later this month, Busan plans to add more information in Japanese about their tourist attractions and Korean-style fortunetelling.

But you don’t need yuk hak to get a glimpse of the future in this part of the world, and now you’ve got more to go on than the English-language press. Just take a look at the Asia Gateway website and see for yourself.

Afterwords: The interview with the married couple is already supposed to be up there, but I couldn’t find it. Perhaps in the next day or so.

Now I get it…

EFFICIENT USE of the Internet has often been a problem for me right around the witching hour in Japan. Accessing web pages, or even different parts of the same web page, slows to a crawl. It’s taken me as long as an hour to put up a post on this site around midnight, when it would have taken only a few minutes had I performed the same tasks during normal working hours.

At times it’s been so frustrating, I’ve felt like taking an axe to the computer.

Now I know why. This Bloomberg article explains the reason. The title? “Porn Downloads Strain Japan Phone Network”.

“We can’t see customers’ data but can surmise the biggest portion of it is probably movies,” said KDDI spokesman Keiichi Sakurai. “We can’t deny the possibility those movies include adult content.”

Customers have complained about stoppages or slow Web access, mainly around midnight when traffic from “heavy users” spikes, Sakurai said. Japanese carriers spent $74 billion building their networks since 2000, based on data provided by Wireless Intelligence, a London-based researcher.

One reason for the problem is that Japan was among the first to use advanced technology:

“When you have unlimited data, you’re going to have an issue with capacity — it’s an issue that’s been waiting to happen,” said Windsor Holden, principal analyst at Juniper Research Ltd. “It wouldn’t surprise me that it happens in Japan first because they’ve had 3G for so much longer.”

It’s forcing DoCoMo and others to take steps to limit access:

While profiting from the traffic, Tokyo-based mobile carriers DoCoMo and KDDI Corp. say they’ve been forced to impose limits on the heaviest users as the $74 billion network feels the strain.

And:

“Pornography will eventually open a debate about how carriers should modify their business model as data traffic swells,” said Yusuke Tsunoda, a telecommunications analyst at Tokai Tokyo Securities Co. “It may prompt even tighter access restrictions.”

Thanks for nothing, dudes. Here’s an idea: Why don’t you do the rest of us a favor–and yourselves most of all–and find yourself a real woman? You know, get some flesh-and-blood action instead of the self-defeating vicarious jollies you’re trying to pretend is “pleasure”. Or is that too much to ask?

There’s a very simple rule with women: if you make them happy, they’ll make you happy. You don’t have to be a doormat, and you don’t have to pretend to be a stud; just put a smile on their face and a song in their heart. It’s not that hard as long as you are. Heck, if you use your natural-born imagination, you don’t always have to be that, either.

Some of them might even be so happy they’ll volunteer to cook you a meal. Now wouldn’t that taste a lot better than the crappy convenience store plastic-flavored bento you’ve been dribbling down the front of your dirty tee-shirt while you watch the semi-pros go through the motions?

Hokuto’s Web site offers 2-minute video clips for phone users for as little as 100 yen and sells full-length movies for DoCoMo subscribers.

“Whenever there is a new distribution method for adult content, adult content will go that medium,” said Holden at Juniper Research. “It’s gone that way since cavemen drew adult pictures in the cave.”

But at least the cavemen were using live models and drew those pictures based on experience.

Here’s a timeless tip: There’s no finer medium for enjoying your adult content than to use the old-fashioned distribution method.

Apt observation

IN THE BOOK Jiminto wa Naze Tsuburenai no ka (Why Won’t the Liberal Democratic Party Collapse?), former LDP and opposition Democratic Party of Japan member Hirano Sadao makes a perceptive observation during his roundtable discussion with Murakami Masakuni and Fudesaki Hideyo about the type of people who populate the DPJ. He adds that the same could be said for Japanese society as a whole.

Here it is for your consideration. (Note: The Jomon period, from prehistory to 200 BC, is the earliest of the Japanese historical periods. It was followed by the Yayoi period, which is defined as 200 BC to 250 AD.)

“Actually, there are three types of people in the DPJ. The first is the Jomon type. They speak belly to belly, as typified by (past party president) Ozawa Ichiro, and words are used as a complement to that.

“The second is the Yayoi type. They speak using only letters and numbers, and they’re the members of labor unions, citizen activists, and the pampered sons of the wealthy.

“The third is the Internet type. They think using only letters and numbers, and never consider the essence of the words.

“That means communication in a real sense is not possible. This phenomenon is occurring throughout Japan, and is the basic cause of the confusion in contemporary society.”

Throughout Japan? Could not the same be said of the entire developed world?

Everything you know about Japan is wrong

If all your knowledge about Japan comes from the overseas mass media, then everything you know about Japan is wrong.
- The motto of this website

FREQUENT POSTER MAC has just sent in a note to the Comments section that is too very extremely good to be overlooked. Here it is, brightened up a bit for the wider public.
*****
We had a festival up at our local castle which I attended. Bear in mind, I don’t live on the mainland, and where I am there is only a single railtrack on the way in and out.

I only managed to befriend a few folks, but the first I did had studied Swahili and toured Africa with her judo master teaching out there. Now she is going to Korea to live. The second spoke of her affinity with the gypsies of India where she had traveled widely and studied yoga. We shared memories of Spain and Morocco. She is not alone in the Indian connection–the guy that does the curries at our local farmer’s market spent over 10 years as a saddhu (naked India holyman) before returning to Japan. The guys next to us are currently living in a native American teepee whilst they build their eco-house in the hills somewhere.

Yup…just your average, quiet, rainy weekend in a racist, inward and conservative country like Japan.
*****
Mac’s experience is yet another example of what I see every day in the part of the sticks where I live, and have seen every day for the past 25 years. I first came to Japan to teach at an English school that is affiliated with an NGO and a sort of day care center for pre-schoolers called Yume Gakko (Dream School).

The man who started and ran the English school was fluent in French and English (with interpretation certification in both languages) and lived in both France and Canada. He was also conversationally passable in both Korean and Chinese. I never counted, but he must have visited at least 20 countries as part of his activities.

The man running the English school now spent a year in Alaska as a high school student and liked it so much he chose to attend and graduate from the University of Alaska. He got a master’s degree in theater arts from Towson University near Baltimore and taught for several years at a college in Massachusetts. Before leaving the U.S. to take up his current position, he decided to take a two-week vacation in Costa Rica before coming back home.

Another teacher at the school did postgraduate work in England and then received a master’s degree at UC Santa Barbara in pre-school education. She’s now an interpreter (who’s appeared at the side of Yo Yo Ma on national television) and translator, and is also involved with the Yume School and volunteer activities for UNESCO.

The school’s primary native-speaking English teacher was born and grew up in the Bahamas, and they have also employed teachers from Sri Lanka (several), The Philippines, Pakistan, India, Jamaica, Zaire, and Egypt.

The man now in charge of the NGO lived–with his wife and pre-school aged daughter–in Myanmar for two years. One of the women working there has spent some time in Europe, and her English is good enough to handle a telephone conversation (foreign languages are hard to do over the phone). Another woman working there lived for several years in South Korea. They all regularly visit Myanmar, where they helped build a school, and Thailand, where they run a scholarship program at an orphanage out in the boondocks.

The man running Yume Gakko graduated from the University of Montana.

Do you think these people are exceptions? Also in this city of 180,000, 45 minutes by train from the nearest metropolitan area, is a bar that plays nothing but American country and western music. It is operated by one man and his female assistant, a graduate student at the local university from Uganda. One night I walked in there in the midst of a loud argument about soccer with people banging on in both English and Japanese, involving two Japanese, two New Zealanders, an Australian, an Irishman, a Welshman, and a Moroccan. It was an interesting experience to listen to them go at it, sip a beer, and chat with the Ugandan waitress while Johnny Cash played on the sound system.

Then there’s my barber, a woman of about 45 who has lived in Indonesia and Hawaii, competed in international surfing championships, and went to Jamaica for her honeymoon because she was nuts about reggae. The entire staff of the shop takes a three-or-four day tour together every year overseas. Her father used to be an OISCA volunteer and traveled every summer to several countries in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific as part of his activities. During one haircut, her father stood next to the chair and told me about the two weeks he had just spent in Fiji. (I encouraged him to talk; I always wanted to go there myself.) Her sister lived for a decade in Los Angeles. Her daughter in junior high school has already visited more countries than I have, and am ever likely to.

I grew up in the United States (and had grandparents whose first language wasn’t English), a country that was built by immigrants and used to claim that it was a melting pot.

While I’ll be the first to admit that it was indeed a melting pot, I never met even a handful of Americans with those sort of international experiences–and I grew up in a city of a million people (at that time) and graduated from a world-class university. And don’t even try to tell me about international mixing and mingling. When I go to the U.S. with my wife and we stand in line at a shop or the bank talking Japanese, people look at us (particularly me) as if we came from another planet.

At one shop we visited in New York, the Latino clerk complimented me on my ability to speak another language and expressed the wish that more Americans were as willing to do the same.

Some people would like to have you believe that Japan is “racist, inward, and conservative”, as Mac put it. Other people seem to enjoy believing it. But most people prefer reading fiction to non-fiction, too.

Japan is racist, inward, and conservative?

Compared to whom?

The new breed of Japanese politician

“I think the people of Japan and the prefecture seek a method of politics different from that based on political parties. We must change politics at the local level to win the approval of the people of Japan and the prefecture.”
- Osaka Gov. Hashimoto Toru

THOSE WHO RELY ON the overseas press to keep abreast of Japanese politics would get the impression that the country’s politicians are a faceless, duplicitous lot of hacks with bad suits and bad teeth barely able to conceal a belief that Imperial Japan is destined to rise again. In that version, the one exception was Koizumi Jun’ichro, the “maverick” who represented a “refreshing change”.

But that distorted view is a false impression. That’s what comes from looking through the wrong end of an obsolete telescope.

While it might have contained a measure of truth at one time, the characterization was never wholly accurate to begin with. And now, failing to play attention to current trends means observers are missing one of the most important aspects of contemporary Japan, as well as one of its most compelling political stories.

Mr. Koizumi was not an outlier: rather, he was the first of a new breed of politicians whose dynamism could further transform the face of an already transformed society.

Hashimoto Toru

As with all social trends, it is not possible to separate the chicken from the egg. It was inevitable that the dramatic changes that have occurred in Japanese society since the 1980s would produce a dramatically different type of Japanese citizen. What few people outside Japan have realized is that they also produced a dramatically different type of politician that is earning the enthusiastic support of those citizens.

Regardless of what one thinks about their policies, politics, and personalities, the old labels no longer apply to people such as lower house members Watanabe Yoshimi or Eda Kenji, briefly profiled in a post down the page. Nor do they apply to Miyazaki Gov. Higashikokubaru Hideo, the subject of many posts here and the one immediately below this.

After two years in office, Mr. Higashikokubaru has an approval rating of 88% as measured by his local newspaper. Politicians do not achieve that level of support by accident, no matter how long they spent in show business first, so it would behoove the rest of the political class and those who write about it to examine the reasons for his success.

In an interview in the April issue of Ushio, the first reason the governor cites for his popularity is a conscious effort to act naturally and not behave in the manner of government officials in the past. He also cites a willingness to listen to everyone without making an immediate judgment on their opinions or demands.

These traits have prompted one Japanese Internet news source to dub him “the cooperative type” of new, local politician. While that has worked for the Miyazaki governor, others are using different techniques.

Hashimoto Toru

One of those other types is a youthful firebrand who has made the devolution of authority to local government his calling card–the former attorney and television celebrity Hashimoto Toru, governor of Osaka Prefecture.

As the quote at the top of this post makes clear, the 39-year-old Mr. Hashimoto shares with Mr. Higashikokubaru the belief that the days of party-centered politics in Japan has to end. The Miyazaki governor, an independent, often says that the only party a local politician needs is the citizens.

This is an indirect corroboration of the changes in Japanese society, which traditionally was centered on group activity rather than individual behavior. One political consequence of this social structure was that all the political parties demanded Soviet-style obedience within the party once a consensus was reached, regardless of the individual views of the members.

But the younger generations no longer feel constrained to sacrifice their views on the altar of consensus, and their independent behavior is increasingly influencing that of their elders.

While Gov. Higashikokubaru is considered “the cooperative type”, Mr. Hashimoto, who has been in office only one year, is unabashedly the confrontational type. He seems to have taken a page out of the book of economist John Maynard Keynes, who once remarked that when all else failed “ruthless truth-telling” is the only answer.

This ruthless truth-telling has become such a phenomenon among the public that two newspapers, the Asahi and the Sankei, file daily features on his continuing adventures. The Sankei, being non-leftist and a supporter of devolution, is generally sympathetic to the governor. Just today they quoted him as calling the national bureaucracy “tyrannical” for their plans to erect a new building in Osaka for one of their local branches. A Japanese politician will never go far wrong with his constituents by attacking the bureaucracy in the harshest manner possible.

The Sankei also approvingly noted the stir he caused when he declared that “The regions are the slaves of the nation(al government).” The governor was specifically addressing the financial liability borne by local governments to support enterprises or institutions directly operated by the national government.

This certainly got Tokyo’s attention. Mr. Hashimoto has been invited to debate the issues with the Cabinet Office’s Committee for Promoting Regional Devolution and Reform. (You might keep this in mind if you ever read in English the tired old proverb that the nail that sticks out in Japan gets hammered down. Whoever dares repeat that these days is looking through the rearview mirror.)

Indeed, Mr. Hashimoto seems determined to be the first to do the hammering. He has been so outspoken on occasion that he has been charged, sometimes not unfairly, with intemperance, as this previous post describes.

North Korean schools

This week still more of the governor’s ruthless truth-telling stirred up a minor controversy in some quarters. This report came from the Asahi, which as a newspaper of the left has a vested interest in the character assassination of non-leftist politicians with significant popular appeal.

One of the governor’s primary initiatives has been to move the prefecture offices from the present building, which is more than 80 years old, to the Osaka City-run World Trade Center. The move was backed by local business leaders long before Mr. Hashimoto took office. Most are aligned with the Liberal Democratic Party, the dominant party of the national ruling coalition, but some from the opposition Democratic Party of Japan also supported the move. (Business leaders claimed it would spark greater regional development, and it would also solve the problem of the red ink the facility has been bleeding since it was built in the 90s.) Meanwhile, New Komeito, the Japanese Communist Party, and a significant amount of the population were opposed.

The Osaka Prefectural Assembly this week rejected the proposal to move the government offices, which required a two-thirds majority to pass. When asked about his defeat, Gov. Hashimoto said:

“Japan isn’t North Korea, after all. If I got my way in everything all the time, I’d become a dictator.”

More temperate public officials, hesitant to say something that could cause offense, might have considered blandness to be the better part of valor. They might have said that the people had spoken through their elected legislative representatives and the defeat demonstrates the health and soundness of the democratic process. In other words, the same boring old crap that goes in one ear and out the other.

But the Japanese public is fed up with mush-mouthed politicians, and Mr. Hashimoto was not elected because of an ability to sponge on the soft soap. He is in office because he calls a spade a spade.

The Asahi found (or was approached by) an association of the mothers in the prefecture who send their children to North Korean schools. The newspaper ran an article that reported the association’s demands that the governor withdraw the statement, apologize, and take measures to ensure the safety of the children at the schools.

Their demand says that his statement referring to North Korea in regard to a purely local issue while “North Korea bashing” is occurring due to that country’s upcoming launch of a missile is inappropriate. “We are concerned that the statement could encourage unjustified harassment of the children at the schools,” the mothers said.

The insolence of the North Koreans and their local lackeys is by no means a new phenomenon, but the moral repugnance of this particular complaint is breathtaking. Those of North Korean ancestry in Japan who are allowed to operate schools for the primary purpose of indoctrinating students in the propaganda of an enemy state should be grateful that they have the opportunity to exist at all, much less complain about democratically elected leaders in public. That opportunity certainly wouldn’t be available to them in Pyeongyang, and they know it.

Meanwhile, the North Koreans, who have threatened to turn Japan into a sea of flame, fired missiles in its direction several times, and regularly sent operatives into the country to kidnap private citizens—an infringement of national sovereignty that could also be argued to be a casus belli, is now preparing to launch a three-stage ballistic missile over Japan in violation of a United Nations ban (I know, I know) as soon as this weekend.

The schools themselves are operated by Chongryon, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, whose chairman and five other senior officials are members of the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly. If anyone by chance did harass the North Korean students—who are made to wear uniforms based on traditional Korean designs—it would be the blame of their schoolmasters, their parents, and the country to which they owe allegiance.

One might make the case that the Asahi is performing a service for the large ethnic Korean population in the Kansai district by reporting the news. But that would not be a credible excuse for a newspaper that has had its knives out for Mr. Hashimoto for most of his term trying to discredit him.

The Asahi seems to think that Mr. Hashimoto is irresponsible and intemperate. Some would agree, but many in Japan are thrilled to see a politician unafraid to say what he thinks and ruthlessly tells the truth as he sees it. I do not use the word “many” lightly. In January the support rate among his constituents was 82%.

Morita Kensaku

It is also worth mentioning in this context Morita Kensaku, who handily won the gubernatorial election in Chiba Prefecture in a race closely watched to see if the Ozawa fund-raising scandals would have an impact on the local DPJ candidate. (Apparently they did, to an extent.)

Morita Kensaku

As a former actor, Mr. Morita already had the advantage of name recognition. But other Japanese observers suggest that one reason for his victory is that he presented himself as the face of the prefectural citizens and a man who transcended party. Despite endorsements by about half of the LDP members of the prefectural assembly, he avoided using those endorsements in the campaign.

His primary opponent, Yoshida Taira, was backed by the opposition DPJ. While that seems to have been a handicap this time around, the same observers note that Mr. Yoshida tried to nationalize the election by campaigning on a platform of throwing the bums of the LDP out of office and replacing them with the DPJ. In short, they say, Mr. Morita’s success may have been due to an approach identical to that of the Miyazaki and Osaka governors. All three have pledged their loyalty to the voters’ interests rather than to those of a political party.

It’s worth noting that Japan is a parliamentary democracy, and that prime ministers must be members of the Diet. That means they are legislators, a group notorious for a lack of executive skills. (That’s likely one reason the LDP usually has its prime ministerial candidates serve in several executive positions in the Cabinet and in party posts first.)

Mr. Higashikokubaru already seems intent on moving from the governor’s office to the Diet, and perhaps he thinks he looks upon the visage of a future prime minister when he faces the mirror in the morning. It remains to be seen if people such as Mr. Hashimoto and Mr. Morita follow his example, or turn to individual initiatives such as Sentaku, the group organized by former Mie Governor Kitagawa Masayasu.

Whatever happens in the future, it must be emphasized that the presence of such men in Japanese politics is a lagging indicator rather than a leading indicator. That they exist is a corroboration of changes that already have occurred in Japanese society, not of changes that might happen in the future. Besides, there is now so much dynamism in political circles in Japan, particularly at the regional level, that further drastic change must be taken as a given.

But don’t expect to see much discussion of this in English anywhere, much less the media. They still think the LDP and DPJ mudboats of Aso Taro and Ozawa Ichiro are the norm.

They still think Japanese politicians are faceless.

Afterwords: Nothing about politics, but here’s an observation of a different sort. Mr. Morita is giving the banzai salute in celebration of his victory in the photo above. Notice that everyone’s hands are facing toward the front.

That wasn’t always the case. Older people with a prewar education invariably raise their hands with their palms facing each other, resembling an NFL official in American football signaling a touchdown. A few sticklers even talk about it.

Time brings about all sorts of changes, does it not?

Matsuri da! (102): The Imari Tontenton festival is a life and death affair

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

PEOPLE IN WESTERN COUNTRIES are losing the right to enjoy themselves by freely engaging in activities with an element of risk through the coincidental action of three groups: Those who resort to frivolous lawsuits to compensate for their avoidance of personal responsibility, the corporations and governmental bodies justifiably afraid of being held liable in those lawsuits by vacuum-brained jurors, and the nanny-state meddlers who hold us all hostage to their yearning for a make-believe, safe-as-milk world.

We’ve all read and been entertained by tales of wacky legal action. One website uses as example the man who won $50,000 from a company that makes basketball nets because he claimed the company was responsible for his teeth being caught in the net while dunking a ball. Mirable dictu, a jury believed him. One plaintiff not as lucky was the nudist who burned his feet after participating in a firewalk. He sued the man conducting the event, despite being warned in advance of the danger, but his suit was dismissed.

The legal feeding frenzy forces companies and local governments to protect themselves. This month in England, municipal authorities in Halesowen, West Midlands, ordered the local Rotary Club either to install a belt on Santa’s sleigh (which they sponsor) as he rides through town, or fork over an extra £200 in insurance premiums. The sleigh is towed by a Land Rover at a speed of 5 mph.

Some intrusive bureaucrats are even worse. Britain’s Department for Children, Schools and Families printed a leaflet for public distribution this year warning of the dangers of Christmas. The leaflet advises readers that 1,000 people are hurt by Christmas decorations annually–that killer tinsel again–and another thousand have to visit the hospital after accidents with Christmas trees. Perhaps there is some benefit in cautioning people about the proper use of sharp instruments when assembling toys or opening presents. But try to imagine what sort of government drone thought it would be an excellent idea to include in the leaflet the possibility that holiday dinner guests who have had too much to drink could “crash to the floor when they miss their seat at the dinner table”.

The following story makes clear, however, that Japan still seems to be immune from these bacilli. Do I have to tell you this story is about a festival? Hah! In fact, it’s about one of the three most famous fighting festivals in Japan.

That would be the Imari Tontenton festival held in late October every year. There’s a good reason it became a fighting festival—the participants disagreed over how to conduct the event and chose to settle their argument with a rumble on the city streets. They enjoyed themselves so much they turned it into an annual scrum.

In other words, the municipal authorities and the religious institutions of Imari have sanctioned—indeed, encouraged—symbolic citizen violence in public.

Kiwa-enka!

Imari once had two Shinto shrines in the same neighborhood that held their festivals on different days. One was the Kokitsu shrine, whose event was offered to ask the divinities for a bang-up harvest. The other was the Totoshima shrine, whose festival was conducted in supplication for an abundant catch of fish.

The story goes that the authorities ordered the two shrines in 1829 to hold their festivals on the same day. The organizers couldn’t agree on the order of the procession or the rules of conduct, but they did agree to settle it like men and fight with their festival floats under specific rules of engagement. The battle continued even after the two shrines merged with a third shrine in 1962.

Actually, that should be “battles” in the preceding sentence. The three-day festival starts with a parade of the two floats on the first day. As they march through town, the lifters chant “Chosanya”, which once upon a time meant, “We’re going to the Imperial court!” The street fighting lasts all three days, however. The first day’s fight card features one or two bouts, while as many as five can be held over the next two days. For the climax on the final day, they duke it out next to a river where the original festival is said to have been held.

Forcing the opponent into the river is not an issue because that’s where both teams are going to wind up. The point of this particular contest is to see who can climb out of the river first. If it’s the team with the float from the old Kokitsu shrine, that signifies a rich harvest. If it’s the team from the old Totoshima shrine, local dinner tables will be groaning from the weight of the fish caught over the course of the year.

Perhaps as a way to justify the jousting, the folks in Imari added another layer of symbolism to their festival fighting. The two sides square off to represent the competing lines of the Imperial household in the 14th century, referred to as the Northern and Southern dynasties. The Kokitsu shrine float is actually a mikoshi, or portable shrine containing the spirit of the divinity. It is supposed to represent the forces of Kusunoki Masashige. Meanwhile, the other float, known as a danjiri (the one with colorful decorations) represents the forces of Ashikaga Takauji. (You can read more about this complicated period of Japanese history here.)

This is no American Civil War battle reenactment in which fat old guys wear ill-fitting period costumes and goof around while pretending they know how to use a musket. The Japanese participants may not hit below the belt, but they are healthy, vigorous men who intend to win, and in this case winning means using enough strength to overturn another float weighing about 600 kilograms (1,322 lbs). In fact, when the two teams square off, one side challenges the other by chanting, “Kiwa-enka“, which is older local dialect for “Come on!”

The spectators get as caught up in the action as any soccer hooligan, and they’re probably just as liquored up too. As the two sides stare each other down, the crowd starts yelling “Aore, aore!” (Literally, that’s a command to quit screwing around and get on with it.) The leaders of the two teams are known as shogun, or military commander. The field generals wait for the right moment to launch their attack, which they signal by raising a flag. The danjiri team employs a taiko drum to whip up the martial spirit, beating it three times. The onomatopoetic representation of that drumbeat—ton-ten-ton—has become the name of the festival itself.

Dangerous fun

All Japanese grow up knowing that getting in the middle of some of the more masculine festivals can be dangerous business, so they assume that everyone is aware of the risk involved before signing up. They’ve been thrashing and bashing and pushing and shoving each other in the name of winning divine favor for more than a millennium, so the accidents that can and do happen are not a surprise.

The organizers of the Imari Tontenton Festival are no exception. The members of the fighting teams have to register in advance, at which time they are presumably warned once again. All the city’s ambulances are brought to the scene of the battle to deal promptly with injuries. After the winner of one bout has been determined, the two floats disengage to allow the wounded—including any spectators who jumped into the fray—to be treated and sent to the hospital if necessary. It is a tradition for the crowd to see off the departing ambulances with a round of applause. Those with minor wounds return to fight again.

In October 2006, those ambulances were needed. One 17-year-old onlooker got carried away by his emotions and joined in the pushing and shoving for the team that wound up losing. When their float was overturned, he was crushed underneath and killed. Another 22-year-old spectator who also dashed into the heat of battle to support the losing side received an injury to his spine, and newspaper reports say he still has difficulty walking. (They do not say whether he has been paralyzed from the waist down; either he hasn’t been, or the local newspapers prefer to use euphemisms.)

That was enough to give even the most intemperate of hotheads and diehard traditionalists pause, so the festival was suspended entirely in 2007. The organizers resumed the parade this year, but the suspension remained in force for the battles between the mikoshi and the danjiri.

Those of you who think it’s a good idea for Santa to buckle up his seat belt while being pulled at 5 mph in his sleigh might be surprised at what happened next.

Neither the high school boy nor the young man had registered in advance as participants—their involvement was on the spur of the moment. Therefore, when the surviving man sued the organizers and five officers for damages of 100 million yen ($US 1.1 million) and asked that they admit their negligence, the defendants balked at the latter demand. They countered that they weren’t negligent because the plaintiff hadn’t formally registered as a participant.

They were willing to provide financial compensation, but not for as much as the man demanded. The committee had 6.7 million yen in operating funds as of the end of October, so they also asked for financial contributions from the 3,600 households in the district where the battle takes place. The man will receive something, but it appears that the matter will be settled out of court for whatever amount the organizers can come up with.

And if you think that means the end of the festival, you might be surprised again.

Reports this week say that local citizens who want to resume the fights have formed the Association for Protecting the Traditional Culture of the Imari Tontenton Festival. They hope to create sentiment for reopening hostilities and plan to start a street corner petition campaign from January to April. They’ll submit the signatures they collect to the festival organizers, the Imari shrine, and the city.

The members of the association aren’t rubberneckers with a taste for bloodshed; they’re the men who actually do battle in the streets and the river.

One member said:

“We are deeply cognizant of the accident and understand the opinions that counsel prudence about resumption. But we want to do something to preserve the fight, which is an Imari tradition.”

Some people in this world are oh so anxious to rearrange everyone’s life—under their supervision, of course—to make sure it is as harmless as a closed safety pin under lock and key.

Meanwhile, some men in Imari know exactly what they want to do. They enjoy it and so do many of their friends and neighbors. They understand that they could wind up dead or maimed, but they’re willing to take that risk. The other folks who aren’t interested can mind their own business and not show up.

I’d sign their petition any time they ask.

Afterwords: There aren’t any good videos of the Tontenton Festival, but this YouTube offering, while called a video, is actually a slideshow put to music. It’s worth watching, however, and the second song might get you to thinking about having a nice glass of shochu mixed with hot water. Dig the ton-ten-ton drumbeat at the start.

Notice also the picture of the young father holding his young son in his arms toward the end of the video to watch. As I said, Japanese grow up knowing the dangers involved.