Japan’s Political Kaleidoscope (3): DPJ edition

THE MOST RECENT JPK focused on the two sides of Aso Taro before “no side” is called for him, which might be sooner than we think. Turnabout being fair play, it’s time to cross the aisle for a look at recent developments with the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, a worthy subject for examination if only because they always seem to be on the verge of losing the elastic in their political trousers.

How I spent my summer vacation

The last time we checked in with Kan Naoto, the veteran of nearly 30 years in the Japanese Diet was off to England for a three-day field trip to study the workings of Parliament.

Mr. Kan held a press conference in London to tell the class what he had learned. He said he discovered that the opposition party in Great Britain has a formal meeting with the national bureaucracy before an election to prepare for a smooth handover of power. He asked the Japanese government to permit a meeting of the same type.

“I intend to ask the government to recognize formal contact between the bureaucratic organizations and the party before the next election.”

That’s a good idea, but finding that out required a three-day junket in Westminster? It’s something a junior staffer from the British Embassy in Tokyo could have told him over a two-hour lunch, saving everybody a lot of time and money. Then again, he would have missed seeing the changing of the guards and hearing the chimes of Big Ben. Perhaps he prefers to study using the full immersion technique.

Tails wagging the dog

Awarding seats in the legislature to parties that haven’t won elections using a formula based on the proportion of votes received amplifies their power beyond justification. There are people in every country who believe all sorts of things, but the right to free speech and free thought does not include the right to be taken seriously, much less the right to have a voice in government. The general plot in a democracy is to fashion a rough consensus based on majorities and move in that direction. The only effect fringe elements have on society at large is to cause paralysis or work at cross-purposes with the majority. What else would anyone expect to happen in the world of politics?

As part of its strategy to take control of government, the DPJ formed an alliance with the Social Democratic Party, who represent the flannel-headed death spiral left, as well as the semi-fossilized People’s New Party, who are blocking privatization of unnecessary government ministries and bureaucratic reform.

Many Japanese politicians also realize there’s a problem, and moves are afoot to reduce the number of MPs in both houses of the Diet. (Proportional representation is not the only issue; there are just too many legislators in Japan at all levels of government, period.) Proposals are floating around that call for cuts ranging from 50 to 180 of the lower house legislators. That 180 is an important figure because it’s the number of proportional representation seats in the House of Representatives.

The DPJ adopted a platform plank during the last national election to reduce those seats from 180 to 100, nearly halving the number of proportional representation delegates. But they could afford to be honest since the voters weren’t ready to take them seriously as the head of a national government yet. It’s funny how that changes the closer one gets to power.

The SDP is taking them very seriously, however. They have seven seats in the lower house, only one of which they won outright. The rest are all filled by proportional representation delegates. Eliminating those seats eliminates their voice, such as it is.

So it’s no surprise that their participation in a DPJ-led coalition government is conditioned on maintaining the status quo on proportional representation. Said party head Fukushima Mizuho:

“An electoral system based on one delegate in a winner-take-all district will lead to a two-party system. The Diet requires a multidimensional value system, including small parties.”

Defending this idea inevitably means that one has to defend minority control of the majority, which is anathema to the idea of a democratic government.

Incidentally, it’s worth remembering that the last non-LDP government in Japan fell apart when the Socialists, the previous incarnation of the SDP, bolted the coalition.

Yukio steps in it again

The subject of proportional representation intersected with DPJ party head Hatoyama Yukio’s tendency to babble, particularly where the PNP is concerned.

Said Mr. Hatoyama during an FM radio broadcast:

“Our preference is a coalition with the SDP and PNP until we can take an absolute majority in the upper house election next July.”

The PNP was not amused, and who could blame them? Asked party chief Kamei Shizuka:

“Would anyone get married knowing they’ll divorce in a year?”

From that you can tell pre-nuptial agreements aren’t yet commonplace in Japan.

But Mr. Kamei is more old-fashioned. If you want us to hop into bed in bed with you, he suggested, give us a real kiss instead of a kiss-off.

To show their displeasure, the party postponed a decision on offering their support to 50 candidates in the lower house election proposed by the DPJ.

Mr. Hatoyama offered an excuse:

“My true intent was not conveyed.”

That’s the best he can come up with after 40 years of marriage? Then again, maybe he’s never had to do better. In 1996 it was revealed that he had a mistress in Hokkaido for 10 years, but his wife blamed herself and took him back.

Considering the mood of electorates world-wide and the odds a DPJ administration will belly flop, it might not be such a good idea for them to start counting any badger skins from an upper house election. (The Japanese proverbially warn against counting those pelts rather than unhatched chickens.)

Not all the DPJ Diet reform plans are meeting with opposition from their small-party allies, however. Some are meeting with opposition from DPJ members themselves.

For example, some want to include a measure in the platform reducing the number of upper house seats. Naturally those DPJ members with upper house seats aren’t ready to get on board that train. They say the party is being “too hasty”.

So, what will the party’s latest edition of its “true intent” turn out to be?

Yukio tries to wipe it off

Those who have been following the DPJ hymnbook know that Mr. Hatoyama’s plan for reforming the Japanese bureaucracy is to have everyone at the level of department head or above resign when the party forms a government. They’d be rehired on the condition of signing a loyalty oath pledging to support DPJ policies. Acting Party President Kan Naoto has already begun backing off that one, and now Mr. Hatoyama is sidling away too, though he hasn’t conveyed his true intent yet. He said:

“(When the) current law is unraveled, (we find) it’s difficult from a legal perspective to demote civil service personnel. (So) it’s my understanding this will not necessarily take the form of a written resignation.”

Unraveling that statement leads to the question of what form it could possibly take. Let’s assume they won’t be lined up against the wall, given a last cigarette and blindfold, and shot.

Here’s an idea: Make a phone call to Nakagawa Hidenao of the LDP and tell him you’ll support his bill to make it easier to demote civil servants as well as outlaw the revolving employment door for retired bureaucrats. He’s got more than 100 signatures on the bill, and he said he wrote it specifically to get DPJ backing. If you worked together, it would easily pass both houses.

That’s assuming you’re serious, of course.

Manifestly devolving

The DPJ has formulated the outline for a new platform a plank on devolution. It’s seen as a nod to the ideas (and more importantly, the popularity) of Osaka Gov. Hashimoto Toru, surely with the intent of capturing his support in the election. The party claims it will promote a great shift of authority to local government by 2013, their fourth year in office, if they’re still there.

They plan on eliminating the prefectural government liability for local agencies of central government enterprises, which is near the top of Mr. Hashimoto’s wish list. Also included for elimination are grants with strings attached to specific agencies.

The party hopes this will neutralize the authority of the central bureaucracy and the influence of the zokugi-in, those legislators sitting in the Diet who serve as the handmaidens of the individual ministries by acting as their de facto in-house lobbyists.

They’ve also ditched Ozawa Ichiro’s idea to reorganize local government around 300 units, which Mr. Hashimoto and the National Association of Towns and Villages opposed. In its place they’ve offered up a vague program for basic local governmental units (usually municipalities in most countries) with authority equal to that of prefectures. They promised to “think about” the state/province system, an LDP idea that is already halfway down the runway, and which Mr. Hashimoto likes.

In fact, DPJ bigwig Okada Katsuya visited the Osaka governor and played up to him by suggesting a state could be created in the Kinki region. Mr. Hashimoto says he will “cheer on”, rather than endorse, a party in the upcoming election, so perhaps Mr. Okada thinks that flattery will get him everywhere.

Never underestimate the power of a local politician from a populous region with poll ratings north of 80%!

Political indoctrination of children Public school education

Koshi’ishi Azuma, one of the troika of DPJ acting presidents with Ozawa Ichiro and Kan Naoto, addressed the Supreme Soviet general meeting of the Japan Teachers’ Union, held at Social Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo. Mr. Koshi’ishi is one of seven DPJ legislators to have a Socialist Party background, and he formerly headed the JTU-affiliated Yamanashi teachers’ union. Once a Red, always a Red, eh?

You think I exaggerate? Last month Mr. Koshi’ishi said at a press conference:

“Rather than inspecting North Korean ships, we should inspect the Aso Cabinet.”

As he frequently does, Mr. Koshi’ishi spoke about the relationship between politics and education:

“There is no such thing as education without politics.”

Well, that clears that up. The JTU criticism of the use of innocuous patriotic gestures in the schools, such as singing the national anthem, is so habitual as to be knee-jerk. Now we know it’s not because it injects politics into education, but rather because it injects the politics they dislike into education—i.e., they’d rather sing the Internationale.

Koshi'ishi Azuma

But there was no mystery about what he thought to begin with. The Yamanashi union got caught a few years ago squeezing contributions from primary and junior high school teachers for his election campaign, and they even had teachers working the phone banks to bug voters at home. The teachers themselves admitted the money went into a dummy bank account for Mr. Koshi’ishi, who wound up with JPY 3 million.

At another JTU meeting in Tokyo in January, he said:

“It is not possible to be politically neutral in education…We will change education through politics.”

Statements such as these skate close to the edge of violating the Japanese laws regarding politics and education, and–let’s face it–are a de facto pledge to indoctrinate students.

The Japanese electorate might be desperate for a change of government, but it’s unlikely this is what they have in mind. Most of the DPJ rank and file probably don’t care for it either, but that’s the price they pay for trying to paste together unwieldy coalitions.

As an example of how far the DPJ is willing to follow the JTU party line, they said they would abolish the JTU-opposed supplementary reader on morality, Kokoro no Noto (Notebook of the Heart), of which several editions are used in primary and junior high schools. It would save JPY 300 million ($US 3.24 million), which admittedly is a bit steep.

Developed by a psychologist, the book is very easy to read, is written in a soft and fuzzy tone, and talks about the importance of working for a living, raising a family, and becoming a responsible citizen. In other words, it’s as controversial as vanilla ice cream.

But here are the objections raised at one website:

“For example, about working, the reader includes such sentences as, ‘When do you get the feeling that you have worked? Is it when you’ve studied? Is it when you’ve come home from school?’, and ‘Working is not only for your own sake, but also for contributing to society.’

“We think that tries to whitewash the idea of working. Considering the reality of employment in Japan today, some children are not able to have a satisfying life at school because of the burden they feel from their parents (having lost their jobs) due to restructuring.”

No, I did not make that up.

Their real beef, however, is probably to be found on the page about patriotism (the only one) that appears later in the book. Here’s the complete and unexpurgated version of how one reader treats the subject:

“If you extend the feeling of loving your hometown outward
It will connect with the feeling of loving Japan.
The feeling of loving this country where we live
And wishing for its development is perfectly natural.
But, how much about this country do we know?
We should have a thorough knowledge of Japan now and renew our awareness of its splendid traditions and culture.
When seeing the excellence of this country, and passing on its merits to the future,
Loving Japan as a member of international society, and as one of the people on the Earth,
Must not be the narrow and exclusionary glorification of one’s country.
Loving this country will connect with loving the world.”

Mark my words! If they force Japanese junior high school kids to read this propaganda, before you know it they’ll want to start marching into the Korean Peninsula again!

Is it any surprise that people who think Aso Taro is a criminal and Kim Jong-il should skate would respond to the sentiments in the above excerpt like Dracula to a cross?

Look for a lot of Ministry of Education news to be generated in the event of a DPJ victory.

Grave robbers

Now that we’re on the subject of people who sleep in coffins, what is it with necrophilia and Democratic Parties? The Democratic Party of the Daley machine in Chicago (where Barack Obama learned whatever it is he knows about politics) has long been the butt of jokes for having perfected the technique of counting the graveyard vote. It’s part of the American political folklore that the Illinois ballots cinching the White House for Richard Nixon in 1960 are in a cement-weighted chest at the bottom of Lake Michigan.)

Now it turns out that the Democratic Party of the Hatoyama machine in Hokkaido modified the grave robbing technique by having the dearly departed donate money to DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio rather than rise up and vote for him.

Good idea. The write-in ballot is used in Japan, and that could get messy.

The Asahi Shimbun reported on 16 June that from 2003 to 2007, at least five very still people contributed an aggregate of 1.2 million yen on 10 occasions to Mr. Hatoyama’s personal political fund raising group. When contacted, relatives of four of the five said WTF? and the fifth said he wasn’t sure. Perhaps he needs to conduct a séance.

When asked about it at a press conference, Mr. Hatoyama said he would look into it right away. He also said:

“I’m surprised, because it was completely unexpected.”

What was unexpected? Getting caught, or getting money from dead people?

Then a curious thing occurred—several other media outlets, including the Yomiuri Shimbun, the Kyodo news agency, and weekly magazines, started matching up obituary columns with Mr. Hatoyama’s list of donors. The original list swelled to 90 corpses (or the urns containing their ashes) who donated up to JPY 21.77 million (about $US 235,000) in 193 instances.

And here we thought all the zombies were in the LDP!

The DPJ boss asked his attorney to investigate. The lawyer came back to report that the donations were derived from JPY 10 million which Mr. Hatoyama had entrusted to an aide if political funds ran short. The aide was embarrassed that he wasn’t able to shake down enough people, so he used those funds to cover for it. The report quotes the aide:

“I should have asked for donations in person but I neglected to do so. So I repeatedly made false accounts (in the political fund reports).”

Said Mr. Hatoyama:

“I assume that since there was so few donations from individuals for me, (the aide) thought it would be embarrassing if the fact came into light.”

The DPJ wants everyone to think that settles it.

The party—which submitted a bill to the Diet for amending the political campaign law to prohibit corporate donations after their former chief Ozawa Ichiro’s fund-raising group got caught taking illegal contributions from a construction company—refuses to cooperate with a Diet investigation of the matter. Said Okada Katsuya:

“(Hatoyama Yukio) has fulfilled his responsibility to explain.”

But wait!

There’s a lot that hasn’t been explained. For starters, if Mr. Hatoyama gave all that money to his aide to cover expenses, which the aide diverted to graveyard donations, why didn’t he ask the aide for a yearend accounting of the money provided? You know–follow normal business practices. If he’s that cavalier with his own money, how will he be with the national treasury?

“There’s something wrong here someplace.”
- Bo Diddley, Ooh Baby

But another question remained unanswered: What shortfall in donations? Mr. Hatoyama said the aide was embarrassed over the lack of money collected, but that wouldn’t be the appropriate word for the amount of individual donations the DPJ leader received, unless it was used in the context of an embarrassment of riches.

According to Mr. Hatoyama’s political fund reports between 2003 and 2007, he received from 50 million yen to 110 million yen annually in individual donations.

Further, the Mainichi Shimbun reported that during the 10 years from 1998 to 2007, Mr. Hatoyama received JPY 590 million yen (about $US 6.37 million) in political largesse. (Remember that he represents just a single legislative district.) Rather than having a shortage of fund raising, his committee brought forward money at the end of every fiscal year.

But wait!

Even subtracting the JPY 21.78 million in dead man money from the total, Mr. Hatoyama scraped up far more that of other DPJ and LDP leaders in recent years, including former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Ozawa Ichiro himself. And Mr. Ozawa was getting money from construction companies.

The annual political contributions to other LDP and DPJ party presidents averaged JPY 1.40 million during that same time period, a paltry amount in comparison.

And of those donations to Mr. Hatoyama less than JPY 50,000 ($US 540), which is the level at which tax deductions kick in, 60% were from anonymous contributors. In 2003, at least 1,500 of the quick rather than the dead made these small donations without stating their names or addresses.

A useful contrast is the individual contributions given to blueblood Aso Taro, whose family is so fabulously wealthy he pretends to read comic books to acquire the common touch. They exceeded JPY 10 million only once, and anonymous donations accounted for less than 10% of the total.

Mr. Hatoyama is on the record as calling for greater use of tax-exempt contributions to encourage individuals to give money to candidates, yet he is the undisputed champ for pulling in small anonymous contributions that aren’t eligible for tax deductions.

The law states that individuals can contribute a maximum of 10 million a year. Did Mr. Hatoyama and his supporters employ anonymous donations that wouldn’t show up on tax statements to get around the law?

But wait!

In addition to dead people, it also turns out that the DPJ president also hauls in a substantial amount of swag from local legislators at the prefectural and municipal level. He’s the official representative of a DPJ district level group in Hokkaido that receives hundreds of thousands of yen annually from local pols, and an aggregate of JPY 16.50 million over five years.

What’s so unusual about that? One Diet member from the LDP–you know, the money politics party–said that he had never heard of local politicians donating to the campaigns of national politicians before.

But wait!

The local politicians have a tendency to give their money to Mr. Hatoyama on 25 December. That’s not a public holiday in Japan, but it’s still an unusual coincidence. Christmas in 2005 fell on a Sunday, yet that’s the day the fund-raising group reported receiving the cash-stuffed envelopes in its stocking. Ho ho ho!

Is the group visiting the homes of local politicians in Santa suits picking up individual donations on Christmas Sundays?

Or, in addition to their mobilization of the deceased, does the DPJ share with their American counterparts a puerile sense of humor? What will the party try next, a dead flower hanami?

But wait!

There were 26 local legislators who gave money to the group in 2007—Christmas Day again—and all of them received the documents issued by the government permitting their donations to be deducted from their income tax. The local DPJ explained that the donations were a substitute means for offseting party expenditures. But party expenditures are not eligible for income tax deductions, so if they received deductions, they broke the law.

The contributions ranged from JPY 18,000 to JPY 264,000.

There’s even more!

Another political support group for Mr. Hatoyama based in Muroran, Hokkaido, reported JPY 0 ($US 0.00) in operating expenses on their financial statements for the three-year period starting in 2005. The DPJ explained that their president’s main group paid the office’s rent and phone bill. They said the other group was just a volunteer body created to organize and hold events, that it had no employees, and that it didn’t use the offices every day.

It turns out, however, that the volunteer group’s offices are in a building owned by Mr. Hatoyama’s mother. Of course the LDP pointed out that the recording of zero expenditures is eccentric bookkeeping, and that if his mother let them use the offices rent-free, it should be considered a political donation.

Ooh, baby. Bo knows. There’s something wrong here someplace.

Haven’t these people learned how to deal with revelations of unpleasant facts yet?

It doesn’t matter if the media is discovering this on its own, or if sources within the Kasumigaseki bureaucracy are feeding them the information now to derail any civil service reform before it leaves the station.

It’s all going to come out now. Trying to stall in the Diet by saying it’s already been explained isn’t convincing anybody.

Just hold your nose while we hold ours, take the medicine, and get it over with.

Spending the public’s money

SOME POLITICOS come from the left, some come from the right, and the other 90% come from the position of expedience to ensure their own survival in office, but one thing they all have in common, regardless of their country of origin, is the love of spending the public’s money as if it were their own.

Love Island

The idea that public funds are not theirs to use unless there’s a good reason and the public interest is at stake seems to have escaped them. That in itself is bad enough, but the problem is compounded when the money is spent on useless endeavors. It isn’t just a taste for pork; public servants also find it delectable to dine on taxpayer funds by spending money on projects that sound good, regardless of their inadvisability.

It’s not easy to track the wastage at the national level, and it’s made more difficult because the self-congratulatory marvels of the media usually can’t be bothered to stir themselves from their porta-thrones to do any serious digging. Imagine then how difficult it is to keep tabs on these expenditures at the local level.

Some examples have been coming to light in Japan in recent years, most notably the case of Yubari, Hokkaido. Smack dab in the middle of a snow belt, the town of 13,000 people had a municipal Ferris wheel, History Village, robot museum, stuffed animal museum, fossil museum, and coal mine museum. There were more than 20 facilities paid for by the central government with the objective of attracting tourists to a semi-isolated rural area, but they were all dismal failures, as anyone in the private sector could have predicted. The town now has a debt equivalent to $500 million, forcing them to curtail more mundane but much more useful city services. Yubari once had 11 schools; soon it will have only three or four. It once had a library, city hall branches, bus discounts for the elderly, municipal trash collection, and a lavatory at the train station. Not any more.

And the Ferris wheel isn’t operating either.

Still other examples of wasteful public expenditure are in plain sight, and people seem unmotivated to do anything about them. Take the case of Naka-cho, Tokushima.

Twenty years ago the municipality formed a public-private partnership to operate a resort on public property. The resort is named Aiairando (Love Island; Love Love Land is also possible). It is owned by Naka-cho and operated and managed by the partnership, which is called I.F.

The resort covers about four hectares of land. It has a wooded plaza, 14 cottages, a woodworking studio, a campsite, tennis courts, a restaurant, shops, and a garden with 10,000 hydrangeas. The public was initially interested in Aiairando, and visitor totals reached 38,640 in 1991, generating income of roughly 37 million yen (about $US 400,000 today).

But public interest soon waned, so an attempt was made to lure back the public by installing playground equipment and eliminating the admission fee. This resulted in a temporary rebound, but the numbers started falling again. The park was visited by 15,767 people in 2007, and it generated income of only nine million yen (about $US 92,000). Five million yen of that was accounted for by the operating commission paid by the municipal government.

I.F. executives attribute the visitor falloff to the number of similar resorts in the area and the diversification of leisure activities. They also note that the facilities themselves have aged, and warn that visitors will not come unless new facilities are provided. Yet, they say, the municipality is on a tight budget and it would be difficult to ask them for money.

Here’s the worst part: Naka-cho’s chief municipal officer says the original objective for the resort was not to generate income. Yet, despite the problems with finances, the municipality is still considering ways to improve the facilities.

If he’s serious about any of that, the man should be out of a job. It is not the business of municipal governments to operate resorts, for any reason whatsoever. Yet, when everyone admits there are similar resorts in the area, why is Naka-cho still involved in this one?

And why did it get involved in operating a resort if the idea wasn’t to generate income to begin with? A municipal park may improve the quality of life in a district, but people are capable of fending for themselves when it comes to finding more sophisticated ways to spend their free time.

So the resort wasn’t really needed, no one’s coming any more, the facilities need replacing, and what does the CMO say? The town will look for ways to find the money the resort needs.

In the private sector, people are cautioned about throwing good money after bad. Apparently that concept hasn’t penetrated the public sector yet.

But why should we expect it to?

It’s easy to spend money when it isn’t yours to begin with.

Matsuri da! (103): The big chill

EVERYBODY KNOWS that cleanliness is next to godliness, and religions the world over incorporate ablutions for the sake of purification into their activities. Shinto in Japan is no exception; the term they use for this ritual purification is misogi.

A little bit of baptism never hurt anyone, especially if it’s done in a nice warm body of water in the middle of summer. But some folks take the idea of ritual purification very seriously indeed.

Take the Kanchu Misogi Festival now underway at the Samegawa Shinto shrine in Kikonai-cho, Hokkaido. The word kanchu means mid-winter, and mid-winter in Hokkaido, where they start wearing jackets at night in the second half of August, is a very cold place to be. The festival, which dates from 1831, is held in supplication for an abundant harvest and catch of fish. It starts at 7:20 p.m. sharp on the night of the 13th. At that time, four young men clad only in the briefest of white loincloths step onto a specially prepared stage on the shrine grounds. This year, the temperature in Kikonai-cho at 7:20 p.m. on the 13th was 1° C, or 33.8 ° F.

Wait for it—this is just the warm-up. Or should I say, “cold-up”.

One of them starts chanting Ei! Ei, picks up a bucket of ice water, and dumps its contents down the backs of his companions. And then he does it several more times, to make them purer still.

Dedication that extreme deserves an audience, and yes, they attract a crowd. This year, about 50 spectators showed up to watch, though there were no reports on how long they could bear to look at the spectacle before heading home to a hot bath. The group now involved in the ceremony consists of four men ranging in age from 18 to 21. I say “now involved”, because they’re going to stay holed up in the shrine until the 15th. They come out on stage and repeat the ceremony at intervals of a few hours each for the better part of two days.

Only males that age could be convinced it was a good idea to do something that…that…Heck, I’ll let you pick the adjective of your choice.

By the way, the reason the Kanchu Misogi ends on the 15th is because the festival then turns into the Kaichu Misogi. The word kaichu means “in the sea”. That’s right–these four young bravos are going to quit messing around with the girly-man buckets of water and go for the ultimate midwinter purification by jumping into the sea.

Now I ask you—isn’t that a lot of purification for four men to be going through on their own? They would have had to have done some really low-down and nasty stuff over the past year to require that much of a ritual cleansing, post-adolescent male craziness notwithstanding. Perhaps what they’re doing is a symbolic purification for everyone in Kikonai-cho, much like The Nazarene is said to have died for our sins on the cross.

I’m glad somebody wants to do it badly enough to step up and volunteer. If I were asked to do my part for the salvation of the neighborhood, I might choose to put up with a little defilement instead!

UPDATE:

The four guys finally took the plunge before noon on the 15th, as you can see from this:

The air temperature at the time was -5.4° C, or about 22 ° F. The reports say they splashed each other for about five minutes, but they didn’t say how deep they went in.

If they went in up to their waists, all I can say is: You’re a better man than I.

Miko make the season bright during New Year’s in Japan

MOST OF THE TIME, a Shinto shrine is all but deserted. Shinto isn’t a religion in the way people usually understand it—there are no written doctrines and no set times for worship. People visit a shrine when it suits their mood, their circumstances in life, or to participate in a few festivals or other events.

During the New Year’s holiday from 1-3 January, however, the shrines will be packed with people on a hatsumode, the customary first visit of the year. In most cases, people will visit three shrines in one day.

It would be impossible for the regular crew to handle the immense influx of visitors descending on the shrine in such a concentrated period of time. The chores required to receive those visitors, as well making and selling good luck talismans for the year ahead, require that the staff be reinforced with part-time employees. These are young women hired to serve as miko, or shrine maidens, who roughly correspond to altar boys at a Catholic church. While the larger shrines already have a few miko on call, particularly to assist at wedding ceremonies, most shrines have to hire them for the season.

Left over right? Or right over left?

Because they’re working in the service of a religious institution and not a convenience store, the miko must conform to certain standards (i.e., no dyed hair). The priests provide additional training for the proper speech and deportment to be employed when greeting the shrine-goers, which demands a level of courtesy beyond that usually required in Japanese society.

This training includes instruction for dressing oneself in the traditional red and white garments, one of which is a hakama, or divided skirt. That’s normally part of a man’s formal wardrobe, particularly for traditional wedding ceremonies. While they aren’t as difficult to deal with as a kimono, wearing one is not intuitive and requires that someone show the wearer the ropes, or the drawstrings in this case.

The first photograph shows some miko-in-training learning how to dress at the Fukuyama Hachiman-gu in Fukuyama, Hiroshima. The training session, which also included lessons in the manner of address and the correct way in which to hand over lucky talismans to purchasers, was held about a week ago for the 40 women who will help out this year. The shrine needs the help: They expect 200,000 visitors over the three-day period.

Said the shrine’s priest, “The role of the miko is to connect the worshippers with the spirit of the divinity. I want them to approach that role with a pure heart.”

Santa’s elves

The shrines have plenty to do to prepare for New Year’s, which is still the most important holiday on the calendar. Some of the shrines that sell the talismans make them on the premises. That means the miko have been beavering away in the workshop as if they were a Japanese version of Santa’s elves.

The second photo shows a group of the 17 miko at the Onoyama-cho Gokoku shrine in Naha, Okinawa, making traditional fukusasa talismans by tying them into bundles after the materials were purified in a ceremony. Fukusasa is a combination of the words “lucky” and “bamboo grass”. A lot of lucky items will be sold to Japanese over the next few days in addition to bamboo grass, including fukubukuro, or lucky bags from department stores filled with merchandise and certificates for bigger-ticket items. One woman interviewed on television today was so intent on getting her fukubukuro that she rented a hotel room near the department store to ensure a spot in the queue enabling her to elbow her way inside when the doors opened in the morning.

The bamboo grass was specially cut by the priests in some nearby mountains. Said the chief priest Kaji Yorihito, “The bamboo grass grows pointing straight to heaven and is symbolic of the life force. We hope that as many people as possible will visit the shrine and add a sense of stability to their lives.”

The fukusasa are affixed with bells and small gourds, and then purchased and displayed by the parishioners who hope the luck will rub off in the form of domestic safety and business prosperity. It doesn’t take long for the miko to create a lot of potential luck. They can make 1,000 fukusasa in two days, as well as 10,000 hamaya, or exorcising arrows. When you expect 240,000 visitors, it’s good to have sufficient stock on hand. Besides, if you absolutely had to have an exorcising arrow, would you want to stand in line at the shrine and then be told they were sold out?

Cocoon balls

Meanwhile, work lasted for more than a week at the Kinomiya shrine in Atami, Shizuoka, to make the mayudama talisman for sale to those looking to get lucky in their business dealings. A mayu is a silkworm cocoon, and once upon a time the shrine attached real cocoons to willow branches and offered them over the counter.

That’s too expensive these days—silkworm cocoons were sold until recently on Japanese commodity exchanges, and the adventuresome investor can still buy raw silk from the cocoons on the Tokyo Grain Exchange. (For an idea of how people in East Asia view silkworms, the single kanji for the word is written by combining the characters for heaven and insect: 蚕.)

The more economical option today is the use of brightly colored balls (the tama of mayudama) made of rice meal. These and other decorations are attached to the branches of the hagi, or Japanese bush clover. The girls at the Kinomiya shrine made 3,000 this year, and you can see an example of their handiwork in the third photo.

Cleaning house

The miko are also responsible for performing the more housewifely tasks at the shrine, such as the yearly cleaning and dusting. Here’s a 40-second video of the miko banishing the cobwebs from the high ceilings using three-meter-long bamboo poles with bamboo grass on the business end instead of a mop or feather duster. Note how the priests are the model of liberated males, grabbing poles and working alongside the miko. But considering those spotless white outfits they’re wearing, one has to wonder how much dirt they expect to remove. Then again, how dirty can the inside of a shrine get in a year?

That’s the Hokkaido Jingo shrine in central Sapporo, by the way. They’re expecting 730,000 people to drop in this year. The end of the video has a shot of the shrine exterior that’s worth seeing for its stark Japanese beauty. Besides, it’s a lot better to view the shrine from the outside by video instead of in person at this time of year. Judging from the amount of snow on the ground and surrounding trees, I’d be hibernating until spring if I lived there.

Supersized kagami mochi

If you think cleaning the corners of the ceiling with bamboo poles and leaves is an unusual assignment, watch what the miko do at the Yasuzumi shrine in Takanezawa-machi, Tochigi. The shrine is noted for offering a jumbo three-level kagami mochi (decorative New Year’s rice cake) every year at this time in the hopes the divinities will see fit to bless them with a good harvest and that Japan’s print and broadcast media will see fit to give them a minute of free publicity. It works like a charm—this video is one of at least three from Japanese TV floating around on the web.

It shows some parishioners pounding the very glutinous mochi rice with wooden mallets to form the uncooked cakes, a forklift bringing in the first two layers, and the miko bringing in the third mochi cake in a procession as if they were transporting a daimyo in a palanquin. It concludes with the priests topping off the creation with one of the most delicious citrus fruits known to humankind: the bampeiyu. They resemble grapefruit about half the size of a basketball but without the sour tartness. And they’re coming into season soon!

Take a few seconds to imagine a ceremony that involves a forklift, a traditional pallet carried by young women in ceremonial clothing, and a giant citrus fruit used in place of a cherry to top off an enormous food offering. Ain’t Japan grand?

Takanezawa is one of Tochigi’s prime rice growing districts, and the shrine began making the jumbo kagami mochi in 1982. It took the parishioners two days to make this bruiser. The first level is 110 centimeters in diameter (3.6 feet), the second is 80 centimeters, and the third is 60. It’s about 90 centimeters high and weighs about 500 kilograms (1,100 lbs.) when fully assembled. If you’re passing through Tochigi, you can stop by and see it until the 20th. After that, the monster mochi will be removed and chopped up into smaller pieces for distribution to parishioners during the Setsubun festival on 3 February, unless Godzilla comes ashore and swallows it whole first.

Restoring a two-year tradition

There’s more to a miko’s lot than wearing traditional costumes to fashion handicrafts in the shrine sweatshop, serve as cleaning ladies, or do the heavy lifting of decorative rice. The two miko shown in the next photo are practicing the Urayasu-no-Mai (a dance), which was performed for the first time in 67 years at the Teruhi Shinto shrine yesterday in Osaki-cho, Kagoshima.

The dance for women is performed to music resembling gagaku with an elegant and deliberate choreography. It appears traditional, but it was actually created and first offered at the Ise shrine in 1940 to celebrate the 2,600th year of the Imperial line. (That anniversary was a very big deal in 1940, but that’s another story.)

The 79-year-old Fujioka Tomio of the local kagura preservation society says he was in the audience during the inaugural performance as a lad of 10 and has never forgotten it. The dance was performed for only two years—the Japanese had other fish to fry by 1942—and he’s been at the forefront of efforts since then to bring it back. He worked with a local teacher of traditional Japanese dance to teach it to two girls, one a first-year junior high school student and the other third-year high school student. They began practicing in November, and shown here is a photo of the miko in a dress rehearsal last week at the shrine. Mr. Fujioka and the shrine parishioners hope this will start a new tradition that will last longer than two years this time.

It might seem as if there is a sense of Japanese exclusivity and exoticism hovering about all these activities—young women dressing in traditional Japanese clothing to make traditional Japanese crafts for the celebration of New Year’s at Shinto institutions that they cleaned with ritual implements and adorned with ritual food offerings, and then performing a special dance created at a shrine closely associated with the Imperial house to celebrate more than two millennia of Imperial rule. Some might like to think the Japanese are so exclusionary and this behavior so defining that participation by anyone else would be unthinkable.

Think again. There’s another video floating around the web of a recent TV report on a miko training session at a shrine in Nagasaki City. The video wasn’t particularly distinctive, so I didn’t include it here, but a brief interview of one of the trainees casually tacked on to the end might cause cognitive dissonance among those who enjoy being narrow-minded about Japan.

This particular trainee was a 21-year-old Korean university student attending a local university. The woman was not learning about miko practices—she was taking a refresher course. She had already worked as one during the 2008 New Year’s holidays and enjoyed it so much she wanted to do it again.

You didn’t really buy that line about the Japanese being xenophobic Korean-haters, now did you?

Lest old acquaintance be forgot, let’s not forget this post from last year all about miko and some of the other delightful things they do.

Akemashite o-medeto gozaimasu!

Whale and shark: New Year’s treats in parts of Japan

TURKEY OR HAM is usually the main course of choice for Christmas dinner in the United States. O-sechi ryori, the meal served on New Year’s Day in Japan, consists primarily of seafood and vegetable dishes. There is some variation in the types of food served in different regions, however, and some of those variations may raise a few eyebrows, if not whet a few appetites.

For example, people in southern Hokkaido, the northernmost of the four main Japanese islands, think whale meat, often prepared as kujirajiru (whale soup) is an indispensable part of their New Year’s feast. The accompanying photo shows frozen whale on display in a Hakodate market

This particular shop offers frozen steak and what is called bacon from minke whales. The steak sells for 1,000 yen ($US 9.17) for 100 grams and comes from whale caught in the South Seas, while the bacon, which is more expensive at 3,500 yen ($US 32.10) for 100 grams, is made from locally caught whale. One shop clerk admitted it was expensive, but said that it sold well because “people want to eat something tasty for their New Year’s dinner”.

Another seafood shop in the city offers whale bacon that it makes itself, which is not the usual practice. They sell it for a more affordable price of 1,200 yen for 100 grams. The shop owner said they use only salt in the production and eschew preservatives and artificial coloring. They also have minke whale steaks at 600 yen for 100 grams, and bacon made from the dwarf minke for 2,000 yen for the same weight.
　
All the stores report that the sliced varieties of whale, both frozen steak and bacon, have been selling very well in recent years.

Meanwhile, further south in the northern part of Hiroshima, a New Year’s day dinner is not complete without shark meat, which locally is called wani (a word that means crocodile everywhere else in Japan). Fishery cooperatives in Nagasaki and Wakayama ship the shark to merchants in the Hiroshima cities of Miyoshi and Shobara, where it is cut to order for retail customers.

Shark has little fat and a thick skin, which means it can keep for a long time. Years ago, when there was no mechanical refrigeration in the home, it was the only fish eaten as sashimi in some mountainous areas.
　
One maritime product company in Miyoshi orders shark about one to two meters in length. They handle about six tons worth of the fish at yearend, which is roughly 1/6th of its annual turnover. The highest quality shark sells for about 3,000 to 4,000 yen per kilogram retail.

Americans often complain about eating turkey sandwiches for three or four days after Christmas. I wonder if Hiroshima housewives hear the same complaints about shark meat!

It’s unlikely that anyone in Hokkaido complains about several consecutive days of whale, however. As I’ve noted before, some whale tastes better than steak. (I don’t understand the point of making bacon out of it, though.)

To read about another way of chowing down on shark meat, try this previous post. You might find yourself wondering why the folks in Hiroshima find it so appetizing.

Shogatsu: Stretching soba over to the new year in Japan

ONE THING IS CERTAIN: At some time over the course of New Year’s Eve, most Japanese will eat a dish of toshikoshi (year-crossing) soba, or buckwheat noodles. The long-established custom of eating soba on the evening of 31 December derives from the hope that it will extend a family’s health and fortune over to the coming year.

Someone has to fill the demand for all that soba, and one company up to the task is San Shokuhin of Itoman, Okinawa Prefecture, which shifted to 24-hour operation on the 28th with 180 employees, nearly half again their usual number. Until early this morning they kept the conveyor belt running while everyone was busy packing boxes with the freshly made, air-cooled product.
　
Over those four days they produced enough noodles for an estimated 700,000 meals, 80% of which will be consumed in the prefecture.

It’s reported that when people in Okinawa began eating toshikoshi soba on New Year’s Eve, they slurped down the variety from the main islands. They started switching to the Okinawan variety circa 1974, however, and that type became the established custom around 1982.

Hokkaido Hoedown

For an idea just how much soba means to the Japanese everywhere in the country, let’s jump from the far south in Okinawa to the scene in the second photo in the far north—the Sengen district of Fukushima-cho, Hokkaido.

The photo shows a scene of junior high school girls serving as miko, or shrine maidens, as they perform the local Matsumae kagura, a Shinto dance, to the accompaniment of taiko drums and flutes before an audience of about 200 in a 2.5-hectare field of white soba. The performance was staged as an offering for peace and an abundant harvest.

The community became involved in growing soba as a way to promote the local economy, and the Matsumae Kagura Preservation Society presents six types of the Shinto dances on a temporary stage in the soba fields early every autumn. This year’s performance was the sixth.

Sorry to run off so abruptly, but I’ve got a bowl of soba waiting!