Japan’s cultural kaleidoscope (4)

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

Island hopping

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

Hamada Eri

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tokushima seaweed comes home

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

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

Off to see the Iyoboya

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

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

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

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

Snow fun in Kamakura

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

Let 100 dragons soar

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

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

Rebuild it and they will come

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

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

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

Leg room

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

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

Hokkii rice burger

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

Goya senbei

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

Strawberry sake

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

Extra credit

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

Really high

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

This'll beam you up.

Exotic booze

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

That's where they make it, you know.

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

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

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

Build it and they will come

The slender, the fat, and the shapeless

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

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

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

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

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

*****
And don’t forget Okinawa!

Kumamoto new year

WHAT do Japanese do in public on New Year’s day? This short video from RKK, a local television station in Kumamoto, will give you an idea.

The announcer begins with a New Year’s greeting and then introduces four different scenes. The first starts at 6:00 a.m., when the gates of the Kumamoto Castle are opened for visitors who want to see the first sunrise of the year from there.

He mentions that the temperature was relatively mild, closer to that of a mid-March day at 5.4°C. The sky was cloudy, however, disappointing the people who were hoping to see the sun.

The second scene is of visitors to the Kato Shinto shrine, where about 420,000 people come during the first three days of the new year. The first man interviewed says he is praying for the happiness and health of his family. The woman who follows says she asked for the sound growth of her children.

Scene three is of the Wild Bunch at the Kumamoto Central Post Office roaring off to deliver New Year’s cards after attending a Shinto ceremony. They expect to deliver 25.8 million throughout the prefecture. That’s how the mailmen deliver the mail in my neighborhood too.

After that, actress and model Margarine (which is how it’s spelled in Japanese) and the prefectural PR character Kumamon (the big black bear) visit a nearby maternity hospital to welcome the babies born that morning. They also give newly made commemorative seals as presents to two people.

And of course there are miko!

Whale of a good time

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

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

Whale chirashizushi!

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

Deep-fried whale skewers!

Whale stewed in citron juice!

Whale tongue stew!

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

And this unidentified lip-smacker!

Or this!

And this one too!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Said one historian:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afterwords:

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

*****
The Sea Shepherd recruiting song

Yet more true facts

THE PREVIOUS POST about misconceptions elsewhere of Japan-South Korea relations reminded me of similar misconceptions overseas about a supposed waning of the spirit of Japanese enterprise. That’s illustrated by the recent rash of ADD-impaired stories presenting Japan shuffling off the world’s stage like some forgotten old duffer with hair growing out of his ears.

Oh, really?

Here’s a sample of stories featuring developments that occurred over the past two months in Kyushu alone. Decide for yourself who’s shuffling and who’s strutting.

* Kitakyushu Hydrogen Town Project

Trials of the Hydrogen Town project in Kitakyushu got underway on 15 January and will run until the end of March. The trials involve using underground piping to send hydrogen to individual residences and commercial facilities, where it will be used in fuel cells to generate electric power and heat water. The hydrogen used is created as byproduct at local steel mills. The project organizers hope to resolve any issues regarding consistent hydrogen supply and its safe use. These will be the first large-scale trials in the world for the use of hydrogen in urban areas.

* Nanosatellite Testing Center Opens at KIT

The Kyushu Institute of Technology opened the Center for Nanosatellite Testing, a facility for conducting trials with artificial satellites no larger than 50 centimeters in diameter and weighing less than 50 kilograms. It is the world’s first facility with the capacity to conduct all the required performance tests for nanosatellites, including the ability to withstand temperature changes and vibrations. These satellites, used primarily for taking photos of Earth, have become increasingly popular in recent years because they are somewhat inexpensive.

* New Development in Cancer Stem Cell Treatment

Dr. Nakayama Keiichi and a team of researchers at Kyushu University’s Medical Institute of Bioregulation discovered that a certain protein will change the state of cancer stem cells, which are impervious to chemotherapy and radiation, into a state that allows them to be attacked. Even when other cancerous cells are removed, the remaining cancer stem cells have the potential to create a recurrence of the disease. Converting the protein into a usable medicine might bring a cure within reach.

* Honda to Conduct Electric Vehicle Trials in Kumamoto

Honda announced it will begin trials of new model electric motorbikes, electric cars, and plug-in hybrids next year at its Kumamoto Prefecture plant. The recharging station used in the trials will employ solar power to generate the electricity. The motorbike trials are slated to begin next spring, while those for automobiles will begin in the latter half of the year.

* Desalinization Certification Plant Built in Kitakyushu

Water Plaza Kitakyushu, Japan’s first desalinization certification plant capable of certifying both the conversion of seawater to fresh water and the purity of reclaimed sewage water, will begin operation in April. The plant was built by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). The operators hope to disseminate the technology and operational expertise gained from the plant both in Japan and overseas.

* NEECO to Make Energy from Chicken Dung in India

Fukuoka City-based Nishi-Nippon Environmental Energy Co. plans to launch a biomass power generating business in India by the spring of 2012 using chicken dung as fuel. If the enterprise is successful, the company hopes to expand the business throughout India and the rest of Asia. The company is using the expertise gained from operating a similar enterprise in Miyazaki Prefecture, which produces 25% of Japan’s chickens.

* Ecogenomics Sells DNA Chip Technology to China

Bio-venture company Ecogenomics is now selling to Chinese government agencies its DNA chips, which are devices for genetic testing. The adhesion and reaction of bacteria and chemical substances on the DNA chips makes them effective as medicine for pathological conditions. They are also said to be effective for preventing cancer and infectious diseases. The company has its own technology for the comprehensive processes from design to manufacture to create products that meet the individual testing needs of its customers.

While putting this post together, I discovered another example from outside Kyushu, as described today in the Asahi:

Researchers at RIKEN, Yokohama City University and The University of Tokyo have uncovered how gut bifidobacteria protect the body against lethal infection by enhancing the defenses of colonic epithelium. Published in this week’s issue of Nature, the finding provides first-ever clues on the mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of gut microbiota, promising more effective probiotic therapies for a variety of disorders and diseases.

*****
To find this information, however, one has to read Japanese newspapers.

*****
Chemistry is another popular field in Japan.

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It’s a sin to tell a lie

THOMAS SOWELL’S description of a scam that that been run repeatedly by Democrats in Washington, D.C. makes one wonder if the Democrats in Tokyo are taking lessons:

Democrats start spending money wildly, handing out goodies to a wide range of people who they want to vote for them, while Republicans complain about deficits and the national debt. Then, when the public becomes alarmed about the debts that are piling up, the Democrats get the Republicans to vote for higher taxes to deal with the debt crisis, in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

Sometimes the deal is sweetened by the Democrats promising to make spending cuts if the Republicans vote for higher taxes, so that there can be one of those “bipartisan” solutions so beloved by the media. But, after the Republicans vote for the tax increases, and come running up to find the spending cuts, the Democrats snatch away the spending cuts and the Republicans fall right on their backsides…

Republicans are not the only suckers in this game. The voting public’s willingness to believe fancy rhetoric and ignore hard facts is a crucial part of this scam.

Meanwhile, the Tokyo Democrats are playing their own game by leading the cheers for increases of both the consumption tax and the income tax for “fiscal reconstruction” to prevent Japan from applying the Grecian formula. They’ve turned their superficial effort at spending cuts into a dog-and-pony show for television with easy-on-the-eye Ren Ho as one of the MCs. She’s a first-term upper house member whose primary employment before election was as a model and television presenter.

The primary difference in the comparison between the big D Democrats is that, other than during the Koizumi/Abe era, the Liberal Democratic Party is just as complicit as the Dems. The latter have even gotten the LDP on board for a 10% consumption tax increase, showing that the party still thinks mudboats can float. Maybe they should just consider removing the Liberal from their name and removing any doubts. The only political opposition is coming from the Koizumians, the “rising tide” LDP wing led by Nakagawa Hidenao, and, to a certain extent, Your Party.

It doesn’t take much looking to see what will wind up happening. The fiscal policies being pushed by the DPJ and their dead certain/dead wrong economists such as Ono Yoshiyasu will take a pratfall of their own. And as sure as God made little green ume, that will provoke calls for more government spending because it just wasn’t enough the first/second/third time. The usual suspects in the U.S. are already banging their golden goblets on the sidewalk for a third stimulus, despite the failure of the first two and the encroaching penumbra of a double-dip recession. The only employment saved has been in the public sector, and chances are excellent that’s how it will shake down in Japan too.

How difficult can it be to realize that the solution is to STOP SPENDING, and that the first trees to which the fiscal foresters should apply their chain saws are in the deep woods of the public sector? But how difficult can it be to realize that the DPJ’s ties with public sector unions guarantee those forests will remain virgin? In the party’s manifesto, the DPJ promised to reduce national public employee personnel expenses by 20%. (Insert canned laughter.)

It’s a sin to tell a lie

DPJ Secretary-General Edano Yukio recently tried to defend the party by saying they had very few ties to national public sector employee unions. Mr. Edano claimed most were affiliated with Japan’s Communist Party. The secretary-general is an attorney, by the way, and we all know how closely attorneys-turned-pols adhere to the truth.

The Reds got upset, even though Kokko Roren, a public sector union with 110,000 members affiliated with Zenroren, the National Confederation of Trade Unions, does have unofficial ties with the JCP. Some of the senior executives in the union are party members, and the membership is tacitly encouraged to vote Communist. But both the JCP and the Zenroren demanded a retraction because they have no official affiliation—unlike the ties between the DPJ and Rengo, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation.

One has to wonder if Mr. Edano has a problem with short-term memory loss. On the Japanese-language part of the DPJ website, there is (or was until recently) a report of Mr. Edano’s visit to Rengo headquarters just a fortnight before the bickering began. They signed an agreement pledging member support for the DPJ in the upper house election.

Mr. Edano gave a speech in which he thanked the group for its backing, offered the Japanese version of the global soc-dem boilerplate, and pledged to create with the group a society where people can work with peace of mind. Whenever a politician says that to a union with public sector employees, he means he promises to make it next to impossible to lay them off.

Meanwhile, Rengo Chairman Koga Nobuaki said:

Everyone recognizes that you have achieved a change of government and we have started to create a new society. We must not stop the trend toward creating a new society. Indeed, we must not allow the hands of the clock to be turned back.

Let’s put aside the fact that the new society they envision would require turning back the hands of the clock to a tired old era that was remarkable for its lack of success and superfluity of unproductiveness, and look at which unions are affiliated with Rengo. As you can see from this list on their English page, the affiliates include Jichiro (The All-Japan Prefectural and Municipal Workers Union), Nikkyoso (The Japan Teachers’ Union), JPGU (The Japan Postal Group Union—is the DPJ’s stance on Japan Post privatization starting to make sense?), NHK Roren (The Federation of All-NHK Labor Unions), and Zen Insatsu, (All Printing Bureau Labor Union, for workers at the National Printing Bureau, which the Abe administration wanted to privatize. It was returned to direct governmental control during the first Ren Ho dog and pony show).

That’s a lot of public sector unions, but still no “national” public sector unions—until we get to the 120,000-member strong Kokko Rengo (Japan Public Sector Union).

So, who’s in Kokko Rengo?

Their Japanese-language website says it has several members. First on the list is the Kokko Soren, or the Japan General Federation of National Public Service Employees’ Unions, which itself consists of five unions:

1. Zennorin, the labor union for non-management personnel of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (including independent administrative corporations, i.e., the entities where retired bureaucrats slide into amakudari jobs)

2. Zenkaihatsu, the labor union for employees of the Hokkaido Regional Development Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport

3. Zaimu Shokuso, the labor union for employees of the Finance Ministry

4. Zenzaimu, local finance bureau employees in the Finance Ministry

5. Okinawa Kokkoro, a union for national government workers in agencies and independent administrative corporations in Okinawa

It’s also affiliated with:

• The Japanese Confederation of National Tax Unions for regional bureaus of the National Tax Agency

• The Labor Federation of Government Related Organizations, which represent and organize 27,500 members of 67 affiliated trade unions. The members work in special public corporations, incorporated administrative agencies, foundations and other non-profit organizations.

• Zenchuro, the All-Japan Garrison Forces Union, for workers at American military installations

• The Japan Customs Personnel Labor Union (which for some reason has a photo of an attractive beach on its website)

• The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Office Workers’ Union

• With observer status: Kokkai Shokuren, consisting of three unions for employees at the Diet and the Diet library

Will the Democratic Party of Japan actually come up with serious reforms for public sector employment and cut government expenditures?

Will Edano Yukio ever come clean?

When shrimp learn to whistle.

Afterwords:

There are plenty of low hanging branches ready to cut even for the amateur woodsman. For example, legislators at both the national and sub-national level receive public funds to conduct policy research, separate from their salaries and office expenses. They are required to return the unused portion each year, but they’ve been so assiduous in researching policy matters the governments never got much back.

Last year, however, Kumamoto began requiring prefectural legislators to provide receipts for all expenditures of the policy research funds. The prefectural government recently disclosed its income and expenditure report for FY 2009, and it turns out that the unused portion of the funds returned last year was 86 times the amount of the previous year. That’s got Fukuoka Prefecture mulling a similar measure. Let’s hope it just wasn’t a down year for policy study.

Out of the gate

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

Bak Jae-ho came to Japan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making them earn their money

HERE’S AN IDEA so good it’s a shame the potential applications are limited.

The members of the municipal council of Itsuki-mura in Kumamoto have agreed in principle on a plan to base their salaries on job performance. The village residents will form a committee to evaluate the council members as “excellent”, “good”, or “ordinary”. The bill to amend the law governing council member remuneration will be presented to the municipal council in March, and everyone expects it to pass. A spokesman for the National Association of Chairmen of Town and Village Assemblies says they’ve never heard of a local governmental assembly in Japan with a performance-based salary system, and they think Itsuki-mura will be the first in the country to adopt one.

Beautiful downtown Itsuki-mura

Some villagers came up with the idea last December because they wanted to provide incentives for the council members to conceive and implement the drastic steps they believe are needed to revitalize the community of 1,400. Many of the villagers moved away in recent years because the central area was to have been flooded with the construction of the Kawabe River Dam. But that dam was one of the many construction projects suspended by new Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Minister Maehara Seiji after taking office with the new government last September. As you might well imagine, that made a mess of the village’s municipal planning.

The measure will call for the evaluations to take place at the end of every fiscal year. The council members’ current monthly salary of JPY 210,000 (about $US 2,300) will be cut 20%. Those who receive an “excellent” rating will receive an extra JPY 516,000 for the year, the “good” ones will get JPY 258,000 extra, and the “ordinary” ones will get a bundle of switches instead of Christmas presents, but no money. In yen terms, those rated excellent will wind up with about as much in salary as they do now.

The evaluation committee will use minutes from the council meetings to make their decisions, and they will examine the questions raised, the bills presented, and the members’ participation in community activities outside of municipal government. The chair and vice-chair will also be judged on their leadership abilities. The names of the committee members will not be made public, and there will be no appeal of their decisions.

The villagers have yet to decide whether to publicize individual evaluations. The report contained no information on the procedures for choosing the evaluation committee members. The current council chairman allowed that problems with the system would probably arise, but their immediate objective is to revive a village that was nearly wiped off the map.

This plan sounds as if it would work well for small municipalities, though the potential for abuse exists if the committee members let personal grudges interfere with their evaluations. In a village that small, everyone knows everyone else to begin with. In a larger municipality, party politics would probably cause some problems, thought that’s unlikely to be a factor here.

Another drawback is the lack of a “bad” evaluation category. There are stinkers in every village on the planet, and designating “ordinary” as the lowest rating smacks of grade inflation. Nonetheless, it does sound as though it’s worth a try. Financial incentives do tend to focus the mind, and Itsuki-mura is a lovely place to judge from the photos.

It’s also a good thing I’ll never be asked to join that evaluation committee. With the financial incentive, you just know somebody will try to boost their take-home pay by coming up with all sorts of legislative proposals just to make themselves look good.

I’d be tempted to take points away from those people on general principle!

Down on the farm

THE GLOBAL INFOTAINMENT MEDIA is intensely curious about trends in Japan, both to satisfy its voracious appetite for content and to maintain its preferred narrative of Japan as East Asia’s Goofball Kingdom. Here’s one trend they seem to have overlooked, however. Prof. Ito Motoshige of Tokyo University and the director of the National Institute for Research Advancement recently interviewed Itochu Corp. Chairman Niwau Ichiro for publication. This is how Prof. Ito set up the interview:

“Interest in agriculture is intense now. Publications ranging from business and economics journals to fashion magazines are covering the subject, and the slang term no-gyaru has even arisen to denote the young women engaged in farming.”

No-gyaru is a pun based on nogyo, the Japanese word for agriculture. Who knew that it was hip to be a hayseed in Japan nowadays? Certainly not the readers of the English-language media.

No-gyaru

Itochu is a large trading company with its fingers in a bakery full of pies, including the refining and sale of Chinese rice, so Mr. Niwau has at his fingertips a cornucopia of fascinating statistics about farming in Japan.

He asserted in the interview that Japanese agriculture could be internationally competitive, and the way to achieve that goal would be to maximize the use of land as an asset to produce value and to inculcate a sense of entrepreneurship among the farmers. Here are some highlights from that interview.

By the numbers

12% of Japanese territory is farmland
16% of Japanese territory was farmland 45 years ago
8.3% of Japanese farmland is not cultivated.
The latter figure represents an increase of three times in 20 years, and is equal to the land area of Saitama Prefecture.

2.99 million people: The farming population in 2008, a drop of 80% in 49 years
60%: The percentage of the farming populaton 65 or older

Demonstrating the fundamental problem with bureaucracies the world over:

290,000 people: The number of JA group employees 45 years ago (The central committee of agricultural cooperatives)
300,000 people: The number of JA group employees today

410,000 households: Employed in agriculture only, 16% of the total involved in agricultural production either full time or part time

56%: The ratio of Japanese cropland accounted for by rice paddies
4.2 tons of rice per unit of production area: The global average
6.7 tons of rice per unit of production area: The Japanese average

The Itochu president argued that Japanese rice is not as expensive to produce as some might think. Production costs per kilogram range from JPY 344 for 0.5 hectare plots or less, to JPY 160 for 10-15 hectare plots. He says that Itochu’s costs for refining and selling Chinese rice are JPY 105 per kilogram, and don’t include export costs.

Japanese rice would be price competitive, he maintains, even if all agricultural tariffs around the world were immediately removed. The key is to promote agribusiness on a large scale rather than through small farms.

This would be financially beneficial for agricultural workers, too. Converted to hourly wages, the producers on larger farms make JPY 3,100, or more than salaried employees. In contrast, those on the smallest farms make JPY 300 per hour, less than convenience store workers.

Mr. Niwau suggests that rice production should be concentrated in areas with broad plains, such as Hokkaido and the Tohoku region, while areas in the more mountainous western Japan, where it would be more difficult to operate larger farms, should switch to other fruits and vegetables. He says the latter farms would produce crops competitive with imports. For example, he reports that the more expensive Japanese cherries still sold well against imported American cherries due to their superior taste and freshness.

He proposed the delivery of food directly from the production site to the consumption site as an avenue that should be explored further. (I can vouch for this myself; we get apples shipped directly to our house from different production areas in Japan once a month from October to March. I’d recommend it to anybody.)

The government gets in the way

Mr. Niwau laments, however, that laws on land use and agriculture haven’t changed in 50 years. The government’s policy over the past half century has been to encourage acreage reductions to prop up rice prices. He holds that this has been a complete failure from a market perspective, and he used an analogy to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the approach.

It is as if, he suggested, a company responded to poor sales figures by slashing production and raising prices.

He is not the first to claim that the Ministry of Agriculture has been a complete a waste of time and resources. He also mentioned the zokugiin of the Diet, the MPs allied with different ministries and who promote their interests in the legislature. The zokugiin, he says, work to maintain those policies to receive the electoral support of rice farmers in particular, who benefit financially from the higher rice prices and the subsidies for acreage reductions.

The ruling Democratic Party of Japan is taking a step backwards from moves to encourage agribusiness and larger farms that were begun during the LDP administration of Abe Shinzo. The DPJ offered as part of their election platform a promise to provide subsidies to individual farm households.

That, says Mr. Niwau, is a mistake. The formulation of agricultural policies should be left to local governments, based on local conditions, and focus on policies for enterprises devoted exclusively to agriculture, whether operated by an individual or by a corporation.

He also suggests that local governments could form committees to lease farmland from individual farmers, aggregate it, and lease it in turn to those who want to work the land, including companies involved in agribusiness.

This is already happening today, and not all those companies are purely agricultural concerns. For example, Fukuoka City-based Kyudenko, primarily engaged in providing electric power facility engineering services, announced last week it had formed an agreement with the city of Amagusa, Kumamoto Prefecture, to grow olives. The agreement starts in FY 2010 and will run for three years. The company will plant 6,700 olive trees on unused cropland in the city, and will study cultivation techniques and the potential for profitability over that three-year period. If they like what they see, they will continue to grow olives. Kyudenko says it is open to using either public land or privately owned land.

In short, applying market principles would improve Japanese food production, make it a competitive enterprise, and solve the problems of unused land, the aging of the farming population, and the lack of successors. Key for the success of that endeavor would be to devolve authority to the local level and remove the influence of the bureaucracy and national legislator-lobbyists.

Where have we heard that one before?

Exploration and discovery

How did the media miss the chance to find out about the no-gyaru phenomenon and this discussion of domestic agricultural reform? They didn’t turn the page.

This interview appeared in last September’s edition of the monthly Voice. It was the same issue that published an article by Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio explaining his political philosophy. It later was translated into English for the New York Times and caused a minor stir for its eccentric positions and apparent tilt away from the United States in foreign policy matters.

Mr. Hatoyama’s article ended on page 141, while this one began on page 142. The quote about no-gyaru was in the first paragraph.

Why should the impractical thought processes of a man destined to have the political lifespan of a firefly be of greater interest than a disussion of how a nation feeds itself?

Hands across the Sea of Japan

IT’S A RELIABLE rule of thumb that a nation’s political class is more often the problem than the solution regardless of the matter at hand. The reliability of that rule continues to be borne out by the behavior of the Japanese in Kyushu and the Koreans on the southern part of the peninsula. While the politicos vaguely talk the talk about the importance of good bilateral relations, folks on the ground continue to walk the walk and do the job themselves. Here are two more examples—one of people at work, and the other of people at play.

At work

Busan’s Ulsan region in South Korea resembles Kyushu in that it is the center of flourishing auto and shipbuilding industries. The Ulsan region, however, is home to 1,500 companies in the industrial textile sector that supplies products to both. Many of the firms have created a niche by producing items for car interiors and specialty textiles, and they are eager to develop ties and do business with Kyushu’s auto industry.

To help them make their pitch, the International Footwear, Textile, and Fashion Expo in Busan has invited representatives from Kyushu auto companies to attend the three-day event starting on the 19th. Business and opinion leaders on both sides of the Korea Strait are excited about the potential. The Nishinippon Shimbun described that potential in two stories on the Expo and the specialty textile industry in the Ulsan region that covered half a page.

They quoted Paek Mu-hyon, the chair of a textile industry group in Busan:

“We want to promote technical ties and business with Kyushu’s many auto companies and use high-function Japanese and Korean products to compete against China, which is increasing its presence as a market and production region.”

Who needs summit meetings about East Asian entities when the private sector demonstrates this much enthusiasm to achieve the same result on their own?

At play

Here are two events that go together like ice cream and cake. The first is the Yamaga Lantern Dance, a festival from Yamaga, Kumamoto, in which hundreds of women dance to a stately traditional folk song while dressed in summer yukata and wearing lighted lanterns made of paper and glue on their heads. (Here’s a previous post with photos.) The second is the Seoul World Lantern Festival, which is underway in that city right now and will run until the 15th. Those of you near Seoul and willing to visit will have a chance to have your ice cream and cake and eat it too, when the women from Yamaga perform on Saturday and Sunday.

Yamaga officials say the dancers visit such Asian cities as Shanghai and Singapore once a year, but this is the first time they’ve been to South Korea since 1993. Held on the banks of the Cheonggyecheon, the Lantern Festival is one of the attractions of the 2012 Visit Korea Year. The events feature performances from South Korea, Japan, and China, and the area is decorated with displays of both real lanterns and lantern-like objects. During the Yamaga performance, the streets will be lined with candles in bamboo holders and traditional Japanese umbrellas. In addition to the group from Yamaga, a group from the Nebuta festival in Aomori will also participate.

The lack of coverage given by the overseas media to this flourishing cross-strait interaction notwithstanding, the only remarkable thing about this activity is that it isn’t remarkable at all—it’s a fact of daily life. Regional and local politicians have enough sense to either get out of the way and let it happen, or lend a helping hand from behind, rather than elbowing their way to the front to pose for photo ops.

Now if the national politicians would only get the hint that grand schemes aren’t necessary when people are allowed to act naturally without interference. Everyone else already has.

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.

Monsieur Morimoto

WOULD ANY ACTOR dare dream that his film debut would be screened at the Cannes Film Festival? And that when the house lights came up, he would be hailed by an audience calling out his name, which was also used as the film’s title? But that’s just what happened to Morimoto Ken’ichi this year, who must still be pinching himself in disbelief.

The best part of the story is that none of it was his dream to begin with—Morimoto is not an actor, and his performance in the movie Monsieur Morimoto was his first in any medium. In fact, he’s a retired postal worker from Mashiki-machi, Kumamoto, who left his family behind to go to Paris and pursue an entirely different dream. M. Morimoto wanted to become a painter.

As an article in today’s Nishinippon Shimbun reports, Morimoto ended his job at the post office in 2000 after 40 years of service when he reached the mandatory retirement age. He traveled to New York, Tahiti, and several places in Europe before deciding to relocate in Paris because it was “the most suitable for my creative environment”.

Sporting a beret and nattily trimmed white beard, the 68-year-old Morimoto drew the attention of passersby as he sketched on the city streets. He also drew the attention of director Nicola Sorgana when the latter encountered him in a Paris art gallery. Sorgana then conceived of a movie with Morimoto as the main character, though the story itself is fiction. (It follows the artist as he encounters some unusual people while wandering around the city looking for one of his paintings, which has disappeared.)

When asked about his acting technique, the postman/artist/actor replied that he just followed the instructions of director Sorgana as if he were a robot. He said the experience was exhausting because each scene required about 10 takes, and he didn’t understand the story very well to begin with.

The newspaper reports that when the movie was shown at Cannes, the audience erupted in applause at the end, with some of the viewers calling out “Morimoto!” He telephoned his wife—whom he left back home in Kumamoto—to tell her what had happened, and she replied, “You’re joking, right?”

Here’s a brief review from the American show biz trade paper Variety, which didn’t care for the film. They say it doesn’t have an international distributor and is unlikely to get one (though it will surely be shown in Japan at some point). Here’s another brief review from CineEuropa.

One has to wonder: Does Morimoto Ken’ichi get into bed every night and laugh himself to sleep?

Matsuri da! (78): How low can you go?

Don’t move that limbo bar
You’ll be a limbo star
How low can you go?
- Limbo Rock (Jon Sheldon, William E. “Billy” Strange)

HOW’S THIS for a bright idea? Religious institutions where they encourage people to have some playground fun!

That seems to be the motivation for the Shinto shrines in Japan which have what are called mini-torii. The torii is the distinctive shrine gateway, and it serves as both the marker of the sacred space and as a symbol for the shrine itself. It’s usually erected near the start of the path leading to the main hall.

But just because something’s sacred doesn’t mean it can’t be used for amusement. One example is shown in the first photo, which is a scene from the Flower Festival at the Awashima shrine in Unzen, Nagasaki. (You might remember that Unzen was the location of some severe volcano eruptions in the early 1990s.)

In addition to the regular torii at the front of the premises, the Awashima shrine has three mini-torii. It’s a festival custom for women to try to crawl through these gateways. Successfully squeezing through all three is said to bring several benefits, such as safe childbirth, the rearing of healthful children, and a happy marriage. (Perhaps I should rearrange the order of those benefits!)

The torii are made of stone and have inner dimensions of 33 centimeters, 30 centimeters, and 27 centimeters. The women pass through the largest one first and then go on to the smaller ones in succession, which is supposed to represent the process of childbirth.

Meanwhile, the Awashima shrine in Uto, Kumamoto (this Awashima is written with different kanji), bills itself as having the number one mini-torii in Japan, as you can see from its Japanese-language website.

They also have three mini-torii that people crawl through, though all three have 30-centimeter-square openings.

Since mini-torii are the shrine’s specialty, the parents in the district asked the authorities to create some special ones so their kids could crawl through in the hope of helping them pass school entrance examinations. That’s how the shrine’s chief priest came up with the idea for the one he’s showing off in the photo. The shrine has assembled it during the exam period during the past two years, and this year it was left up until March 31.

The pencils are 60 centimeters high and have a diameter of 10 centimeters. The inner opening is also 30 centimeters square. Pencils usually have six sides, but the priest must have been divinely inspired to make these with five. The word for passing a test in Japanese is gokaku, with a slightly elongated o sound. Make the o sound shorter, and the word can mean “five angles”.

It might not be so easy for some women—or bigger students—to pass through those torii, but it’s got to be easier than a camel passing through the eye of a needle on the way to heaven!

Matsuri da! (68): Baptism Shinto style in Japan

SOME CHRISTIAN CHURCHES—following a Hebrew custom–insist on baptism with full body immersion for purification. This has an intriguing parallel with Shinto, as shown by the Hadaka Matsuri (Naked Festival) of the Yasaka Shinto shrine in Kumamoto, which was held on the 20th. A group of men change into loincloths to perform a misogi, or ritual ablution, in imitation of the monks who did the same 400 years ago during a time of plague in the area.

Fortunately, we can watch the actual event because RKK Television in Kumamoto City filed a report that you can access here. (RealPlayer is necessary.) Here’s a quick translation of the newsreader’s text:

“The Hadaka Matsuri (Naked Festival) was held today in Amakusa-gun, Reihoku-machi, during which area residents carried a mikoshi (portable Shinto shrine holding the divinity) into the sea in supplication for health and safety.

“The Hadaka Matsuri of Yasaka Jinja (Shinto shrine) in Kotsufukae, Amakusa-gun, Reihoku-machi, is said to have begun about 400 years ago when people in the area were suffering from a virulent disease. Seeking relief through divine intervention, itinerant mountain priests plunged into the cold sea in an act of religious austerity.

“After a Shinto rite was conducted around a bonfire at 10:00 a.m., a group of 30 men ranging in age from 24 to 62 and wearing bleached cotton loincloths carried the mikoshi outside the shrine grounds and entered the frigid waters.

“It was unfortuately rainy this morning in the Amakusa area, but the men, whose skin turned red in the cold rain, offered prayers for the health and safety of local residents as they swam about 200 meters, buffeted by the waves. Many spectators provided moral support.

“The men later carried the mikoshi to about 180 homes in the Kotsufukae area.”

Additional information: The itinerant mountain priests, or yamabushi in Japanese, were known to carry conch shell trumpets (for reasons I don’t understand), and that’s why one of the men can be seen blowing one in the film clip. The phrase they are chanting for self-encouragement is “Yoiya, yoiya!” Also, during their visits to local homes after coming out of the sea, they enter without removing or changing their footwear, normally a serious breach of etiquette in Japan. Legend has it that the householders are supposed to give their home a thorough cleaning by sundown.

In Christianity, baptism is a rite of purification that represents an initiation. The parishioners of the Yasaka shrine aren’t being initiated—but they are recreating an event in which their ancestors were saved.

Shogatsu: Pounding Mochi for New Year’s Day in Japan

NOW THAT the Christmas decorations have been taken down, Japanese attention has turned to the real yearend holiday, which is the most important holiday on the calendar—New Year’s Day.

Though Christmas has become a part of life in Japan, it’s little more than a festival of light and a commercial opportunity. It may be a pleasant diversion for children and young people, but unless it falls on a weekend, 25 December is still a working day here.

One of the perennially popular seasonal songs in the US is I’ll Be Home for Christmas (written in 1943 at the height of World War II). But the yearend holiday the Japanese come home for falls on 1 January, and that’s the day everyone around the country has been getting ready for.

Just as there are many traditions associated with Christmas in Western countries, there are also many traditions associated with New Year’s Day in Japan.

One such custom is mochitsuki, or mochi rice pounding, which is performed to produce a traditional food. Mochi is a type of rice cake made from a very glutinous form of rice, and in the old days people made it by hand using a mortar and a wooden mallet. Steaming rice is pounded into sticky whole and then formed into either rounded cakes or sheets that are cut into squares.

Mochi has long been an essential part of some religious ceremonies, and none are more important than those held at yearend. Three mochi cakes of different sizes, called kagamimochi (mirror mochi), are displayed as a decoration in both homes and shrines. The cakes themselves are also eaten in zoni, a kind of soup that can be made in several different ways. The most auspicious food eaten during the season, zoni is thought to have originated in the 15th century in a ritual for partaking food with the divinities.

Those people who still pound mochi for tradition’s sake do it out in the yard at their home with family or friends. But the custom is also performed at other sites. One example is the mochitsuki shown in the first photo at the municipal offices of Mima, Tokushima Prefecture. The city employees of Mima hold the ceremony annually to mark the end of the work year, but they add a twist—they swing their hammers in time with music played on shamisens.

Twenty members of Udatsu, a shamisen mochitsuki preservation association, work the mochi while music is performed in the background. This year, they hammered out 36 kilograms worth. Other city employees formed the rice cakes, which were distributed to people who came to the offices that day. The custom in Mima of combining mochi with music predates City Hall–it has 420 years of history behind it.

Mochi demand is much too great to fill completely by hand, however, so even as you read this small businesses throughout the country are operating round-the-clock to put a smile on the faces of mochi lovers nationwide. The second photo shows the mochi made at Co-Op Kobe in the city of the same name, which began production this season on the 26th. Their small plant employs 230 people, including students hired just for the season, and the work will go on 24 hours a day for a six-day period until the 31st.

This year, they expect to make about 10.5 million cakes weighing 40 grams each. The reports cheerfully inform us that if the Co-Op Kobe cakes were piled one on top of another, the stack would be 210 kilometers high, or 56 times higher than Mt. Fuji.

The folks in the previous two examples are making mochi to be eaten, but third photo shows the miko, or shrine maidens, at the Suwa Shinto shrine at Nishiyama-machi in Nagasaki City making two giant kagamimochi for decoration.

The two bruisers they’ll be slapping together are made with mochi rice grown in Isahaya and will weigh 30 kilograms each. After they finished the pounding, they let the mochi set until the 30th–today!–and then put the two huge cakes together. One miko said the more she pounded, the more she enjoyed the sensation of the rice sticking to the mallet, though she still wound up with callouses. (And probably sore shoulders, too.)

Not all mochi rice is used for food. This is Japan, after all, so some of it is diverted to sake production, as you can see in the fourth photo.

The Aso Shinto shrine in Aso, Kumamoto Prefecture, makes sweet sake to distribute to the people who visit the shrine on New Year’s Day. They finished the job on the 21st, and are letting fermentation work its magic until New Year’s Eve.

They use rice donated by parishioners. The reports say that sake made with mochi rice has a more full-bodied, sweeter flavor, but I’ve never had any, so I can’t confirm that.

Sometimes at this time of year people in Japan ask me if I’ve got that New Year’s spirit, but I always have to disappoint them by saying no. The New Year’s spirit, much like the Christmas spirit, is the result of holiday experiences accumulated from the age of zero, and the American New Year’s holidays of my childhood were too boring to create nostalgic memories. All the fun came during Christmas, it was too cold to go outside and play, and television, with college football games morning, noon, and night, was even more boring than usual.

I did pound mochi once during my first year in Japan. Rather than put me in the New Year’s spirit, however, it just reminded me how lucky I was that I don’t have to make a living from manual labor. It’s a lot of work swinging that mallet, and it took a lot longer than I thought for the rice to congeal into a whole. I enjoy the taste and consistency of unpounded mochi rice, but don’t consider mochi rice cakes a treat—too gummy and hard to chew—so I’ve politely declined invitatations since then. The enjoyment came from the sweat-based camaraderie developed with the other people who worked just as hard as I did.

For a video of mochitsuki, look in the third column from the right on the list of this page of Brovision videos of life in Japan (link also on the right sidebar). That’s exactly what happens!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s as good an excuse as any!

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

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

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

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

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

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