Just deserts

Upon a pillory – that al the world may see / A just desert for such impiety.

- Warning Faire Women (1599)

IF it were possible to bestow a person with a medal for services rendered to society, pin the medal to his chest, cover his eyes with a blindfold, stick a final cigarette in his mouth, and stand him against a wall to be executed by firing squad, Public Enemy/Hero #1 would be Julian “Wikileaks” Assange. While his behavior is undoubtedly execrable by any standard, we are also undoubtedly better off for knowing some of the information he was responsible for revealing. Much that information demonstrates the contempt the international political oligarchy has for the people they rule. Some of that information involves the Japan-U.S. security alliance.

Recall that in the summer of 2009, Hatoyama Yukio and the Democratic Party of Japan made the specific promise during their lower house election campaign to tear up the agreement with the Americans and move the Marine air base at Futenma in Okinawa outside of the prefecture “at a minimum”, and ideally outside the country altogether. Negotiations for dealing with the base began after Marines raped a schoolgirl near there in 1995.

To briefly recapitulate: The United States governed Okinawa from 1945 to 1972, even though the Allied occupation ended in 1952. It took 20 more years for the Americans to give Okinawa back.

Cross my heart and hope to die!

It would be entertaining to hear someone deny the argument that they still occupy it. The Ryukyus account for 0.6% of Japan’s land area, but host 75% of American military facilities in the country. Those bases occupy 18% of Okinawa’s land area. Roughly 70% of the people on the country’s four main islands support the military alliance with the United States, compared to only 10% of the Okinawans. (A higher percentage is willing to put up with it for the economic benefits.) More than 50% of Okinawans think the unwillingness of the rest of the country to either reduce their burden or accept American military facilities themselves is a form of discrimination. That makes it the ultimate manifestation in Japan of the Not In My Back Yard phenomenon.

The American military is stationed in the country for Japan’s “defense”, but Futenma is a Marine air base. Marines attack; they don’t defend.

When negotiations began with the Clinton Administration, there was an American promise to return Futenma to Japan (who built the first air base there during the war) in five to seven years. That somehow morphed into a project to build a new airbase in northern Okinawa.

There are four directly elected lower house seats in Okinawa Prefecture. Before the election, two seats were held by the then-ruling LDP, one by the Social Democrats, and one by the People’s New Party. Buoyed by the anti-LDP sentiment nationwide, the Aso government’s use of the Koizumian two-thirds lower house majority to push through the Guam Transfer Agreement, and the DPJ promise to move Futenma, the DPJ snatched those two LDP seats in the 2009 election. They didn’t run any candidates in the other two districts; the incumbents were members of parties that were part of their alliance and which joined the ruling coalition.

Several things became apparent within days after Mr. Hatoyama took office. Among them were that he had no idea what he was doing, neither he nor his party could be trusted to keep any of their campaign promises, and he had no business holding any executive position whatsoever, much less the prime minister of Japan at a turning point in the country’s political and governmental history.

To telescope a long story, two months after he opened the fall session of the Diet with a speech at the end of October 2009, he couldn’t keep his own story straight about his government’s plans for the Futenma base or their negotiations with the Americans. Statements made in the morning became inoperative before the end of the day. He would decide before the end of the year and then he put it off until May. He famously asked Barack Obama to trust him, and people wondered what it was he could be trusted to do. By early January, the Japanese media already assumed that his days as prime minister were numbered. His support numbers were in free fall after he had squandered both his honeymoon period and one of the most golden of opportunities ever available to a new government and its leader.

By May 2010, Mr. Hatoyama confirmed what had been obvious since the beginning of the year when he announced that Futenma would stay in Okinawa as originally planned. He traveled to Okinawa himself to apologize to the governor:

“I tried to do different things, but I came face to face with the difficulty of the actual problem of (moving) everything outside the prefecture.”

Mr. Hatoyama resigned at the end of the month after one of the shortest terms and with one of the lowest support ratings in postwar Japanese history.

The Beans are Spilled

One year ago this month, Wikileaks released American governmental cables sent from Japan to the U.S. about the Futenma discussions. They didn’t generate much comment, even in the English-language media, because the focus of Japan-related news was still the Tohoku disaster of two months before.

That information made Mr. Hatoyama and his government look even worse, as difficult as it is to imagine. Try this account from the Economist:

LESS than a month after a new government took office in Japan in September 2009, American officials talked their Japanese counterparts through a longstanding frustration: stalled plans to build a new airbase for American marines on the southern island of Okinawa. According to confidential minutes of the meeting sent to Washington, DC by the American embassy in Tokyo, leaked by WikiLeaks, Kurt Campbell, an assistant secretary of state, said a new airstrip was necessary because of China’s growing military strength. But that could not be discussed publicly, “for obvious reasons”.

A few months later Mr Campbell went further, according to another cable. Because of potential threats from North Korea, China and elsewhere, America and Japan faced “the most challenging security environment” in 50 years. However, he said the messages to the public often glossed over that reality. Presumably that too was to avoid offending China, even though it would have helped Okinawans to understand why the new facility is deemed so important.

And:

The WikiLeaks cables show that the number of marines and their dependents slated for removal to Guam has been inflated in order to soften opposition. (The 2009) agreement mentions the removal of about 8,000 marines and 9,000 dependents. But an American embassy cable in 2009 says that when the plan was formulated in 2006, “both the 8,000 and 9,000 numbers were deliberately maximised to optimise political value in Japan.” Okinawa officials suspect that the number of Guam-bound marines may be as few as 3,000—if they go at all.

When it came to power in 2009, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which had opposed the relocation plan in opposition, came under intense pressure from Washington to push ahead with it. American officials urged the new government not to discuss alternatives in public, warning of a strong American reaction if it did, according to WikiLeaks.

The Eurasia Review Newsletter provided more details in an article by Rajaram Panda. ERN deserves a milder form of the treatment appropriate for Assange: They should be commended for presenting additional information and then kicked in their backsides for entrusting the article to Mr. Panda, who combines a tendency to exaggerate with an ignorance of Japanese politics remarkable even for non-Japanese who write about the country.

The article begins:

In a startling revelation, the US cables posted on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks said that, in 2009, the US had warned the then Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio about Japan’s wavering policies on bilateral ties.

It doesn’t take them long to screw it up:

When Hatoyama took office in September 2009, Japanese people believed that he was a sincere but helpless politician who was unable to fight the influence of the US.

Not one word after the comma in that sentence is true. No one knew how he would deal with American influence, and he gave every indication beforehand that he intended to create some distance in bilateral relations. While it is true that some view him as sincere, it is also true that they view as childishly naive the few policies he’s sincere about.

The revealed documents now show that Hatoyama and the DPJ had lied to the Japanese people during the 2009 election campaign. The DPJ and the Japanese government officials were never committed to relocating the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawa Prefecture, as the revealed documents indicate.

That’s true, but only in an interpretative sense. The American arm twisting of the DPJ does not seem to have begun until after the election.

Between 2009 and early 2010, Hatoyama and his officials conveyed to their US counterparts that Japan would seek alternatives to the 2006 Agreement to relocate Futenma to the Henoko district of Nago in Okinawa Prefecture. However, in a secret pact, they said that Japan will honour the 2006 Agreement if the US rejected the proposed alternative.

The Obama administration knew early on that the Hatoyama administration would go along with the 2006 Agreement as long as the US continued to reject any alternative. Hatoyama had secretly said this to the US six months before he decided to break his promise to the people to relocate the base outside Okinawa.

Six months before he announced that he broke his promise was in December 2009, post-election and post-arm twisting.

The US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific affairs, Kurt Campbell, complained in October 2009 that Hatoyama told his Chinese and South Korean counterparts in Beijing that Japan depended on the US too much. Campbell told Japanese Parliamentary Defence Secretary Akihisa Nagashima that such remarks “would create a crisis in US-Japan relations… Imagine the Japanese response if the US government were to say publicly that it wished to devote more attention to China than Japan.”

We don’t have to imagine the Japanese response, because we know what it is — official sycophancy. The U.S. government has been devoting more attention to China than Japan without saying it publicly for the past two decades.

Now they don’t bother to hide it. This week the U.S. government allowed China the exclusive privilege of purchasing U.S. debt directly from the Treasury, without having to buy the bonds through Wall Street brokers and pay their commissions. The Chinese are now the leading American debt underwriters. Japan formerly starred in the role of Number One Sponge and still buys nearly the same amount as China, but they’ve never gotten the star treatment.

As Mark Steyn frequently points out, the Americans will be paying enough interest on the debt held by China to finance the annual outlays for the People’s Liberation Army by 2016. Meanwhile, Japan pays far and away the highest vigorish of any overseas country to support American troops stationed on its territory. This is justified in part by the need to defend Japan from China.

Finally, a contemporary use of the word “bizarre” that isn’t hyperbole.

But that’s unless the Chinese are actually unloading on the secondary market what they buy from the Treasury to satisfy their desire to get out of US debt and into gold while satisfying US demands to buy more of its debt. (There’s another interesting Wikileak in there, too.)

The Japanese people now feel that Hatoyama’s US policy was fraught with duplicity and backroom deals. Being the Land Minister, Maehara was dabbling with foreign affairs and was playing a crucial role in handling Japan’s US policy.

He’s speaking here of Maehara Seiji, who was involved with the discussions. Mr. Panda thinks that Mr. Maehara’s participation was due to his connections with the American government, and were improper because he was the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport. He is not aware that Maehara Seiji held another Cabinet portfolio at the time — Minister of State for Okinawa and the Northern Territories. It was his business to be involved.

In other words, Mr. Panda doesn’t know the A of the ABCs of Japanese politics/government.

The Obama administration was aware that there was a section of politicians in Japan who sought distance from Washington. Even many Japanese people started to view Japan’s policies as being dictated by the US and described their own country as “America’s baby”. In particular, right-wing nationalists vouched for reducing reliance on the US and argued that Japan must not be afraid to take a confrontational position in foreign policy.

“Started to view”? That view started among many Japanese people on 16 August 1945. And if there is a certified demonstration of lazy thinking/no thinking/no real experience among people writing about Japan, it is their wishful thinking about the effect on modern politics of “right-wing nationalists”, whatever either of those debased terms mean nowadays. The psychopundits either overlook or never saw that the same arguments attributed to those unenlightened and unintelligent dregs of society have been made even more stridently by the left-wing internationalists in Japan. The leading figures of the Democratic Party government are among the country’s most well-known left-wing internationalists.

The Obama administration is believed to be instrumental in Hatoyama’s ouster from office because of the latter’s inept handling of the Futenma base relocation issue.

Not in the US and Japan of Planet Earth. Last rites were already being prepared for Hatoyama Yukio a few months after he took office, for a galaxy of reasons. Futenma was the coup de grace. People are not without their suspicions about American string-pulling in the Japanese government, but the Democratic Party did not want to go into the July 2010 upper house elections led by a man whose support ratings were maxing out at 19% in the polls.

The inept handling of the Futenma base relocation issue? Mr. Hatoyama broke his pre-election promises — which of course the U.S. knew about — to do what the United States wanted to do. This doesn’t make much sense.

Besides, Campbell complained in October 2009 about Hatoyama’s policy towards China and South Korea. At the Nuclear Summit in April 2010 held at Washington, Obama snubbed Hatoyama and weeks later Hatoyama resigned and was replaced by the more US acceptable Kan Naoto. Kan immediately confirmed that the Futenma base issue would proceed according to the US desire. No wonder, when the leaks surfaced, he declined to comment and said that the announcement of information was “not legitimate”.

Kan Naoto is one of the leading left-wing internationalists of the DPJ, though he is also known as a trimmer most interested in power. Japanese arms were almost certainly twisted to cause the DPJ to cry uncle, but the crying had already happened before Mr. Kan’s turn arrived. As deputy prime minister, he had a ringside seat.

It is too soon to assess how the public will digest the dishonesty of the DPJ and how the Japanese government succumbed to the US pressure to follow its line of thinking. The opposition is likely to mount a campaign again calling for Kan’s resignation. Maehara was seen as an agent of the US and the Japanese people are unlikely to forgive him.

It will always be too soon for Mr. Panda to offer analysis about Japan. None of this happened. The opposition mounted a campaign calling for Kan’s resignation, but none of the many compelling reasons had anything to do with the United States. Mr. Maehara has been relegated to the sidelines, not because he was seen as an “agent of the US”, but because he’s viewed as an opportunistic lightweight with an unexplained affinity for North Korea.

Japan-US ties are too complex and its real value cannot be evaluated from this single incident.

Nor can they be evaluated by a drive-by observer lacking field-specific knowledge. The only solution for dealing with people such as Mr. Panda is to persecute them to the fullest extent of the Internet Law of the Jungle.

Finally, here’s how the Ryukyu Shimpo, an Okinawan newspaper, handled with the revelations:

According to U.S. official telegrams disclosed by WikiLeaks, while the DPJ administration was seeking the relocation outside of Okinawa Prefecture of the U.S. Marine Corps now based at Futenma, a staff member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan suggested to United States government officials that they should not compromise on the Futenma relocation plan. The cable indicates that both governments inflated the numbers involved in U.S. Marine Forces Transfer Plan from Okinawa to Guam. The Roadmap for Realignment Implementation agreed to by both governments in the spring of 2006 states that 8000 Marine Corps personnel and 9000 dependents would move to Guam, but leaked telegrams indicate that these numbers were inflated to optimize their political value.

And:

The cables also include an example of a Japanese career bureaucrat recommending to United States officials that they stay on course with the Roadmap for Futenma relocation after the regime change to the Democratic Party of Japan. At an unofficial lunch meeting October 12, 2009, Director General of Bureau of Defense Policy Shigenobu Takamizawa is reported as warning the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt M. Campbell “against premature demonstration of flexibility in adjusting the realignment package.” The cables also reported that a counselor in charge of political affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan made the basically the same remark to his counterpart of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. The cables therefore indicate that career bureaucrats moved to prevent the Hatoyama administration from seeking the relocation of the facilities at Futenma outside of Okinawa.

This is more evidence, by the way, that the Japanese bureaucracy considers itself to be the permanent ruling class of Japan. That exonerates neither Mr. Hatoyama nor the DPJ, however. Another of their campaign promises was to bring the bureaucracy under control, and they have the authority to do so if they choose to use it. But enjoying the perquisites of political status is more attractive than exercising that authority and touching off a de facto civil war that few of them have the ability to contest.

Diplomatic cables from this period show that despite the DPJ’s formal efforts to find a new candidate site for Futenma, the United States from an early stage thought the Hatoyama administration would go along with the 2006 agreement as long as the United States continued to reject any alternatives.

On Dec. 10, the U.S. Embassy inTokyo dispatched a cable that was classified “secret” and for American eyes only.

The cable said, “Five DPJ Cabinet members (Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa and Maehara) met on the evening of December 8 and agreed that they could not accept moving forward with the Futenma Relocation Facility (FRF) because of opposition from the DPJ’s coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party.”

According to the document, Maehara explained to Roos that Japan would seek a number of alternatives that might be acceptable to both the United States and the Okinawa people.

But the cable shows that Maehara also said, “If the U.S. does not agree to any alternative to the existing FRF plan, the DPJ would be prepared to go ahead with the current relocation plan and let the coalition break up if necessary after Golden Week (April 29 to May 5 in 2010).”

Thank you, Julian Assange.

But there’s more:

On Dec. 21, 2009, then Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka had a lunch meeting with (US Ambassador) Roos. Their discussion was included in a cable classified as “secret.”

Yabunaka referred to the Dec. 17 meeting in Copenhagen between Hatoyama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The cable has Yabunaka saying, “Prime Minister Hatoyama confirmed to the secretary in Copenhagen that if the (Japan) review of the FRF alternatives to Henoko did not yield viable proposals, (Japan) would return to the 2006 FRF agreement.”

Immediately after his meeting with Clinton, Hatoyama told reporters accompanying him: “It would be very dangerous to force through (the 2006 agreement). We have begun efforts to think about new alternatives.”

However, the cable has Yabunaka referring to those media reports as “inaccurate.”

And:

On Jan. 26, then Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yorihisa Matsuno met with embassy officials. A cable classified as “confidential” and titled, “Hatoyama confidante on Futenma, Nago election,” described Matsuno as “Hinting at current Kantei (Prime Minister’s Office) thinking.”

Matsuno is further quoted as saying, “Hatoyama and the Okinawa Working Group will have to consider ‘for form’s sake’ Futenma options outside of Okinawa, but the only realistic options are to move Futenma to Camp Schwab or another ‘existing facility.’”

The cable also has Matsuno saying, “The Camp Schwab landfill option was ‘dead.’”

Turning over a New Loop

A flood of media features timed for the 40th anniversary of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan and the related events washed over news media consumers last week. Hatoyama Yukio went back to Okinawa for the first time since he dined on crow with the Okinawa governor in May 2010, and delivered a speech at a Ginowan hotel.

Here’s how he started the speech:

“I love all Okinawans.”

You’re such a lovely audience!

He continued by whining:

“I wanted to let some air into the (base) issue. I wanted to make some progress during my time in office, somehow.”

Before he appalled the nation:

“I have not been able now to satisfy the emotion of “outside the prefecture, at a minimum”. I can clearly state that one who has not satisfied that emotion does not fully understand the emotions of everyone in Okinawa. I intend to have that belief always.”

Everyone in Japan knew what he meant despite the vacuum-packed circumlocution and euphemism. All the headlines in the print media trumpeted the Hatoyama claim that he still supported moving the base outside the prefecture.

There was remarkably little anger, incidentally. People long ago realized he’s an eternal adolescent (most closely resembling a junior high school girl) with too little sense and too much money who had no business becoming prime minister. They intend to have that belief always.

One of his excuses was that he wasn’t able to do devote all his attention to the issue because he was too busy putting together a budget, despite having thousands of subordinates at his disposal. Nobody believed that, either, coming as it did from a man who preferred to attend galas with his trophy wife, the royalty of showbiz, and the Imperial household rather than attend to the business of government.

There was also the usual externalization of the internal fog:

“My thinking got too far ahead of itself, and I wasn’t able to fully convince many people.

“When I think about it, I wonder if it was an unreasonable course. When I think about it now, that’s what I think.”

Nonaka Hiromu, the chief cabinet secretary under LDP Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo in 2000, attended the same event as Mr. Hatoyama. When it was his turn to speak, he looked directly at the former prime minister and said:

“Men are supposed to have a sense of shame. Did you come so casually to Okinawa to dishonor (literally, hurl mud at) the Okinawans?”

Later interviewed by the Ryukyu Shimpo, he added:

“A person who stands on the dais and dishonors the Okinawans makes my blood boil (literally, steams my guts).”

Mr. Hatoyama was his oblivious self when he too was interviewed by the Ryukyu Shimpo the next day:

“It was natural to raise the issue of moving the base outside the prefecture.”

By this time he had found a new excuse:

“The Defense and Foreign Ministry bureaucracy struggled to decide how to return the base to Henoko (in line with the pre-existing agreement). They introduced the logic through the Americans that it would be inappropriate to take the base outside the prefecture, and only Henoko was acceptable.”

He’s confirming the Wikileaks revelations about Messrs. Takamizawa and Yabunaka above, and indirectly contradicting Mr. Kan’s denial. All he had to do to end the malarkey was put his foot down, but there wasn’t enough time to put him through a series of testosterone injections.

*****

After His Majesty’s Firing Squad in the Kingdom of Just Deserts dispatches Assange, it will be the turn of Hatoyama Yukio to stand blindfolded against the wall for his high political crimes and misdemeanors. Pinned to his lapel will be a medal for the service he rendered his country by using his mother’s money to buy the party that ended single-party rule in Japan.

*****

Meanwhile:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe the United States should remove all its troops from Western Europe and let the Europeans defend themselves. Only 29% disagree, but another 20% are undecided.

That number will probably continue to grow and extend to Asia, if it already doesn’t.

*****

Mr. Hatoyama isn’t the only one who wanted to go back to Okinawa. I’ll bet the other guys had more fun, though.

Questionable

HERE are a few questions about the responses of some people who have objected to recent actions by the Japanese government.

Questions #1

Early last week, anti-capital punishment activists praised Japan for what Kyodo termed its “apparent de facto moratorium” — whatever that word sequence is supposed to mean — on killing convicted killers.

What really happened, rather than what apparently de facto happened, is this: The last time anyone walked the long green Japanese mile was July 2010. Rather than being a moratorium, it was an unannounced decision by the new prime minister, Kan Naoto, to stop executions. He was abetted in that decision by his second justice minister, Eda Satsuki, long an opponent of capital punishment. Mr. Eda always dodged the question when asked whether he had declared a moratorium on executions, as well on as signing the papers authorizing them. Last year was the first year there were no executions in Japan in 19 years.

Both men are now gone from the Cabinet for good, which means that affairs have reverted to normal. Three men were hung by the neck until dead on 29 March. In keeping with the Japanese practice to reserve the death penalty for multiple murders, one of the three rammed a car into a train station in 1999 and killed five people with a knife.

Capital!

Every survey I’ve ever seen has the Japanese public approving capital punishment with roughly 70% support. A December 2009 Cabinet Office poll found that 85.6% of respondents said capital punishment is “unavoidable in some cases”.

The English-language media says the issue is “hotly debated” in Japan. What they mean is that they want it to become hotly debated in the real Japan instead of the Japan of their imaginations. Most Japanese think capital punishment is a natural response to certain circumstances, in the same way that others think abortion is a natural response to different circumstances. A look at the poll results shows that only a sliver of the population is likely to get hot about it, and then only those who know how to write press releases.

The executions were followed by Justice Minister Ogawa Toshio’s announcement that plans for a discussion panel on the pros and cons of executing cons will not be put into execution after all.

Said the Kyodo English-language article, with typically emotive language:

“The panel would have invited input from experts on all sides of the emotive issue, and Ogawa’s decision to curtail the opportunity for debate, including on the suspension of executions, immediately drew fire from death penalty critics.

“’It is left up to the personal creed of a justice minister whether to debate capital punishment. The DPJ cannot avoid blame for its irresponsibility as a ruling party,’ said Hideki Wakabayashi, an official at Amnesty International Japan.”

Amplified bologna. Mr. Wakabayashi thought it was fine that the personal creed of a different justice minister led him to apparently de facto suspend executions. Further, the only “experts” on capital punishment are those who research the frequency, the means, the standards, the distribution, and the background of the practice. Everyone else is trafficking in moral suasion, regardless of the title on their name card.

Nor did Mr. Ogawa curtail the opportunity for debate. Mr. Wakabayashi is at liberty to debate the subject until he’s gassed. He can write op-eds, magazine articles, or books, give speeches at rented halls or standing on top of upturned beer crates in the park, or wheedle interviews in the broadcast media. The absence of government sponsorship does not mean a thing does not exist.

And since Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko has no problem with capital punishment, it certainly wasn’t left up to the personal creed of this justice minister.

The EU is floating in the same boat. Here’s Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, the European Union’s High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, UK Labor Party pol, and a Life Peer who was born into a coal-mining family (i.e., she’s leftist aristocracy):

“The EU deeply regrets the execution of Yasuaki Uwabe, Tomoyuki Furusawa and Yasutoshi Matsuda on 29 March 2012, and the fact that this marks the resumption of executions in Japan after twenty months during which none took place.”

Why does Lady Ashton not mind her own business? Or are her official EU duties as insubstantial as her peerage?

The opponents of capital punishment say it is cruel and inhuman, but that’s looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope. Cruel and inhuman is deliberately stabbing five innocent people to death at a train station.

There were lamentations that the three condemned men were given only a few hours’ advance notice, and that their families were not notified until after the executions. There were no apparent de facto lamentations for the victims, who received no advance notice of their deaths at all. Their families weren’t notified until after they died either.

It is not unreasonable to assume that Lady Ashton and Mr. Wakabayashi are concerned about “social” justice, “social” democracy, and “social” welfare, and therefore about the well-being of society itself.

Why then do they deny society the means for self-defense?

Questions #2

Most Okinawans are getting really tired of having to make room for all those American service personnel. The entire Okinawa island chain is 877 square miles in all, and it is the location of 70-75% of the 47,000 American warfighters in Japan. American military installations occupy slightly more than 10% of all Okinawan territory, which is just over half that of the 1,545 square miles of Rhode Island, the smallest of the 50 American states.

In December 2010, Kan Naoto’s government agreed to pay the U.S. JPY 188 billion a year (about US$2.25 billion then) every year through 2015 to help defray the American military expenses. That’s significantly more than either Germany or South Korea pay.

The Japanese finally convinced the Americans in 2009 to move some Marines from Okinawa to Guam, but they had to accept a bill for $2.8 billion to get it done. That money will be allocated to the construction costs for new facilities in Guam.

But the U.S. reopened the deal in February when Congress wanted to cut expenditures and thought Japan should pay even more to transport American soldiers and build facilities for those American soldiers on American-governed territory. They wanted US$3.5 billion instead.

Why did Japan agree?

The Kyodo report had the answer:

“Japan, which initially resisted the move, has since relented to preserve the harmony of the bilateral alliance, the sources said.”

Ah, so. To keep the Americans from pouting and behaving unpleasantly. But you don’t always gotta have wa.

Why is Japan helping the U.S. out of their budgetary mess by exacerbating their own?

I have an answer for that:

The Japanese government is paying vigorish to the United States of America for a protection scheme.

Now here’s the question no one has an answer for.

Why don’t the Japanese apply the same attitude to the U.S. as they do to Amnesty International or the EU?

It would be salubrious for both parties if the Japanese were to tell the Americans to depart from Futenma in one year and to pay their own way home. The lower American lip would protrude; the neo-cons and many on both sides of the aisle in Congress would raise their voices, but they’d get over it. They’d still have plenty of military firepower here.

The Japanese might even figure out that the Americans need them just as much, if not more, than they need the Americans.

Afterwords:

Here’s another question: Why does Amnesty International and the EU pester Japan — or even Mr. Natural himself, Abdallah Al-Bishi? Those organizations are full of the type of people who think multiculturalism is the contemporary apostles’ creed, can’t bring themselves to hold responsible the European Islamist youth for their actions when they rampage — or even admit their identity — but yet insist the uncivilized un-continentals on either end of Asia conform to their moral code instead of allowing them their own.

Al-Bishi’s implicit comparison of men and women at about the eight-minute mark is most interesting, by the way.

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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!

Snow scenes and cherry blossoms

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

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

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

They play soccer in the snow.

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

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

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

They go mountain biking in the snow.

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

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

They also have races with radio cars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the media thinks Japan is weird!

UPDATE:
Now here’s some good news.

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

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

Nengajo 2012

CENTURIES OF TRADITION inform the festivities during the New Year holiday in Japan, making it an analog for the Christmas holidays in countries with a Christian orientation. That includes customs, activities, and events at home and in public, both semi-sacred and secular, specific to the season. For example, just as others send Christmas cards, the Japanese send New Year’s cards to family, friends, and business associates called nengajo. If they’re mailed by a certain date, the post office will deliver them smack dab on 1 January.

That’s how I began the New Year’s post for 2011. Beats me if I can think of a way to improve it, so that’s how I’ll begin the Ampontan nengajo for 2012. The first paragraph may be recycled, but the rest isn’t!

*****
Cleanliness really is next to godliness in Japan. One reason is that the concept of kegare, or impurity, is an important part of the Shinto worldview. A manifestation of that on the mundane level is the conduct of spring cleaning at yearend. Then again, spring was traditionally considered to have begun with the New Year, an idea that survives in the nengajo message that offers congratulations on the “new spring”. Shinto shrines are also given a thorough spring cleaning at yearend. That ritual is called susubarai, which translates as an exorcism or purification of the soot.

Here’s a scene from this year’s susubarai of the main hall at the Kashima Shinto shrine in Kashima, Ibaraki. Those bamboo poles are four meters long. Ibaraki is near the three prefectures that were hardest hit by March’s Tohoku earthquake, and the shrine’s torii and beams in the main hall were heavily damaged. Said the chief priest:

The shrine deity is the one who limits earthquake damage, so I think that’s the reason it wasn’t any worse. We want to have the new torii finished by the 2014 spring festival. I pray that next year will be a good one.

He’s not alone in that.

The susubarai at the Oyama shrine in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, is called the sendensai, or the festival for purifying the hall. It is a festival of sorts, as the miko shrine maidens start by performing a traditional dance, which is followed by a rite for purifying the tools used for cleaning. If cleanliness and purity is the point, half measures just won’t do.

Then they got to work and exorcised the soot at the main hall. It was 2º C when the picture was taken. That isn’t the most spring-like of temperatures, which is the main reason I’m not excited by the custom of spring cleaning at home in December. Surely they were wearing something warm underneath. The entire operation was handled by 12 people, and those poles they’re wielding are seven meters long. Take the time to look at this photo of the shrine’s front gate: the architecture is both striking and unusual.

It stands to reason that some shrines will be easier to clean than others. Among the others is the Tosho-gu shrine in Nikko, Tochigi, which has more than 500 kirin (sorry for the Wikipedia) and dragons on the outside. That’s particularly true when the kirin and the dragons are national cultural treasures. The shrine was established in 1617, and the enshrined deity is the spirit of none other than The Shogun himself, Tokugawa Ieyasu. It takes 100 people to do all the work here.

Buddhist temples also get the yearend purification treatment, and the insides of the temples get just as dirty as the outsides. The priests and parishioners of Nishi (west) and Higashi (east) Hongwan-ji, a temple complex in Kyoto, have a unique method for driving out the old year’s dirt using bamboo sticks and large fans. It must work: They’ve got 445 tatami mats in the main hall in the west and 927 in the east to clean, and they’ve been cleaning them on 20 December every year since the 15th century.

It starts when the chief priest gives a signal, and the entire line starts whacking and waving. The more nimble climb a ladder to the transoms and blow it out that way. The ritual is also a way to give thanks for a safe year, and it ends when one of the priests draws the character for long life in the air.

While some shrines have to deal with the cleaning of kirin or dragons on the exterior, some Buddhist temples have challenges of their own, such as cleaning statues of the Buddha. That’s quite a challenge at the Kiko-in Obihiro, Hokkaido, whose 6.8-meter-high statue is the largest wooden Buddha north of Tokyo. To be specific, it is a statue of Amida Nyorai. Those bamboo poles are three meters long. It only takes them about 30 minutes, however, as the work surely becomes lighter when it’s sanctified. It’s also a gesture of thanks for the past year.

The cleaning involved with sending off the old year includes the disposition of more than dirt. The shrines also have to do something with all the ema that people entrusted to them during the year. Ema are small wooden plaques on which people write their prayers and wishes. They’re left at the shrine, where they’re received by the divinity. It’s unacceptable to just dump them in the trash, not only for emotional or spiritual reasons, but also because a shrine can have 45,000 of them, as the Hofu Tenman-gu in Hofu, Yamaguchi, did last year. Many of them bore wishes for success in upcoming entrance exams, and most of them were probably granted. It’s an elegant solution: The shrines combine ritual purification and an environmentally friendly fire lit by candles.

Once they’ve taken care of the old year’s business, it’s time to get to work on the new. Speaking of ema, most shrines put up big ones of their own with the symbol from the Oriental zodiac for that particular year. Happy year of the dragon!

Here’s the Big Ema installed at the Kumano shrine in Wakayama. Big in this case means 2.8 meters high and 3.9 meters wide. The eastern-central part of Japan was lashed by a summer typhoon that caused substantial damage, and the Kumano shrine was not spared. Therefore, the painting on this year’s ema has the image of a rising dragon breaking through the black clouds of disaster. The chief priest painted it himself in four days, and it took six priests to carry it to the grounds and replace the old one in the back with the new one.

Just as some Western families hang wreaths on their homes at Christmas, the Japanese adorn the outside of their homes or offices with kadomatsu (corner pine), which is viewed as a temporary abode for the divinities. The folks at Omi-jingu, a shrine in Otsu, Shiga, are known for their jumbo kadomatsu. This year’s version is just as jumbo at four meters high, and it was arranged to resemble a soaring dragon. It was made by a group of parishioners, who also handled the susubarai. For the past seven years, they’ve used a pine tree on the shrine grounds that they temporarily transplant, roots and all. Said one of the kadomatsu designer/gardeners:

There were all sorts of disasters this year, so we made this with the wish that everyone would have a happy life next year.

Another decoration for home or shrine is the shimenawa, a straw rope that denotes a sacred space in general, and the temporary abode of the toshigami, the divinity of the new year, in particular. Of the 30 hung at the Kogane shrine in Gifu City, the one at the front is a jumbo version eight meters long, 40 centimeters in diameter at the thickest part, and 30 kilograms in weight. It’s made from straw from mochi rice stalks, mochi being an even more glutinous variety of rice than japonica.

The Kogane shrine is known for providing good fortune to those interested in money and wealth. In fact, the kanji used for the name of the shrine is the same as that for money, but with a different reading. Shrine officials expect 130,000 hopeful high rollers to visit in the first three days of the new year.

While we’re on the subject of jumbo decorations, here are two jumbo origami of dragons in red and white, the Japanese national colors, at the Tsurusaki Shinto shrine in Hayashima-cho, Okayama. (Japanese language, but nice photos.) They’re 1.8 meters high and four meters long, and if you can’t make it for New Year’s, don’t fret — they’ll be up until the end of the month, and they’re illuminated until 9:00 p.m. every night. Said the chief priest:

With Japan covered by a dark cloud due to the disasters and other reasons, we hope this year everyone can soar again like the dragons that push their way into the sky.

As evidence that old religions can incorporate new elements, this is only the 11th year for the shrine’s origami displays. They started in 2001 with the year of the horse. To symbolize their support for Tohoku recovery, they procured the paper from a wholesaler in Sendai.

An even newer New Year twist on a traditional Japanese art is a public performance of calligraphy by a priest at the Kumano shrine in Tanabe, Wakayama, on a platform in front of the main hall. The folks at the shrine, which is the same one with the big ema above, started the tradition just two years ago. In keeping with the theme of jumbo-ness, this calligraphy is three meters square and was rendered with a brush one meter long. The character can be read as either kirameki or ko, and it means glittering.

Calligraphy is not done with just a flick of the wrist; it also demands internal stillness. The reports from Wakayama say the priest stared at the cloth for a time for spiritual preparation before he started. The reports also say the priest put his entire body into it, which the audience appreciated. One of those watching was a woman from Nagoya, who said:

There was a dignified and awe-inspiring atmosphere, and I found myself straightening my back without realizing it.

Said the calligrapher/priest:

Conditions were very harsh this year with the Tohoku disaster and the typhoon. I hope that next year, each one of us recovers and shines.

Are you noticing that people use the holiday as a way to cleanse themselves of more than just dirt and old objects?

You’ve also probably noticed that the priests aren’t doing all this work by themselves. Their helpers are the Japanese equivalent of Santa’s elves, the miko shrine maidens. Those are the young women dressed in white hakui and red hibakama. (There are those colors again.)

So many people visit during the three-day period that the shrines have to hire extra miko part-time to help. They’re usually high school and college-aged girls, and dealing with the public in a manner befitting a religious institution requires special training in manners and speech. That training also includes instruction in how to wear the clothing, and how to properly hand over the amulets that people buy on their visits. Here’s a scene from the orientation for the 23 arubaito miko conducted by the Toishi Hachiman-gu in Shunan, Yamaguchi, which will celebrate its 1300th anniversary next year. To give you an idea of why the shrines need to supplement the help, the Toshi Hachiman-gu expects 200,000 people to drop by from 1-3 January.

Bigger shrines require more miko, and the Kitano Tenman-gu in Kyoto needed 70 this year for New Year’s duty. (That one’s in English.) They expect 500,000 visitors in the first three days of the New Year. One reason so many people come is that one of the shrine divinities is the deified spirit of Sugawara Michizane, renowned for his learning and erudition. That attracts all those who want to pray for success on the entrance exams for schools or places of employment.

The first order of business for miko training at Kitano is to say a prayer at the main hall, after which the priest performs a purification ritual. That’s followed by an explanation of the buildings, fixtures, and amulets, and the proper way to interact with the worshippers.

Most of the shrines are somewhat strict about the appearance of the Jinja Girls — dyed hair is usually prohibited. Well, wait a minute, let’s modify that. The women old enough to dye their hair, i.e., post high school, are old enough to know that they can buy a bottle or tube and go back to basic black for a few days before getting stylish again.

While they’re sticklers for appearance, the shrines are downright ecumenical about identity. The job is usually open to young women of any nationality. I read one account of a Korean university student in Nagasaki who enjoyed her experience so much one year, she signed up for a second. I’ve also read about one shrine hiring an Italian woman for the season. In fact, here’s an article from China talking about New Year’s customs and the Chinese girls who also serve as miko. Aren’t those hairbands nifty?

Meanwhile, the Gokoku shrine in Kagoshima City trained 40 new miko to help greet their expected visitors. One 20-year-old said she had wanted to wear the white clothing for a long time and was happy to finally get the chance. She also promised to do her best to ensure that the worshippers will be able meet the new year with a good feeling. About 150,000 people are likely to drop on by, so let’s hope she doesn’t get tired from being that cheerful for that long to the crowds. Then again, it isn’t as if she he’ll have to cope with the “behavior” of American shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving.

Here’s the training for 20 miko at Tottori City’s Ube shrine, which is thought to have been founded in 648, so they’ve been at this for more than 1,300 years. The chief priest told the novitiates he wanted them to be sure to give the parishioners a cheerful smile, which might be more difficult than it sounds. How easy is it to be solemn and smiley at the same time?

This shrine also has a connection with money matters, and is said to be just the place for those praying for success in business. In fact, it was the first Shinto shrine to be depicted on paper money — an engraving of the shrine and the founder appeared on the five-yen note in 1900. It also showed up on five-yen and one-yen notes into the Showa era, which began in 1925. They make only five- or one-yen coins instead of notes now, but in those days, a yen was still a yen.

If the global economy doesn’t improve, I might get on the train to Tottori myself.

Hey now! Some guys like photos of women with large silicone implants hanging out of small bikinis. Me, I go for the miko! It’s my website and I’ll steal the photos I want, and I want one more:

Here they are receiving instructions at the Kamegaike Hachiman-gu in Kanagawa City. This is a popular New Year’s destination because it has all the Shichi Fukujin, the Seven Gods of Fortune of Japanese mythology and folklore. Legend has it that the munificent seven come to town on New Year’s and distribute gifts to good little boys and girls of all ages, just like Santa Claus. Instead of a reindeer-powered sleigh, they show up on the good ship Takarabune, which literally means treasure ship. In another Christmas analog, children are given money in envelopes on New Year’s as a gift, and sometimes these envelopes have a picture of the Takarabune on them.

The Kamegaiki shrine is also a good place to go for those who are desirous of safety in traffic and the luck in the draw in the lottery. Then again, the sacred sake the shrine gives away is another attraction. Clever punsters that they are, some Japanese employ the word for a Shinto shrine to refer to the holy hooch as “jinja ale”, and no, I did not make that up.

The more you think about it, the more appealing Shinto gets.

Speaking of grog, the Takara Shuzo sake brewers of Kyoto conducted a survey to find out everyone’s favorite New Year’s drink, and topping the list was sake. (That’s the same takara as the treasure in the takara above.)

The survey was conducted in the Tokyo and Kinki regions among 400 men and women aged 20 to 60+. When asked to name their New Year’s poison, 57.8% replied sake, 53.6% said beer, and 21.2% said wine. (Multiple (hic) answers were possible.) Sake was the leading choice in all age groups except for the people in their 30s.

It’s not all good news for the brewers — some people said they drink it only on New Year’s Day. The explanation of 56.9% was that it’s a special occasion. Others said they just go along with the choice of their family and friends.

In addition to downing the regular old sake, another special holiday custom is three sips from a cup of o-toso, sake mixed with (originally) medicinal herbs and mirin. The survey found that 88.6% of the respondents knew what it was, and that 50.8% drink it either every year or occasionally on New Year’s. The survey also turned up the fact that 53.5% of the people mistakenly thought it was a specially brewed sake, rather than being a mixture. That group consisted mostly of young people.

It was originally drunk to flush out the illnesses of the old year and promote long life in the future. The characters for toso, by the way, are 屠蘇 (the o is the honorific). The first means “to massacre”, and the second is most commonly used to mean a revival or resurrection. Some Western Christians get carried away by the connection they see, but the standard Japanese explanation is that the second character originally represented “the demon that causes illness”. In other words, o-toso is drunk to slay the demon. It’s more likely the origin of the expression Demon Rum than a derivative of the Easter story. Different season altogether.

Of course there’s a connection between liquor and miko, and not what you’re thinking, either. Here are some shrine maidens out tachibana citrus fruit picking at the Iwashimizu Hachiman-gu in Kyoto. Iwashimizu is so famous for the fruit that it’s used as a symbol on the shrine crest. The trees are planted on the east and west of the main building, and the miko can pick 10 kilograms of the three-centimeter fruit in 30 minutes of farm labor. These fruit are not for eating — they’ll be the main ingredient in tachibana citrus fruit wine instead. Nowadays they subcontract the work to a sake brewery in Joyo, Kyoto, and it will take three years before it’s drinkable. They donate the finished product to the Imperial household. During the Edo period, they also passed some of the stash around to the shoguns.

Speaking of the Imperial household, the members like this place. There’ve been more than 250 household visits to the shrine since 860.

And speaking of all this booze, here’s a report from Asahi TV about making New Year’s sake in Utsunomiya, Tochigi. It was below zero on the morning this segment was filmed:

But back to the miko and New Year’s amulets! They do more than sell them — they make them, too. See what I mean about Santa’s elves?

Here they are at the Atago shrine in Fukuoka City making o-mikuji fortunes for the New Year. They’ll offer 14 kinds, including the red daruma and, for the first time, the medetai mikuji. Medetai is a word for a joyous occasion, but the pun is in the shape of the fish — the tai, or sea bream, which is served at other joyous occasions, such as wedding ceremonies. The Japanese like the fish so much they have an expression that insists they’re great even when they’ve gone bad. The shrine made 800,000 last month for the 700,000 visitors they expect, so they might have a few left over.

They also made lucky arrows at the Tsuruoka Hachiman-gu in Kamakura, Kanagawa, the most important shrine in the city. These arrows are called hamaya, which are sold as amulets that drive away evil spirits. Some also say they provide safety to the home and prosperity to business. The sale of hamaya is derived from the days when the exhibition of archery skills was a part of New Year celebrations. They’ve got two varieties here: One 60 centimeters long and the other 94 centimeters long. They’re wrapped in washi (Japanese paper), have bells on the end, and are affixed with kabura, a device that makes a whistling sound when the arrow is fired. It was once a popular item among the archers participating in contests or banditry. The shrine makes 245,000 of them, which takes most of the year.

They’re also readying amulets for sale at the Hakusan shrine in Niigata City. Shrine officials think the facility was built in either the 10th or the 11th century, but they’re not sure because two fires in the 16th century destroyed some of their records. In this case, the amulets are rakes and arrows, and people got a head start on buying them on the 26th. The shrine prepared 40,000 for their 170,000 visitors to come.

The word for the traditional bamboo rake is kumade, literally a bear’s paw, and they were used to rake leaves and grain. They started selling them as New Year’s trinkets during the Edo period so folks could play croupier and rake in the good fortune.

New Year’s amulets are also produced outside the shrines. One example is the dragon dolls, for the year of the dragon, made at a studio at the Toyama Municipal Folk Craft Village in Toyama City.

Another is the earthen bells in the form of dragons made by the Nogomi Ningyo Kobo in Kashima, Saga. A nogomi ningyo is a local toy conceived by the late studio’s founder soon after the war. He passed the business on to his son Suzuta Shigeto, a national living treasure for his fabric dyeing artistry, so we’re talking serious art here.

The studio is offering three types this year, one a design by the founder, another a jade (colored) dragon, and another designed by Shigeto to represent a dragon riding the clouds. He said he wanted to create the image of vigorously climbing and riding beyond the troubles of the past year. All of them are handmade, and the report said that the slight variations in sound and color would beguile potential customers. They’ll make only about 7,000 to sell throughout the country for the holiday, and all things considered, they’re probably more expensive than the items on sale at a shrine.

Shinto isn’t the only source for New Year’s ceremonies. A traditional ritual for presenting water from the fountain of youth to the governing body of the old Ryukyu Kingdom, now Okinawa, is still held today, and this year was held on the 25th in Naha. Forty people dressed as government officials and female priests lined up for some water carrying. The elixir in question is a mixture of two varieties of water that’s been concocted at the Enkaku-ji Buddhist temple. The original idea was to meet the New Year with a wish for the kingdom’s peace and the king’s health and long life.

Which to choose? The Ryukyu waters, sacred sake, or o-toso?

Finally, it isn’t possible to discuss New Year’s in Japan without a mention of the Kohaku Utagassen. That’s a New Year’s Eve musical variety show based on the premise of a singing battle (utagassen) between the female Ko team — Red! — and the male Haku team — White! It debuted on radio in 1951 as a one-hour special, but has now evolved into a four-hour extravaganza broadcast simultaneously on TV and radio. At one time it was the highest-rated single show on Japanese television, but changing times and tastes have taken it down a few notches. Nevertheless, it is still the highest-rated musical program every year.

An appearance on the program is a sign that the performer has made it in Japanese show business, and because NHK requires (or used to require) that all singers pass a singing test to appear on the network, it meant that viewers would be getting quality entertainment. It features all styles of music, including enka for the old folks (Sakamoto Fuyumi was on last night for the 23rd time) and straight pop for the kids. Selected members of the AKB 48 girls also appeared for the third time as a group last night, early in the evening, and I was surprised at how good they sounded.

In keeping with Japanese ecumenicalism, foreigners, especially East Asians, are frequently invited to appear; the South Korean pop idol BoA has been on six times. Largely unbeknownst to their fans in the West, Cindy Lauper and Paul Simon once performed in the same year.

Last night, the Red team won the contest for the first time since 2004. The White team has the series edge to date, 33 to 29.

Whose performance to pick from the wealth of options on YouTube? I’ll go with the special one-off appearance of the Drifters in 2001. Those aren’t the American Drifters, but the Japanese group. They started out as a band in the late 50s and evolved into a comedy team whose television program ran from 1969 to 1985 and became the highest-rated regular program. (They also made a couple of movies, at least one of which was quite entertaining.) Older folks might remember their 40-second performance as the opening act for the first Beatles concert in Japan.

The man in the green is Ikariya Chosuke, the nominal leader, who died in 2004. Later in his career he starred as an attorney in a courtroom drama series similar to Perry Mason, but with lighter moments. He also won a Japanese Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the film Bayside Shakedown. He was the host/narrator of the Drifters’ TV show, and often wound up as the guy getting dumped on by the others.

The man in the orange is Shimura Ken, who started working with the group in 1968 and became an official member after replacing one of the originals in 1974. Most of The Drifters weren’t really comedians, but rather performers acting in comic sketches. Shimura is an exception, however, as he is a talented comic, and at his best was as funny as any comedian anywhere. (You other foreigners can cool it with the wise lips right now.) He took over The Drifters program with a show of his own that was often hilarious and sometimes bordered on the surreal. He and the staff of that program were masters of running gags, both within a single program, and also from show to show.

Translating the lyrics wouldn’t be productive — did you catch the brief background chorus of papaya, papaya? — but it’s more fun to watch the dance troupe anyway.

Shimura Ken might say, Dafun Da!, but I’ll stick with: Akemashite, o-medeto gozaimasu. Happy New Year!

UPDATE:

Very late on New Year’s Eve (one report said early New Year’s morning), one of the three most-wanted criminals in Japan gave himself up to police:

Makoto Hirata, a member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that released deadly sarin gas on Tokyo subways in 1995, surrendered to police last night, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported.

Hirata, 46, and fellow Aum members Katsuya Takahashi and Naoko Kikuchi are listed as Japan’s three most-wanted fugitives, on a police website. Hirata was wanted in connection with the murder of a notary, while the other two are alleged to have been involved in the poison gas attacks.

Hirata turned himself in at the Marunouchi police station in central Tokyo, NHK said, citing the Metropolitan Police Department. He is being questioned at the Osaki police station, according to the broadcaster.

Another New Year’s cleansing of impurities, is it not?

Thousand islands

THEY’RE not foolin’ when they call it the Japanese archipelago — the textbook boilerplate is that the country consists of four main islands, though it’s becoming more politically correct these days to include the main island of Okinawa as the fifth. But few people, even among the Japanese, are aware the other roughly 1.000 islands, both inhabited and uninhabited, give the country an Exclusive Economic Zone of about 4.46 million square kilometers. That’s the sixth-largest EEZ in the world.

Of the inhabited islands, the westernmost is Yonaguni and the southernmost is Hateruma, way down south near Taiwan, both part of the Yaeyama Islands (English-language website on right sidebar). Of those on which only seagulls reside, Okinotorishima represents the extreme southern edge of Japan, and Minamitorishima the farthest point east.

Some of the better known among the rest are Tsushima in the Korean Strait, which some excitable Koreans like to pretend is theirs; Tanegashima in Kagoshima, the site of the first recorded contact between Europeans and Japanese in 1547 and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Tanegashima Space Center; and Sado in Niigata, the sixth-largest island in the country and the authorities’ choice from roughly 700 to 1700 as just the place to send the dissidents and disgraced into exile. In fact, Charles Jenkins, the U.S. Army deserter and husband of North Korean abductee Soga Hitomi, could be considered a voluntary exile there now, though it is his wife’s home town.

That’s not to mention the Senkakus, on which the Chinese and Taiwanese have designs; Takeshima, which the South Koreans occupy; and the four islands off Hokkaido referred to as the Northern Territories, which the Soviets seized after Japan surrendered in 1945.

Awareness of these outlying islands is growing in Japan, particularly the semi-tropical warm ones, as pleasant places to visit. The inhabitants also are developing an awareness of their own. For example, the fourth annual national tournament for junior high school baseball teams from the outlying islands was held this year, and a team from Kamijima, part of Ehime, took home the trophy. (Most of the inhabited islands have junior high schools, but not as many are large enough to have high schools.)

Japan Hands will not be surprised to learn there is a National Institute for Japanese Islands devoted to promoting interest in and the interests of the one thousand. Earlier this month, they published a map that squeezes every last one of them on one side of an 80 x 110-centimeter sheet. That required a scale of 5 million to one to accomplish. The other side features larger maps of regional island groups on a scale of 750,000 to one. The map also includes a list of their names and all the air routes to make it handy for visits. At JPY 525 plus about JPY 180 for domestic postage, that’s cheap even at twice the price for a fanatic such as me.

Said the institute:

We hope that people look at the map and get a real sense of Japan as a country made up of many islands.

If you live in Japan and are interested getting a real sense of the island nation Japan, here’s the institute’s Japanese-language website where you can order one for yourself. Scout around on the site and you’ll also find a page that sells food and liquor from the islands, too.

And if you don’t have the time or the money for a trip, here’s the next best thing — a YouTube tour of Yonaguni with a local folk song as accompaniment.

Funny money

HERE’s an anecdote about Hatoyama Yukio that I ran across yesterday. It typifies the pettiness of the political class everywhere.

In 1999, Mr. Hatoyama was involved with a group that included Sakaiya Taichi, then head of the now-defunct Economic Planning Agency. One of the members came up with the idea of issuing a JPY 2000 bank note to coincide with the new millenium, and Mr. Hatoyama thought it was a capital idea. He had the Democratic Party, then in the opposition, conduct a study about issuing the bill and its potential economic effect.

In the meantime, the same light bulb went off in the head of someone in government. He brought the idea to then-Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo, and the bill was issued. Mr. Hatoyama was upset that the LDP beat him to the punch and wondered how word of his plan leaked out. He told the press during an October 1999 news conference that he should have publicized the DPJ study sooner.

It didn’t turn out to be such a good idea after all. No vending machines or ATMs had the capability to handle the new note, and it soon became became the subject of media mockery. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, Mr. Hatoyama told the monthly Bungei Shunju in 2000 in a discussion of the Obuchi government:

They’re going to have a lot of weird ideas, like this one about issuing a JPY 2000 note.

With the world’s governments in the hands of kidults, it’s no wonder we’re all up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

*****
Another of the Obuchi government’s ideas was to issue the bill in conjunction with the G-whatever summit in Okinawa that year. The obverse of the note has an engraving of Shureimon, one of the gates at the Shurei Castle in Okinawa. It is the only Japanese banknote without a person’s face on the front. (Then again, there are only three other notes.)

Shureimon

The problem with ATMs has been resolved to an extent, though most of the banks operating those ATMs are in Okinawa. Some banks in foreign countries won’t handle the bills when changing money. I can’t remember the last time I saw one of them, and there are now fewer of them in circulation than there were of the old 500-yen note, which they eliminated in 1985. There’s a good reason for that — they stopped printing 2000-yen notes in 2003, though the Bank of Japan has a lot of unissued bills in storage.

Nishiyama Yutaka, a mathematics professor at the Osaka University of Economics and an expert in boomerang research, wrote this short paper in Japanese suggesting one of the reasons the 2,000 yen note didn’t catch on is that Japanese are more likely to prefer odd numbers and people in the English-speaking world even numbers. He of course mentions the meaning of the word “odd” in English.

Prof. Nishiyama went to the trouble to count the number-related words in Japanese and English dictionaries. He found a much higher incidence of vocabulary items related to one and three in Japanese, while there was a much higher incidence for two in English.

Before you dismiss this as so much silliness, consider one more point. The professor correctly notes that the Japanese equivalent of the proverb “two heads are better than one” involves three people.

Oh yeah, here’s one more: In 1995, the same Bungei Shunju profiled a list of “Leaders for the 21st Century”. Number one on the list was Hatoyama Yukio. Some Japanese now argue that Mr. Hatoyama was Japan’s worst prime minister ever.

But then that’s the pitfall for publishing lists of that sort, isn’t it?

*****
Once upon a time, a two-dollar bill bought some big fun.

Interpretations

TANAKA Satoshi, the head of the Okinawa Defense Bureau, went out drinking with some members of the media on Monday night, and it cost him his job.

While they were in the process of getting lubricated, one of the media lads present asked Mr. Tanaka why the government has so far not set a schedule for submitting to Okinawa Prefecture an environmental assessment report on the relocation of the US Marine air base at Futenma. This report would expedite the implementation of the plan.

Here’s how Kyodo translated his reply:

Do you declare that you are going to commit an act before you do so?

The media members present said he used the word okasu for “commit an act”. Since spreading gossip is their primary job, they promptly got to work and blabbed about it as soon as they got next to a computer. Kyodo’s amusing explanation was that this word is “often interpreted as implying an act of sexual violence against women”. Japanese dictionaries don’t present that word as an implication, however — they list “rape” as one of the definitions. It’s primarily used to mean “to violate, to contravene the law, or to commit an improper act”, so it’s easy to see how the meaning expanded. I found that out first hand years ago early in my life in Japan when I stumbled over the word myself. I said okasu instead of okosu when I was talking about waking someone up, and I had to revisit the dictionary later after everyone in the room gave me a funny look.

Defense Minister Ichikawa Yasuo summoned Mr. Tanaka to Tokyo to explain himself. He said he doesn’t remember saying it, but Mr. Ichikawa fired him anyway. Kyodo explained:

Ichikawa said it would be difficult for Tanaka to continue in the post while the ministry is in a crucial stage regarding various issues involving Okinawa.

We don’t need Kyodo or a dictionary to interpret that. It means that government officials aren’t allowed to tell the truth about policies detested by the people who will be the most affected.

Most amusing of all is the media-driven teapot tempest. Kyodo’s dizziness in their effort to avoid the word “rape” resembles the 19th century women of the Victorian age who chose to substitute “limb” for the vulgar “leg”, and covered up the limbs of large tables so as to prevent impressionable eyes from gazing on that curvaceous naked wood.

The comment was held to offend Okinawans, and some Okinawans did their Pavlovian postmodern duty and became offended. You’d think they’d be glad someone in the government finally told the truth. It seems they’d much rather pretend the DPJ government intends to do something it is incapable of doing — getting the base moved.

The comment was also held to offend women, presumably the feeble-minded among them overcome by the vapors at the combination of a figure of speech, the facts of life, and common sense. Japan awaits the social epidemiologist who can identify the local strain of the political correctness virus that has infected so many Western lackwits handicapped by a congenitally weak intellectual immune system.

Left unsaid by the media was the most salient fact, perhaps because it was so obvious: the government’s prediliction for rape won’t come as news to the rest of us.

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Betting on the bulls now legal

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

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

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

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

This is what happens after a bullfight in Spain:

This is what happens after a bullfight in Japan:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afterwords:

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

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

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

Uukui in Okinawa

WHATEVER else can be said about the folks in Okinawa, they sure roll their own. At some point in the summer, usually mid-August, everyone in Japan celebrates O-bon, a holiday originally for welcoming the spirits of the dead back to their homes for a brief annual visit. At the end of the holiday, the living sometimes cast small boats on the river to represent the return of those spirits to the netherworld.

The Okinawans, however, have a more elaborate ritual known as the uukui. It starts with the eisa, a performance of drumming and chanting for the repose of the dead. (Eisa performances have also become more secular over time.) Then, entire families head in a group to the graveyard, with those in the lead carrying lanterns and others bringing incense. In some villages, entire streets are filled with lanterns.

The photo here shows an eisa performance by a youth group on 14 August in Itoman. The group gave seven different performances, one at a national memorial park for those who died during the fighting on Okinawa during the Pacific War. They had suspended those performances for a while, but resumed them three years ago.

In some places, people use the family O-bon gathering to combine traditional celebrations. The folks in Miyakojima, for example, had a tog-of-war contest during uukui for the first time in 12 years. The procedures are the same as those events conducted as part of a Shinto festival. Residents of the Gusukubetomori district were divided into two teams, representing the east side and the west side. The Strong Boys get to claim that the divinities will favor them with a good harvest or fishing catch, and protection against illness and disaster.

The tug-of-war was not originally an o-bon event, but the Miyakojimanians made it a moveable feast because it was easier to rustle up the rope pullers when everyone was visiting the old folks at home. Here, however, they traditionally use a vine known in English as the common derris instead of a rope. Unfortunately, the derris hasn’t been common enough lately, so they retwined half the rope used at the Miyakojima summer festival in July.

Said one of the organizers:

“We want to do it every year. It’s an important event for conveying the spirit of group unity from the older people to the younger people.”

The combination of the difficulties in Japan presented by the recent natural disasters, what seems to be the approaching economic calamities in G7Land — accelerated by Phase II of the collapse of the experiment in socialism (this time socialism lite instead of the SAE50 viscosity variety) — and other trends suggest we could be seeing a return to whatever the local definition happens to be of that Old Time Religion (OTR).

For a look at sacred hoedowns elsewhere in Japan during the season, here’s a look at three wild and wooly O-Bon dancing festivals. Don’t pass up the excellent video of the Awa Odori.

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And it doesn’t get any more downhome than this video of the Uukui Eisa in one Okinawan neighborhood.

Letter bombs (18): Futenma and the dollar

“Soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionary.”
- Bob Marley

THIS TIME two years ago, then Democratic Party President Hatoyama Yukio went campaign shouting through Okinawa promising that if elected, his party’s government would insist on the removal of the U.S. Marine airbase at Futenma to somewhere outside the prefecture at a minimum, or — better still — outside the country.

Mr. Hatoyama and the Democrats were so profligate with their promises during that campaign they tossed them out like so many candies at a child’s birthday party. The DPJ had still not earned the trust of the Japanese public, and many in the electorate lacked confidence in their ability to manage national affairs. The people were so disgusted with the LDP, however, they knew it was time for a change and so voted them out.

Demonstrating a combination of immaturity and contempt for the public striking even for the political class, the DPJ government began breaking its promises within days of taking office. Indeed, Ishii Hirohisa, their first Finance Minister, appeared on a Sunday TV political blabathon in October 2009 to blithely declare that broken promises were sweet and dandy and not a problem at all. The party would let the voters decided how much it mattered to them when the next election rolled around.

The following day, Mr. Hatoyama delivered his maiden speech to the Diet as prime minister.

Two months later, it was apparent that neither Mr. Hatoyama nor the DPJ were ready for prime time and never would be. His administration was one of the shortest in Japanese postwar history, and the largest of the shoals on which it foundered was the craven abandonment of the promise to move Futenma. Prime Minister Hatoyama was kicked out of office, and the governments of Japan and the United States kicked the Futenma can down the road.

The issue arose again this past week, sticking its head out of the policy rubble that is the Kan administration as if it were a rattus norvegicus confident in the knowledge that the current human inhabitants of the property were merely temporary squatters.

Senior officials in both the American and Japanese governments agreed to abide by the original agreement — painstakingly drafted by successive LDP administrations starting in 1996 — and move the airbase to another part of the prefecture. Prime Minister Kan Naoto, for whom shamelessness is a feature, not a bug, had this to say:

“I fully understand the desire of Okinawa to move the operations out of Okinawa and out of Japan,” Kan told reporters following the memorial ceremony. “We have reviewed it from every angle, however, and the current situation would not allow it.”

Considering the background of the issue, his excuses are illuminating:

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Monday that considering moving the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station outside Okinawa Prefecture might further stall current negotiations over the base relocation, despite a renewed call by the Okinawa prefectural government to move it beyond the southwestern island prefecture.

“The people of Okinawa have been saying they want the base out of the prefecture or out of the country…

Wherever did they get the idea that it was possible?

“…but if we look at ways other than the current plan, (the relocation plan) could return to a state in which (the relocation site) will once again be undecided,” Kan told Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima.

In other words, we have to go with what we decided, because if we don’t, it will be undecided.

The Yomiuri Shimbun spelled it out for those who still haven’t gotten it:

The new Japan-U.S. agreement to abandon a 2014 deadline to relocate the functions of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station in Okinawa Prefecture means there is a strong probability the facility will remain in its current location indefinitely, according to observers.

The accord confirmed the bilateral commitment to transfer the Futenma base in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, “at the earliest possible date after 2014.” However, this ambiguous wording would, in effect, allow the military installation to stay there for an indefinite period.

The latest accord is tantamount to scrapping an agreement reached between the two nations in 2006, when a coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito was in power, to relocate the Futenma functions by the end of 2014.

Note the “if” in the following:

A Japanese government source said, “If the Futenma Air Station’s transfer is carried out, it will be in the latter half of 2017 at the earliest.”

As with many of their other putative reforms, the Democratic Party has not returned to Square One. They’re at Square Zero Minus Five and still marching backwards. Until someone in Japanese politics grows a pair, Futenma is going to stay right where it is.

A link to an article sent in by reader Marellus provides a comprehensive explanation that factors in the use of the American dollar as the global reserve currency:

The dollar’s universal value is like an agreed-upon tax that the democratic world pays for the added security provided by the Americans.

Specifically:

“The prime minister of a given country might complain about the dollar in public, or criticize the United States as “arrogant.” In private, with his advisors, he is desperate to keep America’s military presence in his region. For the sake of local politics, he may call for the close of American military bases, or the return of American troops. Privately, however, he assures the Americans that the insulting language he uses in public is not to be taken seriously. There is a public discourse against America – a discourse of resentment made for gross public consumption; and there is the discourse of statesmen one to another. How else has the dollar survived in its leading position decade after decade?”

Don’t expect a change in the status quo until either the Americans retrench or the Japanese decide it’s finally time to whiteout the juvenile fatuity of Article 9 in the Constitution and establish themselves as an independent state in the community of nations. And don’t expect the latter to happen until the current generation of leaders retires, forsakes the suits and black hair dye, and retreats to their living rooms to quietly indulge their elegant pursuits or their taste for liquor in the daytime.

Afterwords:

Justin McCurry, the Guardian’s placeholder in Tokyo, contributes an article on the subject that is — Quel choc! — largely accurate and free of the usual snide asides. But the lad can’t help himself, as is obvious from the lede:

A major realignment of US military forces in east Asia is in disarray after Tokyo and Washington agreed to drop a 2014 deadline for the relocation of a marine corps airbase on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.

The American Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines have dozens of installations throughout Japan alone — roughly one hundred if you count them all, including supply depots and other facilities. But in McCurry World, moving one Marine airbase in Okinawa constitutes “a major realignment of US military forces in east Asia”.

The only differences between the usual McCurry article in the Guardian and any article selected at random from the News of the World are the size of the type, the luridness of the photos, and the educational background (not necessarily intelligence) of the readers.

The Japanese junk food champs

THE UN still cites the Japanese as having the world’s longest life expectancy from birth at 82.6 years for everyone, and 86.1 years for females. The CIA World Factbook offers similar figures, but ranks the country third behind the mini-states of Macau and Andorra.

A Japanese doctor once told me that if I wanted a long life, I should follow the dietary habits of Japanese women 50 years ago—in other words, chow down on fish, rice, and soy-based products. That diet is one of the keys to Okinawan longevity, which for years was the highest in Japan, until the younger Okinawans started eating like Westerners. (There’s more information on the Okinawan Centenarian Study here.)

Not all Japanese are interested in healthful diets, of course. Those who might have wondered who in Japan has the worst dietary habits now have an answer—the residents of Oita City, Oita, on the southern island of Kyushu. Oitans are known as the national leader in the consumption of chicken and dried shiitake mushrooms, but a recent Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications survey reveals they are also tops nationwide in junk food consumption.

The ministry’s survey, which covered all the prefectural capitals and 49 other major cities, showed that Oita City led the nation in purchases of purin (a commercially prepared custard pudding), packaged snacks, and chocolates. They also ranked second nationwide in purchases of instant noodles of all types and third in hamburger consumption. Meanwhile, they were at the bottom of the table by a substantial margin in purchases of spinach and other fresh vegetables.

By the numbers: The amount of money spent in Oita City annually by households with two or more members on purin totaled JPY 2,240 yen, or roughly $US 27.27 (JPY 1,788 nationwide) JPY 5,816 (JPY 3,819) for snacks, and JPY 1,552 (JPY 1,058) for chocolates. They’ve led the nation in snack and chocolate purchases for two years running.

The ministry said these proclivities had a greater impact on men than on women. A 2008 government white paper found that 34.1% of the men aged 20 to 69 in Oita City were overweight, compared to 29.3% nationwide. A total of 14.19% of 12 year olds in the city were classified as junior porkers, compared to a national percentage of 12.41%.

The women of Oita City came off slightly better—27.7% of females aged 40 to 69 were overweight, compared to 26.6% nationwide. They ranked dead last, however, among all Japanese women in the consumption of vegetables.

To probe even further, three year olds in Oita Prefecture have an average of 2.03 cavity-infected teeth compared to 1.16 nationwide, ranking it among the worst three prefectures in the country. The news is even more painful for the local 12 year olds—they average 2.7 cavities against 1.6 nationwide, placing them next to the worst in Japan.

The ministry reports that 19,052 people in the city received annual physical checkups through work, etc., and of these, 3,334 were warned about the possibility of developing metabolic syndrome. That’s a bit more than 17% of those studied, compared to estimates of 20% to 25% in the United States. Those estimates also probably apply to Great Britain and Australia, as the problem is said to be just as severe in those countries.

At least the folks of Oita City can take consolation that their junk food jones doesn’t include deep fried candy bars, which has become a popular snack at fish and chip shops in Scotland. According to the Scottish government, almost two-thirds of their men (66.4%) and more than half of the women (59.6%) were overweight in 2008.

Maybe if they exported purin to Scotland it could help wean them off the hard stuff!

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American health and fitness guru Jack LaLanne, still going strong at age 96, once said that the only part of a doughnut worth eating was the hole.

He could have said the same about jelly roll, too.

Tropical real estate

AT THE END of the Cold War, Hiramatsu Shigeo was one of the first to warn that the Chinese would become a global military power. An expert on Chinese military matters and the author of more than 20 books, he recently wrote an op-ed for the Sankei Shimbun about Japan, China, and the Senkakus. Some of it is already familiar to people who have been following recent events, but the rest of it is worth reading in English. Here it is.

*****
Why do Japanese politicians and the mass media never tire of doing the same thing whenever something happens in the Senkaku islets? Dozens of Chinese fishing boats have been active in the area since July, but the mass media didn’t consider it news until 7 September, when one of those ships rammed two Japanese Coast Guard cutters. Until then, few Japanese were aware that the Chinese fishing boats were prowling in our territorial waters.

The Senkaku islets were incorporated as Japanese territory in 1895. Koga Tatsushiro of Ishigaki leased four of the islets from the government and began operating a dried bonito business on the main islands of Uotsuri and Minamikojima. They became his private property when he purchased the islands in 1932. On the eve of the Second World War, Mr. Koga left the islands and they reverted to their uninhabited state. They are now owned by a Japanese man in Saitama.

Consequently, the 12 nautical miles around the islands are Japanese territorial waters. Under international law, international vessels with the exception of military craft may pass through the area unobstructed, but they are not permitted to conduct any sort of activities while there or to prowl about. The Japan Coast Guard warns intruding foreign ships and has them depart. When dealing with dozens of fishing boats, however, this becomes a never-ending game of chasing away offenders that return later. That’s no easy assignment.

This state of affairs has been brought about by the peace-at-any-price principles of our government, mass media, and pundits. The primary responsibility for the most recent incident lies with the Democratic Party government. Though the peace-at-any-price elements were also present during the days of Liberal Democratic Party government, the DPJ excesses have gone well beyond those of the LPD…

———-
…With the intermediation of former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, the territorial issues were shelved and Japan, China, and Taiwan reached an agreement to begin joint development of the oil resources only. Several months later, however, in December 1970, China used editorials, first in Xinhua and then in the People’s Daily, to claim that the East China Sea was a Chinese sea, and that the oil resources of the East China Sea were Chinese resources. Their attacks on Japan were particularly harsh: “Will Japan again plunder Chinese resources? Is this not militarism?” Plans for joint development evaporated with this bluster.

The threats were effective. Since then, a state of affairs has emerged in the East China Sea in which Japan can only warn the Chinese (fishing boats) about their activity in Japanese territorial waters and are unable to expel them. Recently, the Japanese Coast Guard ordered a Chinese survey ship to cease and desist in the waters near Amami Oshima. The Chinese ignored the order, replied that “This is China’s sea”, and continued their survey. (N.B.: Amami Oshima is part of Kagoshima and lies roughly halfway between Kyushu and Okinawa.)

——————-
…When I began my studies of China 50 years ago in graduate school, my academic supervisor gave me this advice, “Be careful of the Chinese. When they are in a position of superiority, they become overbearing toward others.” Another professor said, “Remember this well. The Chinese will smack you on the face with their right hand as they hold out their left hand demanding money or goods.” At that time, I couldn’t believe what they told me, but when the Chinese demanded an apology and compensation after Japan released the arrested fishing boat captain and allowed him to return home, I realized those two professors were right.

It is now no longer possible to ignore a China that has grown powerful. Whenever an incident occurs, we must not have a flustered response, but rather carefully analyze past Chinese tendencies. We must not treat the symptoms, but present a strategic response.
(end translation)

*****
The failure of the mass media to pay close attention will surprise no one, but that statement about the Senkakus being private property caught me off guard. Mr. Hiramatsu is right (though it seems Koga Yoshitsugu bought the islands and not his father). Here’s Foreign Minister Maehara Seiji speaking on NHK on 7 October:

“The Senkaku islets are currently the private property of Kurihara Kunitatsu (N.B.: 国起; I think that’s Kunitatsu) of Saitama City. Since October 2002 the Japanese government has leased the land from the Kurihara family for JPY 30 million a year. After the war, when the islets were effectively under the control of the United States, fees for the use of the land were paid to Koga Yoshitsugu, the owner at that time.”

Here’s the rest of the story. Koga Tatsushiro was a merchant who relocated from Fukuoka to Okinawa to expand sales channels for Yame tea. While there, he came up with the idea of turning green turban shells into buttons for expensive clothing and exporting them. That made him a wealthy man. He used the money from that business to operate a dried bonito plant in the Senkakus, with 280 people working on site.

Koga Yoshitsugu

His son Yoshitsugu bought the islands (with the exception of Taishojima) in 1932 for JPY 15,000 yen, which would be about JPY 25 million in today’s money. Restrictions on supplies and the lack of fuel in the days just before the war caused Yoshitsugu to abandon the business. Mr. Koga was still alive when the 1970 dispute broke out with China and Taiwan. At the time, he said that he had been leasing one island to the Americans since 1950 for gunnery practice for $US 1,000 a year. He also paid property tax to the city of Ishigake.

Yoshitsugu and his wife Hanako had no children, and in the 1970s they sold two of the islands to Mr. Kurihara, with whom they had a close relationship. Mr. Kurihara, who is now about 70, owns and operates a wedding ceremony hall in Saitama. Yoshitsugu died in 1978 and his wife sold the other two islands to the Kurihara family. A younger Kurihara brother named Hiroyuki said that his brother and older sister own two of the islets each. The sale price for the first two islets was reported to have been about JPY 46 million, but Hiroyuki says that price is too low because everyone had become aware of the nearby oil deposits by the time of the sale.

As Mr. Maehara notes, the national government leased the islands from him in April 2002, and the lease is formally in the name of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

They might ignore Chinese behavior in the Senkakus and domestic Japanese protests about that behavior, but the Japanese mass media jumped on that story. The news led to a flood of media inquiries at the Kurihara home, which the family has deflected. One reporter called the house, and a woman answered the phone:

“I’m the maid, no one else is at home…for details, please ask the Cabinet Secretariat. Journalists are coming to ask questions…No one is at home. I can’t say anything. I’m sorry. Please take care of yourself.”

Last month a woman who identified herself as Mrs. Kurihara said something very similar to a different caller, but added that it was now a national and not a personal matter. She also said they’ve been getting calls from overseas.

Kurihara Hiroyuki provided some details to the media through an intermediary. He said his brother has been to the property only once, but he has visited many times himself. He says the mountain on the main island has a virgin forest, the nearby waters are breeding grounds for swordfish, and Ise ebi can be caught by hand at night.

Now that the owners have gotten older, they are wondering what to do about the islets. The property is subject to inheritance taxes, and it will be taxed at a much higher rate than normal because the public sector is using the land. If the taxes aren’t paid, the land will be confiscated. Isn’t big government wonderful?

Hiroyuki also reported that he was told an oil company made an offer in the pre-bubble era to buy the islets for JPY 35 billion, but was turned down. Both the Koga family and the Kurihara family have wanted to maintain the islets in a condition as close as possible to their original state to honor the memory of Koga Tatsushiro. He said the family is just as upset with the lack of a Japanese government response to China as the rest of the country. He added they might consider a sale if Japan, China, and Taiwan agreed to use the islets to develop maritime resources, and a small port was built for ships as a safe harbor. The nearby sea is often rough and dangerous for ships.

Meanwhile, as this Japanese government website (in Japanese) shows, the American military is still using the islets for gunnery practice, specifically for air-to-surface and ship-to-surface weapons.

Afterwords:
Hit that link to Ise ebi if you’ve got the time.

Amami Oshima is the fifth largest of the country’s many smaller islands (not counting the four main islands). Though it has recently attracted many surfers, the frequent rainfall means it has the shortest amount of sunshine during the year of any part of Japan.

Some Amami soul music!

Shimojo Masao (13): On the Senkaku islets

PROF. SHIMOJO MASAO has been occupied with other matters lately and has been unable to write for the site, but yesterday he sent this article on the Senkaku Islets.

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TENSIONS have recently erupted between Japan, China, and Taiwan over the territorial rights to the Senkaku islets. The eight islets, which include Uotsuri and Kuba, lie about 175 kilometers northwest of the Yaeyama archipelago in Okinawa and about 195 kilometers northeast of Taiwan, and are under the jurisdiction of Tonoshiro, Ishigaki in Okinawa Prefecture. They have been Japanese territory for more than a century, since 14 January 1895.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China claimed the Senkakus on 11 June 1971, while the People’s Republic of China claimed them on 30 December the same year. The reason both Taiwan and the PRC claimed the islets is the content of the report issued by the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) of a survey of the East China Sea seabed in 1969. The report stated it was possible there were deposits of oil resources on the continental shelf of that sea.

The territorial claim of the Chinese government is a special case in that they view the Senkakus as ancillary islands to the province of Taiwan, which they consider to be part of China. The grounds for the Chinese territorial claim is that when the Ryukyu Kingdom (now Okinawa Prefecture) became a vassal state of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Senkakus were used as a landmark on the sea route when the Chinese emissary visited. Therefore, insist the Chinese, they were aware of the islands first. Another basis for their claim that the islets are Chinese territory is that Qing Dynasty emissary Xu Baoguang did not include the Senkakus in the 36 islands of the Ryukyu chain in his Annals of Zhong Shan.

The Japanese incorporation of the Senkaku islets as terra nullius in 1895 was proper under international law. The problem, however, is the wide divergence in historical understanding between the two sides. While Japan asserts that the Senkakus are Japanese under international law, the Chinese say they were historically Chinese territory and that their incorporation into Japan was an imperialist occupation. Chinese fishing boats have nonchalantly continued to carry out fishing operations in Japanese territorial waters near the Senkakus, and this fait accompli informs the Chinese historical awareness that the islets are Chinese territory.

That is the reason China tried to justify the collision when the Chinese fishing vessel rammed the Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats on September 7, and the captain was arrested on suspicion of obstructing public officials in the line of duty. Even when the Japanese took a firm stand and repeatedly insisted that the Senkaku islets were Japanese territory, the Chinese did not agree. Japan’s Democratic Party government deployed a coastal surveillance team of about 100 members to Yonaguni, an island near the Senkakus, on 21 November as part of their evaluation of National Defense Program Guidelines, saying they could detect Chinese military vessels and aircraft in the area with radar. The Chinese countermeasure was the immediate dispatch of two fishery patrol vessels to the area near the Senkakus that passed through the adjoining Japanese waters.

A response of this type, however, is not a wise choice. It is not too late for the Chinese to reexamine their historical awareness before both countries become emotional. In the same way that South Korea continues to illegally occupy Takeshima with no historical justification whatsoever, the Chinese have demonstrated no historical basis for their claim that the Senkakus are Chinese territory.

Of course the Chinese passed near the Senkakus every time their sent their emissary to the Ryukyu Kingdom when the latter was their vassal state. It is true that one part of the Senkaku islets were shown in a map in Zhou Huang’s Treatise on the Ryukyus, and they are not included as one of the 36 Ryukyus as described in Xu Baoguang’s Annals of Zhong Shan. That alone is not grounds for claiming that the Senkaku islets are Chinese territory, however. That’s because Ming Era Taiwan, known as Dongfan, was inhabited by indigenous people and Chinese rule did not extend to the island. The Da Qing Yi Tong Zhi, a 1744 geographical survey of the Qing empire, showed that Taiwan was part of Japan during the reign of the Emperor Tianqi (1621-1628). It was also occupied by the Dutch for a time.

The Qing Dynasty annexed the island in 1684, but their rule did not extend beyond the southwestern part of the island. It did not reach the northern part of the island until 1723, when it established the Zhanghua and Danshui sub-prefectures.

The territory controlled by the provincial authority established during the Qing Dynasty did not extend over all of Taiwan. That can be confirmed by the Taiwan Fuzhi (Annals of Taiwan Prefecture), written by Gao Gongqian and others in 1696, and the maps in the Chongxiu Taiwan Fuzhi (Revised Gazetteer of Taiwan Prefecture) by Fan Xian and others in 1747. The eastern half of the island, which includes the Taiwan mountain range, is left blank, evidence that Qing Dynasty rule did not extend there.

In addition, the map of Taiwan Prefecture in the latter source shows the northern boundary of their control to be the Keelung (Jilong) Castle, while the Fengyuzhi in the Taiwan Fuzhi explains that the territory stretches 2,325 li northward to Mt. Keelung, thus defining the territorial border of Taiwan. The Senkaku islets are 195 kilometers northeast of both the fort and the mountain, so they obviously were not considered part of Taiwan. This can be confirmed with the map compiled at the order of Emperor Qianlong in the Da Qing Yi Tong Zhi. The map of Taiwan Prefecture is the same as that in the Taiwan Fuzhi and shows the Keelung Castle as the northern border of the territory. That map in turn was later used as the model for the Taiwanfu Jianyutu in the Qinding Gujin Tushu Jicheng (Complete Collections of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to the Current Times) of 1728. There was no change in the extent of the territory when the Republic of China was founded in 1912. That is shown in the Danshui Tingzhi (The Danshui Sub-Prefecture Gazetteer) compiled at the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1871, the Huangchao Xu Wenxian Tongkao (Comprehensive investigations based on literary and documentary sources) dating from the Republic of China era in 1912, and the Qingshigao (The Draft History of Qing) completed in 1927.

From these Chinese documents, it can be stated on the basis of historical fact that the Senkaku islets have never been Chinese territory, and that the Japanese government’s possession of them as terra nullius was appropriate under international law. The Chinese, however, say that the Senkakus have historically been Chinese territory, and criticize Japan’s incorporation of them as an imperialist occupation.

That is based on ignorance. One can only say theirs is a historically warped territorial ambition of the same type as South Korea’s occupation of Takeshima and Russia’s occupation of the Northern Territories and the Kurile Islands.

- Shimojo Masao

Map of Taiwan Prefecture, Da Qing Yi Tong Zhi, Vol. 335 (Takushoku University Collection)

Afterwords:

Prof. Shimojo told me that he found the map shown here in the university library. The book in which it was found is about 100 years old, had not been examined for a long time, and the university was not aware of the map’s existence.

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Good cop, bad cop

THE MAINICHI SHIMBUN ran a story in its morning edition of 8 November that, if true, confirms what most people have long suspected. It’s one of the many reasons for the widespread anger with Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito, and shows why speculation has begun that Prime Minister Kan Naoto will have to cut him loose if his Cabinet is to survive–though that’s growing increasingly unlikely by the minute.

Recall that in September, private-sector consultant Shinohara Tsukasa was recruited (likely by Mr. Sengoku) to create a channel of communication with the Chinese government. That paved the way for a meeting between Chinese officials and DPJ MP Hosono Goshi. Reported the Mainichi:

“Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku is said to have agreed to the Chinese demand that the video of the encounter between the Chinese fishing boat and the Japanese Coast Guard vessels not be shown to the public, and that the observation tour of the Senkakus by Okinawa Gov. Nakaima (Hirokazu) would be called off.”

One wonders what might have happened over the past two months had someone in the DPJ government been willing to stand up for Japanese sovereignty and its national interest, rather than cede the Japanese public’s right to know to the Chinese, and allow the Chinese government to dictate the travel arrangements of a Japanese prefectural governor within the borders of his own jurisdiction.

One also wonders what Prime Minister Kan was doing when all this was going down.

There have been reports that Mr. Sengoku from the start intended to act as a lightning rod for criticism of the Cabinet to protect Mr. Kan and the younger ministers, such as Maehara Seiji. After the past two months, he’s already absorbed so much electricity he probably glows in the dark.

People who serve as chief cabinet secretaries sometimes team up with the prime minister to work the good cop, bad cop routine. For example, Hirano Hirofumi said several times that he was more than willing to take the heat as the bad cop to Hatoyama Yukio’s good cop, particularly for the Futenma issue, but the latter scattered so many banana peels along his own path he couldn’t make it across the stage.

Though Mr. Sengoku seems to be a natural-born bad cop, even this less-than-dynamic duo can’t get the routine to work. That would require someone credible to play the good cop role, but Mr. Sengoku is stuck with the Japanese equivalent of Barney Fife.