Fans of Ghibli Studios and the Earthsea novels are surely interested in how Ghibli’s interpretation turned out. Not so good, it looks like, judging from some reports and the original author’s reaction. From the general sound of things, it seems that Goro wasn’t up to the task after all. That’s unfortunate.

But I’m not here to talk about that. My interest is in the blog post that Kikko, Japan’s mysterious and popular (but no longer top) political blogger, wrote on the film. The bulk of the post is a translation of Le Guin’s official reaction to the movie, but she prefaces that with a conversation between two young women that she supposedly overheard on the train. Below is a translation of just the conversation:

A: Oh no! At this rate, I’ll fall right to sleep!
B: Oh? Are you not getting enough sleep, Kyoko?
A: Hm, every night it’s too hot…If I sleep with the A/C on, my skin gets dry and so does my throat!
B: Well, then you should just go see Earthsea!
A: Why’s that?
B: I went to see it last week with Marie and Chika, but I fell asleep a half hour after it began because it was so boring…and when I came to the end credits were rolling!
A: It’s that boring?
B: I didn’t see almost any of it, but Marie and Chika said they couldn’t stand it and fell asleep about halfway through…so it looks like at least the first hour is boring enough to make you sleepy…
A: But, the TV and everything is saying it’s a “big hit in theaters!” right?
B: Really? Since I was let down by Howl’s Moving Castle, I had hope this time would be better, but this was way more boring than Howl…It’s like, rather than tell the story with animation, the characters just explain the story in order with long monologues…so I gradually started to feel sleepy, then eventually closed my eyes and just listened to the lines, and then just fell asleep.
A: Oh, I see.
B: Like, since all the lines are long and in a monotonous explanatory tone, it makes you feel like you’re being forced to listen to a lecture by Oishi the Section Chief.
A: Really??? Haha…

Kikko’s comments that follow the above conversation criticize the mass media for caving in to pressure from promotional agencies such as Dentsu by lavishing unearned kind words on movies and other products even when they are clearly terrible as in the case of Earthsea.

As poignant as Kikko’s sentiments may be, I have a hard time believing that Kikko actually overheard such a conveniently-worded conversation. She claims not to have seen the movie (typical of her other lengthy articles about Japanese anime) yet but has no problem using a supposedly overheard conversation to back up criticism of the media and badmouth a movie she hasn’t even seen. If that’s true then it’s irresponsible, and if not then, well, she’s being just as dishonest as Dentsu and the mass media, isn’t she?

Since an article posted on her site broke a major development in the faked earthquake safety data scandal last year (and in the several stories she’s had pertinent information on since), wide and well-founded speculation has spread that the purported writer of this blog (a “hair and makeup artist” in Tokyo) does not really exist, or at least that there is something less than forthcoming about the source of the blog’s content. One theory (as noted in a “Kikko Watching” wiki) is that the site serves as the repository of one or more news reporters that use it to reveal information that can’t make it past editors in the major publications. This is the theory I’m going with, so check back in a few months or so when the truth is finally known to see if I was right.

Whatever the source of the articles on Kikko’s blog, the site has been extremely entertaining and illuminating as it often contains information and analysis that is simply not available elsewhere. However, there are many many other instances where I am left shocked at the claims Kikko’s site makes. For example, her repeated claim that weapons of mass destruction were and are being used by the US military in Iraq are not backed up by any credible evidence whatsoever, and sources she does cite for other issues have turned out to be fake. And then there are the suspicious quotes and anecdotes, one of which I have translated above.

Clearly any blog’s comments cannot be taken as gospel truth, especially when coming from one as mysterious as Kikko’s. But the scandal over Kikko makes me wonder: when the newspaper can’t even tell you when a film sucks, perhaps it’s preferable to hear the truth from a frank and knowledgeable fraud than swallow lies from the opaque and manipulative establishment.

The Thai press (at least the English-language kind) is abuzz over the arrest of Jon Benet Ramsey’s alleged killer. He lived pretty close to one of my friends, apparently. But as for my take (not that anyone asked), The Onion sums things up rather nicely:

“An accused murdering sex-offender goes into hiding, and no one thinks to check out Thailand?”

In other news, the man apparently tried to get a sex change while in Thailand. They’re cheap here at around US$1600, so maybe he just had some extra cash lying around and wanted to see what would happen.

I’m back from my trip with Lord Curzon and will be posting some pictures in the coming days. This tidbit, however, just couldn’t wait:

On Wednesday, rather than take a bus around the peninsula to catch our ferry to Hakodate, we decided to hitchhike straight through the mountains. This turned out to be pretty strenuous, as nobody was going all the way to our destination, so we had to thumb five rides and do a lot of walking in between.

The last car to pick us up was an aging four-door occupied by three thuggish-looking guys with buzz cuts. As we zoomed up the coast, headed for the very northern tip of Honshu, the driver opened up the conversation something like this:

DRIVER: Where you guys from?
CURZON: America.
DRIVER: Ha ha! Oh! You heard about Koizumi going to Yasukuni?
CURZON: (knowing smile) Oh, yes.
DRIVER: (more nervously) Heh heh… (awkward silence)

After they dropped us off at the ferry terminal, I remarked to Curzon: “It’s a pity we don’t know how to say ‘fuck yeah!’ in Japanese.”

Remember that piece saying that Yasukuni was in financial trouble? Well, turns out the shrine itself wasn’t too happy about it:

Yasukuni Shrine on Tuesday blocked Asahi Shimbun journalists from covering Junichiro Koizumi’s last visit to the site as prime minister on the 61st anniversary of the end of World War II.

The ban on Asahi reporters and photographers in the Shinto shrine’s precincts is in protest over a map of shrine holdings printed over the weekend by the daily.

The ban will remain in effect for an indefinite period, shrine officials said.

While one could argue that one less news agency covering major events in Japan could be beneficial (see what happened when the BOJ ended quantitative easing), it’s hard to see where this is coming from. The properties are a matter of public record, so it only makes sense that a story on the financial situation of a controversial shrine that, incidentally, may be nationalized if Foreign Minister Taro Aso has his way, would include information about the shrine’s holdings.

Anyway, I am not close to this issue. But I do have some questions:

For some reason, foreign financial reporters on Japan seem to have the best perspective. Here are two examples:

William Pesek, a columnist for Bloomberg, earned my admiration back in June when he cut through layers of government spin to find the real reason why BOJ Governor Toshihiko Fukui should resign:

The scandal involving his 10 million yen ($86,950) investment in a fund led by a shareholder activist jailed on insider-trading charges has gone beyond theater and farce. It now threatens to tarnish Japan’s global reputation.

Even if it turns out Fukui didn’t break any laws, his actions were dumb. Fukui invested in Yoshiaki Murakami’s fund in 1999, when he was at the Fujitsu Research Institute. He applied in February to sell his shares, raising questions of propriety as the BOJ prepares to boost rates for the first time since August 2000 and after his investment more than doubled in value.

The bigger problem is how vehemently Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has come to Fukui’s defense. It means the BOJ governor, who is supposed to be independent, now owes the prime minister. The upshot is that a rate hike that was widely expected in July may be delayed until after Koizumi steps down in September.

Fukui, 70, yesterday said ``monetary policy isn’t affected by politics’’ and that the BOJ needs to adjust rates ``without delay.’’ Even so, the mere perception that BOJ policies are paralyzed thanks to Fukui’s missteps is reason enough for him to resign.

Preach it!

Coming in at No. 2 (only because he doesn’t cover issues I’m curious about often enough) we have David Piling, the FT’s correspondent in Tokyo. Like Pesek, he’s adept at cutting through the BS, even when it comes from his fellow Britons as in this book review:

To wish [the “unique” aspects of Japan] away would be to miss something recognisably Japanese. Yet, to treat Japan as inherently odd can quickly stray into stereotype, even prejudice. Just as bad, it can bolster the case of those Japanese exceptionalists who assert that Japan is unique, superior and unknowable by foreigners.
...
In Atomic Sushi, May seeks to break the deadlock by recounting, wittily and often brilliantly, his personal experiences, greedily amassed during a year spent teaching at the University of Tokyo.
...
The approach, as befits a professor, is to tell a story (often hilariously) and then to offer analysis. The interpretations are sometimes amusing and astute, but sometimes they are so sweeping as to be virtually meaningless. Take the account of a beautiful girl who, though standing, falls asleep virtually draped over a commuting businessman. Apparently in the depths of slumber, she nevertheless awakens the instant the train reaches her destination.

She apparently displays the Japanese people’s “pervasive and acute alertness to their environment and its subtle signals, instilled perhaps by their constant vulnerability to earthquakes”. Or maybe she just heard the station announcement.

As a reporter, Piling will undoubtedly be replaced when his time comes to be promoted or the FT feels that his closeness to Japan could pose a conflict of interest problem (one major reason why many news companies replace their foreign correspondents so often). I can only hope that they find someone with as keen judgment.

There are many who feel that Japan shouldn’t have to put up with foreign criticism, or that Japan’s image needs to be mollycoddled by official propaganda and numerous underdisclosed shills. But I can’t stress it enough that open debate and frank discussion (most especially when it’s available for free on the Internet), such as the above examples, are desirable when you’re talking about understanding another society, discussing policy choices in a society in which you’re invested, in monetary terms or otherwise. It results in a better informed public and a broader range of ideas from which to draw inspiration and guidance.

I haven’t been following this issue too closely, but here’s a quick rundown:

On August 2, star Japanese boxer Koki Kameda fought Juan Landaeta of Venezuela for the World Boxing Association’s light flyweight championship. The match, which I naturally missed since I live outside Japan (but you can see some clips on Youtube here), was said to obviously have gone to Landaeta in terms of both points and the match’s momentum. However, at the end of the day Kameda was awarded the championship 2-1. The Japanese blogosphere (which scored its first political touchdown amid last year’s earthquake safety scandal) cried foul, the rumor being that the match had been rigged as a “present” for mob boss Goro Hide Hanabusa’s birthday. Pictures of the two together (see above) soon surfaced, putting Kameda’s career in jeopardy not just for participating in a rigged match but for acquiring a dirty image in what is supposed to be a family sport.

Marxy, who has been following this story, has noted that the story has broken much faster on the Internet than in weekly magazines, Japan’s usual outlet for yakuza-related scandals. While diffusion of the Internet into daily lives in Japan has lagged behind the US (your aunt Ikuko still can’t book discount flights online, for instance), the more popular uses of the net (anonymous message boards, then blogs, and now Youtube) have proven effective tools in getting around the notorious disinformation found in traditonal news media (case in point). Japanese wiki, for instance, contains frank passages on taboo subjects such as the real identities of TV stars, exposure of staged events on TV, and now the role of organized crime in fixing boxing matches.

That is, it did until a few hours ago. Marxy just clued me in that Hide Hanabusa’s wikipedia entry was recently deleted due to “copyright issues”. Wikipedia will apparently instantly delete any entry that a rightsholder alleges contains a violation of his/her copyright. I have no idea whether that is the case in this instance, but it’s interesting to see that the yaks may have realized they’re being humiliated online and decided to take action.

Will the Japanese yakuza expand its Internet savvy beyond cheap cons in order to protect its image? Well, as far as this blogger is concerned, I figure I’ll be safe as long I keep writing in English.

From the PM Office website:

Look at him being awesome in Mongolia:

Best Prime Minister ever? You bet. Too bad he’ll be checking out next month.

What I really liked about Koizumi was his knack for political spectacle – you may remember his recent Elvis impersonation. We’ve spent a lot of time looking at Koizumi’s sheer presence on camera. He’ll be remembered in the US for his horrible karaoke at Graceland, but in Japan he is likely to go down as Japan’s biggest reformer since MacArthur.

Now, R. Taggart Murphy at the New Left Review points out that Koizumi did precious little to shake up Japan’s real power structure – unchecked and all-powerful bureaucrats who are loyal lapdogs of the US because Japan’s immense dollar holdings leave them with few options. I can’t offer a complete response to the article, but he dismisses Koizumi’s reform drive as a “convincing act,” a claim that’s irritating as someone who looks at some of the trees among the forest of Japan’s government.

I mean, he’s basically right. Of course any responsible Japanese politician isn’t going to commit political suicide by disrupting the precarious world financial system (Taggart admits that elsehwere in the paper), and any policy pursued by the PM’s office is going to be riddled with concessions to the “real power holders” – hence the directionless postal privatization policy and failure to get Japanese bond issuances down under 30 trillion yen, as well as leaving many other unanswered questions. And he makes a good point – that the push for so-called “neoliberal” economic policies that has been going on since the 90s were often nothing but smoke and mirrors hiding more cynical policy objectives.

But at least in terms of political reform, Koizumi did a lot – the dismantling of the LDP’s faction system (as seen in the rush to support Abe), the rise of the CEFP style of policy making, and the fruition of Japan’s new electoral system, all Koizumi-led developments. These are not merely “imported suits of clothes” as he puts it but (late) responses to demands from the public to take power away from the bureaucrats, who have lost significant public trust in the last decade or so.

But it looks like Japan’s next PM, Shinzo Abe, in addition to offering very little on policy issues (reports on his new book and promotional campaign seem pretty wishy washy – I mean, 2nd chances for failed business owners?!). And it’s certain that he will offer nothing even remotely closely resembling Koizumi’s early classic bike safety display in full, shiny reflective business attire.

I mean, just look at this guy (on the left of course):

As much as I’d like to know what this picture is all about (Chinese source!), it’s clear enough that this man is zombie Jon Arbuckle – boring, lame, and flesh-eating. He’s typical LDP blah and Japan needs none of it.

Koizumi, you’ll be sorely missed. I’ll be crying as I clutch my lion keychain (get them at the LDP HQ while they’re hot!) during Abe’s swearing in.