Shukan Playboy is finally getting around to investigating what I termed “living the dream” back in November. So am I correct in celebrating the fact that my summary of an Asahi article totally scooped a sleazy porn-filled tabloid’s low-priority human interest story? I don’t know, but on the scale of “nailing the Japanese mainstream media in English for a small audience” this rates about a 6, above prematurely praising the Asahi’s website (a 2) but well below exposing Bobby Valentine’s shady Japanese language lesson promotion schemes (easily my best work, a 10).

Also of note: Japan Times talks about malicious comment attacks on Japanese blogs. Are these frequent organized comment attacks on blogs a result of decades of social decay, as one expert alleges? Or could it simply be that there is a surge of new Internet users who learn their Internet manners from 2-channel? Couldn’t this problem be nipped in the bud if popular bloggers would only effectively manage their comments sections?

Blogs are really only starting to mature in Japan, so I can understand why the issue is newsworthy. What I don’t understand is why the most recent example is almost a year old.

I wonder why the article focused almost completely on victims’ stories and some expert opinions but neglected to mention what’s actually being done about the problem. A major recent development that came out 2 weeks ago was the announcement of new guidelines for ISPs that would make posters of malicious comments subject to having their personal identifying information disclosed to the victims of the comments (making it possible to sue for defamation). It’s a development that could put an end to the very practice the article is whining about, so it would have been nice of the author of a news article to let readers know what’s happening right now as opposed to last year. All we got instead was misleading bureaucrat-speak: “Currently, there is no regulation to curb enjo against Japan’s estimated 8.68 million blogs, said Yuko Fujii, an official in the information policy division at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.”

Also also of note: There’s a long interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on the occasion of his fact-finding mission in Japan. He must have a lot to learn because these are the only substantive comments he makes about the Japanese-language version of his site:

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it is said that in the Japanese Wikipedia, people would go to the discussion page, then discuss and discuss and discuss until they reach a consensus—and finally someone will go and very cautiously change the entry. Whereas in English, we change the entry and fight about it. I’ve heard this not just from English speakers but Japanese themselves. I wonder if it might not be some kind of self-humorous image of Japanese that endless discussions for consensus occur before something happens. It could be true, though I don’t know. But I’m told that the culture is different. Maybe I’ll be able to find out when I hang out with the Wikipedians here.
...
Why do you think the rate of growth has slowed on the Japanese Wikipedia compared to other languages?
I don’t really know. That’s what I’m here to find out. Maybe it needs more promotion. But it’s very difficult to say. Some of it is the Japanese Wikipedia used to be larger than the French, and there were twice as many editors working in the French Wikipedia. So we used to joke that “there’s more French but the Japanese work harder.” (Laughs)

The part about consensus-based editing is sort of true, at least from what I’ve seen. People will complain about content without making changes immediately, but that’s not universal and I don’t think there necessarily needs to be consensus, just perhaps no big objections.

Anyway, I hope that he learns a lot during the month he’s spending in Japan, including another eye-opening phenomenon that Wikipedia Japan has created: the posting of otherwise taboo information that is little-reported in the major media (such as the fact that the famous “Kano Sisters” are not actually related, or the bogusness of the Densha Otoko phenomenon, as discussed here).

Curzon and I stumbled across this sign in a tiny village while hitchhiking across the Shimokita Peninsula in Aomori last summer. Roughly translated it says:

GREETING CAMPAIGN

• Good morning!
• Good day!
• Good evening!
• Good job!

Kids and adults! Let’s work on greeting each other!
Kawauchi Community Center

Naturally, the few elderly people we saw in this village gave us puzzled stares as we passed through, leading me to believe that this sign was just there for decoration, kind of like a speed limit.

March 7

Crown Princess Masako speaks to a student about his prize-winning invention, the Omni-Directional Electric-Powered Wheelchair, as Crown Prince Naruhito looks on at the 65th Concours of Schoolchildren’s Inventions in Tokyo Wednesday. (AP)

He’s never going to live that one down, no matter how advanced his rag-doll transporter might be. Thankfully for him, you can’t go to jail for disrespecting the imperial family anymore.

This time, it’s being reported in this piece of syndicated commentary by William Lind.

You can almost hear [the House Democrats’] glee as they offer the anti-war voters who gave them their majority one of Washington`s oldest dodges, ‘requirements’ the Executive Branch can waive if it wants to.

The kabuki script currently goes like this. Congressional Democrats huff and puff about ending the war; the White House and Congressional Republicans accuse them of ‘not supporting the troops;’ and the Democrats pretend to be stopped cold, plaintively crying that ‘Well, we all agree we have to support the troops, don’t we?’

‘Supporting the troops’ is just another dodge. The only way to support the troops when a war is lost is to end the war and bring them home.

I guess “theater” doesn’t sound exotic enough to suit a Beltway hack.

Nikkei Net warns:

Press Holiday
Morning Edition will not be updated on Monday, March 12, because of a press holiday on Sunday.

That’s right. The concept of a 24-hour news cycle (or even a day-to-day news cycle for that matter) means nothing to Japan’s newspaper companies. On Sunday, none of the major newspapers will go to print, nor will they update their websites (though to be fair, most of them slack off on weekends anyway). This behavior is unheard of in the US, but I have to admit giving reporters a day off isn’t that bad of an idea. Given the sometimes volatile nature of breaking news, there might be a similar justification to forcing reporters to sit it out a while that there is for keeping capital markets closed on holidays and after hours. Still, it’s pretty ridiculous that newspapers took the day off on the day the postal privatization bills were initially rejected (Aug 8, 2005):

As news days go in Japan, it rarely gets bigger than it was Monday. In a narrow vote, the upper house of the Japanese Parliament voted down a pivotal piece of legislation intended to privatize Japan’s $2.9 trillion postal savings system, the world’s biggest bank. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had staked his reputation on postal reform, so in retaliation, he dissolved the lower house and scheduled a general election for Sept. 11. Pundits bloviated that the turn of events could even mean the end of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s half century of nearly unbroken control of government…

Yet if you relied on Japanese newspapers for your news, you wouldn’t have heard about those momentous events Monday. That’s because Monday was one of Japan’s monthly newspaper holidays.

The holiday coming up is less likely to make Japan’s newspapers look so obviously like archaic relics of the past, but it still bores me half to death. I mean, why are Japan’s newspapers even allowed to form a cartel and agree all at once when not to publish? More on that later.

Read more about newspaper holidays (kyukanbi / 休刊日) at the sadly defunct Japan Media Review.

Update: This citizen journalist claims that there were no newspaper holidays when he was young. I can’t seem to find when this practice started, but apparently it’s rather recent, though these days they are accepted as a part of everyday life. And as JMR notes, the wire services Jiji Press and Kyodo News as well as the sports newspapers don’t participate. I will get to the bottom of this.

The Economist this week reports on my favorite topic: the “gossip-mill” among Japanese political circles. This week the mill is speculating on the prospects of Abe staying in office beyond the upper house elections. Of all the recent English-language weekly articles on Abe’s trouble, this one sticks the closest to how the political debate looks from the Japanese perspective. In other words, they’re trying to beat me at my own game, and I like it:

THE gossip-mill is grinding away, and the man whose career could soon pop out the other end in fragments is none other than Shinzo Abe.
...
[Abe’s] decline [in public support] may explain why on March 1st Mr Abe chose to undo much of what he had achieved through his October visits to Beijing and Seoul, by publicly denying one of the many Chinese and Korean grievances: that Japan’s Imperial Army forced hundreds of thousands of women, mostly Chinese and Korean, into prostitution during the 1930s and 1940s.
...
The Japanese public has turned against Mr Abe not because of foreign policy or historical debates but for economic reasons. For all the government’s boasts that Japan is enjoying its longest period of growth since 1945, the Japanese are not feeling much benefit in their purses and wallets.
...
In this respect, things were no better under Mr Koizumi, but at least he seemed to be doing something about it by shaking things up. By comparison, Mr Abe looks clueless.

I’ll reproduce the closing section in full because it is so, so tasty:

Dreaming of Lionheart

Actually, his problem is subtler than mere cluelessness. He is torn between dealing with the politically potent topic of inequality—in an ageing Japan, the income gap is widening—and making further reforms to encourage future growth. The only thing he has done so far has made both problems worse, however: his government clamped down on the interest rates chargeable by consumer-finance companies on loans to Japan’s poorest borrowers. This looked popular, but some say it has choked off their borrowing and helped to depress consumer spending.

Worse still, when he has had a political clue it has led him in the wrong direction. Mr Koizumi pulled off the remarkable trick of attacking his own political party, eventually kicking out LDP Diet members when they rebelled against his flagship programme of postal privatisation. That laid the ground for his triumph in the 2005 general election. Mr Abe, keen to curry favour with his party’s old guard, has now readmitted 11 of the rebels. At a stroke, that has changed his public odour from breath of fresh air to the usual LDP halitosis.

Whether he will actually be dumped, however, depends on how badly the LDP fares in the July Upper House elections. Fortunately for Mr Abe, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan is also in disarray, with its leader, Ichiro Ozawa, in poor health and at war with his own colleagues. Yet that may not save Mr Abe, such is the mood against him. Strange stories have been circulating about how cabinet ministers have so little respect for him that they do not bother to stand up when he enters the room. The rival most often mentioned as his budding successor is Taro Aso, the bumptious foreign minister, who is also a conservative and currently cuts a more dashing figure than his boss.

Another name, though, is increasingly being whispered: Junichiro Koizumi. There is no real prospect of tempting him back, at least not yet, for the great man is said to be having far too much fun as Japan’s most eligible bachelor. But how he is missed.

For all its great attempts to read the tea leaves, the article completely neglects to mention the possibility of a cabinet reshuffle, which seems to be the dominant theory these days (probably from LDP sources who want a crack at a ministerial post). Given that the internal conflicts in the Abe administration go far beyond a failure to rise when Abe enters the room, a 2nd cabinet may seem in order. Abe has expressed intentions to stay in office for a long time, but so far he and his people have lacked the savvy to keep his achievements in focus and maintain the public support so crucial for staying in office.

Recently, Abe reached out to Koizumi, who according to reports met Abe and LDP Sec Gen Hidenao Nakagawa for dinner last night and encouraged Abe to stay on as PM even if his party loses the upper house elections. Abe listened to Koizumi lecture on strategy the whole time, including lines like “It’s been written that a ‘draft’ is blowing between the kantei and the LDP, but when I was in office is was a thunderstorm. Just pit the kantei and the party against each other and stir up a typhoon” (according to Nakagawa at least). In such a dire environment, it’s only natural for Abe to get advice from someone who was relatively good at “[seeming] to be doing something…by shaking things up,” even if some people would point out that the LDP was actually losing seats to the DPJ in every election under Koizumi except for the 2001 upper house elections that were aided by “Koizumi fever” and the landslide victory in the 2005 lower house election that Koizumi successfully turned into a referendum on postal privatization.

But at least Koizumi started out with low expectations and managed to stay in power, as opposed to Abe’s quick decline and non-stop crisis mode. At any rate, whether Abe can pull off Koizumi’s tactics without actually being Koizumi (or having Koizumi team members on board) is beyond me, but then I’m not the one playing this game.

While doing some research work for a local professor of Japanese law, I came across an interesting statistic: there was one arrest in 2003 for the crime of abortion. This piqued my interest, so I decided to go off on a little tangent and figure out what this crime entails. Here’s my Americanized translation of the Criminal Code:

Chapter XXIX. Crime of Abortion

§ 212. Abortion. A pregnant woman who commits an abortion using pharmaceuticals or another method shall be subject to imprisonment of no more than one year.

§ 213. Consensual Abortion; Death or Injury Thereby. A person who causes an abortion while employed by a woman, or with her consent, shall be subject to imprisonment of no more than two years. A person who kills or injures the woman thereby shall be subject to imprisonment of no less than three months and no more than five years.

§ 214. Abortion In The Course Of Practice; Death or Injury Thereby. A doctor, doctor’s assistant, pharmacist or seller of pharmaceuticals who, while employed by a woman or with her consent, causes an abortion shall be subject to imprisonment of no less than three months and no more than five years. A person who kills or injures the woman thereby shall be subject to imprisonment of no less than six months and no more than seven years.

§ 215. Non-Consensual Abortion. A person who causes an abortion without being employed by a woman or without her consent shall be subject to imprisonment of no less than six months and no more than seven years.
2. A failed attempt of the above crime shall also be punished.

§ 216. Death Or Injury By Non-Consensual Abortion. A person who kills or injures a woman through the commission of the above crime shall be judged as having committed either the above crime or the crime of mayhem, whichever is more serious.

Abortion was legalized in 1948, decades after the Criminal Code was enacted. Some characterize this as a victory of an emerging feminist movement in Japan, but the truth is a bit darker, and pretty darn obvious from the abortion statute’s original title: the Eugenic Protection Act (優生保護法). Its stated purpose: “To prevent the birth of progeny which are undesirable from a eugenic standpoint, while protecting the life and health of mothers” (優生上の見地から不良な子孫の出生を防止するとともに、母性の生命健康を保護すること).

Certainly attitudes were different back then. This was at the peak of the Japanese government’s long-running policy to prevent people with leprosy from procreating. Under this policy, “male patients had to be vasectomized before they were allowed to marry, and female patients were enforced to have abortion and even infanticide.”

In 1996, the statute was given a new name: the Mother’s Body Protection Act (母体保護法). It’s been clipped and amended so many times that it’s hard to parse, but basically the rules are:

• Abortion becomes absolutely illegal at the point when the fetus is viable outside the uterus. (Technically, this is because the abortion statute ceases to apply at that point, and the Criminal Code takes over.) The Health Ministry decides when viability occurs, and has changed its mind on the subject several times. Its current verdict is after 23 weeks (props to Japanese Wikipedia for providing an easy link).
  
• Abortion must be performed by a doctor specially licensed by the prefectural government.
  
• Abortion can only be performed:
  

  1. When the health of the mother would be threatened, either physically or economically (define the latter yourself), by carrying the child to term, or
     
  2. When the child was conceived through violence or intimidation, or
     
  3. When the child was conceived through fornication, and at a time when the mother was unable to resist or reject the advance.
     

This is all very interesting to someone who comes from the land of Roe v. Wade and the notion that abortion is a right. But then again, you can kind of see the loophole-ability of the abortion law. How easy must it be for the mother to lie about the circumstances surrounding the conception? And how many mothers could invoke the economic harm provision?

I’ll leave you with some factoids from a medical journal abstract on the subject:

In one case in 1988, when the fetus of a 16-year old girl was aborted in the 25th week of pregnancy and left unattended although alive, the doctor was indicted and punished, although the probability of survival of the child was estimated at about 50%.

Since 1955, when the abortion rate was the highest (about 1,150,000 abortions), the number has been decreasing steadily. In 1991 the abortion rate was 13.9/1000 women of reproductive age (15-50 years); however, great differences existed between prefectures (6.4-26.0/1000).

It is alarming that the rate of abortions has increased among women under 20 years of age and at later phases of gestation. ... Unquestionably, the abolition of the requirement in 1952 mandating that the abortion seeker undergo an examination by two doctors has liberalized the abortion law. However, many young pregnant women who need help do not get adequate support and counseling and may end up in prostitution.

On April 1, Japan Airlines is joining the oneworld airline alliance, whose largest members include American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas.

This is not really news, because JAL has been in the process of joining oneworld for years. They just happened to run into a number of issues, chief among them an oddly-structured merger with JAS, and barely compatible booking systems that required an overhaul of how JAL sells its tickets. (ANA, on the other hand, has been an integral member of the Star Alliance for years now with no major issues. Not to mention a much better safety record.)

Anyway, the main effect of the JAL-oneworld consummation is that you can include JAL on one of oneworld’s special round-the-world-type tickets. All the other benefits (frequent flyer mile sharing, code sharing, lounge sharing, etc.) were already more or less in place.

Nonetheless, JAL took out a full-page ad in US FrontLine, one of the weekly Japanese tabloids published in the US, to announce how totally awesome this transaction is. Opening line: “JAL’s New World Begins!”

Who are they kidding? I’m really into the airline industry, and I’m freaking yawning here. Get a life, JAL. The rest of us already defected to Star Alliance.