The Chinese Baiji river dolphin may be extinct, but if any survivors are eventually found, at least they can safely be relocated to the tunnels used by the New York City subway until this morning.

Readers who remember my discussions of Kokaryo(光華寮), the Kyoto student dormitory for overseas Chinese students which became the center of the longest duration lawsuit in Japanese legal history might be interested to know about Seikaryo (清華寮), a Chinese student dormitory located in Tokyo, which was purchased under significantly different, but also interesting circumstances.Seikaryo recently made the news due to a tragic fire that killed two women living there, which was brought to my attention via an email from Curzon. Seikaryo, like Kokaryo, was originally purchased as a dormitory for Taiwanese students studying in Japan, but where Kokaryo had been purchased by the Taiwanese Republic of China government (possible with funds that may have been repayment for property taken by Japan from mainland China-this and other vagaries led to the bizarre and complex circumstances of the lawsuit, about which one can read in my earlier pieces), Seikaryo was constructed in 1927 by a foundation belonging to the Japanese colonial Governor General in Taiwan, when Taiwan was an internationally recognized colonial possession of Japan.

According to this article, the property rights of the dormitory were unclear after the war, leading to problems involving such things as the assessment of taxes, but apparently-unlike Kokaryo- it remained a residence for students from both Taiwan and China. This article, from a mainland China source, claims that both Kokaryo and Seikaryo were purchased by the Taiwanese government while it was under Japanese occupation, and after Japan’s surrender became property of the People’s Republic of China, but since Kokaryo was in fact not purchased by Taiwan until 1952, when the ROC government had already lost the civil war, the Chinese article is clearly false. Last, this article from a Taiwanese source states that the actual land is owned by Japan, with a term that I believe means something like Right of Occupation (房舍產權) residing with Taiwan. It is unclear however if this refers to the situation at the time of construction (1927), or the present.

If anyone has more information on Seikaryo, particularly as it compares with the somewhat more famous Kokaryo, I would be very interested in hearing.

My original piece on Kokaryo is here, and my piece on the resolution (at least for the time being) of the legal battle is here.

Today’s New York Times has published a moderate sized article on the Chinese phenomenon.

No one can say with any certainty what the full tally is, but there are easily a dozen unauthorized Harry Potter titles on the market here already, and that is counting only bound versions that are sold on street corners and can even be found in school libraries. Still more versions exist online.

These include “Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Relative Prince,” a creation whose name in Chinese closely resembles the title of the genuine sixth book by Ms. Rowling, as well as pure inventions that include “Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon,” “Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire,” “Harry Potter and the Young Heroes,” “Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon,” and “Harry Potter and the Big Funnel.”

Some borrow little more than the names of Ms. Rowling’s characters, lifting plots from other well-known authors, like J. R. R. Tolkien, or placing the famously British protagonist in plots lifted from well-known kung-fu epics and introducing new characters from Chinese literary classics like “Journey to the West.”

In related news, of the 100 or so blogs and other websites that linked to my fake Harry Potter post, this post at the blog of the comic book fansite Newsarama may be the only one to offer a substantial contribution. Now, I had posted a couple of pages from a nice, wholesome Harry Potter Japanese fan comic (dojinshi), but someone at Newsarama had apparently dug into their personal bookmarks collection and dug out links to online archives of-ahem-less than wholesome product. The sort of thing that chronicles the sort of activity that English boarding school was famous for before Hogwarts. Am I going to paste the links here? No, but anyone curious enough to click can take that extra step.

For the many thousands of readers who can’t get enough of fake Harry Potter, NPR’s Morning edition had a story on Chinese sequel-legging for their July 13 broadcast. And no, they don’t mention either of the two presented here.

Also, don’t forget the truly awe-inspiring Harry Potter in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese Translation web site, which gives detailed comparisons of the Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese translations of the novels. Fascinating reading for hardcore fans of the series (particularly those with some knowledge of one or more of the languages treated), and truly essential reading for any translators familiar with the world of Harry Potter.

To tie in with the world-wide media extravaganza that is the release of the final volume of the megaselling Harry Potter series, today I would like present scans from three lesser known sequels in my collection.

First is the China exclusive 2002 release, Harry Potter and the Filler of Big, a title made only slightly less mysterious when one realizes that the Chinese title translates rather more accurately into Harry Potter and the Big Funnel, although you’ll need someone with better Chinese than mine to describe the plot of this gloriously audacious illegally published novel-length fanfiction.

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If you look at Sino-Japanese text printed in the Chinese Song or Japanese Mincho typeface (similar to serif typefaces in European languages), you’ll notice that the horizontal strokes in characters are much thinner than the vertical strokes. Here’s why:

The printing press appeared in China during the Song Dynasty. At the time, each print block contained two portrait-oriented pages placed side by side. The print blocks were all cut from rectangular planks such that the wood grain ran horizontally. Because the grain ran horizontally, it was fairly easy to carve patterns with the grain, like horizontal strokes. However, carving vertical or slanted patterns was difficult because those patterns intersect with the grain and very easily break. This resulted in a typeface that has thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes. To prevent wear and tear, the ending of horizontal strokes are also thickened. These design forces resulted in the current Song typeface.

Amazingly creepy! The pandas are going to haunt my nightmares for sure. Video is in Japanese, but you don’t need to understand to get creeped out with the fake Disney characters.

Unfortunately, Shukan Bunshun reports that the extra attention this Bizarro wonderland has gained is causing the managers of the state-run park to cut back on the flashier piracy.

Back on February 1st I wrote a post on the battle over the “Kokaryo” (光華寮) Chinese students dormitory in Kyoto, between the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China. Those who don’t remember the details of the case or need a refresher should read my initial post on the subject and/or some of the linked news articles.

Since my initial report the case, which 40 years after filing was apparently the longest running lawsuit in Japan, has ended-at least in its current form. While the outcome of the case was exactly what the PRC wanted for diplomatic reasons, it was still not technically a complete success in terms of the primary substance of the lawsuit.

Note that Yomiuri Shimbun’s March 28 headline, “Top court rules China, not Taiwan, owns dorm” is factually incorrect. In fact, the court ruled that because the lawsuit was originally filed by “China” and that recognition of “China” has shifted from the Republic of China (Taiwan) government to the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China), not Taiwan but the PRC is now the plaintiff. The original lawsuit was filed by “China” as represented by the ROC (Taiwanese) authorities against the Chinese (mainlander) dorm residents, whom the ROC wanted to evict due to their support of the PRC. While the defendant was technically the individual students, they were supported by the PRC government, and the case essentially became ROC vs. PRC vying for control of the dorm, even though the original motion that started the trial was calling for an eviction order of the mainland Chinese students from the dorm. Because the original lawsuit was filed by “China,” the court’s judgment that “China” was now represented by the PRC and not the ROC meant that in essence the People’s Republic of China was now playing both sides of the field, and as the plaintiff they had the right to decide not to continue prosecuting the case. In fact, it seems that the court never ruled on the primary issue of property rights one way or the other, and technically their decision allowed the plaintiff to continue to pursue the case by having it returned to the Kyoto district court, which they naturally did not do.

As PRC Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a January 26 news article, “The Guanghualiao [note: “Guanghualiao” is the Chinese pronunciation of “Kokaryo”] case is not merely a property case, but a political case concerning China’s legitimate rights.” While China has always insisted that this is a political case and has publicly demanded satisfaction from the Japanese government, Japan has always pleaded separation of powers, and insisted that it was both illegal and impossible to intervene in the court system for diplomatic and political reasons. However, some observers find both the timing and verdict of the case suspicious. Coming on the heels of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s highly publicized and politically significant official visit to Japan, cynics might suspect that the Japanese government did in fact “encourage” the court to resume the long-stalled case, and adjudicate it in China’s favor as a subtle diplomatic gift to counterbalance moves by the Japanese administration over the last few years to strengthen diplomatic and military ties with Japan.

Despite the high court’s decision that the PRC was in fact the plaintiff in this case, which has effectively nullified all of the previous judgment’s in Taiwan’s favor, there is still a chance for Taiwan to prevail in their property rights claim. The April 4 Taipei Times reported that Taiwanese authorities were looking into how to continue the case, despite having lost the standing to pursue the lawsuit as originally filed on behalf of the Republic of China. “We will continue our fight, considering the possibility of a fresh civil lawsuit or other legal means,” said their attorney Noriyasu Kaneko. According to an April 21 Kyoto Shimbun article (apparently not available online), Taiwan is in fact planning to file a new motion in the Kyoto court asserting their property rights as a “body” and attempting to sidestep the entire hornet’s nest of “one China” and diplomatic recognition. While this case has been a victory for China and a potential danger for Taiwan’s property rights abroad, it is also worth noting that the original premise of the case, that the ROC is the proper representative of “China” is a decades old doctrine that is effectively disavowed by the current Taiwanese administration anyway. Although I doubt that there has been anyone in Taiwan celebrating this verdict, it can also be looked at as the collapse of yet another piece of the “One China” diplomatic fiction. Now that Taiwan no longer has to pursue this Chiang Kai-shek era lawsuit based on the obsolete premise that they are the “One China,” there is at least some sliver of hope that they can turn around and use the new lawsuit to reassert their rights as a body separate from China.