Yesterday, Russian rikishi Roho was easily tossed out of the sumo ring by Chiyotaikai (video). As usual, Roho looked like he was about to rip someone a few new assholes. Unfortunately, he wasn’t messing around this time:

Still heated, Roho smashed a bathroom glass window on his way back to the dressing room and after receiving a reprimand from the JSA judging committee, proceeded to attack the photographers who were trying to take his photo.

“Violence toward field reporters is truly shameful and unforgivable for a sportsman,” the Mainichi Shimbun said in a statement.

Exactly what triggered the exchange is unclear but both Roho and Chiyotaikai received warnings from JSA Chairman Kitanoumi. The Russian wrestler later said that Chiyotaikai made a derogatory comment after the bout that set him off.

Roho will forfeit his bout against ozeki Tochiazuma Sunday and have two rest days.

Let’s see him try to get into an onsen now…

(Japanese ability recommended but not required.)

Consider these two phenomena:

1) Athletes endorsing products that supposedly help their performance; and

2) Exploitive marketing of second language learning products that offer a specific pattern of drills as a purported secret to learning the language.

By themselves, they are typical, if somewhat sleazy parts of everyday consumer life. But put them together and you get this nugget of infotainment from the ethically-challenged Daily Yomiuri:

Bobby Valentine learns the joy of Japanese

Yoko Mizui Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

“The most exciting thing that ever happened to me was not winning the Asian Championship and the Japan Championship last year. Nor was it winning the Major League. It was not even winning koryusen this year,” said Chiba Lotte Marines baseball team manager Bobby Valentine. “The most exciting thing was that at the age of 50 plus, I could discover Step Up Nihongo and learn the language.”

Valentine talked about how he learned the Japanese language and utilizes it in managing his team at a seminar to introduce a new e-learning system, “eSUN,” in Tokyo on June 26.

Step Up Nihongo (SUN) is a set of textbooks for non-Japanese to study the Japanese language, written by Shigekatsu Yamauchi, who also writes the monthly column “Japanese in Depth” for the Language Connection page of The Daily Yomiuri.

That’s right, just when you think Chiba Marines manager Bobby Valentine is going to give us some insight into ups and downs of his attempts to learn the language of his adopted home (which he incidentally lives away from in the off-season), BAM you get a sales pitch. There is nothing indicating that this article is an advertisement meant to promote a specific product. And adding insult to injury, there’s next to no info about how good Valentine’s Japanese actually is or how he really learned it. I guess it’s up to us to try eSUN and find out, right?

In the interest of fairness, there are dozens of press releases put out and promotional events held every single day in Japan announcing the arrival of some great new product. Every one of them claims to be newsworthy, making it up to the reporter/editor’s judgment to know what is really worth printing. If we give the Yomiuri the benefit of the doubt, “Bobby Valentine endorses Japanese study method” could be newsworthy in and of itself. He’s yet another success story of a foreigner in Japan, so people want to hear just about any tidbit of information that’s available. I mean, color me ignorant, but I didn’t even know Valentine was seriously studying Japanese, although I’m not about to start believing it now (Question: is his Japanese any good? According to this Nov 2005 interview it’s “a major problem”). Unfortunately, the article is not exactly written to emphasize the newsworthy aspects of the event. Again and again the writer emphasizes the benefits of eSUN.

Keep in mind that in the Japanese media, product placement passed off as news (i.e.: with no mark denoting that you’re looking at an ad rather than actual news) is rampant (for example, Nikkei has an entire Saturday supplement for just such a purpose). Marxy has some good coverage of that phenomenon on his blog.

I would say this article fits snugly into that tradition of unannounced advertising. Especially since after about 10 minutes of the most cursory research, I was able to unearth a good bit of info to that makes it unlikely that Valentine is merely a volunteer supporter of this learning technique.

First let’s consider: are we really expected to believe that the discovery of this product was the most exciting moment ever in the life of the Bobby Valentine, the only foreign manager (except for Sadaharu Oh I guess but he doesn’t count) in Japanese baseball to ever win the Pacific League and Japan Series championships and, coincidentally, the inventor of the “wrap” sandwich?

If it is, he’s been quiet about it up to now – he only mentions the product once on his official blog (which in turn is a marketing gimmick for a different site) in the form of a brief non-sequitur in a February 2006 post explaining how the blog works:

It is very interesting to note that David, who is bilingual in English and Japanese, learned his Japanese from the same teacher I am currently learning mine! Our teacher is Shige Yamauchi-sensei of ICI, a foreign language school in Tokyo. Using Step Up Nihongo (SUN), which is a wonderful teaching tool for those that want to learn Japanese, students can not only learn it by book and tape form but also interactive internet lessons as well.

But that brief endorsement was enough to warrant ICI, creator of the Step Up method and the company featured in the article in question, to include a full-on graphic logo (linked to the above blog post) on their website to let potential students know that Valentine endorses their methods:

And I’m sure he does – but I have a tough time believing he’s doing this simply as an uncompensated advocate. The article claims that Valentine was hooked on eSUN after someone handed it to him on a plane. Sure, and James Bond drives a BMW to impress chicks. Valentine is a businessman. Look at the way he’s doing his blog: some secretary is recording his thoughts while he’s on the road, and then transcribing them onto a blog that links directly to a major Valentine investment. Pretty shrewd!

And from the get-go, the seminar that constitutes the “where” of the article was held by a company run by a Yomiuri contributor. Considering that the very existence of his column is a convenient way to drum up business, sneaking in a cheap promotion of a celebrity endorsement of his product doesn’t make for much of an intellectual stretch. And being a part of the Yomiuri establishment must make it easy to cut in line ahead of other, less-connected Japanese learning methods.

So we’ve got a) An article that is clearly pushing a specific product but does not identify itself as an ad; b) a subject who in all likelihood is a paid (but unannounced) spokesman for the product; and c) The company offering said product has personal and financial connections to Yomiuri. In my own amateur opinion, such an article violates the “newspaper ethics” that the Yomiuri supposedly subscribes to as a member of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association (NSK). Here’s the relevant excerpt of the NSK’s Journalistic Canon, Newspaper Advertising Printing Standards (for some reason these standards are left out of the English version of the NSK website):

[Newspapers] shall not print advertisements that correspond to the following:
[omitted]
3. Falsehoods or items for which there is a danger of misinterpretation.
“Items for which there is a danger of misinterpretation” refers to the following:
(1) [Advertisements] that use formatting and expressions that look ambiguously like editorial matter, making the fact that it is an advertisement unclear.
[rest omitted]

So as long as the journalistic canon applies to online articles (at least it seems to in the US) the DY might consider sticking the word “advertisement” above articles that serve little purpose than to sell us something. Until either that happens or I get definitive proof that Bobby Valentine has no endorsement deal with Step Up Nihongo, I will continue to be properly offended.

(Thanks to FG for pointing this article out to me)

World cup fever has gripped the, ummm, the world I suppose. But in all of this fuss over teams of humans from one country competing against teams of humans from another country for the greater glory of their history/race/ideology/religion its important not to forget the as of yet infantile league that will some day destroy them all. I am of course talking about the RoboCup.

And not only humans and robots are caught up in football fever! For according to this report from the BBC even monkeys are new getting in on the action, and this is something that is of great concern—for when monkeys and robots meet on the battlefield, no good can come of it. We have been down that dark road before and we much be very mindful of that awful conflict re-awakening.

Japanese uber-blogger Kikko scoffs in her most recent post at what she terms lame and unpatriotic promises that certain celebrities have made “if Japan beats Brazil” in the upcoming World Cup match. Kaori Manabe, for her part, has reportedly promised to “hold a Carnival in a bikini” in the off chance Japan can topple the current World Cup defenders. Sure, maybe they shouldn’t be prematurely predicting Japan’s elimination in the first round, but to me it makes perfect sense to make wild wagers when the odds are stacked in your favor.

In the (as always, too long) intro to her post, however, Kikko-san makes some interesting claims about the English meaning of the word “cop”:

Speaking of Croatia (NOTE: the team Japan recently tied against in the World Cup), that’s the homeland of (PRIDE kickboxer) Mirco Crocop. Since I heard it a while ago, I know that Mirco, who worked as a police officer, took that ring name from the “Cro” in “Croatia” and the English “Cop” meaning “police officer” to make his ring name “Cro-Cop” meaning “Croatian Police Officer.” In other words, since a robot police officer is “RoboCop,” then a Croatian police officer would be “Crocop.” But “cop” has the sense of “beat cop” (NOTE: omawari in Japanese) or “po-po” (NOTE: pori-ko in Japanese) or “the fuzz” (NOTE: mappo in Japanese), doesn’t it? “Police officer” (NOTE: keisatsukan in Japanese) means “police” or “policeman” [in English], as in “strange police officer” or “a policeman with his nipples in the wrong place,” so “cop” has more of an informal (NOTE: kudaketa in Japanese) connotation. Then, if you pronounce it “cop” (NOTE: as it is normally pronounce in English; “cop” in Japanese is normally pronounced COPE-poo), then it has an even more informal connotation. So if someone says “Cops are coming!” then it’s like “The fuzz are here!”

Um, no? First of all it’s always pronounced cop (i.e. カップ; it would be different in British English, I guess, but that doesn’t change the meaning at all). And another thing: “cop” is something of a colloquial term, but it has none of the pejorative connotation contained in the Japanese satsu, pori-ko, or mappo (unless I misread these terms), or even the English slang “po-po” or “fuzz.” Any lame-o on the street will “call the cops” on someone if they’re acting like a douchebag. Your posts are always enlightening, Kikko, but you might want to stay away from analyzing the “nuance” (a Japanism meaning “connotative meaning”)of the English language.

UPDATE: In related/parallel lives “news“: Home Depot Criticized For Pledging $10 Billion To American Cancer Society For Every Padres Home Run

Remember Nikolai Volkoff, the “Soviet” wrestler everyone loved to hate? Well turns out he was actually from the former Yugoslavia. And he’s most recently been spotted following in the footsteps of greats such as Jesse “the Body” Ventura, Antonio Inoki, the Great Sasuke, and Hulk Hogan (ran for president of course) and run for office. But this time, his opponents seem to be playing the role of the heel. The Washington City Paper has a great story on it. Highlights:

(Reacting to leaflets distributed claiming he used to spit on the American flag in his wrestling persona) “Spitting on a flag, that’s cheap heat,” he says. “I was a professional. I didn’t work for cheap heat.”

Volkoff truly believes that the anti-Commie mood he helped foment in the West through his un-American activities in the ring hastened the fall of the Wall.

...

(Opponents) Impallaria and McDonough both deny any connection to the fliers. But they don’t mind echoing the message.

“He was the Tokyo Rose of the 1980s,” says Impallaria. “He made his living spitting on the American flag and singing the Russian national anthem. Now he can say he was just doing a job. Tokyo Rose was just doing a job, too.”

Adds McDonough: “He did spit on the flag. I consider that reprehensible. Anybody can run for office. You can’t go around saying your wrestling career doesn’t matter. Volkoff isn’t even the name on his birth certificate. People need to know everything.”

As any good wrestler would when given a platform, Volkoff leveled some smack of his own at his antagonists. “Impallaria—that guy has 27 arrests,” he says. “How do you get arrested that much?”

Asked to respond to Volkoff’s blast, Impallaria says, “A lot of people are charged with a lot of things, but the real question is: Have you ever been convicted of anything?”

OK, OK, OK. Have you ever been convicted of anything?

“Anybody can look that up,” Impallaria says, declining to answer “the real question” any further. “I’m going to stick to the issues. I’m not going to lower myself to dirty politics.”

The Republican primary will be held in September. Vineberg says that despite his adversaries’ tactics, Volkoff has no intention of hiding his wrestling past as the campaign progresses. In fact, the press secretary has been contacting former ring colleagues to ask them to come to Maryland.

“We’ve been talking to the Iron Sheik,” says Vineberg. “Nikolai and the Sheik made a great tag team. America really hated them. I’m sure he’ll be up here to help.”

What is it about wrestlers that makes them such appealing political candidates in Japan and the US? Is it their masculinity? Giant authoritative boots (If so, Condee Rice might be considering running for office!)?

Perhaps it’s easy for the wrestlers to adapt to the campaigning process’s similarities to the carnival sideshow aspects of pro wrestling. I mean, pro wrestling and politics have a lot in common – head to head confrontation, tag teams, battle royales (battles royale?), playing to the crowd, constant touring, factionism. One difference – the winners aren’t decided beforehand in politics (we hope).

I wonder – do pro wrestlers enter politics in Mexico? The most famous luchador of all, El Santo, seems not to have made that career decision. Have there been any politicians from the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling?

I was intrigued to note that the classic WWF’s own Iron Sheik is actually known by his real name, Khosrow Vaziri, in Japan. Apparently, the former bodyguard for the Shah did not get the same villainous characterization in Japan.

Of course, the Iron Sheik has popped back into the public eye with the release of some amazing interviews with him:

↑ This shit is CLASSIC, people.

A commenter asked us whatever happened to Nasubi, the aspiring comedian who allowed Japanese TV to kidnap him and force him to survive by entering sweepstakes in 1998.

Well, as usual, Wikipedia has the answer (paraphrased):

Nasubi’s feature is, as noted by his stage name (Nasubi means “eggplant” in Japanese), his 30cm-long face. He has sought a dramatic acting career since he started, and is currently active mostly in stage productions. In 2002 he founded the “Eggplant Way” and serves as its chief.

Recently most of his television appearances have been on local programs in his native Fukushima, but in 2005 he appeared in national TV dramas “Train Man” and “Trick New Special.”

Looks like he survived his near-starvation experience to go on to moderate success as an actor. Good for him! Check Nasubi’s official website (Japanese only) for appearances. He also keeps a pretty regular diary (latest entry):

So, so strong!!

The World Baseball Classic semifinals... The overall game made me numb, but the third time’s the charm! This game showed us Japan’s sticktuitiveness? or its latent energy, it was 110% worth seeing (*^_*)

Both teams…had very fine plays, also plays where they had to make up for mistakes, and I got the deep impression that we can be proud of Asia’s high level of baseball throughout the world!!

But truthfully? Don’t you feel kind of bad for Korea?

3/19/2006 (Sunday)

Umm, not really! I was just watching Japan trounce Cuba in the finals (right now it’s 6-3 in the bottom of the 8th). Once, when Ichiro was running home, he actually stopped the 3rd baseman from throwing home by intentionally blocking his line of vision. That’s some superhero shit, my man.