This was announced at work on friday afternoon, and I believe hit the evening NHK newscast. I work in a different office and don’t know anything more than what’s in the following Asahi story.

Two Ritsumeikan University faculty missapropriated ￥21,000,000 of government research money

Ritsumeikan University announced on March 2(Friday) that two faculty of the College of Engineering have misappropriated public research funds from sources such as the 21st Century Centers of Excellence project and scientific research assistant funds totalling ￥21 million and, in addition to having diverted money into use for paying the tuition of foreign students by having it deposited into their bank accounts under the name of “payment for student part time work” had also illegally diverted money into a construction worker relative.

According to the university, the two are Professor Shinji Egashira (60) and lecturer Takahiro Ito (34) of the City Systems Engineering Department.

Between 2001 and 2006, Prof. Egashira over 100 times requested funds from the university to be paid to 39 students of his research lab in exchange for part time work duing surveys and research assistant duties. The total of ￥15,000,000 transferred was used for the tuition, living expenses, and research activities of the foreign students. They say it was not used for personal clothing.

It appears that Lecturer Ito, in 2004 and 2004, under the name of “river engineering study” made false purchases of lumber from the construction company that his father runs, and caused the university to pay ￥5,930,000 from the same project budget.

The two admitted the truth of their misappropriation and returned the entire amount to the university. The university plans to take disciplinary action regarding the two within the month.

Misuse of public research funds by a different Associate Professor was revealed in June of last year. This insappropriation was uncovered over the course of an internal university investigation related to that. College Dean Seiji Kawaguchi apologized at a press conference saying, “the proper act of observance of the law was not thoroughly carried out” and indicated a policy of upgrading internal contact points within the university, and of strengthening internal auditing functions.

... he gets SLAMMED by Amnesty International “for comparing human rights to fatty butter.” If you put it that way it makes me think he was high when he said it.

Readers of The Japan Times may already have noticed Japan Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki’s controversial statement that “Japan has been historically governed by the Yamato (Japanese) race. Japan is an extremely homogenous country. In its long, multifaceted history, Japan has been governed by the Japanese all the way.” While there is plenty to criticize about this quote (for example, exactly how far back is “all the way?” most of the criticism is really pretty obvious and not that interesting.

However, what has not yet been reported in English is another statement that Ibuki made in the same speech.

According to the Yomiuri:

He went on to compare human rights to butter. “If you just eat nothing but butter every day, then you will develop metabolic syndrome [ed: like diabetes I guess]. Human rights are important, but if you eat too much of it, then Japanese society will develop “human rights metabolic syndrome.”

I would like to thank Minister Ibuki for that delicious metaphor.

In a previous discussion thread, commenter Riko of Taiwan asked me why Japan offers scholarships to foreigners. For those unfamiliar with the program, Japan’s Ministry of Education offers a number of scholarships, primarily graduate level, to foreign students from around the world, to come and study in Japan. To read about the types of scholarships avaliable, see any Japan Embassy web site and look under Education or Scholarships, for example the New York regional one (my home region). I originally types my comments below in reponse to Riko’s question, but then thought that this topic would be better as a new discussion, so here we are.

I don’t know anything about the history of the program or what the officially stated purpose is. In most Asian countries applications for the scholarships are very competitive, but people who study Japanese to a high enough level in the US are quite rare, so there are far fewer applicants for this program.

In fact, Taiwan has a similar program. When I was studying Chinese in Taipei, many of my classmates were in Taiwan on a government scholarship, doing language study before they actually entered their undergraduate or graduate program. The interesting thing in Taiwan is that there are actually two programs. One from the Ministry of Education, and one from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The latter program is open only to citizens of the few countries who have formal diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, and the MOE scholarships or for countries that don’t.

It seems to me that the goals of these scholarship programs in Japan and Taiwan are similar; their primary purpose is diplomatic, to build goodwill towards the host country. In Taiwan’s case, they are obviously overshadowed by China in terms of image, and they want people to come and study there so Taiwan will have a core of foreigners helping to promote the country abroad based on their good experiences there. If you look at which foreigners are studying in Taiwan, about half are Japanese-most of whom either have relatives or ancestors that are Taiwanese or who did not want to study in China either because Taiwan’s standard of living is more similar to Japan or because they worry about anti-Japan sentiment in China making it uncomfortable to be there. Then you have another 10 or 20% who are Taiwanese-Americans or Canadians, who obviously would study in their parents or grandparents’ home instead of China. Then there are a few percent who wanted to study in Taiwan because the traditional writing appealed more to them or they have family working in Taiwan or their Taiwanese friends back home suggested they go to Taiwan, but I think 20-30% or so are there because of the scholarships. If the Taiwanese government did not use these scholarships, they would probably have exactly zero students coming from most countries, and almost zero coming from some other countries if you do not count students that have blood links to Taiwan. I guarantee that I would have never even thought of going to Taiwan if they had not offered me a few months of free study there. Since Taiwan is, to put it mildly, in a diplomatically awkward situation, it is probably worth the money to take a few people each from many different countries around the world, and then send them home educated and friendly towards Taiwan. Larger numbers of these scholarships are also

Japan’s case is not as dramatic as Taiwan, but the reasons are similar if smaller scale. While there are people interested in Japan all over the world, there are virtually no communities of native speakers of Japanese outside of Japan, so most people who become fluent in Japanese and understand Japanese culture will have to live in Japan at some point. Since Japan is one of the world’s most expensive countries, there are very few people around the world who can afford to study there, and of course the number of people who could afford it is much lower in some poorer countries-and these are often the same countries where Japan has manufacturing or outsourcing facilities, or buys raw materials from.

There are probably other justifications for the program which I have missed,  so please chime in.

Any HTML gurus know why the hell I have a gigantic mess of white space before the table below? If so, let me know!

A week ago I mentioned how Taiwan’s DPP administration has been editing grade school history textbooks to refer to Chinese history as “Chinese history” instead of “this country’s history” and removing the honorific title “Father of the country” from references to Sun Yat-sen, leaving only his name.

A few days later, there were reports that the Ministry Of Economic Affairs (MOEA) is engaging on a systematic campaign to remove references to China from the names of state run enterprises, and to encourage private corporations to do the same.

Some examples from the article:

Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中國石油) and China Shipbuilding Corp (CSBC, 中國造船) would soon be renamed to include “Taiwan” in their company titles in accordance with government policy.

Chinese Petroleum Company ->”CPC, Taiwan” (台灣中油)

Chinese Ship Building Corporation (CSBC) -> Taiwan International Shipbuilding Corp (台灣國際造船)

Another company that has been targeted in the name change campaign is China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), but Chen did not address this yesterday.

CAL said earlier that its name was valuable in the greater China market.

Although previously well-known in the international community and with a large number of overseas branches, the state-controlled International Commercial Bank of China (ICBC, 中國國際商銀), is now called Mega International Commercial Bank (兆豐國際商銀) after merging with another state-run entity, Chiao Tung Bank (交通銀行).

[From Taipei Times, Feb 3]

Of particular note is this sentence buried in the last paragraph.

The issue of changing the name of state-run enterprises is part of the government’s “name-rectification” policy, aimed at avoiding Taiwanese companies being mistaken for Chinese ones.

My previous post on the revision of history books had mentioned how this concept is central to Chinese thought, at least since Confucianism referred to “rectification of names,” and in fact this phrase concept is extremely common in Taiwanese political discourse.

To get an idea of how common, take a look at the top 10 most emailed articles at Taiwan’s Liberty Times newspaper on today, February 7 2007:

1.	不認同 李筱峰退出李友會	342 票
2.	李登輝：制憲正名達成國家正常化	255 票
3.	王又曾被拘留美週內決定去留	237 票
4.	追討格瑞那達7億貸款 我在美興訟	201 票
5.	財金高層：央行正名 英文名應去中...	200 票
6.	廉能會調查…馬特別費 300餘萬...	170 票
7.	更名難 綠委促中正紀念堂搬家	132 票
8.	邱義仁陳唐山互調 許惠祐掌國安局	122 票
9.	2000萬保釋金不用籌 王家疑有...	120 票
10.	大法官林子儀 股票交易漏報２００...	120 票

Of these, #2 and #5 both include the phrase “name-rectification” (正名) in the headline. #1 refers to comments made by former president Lee Deng-hui regarding Taiwan’s status, which is intimately bound up with name-rectification. #7 about the proposed relocation of the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall from Taipei to Taoyuan country, where his mausoleum is located, and the re-purposement of the current building for use as something like a “Taiwan Democracy Memorial.” This same article #7 also mentions the recent renaming of Chiang Kai Shek airport to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. So that makes, out of the ten most popular articles of the day, there are four related to the politics of name-rectification.Let’s look for a moment a bit more about the Chiang Kai Shek issue. While no one denies that Chiang is a critical figure in the history of China and Taiwan, exactly how he should be remembered is a major point of contention between the Taiwanese political factions. As his former party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang/KMT) still respects his memory and praises his role in the original revolution, the birth of the Republic, the fight against the communists, and the development of Taiwan’s economy after the flight from the mainland. On the other hand, the Taiwanese independence oriented Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) tends to look at him as a military dictator, who invaded Taiwan with his ragtag army of mainlanders and spent decades suppressing native culture and liberty on the pretext of national security.

As part of their name-rectification agenda, the DPP administration has already changed the name of the Chiang Kai Shek International Airport, and has now proposed the more radical step of actually removing him from his own memorial hall. In addition, they have also ordered the removal of outdoor statues of Chiang Kai Shek from all military bases, to be placed in storage. The excellent China affairs/media blog ESWN has a short bit on this, with an amusing quote from the defense minister Lee Jye.

Lee: “Why not remove them?”
Reporter: “Why remove them?”
Lee: “You tell me why not remove them? This is a democratized country. I am in an awkward position, right or not? The ruling party has some idea that they want me to carry out. The opposition party also has its own opinion and it does not want me to carry this out. So what do you say that I should do? Removing the bronze statues does not mean discarding them. It is to move them to where they belong. As you say, you are the opposition right now. If you become the ruling party next time, you can tell me to bring the statues back again. It is such a simple issue. Why are you arguing about this all day?”
Reporter: “The blues are not happy, but the greens are not happy either?”
Lee: “Yes.”
Reporter: “Could it that you feel pressed and aggrieved?”
Lee: “Then I ask you to help me. Please do not keep picking up rocks and throwing them at me.”

There is also an article at the Taipei Times about the statue removal campaign. Significantly, the removal of the statues is being accomplished before February 28 of this year, which will be the 60th anniversary of the famous 228 incident, in which military police occupying Taiwan for Chiang Kai Shek’s KMT led Republic Of China government beat an elderly female street peddler (on 2/27), triggering a protest the next day (2/27) in which several civilians were shot and killed by police, which caused rioting and near-insurrection by the Taiwanese, which led to the introduction of military law by the KMT government, and a crackdown against rebels and former “Japanese collaborators,” in which thousands were killed. The 228 incident, now commemorated with a holiday known as Peace Memorial Day, is considered by the DPP to represent everything bad about the decades long period of military law in Taiwan. While the KMT officially does not consider Chiang Kai Shek to be responsible for the 228 violence because he was not in Taiwan in the time and did not order order the reprisals against civilians, there are many who blame him either based on the principal of a military commander’s responsibility down the chain of command, or because they believe that he did in fact authorize the post-insurrection massacres.

Interestingly, despite the history textbook revisions removing his title as “father of the country” the final paragraph of the Liberty Times #7 article from above, on the possible removal of the Chiang Kai Shek memorial from the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, makes a point of saying that because are still many people who respect the great doctor’s principles of democracy and fraternity and all that noone would ever consider doing anything to the Sun Yat-sen memorial hall. Of course, who knows what a future government might find objectionable?

Article first, comments below.

Textbook revision draws criticism

STAFF WRITER, WITH AGENCIES
Tuesday, Jan 30, 2007, Page 4

The Ministry of Education has revised a high-school history textbook to more accurately reflect Taiwan’s development as an independent nation, media reports said yesterday. Under the ministry’s orders, the title of the textbook was changed from National History (本國史) to Chinese History (中國史), reports in the Chinese-language daily China Times and by the state-funded Central News Agency (CNA) said.

In the textbook, terms like “our country” (woguo, 我國), “this country” (benguo, 本國), and “the mainland” (dalu, 大陸), were changed to “China” (zhongguo, 中國), to indicate that Taiwan is not part of China, the reports said.

To put Taiwan and China’s relationship into context, the textbook now uses neutral words to describe events in China’s history, such as describing the 1911 Wuhan Uprising that toppled the Manchu Dynasty as a “riot” (qishi, 起事) instead of a “justified uprising” (qiyi, 起義).

In addition, the Republic of China’s first president, Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), was referred to as the “founding father” (guofu, 國父) in previous versions of the book. The revised textbooks merely refer to him as “Sun Yat-sen.”

Another change condensed ancient Chinese history, but includes a section on the Taiwan-China separation. The section includes a passage that reads: “Taiwan’s future remains a big question mark. Will Taiwan’s independence bring war? How to protect Taiwan from being swallowed? How to maintain the status quo? How to deal with China? Taiwan’s people are frustrated.”

“School textbooks must reflect social changes, regardless of the era or the nation,” National Institute for Compilation and Translation Director-General Lan Shun-teh (藍順德) was quoted as saying in the CNA report.

Some teachers, however, are opposed to the revisions.

“In the compilation of the history textbook, there was strong political intervention from the government and only one voice was allowed. This is control by the state apparatus,” Wu Chan-liang (吳展良), head of the history department of the National Taiwan University, was quoted saying by the China Times.

In recent years the government has undertaken many “desinicization” measures, such as removing the word “China” from the names of some state-run enterprises.

Currently, Taiwan’s executive branch is controlled by the pro independence Democratic Progressive Party, while the legislature is controlled by the pro-China (but not pro Communism) Nationalist Party (Kuomintang: KMT for short). The two parties continually struggle for the political upper hand, and there has been a tendency for the party in power to promote their particular vision of Taiwanese identity, in great or small ways. For example, the DPP administration has made great progress in desinicization and promotion of local Taiwanese culture, such as the promotion of the Taiwanese and Hakka dialects and aboriginal languages and culture, the recent creation of a cabinet level Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, the currently under debate Aboriginal autonomy law.

On the other side, we have seen the KMT controlled Taipei government institute standard correct pinyin signs, while much of the country continues to use virtually random alphabetic spelling of Chinese names and words. (Incidentally, Taiwan needs to adopt pinyin universally on public signs. Since pinyin is present purely for the convenience of foreigners, making the signs actually legible should not be a political issue.)

This textbook revision is just another example of the same type of action. Interestingly, while the actions of the pro-independence faction are generally looked at as anti-China, the thinking behind their textbook revision is probably best described using the Confucian idea of rectification of names.

Confucius believed that social disorder resulted from failing to call things by their proper names, and his solution was “Rectification of Names/Terms” (zhèngmíng, 正名). When Duke Jing of Qi asked about government, Confucius replied, “There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.” (Analects XII, 11, tr. Legge). He gave a more detailed explanation of zhengming to one of his disciples.

Tsze-lu said, “The ruler of Wei has been waiting for you, in order with you to administer the government. What will you consider the first thing to be done?” The Master replied, “What is necessary is to rectify names.” “So! indeed!” said Tsze-lu. “You are wide of the mark! Why must there be such rectification?” The Master said, “How uncultivated you are, Yu! A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.” (Analects XIII, 3, tr. Legge)

Xun Zi chapter (22) “On the Rectification of Names” claims the ancient sage kings chose names (ming 名 “name; appellation; term”) that directly corresponded with actualities (shi 實 “fact; real; true; actual”), [Japanese readers may recognize this characters as 実] but later generations confused terminology, coined new nomenclature, and could no longer distinguish right from wrong.
The blues (KMT) continues to claim that Taiwan is in fact part of China, and they therefore must continue to refer to Taiwan as part of China. Likewise, the greens (DPP) can not allow Taiwan to continue to be referred to as the Republic Of China, since they do not believe that it is in China at all. While most of them are still too scared of China to offically declare independence and change the constitutional name of the republic from China to Taiwan, there is a movement to apply for membership to the UN under the name of Taiwan. (As their application as “Republic of China” has been rejected for 13 years running.

The two sides may disagree over whether Taiwan is in fact part of China, but they are doing so in a very Chinese way. To paraphrase, names are rectified by the winner, but in Taiwan’s tempestuous democracy there is unlikely to be a clear and decisive majority party in the near future. However, recent polls show that the number of Taiwanese self identifying as Taiwanese, instead of Chinese, has increased from 36% when the DPP president Chen Shui Bian was elected in 2000 to over 60% today. If this trent continues, reality may become undeniable, with even the KMT being forced to rectify names.

The changing landscape of Japanese people’s English learning practices is a factor keeping Japanese students out of ESL classrooms in the UK, reports Kyodo News:

(Kyodo) _ The number of Japanese learning English in Britain has slowed in recent years, amid signs that growing numbers of young people from East Asia are opting to study in their home country rather than venture overseas.

Experts put the tailing off down to many factors, including the state of the Japanese economy, falling birthrate, the popularity of Chinese and the increasing provision of English language teaching in the region.
...
According to figures provided by the Council, the number of weeks spent in Britain by Japanese studying English fell between 1997 and 2001, and has plateaued out in recent years. In 1997, Japanese spent 170,100 weeks in Britain. By 2001, this had fallen to 123,626 weeks.

In 2002, the figures picked up again and in 2004 Japanese spent 135,347 weeks in the United Kingdom. However, numbers are expected to be down for 2005.
...
Emma Parker, education promotion officer at the British Council in Japan, said all of the large English-speaking countries—Britain, the United States and Australia—had seen reductions in Japanese students. She added that the number of Japanese going to overseas universities appeared to be falling, and this inevitably impacted on applications for English courses. (many students take English language courses before studying at a foreign university).

As well as the simple fact that there are fewer younger Japanese people, Parker put the decline down to “more and more potential study destinations, and so increased competition.”

She said there were several Japanese-owned English language schools located in nearby Asian countries and, “although English skills remain very important in Japan, people’s interests and employers’ requirements are diversifying.

Essentially, if this article’s assertion that people are choosing to study at home is to be believed (though why they chose to measure that in hours as opposed to people escapes me), that would mean Japan’s domestic ESL market (for Japanese adults, anyway) has become so developed (to the point of saturation) that people may be taking seriously the idea expressed in top English conversation firm NOVA’s slogan of “study abroad near your local train station.” That would be a sad development—the peculiar nature of the still-flourishing interest in the English language in Japan has now been officially blamed as a factor keeping Japanese people from studying abroad, which ironically means less overseas exposure for the average Japanese. The pros and cons of eikaiwa-style English education aside, it simply cannot serve as an effective replacement for studying abroad if one’s goal is to learn how a language is used and the culture it comes from.

That said, it would take more study to see how true that claim is (I wish I could get my hands on that report for one). And it seems like this story is talking about ESL students only, not undergraduate or graduate degree programs. I’m having trouble locating more recent statistics, but as of 2000, the number of Japanese people studying abroad (including all 3 categories and more, and most of them going to English-speaking countries, presumably) continued to rise, though at a much lower rate than in years past. My guess is it’s a combination of factors: families who are facing lower incomes (and shrinking disposable incomes) may be forced to see eikaiwa as a second best option since they can’t afford to send their kids to study abroad. Or there may be other factors at play: Japanese universities are becoming easier to get into (fewer kids, same number of universities) meaning that studying abroad isn’t being used as Plan B for kids who had trouble on the entrance exams; or perhaps parents/students are getting wise to the fact that ESL programs often aren’t what they are cracked up to be. One explanation mentioned in the report that I don’t buy is the competition from other languages. English is still king in Japan and will be for the foreseeable future.

I’ll try and keep an eye on things, but in the meantime: what do you think?

A couple of months ago I picked up The History of Zainichi Koreans, a Japanese language middle school text book intended for use either by ethnic Korean Japanese residents at Mindan (South Korean) affiliated schools, or as a supplemental text for history teachers in Japanese schools. It was published by Akashi Shoten in February 2006, and written by the history textbook creation sub-committee of Mindan and can be bought through Amazon Japan.

Looking at how history is presented in textbooks is, as readers may know, something that I find rather fascinating and so I would like to translate some small sections of interest in this text for everyone. Today I will start with the timeline of key events in Zainichi history. It is divided into two parts, Pre Liberation and Post Liberation, with the respective timeline being placed at the beginning of that half of the book. Notice which events, some of which are probably unknown to over 99% of Japanese citizens (i.e. the details of foreigner registration) are selected as key to Zainichi history.

View the entire post to see the timeline.

Read the rest of this entry »