A high-level US court just ruled that American paper money must be redesigned so that blind people can distinguish bills by denomination. Other countries accomplish this through subtle tactile differences or different bill sizes, but all US currency feels more or less the same, at least when it’s fresh off the presses.

When I went to Albany in February to be sworn into the New York bar, I had a number of odd experiences, among them:

• Drinking Chinese state-brewed beer in a sketchy hotel room while discussing what would happen if they went to war with Japan (this would have led to nothing good had the sole Chinese attendee not decided to “go to bed” early)


• Sitting in a crowded waiting room next to a lawyer who works literally within eyeshot of my office window in Tokyo


• Touching a girder from the World Trade Center

But probably the weirdest experience was when I bought a pack of gum inside the New York state government Cloud City.

Everything was normal until I went to the cashier. I put the gum on the counter. The cashier said “Hi, what are you getting today?” For many people, that would merit some kind of sarcastic response. As usual, I bit my tongue, which was probably a good thing because the cashier was blind.

I tried to act as un-shocked as possible, and said “Umm, a 5-pack of Doublemint.”

“OK,” she said, and started pushing buttons on the register. The register read out the numbers as she pushed them. “POINT SIX NINE ENTER. SEVENTY-THREE CENTS.”

“That’ll be 73 cents,” she said.

I handed her a five-dollar bill.

“Out of how much?” she said.

“Uhh, out of five.”

Anyway, I wonder whether she works there all the time. Maybe they just put her there on bar admissions day as an ethics test for new lawyers. Or maybe people really work on the honor system in Albany. Who knows. At least her job will be a bit easier in a few years’ time…

This isn’t normally the sort of thing we discuss on this blog, but in announcing his upcoming marriage with his partner of 21 years, the sci-fi actor makes an interesting comparison between discrimination involving his sexual orientation and Japanese descent. Here is Takei’s entire letter, with italics added for emphasis.

Our California dream is reality. Brad Altman and I can now marry. We are overjoyed! At long last, the barrier to full marriage rights for same-sex couples has been torn down. We are equal with all citizens of our state!

The California Supreme Court has ruled that all Californians have a fundamental right to marry the person he or she loves. Brad and I have shared our lives together for over 21 years. We’ve worked in partnership; he manages the business side of my career and I do the performing. We’ve traveled the world together from Europe to Asia to Australia. We’ve shared the good times as well as struggled through the bad. He helped me care for my ailing mother who lived with us for the last years of her life. He is my love and I can’t imagine life without him. Now, we can have the dignity, as well as all the responsibilities, of marriage. We embrace it all heartily.

The California Supreme Court further ruled that our Constitution provides for equal protection for all and that it cannot have marriage for one group and another form – domestic partnership – for another group. No more “separate but equal.” No more second-class citizenship. Brad and I are going to be married as full citizens of our state.

As a Japanese American, I am keenly mindful of the subtle and not so subtle discrimination that the law can impose. During World War II, I grew up imprisoned behind the barbed wire fences of U.S. internment camps. Pearl Harbor had been bombed and Japanese Americans were rounded up and incarcerated simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. Fear and war hysteria swept the nation. A Presidential Executive Order directed the internment of Japanese Americans as a matter of national security. Now, with the passage of time, we look back and see it as a shameful chapter of American history. President Gerald Ford rescinded the Executive Order that imprisoned us. President Ronald Reagan formally apologized for the unjust imprisonment. President George H.W. Bush signed the redress payment checks to the survivors. It was a tragic and dark taint on American history.

With time, I know the opposition to same sex marriage, too, will be seen as an antique and discreditable part of our history. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy remarked on same sex marriage, “Times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper, in fact, serve only to oppress.”

For now, Brad and I are enjoying the delicious dilemma of deciding where, when, and how we will be married. Marriage equality took a long time, but, like fine wine, its bouquet is simply exquisite.

Much of the debate over the legitimacy of this court decision, and gay marriage in general, is based upon the question of whether sexual orientation as a basis for discrimination is on the same level as gender and race. Since the general scientific and societal consensus seems to be that sexuality is primarily an inherent characteristic (whether due to genetic or prenatal factors), rather than a matter of “choice” or “lifestyle” I personally cannot buy the argument that it is not a similarly invalid basis for discrimination. I imagine that the best route for success on the part of gay marriage equality advocates is to continue to press comparisons with the earlier generations’ fight for racial and gender equality, continue to conflate racial discrimination with homophobia, and remind people that ”separate but equal” is a vicious lie. Most people will likely balk at highly technical debates of constitutionality and jurisprudence, but perhaps more of them will listen when an elderly Japanese-American homosexual tells them that being barred from marrying his fiance is equivalent to being locked in an internment camp in the 1940s.

Incidentally, my favorite potential remedy to the entire issue is the somewhat radical proposal to remove the term “marriage” from the law entirely, make the state responsible only for two-party “civil unions” to which gender is irrelevant, leaving marriage as a religious sacrament or label of self-identification.

It seems like every few months there’s yet another court ruling as to the constitutionality of Japan’s defense forces. Apparently, Americans are following suit with regard to the Iraq war.

New Jersey Peace Action et al. v. Bush, represented by the Constitutional Law Clinic at Rutgers University Law School-Newark, alleges that the war violates article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which assigns to Congress the authority to declare war.

Clinic director Frank Askin said the framers at the 1787 constitutional convention denied war-making powers to the president except in response to sudden attacks when Congress might not have time to react quickly.

“The founders were very clear that only Congress could make that awesome decision,” he said in a statement. “They [members of Congress] were not permitted to delegate that power to the president and thus be able later to disclaim responsibility for a decision gone bad.”

Interesting (but, I suspect, futile) arguments in the full article.

As I am about to permanently disassemble this computer and bring only the hard drives with me to Japan, where I will then assemble a new system after finding a place to live, I figure it would be a good time to post the various things that had been sitting around my desktop in case I ever found the time and motivation to write something about them.

• Genetic tests have shown that the Taiwanese aborigines are likely to be the ancestors of the entire Polynesian and Micronesian population, which also includes the Malay group, comprising the majority population of the three large countries of Malaysia, Indonesia and The Philippines. While study of archeology and linguistic variation, as well as phenotype analysis of modern populations, had led some researchers to suspect that the ancestors of most Pacific islanders were descended from the ancestors of the pre-Chinese Taiwanese aboriginal population (who themselves migrated across the Taiwan Strait thousands of years ago, when the Han Chinese probably still lived far to the north) but this genetic study provides the strongest evidence yet for the theory.


• Although Japan may be the only country in which a unique word exists for “chikan”, the phenomenon is hardly unique. I once linked to a New York Times article on the prolificicity of flashers or “bumpers” in the NYC subway, which likely occurs with frequency in any city with a crowded public transit system. Another place famous for it- Mexico City. Apparently the problem is bad enough so they have introduced women only buses, perhaps inspired by Japan’s women-only commuter train cars.


• U.S. anti-terrorism special operations forces assisting the Philippines military have contracted a Manila-based marketing firm to create comic books with an anti-terrorism message. American style superhero comics are extremely popular in the Philippines, but I am very skeptical that a marketing firm would be able to create a comic with a genuinely compelling story, regardless of how slickly produced the graphics and printing may be. I would love to actually see the comics though, which sound like a prime example of the force that American cultural products still carry in the country, over 60 years after colonialism officially ended there.


• Korean’s Chosun newspaper has a truly hysterical article entitled Manhattanites Served Korean Food as Japanese. Just read and laugh.


• “Samurai-Sword Maker’s Reactor Monopoly May Cool Nuclear Revival”. An amazing headline and a pretty amazing article. Apparently, Hokkaido’s Japan Steel Works Ltd. is the world’s largest-and virtually only-supplier of steel-cast nuclear reactor containment chambers, which naturally must be built to VERY exacting standards. Despite an apparently massive surge in demand for these massive products, the company is skeptical how many plants will actually be built in the end, and are therefore reluctant to make the capital investments required to raise their output above the current level of 4 pieces per year. Yes, FOUR. The fact that this single plant is a bottleneck for the global nuclear power industry seems to be the result of some past failure in strategic planning, but the solution is unclear. And yes, they really were a maker of samurai swords- and apparently still are!
  “They’re made in a traditional Japanese wooden hut, up a steep hill from the rest of the Muroran factory. It’s decorated with white zigzag papers called ``shide’’ used in Shinto shrines, creating a sense of sanctity in the workshop.Inside, as the factory clangs and hisses below, Tanetada Horii hand-forges broad swords from 1 kilogram (2.2 pound) lumps of Tamahagane steel.”


• Suriname, the tiny South American nation which was formerly a Dutch colony has been searching for an appropriate national language. Currently this is Dutch-which is also used in government and law- but English has surpassed it for international business, and Sranan-a local language derived from an English creole-has surpassed it as the language of the street. The language situation gets even more complex:
  “Slip into one of the Indonesian eateries known as warungs to hear Javanese, spoken by about 15 percent of the population. Choose a roti shop, with its traditional Indian bread, to listen to Surinamese Hindi, spoken by the descendants of 19th-century Indian immigrants, who make up more than a third of the population. And merchants throughout Paramaribo speak Chinese, even though the numbers of Chinese immigrants are small.Venture into the jungly interior, where indigenous languages like Arawak and Carib are still heard with languages like Saramaccan, a Portuguese and English-inspired Creole spoken by descendants of runaway slaves who worked on plantations once owned by Sephardic Jews.”
  What is an appropriate common tongue in a country like this? When deciding on a common language, what weight is given to the linguistic history of the state itself, the background of the people, ability to communicate with (much larger) neighboring countries or international business?

About a week ago the New York Times had an article entitled “Seeking Recognition for a War’s Lost Laborers” on the lack of recognition for the Asian victims of Japanese forced labor in the construction of the famous “Railway of Death.” According to the article, the history of the 200,000-300,000 Asians who were employed, and often killed, in the construction of the railway, which was being constructed to link Bangkok and the Burmese (Myanmarese) capital of Rangoon (Yangon) to provide logistical support for Japan’s invasion of Southeast Asia, has been almost completely overshadowed by stories of the smaller number of Western POWs.

Between 200,000 and 300,000 Asian laborers — no one knows the exact number — were press-ganged by the Japanese and their surrogates to work on the rail line: Tamils, Chinese and Malays from colonial Malaya; Burmans and other ethnic groups from what is now Myanmar; and Javanese from what is now Indonesia.

“It is almost forgotten history,” said Sasidaran Sellappah, a retired plantation manager in Malaysia whose father was among 120 Tamil workers from a rubber estate forced to work on the railway. Only 47 survived.

[...]

By contrast, the travails of the 61,806 British, Australian, Dutch and American prisoners of war who worked on the railway, about 20 percent of whom died from starvation, disease and execution, have been recorded in at least a dozen memoirs, documented in the official histories of the governments involved and romanticized in the fictionalized “Bridge on the River Kwai,” the 1957 Hollywood classic inspired by a similarly named best-selling novel by Pierre Boulle.

One reason given for this inequality of historical memory are that virtually none of the Asian victims were from Thailand, giving the local government little incentive to commemorate them. Another is that, unlike the American and British POWs who wrote memoirs and gave countless interviews to journalists and historians, virtually none of the Asian laborers were literate, and they lacked ready access to mass media.

At this point, I would like to present some photos I took at a very peculiar museum that Adam, his (now) wife Shoko, and I visited when we were in Kanchanaburi, the location of the famous Bridge on the River Kwai.

The Jeath War Museum (JEATH is an acronym for Japan, English, American and THai) is a rather eccentric museum based on the collection of a wealthy Japanese history buff, who apparently purchased a building a number of years ago, stocked it haphazardly with local WW2 memorabilia of both great and small interest, and has not had arranged to have it cleaned since.

First, some photos from outside the museum itself.

This is a picture of the famous Bridge which I quite like.

Here are Adam and Shoko posing with the bridge behind them. I do not know the sleeping man, but I have to assume that he is a war criminal of some kind.

This is a silly little train which lets  tourists ride across the bridge and 1 or 2km into the jungle on the other side, and then ride backwards to the other side.

I blurrily snapped this memorial obelisk in the jungle across the river, from aforementioned silly train. It says something along the lines of “the remains of the Chinese army ascend into heaven.”

This plaque is location near the bridge. I did not, however, see one for the British POWs, although I certainly could have just missed it.

And now we reach the museum portion of our tour. I do not seem to have any photographs of the entrance area, but the first thing you see upon approaching the entrance to the museum proper are these statues of historical figures, with biography written on the wall behind them. I will transcribe the highly amusing text another time.

Here is Tojo.

Adam and Shoko again, with their good friends Josef Stalin and General Douglas MacArthur.

The lovable Albert Einstein gets a wall as well.

Inside the museum we are confronted with more dramatic statues, such as this tableau of POWs constructing the railway.

Here is one in a cage. Note the real straw.

Eerie closeup of another caged POW statue’s face.

Adam and his new friend, the WW2-era Japanese soldier driving an old car.

The driver.

Another old car. I do not recognize the make, but it is covered in dust that may weigh as much as the steel.

US Army signal core teletypewriter

Recreation of Japanese army tent

Read the text carefully. Do you know when the CD was invented?

A message from Japan to the Thai people. It’s a bit hard to read, so if anyone wants I can transcribe it.

A British anti-Japan political cartoon

Overall, the museum is a complete shambles. While it has a huge array of cool stuff, it is strewn about almost at random, covered in dust, and sometimes behind other stuff. Not to mention placed in crowded and un-lit cases with poor labeling. Despite the numerous flaws, it is certainly worth a visit if you are in the area, but I can’t say that it will do much to provide any sort of historical narrative, and certainly does not even try to meet the standard hoped for by the Times article I began this post with.

As horrific as the news can be from time to time, I’m not sure I can think of any contemporary story that quite compares with the story of Delphine Lalaurie, of 19th century New Orleans.

On April 10, 1834, during another party, a fire broke out in the kitchen of the mansion. The kitchen, as was the norm in Spanish mansions, was separate from the home and located over the carriageway building across the courtyard. The firemen entered the building through the courtyard. To their surprise, there were two slaves chained to the stove in the kitchen. It appeared as though the slaves had set the fire themselves in order to attract attention.

However, the biggest surprise was to be found in the attic, where the fire brigade was directed by the other slaves. The door was bolted, and the fire brigade had to use a battering ram to open the door. What they found would make their stomachs wrench; inside the crawlspace attic was the stench of death. According to contemporary accounts, over a dozen disfigured and maimed slaves were manacled to the walls or floor. Several had been the subject of gruesome medical experiments.

The exact details are unclear; owing to the horrific nature of the crime, many details were either swept under the rug or embellished. One man looked as though he had been victim of some bizarre makeshift sex change. Another one, a woman, was trapped inside a small cage, where her arms and legs had been badly broken and then reset at odd angles, making her appear as some sort of “human crab.” Another woman had her arms and legs removed and patches of her flesh had been sliced off in a circular motion to make her appear as a giant caterpillar. Some had their mouths sewn shut and had then starved to death. Others had their hands sewn to different parts of their bodies. One woman had her entrails pulled out of her stomach and was secured to the floor by her own intestines. A small boy of about twelve had the flesh on half of his face peeled back, revealing muscle, veins, and so forth. The wound had since been infested with disease and insects. Most of the victims were found dead. Those who were still alive, begged to be put out of their misery and died shortly after.

March 10

Stop in a local cafe across from the Pike Street Market. Need some cash. As I use the exorbitantly overpriced transaction fee laden ATM a man sitting at a table located directly between the dor and the counter begins speaking. He is somewhat indistinct, but he is saying something like:

“I used to get three hundred dollars a day out of these cash machines. [[something about buying or selling cocaine, unclear]] and you could get out $300 a day without a transaction fee. You got a transaction fee on that one?”

Long white hair and beard, flannel shirt and jeans. 55-65 years age, long slightly pointed nails, with visible dirt underneath. From California originally, he has been in Seattle for 7 years. No matter how one responds, he continues his stream of consciousness elocutions, your own contribution affecting the flow of monologue barely more than a pebble tossed into an actual stream.

“Are you a local?”

“No, I’m visiting some friends here. From New Jersey.’

“Oh,  year Jersey- interesting state. My dad was from outside Toronto, little place near a farm seven miles outside of town.”

“Uh-huh…”

During the 3-5 minutes I am in the cafe, he tells me his favorite pie is key lime blackberry but recommends against carbanero-the hot pepper. I am unclear if this is somehow pie related, but if so I must admit it sounds like a terrible recipe. His favorite restaurant had some sort of meal platter involving a rosemary chicken breast for only $7.50, he sometimes eats two for 13 dollars. He offers to treat me to this lunch as I am already trying to pleasantly say goodbye and head out the door, which I am slowly inching towards. There is no recognition whatsoever of my attempts to politely break off conversation, so I walk out the door, words at my back.

The coconut chai is delicious.

Later, I meet my friend Brian for lunch as he takes his break from work a couple of blocks away. We eat at an Ethiopian/African restaurant which I notice has a dish involving rosemary chicken for $7.50, but I am more in a fish mood. For $8 is it excellent, with some sort of green sauce which looks like, but does not taste like pesto.

After spending five days visiting my grandparents in the retirement district of Florida-an area which I can definitively say is, out of all the locales in this world where I have spent even a single entire day, the least appealing in virtually every way-I find myself gradually approaching the tail end of a six day long visit to some friends from my years as an undergraduate at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey who have since graduation moved out to Seattle.

Here is a selection of brief notes on Seattle jotted down in my pocket notebook as I wandered around the city for a couple of days.

March 5

Flight to Seattle.

British stewardess, maybe 50 years old & doughty, shortish red curly hair and thick, thick black glasses-to young woman sitting in starboard aisle seat.  “Are you with them?” She is referring to the two persons sitting between the aisle seat and the window. “No,” is the reply. “Well then, why not sit over there?” says the stewardess referring to the entirely empty port-side half of the row. “Why look like a sardine when you can swim upstream like a salmon?”

March 6

In front of the Space Needle, homeless man in blue sweatshirt is silently gesturing to all passing vehicles that he will crush their bones, rend their fles, and devour them-in the “fee fi fo fum” style of the Jack and the Beanstalk giant.

Distressingly, the Science Fiction Museum is located down the street from the Space Needle, instead of inside of it, which I consider to be the obviously fitting location. In protest of this reckless and selfish offence against common sense, I enter neither of them.

Later in the day, somewhere in the downtown area not far from Pioneer Square, a girl (moderately hipster looking, ginormous sunglasses) waiting behind me in line to order at a Starbucks is shocked that “Tall” size is in fact rather short. She is from Alabama, were they do not have Starbucks. She promised her friends she would boycott it after moving to Seattle, but it’s right on her way to work.

March 7

Much like the apocryphal German spy unmasked in WW2-era Britain due to his habit of looking the wrong way before crossing the street, my most obvious “tell” as an out-of-towner in Seattle is easily my uncertain approach to traffic crossing. Never have I seen such a combination of pedestrians uniformly waiting for traffic lights and drivers uniformly yielding to pedestrians without pause. How is a New Jerseyan to react?

Back in high school I was friends with this girl who hated the taste of coffee, but thought she should be a coffee drinker for image purposes. To wean herself onto the vile drink, she drank mocha (coffee mixed with hot chocolate), gradually increasing the coffee to chocolate ratio. After I finished high school we lost tough and the last I heard she was a heroin addict living somewhere on the west coast.

As I write this, I am drinking hot chocolate. Not mixed with coffee. I hate the stuff. This is not a good town to be anti-coffee.