Month: February 2006

Illegal Bookies’ Influence Waning in Govt-sponsored Horse racing

Horse racing in Japan (Keiba) is a government-sponsored gambling powerhouse. Other lucrative state-owned gambling venues in Japan include Keirin (bike racing, “Welcome to sports cycle race “KEIRIN” in the world to which Japan gave birth.” < - THANK YOU, machine translation!) and Kyotei (boat racing, the brainchild of war criminal and would-be Nobel laureate Ryoichi Sasakawa).

When I was going to high school in Japan, I often spent Saturdays with my host father as he played the horses. He’d read the horse racing newspaper, call in his choice to a bookie on his cell phone, instantly fall asleep, and then wake up just as the race came on TV only to lose every time. He never seemed to mind though — every time he lost he’d just make a kind of Japanese sighing noise and look at the paper again for the next race.

He was a hard drinking, hard smoking gambler who wheeled and dealed in local politics – all attributes that I would normally consider sleazy if he were not also one of the most warm and kindly people that I’ve ever met.

Anyway, back to the point of this post: the Internet seems to be changing this (apparently illegal) bookie system. ZAKZAK reports (and I paraphrase):

Bookies Disappearing as Online Horse Bets Gain in Popularity
Raison d’etre Lost Upon Institution of High-Payout 1st-2nd-3rd Bets

The Japan Racing Authority (which runs Japan’s horse races for the national govt) will hold the first GI race of the year, “Febuary S,” at the Tokyo Race Track. As the races are run, [yakuza-connected] “bookies,” who are officially banned by the Horse Racing Law [but nevertheless prevalent] are quickly shrinking in number. In addition to an aggressive clampdown by police, the benefits of making bets through a bookie are disappearing due to the popularity of purchasing racing tickets on the Internet (on mobile phones etc) as well as the institution of “1st-2nd-3rd” bets with high payouts.

According to a report (PDF) by the National Police Agency, incidents for bookie activities, after peaking in 1992, have decreased 90% since then.

The benefits of bookies were: (1) Most tickets can be bought at low prices starting at 90 yen since management expenses etc are not deducted from sales; and (2) On top of being able to gamble away from the official ticket counters by placing bets on the phone, one can pay after the fact, making it possible to bet without having any money on you at the time.

However, as the authorities strengthened their enforcement of the law, the JRA expanded its services to allow customers to buy tickets on the internet or mobile phones. By 2005, Internet purchases had come to make up 43% of sales. In 2004, the “1st-2nd-3rd” bets were instituted, removing bookies’ raison d’etre.

A senior detective of the Hyogo Prefectural police, who must deal with the [infamous yakuza family] Yamaguchi-gumi in its jurisdiction, comments, “Many bookies made maximum odds of 100:1. Recently 1st-2nd and 1st-2nd-3rd bets have been instituted, and even 100,000 yen tickets. The recognition spread that even buying from the illegal bookies, it was a ‘high-risk, low return’ bet.”

As demand disappears, bookies have started to go out of business. The senior detective notes, “In Hyogo Prefecture, a certain group directly connected to Yamaguchi-gumi that had provided the source of funds for bookie activity has seen its debt skyrocketing currently due to a lack of revenue, placing it in a state of destruction. I guess there’s no longer a role for bookies.”

ZAKZAK 2006/02/15

The comfortable and semi-legal relationship between the government and organized crime in Japan never ceases to amaze me. Well, it’s not just that it’s so comfortable, but also that it’s so open and obvious, and not just in the realm of horse racing (see links).

I mean, the JRA could easily have offered (pre-paid) telephone bets and high-odds betting options long ago, which would have eliminated the need for yakuza bookies.

I’ll show you strange bedfellows

From a story that ran today in the Financial Times:

“The Livedoor case was expected to lead to criticism of the dark side of Koizumi’s reforms. That is what is starting to happen. It is not just about Takebe anymore,” says Takao Toshikawa, editor of Insideline, a respected current affairs magazine.

Nonsense. Such criticisms are entirely misplaced and such links are forced. If anything, the reforms should be faulted for not going far enough by putting in regulations to prevent the kind of stuff Horie was doing. As the Economist recently put it:

[Horie’s] practices were pretty traditional, but he used them with a speed, aggression and visibility that were new. Many of the things he is known to have done were perfectly legal, such as using after-hours share trading to build up large stakes in target companies, or exploiting artificial liquidity shortages after stock splits. In a properly regulated financial market they would not be. Nor would his accounting have been allowed to be as obscure as it was, whether or not it is proven to have been illegal.

Then we have this from the same FT story:

“We will continue to pursue this aggressively.The LDP is polluted with money that Horie raised by deceiving (Livedoor’s) individual investors,” a DPJ official said.

I am laughing that this guy can even make such a claim with a strait face!

Here are some strange bedfellows for you — anti-reformers who will do anything to link Horie and Koizumi, and politicians who act as though individual investors actually matter and that they actually care about the source of their money.

Kobe Airport opens, but far more wackiness might be in store

Kobe Airport, the third passenger airport in the Kansai region, opened just a couple of hours ago. So what’s next? How about a tunnel from Kobe to Kansai?

The “Cross-Osaka Bay Railroad” is envisioned to connect JR Shin-Kobe Station and Kansai Airport via Kobe Airport in 30 minutes, using linear motor cars over the total distance of 36 km. The Kobe Airport-Kansai Airport run will take only 17 min. The cost of the tunnel is expected to be 530 billion yen.

Apparently, this was one of those crazy bubble-era ideas that fell apart after the Kobe earthquake of 1995 and the stagnant traffic numbers at Kansai in the late 90’s. But now, authorities are saying that if traffic at Kansai picks up, the airport may have to go international-only, and this project might be needed to keep a steady flow of passengers between domestic and international flights. Hyogo Prefecture seems to be warming to the idea, but Kobe City and Kansai Airport (perhaps fortunately) think it’s pretty ridiculous.

Why the Frog Bridge is Stupid


Ampontan at Japundit had a thought-provoking post on the “Kaeru Hashi,” or Frog Bridge, that was built on central government largesse in Inami-cho, Wakayama Prefecture:

I can’t begin to explain how quintessentially Japanese this entire story is. They’ve managed to use a historical Japanese figure for inspiration, connect him to a unique public works project to gain a little recognition in a cheerful, positive way, and incorporate the Japanese love of wordplay. When I was new to the country, unaware of the extent to which I was affected–or infected–by the sense of fashionable, cynical irony so endemic in the West, I would have rolled my eyes until they slid out of their sockets at the dorky hellokittyishness of this bridge and the people who built it.

After all these years in Japan, however, I’ve come to realize that cynical irony is a dead end street and learned to appreciate the sincerity, simplicity, and earnestness of the emotion behind efforts such as those of the people of Inami-cho. I wish them the best, and if I’m ever in their neighborhood, I’ll be sure to stop by to look at the bridge and buy some vegetables or flowers. I’m sure they’re excellent. You can even see the bridge if you’re just passing through–they built it so that it’s visible from the local JR train station.

People at Japundit were too mesmerized by the hypnotic power of the bridge to respond to my comment, so here it is for my MF peoples:

You seem to present two possible interpretations of the Kaeru Hashi: cynical-ironic dismissiveness or appreciation for the earnestness of the people’s efforts.

Perhaps I haven’t spent enough years in Japan, but there must be at least one other way to look at something like this, because I think, with no irony whatsoever, that this bridge is a gaudy and horrible waste of money.

I mean, consider it this way: when you go into the house of a married couple and find that the wife keeps it decorated nook and cranny with frilly lace, pink bunnies, and countless antiques, scented with nostril-burning potpourri, and kept immaculately clean, do you (a) Appreciate the sincerity, simplicity, and earnestness of the emotion behind the woman’s efforts; or (b) Feel sorry for the poor schlep of a husband who has to put up with such tacky interior design (and probably isn’t allowed to sit on the couch)? I for one would choose (b). This bridge and other such projects look as if the federal government gave a team of domineering housewives with bad taste a million dollars to waste on whatever silly civil engineering project they could come up with.

That million dollars could have been put to much better use than yet another bridge. The problem is that the funds these towns get are tied to programs like the euphemistic “Self-conceived self-conducted Regional Development,” so they are forced to actually build something. If the federal government were truly interested in revitalizing these small towns (instead of padding the wallets of construction companies), they could have steered the money toward, just for example, scholarships to regional universities or maybe even incentive programs for industries.

The problem isn’t so much of different “worldviews” between the Japan and the “West” but rather one of the corrupt central government exploiting the small towns for its own benefit. It’s funny you call this post the “Great Leap Forward” because these types of federal programs actually do resemble China’s great leap forward in that they force local governments to perform economically unsustainable activities. The towns aren’t starving, at least, but without true economic development they are facing a slow death – depopulation. Koizumi’s “Trinity Reforms” are supposed to end the cycle of addiction to public works that afflicts the outlying regions of Japan by putting more tax revenue in their control, but prospects for their effectiveness are moderate at this point.

Is the LDP Unbeatable?

I have been digging marxy’s blog hardcore lately, and his latest posts have inspired a few lengthy rants from me. Since I am so very proud of myself for actually having written something, I’ll repost them here.

Today we will look at whether there can be a viable opposition to Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has, with only one brief (but significant) hiccup in 1993, ruled Japan since 1955 thanks at least partly to CIA funding.

First, marxy’s post, a reaction to Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback:

Academics are always convinced that the rebirth of Japanese politics is right around the corner, as if the DPJ will suddenly become a viable second party. But check the demographic breakdown: Japan’s most educated white-collar workers are thoroughly apolitical and the working classes depend even more now on LDP pork barrel projects and protection for their job security in the post-manufacturing era.

The One-Party Japanese State is here to stay, but perhaps Japan can at least cut the American leash in the future, right? Unfortunately for the Pacifist Japanese masses, the LDP only presents two options: remilitarize with a nod to past Imperialist glories or maintain a Japanese pseudo-pacificism under the American protectorate. Politics could offer a third way, but thanks to the gifts of U.S. foreign policy, they don’t have that here.

And my reaction, slightly edited for readability:

While I don’t count myself as one of those people who thinks that Japan is always just about to turn the corner, if you look at the elections that have taken place since major electoral reform was carried out (switch from multimember election districts to single-member) have shown that future LDP control of the government is far from certain.

There is no way to tell how involved the CIA is in Japanese politics right now (though I can more or less guarantee you that the top leaders of Japan have regular meetings with CIA officials). Also at this point, I don’t think that the LDP has any trouble raising funds on its own, and whatever slush funds the CIA set up for it have probably already been laundered somewhere.

But it is a fact that the DPJ had been gaining seats progressively in each election since its formation in 1998, so much so that it only required the defection of 18 or so LDP members in the Upper House to defeat the postal privatization legislation (though 30 eventually did rebel), which led to the General Election in September.

That election led to a huge victory for the LDP, but that victory was notable first for American support of a very different kind (Bush’s PR firm) modern PR techniques and for the types of voters it attracted to the LDP — TV-watching urbanites, the same people you (more or less rightly) dismissed as being apolitical. The LDP achieved this by having a charismatic leader with great hair, limiting the scope of debate by staying on message (postal privatization!!!), and orchestrating a riveting drama pitting the reform-minded LDP (and cute new “Koizumi children”) against the vested interests represented by the postal rebels and (somehow) the DPJ.

Remind you of US-style elections a little? Competing for constituents based on policies and theater is vastly different from the traditional way for the LDP to run an election, which was basically to round up its traditional support bases (as you quite eloquently described) and be done with it. The bad thing is the LDP played the new game to its advantage, but the good thing is that, in theory, anyone could do it, even the DPJ (which at least tried – they had a US PR firm of their own, it just happened to be caught unprepared for the ultra-effective push by the LDP [the ineffectual slogans “We won’t give up on Japan!” didn’t help either]).

Unfortunately, while the election system has changed, other aspects of Japan’s political landscape – the LDP’s close relationship with big business and the bureaucracy itself- have not. Why is this important? Well, one can see a telling example in the DPJ’s “counterproposal” to the LDP’s resubmitted postal privatization bills in October 2005. The counterproposal was a miniscule 11 pages compared to the LDP’s 500-plus megalaw.

This just goes to show that the DPJ very simply does not have the technocratic expertise to make policy, which is something the Japanese public understands. The LDP (well, the *governement*) postal privatization bills were formed after months of intense discussion and debate that involved the greatest minds in Japanese policy both in and out of the bureaucracy. The DPJ (or any other party for that matter) could not even begin to hope for such access because, for better or worse, there is no reason for bureaucrats, academics, academia, or even the Japanese people (it can be argued) to work with a party that can’t get things done. It’s a vicious cycle that will probably continue more or less unabated until the next time the LDP gets booted from power.

A few quick links before a brief absence

As of today, February 14th, I have exactly two weeks before I fly from Taipei’s Chiang Kai Shek airport back to New Jersey’s Newark. With that deadline pressing on me, I’ve decided to take a week and head to see some places in the south (and maybe East?) of the island that I haven’t yet gotten around to. I’ll hop a bus this evening to Taizhong, look around that area during the day tomorrow, and then meet up with a former classmate from Ritsumeikan in the evening. That’s as far as I’ve planned, but I’ve got my Lonely Planet Taiwan to look over on the bus ride.

First up is one that I’m amazed hasn’t gotten more attention.

Japanese sue over disputed history textbook
TOKYO (Reuters) – A group of Japanese sued over a history textbook that critics say whitewashes Japan’s wartime aggression and has angered Asian neighbors, demanding on Thursday that a local government cancel its adoption of the text.

Japan’s Education Ministry approved the new edition of “The New History Textbook,” written by nationalist scholars, last April, prompting outrage in China and South Korea, where bitter memories of Japan’s aggression until 1945 persist.

The lawsuit was filed by eight residents of Suginami, a residential district in western Tokyo that attracted media attention last year when it became one of the few school districts to adopt the junior high school textbook.

“As a resident, I can’t keep silent over the choice of an unwanted textbook for growing children,” Eriko Maruhama, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, told a news conference.
Read full article.

This sounds like a reasonable course of action for local residents to take, since they allege that the school board chose the textbook for political reasons, despite it having been given a poor quality assessment by local teachers. Perhaps this lawsuit will have a similar effect to that of the Dover, Pennsylvania lawsuit which blocked that schoolboard from teaching intelligent design.

Next is something that I briefly mentioned on in this rather silly post the other day. As reported by the prolific Norimitsu Onishi in the New York Times, Tsuneo Watanabe, the publisher of Japan’s conservative Yomiuri newspaper, has recently been reconsidering the long term impact of some of the right wing policies he had promoted, particularly in regards to the international relations, miltarism, and the Yasukuni issue.

The Yomiuri is the world’s single best-selling daily newspaper, and its impact should not be underestimated. Of particular interest is the fact that Watanabe has actually joined with the Asahi Daily newspaper, Japan’s major left-leaning daily, and the Yomiuri’s chief rival, in calling for a national, religiously neutral, and internationally respectul memorial to replace Yasukuni for official purposes.

As rivals, it is not surprising that The Asahi Shimbun and The Yomiuri Shimbun often adopt different editorial viewpoints. Even so, a recent exchange between the heads of the editorial boards of the two major dailies found some common ground, especially regarding Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s controversial visits to Yasukuni Shrine.

The following is the abridged version of a discussion between Yoshibumi Wakamiya, chairman of The Asahi Shimbun’s editorial board, and Tsuneo Watanabe, chairman of The Yomiuri Shimbun group, that originally appeared in the February issue of Ronza, the monthly commentary magazine published by The Asahi Shimbun.

Time Europe has an interesting article about how Olympic wannabes are opportunistically changing their citizenship, often based on tenuous third generation bloodline connections, to qualify for elegibility to participate in that country’s national Olympic team. While I have no interest whatsoever in the Olympic games themselves, I do always like to hear about new twists in conceptions of citizenship.

hockey’s crossover nationals are hardly anomalies in Torino, where plenty of athletes are competing under the flags of second or adopted homelands. The practice is so common in both Winter and Summer games that International Olympic Committee ( i.o.c.) President Jacques Rogge blasted some of them as “mercenaries” last November.

And last, but not least, more tragic news regarding our slimy brethren.

he mountain yellow-legged frog has survived for thousands of years in lakes and streams carved by glaciers, living up to nine months under snow and ice and then emerging to issue its raspy chorus across the Sierra Nevada range.

But the frog’s call is going silent as a mysterious fungus pushes it toward extinction.

“It’s very dramatic,” said Yosemite biologist Lara Rachowicz. “One year, you visit a lake and the population will seem fine. The next year you go back, you see a lot of dead frogs scattered along the bottom of the pond. In a couple years the population is gone.”
[…]
The frog population has dropped by 10 percent a year for five years, Rachowicz said at a gathering last month of 24 experts trying to save the frog.

INR 101

Here’s an explanation of the international scene that anyone can understand:

Taylor Townsend is Saudi Arabia. America and the gang are sort of forced to be friends with Saudi Arabia, but they haven’t forgotten how she backstabbed them. She is probably bipolar — she’ll blow you or blow you away, depending on which Saudi Arabia decides to show up.

Last, but least, we have Canada, originally known as Chilly. Canada is one of the least important characters on the show. His main role is to be the dork everyone laughs at.

In fifth grade, we learned world history by treating it as a soap opera. That approach works pretty well for current events, too…

Images of Taipei 101 now restricted


The Taipei Times is reporting that “Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC), owner of Taipei 101, said it will start charging companies for any commercial usage of the image of the world’s tallest building in a bid to protect its trademark.”

Last year alone, TFCC found over 1,000 cases of other companies using Taipei 101 as a promotional tool — mostly in real estate advertising — that could potentially mislead consumers, Wei said.

As a result, TFCC decided to charge royalty for any commercial use of the building’s image. For example, a poster featuring the Taipei 101 tower will be charged NT$100,000 (US$3,099), Wei said.
[…]
Use for the government and public is free of charge, Wei said.

The decision drew the ire of advertisers and TV producers, as other major landmarks around the world, such as the Empire State Building in New York City and the Eiffel Tower in Paris, have no such charges.

Unfortunately, the last statement seems to be only half true. In a clever manuever, photographs of the Eiffel tower itself are not copyrightes, but in 2003 a new lighting display was installed. Since the design of the lights is copyrighted, photographs of the lighting disaply are as well, which by extension means any photos of the Eiffel Tower at night.

As a result, it’s no longer legal to publish current photographs of the Eiffel Tower at night without permission. Technically, this applies even to amateurs. When I spoke to the Director of Documentation for SNTE, Stéphane Dieu, via phone last week, he assured me that SNTE wasn’t interested in prohibiting the publication of amateur photography on personal Web sites. “It is really just a way to manage commercial use of the image, so that it isn’t used in ways we don’t approve,” said Mr. Dieu.

It may be some minor comfort that owners of iconic buildings such as the Eiffel Tower or Taipei 101 claim that they won’t prosecute non-commercial infringers, but the fact is that there is nothing stopping them from being a nuisance to anyone that publishes such a photo, even on a personal blog like this one. Does anyone really think that laws allowing for these kinds of restrictions are reasonable? I can’t wait for 2012 (to be optimistic) when security teams are stealing cameras from tourists snapping photos of the new “Freedom Tower” at New York’s World Trade Center.