Month: October 2006

Colbert: “I want you to address my pachinko analogy”

Recent exchange from the Colbert Report:

Biologist/god critic Richard Dawkins: [Evolution] is a highly non-random process. The big thing that everyone misunderstands about Darwinism is they think it’s chance, they think it’s an accident, and it’s not an accident.

Colbert: Well, it’s too complex for us to perceive, you know, it’s like, I know a pachinko machine isn’t an accident, either, there’s a reason why it bounces from nail to nail, but it looks random to me, right?

Dawkins: Nothing in nature looks random.

Colbert: I want you to address my pachinko analogy!

Dawkins: I’ve never even heard of it, what is that?

Colbert: You’ve never heard of pachinko? Oh, it’s like Japanese pinball. It’s great, they make pornographic versions of it over there.

The Colbert character proves once again to be more complex than meets the eye. Just when you thought you knew his aggressively ignorant conservatism, off he goes and admits not only to an interest in other cultures but even a playful love of pornography!

But anyway, I’d like to show you a little of what Colbert was talking about. Yes, pachinko is similar to pinball, but unlike in the US where pachinko continues a slow fade into near-extinction, the vertically played Japanese game remains Japan’s top gambling institution, beating out horse betting and lotto-type games (not necessarily in that order). The gambling business side of pachinko is only semi-legal and the parlor owners are well known for ties with North Korea. But if casino-type games are your cup of tea, then platforms such as 슬롯사이트 may be perfect for you.

As for the machines themselves, my personal favorites are the ones featuring the chinful mug of the game’s biggest promoter, wrestling legend and former Diet member Antonio Inoki, who incidentally also has close ties with the North Korean elites:

inoki pachinko.jpg

Are there pornographic pachinko machines? The Cutie Honey series, featuring big-breasted anime women, may count:

More famously, there are numerous machines featuring 80s anime sensation Urusei Yatsura:
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dai.jpg

The game features the bikini-clad character Lum, and the outside of pachinko parlors are often plastered with her image. Similarly, you’ll also see some risque shots of Fujiko-san from Lupin III to advertise pachinko games based on the seminal anime series:

If you want to call these games pornographic I wouldn’t object, but at worst they are the softcore stuff similar to what you’d find in American comic books. The difference, I think, is that Americans visiting Japan (like myself) would probably feel uneasy with the flagrant, in your face placement of these images in public outside pachinko parlors, especially placed in the context of plentiful pornography (bikini shots in kid’s comics, men reading newspapers featuring full nudity on the train) and casual misogyny found throughout Japan’s pop culture.

Incidentally, there’s been a recent (2004-ish) release of a pachinko version of the epic anime title Neon Genesis Evangelion, for those who might like that sort of thing:

eva pachinko.jpg

McGowan wins appeal against racist store owner, sort of

One of our most commented-upon posts deals with the story of Steve McGowan, a black man living in Japan who lost a lawsuit against a racist optician who told him to “get out!” of the store.

Fortunately, he eventually found some semblance of justice. The Kyoto District Court’s verdict was overturned by the Osaka High Court this week, and MacGowan received ¥350,000 in emotional damages for what the court described as “an outrageous act beyond common sense.”

However, the court refused to consider the comment as discrimination per se. Exactly why is unclear, but the resulting damages award, based solely on being told in a harsh voice to leave the store (race notwithstanding), is not even enough to cover McGowan’s legal expenses (according to Debito‘s account of the situation).

So… a victory, kind of, sort of, maybe. But at least the courts aren’t total assholes.

We still miss you Koizumi!

Koizumi post PM stump speech 200610160287.jpg
Koizumi has made his first public speeches since leaving office in support of LDP bids for office in two simultaneous by-elections to be held this Sunday in Kanagawa and Osaka Prefectures. I’m not all that interested in the races, since they both seem to be swinging LDP, it’s great to see the man’s face again.

Unfortunately, it looks next to impossible to get a full version of this speech. TV stations seem to only have carried parts of it, the online news sites don’t seem to be carrying it, Koizumi doesn’t have his own website, and the LDP’s site hasn’t uploaded it yet, if they plan to at all. Japan does have something like America’s C-Span, but it’s an extremely minor channel that very few Japanese people receive.

And yes I checked YouTube as well, but it wasn’t there. Thankfully I found some sweet footage while I was looking:

  • A Koizumi anime outlining some highlights of his administration, such as his style in selecting cabinet members and bringing his own boxed lunch to the historical summit meeting with Kim Jong Il – even Abe looks interesting when animated!
  • A TV clip reporting on a magazine article in Shukan Post that Koizumi moved out of the PM’s official residence the next day after the LDP presidential election, stayed in a 520k yen per night hotel room, only to move into a meager 50k yen/night room immediately after stepping down as PM. He brought dozens of classical music CDs with him, said he’d take a year to “recharge” and is enjoying a “leisurely retirement.” Meanwhile, Yoshiro Mori, Koizumi’s predecessor, has increased his political wheeling and dealing and is rumored to have a great influence on Abe. Mori had pledged to step down as his party faction’s chairman when Koizumi left, but apparently since Abe will do whatever he says, leading the faction is just too “fun” to quit. Despite Abe’s pledge to go it alone when deciding on a cabinet, Mori leaked to the press that he had a sit-down with Abe to discuss his new administration. The rumors are
  • And last but not least, a great retrospective of what made Koizumi rock – the photo ops. Watch closely to see Koizumi in a Guardian Angels uniform, with beret!

    • Deconstructing an alleged compliment

    Bush administration White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was quoted in the NYT as describing his boss (George W. Bush, for the dim) like so:

    “He reminds me of one of those guys at the gym who plays about 40 chessboards at once.”

    In my experience with gyms, there is in fact noone there playing 40 chessboards at once. Now, there are chess geniuses who can manage such an incredible feat, but they don’t go to the gym to do it. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that someone wanting to play 40 games of chess at once who thought that the proper venue for such an event was a gym is probably an idiot.

    I am reminded of the episode of The Simpsons, in which Bart plays a dozen games of chess, blindfolded, simultaneously. Onlookers are briefly astonished. Bart loses every match.

    The best WW2 comic cover

    Captain America #1

    The other day when I said that the style of WW2 era propagandistic superhero comics just couldn’t work today, but there is one anti-Nazi comic book of that era that deserves to be better remembered as an iconic image of the war period in America. This dramatic cover, published in March, 1941, marked the very first appearance of Captain America, who was given the very unusual honor of premiering in his own full length comic, instead of being tried out as a backup character in an anthology.

    Why is this cover so different from the others? Where the DC covers were full-fledged propaganda posters, this is a proper comic book cover. Of the seven DC covers I posted before, five of them have propagandistic slogans as corny as any you would find on an official government poster, and the sixth is a highly stylized, static image of Superman standing astride the world holding Hitler and Tojo in each hand, clearly symbolizing the globally dominant power of the USA. The seventh cover, which depicts Superman ready to punch out the oddly jaundiced looking Japanese pilot of a warplane, is the only one that actually looks like it could be a comic book action scene as opposed to a propaganda poster, but the simplicity of the scene and the isolation of the two characters on a largely monochromatic background still feels kind of static.

    On the other hand, we have Captain America-not about to punch Hitler, but clearly having just done so. There are Nazi officers all around, firing bullets at the Captain, who has clearly interrupted a planning session of “sabotage plans for U.S.A.,” which are conveniently laying on the ground, labelled in English. By opening with such a dynamic and dramatic scene, Captain America is portrayed from the beginning as a man of action and the champion of American virtue-but not necessarily the vehicle of the official government line and propaganda.

    Why is that? Well, notice the date-March 1941. The US did not enter WW2 until December of that year, but the creators and publishers of Captain America at Marvel Comics (then called Timely Comics) were clearly urging us to. It is of course no coincidence that both the writer (Joseph Simon) and artist (Jack Kirby) were both New York Jews, the sons of immigrants from Europe. In fact, at this time basically the entire comic books industry was New York Jews. Naturally, they were no fans of Hitler, and this cover reflects what must have been a universal fantasy at the time. Certainly I myself, as a member of a New York Jewish family born decades after WW2, can hardly imagine anything more satisfing than smashing Hitler in the face. Even the staunchest critics of modern US foreign policy should admit that the cover of Captain America #1 is best summed up in one word: awesome.

    Bridge on the River Kwai [Photo]


    August 19, 2006

    Immortalized in the 1957 film of the same name, this bridge was constructed during the Second World War by British and American POWs of the Japanese as part of the so called “railway of death,” intended to create a link with Burma. After Japan was forced to give up all of their overseas colonies and property following their defeat, the British sold the entire Burmese-Thailand railway, including this bridge, to the Thai government for 50 million baht. The bridge, which had been damaged by aerial bombing, was repaired and remains in use as a tourist attraction.

    The immigration debate, 100 years ago

    I am currently reading the biography of William Gorham I mentioned in my post on using online resources for researching his life. Here is what the book, written by Gorhman’s Japanese colleagues, has to say on the Japanese in California about a century ago.

    Almost the entire Japanese immigrant population in the U.S. was located in the state of California or in other parts of the Pacific coast. They had left their native areas and immigrated to a foreign nation empty-handed, but also had attained success in the United States. The disparity in customs, along with their resulting problems, as well as the difficulty of learning a new language, all were overcome by these immigrants and they were able to make substantial successes of their lives. At the same time, from the point of view of racial rejudice or from the point of view of the struggle to make a living, there was the inevitable friction as well as competition that came about between the Japanese and the white immigrants from Europe. In fact, the substantial successes attained by the Japanese immigrants, if anything, resulted in more opportunity for them to be viewed with jealousy by immigrants from other nations.

    However, capitalists in the state of California had always valued highly the calmness and willingness with which the Japanese would stick to work, as well as their capabilities for labor. They were also appreciative of the immigrants’ ingenuity and resourcefulness. In fact, they were amazed at the Japanese immigrants’ cleverness exhibited in growing vegetables and in catching fish. Although white laborers used a slogan to oppose them — “Keep California White” (i.e. keep the state of California forever for whites only), as far as the capitalists were oncerned, they sided with the Japanese immigrants and used the slogan, “Keep California Green” (i.e., keep the state of California green with produce from farms and gardens). (p. 26-27)

    According to the Sept 22, 2006 NYT:

    Stepped-up border enforcement kept many illegal Mexican migrant workers out of California this year, farmers and labor contractors said, putting new strains on the state’s shrinking seasonal farm labor force.
    […]
    The tightening of the border with Mexico, begun more than a decade ago but reinforced since May with the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops, has forced California growers to acknowledge that most of their workers are illegal Mexican migrants. The U.F.W. estimates that more than 90 percent of the state’s farm workers are illegal.
    […]
    For decades, Mr. Ivicevich said, migrant pickers would knock on his door asking for work climbing his picking ladders. Then about five years ago they stopped knocking, and he turned to a labor contractor to muster harvest crews. This year, elated, he called the contractor in early August. Pears must be picked green and quickly packed and chilled, or they go soft in shipping.

    ”Then I called and I called and I called,” Mr. Ivicevich said.

    The picking crew, which he needed on Aug. 12, arrived two weeks late and 15 workers short. He lost about 1.8 million pounds of pears.