Shukan Playboy is finally getting around to investigating what I termed “living the dream” back in November. So am I correct in celebrating the fact that my summary of an Asahi article totally scooped a sleazy porn-filled tabloid’s low-priority human interest story? I don’t know, but on the scale of “nailing the Japanese mainstream media in English for a small audience” this rates about a 6, above prematurely praising the Asahi’s website (a 2) but well below exposing Bobby Valentine’s shady Japanese language lesson promotion schemes (easily my best work, a 10).
Also of note: Japan Times talks about malicious comment attacks on Japanese blogs. Are these frequent organized comment attacks on blogs a result of decades of social decay, as one expert alleges? Or could it simply be that there is a surge of new Internet users who learn their Internet manners from 2-channel? Couldn’t this problem be nipped in the bud if popular bloggers would only effectively manage their comments sections?
Blogs are really only starting to mature in Japan, so I can understand why the issue is newsworthy. What I don’t understand is why the most recent example is almost a year old.
I wonder why the article focused almost completely on victims’ stories and some expert opinions but neglected to mention what’s actually being done about the problem. A major recent development that came out 2 weeks ago was the announcement of new guidelines for ISPs that would make posters of malicious comments subject to having their personal identifying information disclosed to the victims of the comments (making it possible to sue for defamation). It’s a development that could put an end to the very practice the article is whining about, so it would have been nice of the author of a news article to let readers know what’s happening right now as opposed to last year. All we got instead was misleading bureaucrat-speak: “Currently, there is no regulation to curb enjo against Japan’s estimated 8.68 million blogs, said Yuko Fujii, an official in the information policy division at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.”
Also also of note: There’s a long interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on the occasion of his fact-finding mission in Japan. He must have a lot to learn because these are the only substantive comments he makes about the Japanese-language version of his site:
I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it is said that in the Japanese Wikipedia, people would go to the discussion page, then discuss and discuss and discuss until they reach a consensus — and finally someone will go and very cautiously change the entry. Whereas in English, we change the entry and fight about it. I’ve heard this not just from English speakers but Japanese themselves. I wonder if it might not be some kind of self-humorous image of Japanese that endless discussions for consensus occur before something happens. It could be true, though I don’t know. But I’m told that the culture is different. Maybe I’ll be able to find out when I hang out with the Wikipedians here.
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Why do you think the rate of growth has slowed on the Japanese Wikipedia compared to other languages?
I don’t really know. That’s what I’m here to find out. Maybe it needs more promotion. But it’s very difficult to say. Some of it is the Japanese Wikipedia used to be larger than the French, and there were twice as many editors working in the French Wikipedia. So we used to joke that “there’s more French but the Japanese work harder.” (Laughs)
The part about consensus-based editing is sort of true, at least from what I’ve seen. People will complain about content without making changes immediately, but that’s not universal and I don’t think there necessarily needs to be consensus, just perhaps no big objections.
Anyway, I hope that he learns a lot during the month he’s spending in Japan, including another eye-opening phenomenon that Wikipedia Japan has created: the posting of otherwise taboo information that is little-reported in the major media (such as the fact that the famous “Kano Sisters” are not actually related, or the bogusness of the Densha Otoko phenomenon, as discussed here).
I don’t know how effective the guidelines will be with respect to 2channel, though. Hiroyuki seems dead-set on ignoring any rule of law which would interfere with his hands-off management of the site. He’s not going to disclose poster information in the event of a lawsuit, and what he does will likely inspire other wannabes to follow suit, resulting in a total stonewalling of any libel plaintiff who tries to pierce the chat room veil.
But he will disclose the information of potential criminals. It’s amazing that he gets to decide what the rules are, and his site is so big that as you say he holds influence over the entire Japanese internet. Maybe the government should give him a seat at the table when these Internet providers get together and set the guidelines, though he might just show up in his pajamas and masturbate in public just to show his disinterest in the whole process.
No, the committee is going to consist of nine law professors, two non-academic lawyers, a couple of industry association leaders and Tawara Machi (thrown in because there are no Japanese women with a bona fide connection to the issue). They’ll have seven meetings over the course of a year, keep detailed minutes of each one, but ultimately fail to reach a conclusion, leaving the two industry leaders to take some Diet members out to the pantyless shabu-shabu restaurant and decide for themselves.
Great choices, but I would have picked Reiko Okutani, the temp agency magnate who gets appointed to every other government committee for some reason.
And you have to wonder if the Japanese government would simply cease to function without hostess clubs and pantiless shabu shabu.
The government did just fine back in the day when all they had was the humble 料亭 . . .