Author: Roy Berman

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

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.

First mention of comfort women in the English press?

The discussion over the proposed presumably well meant but ultimately pointless US congressional resolution condemning Japan’s wartime system of “comfort women” made me wonder, when was this first reported in the US? Since I have easy online access to the New York Times archive I thought I would check there. It seems highly unlikely that the NYT would have passed over mentioning the issue if some other paper had reported it first, so this is most likely as least an approximate date.

***

January 14, 1992

Japan Admits Army Forced Koreans to Work in Brothels

By DAVID E. SANGER,

Three days before Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa takes his first official trip to South Korea, the Government admitted today that the Japanese Army forced tens of thousands of Korean women to have sex with Japanese soldiers during World War II, and hinted that women who are still alive might receive some kind of compensation.

Until today, Japan’s official position has long been that the “comfort girls” were recruited by private entrepreneurs, not the military.

But many historians have attacked that position as a convenient rewriting of history, and over the weekend Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, reported that army documents found in the library of Japan’s Self-Defense Agency indicated that the military had played a large role in operating what were euphemistically called “comfort stations.”

Mr. Miyazawa is widely expected to address the issue on his visit to Seoul and to offer a fairly specific apology. The vast majority of the women were forcibly taken to Japanese-occupied China and Southeast Asia from Korea, which was a Japanese colony from 1910 until Japan’s defeat in 1945.. ‘Abominable Episodes’

Over the weekend Japan’s Foreign Minister, Michio Watanabe, said “I cannot help acknowledging” that the Japanese military was involved in forcing the women to have sex with the troops. “I am troubled that the abominable episodes have been unraveled, and they give me heartache,” he said.

Today Japan’s chief Government spokesman, Koichi Kato, offered a more specific apology, saying, “We would like to express our heartfelt apology and soul-searching to those women who had a bitter hardship beyond description.”

But he said that because Japan settled issues of wartime compensation for Korea in 1965, when the countries resumed full diplomatic ties, there would be no official compensation for the victims. For weeks the Government has been talking about finding private sources of money that would settle claims by surviving “comfort women,” without setting the precedent of reopening reparations claims.

In December, around the time of the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, three Korean women filed suit in Tokyo, demanding compensation for forced prostitution in China. Occasional Protests in Seoul

Though the Government said that officially all compensation issues have been settled, officials acknowledged that they could not openly contest the suit without roiling relations with South Korea. Periodically there have been small demonstrations in Seoul denouncing the Japanese for their failure to face the issue.

The question of Japan’s refusal to acknowledge official involvement in the forced prostitution has been a continual irritant in Japanese relations with South Korea and, to a lesser degree, with China. Many of the women were killed or brutally beaten. While historians disagree about how many women were forced to have sex with the troops, estimates run from 60,000 to more than 200,000.

The documents reported in Asahi Shimbun were found by Yoshiaki Yoshida, a history professor, who reviewed them at the Defense Agency. They have been in Japan since 1958, when they were returned by United States troops, and it is not clear why they have stayed out of view for so long.

The “comfort women” debate has been but one of the continuing tensions between Tokyo and Seoul in recent years. South Korean leaders have long complained that they have yet to receive an adequate apology from Japan for wartime atrocities. Last week, at a dinner for President Bush, President Roh Tae Woo of South Korea reportedly expressed concern that Japan has yet to apologize fully for the war.

***

January 18, 1992

JAPAN APOLOGIZES ON KOREA SEX ISSUE

Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa of Japan made a formal public apology here today for Japan’s actions in forcing tens of thousands of Korean women to have sex with Japanese soldiers during World War II.

In a speech to South Korea’s National Assembly, Mr. Miyazawa said: “Recently, the issue of ‘comfort women’ in the service of the Imperial Japanese Army has come into light. I cannot help feeling acutely distressed over this, and I express my sincerest apology.”

Mr. Miyazawa’s visit to Seoul has been preceded and accompanied by vociferous campaigning in the South Korean press for an apology from the Prime Minister, and for compensation from Japan for the surviving women.

This call has been echoed by protesters in South Korean cities.. Estimates Up to 200,000

Korean historians estimate that 100,000 to 200,000 Korean women were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers before 1945, when Japanese colonial rule ended in Korea. It is not known how many survive.

Japanese and South Korean officials said Mr. Miyazawa had also offered an apology in his second round of talks today with President Roh Tae Woo.

Mr. Miyazawa said at a joint news conference afterward that Japan would sincerely investigate the issue.

But there was no mention in their talks of compensation for the surviving women, the officials said.

The question of compensation for 35 years of colonial rule in Korea was settled when the countries established diplomatic relations in 1965. Compensation Suit Filed

But last month three Korean women who say they were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers filed a compensation suit in a Japanese court, which may set a precedent for other cases.

The issue overshadowed other topics discussed by Mr. Roh and Mr. Miyazawa, particularly South Korea’s growing trade deficit with Japan.

The two leaders agreed to set up a committee to work out by June a plan of action for closing the trade gap and increasing the transfer of Japanese technology to South Korea.

South Korea was $8.8 billion in the red in trade with Japan last year, accounting for nine-tenths of South Korea’s overall trade deficit.

U.S.-NORTH KOREA TALKS SET

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 (Reuters) — High-ranking United States officials will meet North Korean leaders in New York on Wednesday to discuss the country’s nuclear program and other American concerns, the State Department said today. The United States Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Arnold L. Kanter, will meet a delegation headed by the Secretary of the governing Workers Party, Kim Young Sun, a State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said.

[The North Korea bit was on the same page. Not relevant to comfort women but still amusing to see it was in the news at the time.]

Ibuki sticks greasy foot in mouth

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.

Mutantfrog?

I apologize if the following entry is excruciatingly boring, concerned as it is with matters of blog history administration, so please indulge me at your pleasure, gentle reader.
I started “The Mutant Frog Travelogue” a few years ago back when I was studying abroad here in Japan, just to keep family and friends up to date on what I was doing without having to send out mass emails and so on. At the time I was just hosting it on my university web space, (still online at www.eden.rutgers.edu/~royb, despite the fact that I can no longer log in and update it!) and using Blogger (being a Blogger user when Gmail launched got me an invitation to the first stages of the highly restricted semi-open Beta, which was pretty cool) and I had virtually no readership. I blogged off and on over there for a few months, but it was really nothing more than a livejournal style collection of occasional personal news and amusing news clippings, and I had already gotten bored and stopped updating when my friend Adam, who had been on the same study abroad program, asked me to help him set up his own blog devoted to translation of Japanese news articles.

After Adam had been running his blog for a couple of months I decided i would be fun to try again, put together a wordpress based blog on www.mutantfrog.com, and began posting here. Adam’s blog the time was still using Blogger, and hosted at an impossible to remember URL on Verizon, and we decided to merge operations on my new blog, which was using a domain that I had just happened to register based on an old online handle. Eventually, Joe Jones, who had been on the same Rotary study abroad as Adam in high school and also had his own blog, joined Mutantfrog. We were briefly joined by a mysterious fourth member, who wrote anonymously as “Saru” for a few months before circumstances led him to stop public blogging.

Over the couple of years this blog has been in existence, and particularly the past few months, our regular readership and volume of discussion has steadily grown and feedback is almost always positive, but there are some name related issues that have been bothering us about the blog lately.

First of all, name confusion. It is a far too common occurrence that someone, whether a reader or another blogger linking to us or a particular post on our site, attributes a post written by one person to the name of another, perhaps not realizing that this is a group blog and that there are in fact multiple authors. This is of course compounded by the fact that I post under my Mutantfrog handle, which is also the name of the blog.

Problem: How should the blog be revised to make authorship of individual posts clearer?

Second, in a related matter, the name I post under. I am currently thinking about trying to get into graduate school to do research on topics related to some things I post about here, and the blog is of course useful for making contacts and perhaps even having people recognize my name. Unfortunately, as Joe pointed out to me earlier today, I do not actually post under my own name but my handle. I DO have my real name (Roy Berman) on the sidebar by the email link, but I think that Joe is probably right when he suggests that virtually no one will notice that.

Problem: Should I sign posts and comments as Mutantfrog, Roy Berman, Mutantfrog (Roy Berman), or what?

Third, the name of the blog. I haven’t really liked the name “Mutant Frog Travelogue” for quite a while. I chose that title when it was intended to be mainly just a personal travelogue, but it isn’t that at all and could use a new title. Also, as Joe says “Mutantfrog is a fun name, but it’s hard to use it with a straight face when you’re talking to, say, a guy who finances stadium developments.” Is, as Joe believes, “Mutantfrog.com” just too silly a name to put on the CV/resume of a lawyer, a translator, a journalist, an academic, or whatever job any of us are applying for? While changing the domain name is impractical, since that would break all existing links and squander our decent google ranking, changing the displayed title is totally feasible and perhaps a good idea.

Problem: What should this blog be named?

I’ve been saying for months and months that I would be building a new template/layout for the blog and finally adding some useful features such as an “About” page, and so I would very much appreciate any feedback related either to these specific aforementioned issues, or blog design and content in general.

Today’s trivia – 2007.2.19

Joseph Conrad’s famous novel Heart of Darkness was based on the author’s experiences in the Belgian Congo. King Leopold II of Belgium had originally wanted to establish his colony in the Philippines, but Spain refused to sell the islands to him. When the film Apocalypse Now, set in Vietnam and based on the novel Heart of Darkness, was made they filmed it in the Philippines.

Why does Japan (and Taiwan) offer scholarships to foreigners?

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.

Grand conspiracy

The BBC reports that the Japanese whaling ship, the Nisshin Maru, has caught fire near Antarctica, possible at the hands of anti-whaling activists that were in pursuit of the ship. What they don’t mention is that this is the very same whaling ship used as a location in the Bjork art film Drawing Restraint 9. Coincidence? I think not. What are you trying to hide BBC and Bjork? Iceland’s reign of incomprehensible terror must be stopped!