Author: Roy Berman
Who is more exceptional?
“America Against the World,” a recent book based on comprehensive polling data from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, makes the point that our exceptionalism is not exceptional with particular force. While a robust 60 percent of Americans agree with the proposition that “our culture is superior to others,” such self-confidence pales next to that of South Korea and Indonesia, where some 90 percent of the population assents to the idea. The book’s authors, Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes, also note that “poll after poll finds the Japanese to be the most pessimistic of people, expressing far less satisfaction with their lot in life than might be expected given their relatively high per capita incomes. Yet, compared to other Asians, the Japanese are, like Americans, highly self-reliant and distrustful of government and, like Europeans, secular. It is the Japanese public, not the American public, that is most exceptional in the world.”
Any thoughts?
Yasukuni all over again
As if the Niagara Incident wasn’t bad enough (there’s currently a huge controversy in the Japanese media over whether it should be labelled the ナイアガラの滝の事件 or ナイアガラの滝の事変), and now this report!
The “King” never came to Japan, but Japan’s prime minister is making a pilgrimage to Graceland.
Elvis fan Billy Morokawa says Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will likely feel the power of Presley’s enduring energy when he tours the rock-and-roll legend’s home in Memphis, Tennessee, Friday with President Bush.
Did you see that? “Pilgrimage” There’s no way this visit is going to pass the church/state test, and visiting it alongside President Bush the “I was only going in my capacity as a private citizen” defense is never going to fly, particularly when considering his personal history in this cult.
Koizumi, 64, is an Elvis devotee who not only shares a January 8 birthday with his idol, but picked out his songs for a 2001 charity album, “Junichiro Koizumi Presents My Favorite Elvis Songs.” The prime minister appears on the album’s cover standing next to Elvis outside Graceland in a composite picture.
Back in 1987 when Koizumi was a mere lawmaker, he and his brother Masaya, now a senior adviser to the Tokyo fan club, helped raise funds to erect a status of Elvis in the Japanese capital to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death.
Three years ago the prime minister, an eclectic music lover whose favorites also include German composer Richard Wagner, sang his favorite Elvis hit — “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” — with actor Tom Cruise, then in Tokyo to promote his movie “The Last Samurai.”
Let’s just hope that this time the Supreme Court actually has the guts to face the real constitutional question and not skirt the issue on technicalities.
Chikan
In the West, few social problems are thought of as more typically Japanese than the random molester, known aschikan . He may lurk in a parking garage or dark alley, as if some sort of fungus, but his most common natural habitat is the train. During rush hour, when commuters of all ages, professions, genders are packed together like sardines-to the point that certain stations in Tokyo famously (used to?) have platform workers help people squeeze inside before the doors shut-and the hapless victim has no escape from the perverts embrace. Whether he merely breaths too close and too damply to her neck, rubs his pelvis up against her side, slides his hands over her breasts, crotch or buttocks, slips them into her clothes, or actually opens his own clothing to perform that most inappropriate of public acts, the response is always the same-nothing. The woman may be disgusted or terrified, fellow passengers may see, feel, or hear what is going on, but regardless nobody stops it, nobody calls the police, and of course nobody is ever punished.
Of course, this is all a product of Japan’s unique culture, superficially sexually repressed and yet if you scratch the surface ever so perverted. In other, normal, nations perhaps these chikan would be well-adjusted men, allowed to slake their sexual appetites with their wives or girlfriends, instead of being forced to work like robots for a family that doesn’t love them, virtually castrated by society. With no accepted outlet, he turns to increasingly depraved pornography, which gradually programs his pyche to associate his libidinous urges not just with the image of a pretty girl but outlandish scenarios until merely watching is no longer enough, and without any good Protestant values to reign him in, he feels compelled to take to the streets and do something about his fantasies, heedless of the victim’s rights or the consequences.
At least that is how the common stereotype goes. But really it’s all absolute rubbish.
The New York Times has an article on the prevalence of illegal sexual groping and exposure on the NYC subway system.
This week, as the Police Department announced the arrest of 13 men charged with groping and flashing women in the subways, women around the city nodded. Yes, they said, this had happened to them. Yesterday. Last month. Last fall. Twenty years ago.
“Every girl I know has at least one story,” said Barbara Vencebi, 23, a studio photographer standing outside the No. 6 train station at 116th Street in East Harlem yesterday.
It is a crime abetted by the peculiar landscape of the underworld that is the subway system, by the anonymity of a crowded car where everybody is avoiding eye contact. And by the opportunity for a quick escape at the next stop, to disappear behind a pillar, into a tunnel, up an escalator.
An impromptu survey of riders during the morning rush yesterday found that, for many women who have experienced it, the worst part of the crime is the sense of helplessness. What is the right way to react to a humiliating, but not life-threatening, situation? Should you announce to an entire car of strangers that you have just been violated?
Most of the time, the women said, they seethe inwardly but say nothing.
Certainly Japan has its share of sex crimes, does it really have MORE than its share? I heard so many times over the years about the prevalence of chikan and other sexual assault in Japan, but is it really any more common than other countries, or is the belief in its exceptional commonality just another turn in the decades old racial and cultural stereotypes seen in American media since before World Was II?
As an aside, for an interesting take on chikan, check out the novella J (cover image above) by the nobel prize winning Oe Kenzaburo, in which the Jay Gatsby-ish title character apprentices himself to an elderly subway chikan
Two articles on whale in school lunches
I would like to present translations of two different articles on the use of whale meet in school lunches in Japan with little additional comment. These articles are actually half a year old, but they appeared on the exact same day, which makes the contrast all the more striking. My personal take on this issue is contained in this post and comments on Adam’s recent post. Now to me, one of these sounds like a real news article and one sound like propagandistic fluff, but you be the judge. As an aside, if you are looking for some English language material in support of Japanese whaling activities, there’s an entire blog of it here.
Whale meat is super delicious
Students at the No.5 Kouyou Elementary school have “nostalgic school lunch”
For the school lunch week from the 23rd to the 27th a menu item from the mid 1950s to mid 1960s named as “nostalgic school lunch” re-appeared for several days running at an elementary school of Mukou City, Kyoto prefecture. On the 27th whale meat with sweat and sour sauce made an appearance, and this rare menu was sampled with pleasure by the children.
The plan was to deepen the students understanding of the history and significance of school lunches. Nutritionists created the dished by consulting menus from 1957-1968 that had been preserved by Kouyou Elementary. Boiled cabbage, mixed pork and beans-even these basic foods were provided.
On this day, the menu at No.5 Kouyou Elementary had four dishes: whale with sweat and sour sauce, sesame marinated vegetables, white rice and miso soup. The whale, which these days rarely appears in school lunches, was mink whale caught for study. The whale meat was cut into cubes, deep fried with wheat flour, and slathered with sweet and sour sauce. Although it was the first time the children had eaten whale, they were delighted saying “it’s super delicious!” They never stopped asking for second helpings.
At the same school there is also a display in the hall way outside the computer lab to introduce the children to the history of school lunches, starting in 1949, and telling them about the changed in menu and preparation methods.
A week of school lunches
Whale meet appears on menu at elementary schools in this prefecture, etc.
January 27, 2006
The pan-Japan school lunch week began on the 24th, and on the 25th Tatsuta-fry made with whale meat appeared on the menu at Tanabe City’s Uwaakitsu Elementary School (Haraakira Komatsu, principal). In the prefecture a total of 174 Elementary, Junior High and other schools served school lunches using whale meat throughout the week.
Throughout the week a variety of functions were carried out to increase the awareness of children and students, teachers, guardians and area residents towards school lunches. In this prefecture they promoted this by making school lunches using various traditional and locally grown ingredients.
This is the second time that whale meat has appeared in Uwaakitsu Elementary school, the first having been March of last year. On this day the “taste of Wakayama Prefecture” menu also included the other dishes of vegetable and plum rice, boiled egg and kouya style frozen tofu, and ponkan oranges grown locally in Uwaakitsu.
In their own classrooms, the children tasted the dish which they hadn’t had in a long time. Wakana Sugi, a second year girl said of the whale meat, “I guess it’s kind of tough.”
Whale meat has largely disappeared from school lunches since commercial whaling temporarily ceased in 1982. The prefectural school lunch association called on the city, town and village education association to use whale meat to try and move along the children’s education of Wakayama food culture, and it began to appear in school lunches in January of last year.
There are also plans in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Nara prefectures to use whale meat in school lunches throughout this month.
The Ministry of Education, in commemoration of the first test school lunches in Chiba, Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefectures starting on December 24 1946, every year designates a “school lunch week” starting on January 24th, but not conflicting with winter vacation.
Philip K Dick android stolen?
Well, that may be what the mainstream media wants you to believe, but come on-we ARE talking about a Philip K Dick ANDROID here! How could anyone familiar with the man who wrote A Scanner Darkly, Valis, Ubik, The Man in the High Castle, and of course We Can Build You, which stars a cybernetic simulacra of Abraham Lincoln think that a robot containing a complete copy of his surviving records was merely stolen, like a mere piece of luggage? I fully expect to see this android again. My guess: the Replicant Liberation Front freeing their spiritual leader.
The other world cup
World cup fever has gripped the, ummm, the world I suppose. But in all of this fuss over teams of humans from one country competing against teams of humans from another country for the greater glory of their history/race/ideology/religion its important not to forget the as of yet infantile league that will some day destroy them all. I am of course talking about the RoboCup.
And not only humans and robots are caught up in football fever! For according to this report from the BBC even monkeys are new getting in on the action, and this is something that is of great concern–for when monkeys and robots meet on the battlefield, no good can come of it. We have been down that dark road before and we much be very mindful of that awful conflict re-awakening.
Hell on wheels
USA Today has a report on the new mobile execution chambers being gradually introduced in China to replace the older execution method of shooting people in the back of the head with something more humane. By installing the lethal injection equipment in a slick looking bus they can perform executions right at the location of the trial, without having to transport prisoners all the way to a central execution facility or set up equipment in each locality. As a bonus, they can also send the bus to drive around your house at night as a subtle reminder to stay on the right path.
Apocalypse Soon
There’s a good article in the LA Times about some of the more extreme members of the three great monotheistic apocalypse cults of the Middle East (in chronological order, Judaism, Christianity and Islam) who take their religion so literally that they are actively trying to hasten the end of this world because, presumably, they just don’t like it very much.
some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam’s holiest shrines.
Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple — along with two 6½-ton marble cornerstones for the building’s foundation.
Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.
So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal’s body.
Interestingly, this phenomena is largely confined to the US and the Middle East. Yes, of course there are apocalyptic cults in other regions (Japan’s own Aum Shinrikyo being one near and dear to my heart) but they are hardly a mainstream phenomenon over there. In fact, according to the article as many as 40% of Americans believe that an apocalypse is not merely coming but imminent. Now, some people believe that some of the more obscure foreign policy moves engaged in by the US governmental leaders can be traced to this very belief in the end time-and I myself have even engaged in some joking speculation of such a nature-but of course when examined logically the argument falls apart. After all, how could anyone who believes that the world is coming to an end in a couple of decades time be so enthusiastic about being midwife to the creation of a landed hereditary aristocracy by enouraging the repeal of the inheritance tax?
People will bet on anything
You’ve probably already heard about how Ann Coulter said something stupid and offensive about widows of some WTC terrorist victims, and now thanks to the Internet you can also bet on whether or not she is going to be sued for defamation.
Analysts at BetUS.com posted favorable 4-6 odds that the Widows of 9/11, who were also called “self-obsessed women,” will sue Coulter for defamation. However, the chances of Ann Coulter retracting her remarks are slim with only 1-2 odds. Either way, Coulter’s outrageousness has shot her new book to number one on Amazon.com.
Executives at BetUS.com have posted the following odds:
Will Ann Coulter retract her remarks?
Yes: 6-4
No: 1-2Will the 9/11 Widows Sue Coulter for defamation?
Yes: 4-6
No: 11-10