Category: Japan

Photographic proof of Japanese used panty vending machines? Plus a rant at no extra charge

Another gem thrown in my lap by Google Alerts:

This lame article from South Africa — really no more than a list of links — points to all the quirkiness of Japanese vending machines for no discernible reason. I don’t even think he’s in Japan.

I, however, am above such crass sensationalism and would never point out “strange” things about Japan just to get hits.

That’s why I was fascinated when I came across a certain something in his article. We’ve all heard the rumors. Some of us may have even seen something similar in Japan. In Kyoto I did see a vending machine that sold “panties”, but upon close inspection they did not claim to be used and actually appeared to have circular openings in the front (no comment). But very few people I’ve talked to have ever actually seen one. The picture below was reportedly taken in 2001 and is a “converted cigarette machine”:


It closely resembles machines I have seen in Japan before. Something about them makes me doubt they are the actual “used panty” vending machines for a couple reasons: 1) no mention of them being used; and 2) the public outcry that such activities have generated in the past. But I could very well be wrong.
Continue reading Photographic proof of Japanese used panty vending machines? Plus a rant at no extra charge

Japanese Chinese food chains to open stores in China


Gyoza No Ohsho　(餃子の王将 — Their gyoza are “Oh-sho” delicious!） was one of my favorite Chinese food places when I was living in Kyoto. Cheap sets, good food, and plentiful locations! My favorite was the ramen set: it included ramen, karaage, gyoza (of course), AND fried rice. Man was I full.

The branch right outside the Ritsumeikan campus was owned by a die-hard Beatles fan — he decked out his store with volumes upon volumes of manga (lots of ashita no joe, hajime no ippo, and captain tsubasa), rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, and Beatles music (more often Beatles covers, actually) on the old-school stereo system he had set up. I was saddened to see one day that the whole place had been swept clean of any differentiating marks, and when I returned to Kyoto earlier this year it was “closed for repairs”.

BTW, Ohsho is some kind of mahjonng term, so the fact that they named a Chinese food chain after a mahjonng reference says something about what Japanese people think of when they think of China… what I’m not sure, but it definitely says something.

So on a completely unrelated note, recently I was Google-alerted to the fact that Ohsho is planning to open its first stores overseas in — no joke — China. And their timing couldn’t be better! Nikkei has the story:

Kansai’s Chinese food chains trying their craft on home turf
“Made in Japan” Image to appeal to middle and high-class customers (March 12, 2005)

Kansai’s restaurant industry, which has been making chain stores out of ramen stands and Chinese restaurants, continue to extend their businesses into China. At 10-30 yuan per customer (13 JPY), they plan to charge twice the amount of local restaurants. Reversing their low-price strategy for the Japanese market, the chains intend to exploit their Japanese image to target middle and upper class consumers. Escaping from the shrinking restaurant market in Japan, they are attempting to succeed in the home of Chinese cuisine.

In addition to Osaka Ohsho (opening in Shanghai, offering izakaya food as well, plans to franchise up to 25 stores) and “Bikkuri Ramen” (opening in Tsingtao, offering curry and donburi) which is famous for the 180 yen ramen bowl, Gyoza Ohsho is also opening a store in Dalian. They plan to offer grilled gyoza (generally not available in most of China), ramen, fried rice, and other items directly from the Japanese menu. They will consider expanding the chain after viewing results from the first store.

Quick links following up on recent topics

Here’s a few links that I have laying around, mostly related to things that I’ve been discussing over the past week. I’m a little too tired and sick to offer any commentary right now, but feel free to leave your own.

The Daily Show’s comment on the anti-Japan protests in China, in streaming WMV. You know a story is big when the Daily show is making fun of it.

The Economist has a travelogue type article about life in a particular village in rural China.

Despite China’s increasing openness to prying foreign eyes, the dynamics of village life remain hidden away. Although the Chinese media report extensively on rural problems, foreign journalists require government approval to conduct interviews in the countryside (as indeed, in theory, they do for any off-base reporting in China).

In typical Chinese fashion, they only gave the reporter permission to visit one of the more prosperous rural villages, but that aside it’s still an interesting piece.

The Taipei Times is carrying an Associated Press report on how China is using the war on terrorism to supress the Uyghur’s Muslim lifestyle in western Xinjiang province.

Comparing the situation to Tibet, a report by the two groups said Muslims in the Xinjiang region are “concerned for their cultural survival” amid a government-financed influx of settlers from China’s Han ethnic majority.

ESWN translated a section of a very interesting article on how the Chinese government suppresses their own history. Amazingly the author of the article is in Beijing- I hope nothing bad happens to him.

When it comes to viewpoints about warfare and nationalism, the Chinese people are not better than the Japanese. “The winner becomes the emperor while the loser is just a bandit” is an age-old concept of warfare in China. The arrogance of the Han tribe about owning everything under heaven continues to live on today as nationalism. More particularly, the way in which the Chinese Communists have fabricated history and used lies to rule since seizing power is much worse than how the Japanese rightists are revising their history of invasion; the way in which the Chinese Communists have beautify their totalitarian rule is much worse than how the Japanese rightists have beautify militarism. The way by which the Chinese Communists have ruled with lies has created a basis by which Japan can revise its history in order to fool the new generation of Japanese.

This web site seems to be associated with the organization that created the controversial new textbook in Japan. They have a near endless supply of offensive articles written in Japanese, as well as a number in English so poor that they seem to have been translated by a computer. They also host a couple of articles contributed by a fellow with a Germanic sounding name, who manages to combine anti-Semetic and pro-Japanese Imperial sentiment.

The ancient Hebrews, however, have shown a propensity for mass enslavement and slaughter following victory. Since Jews have significant influence over U.S. military and foreign policy, perhaps some of these ancient lessons have been carried over into modern times. It would not be a stretch to suggest that American post-war policies may be an extension of the Jewish experience.

Forget history: Overview of Japan’s new textbooks

OK, so everyone’s mad about the stupid history books that no one uses? That’s fine, but let’s not forget the real story. In no more than a few short years after just beginning to institute educational reforms known as “Yutori Kyoiku” (Education with room to breathe), Japan’s OECD math test scores plummeted down to number two. Making matters worse, they lost out to KOREA of all countries. These developments, along with fears of rising crime by Japan’s youth, have begun a nationwide debate about the benefits of Yutori Kyoiku versus the traditional system we’re all familiar with.

Responding to the new trends in education, textbook makers have been struggling to stay relevant to youth while fulfilling the central government’s policy requirements (ie: passing the inspection). In with the crop of textbooks that were recently approved were a few strange ones. ZAKZAK has more:

A fly in the ointment? “Masturbation” passes textbook examination

“Doraemon” and “Masturbation” are OK, but you can’t use “Tama-chan”?! The content of approved textbooks to be used this spring in middle schools was released April 5. Among the textbooks is a health text that tells of “masturbation” as “the self-pleasuring of a woman”. However, mentions of the character “Tama-chan” from the popular manga/anime Sazae-san were not approved for use in classrooms.

Here are some more odd entries helpfully pointed out by Yomiuri Online:

Chat Smileys, Today’s Japanese: you can read all about them in the new approved textbooks for junior high students

“Ions”, “Heredity”, “Inequality” — “Progressive” curricula that did not exist 4 years ago have returned to the Education Ministry inspections

Here are the new junior high textbooks released to the public April 5th. With contents that surpass upper-level students and exceed the Education Ministry guidelines, there are also many pages devoted to review of elementary school material. As the aptitude of students becomes increasingly polarized, voices of confusion as to what to do with shrinking classroom time mixed with the welcoming of these new texts.

　◆Smileys

Multiple publishing companies have published tables showing the differences between Japanese and English-language “smileys” such as “laughing face”, “crying face”, and “winky face”, considered useful for Japanese students communicating with foreign friends in English. Japanese smileys use round parentheses to simulate the outline of a face from the front, but in English-language smileys symbols such as “:” and “;” are used as eyes and the face is displayed sideways.

　◆Equal representation of gender

An English textbook for second-year students introducing various occupations drew concern from inspectors that “it was lacking necessary consideration for a society of equal participation of the sexes” — of 30 occupations displayed only 6 of the illustrations were of women. Because of this, the textbook company changed 9 of the illustrations, including a police officer and a lawyer, from men to women, and the result was 14 men, 15 women — almost equal except for the astronaut whose sex is unclear.

　◆The ever-changing Japanese language

For Japanese instruction, one company released 3 books that touch on the corruption of Japanese in sections such as “today’s manner of speech”. In one part, written by popular TV host Kajiwara Shigeru, questions modern usage by comparing phrases such as 「こちら味噌（みそ）ラーメンになります」 (“Here’s your miso ramen.”) and 「こちら味噌ラーメンでございます」 (“This is miso ramen.” [tr: ROUGH translation, no questions please]), asking readers, “Which store would you rather eat at?”

　◆Frogs

One textbook brings back “frog dissection” to science classrooms. This first appeared in Ministry of Education guidelines in 1958. Since then it was widely used, but criticisms that it “goes against the principle of respect for living things” caused it to show up less and less, and it has been absent from modern textbooks. The editor explains, “We included it in the interest of putting in as much material as possible, but we put it at the end since there was some resistance to including it in the main text.

　◆Separate last names for married couples

There was a textbook in use that portrays separate last names as one possible choice for when people get married, but the Education Ministry changed its inspection policy to “the legalization movement for separate last names has stalled because there are arguments for and against it“, and has issued opinions stating that text previously approved “may give the mistaken impression that separate last names for married couples has been achieved”. The textbook company involved removed it from the list of options.

Banned manga depicting Nanjing Massacre

This is a repost of an article from the Kyodo news service originally published on October 14th of last year.

Publisher pulls Nanjing Massacre manga after politicians protest
TOKYO — Major publisher Shueisha Inc said Wednesday it will suspend publication of a comic in a popular weekly manga magazine after Japanese local politicians claimed it “distorts history.”

Shueisha said it will not publish the comic “Kuni ga Moeru” (The Country is Burning) in the Oct 13 and Oct 28 editions of Weekly Young Jump, which is immensely popular with Japanese men.

“Some people say the photo used for reference in the drawing was fabricated. It was inappropriate to use such material,” a Shueisha representative said.

The comic series, authored by Hiroshi Motomiya, is a fictional tale about the life of a bureaucrat in the turbulent times of the early Showa era (1926-1989). It has been carried in the magazine since November 2002.

In the magazine’s Sept 16 and Sept 22 editions, the comic described Japanese soldiers massacring civilians in Nanjing in China, in reference to the Nanjing Massacre of 1937.

A group of 37 members of local assemblies protested to the publisher on Oct 5, saying the massacre was presented as if it were the truth in the form of manga and that it was deliberately distorting history by using a photo whose authenticity cannot be confirmed.

They said in a letter that there is strong evidence that the massacre never happened and no proof that it did.

“The parts related to the use of the fake photo as pointed out will be edited or deleted when the comic book is published,” Shueisha said in its reply to the complaint.

The Nanjing Massacre refers to atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army against civilians in Nanjing and its vicinity from December 1937 to January 1938.

The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal concluded that more than 140,000 people were killed. Some Chinese historians put the death toll much higher at 300,000 in Nanjing alone. Japanese accounts vary from several thousand to 200,000 dead. (Kyodo News)

Here is a sample page from the original manga, chosen to show how graphically it actually depicts the Massacre. Do realize that this comes from the weekly manga magazine ‘Young Jump,’ whose primary audience is Jr Highschool boys-the same segment that the shitty rightwing textbook is supposed to be teaching.
nanjing massacre manga

The entire 20 or so pages can be found here.

I think that this backs up both of my points in my previous post; namely that firstly, the Japanese public at large is in fact exposed to and open to a range of viewpoints regarding history and are not opposed to the truth, and secondly that the ultra rightists, in their vocal attempts to stifle what the public sees, succeed in becoming the only voice picked up by international media. Still, it is most disturbing that there are a number ultra rightists who deny that the Nanjing Massacre ever took place. Of course their presence on the web is mainly in Japanese, but here is one example in English. Japanese readers may be interested in this detailed page trying to ‘prove’ that the photographs used in Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking are false. For the record, I find Nanjing Massacre-denyers about as credible as people who believe that we never actually landed on the moon. (To be clear, that means I don’t believe them.) It is very unfortunate that the Japanese public is willing to accept this kind of bullying by extremists.

What China doesn’t want you to see: the Japanese Embassy in China

Thanks to Mainichi:


20 broken windows, thrown water bottles, tomatoes, eggs, yakiimo, enough so that you can’t step without stepping on something.

In addition to the damage at the embassy, Japanese restaurants, businesses, even Japanese cars were attacked.

The Embassy released the pictures to the Japanese media after Chinese authorities banned foreign reporters from the Embassy area.

Japanese Right wing truck

My previous post contains this quote from ESWN:

the majority in Japan is either embarrassed, intimidated (as in: if you speak up, an ultra-rightist sound truck going to show up outside your home and/or workplace to harrass you 24 hours a day with diatribes of hatred)

This raises the question, and it was raised to me by a friend, how intimidating are these famous right wing trucks that drive around and congregate to celebrate certain days or intimidate certain foes? Judge for yourself. Here’s a photograph of one that I took in downtown Kyoto.

/Kyoto/rightist_truck
(Click the thumbnail for the full size picture)
A publicity truck for one of the various ultra right wing groups in Japan. Notice the loudspeakers on top, standard for trucks representing a political group of any stripe.

The upper line of text translates to “Establish an independence constitution”
The large text below the flag reads “All-Nippon Freedom Brotherhood”

The emblem to the left of the door is the Imperial Crysanthemum, with the kanji for ‘self'(short for freedom) in the middle.

What Yasukuni says about the Nanjing Massacre, what most Japanese probably know

ESWN was kind enough to post a link to a gallery of photographs from the Yasukuni shrine as a comment on my earlier post on a Taiwanese Solidarity Union politician’s visit to the shrine.

Many of you will probably be most interested in the following picture from the adjoining museum, which contains Yasukuni’s explanation, in both Japanese and English, of the ‘Nanjing Incident,’ or as we usually know it, the ‘Nanjing Massacre.’
Najing Operation
Since the image is a bit blurry and hard to read, I will reproduce the English below. And yes, the Japanese does say the same thing.

Nanking Operation

The purpose of the Nanking Operation was to surround the capital, thus discouraging the Chinese from waging war against the Japanese. Tang Thengzhi, commander-in-chief of the Nanking Defense Corps. ignored the Japanese warning to open the gates of the city. He ordered his troops to defend Nanking to the death and then escaped. Therefore, when the hostilities commenced, the leaderless Chinese troops either deserted or surrendered. Nanking fell on December 15.

Having seen what Yasukuni has to say about the ‘Nanjing Operation,’ let’s look at a more mainstream Japanese source. First I will post my translation the Kojien‘s entry on the Nanjing Massacre (南京大虐殺）. For those who don’t know, the Kojien is basically the most popular standard Japanese dictionary (that is, Japanese dictionary for Japanese readers, not to a foreign language), and probably the source that most Japanese would first turn to when looking up almost any term. Therefore it is arguably the most mainstream possible source.

Nanjing Massacre
In the Sino-Japanese war, about December of 1937, in and around the occupied city of Nanjing, the Japanese military massacred a large number of surrendered and captured Chinese soldiers, as well as civilians. Additionally there were incidents of such misconduct as arson, plunder, and rape.

I would also like to present the entry on the ‘Nanjing Incident’ （南京事件） from the 1970 edition of the Kadokawa Dictionary of Japanese History(角川日本史辞典). There are actually two sub-entried under ‘Nanjing Incident.’ The first refers to an incident in March of 1927 when the ‘People’s Revolutionary Army’ fired upon Japanese, British, and American troops. The second ‘Nanjing Incident’ is the one which we today generally call the ‘Nanjing Massacre.’ There is no entry for ‘Nanjing Massacre’ or any note that this is term is also used, but then for all I know the term was not yet in common use in 1970. If anyone knows one way or the other, clarification would be appreciated. Here is my translation of the Kadokawa Dictionary of Japanese History’s entry.

Nanjing Incident
1937(Showa 12). The plunder and ravaging that occured during the Japanese military’s occupation of Nanjing in the Sino-Japanese war. The Chinese army had already retreated before the Japanese entered the city, and the Japanese army went on a rampage that lasted until February of the following year, killing 42,000 Chinese, primarily women and children. Responsibility for this incident was severely pursued after the war by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East [Note: also known as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal]

The interpretation of history provided at Yasukuni is most definitely an extreme right wing position. I am not going to offer any of my own opinion or interpretation at the moment, but I will say this; having seen both the Yasukuni/right-wing perspective and two different examples of a mainstream, literal dictionary definition of the Nanjing Massacre in Japan, it is interesting to see that they are not actually contradictory. Even the Yasukuni museum (at least in this single panel) does not deny that the Massacre took place; they simply ignore the issue. Is it actually likely that there are many people in Japan, even among the 0.3% of middle school students being taught with low quality textbooks drafted by right wing organizations, who are unaware of truth of the Nanjing Massacre?

Since ESWN’s helpfully donated link started this post, I’ll end with as an addendum with a quote from an article posted there just a day or two agotheir latest post:

There is a small number of ultra-rightists in Japan whose comments are magnified in the Asian media. I do not believe that they represent the mainstream Japanese opinion. Yet, the majority in Japan is either embarrassed, intimidated (as in: if you speak up, an ultra-rightist sound truck going to show up outside your home and/or workplace to harrass you 24 hours a day with diatribes of hatred) or too polite to say anything about these ultra-rightists so that the Asian nations now believe that those opinions are mainstream in Japan. This is why there are international crises. It is up the to the majority of the Japanese people to condemn those wayward opinions each and every time in a vociferous manner.

Is the problem really that the right-wingers are influencing popular opinion in Japan? Or are they as few as ever, but increasingly good at making their presence known in the international media? Is it true, as Norimitsu Onishi in the New York Times seems to think, that Japan is slowly but surely drifting towards the right?

PS: Curzon over at Coming Anarchy just posted a piece about why he thinks Japan no longer needs to apologize for the crimes of their Imperial period. I’m more interested in what people actually think and know already than abstractions of what they ‘should’ do, but there is obviously a connection between one and the other.

“Ritual” Pro Wrestling at Yasukuni Shrine: ＺＥＲＯ－ＯＮＥ　ＭＡＸ


From SANSPO:

Yasukuni Shrine in Kudan, Tokyo, held the first “ritual” pro wrestling match “Yamato Land of the Gods Strength Festival” in 44 years on April 10th.

Six matches were held by the ZERO1-MAX wrestling league in the outdoor compound, where the burning flames lit up the fully bloomed night cherry blossoms. The main event, AWA heavyweight world champion Omori Takao (35) successfully defended his title for the second time. Ogawa Naoya (37) of UFO and Takefuji Keiji (42) of AJPW made guest appearances, exciting the 3627 fans crowded into the shrine. “It’s wonderful to be at such a special place,” gushed ZERO1 Representative Otani Shinji (32).

The last ritual match was held in April 1961 with Rikidozan protegees Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki. 5000 people came to see it back then. There was also an historic March 1921 mixed styles wrestling match at Yasukuni between American pro wrestler Ad Santel and Judo star Shoji Hikoo.

ZERO1-MAX would like to make the “ritual” pro wrestling a yearly spring tradition at Yasukuni.