Culture – Page 26 – Mutantfrog Travelogue

Best manga ever?

Just read the description. I saw the latest chapter of it, which involved the Pope using ancient Catholic magic rituals to beat Koizumi in a mahjong game. Does it get any better?

Cause and effect in the Japanese office

Nice argument from Noah Smith, guest contributor at Observing Japan, which I would like to forward for our esteemed readers’ comment.

I am in a position to know that Japanese white-collar labor productivity is substantially lower than most other rich nations (including Asian nations such as Taiwan and Singapore). That means that whatever is getting done in all those long hours Japanese people spend in the office, it’s not as much as it could be. Any physics student will tell you that work equals force times distance*; Japanese workers put in a lot of force without getting enough distance.

Japan’s leaders should recognize this distinction. We all know the story of how government protection of Japan’s domestic service sector has left it inefficient, but it’s important to realize the real impact this has on the lives of Japanese people – parents who can’t go home to be with their children, salaries that are lower than they could be, exhausting hours of work put in with not enough to show for it at the end of the day. Maybe Aso should take a clue from King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 4:14, and help the Japanese people to work smarter, not harder.

MY COUNTERARGUMENT: Much to the contrary, the “inefficient” 18-hour day is probably based more on being the easiest way for husband and wife to survive many of the bizarrely fractured marriages that prevail in Japanese society. If husbands had to come home earlier in the evening, for whatever reason, there would be a lot more chopstick-throwing and perhaps some instances of “hot ochazuke”. (Note that I’m generalizing here — there are many women in the workforce these days and more than a few “stay at home dads” — but the traditional structure still prevails.)

THE QUESTION: Even though I think the insane Japanese workday is self-imposed for the sake of the mismatched couple’s sanity, there’s almost certainly a long-term benefit in giving more Japanese boys a regularly-present and halfway-conscious father. What’s the appropriate policy response to move Japan closer to this outcome?

What will the news look like in the future?

Happy new year everyone!

The New Yorker had a nice, concise piece on the financial state of the newspaper industry recently (it’s bad), which concludes:

Does that mean newspapers are doomed? Not necessarily. There are many possible futures one can imagine for them, from becoming foundation-run nonprofits to relying on reader donations to that old standby the deep-pocketed patron. It’s even possible that a few papers will be able to earn enough money online to make the traditional ad-supported strategy work. But it would not be shocking if, sometime soon, there were big American cities that had no local newspaper; more important, we’re almost sure to see a sharp decline in the volume and variety of content that newspapers collectively produce. For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime—intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on—and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.

A third alternative could be to bundle a “news service” fee into your monthly Internet service provider bill, as has been proposed for “illegal” music downloading.

In his “Cyber Libertarian” column for Ascii, economist Nobuo Ikeda forecasts that newspapers in Japan will become “platforms” — meaning they will eventually shed the high-cost paper distribution system and even their newsrooms in favor of publishing outsourced content under their venerated imprints.

I am not sure what to make of it all, but it’s fascinating stuff and I would love to hear your thoughts!

IIjima Ai’s meaning to Taiwan

The mysterious death of former porn-star turned memoir author and TV celebrity IIjima Ai has been big news in Japan. I wouldn’t normally mention something like this due to lack of really caring much, but I was alerted to a rather interesting twist in a comment by Taiwanese TV Journalist Michella Jade Weng at Michael Turton’s blog. Weng linked to an a Mainichi article explaining that IIjima’s death has been unusually big news in Taiwan for a surprising and fascinating reason. I’ll give a translation of most of the article below.

Due to the import of adult videos starring Ms. IIjima in the early 90s when Taiwan was democratization and the opening of society were proceeding, Ms. Iijima became a “symbol” of freedom of expression and culture. The [December] 25th edition of China Times, one of Taiwan’s big four newspapers, had a front page article above the fold article which, along with showing a photograph of Ms. Iijima, stated that Iijima Ai “became the common shared sexual dream of Taiwanese men born in the 1960s to 1970s.”

Note that China Times now has a special feature section on their website, under the amusing folder name of “sexgirl.” UDN, another of the big four papers, also put together a special feature on Ms. Iijima, describing her as “a memory of all the men of Asia.”

Assistant Editor of China Times, Zhang Jing-wei, explained this treatment by saying “The period when Ms. Iijima was active overlapped with the period when Taiwanese politics and society were opened up.　We were not trying to be funny at all, and decided that Ms. Iijima’s death has social significance.”

In 1987, Taiwan’s 38 year period of marital law ended, and restrictions on cultural expression such as newspaper publication and songs were lifted. The Japanese adult videos that began pouring into Taiwan in the 1990s were considered a symbol of social liberalization.

Weng also reports that her editor explained it in more direct terms. “In addition, she was the common link between nearly all men born in the 60’s and 70’s, because almost all of them hid in their bedroom and watched her videos at one point or another.” Including her editor.

Inventing Xmas

Christmas is over but “the holidays” continue.

As you recover from over-eating, you might enjoy reading about how America’s modern Christmas traditions were born. About.com has a concise guide. One interesting tidbit on the first depiction of the modern Santa:

Santa’s suit features the stars and stripes of the American flag, and he’s distributing Christmas packages to the soldiers. One soldier is holding up a new pair of socks, which might be a boring present today, but would have been a highly prized item in the Army of the Potomac.

Beneath Nast’s illustration was the caption, “Santa Claus In Camp.” Appearing not long after the carnage at Antietam and Fredericksburg, the magazine cover is an apparent attempt to boost morale in a dark time.

If you saw the Colbert Christmas Special, you might remember Toby Keith singing “Santa Claus and Uncle Sam are one and the same.” I guess there was more truth to that than is widely recognized!

Burying the lede?

The NYT has a new article explaining in a decent length how currency-finagling led to a codependent financial relationship between China and the US over the last few years. Yes, that’s all very informative, but as is often the case they slip the best part in towards the end, where most readers will have already given up.

In a glassed-in room in a nondescript office building in Washington, the Treasury conducts nearly daily auctions of billions of dollars’ worth of government bonds. An old Army helmet sits on a shelf: as a lark, Treasury officials have been known to strap it on while they monitor incoming bids.

With a line like that, it’s criminal that the photograph for the article was Secretary Paulson and President Hu wearing boring suits.

Best poll ever?

Friday, December 26, 2008
Teens Skipping Breakfast Tend To Have Sex Earlier In Life: Poll
TOKYO (Kyodo)–A recent national poll of around 1,500 people has shown that those who skipped breakfast in their early teens first had sexual intercourse at an average age of 17.5 years, earlier than 19.4 for those who had breakfast every day and an average 19 for all those polled, according to a health ministry study panel.

A ruin in Taichung

Taiwan is full of Japanese style wooden houses leftover from the colonial period, but most of them are vacant, rotting hulks. There was one such house behind my apartment building when I lived in Taipei, which I posted two very nice photos of here and here. I was told (by Michael Turton) that this is largely due to the fact that insurance companies will not sell coverage for these wooden houses, and few are willing to live in an uninsured home.

While wandering around Taichung (in fact, just a day or so after visiting Michael at his home in that same city) I happened across this ruin and wandered around inside with my camera. Here are the photos.

I recommend using the flash slideshow in fullscreen mode for best resolution, or you can go to the Flickr page directly. Note that the pig was not actually inside the ruin, but tied up out front of a nearby shop.

Update: I should mention that it was late at night, and these photos were taken with available light and extremely long exposures. My zoom lense was broken at the time, so all of them are with a 50mm lens (1.6x crop factor). The camera is a Canon EOS 300D, which is aging fast and desparately needs to be replaced.

On The Media on Kisha-clubs

National Public Radio’s always-excellent weekly show On The Media just did a great 20 minute segment on Japan’s unique press club system. The best part of the entire piece: when segment producer Mark Phillips brought up the way in which reporters and the politician or other figure they cover often exchange questions and answers making “the actual-” and this is where I quite literally braced myself to hear the word “kabuki” but instead heard “-a mere formality.” What a relief!

Press Conference with the Taiwanese President

Following the incredible amount of discussion we had here regarding a BBC “From Our Correspondent” column on a heavily stage-managed interview with Japanese PM Aso Fukuda, I think it would be interesting to compare with this Taipei Times “Reporter’s Notebook” column on Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jieu’s press conference given at the Taiwan Foreign Correspondent’s Club. The most obvious difference of course is that Ma, who studied in the United States, is fluent in English and required no interpreter. Also unlike the aforementioned Aso Fukuda interview, this was apparently an actual live press conference, in which reporters were free to ask questions of their choice. However, according to the column, “the tough questions never came.”

Throughout the 90-minute session, Ma’s fluency held up well — but he did stumble on several occasions with figures, reverting to a quick check of the numbers in Chinese with his aides.

Consistent to a fault, however, Ma used the term “mainland” to describe China, so much so that many of the foreign correspondents found themselves employing Ma’s questionable terminology in their questions.

He also made one or two factual errors, such as accusing Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City councilors of offering a reward for anyone who could pelt Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) with eggs during his visit last month, when in fact it was members of the pro-independence group Taiwan Society North.

He did impress by answering questions precisely and comprehensively, except for the terse response to a query on whether he would welcome the Dalai Lama.

Overall, however, the nature of the audience meant that questions focused on international issues, which meant that this reporter — and several others — were left disappointed that Ma wasn’t pressed on domestic problems that may yet influence cross-strait ties.

Incidentally, his response over whether he would welcome the Dalai Lama was “no.”