Category: Culture

Dietman Taizo Sugimura an Idiot After All? (At least he is an admitted plagiarizer)

Speaking of book news:

Young LDP Diet member Taizo Sugimura (PR, South Kanto) has admitted that a post on his personal blog was plagiarized from the autobiography You Aren’t an Idiot After All. ZAKZAK has the story:

This Time Taizo is Suspected of Plagiarism…Just before his marriage
Blog Post Closely Resembles Popular Yoyogi Seminar Teacher’s Autobiography

A post on Lower House member Taizo Sugimura (age 26)’s blog was found to closely resemble the autobiography of popular teacher at the famous exam preparation school Yoyogi Seminar (Keisuke Yoshino, age 39). (Sugimura has since admitted to the plagiarism).

The blog post, uploaded at 11:32pm on May 10, starts out “It was my last night as a single man.” Sugimura describes that when he was 19, he “seriously hated myself,” went to a snowy mountain to kill himself, and “lay down on the snow, quietly waiting for death.” However, he returned to his car after being unable to withstand the cold. He tried going outside again, but ended up going home after thinking “At this rate I’ll catch a cold!”

Yoshino’s memoirs, You Aren’t an Idiot After All, were published in 1991 and were reprinted in paperback. A passage in the book, in which the 19-year-old author attempts suicide by going to the Shigakogen plateau, and after going in and out of his car a few times returns home after realizing he’d catch a cold – the resemblance is consistent even in the story’s punchline.

Yoshino, a former biker gang member, participated in a discussion group for NEETs (people Not in Employment, Education, or Training) held by Sugimura. During the discussion, Yoshino reportedly told that story.

The eery resemblance became a topic of discussion on the Internet, and by May 23 the offending passages were deleted.

(liberally abstracted from ZAKZAK 2006/05/23)

Thank god for the Internet. If you watch the video in which he admits to the plagiarism, you’ll notice just how little he seems to care that he’s a freaking dumbass for ripping off a popular book.

It sounds like he thinks it’s all over since he just deleted the passages in question. Doesn’t he realize it’s too late?

Thailand Report Part 1: Reasons why Korean Air Rules

index_img_6_jpn.jpg
I just got to Thailand on a trip to visit Mrs. Adamu. The flight over on Korean Air was awesome. Let me tell you why:

  • Flight attendants that are beautiful, attentive, yet creepily identical – same height, same skin tone, same body proportions, similar facial features, same voice – think Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible” video meets Kim Jong Il’s personal cabaret troupe. They seem to be extremely weak – I was asked to help load a slightly heavy carry-on bag, and then someone else had to help another flight attendant close a storage hatch. Plus there must have been 5 costume changes over the course of the flight – aprons for the food service, plain white shirts during downtimes, and brown jackets for no discernible reason other than perhaps they look smart.
  • 3 words – BIBIMBAP FOR LUNCH! And not just any bibimbap, this was actually fresh and good. Not the best Ive ever had, but it’s for damn sure the best airline food I’ve ever had. The rest of the fare was only above-average, but the frequent drink services and little perks like ice cream for dessert were nice touches.
  • Personal entertainment centers at each seat – even in coach! In the course of the trip, I caught up on the latest hits in Japan, learned that the US was continuing humanitarian aid to Hamas, saw some movies ranging from the awesome Glory Road and Syriana to this tepid Japanese movie about a boy who　becomes an elephant trainer. Also saw this insane Korean music variety show in which a) a member of the infamous DJ DOC sang a crappy R&B song with a 60-year-old man; b) Another performer suddenly busted out a line and c) An interview in which an older female singer scolded the younger host for using the Japanese word for “pants” (zubon).
  • Ignorant passengers – As we were about to land, an older Korean couple got out from their seats, piled their numerous carry-on bags in front of an emergency exit, and started staring out the window. It took a minute for the flight crew to notice in time to smack them upside the head verbally and send them back to their seats.

    • All in all a great ride and I highly recommend it – they don’t seem to have a restriction on carry-on bags either.

    Awesome stuff from the National Diet Library – Part 1

    Today I was poking around Japan’s National Diet Library (more or less equivalent to the US’ Library of Congress) website, and the amount of amazing material that’s available to anyone who can read Japanese and navigate their search engines is simply breathtaking. I’ll be bringing you highlights from time to time:

    Imperial Diet archives – Way back in 1889, when Japan was actively aping Western culture in a mad scramble to avoid colonization, a legislature called the Imperial Diet, based on the Prussian and British systems, was established. While the body had only limited powers and was only briefly considered to serve its purpose, to this day the Japanese government claims bragging rights as “Asia’s oldest democracy.”

    Anyway, as part of its (exhaustive) Birth of the Constitution of Japan online exhibit, the National Diet Library has made public the Imperial Diet records from September 1945 (after the Allied forces first landed in Japan) until March 1947 (when it was shut down leading up to Japan’s new constitution). I certainly hope they’ll release the rest of the records going back to 1889. Incidentally, the entirety of Japan’s laws dating back to the Meiji constitution is available here in case you were wondering.

    The records (written in old-style Japanese) are a rather difficult read, but here’s a random sample from Japan’s first postwar prime minister, Shigeru Yoshida:

    November 29, 1945 (When Yoshida was Foreign Minister):

    State Minister Shigeru Yoshida: As to Mr. Fuke‘s question, I regret that there was a problem with my answer, I apologize… so I will answer once again. The whereabouts of our compatriots in Manchuria and North Korea is extremely important, I worry on it night and day, and we are making all possible efforts by various means, but while it is truly regrettable, we have not as of yet been able to acquire accurate information. We do receive bits of lopsided information from time to time. According to what we’ve received, depending on the region, conditions are better than imagined in some places and cause us concern in others. In other words, in Southern Manchuria and other areas, it seems that even order has been gradually restored, and there are even those who are calmly attending to their work in some parts. However, we cannot definitively know the actual conditions, so it is truly regrettable that we are not at a stage where we can give satisfactory explanations to our citizens who have families in the various areas. When we are there, we will report such through the Diet, and as we receive information, we will report it in an appropriate manner. (applause)

    Hm, not the best random sampling, but believe me this is a good thing.

    Little-known fact: The word “baka” (idiot) was uttered 173 times in the Imperial Diet’s final year and a half, often (based on a cursory glance at the results) in reference to dangerous left-wing elements such as labor unions. Compare that to the 7 times the word’s been said in the modern-day National Diet in the past 5 years.

    Scientology

    Andrew Sullivan today calls for a boycott of the Tom Cruise vehicle Miss:ion: Imp:oss:i:ble: 3.

    How creepy is Tom Cruise? The Washington Post asks; and readers answer. All I can say is: after the way this guy treated South Park, we owe it to ignore him and any movie with which he’s associated. The Boycott “MI:3” movement starts here. Blogospheric solidarity much appreciated.

    Well Andrew, I am completely with you on this one, but the boycott does NOT start with you. I was walking around Manhattan with my camera on April 16th and snagged this photo on 9th Avenue somewhere between 45th and 50th Street.

    It seems that some people have already had the idea.

    As it so happens I ended up passing through Times Square a few minutes later, where there was a pair of tables full of copies of Dianetics, a pair of e-meters, and a bunch of money-crazed bad pulp scifi worshipping Scientologists trying to indoctrinate passers-by. (I normally avoid Times Square, but I wanted to stop by Midtown Comics on the way home and couldn’t remember exactly which cross-street it’s at, only that it’s near the corner of 7th and 40-something. For the record, it was 40th Street.)

    All of the following photos taken on April 16th on the west side of Times Square with a Canon EOS 300D and 65mm Hartblei Super Rotator lens.
    Continue reading Scientology

    “I wore a 41-pound body of bees for those islands!”

    A Korean bee farmer was stung over 200 times in a puzzling statement of protest over Japanese claims to the Dokdo/Takeshima Islands:

    bees 050206.jpg

    “The honeybee dares to abandon its life when enemies are attempting to attack, to protect its own home. From now on, I hope these bees will contribute to protect our Dokdo”, Ahn Sang-Gyu said.

    An impressive feat, not to mention a very creative way to attract attention to the issue.

    While it can’t really be considered a “beard” of bees, the sheer number and weight of the bees beats out Grandpa Simpson‘s old fictional record of 15 pounds. Since Ahn wore a “symbolic” 187,000 bees, that means his bee suit weighed in at 41.1 pounds, assuming an average weight of 100mg per honeybee.


    UPDATE:     WOAH – this story is way cooler than I imagined – this guy wasn’t just standing around in a bee suit – he did a full-on cannonball on the Japanese flag covered in bees!

    DOUBLE UPDATE: This guy is the world record holder for bee beards, so basically he decided to cheapen his accomplishment by rehashing the act to attach a small-minded political agenda to it. Way to go, chump. You’ll regret that on your deathbed, at which time ocean levels will have risen to the point that Dokdo no longer exists.

    Update by Mutantfrog:I found a video clip of this online. Enjoy everyone!

    This Japanese blog that also linked to the video has a little more to say.
    * He first stood on a scale model of Dokdo and stripped off his outer hanbuk and stood in place for two hours so the bees could settle in place, and then jumped from a 60cm high platform onto a Japanese Hi no Maru flag that was laid out on the ground, so that the bees would “attack” it.
    * The 187,000 bees represent the cumultative 187,453 square meter total of the Dokdo islands.
    * He was stung in over 200 places, but isn’t allergic and the pain has faded in the 2 days since the stunt.
    * He said, “No matter how much it hurts, I will not run from Japan’s provocation,” and “I wanted to show that not jus the people of Korea, but also the bees are angry.”

    The young poisoner confesses

    The following brief article was in Saturday’s Japan Time.

    SHIZUOKA (Kyodo) A 17-year-old girl admitted at the Shizuoka Family Court that she poisoned her mother with thallium, reversing a denial she made following her arrest in October, sources close to the case said Friday.

    “I made my mother take thallium,” the sources quoted the girl as telling the court. Thallium is a highly toxic substance used in rat poison and other pesticides. The mother is in a coma.

    The family court will decide by next Tuesday whether to send her back to prosecutors to face criminal charges or to send her to a juvenile correctional facility.

    The girl, a prefectural high school student, was arrested Oct. 31 on suspicion of attempting to kill her 48-year-old mother at their home in Izumonokuni, Shizuoka Prefecture, by putting thallium in her food between August and October that year.

    The girl’s name is being withheld because she is a minor.

    Unfortunately, the Kyodo piece leaves out pretty much everything that makes this story so grimly fascinating.

    What they don’t say is that the girl had been poisoning her mother in emulation of Graham Young, whose real life story of experimentation with poisoning schoolmates and relatives as a teenager was made into a movie called The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, which I rather enjoyed when I saw it several years ago without knowing that it was based so closely on a true story.

    To make the story even more disturbing, the girl had kept an anonymous blog which included details on the progress of her mother’s condition as she was slowly being poisoned. While she never quite said that she was responsible for her mother’s condition, someone who had read the journals of her earlier experiments with using poison on rodents would probably be able to draw the correct conclusion from her disquietingly cold tone.

    The Times (UK, not NY) has a more extensive and rather good article about this story from a few months ago, shortly after the girl was arrested. The end of the article includes the following brief excerpts from the girl’s journal, as well as some stats on Graham Young.

    WEB DIARY OF A HIGH SCHOOL GIRL

    July 3
    “Let me introduce a book: Graham Young’s diary on killing with poison. The autobiography of a man I respect. He murdered someone at the age of 14.”

    September 4
    “To kill a living creature. The moment of sticking a knife into something. The warmth of the blood. The little sigh. It is all a comfort to me.”

    September 26
    “My mother will go to hospital tomorrow and nobody has yet found out what the cause is. To my regret, she is not covered by good insurance, so life will be a little difficult.”

    October
    “I took a photo of her today as I did yesterday. My brother said I had a penetrating stare and that he was horrified.”

    October
    “According to my aunt, my mother has started having hallucinations. She seems to be suffering from insects that don’t exist or white shadows by the door.”

    GRAHAM YOUNG
    * As a child he was fascinated with poisons and their effects, and the Nazis, becoming a worshipper of Hitler

    * In 1961, at the age of 14, he started to poison members of his family, enough to make them violently ill

    * In 1962 his stepmother died of a lethal dose. Young was arrested and jailed for 15 years for the attempted murder of his father, sister and friend

    * On his release in 1971, he found a job and poisoned several co-workers, killing two of them. He was convicted in 1972 and given life

    * He was dubbed the Teacup Poisoner but wanted to be known as the world’s poisoner. He died in 1990

    * The film The Young Poisoner’s Handbook (1995) was based on him

    Now, the girl’s blog was of course erased from the web server upon its public discovery after her arrest, but luckily for us the administrators did a terrible job of cleaning up after themselves, and some wonderful Japanese netizen used a combination of various search engines and caches to reconstruct the entirety (or at least close to it) of both of the girl’s journals.

    If you have the ability to read Japanese and a taste for the macabre, a mirror of the original journals as well as a collection of other materials related to the case can be found here.

    I’ve been thinking about translating them ever since I discovered the site a while back, but since I haven’t done it yet I shouldn’t make any promises.

    Minister of Foreign Affairs Aso: Japanese Animation Readies Humankind for Robot Slavery

    I can’t believe I’m going to see this guy next week:

    The word “robot” is said to have come to us from the Czech word robota, which means “labor” or sometimes even “drudgery,” and thus is a word that originally carried a negative connotation.

    But through Japan’s Astro Boy or the cat-like robot Doraemon, the meaning of the word “robot” shifted, instead becoming a benevolent friend who helps human beings. In Asia and elsewhere around the globe, robots came to be understood as the “white hats” -the good guys.

    The impact of this situation is that countries with an affinity for Doraemon do not have workers who reject industrial robots, and thus in those countries, industrial productivity rises. In addition, you find that Japanese-made industrial robots sell well.

    Yaskawa Electric Corporation and the other firms of Japan’s “big three” hold a market share of half the global market in the area of robots for welding or applying coatings. Of course, Astro Boy and Gigantor-what we in Japan know as “Tetsujin 28”-are there in the background to all this. In other words, what created the climate in which all this could take place was Japanese culture, and I am continually speaking of culture’s significant contributions in this area.

    (Picture: Aso – 2nd from left – giving some kind of award to Bulgarian sumo wrestler Kotooshu (I’ll let you guess which one he is))

    Quick lesson in METI ineptitude: The PSE Law explained

    Yes, the PSE Law (which would have banned the sale of some used video game consoles and almost all vintage musical instruments) has been thoroughly declawed. Thank god. But weren’t you the least bit curious about how this all got started? I was, so it was especially interesting for me to come across this article in the 3/25/2006 issue of Japanese business weekly, Shukan Toyo Keizai (Weekly Oriental Economy, link opens PDF file). Some highlights (translated where it was easy, abstracted where it was a pain):

    Something’s Wrong Here, METI! (Part 2): Used Goods Sold No More?! Analysis of METI’s teeter-tottering over the PSE Law

    A scandal began when a used goods dealer asked a question to the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI).

    It was October 2005 when a letter arrived at the headquarters of major used goods chain Hard Off Corporation. It said: “Pursuant to the Product Safety Electrical Appliance and Material Law (PSE Law), electric appliances without the “PSE label” can no longer be sold as of April 1. Please take note.”

    The sender was Victor JVC. It was addressed to vendors stores selling the company’s products. Hard Off, though mainly dealing in used goods, sells some new items, so it was as if by chance that the letter made it there.

    President Ken Nagahashi of Hard Off was worried: Does “can no longer be sold” include used goods? What are the stipulations for used goods? He looked on METI’s website, but no matter where he looked he could not find anything about used goods.

    He then directly asked METI, but the person at the Product Safety Division who received his question could not give an immediate answer as to whether used goods were included. Hard Off was at a loss.
    Continue reading Quick lesson in METI ineptitude: The PSE Law explained