Category: Culture

Zainichi players on the North Korean soccer team

With all the World Cup excitement in Japan right now, I just thought I’d link to this Bloomberg report on the two players from Japan on the NK soccer team:

North Korea, the lowest ranked team in the soccer World Cup, faces five-time champion Brazil tonight with its hopes pinned on two players from Japan, as football is one of the great games you can watch play and enjoy, of course there are other games like pickleball which you can learn to play it if you get the pointing system in pickleball and why is important.

Japan-born striker Jong Tae-Se and midfielder An Yong Hak, who both play in the J. League, will represent the communist nation in its first World Cup match in 44 years, playing at 8:30 p.m. local time in Johannesburg. Ladbrokes Plc, a U.K. oddsmaker, rates North Korea a 1,000-to-1 chance to win the tournament.

…

This is the first time players from Japan are representing North Korea at the World Cup, according to Ri. Jong, 26, who plays for Kawasaki Frontale in the J. League, and Omiya Ardija midfielder An, 31, were named in the national team last month.

The two players attended North Korean schools in Japan, hold North Korean passports and have no problem communicating with Pyongyang-based teammates, Ri said.

…

North Korea, playing in its second World Cup since reaching the quarterfinals in 1966, has no professional teams. National team players earn about twice the average laborer’s salary, according to the North Korean football association.

I am hoping for a US-Japan championship match, but of course that isn’t realistic. Alternatively, for those who are into other sports such as the one which mentions a bowstring, they can look elsewhere for better information.

The crime of “blasphemy”

The Kishin Shinoyama nude-photos-in-Aoyama-Cemetery story which Curzon mentioned earlier this year has finally come to a close, with the photographer ordered to pay “¥300,000 in fines for public indecency and blasphemy.”

Wait a minute… blasphemy? How could that possibly be a crime in such a non-religious country?

Go go gadget Criminal Code!

（礼拝所不敬及び説教等妨害）
第188条　神祠、仏堂、墓所その他の礼拝所に対し、公然と不敬な行為をした者は、６月以下の懲役若しくは禁錮又は10万円以下の罰金に処する。
２　説教、礼拝又は葬式を妨害した者は、１年以下の懲役若しくは禁錮又は10万円以下の罰金に処する。

(Disrespect of Places of Worship and Disturbance of Preaching, Etc.)
Article 188. A person who has committed an open and disrespectful act toward a shrine, temple, graveyard or other place of worship shall be sentenced to imprisonment at labor or confinement for six months or less, or a fine of 100,000 yen or less.
2. A person who has disturbed preaching, worship or a funeral service shall be sentenced to imprisonment at labor or confinement for one year or less, or a fine of 100,000 yen or less.

So there you have it; messing with religion is a crime in Japan. It doesn’t seem to be prosecuted that often, though: the various crimes against religion don’t even merit a line item in the Justice Ministry’s annual prosecution statistics.

Fneeter

フニーターとは、最低限の労働しかしないフリーターのこと。
A fneeter is a “freeter” who only does a minimal amount of work.

That’s from the Nihongo Zokugo Jisho website.

I think this is the first Japanese word I’ve heard of which is derived from two Japanese words both derived from English (“フリーター” and “ニート“). Are there other examples I’m overlooking?

Hello Kitty owner turns things around by licensing anything and everything


Source: Pop Crunch

I’ve long been a detractor of Sanrio’s policy of licensing Hello Kitty’s image to appear on just about anything (and some offerings have been downright questionable [NSFW]). But apparently, if you throw hundreds of darts at the board over ten years, you’re eventually going to hit a few bulls-eyes:

Sanrio Co., the Japanese owner of the Hello Kitty character brand, may boost profit after arresting a 10-year slide in sales by slapping its logo on wine, wallpaper and minicars.

The popularity of Hello Kitty, a white cat with a red bow and no mouth, with celebrities including Lady Gaga and Paris Hilton, has led the company to focus on licensing and to pare its retail and restaurant businesses (Sanrio intends to shut 40 of its 260 gift shops in Japan over the next three years).

Sanrio almost doubled overseas licenses last year and counts clothing chains Hennes & Mauritz AB and Inditex SA as customers. President Shintaro Tsuji, 82, plans to set up an office in Dubai this month to grow in the Middle East.
…
An appearance by Hilton, a reality TV player, at Sanrio’s 35th birthday party for Hello Kitty, and by Gaga, a pop singer, on Japanese television holding a stuffed toy, helped the company boost fiscal 2009 sales 0.8 percent from the previous year, the first annual gain since 1999.

“Hello Kitty’s Zen-like calmness and faceless expression are the major reasons for its appeal across age groups and markets,” said Martin Roll, chief executive officer of Singapore-based consulting firm VentureRepublic.

Note that a major part of the strategy is to “expand beyond Europe, North America, and Japan” — in other words, the developed world might have had enough of Hello Kitty, so now it’s time to endear her to the rest of the world. Click through to see Lady Gaga in a Japanese TV appearance, decked out in Hello Kitty everything:

Continue reading Hello Kitty owner turns things around by licensing anything and everything

White American pop singers marketed in Japan

Update: They are apparently not managed by Johnny’s.


Every girl’s fantasy English teachers?

Meet the EastWest Boys. Assembled by Johnny’s Entertainment Sony Music Japan through an audition process, the group, dubbed a “5 in 300 million miracle,” is being solely marketed and promoted within Japan, where they are competing for the hearts of teenage girls.

For their latest single “Take Me There,” they have entered a promotional tie-up with fashion brand Peach John (whose president was mired in scandal last year over a dead woman in her apartment). They are on the cover of the latest catalog and lucky viewers will be able to catch their song on TV ads.

Here’s a YouTube video of a single that recently got some play on Japanese TV, “This Time”:

Sure, I have seen dozens of cheap, poorly produced Japanese pop acts, and some pretty bad American pop groups as well. But watching Americans run through the exact same half-baked dance routines as SMAP produces a special kind of cognitive dissonance.

Johnny’s has made sure to add a few bells and whistles to maximize appeal – the songs are in simple English, and the melody has enough of a pop-punk/emo feel to seem kind of foreign. This was the tune I saw on a few morning shows promoting the group as a new kind of pop act. Girls attending promotional appearances looked overjoyed to hug their new idols.

The music gets much worse when you watch the videos for songs that people didn’t pay enough attention to. “Yesterday’s Hero” was obviously filmed in the exact same warehouse, and the song is 100% cookie-cutter J-POP – no halfway-redeeming nods to American emo to be found. Are they wearing primary colors to make them look like Power Rangers?

While there’s not much to compare, a much, much more listenable American entrant into the Japanese pop world is Jero, the African American enka singer.

The group’s videos are hosted on an official channel, which is kind of a departure for Johnny’s who until recently had a strictly Internet-phobic PR stance. By offering some of their content for free on the web, they are clearly trying to save some PR money by generating buzz online. The upside of that strategy is it gives us a lot of information on these guys that is usually not available on your typical J-pop group.

Continue reading White American pop singers marketed in Japan

I weep for the future

Most readers will remember Taizo Sugimura, the Koizumi “Orphan” accidentally elected to the lower house as a LDP diet member in the 2005 snap election. After a string of disgraceful incidents in which the party quietly told Sugimura to stay out of the public sphere, he was silently booted from the 2009 LDP ticket after his bull-in-China-shop attempt to run for a seat in Hokkaido’s 1st district against a local favorite.

Sugimura is about to relaunch his political career, this time running for an Upper House proportional representative seat for Hokkaido on the ticket of the “Tachiagare Nippon” (the so-called “Sunrise Party”), the stoggy conservative splinter group that broke away from the LDP. The party’s goal in the selection of Sugimura is apparently to appeal to non-partisan voters through Sugimura’s appearances in media and his name recognition. You can read the Japanese article here.

Meanwhile, I was equally surprised to see that DPJ party leader Ichiro Ozawa has pulled in Ryoko “Yawara” Tani, the female Olympic judo wrestler. In a press conference earlier today she announced that “I want a gold medal in the election too” — in addition to seeking to join the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Then there’s also Mari Okabe, a former model and TV talent, who has been nominated to stand for election on the DPJ ticket as well. Here again, the media clearly outlines the party’s motive in picking these candidates — seeking to bring in votes by picking popular people with a wide name recognition.

How do Japan’s political parties get away with this type of popcorn populism? I find it disheartening that people with no merit whatsoever seeking to run for public office are picked for the blatant purpose of nothing more than appealing to the lowest common denominator of voter. Sadly, my informal surveys leads me to believe that lots of Japanese people feel the same way about this state of affairs, but accept it with bland fatalism and disinterest in the state of Japan’s political affairs.

Japan’s Upper House Election is scheduled for July 11th.

Coverage of Yoshida-ryo piece on CNNGo

Reaction to my recent CNNGo photo/article feature about Kyoto University’s famous Yoshida Dormitory has been very positive. I want to thank whoever it was that submitted it to Boingboing, who kindly linked to it as they have several Mutantfrog posts in past years. I also want to especially thank frequent MF commenter KokuRyu, who posted a link to the piece on MetaFilter, where there have been some pretty interesting comments from people who seem to have experience in other cooperative/squat type housing, making some comparisons between them and Yoshida-ryo.

I am also planning on doing a follow-up piece sometime, discussing a little bit more about the history of Yoshida-ryo and the other self-administered dorms at Kyoto University, as well as some of the  “self run” (自治) student activity areas in the university, and the relationship between Yoshida-ryo and the various squatting protests that have occurred on campus over the years, such as the Ishigaki Cafe and the currently still ongoing Kubikubi Cafe. Since CNNGo would not really be an appropriate venue for this sort of piece, I’m hoping readers can suggest or introduce someplace that might be interested!

Mainichi announces new, Twitter-enhanced dead-tree edition

National news daily Mainichi has announced a new dead-tree version of its newspaper to go on sale June 1. Named Mainichi RT, the daily tabloid will print the most-viewed stories online, along with Tweets about those stories and some other extras. A subscription will cost Y1980 a month, which would come out to around Y100 on newsstands assuming they only print weekdays. It’s somewhat similar in concept to Sankei Express, a concise Y100 edition of Sankei Shimbun released a couple years ago, and the many free newspapers distributed in major metropolitan areas in the US (except of course, those are free).

Could there possibly be a less useful idea? Are people supposed to buy it to see if their tweets made it in? If you know all the stories are already online, why bother picking up a newspaper? Someone please tell me what I am missing.

(found via J-Cast, cross-posted from Google Buzz)