Category: Conspiracies

Yakuza Push Back as Rigged Boxing Match Makes Waves in the Japanese Internet

Kameda Hide.jpg
I haven’t been following this issue too closely, but here’s a quick rundown:

On August 2, star Japanese boxer Koki Kameda fought Juan Landaeta of Venezuela for the World Boxing Association’s light flyweight championship. The match, which I naturally missed since I live outside Japan (but you can see some clips on Youtube here), was said to obviously have gone to Landaeta in terms of both points and the match’s momentum. However, at the end of the day Kameda was awarded the championship 2-1. The Japanese blogosphere (which scored its first political touchdown amid last year’s earthquake safety scandal) cried foul, the rumor being that the match had been rigged as a “present” for mob boss Goro Hide Hanabusa‘s birthday. Pictures of the two together (see above) soon surfaced, putting Kameda’s career in jeopardy not just for participating in a rigged match but for acquiring a dirty image in what is supposed to be a family sport.

Marxy, who has been following this story, has noted that the story has broken much faster on the Internet than in weekly magazines, Japan’s usual outlet for yakuza-related scandals. While diffusion of the Internet into daily lives in Japan has lagged behind the US (your aunt Ikuko still can’t book discount flights online, for instance), the more popular uses of the net (anonymous message boards, then blogs, and now Youtube) have proven effective tools in getting around the notorious disinformation found in traditonal news media (case in point). Japanese wiki, for instance, contains frank passages on taboo subjects such as the real identities of TV stars, exposure of staged events on TV, and now the role of organized crime in fixing boxing matches.

That is, it did until a few hours ago. Marxy just clued me in that Hide Hanabusa’s wikipedia entry was recently deleted due to “copyright issues”. Wikipedia will apparently instantly delete any entry that a rightsholder alleges contains a violation of his/her copyright. I have no idea whether that is the case in this instance, but it’s interesting to see that the yaks may have realized they’re being humiliated online and decided to take action.

Will the Japanese yakuza expand its Internet savvy beyond cheap cons in order to protect its image? Well, as far as this blogger is concerned, I figure I’ll be safe as long I keep writing in English.

Liquid terrorism

Andrew Sullivan says that the most interesting thing about the recently foiled terror plot is that the terrorists were planning on using “liquids” of some kind in the attack. Since the authorities are still being tight-lipped about the actual details of the attack we have no idea what exactly that liquid was, but there are a number of possibilities. Andrew’s pet theory seems to be that they were using a device that combines liquids from two different chambers to create hydrogen-cyanide gas. According to this BBC article, it was in fact liquid explosives, with electronic detonators hidden inside portable devices, which presumably would be dis and reassembled within the plane.

Whatever the exact nature of the liquid being used in this particular attack was, there is one major past terrorist attack perpetrated through the release of liquids inside a vehicle. I am of course talking about the Aum Shinrikyo Tokyo subway sarin gas attack of March 20, 1995.

Earlier this year I had a large translation project in which I translated a couple of hundred pages of Aum Shinrikyo related material, including a large portion of Aum and I by Ikuo Hayashi, a medical doctor and member of the cult, who participated in the sarin release. Below are some excerpts describing the preparation for, and actual release of the sarin inside the subway.
Continue reading Liquid terrorism

CIA did support the LDP after all

The speculation can stop: Yes, the CIA did fund and advise LDP election activities in the 50s and 60s. But only about $75k per year, says a recently released “U.S. diplomatic document” according to the Mainichi Daily News. The real focus was on crushing and dividing the left, on which the Agency spent an average of half a million per year (presumably to pay informants/agents?). I wish I could get a hold of these documents, but it looks like the entire country is trying to access the State Dept. Website now for some crazy reason.

Economic White Paper reveals shortcomings of Japan’s labor system

Japan’s economic gap not growing as fast as the Gini coefficient would have us believe? According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a recently released economic white paper details some key developments that could be skewing the data. From the Nikkei:

To prove the point [that the data are flawed], the white paper cited a nationwide consumption survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs showing that most of the growth in the income gap since 1989 stemmed from the fact that households composed of the elderly increased as a percentage of all households. The white paper cited a decline in the average number of members in Japanese households as another reason for the apparent widening of the income gap.

The big problem that could have “adverse effects” on the Japanese economy, the report says, is the now 3.6 million youngsters shooting themselves in the foot by insisting on living a free-wheeling lifestyle in a system that punishes them both socially and financially for it. In other words, if your average Japanese person doesn’t lock in a permanent position in that critical age window of 22 until around 30 (when the typical age discrimination kicks in), he or she has little chance of making as much lifetime income as someone who followed the rules. Of course, there’s nothing controversial about people making less money because they don’t have full-time jobs. The problem is that “full time” jobs (seiki koyo) in Japan are permanent (no firing/quitting as a general rule), so when times get rough, companies have filled up vacant posts with “part time” or contract positions that pay fewer benefits, lower wages, and don’t have the same amount of security in exchange for working the same hours and often performing the same job as full time employees. In terms of effects, the report estimates that once this “Freeter” generation (named after a Janglish word for part-timer) hits middle age in 2015, this phenomenon will result in a 4.9 trillion yen (or 0.9%) loss in GDP.

While part-time work might work for women (who face social pressure against pursuing a career and who may want to work fewer hours while raising children) and old people, young workers who enter companies as part time employees find themselves trapped because while regulations were changed in the 1990s to allow for non-seiki employees, there was no concurrent reform of the seiki system – age discrimination included. If the youngsters continue working part time until they hit the age ceiling, then they are screwed.

Adamu’s Politically Untenable Solution? remove restrictions on firing full time workers (or simply introduce an “at will” employment system), eliminate age discrimination, and otherwise create a truly flexible labor market. GOJ/Shinzo Abe‘s politically sexy solution? Treat part time workers the same as full time workers, raise the maximum hiring age, and encourage more mid-career hiring.

Koizumi Continues to Flout His Own Constitution!

Koizumi Yarmulke.jpg
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi respectfully places his hand on the Wailing Wall, one of Judaism’s most sacred sites, in Jerusalem on Thursday during a trip to the Middle East that takes him to Israel, the Palestinian territory and Jordan. (AP)
(From Nikkei)

Who will stop Koizumi from continuing these perverse, random acts of worship?!

I Pray for an End to Hello Kitty Merchandizing

Seriously, I am just so sick of this crap:
kittify.jpg

Are people still interested to see what else the Sanrio people can put Hello Kitty’s face on who else signs up to beat the dead horse that is licensed Sanrio merchandise? If so, get over it! Please! A Hello Kitty guitar simply does not deserve to be front page news these days (as of now it’s the top image at MDN). Last I checked, Hello Kitty merchandise was the Snakes on a Plane of 2 years ago. That is, it all of a sudden started appearing everywhere online, only to spark a quick backlash once it became overexposed.

Sickeningly Insulting Info-tainment from the Daily Yomiuri

Consider these two phenomena:

1) Athletes endorsing products that supposedly help their performance; and

2) Exploitive marketing of second language learning products that offer a specific pattern of drills as a purported secret to learning the language.

By themselves, they are typical, if somewhat sleazy parts of everyday consumer life. But put them together and you get this nugget of infotainment from the ethically-challenged Daily Yomiuri:

Bobby Valentine learns the joy of Japanese

Yoko Mizui Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

“The most exciting thing that ever happened to me was not winning the Asian Championship and the Japan Championship last year. Nor was it winning the Major League. It was not even winning koryusen this year,” said Chiba Lotte Marines baseball team manager Bobby Valentine. “The most exciting thing was that at the age of 50 plus, I could discover Step Up Nihongo and learn the language.”

Valentine talked about how he learned the Japanese language and utilizes it in managing his team at a seminar to introduce a new e-learning system, “eSUN,” in Tokyo on June 26.

Step Up Nihongo (SUN) is a set of textbooks for non-Japanese to study the Japanese language, written by Shigekatsu Yamauchi, who also writes the monthly column “Japanese in Depth” for the Language Connection page of The Daily Yomiuri.

That’s right, just when you think Chiba Marines manager Bobby Valentine is going to give us some insight into ups and downs of his attempts to learn the language of his adopted home (which he incidentally lives away from in the off-season), BAM you get a sales pitch. There is nothing indicating that this article is an advertisement meant to promote a specific product. And adding insult to injury, there’s next to no info about how good Valentine’s Japanese actually is or how he really learned it. I guess it’s up to us to try eSUN and find out, right?

In the interest of fairness, there are dozens of press releases put out and promotional events held every single day in Japan announcing the arrival of some great new product. Every one of them claims to be newsworthy, making it up to the reporter/editor’s judgment to know what is really worth printing. If we give the Yomiuri the benefit of the doubt, “Bobby Valentine endorses Japanese study method” could be newsworthy in and of itself. He’s yet another success story of a foreigner in Japan, so people want to hear just about any tidbit of information that’s available. I mean, color me ignorant, but I didn’t even know Valentine was seriously studying Japanese, although I’m not about to start believing it now (Question: is his Japanese any good? According to this Nov 2005 interview it’s “a major problem”). Unfortunately, the article is not exactly written to emphasize the newsworthy aspects of the event. Again and again the writer emphasizes the benefits of eSUN.

Keep in mind that in the Japanese media, product placement passed off as news (i.e.: with no mark denoting that you’re looking at an ad rather than actual news) is rampant (for example, Nikkei has an entire Saturday supplement for just such a purpose). Marxy has some good coverage of that phenomenon on his blog.

I would say this article fits snugly into that tradition of unannounced advertising. Especially since after about 10 minutes of the most cursory research, I was able to unearth a good bit of info to that makes it unlikely that Valentine is merely a volunteer supporter of this learning technique.

First let’s consider: are we really expected to believe that the discovery of this product was the most exciting moment ever in the life of the Bobby Valentine, the only foreign manager (except for Sadaharu Oh I guess but he doesn’t count) in Japanese baseball to ever win the Pacific League and Japan Series championships and, coincidentally, the inventor of the “wrap” sandwich?

If it is, he’s been quiet about it up to now – he only mentions the product once on his official blog (which in turn is a marketing gimmick for a different site) in the form of a brief non-sequitur in a February 2006 post explaining how the blog works:

It is very interesting to note that David, who is bilingual in English and Japanese, learned his Japanese from the same teacher I am currently learning mine! Our teacher is Shige Yamauchi-sensei of ICI, a foreign language school in Tokyo. Using Step Up Nihongo (SUN), which is a wonderful teaching tool for those that want to learn Japanese, students can not only learn it by book and tape form but also interactive internet lessons as well.

But that brief endorsement was enough to warrant ICI, creator of the Step Up method and the company featured in the article in question, to include a full-on graphic logo (linked to the above blog post) on their website to let potential students know that Valentine endorses their methods:

And I’m sure he does – but I have a tough time believing he’s doing this simply as an uncompensated advocate. The article claims that Valentine was hooked on eSUN after someone handed it to him on a plane. Sure, and James Bond drives a BMW to impress chicks. Valentine is a businessman. Look at the way he’s doing his blog: some secretary is recording his thoughts while he’s on the road, and then transcribing them onto a blog that links directly to a major Valentine investment. Pretty shrewd!

And from the get-go, the seminar that constitutes the “where” of the article was held by a company run by a Yomiuri contributor. Considering that the very existence of his column is a convenient way to drum up business, sneaking in a cheap promotion of a celebrity endorsement of his product doesn’t make for much of an intellectual stretch. And being a part of the Yomiuri establishment must make it easy to cut in line ahead of other, less-connected Japanese learning methods.

So we’ve got a) An article that is clearly pushing a specific product but does not identify itself as an ad; b) a subject who in all likelihood is a paid (but unannounced) spokesman for the product; and c) The company offering said product has personal and financial connections to Yomiuri. In my own amateur opinion, such an article violates the “newspaper ethics” that the Yomiuri supposedly subscribes to as a member of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association (NSK). Here’s the relevant excerpt of the NSK’s Journalistic Canon, Newspaper Advertising Printing Standards (for some reason these standards are left out of the English version of the NSK website):

[Newspapers] shall not print advertisements that correspond to the following:
[omitted]
3. Falsehoods or items for which there is a danger of misinterpretation.
“Items for which there is a danger of misinterpretation” refers to the following:
(1) [Advertisements] that use formatting and expressions that look ambiguously like editorial matter, making the fact that it is an advertisement unclear.
[rest omitted]

So as long as the journalistic canon applies to online articles (at least it seems to in the US) the DY might consider sticking the word “advertisement” above articles that serve little purpose than to sell us something. Until either that happens or I get definitive proof that Bobby Valentine has no endorsement deal with Step Up Nihongo, I will continue to be properly offended.

(Thanks to FG for pointing this article out to me)

Quiz: What was BOJ Chief Fukui’s 1st “Yellow Card”?

As many of you know, the Bank of Japan Chief Toshihiko Fukui is in trouble for not dropping an investment in the discredited Murakami fund after he took the position in 2003 (though he was not legally required to do so, nor was he required to disclose the investment through an uncanny oversight by regulatory authorities – the US, for its part, does require full financial disclosure from its FRB chiefs such as the last one, Alan Greenspan). It only makes sense since the BOJ Chief is the ultimate insider in a capital market.

In a recent column for his website, opposition DPJ Dietman Yoshihiko Noda (Lower/Chiba 4th) called the so-called transgression Fukui’s “second yellow card”, which in soccer means you’re out of the game.

Question: What is the first yellow card to which Noda is referring? Answer after the “jump”!!

Answer: He quit as vice chief in 1998 after it was found officials from banks, including the former Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank, treated Ministry of Finance and BOJ bureaucrats to “no panties shabu shabu” – at a restaurant Fukui is known to have regularly attended (though Fukui was never actually prosecuted for anything). Shabu shabu is a kind of Japanese meat soup – it’s good, and apparently even better when the waitresses aren’t wearing their underwear. It was this and other, much worse incidents that led to MOF’s financial regulatory authority being stripped away and given to an entity we know today as the Financial Services Agency. And now you know!

Was Osamu Tezuka a Racist?

I stopped at Book Off, that wonderful oasis of a Japanese used bookshop in midtown Manhattan, on my way home from Connecticut last weekend. I wasn’t intending on actually buying anything, but the first all 4 issues of Osamu Tezuka’s manga Adolf (Adorofu ni Tsugu) at a dollar apiece were too tempting to pass up. It’s an interesting work of historical fiction that answers the question: “What if Jews living in Kobe during World War 2 found definitive proof that Hitler was 1/4 Jewish?” As someone relatively unfamiliar with Tezuka’s work, I’ve been surprised to see depictions of torture and mass murder peppered throughout – I had thought he traded mostly in cute robot boys and little lions, but if you look at his bibliography he’s pretty freakin’ prolific!

What caught my eye, though, was this disclaimer at the end of the first volume (loosely translated):

In this “Complete Works of Osamu Tezuka (published in 1996), the images of many foreigners, mainly blacks and Southeast Asians, make an appearance. Some of those images depict those people as they were when their countries were undeveloped or exaggerate past eras and differ greatly from the present situation. Recently, there have been claims that such depictions are racially discriminatory toward blacks and some other foreigners. As long as there are people who feel uneasy about these images or feel insulted by them, we believe we must seriously listen to those opinions.

However, the exaggeration and parody of people’s features is the most important method of humor for comic books (manga). This is especially prevalent in Tezuka’s works, so people of many countries are the subject to parody. Further, beings from the animal kingdom to the world of the imaginary are very humourously caricatured, not only humans. Not even the author’s self-portrait is an exception to this, with his nose drawn several times longer than it actually is. Also, the author is a person who always and continually held the belief that all hatred and conflict is evil, including that between the civilized and uncivilized, advanced nations and developing nations, the powerful and the weak, the rich and the poor, and the healthy and the sick – beneath his stories runs a strong “love of humanity.”

The reasons we have ventured to print the “Complete Works of Osamu Tezuka” are that the author has already passed on and therefore cannot edit his works. Not only would a third person changing the work of the dead would pose a problem in terms of the person’s dignity, but also cannot be considered an appropriate measure to deal with the problem at hand, and not only that, we have a responsibility to protect works that are regarded as the heritage of Japan’s culture. From the beginning, we oppose all discrimination and will work to eliminate discrimination. We believe this is the responsibility of a publisher. We hope that readers, too, will use this Tezuka work as an opportunity to recognize the fact that various discrimination exists and deepen understanding of this issue.

So, Tezuka’s manga aren’t discriminatory but should be used as an opportunity to reflect on the issue of racial discrimination? Sure, Kodansha. Maybe you’ve gotten smarter in the last 10 years, but I kind of doubt it.

This comment is a direct reaction to moves by a group in Japan called “The Group to Eliminate Discrimination Against Blacks,” a fairly sanctimonious group that originally started without a single “black” member to its name. The group claimed that Tezuka’s “Kimba the White Lion” included racist depictions of black Africans and demanded it be changed to reflect a more culturally sensitive era. The move resulted in the removal of Kimba panels from several museum exhibits dedicated to Tezuka. Indicative of Japan’s general isolation from global debate in general, majority public opinion in Japan seems to be against a movement to eliminate discrimination against blacks led by a hypersensitive NGO.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any images online that demonstrate the sharp “satire” of Osamu Tezuka, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a few bones through noses in Kimba the White Lion. Next time I’m in Japan or Book Off I’ll be sure to look out for them.

For the record, I have yet to encounter any stereotypical-type images in Adolf, though one of the Nazis is deliberately depicted as lizard-like to emphasize how evil he is.