Category: Current Events

Tibet in exile

Following my post yesterday about the Dalai Lama’s upcoming visit to my former university of Rutgers, I thought this very recent Time Asia article describing his government in exile.

Around me, matrons from Lhasa are buying bread from vendors outside the temple, and walking their children to the Tibetan school down Temple Road. Recent escapees from Tibet are setting up tables and preparing lattes and chocolate cakes at the sleek Moonpeak Café and at Chonor House, the elegant guesthouse run by Tibet’s government-in-exile. Everywhere are monks in red, reciting sutras, sweeping their temple grounds, streaming into Internet cafés, and just whiling away their day in the shadow of Himalayan foothills, almost as if they were at home. What I’m seeing, improbably, is a vision of Tibet that you can never see these days in Tibet itself.

Also see a brief post I did earlier about Tibetans in Taiwan.

Tabloid Journalism Trumps Politics in Taiwan

After reading the summary of Taiwan’s 2004 media space, make absolutely sure to read this translated article (plus comments) at the blog ESWN.

The most important thing to remember when reading this article, which is not made clear until the very end, is that the Libery Times (as well as its English languge subsidiary the Taipei Times) are ideologically in the pan-green, or pro independence, camp.

A detailed analysis of the Apple Daily-versus-Liberty Times consumer markets showed that the differences occurred in certain age groups and between urban-rural areas. Within the 30 to 34 age group, Apple Daily has 21.8% versus Liberty Times at 18%; within the 40 to 60 age group, Liberty Times is ahead. In the metropolitan areas, Apple Daily leads at 21.2% and Liberty Times only leads in the smaller towns and villages. Overall, the readership of Apple Daily is concentrated in the 12 to 39 age group, and that was the first time that Liberty Times got defeated in this group.

According to industry analysts, the traditional ecology of Taiwan newspapers has been thoroughly disrupted after Apple Daily entered the market two years ago. The two traditional large newspapers — United Daily News and China Times — were completely beaten by Apple Daily and Liberty Times in this survey. The “excellent tradition” of those two newspapers are slowly fading. The measures taken by the two newspapers in terms of editorial improvements have proven to be totally effective, so that the youth advantage of Apple Daily will continue to hold in the future.

SWEET! Japanese Govt To Lead Effort To Realize Virtual Reality TV By 2020

My new job as a “Japan researcher” gives me a lot of fringe benefits, like free subscriptions to the Economist, Businessweek, Asahi and Nikkei daily newspapers, and Nikkei Net Interactive, a web service that provides translated Nikkei articles and some features like Japanese company profiles. I’m often unsure of what to do with the information — does passing along pay articles that I get from work constitute a violation of licensing agreements? Well, I’m sure a partial copy-paste here and there couldn’t hurt.

So it is with that in mind that I bring you this article. Something tells me this is a lot more realistic than Japan’s “Atom Project” (to create a robot with all the humanity of a 5-year-old boy by 2040 or so), and also probably a lot more fun.

Govt To Lead Effort To Realize Virtual Reality TV By 2020

TOKYO (Nikkei)–The Communications Ministry will establish an industry-academia-government R&D organization this year that will work to commercialize VR (virtual reality) television by 2020.

VR TV will enable images to be seen in 3-D from any angle at a quality equivalent to that offered by high-definition TVs, in addition to allowing viewers to feel and smell the objects they are watching.

The government hopes that by supporting the project, it can help Japan maintain its technological edge.

When these features are used on home shopping programs, for example, viewers will be able to examine products by seeing them from various angles and feeling them. VR TV technology will also likely be used in telemedicine and other fields.

Recreating tactile sensations and odors is expected to be the biggest hurdle to commercialization.

To simulate the sensation of touch, researchers are considering using means including ultrasound, electrical stimulation and wind pressure. For smells, the development of a device that mixes natural aromatic essences to recreate particular scents will likely be given a major focus.

I thought I had something to say but I lost my train of thought completely

1) Hip Hop Gospel Mimes — The best in the business. (Thanks SA)

2) Link to DPJ Candidate’s Website Goes to Porn Site Instead — Remember last year’s vice presidential debate? NO?! Well in it Cheney kept repeating some site name, and I thought it would be totally within the realm of possibility for the link he gave out to automatically forward you to goatse.cx.. You know, since he’s so evil and all. Well anyway, Hiroko Mizushima, an opposition party member running for office in Japan’s upcoming election, came close to fulfilling my fantasies. A link to her site posted on the Osaka Prefectural Chapter of the Democratic Party of Japan’s website mistakenly pointed instead to German site “Porn Diamonds” (LINK NOT SAFE FOR WORK). According to Mizushima’s staff, she had changed her site’s address after her provider went out of business, but the Prefectural Chapter just never updated it. Oops!

The face of international togetherness...

3) U.S. Targets Sex Abuse of Exchange Students — Think of it as a little like that scene in American Pie, only instead of an American supermodel faking an accent and stripping in front of a camera it’s a pathetic biology teacher (pictured above) sneaking into a girl’s bedroom and begging for head. Or it’s a fat Asian man feeding booze to Scandinavian boys and then trying to grab their ding-ding-dongs.

I wasn’t molested when I spent my senior year of high school in Japan, but I easily could have been, as the article explains:

Foreign students are among the most vulnerable minors because they usually do not know U.S. laws, are unfamiliar with customs, are dependent on host families or sponsors, don’t know what to do when abused or are afraid to act, according to Lt. Frank Baker of the Allegan County Sheriff’s Office…

“For a predator, this is the ideal situation,” Baker said.

Continue reading I thought I had something to say but I lost my train of thought completely

Banzai! We just screwed Japan!


The postal privatization bills failed. The Lower House has been dissolved, and there will be an election on Sept. 11. The picture is of Diet members cheering “Banzai” for the emperor (?) after their official dissolution.

Mrs. Saru said it best:

I am super disappointed that the bill did not pass. We have a great Foreign Minister right now who is good for Japan and U.S. relations. Great. So much of what is wrong in the Japanese socity and foreign policy is due to narrow-minded politicians and those who vote for them.

Did North Korea market missiles to Taiwan?

I have here an article from the July 18 Chuunichi Shinbun. For some reason it is no longer avaliable on the website (404 error), but luckily you can still see the original Japanese text in Google cache.

Did North Korea market missiles to Taiwan?

Seoul- Kiyoshi Nakamura.

According to the issue of Korean Magazine ‘Choson Weekly’ which went on sale July 17th, a former representative (72 years old) of North Korea’s People’s Supreme Congress (basically their ‘parliament’) who recently defected to the South said in a statement to South Korea’s National Information Institute that the North “visited Taiwan for the purpose of exporting North Korean made missiles.”

When asked about the nuclear problem he said, “North Korea is manufacturing kiloton capacity nuclear weapons.” On the other hand, “The North has little confidence in their large nuclear weapons, and so are also manufacturing 500 kiloton nukes.”

According to the same publication, this representative was also a researcher at the “Oceanographic Industrial Research Facility”, which is a subsidiary of the Secondary Economic Association that covers the entire munitions industry. They primarily develop such things as missiles, and are responsible for production and external business.

The representative let known his desire to defect in May of this year, in a third country.

He was allowed into Korea by the National Information Institute, and investigations are continuing.

Has anyone seen this story reported anywhere else? I’m particularly asking you Korean-speaking Marmot readers.

Update: Adam, your correction is noted.

Three noteworthy articles from Waiwai

The Waiwai section of the Mainichi newspaper’s English language website is usually nothing but a collection of sleazy but entertaining lasciviousness, but this week they actually have three very interesting and more serious stories translated from the Japanese weekly magazines.

First, Shukan Shincho reports on newly discovered documents that allege Hitler actually had plans in place to escape to and hide out in Japan after the Reich fell.

As the Soviets relentlessly pounded the German dictator and his cronies holed up in the subterranean fortress in the German capital, moves were apparently afoot to whisk away top Nazis on long-range Condor airplanes to Japan, journalist Eiichiro Tokumoto writes in the prestigious weekly.

Tokumoto cites a top secret letter dated April 24, 1945, that Toshikazu Kase, then Japan’s Ambassador to Switzerland, wrote to Shigemitsu Togo, Japan’s Foreign Minister at the time.

Kase, a career diplomat whose CV would later include stints as Japan’s first ambassador to the United Nations, was then involved with top secret peace negotiations with Allen Dulles, an operative with the U.S.’ Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of today’s Central Intelligence Agency.

Kase’s letter to Togo shows the diplomat was worried that an already struggling Japan was about to be lumbered with a bevy of nasty Nazis.

Second, Asahio Genio reports that Yoshinori Watanabe, the Kumicho (Don, Godfather) of the Yamaguchi Gumi, Japan’s largest Yakuza clan, has unexpectedly retired.

Hundreds of yakuza gang bosses from across Japan went to the Yamaguchi-gumi’s Kobe headquarters for the July 29 meeting as they were watched by scores of police and media representatives.

Watanabe, 64, announced his retirement in a statement read out by Saizo Kishimoto, general manager of the syndicate’s headquarters.

“I’ve been kumicho for 16 years, but been sick for the past four years and can no longer fulfill my responsibilities, so I’m retiring,” Asahi Geino quotes Kishimoto saying on Watanabe’s behalf.

Apparently, the huge meeting room where the gang bosses sat in silence while the announcement was made, with the hush broken only when some broke down in tears.

This resignation is particularly big news because, according to the article, “Watanabe was the first ever leader of the Yamaguchi-gumi to be alive when his successor assumed office.”

I get such a kick out of the fact that the Yakuza are such a public organization. Can you imagine Tony Soprano’s stereotypically sleazy Jewish lawyer going on Channel 11 Eyewitness News and reading a statement that he has taken over the organization following the arrest of his uncle Junior?

Lastly, we actually do have one about sex. Shukan Post reports that, for the first time ever, Japan’s Administration Commission of Motion Picture Code of Ethics will allow un-mosaiced human genitals to appear onscreen.

But, with the Japanese premiere in late August of “Kinsey,” local moviegoers will get their first unadulterated glimpse of both male and female reproductive organs.

“We discussed it quite a bit internally before deciding the scene where the organs appear is really important for the overall movie and that we wanted it to be screened uncut and without a mosaic,” a spokesman for Shochiku, the distributor of “Kinsey,” tells Shukan Post.

Eirin, which has a strict policy of prohibiting the display or genitalia or pubic hair, has bent when it comes to “Kinsey,” a biopic of U.S. sex academic Alfred Kinsey.

“It’s not on screen for long and, overall, we decided that the scene did not touch on Eirin’s regulations,” a spokesman for the movie ethics committee tells Shukan Post.

I thought Kinsey was a very good film, and it seems a rather appropriate film to break the barrier of onscreen genitalia in Japan. Will they embrace Kinsey’s example in the future? Can Japan’s film board lose their juvenile attitude towards the human body, or will they revert to their old ways and continue to contribute to Japan’s culture of sexual fetishism by blocking ordinary and healthy depictions of sex? Stay tuned.

Japan’s Arlington

Defenders of Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine inevitably compare the shrine with America’s Arlington National Cemetary.

Yasukuni enshrines the spirits of all of Japan’s war dead. Reporters tend to misunderstand what that means. Yasukuni does not contain the actual remains of these people, instead it contains a number of large scrolls on which the names of the dead are ritually inscribed, allowing the shrine to be a vehicle through which prayers and offerings can be given to the spirits of the dead.

While Yasukuni’s rolls contain the names of over 2.5 million deceased soldiers, the controversy stems from the 1068 convicted war criminals honored in the shrine, particularly the 14 class A war criminals whose names were secretly added to the list of souls honored by the shrine in 1978. Clearly, Yasukuni’s official policy is to allow the enshrinement of any former soldier or military official, regardless of the crimes that they have committed.

How does this actually compare with Arlington’s policy?

A recent and ongoing stink over Arlington’s acceptance of a convicted murder reminds me of the Yasukuni controversy. This Washington Post article on the Arlington scandal gives us some insight into their policy. The most important bits are highlighted.

Although Wagner’s criminal history came as a surprise to the cemetery, his crimes do not necessarily exclude him from an Arlington burial.

“A capital crime and being sentenced to life in prison without parole, or a death sentence, would preclude him from being buried in Arlington,” Calvillo said. Anything lesser would not.

According to a spokeswoman at the Washington County judiciary, Wagner was eligible for parole.

Furthermore, as someone who served on active duty in the armed forces and was honorably discharged, he was eligible for a “standard” burial there (for “full” honors — including a band, a caisson and a military escort — more stringent requirements have to be met). For an Army private first class, as Wagner was, pallbearers for his service would have been provided by the 3rd Infantry at Fort Myer.

The cemetery does not do background checks on those buried there, Calvillo said, adding that it is up to their families to share such information. Wagner’s sister could not be located for comment.

In the 1960s, the Department of Defense denied an Arlington burial to a decorated World War II veteran who had been chairman of the New York State Communist Party and had been convicted for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.

After a three-year legal fight by his family, he was buried at Arlington.

In 1997, Congress passed legislation barring those convicted of capital crimes from being buried in a national cemetery. The law was enacted to preclude any possibility that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, a Persian Gulf War veteran, would be buried at Arlington.

For most convicted criminals, however, there are no restrictions.

So does this mean that others among the 290,000 people buried in the cemetery could be convicted killers?

“It is definitely a possibility,” Calvillo said. “If you’re eligible, you’re eligible.”

Of the 14 Class A war criminals, 7 of them were executed by hanging and 4 were sentenced to life imprisonment. One was sentenced to a term of 20 years, and two died of natural causes before sentencing.

It would seem that even if Yasukuni operated under Arlington’s rules, 3 of the 14 Class A war criminals would still be eligible for honors. It is also worth noting that Arlington’s rules became significantly more stringent in 1997. In 1978, when the 14 were enshrined in Yasukuni, there were no comparable rules in place, and it seems none of the 1068 war criminals would have been turned away. Of course, this is based on civilian convictions. Does anybody know how convictions by military courts affect a soldier’s right to burial at Arlington?

Amusingly bad editing

Example one:

I spotted an AP article on Salon.com with the headline ‘Bush Holds Latin American Ally at Ranch.’ Maybe I’ve just been reading a lot of stories about torture at Gitmo and in US controlled prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, but no matter how many times I read the headline it still gives me completely the wrong impression.

Other versions of the headline used by other news outlets reporting the same story:

Colombia president to meet Bush – BBC

Bush Welcomes Colombia’s Uribe at Ranch – Manchester Guardian

Bush Hosts Latin American Ally at Ranch – Manchester Guardian running the same AP story as Salon. Extra points for fixing the headline.

Bush welcomes Colombian leader – San Antonio Express

Let me suggest in the future that the editors at the Associated Press and/or Salon try and remember the difference between the words ‘hold’ and ‘host.’

Example two:

I was on the website Torrentspy.com, looking for some illegal downloads (of course, an activity I only engage in when I’m outside of the United States) when I spotted this article about the possible re-legalization of medical LSD in Russia. I don’t have any particular fascination with LSD, having never even bothered to try it, but it is a topic of moderate interested and so I proceeded to skim the article. Nothing about it really stuck in my mind until I got to the following bit:

Barbara Streisand signed the above-mentioned petition. The actress confessed that LSD helped her survive the nervous breakdown she had after discovering that her only son was a faggot.

I may actually have done a double-take; when was the last time you saw somebody called a faggot in a newspaper article?

I looked up the original source of the article, the English version of the Russian Pravda. The same line at English.pravda.ru reads:

The actress confessed that it was LSD, which helped her survive the nervous breakdown, when the star discovered that her only son was a homosexual.

I’m glad to see that they corrected that gaff. As offensive as it was, I can actually believe it was an honest mistake by a Russian translator whose linguistic command of English surpasses his cultural understanding. On the other hand, Salon still has their truly lousy headline.

Japan to drop visa requirement for Taiwanese tourists

Today’s Taipei Times reports that advocates for Taiwanese independence are renewing calls for a formal declaration of a Republic of Taiwan and the promulgation of a new constitution. I found this quote particularly interesting.

“The good news that Japan has agreed to waive the visa requirement for Taiwanese tourists shows that Japan recognizes Taiwan as a nation,” Wang said. “It also shows that our promotion of correcting the country’s official name and writing a new constitution has made some preliminary achievements.”

As for the visa waver plan.

The bill was initiated by the head of the lower house’s legal affairs committee and passed with the support of the Liberal Democratic Party and its ruling coalition partner, Komeito, and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

As Japan does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the bill is necessary if Japan wants to offer a permanent visa waiver for Taiwanese citizens. Japan’s existing exit and entry regulations only authorize visa waivers for citizens from countries that maintain diplomatic ties with Japan.

It seems that from the Japanese side this is more about promoting tourism than endorsing Taiwanese independence, but it is true that with relations between Japan and China becoming increasingly tense, Japan has recently become more supportive of Taiwan. The bill passed unanimously, showing that whatever policy differences Japanese politicians may have, this was a completely non controversial decision.

As a side note, due to the English language Taiwanese press’s extremely helpful habit of including Chinese characters for proper nouns, I now know that Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) famous quote that there exists one country on each side of the Strait of Taiwan is written “一邊一國.”