Breaking: Steve Clemons reports that outgoing House Speaker Dennis Hastert is tipped by insiders to be the next US ambassador to Japan, thus continuing a fairly consistent tradition of appointing powerful people irrespective of their connections to Japan. Must be the food and the women.
UPDATE: Looks like Da Curzon Code was right.
The Nikkei yesterday printed a brief article on its front page praising the JET Program, a scheme by the Japanese government that exists primarily to place native English teachers in Japanese classrooms, for almost 20 years of “truly significant benefiting Japan”. An excerpt:
Saturday, November 11, 2006
CHRONICLES: JET Program Marks Two Decades Of Benefiting Japan
This year, 5,508 young people from 44 countries, including the U.K. and U.S., are teaching foreign languages — primarily English — at schools throughout Japan.
Almost 20 years have passed since the program was created. Ceremonies to mark the anniversary are planned for the near future, so let us consider what this program has accomplished.
English language abilities among high school students have perhaps risen a little, but the truly significant fact is that about 50,000 young people from around the world who have participated in the program have returned to their home countries after getting to know Japan. Many of the JET alumni have gone on to play important roles in relations with Japan.
The forerunner to the JET program was the BET (British Exchange Teaching) program, and the record shows that the current program exists in part because of the efforts of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, then a member of the House of Representatives. Koizumi had studied in Great Britain, albeit for only a short time.
The JET Program started back when the idea that putting a foreigner in the classroom would work wonders for English education was just gaining steam. But as I have noted, the number of JET participants has declined in recent years, in part because English-teaching industry has matured since then. Nowadays, English conversation schools can be found almost everywhere in Japan, and a school that wants to hire a foreigner can hire one more quickly and easily through private placement agencies or by advertising directly to the large pool of teachers already in Japan. The Wikipedia entry for the program notes that several prefectures have opted out of the JET Program in recent years. So is it time to follow the Koizumi model of “letting the private sector do what it can” and leave the hiring of English teachers up to market forces?
Not yet, I say, and I think the Japanese government would agree with me. The Nikkei gives one very compelling reason why this program, and its $400 million annual budget, remains important: the JET Program is a veritable factory for “Japan handlers” who will go on to careers dealing with Japan in their home countries. It is well-known that the Japanese government has made a point of cultivating Western “Japan experts” since before WW2 in order to boost its international image, and the JET Program has simply proved an especially efficient example of that practice, along with other programs aimed at boosting international exchanges to Japan that began in the 1980s. By hobbling young college graduates early on with 3 years of meaningless semi-teaching, the government can steer them in the direction of a lifelong involvement with Japan, with a small percentage going on to success in various fields. Accordingly, Japanese companies and Japan-related institutions instantly recognize JET experience as synonymous with a familiarity with Japan and tolerance for the Japanese office culture, and often (but not necessarily) Japanese language skills.
And the results are clearly visible. Many if not most of the foreign staff I’ve encountered at Japanese or Japan-related organizations have been JET alumni. More importantly, a good deal of US government employees who deal with Japan (at Department of Commerce, etc) spent time in JET, as have Japan-related employees of other governments, I’m sure.
Now, it’s also true that many of the Japan watchers and others who may go on to “play important roles in relations with Japan” have spent time in the country as privately funded language teachers, exchange students, or even Diet members’ assistants (in the case of Mike Green, Washington’s Japan hand-in-chief). But the fact of the matter is foreign workers are far more likely to enjoy their time in Nowheresville, Japan, if they are able to enjoy the pampering offered by the Japanese government – in addition to a comfortable salary, housing, transportation, and other benefits come standard. Wouldn’t you be happy with the country that let you save enough to pay off your student loans while giving you a cakewalk job?
My quick letter to YouTube:
Dear Youtube:
It looks like dozens of videos of 12-year-old Japanese actress Saaya Irie are making their way around your site. At least one video was popular enough to appear on the top videos of Japanese YouTube search site, Qooqle Clippers. I watched the video, and it’s of Irie in a white bikini with a cameraman in the background telling her to pose. She is 12 years old making suggestive poses. It looks like something out of a Stephen King novel. One hopes that a nightmare sewer clown killed the cameraman moments after the video was shot.
As much as I like your service, videos of this nature are highly inappropriate and may be illegal under US law. In the off chance that you view one of the many videos on your site depicting Saaya Irie and conclude that she is engaging in nothing more risque than normal child modeling, let me assure you that she is intended for the Japanese softcore child porn consuming public, as has been documented (see links below). Often in Japan, child acts make a show of appealing to fellow youngsters while in fact courting older fans who then purchase “photobooks” that feature no nudity but are nevertheless softcore pornography. While tolerated in Japan, an American site should not in good conscience enable this behavior. Considering the extent to which you accommodate copyright holders to ensure that infringing content is deleted in good faith, I can only hope you will make the utmost effort to remove material that depicts child exploitation as well.
Regards,
Adamu
On Nov 20, I’m going to see a lecture by Alex Kerr (pictured, bottom), a businessman in Japan and Thailand and author of Dogs and Demons, one of my favorite books on Japan. He’s giving some kind of talk at the Japan Foundation. Here‘s the promo copy:
Alex Kerr Lecture: “Lost Japan”
Alex Kerr, the East Asia scholar who was praised by Ryotaro Shiba as “a protector of Japanese culture, from America,” continues to express his melancholy at the state of affairs in which Japan’s beautiful scenery is in the process of being destroyed, as well as the need to protect traditional culture. Won’t you lend your ears to the warning bell that Kerr has sounded out of love for Japan and take another look at modern Japan from the perspective of someone who has lived abroad?
As I mentioned, Dogs and Demons is one of my favorites. It’s Kerr’s tale of woe, a follow-up to his previous love letter, Lost Japan, and it criticizes the social, economic, fiscal, and other problems facing Japan. He concludes that a runaway bureaucracy has ravaged Japan’s natural beauty and culture. The metaphor “dogs and demons” comes from this story by Chinese philosopher Han Feizi:
[T]he emperor asked a painter, “What are the hardest and easiest things to depict?” The artist replied, “Dogs and horses are difficult, demons and goblins are easy…. Japan suffers from a severe case of “Dogs and Demons.” In field after field, the bureaucracy dreams up lavish monuments rather than tend to long-term underlying problems. Communications centers sprout antennas from lofty towers, yet television channels and Internet usage lag. Lavish crafts halls dot the landscape while Japan’s traditional crafts are in terminal decline. And local history museums stand proud in every small town and municipal district while a sea of blighted industrial development has all but eradicated real local history.
Kerr goes on to detail initially covered-up river pollution that ended up being so bad they had to name a disease after what it did to people, nuclear reactors clumsily repaired with duct tape, massively wasteful public works spending that robs local areas of the chance to develop a real economy, unconscionable levels of government debt, and countless other examples of Japan’s “policy challenges” circa 1999.
The most effective parts of the book are where he talks about the destruction of Japan’s landscape and city planning, areas that directly affect Kerr personally as an art lover as well as his businesses in dealing artwork and urban restoration. Why are all of Japan’s rivers paved? What is the need for all the noise pollution in public areas? Why was Kyoto’s priceless architecture and urban culture allowed to be put on the chopping block? Why don’t they just tear down Kyoto tower?! OK, that last idea was my own, but he does at least call the tower “garish.”
Continue reading What to ask Alex Kerr?
You may have heard that YouTube deleted 30,000 Japanese videos from YouTube on the request of the powerful music industry group JASRAC. Well, here’s an article that goes into more detail on the efforts to quash the online sharing of copyrighted content.
Translated/paraphrased (translaphased?) from Nikkei (via 2ch):
Behind the Scenes of the “Request to Delete 30,000 Files” from Youtube – The 2nd Act May be to “Eliminate Anonymity”
Even if you did not receive complaints after putting another person’s music on your blog without permission in the 5 days following Oct 2, you should not rest at ease. That is because JASRAC’s monitoring team was constantly connected to American video posting site YouTube from 9 to 5 during that period. We have taken a look at the “Week of Strengthening Measures Against Youtube” during which 23 copyright-holding companies and groups launched a concentrated attack, making simultaneous requests for deletion.
“30,000 videos in 5 days” the Limit
JASRAC was responsible for about 10% of the 30,000 deleted videos. It’s a tiny number compared to the tens of thousands of videos per day on YouTube, but even regularly having a special person in charge of going around various sites on the Internet and monitoring copyright infringements, we were told in what was close to a scream, “Deletion procedures are an extremely minute process. Anything more than that is impossible.”
On YouTube, there is a web site, which regular users cannot see, that is reserved for rightsholders for them to request that videos be deleted. They search for videos by keyword and place a check next to videos subject to the request. Once the deletion request is sent to YouTube, most of the time deletion is completed the next day.
These requests seem simple, but they are rather work intensive. The page is of course in English. Since the name of the song used in the video is not displayed, there are times when it is impossible to judge whether the video actually constitutes a violation unless it is watched to the end. They cannot neglect to listen to even one part of the song.
Continue reading Behind the Deletion of 30,000 Japanese videos from Youtube
Looking through the NYT online archives, which now allow viewing of articles back to 1851 with a Times Select account, I came across a Jan 18, 1906 feature on an auto-show at Madison Square Garden, in which I found three fascinating nuggets. Each one gets its own post.
After all, why even bother bringing an automobile without a native to drive it for you?
＊ ＊ ＊
BUYS AUTO FOR JAPAN
Good Touring Roads There, Says Mr. Thompson-Society at the Shows
An automobile that will be taken to Japan for touring purposes was purchased yesterday at the Madison Square Garden show by J.W. Thompson, who has just returned to New York after a residence of three years in the Mikado’s empire. Mr. Thompson’s purchase was a 30-35 horse power locomobile. He was the first man to introduce the motor car into Japan, his first car having been used there in 1900. Mr. Thompson said last night that the roads of Japan were excellent for automobiling, but owing to the heavy import duty few motor cars have been brought into the country. His greatest difficulty was in teaching the native the mechanical construction of the car so as to make them capable chauffeurs and repairers.
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has a silly and misinformed column arguing that the US needs to allow Japan to arm themselves with nuclear weapons to protect against North Korea. Right. The nuclear weapons program that Japan has been longing for all these years and has only refrained from starting because of US pressure.
Japan is a true anomaly. All the other Great Powers went nuclear decades ago — even the once-and-no-longer great, such as France; the wannabe great, such as India; and the never-will-be great, such as North Korea. There are nukes in the hands of Pakistan, which overnight could turn into an al-Qaeda state, and North Korea
I’m frankly surprised at how bad his reasoning is in this column, how much it sounds like the writing of an enthusiastic but narrowly informed freshman in Poly-sci class.
The fact of the matter is that Japan does not have nuclear weapons because the Japanese population is almost unanimously opposed to the idea. Yes, a couple of higherups in the LDP have suggested the idea of maybe talking about considering discussion of the issue, but quite frankly I cannot think of a better way for them to finally start losing elections seriously than to make the acquisition of nuclear weapons part of their official party policy.
His last paragraph is particularly absurd.
Why are we so intent on denying this stable, reliable, democratic ally the means to help us shoulder the burden in a world where so many other allies — the inveterately appeasing South Koreans most notoriously — insist on the free ride?
This is a mind boggling reversal of reality. Yes, South Korea has been friendly to North Korea. (Unlike some people they actually have to live next door to the crazy man with the gun, which suggests a different perspective from the other side of the Pacific.) But they also have a draft for all adult males, which can hardly be a free ride. Not to mention that fact that South Korea actually DID have a program to develop nukes a couple of decades back, which the US forced them to abandon.
On the other hand, Japan actually DID have a long-term policy of insisting on a free ride. Following the end of the US occupation, the US actually tried to persuade the Japanese government to abandon the principle of pacificism that the US had forced on them only a few years before, and rebuild their military so that they could participate in the Korean war. Japan refused to have even a token military for many years, using the pacifist constitution as an excuse to keep from spending any national resources, capital or human, on military or weapons-a policy that was partly responsible for the country’s fantastic industrial development.
Cold economics were of course not the only reason for Japan to keep from investing in a military for so long. After the disastrous defeat of World War II, culminating in the only use of a nuclear weapon so far, were was also a widespread belief that war was a failed strategy for national success, and that lesson has over the decades transformed into a very strong and nearly universal value of national pacifism.
I see political campaign posters every day calling for the protection of the pacifism clause of the constitution (Article 9), and anti-war and especially anti-nuclear messages are more common and mainstream here than in any other country of which I am aware. In fact, I have never even seen a public protest or demonstration in Japan that did not include that message in some capacity.
I think this comment left by some Japanese person on the Washington Post site says it well.
Get a grip Charlie. While there is an active right wing here of course, the majority in this country where I live is so opposed to nuclear weapons that it would defy your comprehension. Many people here would simply choose non-existence total elimination of both the nation and state of Japan over nuclear weapons possession, let alone use. The Japanese government would run out of fire hoses to put down the demonstrations. Calls for a nuclear Japan are still very premature, and indicate a lack of familiarity with the culture. It aint gonna happen anytime soon.
I think the bit about choosing “non-existence total elimination of both the nation and state of Japan” is frankly over the top, and if Japan were faced for some reason with a genuine war they would came around to full acceptance of their military, but not as things stand now.
Japan’s best offense is their lack of capability for offense. Yes, North Korea distrusts Japan more than anyone, but even they know that Japan is bound by their constitution, laws, and tradition not to use their military for combat purposes unless they are attacked first. North Korea does have to worry about the very real (if unlikely) threat of military action on the part of the US, South Korea or even China, but as long as they do not attack Japan first, Japan is no threat to them-and that more than anything else is what keeps Japan safe today.
[Addendum]: I should have mentioned that the policy of specifically relying on US military protection and instead developing the industrial economy is not a theory of mine, but the Yoshida Doctrine, named after the postwar Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida , who was incidentally Aso’s grandfather.
Recent exchange from the Colbert Report:
Biologist/god critic Richard Dawkins: [Evolution] is a highly non-random process. The big thing that everyone misunderstands about Darwinism is they think it’s chance, they think it’s an accident, and it’s not an accident.
Colbert: Well, it’s too complex for us to perceive, you know, it’s like, I know a pachinko machine isn’t an accident, either, there’s a reason why it bounces from nail to nail, but it looks random to me, right?
Dawkins: Nothing in nature looks random.
Colbert: I want you to address my pachinko analogy!
Dawkins: I’ve never even heard of it, what is that?
Colbert: You’ve never heard of pachinko? Oh, it’s like Japanese pinball. It’s great, they make pornographic versions of it over there.
The Colbert character proves once again to be more complex than meets the eye. Just when you thought you knew his aggressively ignorant conservatism, off he goes and admits not only to an interest in other cultures but even a playful love of pornography!
But anyway, I’d like to show you a little of what Colbert was talking about. Yes, pachinko is similar to pinball, but unlike in the US where pachinko continues a slow fade into near-extinction, the vertically played Japanese game remains Japan’s top gambling institution, beating out horse betting and lotto-type games (not necessarily in that order). The gambling business side of pachinko is only semi-legal and the parlor owners are well known for ties with North Korea. But if casino-type games are your cup of tea, then platforms such as 슬롯사이트 may be perfect for you.
As for the machines themselves, my personal favorites are the ones featuring the chinful mug of the game’s biggest promoter, wrestling legend and former Diet member Antonio Inoki, who incidentally also has close ties with the North Korean elites:
Are there pornographic pachinko machines? The Cutie Honey series, featuring big-breasted anime women, may count:
More famously, there are numerous machines featuring 80s anime sensation Urusei Yatsura:
The game features the bikini-clad character Lum, and the outside of pachinko parlors are often plastered with her image. Similarly, you’ll also see some risque shots of Fujiko-san from Lupin III to advertise pachinko games based on the seminal anime series:
If you want to call these games pornographic I wouldn’t object, but at worst they are the softcore stuff similar to what you’d find in American comic books. The difference, I think, is that Americans visiting Japan (like myself) would probably feel uneasy with the flagrant, in your face placement of these images in public outside pachinko parlors, especially placed in the context of plentiful pornography (bikini shots in kid’s comics, men reading newspapers featuring full nudity on the train) and casual misogyny found throughout Japan’s pop culture.
Incidentally, there’s been a recent (2004-ish) release of a pachinko version of the epic anime title Neon Genesis Evangelion, for those who might like that sort of thing:
Some comic book fans ask why modern story lines do not have, let’s say, Superman hunting down Osama Bin Laden and stopping Al Qaeda. I think these WW2-era covers make a very good case for avoiding those sorts of storylines.
I am currently reading the biography of William Gorham I mentioned in my post on using online resources for researching his life. Here is what the book, written by Gorhman’s Japanese colleagues, has to say on the Japanese in California about a century ago.
Almost the entire Japanese immigrant population in the U.S. was located in the state of California or in other parts of the Pacific coast. They had left their native areas and immigrated to a foreign nation empty-handed, but also had attained success in the United States. The disparity in customs, along with their resulting problems, as well as the difficulty of learning a new language, all were overcome by these immigrants and they were able to make substantial successes of their lives. At the same time, from the point of view of racial rejudice or from the point of view of the struggle to make a living, there was the inevitable friction as well as competition that came about between the Japanese and the white immigrants from Europe. In fact, the substantial successes attained by the Japanese immigrants, if anything, resulted in more opportunity for them to be viewed with jealousy by immigrants from other nations.
However, capitalists in the state of California had always valued highly the calmness and willingness with which the Japanese would stick to work, as well as their capabilities for labor. They were also appreciative of the immigrants’ ingenuity and resourcefulness. In fact, they were amazed at the Japanese immigrants’ cleverness exhibited in growing vegetables and in catching fish. Although white laborers used a slogan to oppose them — “Keep California White” (i.e. keep the state of California forever for whites only), as far as the capitalists were oncerned, they sided with the Japanese immigrants and used the slogan, “Keep California Green” (i.e., keep the state of California green with produce from farms and gardens). (p. 26-27)
According to the Sept 22, 2006 NYT:
Stepped-up border enforcement kept many illegal Mexican migrant workers out of California this year, farmers and labor contractors said, putting new strains on the state’s shrinking seasonal farm labor force.
[…]
The tightening of the border with Mexico, begun more than a decade ago but reinforced since May with the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops, has forced California growers to acknowledge that most of their workers are illegal Mexican migrants. The U.F.W. estimates that more than 90 percent of the state’s farm workers are illegal.
[…]
For decades, Mr. Ivicevich said, migrant pickers would knock on his door asking for work climbing his picking ladders. Then about five years ago they stopped knocking, and he turned to a labor contractor to muster harvest crews. This year, elated, he called the contractor in early August. Pears must be picked green and quickly packed and chilled, or they go soft in shipping.”Then I called and I called and I called,” Mr. Ivicevich said.
The picking crew, which he needed on Aug. 12, arrived two weeks late and 15 workers short. He lost about 1.8 million pounds of pears.
