Japan-US Relations – Page 4 – Mutantfrog Travelogue

What’s right and wrong with divorce in Japan

Note: I started drafting this post about a week ago. Many of these points have since been raised in our educated readers’ comments to Curzon’s earlier post on the Savoie case. I’m going to re-raise them anyway, since I believe the broader discussion of international divorce should continue.

My first trip to court was as a student in an undergraduate law class. I was assigned to sit in a session of the local courthouse and take notes on what happened. This was also where I saw a divorce for the first time. A middle-aged, heavyset black couple with soft Southern drawls came in. The entirety of the divorce went like this:

JUDGE: I understand you two want to get divorced.
WIFE: That’s right, Your Honor.
JUDGE: What is the reason for this?
WIFE: He cheated on me, and lied to me. And we don’t wanna be married no more.
JUDGE: Is this true, sir?
HUSBAND: Yes, it is.
JUDGE: Do you have any children?
WIFE: No, sir.
JUDGE: Property?
HUSBAND: It’s taken care of.
JUDGE: Fine. I declare you lawfully divorced. Take this form to the clerk.
WIFE: Thank you.

I left the courthouse shortly after that, and saw them getting into the same car together to drive home. It was a surprisingly cute divorce.

Since becoming a lawyer and moving to Tokyo, I have gotten an inside seat in some much nastier divorces. Although the law firm I used to work at was primarily dealing with corporate clients, we would regularly get a personal inquiry from, say, a client’s secretary, telling us her brother’s children were stolen by his crazy Japanese wife, and we would invariably try to respond with something productive even though there was nothing particularly productive to do at that point. The problems in resolving cross-border family disputes involving Japan are legion, and have inspired a voluminous website written by an anonymous estranged gaijin dad.

First, some facts

The statistics in this section all come from the Japanese government. You can see the original stats (in Japanese CSV format) here.

One important but rarely-cited fact about Japanese divorce law is that most divorces are consensual and involve little legal process at all. These so-called “kyogi rikon” have consistently accounted for 90 to 95 percent of all divorces during the postwar era.

A lot of this has to do with the ease of the consensual divorce. The two parties simply sign and seal a one-page form (here’s a sample in Japanese) and file it with city hall. It’s possible to get a consensual divorce without ever setting foot in court. But there has to be consensus on what to do with property and children. In this respect, the system makes it comparatively very easy to end a marriage so long as there are no particular disputes to resolve.

If the parties can’t agree to the terms of their divorce, they must go to family court. The first phase is “chotei rikon,” essentially a mediated divorce under the auspices of the family court system. It is supervised by a judge but the mediation is conducted by laypeople. If mediation fails, the family court judge can step in with a “shimpan rikon,” a sort of preliminary judgment, but this can be defeated by either party’s objection within two weeks, and so it does not form a statistically significant number of divorces. The last resort is a “hanketsu rikon,” which is also finalized by the family court judge, but can only be concluded upon a showing of particular legal facts such as infidelity, cruelty or unwarranted denial of sexual intercourse. The parties can reach a settlement during the final court process, in which case their agreement is called a “wakai rikon”; this system was introduced in the past decade and has become a not-uncommon way to resolve marital disputes.

It’s a common misconception that mothers always get custody after a Japanese divorce. In reality, fathers end up with custody in a significant percentage of cases. In fact, until the 60’s, they were more likely to get custody than mothers. Check out this graph.

The thing is that (as stated above) most divorces are reached by voluntary agreement of some kind. Once the case gets into family court, the more-or-less official presumption is that the mother is a more suitable custodian unless the father can prove otherwise. The pre-eminent English academic commentator on Japanese child abduction, Doshisha law professor and periodic Japan Times contributor Colin P.A. Jones ~~(who incidentally lost his own kid in a Japanese divorce proceeding)~~ translated the family court’s mediation manual as follows:

When a child is small, it is thought that the mother should generally be designated custodian. For a young child, the mother’s existence is irreplaceable, and in mediation, custody designations should usually proceed from this basis. [. . .]

When a father is demanding to be designated custodian, it is not uncommon for him to base his arguments on the fact that because he has to work outside the home, his own parents can look after the child. However, it can be said that it is better for the child to live with his mother than with his grandparents. Unless the conditions in which a mother lives are judged unsuitable for the child, as a general rule I cannot approve of awarding sole custody to fathers. Even if grandparents do look after the child, it is likely that matters will arise daily in which they will not pay the same level of attention as a parent.

This manual does not have the force of law; it is merely an official reference for the judges. The practical effect of it is that fathers can only win custody by an overwhelming display of evidence that the mother is unfit to be a parent.

(Aside: Our favorite Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, kept his first two children in a consensual divorce in 1982. His wife was six months pregnant at the time the papers were finalized and gave birth after the divorce. Koizumi tried to claim this third child as well, but the matter ended up in family court mediation and Koizumi’s ex-wife retained custody. Japanese Wikipedia interestingly doesn’t even name the third child of Koizumi, apparently because he is no longer legally Koizumi’s.)

What about joint custody? There is generally no such thing as joint custody among Japanese nationals. Visitation rights (面接交渉権 mensetsu kosho ken) may be granted by the court, but are often very limited (sometimes to a few hours once per year), are very difficult to legally enforce, and one parent must still be designated as the custodian whether or not the divorce is consensual. The only way a Japanese child can be registered as being in joint custody is if the child has another citizenship and their parents’ divorce was finalized in another country which allows joint custody. (This is not a “legal” provision per se; it was allowed by a Ministry of Justice circular and could theoretically be changed overnight if the Justice Minister changed their mind about the issue.)

Even outside Japan, joint custody is a sticky subject among parents, academics and jurists. Terrie Lloyd made the following statement in his email newsletter earlier this week:

The view of most [Japanese] judges (based on interviews with judges that we have done in the past) is that kids need to be insulated from the hurt between divorcing parents by giving them just one care-giver. But this is a traditional view and has no basis in fact. Child psychologists outside Japan generally agree that kids need the love and attention of both parents, even if they are divorced. Splitting the kids from one parent naturally causes them to side with the other (Parental Alienation Syndrome: PAS), which causes them to have complexes about the missing parent later in life.

Actually, as a glance at Wikipedia would show (and as Professor Jones acknowledges in the article linked above), PAS has not nearly reached general acceptance in the psychological community or the legal community, even in the supposedly more liberal United States.

(Another aside, at the risk of pissing off all the divorced men in the room: I find the use of PAS theory in custody disputes difficult to swallow. Sure, in theory it’s better for kids to have contact with both parents and view both parents as respectable people. In practice, if the parents can’t hold their marriage together, they probably can’t refrain from filling their kids’ heads with crazy talk about each other. So how is bouncing the kids back and forth between homes, and introducing two conflicting stories between the parents in the process, less traumatic for the kids than having one consistent story?

That said, there is a risk of conflating issues here. It’s one thing to park the children in one parent’s household when there is abuse or domestic violence going on. It may also be a good idea when the two parents absolutely can’t get along and their own discord is harming their children. But there are also many cases where children have no idea what is going on between their parents–only that one parent is going away forever–and this boggles my mind. In those sorts of cases, it makes sense to allow ongoing shared custody as an option, so long as the parents can work out logistics between them and agree to keep their disputes between themselves.)

This brings us to the international aspect of Japanese divorce law. International divorces are common in Japan, but not exactly in the form familiar to readers of Debito.org or crnjapan.com. 7.1% of divorces in Japan in 2007 involved a non-Japanese party. The most common combinations were:

* Japanese husband, Chinese wife (1.97%)
* Japanese husband, Filipina wife (1.82%)
* Japanese husband, Korean wife (1.11%)
* Japanese wife, Korean husband (0.35%)
* Japanese husband, Thai wife (0.33%)
* Japanese wife, Chinese husband (0.22%)
* Japanese wife, American husband (0.14%)

Chinese and Korean family law bear a striking resemblance to Japanese family law. The Chinese and Korean systems emerged from the civil law tradition, and like Japan’s, revolve around the concept of a central family registration system where every citizen is tracked. So that means only 2.74% of Japanese divorces involve a country with a “truly foreign” family law apparatus, and it’s probably safe to say that of the total number of divorces in Japan, much less than one percent involve a non-Asian party. These facts are understandable given that Japanese-Asian marriages form the vast majority of international marriages in Japan.

Let’s ask the question on everyone’s mind, though:

Is the system biased against foreigners?

Yes, it is.

But to some extent, the bias is unavoidable.

Unfortunately, there are no statistics to show how foreign parents generally fare in court-administered divorces here. My conclusion, based on many stories floating around the internet and by word of mouth, is that foreign parents are highly unlikely to win custody of Japanese kids from a Japanese court, whether or not the foreign parent is male or female. And given the fact that moms are more likely than dads to keep the kids, foreign dads should not expect much if their marriage falls apart.

A lot of this boils down to cultural differences. A Japanese judge likely has no idea of how a non-Japanese family operates, and is going to have suspicion regarding what might happen in a non-Japanese household. Suspicions aside, a not-so-worldly Japanese person would probably be unpleasantly surprised by many family quirks that are taken for granted outside Japan.

The same is true for courts in other countries. Chris Savoie, for instance, attacked Noriko Savoie in Tennessee divorce court because she had their 6- and 8-year-old kids sleep with her in her bed. This practice is uncommon in the US and would probably seem strange to an American lawyer or judge, but wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in Japan, where it’s often used simply to save space.

Cultural issues aside, there are also some procedural stumbling blocks for non-Japanese in the Japanese divorce system. These are issues which warrant legal revision, both from an international human rights perspective and from a perspective of citizens’ best interests.

Problem 1: There is no contempt of court

This is really an endemic problem throughout the Japanese legal system, not just in the sphere of family court. Even if you can get a judge to order some action or inaction (like “stay away from X’s kids” or “let X see the kids on these days”), they have no way to enforce that order if the counterparty says “no.” All they can do is levy fines, but even if they do that, the counterparty can simply refuse to pay.

Then your only option is “self-enforcement” — withholding payments and finding ways to exert social pressure. Self-enforcement might work to some extent if the enforcing party is savvy about the local system, but it puts outsiders, particularly outsiders in different countries, at a great disadvantage. Courts need teeth if they are to effectively administer any sort of custody-related arrangements.

Problem 2: The arbitrariness of Japanese nationality and conflict-of-law rules

The biggest legal problem in the Savoie case is that Dr. Savoie is a Japanese citizen and apparently hasn’t taken that fact into account in his legal strategy. The following statutory passages explain what I mean:

法の適用に関する通則法
General Act Regarding the Application of Laws

（本国法）
第三十八条　当事者が二以上の国籍を有する場合には、その国籍を有する国のうちに当事者が常居所を有する国があるときはその国の法を、その国籍を有する国のうちに当事者が常居所を有する国がないときは当事者に最も密接な関係がある国の法を当事者の本国法とする。ただし、その国籍のうちのいずれかが日本の国籍であるときは、日本法を当事者の本国法とする。

(Home Country Law)
Article 38. If a party has two or more nationalities, then the home country of the party shall be the law of the country in which such party has a habitual residence if such a country exists, and should no such country exist, the law of the country having the closest relationship to that party. However, if any such nationality is the nationality of Japan, the home country law of the party shall be the law of Japan.

According to the International Wedding Association, a Japanese NPO, a citizen would have “habitual residence” by virtue of being recorded in the resident registration (juminhyo) system, unless they have actually lived overseas for five continuous years prior to the date of determination.

（婚姻の効力）
第二十五条　婚姻の効力は、夫婦の本国法が同一であるときはその法により、その法がない場合において夫婦の常居所地法が同一であるときはその法により、そのいずれの法もないときは夫婦に最も密接な関係がある地の法による。

(Validity of Marriage)
Article 25. The validity of a marriage shall be determined by the home country law of the husband and wife if such law is the same; or if such law does not exist, by the law of the habitual residence of the husband and wife if such law is the same; or if such law does not exist, by the law of the place having the closest relationship to the husband and wife.

（離婚）
第二十七条　第二十五条の規定は、離婚について準用する。ただし、夫婦の一方が日本に常居所を有する日本人であるときは、離婚は、日本法による。

(Divorce)
Article 27. The provisions of Article 25 shall apply to divorces. However, if either husband or wife is a Japanese person with a habitual residence in Japan, [their] divorce shall be based on Japanese law.

So let’s run down the facts.

First, Christopher and Noriko were married in Japan.
Then Christopher became a Japanese citizen. So far, so good.
Then Christopher took his wife to the US and divorced her there. But their mutual home country law was Japanese law, so their divorce would have been invalid under Japanese law.
Having been improperly divorced for Japanese purposes, Christopher then married Amy.

Whether or not we agree with the propriety of a U.S. divorce for the Savoies, turning Chris into a bigamist is a pretty illogical outcome. I think he could get around prosecution given that he had no apparent intent to be legally married to two people at the same time.

That said, I think Christopher may intend to rescind, or deny the validity of, his own naturalization. The US Consulate says they want to help him out, which should not be the case if he really is Japanese (you can’t get consular protection in a country where you are a citizen). It’s a bizarre argument, and I believe it would fall flat on its face in court as an “abuse of rights” or something similar.

The solution to this problem, inasmuch as there is one, is to revise these conflict-of-law provisions so that Japanese citizens have the clear ability to divorce in a foreign forum under foreign law if they have some requisite connections to that forum. (Formally allowing dual citizenship, and getting rid of the odd ability to rescind one’s own citizenship following naturalization, wouldn’t hurt, either.) But both of these ideas are in conflict with another feature of the Japanese family law system.

Problem 3: The koseki is a moronic concept

If you don’t know what the “koseki” is, read this. The entire family law system in Japan is based on the premise of a giant hierarchical registry limited to citizens.

The koseki-worship in the civil law system here is responsible for a lot of the family law rules. Children legally exist as an entry in their parents’ koseki page. Parents have a koseki page by virtue of being married. When they divorce, they revert to separate koseki pages, and their children must go one way or the other. Thus, in a sense, they legally lose title to their children. And, as many of our readers undoubtedly know, foreigners do not appear on the koseki at all, except as “notes” on their spouse’s page.

Why is this entire system necessary? Familial relations are a personal matter, and are often quite abstract in nature. Is a parent less of a parent because they remarried or because they don’t have a Japanese passport?

The notion of organizing society around households is unnecessarily feudalistic for the modern age, and something more flexible would be better for citizens and non-citizens alike — particularly those for whom familial roots have historically been a source of discrimination (the burakumin, naturalized Koreans and others).

Personal footnote

I don’t have a wife or kids yet. Debito, who has written extensively about his own divorce and loss of children (a dreadfully sad story, but an excellent overview of how the system works here), chided me in a Facebook comment thread for daring to state my opinions while I lack skin in the game. Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I respect Debito, who gave me, Roy and Curzon the privilege of hearing his story in person a good year before he made it public. But where I come from, having no skin in the game is called “objectivity,” and does not by any means disqualify an opinion.

For what it’s worth, I do have some skin in the game, as I am engaged to get married early next year. While I have given up on my farcical plans to transfer my kids to an offshore investment vehicle, I am still very cognizant that the law (even as I think its mechanics should work) may bite me in the rear someday if my marriage ever breaks down.

Sadly, a lot of the discussion surrounding these issues, whether regarding particular cases or the system in general, devolves into parental narcissism, envy and finger-pointing. The whole framework of marriage, divorce and custody is ultimately not about what Mom or Dad wants: it’s about protecting children and giving them a chance to inherit the world as capable individuals. So, as I see it, we have to approach it from that perspective regardless of which side we occupy on the wedding cake.

Japan’s airliner industry

In the last week or so, there has been some buzz on the NBR mailing list about Japan’s airliner industry. Many very educated people seem completely unaware that Japan has built whole commercial planes before, and that it is still deeply involved in this business despite not having a strong brand in the aircraft business. For regional pundits who are newbies to the aerospace industry, here’s a brief history of Japan’s forays into my favorite line of business.

The Imperial days

Before and during World War II, various Japanese firms built a variety of propeller-driven planes which were used for both civilian and military transport purposes. Many of these models were based on, or provided the basis for, Imperial Army and Navy bomber airframes. Wikipedia has a good list of these planes in its article on Imperial Japanese Airways, the old state-sponsored airline. I particularly like the Kawanishi H6K, a flying boat which was used for flights between Japan and its South Pacific mandate. Flying boats are awesome.

Besides unique designs like the H6K, there were also Japanese planes based on American or European designs; in fact, the Douglas Aircraft Company was granting production licenses to Japanese firms as late as 1938. Throughout the Pacific War, the Japanese forces were flying transport planes almost indistinguishable from parallel models in the Allied forces’ fleet.

After Japan lost the war, the American occupation forces banned Japanese firms from developing or building aircraft, and confiscated all the related technical materials they could find. The demands of the Korean War, however, quickly revitalized the aircraft servicing industry in Japan, as the US needed skilled workers to fix its fighters and bombers at Japanese bases. Japanese aviation resumed in earnest with the peace treaty of 1952, which removed some of the restrictions and allowed scheduled domestic flying to resume.

The YS-11

In 1956, when the aircraft production ban was completely lifted, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry immediately made it a priority to develop a home-grown replacement for the war-era planes then flying throughout Japan. They negotiated with the Finance Ministry and Transport Ministry to come up with a production budget and implementation plan, and in 1957 secured funding to set up a Transport Aircraft Design Research Association (輸送機設計研究協会 Yusōki sekkei kenkyū kyōkai) based at the University of Tokyo, overseen by MITI and a consortium of domestic manufacturers.

The first initials of the Association’s Japanese name, “YS,” were applied to the name of their final aircraft design, the YS-11. With mock-ups prepared and the design ready for production, the Association turned over control to a newly-formed parastatal Nippon Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation (日本航空機製造) or “NAMC,” comprised mainly of staff seconded from the major keiretsu manufacturers.¹

The first YS-11 rolled out in 1962 and represented a major advance in Japanese aircraft-building technology.

There was still work to be done, though. Although most production took place in Japan and was overseen by Japanese firms, Japan did not have the technical capability to make the airframe materials or engines for a modern aircraft, and ended up acquiring these parts from Alcoa and Rolls-Royce respectively.

Still, the YS-11 was a pretty solid aircraft, seating 64 passengers with a cruise speed around 650 km/h. Although most found themselves on regional flights within Japan, Japan’s neighboring countries also bought many of the type. Piedmont Airlines flew YS-11s around the southern United States for a while, and Olympic Airways operated the type around Greece. Having made some return on the government’s investment (though not enough to turn a profit), NAMC set its sights on more advanced planes which never saw the light of day.

The YS-33

In the mid-1960s, NAMC got cocky and decided that it would try to clone the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 widebody trijet, which was one of the most popular airliner models at the time despite an array of safety issues. The initial plan called for three models seating 100 to 150 passengers, but by 1970 it was clear that the market was demanding something more in the range of 200 to 250 passengers. Planned development costs skyrocketed from 15 billion yen to 100 billion yen as the plan got bigger and more technically complicated.

NAMC realized that the government simply could not afford to home-grow an entire jumbo jet, so the YS-33 (alternatively known as the “YX”) never made it past badly-drawn concept art.

In 1971, NAMC shut down its production and design departments, effectively becoming a mere servicer for the YS-11. The company wound down its operations over ensuing years and finally closed in 1983.

The Boeing cooperation era

Around 1970, the global airline industry was suffering from a glut of overcapacity and rising fuel prices, and was shifting its demand to more efficient aircraft. Every major aircraft manufacturer was planning a widebody twinjet at the time: two-engine DC-10s and L-1011s were on the table, as well as the first Airbus (now known as the A300) and a Boeing project tentatively called the “7X7.”

The key Japanese aerospace companies, led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Fuji Heavy Industries, set up a Civil Transport Development Consortium (民間輸送機開発協会 or CTDC) in 1973. CTDC signed a memorandum of understanding with Boeing to become a technical development partner on its 7X7 project. The 7X7 turned into what is now the 767, and Japan ended up providing about 15% of each aircraft, including fuselage and wing sections. The aircraft flew for the first time in 1981.

Since then, Japan’s involvement in large Boeing aircraft has continued. The next Boeing widebody, the now-ubiquitous 777, rolled out for the first time in 1994 with even more Japanese components, comprising 21% of the aircraft. On Boeing’s latest large aircraft project, the ongoing and beleaguered 787, Japanese firms have been contracted to build most of the wings and part of the center fuselage, a total of 35% of the plane, and an extremely important 35% at that.

These huge components are currently built in Nagoya, loaded onto pregnant 747s, and flown across the Pacific to the final assembly line in South Carolina.

This is one reason why Boeing aircraft are ubiquitous in Japan. Airbus’s last sale here was an ANA order for five long-range A340s, which ANA cancelled after placing the first non-US order for 777s. ANA and JAL both later became launch customers for the 787, and ANA has extensively advertised the unprecedented Japanese-ness of Boeing’s upcoming model. But neither airline is particularly beholden to Boeing. In fact, production problems with the 787 led JAL to threaten shifting its order to Airbus.

Airbus, for its part, has not paid much attention to Japan. Instead, it has thrown its money and time into marketing in China, going so far as to open an entire assembly line in Tianjin for its popular A320 family of short-haul jets. Airbus planes are becoming more and more common throughout China, and it’s likely that China will use imported Airbus know-how to jump-start its own large aircraft industry.

Meanwhile, the Boeing partnership is the most successful segment of the Japanese civil aircraft industry today–at least much more successful than all the other money-losing projects to build a “truly Japanese” airliner.

The 7J7

CTDC also came up with a “YXX” plan, first proposed in 1979. They sought to develop a 100-seat jet plane that could be used for domestic routes to secondary cities. Based on their success with the Boeing partnership, CTDC decided to get Boeing on board, and thus was born the Boeing 7J7.

The 7J7 was a fairly unique design in that it would have used propfans for engines. These are basically very aerodynamic propellers mounted on jet engines. Propfans are very fuel-efficient compared to regular jet engines, and are capable of attaining similar speeds. However, propfans are also very loud, which makes propfan aircraft less attractive from a passenger’s standpoint.

In a high fuel price environment, and with the Iranian revolution casting fear in the hearts of fuel-hungry airlines, the propfan’s advantages were extremely attractive. By the mid-80s, though, most airlines were out of money and fuel prices were back to manageable levels. Boeing shelved the 7J7 plan and concentrated on making more efficient conventional jets.

The YSX

Undaunted, the Japanese aerospace industry started chasing another pet aircraft project called the “YSX” in 1986. This aircraft was conceived as a direct replacement for the aging YS-11s, using a similar body with more modern wings and turboprop engines.

The YSX was a very underdeveloped plan which mainly fell victim to bad timing. By the late eighties, Japan was in the middle of an asset bubble while Europe and the US were facing a recession, and domestic manufacturing was no longer quite as competitive. Then came the Pan Am 103 disaster and the Gulf War, which tugged at the finances of already-strained airlines across the globe. By the time the industry picked back up in the mid-1990s, Japan was in a recession, US aircraft manufacturers were turning their attention to Chinese and Korean partnerships, and new types of aircraft were muscling small turboprops out of the market.

Mitsubishi Regional Jet

Today, propeller planes are becoming rarer and rarer. More airlines are switching to small jet aircraft for both short flights (where jets are more comfortable and almost as efficient) and long flights (where small jets can operate more convenient frequencies carrying less people on each flight). This is a market which Boeing and Airbus almost completely overlooked, and as a result, its leading players are now Bombardier of Canada and Embraer of Brazil, hardly countries one would expect to gain a strong toehold in the airliner market. Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian firms are also getting interested in this market segment.

In 2002, the newly-renamed Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry decided that Japan should get in on the regional jet game, and started throwing billions of yen at a regional jet development project led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The resulting design is called the Mitsubishi Regional Jet, and has managed to capture twenty-five orders from All Nippon Airways, though no other carriers have shown interest so far.

There seems to be little chance that MRJ will ever be profitable, as estimates show 600 airframes would have to be produced in order to yield a profit.

*** UPDATE: Just hours after this post came out, Trans States Airlines, a feeder contractor for a few major US airlines, ordered more than 100 MRJs.

Why can’t Japan build a jumbo jet?

The large-aircraft industry has long been supported by government funding. Boeing’s early money-winners, the 707 and 747 lines, started out as military transport planes and were later adapted for passenger service.² Airbus started out with a huge amount of funding by the British, French and West German governments as a way to jump-start the lagging European aerospace industry, and its parent company EADS is still subsidized to develop military aircraft for European forces. The other country to develop a significant big-plane industry was the Soviet Union in its heyday, and since the collapse of its command economy, its once-great aircraft manufacturers like Antonov and Ilyushin have been relegated to making poor copies of designs developed elsewhere.

While we all know Japan has no qualms about throwing tons of money at questionable business plans, the state’s obvious disadvantage here is Article 9. Strategic military infrastructure is legally out of the government’s reach, yet this is the sector which has the deepest technical nexus with large airliners. Without the prospect of national defense applications, there is much less economic rationale to invest in a whole production line for a plane with more than a hundred seats. It takes a hell of a lot of infrastructure, too: Boeing’s assembly line near Seattle is the largest building in the world, covering 400,000 square meters, and is mainly for assembly, not even producing all the huge components.³

Japan certainly has the native technical capability to put together a jumbo jet; the question is whether they could ever make money on it, and whether they could even put together a business plan which makes more sense than piggy-backing on a foreign producer.

* * *

¹ NAMC’s chief technician, Teruo Tojo, was a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries employee who also happened to be prime minister/war criminal Hideki Tojo’s second son.

² The 707 airframe is still in military use as an airborne command post and mid-air refueling platform; the 747 started out life as a bid for a giant military transport plane, and morphed into a giant passenger plane after Boeing’s bid lost to Lockheed’s (which became the C-5 Galaxy).

³ It also allegedly has the busiest Tully’s Coffee in the world.

Showdown at Narita: JAL vs. Ugly Americans vs. the DPJ

Various media sources have been reporting that JAL is now the subject of a tug-of-war between Delta and American Airlines, both of whom are interested in taking a large minority stake in Japan’s largest airline. (Korean Air and Air France have also popped up as “angel investors” in some reports.)

Let’s start with some background.

This is the ex-Narita route map of Delta Air Lines following its acquisition of Northwest. Delta is the #3 carrier at Narita with about 330 flights/week, compared to JAL’s 870 and ANA’s 500.

Northwest, whose operations account for the vast majority of Delta’s combined total, was the first airline to serve Japan following World War II. It provided the technical assistance which was necessary for JAL to start up in the early 1950s, and it has maintained an Asian mini-hub in Tokyo since the immediate postwar era. Delta came into the picture much later: they flew a very odd Portland-Nagoya route for a while in the 1980s, then pulled out of Japan completely, then came back in the 90s with a daily Atlanta flight. While Northwest was well-entrenched with travel agents and corporate travel desks, Delta relied more on feed from its US and Latin American route network out of Atlanta.

Now that Delta has absorbed Northwest, American is the small fry among US carriers at Narita, with just 70 weekly flights in comparison to Delta’s 330, United’s 150 and Continental’s 80. Despite this, AA has great marketing in Japan and their brand is fairly well-known here. Their saving grace is an extensive partnership with JAL through the oneworld airline alliance: JAL sells tickets on AA transpacific and US domestic flights, while AA sells tickets on JAL transpacific, Asian and Japan domestic flights. The carriers also cooperate with each other’s mileage programs, so that one can get JAL miles by flying AA, and vice versa.

AA has been doing fairly well lately, at least as far as US “legacy” airlines go. It just raised a cool billion dollars by selling frequent flyer miles to Citibank, which will, in turn, be dishing out more and more AA miles to credit card holders in the future. It also has more efficient planes trickling in to replace older MD-80 models in its US domestic fleet, which will improve its overall fuel efficiency and make it more competitive with the likes of Southwest and JetBlue.

JAL, on the other hand, is a financial disaster. Its “equal merger” with Japan Air System, which was supposed to make it more competitive in the domestic market, ended up creating two tracks of unionized employees, aircraft and operational infrastructure within the company, and this dichotomy has still not been sorted out. JAL still has a smattering of international routes that it doesn’t really need, most of which date back to the postwar economic explosion when the government basically tried to get JAL to fly everywhere in the world, on top of the extensive ex-JAS network within Japan that generally doesn’t mesh with the international network at all. On top of that, it has a huge, disorganized and fuel-hungry fleet of planes, and no money to swap them all out for a more streamlined fleet. JAL today looks a lot like Pan Am did in the 80s, and we all know what happened to Pan Am.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has been pressing JAL to tie up with Delta for a few months now, according to media reports. Its reasoning is that the two carriers can code share, fill each other’s empty seats and tacitly cede certain markets to each other’s flight operations, much as JAL and American do now. Since Delta has many more routes from Narita, and significant overlap with JAL’s route network, turning the two competitors into allies would help JAL’s finances and justify some level of public funding to keep them afloat. Or at least, that was MLIT’s reasoning as of Taro Aso’s last day in power: New Transport Minister Seiji Maehara is being mum about the situation and implying that the Development Bank of Japan and private financial institutions may be on their own in financing a turnaround plan.

Delta has its own initiative to throw money on the table, and Delta’s interest basically explains American’s interest. I’ll let Cranky Flier, one of my favorite aviation bloggers, explain:

My guess is that [Delta’s Asian routes out of Narita] absolutely suck wind right now. If Delta is really losing a ton of money as I suspect, they could eliminate all those routes and either use the slots to fly to the US or transfer them to JAL. The additional connectivity in Tokyo that they could gain from this link-up would add a bunch more traffic to feed all that US-Tokyo flying Delta does now. (You people in Portland could breathe a sigh of relief, because this could probably help that flight come off the edge of the cliff.)

This move could make a big, immediate difference on the bottom line. If Delta can pour some money in but get it back out very quickly in the form of improved profits, then it’s a no-brainer. …

Of course, if JAL leaves, oneworld loses, so American has now come back with its plan to invest in JAL.

To this, I would only add that although Delta has inherited Northwest’s excellent sales and operational staff in Tokyo, Delta has not been making much effort to publicize its acquisition of Northwest here, except through a few ads here and there that are apparently direct translations of the ads they use in the US. This indicates to me that they are not particularly interested in developing their brand in Japan, despite the fact that it is now their most important overseas market. It’s much easier, from Delta’s perspective, to let JAL sell seats out of Japan under its own brand.

Some analysts and reporters have also raised the topic of Haneda slots, with very little clarification as to why Delta would care about Tokyo’s downtown, mostly-domestic airport. As many MFT readers know already, the Japanese government is slowly making Haneda more international. They are building a new international terminal and have started the legal documentation necessary to allow nonstop service from Haneda to Southeast Asia, Europe and other new destinations, primarily during late-night and early-morning hours when Narita is closed. The United States is not on the table yet, but many observers believe that an “open skies” treaty to open the aviation market between Japan and the US is long overdue, and with that treaty would come the ability to serve Haneda from the US. The most interesting aspect of Haneda for trans-pac flyers is that it will be open 24 hours, potentially allowing early morning or late-night flights between Tokyo and the West Coast that wouldn’t eat up a working day on either side of the ocean. Delta and American should both have an interest in such a service, especially if they can be assured of good domestic feed within Japan out of Haneda, which JAL is best positioned to provide.

It won’t be an easy ride, though. Whoever bails out JAL will have to sort through their mess of operational issues in order to get some return on the investment.

In America, try not to kancho your friends

(Updated)

A few weeks ago NYT ran this great article about the difficulties of raising a son in both Japanese and American cultures:

My Un-American Son

By KUMIKO MAKIHARA

Getting Yataro ready for his first sleep-away camp overseas is turning out to be much more than counting T-shirts and towels. I’m having to review the way children interact here to see which behaviors would go against American codes of conduct. American parents have higher standards than Japanese when it comes to acceptable behavior among children.

Take “kancho” for instance, a popular prank where kids creep up on and poke each other with pointed finger in the behind, shouting “kancho!” or enema. That would likely have the camp counselors in America alleging sexual abuse.

Kancho certainly isn’t encouraged in Japan — a friend of mine is convinced her daughter failed a preschool entrance exam because she playfully jabbed her mother in the rear during the interview. But Japanese parents usually bestow only a mild rebuke.

Please head on over to NYT to read the original article!

Other differences mentioned:

In Japan, racial epithets directed at her half-white son tend to be tolerated (and he is apparently not fazed by them), but in America they would be a cause for great concern.
In sports, coaches and other players tend to use positive reinforcement, while in Japan when her son makes a mistake he is told to “stop screwing up.” This might mean her son could take praise far too seriously and not understand where he needs to improve (his English language skills, in this case).
As someone from a country where communal bathing is common, her son might not understand the more chaste attitudes toward nudity and privacy in America.
Her son has never been given truly “free” time or open-ended choices, while the summer camp he is to attend consists of almost nothing but free time and freedom to choose.
In Japan she wouldn’t think twice about scolding using insults to scold her children, but American parents who see that behavior might think it’s abusive.

All these observations ring very true, though obviously your mileage may vary. I thank my lucky stars every day that I’ve never been kancho’d.

What I like best about this piece is that she resists the temptation to theorize or lecture about which society has the better practices. That’s the right approach because proclaiming one country’s education/child-rearing regime to be superior to the other’s does nothing to help Yataro navigate his new summer camp. By talking from her own experiences as someone who has had to navigate both societies (and offering some speculation about how Americans at the summer camp will react), she is able to shed light on cultural differences without getting into ultimately unhelpful broad conclusions. And in the process she has given us an entertaining and enlightening case study in the form of her own son. I look forward to the follow up article to hear how Yataro fared.

(A Google search for “Maki Katahira” “Kumiko Makihara” reveals several other articles about her son and life in Japan, along with this right-wing conspiracy theorist who implies she must be a CIA agent and part of the Trilateral Commission‘s plot to control Japan because she was married to former Newsweek Japan bureau chief William Powell (though apparently they divorced) and once worked as an executive assistant for a firm partially owned by private equity group Ripplewood. I don’t want to lend any credibility to this crackpot, but even if she is working for the man, this is still a pretty great article)

Nemutan’s revenge – some fact-checking and reaction to the NYT story on anime fetishists

The New York Times has an article in its Sunday magazine section by Tokyo Mango author Lisa Katayama about a “thriving subculture” of men who prefer “2D women” to real women, sometimes engaging in serious relationships with anime characters. On the website, the story is billed under the tagline “Phenomenon” which would give readers the impression that this sort of thing is common in Japan.

Seeing as it comes from America’s most prestigious and influential news outlet, the article has already been widely read (see here for a Japanese translation of a Korean-language summary), and reactions have ranged from uncritical acceptance of the reporting (wtf is wrong with Japan?!) to absolute incredulity (she just ripped off an Internet meme and borrowed from WaiWai so this “phenomenon” is completely overblown and is an example of the NYT exploiting Japan for cheap thrills).

Responding to the reaction, Katayama said on Twitter, “imho, responses to my 2D article reflect readers’ biases + issues more than the offbeat situation of story subjects.” So at the risk of revealing my biases plus issues, I am going to respond to this article.

But before I get to my overall thoughts, I want to point out what appear to be two small but important factual errors. While the article focuses on profiling individuals who are either examples of the “2D love” phenomenon or who promote the concept, at one point she cites some government statistics to bolster her claim that there is indeed a thriving subculture of men who literally think a pillow is their girlfriend:

According to many who study the phenomenon, the rise of 2-D love can be attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life. According to a government survey, more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex.

After I asked the author via Twitter where she got the numbers, she helpfully directed readers to “the gov’t agency that monitors population and social security” which in proper noun terms means the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

So I looked around to find where she might have gotten the information. The results? I could find nothing to credibly back up either of those statements, but there are survey results that show similar but critically different results. Let’s take them one by one.

Friends of the opposite sex

First, the good news – there is rough statistical backing for the claim “50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex.” A 2004 study “The Japanese Youth” conducted by the Cabinet Office shows that only 43.7% of Japanese youth aged 18-24 reported having friends of the opposite sex.

The only relevant figures from the population institute I could find were from its most recent survey from 2005, which state that around half of unmarried men and women are not currently dating anyone of the opposite sex as friends, as a serious boyfriend/girlfriend, or as a fiance.

Still, both figures are much different from saying that half of all Japanese people have no friends of the opposite sex. As kids grow up they are much more likely to have platonic friends, though it’s true that this is less common than in the US. But that in no way backs up the argument that men and women are isolated in Japan. And as for the stat on single people dating, it really is a coin flip whether a person surveyed will be dating someone or not at the time. And it’s completely irrelevant to the “2D Love” story.

Are a quarter of Japanese 30-34 year-olds virgins? No way.

Now let me repeat the other claim: “According to a government survey, more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins.”

Think about those numbers for a minute – if true they would be staggering news and quite possibly a major cause of Japan’s demographic problem. Yet in all I have read about the topic this article marked the first time I have ever seen that claim made. (Mostly it’s attributed to long life expectancies and low birth rates caused by late marriage, quality of life factors, etc.).

It turns out that the real statistic from population institute states that around 25% of unmarried 30-34 year olds are virgins. It doesn’t say anything about the population as a whole. Note that a separate survey finds that around two thirds of men and women have lost their virginity by the time they are in university, so I find it very hard to believe that another 15% or so won’t have met someone special in the intervening 10 years.

I’ll admit that I have not scoured the entire Internet, so there may be a survey that I just didn’t come across. So to give her the benefit of the doubt, let’s see if this claim is even close to realistic. According to the institute’s 2005 survey (PDF in English, page 15), single people with no kids aged 30-34 (defined as one-person private households) make up 34% of all households in the age group. On the other end, 54% of private households whose head of household is in that age bracket are married. That means in order for more than one quarter of all Japanese adults aged 30-34 to be virgins, one of the following must be true: either a) almost all unmarried people at that age are virgins (and we already know that’s wrong); or b) even a good portion of married people fail to consummate their marriages several years into their lives together. And that I am afraid is next to unfathomable.

The WaiWai Connection?

So what happened? Some have accused the author of using the notorious WaiWai as a source. WaiWai is a discontinued feature of Japanese national daily Mainichi Shimbun’s website that specialized in creative translations of Japanese tabloid articles. It was taken down in 2008 after angry Japanese internet users discovered it and found scores of misleading, exaggerated, and false stories depicting Japan as a perverted and even deranged society.

Katayama has claimed that the government reports were her sources and specifically denied using WaiWai. But thanks to James at JapanProbe, I have found the following June 2007 article that contains a passage very similar to one claim made in the NYT story:

The Japan Cherry Boy Association is facing a crisis after the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research revealed that almost one in four Japanese men aged 30 to 34 remains a virgin, according to Weekly Playboy (7/2).

Obviously I wasn’t there when she wrote the story, so I can’t tell where that number came from. But it could easily have come from this source as it makes the same mistake of omitting the key fact that the survey in question only covered unmarried men and women.

Getting facts like this wrong can lead to some unfortunate consequences. Already, the Korean daily Joong Ang Ilbo has posted a summary translation of the article in Japanese (and presumably Korean), complete with a verbatim repetition of the claim “more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins.” Without a correction, this idea is likely to spread and might end up becoming a commonly cited myth about Japan, much like the similarly unrealistic but widespread claim that over 90% of Japanese women in their 20s own a Louis Vuitton handbag.

Without these numbers, the background for this story becomes somewhat undermined. While the isolation between men and women in this country is commonly cited by both foreign and Japanese observers, this gap tends to be reflected in the different ways adult men and women spend their time, particularly married couples. For some fascinating anecdotes on the gulf that opens up between housewives who never leave their neighborhoods and their husbands who never leave the office, read this fascinating interview with author Sumie Kawakami.

Overall thoughts

Aside from the statistics issues, I think Katayama and NYT did readers a disservice by making Nisan the focus of the story, because that turns the real story on its head.

Yes, there is a subsection of otaku who are unapologetic about their dedication to anime porn and proudly wear their virginity on their sleeves. But it’s a stretch to characterize all moe anime fans as walking a blurred line between normalcy and 2-D Love, and it’s even more of a stretch to equate all 2-D Lovers with Nisan, who is clearly in a class by himself. It would have been much fairer to start with the Okayama character. He is a collector of body pillows but isn’t public about it, which is far closer to the typical consumption pattern for these products, though even he is on the extreme side. Most American men have seen porn, but you know you’ve lost your way if you buy one of those fake rubber vaginas. In Japan, most men are probably more like economic commentator Takuro Morinaga who grew up on a diet of anime and maybe even dabbled in some “2D Love” content but never made the plunge into Nisan territory (btw, Morinaga is not one of “Japan’s leading behavioral economists.” He teaches at Dokkyo University but only has his bachelor’s and is best known as a populist TV pundit who commonly makes no sense).

It’s also important to note that since at least Evangelion in the late 1990s there’s been an element of eroticism present in most popular animated series aimed at teenagers and adults, and in general sexual content in manga and anime is much more common and accepted in Japan than it would be in the US. So most otaku may in fact own things Americans might consider erotica such as sexually explicit manga or suggestive figurines (not exactly 2D), but that does not make them Nisan- or Okayama-style 2D Lovers nor even place them outside the mainstream. The US and Japan also have the first and second largest live-action pornography industries in the world, so I think that makes both populations rabid 2D Lovers in their own ways. The key difference is the preference in Japan for underage girls (both real-life and 2-D) as objects of desire, a topic that’s not discussed in the article but deserves its own investigation.

To the extent that 2D love is a real phenomenon, it is driven by pop culture and consumption preferences led by people like Toru Honda and Momo who have books and pillowcases to sell. The market for this stuff is a relatively small niche of the overall otaku market, and I don’t see much of a serious ethos that goes far beyond a kind of brand loyalty (but please by all means prove me wrong; you could say the same thing about NASCAR fans but no one doubts NASCAR’s importance and influence on the identity of certain subsections of the US). And yes, the erotic body pillows are a popular accessory among that demographic. But Nisan and the few people who have an abnormal attachment to their pillows are merely the extreme example of what is largely a story of private porn consumption. And while I have never met or spoken with Nisan, how much do you want to bet he carries his pillow around either as an elaborate joke or to prove his otaku street cred? The whole idea of a proud life-long virgin has the air of a joke about it, and you can read any 2-channel thread on the topic to get an idea of how common it is for people to riff on this meme.

I want to be clear that I am not necessarily against this type of reporting. Far from it, I would say that all weird stuff everywhere should be documented and presented to the world. It’s an amazing world out there with countless stories waiting to be told. Lisa Katayama wrote an interesting story in her field of specialty, so I don’t hold it against her for publishing this article or trying to entertain by finding interesting aspects of Japan to present to the world. And as someone who loves to dig through government reports, I hereby offer that the next time she wants to write a story she is more than welcome to enlist my help if she wants to know what government studies are actually saying about Japan. It’s just in this case she got a couple of facts wrong and mischaracterized what I see as the real situation.

To be honest, if I didn’t notice the potentially groundbreaking statistics, I don’t think I would have bothered to write about this story. The “weird Japan” theme in the English-language media is what it is – viewed from the outside a lot of what happens in Japan does seem odd. And the New York Times is in the business of presenting the world to Americans in an entertaining and digestible manner. Producing stories that cast Japan as a backward country that got modernization wrong lets the readers feel better about their own country and confirm the basic rightness of the American dedication to social progress. But Japan is interesting enough without having to resort to exaggeration.

(Thanks to James at Japan Probe for help with some of the research in this post)

CSIS scholar: An aging Japan will lose any hope of controlling its effective sovereignty

Brad Glosserman, a former member of the Japan Times editorial board now with CSIS*, has a WSJ op-ed (link here just in case) on Japan’s national security situation as its society ages and population declines, taken from a US strategic perspective. It’s pretty grim stuff:

The strategic implications of this shift are equally important. Japan’s demographic transition will act as a guillotine, cutting off the country’s policy options. Most simply, budget priorities will shift. Health care, currently underfunded, will become a considerable drain on the government purse. Defense spending — always a tough sell in Japan — will feel a tighter pinch. Recruitment for the Self Defense Forces, already difficult, will get harder. The reluctance of some Japanese to see their country assume a higher security role will be intensified as the population gets older and more risk averse. Japan will be reluctant to send its most precious asset — its youth — into combat.

Other forces will reinforce Japan’s increasingly inward-orientation. Foreign aid and investment have laid the foundation for Japanese engagement with Asia (and the world). But as the domestic economy dwindles, official development assistance and the investment capital that lubricated foreign relations will shrink. This will diminish Japan’s status in the region as other countries replace Japanese funds.

All won’t be negative: The demographic transition will make it difficult, if not impossible, for other regional powers to demonize Japan as in the past. The bogeyman of remilitarization could be laid to rest for good. This will help eliminate one of the most important obstacles to regional cooperation and provide a real impetus for Asian solutions to Asian problems.

Then he wraps up with some recommendations for how the US can respond to Japan’s demographic changes:

The U.S. needs to be prepared for these contradictory impulses and adjust how it engages Japan accordingly. First, it must abandon the quid pro quo mindset that often characterizes alliance discussions. Japan will have considerably less to contribute to the alliance, but that should not mean the alliance is less important. Discussion should focus on how Japanese contributions serve larger public and regional interests. Japan must do its part and come up with creative ways to share burdens and responsibilities.

Second, the U.S. should shift the alliance’s center of gravity away from military issues. Japanese engagement in this area will become more problematic. If Washington pushes Tokyo harder to make military contributions, it risks politicizing the alliance and undermining its support in Japan.

Third, the U.S. should create and strengthen regional institutions. Regional security mechanisms can pick up the slack as the U.S.-Japan alliance evolves. Other economic and political organizations can minimize tensions in the region. This process should begin soon, while Japan has more influence to maximize its leverage during the creation process. Washington and Tokyo should stop seeing their bilateral alliance and multilateral institutions as zero-sum alternatives. The U.S. should not see this process as a threat to its interests; instead, it should trust Tokyo to see that its interests are respected in these discussions. That would constitute a new form of burden sharing.

Finally, the U.S. has to get its own economic house in order. Washington has relied on Japanese savings — along with those of China and other Asian nations — to finance its profligacy. As Japan ages, it will no longer have those funds to lend to the U.S. This is a potentially wrenching adjustment for America — one that might produce some premature aging of its own.

Typically for op-eds by think-tank people, Glosserman is less interested in making his thoughts clear to the general public than he is in reaching a more sophisticated audience of policymakers. This strategy makes for just this sort of opaque, “wonkish” writing style.

So as the title of this post suggests, I’ll offer the clarity that Glosserman won’t. At the risk of mischaracterizing his argument, here are the points I think he is trying to make:

The demographic situation means Japan will get weaker and weaker to the point that it’s too old and financially crippled to credibly defend itself or economically engage with countries in the region.
This means the US cannot stop providing a strong defense presence in Japan or else “other countries” will replace Japan as a power in Asia.
To get this done, the US needs to pursue a strategy of (1) Pretending the US-Japan alliance is reciprocal by making reasonable demands for Japanese contributions and by not making military issues an explicit focus of the alliance, i.e. stop making loud public demands, (2) Building up regional institutions on terms the US can accept, and do it now before Japan really starts to look bad, (3) Keeping China (and to a lesser extent South Korea) on board as friendly powers so Japan and China can work together on the second piece of the strategy (though he doesn’t outline how to do this); and (4) End the US “reliance on Japanese savings” (that part is light on details as well; I suspect it’s a hastily added reference to the economics topic du jour).
If this can be accomplished, a “Beijing-Tokyo axis” can lead efforts to build EU-style integration of the region which will lead to a lasting peace. And they all lived happily ever after.

Got that, Japan? You’re doomed to live out the 21st century as a paralyzed dementia victim, and CSIS is ready to have the US start manipulating you like a ventriloquist’s dummy in America’s efforts to reshape the region.

My brief reaction is that Japan shouldn’t be counted out quite so easily, but America would be foolish not to think realistically in this direction. Funnily enough, he seems to more or less describe America’s existing policy toward Japan (maintain the alliance no matter what), except for a reminder to US leadership that they shouldn’t expect too much of Japan considering where its demographics are headed.

* Glosserman is affiliated with the “Pacific Forum CSIS” located in Honolulu of all places. Sounds like a much more comfortable post than the real CSIS on K Street in Washington.

Roppongi still a seething cauldron of poison

Just got this warning from the US embassy:

July 10, 2009

Warden Message – Roppongi Security Notice: Drink Spiking

The U.S. Embassy continues to recommend that American citizens avoid frequenting bars and clubs in the Roppongi area of Tokyo due to drink-spiking incidents.

The U.S. Embassy continues to receive reliable reports of U.S. citizens being drugged in Roppongi-area bars. Most reports indicate that the victim unknowingly drinks a beverage that has been secretly mixed with a drug that renders the victim unconscious or stuporous for several hours, during which time large charges are fraudulently billed to the victim, sums of money are charged to the victim’s credit card, or the card is stolen. Victims sometimes regain consciousness in the bar or club, while at other times the victim awakens on the street. Assaults on Americans have also been reported in connection with drink-spiking.

Energy consumption in Japan: A couple of data points

Just out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at Japan’s energy situation. Here is the US Energy Department profile of the country:

Japan has virtually no domestic oil or natural gas reserves and is the second-largest net importer of crude oil and largest net importer of liquefied natural gas in the world. Including nuclear power, Japan is still only 16 percent energy self-sufficient. Japanese companies have actively pursued upstream oil and natural gas projects overseas in light of the country’s lack of domestic hydrocarbon resources. Japan remains one of the major exporters of energy-sector capital equipment and Japanese companies provide engineering, construction, and project management services for energy projects around the world. Japan has a strong energy research and development program that is supported by the government. The Japanese government actively pursues energy efficiency measures in an attempt to increase the country’s energy security and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Oil is the most consumed energy resource in Japan, although its share of total energy consumption has declined by about 30 percent since the 1970s. Coal continues to account for a significant share of total energy consumption, although natural gas and nuclear power are increasingly important sources, particularly as Japan pursues environmental policies. Japan is the third largest consumer of nuclear power in the world, after the United States and France. Hydroelectric power and renewable energy account for a relatively small percentage of total energy consumption in the country. Total energy consumption from 2003 to 2030 is forecast to grow by 0.3 percent per year on average, relatively small as compared to China’s forecast growth rate of 4.2 percent per year on average, according to EIA data.

According to METI’s energy agency, 58% of Japan’s electricity consumption comes from non-renewable sources such as oil, coal, and liquefied natural gas. That number is a whopping 71% in the US.

As the Energy Dept. indicates, Japanese officials view Japan’s high energy consumption and low self-sufficiency as a potential vulnerability, in both economic and national security terms. For example, Iran’s status as a major supplier of oil heightens Japan’s interest in the region (and based on pure speculation, might have influenced the Japanese media’s comparatively tame coverage of the recent Iranian election protests).

So remember: when you are enduring higher office temperatures thanks to Cool Biz, you’re not just saving electricity, you’re helping guarantee Japanese security!

“My Darling is a Foreigner” Manga disrespected in Ayase

I came across this depressingly soggy ex-manga on the road near my apartment:

This was a volume in the ダーリンは外国人 series (Literally translates as My Darling is a Foreigner but has been sold in English translation under the godawful title Is He Turning Japanese? Out of basic respect for human dignity I will use the literal translation in this post).

Whoever left this must really have not liked what they read since it looks like they took the effort of tearing the the binding apart into three pieces before leaving it to rot. I’ve read the first two volumes (one of Mrs. Adamu’s friends gave them to us as a gift appropriate for our situation), and while they weren’t my favorite they don’t deserve this level of disrespect.

But I always believe that when life gives you soggy manga on the street, you use that opportunity to write a review of that manga in the hope that something constructive can come out of such a senseless waste:

Adamu’s thoughts on My Darling is Foreigner

The series, a semi-autobiographical episodic story of the daily life of the author, a Japanese woman with no international experience or English ability, and her quirky, multilingual American husband, was a surprise hit in Japan. According to an undated article at the Hiragana Times, the first volume has had at least 28 print runs since the first edition hit bookshelves in 2002.

I might expect too much from a manga that wears its light-heartedness on its sleeve, but this title was a letdown when I read it a few years back. As a manga it is very well-drawn (I was especially impressed with the detailed closeups of Tony’s face), but the depiction of main character Tony (pictured above) leans too heavily toward a two-dimensional “Hello Kitty” caricature, someone who hasn’t got a personality so much as a list of quirky but endearing distinguishing traits (extremely obsessed with learning languages, generally kind-hearted but won’t change his mind once he’s settled on a decision, doesn’t like to be told how to wash the dishes out of a sense of respect for individuality, has deep-set eyes).

While Darling was basically very well-received by a public that’s used to being entertained by exotic-looking foreigners who love Japan and can speak their language, the manga was not without its detractors. Critical Amazon commenters, many of whom claimed to be in international relationships and to have received the manga from well-meaning friends, seemed turned off by the superficial observations and general dullness of confusing the routine aspects of married life with a deep commentary on international marriage just because the husband has a white face and commutes to Starbucks. Some speculated that the author’s lack of English ability and experience abroad led her to concentrate on the superficial aspects of Tony and fall short of all but the most amateurish insights. Interestingly, some pointed out that Tony seems far more integrated with Japanese society than your typical foreigner, while others got the impression that he’s just a miser who couldn’t fit in back home.

I felt a little disappointed to see a person reduced to such simplicity in the name of keepin’ it honobono, especially since the title implies he represents “foreigners.” And I want to emphasize that Tony is in no way typical of the American population here. Some of Tony’s quirks – as seen in episodes where he badgers a pizza place into letting him use expired coupons and demands a waiter give them wine free of charge since he didn’t like how it tasted – are downright abrasive and share more in common with the stereotypical obatarian than an American man, let alone “foreigners,” which as a term is far too broad (though it fits in with the Japanese connotation of gaikokujin to mean a white Westerner first and foremost). More than any of that, however, I found it hard to stay interested in want of any compelling characters or really any story elements more complicated than your typical episode of Sazae-san.

Still I don’t see any reason to disrespect a perfectly good manga, especially when there is a used book store just a few hundred meters away.

Continue reading “My Darling is a Foreigner” Manga disrespected in Ayase

Which Japanese prefectures sell the most lottery tickets per person?

Ever wonder which parts of Japan gamble the most? No? Well, stick with me and you might learn something about which prefectures are most willing to line up and pay the poor tax.

Each year, Mizuho Bank (which has a special relationship with the lottery from its days as a government bank) tallies the total number of lottery (Takarakuji) tickets sold and divides that number into each prefecture’s population to obtain an average per capita spending total. According to their numbers for fiscal 2007 (as reported in the Nikkei), the top ticket buyers were Tokyo, Osaka, and Kochi prefecture in Shikoku. There was a huge gap between the top of the list (Tokyo’s 12,933 yen) versus the bottom (Yamagata’s 5,328 yen). The top prefectures tended be prefectures that house large cities, such as Aichi.

UPDATE: A typical lottery ticket in Japan costs around 300 yen, meaning that Tokyo residents buy around 43 tickets a year or just about one every week.

Prefectures with the lowest home ownership rates tended to buy more lottery tickets. Tokyo and Osaka, the first and second highest per-capita lottery players, also have the two lowest home ownership ratios, in the same order. Okinawa has the third lowest, and its residents are Japan’s sixth biggest lottery gamblers. On the other hand, Aichi, another prefecture full of takarakuji hopefuls, had the seventh lowest home ownership ratio. (Bonus fact: Toyama prefecture had the highest home ownership rate in 2003 (around 80%). Toyama residents play it relatively safe with a middling per capita lottery spend of between 7,000-7,999 yen).

The outlier was Kochi prefecture, however, indicating that low home ownership, a signifier of relative poverty, does not make up the only factor explaining the results. An official from Kochi prefecture’s budget division speculated, “Perhaps the prefecture residents’ nature of determination and love of gambling had an impact.”

A brief overview of Japan’s lottery system

Though it only brings in about 1/20 the revenue of the almighty pachinko, Japan’s lottery, with its estimated 15,000 or so ticket booths outside train stations (more booths than pachinko parlors, one for every 8,600 people), has been a highly visible form of legal gambling in Japan throughout the postwar era, along with horse racing, yacht speedboat racing, bicycle racing, and mahjong.

According to Wiki Japan, lottery-style gambling in Japan got its start in the Edo period as Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples offered tomikuji (essentially the same as a lottery) in order to raise funds for repairs. Over the years, tomikuji faced various bans from the authorities, and private-sector lotteries remain criminalized to this day. In July 1945, a desperate wartime government instituted a lottery, but Japan surrendered and chaos reigned before a drawing could even be held. A national government-backed lottery was re-instituted during the US occupation in 1948, though it was abandoned in 1954, leaving only regional lotteries. Takarakuji took its current form in 1964 with the foundation of the Japan Lottery Association, a grouping of the regional lotteries.

According to association data, in fiscal 2007 (the period covered by the above survey) Japanese gamblers bought 1.0442 trillion yen in tickets, or about 8,200 yen per person. The US doesn’t have a national lottery per se, but the UK does – on average, UK residents spent 80 pounds (12,905 yen by the current exchange rate) per capita on national Lotto in 2008. The UK lottery’s press kit (PDF) claims that 70% of adults are regular players (but doesn’t cite a source), while a 2007 poll from Japan’s lottery association found that 55% of those polled had purchased at ticket at least once in the past year. The UK system, in which operations are contracted to a private company, appears to be more efficient than the one in Japan. According to the UK press kit, 10% of every pound spent on lottery tickets goes to operations and expenses (5% in dealer commission, 4.5% in operating costs, and 0.5% in shareholder dividends), versus 14.4% of each ticket in Japan (with 45.8% going to paying winners and 39.8% going into the general accounts of each prefecture and major cities).

The odds of winning a current popular Japanese game Loto 6 is 1 in 6 million, which is comparable to other lotteries I am familiar with in the US (and of course less likely than getting hit by lightning).

See the full list after the jump!

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