This is already widely reported, but just thought I would share an amazing, terrifying story that happened pretty close to where I live.
Basically, the headline says it all. Back in June, some local workers visited the home one Sogen Kato to present him with an award – at 111 he had become the oldest resident of Adachi-ku, Tokyo, and the second-oldest man in Japan (on paper at least). However, his 80-year-old daughter wouldn’t let them in – “He’s upstairs but doesn’t want any visitors,” she said.
Undeterred, the officials complained to the police, who eventually got to the bottom of things – according to family members, in 1980 the then-octogenarian Kato declared he wanted to become “enlightened through mummification” (pic possibly NSFW – 即身仏), so would they please leave him alone in his room forever with no food or water, thank you very much.
Apparently, this claim might be a ruse – however Kato died, it’s possible they failed to report it in a ploy to keep receiving his pension. If true, that’s an incredibly stupid way of providing for your family after death. If he had bought a life insurance policy the survivors could have paid for a proper funeral (and therefore “proper” Buddha-fication) and still had enough left over to provide. And the biggest upside would be no skeletal corpse in the house for 30 years! I mean, just think of what you could do with that extra bedroom.
This is the scene outside my apartment these days. Apparently, the Tokyo police are using a new tactic in efforts to catch bicycle thieves and purse snatchers near Ayase station.
The van is equipped with high-powered cameras that can take hi-res images with a 100m range in all directions. I saw them conducting tests a few months ago. The report emphasizes that the cameras are not running while the vehicle is in motion, and that local residents were duly warned about the cameras.
The van really stands out, as you can see. It looks like the FBI is staking out a mob boss’s house. When I first saw them testing the thing a few months ago I thought they might be preparing to film a movie. Looks like I was only half right.
The police must have invited the media to report on this new initiative because there’s also this video report. It’s cool to see my neighborhood in the news, but knowing the cops think Ayase is a hotbed of crime, while not surprising, isn’t exactly comforting.
It’s worth noting that Adachi-ku (where Ayase is located) has launched a so-called “beautiful windows” campaign. In an attempt to reduce crime in Tokyo’s most dangerous area, the government is trying to mimic the success of NYC in the Giuliani years by encouraging citizen patrols, banning smoking on the street, and painting murals on shuttered storefronts. This may dovetail with those efforts somehow.
The Japan tourism agency is saying (sub req’d) they plan to ease a strict ban on tour guide interpreters getting paid for their services. As it stands, only nationally licensed guide-interpreters can get paid; as a result, you can see many “volunteer” interpreters at tourist destinations. Other translations do not need any certification, as far as I know.
Now, they aren’t completely eliminating the qualification program or abandoning quality standards for tour guides, as this key passage makes clear:
The Japan Tourism Agency thus decided to allow people without formal qualifications to charge for their services, while maintaining the current certification program for highly skilled interpreter-guides. The agency hopes to submit a bill to revise the rules to next year’s regular session of the Diet at the earliest.
Still, the agency determined that a certain level of quality, if not national certification, is needed for those who work as guide-interpreters. It is therefore considering drawing up guidelines and having municipalities and private-sector companies certify those who undergo training.
An official with the agency said revising the rules would allow the roughly 54,000 Japanese who now act as volunteer guide-interpreters to better use their skills, and help create jobs for foreigners living in Japan.
So that’s one more group that’s losing protected guild status, much as Japan’s barbers did years ago. Having a strict national qualification requirement for such a minor occupation seems like overkill to me. I can see why the tourism regulators want to maintain quality, though – a situation like the child tour guides at the Taj Mahal in Slumdog Millionaire would probably be a worst-case scenario.
As the voting progresses in Japan’s upper house election, it’s somewhat unclear what the big issues of the election are. For one thing, the World Cup and the scandals plaguing sumo wrestling have hogged the national spotlight. For another, the prime minister only took office about a month ago after the previous one suddenly resigned. How are you supposed to judge a government that’s only been in office a month?
So to help sort things out, I present some of the salient issues in this election and what to watch for in tonight’s results
>> Biggest question – will the DPJ get a simple majority?
As it stands, a two-party coalition, the DPJ and PNP, control the upper house with a single-vote majority. The DPJ by itself has 116 members, so it would need to increase its standing by 6 to secure a majority. There are currently 54 DPJ members up for reelection with another 62 who were elected in 2007. PM Kan has made maintaining that 54 his goal for this election, though former Secretary General and intraparty rival Ichiro Ozawa (who essentially crafted the Upper House election strategy before stepping down) thinks the party could do better.
Apparently, polling suggests a mixed bag. From Kyodo (via Shisaku blog) the DPJ is faring relatively well, but the number of undecided voters dominates support for any party.
>> If the DPJ cannot secure a majority, who will it team up with, if anybody?
Between the last lower house election in August 2009 and now, a number of small parties have sprung up, mostly offshoots from the LDP, apparently in an effort to make their presence felt in the upper house. Add to these other small parties (also mostly LDP outcasts) and there is a long list:
Social Democrat (ex coalition partner)
Your Party
People’s New Party (current coalition partner)
Sunrise Nippon
Happiness Realization
Japan Communist
New Renaissance
Spirit of Japan
New Komeito
LDP (this and New Komeito are somewhat larger)
Am I forgetting anyone? Many of them have all but ruled out teaming up with the DPJ, but I see that as playing hard to get. I mean, why bargain away your position by making conciliatory gestures?
>> Surprise performance from small parties
As I mentioned there is a large proportion of “undecided” voters. The DPJ, once sly about courting this group, took a sharp turn in the other direction with Ichiro Ozawa in charge of election planning. In the meanwhile, another party, Your Party, has taken a populist tone, railing against bureaucrats and pledging fiscal stability and deregulation. In fact they more or less promote a neoliberal platform, possibly putting the lie to the conventional wisdom that the Koizumi agenda was unpopular.
Your Party’s positive poll numbers have fueled speculation that it could punch above its weight in the polls today. With that kind of leverage it could become a more important voice post-election, which could significantly impact the DPJ legislative agenda in areas like postal privatization.
>> Will Mizuho Fukushima lose her seat? And other surprise losses
The Social Democrats were at the center of the biggest political battle of the first half of 2010, namely the debate over how and where to relocate Futenma airfield in Okinawa. Unwilling to back down from their campaign pledge to move the field off Okinawa, in the end the party quit the coalition and effectively destroyed the Hatoyama government. While public opinion seemed to be mildly on the SDP’s side, it remains to be seen if Fukushima and her partied generated enthusiasm for her party at the polls.
Fukushima is running as a proportional representation candidate. That means her party has to win around 2% of the vote before it can win even one seat in the Diet. With the new parties crowding the ballot, there’s a chance her party could be crowded out.
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There are several other issues to talk about (will the Happiness Realization Party win a seat?), but that’s all the time I have for now. See you later tonight!
Today Japan votes to select half the members of its upper house of parliament. I have been lax in my blogging duties this time around, but thankfully there is a wealth of excellent writing on the election in English to choose from. To get an idea of what’s going on, I recommend:
>> Transpacific Radio is planning to do a live video feed of the results tonight. Other obligations prevent me from joining this time, but once I get home I’ll be watching from my corner of Tokyo.
>> Japan Real Time – The Wall Street Journal’s new Japan blog has been (somewhat surprisingly) a great resource for info on the election comings and goings.
>> Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an English-language live map of the results. If you read Japanese you can turn to any number of sources, though – I will be using Asahi, for the most part.
>> Conflicting takes on the election’s meaning from two people who normally agree with one another.
First, we have Michael Cucek’s article on the “meaningless” upper house election. His ultimate point as to why the high number of undecided voters in the polls:
Japan’s Meaningless Election
…
There is, of course, a more fundamental reason why many voters are confused and unable to make a choice, even on the eve of a historic first election under a non-LDP government–and that is the lack of a clear national purpose. Japanese voters are highly educated, law-abiding (for the most part) and eager participants in their own democracy. Ask most of them what Japan’s national goals are, however, and you’ll draw an embarrassed silence, or some dangerous platitude like ‘to live at peace with other countries.’
Without goals or aims, it’s extremely difficult to choose which path to take. Or, in this case, which party or person you want to vote for.
The significance of this election has been thrown into clear relief since Kan Naoto took over from Hatoyama Yukio as prime minister and head of the DPJ. What once looked to be a referendum on the leadership of Hatoyama and DPJ secretary-general Ozawa Ichirō — a referendum that polls suggested that the DPJ would not win — is now an election on the future of Japan, perhaps to an even greater extent than last summer’s historic House of Representatives election. If the DPJ can retain control of the upper chamber, it will have three years before it will have to face the voters again in an election, provided that no snap election is called in the meantime. Those are three years that the government can use to make tough political decisions that a government with a shorter time horizon might be less inclined to make, like, say, a consumption tax increase.
And so this election is critical for Japan’s future.
I would come down somewhere in the middle. If Japanese voters have nothing more to aspire to, what was all the fuss about last year? And why was the debate over issues like Japan-US security, privatization of Japan Post, and so on, so fierce and unyielding? At the same time, this election won’t change the main party in power – the biggest question is whether the DPJ will need a coalition partner or partners to secure a majority in the upper house. Important, yes, but not the defining issue of a generation either.
Somewhat randomly, the Wall Street Journal has recently started up a Japan blog called Japan Real Time (partly, it seems, to provide content to their new Japanese language site). Great stuff, welcome to the party. But being a mainstream media blog, it can’t seem to shake some conventions, like our pet-peeve (or is that favorite?) synonym for sharply criticizing someone:
Party Heads SLAM Tax Plans
Naoto Kan’s proposal to raise taxes, part of a broad fiscal reform package, has hit his popularity ratings and sparked plenty of discussion.
On Tuesday, several party heads made clear that they oppose the tax increase, accusing Mr. Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan of everything from “hocus-pocus economics” to potentially pushing suicide rates higher.
Here’s what they had to say:
Sadakazu Tanigaki, Liberal Democratic Party: The LDP is more or less on the same page as Mr. Kan’s DPJ — it proposed the tax hike to begin with — but Mr. Tanigaki sought to differentiate the two, criticizing Mr. Kan for not being clear on how the tax money will be used. The LDP, Mr. Tanigaki said, made clear in its policy statement that the money would be used for social security spending.
I like the frowny Tanigaki picture they chose (stolen above).
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In other news, campaigning has heated up around my station. The other day I took a pamphlet from the Happiness Realization Party guy, and this morning the freak actually tried to talk to me on my way to work. If it weren’t so freaking humid a chill would have run down my spine. Those people have a few good ideas (bigger houses, more linear trains) mixed in with the crazy (attack North Korea preemptively, retirement age of 75, do everything to make Japan the world’s top economy by GDP), but zero respect for democracy. Funnily enough, part of their platform is to abolish the upper house of parliament, which just happens to be the very body they want the people to elect them to!
Masatoshi Wakabayashi resigned from the Upper House on Friday after he was admonished for pressing an electronic voting button of a fellow Liberal Democratic Party member seated next to him.
The Democratic Party of Japan submitted a motion to discipline Wakabayashi, 75, a former farm minister, to the chamber on Thursday.
LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki urged Wakabayashi to take responsible action Thursday to avoid causing problems ahead of the Upper House election this summer.
If you’re like me, you probably shrugged it off as a joke, a non-story. He explained in Japanese 魔が差した which means “I don’t know what got into me” but could be literally translated something like “a devil made me do it.” Wakabayashi had already announced his intention to retire at the end of the Diet session, but this has got to be the worst case of senioritis ever. A seat in the Diet is nothing to take lightly, even if you’re in the less powerful upper house.
This weekend, PM Hatoyama fired Mizuho Fukushima from his cabinet over their disagreement on relocating Futenma air station. In response, Fukushima’s Social Democratic Party decided to quit the coalition. This development probably has some serious implications for PM Hatoyama, but for this post I just want to focus on how it affects the coalition’s standing in the Diet as the session nears its end.
This shrinks the DPJ/PNP’s upper house majority shrink to just two seats right at the end of the legislative session. The coalition is currently rushing to pass bills that would alter the course of reforming Japan Post, among some other initiatives aimed at the election in July.
With 122 seats together, the coalition now has a thin two-seat majority. However, it would have been even smaller one seat majority if Wakabayashi were still around.
I have no special information on the state of Diet negotiations and debate, but a one-seat majority can have all sorts of potential consequences. One situation I could think of is the American Democrats’ “super-majority” in 2009 as they tried to pass health care reform. Basically, any upper house member could have threatened to defect, delay, or vote against the party to extract some concessions.
But now that they don’t have to worry about such annoyances, the DPJ should probably call Wakabayashi to thank him (or maybe Tanigaki for pressuring him to quit).
Since he was elected in a prefectural district (Nagano) instead of proportional representation and there is not enough time to hold a special election, it seems that according to the rules Wakabayashi’s seat will remain open until the upcoming election in July.
Update: They are apparently not managed by Johnny’s.
Every girl’s fantasy English teachers?
Meet the EastWest Boys. Assembled by Johnny’s Entertainment Sony Music Japan through an audition process, the group, dubbed a “5 in 300 million miracle,” is being solely marketed and promoted within Japan, where they are competing for the hearts of teenage girls.
For their latest single “Take Me There,” they have entered a promotional tie-up with fashion brand Peach John (whose president was mired in scandal last year over a dead woman in her apartment). They are on the cover of the latest catalog and lucky viewers will be able to catch their song on TV ads.
Here’s a YouTube video of a single that recently got some play on Japanese TV, “This Time”:
Sure, I have seen dozens of cheap, poorly produced Japanese pop acts, and some pretty bad American pop groups as well. But watching Americans run through the exact same half-baked dance routines as SMAP produces a special kind of cognitive dissonance.
Johnny’s has made sure to add a few bells and whistles to maximize appeal – the songs are in simple English, and the melody has enough of a pop-punk/emo feel to seem kind of foreign. This was the tune I saw on a few morning shows promoting the group as a new kind of pop act. Girls attending promotional appearances looked overjoyed to hug their new idols.
The music gets much worse when you watch the videos for songs that people didn’t pay enough attention to. “Yesterday’s Hero” was obviously filmed in the exact same warehouse, and the song is 100% cookie-cutter J-POP – no halfway-redeeming nods to American emo to be found. Are they wearing primary colors to make them look like Power Rangers?
While there’s not much to compare, a much, much more listenable American entrant into the Japanese pop world is Jero, the African American enka singer.
The group’s videos are hosted on an official channel, which is kind of a departure for Johnny’s who until recently had a strictly Internet-phobic PR stance. By offering some of their content for free on the web, they are clearly trying to save some PR money by generating buzz online. The upside of that strategy is it gives us a lot of information on these guys that is usually not available on your typical J-pop group.
Great, at least this time it’s in English! It’s similar to many other simple catch phrases used by other countries: “Malaysia, truly Asia,” “Seoul’s got Soul,” and so on. The Japanese-language slogan is more of more of a mouthful and literally translates as “Japan, a country where you will encounter endless discovery.” There’s also a new logo with a stylish but classy combo of cherry blossoms and the Japanese Rising Sun.
I like “Endless Discovery” because it has a message that happens to be true. As a foreigner living in Japan most days there’s something new to discover. This message could help put new visitors in the right frame of mind to enjoy themselves. Japan’s not a country like Thailand where you can head straight to the resort and not worry about foreign customs. It’s an adventure in many respects – new food, few English speakers, complicated train system, etc. (and the area outside of Tokyo is even harder to navigate), so why not put a positive face on what Japan’s got to offer?
I’d like to give Maehara and his people some credit for picking a slogan that actually makes sense. It’s comforting to think the people in power might actually understand the outside world a little bit. It’s one big, noticeable difference between the parties.
This will replace the old slogan Yokoso! Japan, announced in 2003 to much confusion by most people who had no idea yokoso means “welcome” in Japanese. Well-known Japan commentator Alex Kerr was especially critical, saying it might as well be “blah blah blah Japan.” It’s been a favorite target of mockery among many in the gaijin community and can currently be seen on taxis, buses, posters, and even transport minister Maehara’s lapel pin. You’ll be missed! The “Visit Japan Campaign 2010” site is still up, so you can soak up some of the goodness before it closes. There’s other questionable language on the site, like “Yokoso Bazar” and “Revalue Nippon.”
Perhaps the best promotion in the campaign was this ad by then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi:
“We will welcome you with a hearty Yokoso and smiiiile.”
Just as a bit of speculation, some of you might remember that the DPJ has relied on American firms for PR (Fleishman-Hillard in 2005 and possibly today), while the LDP and bureaucracy often relied on domestic firms (Prap Japan in 2005, ad giant Dentsu in 2009). Could that have had made a difference?
Well kids, I just came back from the sneak preview of ダーリンは外国人 at Roppongi Hills. My wife is a fan of the first couple of books, and probably ended up on a mailing of some sort along the line, through which we got invited. Apparently they only invited international couples, and interestingly enough the movies subtitles were in Japanese for the English dialog and in English for the Japanese dialogue.
The movie was just about at, or perhaps even a bit worse than, my expectations. I liked the use of splicing in clips of Oguri’s animation, as well as spot interviews with international couples. But… There were more than a few scenes where I was biting my fist a la Bea Arthur from The Golden Girls, and there was only one scene in which I laughed: Tony Laszlo himself makes a well-placed cameo in the movie that was worth a chuckle. But screenplay, casting, pacing, music, etc. was on par with the average Japanese made-for-TV movie.
Inoue Mao looks less like Oguri and more like Asada Mao. Jonathan Scherr looks less like Tony and more like Dustin Diamond (Screech from “Saved By the Bell”). Oguri in the story is not from Kansai, and Tony ends up being from New Jersey. I guess no one cared about these details to begin with.
Following the movie, Inoue, Scherr, the director Ue, Oguri, and Tony came out on stage to say a few words and answer pre-screened questions from the audience. All of them were a bit nervous, but regardless of that I was surprised at how clumsy some of the exchanges were.
e.g.
Q: If you moved to a foreign country and had to take one thing (mono) with you, what would it be?
Tony: In Japan, ‘mono’ can be 者, in which case I would bring Saori. If the ‘mono’ had to be a thing (物), then…I would bring dried seaweed (nori).
MC & Audience: …. (huh?)
Looking at the post above, I notice this quote: “The producer Kazuya Hamana (head of TV content at TBS) spent five years preparing for this film and plans to try and recreate the feel of the original comics for a story that everyone can relate to.”
I don’t think any of the feel was recreated, and it’s kind of sad to think that five years of work went into this movie. I mean, this movie was pret-ty damn bad…
Thanks, Peter. Nice to know I won’t miss anything by skipping this one.
