Walmart to Open in Japan

All these history posts are making my head hurt! Now let me depress you big time:

Seiyu To Open ‘Wal-Mart’ Supercenters Next Year

TOKYO (Nikkei)–Seiyu Ltd. (8268) will in 2006 start opening stores developed with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and named after the U.S. retail giant, The Nihon Keizai Shimbun learned Tuesday.

Seiyu plans to open large outlets that combine supermarkets and discount stores. All of these so-called supercenters — Wal-Mart’s mainstay — will be developed jointly by the two companies, with some of them bearing the name “Wal-Mart Seiyu.” Candidate areas to host new supercenters include Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture.

These supercenters will offer discount prices on a regular basis under Wal-Mart’s everyday-low-prices concept. Although this marketing method is not widely popular among Japanese consumers, Seiyu will emphasize that the stores are operated under the Wal-Mart philosophy.

Personally, I am not the type to beatify Japan’s traditional culture or superior egalitarian values, but Walmart, I hope you agree, just sucks the big one. I went in there late at night the other weekend just to get soda and I was almost run over by some shitty teenager messing around on the fat-people-scooter they keep around. I mean, I go there to buy razors, but every time I’m there I silently pray that the big ugly Walmart will one day cease to exist, much as the Iraqis are friendly to American troops to their faces but secretly pray for their country to go back to normal as soon as possible.

Imperial Japanese propaganda and the history of Kodansha

Boingboing linked to scans of a Japanese propaganda booklet for kids from the Japanese Imperial period. The low resolution of the scans (not to mention the old-fashioned katakana orthography) makes it a bit hard to read, but that hasn’t stopped two different bloggers from posting translations before I even saw it. Kyle Goetz and Paul Battley both have translations, but Paul Battley’s, in which he places the translation in captions around the original images, is far more readable. Kyle Goetz’s translation, which has more comments and translation notes, is recommended only for those who also know some Japanese. Kyle theorizes that the booklet was written for foreigners, but I believe it is quite clearly a children’s book.

Unfortunately, the book seems to be undated, but from the cover we can see that it was published by Dai-Nihon Yuubenkai Kodansha (大日本雄弁会講談社). Anyone who has even a passing acquintance with Japanese media or publishing will probably recognize Kodansha, which is still a major publisher of magazines, comics and various types of books.

According to the history section of Kodansha’s English language site:

Seiji Noma, the founder of the company, published his first magazine, Yuben (Oratory) in 1909. This was followed in 1911 by Kodan Club, a monthly collection of kodan or traditional stories from which the company was to take its name. The success of Kodan Club assured the future of the new company and, by the mid-1930s, Kodansha had taken a leading position in the magazine publishing industry through the publication of nine magazines.

Looking at the timeline in the more detailed history section of their Japanese language website, we can see that Dai-Nihon Yuubenkai and it’s spinoff, Kodansha, were merged in 1925, creating a company with the combined name of Dai-Nihon Yuubenkai Kodansha. Since this remained the companies name until 1958 (when it became simply Kodansha Corporation) and this booklet is very much a product of the Imperial era, it must have been published between 1925 and 1945.

The Wikipedia article also contains a fun piece of trivia about Kodansha. Before World War II, the company attempted to branch out into other industries, marketting a nutritional beverage called Dorikono. However, due to a wartime sugar shortage, they were forced to cease production of the drink, and completely withdrew from the food industry.

Tabloid Journalism Trumps Politics in Taiwan

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

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

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

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

Detective novels take on the world

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Huang fell for 2004’s widely lauded “The Coroner’s Lunch” and its tale of septuagenarian coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun’s struggle to find the truth behind a series of murders. First-time novelist Colin Cotterill “makes us understand what the system allows [Paiboun] to do, what the system prevents him from doing, and what he manages to accomplish anyway,” says Huang, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Carmel, Ind.

An academic tome might have accomplished the same goal of enlightening readers about Laotian culture. But detective novels are usually easier to read, and now, to a greater extent than ever before, they’re shedding light about the world outside the United States and Britain.

U.S. paid Unit 731 members for data

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) The United States paid money and gave other benefits to former members of a Japanese germ warfare unit two years after the end of World War II to obtain data on human experiments conducted in China, according to two declassified U.S. government documents.

It has been known that the Allies offered to waive war crime charges at the tribunal for officers of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Unit 731 in exchange for experiment data.

But the latest findings reveal Washington’s eagerness to obtain such data even by providing monetary rewards, despite the horrific nature of the unit’s activities, in an attempt to beat the Soviet Union in the arms development race.
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Taiwan media primer

The government prepared Taiwan Yearbook 2004 has all sorts of great information about contemporary Taiwan. I particularly liked the media section, which is a great summary particularly for those of us who don’t know enough Chinese to actually read the daily newspapers.

　Newspapers in Taiwan can be divided into two broad categories: general and specialized. General newspapers tend to cover political, economic, social, cultural, sports, international, local, entertainment, leisure, and travel news. The four papers mentioned above belong to this category, as do the Central Daily News 中央日報, China Daily News 中華日報, Taiwan Daily 臺灣日報, Taiwan Times 臺灣時報, and Merit Times 人間福報. Of these, the Central Daily News and China Daily News are operated by the Kuomintang 中國國民黨 and are less competitive as a result of their political subjectivity. Established in 2000, the Merit Times is Taiwan’s first general-interest newspaper founded by a Buddhist group and positions itself as a defender of straight news reporting.

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

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

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

Govt To Lead Effort To Realize Virtual Reality TV By 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taiwan protests to UN for `misinforming’ exhibit

From the Taipei Times:

DPA , NEW YORK
Sunday, Aug 14, 2005,Page 3

Taiwan on Friday protested to the UN for naming the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as one of the world body’s founding members in a 60th anniversary exhibit.

Taipei’s representative in New York, Andrew Hsia (夏立言), wrote to Shashi Tharoor, the undersecretary-general for public information, accusing the UN of “blatantly deviating from history and misinforming the world.”

The Republic of China (ROC) — later known as Taiwan — was the government in power in China at the end of World War II and one of five powers that began the process of creating the UN, which was founded in 1945.

Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) communist forces forced the government to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1949, and communist China was awarded the Chinese seat at the UN in 1971.

Hsia protested because an exhibition at UN headquarters on its 60th anniversary includes a poster with names of the 51 countries that signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945. The People’s Republic of China was named one of them.

“I hope that this mistake has been unintentional and ask for your prompt attention and action to have it corrected,” Hsia said.

The other UN founders were the US, the Soviet Union, France and the UK.

Notice that the article says “The Republic of China (ROC) — later known as Taiwan .” Despite a recent movement to change the name, this country is in fact still officially known as the Republic of China. It is known as Taiwan almost universally in informal circumstances, but the article’s wording implies that an official name change has taken place.

This article is apparently a product of the German wire service, Deutsche Press-Agentur. Unfortunately, unlike similar American services, it is subscriber only, and there is no way for me to check and see if the original article contains this statement or if it is a result of editing by the customer (the Taipei Times).

The Taipei Times, as the English language sister newspaper to the pro-independence Chinese language daily Liberty Times, is itself unabashedly pro-independence. While I generally sympathize with their politics, they do seem to have a history of playing a bit loose with the facts when it serves their political ends-a tendency that leaves me less than 100% trusting of their coverage. Bias may be appropriate in the editorial pages of a newspaper, and even in choice and manner of events covered, but I simply don’t believe that publishing genuinely misleading copy is helpful in the long run.

Does anybody out there have access to the DPA news feed, who could find the original unedited version of this article?

I should of course mention that the factual basis of the article would be pro-Taiwan enough without this manipulative phrase. It is absolutely true that it was the Republic of China, and not the People’s Republic of China, that was a founding member of the UN, and it is irresponsible of the UN to put out such incorrect information.

Decades After Abuses by the Japanese, Guam Hopes the U.S. Will Make Amends

Decades After Abuses by the Japanese, Guam Hopes the U.S. Will Make Amends
By JAMES BROOKE

MERIZO, Guam, Aug. 11 – In July 1944, American warships were bobbing on the Pacific horizon when a squad of Japanese soldiers swept through this old Spanish fishing port. Jogging down sandy alleys and bursting into stucco homes, they rounded up 30 villagers, all known for their ties to the United States.

“They didn’t want any leaders to be around when the military landed,” Ignacio Cruz said as he recalled the roundup he watched as a 17-year-old. “Then, they machine-gunned them, they grenaded them, and if they found them surviving, they bayoneted them.”

“Dad got killed, and a lot of young babies were brought up without fathers,” continued Mr. Cruz, who grew up, joined the Marines and became the village mayor, the post his father once held. “I managed to survive, and go to school, and build a house for my mother and continue my education.”
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