Fierce Beauty

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This morning's NHK news broadcast was not all over this like hair on a gorilla:

Japan routs U.S. team to win Little League World Series title
AP

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pennsylvania — Noriatsu Osaka hit three homers and tripled as Japan limited Goodlettsville, Tennessee's potent lineup to two hits in a 12-2 victory Sunday to win the Little League World Series title.

In a symbolic gesture, Japan's players jogged the traditional postgame victory lap carrying the flags for both their home country and the United States.

"We had such a great time in Pennsylvania and we really played a good game today. It was kind of a 'thanks,'" the 12-year-old Osaka said through an interpreter.

Starting pitcher Kotaro Kiyomiya struck out eight batters in four innings and added an RBI single for the Tokyo team, representing Japan. The game ended in the fifth inning after Osaka's third homer made it a 10-run game that invoked the "mercy rule"...

(Link)

What surprises about the victory of a team of Japanese 12 year-olds is not that it happens fairly often but that it does not happen every year. It is impossible for me, when I pass the fence of an elementary school on a weekend day, to no not stop and watch in utter amazement at third and fourth graders fielding ground balls flawlessly, waiting for the right pitch, throwing to the cutoff player (I do not say "cutoff man" as popping out of the backs of a lot of caps these days are pony tails, there not being enough boys around to fill up the roster spots) when every ounce of their egos is screaming, "Ichiro would throw to third and nail the runner...and so can I!"

On a kilogram per kilogram and by team basis, the young players of this country cannot find their match in their age peers elsewhere.

Something goes haywire starting in high school -- my guess it comes from the hypertrophied egos of high school coaches, who extend practices and pitch counts beyond what young, still developing bodies can handle. The games of the Spring Invitational and the August National Tourneys, where coaches leave spent pitchers out to die on the mound, tend to upset rather than entertain me (that and the round heads and the marching).

But to watch children play The Game in this blessed land is a thing of fierce beauty.

The Realm Of The Senseless

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, It is probably a bad idea for the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan to make available its in-house magazine. Persons such as yours truly can read articles like this one printed therein.

An editor, and you would think the FCCJ would have one, would normally send the piece back to the author on fire with the warning, "Contextualize this stuff, or every woman or Japanese member of the club will be chewing our arses off."

The publication of this set of anecdotes, rather than causing an explosion, as it likely will, would serve better as an introduction to a suppressed discussion of media and knowledge-industry colonialization of postwar Japan -- where what were by local standards insanely well paid Caucasian, mostly American, males, both straight and gay, found in the defeated nation a sexual playground, one that seemed a world away from their crabbed and intolerant hometowns. That ex-pat spouses, for economic but also racial reasons, could be complicit in the dominance relationship ("Our is cuter"? "Ours" - possessive pronoun article?!? "OURS"?) is staggering, seen from the present day.

That much of the foundation of what is known about Japan was laid down by persons enjoying vastly greater incomes and personal freedom, particularly in the sexual realm, than the persons whom they reported on and studied is a fact of life -- but not necessarily a fatal flaw. Anthropology would not exist as a discipline if inequalities in income and freedom were criteria for exclusion of research done.

However, to deny that reporting and writing about Japan is not haunted by the ghosts of sexual inequalities past would be idiotic. That is why seeing the names of so many women -- Yuka Hayashi, Isabel Reynolds, Linda Sieg, Sachiko Sakamaki, Lucy Craft, Anna Kitanaka, Michiyo Nakamoto, Hiroko Tabuchi -- on the front lines of reporting on Japan is such a heartening development.

Because there are still a lot of very confused folks out there.

And yes, I know "colonialization" is not a real word.

A Somewhat Lame Farce About Modern Totalitarianism

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, When I was in high school, my favorite books in translation were the novels and short story collections of Heinrich Böll, including Billiards at Half-Past Nine and Children Are Civilians Too (My favorite book in English, for those interested in my adolescent loves, was Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar).

In Children Are Civilians Too I found particularly memorable a very brief short story called "My Sad Face." It is about a man living in an unidentified decayed dictatorship who is picked up by police for not having a smile on his face, as required by law.

Little was I to know that the story I found so moving was, according Professor William J. Schwarz, writing in the Saturday Review of March 1970, "a somewhat lame farce about modern totalitarianism."

It seems we live in the lamest of times:

UK man arrested for not smiling during Olympics
Mid-day.com

A man from Britain with Parkinson's disease was arrested while watching the Olympic cycling road race because he "failed to smile or look like he was enjoying himself."

Mark Worsfold, a martial arts trainer and former soldier, said that he was thrown to the floor and handcuffed just as cyclists passed by, Gulf News reported.

His worried wife Nicola only found out he was being held after she reported him missing when he did not turn up for their daughter's ninth birthday party.

The 54-year-old had his fingerprints, DNA and mugshot taken before being questioned about why he did not appear to be enjoying the event on July 28.

Police said Worsfold, who was held for over five hours, was arrested because of "his manner, his state of dress and his proximity to the course."

A spokesman added that the arrest was necessary to avoid a breach of the peace because he was standing near a group of protesters.

But Worsfold, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2010, said that one of the symptoms of the disease is muscle rigidity, which can cause his face to become expressionless and mask-like.

Worsfold, who had stopped to watch the men’s road race in Leatherhead, Surrey, after holding a Taekwondo demonstration nearby, said officers told him he was being arrested and taken to Reigate police station because he was not smiling.

"I was sitting minding my own business," he told a local newspaper.

"Before I knew anything the police grabbed me off this seven-foot wall, threw me to the floor and cuffed me so all I saw of the cycle race was between the feet of people from the pavement. It could have been done better. I was arrested for not smiling. I have Parkinson's," he said.

(Link)

What does this have to do with this blessed land, or indeed the East Asian entire region?

Since the end of the most horrible of wars, it has been the habit of European countries and the United States to justify criticisms of government policies and practices of this region based on a presumed and pre-supposed moral superiority of their nations. It is the basis of criticism of retention of the death penalty (the EU) or just about everything (the United States).

However, since the outbreak of the War on Terror and the rise of the surveillance democracy (with the United Kingdom leading the way), the moral superiority of EuroAmerica is no longer tenable. Indeed, government (Anwar Awlaki) and mob/mass media (Bill Maher, the Dixie Chicks) attacks on individuals for expressing the wrong thoughts or having wrong attitudes are now commonplace; guaranteed freedoms are ignored with impunity (Guantanamo Bay); and basic human decency abandoned (Abu Ghraib). Privacy of communication and person have essentially vanished.

Given the self-inflicted wounding of what was indeed "better" about EuroAmerica, it should not be surprising that the government of this blessed land and other governments in the region should push back: "Who are you to criticize us, you who kill your own citizens living abroad through missile strikes, then proudly issue press releases about it?"

As a consequence, it should not be surprising that EuroAmerican cautions and admonitions about the sex slaves of the Imperial Army, visits to Yasukuni by Cabinet officials, impositions of the death penalty, arrests without due process of law and dolphin slaughter in worthless coastal burgs increasingly fall on not just deaf, but defensive ears.

With the moral high ground eroded to a nub, EuroAmerica's influence is crushed. What remains is only quiet suggestions through diplomatic channels of taking action based not a universal human rights or basic human dignity but purely out of self-interest.

Some may argue that in reality, self-interest was all that ever mattered -- that no action was ever taken out of pressures to conform with the norms of EuroAmerica. Those who hold to this tenet clearly have never watched Japanese television or read Japanese news. The views of non-Japanese bozos (as expressed on television programs, both serious and not) and the image of Japan in the world media has been the subject of intense interest. The example of other countries, particularly those in EuroAmerica, have been the guides and the drive behind the activities of non-profit organizations.

Interest is still being expressed in EuroAmerican ideas. However, is more out of momentum -- the repetition of a particular formula because it has worked in the past -- rather than out of a search for norms. To an ever greater extent, social mores are growing out of indigenous perceptions of injustice and inequality. EuroAmerica is more and more often a source of procedural hints rather than full programs or aspirations.

Some again may argue that this process has been on going for decades. I am not disputing this position. However, the process has accelerated since 2001, whilst the EuroAmerican governments, entrapped in their obsessive quests for security, have become less free.

So as EuroAmerican admonitions are met increasingly with "Got it. Whatever" -- ascribing the East Asian self-confidence to increased economic might is at best half the story. Indeed, in this blessed land, with its twenty-five years of recession and a plummeting percentage of total world GDP, confidence arising out of economic prowess is rather laughable -- though the crisis in EuroAmerica since the 2008 global economic collapse does stimulate more than a bit of schadenfreude.

The other side of the coin is the decline of freedom, of the right to have a sad face on a happy day.

Take The Medals And Run

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The London Olympics are over. I was wondering which "surviving band members" would be the closing act -- and prayed over and over, "Please, please, please do not make it Paul McCartney and Ringo doing 'Hey Jude'."

I could also not help but wonder, particularly after the closing ceremonies had an incomprehensible phoenix segment ("Well, so much for the Stravinsky," I said to myself) what the heck the organizers of the Sochi Olympics will inflict upon us:

"And after that performance by an unknown Russian rapper and Nashi vice-president, a tribute to the internal security services!"

As for this blessed land, its athletes, most of whom were quickly flown home, thereby missing all the fun, are carrying either around their necks or safely in overhead luggage bins medals from 38 team or individual placings, more than the athletes of Japan have ever won at a single Olympiad. These results were achieved despite Japanese judoists boring almost everyone to tears with their uninspired performances in the national sport. Congratulations to their opponents for staying awake long enough to outpoint Japan's embarrassing representatives.

Japan finished in a respectable, if not spectacular, sixth place in the overall medals standings, making London second only to the Athens Olympiad in terms of Japan's final rank in the total medal table. This represents a significantly different final tally and ranking, as I had to point out to a commenter after my post of a week ago, from the country's recent performances at non-boycott Summer Olympics.

2012 London 38 medals - 6th place in total medals won

2008 Beijing 25 / 11th

2004 Athens 37 / 5th

2000 Sydney 18 / 15th

1996 Atlanta 14 / 23rd

1992 Barcelona 22 / 17th

1988 Seoul 14 / 14th

Some not so quite so edifying observations reading les Jeux Olympiques de Londres:

- Know when to not win - The last thing that Japan women's soccer coach Sasaki Norio wanted was to have his team in the same half of the knockout round as the United States. So he told his players play for a tie, not a win, in their final round-robin game against South Africa. He sent in his ace striker Kawasumi Naomi as a substitute in the 58th minute with the apology, "I am embarrassed to ask this, but please do not take one of your magnificent cutting-in shots." (J)

One day later, four women's badminton teams, including the favorite from the People's Republic of China, were ejected from their competition for intentionally trying to lose, this in order to win better placings in their knockout round draw. The sports world reacted with horror. Sasaki was suddenly no longer the strategist but the traitor for his admission he had had his players going for the tie.

However, the criticism was ex-post-facto, leaving only a smattering of sports pundits feeling a smug satisfaction at having "said the right thing" about the Japanese women's soccer team's tactics. (E)

Result for this blessed land: a place in the women's soccer final and a silver medal finish.

- If you are trying lose on purpose, make it look good - The Indian badminton coach protested that the Japanese women's doubles pair should have also been ejected from the competition, having lost its final match against an unranked Chinese Taipei team. Since the Japanese team did not do something stupid and obvious like repeatedly serving into the net, however, the protest was rejected. (J).

Result for this blessed land: a place in the final and a silver medal finish.

- Argue that a man falling in an upside vertical position is doing a handstand. Really - Men's gymnastics team leader and eventual individual all-around gold medalist Uchimura Kohei had terrible results during the first two days of competition. In his last event in the team competition finals, the pommel horse, he went for his dismount and missed it, spinning wildly splayed leg and out of control but nevertheless landing on both feet. The initial judgment of the move was that it was worthless, leaving the Japanese team out of the medal standings. The team bumrushed the judges podium and browbeat the judges into calling whatever it was that Uchimura did a handstand.

Result for this blessed land: the extra points needed for a silver medal finish.

(Are we seeing a pattern here?)

- It's not how you play the game, it's whether or not the referee is blind - While the United States-Japan final in women's soccer was thing of beauty (with a few unnecessary love hugs and a missed handball inside the U.S. penalty area), the United States-Canada game was unwatchable. Canadian fouling of the U.S. side was criminal. Les Canadiennes may have argued that they were robbed (E). They should be glad to not be right now sitting in a London jail cell, awaiting trial on assault charges.

- Don't be helpful - Handsome, bi-national, English-speaking, well-spoken and well-like retiring hammer thrower Murofushi Koji was a shoo-in for election to an athlete's spot on the International Olympic Committee.

That is until he tried to explain to another athlete how to vote in the IOC athlete's representative election. Using his Ipad, he called up the relevant IOC page.

Zing! Expulsion as a candidate for election rigging! (E)

At the Olympics, The Golden Rule is "You are here for the gold; leave the helping out to the volunteers."

- Taekwondo is not the national sport of Korea. Going bonkers over Dokdo/Takeshima is the national sport of Korea - They'll cheer! They'll cry. You'll kiss your bronze medal goodbye!

South Korean soccer midfielder Park Jong-woo and his ridiculous, "Dokdo is ours!" sign on the pitch after South Korea's 2-0 victory over the Japanese team in the bronze medal match. (E)

One wonders whether he will be a national hero, rather than a national embarrassment.


Later - Oh, I see. They had Sir Paul playing "Hey Jude" at the opening ceremonies. Just could not stop themselves, could they?

So much better to have Roger Daltrey at the end looking out over the athletes singing, "Teenage wasteland/It's only teenage wasteland."

Image courtesy: Mainichi JP

He Did It

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, That is the takeaway for this weekend.

Decades ago this blessed land's bureaucrats and the research arm of the Liberal Democratic Party established that government finances faced a demographic wall, where the European-style social welfare benefits and United States-levels of taxation would collide with a wave of retirees, necessitating either:

1) mass privatization of government functions

2) reversals in the promises made to the citizens

3) higher taxation

4) potentially hyper-inflationary levels of government indebtedness, or

5) a combination of the above.

The solution the bureaucrats and the LDP proposed was a consumption tax, with an initial target rate of 10%.

It has taken thirty years to walk the walk from realization to realization. At least three prime ministers have had their heads handed to them over the tax, first for the imposition of a nominal 3% tax, then for each step of the march up to 10%.

However, on Friday, with every political instinct and a slug of economic analysis pulling in the opposite direction, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko managed to drag an opposition-controlled House of Councillors over the goal line.

The political costs have been enormous. Noda will most likely be rewarded, as he should be, with reelection as party president in September. However, he will preside over a much diminished Democratic Party of Japan, over 60 members of which have decamped in one way or another over the consumption tax. The Cabinet's and the DPJ's opinion polling numbers are in the cellar, with an election looming.

One can hate the raising of the consumption tax...and a lot of folks do, for reasons both intellectually sound and transparently selfish.

However, one cannot, no, one must not deny the bravery and tenacity of the prime minister, who sacrificed political blood and capital his party could not spare. When all the sirens are singing sweet songs about how cheaply the government can borrow money, Noda and his wounded party have sent a signal to the holders of Japan's bonds that the government of this blessed land will make good upon its debts through a willingness to both inflict pain and accept annihilation.

On The Olympics

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Since the Olympics is dominating news coverage, I might as well toss in my two yen's worth.

Twelve years ago, economist Stephen D. Leavitt patted himself on the back for having the brains and the guts to produce a study proving something everyone already knew was true: matches in sumo were fixed. Brains for noticing a bizarre and reliable weakness of rikishi with a majority of eight losses when facing opponents on the brink of relegation. Guts for taking on the Sumo Federation, which denied match fixing was taking place.

Leavitt's study was never a big a deal in Japan. When a rikishi at 7 wins and 7 losses on the final day grappled with one with a record of 5 wins and 9 losses, the question in the minds of viewers was not "Who would win?" but "How much did the stable of the guy at 7 and 7 offer the other stable for that all-important eighth win?"

As for the denials from the Sumo Federation regarding match fixing, what did Leavitt expect? "Oh, an American economist has discovered that match results veer wildly from randomized competition. Oh, gosh golly, we admit it: we are no better than professional wrestling!"

As if that were going to happen.

The only reason the cheating buggers got caught is because they began cutting their deals via email.

If Dr. Leavitt had a spare moment for some further feretting out of facts from out of data, perhaps he should consider this year's Olympics. Japanese athletes have collected a serious haul of medals (only two of which are gold) putting the country in fifth place in total medals, even after getting mauled in the national sport of judo. Now there are fewer sports in the last week of the Olympics where Japanese athletes are likely to excel, so the final national totals may be completely different from the current distribution. However, the Team Japan performance -- especially in swimming -- begs the question: where have all these world-class athletes come from? Japan has a declining number of young people, two decades of below-par economic performance and declining fitness among its youth.

One answer of course may be from greater international experience. More Japanese Olympians are competing professionally in foreign sports leagues or on international tours.

Greater genetic variation? Admittedly there is a smattering of bi-national athletes: hammer thrower Murofushi Koji, javelin thrower Genki Dean (No, that is not a typo. That is his real name. His father is a British national), soccer player Sakai Takatoku and rhythmic gymnast Saeed-Yokota Nina (not to be confused with her younger sister Elena, who is a member of AKB48. That is also not a typo).

However, five individuals out of 487 athletes seems an insignificant number.

Which brings up my guess -- the international crackdown on doping.

Based on the number of Japanese athletes who have been caught doping or accused of doping over the last two decades, Japanese athletes have been pathetic in taking advantage of advances in performance-altering chemistry (keirin cyclists may be the exception here).

Now that the international athletic federations are coming down like a load of bricks on doping, the international playing field is more level. Japanese athletes, who had never boarded the chemistry express, may be winning medals in accordance to a more natural distribution taking into account  national wealth, national health and national resources devoted to sports talent development.

Given the seeming Japanese failure to cheat (Is this where we can start talking about culture? - Ed.) it is possible to speak of virtual medals in past Olympiads, where Japanese might have won had they not been facing enhanced rivals.

Finding out whether or not that nasty little truth is lurking in the stats -- that would be a worthy endeavor.

The Sun Also Rises

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Figure skating...and now soccer. (E)

Is there not anything the voracious sportsmen and sportswomen of this blessed land will leave unto others to excel in?

Checking Up On The Humanization Of Hashimoto Toru

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, For all those who believed that Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru would take the punch to the gut of the revelation of a 2006-08 affair with a bar hostess with scarcely a break in his stride, it is now been eight full days since the Opinionated One has tweeted on his Twitter account.

Today we have news of the notoriously judgmental Hashimoto will be giving those whom he previously disparaged a second chance.

In 2008, during his term as governor of Osaka Prefecture, Hashimoto, Osaka native though he is, attended his first bunraku performance.

His response to viewing this cultural treasure, kept alive by generations of musicians, joruri chanters and master puppeteers:

"I will not go a second time. If the performers don't change and start responding to the demands of the audience, I cannot accept (the Bunraku Kyokai's application for public support)."

And freeze public funding for the association he did, when he became Osaka City's mayor.

However, yesterday, Hashimoto let out that he will be attending a second performance of the bunraku tomorrow (July 26) -- on the grounds that he had heard that the bunraku artists had made significant efforts to promote the art form and increase attendance, such as standing outside of railway stations inviting commuters to become patrons.

It seems that for the new, more humble Hashimoto, a solid effort to do better is good enough to make him break a vow.

The performance he will be attending on Thursday? The war horse of the repertoire, what La Bohéme is to opera and Romeo and Juliet is to theater...you know what is coming...wait for it...The Love Suicides At Sonezaki (Sonezaki shinju). (J)

I do not expect...but heck, there is always hope...that the giri versus ninjo conflict therein gets him thinking about his own situation in a new light.

Tanigaki's Appeal To The International Finance Community

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, As noted earlier this morning, Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki Sadakazu was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal Asia (E). He was also interviewed by Bloomberg (E), leaving Reuters no doubt wondering, "What are we, chopped liver? Not raw, of course." (E)

In both articles, Tanigaki makes essentially the same points:

- If Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, in an attempt to prevent further defections from the Democratic Party of Japan's House of Representatives or House of Councillors delegations, proposes modifications of the bill doubling the consumption tax in FY 2015, then the deal in between the DPJ and the LDP-New Komeito alliance is off.

- Tanigaki is ready to submit a no-confidence motion against the government in August.

What could be compelling the president of the LDP to talk to foreign financial information wire services? Was he just going the rounds, talking to anyone who could schedule an interview with him?

Seemingly not. A cursory look at the domestic press shows him offering no interviews to a domestic news entity, just a press availability open to everyone on the 20th.

So what is the deal here?

The first point Tanigaki raises is trivial: a deal's a deal. The PM is not stupid -- he knows that if he tries to renegotiate the package on the passage of the pension and social welfare bills through the House of Councillors, the LDP and the New Komeito will cry betrayal, and order their senators to vote against the bills, killing the reforms.

The second point raised is non-trivial -- and gives an indication why Tanigaki chose to spend his time with Bloomberg and ASW-A rather than any major domestic news outlet.

Tanigaki faces a huge battle to retain his position, should he choose to present himself as a candidate in the LDP's presidential election in late September. He has taken the party absolutely nowhere in three years in office. The party's public support numbers are below those the party had after its trouncing at the polls in August 2009 -- though, to be fair, the LDP does rather better when the question asked is: "What party will you be voting for in the proportional seat vote for the House of Representatives?"

Ambitious colleagues in the party know that Tanigaki's election to the presidency was not due to any outstanding qualities he possessed, but merely because out of the princes of the factions, it was Tanigaki's turn on the throne (I am indebted to Okumura Jun for this insight).

The domestic news media is aware of the tenuous hold Tanigaki has upon the party rank-and-file. They know that if he cannot engineer a political crisis before the end of the current Diet session on September 8, he will go down in history as only the second LDP president to not become Prime Minister.

What the domestic news media also knows is that Tanigaki has virtually no ability to precipitate a political crisis of the magnitude capable of toppling the Noda Cabinet. He cannot bring down the government in this session over the bond issuance bill: the government has enough money to last until October, or beyond, with a little fiddling. As for a successful no-confidence motion, Tanigaki would have to round up everyone not in the governing coaltion -- every member of every party and every independent -- plus 17 of the DPJ's own members, to vote with the LDP (the numbers work out differently, of course, if there are abstentions). This means the Communists voting with the LDP, something that might happen, oh, immediately prior to a giant meteor hitting earth, extinguishing all life on the planet. It means the LDP joining hands with Ozawa Ichiro's People's Life First Party (LF).

The LDP has a strong wish to return to the position of the party of government and strict internal discipline. But grab Ozawa's hand, after all the many times he has scalded the LDP? The very thought sets the brain to boiling.

So it would make sense to talk, not to the national media, which would ask all sorts of embarrassing questions like:

- "How are you going to get the Communists into bed with you?"

and

- "What if you entice the requisite number of number of traitors to vote with you and your allies against the government? Then what do you do? The electoral districts are still unconstitutional, so a Diet dissolution and elections are illegal. What kind of coalition are you going to put together to solve that problem, after you have blown the DPJ apart?"

Better to talk to the international financial press, to sow confusion in the international markets and foreign institutions, first in the hopes of sparking questions about the stability of the Noda government, and second, through the Japanese media's peculiar obsession with the way Japan is portrayed in the non-Japanese media, a rebound of the story in the domestic press.

Because after a serious bout of political deafness over the U.S. Marines' introduction of the despised MV-22 Osprey aircraft into this blessed land (J), one which made it look as if the intransigence of the U.S. Marines was going to drive a second DPJ prime minister out of office, the PM has righted himself and is demanding safety assurances and interim flight paths guaranteed to drive the U.S. Marines nuts. This is perhaps not the "Return to Sender" message the public wants the PM to send to the United States. However, it represents a significant step in the government at least appearing to reclaim sovereignty over the nation's airspace, which Noda for a moment seemed to be giving away.

Tanigaki needs Noda to misread another issue, or have a member of the Cabinet get caught in a compromising position, to evade the axe in September.

Without Noda's or the Cabinet's help, Tanigaki is doomed. He will talk up a storm but he has no wind at his back.

Where It's At At The Asahi

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, It may be just one long "just-so" story...but what a story!

Keio University professor Oguma Eiji offers The Asahi Shimbun's English-language AJW a rollicking, wide-ranging take on what's going on (Hurry up and copy, before link rot sets in).

Yes, Oguma's old university home page was way cooler.

Slackjawed With Amazement at the Kurokawa Report

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, For me to list all the non-sequiturs, self-contradictory passages, half-truths, prevarications ("It is possible that..."), unsupported accusations, self-evident statements presented as revelations (Prime Minister Kan Naoto's visit to the plant "diverted the attention and time of the on-site operational staff." Oh cut the crap: the presence of a wasp in the control room would have had the same effect) and the reticence to assign blame in the final report of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Commission (Kokkai Tokyo Denryoku Fukushima Genshiryokuhatsudenjo jiko chousa iinkai), I would be typing all day, all night -- for weeks.

It is really that bad.

If the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the International Atomic Energy Commission had any sense, they would immediately hire a team of Japan scholars to tear this [unfortunate choice of words removed - Ed.] apart, and form special investigative commissions of their own to compare and contrast all the official reports produced so far.

The download page of the Kurokawa Commission report crashed a little after 9 pm last night (and is still down at the time of the publication of this post), preventing access to the most important versions of the documents. The reports themselves, when one could access them, were presented in impossible to copy-and-paste formats and in a maze of links and pages, indicating how little the powers-that-be have wanted the world and/or the citizens of Japan to take look at the Commission's findings and come to their own conclusions.

That the English language version of the report has the commission president blaming Japanese culture for contributing the disaster, whilst the Japanese language version omits this little chestnut, is simply so revolting an appeal to international stereotypes regarding the people of this blessed land that my morning coffee today tastes like sewer water -- and Amaterasu knows I love my coffee.

Later - This post has been edited to remove non-worksafe language.

Follow Up On Day Care Reform And Why We Should Care

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, I wrote a longish piece a while back on the government's plan to merge the nation's day care center system hoikuen with its kindergarten system yochien. I argued that reform of childcare want not a pressing issue, indeed it was unnecessary. I proposed that the merger was reform for reform's sake, the government feeling pressed to deliver on a change simply to show that it can.

There is now evidence that the major consumers of childcare have a strong antipathy to the government's plans. A Daichi Life Research Institute survey of the mothers with children attending yochien and hoikuen has found that both the mothers of both groups oppose the merger by a two-to-one margin. While the conventional wisdom holds that mothers with children in yochien, the system run by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology, are the most afraid of the merger because of its possible degrading the education experience, while mothers with children in the hoikuen would support the measure from the added education content carried in with the merger, the survey found that no statistically significant differences in between the reportedd support/do not support levels of the two sets of mothers.

Do you support the proposed merger of hoikuen and yochien systems?

Yochien children's mothers

Support 25.9%
Oppose 48.9%

Hoikuen children's mothers

Support 24.1%
Oppose 47.8%

One could question the survey's methodology, which consisted of mailed responses from 247 mothers with children in yochien and 274 with children at hoikuen from 547 childcare facilities. It is impossible to determine until the research institute itself releases its report to what extent the respondents were self-selective and what effect that might have on results.

So why care about this arcane reform? Why not concentrate on the big, hard reforms in military export rules, the post office, the consumption tax?

Let me see...

1) Article 15 of the Constitution.

2) A persistent and pernicious faith of many in the economic and business media-academic circles is that Japan lacks sufficient childcare facilities for the country's women to be full participants in the nation's economy, limiting Japan's potential for growth. The truth is that outside Tokyo and Kanagawa, where most of the nation's news makers and analysts live, the country has sufficient childcare facilities.

If women's talents are not being fully exploited, it can be due to far more difficult to eradicate sexism in entry and promotion into career-track employment. It can be due to continued high rates of wanting to quit to work after marriage (J - Figure 7) -- despite expectations in and encouragement from their future husbands to continue working (J). The peculiarly high rate of wishing to quit work after marriage (I have seen figures showing indeed an increase of this percentage during the 1990s) may be due in part to the discovery that working in a corporate environment sucks, a reality captured in NTT Docomo's brilliant and bewildering new Shinjin no kimi e commercial.

Corporations would really want to know what their women employees wish for and expect.

3) When a government pursue reforms that are not of primary importance and which have only meager public support, the indication is that a congenital failure exists to focus on the important and pressing, with a preference (even when members of the government are aware of its failings) to ticking items off of lists.

The other possibility is the existence of powerful consituencies whose personal interests are being allowed to take precedence over the national interest. It is salient to find out just who is being served by these changes, that one might know the interests to which a party is beholden.

Sky Tree Downs Averted

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In a few minutes' time the Tokyo Sky Tree, the world's tallest free-standing tower, opens for business. I must confess I am royally sick of the whole circus surrounding what is, in grossest fact, just a tower from which to beam out digital broadcast signals, the 1958 vintage Tokyo Tower being too short (333 m) for the job.

I am sick of the pun on the height of the Sky Tree, 634 meters = 6 Mutsu + 3 san + 4 shi = Musashi, the name of the ancient province where much of modern Tokyo is now located (J). I am sick of the product tie-ins. I am sick of the uniforms of the information girls. I am sick of the cost to ride up to the second observation level: 3000 yen, or US$37.85 at current rates. I am sick of everyone's ignoring the reality that compared to the Burj Al-Khalifa, the Tokyo Sky Tree is a pipsqueak.

Leave it up to the cartoonist at the Tokyo Shimbun to find a new, refreshing angle to look at the opening, one that can make even a grump like me smile:

In the first panel, citizens are looking up with safety glasses at the ring eclipse that appeared in the skies above Tokyo on May 21.

In the second, the people are looking up with cameras, binoculars and the naked eye at the Sky Tree, which opens for business today, May 22.

In the third panel, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko remarks to Democratic Party of Japan Secretary-General Koshi'ishi Azuma, "The citizens of Japan have come alive, haven't they?" Koshi'ishi cannot for the life of him understand what has the PM thinking this way.

The hook in this instance is in the title on the left of the panels. It reads:

「２日だけのぅつむかない日々」

Futsuka dake no utsumukanai hibi.

"Just two days when people are not looking at the ground as they normally do."

The hook is the term utsumuku,"to look down," "to keep one's eyes down." The second half of the word, muku, and the images in the first two panels, take the reader on a mental leap to what is probably the best known Japanese song in the English-speaking world, "Sukiyaki" -- the only Japanese-language tune to ever make it into the Top Ten of Billboard's music charts, this in July 1963.

The song, by composer Nakamura Hachidai and lyricist Ei Rosuke, was a huge hit for the singer Sakamoto Kyu in 1961. It begins with what is probably the third best known opening line of any Japanese song, after the national anthem and "Sakura, sakura":

上を向いて、歩こう。。。

Ue o muite, aruko...

"Let me be walking, looking up..."

The song, written after the first burst of Japanese economic growth and on the heels of the "doubling of incomes in 10 years" economic strategy announced by Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato, typifies the hopeful attitude of the times.

In the song, the young man is trying not to cry but ends up doing so because he is all alone. However, he vows to keep looking up -- just as the whole of the country was, hoping for a better tomorrow.

Here is Sakamoto singing and whistling the song in 1983 (You Tube).

Hence Prime Minister Noda's conclusion, after two straight day of people looking up: "Hey, the hope is back!"

Of course, the song has a tragic coda. Sakamoto died in the JAL 123 air disaster of August 12, 1985 -- still the worst single-plane air accident in history. The 747, crammed with passengers heading home for the Obon holidays, lost its the hydraulic steering system a few minutes after takeoff, becoming a veering, swerving uncontrolled mass of terror. After 44 minutes of out-of-control flight, the plane plowed into a mountainside in Gunma Prefecture, killing 520 passengers and crew.

Just Keep On Trying

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In this morning's feel good story, #7 maegashira Kyokutenho, 11 years after he first entered sumo's top division and at the ripe old age of 37 years, eight months, has won his first tournament. He becomes the oldest first-time winner ever.

For a sport still reeling from gambling, drug-use and even wrongful death scandals, having such low-ranked rikishi with a lengthy record of just-barely-above mediocre performances (in what was, until the Kisenosato/Baruto bout, a rancid tournament) is a flash of good fortune.

Bad news for the sumo purists who long for the great days of yore: Kyokutenho, though possessing Japanese citizenship, is still Mongolia-born, extending his countrymen's crushing domination of the sport for the last six years. (E)

This Morning

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,,

Yesterday's rains have washed away every hint of whipped up dirt (the same storm that produced the tornadoes left tiny half-moons of soil on my windows, once the drops had evaporated), pollen and what little industrial pollution (mostly diesel exhaust) as besmirches the air. Mt. Fuji, the snow of its ridges now melted away, seems just a arm's length away.

Sometimes, living in the Tokyo Metropolitan District is really not all that bad.

Mt. Fuji over the rooftops. May 16, 2012, 5:30 a.m.

Photo credit: MTC

Japan As A Normal Nation - Bic and Kojima

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, A profitable competitor in an overcrowded market swallows up an unprofitable rival. The merged company will become #2 in the market, even after closing 40 to 50 underperforming units of the merger target. The founding family of the merger target is told to go stuff it. (E and J)

Which country is this happening in?

The X-Y Axes of Stupid: Children and Childcare

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, There days one wonders, "Oh, why fight it? Why not just sit back and be stupid, like seemingly nearly all those in positions of wealth, power and influence?"

Today is one of those days.

In a Children's Day (May 5) bit of thought-provoking whimsy, researchers at Tohoku University posted a Zero Hour time clock (J). Based upon the rate of decline in the number of children in between April of 2011 and April of 2012 -- the researchers provide the URLs of the relevant government populations statistics pages -- the clocks tick off both the number of children in Japan and the number of days until, if the decline in between April 2011 and April 2012 were extended indefinitely, there would be but a single child left in Japan.

The press release on the workings of the time clock (J) by team leader and Graduate School of Economics and Management Professor Yoshida Hiroshi explains that he copied his idea from the famous U.S. debt clock. He also makes clear that the purpose of the clock is to stimulate discussion of 1) what the current state of the decline in the number of children means, and 2) what are the consequences if declines continue in the future.

That the whole exercise is not an academic but a polemic exercise is apparent from the press release. It is a rush job, with typos. For instance, in the paragraph explaining the goals of the clock, the text should say "apiiru" not "piiru." There is no such word as "piiru."

Of course, the writers and editors news organizations would never, ever take this bit of fun and blow it up into an an actual scientific enterprise. Oh no, they would never do that:

3011 to see last child in Japan: population clock
Jiji, Kyodo

SENDAI — Japan will no longer have children under the age of 15 in 999 years, a group of researchers at Tohoku University Graduate School has estimated.

The team, led by professor Hiroshi Yoshida, developed a child population clock that displays an estimated number of children at any moment based on past percentages of decline. The clock was made available on the university's website Thursday.

The team used a 2011-2012 percentage change in the number of children that was released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on April 1. The number of children aged under 15 fell to 16.6 million in 2012 from 16.9 million in 2011.

The clock calculates the estimated number of children at present and counts down to the last child, based on the assumption that the number of children is expected to continue falling.

Japan's child population drops by one every 100 seconds, according to the clock. As a result, there will be no kids on May 18, 3011...

(Link)

AAAaaaaarggghhhhh!

Of course, this version of the story has gone both viral and mainstream, at least among the publications assuming their readership have sub-bonobo IQ (and if any of readers out there are 100% bonobos, please accept my apologies for associating you with these organizations).

(Search results)

Now this is not to say that the decline of the birthrate has not been one of the social policy areas where the government, both under Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan leadership, has run up against a brick wall. The LDP in the 1990s went on a day care center-building binge that continues to this day -- the green line in Figure 1 of this 2011 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare report.

[By the way, check out the map on page 9 of the report. It shows that of all the children awaiting placement in day care centers, 31% live in the Tokyo Metropolitan District. Add in Kanagawa Prefecture, and percentage rises to 43%. And nine prefectures have zero children on waiting lists.

Can we please now decently bury the "Japan lacks sufficient childcare for working mothers" canard?]

As for the DPJ, it promised, though it in the end has not been able to deliver, direct financial support to all families with children. The child allowance (kodomo teate) was potentially good social policy, as it certainly would have made it possible for lower and middle income couples to have children earlier and in greater numbers. However, the DPJ simultaneously sold the child allowance as an economic stimulus measure, which was dumb, as families, even though receiving only half of the monthly payments promised, still managed to save half the amount dispensed. Of course, financial planners writing in women's magazines advised readers to put all the child allowance into savings.

[If we are to take Shakespeare as our guide (E), the agenda for the DPJ should have been: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the financial planners."]

Tackling the birth dearth has been of tertiary interest for the DPJ leadership -- which has been expending far more of its political capital on solving the budget and pension gaps through raising the level of taxation or goosing economic growth rather than raising the number of taxpayers. Indeed, the "measures for for the declining birthrate" portfolio has become the hot potato of cabinet jobs. A humiliating nine different ministers have held the portfolio since a DPJ-led coalition took power in September 2009 (J) -- a rate of turnover neared only by the hard right dream portfolio of Minister for the DPRK Abductees Issue (six different ministers since the takeover).

Despite failure of the government to find a game plan for reversing the decline in the birthrate, the Japanese people -- whatever that means in genotype terms -- is not going extinct. The Japanese language might go extinct* -- look at at the state of Manchu one century after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. However, writing about the Japanese people going extinct based on the extrapolation of the rate of decline between April 2011 and April 2012 -- not a particular cheerful and hope-filled year, if one may say so -- that deserves a spanking.

-------------------------------
* Mori Arinori (E) thought it a potentially worthwhile goal -- just one of the brainstorms that got folks angry enough to kill him on the morning of Constitution Day in 1889.

Because I'm Bad

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, There is all kinds of bad writing about this blessed land.

There is put up a straw man and knock it down bad, mated with the ethically questionable reworking of what should have been an interview into an op-ed bad. (Link)

There is I-am-a-world-renowned-social-scientist-who-has-previously-written-about-Japan-from-a-scientific-angle-but-for-this-article-I-just-do-not-have-the-time-to-do-the-research bad. (Link)

The article's redeeming feature? Brutal honesty about its own shortcomings:

"In the absence of rigorous sociological polling, I’ll summarize interviews that Japanese friends have conducted for me."

Wow! Call such a methodology what you will...but duplicitous it ain't.

And then there is fishing for grants and fellowships bad, piggybacked on promoting a new book with a new paradigm bad. (Link)

As for the above, the first thing for the authors to do is research what a weathervane does. They might find that a weathervane follows the wind; it does not point out the direction in which the wind will be blowing.

Having learned about weathervanes, they perhaps can get their historical progressions going in their proper directions.

As for their prognostications about this blessed land's steps to joining a New West, mixing the culinary with the architectural is poor form. A tossed salad should be presented as a tossed salad: it is not the outlines and suggestions of a building.

Can Someone Else Write This Post, Please?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, There is a blog post that probably should be written about a micro-abomination committed by the Asia Society against the reputation of this blessed land.

You have to start with this bit of text on the Asia Society's blog (Link) by Shreeya Sinha. Her bio is displayed to the right of the text.

The text tries to justify the Asia Society awarding a grant to videographer Okahara Kosuke, who has produced a documentary following the lives of six women who cut themselves. The text claims that self-injury is a major social problem among women in Japan, which unfortunately for Ms. Sinha, is untrue.  We know this is so because an article in the journal Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences finds:

The present study clarified that 9.9% of junior and senior high-school students (male, 7.5%; female, 12.1%) reported a lifetime experience of deliberate self-injury at least once. These findings confirm our previous studies using a small sample, which reported that the prevalence of self-injury in male and female junior high-school students was 8.0% and 9.3%5 and that 14.3% of female senior high-school students reported self-cutting at least once. The present results also appear to be approximately consistent to the prevalence of self-injury in other countries: 11.2% of female high-school students in the UK, 12%of female university students in the USA, 13.9% of Canadian adolescents, although only Turkish high-school students had a higher prevalence of self-injury (21.4%).

A hat tip has to be given to Mark McDonald, a writer from The New York Times Rendezvous blogs, whose post on the Asia Society's display of Okahara's work links to the journal Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences article, even though the findings therein undermine the assertion that Japanese young women engage in self-injury at rates that are somehow aberrant.

Getting back to the text by Ms. Sinha, she makes a real go of proving the unprovable by offering a citation (Link).  Unfortunately for Ms. Sinha (I repeat myself) the citation is a secondhand report from a self-published sex memoir of a Jamaican-American former English teacher entitled -- and here would be an excellent place to toss in an "and I am not making this up" -- Black Passenger Yellow Cabs: Of Exile and Excess in Japan. That the citation misspells the name of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and offers no clue as to where one can find the study cited is hardly noticeable in a paragraph where the first sentence has the former teacher claiming to have had sexual relations with 40 women in his first three years in Japan and 20 more after his retirement from playing the field (his italics, not yours or mine).

Having navigated through this jaw-dropping passage, you might want to work in the Abe Shinzo quote the Society is so proud to display on its website:

"The Asia Society has been playing an important role in deepening ties and understanding among the peoples of Asia-Pacific and the United States. I truly expect the Asia Society will enhance this role for furthering the region's stability and prosperity."

Those with some stamina might want to double back to work on the second half of the McDonald Rendezvous post, where he visits with the hikikomori phenomenon, this in order to rekindle the debate on whether or not the hikikomori exist as a statistical or clinical entity.

So, whoever you are, please write this post -- because, frankly typing, I just cannot bring myself to do it.

The Real Emperor Makes Real News

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, On Monday night I had the pleasure of attending the Machimura Faction's political fundraising party, my impressions of which I hope to write up in a little piece entitled "Dances With Dinosaurs."

The highlights of the evening's festivities were the self-introductions of the faction's wannabees: the as-yet unelected Liberal Democratic Party candidates the faction would be supporting in the next House of Representatives election.

The Machimura Faction is the most patriotic of the LDP's factions. Its members make no excuses for holding on to some now rather curious, or should one say incurious, views of how life was in this blessed land before 1945. One of the candidates, a tall exhibitionist fellow, made an ostentatious show of turning his back to the audience to bow deeply to the Hinomaru flag, then marching to the front of the stage and shouting out his name and constituency, along with an incomprehensible bit of nationalist gibberish (there is a penalty that comes from shouting into a microphone and it is paid in a loss of the audience's ability to comprehend what one is saying).

One of the candidates introduced hopes to take Tokyo's District 24 from Democratic Party of Japan member Akutsu Yukuhiko, a former political secretary of Ishihara Shintaro and ardent defender of Article 9 of the Constitution (politics really does make for some strange bedfellows). The prospective candidate started out with a "Hello, my name is ____ and I am running for the district of the city of Hachioji" -- and then proceeded with the oddest and yet so-very Machimura Factionish of introductions of Hachioji I had ever heard -- "the district graced with the presence with the tombs of the emperors."

Now this is a true if not generally well-known fact about Hachioji. It does host the Eastern Imperial tombs, which are off-limits to the general public and can be seen only from the air. What is more they are tombs, that is to say the Taisho and Showa emperors and their spouses are buried there, each under a gigantic rounded mound. Indeed, emperors, empresses and Muslims are the only persons who are buried instead of cremated.

Yesterday the Imperial Household Agency made an announcement that will set the Machimura faction's District 24 candidate and every other rightists' head spinning: the ever-surprising and refreshing Heisei Emperor and the Empress have asked to be cremated. Furthermore, rather than an elaborate and hideously expensive separate tomb mound for each of them, they wish a simple shared gravesite.

It has been 350 years since an emperor or empress has been cremated. Emperors and their empresses have also been entombed separately since that time. (J)

The announcement will likely further enhance the reputations of the present emperor and the imperial family. Both are riding high in public opinion in their selfless devotion to the comforting of the people of the Tohoku in the aftermath of 3/11. The imperial couple's request to have the same sort of funeral the law requires of everyone else (again, with the exception of Muslims) and be together forever will likely result in a renewed outburst of public praise and admiration for the trendsetting couple.

The announcement will also drive a further wedge in between the members of the Imperial House and the rightists who claim to be the imperial family's supporters and protectors. The rightists are already up in arms over the proposal to have imperial princesses retain their nobility after marriage. This latest announcement will give the rightists fits.

Of course, the Heisei emperor has always had a penchant for thumbing his nose at the hyper-patriots and their historical blindness. His 2001 acknowledgement of his debts to his Korean ancestors, even in the minimalist way he did it, drove the preposterous celebrators of the pure imperial line nuts. His classic dry put-down of the Tokyo Metropolitan District official who boasted that all the employees of the TMD now sang the national anthem -- "Yes, and wouldn't it have been nice if they had not been coerced to do so?" -- left that official and the right speechless.

The current emperor and empress are opening up space for the succession of the crown prince, a subject that has gained increased urgency with the emperor's recent bypass surgery. If there is a rift between the current imperial couple and the rightists, there will be a chasm between the two when Naruhito and Masako mount the throne.

What is reassuring is that Prince Akishino is on board for all these changes. He has for the longest time been the wild card in the imperial house, willing to rebuke his older brother for departures from decorum and tradition. Now he sings the liberalization tune, being the one to bring up the possibility of the emperor being able to retire, a reform with ample historical precedent which right wingers for some reason detest. Perhaps being the father of the future emperor has something to do with Akishino's being a little more magnanimous and relaxed.

Professor Ruoff, would you have anything you would like to add?



Later - Yoree Koh of WSJ JapanRealTime has checked with some further information on the imperial request. (E).

The government has asked for a year to study the imperial couple's request to be cremated (J). It is hard to ascribe a noble purpose to not immediately granting the imperial couple's wish, save possibly putting to rest speculation that the emperor is at death's door.