The White Peril 白禍

This is kind of old news by now for those who have followed the abductee issue, but President Bush met with the families of several abductees and a few North Korean defectors last week:

"It is hard to believe that a country would foster abduction. It's hard for Americans to imagine that a leader of any country would encourage the abduction of a young child," Bush said about the North Korean regime and its leader, Kim Jong Il.

Wearing a blue badge on his suit lapel to express solidarity with the families, Bush called on Pyongyang to return abductees, saying, "If North Korea expects to be respected in the world, that country must respect human rights and human dignity and must allow this mother to hug her child again."

In her press conference later Friday, Sakie Yokota expressed her hope that the U.S. president's first meeting with an abductee's family would encourage other world leaders to unite in pressuring North Korea to resolve the issue.

"I thanked the president for sharing time with us in his busy schedule. He said he was never too busy to find time to talk about human dignity and freedom. I really wish leaders of all countries would share that thought," Yokota said.

Of course, "solidarity" is a rather vague term. To judge by precedent, the abductee issue will be readily backburnered at future meetings with the DPRK once negotiations over nuclear development start getting sticky. That's not to cast aspersions on Bush's sincerity or sympathy; it's just to say that if the Yokotas and others expect a change in diplomatic approach, I'm not so sure they'll get one.

Just in case you need your memory jogged about what a vile hellhole North Korea is, Human Rights Watch gives the genteel version here. Note that while I focus on the thirteen Japanese abductees here, the number of South Korean abductees numbers in the thousands:

According to South Korea's Unification Ministry, a total of 3,790 South Koreans were kidnapped and taken to North Korea between 1953 and 1995, of whom 486 remain detained. Some of the abductees have been used in propaganda broadcasts to South Korea, while others have been used to train North Korean spies. North Korea has rejected repeated requests from families of the South Korean abductees to confirm their existence, to return them, or, in the cases of the dead, to return their remains.

It's not clear that having the US play policeman--a role for which it's usually criticized--will have much effect on the issue. At the same time Washington can hardly prove to be more impotent than, say, the UN:

The North Korea Human Rights Act, which the U.S. adopted in 2004, opens up the possibility for North Korean refugees to be admitted for resettlement in the United States. Thus far, however, little action has been taken, and it is unclear how many refugees could benefit or when. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution for the third straight year calling on North Korea to respect basic human rights. In November 2005, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution against North Korea, citing "systemic, widespread and grave violations of human rights."

North Korea has largely shunned talks with U.N. human rights experts, except for a few meetings on children’s and women’s rights. It has not responded to repeated requests by Vitit Muntarbhorn, special rapporteur on North Korea, to engage in dialogue.

Dialogue only works as a problem-solving tool among people who can trust one another to be working from similar principles.

No, guys, I haven't forgotten about you. Remember in March when I said that it was the end of the Japanese financial year and that things should start to get a little less hectic in April?

Right.

In truth, the busy-ness was only part of it. The ugliness of the debates over, say, immigration and the rape allegations at Duke has not exactly provided an incentive to get right in there and contribute. At least, it hasn't provided any incentive to me. So despite the DPJ's much-discussed win last week and the death of urban planning critic Jane Jacobs and other newsworthy stuff, I didn't feel much like posting. I don't think I even remembered to mention that I'd been blogging for exactly two years as of mid-April. (Did I?) Anyway, thanks to those who have kept checking back despite the silence.

The Nikkei lead editorial spot was devoted to a single piece today--no surprise, considering the topic:

On 1 May, the "Corporate Law," with its nearly 1000 articles, goes into effect. It is the new fundamental law that has been set up to bundle Section 2 of the Commercial Law with the Limited Company Law, among others, which up to now stipulated how enterprises may be constituted.

A variety of options have been established to permit companies from start-ups to corporate giants to be created and operated in accordance with their respective statures. That means the large-scale deregulation of entrepreneurial activity. Enterprises will have to take decisive responsibility for themselves and set strategies with a new level of clarity.

A few notes here: Japanese has a good handful of words that can be translated "corporation," depending not only on the kind of organization but also on which aspect of corporation-ness is being emphasized. The most literal equivalent to the Latinate sense of embodiedness in our English terms is 法人 (houjin: "law" + "person"). The strictest equivalent of limited, both in terms of meaning and in terms of use in company names, is 有限会社 (yuugen-gaisha: "limited company"), which is the word used in the name of the law referred to above.

In the era of numerous legal restrictions, they were like so-called "rails" that had been laid down. From here on, [enterprises] will have to decide for themselves which directions to travel. Without being kept in line by government supervision, they will get direct feedback on their business acumen in the results of applying it. Toshitaka Hagiwara, chair of the Nippon Keidanren's Joint Committee on Economic Regulation and chairman of the board of Komatsu, sees the new law this way: "We won't be able to exploit our increased number of options if we don't adopt solid policies based on what will truly profit those with a stake in our organizations, starting with our shareholders."

Making money for shareholders was, of course, approximately priority number 953 in the Japan Inc. era. Expansion was the goal, and with the book value of assets (especially property) increasing so rapidly during the Bubble, it was easy to justify.

Yes, I know that the Bubble burst a decade and a half ago. Unfortunately, the Japan Inc. mindset and ways of doing things still have a hold on too many organizations. Outside a handful of world-famous giants, most companies have only a hazy idea of what competing in global markets would actually require of them. That means that whether the nationwide corporate culture in Japan is really ready to make the most of the its new options is an open question. The new law abolishes minimum capitalizations on public companies and LLCs. It allows terms of up to ten years for directors and allows for the requirement that board members be shareholders. It also eases the dissolution of holding companies and the spinning off of subsidiaries.

It doesn't address other factors, such as the financial sector's continuing poor lending judgment. (Risk assessment and risk management are still underdeveloped here in just about every field. So, for that matter, is the financial sector itself.) And a quite extraordinary number of people--even around my age--still look on their companies as social entities to which they owe loyalty, rather than enterprises to which they contribute productivity. That's not to say they don't work hard. But most people, including those who go on to become CEOs, still don't seem to think in terms of developing their own talents their own way and looking for the organizations (and niches within organizations) where they best fit. The relaxing of regulations on corporate structure is itself a sign of a cultural shift, naturally, but how much of one remains to be seen.

The Amagasaki train derailment was exactly one year ago today.

The representative of the families, Naho Asano (33), whose mother and aunt both died in the accident, was in tears as she appealed to JR West: "There's nothing more important than people's lives. I want it etched in the consciousness of JR West that it's people's lives that it's conveying.

A recent survey suggests a better etching tool is needed.

Chrissie Hynde's one of those people like Madonna for me--I've been a swoony fan for over two decades, but never, ever would I want to meet her. What a bitch. But then, she's a rock star, so she's supposed to be a bitch and make maddening pronouncements about political issues she doesn't understand and blow a lot of money on living high.

Anyway, there's an interview with her in Billboard on-line that, in two passages, tickled my funny bone big-time. The profanities come thick and fast, naturally, so even though they're bleeped in the original anyway, I'll put the citations below the jump.

Japan Defense Agency chief Fukushiro Nukaga says Japan and the US Department of Defense have come to an agreement on the military restructuring issue:

Japanese Defense Minister Fukushiro Nukaga told reporters after his three-hour meeting Sunday with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that Japan wanted to have an appropriate sharing of costs in transferring 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to the Pacific island of Guam.

Japan has offered to pay $2.8 billion. It would also finance loans to the United States worth $3.3 billion, the remainder of its $6.1 billion share. Japan would shoulder 59 percent of the realignment cost.

"We have come to an understanding that we both feel is in the best interests of our two countries," Rumsfeld said after the meetings.

...

Japan and the United States are close allies. On Friday, Japan's Cabinet approved a six-month extension of its non-combat support for the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan, officials said.

Of course, there are still some hurdles to be cleared, but they're mostly internal, related to NIMBY and environmental issues raised over proposed new sites for some military facilities to be relocated within Japan. None of the reports I've seen indicates that Nukaga gave word of any changes on those.

The Nikkei, BTW, says that Ambassador Thomas Schieffer was present for part of the negotiations in Washington. No statement from him that I've seen, though, which is as per usual. His presence hasn't really seemed to register much, at least compared to Howard Baker's. Interestingly--and I can't believe I didn't notice this before--the restructuring of US military presence is not listed as one of the "Issues in Focus" on the US Embassy homepage.

And just to drive home that one-big-happy-family feeling....

Courting the likelihood of another outburst from overseas, 96 members of a suprapartisan lawmakers' group visited war-related Yasukuni Shrine on Friday, the first day of an annual three-day spring rite.

The politicians belong to a group called Minnade Yasukunijinja ni Sanpaisuru Kokkaigiin no Kai, which literally means, "A group of Diet members who visit Yasukuni Shrine together."

The 96 lawmakers who visited Friday included former Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Makoto Koga, who currently serves as the head of Nippon Izokukai, an association for bereaved family members of the nation's war dead.

Well, all right, then. (BTW, that name really is a mouthful--皆で靖国神社に参拝する国会議員の会. They must have some eyecatching letterhead.)

Now, I know I have a few readers who cook, and all I can say is, My dears, you are NOT adequately taking care of America while I'm gone.

On Japanese cable, they tend to air US shows with almost no commercials; that means that a show that's an hour long at home has fifteen minutes of dead space at the end, and on some channels, they fill up the time with kitchen gadget commercials.

So it is that I've just spent several minutes laughing my ass off at a commercial for something called the Pasta Express. I couldn't believe it wasn't a parody. Are people seriously that easily gulled? You pour boiling water into a plastic tube full of pasta and let it sit for fifteen minutes? We're making wallpaper paste, I assume? The commercial is beyond ridiculous, purporting to save the hapless householder from such difficulties as aiming the pot so that the pasta lands in the collander and...uh, I'm not sure what else the point is. You can't possibly be shortening the cooking time by not having a heat source keeping the water boiling. And even the commercial makes the pasta look clumpy when it comes out of the tube.

But you can apparently use the thing to make hotdogs or boiled vegetables and other things that are difficult to make with an ordinary stockpot and stovetop, too. Yet another advance in modern life.

If Japan pays attention to US-China relations, China also knows to pay attention to Japan-Korea relations. This is from the Nikkei:

Chinese newspapers such as The China Daily and The Beijing Times reported on 23 April that China's state-run Xinhua News Agency has evaluated the agreement between Japan and South Korea revolving around maritime exploration in the area around Takeshima (Korean: Tokuto) as "a result that is to Japan's advantage."

Xinhua's commentary about this round of discussions indicated that, while it appeared that both sides had made concessions, Japan had "snatched up all the rights to take the lead." It explained that Japan had squeezed Korea by suddenly announcing that it was going to begin maritime exploration and putting its surveying ships on standby, which backed the ROK into a corner.

East Asian governments never seem to tire of accusing each other of being sly and underhanded. What's hilarious in this case, of course, is that the PRC itself has just caused more friction with Japan by putting a blockade around one of the disputed natural gas fields in the East China Sea. (To close the information Moebius Strip, let's cite a Korean news source on that one.) Maybe that's okay because it wasn't sudden?

Anyway, I've been very slack about posting about Japan news lately, so I don't think I mentioned that Tokyo had, indeed, announced that it was going to start seabed exploration around Takeshima. The dispute that, of course, arose with the ROK was resolved last week:

Japan and South Korea reached an agreement Saturday that says if Tokyo cancels a planned maritime survey near the Takeshima islets, Seoul will not propose naming seafloor topography around the disputed islets at an international conference in June.

Administrative Vice Foreign Minister Shotaro Yachi and Yu Myung Hwan, South Korean first vice minister for foreign affairs and trade, reached the agreement to settle the row over the islets in Seoul after their two-day meeting that started Friday.

Japan will not conduct, at least for the time being, the planned survey strongly opposed by South Korea. In exchange, Seoul gave up a plan to give Korean-language names to the seafloor topography.

So we can look forward to yet more mutual recriminations in the future.

Here's how the East China Sea (not to be confused with the East Sea, which is what Koreans call the Sea of J***n) situation stood a week ago:

China has banned ship traffic around a disputed gas field in the East China Sea that is claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo as Chinese workers lay pipelines and cables to tap its resources, Japanese media reported Sunday.

The move is certain to spur protests from the Japanese government, which has been deadlocked in negotiations with China over rights to the undersea energy deposits. The Pinghu gas field lies in an area that straddles a median line that Japan considers the border between the two countries' territorial claims.

China, however, makes a wider territorial claim that envelopes the entire field.

Chinese maritime authorities have posted a notice that all unauthorized ship traffic will be banned in the waters around the Pinghu field from March 1 to Sept. 30, Kyodo News agency and Fuji Television Network reported.

...

Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which both Japan and China have signed, coastal countries can claim an economic zone extending 370 kilometers from their shores. The disputed reserves lie within both countries' claims, and the United Nations has until May 2009 to rule on the matter.

Bear in mind that no one really knows whether there's a bountiful supply of natural gas under there--the major issue is that the country whose exploration and development are more advanced stands a better chance of winning when the UN rules, so it's in the best interests of each disputant to find out as soon as possible.

I hadn't gone to Omotesando Hills, the latest gargantuan Mori Building project, until this past weekend. Atsushi likes architecture and always has a memorably arch comment about something or other whenever we visit a new place together, so I wanted the first time I saw the place to be with him.

I like Roppongi Hills much more than I'd expected to when it opened. It's kind of confusing at first, and the architecture is on the anonymous upscale-mall side, but that's part of what makes it adaptable to all its uses. I have a friend or two in the apartments, and they (the apartments, not my friends) are utterly underwhelming in terms of aesthetics or amenities, apart from the views. But the address has major big-time cachet, and it's certainly a location that's easy to get around from.

I haven't seen the apartments at Omotesando Hills, and the site is smaller and wedged in very tightly among existing buildings, so I don't think it was conceived of as its own little village as Roppongi Hills was. The main building, which has most of the stores and restaurants, is the kind of structure that architecture critics have spasms of ecstasy over, presumably because they'll never have to shop there. (And the building was designed by Tadao Ando, so the accolades were probably phoned in even before the groundbreaking ceremony.) The place is claustrophobic and dark; when we got to the top level, I half-expected the ceiling to be dripping with limey water and have sleeping bats hanging from it. And they had this atonal electro-xylophone music playing, loudly, on the PA system--really distracting.

Otherwise, Tokyo's been doing a lot to remind me why I love living here lately. The weather over the last week has been completely schizo; there was a wonderful, chilly rainstorm--just coming down in sheets--on Tuesday night. The neon and drably colored midnight buildings always look better with a slick of rainwater, and the mist made the cranes and other construction equipment for the new Meiji Avenue subway line look like dinosaurs. The next day was blindingly clear, but sunny in that spring way, and not in the pummel-you-to-the-sidewalk way it will be four months from now. Since then we've had one or two cold nights--I'm betting there are going to be a lot of people getting sick right about now because it's impossible to know whether you're dressing properly for the weather right now--but for the most part it's very comfortable.

Atsushi will be home for Golden Week (the first week of May), and we'll have to celebrate his birthday then even though it's a few days early. He already knows he's getting an iPod. He seemed kind of lukewarm about having one...until I showed him my photo library. That did it. Atsushi--I've mentioned this, right?--takes pictures of anything and everything when we go on vacation. It's a cute quirk, but it means a WHOLE LOT of image files. I think he's pretty excited at the prospect of having them all live somewhere portable.

Of course, I didn't tell him about the iPod-related annoyances he'll also be contending with. Seriously, guys at Apple, no seamless play between tracks on albums? Here is what you need to do: Go up to San Francisco. Find yourself a disco queen with an iPod. Ask him how much he likes having gaps between the tracks on, say, Bad Girls.

Then duck.

Whenever there's an update, I hope against hope it'll include seamless play. But unless I've missed something, no such luck. And trying to cheat by using the fade-out-fade-in function does NOT help. Sigh.

And then there are the remote controls. The suckitude quotient on both of those I've owned has been oddly high for a company that's made its reputation on user-friendliness. The one I used with my old Mini was kind of cool-looking--until you actually pressed any of the buttons, after which the mirror finish was totally smudged and gross. (And that's my experience as a clean-freak homosexual, mind you. I shudder to think what happened in the hands of the average teenager.) The buttons were also jammed in close together, so it was very easy to misfire and end up jumping forward a track when you were just trying to turn the volume up. The radio remote I have now doesn't have that problem, but the alligator clip is hinged on the left, which means that when you fasten it to a bag strap, the control pad is angled away from you if you're right-handed. Kind of awkward. Also, the clip has no gripping power at all. It's so weak I've been thinking about giving it vitamin E supplements. In Tokyo, people are always brushing up against you to get off the train or cut in front of you to a department store entrance or what have you, and the damned thing is constantly sliding off.

Hmm. Anything else to complain about while I have the floor? I guess not really. The bank holiday means that Atsushi will be coming home for the better (in both senses of the word) part of a week. And later in May, a bunch of us will be getting together in New York for a college buddy's wedding, including some very close friends I haven't seen in a few years. (Tomorrow would probably be a good time to start looking for a present, actually.) Hope everyone else is enjoying the weekend.

You can bet that when the US and the PRC have a high-level meeting, we hear all about it here in Japan. The top story in the Nikkei's evening edition was "Failure to connect on concrete issues at US-China Meeting." The information about the meeting itself was basically the same as what we're seeing in the English-language media:

Hu sat down with President Bush on Thursday for what both sides described as constructive talks despite a lack of movement in differences over the Chinese currency or on how to resolve nuclear disputes with Iran and North Korea.

In a dinner speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, Hu acknowledged "differences and even frictions" in U.S.-China relations. But the Chinese leader said he and Bush agreed to take steps to move forward to a more constructive and cooperative relationship.

"I certainly look forward to a future China-U.S. relationship that is more stable, more mature and developed on a sounder track," Hu said in a question-and-answer session after his speech.

Prime Minister Koizumi's take has been posted as a quickie:

Prime Minister Koizumi spoke to the press corps around noon on 21 April about the US-China summit, at which no material progress was made on issues such as DPRK nuclear development and yuan revaluation [the original says "revolution"--SRK]: "Nations have their respective ways of thinking. They will not necessarily agree on everything." Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe spoke to a press conference about the valuation of the yuan. "What's desirable is the kind of flexibility that reflects the fundamentals of the Chinese economy," he indicated.

Ooh, speaking of reflecting economic realities, the potential problems with Japan Post privatization are getting more play as the holding company's operations are gathering steam for real. The FTC is not pleased. Japan Post's advantages over entrants into its markets have been discussed in more detail before, but the Asahi's summary homes in on some of the major problems with mail delivery specifically:

The Fair Trade Commission took shots at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's vaunted postal privatization project, saying the plan in its current form will give the behemoth Japan Post an unfair advantage over private-sector rivals.

In a report released Friday, the anti-monopoly watchdog pointed out a number of items that needed a review, from Japan Post's vast delivery network to parking spaces.

...

But a number of companies that have entered the business are limited to deliveries during certain time frames and at certain fees. That is because companies intending to start regular mail delivery services are required to set up a huge number of postal boxes and ensure uniform services in all corners of the country.

But many companies cannot afford to do so.

The FTC's report said Japan Post will have a huge advantage over private companies if it retains its monopoly over ordinary mail delivery services and enters other fields, such as international deliveries of parcels and other items, as planned.

Under the watered-down postal privatization bills passed last year, Japan Post can operate postal and financial services under a government-funded holding company. The government is to gradually decrease the level of its funding.

The FTC's report said current regulations, such as companies ensuring uniform services all over Japan, must be abolished to allow newcomers to start regular mail deliveries.

The report also said parcel delivery companies and international distributors should be allowed to use, for a fee, Japan Post's postal delivery network, which covers all parts of the country, after privatization.

Meryl Yourish (via Instapundit) has another post up about suicide bombings--as in, how they work. Even if you've already read up on the topic, she's got some good, if disturbing, reminders of what it means when the news reports "critical injuries" in a suicide bombing in Israel. The comments thread also provides some extremely dark amusement: You will be relieved to hear that while Palestinian terrorists embed nails, nuts, and ball bearings in their bombs to maximize casualties, sometimes use plastic pieces instead because they can't be detected by X-rays at the hospital, and source their projectiles from "metal shops" that pretend to be dedicated to serving legitimate civilian markets, there is no conclusive evidence that they are soaking bomb components in rat poison to increase hemorrhaging.

Whew.

Nice to have your faith in humanity restored, huh?

I got a similar feeling, as always, from reading through some of the reactions to Monday's attack on behalf of the Palestinians:

We have never allowed ourselves to justify any operation that targets civilians, any civilians. But every time Palestinians or Israelis face mass murder as a result of systematic Israeli terrorism, and Palestinians react with anger, despair and humiliation, we hold the Israeli leadership responsible, because it insists on occupying the Palestinian people's lands and on attacking them every day, killing their children, bringing resident's houses down on their heads, destroying trees and fields right in front of the eyes of the miserable farmers, closing crossings, destroying the economy and killing the hopes of the Palestinians, big or small.

I realize it's easy to talk this way as an American, but still...don't these people ever get just the tiniest bit embarrassed at the way their leaders and defenders are always playing the pity card? After decades being swaddled in foreign aid and dandled on the UN's knee, is it unrealistic to expect the Palestinians to be resourceful enough to find some market niche to exploit and build some infrastructure? Even if they only wanted to expand their economy so they could lay up a stock of real weapons for a showdown with Israel, at least they wouldn't have to use every second of global media airtime they get to talk about how pathetic they are.

Japan will freeze some of its aid to the Palestinians as a reaction to the Hamas victory in the elections:

The government, in a move that aligns it with the US and the EU, which have announced cessations in aid, aims to force a reversal of Hamas's policy of armed struggle [with Israel].

The aid cessation will be limited to that which would have gone to new projects to build social capital and infrastructure; the plan is to continue to respond to requests from the Palestinians for humanitarian aid, such as food.

The article mentions Ministry of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso, who usually has something fabulously undiplomatic to say about this kind of thing. No such luck this time, unfortunately.

On a related matter (and for those who've managed not to see it linked yet), Jonathan Rauch's latest National Journal column is reproduced in Reason On-line. It's about what the T in WOT should be understood to mean. His recommendation, which synthesizes approaches in a few new scholarly works:

Jihadism is not a tactic, like terrorism, or a temperament, like radicalism or extremism. It is not a political pathology like Stalinism, a mental pathology like paranoia, or a social pathology like poverty. Rather, it is a religious ideology, and the religion it is associated with is Islam.

...

No single definition prevails, but here is a good one: Jihadism engages in or supports the use of force to expand the rule of Islamic law. In other words, it is violent Islamic imperialism. It stands, as one scholar put it 90 years ago, for "the extension by force of arms of the authority of the Muslim state."

Viewing Jihadism as the enemy could make it easier to confront its religious element squarely without seeming to implicate all of Islam. I'm not sure using the word would work quite as Rauch seems to think--even the much-talked-about moderate Muslims could be somewhat miffed by outsiders who try to tell them what one of the central concepts of their faith should mean. But the term certainly gives more focus to our own side of the struggle than "terror."

It pays to diversify, apparently. Indications are now that Hidetsugu Aneha not only falsified earthquake resistance data for buildings but also fraudulently lent his name and credentials to an unqualified designer...who used them to falsify earthquake resistance data on buildings he designed:

Investigators believe the designer, who did not have an architect's license, asked Aneha to lend his name and used Aneha's seal to stamp construction documents he submitted to the municipal government.

In return for lending his name, Aneha allegedly received about 20 percent of the design fees paid by the real estate company--about 10 million yen--from the designer, the sources said.

Using Aneha's name, the designer drew blueprints for nine buildings, including condos, and five wooden houses. Seismic data for six of them were fabricated, the sources said.

Aneha wasn't the only party to branch out into more than one form of fraud, says the Asahi:

Police on Monday questioned executives of Kimura Construction Co. on suspicion the company, embroiled in the scandal over fake quake-resistance reports, had falsified financial statements for several years.

...

Under the construction industry law, companies that undertake public works projects are required to submit documents that objectively show their business conditions, performances and other factors to the central and prefectural governments.

Those companies are then ranked based on assessments of their financial conditions and other factors. The scale of public works projects those companies can bid on depends on their rankings.

And let's not leave out Huser, the other entity that's seen the greatest gains in infamy since the scandal broke:

According to police and other sources, Ojima had a meeting Oct. 27 last year with Aneha and the president of the private inspection company, eHomes Ltd., at Huser's main office in Tokyo's Marunouchi district.

...

The eHomes president said he could not "issue building inspection certificates for four buildings that had yet to be completed."

But, according to sources, Ojima argued, "I think we can somehow manage the situation by applying anti-quake reinforcing and vibration-control methods."

...

The day after the meeting, Huser accepted payments from residents who bought units in the Grand Stage Fujisawa and started procedures for them to move in.

"When I heard from former architect Aneha that he had 'reduced' figures, I knew he meant he reduced (the buildings') resistance against seismic forces," Ojima told The Asahi Shimbun. "But I never knew that he had reduced those figures by 70 to 80 percent."

The Grand Stage Fujisawa has only 15 percent of the quake-resistance strength required under the Building Standards Law, meaning that it could crumble in a moderately strong earthquake.

The Aneha scandal isn't the only somewhat-encouraging sign of a new interest in accountability. This Mainichi English report says that Mitsubishi Motors, defective vehicles from which have been implicated in a parade of fatal accidents over the last dozen or so years, has been ordered to pay damages to the mother of a woman who was killed by a wheel that came off a moving truck in 2002. It also, unusually even for English articles in the Japanese press, contains background helpful for those who don't live here:

"Mitsubishi Motors can afford to pay 5.5 million yen [US $50 thousand-ish--SRK] without feeling an ounce of pain," Aoki said in a telephone interview. "The legal system must work to provide preventive measures."

Aoki said Japan's system for keeping companies in check was so outdated victims of such accidents are usually awarded even less than the damages in Tuesday's ruling.

Mitsubishi Motors said it will abide by the ruling and apologized to Okamoto's family.

"We will do our utmost as a company to regain trust, strengthen compliance measures and vow to prevent any recurrence," the company said in a statement.

The ideas of consumer rights and corporate responsibility are still new in Japan, a conformist, harmony-loving society in which conflicts are avoided and often settled behind the scenes.

Japan's first product liability law was passed only in 1994, and damage suits are relatively rare. Companies are rarely required to pay more than a token amount. Even when convicted of criminal wrongdoing, executives of companies are generally handed lenient sentences with no prison terms.

Does it get more obscene than covering up defects in vehicles and houses used by trusting people? Well, how about if your racket is to screw them out of their life savings?

Excessive lending has pushed an increasing number of borrowers to bankruptcy or forced them to give up their home or other assets to repay their debts.

The FSA concluded administrative punishments should be imposed against such lending practices after many vicious cases surfaced at Aiful Corp.

The FSA on Friday ordered the major consumer loan company to suspend operations at all 1,900 of its outlets for three to 25 days as punishment for overly aggressive debt-collection tactics and other problems.

The lack of lender liability protection has been an ongoing problem in Japan; given the increase in the percent of aging people who need financial services but don't really understand how they work, the FSA's sense of mission is not a moment too soon.

Atsushi was coming home this weekend, so Friday I'd planned to turn in early. But a dear friend had suddenly decided to pack up and go back to his home country, so it would be one of my last chances to see him, and work had been pretty intense over the last week; so I ended up out for a little while. It turned out to be a wise decision. For the first time in a few weeks, I spent an entire night out with the boys when it was just fun--no tear-wiping or advice-giving. You know how things seem to go in cycles wherein the lives of all the people you know get way complicated all at once? It's not that you can blame anyone (except the fickle, duplicitous guys who tend to be involved in many cases); it's just what happens. Friday night I was able to ramp down from big brother mode a little and just have a matey good time, and it made it much easier not to attack Atsushi with a litany of frustrations the moment he came in the door.

IKEA is opening a store in the Tokyo area--Funabashi, the first city I stayed in when I arrived in Japan nearly ten years ago, actually. Anyway, for publicity, the company has an exhibit of model rooms in installation boxes along one of the boulevards in Aoyama. Atsushi is a total furniture queen. Not a decorating queen, mind you, just furniture itself. He likes to buy it and then kind of plunk it in the apartment where it seems to make sense and forget about it. I'm one of those people who have to try a new piece in every conceivable position before I leave it sit.

Additionally, furniture was one of our major flirtation props when we were first getting together. He'd just bought the apartment and was moving out of a furnished company dorm room, so there was a lot to buy and arrange. It was the most natural thing in the world for me to throw lines like "Call me if you need help with anything; I only live a few stops away, and, you know, American guys are good at DIY stuff." As a literal offer, it was complete malarkey. I'm really not bad with stuff around the house--though living in modular-plastic-box Japan for ten years has made me forget a lot--but he was moving into a brand-new building and having everything delivered and installed by Nippon Express. There wasn't anything to help out with, and we both knew it. But it served as a demonstration of interest, and looking at home furnishings became a staple date activity for us over the first few months. So yesterday was kind of a sweet reminder of that, even if the rooms themselves were, as one might have expected, ridiculously unlivable-looking.

And we got to spend Sunday morning eating breakfast and watching the political yak shows and stuff. This morning's ration of "and stuff" was a fascinating special about public works boondoggles in Hokkaido. It was a Dogs and Demons classic. If none of the information was really new--I mean, I hadn't been aware of what was happening in those specific villages, but redundant roads and dams are old stories in Japan--it was still entertainingly presented.

I especially liked the new federal highway planned to run through a village of 5000 in the north-central region of the island. Not only are there already a tangled skein of little-used federal, prefectural, and municipal roadways criss-crossing the area--seriously, this must be the most readily accessible isolated village in human history--but the new road takes the long way around to its coastal destination. The reporter interviewed several truckers, who chuckled that of course they weren't going to use it because there was already a truck-worthy shortcut to the same city that wasn't a toll road.

Residents of, I think, Sapporo next talked about snow-plowing, which is performed by three separate fleets of public teams. You have your federal team for the federal roads, your prefectural team for the prefectural roads, and your municipal team for the municipal roads. I was only listening with one ear at this point, but the problem seems to be that the local roads people actually need to use to get out of their houses are plowed after the federal snow removal teams have sailed through, scrupulously taking care of their territory only. So there are both redundancies and non-performance problems.

We had to take off when they started talking about the gajillion unnecessary dams and retaining walls that shackle the rivers. The point that was made--again a known one, but presented in detail--was that the Hokkaido prefectural government had submitted to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport a list of projects that should be shifted to local jurisdiction...and was curtly rebuffed (譲渡が困難 was the phrase highlighted in the document, IIRC) because the projects were deemed to be in the national interest. And, the reporter pointed out, it's in the budgetary interest of the MLIT to keep as many projects under its own management as possible.

So...bureaucratic self-centeredness: bad. Mischievous, non-nurturing good time with friends: good. Atsushi here for weekend: good. Atsushi having to go back to Kyushu again: bad. I think I made out well on balance, especially since my street is never under three feet of snow. Hope everyone else had a good weekend, too.

Joel at Far Outliers has a post up about the Japanese view of spirituality as mediated through language. As always, it's an interesting and well-chosen passage.

Around January-ish, there were reports that the ruling coalition was haggling over the definition of patriotism in new education legislation. The two parties have reached an agreement:

On 12 April, the LDP and Komeito reached a broad agreement in connection with proposed revisions to the Fundamental Law of Education, which determines the basic concepts that frame education. The parties agreed on a course by which the expression of "patriotism," which had been a focal point [for debate], was that [the educational system] "cultivates an attitude by which, along with loving our nation and homeland, [a student] respects other nations and serves the development of peace for the international community." After an official decision is made on 13 April, the government is on track to submit the proposal to the Diet as early as mid-April.

Why so much ink spilled over this particular negotiation? You never want to freight one of these little episodes with too much Significance; nevertheless, I think the above story does encapsulate some of the broad-brush problems Japan has been encountering in the last decade and a half or so. Is there supposed to be a shift in attitude toward Japan's resident Chinese and Koreans? Would the educational system change in ways that would encourage children not just to "make contact with" other cultures but actually to immerse themselves in them, even at risk of becoming a little less Japanese? And what about the possibility of allowing more immigration? The point here is not to fantasize that thorny issues could be solved or micro-managed through a change of phrasing in a federal education policy. It's just to point out that people pay attention because they know that the question of patriotism in the public schools touches on issues that go far beyond just what teachers and textbooks say in the classrooms.

Added five seconds later: It's also worth noting this part, from the same Nikkei article:

The Fundamental Education Law currently in effect was ratified in 1947. The government and ruling coalition originally looked into revising it based on indications that "it has not responded to changing times."

In this PC era, you respond to changing times by vaguely invoking the "international community," I guess.

That's sad. June Pointer has just died of cancer.

The Pointer Sisters were utterly charming in a way that's nearly impossible to conceive of now. Just about everything they released had some element of randiness in it, but it was good-natured, sweet-tempered randiness. They delivered the line "Jump for my love" as "Make the effort--I'm worth it," not as "You're my slave--now act like it." Try to imagine that from, say, Destiny's Child. Pop divas nowadays, especially on the R&B end of the spectrum, have a way of careening between unassailably hard and drippily vulnerable. (And yes, I'm aware that, much as I continue to admire her, Madonna had a lot to do with ushering in that state of affairs--at least the former part.) The Pointer Sisters challenged their men without being cynical or...what's a good word?...flinty, maybe. They teased, but they never taunted.

And the outfits! Good grief. Unfortunately, there's a certain kind of gay man with unresolved woman issues who likes to laugh at women who try to do glam and don't get it right. Whether the Pointers were wise to that in any explicit way, I don't know; but they were able to amuse you with their looks without making you want to laugh at them. They were three all-American girls having a good time playing dress-up with as many shiny things as they could throw on at a time. There was no pretension to puncture. Who could resist their sense of fun?

Especially when the singles it accompanied were so great. (This, dear children, was back when a pleasing melody was considered as important as a catchy rhythm track.) The Pointer Sisters had gusto, they seemed to be enjoying themselves, and they were in on the diva joke without overworking the irony. They were never going to be the most technically accomplished, the most android-beautiful, the best-selling pop stars. But one of the great things about America is that you're not condemned to the same life as the hometown folks if you're not born with the best connections or the best talent or the best bone structure. You're allowed to pack up your very good-ness and see how far it will take you when spiked with aspiration. The Pointer Sisters used their resources to give a lot of people a lot of joy. It's good to know that June had two of her sisters with her when she died. RIP.

So we're all abuzz right now with the news of this white paper from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport:

Roughly 70 percent of Japanese fear for their safety due to the frequency of natural disasters in this country, the possibility of major accidents like aircraft crashes and a growing perception that a terrorist attack could take place, according to a government survey.

The fiscal 2005 white paper on national land and transport submitted to the Cabinet on Tuesday by Kazuo Kitagawa, minister of land, infrastructure and transport, also shows that 23.8 percent of Japanese regard the country as definitely or moderately safe.

...

The survey conducted last December canvassed opinions of 2,000 eligible voters across the nation. There were 1,314 valid responses.

People feel less safe. The next question is, should they? The rest of the article points to topics that will be familiar to anyone who's been following Japanese news (or, hell, been reading this blog) over the last few years: the Niigata earthquake, the JR West derailment last year, the Aneha earthquake resistance falsification scandal, the asbestos scandal, and the seemingly daily reprimands handed down to JAL by the transportation authorities. (Dumbfoundingly, the article doesn't even mention the nuclear power industry. Or the series of high-profile medical screw-ups.) Just today, there was word of yet another unsettling survey, this one performed by the Yomiuri on JR West drivers:

According to a Yomiuri Shimbun survey, more than 60 percent of the respondents also said they had made greater efforts to improve safety since the accident.

The results showed that while individual drivers felt they had developed greater safety awareness, they did not feel the company's safety measures had improved overall.

The reliability of that survey is a little questionable, since it didn't include drivers from the largest union. Also, there's a potential SLOPs issue. The drivers who are most likely to respond to questions about company safety policies are those who have unusually strong feelings about them.

That doesn't mean they're wrong, though. One tends to doubt that real safety levels in Japan have just up and plummeted. What I suspect has happened is that economic dislocations have reduced the number of safety checks systems can perform. After the war, Japanese bureaucracies and companies made room for hordes of redundant workers. Their duplication of effort, like the Space Shuttle's multiple computer systems, made it possible to plan, check, confirm, check the confirmation, reconfirm the check, and recheck the reconfirmation of the check, and then actually start the engine. One of Japan Inc.'s strategies was also to keep employment and consumption high in the construction industry by replacing equipment and infrastructure way before it was necessary. And the need to rebuild the country after it was flattened by the war also gave everyone a sense of being a cog in an increasingly prosperous machine.

The end of the era of economic hypergrowth made necessary changes in approach, and Japan has adapted to some of them better than it has to others. I think the transition will ultimately be successful--in most ways, the Japanese are very pragmatic. So, for example, the sheer excess of personnel is essentially gone. When I arrived ten years ago, it was the twilight of the era of elevator girls in every department store and a half-dozen gas station attendants swarming over every car.

But the essential way of thinking that prizes not making waves and submitting all your documents properly stamped over asking penetrating questions and finding imaginative ways to cut down on paper-pushing--that remains. Additionally, Japanese enterprises don't seem to have internalized the fact that having fewer eyes on and hands in every operation means that each employee who is involved has to be more watchful and reliable. Everyone realizes that Japanese workers for the new age need a sense of individual responsibility, an ability to improvise, and the confidence to sound the alarm when they discover something is screwy; but no one seems entirely sure how to shift everything in that direction.

And then there's the fact that a lot of things that were originally built under the assumption that they'd be replaced by shinier, newer structures in a dozen years have been kept in service. That doesn't mean the next earthquake is going to bring the whole of Tokyo crashing down, but it does mean that the Japanese are finding it more difficult to retain the image of their country as perfectly safe, clean, and healthy.

Last week, as those who picked up on the title to this post will have figured out, I had kind of a Bjork moment. And then, as if by magic, Beautiful Atrocities linked to this impossibly hilarious video parody. (How did the Flea not get to this first?) Bjork's such an easy target, you'd think result would be kind of lame and surprise-free, but no. Totally made my day.

Speaking of experimental-ly people we listened to in college during the early 90s, the new Massive Attack retrospective made me realize that Blue Lines came out fifteen years ago. Fifteen. Years. Ago. Kids who were conceived to it are, like, finishing junior high school soon. Sheesh.

Oh, Bjork wasn't the only funny video-related encounter I had in the last few days. The other night, some Simply Red video--I assume it's new--was playing, and one of the guys was like, "Sean-chan, everyone else thinks I'm crazy to say this, but doesn't he look like Kim Jong-il?" My buddy was referring to Mick Hucknall, with his pouffy receding hairline and owl glasses, riding standing up in a car. And he was right. He did look like Kim Jong-il. The resemblance was so unmistakable I almost fell off the stool--seriously, it was spooky. Give Hucknall credit for not having facelifted and hair plugged and Botoxed himself into an animatronic wax figure like many other celebs his age, but the guy seriously needs a new stylist.

Yes, that's bitchy, but it was that kind of weekend. Atsushi was supposed to come home, but through no fault of his own ended up having to stay in Kyushu for business. So I was kind of in a mood that my friends took it on themselves to yank me out of. I was entertained the whole weekend, but I think I ended up exhausting my entire ration of gayness for the next six months. No one tell the board of the International Homosexual Conspiracy, or they'll send their enforcers to keep me in Dockers and Miller Lite until October.

Not that anything newsworthy happened. In a way, it was the according-to-recipe-ness that made it comforting: The packed club where someone jostled my buddy's arm and sent half his shot of tequila across the front of my sport jacket. (I had fun explaining that one to the dry cleaner.) The two Japanese guys in their early 20s who, in addition to looking about thirteen, did that junior high school thing where they come up to you and say, "Our friend over there? He'd really like to talk to you? Is it okay if we bring him over?"

One thing that wasn't comforting: DJ types? Guys? Seguing from "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" into "Hung up" was a tired idea before you even did it the first time last fall. Enough, already.

When I went to dinner with a friend--this was the next day--the headwaiter swooped down on him in full service-industry swish mode: "HONEY! Haven't seen you for ages the sweater is working for you how are you who's your friend you'll love today's fish let's give you a table with a view I know you want a bottle of Italian white BAY-BEE!" In the silence and stilling of air currents occasioned by his departure, I asked my friend who he was. My friend responded (gay readers will know exactly what's coming) in his usual confiding Australian drawl: "Sean, I have no idea. I was hoping you'd remember him." If you've ever wondered why gay guys resort to calling each other "darling" all the time, it's there in that moment.

The Nikkei had several good editorials over the last few days while I was busy thinking about other things. One on Friday was about the teaching of English in elementary schools:

The debate over whether to make English a compulsory subject in elementary schools has heated up. At a meeting at the end of March, the Foreign Languages Division of the Central Education Commission, the advisory body for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology [actual official English name, kids--SRK], compiled a report approving the move. For Japan to survive in this age of internationalization, we cannot dodge the necessity of perfecting our English education. We must be forward-thinking with regards to making English compulsory in elementary schools.

...

Post-war English education has been a disaster. The sad situation is that, despite the long time they spend studying it, English isn't something the vast majority of people are actually able to use. One option for addressing that is to set up an environment in which students can get to know English from elementary school on.

However, there are several topics of concern involved in making English compulsory.

One major concern raised is that putting English into the curriculum could require cutting out time spent studying Japanese language and literature to make room for it. Another is that foreign teachers would have to be brought in in order for students to learn real English. The editors see neither of these as insurmountable, since the time dedicated to English would amount to about an hour a week and electronic media can provide audio stimuli without the presence of a native speaker.

Oddly for the Nikkei editors--who are usually wonderfully ready to give bureaucracy a good pummeling at any opportunity--they don't raise what I see as the biggest concern: Given that the Ministry of Education has spent the last half-century non-teaching kids English in junior high and high school, do we really expect it to come up with a program of English for grade school kids that's efficacious at anything but consuming more of the budget?

A paragraph I didn't cite said, "There's no need to conceive of English and Japanese as opponents." But one of the problems, of course, is that English education here has been drained of as much possible "foreignness" as possible. Students in Japanese schools learn English the way they learn math--as a set of formulaic rules to be memorized and adapted to situations that fit certain criteria. In its quest to turn children into good Japanese adults, the Ministry of Education has steadfastly avoided impressing upon them that English is a multi-dimensional language and way of thinking about the world that's different from the Japanese way of thinking. How far the society here should go in cultivating the special Japaneseness of its young is not for me to judge; but the Ministry of Education's guiding principles to date have clearly been real barriers to effective foreign language learning, and all the talk about "internationalization" will be essentially meaningless until that conflict is faced squarely. It's odd to see the normally incisive Nikkei glide over that.

or "All the gay stuff I haven't written about for the last two weeks"

or "How to be gay and annoy me"

Beautiful Atrocities had this column of advice for newly minted gay men linked under "Outside Reading" this past week. Most of it is pretty sound underneath the inevitable tone of snark (and be warned that some of it's on the raunchy side). It's also, unlike a lot of attempts to be funny, actually funny. Item #1 made me laugh out loud.

However, item #14 nettled me. It's not so much that it's bad advice as that it scornfully hits an easy target but leaves out the flip side, which I think affects far more people:

14. Beauty fades. Develop some inner resources, otherwise when it goes, those of us with less far to fall will laugh at you. To your aging face.

Fine. Point taken. But newly out guys also need it drummed into their heads that...

14.1. Don't assume that someone you think is unusually hot must therefore be (1) a bitch, (2) a slut, (3) a moron, and (4) a shallow user.

14.2. Plenty of men who will never be models or CEOs are in happy relationships. You can be one of them if you look for ways to be generous and stop expecting The Love You Deserve to ambush you while you lean expectantly against the bar.

For every gorgeous, turned-out man who thinks he's some kind of Gay Brahmin, there's a fag who sabotages his own potential regular-guy attractiveness by constantly drawing attention to the fact that he's not Jude Law. Humility can be sexy; self-humiliation is a turn-off.

Not all stereotyping is quite so damaging. At least, I don't think so, though people have too much time on their hands apparently disagree:

Some gay rights advocates are raising questions about a new Chrysler commercial that features a fairy who uses her wand to turn a tough-looking guy with a big dog into a pastel-clad man walking four small dogs on pink leashes.

DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group introduced the "Anything but Cute" ad campaign last month to promote the new Dodge Caliber compact car, aimed at young buyers.

...

The Commercial Closet, which monitors marketing tactics that could be offensive to gays and lesbians, was more critical of the ad [than the mewling executive director of the Triangle Foundation, cited earlier].

"It directly finds humor with the term fairy, referring not just to the type that flies around with a magic wand, but also the universally recognizable gay stereotype of an effeminate gay man," it said in an online review of the ad.

I'm afraid I'd make a very bad gay activist, because there is no way in hell I could make a public statement that solemnly and carefully differentiates between a fairy "that flies around with a magic wand" and a gay guy without dissolving into laughter.

Of course, we want to get rid of the stereotype that gay guys are all girlie, emotionally fragile, flighty, and limp-wristed. Permit me to point out, though, that advertising spots are not the place to expect sophisticated commentary that challenges preconceptions. (There are plenty of ads that end in unexpected revelations as a way of providing a jolt that might make the product memorable, but they usually don't constitute social science lessons.) Steve Miller at IGF posts a link to the ads.

We're supposed to bloviate over that? I was more offended by the guy's post-spell walking-shorts-and-socks combo than anything else. That fairy needs to get herself a fag friend to teach her about style, cute or otherwise.

And people need to learn how commercials work. Television is populated by dads who are amazed to find out that you can clean clothes with detergent, black women who have clearly been directed to turn the sassy-chick-erator all the way up, Italians who can't say a word without windmilling their arms, and people whose persnicketiness is signaled by British accents. Sometimes these types are used skillfully, and sometimes they're used poorly; but ads generally have to rely on stock characters because they have an extremely short amount of time to make an impression. It's certainly possible to imagine an advertisement that implies something genuinely offensive, but I don't see how showing some dumb jock type get turned into an dorky metrosexual necessarily does, even if he's supposedly being punished for saying "Silly fairy!" to a fairy.

Speaking of silly--or at least muddled--fairies: Last week, Rondi Adamson posted about the release of Canadian Christian peace activist James Loney, who had been abducted in Iraq. Loney's family and friends scrupulously avoided mentioning his homosexuality while he was in the hands of his abductors:

I remain puzzled that a gay man like James Loney would, de facto, have aligned himself with people who would see his sexual orientation as sufficient reason to kill him.

...

One of Loney's CPT colleagues, Doug Pritchard, seems to have a case of both [mental-midgetitis and irony deficiency]:

"It's a sad fact that around the world gays and lesbians are more vulnerable to attack than straights," Pritchard said.

Hmm. Yeah. Particularly under Islamist fascist regimes, Doug.

No kidding. I don't think this is the first time Rondi has expressed (perfectly understandable) puzzlement about gays who give a free pass to the Palestinians and other aggrieved groups whose anti-homosexuality is so extreme as actually to warrant the overused word oppression. The article doesn't mention whether Pritchard is gay, but his attitude is pretty representative of the basic problem. His statement isn't inaccurate taken as a self-contained thought. But that "around the world," which runs the entire world together into one, big vaguely threatening place, is bizarre given that the context for the remark is that contrast between Islamofascists in Iraq, among whom revealing your homosexuality could lead to mistreatment or worse, and Canada, where you can talk about it to the press. (One of Loney's fellow abductees was murdered.)

[Aside: Martha Stewart just explained to viewers that when the shrimp turn opaque that means they are "not transparent." Has the educational system deteriorated that much?]

Unlike a car commercial, the public spotlight that comes with having your gay colleague released by terrorist kidnappers seems to me like the perfect opportunity to make a social and political argument: Thank God he's back here in the democratic West, where we value personal liberty and the ability to live peaceably with our differences. After all, these people are supposed to be looking for ways to espouse Christian Peace, are they not? Perhaps even the mention of bloodthirstiness, however germane to the situation at hand, would have seemed off message.

The message from the director of a new movie out of the UK is that Chinese-British gay men exist (via Gay News):

"It's very frustrating. Chinese people don't just run restaurants. Lots of them do great jobs like lawyers. It's scarily backward in the UK. In the US, Lucy Liu was in Charlie's Angels not because of her 'Chinese-ness' but because she was right for the role."

Tell that to the more oversensitive Asian-American activists, honey. Anyway, what I found interesting was this part:

The filmmaker said Hong Kong is the most liberated Asian country, "Racism exists on the international gay scene. Chinese gay men have a low ranking in the gay hierarchy because they don't fulfil the classical male beauty."

"I know some Asians who have switched to dating Asians."

Because there aren't enough Western gay men who are looking for smooth little Asian hotties?! That's a demographic development I hadn't been aware of, though I admit to not being all that familiar with the scene in Hong Kong. The tendency for some Westerners to want their Asian boyfriends to act like man-geisha does strike me as a problem, but that doesn't appear to be what Yeung is talking about. In any case, he seems to be able to point out what he thinks are problems without taking a whiny tone, which is always good to see. If his movie is the same, I hope it does well.

The government has denied that it has yet shared any DNA information about Megumi Yokota's possible husband with the ROK:

Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe made a statement the report in the South Korean press that the Japanese government has confirmed that the person reported to be DPRK abductee Megumi Yokota's husband was also a man who was abducted from South Korea at a press conference following an April 7 cabinet meeting. He denied the reports, saying, "We are moving forward diligently with the DNA evaluation, but at this point in time, the results are not yet in, and in our capacity as the government, we have not specified anything about the person said to be Megumi Yokota's husband." Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso also stated emphatically, "It certainly isn't yet the case that word has officially come from among the professionals--scholars and such--that this is the man, or this isn't the man."

Unlike a lot of diplomatic issues, the abductee problem has an obvious human interest angle, and the Japanese public has responded. One wonders whether the government isn't being so quick to deny that it's helped the ROK because of the loud complaints here at home that it's doing little to find out what happened to the Japanese abductees still not satisfactorily accounted for.

The 6-party talks will, if the negotiations work out, be scheduled to open again some time soon:

The Chinese foreign ministry announced on 6 April that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Wu Dawei, chair of the 6-party talks revolving around North Korea's nuclear issues, will visit Japan. Representatives to the talks from the DPRK, ROK, and US plan visits to Japan to coincide with an international summit to be convened on 9 April; Russia is also looking into the possibility of participating. That means that all major members, including Japan, will be gathered in Tokyo. Signs are that each of these high officials will be in contact with the others on an individual basis, looking for a way to reopen the 6-party talks, which have been suspended since last November.

It's not possible to tell what will come of this, of course. Precedent says the 6-party talks will, if repoened, be useful more for making the DPRK feel appreciated and respected like a real country with legitimacy and stuff than for resolving things.

Speaking of Chinese diplomats, PRC politicians' remarks about the Yasukuni Shrine pilgrimages keep coming:

Last week's declaration by Chinese President Hu Jintao on Yasukuni Shrine continued to ripple through Japan's political community Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Taro Aso once again had strong words for Hu over the Chinese president's suggestion that he would meet with Japanese leaders on condition that they stop visiting Yasukuni Shrine.

"It sounds like a method similar to saying to Taiwan 'We won't meet with you unless you recognize such-and-such aspect of China,'" Aso said Tuesday. "Their methods go beyond our understanding."

Yeah, listen to you, tough guy. Surely, Taiwan is the last issue Aso wants to be bringing up in the process of ringingly declaring that Japan stands firm in the face of China's irritable demands.

Zak, who comments here sometimes, directed me to an old post of his on the Japanese willingness to part with priceless artifacts:

A Japanophile is merely someone who doesn't really know Japan.

Sometimes you will hear people refer to "old cultures" as though that age gives the culture some measure of wisdom. What rubbish. The opposite is perhaps more likely to be true: the older a culture, the more time it has to accumulate really stupid ideas which become part of the national consciousness and continue doing damage century after century.

Sure, some beautiful things have originated in Japan. But, the whole culture seems geared towards insuring that those things don't survive. This is visible on many levels. Again in the shakuhachi world, for instance, traditionally if you go see another teacher you'll be excommunicated from your old one. So, everyone practices and learns in little pathetic isolated islands, prevented from venturing out by fear that they’ll never be let back in.

...

Ask most Japanese people if Japan is an "ashi no hippariai no sekai," and most them will nod. This is a particularly Japanese phrase which means "pulling each other back to ensure no one gets ahead." This is not just me ranting—most Japanese people freely acknowledge this to be the case. It's just that no one really minds. Japan is an "old culture," after all, but not one where people are stupid; this just means that its dysfunctionalities are recognized but met with nothing but blithely passive acceptance.

Zak's covering a lot of ground there, some of it a bit sketchily. At its broadest, the issue is that the Japanese tend to accept external reality as obdurate, something to be adapted to, even as they recognize that particular circumstances are endlessly shifting. One reason for that is the environment: Much of the country consists of near-impassable crags and gorges; a lot of the soil is poor for agriculture--we modern Western students, having been preached at about healthy Japanese eating habits are since we were little, are often shocked to learn in Japanese history classes about the poor food quality that was the rule until the Meiji Restoration--and natural resources are few. Even the closest trading partner is a sea journey away; for all intents and purposes, the Japanese Archipelago is at the edge of the world. It is also regularly visited by earthquakes, vulcanism, tidal waves, typhoons, and heavy snows.

Therefore, the Japanese have felt isolated and at the mercy of nature for pretty much the entire history of their civilization. I don't know that the way society evolved to value group affiliation, discipline, and emotional detachment was inevitable, but it was certainly understandable. Nature frequently took away things that people had let themselves get invested in; in those sorts of circumstances, one reasonable reaction is to avoid investing yourself in things and to find safety in numbers.

Japan has taken those ideas to extremes that, it could be persuasively argued, aren't very wise. But then, let's remember that they aren't necessarily very old, either. In many fields, the idea that there's a rigid, codified "right" way of doing them down to the last millimeter actually originated in the Meiji Restoration in attempts to "reclaim" a static, idealized Japaneseness that was in fact being projected backward. Not that Japan up to 1868 was a devil-may-care kind of place--art forms had gone through the usual stages of fresh experimentation through balanced formal perfection through ossification and breakdown. Still, the great Japanese art traditions overall involved improvisation based on circumstance and idiosyncratic wisdom that was passed down by masters, and other sets of customs--the warrior culture and native religion among them--weren't nearly as formulaic as we're accustomed to thinking of them now.

And where Japanese mediocrity is concerned, blithe is possibly the last word I'd use. Mediocrity here is in fact full of tension, maintained as it is through constant effort to avoid doing anything that would be (literally) egregious. The costs have become obvious. Tamping down individual initiative not only keeps people from pursuing contentment but also keeps them from following through on offbeat, experimental ideas that could bear unexpected dividends later. But there are benefits, too. Strict adherence to group and hierarchical roles provided stability, which is a value in its own right.

It's starting to sound as if I disagreed with everything Zak wrote, I fear. In fact, I agree with him in the main with regards to Japanophilia, one of the most tiresome mental disorders on the planet. Far too many Westerners, undervaluing the rich strains of spiritual quest in our own traditions, are willing to look at any and every custom in Japan as a manifestation of mystical profundity, toward which the proper posture is receptive, uncritical awe.

Japanese customs are actually like everyone else's customs, having developed through the usual combination of practicality, happenstance, and arbitrary decisions along the way. Many of them serve a purpose very well--Japanese society wouldn't still exist, let alone be this successful, if they didn't--and others could stand to be transformed or dropped. In some contexts, the emphasis placed on how ephemeral this life is is as pragmatic and as moving as it's cracked up to be; in others, it produces needless waste. It's possible to love Japan and acknowledge that.

Added on 9 April: Rondi Adamson has kindly linked this post and added some interesting observations of her own, based on her experience of having lived not only in Japan but also in Turkey and in France. Worth reading as always.

It's now official: Naoto Kan and Ichiro Ozawa will run for the position of Democratic Party of Japan president this coming week:

On the night of 5 April, the DPJ's Ichiro Ozawa and Naoto Kan officially announced in rapid succession at press conferences their intention to stand as candidates in the 7 April election for party leader in the wake of current leader Seiji Maehara's resignation. Ozawa stated emphatically that he has "resolved to throw my political viability into find a solution to our current hardships and realize [the goal of] a DPJ administration [in the Diet]." Kan related that "the DPJ is truly standing at the edge of a cliff. I aim for an administration that will revitalize it."

The vote is expected to be close.

Apparently, Japan and the ROK are teaming up to try to find out the identity of Megumi Yokota's husband:

In February, the Japanese government took blood and other samples from the families of five South Korean abduction victims who were cited as possible husbands of Yokota, and had been testing the DNA of the samples.

In response, South Korean officials said that if the possibility of Yokota's husband being a South Korean abductee arose, it would ask Japan for DNA information from Yokota's daughter, Kim Hye Gyong, and conduct its own verification of the identity of Yokota's husband.

Five South Koreans who disappeared in 1977 and 1978 have been citied as possible husbands of Yokota. South Korea has acknowledged that all five were abducted by North Korean agents.

For Yokota's husband's sake, let's hope his affairs are settled more easily than hers have been. The poor woman's father has been on television so frequently over the last few years that a lot of us news watchers know him by sight now. The reason, of course, is that the DPRK keeps playing games about releasing her remains--who knows whether Pyongyang even knows where they are by this point? Some abductees have returned to more (Hitomi Soga, wife of US Army deserter Charles Jenkins) or less (several others who have returned to quiet lives in the provinces) publicity, but Yokota's case has become a symbol of North Korea's inability just to do something...anything...forthright.