According to NHK, the Japanese government has filed an official protest about the article. NHK’s article focuses on the atomic bombings, and doesn’t mention the ending section of the article, which is arguably worse:

Abe seems to be hallucinating. The low-yen boom and extreme-rightists’ support have blinded him to push Japan onto an arrogant and selfish path. He is mistaken when he thinks he can challenge the memory and decency of humanity just to be popular among his own ignorant people.

Abe is free to do as he wishes. But God, too, is at liberty. The vindictive spirit of the Maruta has been resurrected thanks to Abe. God may feel that retaliation against Japan hasn’t been complete.

What is the challenge to human decency that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is apparently guilty of? It would seem that earlier this month, he posed for a photo in a Japanese jet that happened to have the number 731 printed on it. Anti-Japanese nationalists in South Korean and China were angry about the number, with some seeing it as a deliberate attempt to remind them of Unit 731. Major newspapers helped fuel the anger:

“Abe’s pose resurrects horrors of Unit 731,” read the headline on the English-language Korea Joongang Daily. The Chosun Ilbo’s caption referred to “Abe’s never-ending provocations.”

None of the newspapers gave any indication of whether their Tokyo-based staff had tried to establish whether there was any intent to use a jet marked 731, although the Chosun Ilbo noted that there were other jets at the same base with different numbers that could have been used.

A Defense Ministry official in Tokyo said that the numbering on the jet was pure chance.

“The last three digits on the Blue Impulse jets are their individual ID numbers. There isn’t much we can say other than that the number was purely coincidental,” the official said.

Other South Korean newspapers tried for even crazier conspiracy theories:

The Dong-A Ilbo, another large national paper, ran a composite photo that also showed Mr. Abe wearing a baseball jersey with the number 96. This, according to the Dong-A, could be another “numerical provocation” since Article 96 is the section of the Japanese constitution that Mr. Abe wants to revise as part of his goal to allow Japan to formally possess a military.

Abe pointed out a much more obvious reason for the number: he is the 96th Prime Minister of Japan.

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Two people were wounded. The first was a newspaper deliveryman. Then, a woman who happened to be nearby was stabbed.

According to eyewitnesses, he was asking people if they were Japanese. When they answered that they were, he attacked. According to police, he said he wanted to kill many Japanese people(“生粋の日本人なら何人も殺そうと思いました”). He described his targets as “生粋” or “natural-born” Japanese, a distinction that probably doesn’t include Koreans who have taken Japanese citizenship.

The Japanese media is reporting the incident as a “indiscriminate random attack” (無差別通り魔), but it look more like a hate crime meant to target a single ethnicity.

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Throughout history there have always been groups of people that have enjoyed positions of privilege, be it due to circumstance or mere good fortunate: The scribes in ancient Egypt, the manor lords of feudal Europe, the early capitalists in 18th century England.

But you would be hard-pressed to find a more ridiculously (and completely unjustifiably) over-privileged class of people than the Caucasian male in 1980s Japan. Anyone that has set foot in Japan has either experienced first-hand or at least heard about the `easy money, easy women’ gigolo-esque lifestyles of the blue-eyed, fair-skinned lucky men living there during the Bubble years.

In some respects, I don’t think this was mere happenstance: my (probably half-baked) armchair analysis goes like this: Japan spent the first few decades after WWII rebuilding itself, both physically (bombed-out cities) and psychologically (losing the war, the Occupation). Of course, we all know what happened next: the `Japanese economic miracle’; over 30 years of unprecedented economic growth. By the 1970s Japan trailed only the US and the Soviet Union in GNP.

Here’s the other important part of the equation: By and large it was Japan’s women that did the interacting. Japan’s men were still away from home for long hours, `working’ (i.e., spending their evenings in a drunken stupor in hostess clubs or other establishments of ill-repute). It was Japan’s women that had the time and now the cash to spend, just as foreign goods and traveling overseas was getting cheaper and cheaper (see Accord, Plaza). It was Japan’s women that started taking tennis lessons, traveling abroad, first to Asia resorts then stretching their legs to Europe, then going back to Japan and deciding that they needed to learn English before their next trip. Bingo–you have your eikaiwa boom, and with it growing demand for English-speaking talking heads.

No doubt it was heady times for the young Western male in Japan in the late 1980s. Some men, of course, started to believe their own press clippings about how sugoi they were because they happened to be born in an English-speaking country (they were in for a rude awakening when the bubble burst and the economy soured). But it’s perhaps no surprise (although still a bit sad) that so many gaijin veterans of the 1980s Bubble still look on that time as the best time of their life.

Which, in a somewhat roundabout way, brings us to Kobe Blue, the second work of fiction by Christopher J. Johnson (self-published, Smashwords.com). Kobe Blue is the tale of not one, but two young American men and their experiences in Bubble and post-Bubble Japan.

In some ways this was a frustrating book to read, and an even more frustrating book to review.

Frustrating, because first and foremost, it is clear that as a writer of fiction, Johnson has talent and substantial (untapped) potential. He has a writer’s eye for detail and the chops to put what his mind sees to paper. In the best spots the writing has a sublime, natural flow. Johnson by all account is well-traveled, and apparently does a lot of travelog-related writing, and it shows: he excels at descriptions–sometimes just quick five-note riffs (`the funeral pyre of (Japanese grammar) books’, `Everyone’s meditating on planet me’), but Johnson is at his best in longer solo jams when he’s setting a scene, a place, a mood.

Now, sometimes too much of a good thing is…too much. I fully understand that opinion will be divided on this, but I personally found that reading paragraph after paragraph of text dripping with metaphors and similes got tiresome after a while. (I was reminded somewhat of the `too many notes’ line from Amadeus; obviously a flawed analogy because while he has talent as a writer of fiction, Johnson is not yet a Mozart….but hopefully you get my point).

Further, it must be said that if descriptions are Johnson’s strong points, he needs to work on speech: much of the dialogue lacked any sense of pacing or authenticity (at one point one of the Japanese characters calls himself `Yamaguchi-san’). This often broke the spell woven by the preceding paragraphs that had set the stage. There were exceptions, of course: one of my favorite scenes from the book was between Kurisu and Jonathan, talking about the contrast between random English conversation between two gaijin strangers on a train, and an English conversation between a gaijin and a Japanese. Equal parts ironic, humorous and poignant, it once again showed the author’s eye for interesting detail.

But overall, I actually found the writing rather uneven…so uneven, in fact, that part of me wonders if Kobe Blue actually began life intending to be a book. Parts of it feel like bits and pieces from different times and places were cobbled together; that it still works as a story at all is testament to the underlying quality of the writing and the potential of the story.

More problematic, however, was the story structure. The book is supposed to be about both a `nostalgic look’ at Bubble Era Japan and international relationships in `consumerist societies and over-crowded cities’, based on `real experiences’.

As noted above, the book is about the experiences of two young American men that arrive in the late 1980s, right in the middle of the Japan bubble: `Jonathan’, shy and unpopular back home, finds he is a rock star with Japanese women as an English teacher in Japan; he spends most of the book bedding Japanese women, seemingly a different woman each night. `Kurisu’ – a Japanized version of the author’s name – is the upstanding citizen that doesn’t play around; a major chunk of the book is focused on his relationship with his girlfriend (or is she?). Given that they have the same names, it is tempting to equate Kurisu with the experiences of the author, although I suspect that the author is probably both Kurisu and Jonathan.

Part of the problem I think starts right at the beginning: The book plops Kurisu down in Japan with almost no background story, no foundation to understand where Kurisu is coming from. In fact, much more background material is given for Jonathan than for Kurisu (another reason that I suspect Jonathan is perhaps more relevant to the extent that the author’s experiences made it into the book). There is even some back history for some of Jonathan’s one-night sexcapade partners, even when very little is given for Kurisu, who ostensibly is supposed to be the main character in the book.

I say `ostensibly’, because it’s hard to tell if Kurisu is the main character or not. His story does account for the majority of the plot, and the book starts off in the first person, written from Kurisu’s point of view. But then it shifts to third-person for major chunks of the book, mostly relating to Jonathan’s sexual conquests – just how does Kurisu get to know the backstories of some of Jonathan’s numerous sex partners and the intimate details of what Jonathan does with each of them? In fact practically the entire middle third of the book reads like a soft-porn novel, a Fifty Shades of Japan Grey for the Bubble-era gaijin, profiling Jonathan’s conquests. If this was used as a contrast to some semblance of growth or development for either Jonathan or Kurisu, it would be understandable…but with no apparent purpose other than nostalgic titillation, it detracts from whatever underlying message the story was supposed to have.

More frustrating is that Kurisu seems to land in Japan with a vast database of Japan knowledge and experience already intact: on his very first train-ride from Osaka to Kobe on just his second day in Japan, Kurisu talks about the `nostalgia’ surrounding Amagasaki, Nishinomiya and Koshien Stadium. He arrives in Japan determined `not to become an English teacher’. It rather begs some questions – why (how) did he have this preconceived notion of the eikaiwa industry in Japan? How did Kurisu intend on supporting himself in Japan? We don’t know, partially because we have no backstory (what did he study at university? For that matter, did he even go to university?) It’s hard to develop a story arch of the protagonist learning about Japan when he arrives in the country apparently having already lived it.

Happily the latter question of how Kurisu can support himself is conveniently answered by having him, on the morning of his very first full day in Japan, meet an attractive, single Japanese women that is not only completely fluent in English, but that also immediately invites him to stay with her, rent-free, for apparently years on end, at her home where she lives with her mother. Because, you know, Japanese women did this all the time for guys that seemed to be `a decent sort’. These sorts of `plausibility fails’ definitely detract from the reader’s experience.

The timeline of the story is equally confusing. Somewhat perplexingly, we learn how old Kurisu is near the end of the book, but we don’t really know how old he is when he gets to Japan. It’s perplexing, because based on the numerous historical events that are noted in the book, Kurisu apparently spends at least five or six years in Japan, yet the story is written as if it takes place in the span of a year or so. The timeline of the book is a helter’s skelter mess – in some parts of the book, years just melt away – not only with no explanation, but no mention of the shift in time or reference to what happened in the interim. It also sometimes results in clear timeline errors; at one point in the book Jonathan’s boss decides she can fire him because he’s still in the six-month probationary period, but by that part of the book Kurisu and Jonathan had to have been working at the eikaiwa company for at least eight months.

Too often, the reader is jarred back to reality by some inconsistency, then has to do the mental gymnastics to keep everything in place. Rarely is it a good idea to force the reader to work at having to make the logical leaps of faith to save some semblance of plausibility for the book.

Jonathan and Kurisu are polar opposites in terms of their personal relationships in Japan; normally you’d expect this to be the main story arch. But at the end of the book, both Kurisu and Jonathan appear to be the same persons they were on the day they got to Japan. Whatever momentary flashes of growth (particularly for Kurisu – climbing Fuji-san, a 10-day meditation retreat) are swallowed up by eikaiwa classes, going through the motions as a `sarariman’, or pachinko. Even Kurisu’s core relationship in the book with Aki fails to develop that much from the day Kurisu arrives at her house. The only exception being we get more background for Aki (more, in fact, than we get for Kurisu himself).

It’s unclear just what Kurisu and Jonathan learned from their time in Japan other than `you can have sex with lot of Japanese women, and they make great wives because they’ll work hard in the home and won’t complain’.

And ultimately it’s unclear just what message the reader is going to take from the book. There are at least three distinct storylines in Kobe Blue, none of them really work sufficiently well on their own, and ultimately the whole fails to add up to the sum of the parts.

It’s a damn shame because Johnson clearly has the talent to do much, much better.

Looking back at this review, I think it may come across a bit more negative than I had intended. Despite the numerous flaws, I still enjoyed reading the book, and still wanted to know more about Kurisu and Aki (both past and future). That, to me is the sign of a good book. Little can be done to save poor writing; that’s not Johnson’s plight. Rather, like a good catcher can help turn a good pitcher into a great pitcher, I suspect Johnson just needs a good editor to tweak and tighten.

Intriguingly, the book ends with a fairly massive loose end, which suggests a possible sequel. So let me summarize by saying this: Would I buy and read another novel by Johnson?

The answer is a definite yes. The potential is clearly there.

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Japan Probe was invited to the Italian Chamber of Commerce’s “urban sustainability” seminar. Architects A and O wrote this report for us.

It was a busy Friday afternoon at the Italian Institute of Culture in Chiyoda-ku. At first it was not quite clear how a chamber of commerce and urban sustainability are connected, and there were not many clues to that in the events’ posters. Despite the architecture themed topic, the crowd was largely comprised of dignitaries, reporters and businessmen -in suits and speaking Italian of course-.

It was the opening speeches by Francesco Formiconi, the president of the Italian chamber of commerce in Japan and Domenico Giorgi, Italy’s ambassador, which set the stage for this whole event. Its purpose is to open the 2013 annual meeting of Italian chambers of commerce in Asia and south Africa, and set the mood for its three-day proceedings. Urban sustainability and business might seem like an odd pair, but according to the speakers -sporting only a single architect among them-, we should think otherwise.

The change in East Asia’s economic profile seems to be of great interest to European economies, since according to Italy’s ambassador, East Asia is slowly but steadily moving towards more regional integration. With Japan entering the TPP (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement ) and impeding tripartite negotiations between China, Japan and Korea on further trade agreements in May, “the overall picture of trade flows and investment will change”. If the connection to urbanism is still not clear, we are getting there. Since 2009 for the first time in human history, more than 50% of the Earth’s population lives in cities, and one should not forget that east Asia is home to the world’s largest urban regions, or “mega-cities”.

Consequently, the regional integration of economies brings further questions about the geographic distribution of production, the mobility of workforce and the creation of economic zones that do not strictly coincide with national borders, but instead follow transit networks between urban cores. A very large percentage of the regional wealth is produced in ever expanding urban conglomerates, such as the Tokyo Metropolitan area or the Pearl River Delta in China (an articulated mega city with an estimated population of 50 million). The form that these cities will take will affect the lives of -literally- billions of people and shape the economies of the region. The point that the speakers tried -and managed- to make is that urban sustainability is an urgent matter, because it is a matter of money. We seem to be moving towards a future where we will inhabit one expansive, interconnected, transcontinental city.

The main point that one could get out of the opening speeches was that, the complex systems dictating how cities function, expand and connect to each other will define our economic strategies -especially in the Asia-Pacific region-. While the 20th century answer to issues of urban livability was the protection and preservation of natural reserves in the periphery of the cities and the creation of open green spaces within them, for the 21st century we need to come up with integrated strategies. The urban environment cannot be separated from the natural any more, and there is a lot to be gained by addressing urban regions it as natural systems. Some of the main components of these systems are waste management, energy production and allocation and the compound problem of commuting of ever increasing populations.

The speeches of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation manager Marta Marmiroli and American architect John Mader further explained the technical part of this challenge. For John Mader, the four principles that define a sustainable city are:

-efficient intercity and intra-city transport. Cities should be at the same time more dense, more inter-connected and more liveable.

-pedestrian friendliness.

-resilient and robust land use (mixed use areas as opposed to separation of residential, commercial and industrial zones). Multifunctional urban cores.

-incorporation of Nature in the form of Parks, reserves and even urban food production to reduce energy footprints

On the other hand, Marta Marmilioni was more business oriented in her presentation, which focused on the experimental gradual implementation of a “smart grid” in Japan. Smart grids are networked systems handling de-certified energy production (eg by home solar collectors) and reallocation according to demand and with minimum loss. As cities keep growing, the traditional electricity grids seem increasingly incapable of dealing with fluctuations in production and demand of energy across huge areas. The possible success of this system would make ventures in green energy production in Japan even more profitable, since for the couple of years a “feed in tariff” system is already in place, paying hefty subsidies to investors.

We would have liked presentations on waste management, water use and and high speed-rail but there was a certain lack of technocrats in the event, which was indeed more focused to matters of regional policy in connection to future city development. The seminar was programmed to close with a round table discussion by the Presidents of the Italian Chambers of Commerce from Asian and south African countries, that turned out to be a series of short speeches -no table, no debate and no q&a due to time constraints-. Many of them offered fascinating albeit short insights on urban strategies, as insiders and entrepreneurs in a multitude of Asian and African cities.

Since the raison d’etre of this kind of gatherings is of course networking, the actual closure came with Campari cocktails at the Italian Institute of Culture’s lobby. Again, the thing that most stood out were the suits and people speaking in Italian, albeit this time with drinks in their hands. The proceedings of the 2013 annual meeting of Italian chambers of commerce will apparently follow this weekend, behind closed doors.

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The video mentions two cases. The first case took place in Hokkaido, where a 73-year-old woman received a phone call from a person claiming to be from a company that helps people invest in foreign currency. He assured her that if she invested in Uzbek currency, she would no lose any money. The woman was tricked into mailing cash worth 20 million yen to the man.

A 71-year-old woman in Fukuoka prefecture fell for a similar scam. She was told that she could double her investment if she bought Afghan currency. She paid about 32 million yen and received a package of currency that was worth only about 50,000 yen.

The Japanese government has a website that warns people against these kinds of investment scams. Unfortunately, the targets are mostly elderly people, an age group that isn’t exactly known for being able to look stuff up on the internet.

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The most interesting response is from Corey Wallace of Japan Security Watch. He notes that the article contains some “memes” that commonly appear in international media reports about Japan’s security policies:

As with many media commentaries, the problem often resides in the framing rather than the information itself. First, any reference to Japan “moving away from pacifism” will be an inherently loaded characterization, and while not all who do refer to it buy into the idea that this is necessarily a bad thing, it will unfortunately reaffirm the knee-jerk narratives around Japanese remilitarization which prey on pre-existing stereotypes regarding Japan.

First, the concept/frame of “moving away from pacifism” is kind of a meaningless distinction to make in the first place. Japan has never been formally “pacifist” and has never been as purely idealistic (or naive, if you take your cue from DC) as many believed. In this sense, the “moving away from pacifism” is a double fiction. Defensive-orientated defense (senshu bouei 専守防衛) and certain antimilitarist norms, established in the public imagination and institutionalized politically much later than 1947, are a better starting point for understanding Japan’s initial “non-offensive” security doctrine. I wonder if it would be so hard for commentators to use language such as “Japan’s security doctrine continues to incrementally evolve in line with regional developments and Japan’s changing international identity after periods of societal debate.” Of course, that would be boring. But appropriate.

Second, the specific claims about Japan’s security evolution, while not incorrect per se, are probably not quite as meaningful as they might seem at first glance, at least as conceptualized within the frame of “weakening pacifism.”

Read the full article here.

Another noteworthy response to Fackler’s article comes from Thomas U. Berger of Boston University:

“…If anything, it has been startling how slow Japan has been to respond to the changing threat environment, although that can be attributed to the fact that Japan still feels that it has a certain margin of safety to work with with regard to the Chinese and North Korean threats.

The analytical problem comes from the use of the term “pacifism.” While there is indeed a pacifist streak in the way Japan thinks about defense and national security, it has always been a minority view. Even in the 50s and 60s there never was a consensus in favor of unarmed neutrality, and there is virtually no support for it today.

A more accurate term for Japanese attitudes is what I have called anti-militarism. The Japanese are extremely skeptical about the use of forces because of their historical experiences of the 1930s and 40s. These experience have been institutionalized in various ways in Japan’s legal and bureaucratic systems and they are reinforced supported by popular attitudes that are periodically reinvigorated by books, movies as well as the way Japanese people – both elites and on a popular level – talk about the past.

This does not mean, however, that the Japanese have completely foresworn defending themselves. There has always been a readiness to defend Japan and its territory….”

Read his full post at the NBR Forum.

In another NBR Forum post, Todd Kreider examines the statements Fackler writes about Japan’s public opinion and defense spending. As others have observed, defense spending increases are tiny and public opinion has barely changed over the last decade. Buy why let that get in the way of a good story?

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Well folks, it looks like the Japanese government somehow allowed him back into the country. According to some tweets he made this morning, Johnson apparently attended last weekend’s Tokyo International Literary Festival.

Also in attendance was Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times. It is not clear if they actually talked to each other at the event, but Tabuchi posted the following public Tweets today:

Christopher Johnson replied to her first Tweet by claiming total ignorance of any harassment. He then stated that he was being “framed.”

(Despite acknowledging that his tweets were public and thus would be fair game for bloggers to quote, Johnson continued to post tweets directed at Tabuchi.)

It didn’t take long for Johnson to shift towards what some might read as physical threats. He called on Tabuchi to meet him tonight, promising that he would stop his partner from tearing Tabuchi’s hair out. Woah.

Johnson described the information from Tabuchi’s friends as “false accusations from dubious sources,” and questioned her integrity as a journalist.

It’s an interesting turn of events because Johnson has frequently praised Tabuchi’s articles. This drama feels like a repeat of Johnson’s falling out with Jake Adelstein. In that case, Johnson’s public meltdown on Twitter led to a long-winded “investigative” blog post that viciously attacked Adelstein. Should we now expect an article attacking Tabuchi?

Update: Johnson is now complaining about this blog post.

His call for settling the matter in private is supremely ridiculous, as responded to Tabuchi’s post with public Twitter messages and continues to make more public posts, many of which could appear crazy or threatening to third-party observers.

Today, he has spewed out Tweets denying that he threatened Tabuchi. Johnson has also condemned Tabuchi’s “patho liar” friends.

Despite the fact that Tabuchi made a public twitter post stating that she would no longer directly communication with Johnson, he has continued to direct his Tweets at her, demanding an apology for her “false accusations.”

Johnson chooses to make public tweets to the NYT instead of contacting them privately via e-mail. Hilariously, he thinks he is so important that the NYT will read his tweets and then send him an e-mail!

There were also tweets directed at me, demanding that I edit this post to reflect “reality.”

It’s odd that Johnson feels the need to describe Hiroko Tabuchi as a “junior reporter” who is “unknown.” Regularly writing major articles for one of the world’s most well-known newspapers, she is is hardly unknown, and not exactly “junior” either. But, I suppose almost any reporter is “junior” compared to the illustrious Christopher Johnson…

Update 2: Somebody else noticed Johnson’s emphasis on Tabuchi’s lack of importance. Johnson claims that he is not “belittling” her, but is instead pointing out the truth. And making a public spectacle of his disagreement with Tabuchi’s supposedly untruthful accusations is “showing respect” for her. Um, okay. Whatever you say, man.

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The 62-year-old woman in these videos came from Oita prefecture to visit her kids, and ended up competing in the contest. She won by downing a 210 gram bowl of natto in 48.67 seconds:

The winner of the male section, a 26-year-old Ibaraki native, won by downing 350 grams of natto in just 22.08 seconds.

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According to Sea Shepherd:

The Japanese whaling fleet, poaching whales from Antarctica’s Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, creates a collision as they attempt an illegal refuelling operation. Sea Shepherd Ship Bob Barker peacefully blocks the whalers’ factory ship, Nisshin Maru, from refuelling.

The Bob Barker holds their ground, but the Nisshin Maru moves in, pinching the Bob Barker between itself and the fuel tanker Sun Laurel while blasting the bridge windows with high-powered water cannons. The bow wake from the two larger ships causes the smaller one to lose steerage, and the ensuing turbulence throws the Bob Barker off course. The Bob Barker gets helplessly tossed side to side between the two larger ships.

This video clearly shows the fault of the collision on the Nisshin Maru. According to COLREGS, the Bob Barker had the right of way, and the Nisshin Maru had no right to move closer to the Bob Barker.

However, a user of Reddit.com who is familiar with the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) wrote the following:

The Bob Barker is very much in the wrong in this situation. These two vessels are undergoing an operation known as “underway replenishment”. Vessels engaged in this operation become “restricted in their ability to manoeuvre (RAM)”. I am unable to see from the video whether or not she is displaying her day shapes to indicate so, but either way the Nisshin Maru has properly warned the Bob Barker to keep clear. As the Nisshin Maru is RAM, the Bob Barker, which is under “power-driven vessel” status must avoid a vessel RAM. COLREGs Rule 18 (a)(ii)

The second mistake is the attempt to overtake these two ships so close. This is a direct violation of COLREGs Rule 13 (d) which governs overtaking. “Any subsequent alteration of the bearing between the two vessels shall not make the overtaking vessel a crossing vessel within the meaning of these Rules or relieve her of the duty of keeping clear of the overtaken vessel until she is finally past and clear.” Because of the fact that the Bob Barker is within 22.5 degrees abaft (behind) the beam (line in the middle from side to side) of both vessels, she is to keep well clear and safely overtake the vessels on either the port or starboard sides.

Any remotely competent mariner would not find themselves in this position. a smaller vessel like the Bob Barker should not have much difficulty avoiding this even near the start of this video. The Bob Barker should have used astern propulsion to remove herself from the middle of these two vessels.

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It has come to my attention that the Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies has published an excellent new article about the “Comfort Women” issue. Gavan Gray of Ristumeikan University explores how an inaccurate historical narrative has come to be accepted as unquestionable truth among Asian and Western countries that so harshly criticize Japan’s handling of the issue:

The clash between Japan and South Korea over redress for former ‘comfort women’ is a key element preventing stronger ties between the two neighbours. The issue has also diverted attention from the larger problem of human-trafficking that plagues both countries. In recent years understanding of the issue has been broadened by Asian scholars who have moved beyond the version that was dominant in the early 1990s. In the West however, perceptions remain as they were twenty years ago, repeating as fact elements that have been brought into question or utterly disproven. This inaccurate portrayal by Western media and governments has compromised resolution of the issue in Asia and failed to acknowledge widespread use of equivalent systems of prostitution by both South Korea and the USA. The reason Japan was so specifically targeted lies in a timely convergence of feminism, Korean nationalism and latent anti-Japanese racism. Acting to exaggerate the cruelty of Japan’s system while ignoring those of other nations, these factors prevented Japan and South Korea from developing a new perspective on the issue that would allow stronger ties between the two and refocus the campaign to end exploitation of Asian women.

Read it here: Comfort Women, Military Prostitution and Human Trafficking – The need for a perspective shift in Japan and Korea

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Luckily, no Japanese were injured, but one Japanese ship did suffer slight damage.

Sea Shepherd, who has a history of steering its vessels dangerously close to whaling ships and causing collisions, has whined about how the Japan ship “rammed them.” Of course, media outlets such as the Australian Herald Sun have parroted Sea Shepherd’s press releases. (Video from the perspective of the Japanese whaling ship shows the SS vessel steering itself into the path between the whalers.)

Learn more about Sea Shepherd by checking some of these other posts:

• Paul Watson: Tsunami That Killed Hundreds of Japanese Was Divine Punishment
• Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson – Interview With an Eco-Terrorist
• Paul Watson Responds to Japanese Arrest Warrant (and Publicly Admits His Guilt)
• Remember World War II: Sea Shepherd Depicts Japanese As Uniquely Cruel & Dishonest

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It shows a group of mothers who gathered in front of the Suginami ward office in Tokyo to protest a shortage of nursery schools. In the latest round of applications for the nursery schools maintained by the ward, 1,833 children were rejected because there was simply no space for them (there were 2,968 applicants). The mothers, many of whom probably need to work during the day but cannot afford expensive private nurseries, are understandably angry.

The reporters visit the house of a woman who lives in Itabashi ward of Tokyo. She gave birth to a baby a year and one month ago, and was planning to return to full-time work. Unfortunately, she was unable to find a nursery for her child. She applied for five places, and they all turned her down because they were full. Because her maternity leave only lasts until April, she will be forced to abandon her job.

Government-run nursery schools have pretty strict entry requirements. Because of a shortage of such facilities, they give preference to people in the worst financial circumstances. The woman they interview says she has heard about some couples getting divorced so they could have a better chance at passing the entry screening.

There are, of course, private nursery schools. However, they can be quite expensive. The report says that it can cost about 100,000 yen ($1,060) a month to put two children in daycare.

It’s a really bad situation. If a mother has to face such difficulty and economic hardship after having one child, she may very well decide not to have more children. Not a great outcome for Japan’s birth rate…

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Who doesn’t like cat posts?

Last week, the South Korean nationalists who had erected a “comfort woman” statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul (pictured above) announced plans to expand its campaign against Japan. The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery claimed that it was going to erect another statue in Singapore, and was finalizing arrangements with government authorities.

But Singapore apparently won’t make itself a pawn in their game:

“This is not accurate,” the ministry told AFP in an emailed statement.

“There are no ongoing meetings or discussions between the Singapore government and the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery on this issue. Nor will we allow such a statue to be erected in Singapore.”

Singapore is not the only target. The nationalists are supposedly planning other statues in other countries.

[ Since some people who come across this story may only be familiar with the Korean nationalist spin on the comfort women issue, here is a repost of some background information I wrote for a previous post.]

Background Information on Japan’s Official Response to the Comfort Women Issue

The issue of war reparations was addressed during the negotiations of the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. The South Korean government accepted a huge sum of money from Japan, stating that it would take care of the distribution of reparations to individual Korean victims of Japanese imperialism. The South Korean government agreed that its citizens would no longer have the legal right to demand compensation payments from the Japanese government.

Unfortunately for the victims, the South Korean government hid the reparations agreement from its citizens and used the money for other purposes. For decades, South Koreans believed that Japan had not properly paid reparations to their country. The South Korean government eventually admitted the truth in 2005:

In January 2005, the South Korean government disclosed 1,200 pages of diplomatic documents that recorded the proceeding of the treaty. The documents, kept secret for 40 years, recorded that South Korea agreed to demand no compensations, either at the government or individual level, after receiving $800 million in grants and soft loans from Japan as compensation for its 1910–45 colonial rule in the treaty.
The documents also recorded that the Korean government demanded a total of 364 million dollars in compensation for the 1.03 million Koreans conscripted into the workforce and the military during the colonial period, at a rate of 200 dollars per survivor, 1,650 dollars per death and 2,000 dollars per injured person.However, the South Korean government used most of the grants for economic development, failing to provide adequate compensation to victims by paying only 300,000 won per death in compensating victims of forced labor between 1975 and 1977. Instead, the government spent most of the money establishing social infrastructures, founding POSCO, building Gyeongbu Expressway and the Soyang Dam with the technology transfer from Japanese companies.

The documents also reveal that the South Korean government claimed that it would handle individual compensation to its citizens who suffered during Japan’s colonial rule while rejecting Japan’s proposal to directly compensate individual victims and receiving the whole amount of grants on the behalf of victims.(emphasis added)

Despite this evidence, many Koreans insist to this day that Japan never paid any form of compensation to their country. They have also dismissed or ignored the Japanese government’s numerous apologies to victims of imperialism.

When the comfort women issue gained international attention in the 1990′s, the Japanese government decided that it was a special case. Despite the fact that the previous treaty had legally settled the reparations issue and despite the fact that South Korea had paid compensation to the women, measures were taken to provide additional aid to former comfort women. Directly paying reparations would violate the 1965 agreement, so the Japanese government instead established the Asian Women’s Fund to raise funds and deliver compensation payments.

As noted on the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s homepage, the official response to the issue included apologies and the distribution of billions of yen in reparations to surviving comfort women:

Recognizing that the issue known as “comfort women” was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of a large number of women, the Government of Japan, together with the people of Japan, seriously discussed what could be done for expressing their sincere apologies and remorse to the former “comfort women.” As a result, the Asian Women’s Fund (AWF) was established on July 19, 1995 in order to extend atonement from Japanese people to the former “comfort women.” Having decided to provide necessary assistance for the AWF by a Cabinet decision in August 1995, the Government of Japan, with a view to fulfilling its moral responsibility, had been providing all possible assistance for the AWF, including bearing the total operational costs of the AWF, assisting its fund-raising and providing the necessary funds to implement its activities (approximately 4.8 billion yen from the AWF’s founding through fiscal year of 2005), in order for the AWF to attain its goals.

The AWF closed its doors in 2006, after having spent a decade searching for surviving comfort women and delivering compensation and apologies to those willing to accept them. Sadly, many former comfort women rejected the apologies and compensation. This was because Korean nationalists had convinced them that a foundation established and funded by the Japanese government was “unofficial,” and thus the AWF’s work did not amount to a “sincere” effort by Japan. The civic group that erected the bronze statue is made up of people who hold such a view of the AWF.

And finally, here are two frequently mentioned points that should probably be addressed.

• “Korea wasn’t a democratic country in 1965” – Apparently, some people think that the entire 1965 agreement should be scrapped because Park Chung-hee was not a democratically elected ruler. Unfortunately, that’s not how diplomacy works. Japan had no control over the form of government in South Korea, and it had to deal with the South Korea that existed at that time. Compensation payments were necessary to normalize relations, and Japan had to agree to pay that money to the South Korean government before the treaty could be signed. Waiting decades to see if South Korea would ever democratize was not a realistic option. And it isn’t fair to expect that Japan should repay that money because the South Korean government didn’t properly execute the domestic end of the agreement. [ It's also strange to think that today's Japan should be held financially accountable for the actions of its pre-1945 undemocratic regime, but that Korea should ignore the actions of its previous undemocratic regime.]
• “Why doesn’t Japan just make a direct payment of compensation to the women?” – Since the end of World War II, Japan has used bilateral agreements to settle reparations issues with all of the countries that suffered due to Japanese imperialism. Billions of yen were paid to the national governments of countries. The agreements made individual compensation a legal matter between the people of those countries and the governments of those countries. These kinds of state level agreements are widely recognized throughout the world, and are far more common than agreements that leave open the possibility of compensation lawsuits from individuals. If Japan were to void its agreement with South Korea by paying direct individual compensation to the former comfort women, it would in effect void all the other postwar reparations agreements. Reparations that were already legally settled and already paid at the state level would have to be re-paid at the individual level. The Asian Women’s Fund allowed Japan to avoid the legal mess of voiding treaties, while still being able to satisfying a desire to pay special compensation to the surviving comfort women. (To learn more about Japan’s state level compensation policy, check out Japan’s Contested War Memories by Philip Seaton and flip to page 59.)

This summary of the apology/compensation issue is not meant to belittle or insult the former comfort women. Their suffering was great, and they deserved compensation and apologies. This summary was meant to provide a calm and rational look at how the postwar Japanese government has already taken very real actions in response to the situation – including very real apologies and very real monetary compensation.

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Under the new compromise, American exporters will be able to ship to Japan beef from cattle that are less than 30 months old. Previously, Japan would only accept U.S. beef from cattle ages 20 months and younger. Administration officials hailed the change as a boon to U.S. cattle ranchers.

As this Japanese TV news report shows, some supermarkets in Japan are already announcing price drops for American beef:

For one cut of beef, the price at Seiyu(Walmart) supermarkets has dropped from 127 to 97 yen per 100 grams!

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Three of the men are suspected of stealing a bronze standing statue of Tathagata Buddha, designated an important cultural property by the Japanese government, from Kaijinjinja shrine, and a seated statue of the Kanzeon Bodhisattva, designated a tangible cultural property by Nagasaki Prefecture, from Kannonji temple in October.

Both the shrine and the temple are located on Tsushima island, which lies in the straits between the Japanese mainland and the Korean Peninsula.

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In a recent Yukan Fuji article, former Japan national soccer team player Ruy Ramos spoke about his commitment to his country of citizenship. Ramos was born in Brazil and first came to Japan in 1977. He naturalized in 1989. Over the years, he has developed a deep love of this nation.

Here is what he said in the interview:

日本で戦争が起きたらオレは戦う。だって日本人なんだから。日本人になった期間は短いけどオレは日本人だよ

Roughly translated, it says: “If Japan got into a war, I would fight (for this country). After all, I’m Japanese! Even though I have been Japanese for a short time, I am Japanese!”

Ramos is already 55-years-old, so he’s far too old to enlist in the Self-Defense Forces. If there was a war, he’d probably have no opportunity to fight in defense of Japan. But his remarks have nonetheless drawn some praise from netizens.

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A couple days after the March 11th 2011 earthquake, the French government told its citizens to flee the Tokyo region. It was a notorious overreaction to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident. It was based on fear and/or distrust, not on actual information about a credible or serious threat the people of Tokyo. At the time, many of us in Japan harshly criticized the French embassy’s response. The consensus at the time among nuclear experts was that Tokyo was not in danger, and subsequent investigations of the nuclear accident have found that they were right. It was totally unnecessary for people to leave Tokyo.

Nonetheless, quite a few foreign residents of Tokyo fled. Among them were nine employees of the French section of NHK’s Radio Japan. Eight of those employees later returned to Japan and resumed work at NHK. But one of them, Emmanuelle Bodin, was fired. She is now suing NHK for 22.17 million yen ($250,000) in damages, claiming that they unfairly dismissed her:

“In order to protect my family, I decided to temporarily leave Tokyo. . . . Prior to my departure I followed the required NHK work procedures, which included obtaining permission from my management,” Bodin said in Tokyo at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, where she and one of her lawyers, Kazuyuki Azusawa, held a news conference.

NHK claims otherwise. They say that she did not request leave, but instead “unilaterally” informed her managers that she was leaving Japan. Other foreign contractors who temporarily fled had given at least a day’s notice to NHK before leaving. Bodin apparently informed her boss just 3.5 hours before she was scheduled to work on a radio program.

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However, it’s not all bad news. Here is a news story about a Coming of Age ceremony that was held in Beijing for Chinese and Japanese youths:

One young Chinese man tells the Japanese reporter that although there is a dispute between their countries’ governments, it is a good thing for the peoples of both nations to improve their relations through private exchange events. A young Japanese man says that the change of leadership in both Japan and China is a good chance for the countries to improve relations.

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In March 2011, the USS Ronald Reagan participated in Operation Tomodachi, an American military effort to provide aid and assistance to Japanese tsunami victims. The aircraft carrier, which was equipped with advanced radiation detection devices, kept a safe distance from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. At one point, the media reported that the ship had been exposed to a tiny and non-dangerous amount of radiation:

“The maximum potential radiation dose received by any ship’s force personnel aboard the ship when it passed through the area was less than the radiation exposure received from about one month of exposure to natural background radiation from sources such as rocks, soil, and the sun.”

The ship was apparently about 100 miles away from the plant, way beyond the evacuation distances recommended by both the Japanese government and U.S. government.

But that has not stopped some people from concluding that the sailors aboard the Ronald Reagan were exposed to horribly dangerous levels of radiation. Ever since 3/11, anti-nuclear activists have flooded the internet with scaremongering stories that insist, without evidence, that people hundreds or even thousands of miles away from Fukushima suffered from dangerous exposure to radiation from the nuclear accident. It would appear that 8 of the 5,5000 sailors who served on that ship believe the hype. They are suing TEPCO because it allegedly hid the danger from them:

“According to then-existing data uniquely known to the defendant at the time, the plaintiffs’ consequent exposure to radiation within their zone of operation, then indicated that radiation levels had already reached levels exceeding the levels of exposure to which those living the same distance from Chernobyl experienced who subsequently developed cancer,” the complaint states.
“Consequently, the potential for the development of cancer in the plaintiffs has also been enhanced due to the levels of exposure experienced by them during ‘Operation Tomadachi.’”
The sailors say they “face additional and irreparable harm to their life expectancy, which has been shortened and cannot be restored to its prior condition.”

And what should TEPCO do to make things better? Give the eight sailors millions of dollars, of course!

They are seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and $30 million in punitive damages for fraud, negligence, strict liability, failure to warn, public and private nuisance, and defective design. They also want TEPCO ordered to establish a fund of $100 million to pay for their medical expenses.

Relevant Links

• Fukushima Accident “Unlikely to Cause an Increase in Cancers”
• Stanford Researchers: Fukushima Radiation Will Likely Kill Less Than 200 People Worldwide
• Fukushima Radiation Exposure Far Less Than Feared
• UN: Fukushima Radiation Health Effects Will Be Relatively Small / Not At All Comparable to Chernobyl

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Sea Shepherd is an organization that claims to care about protecting wildlife. Their latest “conservation” scheme involves support of the Chinese government’s claim to the Senkaku islands:

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society wishes to support Chinese efforts to assert sovereignty over the islands known as the Diaoyu Islands by China and the Tiaoyu Islands by Taiwan.

The Japanese have referred to the islands as the Senkaku Islands since they were forcibly annexed by Japan from China in 1895. Sea Shepherd is concerned that Japanese control over the islands will lead to the slaughter of more dolphins and whales. “We do not want to see the waters around these islands run red with the blood of dolphins and whales,” said Captain Paul Watson. “Japan has demonstrated they do not have the ecological integrity nor the environmental responsibility to manage these island ecosystems.” Sea Shepherd would like to extend an offer to China to invite our organization to send one of our ships to the islands to investigate the local populations of dolphins and other marine wildlife species that would be threatened if Japan occupies the islands.

It’s an idiotic stance, even for an idiotic organization like Sea Shepherd. While some animal rights activists may think that Japan’s ongoing dolphin and whale hunts are cruel or inhumane, the hunts do not threaten any whale or dolphin species with extinction, nor do they significantly harm the environment. The People’s Republic of China, on the other hand, is engaged in wholesale destruction of nature within its territory.

If Sea Shepherd really wanted to protect wildlife, it would never support Chinese territorial expansion. But, as this latest scheme so clearly shows, Sea Shepherd and its leaders are consumed with petty hatred towards the nation of Japan.

Learn more about Sea Shepherd by checking some of these other posts:

• Paul Watson: Tsunami That Killed Hundreds of Japanese Was Divine Punishment
• Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson – Interview With an Eco-Terrorist
• Paul Watson Responds to Japanese Arrest Warrant (and Publicly Admits His Guilt)
• Remember World War II: Sea Shepherd Depicts Japanese As Uniquely Cruel & Dishonest

[hat tip to Captain Novolin]

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It has come to my attention that William Sakovich, the blogger behind the Ampontan blog, has passed away. According to a comment from a friend, he died of cancer on December 21st:

Hi everyone. I don’t how much longer Bill’s preprogrammed entries will continue but I have sad news to report. Bill Sakovich, the author of this blog passed away on December 21 from cancer. He had been having stomach problems for the past two months and thought it was an ulcer. He went in the hospital to have the ulcer taken care of and during surgery they found he had cancer and that it had spread throughout his stomach and intestines. I’m sorry to say that my days are now a little less bright without the opportunity to meet up with Bill for some yakitori and political discussion.

It is truly sad to hear that Bill is gone. I think we can all agree, regardless of our political leanings, that Bill’s blog was a valuable resource for Japan news. His high quality blog entries contained conservative viewpoints and translations of Japanese sources that one could rarely find in mainstream English language news articles.

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Their evidence for the drug trade was a single post from 2010 that used code words to refer to MDMA, marijuana, and cocaine….investigators are calling 2ch a “hotbed of crime” because moderators did not delete the single post from 2010. (Over 1,800,000 posts are made on 2channel every day.)

Police have announced today that they will be filing charges against Hiroyuki Nishimura, the founder and former owner of 2channel. Although he supposedly no longer has official ties to 2channel anymore, he is being blamed for 2channel moderators’ failure to delete the post:

Nishimura will be charged with abetting drug dealing. However, some twitter users have pointed out that the statute of limitations for the drug law in question is 3 years, and Nishimura sold 2channel more than 3 years ago.

[hat tip to Avery]

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The results of today’s election are coming in, and it’s terrible news for the Democratic Party of Japan. The ruling party, which failed to live up to a lot of the hype that got it elected a few years ago, has suffered miserable defeat. A lot of people were expecting the Liberal Democratic Party to return to power, but the extent of their victory is pretty damn impressive.

Exit polls showed the LDP would win 296 seats in the 480-seat lower house, while its longtime ally, New Komeito, was on course to win 32 seats. Combined, the tally would give the parties the “super-majority” they need to take total control of both houses of parliament and end years of policy deadlock and instability.

Shinzo Abe will become the new Prime Minister. Get ready for a flood of international news articles about how his victory supposedly shows that Japanese voters are right-wing nationalists…

The Japan Restoration Party, led by former Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, has picked up over 50 seats.

Update: The results are in. The big winners were: LDP 294 seats(up from 118), Komeito 31 seats(up from 21), Japan Restoration Party 54 seats, Your Party 18 seats (up from 8). The DPJ only won 57 seats (down from 230!). The Tomorrow Party of Japan, which heavily promoted itself as an anti-nuclear party, suffered a crushing defeat (9 seats, down from 61).

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This week, cops in Tokyo announced the arrest of serial purse snatcher. For their photo op, they actually dressed a dummy in the man’s clothing and placed him on the motor bike that was used for the crime!

Somebody had a lot of free time on their hands.

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Somebody must have read about Shinzo Abe’s battle with crippling diarrhea, because he is shown shooting vast amounts of liquid feces out of his rear end. Noda, who famously compared himself to a loach fish, seems to be using one as a weapon. And it looks like South Korea’s national symbol is now the Gangnam Style guy…

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With Shinzo Abe’s LDP set for a possible victory in this weekend’s election, Western reporters have been struggling to come up with interesting explanations for what is happening. Public discontent about the lack of impressive changes brought about by the DPJ makes for a rather boring story, so some reporters have fallen back on a familiar meme: the rise of right-wing nationalism and militarism. As usual, they gloss over or ignore Japan’s numerous official apologies, depicting Japan as a nation of history deniers. Some articles even imply that China’s aggressive expansionism and anti-Japanese nationalism is because of Japan’s alleged failure to acknowledge its past.

Here are a few examples of this kind of article.

Time Magazine’s Battleland blog has an interview with a scholar who wrote book about war guilt. Entitled “Why Japan Is Still Not Sorry Enough,” the interview is structured in a manner than tells readers that Japan has not really apologized for the war. (Although the scholar does admit that Chinese and Korean nationalism are partly to blame for the situation.)

Mark Firn of the Telegraph has written an article about the expected LDP victory, claiming that Abe’s return to power would bring about a triumph of “core demands” of Japan’s “far-Right.” Shinzo Abe’s views about historical issues are emphasized, supposedly because he will be able to overturn Japanese mainstream public opinion and insert right-wing ideology into the education system. Other papers have picked up the story, running it with headlines such as “Japan’s Right glorifies wartime past as it heads toward power.” The article doesn’t do a very good job of explaining why this time will be so different from the last time Abe was Prime Minister. As many of you probably remember, then Prime Minister Abe was forced to moderate his right-leaning views about history and endorse Japan’s longstanding policy of historical apology. The “rise” of a couple small right-wing fringe parties will not produce a wave of nationalism that will turn the whole country towards glorifying militarism.

Martin Fackler of the New York Times recently penned a piece of about former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara’s new political party (“A Fringe Politician Moves to Japan’s National Stage“). While the media in Japan factually reported that Ishihara’s party is losing steam and on its way to obscurity, Fackler took his article into dreamland. Fackler writes that Ishihara “has emerged as a contender for prime minister.” It’s a statement that is so ridiculous that it could produce laughter from anyone familiar with the situation in Japan. Unfortunately, the New York Times’ readers don’t know a lot about Japan, and many of them will actually take it seriously.

In reporting about the 75th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, Al Jazeera claims that Japan has “never apologized” for what happened. The Japanese government’s official policy, which candidly acknowledges what happened, is interpreted as historical denial because it contains no numerical estimate of the death toll. And so, we are led to believe, it makes sense for mobs of Chinese rioters to smash and burn Japanese businesses…

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Earlier today, Japan was forced to scramble fighter jets after a Chinese government aircraft violated Japanese airspace over the Senkaku islands:

Japan’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that their Air Self Defense Force deployed F-15 fighter jets in response… soon after Chinese aircraft left Japanese air space.

Tokyo currently filed a strong complaint to Beijing and is trying to resolve this matter diplomatically.

For months, China has repeatedly used patrol ships in a provocative manner in the area. This is apparently the first time they’ve used an aircraft.

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Yesterday, I went to the Fukushima shop that is a mere 3-minute walk from the Yaesu exit of JR Tokyo Station.

The shop is a bit small, but it is selling plenty of great products. It has a wide variety of food, some of it refrigerated, and some in omiyage-style snack boxes. They also sell sake and fruit juice produced in the prefecture. Some products celebrate famous Fukushima people, such as scientist Hideyo Noguchi. And there are some cool traditional crafts.

They also sell beautiful Obori Somayaki cups, mugs, and plates:

These were produced by an artist who was based in Namie, a town that had to be evacuated after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. The cups and plates are beautifully crafted, with cool double-layer designs and painted images of horses. Most are sold for between 1,800 and 3,000 yen a piece. It’s a pretty reasonable price for such a fine piece of art.

The store also sells stuffed versions of Kibitan, Fukushima’s cute mascot bird. About the size of a small teddy bear, these sell for 2,100 yen each.

If you are looking for some last minute Christmas gifts, it would be a good idea to check out this shop. You can buy some neat Japanese crafts and food items while supporting the recovery of a prefecture that suffered greatly because of the damage brought by the 3/11 disaster (and the subsequent international fear campaign by anti-nuclear activists).

[Note: There is another Fukushima antenna shop in Tokyo. It's one the first floor of the Ito Yokkado shopping mall near Kasai station.]

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The crimes took place at a “snack” bar in Kabukicho called Vegas.

They were running a familiar scam. Hostesses got male customers to buy overpriced drinks, quickly running up a bill that exceeded the amount of cash they were carrying. Before continuing to drink, they would accompany the customers to an ATM, where they would take out more cash (and have their pin numbers noted for later use). The customers would then be made to drink until passing out. When they’d wake up the next morning, they’d discover that somebody had used their ATM cards to take out additional cash.

The bar owner and his hostesses apparently used this method to steal around 1 billion yen over a period of 6 years.

Since 2009, the U.S. Embassy’s homepage has a warning about a similar kind of scam. It mentions Roppongi as an area where scammers are very active. The Japan Times also reported in 2010 that bars and restaurants in Roppongi had used foreign customers’ credit cards to make bogus charges.

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If you’ve watched much Japanese television over the last couple weeks, you’ve probably noticed that political parties are running a modest number of commercials. It’s a little more tame than the kind of stuff that goes down in America, where parties and political groups flood the airwaves with ads that harshly attack opponents.

Let’s look at a few examples.

First, we have the LDP’s commercial:

It’s a very simple commercial with a very simple message. Shinzo Abe repeatedly calls on voters to help him “take back” Japan and return the country to economic prosperity.

The DPJ’s commercial is also very simple:

This one has Prime Minister Noda standing in front of a red screen as the camera slowly zooms in on his face. In contrast to the LDP message, Noda emphasizes the need to move forward and create a future that we can proudly leave to our children and grandchildren. Their slogan notes the importance of determination.

Both major parties have pretty boring commercials. The smaller parties have less to lose, so they can take a risk by making their commercials creative and/or entertaining.

Although I have not seen them aired on television, the Japan Communist Party’s YouTube channel has uploaded several issue-specific ads. For example, here is one about raising the sales tax:

As cute birds bathe, they discuss how raising the sales tax might make it hard for them afford daily baths. They wonder why they, the common folks, have to suffer from such a tax increase. Shouldn’t the government tax rich people instead? (Another ad sends the same message with a conversation between two men eating oden.)

The JCP also has an anti-TPP advertisement:

Cute little onigiri are discussing the impact of a free trade agreement with the United States. Japanese farmers work hard to produce rice, but if Japan joins the TPP, say goodbye to those cute rice balls! (In another ad, pushy American beef is trying to force Japanese beef off a supermarket shelf.)

The JCP has a few other ads too. One has a light bulb telling voters to support the complete abolition of nuclear energy in Japan. Another anti-nuclear ad has a hermit crab that fears for his life and wants Japanese people to remember the scary explosion that occurred in 2011. In one ad opposing U.S. bases in Okinawa an American aircraft replies to Okinawans’ safety concerns by saying everything is okay. The aircraft speaks Japanese with a shitty American gaijin accent. Another anti-base ad has cute fish playing up fears about Osprey aircraft.

Here is the CM for Your Party (or “Everyone’s Party” in Japanese):

Party leader Yoshimi Watanabe races across the screen on a skateboard! So hip and cool! Watanabe says there are more important things to do than raise taxes. The CM also emphasizes the party’s total opposition to nuclear energy and focus on economic recovery.

The Happiness Realization Party, a right-wing party that is linked to the Happy Science spiritual movement, was known for some pretty extreme advertisements during previous elections. Unfortunately, their CM for this year is a bit more boring:

One of their leaders outlines their major policies: 1) protect Japan from China’s nuclear weapons by strengthening defense (within the U.S.-Japan Alliance), 2) stop attempts to raise the sales tax, and 3) move forward with the development of nuclear energy in Japan.

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The other day, I came across the following poster, promoting Kazumi Matsumoto, who is seeking election as a representative for Tokyo’s 2nd district:

The poster stands out because Matsumoto has chosen an interesting font for his name. The font makes it look exactly like the logo of the Matsumoto Kiyoshi drugstore chain!

He is actually a grandson of the Kiyoshi Matsumoto who founded that company (and later became a politician). Matsumoto’s poster said he held an position of importance at Matsumoto Kiyoshi, so he probably won’t get in trouble for making his name resemble the company’s logo.

Matsumoto served one term as an LDP lawmaker in the House of Representatives in 2005-2006, after getting elected as one of Prime Minister Koizumi’s “children.” It now looks like he’s trying to make a comeback by aligning himself with Ishihara’s Japan Restoration Party.

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He also checks out some Tokyo nightlife:

Introduces cheap places to sleep:

And there is some general sightseeing too:

The videos were made by the Japan National Tourism Organization to promote their “$100 Day Travel Ninja” challenge. Facebook users who create and share their ideal itinerary have a change of winning a free trip for two to Japan.

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The man was a child living in Northern Korea when World War II came to an end. In the chaos the followed, his family tried to return to Japan. His mother and brother died in the process.

They were unable to locate the exact location of their graves, so the man offered prayers at the former site of a detainment camp for Japanese.

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Pretty cool as a video, but pretty bad if you have to live in the same neighborhood as this guy and his loud vehicle…

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Tokyo’s air quality gradually improved under former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara. Japan was behind the west in regulating atmospheric concentrations of known carcinogens such as PM_2.5 – particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (µm). The primary source of these fine-sized particulates in Tokyo was diesel engines, which in 1999 Ishihara began a campaign to reduce.

A law banning “dirty diesels” in Tokyo was passed in late 2000 and subsidies to help local businesses replace or retrofit noncompliant vehicles began in 2001. Enforcement through heavy fines as well as naming and shaming began from late 2003 in Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, and (from 2004) Kanagawa. Upper limits on diesel exhaust were further lowered in 2006 [J].

It wasn’t until 2009 that the central government introduced regulations comparable to those set by the US EPA: 35 and 15 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m³) for daily- and yearly-averaged concentrations, respectively.

The graph above shows the PM_2.5 levels from fiscal year* 2000 to 2011, the limit of the raw data currently available from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. There are only four long-term PM_2.5 measuring stations in Tokyo (two “general” and two “roadside” stations). The bar graph indicates that the roadside station along the Nikko Kaido in Adachi Ward recorded daily-averaged values that exceeded 35 µg/m³ on approximately 160 days during FY 2000. This decreased to only about 10 days during both FY 2009 and 2010.

However, much of Tokyo appears to be struggling to drop under the yearly limit of 15 µg/m³, and the data presented here are insufficient to definitively link the improvements directly to the actions of Ishihara and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. A recent study has noted that mortality from cancer has decreased in Tokyo over the same period, but the methods available and the nature of the data prevent statistical attribution of any observed changes.

Now, concentrations have begun to increase since the 3/11 disaster, but with only 10 years of data in total, and only 1 following the quake, it is impossible to attribute the changes to any particular cause. The magnitude of the change is also within the inter-annual variability (for example the increase from 2004 to 2005).

Could this reflect the increased usage of traditional fuels for electrical generation with a number of nuclear plants offline?

*Fiscal years in Japan begin in April, so FY2011 was from 4/1/2011 until 3/31/2012.

An example of the raw data available from the Metropolitan Government with daily, monthly, and yearly averages.

During his detention, Michael’s friends used social media to spread the word about the incident and raise money to “free” Michael. According to Jackie Bigford and Steven Thompson, Michael was detained because he was in Japan on an expired visa. In other words, it appeared he was illegally overstaying in Japan.

They claimed that Michael’s Japanese fiancee had traveled back to their apartment to get his passport. After apparently checking the passport, it was discovered that Michael’s visa had expired. Based on the wording used in Bigford’s post, it sounded like she was fairly certain that these events had taken place.

However, the details of the story changed a few days later. The passport could not be produced because it had been allegedly stolen.

On November 8, Michael announced Facebook that he is now a free man, and has married his Japanese fiancee:

I was arrested by the Japanese police on 16 September in the infamous “Cove” town of Taiji and held (without any charge) by them for 11 days due to misleading information supplied to them by the Immigration service. After being cleared of any wrong doing the last 42 days have involved an investigation by Immigration and as far as I can see the Osaka Detention Center where I have been held has yet to communicate with the Tokyo office which was where I was granted an extension on my visa (or at least I thought I was). They are in 2 words a xenophobic nightmare.

Things reached a total nadir last Thursday during my “admistrative hearing” where the Tokyo case officer failed to appear as a witness due to not being notified by Osaka. Keystone cops stuff but I did learn of the possibility of bail which I was promptly granted.

I harbour no harsh feelings towards japan merely warn people not to expect any form of reasonable treatment from their Police force nor Immigration Service. Their mindset and systems are firmly stuck in the dark ages unfortunately.

I will go into details later but will just say that….

1. It has been an awesome learning experience about gratitude, Japan, what is real and what matters.

2. I did not overstay nor commit any breach of any law of Japan.I could perhaps have asked one or two better questions and been less trusting but basically I have been caught in a trap of suspiscion of foreigners and incompetence of bewildering proportions. In essence a case officer in Tokyo failed to record details about my application correctly and also failed to email me and sent me a letter asking for more details to an incorrect address. She is the one who failed to turn up for the hearing.

3. I am healthy and well both physically and mentally. My Japanese both spoken and written is at a whole new level.

4. I miseed you all like crazy!

5. I owe several of you a huge amount of thanks and will will now begin work on paying you back.

6. 4 more years! (Obama AND a visa in Japan for me lol)

7. I am fired up and ready to tweet and post and share.

Much love

Michael

I e-mailed Michael and asked for a few more details, particularly concerning the the conflicting accounts that his friends provided during their online fundraising efforts. He informed me of the following:

• I had a visitor visa. It was my first for 3 years.
• I had an Alien Registration Card (ARC) it expires December 15 2012
• Was not working in Japan. My now wife was to do some interpreting of some Japanese right wing guy in Wakayama ken and I went there with her.
• I guess I “proved” that I was not violating rules when the police checked the actual law and realised that you can carry a passport OR an ARC. Took them 7 days.As for overstaying when the Osaka immigration office finally talked to the Tokyo Office (took about 40 days) they realised that I had a live application for an extension to my visitor visa that they had yet to decide about. I had been in regular almost weekly contact with the Tokyo Office for some time. I had made both things clear from minute 1 but no-one bothered to listen. Presumably as they have little to do.
• You see I never did anything wrong.
• Getting married was irrelevant as I did it after I was realesed in any case.

So your headline saying “Caught Overstaying” is grossly incorrect. I do not even know where you got this idea. If my “friends” told you that perhaps I need better friends.

In response to a few follow-up questions, Michael stated:

• Visitor visa expired 26 July. So in that respect Jackie was correct. She neglected to say that I had applied for an extension. I guess Jackie just presumed it because as a Canadian you would not be allowed to be detained unless you had done something wrong. No contact between Jackie and my wife as far as I know.
• I needed to get a visa extension as my passport was stolen. I could not leave Japan without a passport.
• Never knew that ARC card was useless just because visa date on it had passed. Seems to be a grey area with cops as cops in Tokyo have stopped me twice and accepted it in lieu of a passport.
• I handed my ARC to the Immigration Office in Osaka.
• They asked me to show a ticket out of Japan when I applied for an extension. I had tickets for Hong Kong and said so on the application. I requested an extension till 26 Sep in case the flight was delayed due to bad weather (typhoon season you see). Was told by Immigration tin Tokyo that this was acceptable

Other online comments from Michael stated that the Tokyo immigration office had made a mistake with his address, so he was not properly informed about the status of his application for a visa extension. A letter demanding that he produce further documents was apparently sent to an incorrect address. So on September 16th, Michael was walking around Taiji with an Alien Registration Card that would not have contained any information about a visa extension application. If that was the only identification that Michael could produce, it’s easy to understand why police arrested him. The card would have showed that quite a lot of time had passed since his previous visa had expired. With no evidence to the contrary, police assumed that he was illegally overstaying that visa.

Even after reading all this new information, the account is still a bit confusing. But it does look like there are some steps residents of Japan can learn to avoid experiencing similar trouble. First, and foremost, one should take steps to renew visas before they expire. If a visa application is still in process when a previous visa expires, be sure to carry around a document that states that the application is in process. It is also extremely important to keep your passport in a very safe place. Making a photocopy of the visa page of your passport might also be helpful (but probably is not necessary, because Japanese immigration authorities keep computer records of your visa status). And finally, if you aren’t carrying a document or ID that proves you have a valid visa, avoid encounters with the police.

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“If they choose other nationalities including China, Japanese can take part,” the influential newspaper Asahi Shimbun’s online edition quoted a source at the organising committee of the November 25 marathon as saying.

The committee made the decision by taking into consideration the safety of athletes, the daily said in a report from the Chinese capital.

The story was picked up in the international press. The organizing committee’s decision became yet another shining example of petty Chinese nationalism. After facing public criticism and an official complaint from the Japanese embassy, the organizers reversed their decision:

A Japanese television report about the policy change notes that some Chinese netizens praised the ban on Japanese athletes, but many more Chinese though that the ban was unfair and unnecessary.

The Chinese state media has jumped in make excuses:

“Beijing Marathon has never refused Japanese marathon fans to participate. Beijing Marathon has been open to marathon fans from every country and region all over the world since its inauguration,” said the association’s deputy director Shen Chunde in a report published on the official website.

Some reports had said that the 2012 competition did not admit Japanese runners as there was no option of Japan as to nationality in the application page.

“As far as last year’s registration concerned, it was rare that Japanese runners signed up online individually. Basically they applied through Japanese enterprises,” Shen explained.

“So this year, we remained to accept group registration because it is convenient for the Japanese participants to look after each other and also it is easy to handle in terms of picking up competition numbers and outfits. Therefore, there was no registration option for individual Japanese marathon fans,” Shen said.

“Since Japanese runners are enthusiastic and would like to apply as individuals, we will open this channel,” Shen said.

It is a lame excuse that doesn’t match what Japanese reporters were initially told by the marathon organizers. They might have been better off if they’d claimed that a computer virus mysteriously deleted only Japan from their website code…

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It starts by showing us a Starbucks in Ueno Park, which has an open and artsy atmosphere. Apparently it’s quite different from the chain’s other coffee shops.

The next shop is a Falconer’s café in Mitaka. The café serves food and drink to people who love birds of prey. They get to meet the owner’s birds, and some hobbyists also bring their birds to the cafe. Japan already has quite a lot of dog and cat cafés, so why not have one for falconry fans?

Next we have a reptile café in Yokohama! Folks who love turtles, snakes, and lizards can finally have a place to relax and drink tea.

If you’re creeped out by hawks and lizards, maybe you’d prefer the final café. It’s stationary-themed café in Omotesando. Each table in the café has a drawer containing stationery, which customers can use to write memos, letters, or anything else they desire. How exciting.

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It shows a group of Americans who were in Shiga prefecture to participate in Orient Shield, a joint field exercise at the Aibano training area. After the training, some of the Americans were shown one of Shiga’s famous tourist attractions: its ninjas.

The Americans got to watch some ninja battles. They were also given some shuriken training. Everyone seems to have a good time.

[Note: Some readers have noted that the Shiga ninja show in the above video contains ninjas from another part of Japan. Shiga does not have a monopoly on ninja, but it does market itself as Japan's ninja prefecture.]

Further to the south, the American and Japanese forces are holding another exercise. This one seems aimed at preparing the Allies for the defense of Japan’s southernmost islands.

About 47,000 personnel, including 10,000 from the US military, are participating and a US aircraft carrier is also taking part, it said.

The drill was originally meant to practice landing on an island in Okinawa prefecture, but it was changed to training at sea because of concerns that landing practice might escalate tensions between Japan and China, the report said.

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Volunteers wrapped nori around about 1.1 tons of vinegared rice, carrots, and shiitake mushrooms to create the massive roll. It was then sliced and served to about 2,000 people.

The roll was 21 meters long, approximately the same length of 40 cm/45 Type 94 naval gun of the famous battleship Yamato, which was laid down at the Kure Naval Arsenal in 1937. The roll had a diameter of 31 centimeters, making it not quite as wide as the Yamato’s gun. The Yamato museum is one of Kure’s main tourist attractions.

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Police received a call from a bar/restaurant at around 1:00AM, reporting that a drunk American had become unruly/violent. I seems that the American was asked to leave the bar earlier that night. He proceeded to angrily leave, then took the stairs up to an unlocked apartment on the third floor of the building.

The American surprised a 13-year-old boy who was sleeping in the room. The boy, fearful of the intruder, decided not make any sudden attempt to escape. At some point, the American became angry (possibly because the boy didn’t speak much English?) and the kid got punched in the face. The American then smashed a television set. After trying to escape out a window, the American fell. The owner of the bar/restaurant discovered what was going on and called the police.

The suspect, who was later taken to a U.S. military hospital, is described as a white male who was a member of the United States Air Force stationed at Kadena. The incident took place in the village of Yomitan.

In isolation, this might not get so much attention, but after last month’s rape, this is a big news story. And bad news for American-Japanese relations.

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Japan’s umbrella culture is reinforced these days by an ongoing fear of fall-out from Fukushima – in particular, radioactive rainwater. Locals tend to hedge and keep brollies both at home and at work.

In my office, a large rack contains perhaps twice as many umbrellas as there are staff. Presumably I draw compassion as I walk in the drizzle protected only by a tweed coat.

Those of us who have lived in Japan before and after 2011 know that Japanese umbrella use has changed little since Fukushima. Japanese have always used umbrellas on rainy days, to an extent that seems odd to people from other nations. It’s understandable that an ignorant or stupid outsider might incorrectly assume that radiation fears are the reason why most Japanese people use umbrellas during light rain, but that’s no excuse for a major newspaper to print such a claim.

Tokyo’s water supply has been tested for radiation every day since the nuclear accident. Current rainfall contains no measurable levels of contamination. While there may have been some public fear about radioactive rain over Tokyo in the immediate days after the nuclear disaster, such fears are practically non-existent today.

Alastair Wanklyn’s article is sensationalist piece of garbage, spreading unfounded fears about the water supply and food supply in Japan. Over the years, I have come to expect poor news reporting about Japan in Western newspapers, but this article sets a new low. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

[hat tip to Ken Y-N]

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Tourists beware! The media is now reporting about a really terrible scam that is going on in Tokyo’s major tourist areas. It seems that there is a group of fake Buddhist monks who trick foreign tourists into donating money to their “temple.” Here is a TV report that aired yesterday:

The “monks” approach tourists, hand them a golden good luck charm, and ask for a donation. Many tourists are happy to donate to such a noble cause. The fundraisers seem to target foreign tourists, but they also occasionally approach Japanese people. In a short time, the men can raise many thousands of yen.

But are they really monks? One told a Japanese reporter that he was raising money for a temple in Bhutan. Another claimed to be raising money for a temple in Taiwan. Yet the two men seemed to be working together.

A call to a Bhutanese association in Japan revealed that their clothing is totally different from what Buddhist monks wear back in Bhutan. And the Taiwanese temple that was written on one man’s fundraising appeal stated that they had not sent any monks to Japan to raise money. The “monks” were lying.

The camera crew observed the “monks” taking breaks from fundraising. These breaks included trips to clothing stores and luxury watch shops. How could a monk afford a designer wristwatch?

After one failed attempt to follow a “monk” home, the news crew located their apartment. The “monks” were living in a residence full of Chinese people. They spot a man who they had seen fundraising in Akihabara the day before. Instead of monk robes, he was wearing normal clothing. Although he initially denied that he could understand Chinese, he eventually began to answer their questions in Chinese. He claimed to be a cook, and feigned ignorance of the fundraising scam. (Although his face is blurred for legal reasons, he is the exact same person that they filmed in Akihabara.)

At the end of the report, it is noted that the scammers seem to have been scared out of the Akihabara area. But they are are still scamming people. They have moved to other tourist areas, such as Harajuku, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Asakusa, Shinagawa, and Roppongi.

Hopefully, this news report will get the cops to crack down on these scumbags.

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Yesterday morning at 6:00AM, a group of men smashed a window broke into an AU mobile phone shop in Sagamihara city. They stole 36 smartphones, including iPhone 4′s and other models offered by AU. The store was also stocked with several new iPhone 5 smartphones, but the thieves took none. Apparently they were not seeking the newest iPhones, or failed to notice the shelf containing them.

About a month ago, a group of criminals pulled off a similar crime on the other side of Honshu, stealing nearly $100,000 worth of smart phones from Western Osaka. However, those thefts were specifically targeted at the iPhone 5. The thieves out in Kansai apparently know the difference between an iPhone 4s and an iPhone 5….

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If the Japanese text in the top corner of the image makes it obvious enough that this probably isn’t a photograph from China. The man in the photograph is Kazuhiro Kiyohara, a former professional baseball player whose face is recognizable by almost every Japanese person who owns a television set. He played in the Japanese leagues for over 20 years, and regularly appears on Japanese television programs.

Kiyohara’s parents were Japanese. He doesn’t have Chinese or African roots (but some netizens have spread rumors about Zainichi Korean origins). But it looks like he’s destined to go down in internet history as a Black Chinese guy.

As someone who spends a lot of time outdoors, Kiyohara is more tanned than most Japanese people. The “Black Chinese” image seems to have been recorded on a day when he was especially dark.

According to Naver Matome, some Japanese netizens were also surprised by Kiyohara’s dark skin tone:

The blog post jokingly asks if Kiyohara is a Black person. Twitter users also commented on how dark he looked.

The images are screen captures from an event that aired on TV earlier this month. Kiyohara was bringing flowers to a retiring baseball player. At some point the image was uploaded elsewhere, stripped of its context. Kiyohara then became a “Chinese Black.”

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I was recently upstate and over dinner the talk of cancer came up. My father-in-law mentioned that it was “his time in Nagasaki” that killed his father. Of course this piqued my interest, so he pulled these photos out. I thought Reddit would appreciate them.

His father was in the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines. He also shipped a crate of guns, swords, and a Battleship flag home. All that remains is the crate and these photos. Apparently he traded the guns and swords for a mandolin and banjo in the Sixties. The flag is unaccounted for.

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The driver tries to block the cyclist, but fails. The crazy cyclist speeds around a corner, with the cop in close pursuit. Was the cyclist caught?

The video is an example of new police efforts to stop dangerous cycling in Japan:

After the March 2011 earthquake, the number of people commuting by cycle in the Tokyo metropolitan area increased dramatically. A lot of these new cyclists are ignorant of traffic laws. Almost two-thirds of bicycle accidents involved cyclists engaged in some violation of traffic laws.

Police have been increasing their efforts to cut down on lawbreaking cyclists. This involves stricter enforcement on the streets, as well as events aimed at educating the general public. Police officers have been going to driving schools to offer free lectures on bicycle manners and safety.

The city of Musashino has come up with a very interesting way of encouraging adults to attend such lectures. Anyone who goes to a lecture receives preferential access to bicycle parking lots. So far, over 12,000 people have taken up their offer. Mitaka city will now follow their example with a similar program.

Bonus Video: A cyclist angrily shouts at a police officer who is manning a speed trap.

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On a recent edition of the “Panic Face” television show, Nigerian-born celebrity Bobby Ologun was dressed up as a gorilla for a hidden camera prank:

The prank was meant to fool his youngest daughter. Bobby and his two other kids tricked her into believing that they were filming a travel program. When visiting the town, they were shown a “shrine” to the local “gorilla god.” According to fake legend, if one of your family members turns into a gorilla, you can offer bananas to the gorilla shrine and the god will transform your family member back into a human.

When Bobby and the kids went to bed that night, everything seemed normal. But in the middle of the night he got up and a special effects team transformed him into a gorilla. He crawled back into bed before his youngest daughter woke up. When morning came, she was told that daddy had turned into a gorilla while sleeping!

After some initial shock, she took charge of the situation. She helped Bobby hide in a closet while she went to find the gorilla shrine, which happened to be only a short walk from the hotel. Television staff disguised as townsfolk guided her to the location of the fake shrine.

When she offered bananas to the shrine, the gorilla god spoke to her! It was actually her father, but she apparently did not know it. After telling the gorilla god that she loved her dad and wanted him back, Bobby appeared in human form and revealed the prank to her.

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National broadcaster NHK said the two men, both 23 years old, had been arrested over the alleged assault of the woman before dawn on Tuesday.

One of sailors admitted carrying out the attack, but the other has denied it, according to TV Asahi.
A spokesman for the Okinawa prefectural police refused to comment on the reports.

The incident has the potential to snowball, feeding in to the increasingly vociferous anti-base movement.

The Japanese news report about the arrest uses the term “adult woman” (成人女性) to describe the victim.

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It was also recently reported that Japan’s consumption of LNG will probably exceed expectations:

To make up for the inactive reactors, the world’s top LNG importer would need to consume 76.4 billion cubic metres (bcm) this year and 72 bcm in 2013, Goldman Sachs forecast.

Goldman’s previous expectations for Japanese LNG consumption in 2012 and 2013 were 75.5 bcm and 69.8 bcm respectively.

Good news for oil companies, but bad news for Japan.

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The swimming styles were apparently developed hundreds of years ago by samurai warriors. Some look silly and slow, but they weren’t designed for winning races inside the calm waters of pools.

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The statue represented the central tower of Takatori Castle in Nara. Majority of the aluminium cans used to construct the statue were recycled from 380 neighboring households, while some were donated by companies. The organisers started collecting cans from January 2012, began constructing in May, and finished making the statue on 28 August.

Judging from the images in the video, it appears that Kirin brand cans were used for most of the exterior, while other types of beer cans were used to fill the inside. Anybody know if Kirin sponsored them?

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The advertisement, which is more than 10 meters square, begins with the question “Do you remember?” and shows former German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling in apology for Nazi atrocities at a Jewish ghetto monument in Poland in the 1970s.

The sign says the action “promoted reconciliation in Europe.”

It continues: “In 2012, Korean women forced to work as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers … are still waiting for a heartfelt apology from Japan.”

The Japanese consulate apparently sent an official letter of protest to the advertising company that ran the ad. A futile move, no doubt.

The advertisement plays upon American ignorance of the issue. New Yorkers and tourists who read the advertisement will probably believe that Japan has never apologized or offered reparations to the comfort women. Most Americans do not realize that Japan has paid millions of yen in compensation to Korea and has apologized on numerous occasions in the past. I have copy-pasted some background information about the issue onto the bottom of this blog post, so that those who are not familiar with the issue can learn the truth.

Background Information on Japan’s Official Response to the Comfort Women Issue

The issue of war reparations was addressed during the negotiations of the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. The South Korean government accepted a huge sum of money from Japan, stating that it would take care of the distribution of reparations to individual Korean victims of Japanese imperialism. The South Korean government agreed that its citizens would no longer have the legal right to demand compensation payments from the Japanese government.

Unfortunately for the victims, the South Korean government hid the reparations agreement from its citizens and used the money for other purposes. For decades, South Koreans believed that Japan had not properly paid reparations to their country. The South Korean government eventually admitted the truth in 2005:

In January 2005, the South Korean government disclosed 1,200 pages of diplomatic documents that recorded the proceeding of the treaty. The documents, kept secret for 40 years, recorded that South Korea agreed to demand no compensations, either at the government or individual level, after receiving $800 million in grants and soft loans from Japan as compensation for its 1910–45 colonial rule in the treaty.
The documents also recorded that the Korean government demanded a total of 364 million dollars in compensation for the 1.03 million Koreans conscripted into the workforce and the military during the colonial period, at a rate of 200 dollars per survivor, 1,650 dollars per death and 2,000 dollars per injured person.However, the South Korean government used most of the grants for economic development, failing to provide adequate compensation to victims by paying only 300,000 won per death in compensating victims of forced labor between 1975 and 1977. Instead, the government spent most of the money establishing social infrastructures, founding POSCO, building Gyeongbu Expressway and the Soyang Dam with the technology transfer from Japanese companies.

The documents also reveal that the South Korean government claimed that it would handle individual compensation to its citizens who suffered during Japan’s colonial rule while rejecting Japan’s proposal to directly compensate individual victims and receiving the whole amount of grants on the behalf of victims.(emphasis added)

Despite this evidence, many Koreans insist to this day that Japan never paid any form of compensation to their country. They have also dismissed or ignored the Japanese government’s numerous apologies to victims of imperialism.

When the comfort women issue gained international attention in the 1990′s, the Japanese government decided that it was a special case. Despite the fact that the previous treaty had legally settled the reparations issue and despite the fact that South Korea had paid compensation to the women, measures were taken to provide additional aid to former comfort women. Directly paying reparations would violate the 1965 agreement, so the Japanese government instead established the Asian Women’s Fund to raise funds and deliver compensation payments.

As noted on the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s homepage, the official response to the issue included apologies and the distribution of billions of yen in reparations to surviving comfort women:

Recognizing that the issue known as “comfort women” was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of a large number of women, the Government of Japan, together with the people of Japan, seriously discussed what could be done for expressing their sincere apologies and remorse to the former “comfort women.” As a result, the Asian Women’s Fund (AWF) was established on July 19, 1995 in order to extend atonement from Japanese people to the former “comfort women.” Having decided to provide necessary assistance for the AWF by a Cabinet decision in August 1995, the Government of Japan, with a view to fulfilling its moral responsibility, had been providing all possible assistance for the AWF, including bearing the total operational costs of the AWF, assisting its fund-raising and providing the necessary funds to implement its activities (approximately 4.8 billion yen from the AWF’s founding through fiscal year of 2005), in order for the AWF to attain its goals.

The AWF closed its doors in 2006, after having spent a decade searching for surviving comfort women and delivering compensation and apologies to those willing to accept them. Sadly, many former comfort women rejected the apologies and compensation. This was because Korean nationalists had convinced them that a foundation established and funded by the Japanese government was “unofficial,” and thus the AWF’s work did not amount to a “sincere” effort by Japan. The civic group that erected the bronze statue is made up of people who hold such a view of the AWF.

And finally, here are two frequently mentioned points that should probably be addressed.

• “Korea wasn’t a democratic country in 1965” – Apparently, some people think that the entire 1965 agreement should be scrapped because Park Chung-hee was not a democratically elected ruler. Unfortunately, that’s not how diplomacy works. Japan had no control over the form of government in South Korea, and it had to deal with the South Korea that existed at that time. Compensation payments were necessary to normalize relations, and Japan had to agree to pay that money to the South Korean government before the treaty could be signed. Waiting decades to see if South Korea would ever democratize was not a realistic option. And it isn’t fair to expect that Japan should repay that money because the South Korean government didn’t properly execute the domestic end of the agreement. [ It's also strange to think that today's Japan should be held financially accountable for the actions of its pre-1945 undemocratic regime, but that Korea should ignore the actions of its previous undemocratic regime.]
• “Why doesn’t Japan just make a direct payment of compensation to the women?” – Since the end of World War II, Japan has used bilateral agreements to settle reparations issues with all of the countries that suffered due to Japanese imperialism. Billions of yen were paid to the national governments of countries. The agreements made individual compensation a legal matter between the people of those countries and the governments of those countries. These kinds of state level agreements are widely recognized throughout the world, and are far more common than agreements that leave open the possibility of compensation lawsuits from individuals. If Japan were to void its agreement with South Korea by paying direct individual compensation to the former comfort women, it would in effect void all the other postwar reparations agreements. Reparations that were already legally settled and already paid at the state level would have to be re-paid at the individual level. The Asian Women’s Fund allowed Japan to avoid the legal mess of voiding treaties, while still being able to satisfying a desire to pay special compensation to the surviving comfort women. (To learn more about Japan’s state level compensation policy, check out Japan’s Contested War Memories by Philip Seaton and flip to page 59.)

This summary of the apology/compensation issue is not meant to belittle or insult the former comfort women. Their suffering was great, and they deserved compensation and apologies. This summary was meant to provide a calm and rational look at how the postwar Japanese government has already taken very real actions in response to the situation – including very real apologies and very real monetary compensation.

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As of the time of this blog post, they had raised 16,742,900 yen ($213,00), far surpassing their original goal of 10 million yen. Over 1,480 people donated, some giving a few thousand yen, while others gave tens of thousands of yen.

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