Comfort Women and Justice? And revisionism!

From what little time I have for the news, I gather that, for some time now, the Japanese government has been asserting that it will clear up the issue of comfort women with Korea by the end of the year. Personally, I applaud this effort to try and reconcile differences between Japan and Korea, and I hope this marks a greater shift towards a deeper understanding between Japan and its neighbouring countries.

However, I have a couple of issues with how this reconciliation is being approached. The short version is that the approach of both governments is fundamentally flawed.

1) The necessity for financial compensation.

It makes sense from a legal perspective that victims be compensated for the traumas (in this case, quite horrific ones) incurred. However, who should be paying that compensation? The issue is such an old one now that it is no longer possible to round up the responsible people and impart justice.

From the agreements reached so far it looks like the Japanese government will be paying compensation, which superficially seems fair: it was the Japanese government that occupied Korea, right? Well, I have problems with this.

Firstly, the Japanese government now is nothing like the organization that rampaged around East Asia during the war. To my mind, it is a separate entity, established largely by the US when they demolished Imperial Japan and led them by the hand to a truer democracy*. Since then, it has evolved yet more. As such, I think it odd that modern Japan be held directly responsible for the compensation of the comfort women.

Secondly, where does this money come from? The government gets its money from taxes, which are paid by working individuals in Japanese society that are entirely innocent. Sure, the figure per head is going to be infinitesimal** (7.8 yen, something like 4p), but to my mind this is foundationally flawed.

2)Japanese revisionism

Just so we're clear, it's not just the Korean side I have issue with here, the Japanese side is equally flawed. It is plain to see on the news, Abe wants to "put an end to the issue before the year is out". Why the rush? Is this really the best premise for discussion? He may as well announce "Let's just get this over with quickly so that when the new year comes we can forget all about it". Anyway, part of the initial terms drawn up by Japan was the removal of a statue erected outside the Japanese embassy. This statue symbolizes the pains inflicted by Imperial Japan and a defiance, which I applaud, towards Japanese indifference to the issue.

I think part of the issue here is that the statue hurts Japanese honour. But let's be honest, it should do. The actions of Imperial Japan are a shame to the name of Japan, and it is by overcoming that shame that Japan should move forward; the Japanese government should be working towards building a society where past lessons are learned and can never be repeated. Instead, Japan has focussed on this shame as something that needs removing, rather than a harsh lesson.

I feel slightly alleviated by the fact that Korea haven't agreed to this term yet; however, I am somewhat disappointed that revisionism isn't the main thrust of Korea's discussions. If you're going to hold modern Japan to account, at least do so for its own wrongdoings***...



*The barbarism the US displayed (admittedly blood was on everyone's hands back then) is at least partially offset by the spirit of cooperation the US managed to forge with their vanquished.

**1 billion yen divided by 127 million people. 7.8 yen doesn't sound like much, but 1 billion yen is. A lot of good could be done with that money; lives could be saved with it, but as it stands a lot of elderly people and their families are going to get large sums of money. Yeah, they deserve a break, but so do starving children in the slums of the places we like to forget about.

*** My greatest fear here is that, by focussing on the money, the solution will only be a temporary one. I'm sure there is still plenty of anger in Korea regarding this issue, and while Japan keeps avoiding the issue, the Japanese will be less informed as to why such a sentiment exists. This in turn reinforces Japanese hostility. In such a situation, one can only hope that time passing will counteract this.

Yochien 幼稚園 - Starting Preschool in Japan - What it Means for Your Child, Time, Wallet, and Sanity

Figure 1: Specifications for a box to contain a child's tools for playtime.

Note the needlessly specific specifications that make what would be a 

simple trip to the 100-yen store many times as expensive in time and money.

 

Executive summary

Preschool education in Japan is an over-subscribed, unstandardised mess. I'll surely be glad my child attended, but it's everything that needs to be done until then that riles every rational bone in my body. My choices of education appear to be "no education until age 6" or "Christian preschool", complete with vaguely-defined charges and mandatory DIY children's accessories.

Warning. Applying for preschool in Japan may make you homesick.

Foreword

Herein lie the experiences of one fallible man and his family, trying to make ends meet on the fringe of Tokyo. I'm unsure of how relevant my experience is to anyone else in the country. Additionally, I was educated in the United Kingdom, which schooled me at negligible expense, albeit in the soggy, grey sort of way that everything tends to happen in the UK. This under-exposure to financial hardship* has undoubtedly clouded the glass through which I see the Japanese education system**.



*I would like to point out that this isn't due to having wealthy family; unlike many so-called "university students", I underwent the increasingly rare right-of-passage of making it through university without a stipend from my parents.

** Or indeed the health system, real-estate, etc., etc..

 

When to get your child educated***

I approached childcare with the same angle I use with most things; "Can it wait?" To be fair, I've spent much of the last year ensuring I've had the financial stability required to relocate my wife and children from Kagawa*4 to Saitama, and prior to that, getting my foot in the door of a university in Tokyo.

Nonetheless, the technical answer is "yes", compulsory schooling starts with primary school*5, and so my daughter will be joining the local preschool at the ripe age of 5. Nonetheless, this being later than I started school, I've been keen on getting my daughter some form of education for a long time now, and while my wife was in hospital, I used kindergarten to care for my daughter while I went to work*6. Anyway, pre-schools (which is what I will call "yochien" here) are generally entered from ages 3-6.


*** Yes, I will keep writing second-person for my titles, despite the first-person narrative; this is a blog for the grammatically masochistic. I will also keep up the footnotes, just to make things even less tidy. 

*4 Land of Udon, temples, and -if you ask the Japanese- more udon.

*5 Or "elementary school", if taxation without representation upsets your sensibilities.

*6 I survived a total of 2 months in a 1R ("one-room"*7) flat in Yokohama whilst supporting my daughter and trying to successfully translate for money, and write research documents for the promise of money. Those single parents that do that sort of thing every day of their parenting lives deserve all the help they can get. And a medal.

*7 The "One room" being a combined bedroom and kitchen. Toilets and hallways are not counted in Japanese estate agentese.

Finding education for your child

So, having successfully ported my family from Kagawa to Saitama*8, our first priority was to get our daughter's education sorted. Therein manifested problems 1 and 2, which are "the lack of preschools" and "nursery school requirements", respectively.

Within walking distance of my fledgling, car-less family are precisely 2 preschools, thus we're very short on options. Both preschools are ostensibly Christian schools*9, and more-or-less at maximum capacity. This led us to broaden our search to include nursery schools ("hoikuen"), which would be less educational and more focused on play. Given that many preschools also take the play-focused approach, hoikuen are a reasonable approximation of preschools, and tend to be far more numerous (with at least 3 within a 8-minute walk of our house).

However, it quickly became apparent that the nursery schools were not an easy option due to their requirement that both parents be working. We reasoned that we could probably weasel our daughter in by using our 4-month-old son as reasonable grounds for not having sufficient time to spend on our daughter; however, my wife discovered through conversation that it is likely that such an application would likely be refused. Additionally, my wife was concerned about the possibility that our daughter might be taken out of nursery school when our son reached a more "manageable" age of 1. Thus, I remain slightly sceptical about the existence of this problem, as due to the above concerns we never proceeded as far as making an application.

*8 Still have some incompatibility issues due to unmet dependencies for Sanuki Udon (I currently live above an udon shop, and have yet to eat there because "udon in Saitama is so expensive"); however, as a quick workaround, there is always ramen.

*9 Which should be a non-issue, given my primary school education included prayer each morning; however, now that I've given in to rational thought, the idea of someone teaching my children that, essentially, fairies are responsible for all of the mysteries of this world... Doesn't sit too well with me.

Applying for education for your child

Eventually we settled on the larger of the 2 preschools in the area, and they offered us a look around. The staff were helpful, kindhearted people of the sort you might hope to find in a preschool. Additionally, my fears of brainwashing were belayed by assurances that the preschool honoured the spirit of Christianity more so than the actual spirits of Christianity. They even gave me a rhinovirus so that I could get an authentic preview of childhood education as viewed from a father's perspective. Excellent! Where do I sign up?

The preschool provided us with the application form after we visited them for the tour. However, of course, once signed, there is the issue of financing this little endeavour. The nyugakuhi ("school entrance fee") for our chosen institution was 90,000 yen. Given that I'm fed up with the aforementioned delays to our daughter's education, and my eagerness to have the school accept our application, I've not been so crass as to ask what that money is used for; however, I will point out that I will also be paying additional initial costs of around 20,000 yen for equipment/clothing etc., and a monthly fee (of around 20,000 yen) too. Assuming the monthly fee covers teaching expenses, and the equipment will be paid for or provided by ourselves, I do wonder, for a preschool with about 20 children per teacher, "what on earth is this sum of money for?"

Preparing your child yourself for preschool

Occasionally, I am suddenly struck by the fact I am here, in Japan, living my dreams amidst that misty, bamboo'd, fairytale image of the East that drew me here in 2007. Sometimes, rather than be "struck" by this magnificent contrast, I am entirely bowled over*10.

By far the biggest surprise, even more so than the existence of a entry fee for preschool*11, was the outline of "things to do before your child enters school". It starts out asking for a photo of the family together (fair enough, I guess, over 100 kids, they're going to want some visual reference, though I'll be damned impressed if Teacher of class A knows which parents a pupil of class G belongs to, even with photos). It continues with a reasonable list of items such as a rucksack, scissors, etc., and specifications for those items. This is where things go a bit odd "Letter bag. This is a blue, vinyl bag. It is used to store letters at the preschool." Is a "letter bag" really necessary? How about the rucksack, that's also a container for holding things, right? "Album: We make an album with pictures that the child has drawn, which is for the graduation ceremony." OK, so having not attended either of my higher education ceremonies, I'm biased here, but a graduation ceremony for 6-year olds? I knew they had them for primary school, but damn it that is just pretencious. 

Things get worse. On the next page "Items to be prepared yourself", the words prepared yourself are key here: "Smock: ... The instructions for making the smock will be explained during the meeting for school entry preparations". 

I'm sorry. I must have read that wrong. No, it really does say that. We're obliged to make a smock, as we shall learn at the "meeting for school entry preparations"*12. Wow, Japan. Just wow. Global trade, record quality control at reasonable prices and we have to make our own child's clothing now? I mean, I know this smock is just to keep dirt off the expensive clothes, but it would literally be quicker to go to the second hand store clothes and grab something there. Probably cheaper too, as now we need to buy everything necessary to make a smock from scratch.

I know I'm getting rhetorical now, but really! I can use trains as fast as helicopters, watch robots play badminton*13, access lightning fast internet, and eat possibly the most refined food in the world, but children's clothing is a DIY job? Somebody pass the education system a link to wikipedia, they have a lot of catching up to do...

We also need to make an additional 2 bags: 1 for a cup, and one for a lunchbox. As if lunchboxes with handles never existed. Another two bags are also requested, which we'll buy if possible, but they have very precise size specifications (32 cm by 45 cm and 30 cm by 35 cm). We also need to make a "child's tool box", 9 by 15 by 28 cm, "please attach decorations (buttons, ribbons, pieces of felt, lace etc.) as desired". 

I asked my wife whether this strange list of DIY necessities might have something to do with a vestigial post-war "make do and mend" approach to preparing children's things for school, and she said "yes, probably. But we have so many more things these days, so they've probably all been added too". She also says that the above isn't a particular surprise to her, and that the main concern of parents will be in finding materials unique enough to befit their pretenciousness*14. 

Apparently, there also exist companies that will make the above items (this link is Japanese), and these can cost  more than what you might pay for branded items. So, there is hope for those with more money than time, but not much hope for common sense.


*10 Such that I even write blog articles subtly(?) infused with impotent rage!

*11 Hell, I've paid "key-money" twice and I was informed enough to be rightly surprised when my deposit for my 1R in Yokohama was actually returned to me! Anything that is slightly "one-off" in Japan, such as entering an institution or changing address, seems to have at least one vaguely-defined fee attached.

*12 "Yeap. That's it, I'm writing that blog article."

*13 To be honest, I randomly witnessed this through the window of one of the halls of the university I work at while I was walking home one night, so that was one of those "some things money can't buy" moments

*14 not exactly in those words, mind.

Conclusions

Preschool is set to drain my wallet, my time, and my patience. I only hope that my daughter gains, through socialising with people of her own age, what my wife and I cannot teach her at home.

 

America-envy, and why Brits are unsufferable

Not really a rant so much as an opinion-dosed observation...

I landed upon a YouTube video of American's eating food from British McDonalds. To be honest I think it was amusing, especially the last sound bite* of the video.

As you can expect, the comments section was a mess of nation-based bigotry. It amused me that one person pointed out:

"... You want talk about how americans piss you off? People from UK Piss me off. Any american that goes there gets shit talked 24/7 do we shit talk people their? no. They just are jealous of our country to be honest. That's the only reason I can think of, as to why dumb ass british people make fun of americans all time." - AnimeGirl

To be honest, I think AnimeGirl was generous to us Brits in assuming that the root of this anti-American sentiment is jealousy. Many, many British are overtly, and mindlessly of the British-is-best camp. Maybe this is a psychological compensation for the fact that -geographically- the British Empire waned long-ago; however, my personal experience of 26 years living in the UK has led me to the alternative conclusion that we deride the Americans not because of jealousy, but because we're gits. Brits will gladly deride any culture, even ourselves. To an extent, I think there is even a perverted sense of pride in this stance, but I don't count myself among that number.

I lived for a year in Japan initially out of curiosity, but I moved out here more permanently in part due to feeling fatigued at the general hostility one encounters in the UK. I can remember no instance of even being so much as unduly criticized here in Japan, let alone outright insulted, by a stranger. There are likely other factors at work**, but as it stands every year here reinforces the illusion that the gits are more numerous in the UK. Whether or not the same is true of America, I couldn't say. I've only spent a week (working) there. The only observation I was able to make was that people seemed more keen to interact than in the UK***.

Anyway. To regain some balance to the topic, perhaps I'll switch sides of the fence again when I've been here 20 years; there's only so different people can be while sharing >99.9% of their genetic data, and Japan, like anywhere, has its problems. No doubt gits will be gits in different ways depending on their culture. But hell, at least we're not at war, and hell, I have the freedom of time to write such a flaccid rant inspired by YouTube comments (never a good start to a discussion), and you had the time to read it. Apparently that's progress. What a strange world we live in.


* in a punning mood today, sorry..
** e.g. perhaps people are less inclined to insult a foreigner here either due to anticipated lack of understanding or reciprocation of the hostility; or differences in my commuting habits etc. Additionally, I've heard that my racial profile gets a better deal than some of the other minorities.
*** About which I hold the paradoxical view that this is both a good thing, but at the same time I don't like talking to strangers very much.

Why atrocities occurred in the Far East, why it still matters, and what we should do about it

Yesterday I watched through a BBC documentary on war crimes committed by Japan during WW2. The documentary discusses -in sometimes horrifying detail- the crimes against humanity committed by the Imperial Army of Japan. I think it is a pretty good introduction to the subject, and to summarise further, part 1 frames the atrocities in the context of increasing militarism in Japan, increased brutality of training in the Imperial Army, and nationalist/imperialist propaganda, before embarking on a tour of the first half of Japan's war with acts of brutality being the landmarks.

After watching part 2 (which completes the tour by focussing on the horrifying result of the belief in death-before-dishonour, as well as some of the American-inflicted suffering of the Japanese), I sat thinking about how it is both sides were willing to indiscriminately kill civilians.

As part 1 illustrated, POWs were treated very well by Japan during WW1, I'm not sure if this extends to non-Europeans, but it goes some way towards confirming that the Japanese are not intrinsically inhumane (I sincerely hope this doesn't need stating, but there it is anyway), but rather the social environment at the time was the root cause. Looking at the domestic history of Japan, it seems fairly obvious this was the case; however, why did America end up indiscriminately firebombing Japan?


Let's assume you're asked to run a bombing mission over civilian area during a war. Whether you agree is probably going to be based on: 1) whether you are blindly obedient, 2) whether you feel the mission will prevent defeat/danger to your homeland or allies, 3) whether you respect the people who will die. That is the order I would have written those items had I not watched the documentary, but now I think 2 and 3 are in the wrong order. Firstly, its evident that the Japanese soldiers -revelling in their early victories- had a contempt for their victims. But to an extent the same contempt is shown by the Allied soldiers, and while this is usually towards the Japanese soldiers, it seems that the bomber pilots (if not contemptuous) were indifferent to whether their targets were military or civilian, and they surely could not have been concerned for the safety of their homeland while dropping bombs on an increasingly crippled Japan, right? Perhaps they just wanted a quick end to the war to save their comrades the risk of being shot down, but even so, to weigh the lives of so many civilians (arguably they don't know how many civilians they will end up killing; however, I expect these people were fairly conversant with the power of their weaponry) against their comrades still hints to me of a disdain (or at least indifference) towards their victims.

OK, so what does this matter? Well firstly we can say with relative certainty from the above that atrocities will occur when there is disrespect for the opposing side, and these atrocities become worse with increasing disrespect, and increasing distance. Asking combatants to "please, very kindly respect the people whose government you are at war with" is just plain stupid because soldiers have a job which is psychologically devastating (killing people and exposure to mortal danger - how is that better than minimum wage?), which will inevitably lead to some level of unwanted behaviour, and when such behaviour is not systematically guarded against, and additional negative propaganda is imposed on top of that, you get the Imperial Japanese Army.

In other words, any war will lead to some atrocities, and propaganda makes things much, much worse. The problem is we have a number of warmongering nations (I'm looking at the US and UK here, but things have gotten more complicated than I've had time to keep up, recently), and a number of nations with state-run media (China, and Russia are often accused, but they're not the only ones). The examples in brackets are unlikely to go to war right now, but situations change (Japan was allied with the UK in the first World War, and with the Nazis in the second).

In this respect, the relative (and mutual) animosity* between Japan and China has to stop, because in the remote possibility that a war did happen between them, it would be terrible.

But what should we actually do? Well, here I think some politicians should take heed of a psychological experiment called "Robber's Cave Experiment". In that experiment, it was found that a group of boys separated from each other would naturally come into conflict when competing at given tasks, but that this could be overcome by integrating the groups and having them work towards common goals.

Translated to the world stage, this means we need to focus less on the transgressions made against each other, and more on cooperating on common goals. Note this doesn't mean letting ourselves get trodden on, but simply that we shouldn't ostracise countries because they do not conform to our expectations, rather we should use some of that energy create more opportunities for collaboration.

To an extent this is already happening due to trade. Trade has become essential to our societies, and this necessitates some degree of cooperation. When we go into our favourite shop, where we have a good relationship with the owner, and we comment that the paint job on the door looks like it needs redoing, that owner is far more likely to take on that information than if we said the same in a shop where we have no such relationship.

We all want the world to change for the better, and we want to do it now. Unfortunately, we simply cannot do it directly, the relationship must be built first, otherwise our clamouring for change simply drives us apart. Even when we have the power to impose the change, has this really worked for us in the past?

The problem with this is implementation. There is little we can do but vote for the moderate political candidates, promote tolerance, and focus on the benefits of collaboration (trade, science, and the arts are all exceptional examples).





*I've heard a number of my Japanese friends talk about the Chinese is really quite disturbing ways, and you really don't need to look hard to see that the Japanese are thought less-than-well of by a proportion of China too. Then again, perhaps looking harder would reveal otherwise.

Background checks for renting in Japan

Summary for applying for an apartment in Tokyo

-Have your proof of income ready
  -Easiest if you're an employee
  -Bring your bank books and any relevant invoices etc.
-Be ready to substantiate your reasons for moving
  -Be ready to share relevant contact details
-Be prepared to wait ~4 working days for the application to go through
  -Be available. You will likely be called by guarantor companies, management companies/landlords


There are a lot of articles, forum posts etc. on renting apartments in Japan, all of which are pretty easily accessible from Google; however, I thought I'd share my experience on background checks for renting, which I couldn't personally find much information about.

So, I'd found some places on athome.jp that I liked, emailed the estate agent involved, and arranged a meeting. As seems pretty typical, none of the places I'd found were available, but they showed me some other places instead. I found one I liked, and we headed back to the office to start the application.

During the application (which took about an hour) I filled out a couple of forms. You might save a minute or so by knowing your birth date in the Japanese calendar. You'll probably save considerably more time if you're not self-employed. I am self-employed, so I also had to show reasonable proof that I could make the rent. I had 2 months worth of invoices (they would have preferred 3) and my bank book, of which they took copies.

They also wanted to know the reason I was moving to Tokyo. Now, in my head, the reason is that I'm more likely to find a research position in Tokyo than in rural Japan; however, in actuality I'm only in relatively preliminary discussions with one of the professors over here. Nonetheless, I opened my big mouth, assuming any old reason would do. This actually ended up with me having to provide the aforementioned professor's contact details (thankfully the professor is a nice guy, and was willing to help out), and these were not just retained by the estate agent, but passed on to both the guarantor company and the apartment's management company. To try and avoid making myself look like a complete ass from my prospective professor's point of view, I stressed to the estate agent, guarantor company, and management company that unless something firm was decided upon, my main subsistence was from my translation work.

At some point, and I don't recall exactly why, the estate agent took a copy of my PhD certificate. It was probably relevant to something I said.

After making the application on Saturday, I got phone calls from the guarantor company and management company on Monday and Tuesday, respectively. Basically they just went over the contents of the forms I'd filled on Saturday, and concentrated on the weakest part, being the reason for moving, to which I basically said moving to Tokyo will also be helpful for my translation work, but I intend to do research if possible. I think they were also keen to double check my earnings.

On Wednesday, I got the call from the estate agent to say the application had been successful. Just 4 days from applying! I'm pretty thrilled about that: I thought they were going to keep me hanging for at least a week, and I was half-sure they were going to reject it.

On reflection, I'm not sure how useful my case is. I imagine most people will not be self-employed,  which will mean they have all the proof of income and reasons necessary to make things as smooth as possible. Also, perhaps having a professor (and a PhD) to vouch for me made a difference? Mine is a pretty unique case, so all I can really offer in advice is to have all your proof of income and be ready to substantiate your reasons for moving. For example, I really should have contacted the professor beforehand.

Still, as far as time scales go, you can probably expect to wait just a few days for the check to go through before you know you'll be able to move in.

P.S.

Lastly, if possible, I advise using a Japanese-speaking estate agent, I went both the a gaijin-friendly and to a normal estate agent, and found that the normal estate agent tended to have the better deals, or in the very least was more inclined to show them to me. If you have the patience to go to 2 or 3 estate agents, then I would highly advise it.

Oh, and never take flats on the ground floor. Maybe my nose has been over-sensitized by damp, dingy England, but the first-floor apartments I viewed universally smelled of mold. Given that I've lived in a house for the last year, and that the ground floor here is fine, I didn't really believe it, but having actually gone to 3 first-floor rooms and taken a good whiff (as well as inspect the cupboards for mold, and found it in 2 of them: use a torch or the light on your phone and look at the corners of the most difficult to clean part of the cupboard, usually the underside of the lowest shelf to the floor -ignore any strange looks from the estate agent- any fluffy specks that come off when applying pressure with your finger are probably mold), I'm never going to consider a ground-floor room again.

Japan "Enters the era of smartphones"

According to BBC News, Japan has freshly entered "the era of smartphones", and now everyone is worrying that we'll all be bumping into each other over here because we're too inconsiderate to look up from our LCD displays while crossing the street.

I'd like to point out that, if Japan has really been slow to adopt smartphones, there are two very good reasons for this:

1) The preexisting phones in Japan were unimaginably superior to the pre-smartphones of Europe. I remember coming to Japan for the first time in 2007 and being amazed at the capabilities offered by my Japanese mobile. In addition to the basics such as a camera etc., it had navigation (maybe GPS, or perhaps based on triangulation of transmitters), and email. My wife -then girlfriend- had a slightly better mobile that supported even nicer features such as TV: it honestly made phones on the UK market look absolutely laughable.

According to the wiki, the iPhone came out that year, but it was at least a year before it even entered the Japanese market. And if you already had a decent "standard" Japanese mobile, you might wonder at the advantage in getting an iPhone back then. In fact, according to Wikipedia "In 1999, the Japanese firm NTT Docomo released the first smartphones to achieve mass adoption within a country".

Basically, either the features Japan's phones were too competitive compared to our notion of "smartphones", or they were already fully-fledged smartphones. Effectively, Japan was using smartphones before anyone else. Maybe they weren't touch-screen, but they were powerful beasts for their time.

2) Utilising smartphones to their full potential requires a decent internet connection, and the mobile companies over here are very happy to charge an extraordinary amount of money for this service. There is very little choice when it comes to data plans, and if you go with one of the "big 3" providers here, you options are all or nothing. I'm not sure if this has been the case previously (there is a 6 year gap between 2008 and 2013 where I was in the UK), but I suspect expense will have been a big motivator for holding onto older mobile technology.

---

With that out of the way... I do wonder about the whole "dumbwalking" thing. I guess with the increases in functionality, there is a greater likelihood that people will be walking and doing something on their mobile, especially now things like LINE allow you to message without spending any yen. Increased adoption of phones in general is also likely to be a big contributor (even my 10 yr old nephew has a dumbed-down phone). Nonetheless, Docomo's simulation of everyone crossing the road while staring at their phones is really just a bit of sciency fun. I'm sure the simulations may have some use when realistic parameters are used, but you don't need me to tell you that most people will actually be looking where they are going. This is illustrated very cutely in the end of the BBC's article, where the author sets himself the goal of walking across a busy junction, deliberately not looking up from his phone, and the fact that "I'm sure I'm going to get hit, but after a few seconds I relax. It's OK. Everyone's reacting for me", and "It's so silly I have to look up". This is how the real world works: people try to get out of the way, but they are generally aware of the need to stop, and look up when necessary.

To be honest, its a nice little article, but I just get the feeling the author is trying to write life into an issue that simply doesn't exist.

Then again, I've yet to live in Tokyo.

Reinterpretation of the Peace Constitution. Does it matter?

Japan's government has recently begun implementing its reinterpretation of the Peace Constitution. For more than 60 years, Japan has foregone the right to use military force except in self-defence, but the new changes being implemented by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) mean Japan will now exercise the right to "collective defence".

Here, collective defence means providing military force in defence of an ally. What does this mean in real terms, though? I think its fair to say that if a nation allied to Japan came under attack, that the Japanese government would be quick to forget the peace constitution and make ready to commit troops anyway, where such a conflict was endangering Japanese security. One example often touted by the media is the new ability for Japan to shoot down missiles from (for example) N. Korea, that were headed for an allied country (i.e. the USA). I would conjecture that even without the reinterpretation of the constitution that Japan would do this, because it cant risk losing face to America because of its dependence on the US for trade, and it could easily justify the action after the fact. The same goes for any conflict involving major trading partners.

In this light, the reinterpretation seems very much like what Japan has been continually doing: posturing. There is overwhelming support among the political parties of Japan for the reinterpretation, and so we can probably assume that (for example) shooting down a couple of North Korean missiles would be received relatively positively over here, regardless of the constitution. The real power of the changes is political: PM Shinzo Abe will gain a fair amount of domestic support from this move.

The problem with such reinterpretation of the constitution is the same problem with Japan that it has always had from posturing: international relations. China and S. Korea have both objected to the change, and the reinterpretation of the peace constitution provides a tempting foundation upon which to criticise Japan. It would be easy at this point to paint Japan as re-militarising, increasingly extremist, and unwilling to resolve disputes diplomatically.

It makes me wonder, is the gain in domestic support really worth the loss of respect in Asia? Then again, does this political posturing really have any impact on trade?

EDIT: Reading the paper this morning, while Abe managed to push this through through the government, it isn't riding well at all with the public: Polls suggest public support for the Abe cabinet has dropped under 50%, with 54.4% disagreeing with the move, and only 34.6% agreeing. Its kind of nice to know the Peace Constitution is valued by the Japanese people, and this raises some questions over the validity of Abe's actions; however, I'd like to think that the Japanese people don't in principal object to the idea of shooting down missiles en-route to their allies..

Tracking Royal Mail deliveries to Japan

Just a quick pointer, if you have something sent from the UK, and have a 13 digit tracking number (of the form ○○##########GB, where ○ is a letter, and # is a number), you can use this with both Royal Mail Track and Trace, AND the Japan Post tracking service. I believe Royal Mail will track the parcel from beginning to end, whereas Japan Post will only track your parcel once it arrives in Japan. Nonetheless, the Japan Post service seems to offer more detail. As to the utility in knowing that my parcel is in an "inward office of exchange", I don't suppose it makes much difference; but somehow its nice to watch the cogs turning, even if you know the clock will chime at noon...

Example:

Royal Mail tracking:

"Your item, posted on 24/03/14 with reference ○○##########GB has arrived in KAWASAKI and is being processed for delivery."

Japan Post tracking:

	State occurrence date （In local time if occurred overseas） Shipping track record Details Office Prefecture / Country ZIP code（Postal code number） 03/27/2014 23:54 Arrival at inward office of exchange KAWASAKIHIGASHI KANAGAWA 219-8799 03/28/2014 09:00 Held by import Customs KAWASAKIHIGASHI KANAGAWA 219-8799 03/28/2014 10:20 Departure from inward office of exchange KAWASAKIHIGASHI KANAGAWA 219-8799
	EDIT: added some more detail

Trains in Japan > Trains in the UK

When heading for Heathrow by train, ready to head out the following morning, I had the pleasure of bumping into some of the people from South West Trains management (at least, that is who they purported to be, and given the reaction of the guard, I don't have any reason [or am too apathetic] to doubt them much). They overheard me asking the guard whether the next stop was Woking (for the airport), and asked where I was going. When I told them Japan, they said some of them had been on a business trip to Japan to have a look at how things were done in the Land of the Rising Sun. The general consensus was that things were OK in Japan, but not really any better than in the UK. Oh yes, this talk about Japanese railways is all very exaggerated... This struck me as a somewhat odd standpoint at the time, even with my relatively sparse experience of the Japanese railways.

Lets start with reliability, and fast forward to February. I had my flight from Tokyo to Takamatsu cancelled by snow. My initial reaction was to phone what felt like every hotel in Tokyo (actually it was about 15-20), and sit put (particularly easy to do in Tokyo, it seems: there is a lot to do, and its not that expensive). Unfortunately, this turned out to be impossible as everywhere I phoned was fully booked. I decided instead I'd risk using the trains.

To be honest, just the fact that Japan can operate train services when there is actual snow on the ground is a novelty in and of itself.. But exaggeration aside, I got from Tokyo to Kagawa in just a few hours (arriving before the time the flight was due into the airport, although I did leave Tokyo 2 or 3 hours early). I suspect a similar feat would be impossible in the UK given the level of snowfall.

Next, cleanliness. Japanese trains are kept in far better shape. Seems the general rule here is the faster the train, the cleaner it is. But perhaps that isn't surprising.

Price. A last minute trip into London from West Dorset is going to set you back upwards of 60 GBP and take almost 3 hours for a ~200 km journey. A journey from Kagawa to Tokyo by bullet train is about 120 pounds, takes 4hrs 20 minutes, and covers a distance of around 700 km. I'll do the maths for you; you pay 30p for each km in the UK, versus ~17p in Japan, while traveling almost 3 times faster, on average (I'll also point out median household incomes are comparable between Japan and the UK, so direct comparison like this isn't unreasonable, but I'll admit the caveat that I'm not sure how the cost-of-living burden differs between the two).

Speed. See above with regards to the bullet train. Perhaps not a fair comparison, though. Most trains in Japan don't seem overly speedy compared to what I'm used to in the UK. But fair or not, Japan has a bullet train, the UK hasn't even started laying track, so far as I know... I could try and weight things back in favor of Blighty by pointing out the UK high speed rail is going to be a good 80 km/h faster than the current Japanese bullet trains; however, just a couple of years after the UK line is due to open, Japan may have superconducting maglev train services between Tokyo and Nagoya. These could go an extra 100 km/h faster at 500 km/h*...

In conclusion, Japan is a very rich country, and has a high population density, it makes sense this would lead to railways that are more efficient. Clearly I think Japanese trains are the better. I suspect the opposite opinion I got on my way here back in November was not in any small part weighted with national pride. Then again, when its so plain to see that the grass is greener on the other side, I can see the merits in taking the good ol' British attitude of sticking up a middle finger, and not giving a damn. A way of life much under-used over here.

Racism in Japan

A Google search for "ANA CM 批判" (ANA advert criticism) on the 29th: Almost all the hits on the first page are either completely neutral Japanese news articles, or news regarding LiLiCo's comments on the issue: "Do foreigners who come to Japan have so much free time [to make comments like that]?", and "as a foreigner myself, I find it very embarrassing".

Now, there are 2 points about this. Firstly, there are foreigners over here who feel, as I do, that crying out racism over adverts like that of the ANA actually is more of an embarrassment than the ad itself.

Secondly, LiLiCo's sentiment was regurgitated on the 2nd, 3rd and 7th results of a page full of otherwise neutral news.

On reflection, there is racism towards us with lighter hair and bigger noses in Japan*; however, I'm am dubious that the advert plays a significant role in this, and when criticism of the advert leads to news and blog articles that portray such criticism as childish (as I said it would), then I suspect that does more damage to the image of Westerners in Japan.

In my opinion, this is a cache 22. I'm beginning to think the advert should never have been released, and if someone finds the advert offensive, they have a right to speak out; however, the very act of speaking out makes us a target for more confusion.

It could be argued that we should speak out anyway, and this has been a way forward for a lot of civil rights movements. However, I don't feel oppressed here, and all while that is the case, I'm happy to find other ways of changing people's perceptions than complaining.


*that said, I've never been the victim of such racism, nor do I know anyone who was. In fact the closest I've come to Japanese racism is being told that my friend's friend (whom I didn't know) had been victimised, which represents 1 of more than a hundred overseas students at that time. Either I was lucky and surrounded by lucky people, or racism just isn't as big a problem in Okayama, where I did my exchange. In contrast, I've heard racism on my handful of visits to London, but again, perhaps that is more to do with location, the rest of the South that I've been to seems pretty OK.

Racism bad! Naughty Japan!

So, recently ANA pulled an advert because it was deemed racist. Go ahead and watch that link.

Personally I thought it was hilarious, but then I've been absorbing Japanese comedy for a few years now. Sure it picks on a stereotype, but I think Rupert Wingfield Hayes' analysis on this is pretty much on the mark*.

What annoys me more than anything is the reflex RACISM! reaction that lead to the advert getting pulled.

I'm not sure where the apparent outcry originated, but by the gods I hope it wasn't foreigners. Why? Because it does foreigners much more harm to the reputation of Westerners to complain about the advert's racism than this advert itself does.

In case you don't follow my logic here, remember what happened to all the foreigners when Fukushima underwent meltdown? About 500,000 of them smegged off, and as a result, the term "flyjin" was coined. Yes, that's even more derogatory than the advert, and twice as funny, in my opinion.

The point is, every time a kneejerk reaction like this occurs, it will make us foreigners look like complete pansies. As I commented on that article (see the link. Let's see if it passes moderation! **):

The cry for racism at every conceivable opportunity paints us increasingly as childish. Respect is earned by your actions, when one's notable actions consist primarily of such demands for respect, it to an extent undermines the other favourable attributes one might have.

Finally, A non-racism argument for you: If you had to employ someone, would you choose the one that was defensive when you accidentally laughed at a mistake on their CV, or the one who laughed with you?

In other words, if one's default position is to complain about racism in this way then it is closed minded: insofar as having a default position is closed minded. The open-minded stance is to try and understand the person stood opposite you, and work on what we have in common. You can have virtues such as justice, but equally when your sense of justice is causing you pain, is this indicative of injustice, or of a flaw in your sense of justice? Since laws change between countries, we can assume that justice (to some extent) is different between people. I'll leave that as a thought exercise for the reader ***.

Anyway, foreigners say worse things about themselves, and being big-nosed and blonde-haired actually puts you at the nice end of Japanese racism which is actually probably more fun than living in Japan as a Japanese (but I evidently have little experience in that area).

Finally, and more seriously, there are far, far worse aspects of Japanese media**** we could be picking on, like the biassed reporting of the war, or appeasement of far-right stances.


*For those too lazy to click the link (or if it dies), Mr Hayes reminds us that in Japan, blonde hair and a big nose aren't traits that are looked down upon. I would add that I'm not so sure when it comes to nose size... I never heard of a Japanese person getting a nose-job to look more Western.. But blonde hair is something commonly praised over here.

**To be honest, given the awful puntuation, I've half a mind to ask they delete it anyway, haw haw haw

*** all 2 of them, lol, though I think they are both clever enough to work out where I was going with this

****e.g. the insistence on popularising the band AKB48, even though everyone knows it causes bleeding in the ears of humans and other intelligent animals.

Visiting the Yasukuni Shrine

To set a point straight: In my opinion, the Yushukan museum (the propaganda zoo situated next to the Yasukuni shrine) is an atrocity all unto itself. True, the Japanese have their own side of the story of what happened during WW2, but the stuff in that museum is exactly what the propaganda of the day was saying "it's all for the benefit of Asia, freeing it from colonialism!"... Ridiculous. The idea that promising young people here in Japan are falling for the exact same propaganda that cost so many young lives just a few decades ago is sickening.

Anyway, lets continue. Recently, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the controversial Yasukuni war shrine.

If I (or the state, for that matter) was to visit a war-grave in the UK, noone would think a thing of it, I think. Somewhere (I assume) there are graves for the people that gave the go-ahead for the bombing of various cities in Germany, Japan, and a whole host of other cities across Europe that were under axis control. I imagine people still visit the cemeteries housing those graves, and I never heard of anyone complaining about it.

Yasukuni is a bit more complicated because the war-criminals and soldiers are all at the same complex. I'm not sure about the exact layout of the shrine, but needless to say, if you want to pay your respects to your war-dead, you might have your prayers overheard by a war-criminal or two. Evidently, if you're the leader of a country surrounded by past victims of said war-criminals, this is going to cause problems.

However, is this really a problem with the Japanese side? Or is this as much to do with our failure to understand what is going through the Japanese heads?

Freedom of religion is something we of the West are supposed to be pretty big on (not a fan of religion myself, but lets not go there today), and to tell anyone they cant worship somewhere because of events come and gone is supposedly amoral. But religion is just an obfuscation of what is really happening. The real reason Yasukuni has become such a controversy is because it has become a political tool. If the Japanese don't visit the shrine, domestically speaking they might look cowardly, and the government will weaken as a result. If they do visit the shrine, the surrounding countries will look cowardly if they don't protest. Its a horrible balancing act between Japanese public opinion and international politics, with religion acting as a pivot. If everyone just stood back and acknowledged the situation, and then moved on to the next issue, then the problem would disappear entirely. Unfortunately world politics always plays out like school-ground arguments.

Looking at the Japanese newspapers, it doesn't seem this latest visit the shrine went down too well on the Japanese side either, and perhaps this is a sign that visiting the shrine is no longer a viable way of increasing opinion poll ratings. If that is the case, then visits to the shrine by state officials might die off.

EDIT: Lets ignore the fact that Shinzo Abe is a Right-winger for the purposes of this discussion. It undoubtedly played a part in this, lets not kid ourselves that it wasn't desire for political support that really made him go, but his ideology. That isn't how most democracy works*.

EDIT2: Lets also ignore Shinzo Abe's possible ambition of nullifying the peace consitution. That is speculation, interesting and well-informed speculation, and possibly true. But for him to ever succeed he needs to come out of this affair with better public opinion than when he went in, which frankly doesn't look so certain.

*I say this with some considerable degree of hesitation.. Would love to discuss that with a politics graduate.

Getting a bank account in Japan

I've seen posts for this sort of thing around, but things changed since the article I looked at, so here is the procedure I went through for getting a Japanese bank account:

When I went to register at the city office, I had my address written on the back of my residency card, and stamped. Apparently, this was sufficient proof of address (they sounded a little unsure, so where possible, I'd advise having an insurance card, but even so, I managed to get an account this way).

You'll then have to fill in the forms yourself, in Japanese. Apparently after some incidents or other it is now necessary that the person setting up the account actually do all the writing. Still, if you have brought the proof of address, then you can copy the characters off of that; however, you'll also need to be proficient at writing katakana, both for your name and for the pronunciation of the address.

A handy thing about getting a bank account with the post office is that you can register yourself at your address at the same time as making a bank account. I'm not sure how important this is, as I've sent things addressed to my daughter, and to my knowledge she isn't specifically registered with the post office, and I've never had anything lost in the post...

The other handy thing about a post office account is that they have branches all over the place in Japan, which is great if (like me) you don't know exactly where you'll end up.

Book: "Visas for 6000 lives" 「六千人の命のビザ」

It's been a while since I posted. I've spent most of that time writing my PhD thesis, and preparing its defence. In my spare time, I've done a fair amount of reading, my main challenge being "Visas for 6000 lives" (六千人の命のビザ).

Initially, I was quite keen (having been somewhat thrown by what I considered the difficult language in Natsume Souseki's "Bocchan") to read "Visas for 6000 lives" in English; however, I had read on the net that the translation isn't terribly good, and so I decided to get a Japanese copy and read that instead.

As it happens, I'm quite pleased I got the Japanese copy: for the most part the Japanese is not too hard going, and it was interesting enough to keep me going to the end (The most difficult part being a small telegram from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which I had to resort to getting a Japanese friend to read through for me, but besides this, the language was very accessible).

My main interest in the book is the act of humanity performed by Chiune Sugihara through which thousands of Jews were saved during the Second World War; however, the book somehow manages to condense this chapter of Sugihara's life into the first chapter (of seven). Despite this, I feel the scene was set sufficiently well, and there are a wealth of experiences and excitement through the following chapters.

As someone who knows very little of what civilian life was like in Europe during the Second World War, the book was a fascinating, sometimes heart-wrenching, glimpse of that era; albeit from the perspective of the exceptionally well-to-do.

I'd recommend the book to anyone who, like me, has little knowledge of life in Europe during that time, or is interested in finding out more about Chiune Sugihara.

Learn Japanese by Email! (and VOIP, IM etc.)

Learning Japanese by pen-friends/email-friends...

Pros:

• Learn Japanese as it exists in its natural environment
• Almost no previous experience necessary
• Can pick up slang words
• Meet truly interesting people from interesting places
• Learn anywhere, any time

Cons:

• Some pen friends may object to your spouse* 
• May pick up words mismatched to your gender
• Can pick up slang words

I've maintained a long time that getting a pen friend -or now we're in the digital age, an email friend- is among the best ways of learning a language. My personal plan for learning Chinese was basically: buy a book and audio CD that teaches the basics, then find mail-friends online.

To be honest, I never ended up learning Chinese all that long, but then Japanese has to take precedence in my life. Maybe when I've settled into Japan, I'll start up the Chinese again. I digress, but still, if you're interested, I feel I got on pretty well as a beginner with just those two resources: the beginner's book, and mail-friends**.

The great thing about email friends is that they cost you nothing (unless you end up marrying one of them... Whoops!), and even if they don't teach you, you're still learning.

In fact, as much as I want to like people for trying to teach me, its those email friends that correct me every sentence that I end up emailing the least often. I've taken a very 適当 (casual) approach that probably has more to do with passively absorbing what sounds right than actually putting in effort and being proper.

In any case, if you want to learn how to speak proper Japanese, you're going to want to read books, not chat to random people... If you can't read books yet, then its probably too early to worry about speaking properly, unless you want to do business in Japan, or ask your girlfriend's dad if its OK it to marry his daughter (shoot there's another thing I forgot to do!)...

But even so, email friends are helpful at pretty much any level of ability.

The only thing I would say against email friends is that I get a hell of a lot higher uptake from girls. I don't mind this (though my wife might), but it does mean that I'm not absorbing whatever language usage is more common amongst my own gender. The other thing, which I feel is related, is that many of these email friends will stop emailing as soon as I tell them I have a wife.

This lead me more recently to just omit that fact until asked... Certainly it means you can get a bit more practice in before it comes up, but in actuality I suspect its better to make it one of the first things to say so that you can find the email friends that are actually looking for friendship and save yourself some bother at the same time.

To close, I think its also worth pointing out that its never been a better time for gathering some email friends, with mobile internet as its current price, and email-capable mobiles, you can easily afford to do this anywhere. Free Japanese support, wherever you want, whenever you want, from native speakers of the language.



* if you're lucky, your spouse won't object to your pen friends ;)
   by the way, I'm interested in hearing if anyone else seems to find they lose a lot of email friends on account of having a spouse, because it seems very strange to me... Please comment!

** on second thoughts, I should add online dictionaries to the list of necessities, but online dictionaries are far easier to find than good pen friends or good books.

Not forgetting the East Japan Earthquake

I posted some time back about how the East Japan Earthquake is, quite rapidly, being forgotten. However, I think that when you spend some time to absorb the current culture of Japan (in my case, by listening to Japanese radio), it becomes apparent quite quickly that this isn't the case*.

Of course, without being in Japan, I feel that it is quite difficult to get an idea of how things have unfolded culturally, but even so, it seems telling that FM Hirakata is punctuated with references to the "Smile Again Project": a project where listeners compile messages to be broadcast every 11th by radio station(s) in the affected areas, with many of these messages also being broadcast sparsely through FM Hirakata's schedule.

In any case, while here in the UK the events of 11/03/2011 have been mostly forgotten**, it seems to have become quite a big piece of the Japanese cultural puzzle, which I guess is no less than anyone might have expected.


*In part, it shows that Google's statistics (like any statistics, I guess), should be used with a little more care before implying meaning. Supposedly I'm a scientist, of sorts; I really should know better.

**Leastways, I never hear people talk about it anymore.

More gubenatorial stupidity?

Same s***, different governor? This time its comfort women, who were "necessary" according to the Osaka governer Toru Hashimoto.

I mean, that's just stupid, right? Comfort women aren't necessary! The American's never did th-- oh wait.. Yes, they did, actually. And they got the idea from the Japanese, at that.

Despite shooting down my own argument here, I'm still inclined to say that the comfort women weren't necessary. They might have acted as a "breakwater" between the troops and "regular" women and girls, but considering they recruited the women at exceptionally low wage from a newly impoverished* population does much to blur the lines between "regular" women and comfort women.

So perhaps some of the population at large was protected, but only by recruiting members of the population that likely had little choice.

That said, I never heard of Allied troops with comfort women available during the liberation of Europe. The idea of being shot at making you require a shag is somewhat alien to me**. Surely the best way of letting troops rest is to move them away from the front lines for a while?

So what is the point of this discussion? That Hashimoto is an idiot? Unfortunately, I'm inclined to disagree, no matter how stupid the above is, some of Hashimoto's other ideas are pretty good: he supports cooperation in the case of several island disputes, and tends toward a compromising stance on the Futenma air bases. On the whole though, Hashimoto's nationalist stance, and apparent eagerness to revert rape issues to prostitution ones isn't something I'm willing to overlook.

What really gets to me about this man is that he isn't one of the "old-boys" of Japanese politics, or really an "old boy" of any sort at all. He is the product of late post-war Japan. Born in the 1960s, he's seen Japan's economic rise without having witnessed the destruction that war wrought on his country. There are millions of Japanese who have been brought up in the post-war society, and some of these are becoming the political big-wigs. I fear that they don't have the perspective of their elders, and with the effective censorship of the war in textbooks, I don't see things improving any time soon. From my limited outside view, it seems as though pragmatism is the only thing keeping the right-wingers in check at the moment.

Naoki Inose's (the Tokyo Governor) has come out with some stupid comments, but Inose is pretty harmless. Indeed, Inose exudes an image of cutesy Japanese anime-style stupidity. But people like Hashimoto also exist, who are undoubtedly intelligent, but harbour very dangerous ideologies.


*ie, decimated

**indeed the idea of being shot at in general is alien to me, though I've been in the line of practice fire before (and through no fault of my own, I'll add)

Top 5 Heroes of Imperial Japan

Understandably, much like Germany, the role of Japan in the war is almost universally viewed from a negative standpoint. However, unlike Germany, where we occasionally fixate on the daring and righteous efforts of people like Schindler, or romanticise about escaping from persecution (as per The Sound of Music), almost no examples in this vein can be found in the Western consciousness.

Rather than conform to the typical concept of heroes, who are commonly measured in terms of how much damage they inflicted versus their personal risk, this list aims to go some way to rectifying this by briefly introducing some examples of Japanese heroes that put the wellbeing of others before that of their regime.

Toyohiko Kagawa

Toyohiko Kagawa was a Christian reformer and activist who deserves mention for his sense of humanity during the peak and fall of Imperial Japan. He showed his Buddha/Orwellian side by abandoning the luxuries of modern Japanese life to experience poverty in the slums first hand.

That might not sound like much, but Kagawa went through a good deal of persecution in Imperial Japan, both from the police and his countrymen. Despite this, Kagawa set up the Anti-War League, and publicly apologised to China for the invasion. For this, Kagawa was arrested and briefly imprisoned.

It's this kind of selfless, righteous* tenacity that epitomises true pacifism.

Chiune Sugihara

Chinue Sugihara was the ambassador for Imperial Japan in Lithuania for some time during the holocaust. Thousands of Jews fled to Lithuania to escape persecution by the Nazis, however they became effectively trapped there because obtaining passage through the Soviet Union was very difficult. A great crowd of refugees surrounded the Japanese embassy in the hopes of obtaining a transit visa.

Sugihara contacted Japan several times, and failed in all cases to obtain permission to provide the visas, but after some contemplation decided to write the visas anyway. With the visas in hand, many thousands of refugees were able to pass through the Soviet Union and Japan, undoubtedly saving their lives.

Sugihara is fairly well known in Japan, and by numbers alone Sugihara should be at the top of the list, but I've given him the number two spot. Why? As much as he was a Japanese national, his only act of antagonism towards Imperial Japan was writing the visas, which you might argue was a dangerous thing to do; however I'd question the likelihood of Imperial Japan to go so far to persecute him. More than anything, I'd describe Sugihara as a hero of Europe, rather than Japan.

FYI, here is an essay of spectacular scope** regarding Sugihara: informative link.

Kijuro Shidehara

Shidehara was the foreign minister of Imperial Japan for two terms, and constantly pushed for cooperation and the expansion of cultural links with China, while making attempts to avert military intervention. Hats off to Mr. Shidehara, but the overpowering rise of the military essentially rendered him an impotent force.

Nevertheless, one might argue for Shidehara's heroism in the face of the assassination attempt on his contemporary by ultranationalists, and its this argument for which I include him in this list, even though there is much more to talk about regarding Shidehara.

Sokichi Takagi 

Sokichi Takagi was a Japanese Imperial Navy officer with powerful friends. It was because of his unique position within earshot of the "high and mighty" of Imperial Japan that he caught the attention of Shigetaro Shimada, who wanted a reliable assessment of Japan's trajectory in the war.

Takagi's ability to evaluate Japan's position in the war lead him not only to realise the inevitability of defeat, but to conclude that peace must be made with America, and that to do so the Prime Minister (Hideki Tojo) must be assassinated.

Knowing Tojo to have a great affection for open-top cars, Takagi planned to barricade, or block the Prime Minister's car, then open fire using a machine gun. The plan might have succeeded, considering Takagi's powerful supporters, however the plan was never invoked due to a mass resignation within the Tojo cabinet over the loss of Saipan. Takagi spoke later that "Had the assassination taken place, the resulting increase in tensions between the army and navy would have made peace-making difficult"***.

Unable to carry out the plans, Takagi still worked towards a peaceful end to the war, though as evidenced by the near-destruction of Japan, his efforts were not entirely successful. Nonetheless, I think Takagi's powerful resolve, which would likely have gotten him killed had it been exposed, earns him a place in the top 5.

Sanzo Nosaka

Sanzo Nosaka was a communist politician. In Imperial Japan, communism was fairly high on the list of "things not to do... Or else", and indeed, Nosaka was imprisoned more than once, and even tortured. Nonetheless, this appears only to have strengthened his resolve.

Nosaka joined Comintern and eventually was ordered to help China's resistance to Japan. This lead to Nosaka helping in the indoctrination of captured Japanese troops. Apparently, he was so successful that the Japanese army made attempts at assassinating him.

In this light, Nosaka appears the very embodiment of heroic resistance against Imperial Japan, but as the Wiki points out, there are a number of darker aspects to Nosaka's career.

Firstly, it was found that Nosaka had close ties to Stalin's regime, worse, it appears he used that position to exact personal vengeance on his friend after hearing they may have slept with his wife. The alleged adulterer was ultimately killed by firing squad.

Secondly, there is the fact that he was working under orders from Comintern. I'd like to think that Nosaka was working to mitigate the evils of Japanese occupation of China, but I wonder to what extent this was just to further the communist cause. That is to say, was Nosaka aiding the Chinese people, or just trying to impose his own world view?

Whatever the case, Nosaka highlights the fact that some Japanese soldiers, when educated on the evils committed by Imperial Japan, were happy to take up the cause of the Chinese. A fact that seems entirely overlooked in the popular memory of the war. In this light, even if Nosaka's own heroism is vague and tainted, I'd like to think that perhaps he produced a few heroes, no matter how they may have faded from history.


*I'd like to stress that I say righteous here without any invocation of mythical/theoretical beings

**at least in terms of what is freely available on the internet

***information from this paragraph can be found in Japanese here

Tokyo gubernatorial stupidity: Naoki Inose

Ah Japanese politicians. The outside world must seem so confusing to them. Yes, I'm thinking of Tokyo Governor Naoki Inose's remarks on Istanbul's Olympic bid (go ahead and click that link, the picture is great: looks like they're trying to use the mics to push him over backwards*).

Its almost embarrassing to read what he said, and it shows an outspoken ignorance of the outside world that would get you fired from most jobs in the public eye over here. I find it a bit funny that not so long ago he was warning against complacency over winning the Olympic bid.

Well, its obvious that Tokyo has now screwed its Olympic bid to Pluto and back, but I doubt that will do much to mar Inose's reputation at home, considering his predecessor was completely outrageous, and still was able to resign on his own terms.

But for my part, I'm not going to lose all faith in Inose-sensei. Even if he is a complete pratt, reading his wiki page (Japanese) gives the sense of a reformer, and if nothing else, he played a part in the rescue of several people in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

That said, the guy needs to get a bookshelf for that ¥4.5 million toilet of his. Perhaps he can then learn something about how Istanbul was a major seat of civilisation for hundreds of years (maybe thousands of years including the other civilisations that existed there. Hell, I need that book too)...

EDIT: Somehow, Tokyo managed to win the 2020 Olympic bid, though I suspect it has more to do with this person, than Inose.

* I hope you'll forgive my being light-hearted. As much as anything this post is just an excuse to use the word "gubernatorial"** which I can't imagine a single way of pronouncing that doesn't sound ridiculous.

** a word so strange to me that I initially thought it was a cute Japanese corruption of some other word that doesn't sound stupid. If only English were so sensible...

Google is reading my (Japanese) mind

Is anyone else seeing Japanese ads on YouTube? I don't mean a YouTube video of a Japanese ad*. I'm actually getting Japanese ads (given the previous link, ironically) for the Japanese coffee brand Georgia (a Coca cola brand).

At first, I thought that maybe YouTube has erroneously got my language as Japanese, but no, its still English. OK, and I still get English ads too. And to top it all, the Japanese ad preceded an English video...

My guess right now is that it has something to do with my posting Japanese into a video I uploaded**, which apart from having a Japanese title, also has Japanese in the subtitles and description (it took far more work than it was worth to make that).

So, of course, YouTube isn't reading my mind, but it damn well feels like it sometimes. I'm kind of impressed that Google's system can (to some degree) be aware of my fluency in Japanese***. On the other hand that is seriously wasteful advertising, given that I'd have to be really, really determined to get hold of that coffee over here... And anyway, my loyalty is with Boss, and that has nothing to do with the taste!


*Gotta love Tommy Lee Jones

** its completely irrelevant here, but here's a link if you're that inquisitive...

*** Or this is happening to everyone, and I don't know it yet. Or it really is a bug.