The White Peril 白禍

There's a search string pattern you straight people with blogs probably never get to see. It's kind of a pity, because it can be a real trip.

What you need to do is (1) mention gay stuff on your site a lot, and (2) mention a man who's in the public eye lately and doesn't need a paper bag over his head once. Then wait, oh, say 12 hours. At that point, you will be inundated with people searching for "[name]+gay" or "[name]+homosexual" or "[name]+queer+please+god+please." Several months ago, I brought up the then-future Mr. Renée Zellweger in passing, and for weeks--no kidding, weeks--afterward, I was beset by Googlers and raving Yahoos with Enquiring Minds.

The latest object of Googlelust is this guy, and I'm sorry to say to the few dozen people who are wondering that I have no idea which way he swings (or, since his hobby is chasing tornadoes, "blows"...oh, maybe not such a great metaphor, given the question...let's give him the benefit of the doubt and make it "swings"). One lone, novel searcher asked whether he was married; I don't know that, either. His bio indicates that he spent four years at Cornell thinking about the weather without offing himself, which is pretty impressive. Otherwise, all I know is that he needs to de-pouf the hair and eat a few Big Macs, but you can see that without my help.

LDP Secretary General Hiroyuki Hosoda has offered Japan's best wishes to the states damaged by Hurricane Katrina and says that the government will investigate ways to help out.

Japan has a typhoon season, too, and Number 13, one of the first big ones of the year, is heading toward Okinawa. As always, no one can predict where the storm may veer off to as it changes course. If it keeps along the same path, it could dump 200 millimeters of rain on some islands in the area within 24 hours.

If this year is like last year, which we all hope it's not, this is just the beginning. One small thing to be thankful for (besides the fact that Atsushi's in a big population center with good building codes) is the way the news media here cover disasters. Well, that and the way people react to them--you don't catch Japanese people bellyaching that a storm was "overhyped" when all hell fails to break loose and deaths and damage are minimized.

Additionally, for all their flaws in other respects, NHK and the rest know how to cover the aftermath of a disaster without making themselves the center of it. Yesterday, I was watching the ever-repellant Aaron Brown interview Jeanne Meserve on CNN. Meserve had covered the storm from a parking garage above the Superdome and was relating how some of her camera and tech guys had gone along on search-and-rescue boats after the rains stopped. Though her voice sometimes broke as she described some of the things they'd seen, she was clearly steeling herself to give the facts to the extent that she knew them. Her self-discipline and reserve made what she was reporting that much more moving.

Then Brown had to go and spoil it by doing this oily routine: "You know, people often say that journalists are thrill-seekers, but you can tell by how Jeanne here is practically on the verge of sobbing that that's not the case. See? She's about to cry. Journalists are compassionate people. Get it? Oh, and Jeanne and I have known each other for years--why, I just called her 'Jeannie.' That's a diminutive. It means we're buddies. We're part of the same selfless humanitarian club, don't you know." To her credit, Meserve responded, "Well, sometimes we are thrill-seekers," and seemed to be trying to remind Brown tactfully that whatever stout-heartedness she was displaying might not be the real story. I don't know whether she was able to penetrate his force field of smugness, because I had to change the channel at that point.

Michele has had an idea that's uplifting rather than just smug: she's now collecting encouraging stories from the aftermath of the hurricane. No civilization can outwit Mother Nature all the time, and Katrina did plenty of horrifying things that we're going to be finding out over the next several weeks; but the ability of our society to deal with catastrophic blows in such a way as to address and minimize damage is really inspiring.

I don't want to sound like your kindergarten teacher, but for those who are Americans living in Tokyo, Hurricane Katrina's doings over the last few days served, I hope, as a reminder that you need to have your earthquake kit ready. If the big one comes, the police and fire departments will have their hands full rescuing the elderly and infirm; it would be nice not to pile the able-bodied and unprepared onto their workload. The US Embassy earthquake preparedness guide/checklist is always a good reference.

If you read Japanese, Hitachi will also have a helpful feature on its site up the day after tomorrow:

Residents later this week can find out what their homes would look like after a major earthquake by using a Web site that pinpoints danger spots in the event of a temblor.

The system, developed by a group led by Shigeyuki Okada, a professor at Nagoya Institute of Technology and an expert in earthquake disaster management, is designed to give residents ideas about preventive measures, such as rearranging furniture, against temblor-induced damage.

The service will be free.

Residents will simply enter such information as floor plans and sleeping areas, and the program will highlight the danger areas.

The system was tailored for ordinary use by Hitachi East Japan Solutions, a Sendai-based software engineering company.

The start of consultations on Hitachi East's Web site is scheduled for Sept. 1, the anniversary of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Earthquake-related drills around the country and reminders about disaster preparedness are expected on that day.

The site will allow you to configure a model of your house based on room layout, furniture placement, and ages of household members. Feed them in, and the site will give you the most obviously vulnerable points in the house. Sounds pretty cool.

See, my problem with this ad (via Ace) is that it cuts off before Brian and Partner Simon turn on each other hungrily, start making out, and tear off each other's crisp little dress shirts. (That white totally washes you out, BTW, sweetie.)

Okay, my other problem is that there's just plain not enough of Partner Simon, who's the way cuter of the two.

Okay, my other problem is that Ellner is not running against George W. Bush for Borough President, so I'm not really sure how going negative on him demonstrates anything whatever about what Ellner can do for Manhattan. However much of a tough guy he is who stands up for his progressive beliefs, is he going to do anything about troop deployments?

I know--he needs to get himself name recognition and is appealing to Manhattan voters as effectively as he can in a fraction of a minute. Whatever works, do it. I'm also seriously cheered to see a gay guy appearing openly with his partner in a campaign ad. It's just unfortunate that what accompanies it reinforces the image that urban gays are suckers for the emptiest, most unhelpful sort of lefty jeering.

The NYT has more about the election itself, BTW.

Hi, this is Rob Marciano, your CNN On-the-Spot Idiot. I'm under this here cinderblock lean-to as winds whip debris and rain through the air around me--and, hey, we're not even close to being slammed by the eyewall yet! Uh, was that an anvil that just went by? Or maybe a big ol' rock? My baseball cap is totally gone, dude. This lady in the hotel where we are? She tried to open her door, and it slammed shut--like, from the wind--and whacked off half her finger, and the nurses are trying to give her first aid. But yup, here I am.

For Pete's sake, I wonder where people get the idea that maybe they don't actually need to evacuate when they're told to because they'll be able to brazen it out no matter how bad the storm is. I especially like the way Daryn Kagan solemnly warned everyone immediately after Rob's report that they shouldn't go outdoors until it was safe. (BTW, Daryn? What's with the hair? Do we think we're the Joan Jett of journalism? Is that who we think we are? Maybe Siouxsie Sioux? Sheesh.) And here's Jeanne Meserve (outdoors) to tell us about more of the Superdome roof skin flying off. One of her crew seems to have blown away--they cut back to Atlanta.

On the bright side, the proverbial ten pounds the camera adds are very flattering to Rob there, who looks kind of excessively lean and blow-dried in his CNN bio pic.

Added at 23:52: Okay, Anderson Cooper is acting seriously scared--and do you wonder? He's also bitching to Daryn about the lack of common sense on the part of other people who are walking around outside. They're not super-cool reporters, so they could get hurt.

Michele Catalano is collecting stupid over-hype coverage at her place.

Japan says Iraq has asked it to maintain its non-combat SDF presence in the reconstruction past the current December end date:

Iraq has asked Japan to extend its noncombat mission of troops in the southern part of the country beyond its expiration in December, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Monday.

Koizumi, in a debate with the leaders of five other major political parties in Japan, said that the government had not yet made a decision about whether it would extend the mission, which is opposed by many in Japan.

"Japan has received an official request to extend its presence in Iraq," Koizumi said.

"So we will continue to monitor the situation there, and make a comprehensive decision on the issue based on realities within the country, the opinions of the Iraqi people, U.S.-Japan relations, and Japan's responsibilities in the international community," the prime minister said.

Japan has about 550 troops in the southern city of Samawah on a humanitarian mission to purify water, rebuild schools and other tasks.

The LDP has women candidates at the top of its lists for 7 of Japan's 11 proportional representation zones:

In the Tokyo Bloc, the top candidate is Sophia University professor Kuniko Inoguchi. In the Tokai Bloc, Satsuki Katayama, a former Ministry of Finance division director, tops the list, with culinary researcher Makiko Fujino, and private economist Yukari Sato second and third in line, respectively. In the Kinki Bloc, journalist Mitue Kondo, and in the Kyushu Bloc sitting Diet member Kyoko Nishikawa, are at the top.

There are 57 candidates registered only for proportional representation seats and 180 registered for both proportional representation seats and regular district seats. One gets th e feeling--I've been waiting for someone from the LDP to come out and say this, but surprisingly, I haven't heard it yet--that the Koizumi candidate wants its anticipated victory over its enemies to be that much more decisive psychologically if it can be played as a bunch of women beating the old boys' network.

The tendency of typhoons in Japan to change direction and not strike where expected has made me hope that New Orleans may not get the royal screwing from Hurricane Katrina that everyone's been expecting. It's not looking good, though, and my thoughts are with everyone potentially in its path. I know what it's like to live in a beloved city that's under constant threat of natural disaster (not to mention at least partially below sea level), but the knowledge that Mother Nature is coming to get you right now must be very different from the vague sense that the ground could heave at any second.

Isolated tornadoes are also possible Sunday across southern portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, forecasters said.

...

National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said: "There's certainly a chance it can weaken a bit before it gets to the coast, but unfortunately this is so large and so powerful that it's a little bit like the difference between being run over by an 18-wheeler or a freight train. Neither prospect is good."

Maybe not, but at least the 18-wheeler is shorter. Catastrophic flooding (Tokyo has a lot of reclaimed land, too, so we hear about this often) has a lot of consequences in large population centers:

In New Orleans, which lies below sea level, gas and diesel tanks are all located above ground for the same reason that bodies are buried above ground. In the event of a flood, "those tanks will start to float, shear their couplings, and we'll have the release of these rather volatile compounds," van Heerden added.

Because gasoline floats on water, "we could end up with some pretty severe and large — area-wise — fires."

"So, we're looking at a bowl full of highly contaminated water with contaminated air flowing around and, literally, very few places for anybody to go where they'll be safe."

He went further.

"So, imagine you're the poor person who decides not to evacuate: Your house will disintegrate around you. The best you'll be able to do is hang on to a light pole, and while you're hanging on, the fire ants from all the mounds — of which there is two per yard on average — will clamber up that same pole. And, eventually, the fire ants will win."

And that's just the local impact; New Orleans processes a lot of petroleum and is a major port. For everyone's sake, let's hope for the best.

Added at 16:54: Instapundit has a post full of links and reader reports, naturally. His final observation is this:

I have to say, though, that from what I've seen New Orleans hasn't been on the ball. The evacuation was too late, there don't seem to have been many efforts to get people out of the city or to shelter, and whenever I see city officials on TV I get an unpleasant vibe, like in the first half-hour of a disaster flick. I hope that I'm wrong about this, and that everything goes as well as possible, which I'm afraid will still mean "not that well, really."

I've only been seeing those who are on CNN, but I do get the same feeling. Those in charge of planning fire/rescue and reconstruction projects have no choice but to learn from disasters as they happen, but that's no excuse for not being prepared to evacuate people effectively. The people to worry most about are those who have no choice but to take their chances:

The doctors and nurses who were on duty when their hospitals declared an emergency would not have been allowed to leave at the end of their shift, at least not without losing their jobs and risking their careers. But they took an oath to care for their patients, and that's what they'll do, even though it means they can’t be with their own families or help them to evacuate. And now they'll work around the clock, without relief. Pray for them.

Oh, I don't know, Connie. I like your libertarian version, and the feminist one is an oldie but goodie, but--and I realize I'm biased--my favorite is still

Q: How many gay men does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: What's wrong with right here?

Guys, do you have to put it that way?

The British army joined in a gay pride march for the first time, an army spokesman said.

...

"We don't really care what sexual orientation you are if you want to come and join us in the army," said Logistics Corps warrant officer Lutha Magloire, 39, part of the Army's Diversity Action and Recruitment Team.

"The army reflects society and we must recruit from all sections, so if there is prejudice in society it will be in the army also.

"But the army can only get better the more it represents all the community."

I'm glad the armed forces in the UK are recruiting gays. Well, sort of. To me "gay-friendly" is a bit excessive. "If you can cut it and follow the rules, no one cares whether you're gay" would be my version. But "the army can only get better the more it represents all the community" is a ridiculous statement. It goes beyond saying that the armed forces don't want to shut out talented, qualified people. The army is not supposed to reflect civil society; it's supposed to find ways to skim off the best people to defend the country from attack. Magloire's comment may have just been tossed off, but it contributes to the impression that gays succeed in society when mere variety is valued over the ruthless pursuit of excellence. For the sake of the British, one can only hope that any gays who think the army's gay-friendly recruiting policies mean they're in for eased standards and hand-holding have those expectations summarily thrashed out of them when they hit training.

Oh, and happy belated Pride Day to Manchester. (Some of my people are from Lancashire. Actually, a friend of mine is home in Manchester right now, too, I think--I'll have to ask him whether he went to Pride.)

(Via the Washington Blade)

Prime Minister Koizumi is taking a modest view of the significance of his efforts to privatize Japan Post:

Prime Minister Koizumi has christened his recent dissolution of the House of Representatives the "Japan Post-Galileo Dissolution," borrowing the name of Galileo Galilei, the Italian physicist who advanced the idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

In response, Shizuka Kamei, a member of the group of Representatives who banded together to vote against the Japan Post privatization bill, shot back, "That guy? He's the Ptolemaic!" What do Galileo scholars think about all of this?

"As a researcher, I wouldn't trot out Galileo comparisons too lightly--that's my unvarnished opinion," said Professor Ichiro Tanaka, a science and technology historian at in the graduate department of natural science research at Kanazawa University and author of Galileo.

The Japanese words here, incidentally, are 地動説 (chidousetsu: "Earth" + "moves" + "argument" --> "heliocentric theory") and 天動説 (tendousetu: "sky" + "moves" + "argument" --> "geocentric theory").

So--is Koizumi about to be excommunicated? Whatever outcome you want from the election, you can, of course, find a poll that supports it. The Yomiuri has this summary of where things stand at this point, which should cheer supporters of the Koizumi cabinet:

"If the LDP continues to do well, we might well end up with fewer than 150 seats out of a total 480," a senior DPJ member said.

"The LDP's divisions over postal reform, led us to believe we were on the eve of grabbing power. But if we lose by a big margin this election, it'll be us, not them, that will be split," he admitted.

The DPJ's fate, as in previous elections, is believed to lie with floating voters. Since the party has long depended on them, DPJ members know that such voters are fickle at best.

Koizumi and the LDP have insisted postal reform is the dominant campaign issue. "We'd like to get pensions back into the limelight. We'll ask people, 'Which is more important, postal services or pensions?' and then win back their attention and support," a senior DPJ member said.

A Yomiuri Shimbun poll Friday found the DPJ had an edge of nearly three percentage points over the LDP among floating voters.

Asked which party they would vote in the election, 11.5 percent of those with no party affiliation said they would vote for the DPJ while 9.2 percent said they would vote for the LDP.

In a Yomiuri survey conducted on Aug. 9, the DPJ was ahead of the LDP by 10.9 percent to 5.6 percent. But the most recent poll, released on Aug. 19, found the LDP ahead of DPJ, 12.5 percent to 11.2 percent.

Of course, there are still two weeks until the election, so there will be plenty more blustering and polling between now and then.

It's interesting that that DPJ guy was talking about potential rifts in his own party. Just today there was this exchange:

LDP Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe said that, assuming the ruling coalition maintained its majority in the House of Representatives, "there will inevitably be a major shift in the political landscape, given that there are many in the DPJ who also support Japan Post privatization." He indicated that his perception was that such developments could cause the DPJ to split. Responding, DPJ leader Katsuya Okada countered, "That's an extremely rude thing to say. Impossible!"

The DPJ also pointed out, naturally, that the LDP also has members who didn't go along party lines.

Much is being made of the fact that the LDP is focusing obsessively on Japan Post privatization, with the opposition parties figuring they can use it to their advantage and win voters over by shifting the discussion to other issues. Perhaps. Not all of Koizumi's policies have been popular, and the communists and social democrats, for example, are trying to capitalize on the possibility that Article 9 of the constitution could be amended to allow for collective self-defense and on the increasing number of workers without positions as regular company employees.

The LDP has some potential tricks up its sleeve, though. It's use of "assassin" candidates is described by the Mainichi here:

The LDP is reportedly planning to place its high profile candidates, referred to in Japanese as "shikaku," or "assassins," high on the party's proportional representation list, basically ensuring them victory in the election.

But candidates standing for re-election to the Lower House, who are likely to face a tough battle in the election, are complaining that the preferential treatment of such candidates is unfair.

The LDP has pitted the high-profile candidates against rival candidates opposed to the postal privatization bills promoted by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

The party's proportional representation list will be released on Aug. 29. If the "assassins" are placed high on the list as expected, the party's leadership is likely to come under fire from party members seeking re-election.

There have been plenty of complaints that the LDP's funkier high-profile candidates are inexperienced politically; pushing them to the top of the proportional representation roster (the list of districts is here in Japanese, BTW) is seen as a kick in the teeth to party loyalists who supported Japan Post privatization but may not win seats in their individual districts. The proportional representation list is to be released tomorrow, so we'll see what it looks like.

BTW, proportional representation, for those who find the Mainichi explanation confusing, involves setting aside 180 lower house seats and 98 upper house seats to be divided among 11 zones (large regions of Japan such as Hokkaido, Tohoku, and Tokyo) rather than little individual districts. Voters select a party to get the proportional representation seats for their zones; each party gets the same proportion of seats as it got votes. The idea is to keep parties that have significant support but didn't win any seats with individual candidates from being shut out of the Diet entirely.

Atsushi and I were able to get together every two weekends for most of the summer until this month. I haven't seen him for three weeks, so I'm getting kind of gretzy--especially because he's working all through this weekend, and I can tell he's stressed and tired and can't do anything about it.

My own travails this weekend are more annoying than stressful. Funny how it's not listed on the reference calendar of my datebook, but today is apparently Retailers Make Sean Feel Lazy Day. The giggly, flirtatious girls behind the counter at Dean & Deluca said, "We haven't seen you in that shirt lately," which struck me as a sign that maybe I'm not cooking for myself quite often enough. It's not mere sloth--really it isn't. For one thing, with the heat, it's hard to take frozen homemade food in to the office without having it drip water all over the place. For another, Japanese apartments aren't wired to allow you to use all your appliances at one time. In our place, either the air conditioner or the microwave/oven is on...but not both, unless you want to trip the breaker. Thankfully, the weather has a hint of fall around the edges. The sun today is strong, but it doesn't stab at you the way it did up until last week or so. In a few weeks, I won't need to choose whether to make food from scratch or avoid death from heatstroke. And anyway, the Dean & Deluca girls didn't mean any harm.

When I went to get my watch battery changed, on the other hand, the guy did adopt a frank scolding tone--you know how people who work with gadgets can never seem to accept that we laypeople use them hard?--to inform me that there was condensation under the crystal, which I apparently caused by getting the watch wet. I am guilty of watch abuse and was given to understand by his expression that I was just lucky he didn't call Child and Family Services on me. "Moisture can get in around the battery cover," he snapped, oblivious to the fact that just above the battery cover was where the case was stamped "WATER RESISTANT." I mean, it's not as if I'd ever turned a firehose on the thing--I just don't take it off before I do the dishes.

Of course, now that I've reverted to being a lazy bachelor who subsists on take-out, there aren't a lot of dishes to do. Luckily for me, Atsushi's coming home this coming Saturday, which should stop my downward slide before I start, like, getting fat and leaving laundry on the floor and stuff.

Romeo Mike has two great posts up this week. The more general one is about how movements for tolerance mutated into political correctness. I'm going to zero in on the gay content--go figure--but there's a lot more to it:

I never wanted anything more out of my gay rights than to not be arrested for it. I was perfectly aware that my dynamics were different from the mainstream, so why should a tail wag the dog. Yet now society itself is being dismantled to accommodate a few hundred people who demand to have the same everything, even when so much of it has to be artificially constructed, and risks affecting essential social fabric.

Well, societies do evolve. The decriminalization of homosexual conduct has itself certainly been a change in the social fabric, after all--however innocuous those of us with the most to gain by it may find it. And entitlement-mindedness did not originate with gays; it's the way politics works nowadays. Furthermore, just about everyone who espouses "traditional values" is picking and choosing customs from the past that he deems worth reviving or updating, and human institutions are by definition artificial constructs. Even so, none of that vitiates the point that fecklessly restructuring long-standing institutions to serve political ends that only emerged a decade or two ago is ill-advised. Not even all gay activists can agree on why gay marriage, as opposed to the other potential ways gay unions might be recognized, is the only way to go. The reasons most frequently and loudly offered appear to center on "respect" and "dignity," which it's dangerous for free people to expect the government to confer on them.

About feminism, RM (I hope he doesn't mind my calling him that; I am certainly not going to refer to him as "Romeo") says,

Though males had to work to support their families, feminists co-opted work as an equality issue. Now, child-rearing is disdained by many women who identify their life purpose by labouring for their employer. For many, children aren't part of the equation anymore, even though they still mate. Yet the subsequent rise in mean income forced up the cost of living so now women have no choice but to work, child or not. Surely, on their death beds their last words will be,"I can rest now knowing my life's purpose was to make profits for my boss."

Again, I'm with RM overall. Encouraging people to think of their career as their primary source of fulfillment (or even intellectual stimulation) works against their instincts and the good of their children--no argument here. At the same time, let's not lose sight of a couple of things. For one, while Australia has a different tax system and welfare state from the US, my understanding from Australian friends is pretty much that the two countries are not much different in this respect: families with children can make it with one income if they're willing to forgo the frills of full-on bourgeois living.

For another, not everyone is cut out for child-rearing. We are a complex civilization with many important artifacts to maintain and develop for future generations, and there's no shame in devoting yourself full-time to such tasks. The problem is that everyone--including the vast majority who will eventually become parents--has been encouraged to develop in a way that's at odds with good parenting, not that women who aren't the mothering type are now free to pursue careers.

The big problem is mouthing abstract bromides about "diversity" while taking concrete steps to shoehorn people into politically-approved personality and behavioral types. RM tackles that in the other post, coming up with a useful neologism:

mis.het.eur.andry; from misandry, hatred of men + het, heterosexual + eur, euro

"denigration of straight white male/s under the guise of promoting anti-patriarchal ideology."

The whole mentality of seeing different ways of life as some kind of rebuke directed at your own is something I've never understood. If you have to defang people's personalities in order to be able to deal with them comfortably, there's something wrong with your spine. Liberal societies nurture strong, combative personalities and will always have their share of friction. Feminists and gay activists who expect us to make lasting gains that are woven into society instead of being appliqueed onto it need to see the advantage there. Opposition doesn't just tear you down, it also shows you where your own arguments have flaws so you can improve them.

They haven't ironed out all the kinks in Japan's spy satellite program:

Japan has postponed the launch of a third spy satellite intended to keep an eye on communist North Korea for at least six months due to a technical glitch, a report said Thursday.

Japan launched two spy satellites in March 2003 amid concerns about the security threat posed by North Korea, which claims to have nuclear weapons.

The third was set to be launched this fiscal year, which ends in March 2006, but a government committee postponed it because of a computer chip problem. At least six months are needed to replace the chips and test new ones, Kyodo News agency said. Officials were unavailable to confirm the report late Thursday.

...

Critics say sending spy satellites into space goes against a long-standing Japanese policy of conducting only nonmilitary space missions.

Yes, it does, but that just means it goes against a long-standing Japanese policy of mistaking sub-standard defense for saintly non-aggression. No harm in changing that.

Nine years ago today, I landed at Narita Airport for the first time. I had no idea it was the first day of the rest of my life. I was originally supposed to be here for a year-long language program and then return to grad school in New York. Plans change!

I tried to get interested in the discussions of potential gay "conversion" at The Volokh Conspiracy and couldn't. I find Eric's comments on the topic fascinating, though:

But there's a real world out there, and when you're young, hot and horny, and there are other people running around, there are naturally going to be occasions when one of them is naive, yet willing.

Looking to be converted — to put it in Volokhian terms.

Such types — apparently heterosexual, but what you might call "bi-curious" — used to regularly come on to me, and they'd scare the hell out of me, because I could not have handled the responsibility. Fortunately, I had a house full of openly gay men which I used to use as a "dumping ground" for the wannabe converts. All I needed to do was get them into the house, sneak out the back door, and drive away. The rest was not up to me.

Eric's right, though I think he may overestimate the naive part. A lot of us who are gay were once "straight" guys finding cagey ways to put ourselves in proximity with gay men who might put the moves on us--or not even necessarily put the moves on us, but connect somehow.

This isn't the "conversion" or "recruitment" scenario as envisioned by most social conservatives, which involves the seduction of a straight man who's just kind of confused and horny by either a specific homo or the general normalization of homosexual behavior. Then, through some mysterious mechanism I've never seen explained, Straight Man is in danger of becoming addicted to the combination of instant gratification + lack of need for messy emotional entanglements and ruining his life, which result would presumably be all the more tragic because he's not "really" a faggot.

Do such things happen? Possibly. It definitely happens that gay men scam on hot straight guys a lot, and sometimes they score. But I find it hard to believe that seriously heterosexual men don't pretty quickly find themselves thinking something like Blech--I just made it with a guy!...and not doing it again.

Regarding the rest? Well, you can't exactly "convert" them to something that's already inside them, and seduction between adults never goes just one direction. For every caddish homo pestering a straight friend to give him a chance to demonstrate the joy of gay sex, there's a "straight" man who's driving a gay friend of his crazy by sending constant flirtatious signals.

One last thing along those lines: we're not just talking about "enjoyable" behavior. Figuring out that you like sleeping with people of the same sex is relatively easy. Coming to terms with the fact that you're destined to mate with someone of the same sex is not so easy. Many, if not most, of us who are confirmed homosexuals went through a period of transition in which we called ourselves bisexual. I don't deny that bisexuality exists, but "orientationally bisexual but behaviorally heterosexual" really is frequently code for "hasn't figured it out yet."

I don't blame Michael or Henry Lewis for not bringing it up, but there's an interesting aspect to this story that I think worth paying attention to:

The Concerned Women of America, a “traditional family values” organization run by Beverly LaHaye, wife of fundamentalist preacher Rev. Tim Lahaye, a Christian broadcaster, has targeted Starbucks for promoting “homosexual values” by including quotes from gay individuals on their coffee cups, and for the company’s support of a San Diego gay pride event.

...

The campaign also features quotes from other gay celebrities including singer–songwriter Rufus Wainwright, and musician Stephin Merritt.

Starbucks started the “The Way I See It” quote program “as an extension of the coffeehouse culture — a way to promote open, respectful conversation among a wide variety of individuals.” Other notable figures whose quotes appear on the cups include actor Quincy Jones, New Age author Deepak Chopra, film critic Michael Medved, Olympic medalist Michelle Kwan and coaching legend John Wooden.

So--our campaign to promote discussion among people of differing viewpoints includes a few gays, a New Age guru, a few movie types--isn't Q still mostly known as a music producer, BTW?--and a few athletes. Notice anyone missing?

I suppose it's possible that there are deep thoughts from conservative Christians on some of the cups Starbucks printed for the program, or at least that there was bland spiritual content in the quotations from those considered notable for non-religious achievements. But it seems odd that the company's media manager wouldn't have mentioned that if it were the case. Doing so would, after all, have been the obvious way to deflect criticism from the CWF that Starbucks is promoting one-sided agenda.

Starbucks program planners probably didn't sit in their official smoke-filled smoke-free room and say, "Well, whatever we do, let's be sure to leave out those dreadful Christians!" But the effect of hewing closely to the academic left's definition of "diversity" is to give the religiously devout yet another little reason to feel that "the coffeehouse culture" believes they have no wisdom of their own to offer but plenty to learn from everyone else. Even if you don't think that's unfair, it's bad strategy, especially for gays and those who think they're trying to help us.

Aside: I think that if I were confronted, of a not-yet-caffeinated morning, with a quotation from Deepak f'ing Chopra on my coffee cup, I'd hand the sucker back and head back to bed, perhaps forever.

Added while trying to keep biscotti crumbs out of the keyboard: Henry Lewis commented to say that the contributors to "The Way I See It" do include a few conservatives; I'm more than happy to admit an error when it turns out I was being too cynical.

Even so, maybe I'm just too inclined to be hard on gay PR and am making a big deal out of nothing, but...put it this way: you've got an exchange of ideas that includes a New Age guy, an out gay guy, an Asian woman athlete, et c. I think that most rank-and-file Americans would say that if you really want to reflect the diversity of society, there should be an obvious Christian, saying pointedly Christian things, in there somewhere.

Mark Alger says that summer has begun its slow glide toward fall in Cincinnati. Tokyo had its moment last week, too. I walked out the door, and--uh, if you've ever had an inner-ear infection, you know how the doctor gives you anti-biotics and pain-killers and you go home and go to bed and you wake up and it doesn't hurt and the relief is so overwhelming you almost cry? It was like that. You felt air--real, lovely, moving air that actually felt as if it contained some oxygen along with the water vapor. Suddenly, you knew you could walk down the street without expecting to run into Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego around every corner.

Fine, so the city turned back into a kiln within twelve hours, but the brief moment of relief was enough to give hope. Today, we had a rain that was actually kind of refreshing. I think I've been compulsively downing less iced tea, at least by a little. It won't be long before guys are no longer walking around in shorts (boo!), but not long after that they'll be wearing sweaters (yum!), so it all works out.

The NYT has the proposed Iraqi constitution posted. Michael has it, I think, in perspective:

It’s not perfect, but unlike some people, I didn’t expect it to be. A lot needs to be worked out. I’m not happy with laws being based on Islam, but I am happy with Article 151: No less than 25 percent of Council of Deputies seats go to women. That would make it more representative than Parliament in Canada. And, if women are treated unequally, then they, as a majority vote in Iraq, have the right to force change in the law.

I'm not really fond of Article 151--just removing barriers to women's political participation strikes me as sufficient in that sphere. I don't usually go for nationalized industries, either, though in this period of transition holding off on privatization may be a wise initial move. Iraq has several competing ethnicities and a population shellshocked by decades of brutal dictatorship followed by invasion followed by slow reconstruction. Anyone who's acting all bowled over at the fact that people have clung to tradition (in this case Islamic) to help stabilize things is either disingenuous or stupid.

Japan's proceeding with its SST plan:

Japan's space agency plans to launch an arrow-shaped airplane at twice the speed of sound high over the Australian outback as early as next month in a crucial test of the country's push to develop a supersonic successor to the retired Concorde.

The test follows a three-year hiatus since the first experimental flight of the unmanned aircraft, dubbed the next-generation supersonic transport, prematurely separated from its booster rocket and crashed into the desert.

"We've made some improvements so that won't happen again," Takaaki Akuto, a spokesman for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, said Tuesday in Tokyo. "This is a pretty important test."

A successful mission will pave the way for additional experiments as JAXA aims to develop a plane that can carry 300 passengers at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, making the run from Tokyo to Los Angeles in about four hours.

The aircraft is being developed in a partnership with France, whose history in the way of making profitable supersonic jets is not what you would call promising. But let's just leave that aside and dream of flying to LA in four hours.

Four hours! Just think of what you could do with the seven hours you'd save that way: start recovering from your jet lag early...spend more time with your friends...catch a domestic flight to New York and end up spending less time in the air than you would have spent flying Narita-JFK on a 747...write and proofread the great American novel. It would be like winning the chronolottery. Of course, it's likely to be super-expensive, if it happens at all, so for now we're still stuck trying to convince ourselves that 12 hours of imprisonment is great because it's the perfect opportunity to reread War and Peace without distraction.

I don't seem to have enough gay readers to fill a taxi, and I doubt that those I do have need this particular sermon, but JIC....

There's nothing wrong with being boisterously gay at a bar. I do it all the time myself. But honey, it's possible to do so without screeching so loudly that everyone else in the place wonders whether he's accidentally wandered into a junior high school girls' bathroom.

Not long ago, I was at one of my favorite hang-outs, and it was fairly full. You had to talk at a bit above normal conversational volume to be heard, which was fine. Then in came a group of four or five guys who decided that if 70 decibels are good, 130 are even better. I don't just mean, like, every once in a while, they'd all laugh uproariously when someone made a good wisecrack. I'm talking about their sustained volume.

One of them was talking about his sex buddy Darren back in Boston. I learned (from five stools away, mark you) a lot about Darren. Darren ties him up just the way he likes it. Darren is close to 50. Darren is no movie star, but he's pretty cute. Darren has as much hair on his abs as on his chest. Darren's belly has a fair amount of fat on it, but the muscles underneath are still rock-hard. Darren proves that it's true what they say about guys with big noses.

This went on and on, loudly. To make matters worse, one of the Japanese guys in the party didn't seem to understand idiomatic English very well, and Mr. Bostonian was being pretty slangy, so every once in a while he had to stop and repeat something he'd just said, rephrasing it with can't-miss-it literalism.

Aside from the tying-up part, and depending on just how much lard there is on his tummy, Darren actually sounds kinda hot. I'm almost sorry that I didn't encounter him when I was younger and wilder. At this point, though, I'm afraid the next time I go to Boston I'm going to run into Darren, recognize him, and merrily appropriate him as an old acquaintance before I remember that I myself do not, in fact, know him. Adjusting your voice so that your friends can hear you but those around cannot is worth the effort, guys. Otherwise, you look at best impolite and at worst desperate to convince the world at large that your life is exciting.

Okay, um, when Dianne Feinstein (1) is calling you petty and (2) has a point, it is time to change your thinking. it is high time to change your thinking. it is way past high time to change your thinking. just what the hell are you thinking, anyway? Jaw, meet desk:

The USS Iowa joined in battles from World War II to Korea to the Persian Gulf. It carried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran conference of allied leaders, and four decades later, suffered one of the nation's most deadly military accidents.

Veterans groups and history buffs had hoped that tourists in San Francisco could walk the same teak decks where sailors dodged Japanese machine-gun fire and fired 16-inch guns that helped win battles across the South Pacific.

Instead, it appears that the retired battleship is headed about 80 miles inland, to Stockton, a gritty agricultural port town on the San Joaquin River and home of California's annual asparagus festival.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a former San Francisco mayor, helped secure $3 million to tow the Iowa from Rhode Island to the Bay Area in 2001 in hopes of making touristy Fisherman's Wharf its new home.

But city supervisors voted 8-3 last month to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military's stance on gays, among other things.

"If I was going to commit any kind of money in recognition of war, then it should be toward peace, given what our war is in Iraq right now," Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said.

Feinstein called it a "very petty decision."

"This isn't the San Francisco that I've known and loved and grew up in and was born in," Feinstein said.

For crying out loud, people, I don't much like the military's stance on gays, either--but, you know, for much of the time the Iowa was in service, homosexual conduct was flat-out illegal everywhere. This kind of snippy grandstanding disregards any progress that's been made and looks like...well, snippy grandstanding. (Now, there's a stance that's likely to convince the military to consider a change of policy.) Furthermore, anyone who would spurn a ship that was used to help defend American liberties through key events in the 20th century because he happens not to like what the military is doing right now is a fruitcake. Slap Korean War veterans in the face to make a point about the Iraq invasion? I'm only grateful that the article doesn't spell out what the "other things" are. Happily, the officials from Stockton who are quoted in the article indicate that it's going to get a proper welcome there.

This editorial from the Nikkei raises good, albeit depressing, questions about the plans the two major parties have for Japan Post:

The DPJ plan would maintain Japan Post as a semi-public corporation but lower the cap on savings account balances for a single depositor from the current 10 million yen to 7 million yen by next year, and from there down to 5 million yen over several years, so that the approximate 220 trillion yen now held in postal savings would shrink by half. There would also be some sort of method used to decrease the number of new policyholders for insurance. The party touts its plan as a way of realizing a more definite transfer of capital from the post offices to private banks and insurance companies than the LDP plan would: "A change in the flow of capital from public to private."

That's one way of thinking, but it leaves more than one question open. If the amount of capital contracts greatly, not all of the 26000 regular employees of Japan Post will be needed, but the DPJ plan doesn't say anything clear about personnel reductions. The party says, "Personnel levels will, of course, be adjusted as more workers reach mandatory retirement age," but to the extent that the Japan Post unions and other organizations, which are antipathetic to personnel reductions, are expected to form a layer of support for the party, the plan lacks persuasiveness without concrete proposals for personnel management.

The DPJ plan maintains Japan Post as a semi-governmental corporation but says that it will investigate the full spectrum of options, including integration with federal financial institutions. Privatization is also included among the options. However, if the option of not privatizing Japan Post outright is not selected for now, then there will be no choice but to use money from the profitable deposit and insurance divisions to make up for losses by the postal services division if it once again becomes unprofitable as trends such as e-mail cut into its business. In extreme cases, it's possible that tax money will need to be used to rescue postal services.

Of course, it's not a sure thing that the LDP's privatization plan is going to bring us salvation, either:

On the other hand, the privatization bill to be resubmitted by the LDP would split postal services, savings, and insurance into three separate corporations, then establish a fourth for counter services that would absorb the majority of current post office employees. A holding company would manage these four organizations. Government guarantees on postal savings and insurance would be abolished.

This is privatization in outline, but as a result of compromises with the former Mori faction, added provisions mean that in substance, the three divisions will continue to function as a single monolithic body, and furthermore, and significant government interests will remain.

For example, the holding company is a public entity for which the government will provide more than a third of its capital. On top of that, the holding company will be able to continue to hold shares in the savings and insurance corporations even after March 2017, when the transition to privatization is to be completed. That means there is a real worry the flow of capital from public to private hands will not be effected: government interests in the organizations' financial operations, including where capital is allocated, will remain all along.

This isn't new--I've discussed everything in the above paragraphs in scattered posts from time to time, but it's a good summary.

There was an earthquake in Niigata this morning--M5.0 and also a strong 5 on the JMA scale. Reported damage sounds like little more than a few broken windows, but I'm sure the residents are jumpy after last fall's series of destructive quakes. In Japanese terms, Niigata, like Kobe, is not considered a very seismically active area, so preparations are somewhat sketchy, though I'm sure they're a lot better now than they were last year at this time.

I probably would have missed this had Susanna not shot me an e-mail about it: Roger Simon is in Japan and is posting photos and impressions of his stay in Nikko. Worth reading. One thing he said is heartbreakingly true:

English is only sparingly spoken here [at the inn where he's staying] and all of the other patrons are Japanese. They seem to be more in search of Old Japan than even this gaijin.

Yes. There are Japanophile Westerners who get all woozy over "traditional Japanese culture" in a way that makes it seem they care for nothing beyond having somewhere quaint and exotic and Zen and Oriental to go in order to fill in their own spiritual void. But you don't have to adopt that condescending perspective to see that the Japanese people's relationship with modernization is complex and not as resolutely amicable as it's often made to seem.

Tokyo is a striking city--I've lived here for almost a decade and love it to pieces, but let's face it: no place on Earth brings the fug like Tokyo. A lot of it really does look like Bladerunner. What Tokyo has going for it, however, is that it's the largest and most kinetic megalopolis in the developed world. Its expansive affluence and churning, insane vitality mean you don't mind the drabness so much.

Where the ugliness of modern Japan really makes you want to weep is in places such as Kyoto. Nothing quite prepares you for when you alight at the new Kyoto Station, prepared to immerse yourself in one of the most legendarily beautiful cities in the world...and realize that you're inside a big modernist glass box of monumental, almost unimaginable hideousness. Across the street from the glass box is the unfortunate Kyoto Tower Hotel, which looks like a giant toilet brush in its stand. The downtown is full of the unprepossessing stucco-ish and tiled building facades you can see anywhere in Japan. Of course, the temples and a few select old neighborhoods really are as gorgeous as you expect. Atsushi and I were there in the fall of 2001 when the leaves were just reaching their peak. It was magical--until you came back down the mountain into the city. Then you may as well have been in Nagoya.

Japanese people realize that the way they've modernized, impressive as it is, has not produced a happy medium. Unfortunately, building codes and public works projects don't show much sign of changing, and the architects who have found imaginative ways to integrate old-fashioned Japanese ideas of structure with modern technology and materials are way outnumbered by those who are content to design big, characterless boxes. Or who go headlong in the other direction and generate designs for buildings that are so trippy and "experimental" as to be user-unfriendly.

A lot of the "traditional" Japanese inns have the same visible air conditioning units and formica furniture and artificial fibers that you see elsewhere here. What they have going for them are the water and rock- and cedar-lined baths. And they're not as crowded as the commuter trains. I'm not sure Tanizaki would have approved, but that's about as close to nature as life gets for most people these days.

You know what it is about Nigella Lawson? The rack. This is a woman who was clearly designed by God to provide sustenance.* I mean, it would be a relief in any case to see this kind of female celeb--featured in British Vogue and known for being A-list glam--who does not force herself into the ubiquitous Malnutritia McGelboobs silhouette. Bonus points for having mastered the ability to wear clothes that showcase her curves without making her look like a $2-an-hour whore. (Could someone closer to LA and NY maybe remind the stylists of the developed world that fabric is supposed to cover people's privates in public?)

Her hair approaches Jaclyn Smith levels of thick, lustrous gorgeousness, too--I bet chewing and swallowing food and then keeping it down long enough to absorb all the nutrients helps with that.

Good grief--girlfriend just came out in a silk bathrobe to rub oil into some kind of roast with her bare hands in the eerie midnight glow of a kitchen light. If I were a straight man or dyke, I'd be having a stroke right now.




Added on 21 August: Note to self: if you ever want a sudden increase in weekend traffic, find a way to get Kim to link you with a post about boobies. Good grief. I mean, in a good way. (And thanks, man.)

Sheesh. Next time I decide to click on a link to AMERICAblog, can someone kindly break my wrist for me? Thanks. Especially if I decide to scroll down from the post that someone linked and sample some of the other goodies available.

I'm not going to get involved in opining about Cindy Sheehan and what kind of person she is. I will, however, ask my fellow gay guys this: Is it really a good idea to be fawning over a mother whose authority in argument is implicitly predicated on the belief that she gets to own her son's memory and legacy now that he's dead? No matter what allegiances he publicly and consistently took while alive, as an independent adult? Even if what she supports is diametrically opposed to the way he lived? Do gay men really want to do that? Really seriously really? I'm thinking maybe it's not such a hot idea.

Added on 20 August: Henry Lewis gives the obvious response:

So, yes, she gets to 'own' her son's memory and legacy – because he was her son, and she loved him. The allusion here (I think, since the question is about whether gay guys should fawn over Cindy), is if you're gay and your parents don't agree, should they be able to use your memory (assuming you've died) to promote their anti-gay agenda? The comparison, though, is a false one. An anti-gay parent who uses the memory of a dead gay-child to promote their anti-gay agenda is (arguably) actively working to tear down their son’s memory. Sheehan isn't doing that.

She hasn't had anything bad to say about the military and, to my knowledge, hasn't said she opposed Casey's choice to be in the military. What she has said, is that she doesn't understand what her son's sacrifice was for. I suppose you might argue that if Casey was staunchly pro-war-in Iraq (as opposed to pro-doing his duty as a member of the military), you might argue that his mother's anti-war activities somehow go against his wishes, but even then, it's not the same thing. Cindy is proud of her son, she misses him, and there's no indication she wanted him any different than he was – that she didn't support him.

I find it hard to criticize a guy who may actually use more parentheticals than I do--which is saying something--but this is hair-splitting with a vengeance. The man reenlisted after the start of the Iraq conflict (as his own unit was getting ready for deployment, from what I've read). It's hard to imagine him, from the available information, as being anything but in favor of the Iraq invasion. Even so, how Ms. Sheehan's thinking actually relates to her son's thinking was not the point I was addressing.

As far as I'm concerned, it's all over after that first sentence: "So, yes, she gets to 'own' her son's memory and legacy – because he was her son, and she loved him." Whatever you say, honey. I'm less concerned with what Sheehan thinks herself than with the uncritical acceptance of the idea that her being a bereaved mother gives moral weight to the way she invokes her son's memory to support her political opinions. It simply doesn't. My mother loves me, sure--but if I died and she started going around and implying, however sincerely, that I'd only chosen an out life because I'd been suckered by the gay establishment...well, I hope it would be duly noted that she was calling into question my considered judgment as an adult.

Why is it that the names of new political parties always sound so hard-socialist? The party just formed by several key Japan Post opponents, dropped by the LDP for their rebelliousness, will be called the 国民新党 (kokumin shintô: "citizens' new party").

On the bright side, with so few members, everyone gets an executive post:

Former House of Representatives Speaker Tamisuke Watanuki, who heads the party, made the announcement at a press conference held late afternoon.

The new party comprises five members, including Shizuka Kamei, former chairman of the LDP's Policy Research Council, who spearheaded opposition to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's postal reform drive.

Hisaoki Kamei, former National Land Agency director general, took the post of secretary general.

House of Councillors member Kensei Hasegawa, another LDP member who defied party executives to vote against the postal bills, also joined the party.

The four rebels left the LDP earlier in the day.

Another upper house member, Hideaki Tamura, left the Democratic Party of Japan to join the new party.

"We considered it inappropriate that the prime minister submitted the bills in a hasty and high-handed manner," Watanuki said at the press conference.

"We're strongly resentful that LDP executives decided not to support the 37 party members who voted against the bills in the lower house, and to field rival candidates against the opponents," he added.

"I stood up [to form a new party] since I can't just sit still and watch" the LDP executives' strategy to field alternative candidates, Watanuki said. "We'd like to become the vanguards of preventing such backroom politics."

Backroom politics? There's always some of that, of course. If anything, though, I think that most people's perception was that Koizumi and his fellow travelers were so upfront about demanding loyalty without necessarily making it clear what Japan Post privatization was concretely going to accomplish.

Prime Minister Koizumi, kami love him, did not mince words over the news:

"I think it's good for them to set up a new party to disseminate their policy, because unlike LDP members [Cold, man!--SRK], they're against postal privatization," Koizumi said at the LDP headquarters in Tokyo.

But when asked about the possibility of postelection cooperation with the new party, he said, "As the LDP and New Komeito will win a majority, we can't cooperate with people who are opposed to postal privatization."

...

The Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition party, has now posted its election platform. Japan Post is the issue that's getting all the attention, but it shouldn't be. There's always a real possibility that the LDP coalition could lose. If so, here's what we're in for (drastically summarized and leaving out some bullet points entirely):

Japan-US relations: The platform emphasizes that Japan's important strategic relationship with the US does not make it a vassal state and that it retains its autonomy. It also asserts that based on changes in the Asian "strategic environment," US military presence now in Okinawa should be first redistributed within and then moved out of Japan. It also wants Japanese law to be in effect at US military facilities and crime suspects to be turned over to the Japanese courts before being charged.

The SDF: The platform states that the SDF should be restructured within two years to be able to cope with new threats such as cyberwarfare, ballistic missiles, and terrorism. It also goes out of its way to mention defense of various disputed island chains.

The SDF deployment in Iraq: The DPJ proposes to bring back the non-combat SDF forces now in Iraq by December. The Japanese contribution to the reconstruction would take the form of ODA activity.

The building of a relationship of mutual trust with the PRC: After this is achieved (I'd love to see the DPJ describe how), Japan and China can start to systematize their cooperation on things like energy consumption, currency valuation, maritime territory, and security.

Relationships between Japan and the ROK or other Asian states: The platform proposes mostly free trade agreements, though it also mentions Japan's role as a consultant on democratization, conservation, crime reduction, education, and energy policy.

The DPRK: There's no pretense to building a relationship of mutual trust here. The DPJ supports attempts to denuclearize North Korea through the ongoing 6-party talks. Regarding the issue of Japanese abductees, it proposes possible measures such as the blocking of entry into Japanese ports for DPRK-registered vessels. Also, with the number of refugees from the DPRK showing no sign of dropping off, the DPJ proposes increased maritime security.

A global warming tax: ¥3000 per ton of CO₂ emitted

Social insurance: The operative slogan is "fair, transparent, and sustainable." There's quite a bit of detail here--it's a big issue in Japan--but there are a few major proposals. The DPJ wants to consolidate the various pension systems to eliminate inequities, such as by eliminating the special pension system for Diet members and making them pay into the same black hole reservoir as the rest of us. Married couples would be regarded as paying into the same pension account and each be considered entitled to half. The national health service would be reformed to facilitate such exotica as seeking a second opinion. The unemployment system would make it easier for younger workers to get career counseling and assistance, and the labor laws would be brought more in line with international standards. This includes--you have to love Japan--compulsory interviews by physicians for workers with long shifts. This is presumably to make sure they don't drop dead from overwork, which is no longer seen as a contribution to company and family honor.

On farm, trade, and public works policy, the DPJ is generally opposed to privatization and the abolishment of subsidies; however, it does propose a decrease in the number of boondoggles (who doesn't?) and support the spinning off of authority for the disbursement of funds to local governments.

Nick has a handy run-down of left and right positions on major issues. My favorites:

Left
Trade sanctions are good when applied to evil governments like apartheid era South Africa.
Trade sanctions are bad when applied to the suffering people of Ba'athist Iraq or fascist Cuba.

Right
Trade sanctions are good when applied to totalitarian red China.
Trade sanctions are bad when Margaret Thatcher says they are. [Does that just apply to trade sanctions? It's been a firm and generalized tenet in my life for decades.--SRK]

Left
Government interference is bad when the nanny-state tells you not to smoke the weed.
Government interference is good when it tells you to turn your guns in to the police.

Right
Government interference is bad when the nanny-state tells you not to smoke Marlboros.
Government interference is good when, in an ironic move, it throws you in jail for having the gay sex.

My.

sainted.

aunt.

Muneo Suzuki, a former Lower House member of the ruling party who is appealing a bribery conviction, on Thursday launched a new political party that he hopes will win him a seat in the Sept 11 election.

Suzuki, 57, said his Sapporo-based Shinto daichi (New party, big land) was planning to win at least two Hokkaido seats in the election.

He said the party, which was named by popular singer Chiharu Matsuyama-a long-time friend of Suzuki's-to symbolize Hokkaido's vast area, would stand for the socially disadvantaged.

"I want the party to be one for the weak and those with no power," Suzuki said. "Politics should work for those who are disadvantaged or regions that are underdeveloped."

The party is planning to come out guns blazing against bureaucratic intervention in politics. It will also campaign to secure Ainu rights as well as the construction of a pipeline to directly import natural gas and petroleum from Russia to the northern island.

Muneo Suzuki was sentenced to two years in prison and millions of yen in fines for...well, I don't think he was charged with breaking and entering, but just about everything else was in there: bribery, bid-rigging, perjury, and fraud among them. His idea of having politics work for "regions that are underdeveloped," naturally, is funneling money into boondoggles that have no potential users. The best that can be said of him is that he was considered a scourge of bureaucrats, but you have to be scraping big old splinters from the bottom of the barrel to come up with that one.

Michael links to this blog, by a man who's just come out to himself and his family at middle age. As Michael says, it's wrenching to read--but parts of it are touching in a frankly affirmative way, too. After reading Chris's passage about that first time you go from Why is that guy staring at me like that? to Wait a minute--he thinks I'm cute!, I can't stop smiling. And the part about the big, hairy guy of Middle Eastern extraction reminds me that I really should drop my first boyfriend a line and see how he's doing.

The Nikkei editorials included one that opened thus this morning:

The occurrence of a severe earthquake makes the blood run cold and always makes it hit home that, anywhere at any time in Japan, there is the danger of a catastrophic earthquake. We all have the memory of times when we were jolted into fear by the shaking of the earth--that memory gives us an opportunity to review point by point our earthquake preparations both at work and at home.

Yesterday, a fairly serious earthquake struck; its focus was off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture. Its highest surface intensity was a weak 6 JMA, recorded in southern Miyagi Prefecture. Its magnitude is estimated at M7.2. There were serious injuries and damage to buildings. The shaking was registered over a large range of the Japanese Archipelago, and the rattled feeling it produced was registered by a correspondingly large number of people.

The Japanese expression used here isn't "makes the blood run cold," actually--it's 肝を冷やす (himo wo hiyasu: "chills the liver"). If there's anyone reading from Japan, this might be a good time to plug once again the US Embassy's earthquake preparedness checklist.

Another Gay Republican has posted a spare, concise coming out story that's worth reading. His conclusions are possibly of limited use for those with moral questions based on firm religious beliefs that are at odds with homosexual conduct, but he knows how to frame the issue:

Afterward, I was upset and angry for having fought myself over this. Why had I built being gay into this enormous, frightening obstacle? There had been nothing to be afraid of. It was me, all me.

Ignorant anti-gay prejudice does exist, and it does a number on you. But you get to decide how you're going to deal with it. The only thinking and behavior you can reliably change is your own.

In a comment to this post, John of Toilet Paper with Page Numbers directed me to a post of his from a few weeks ago. At first glance, it seems only tangentially related to the topic of political affiliation. In reality, though, it gets to the heart of what I was talking about. John reproduces a letter he wanted to posts for his chemistry students when he was a TA, and this is part of it:

Do you realize why you are in this class in the first place? I'll give you a hint. It's because the peckerwoods in the admissions office are too spineless to use your transcripts and SATs to tell you straight up that you are not qualified (now hold on, I didn't say too stupid...yet) to enter college, much less a pre-med program. This is a weed-out course. And I have a big Black and Decker logo on my red pen. No, I'm not being judgmental. I'm telling you the cold, hard truth no one has bothered to rub your nose in yet. Believe me, I'm kinder than your first boss will be.

Concealing people's ignorance from them--indeed, going so far as to keep them ignorant by pretending to teach them math and science without actually doing so--is fine if you think it perfectly natural that they'll grow up to have their lives run by caretakers anyway. If, however, you think adults should be independent, then it follows that children need to be equipped to take care of their own business without interference. That involves a basic, systematically-presented, stringently-tested foundation in the usual liberal arts subjects. It means a frank recognition--without namby-pamby self-esteem-building bromides--that we all have our own individual mix of talents and that not everyone is equally capable in all fields. And, conversely, it means a frank recognition that the donnish kind of intelligence is not the only one that matters.

This is 180 degrees opposite from what was being said last week, though rapid changes in strategy are themselves hardly surprising at this juncture:

On 16 August, LDP legislators who opposed the Japan Post privatization bill--including Tamisuke Watanuki, Shizuka Kamei, and Hisaoki Kamei--met in a Tokyo hotel and agreed on the broad outlines for the formation of a new party centered on current members of the lower house who were part of the opposition. After hammering out the party's name and fundamental policy platform, they plan to announce [its formation] on 17 August. Most such members have already firmed up plans to run [in the snap election] unaffiliated, so the new party is likely to have a small-scale start.

For its part, the DPJ released its lower house manifesto yesterday:

On 16 July, the Democratic Party of Japan released its lower house election manifesto (campaign promises). On the subject of Japan Post reform, pitched as the party's major point of contention with Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi, it states that postal savings and insurance "will be reduced to a reasonable scale." Limits on the amount that could be deposited in postal savings would be reduced in stages starting in 2006. Reform to centralize all pensions would be executed by 2008. The battle [of campaign platforms], starting with that over Japan Post and pension reforms, will be beginning in earnest as the parties gear up for the 11 September election.

...

The reduction of limits on postal savings deposits is designed to effect a "reduction of public financing." Among the provisions: capitalization through postal savings accounts (which now hold a total of ¥330 trillion) will be halved within 8 years by reducing the per-depositor limit from ¥10 million to ¥7 million, then over the subsequent several years to ¥50 million.

"Public financing" refers, of course, to the investment of citizens' savings in pet government projects, many of which are of questionable public utility. There's no word on whether the DPJ plans to address organizational inefficiency at Japan Post, but then, even the LDP caved when it came to reductions in the number of outlets and personnel.

Today's earthquake in Miyagi Prefecture appears to have caused about 60 injuries of various levels of severity. The magnitude estimate has been revised to M7.2, which is comparable to that of the Great Hanshin Earthquake ten years ago. The focus of today's quake was buried deeper, though, and the JMA rating was correspondingly lower than the 7 given to the Kobe earthquake. Sadly but fortunately, every big earthquake is instructive for engineers; Sendai's shut-off systems for gas and water mains were improved after the Kobe quake, a move that was credited with minimizing damage in the region's last two major quakes and probably also had its effect today.

Or I could slide to the right for a while

You'd think I'd be sick of this subject. Actually, I am sick of it, but it's an important subject. When I first clicked through and started reading, I was like, Wow, this guy's parodies are a laugh riot. I wonder how closely he's hewing to what people actually said when he's making up those fake quotations. Think I'll look at the original WaPo article and see. [snarfs Pimms and ginger] SUFFERIN' SUCCOTASH, THAT'S WHAT THE DEMOCRATS ACTUALLY SAID ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS HAVE THEY ALL BEEN SMOKING CRACK OHMAHGAWD OHMAHGAWD?!

Of course, I shouldn't have been so surprised--a few months ago, I finally gave in and changed my party registration because I was so sick of looking at the latest repellant Democrat gasbag on television and thinking, There are no words to express how happy I am that I've found a way to live on the OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE GLOBE from YOU. I've always voted more Republican than Democrat and been on the right-ish libertarian side of most arguments, but I liked being able to vote in Democratic primaries and figured that voting GOP without being registered or contributing at least allowed me to send a small, individual signal that it didn't have my unqualified support (especially when it came to wasteful spending). Not that I was expecting this to give Haley Barbour insomnia, or anything--it just struck me as the right balance.

But eventually, enough is enough. My beliefs haven't changed one bit, and I don't plan to become a party hack, but at least the Republican leadership is usually broadcasting from the same planet as the rest of us.

Michael Reynolds of The Mighty Middle is to the left of me, and he's clearly not about to bolt from the Dems, but he very clearly sees what I think is the major strategic problem with the DNC leadership. I'm quoting at length because, although the message he delivers is not new, he delivers it with clarity and point:

The moral center of the GOP is in big business, small business and churches. The moral core of the Democratic Party is in academia, unions and the groups - the NARALS et al. The unions are disintegrating, the academy is the very definition of "out of touch," and the groups are hermetically sealed parallel universes inhabited by lawyers, flacks and giant, bloated Senators.

If you want to talk to people — people who do not already agree with everything you have to say, professor — you have to actually know some people. Some of those people you need to know will drive SUV's. Some will own jet skis. Many will attend churches where people sing a lot. They will not necessarily dine on a small green salad with lo-fat dressing on the side. They will not know or care who Noam Chomsky is. And here is what is vitally important for Democrats to understand: although these people will not necessarily be part of your all-Angelou book club, they will be at least as smart as you are.

To communicate with people, understand people. To understand people, listen to people. Fire the consultants. Fire the gurus. Fire the pollsters. Fire the lawyers. Get back into the real world. Send forth your minions, Democrats, scatter them to the winds with instructions to go forth into the McDonalds and the Wal-Marts and the churches, to boldly engage fat women in spandex, and skinny guys in pick-up trucks, to speak without sneering to the local businessman, to talk on equal terms with the minister and the insurance salesman and the cook and the fisherman and the clerk. Watch TV. (No, not PBS. Not HBO, either.) Read bestsellers. Shoot a gun. Ride a speedboat. Drive a big old gas hog across west Texas at ninety miles an hour. (It's fun. Even more fun than composing briefs or conducting a focus group.) Smile at other people's kids. Talk to teachers - not their union reps. And by the way, when I say "talk to" I mean, "shut the f**k up and listen."

I'm not always happy with the Republican politicians and talking heads, but I will say this: even when they're driving me nuts with their hyper-spending and their footdragging on border and air security and their selective opposition to entitlement programs and their preachy allegiance to the War on Drugs, they at least are rarely guilty of talking about Americans en masse as if we were as dumb as a box of rocks and depended on them to run our lives properly.

After all, every Red State town has doctors, lawyers, accountants, and real estate agents, just like places in the big coastal population belts. Additionally--you know, my father was graduated from high school on shop courses, and my mother dropped out of ninth grade, then went back in her 40s for her GED and a certificate in data entry. Most adult friends of our family had similar backgrounds. None of them was an idiot. Most of them read the newspaper and a handful of news magazines, and even those who were otherwise unlettered read the Bible daily. My own interest in politics was nurtured by listening to them discuss the Iran hostage crisis; why they hated Carter; why they loved Reagan; the Grenada invasion; Yasser Arafat; and Gloria Steinem. I'm a passionate supporter of education with stringently-enforced standards, but it simply is not the case that being undercertified dooms you to ignorance.

What does doom you to ignorance is going into every discussion assuming that you have lots to teach people and little to learn from them. That attitude really isn't such a problem with everyday people who happen to be registered Democrats. At least, in my experience, it isn't. It is a huge, huge, huge problem among those who set the priorities and public image for the DNC. Reynolds's message is the one they need, but given the statements that he's responding to, it's hard to imagine they'd know what to do with it.

(Via Joanne Jacobs)

The way we felt this morning's earthquake in Tokyo was as gentle rattling for about 20 seconds and then more noticeable swaying. It seemed to last forever, and though it wasn't really strong, it made a good deal of noise.

It was more serious elsewhere: M6.8 at the focus and a weak 6 on the JMA scale at the epicenter in southern Miyagi Prefecture. They're reporting quite a few injuries in the major city of Sendai, though it's only an hour after the quake and details are few. Sendai, fortunately in a sense, is in an earthquake hot zone. It's as well prepared as you can be for a big shake-up. Its last major quake was two years ago, but it's still waiting (if that's the word) for the next Miyagi-oki monster--the region gets hit with one once every several decades. If anyone's reading from around Sendai, stay safe.

The LDP may pursue an aggressive strategy regarding Japan Post privatization:

The Liberal Democratic Party hopes to pass the postal privatization bills during a special Diet session to be convened after the House of Representatives election if the ruling coalition retains its majority, sources close to the party said Sunday.

The party plans to resubmit the bills, which were rejected by the House of Councillors, to a special Diet session for an extended debate on the bills, the sources said.

It is unusual for bills to be debated at a special Diet session.

With Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi having touted the postal privatization bills as the key election issue, the LDP felt it was necessary to make clear its determination to pass the bills as soon as possible, the sources said.

A special Diet session, which elects the prime minster, speaker and vice speaker, does not usually deliberate on bills.

In related news, the Nikkei reports tersely that Shizuka Kamei has resigned as head of his faction. Kamei was one of Koizumi's rivals for selection as Prime Minister four years ago; he was also one of Koizumi's most visible opponents in the debate over Japan Post privatization. Kamei had removed the faction's secretaries general from their positions last month when the pair voted in favor of the bill. The Kamei faction accounted for the largest number of opposing LDP votes in the House of Councillors.

Added a few minutes later: I don't have the news on, so I haven't seen Kamei's press conference; as always, the Nikkei's on-line story is being added to:

After his announcement, Kamei stated to the press corps that the reason for his resignation was that "my faction members have been put in a painful position" because the LDP has decided not to back current members of the Diet in the lower house election if they voted against the Japan Post privatization bill. He also explained, "We were unable to stop the reign of terror conducted by Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi."

It's hard to fault legislators who vote against laws they don't think are a good idea. On the other hand, Koizumi is attempting reforms that hit so many powerful beneficiaries where they hurt that you can't blame him for feeling the need to play hardball politics, either. It will be interesting to see what happens. The Mainichi has conducted another poll and says that public support of the cabinet is still rising. Those who didn't support it most frequently cited the slowness of economic recovery as their reason. Koizumi and his strategists have failed to give the public clear, easily digestible reasons that Japan Post privatization would be a real help in that regard. Whether they're going to change their approach now is anyone's guess.

The memorial service for the World War II dead was held today; 15 August is the anniversary of the Japanese surrender. The speeches contained, as always, avowals to uphold Japan's constitutional pledge of non-aggression and to use its prominence to work toward world peace. This was the first year that the family members in the procession of the bereaved included no parents of the dead. I doubt that that's necessarily going to be true from here on--the parents of those in their early 20s at the end of the Pacific War could be in their early or mid 80s now. That's higher than the average life expectancy for that generation, but not significantly higher.

Added a few minutes later: Why am I so scatterbrained? Hello! The real story was from Koizumi's Prime Minister's Statement:

Prime Minister Koizumi acknowledged [the facts of] history in his speech, saying, "Through our colonial governance and invasions, great damage and suffering were wrought on a great many nations, above all the peoples of Asian nations." In addition, he once again explicitly indicated a mindset of reflection and apology by saying, "We now express an attitude of unsparing self-reflection and, from the bottom of our hearts, apology, having fully and humbly confronted the facts of history." In both cases, he was quoting from the speech given by [then-Prime Minister] Murayama in which he apologized for the war, referring to [Japan's actions] as an invasion.

Murayama's speech was given exactly ten years ago.

Interesting, this:

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi upped the ante in his war against party rebels by instructing that priority be given to fielding female candidates in the Lower House election next month.

The strategy started to take shape with a decision by ruling Liberal Democratic Party executives on Thursday to field Satsuki Katayama as its candidate in the Shizuoka No. 7 constituency. The seat is held by Minoru Kiuchi, 40, one of the party's 37 rebel lawmakers who voted against Koizumi's postal reform bills.

What's the reasoning, I wonder? Are LDP strategists trying to get out the housewife/single woman vote? Do they just feel that female talent hasn't been sufficiently tapped and that this is a good opportunity to make a statement about the party's values? Koizumi's stated reason is this:

Regarding the backing of female candidates, The Prime Minister told the press corps, "[The move is] because there are very few women members of the Diet. I want those who rise to be the most competent people possible."

Fair enough. I'm sure he means it. It seems likely that the strategy is also part of an effort to change the party's image. Koizumi sees himself--and has pitched himself--as a revolutionary. More visible women in positions of power would help dispel the impression that the failure of the Japan Post privatization bill to pass means that the LDP is still under the control of well-connected old men who are tied to the old patronage system.

*******

Speaking of women politicians--the Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade 2005 was held here in Tokyo yesterday. I didn't watch and, of course, it got next to zero news coverage as always. The Mainichi did report on it tangentially, though:

The Mainichi has learned that Osaka Prefectural Assemblywoman Kanako Otsuji (30) plans to participate in the Tokyo Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade on 13 August, coming out in public as a homosexual herself. Her autobiography is also to be published soon. It is extremely rare for sitting elected officials to come out in public as homosexual. Assemblywoman Otsuji stated, "Because of discrimination and prejudice, gays frequently haven't made themselves known. I hope that, by making myself visible as gay, I can throw the issue into relief and put and end to the vicious cycle of discrimination and prejudice."

I assume Otsuji made the announcement yesterday; no one was talking about the parade when I went out last night, but as I say, it isn't really an attention getter. More power to her. The image of gays in the Japanese media is very much on the freakishly-funny end of the spectrum. If Otsuji is able to be charmingly ordinary and gets a reasonable amount of coverage for her book, she could do a lot of good.

Shoichi Nakagawa, the Minister of Economics, Trade, and Industry, made a pilgrimage to the Yasukuni Shrine this morning. I assume the reactions from the rest of East Asia will be all over NHK by this evening. Yuriko Koike, the Minister of the Environment, and Hidehisa Otsuji, the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare, plan to go tomorrow on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II; twelve members of the cabinet, including Prime Minister Koizumi and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, have announced that they will not go to the shrine tomorrow.

Megan McArdle posted something that inflamed Eric into writing one of his usual good posts on the gay marriage debate:

In the incident cited by Megan McArdle, gay activists are apparently claiming that two heterosexuals should not be allowed to marry each other if they are of the same sex. Yet nowhere have I heard "heterosexual activists" making a similar argument (that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry each other if they are of the opposite sex).

Clearly, there's a lot of misunderstanding — both about existing marriage laws, as well as laws which would legalize same sex marriage.

What gives?

I have no idea, man, but when you find out, let me know.

Actually, maybe you should leave me in blissful ignorance. I'm in my early 30s and in good shape, but I'm afraid hearing a detailed explanation of these people's non-thinking might give me a coronary. Here's part of that article:

Two heterosexual fellows in Canada, invoking their rights under Canada’s recently passed same-sex marriage legislation, have announced their intentions to marry. Drinking pals Bill Dalrymple, 56, and Bryan Pinn, 65, intend to marry not because they are gay but for the tax breaks.

News of the pending engagement didn’t sit well with same-sex marriage activist Bruce Walker, a Toronto lawyer. He complained that marriage should be for love.

You know something, bitch? The day our civilization puts people like you in a position to adjudicate (1) whether what my boyfriend and I have is love and (2) whether that qualifies us for government goodies--that's the day I depart for, like, Zimbabwe without looking back. I don't think it's possible to verbalize how angry this kind of thing makes me.

To the extent that gay activists began formulating their ideas about marriage a decade or so ago, when the opposing argument most frequently encountered was "Gays have sex, not love," I can see where it comes from. The problem is, the argument has moved on, and a lot of activists haven't. What kind of topsy-turvy world are we living in when queer activists are the ones who want to peer into other people's bedrooms and pass judgment on what goes on there? And who's to say that Dalrymple and Pinn--who are friends, after all--don't love each other? I think I could fairly say that I love my drinking buddies (especially after I've had a few).

The point that gays fall in love and make the sacrifices necessary to take care of each other is an important one, but it cannot serve as the fulcrum for an argument in favor of gay marriage. How gay activists can fail to be aware of this by now is beyond me--their inability to see themselves as the public sees them is astounding--but the more they push the "We're cute! We're cuddly! Approve of us!" line, the more they reinforce the feeling that we suffer from arrested development and have not taken adult control over our lives.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the crash of JAL flight 123, which killed 520 people and remains the worst single-plane disaster in civil aviation history. The plane depressurized suddenly while flying from Tokyo to Osaka after losing its vertical stabilizer and hydraulic lines. The anniversary is played up on the news every year here not only because of the large number of deaths (including Kyu Sakamoto, who sang the song released as "Sukiyaki" in the US) but also because the crew's heroic efforts to use momentum to control the plane bought it 30 minutes before it crashed, enough time for many passengers to prepare farewells for relatives and affix identifying documents to their bodies. The flawed repair and maintenance that led to the tailfin separation were the fault of both Boeing and JAL; a round of suicides ensued.

Japan's transportation networks are objects of intense national pride, and after the JAL 123 crash, the airlines and civil aviation authorities redoubled their efforts to prevent accidents. In one of this morning's editorials, the Nikkei drily notes:

On that day [12 August 1985] Japan became acquainted with the pain of aviation accidents in the era of jumbo jet transport, and since then the assumption has been that those in the aviation industry continue to work hard, motivated by a resolve to assure that such an accident can never happen again. For 20 years, there have been no regular Japanese airline has experienced a crash.

However, recently, a incident upon incident has called into question that hard work and resolve.

In recent years, there have been a number of nail-biting near misses, the most famous of which was the 2001 incident in which air traffic controllers mistakenly steered two JAL jets into each other's paths. The planes, carrying a total of almost 700 passengers and crew, came within about 30 feet (!) of each other midair; one of the jets had to make collision-avoidance maneuvers so violent that 42 people were injured.

There have been plenty of other, lesser incidents (try searching this site for references to "JAL" and "ANA" just in the past year), and both major airlines have been officially censured by the Ministry of Land, Transport and Infrastructure. The best light to put on things is that the bad press about safety has given everyone concerned excellent motivation to tighten up operations; what tightening up is actually being done remains uncertain.

Downtown Lad asks an age-old question with the snark factor removed:

Are gay people better looking? That's a serious question. One of my gay friends mentioned how all of his gay male friends were better looking than their male siblings. Why is this?

• Because gay men use moisturizer?
  
• We keep in shape, because (like women) we know that men are visual, and we have to stay fit in order to stay attractive?
  
• The gay gene is the same one for good looks?

I'm inclined to think the factor with the most effect is item 2, along with some others.

For one thing, gay bars in New York and other big metro areas attract a self-selecting population that is disproportionately (though far from entirely) made up of guys who believe they belong among other beautiful people. That's often at least in part because they're of above-average attractiveness themselves.

Also, in addition to staying fit, urban gay guys are more likely to dress carefully than straight guys. Most of us tend to gravitate toward clothes that fit neatly and trimly--even those who don't care about style and stick to khakis + chambray shirt. A homely man can make himself look way, way yummier with flattering hair and well-cut clothes; sometimes, he can even work the beau-laid thing to his advantage if he's confident enough and has interesting bone structure.

Of course, if you had a good sample size of gay men and their straight brothers, you could test the third and most interesting proposition, theoretically, by checking things like face and body symmetry, thickness and luster of hair (in those who don't do the shaved-head thing), clarity of complexion, and other universal signals for sexual attractiveness. Who knows? Maybe there is a correlation. It doesn't seem any more far-fetched than our over-representation in arty careers.

The Mainichi has done a poll that indicates the electorate is turned on by Prime Minister Koizumi's implacability in the face of the opponents who defeated his Japan Post privatization bill:

The Mainichi conducted a rapid nationwide opinion survey (by telephone) on 8 and 9 July, [to gauge reaction to] the news that Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi had gone ahead with his threat to dissolve the lower house of the Diet. Support for the Koizumi cabinet was at 46%, up 9 points from last month's poll, in which the figure (37%) had been the lowest ever. In contrast, non-support was at 37%, 3 points down. Additionally, the 54% of respondents who said they "agreed" with the dissolution of the lower house far outnumbered the 36% who said they "opposed" it. And with respect to the results of the 11 September lower house snap election, 50% said they "hoped for an administration with the LDP as ruling party," outnumbering the 35% who said they "hoped for an administration with the DPJ as ruling party."

Interestingly for a cabinet with a carefully cultivated young-upstart image, the Koizumi administration got its highest level of support, when broken down by respondents' ages, among those in their 60s. Jun-kun also isn't just for housewives to swoon over anymore: 52% of men and 43% of women support the cabinet according to the Mainichi survey.

We can't take polls at face value, of course; but allowing for give in the figures, is the Mainichi tracking something significant? I think it may be. Koizumi was elected as a reformer--he was the broom that was going to sweep away corruption and waste. The bank clean-up worked better than expected. The Yasukuni Shrine visits in and of themselves don't sit well with voters, but I suspect that to many people they represent a real, if impolitic, devotion to his country. Privatization of the postal service was one of his key reforms. He did not, as members of his own cabinet have pointed out, bring a lucid explanation to the average voter of why it was necessary to move from the existing semi-governmental Japan Post corporation to a fully-privatized set of institutions, but the public has at least been able to recognize the move as part of his effort to uproot the fat-cat LDP old guard.

Simply put, the Japanese people seem to like Koizumi when he's being a stubborn pain in the ass. They don't like when he caves to pressure and does the politically expedient thing, such as cutting off Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka (who, remember, was more popular than Koizumi with the public before his 2001 selection as PM). Koizumi said last month that the LDP would not support the reelection of any Representative who voted against Japan Post privatization, and he seems to mean it.

It's only fair to note that the Yomiuri's poll, also conducted this week, showed less support for Koizumi than the Mainichi's:

Fifty-two percent of the respondents thought it was inevitable that Koizumi should dissolve the lower house after the postal bills were voted down Monday, while 35 percent said they did not think it was inevitable.

Asked who should be blamed for the dissolution, however, the number of those who said Koizumi should be blamed, at 39 percent, was close to that of those who said the responsibility lay with LDP members who rebelled against Koizumi, at 41 percent.

Among LDP supporters, 57 percent criticized the LDP rebels. But among independent voters, who are seen as the key to the election, those who said Koizumi was to be blamed recorded the highest percentage, at 43 percent.

The respondents' opinions were close again when asked if they wanted Koizumi to keep his post if the LDP was voted back in power--46 percent said they wanted Koizumi to remain as prime minister, while 43 percent said they did not. Among independent voters, 53 percent opposed Koizumi's retaining his post.

This result is another sign of the fall in Koizumi's popularity because in an interview-style Yomiuri Shimbun survey conducted before the previous lower house election, 55 percent of respondents said they wanted Koizumi to continue as prime minister.

Those who wanted the LDP to retain power after the dissolution, at 43 percent, surpassed those who preferred the Democratic Party of Japan to take power, at 33 percent.

Who's right? As I say, I think the Mainichi is likely to prove closer to the mark, and largely because of a phenomenon (let's cite all the dailies today, shall we?) that the Asahi notes: Koizumi is great at confounding his opponents, and they suck royally at banding together to push back at him because there's too much else they disagree on. The talk of a new party--against the entrenched LDP old timers but not as extreme in reformism as Koizumi's cabinet--hasn't come to anything. Even if Koizumi doesn't get, as he wants, new LDP candidates to run against every LDP Representative who voted against Japan Post privatization, he may still have leverage he can use to bring some of the dissenters back into line.

BTW, Koizumi's latest gambit is still causing his mentor, former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, grief. Whether Koizumi or his more cautious friends are in touch with reality, it's too early to judge. The next month should make for some lively NHK news broadcasts, though!

Added on 11 August: The Nikkei's poll shows, naturally, yet different results:

In a rapid nationwide opinion survey conducted by the Nikkei on 9 and 10 August, support for the Koizumi cabinet was at 47%, up 4 points from the previous survey in July. Non-support was 6 points down, to 37% percent. Regarding the non-passage of the Japan Post privatization bill by the upper house, 47% of respondents said they "support Prime Minister Koizumi['s position]," outnumbering the 36% who said they "supported the LDP opposition['s position]." About the make-up of the administration that results from the upcoming lower house election, 47% of respondents expressed hope that the administration would be led by the LDP in some configuration, with just 31% hoping for leadership from the DPJ.

Added on 13 August: Japundit has posted in more detail about which cabinet members are proposed to go up against which privatization foes.

Joe e-mailed to ask whether I'd heard about this story from the Lehigh Valley, where I grew up and he has a lot of relatives. I had not. Now that I have, I'm appalled:

KUTZTOWN, Pennsylvania -- They're being called the Kutztown 13 -- a group of high schoolers charged with felonies for bypassing security with school-issued laptops, downloading forbidden internet goodies and using monitoring software to spy on district administrators.

The students, their families and outraged supporters say authorities are overreacting, punishing the kids not for any heinous behavior -- no malicious acts are alleged -- but rather because they outsmarted the district's technology workers.

...

In Pennsylvania alone, more than a dozen school districts have reported student misuse of computers to police, and in some cases students have been expelled, according to Jeffrey Tucker, a lawyer for the district.

The students "fully knew it was wrong and they kept doing it," Tucker said. "Parents thought we should reward them for being creative. We don't accept that."

A hearing is set for Aug. 24 in Berks County juvenile court, where the 13 have been charged with computer trespass, an offense state law defines as altering computer data, programs or software without permission.

"Reward them for being creative"? I know that a lot of hard-working school administrators have to deal with parents who are lax disciplinarians and make every excuse imaginable not to find fault with their own little snoogums, but that didn't ring very true to me. (The felony the kids are charged with, BTW, is computer trespassing.) There's a website to support the thirteen students who are being charged, and on its comments board, the parents of a few of them have posted. There are a lot of questions raised: information and support to the parents about the laptop program was slack from the beginning, parents were not alerted that the district considered their children's conduct serious infractions, and the students who have been charged may have been selected because their parents don't have connections. Of course, none of this is corroborated--I'm only going by what's posted there.

Looking for reasons to sympathize with the school district requires major effort, though, because the facts that do appear undisputed make it look like a warren of dumb bunnies:

The computers were loaded with a filtering program that limited internet access. They also had software that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens.

But those barriers proved easily surmountable: The administrative password that allowed students to reconfigure computers and obtain unrestricted internet access was easy to obtain. A shortened version of the school's street address, the password was taped to the backs of the computers.

The password got passed around and students began downloading such forbidden programs as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool.

The students were clearly breaking rules and deserve punishment. It does seem reasonable to expect, though, that administrators help encourage students in the direction of obedience by not making the rules ridiculously easy to break. Of course, if they don't know how computers work, that may be hard to manage. Maybe sticking to programs that they themselves understand would have helped.

The anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing gets less attention, I think, in the Western media than that of the Hiroshima bombing, which precedes it. The speeches on 9 August tend to contain harsher soundbites, though. Part of that is that the mayor of Nagasaki is outspoken about nuclear disarmament; given that he's not responsible for defending the nation, he can afford to be. A few months ago, he stated that the US has not made serious efforts toward nuclear disarmament. His sentiments were, as always, echoed by speakers today:

A representative of the survivors of the bombing, [Ms.] Fumie Sakamoto (74), read the "Peace Pledge," calling for the abolishment of nuclear weapons: "I have managed to live 60 years since that day; no one else must be allowed to taste this kind of suffering."

Prime Minister Koizumi also made the usual bland statements in support of worldwide nuclear disarmament. However, with due respect to Ms. Sakamoto and her fellow survivors' truly awesome fortitude, it is simply not possible for rich nations not to arm themselves with the best offensive and defensive military technology available.

Well, I guess it would be possible in the short term, but it would also be foolish. Practically the entirety of world history consists of the building up of material and intellectual riches by imaginative and hard-working peoples, followed by attempts by other peoples to grab those resources by force. Life is strife, unless we want to return to subsistence farming in isolated hamlets. The best way any free country can honor its war dead in deed is to allow its citizens to better their lives without impediment and to protect them, unwaveringly, when when others go after the fruits of their labor.

Added on 10 August: I saw this a week or so ago and forgot to mention it when posting on 6 August: Romeo Mike likes to take pictures of stupid-lefty political posters and stapled-up handbills around town. Last week, there was one about Hiroshima in the middle of this post.

I can't tell whether the pattern on the woman's obi is supposed to be origami doves of peace or, you know, lotuses of enlightenment or something. I can say that the first time I read the main message of "No more US wars / Abolish all nuclear weapons / Troops home from Iraq now," I thought, For crying out loud, is that a flippin' haiku? Please tell me they didn't...oh, sweet Amaterasu, they couldn't have.... Luckily, they hadn't--I was faked out by that five-syllable first line. That was where the relief ended, of course. (You have to read the "What will socialism look like?" one, too, which pushes the time-dishonored line that real socialism would lead to paradise on Earth; the problem is that no one's done it right yet. And at the risk of cramming too many topics in here, you might want to read RM's thoughts on the push for same-sex marriage in Australia, which appears to be prey to the same problems as it is in the States: disagreement among advocacy groups about both strategies and goals, contempt for dissenting gays and thoughtful opponents. The sun never sets on lefty stupidity.)

Added on 11 August: I don't want to beat this topic to death, but Michael and Daily Pundit have noted the way reports about the bombings land in La-la Land non-reality. Michael questions a Globe and Mail headline, and Bill Quick--well, if you want to know why I never cite The Japan Times here, it's because I don't read it. Check this out:

The U.S. actions arose not from any rage but from cool, calculated thinking. The intent was to deliver a crippling psychological blow to Japan by obliterating two of its important cities. No warning was given to the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki before unleashing the nuclear holocaust.

...

Before dropping the second bomb, shouldn't the U.S. have given Japan a reasonable and firm deadline to surrender? In rushing into a second nuclear attack before Japan could grasp the strategic significance of the first bombing, Truman achieved little more than showing that a tested implosion-type bomb worked.

No warning? A reasonable and firm deadline? You'd think we were talking about that employee in cubicle A7 who never submits his paperwork on time.

The Japan Post privatization bill has been voted down by the upper house of the Diet; Koizumi pledges to dissolve the lower house and call new elections on 11 September. There were 22 LDP votes against the bill, 4 more than the 18 required for it not to pass. The final total was 108 for, 125 against. It's the only thing NHK is talking about right now, naturally, but there's nothing really enlightening being said. The main noise in the House of Councillors' chamber after the tally was announced sounded like cheering, naturally.

Given the pressure the party leadership had put on LDP legislators to vote in favor, I'm sure some of those who weren't cheering were still feeling inward relief. There had not been much effort to get voters behind the bill, and those constituents that did voice opinions--such as, you know, the postal workers' unions--didn't support it. Ditto, of course, for the unelected officials in the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversee the current semi-governmental Japan Post corporation. Japan Post privatization has been presented in public all along as an example of the rifts in the LDP; it fulfilled that role to the end. The next month or so promises to be interesting.

Added at 16:00: As Atsushi just remarked to me while NHK's camera panned the assembled cabinet, the Prime Minister decided against cool biz today (though Heizo Takenaka and another minister or two are tie-less), and man, were they wearing some sour expressions.

Added at 11:59: Much hot air emitted since this afternoon. Few surprises. Koizumi has vowed that the lower house members who voted against the Japan Post privatization bill will not be supported by the LDP in the upcoming snap election. Otherwise, mostly a reaffirmation of positions by those whose talking heads have appeared for months.

BTW, it's worth noting in all the brouhaha that the point to which Japan had progressed before todays set of documents was formulated represented no small feat. The 2001 reorganization of the federal ministries involved the dissolution of the Trust Fund Agency of the Ministry of Finance, to which all Postal Savings deposits had theretofore been required to be routed. Granted, the creation of the Japan Post semi-governmental corporation didn't solve the spending problems, either on pork-barrel public works projects or on government bonds, but at least it let some light and air into the shadow budget. These things take time.

The asbestos scandal has been expanding so rapidly that it seemed wise to wait to say anything about it--there have been new and disheartening revelations just about daily for the last several weeks. The story actually began, of course, decades ago:

The Environment Agency, predecessor of the Environment Ministry, failed to measure asbestos fiber particle concentration in the air near asbestos-processing factories between 1979 and 1986, despite fears of health risks to residents, sources said.

Though the agency conducted research for two years starting in 1977 at 14 factories, it did not conduct measurements until an emergency study was made in 1987, when the use of asbestos in school buildings attracted attention as a health problem.

...

The agency introduced regulations on use of asbestos in 1989 by revising the Air Pollution Control Law.

It was known since the 1960s that many residents near asbestos-processing factories overseas had suffered from health problems.

The agency's study team urged in 1980 that research near asbestos-processing factories should be done as soon as possible because residents there had inhaled large concentrations of asbestos.

This is not like the asbestos hysteria in the States twenty years ago, when schools and other public buildings with contained asbestos were subjected to removal programs that actually risked ejecting it into the air at higher levels. Most of the problems that have been recently discovered in Japan involve either workers who handled asbestos of residents of areas near asbestos-using plants. There has been a shopworker whose mesothelioma has been linked to his work in a shop insulated with blue asbestos, but it was in a confined space that he spent a great deal of time in and often cleaned. To my knowledge, no other similar cases have been publicized, but as I say, there have been so many new announcements over the last month and a half that it would be easy to miss one.

There have been some concerns raised over asbestos in building materials--the latest involved Pacific Materials, a maker of building materials for public works projects, used asbestos in fire-retardant coverings (including what seems to be spray-on foam insulation) up to 1989. Japan tears down and rebuilds facilities at a much higher rate than the US, and that increased turnover makes it more important to know where each fiber in use is. Walls and ceilings do not sit unmolested for long here.　　Additionally, Japan has a track record of playing fast and loose with the use and disposal of hazardous materials. Despite Japan's image as a safety-conscious society with a tightly-controlled economy, safety regulations are often sketchy and slackly enforced. Nuclear screw-ups are the most well-known problem. Americans who arrive in Tokyo get a window on this attitude at seeing construction sites, which are separated from pedestrian pass-throughs by nothing more than traffic cones and plastic tubes; the walkways are often surfaced with pieces of old plywood. Unless there's a crane swinging I-beams overhead, it is extremely rare for a sidewalk to be entirely closed off for construction.

Most of the newly publicized cases of illness involve workers who came into repeated high-risk contact with uncontained fibers. The government has been slow to move on this problem, which has been known for decades; and as so often happens, its laxity is coming back to bite it all at one time. Multiple big-name companies have revealed that employees have been known to die of mesothelioma, the cancer most commonly linked with repeated airborne asbestos exposure (and, indeed, not known to be caused by anything else). The problem has invaded public consciousness to the point that fraudulent contractors are coming, uh, out of the woodwork to offer bogus asbestos containment or removal.

For those who want a run-down on the vocabulary used in the Japanese coverage of the scandal, this Yomiuri article hits most of them in the process of giving a description of the properties of asbestos. One thing that article doesn't point out is that the blue and brown fibers are considered more carcinogenic than the white fibers; use of new blue and brown asbestos was outlawed in Japan in 1995, and white asbestos wasn't banned until last year. Remember, though, that if a manufacturer or contractor can argue convincingly that no alternative material is suitable, use of asbestos is still permitted. The statute of limitations on wrongful death claims is also very short--within five years from the day after the victim's death. Given that asbestos inhalation has been a problem for decades but was largely unpublicized, the government is looking into extending it. Unsurprisingly, victims' advocates say the move is too little, too late.

One of the sad things about this recent spate of revelations is that it doesn't appear to be the result of the usual collusion and cover-ups. Not that I'm a fan of corruption, but there will always be opportunistic and evil people in the world, and if we can't always prevent them from gaining power, it's a good thing when we can discover them and address their wrongs as best we can. Regarding asbestos, the problem appears to have been sheer complacency. The companies involved were doing work to keep the Japan, Inc., machine going at relatively low cost, and no one noticeable was dropping dead right at the moment, so...well, even if studies had repeatedly shown that asbestos is a carcinogen, there were other things to worry about.

Hello, earthquake! Seems to be dying down...yup. Atsushi hasn't bolted out of the shower, so I guess we're okay in Tokyo. Hope it wasn't higher magnitude elsewhere.

Okay, we all knew this was coming and how it was going to be pitched. That doesn't make it any less vile:

A tell-all book by the nation's first openly gay governor is in the works, a New York publisher said Thursday.
The as-yet-untitled memoir by former New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey will be published by ReganBooks, an imprint of publishing house HarperCollins.

...

"Jim McGreevey has a rare opportunity, and the courage, to tell the whole truth about his life," Regan wrote. "In this deeply honest and revealing book, he will describe how he wrestled with his sexuality and his faith--from the expectations he faced as a young man to the divided persona he created in order to meet them."

Courage, my white faggot ass! For one thing, calling McGreevey "the nation's first openly gay governor" is misleading, since he announced his sexuality as a lead-in to announcing his resignation. He didn't serve a single openly gay day that he wasn't already committed to leaving office (when it was most convenient for his party) and thus never risked taking political hits for his homosexuality when it might have mattered. And give me a break--gays serving in Iraq under "Don't ask, don't tell" are showing courage. Gays who are willing to go on talk radio and defend our way of life to callers who tell them they're a pox on society are showing courage. McGreevey isn't showing the slightest bit of courage by adding to the already bloated genre of gay coming-of-age stories.

He could, however, do so by being up-front about how his mishandling of his own sexuality affected his performance as governor. As a lifelong Pennsylvanian, I blithely make New Jersey jokes all the time, but that's all in jest. The fact is that 10 million Americans were depending on his administration to protect them against terrorism as best it could, and he went and hired an incompetent cutie as security head who, being an Israeli citizen, apparently couldn't even get adequate security clearance to do his job. And that's not the only act of corruption of which McGreevey's of. I'd gladly pay money--I'd pre-order--a book in which he decided to get all "deeply honest and revealing" about that.

The Japan Post privatization bill has made it through committee in the House of Councillors and will go to the floor at the Monday plenary meeting. Every legislator and his grandmother has been interviewed on NHK today; no one said anything enlightening or new.

It's helpful to remember, BTW, that the bill that the upper house is getting is different in a lot of significant ways from the original proposal--and from what you'd normally think of as privatization. There will be a semi-governmental holding company (essentially the existing Japan Post central organization) and four individual companies for counter services, actual mail transport and delivery, savings accounts, and insurance.

The government will not be required to sell its shares in the provider companies by 2017 as had originally been proposed, which allows plenty of time for chummy relationships between officials and top managers to form. In fact, they'll be there from the get-go. Additionally, the ability for companies to engage in mutual shareholding has not been precluded.

There's also a government fund of ¥2 trillion that's to be used to insulate the service providers against losses from the providing of deliveries and financial services to rural areas. The official line is that it can only be used to bail out local providers that are going under, and that probably is the intention; but critics say it could be used to allow Japan Post spinoff companies to undercut private providers. (Is it time for a reference to the California energy fiasco? I think it is.)

Furthermore, the idea that Ministry of Finance officials who have depended on the money in postal savings--all ¥250 trillion of it--as part of the shadow budget are just going to sit back and watch while it disappears is hard to swallow; and then there's the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, which more directly controls the post-ier part of Japan Post.

Of course, the privatization bill has meaning as a symbolic gesture as well as a concrete move to reform a given set of public services. We'll have to wait and see whether it ends up being more symbolic than concrete. Well, we'll have to wait and see whether the bill passes at all.

Tomorrow morning is the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. I can't really think of anything better to say about the attack itself than what I said last year. I'm not big on self-quoting, but if you don't feel like clicking through:

When I think of people immediately after the bombings, their faces obliterated by heat, expending their little remaining energy to bow in gratitude for the water volunteers brought to their lips (one of the most famous A-bomb memorials is inscribed with 水, the character for "water," because that's what so many victims cried out for), my heart aches. The same when...you know, bodies of water feature very prominently in Japanese literature, as they do the world over, as sources of refreshment and sustenance. Imagining people set afire, stampeding into rivers and lakes to cool themselves, only to find the water boiling hot, makes me cry. As an American who places the highest value on individuals, I wish we hadn't had to cause such suffering to anyone at all who wasn't irredeemably evil.

But we did have to. Emperor Hirohito was ready to surrender, but he had military leaders who were plotting to intercept his proclamation, and no one on the American side could be sure how long rank-and-file Japanese soldiers and citizens would keep fighting. That there were other, more unsavory motivations for dropping the atom bomb (such as scientific curiosity about its effects) is hard to dispute. There probably isn't any such thing as a guileless decision during wartime, for that matter. I wish the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs a peaceful eternal rest as much as anyone. But I'm glad America did what it took to win.

I do think that, given the political controversies over Japan's attitudes toward its wartime conduct, there are one or two additional general points that might be made. Dean links to a post by Riding Sun about the history textbook debate that presents a good overview of the teaching content and the back-and-forth of the debate. Something that's worth bearing in mind, though, is this: the teachers' unions, especially the Japan Teachers' Union, are leftist. While their rank-and-file members tend to be not so extreme as the labor leadership, the average public school teacher is hardly a raving nationalist. When it's the teachers who express political views, you often get stories like this one.

It's those teachers through whom whatever is said in the textbook is mediated in the classroom. Among the Japanese friends with whom I frequently have frank political discussions, many (including Atsushi) say that their teachers tended to skip the chapters in their history books about the period after the Russo-Japanese War. I mean, you figure, it would have been discussed at the end of the year, and it shouldn't be hard to pace the class so that it runs out of time before uncomfortable subjects come up. I'm not sure how cram schools treat World War II; it seems unlikely that the entrance exams contain many questions about the period. The Japanese way of dealing with awkwardness is to ignore it, after all.

I certainly do not condone this. A balanced view of one's culture must include the bad with the good, and the way a civilization becomes world-class is by doing extreme things on a grand scale, so there's going to be plenty of bad to discuss. That's no less true of Japan than of any other country, including the former colonial powers of the West. I think, however, that when only the nationalist textbooks are discussed, there's a danger of leaving the impression that millions of students across Japan are actually sitting in rows being harangued: "How did our troops get into Manchuria, class?" "By advancing into it, Sensei!" The missing part of that picture is that the lefties in the JTU favored the hard-pacifist line pretty uncritically for years--including not only acceptance of responsibility for wrong-doing doing the occupation of Asia but also the advocating of monetary restitution for individual Asian war victims. I'm not happy to see ultra-nationalists clamoring to swing the pendulum all the way to the opposite side, but it's not as if they'd just awakened one morning and decided to do so unprovoked. Unfortunately, people with more moderate views and a pride in their country tempered by realism tend to keep silent when the topic comes up in public.

Added on 6 August: I edited the above a bit for clarity--I'd originally not planned to post it before this morning, but I clicked on the button before I realized what I was doing.

While I'm at it, one more point about liberal arts education: it isn't the goal of the Japanese educational system. While I'm happy to join Riding Sun in saying that's a problem, I don't think that the nature of the problem is that the Japanese public education machine is aiming for an American-style liberal arts system and misfiring because the far right is getting in the way. Just about everyone wants to tell the students what to think--not just the nationalists but also the teachers' unions and the Ministry of Education. (Well, now it's the Ministry of [deep breath] Culture, Education, Sports, Science and Technology. Plans to have a partridge in a pear tree added remain unconfirmed as I post this, perhaps because they're already under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.) There are education researchers and policy makers who favor a liberal arts curriculum as we would understand it, but the majority only disagree on what the students should be fed, not whether they should be force-fed ideas at all. The education establishment has mouthed things about liberal arts models because of the US occupation after the war, but like everything else that gets imported, they have been transformed according to the perceived needs of Japanese society.

Added at 7 a.m.: Okay, one more thought. This is a passage from the end of Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, written soon after the end of the war:

What the United States cannot do--what no outside nation could do--is to create by fiat a free, democratic Japan. It has never worked in any dominated country. No foreigner can decree, for a people who have not his own habits and assumptions, a manner of life after his own image. The Japanese cannot be legislated into accepting the authority of elected persons and ignoring 'proper station' as it is set up in their hierarchical system. They cannot be legislated into adopting the free and easy human contacts to which we are accustomed in the United States, the imperative demand to be independent, the passion each individual has to choose his own mate, his own job, the house he will live in and the obligations he will assume. The Japanese themselves, however, are quite articulate about changes in this direction which they regard as necessary. Their public men have said since V-J-Day that Japan must encourage its men and women to live their own lives and to trust their own consciences. They do not say so, of course, but any Japanese understands that they are questioning the role of 'shame' (haji) in Japan, and that they hope for a new growth of freedom among their countrymen: freedom from fear of the criticism and ostracism of 'the world.'

Benedict has taken a drubbing in succeeding decades, often justifiably, for her generalizations about the rigidity of Japanese society, which were excessive even then. But she was right about a great deal, too. We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki because we had to, but once Japan knew it had been crushed, it responded as it always does by adapting. Like any living civilization, Japan is a work in progress, but the overall progression over the last 60 years has been toward more liberty, and it has mostly been the Japanese themselves who have accomplished that.

Is there some kind of rule that, now that the word ass is permitted on network television, you have to have characters say it all the time? Like, there's a backlog from all that "ass" that went unsaid until the 90s, and it has to be cleared out? I mean, look--I'm a man who just loves ass, even in expletive form. It's just that it seems so forced.

In a more wide-ranging discussion, Dean has himself and a few others worked into a froth over naughty words. It's interesting to read, but his own take on the issue (that people who chafe at hearing them are just being self-righteous) shows a surprising lack of imagination.

Sophisticated cultures need arbitrary boundaries. In a society in which people move about freely and make agreements by contract rather than blood ties, we need as many ways to establish trust as possible; and it's important that some of them be content-free, or at least symbolic. You can't operate if you have to wait until after you've entrusted your life or property to someone to find out whether he's reliable. The risk is too great.

That's one of the reasons we have all kinds of little rules about how to serve and eat food, how to format certain kinds of letters, and how to express yourself in public. The behaviors themselves don't matter. What matters is that you're showing respect for the prevailing customs of your own culture, which indicates that you can be expected to respect weightier rules when they're operative.

Now, of course, it isn't necessarily true that he who is faithful in little will also be faithful in much. There are plenty of swindlers and sluts with impeccable manners socially. Etiquette has to be supplemented by reputation and credentials if we actually want to draw conclusions, as certainly as we can, about what kinds of people we're dealing with. But I maintain that it's a valuable starting point. A willingness to avoid vulgar expression in public is a signal that you understand the difference between public and private spheres and that you are capable of at least a modicum of self-discipline. Neither quality is to be taken for granted these days.

BTW, my upbringing was as working-class as Dean's was, and there was no cursing allowed in my parents' house. There was no self-righteousness about it--my mother never tsk-tsked over the neighbors' language or anything--and most of it was for religious reasons. I suspect they still matter to more people than Dean thinks. And conversely, if he thinks class-conscious types are the ones who avoid cursing, he hasn't spent any time with social-climby lawyers or bankers in their off hours.

One final point: you won't see me use extreme swear words here, but (as Dean himself...and Connie, and Michael, and a few others who've become friends through the blog here...can attest) I deploy them freely and unblushingly in private correspondence. One of the pleasures of having friends is being able to let your guard down around and say what you think in raw form, and it gets lost if you talk the same way all the time. That may not be the most important consideration related to the issue, but I don't think it's a negligible one.

A conversation I had a few days ago reminded me that it must have been pretty close to exactly five years ago this week that Atsushi and I met for the first time. Sounds like an excuse for a celebration when he's home this weekend. (You knew he was coming home by the fact that there was just an air-traffic screw-up this week, right? Happens every time. Of course, as Atsushi points out, it's probably just that there's an air-traffic screw-up every few weeks lately.)

How many times do people need to be told to check batteries periodically? This time, the problem wasn't a dead remote for the VCR, it was the air traffic control system at Haneda Airport:

A power failure in the air traffic control tower at Haneda Airport in Tokyo forced the cancellations or delays of more than 300 flights Tuesday, affecting 60,000 passengers.

All takeoffs and landings were halted for about an hour from 11:33 a.m.

...

The blackout was caused by dead batteries in two emergency power sources within the transport ministry's airport office building and the control tower.

It took down the entire system, cutting off all power to the air traffic control system, including the landing guidance system and flight data processor, which sends data on flight routes to other airports.

I happen to have spent Monday night having dinner and a drink or seven with a fellow blogger--he's not very forthcoming about himself on his blog, so I don't know whether he wants to be named here. We spent part of the time in a 40th-floor bar, looking out over the vast field of skyscrapers and elevated highways and other artifacts of civilization that make up central Tokyo--and we were lucky enough to have a view of trains and boats and planes coming in toward that part of the bay. (A combination Ayn Rand and Dionne Warwick moment--superb!) Watching planes coming in on the flight path for landing at Haneda really brings it home to you just how unbelievably congested it is. Haneda handles most domestic flights to and from the city. Unreal.

You know you're in Japan when a news report contains this passage:

Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Yoji Nagaoka was found hanged at his home in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, on Monday, police said.

Nagaoka's wife found the 54-year-old House of Representatives member just after 10 a.m. He was taken to a hospital in Mitaka, Tokyo, but was pronounced dead at 12:16 p.m., the Metropolitan Police Department said.

The MPD suspects Nagaoka committed suicide, and is investigating whether he left a suicide note.

...

As Nagaoka is only the sixth Diet member to have committed suicide since the end of World War II, there has been considerable speculation about why he chose to take his own life, with some suspecting the split inside the LDP over the postal privatization vote was a factor.

Wow. Only the sixth Diet member to commit suicide since WWII, huh? Those Diet members really deserve a commendation for their spectacular suicide-avoidance program!

Why is it that the Japan Post privatization may have pushed Nagaoka over the edge? Several reasons. Koizumi and his cabinet have staked a lot of political capital on Japan Post privatization, and they've been leaning on legislators any way they can. In the opposite direction, unelected officials have a lot of pull, and rural postal workers are very important to the LDP in elections. (That's something that's rarely commented on at length, even in discussions of this particular bill, but one of the major dailies had a very good article about it the other day. Wouldn't you know it, I can't find the link, but when I do, I'll post it.) NHK reported last week that postal workers have been lobbying legislators so forcefully that the head of the union had to tell them to lay off before they started spooking people too much. In rural areas, the post offices help to mobilize voters for LDP candidates; many Diet members feel directly beholden to Japan Post workers in their districts. Most Diet members from the ruling coalition say they plan to vote in line with the party, but there are, at least according to the Asahi, 12 who firmly oppose the bill. (That's up from 8 a few weeks ago.) Given that just about everyone else basically plans to vote against, and that 18 LDP votes against is the magic number that will deep six the bill, the 6 who say they're undecided are having a rough time of it. Koizumi is still aiming to have the bill voted on in the House of Councillors plenary session the day after tomorrow.