The White Peril 白禍

Ghost of a Flea has a post up that shuttles from Kelly Osbourne to Kylie to Sharon Osbourne to Madonna. Here are the first two:

While people have been rather mean about Kelly Osbourne's figure she turns out to be an admirer of Kylie Minogue's. Echoing the considered observations of countless communication studies essays I have read, Kelly believes that "sex really does sell". Kelly is right to credit Kylie some of her success to her pixie-like proportions but Kylie also claims a vast gay fan base to whom her pixie-like figure is secondary to some nebulous something else. This something else is what Kelly might better spend her time cultivating than surgery and botox and so forth.

I thought Nick was going a little overboard warning a woman of twenty-one off Botox, but according to the linked article, apparently not. Sheesh. I've always thought it was excessive for Kylie herself to use Botox. She's not even forty.

Via Gay News, I saw this DP article about an actor who spoke at Asian Pacific American Heritage Week. (I was a bit confused about that. I thought Asian Pacific American Heritage month was May and was wondering whether I was going to have to go all ethnicity-admiring and diversity-appreciating on Marc's ass for the second time this year. But I think last week was just a Penn event, so I can keep liking my Asian friends in the boring old individual way.)

The actor, who apparently used to be on Law & Order, was faced with a problem: he is (1) a racial minority and (2) a faggot--but not (3) a woman, and therefore does not qualify for the PC Triple Crown. I thought he found an ingenious solution to this appalling deficiency:

Wong conveyed the confusion of his childhood in San Francisco when he interrupted an anecdote about his struggles as a young Asian-American with, "Oh, I forgot to tell you that I was a homo," eliciting peals of laughter from the audience.

Encouraged by a "colorblind" drama teacher, Wong discovered a passion for the performing arts as a child.

Later, Wong encountered Asian stereotypes in the acting world for the first time when he was cast as a Chinese stowaway in a play outside of school.

"It was the most shocking thing that I have ever experienced in my life," Wong said.

Though Wong changed to a different role after speaking with the director, this experience was the beginning of his "racial anorexia."

Wong highlighted the intensity of this internal conflict when he said, "At least when you're anorexic, you can starve yourself. What can you do when you have this face?"

See? He was, like, anorexic, and what's more princessy-feminist chick than having an eating disorder brought on by patriarchal pressure? All right, FINE, he was a metaphorical chick, but in this world of contingency and différance, we wouldn't want to be reinforcing false binarisms between the literal and the figurative.

I have to say that I'm not quite sure what the anorexia comparison is supposed to, you know, mean. He wanted to destroy his Asian self, I guess? There's a potentially interesting question lingering in there about where typecasting shades off into stereotyping. No one bitches that Kristin Scott Thomas is, as much for her sky-goddess coloring and bone structure as for her actorly skill, frequently called upon to play uptight women of Northern European extraction with emotions simmering beneath the surface.

I can see, in an instinctive sense, how casting Asians in boxed-in roles is somehow worse, but it's hard to explicate. Surely one doesn't have directors telling actors to Charlie Chan up their accents. There is definitely a tendency on the part of casting directors to figure that everyone with slanted eyes and dusky skin is interchangeable, which is how you end up with Vietnamese, Korean, and Taiwanese women all playing Chinese roles in The Joy Luck Club. But that doesn't seem to be what Wong is talking about. And what, pray tell, is a "generic Asian waiter"? It's not as if there were meaty, three-dimensional waiter roles available by the dozens for white actors. If troubled Korean gang members exist, I'm not sure why they shouldn't be featured in teleplays, as long as their individual identities are fleshed out.

Wong, as befits the occasion, doesn't seem to have been much concerned with individual identity:

After struggling with his race and sexual orientation during most of his life, Wong has gradually come have confidence in himself.

"Ironically, the two things that I loathed about myself were the things that were rich about myself," he said.

Yes, we should all learn to derive our sense of the richness of our personal identities from the boxes we check on census forms. An inspiring example for today's college youth, that is.

Not all of Prime Minister Koizumi's gestures of respect for Japanese military dead are controversial. This morning he attended a memorial service for fallen SDF personnel:

Addressing those assembled at a memorial service held at the Japan Defense Agency for Self-Defense Force personnel who have fallen in the line of duty, Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi stated, "This precious sacrifice by the spirits [of our soldiers] has not been made for nothing; we will continue to construct a system that allows us to complete the exalted mission [they undertook]."

The memorial was for sixteen or so SDF trainees who were killed in training accidents; there have been no combat operations since the war, of course. Koizumi's statement was pretty content free today--in political terms, I mean; there's nothing weightless about honoring dead soldiers--but it's always good to pay attention to these things because things that slip into set-piece speeches can sometimes give you a glimpse of what the administration is thinking. Where to take the SDF from here has been a big issue over the last few years. The US supports moves to make it more like a standing army, with the legal ability to participate in defense operations with allies. North Korea likes to test missiles over our heads. China's economic growth has been accompanied by increased unrest and schizo behavior by the CCP. Japan wants permanent membership on the UN Security Council. And that doesn't even factor in Japan's place on the Islamofascist terror hit list, for the transgression of being a developed and free country.

The current proposal by the LDP's committee on constitutional revision is to change the SDF to the SDA: 自衛軍 (jieigun: self-defense army). You can never translate these things perfectly, but a 軍 is more menacing-sounding than a 隊. Koizumi appears not to have said much of anything about how his administration views the SDF's "mission" this morning, but it's clearly changing.

Condoleezza Rice has explicitly declared that the US supports Japan in its efforts to resolve the abductee issue:

On the evening of 28 October (29 October JST), Minister of Foreign Affairs Nobutaka Machimura met with US Secretary of State [Condoleezza] Rice at the Ministry of Interior Affairs. They agreed in their perception that there must be a review of US and Japan's contributions to the United Nations, which combined exceed 40% [of total member contributions]. They also reaffirmed that they would present a united front in working toward the denuclearization of North Korea. Machimura indicated that, regarding the Japan-DPRK summit to be opened on 3 November, it is Japan's plan to make the Japanese abductee issue its highest priority in discussion; Rice stated [that Japan had America's] "support on all fronts."

Rice also restated that the US supports Japan's bid for permanent membership on the UN Security Council, though the Bush administration has been known to advise the Koizumi cabinet to throttle back at times. There seems to have been no mention of the beef import ban.

I guess I hadn't been reading Ace long enough to know much about her coming out. She's posted about it at Gay Orbit and at her place. (It's the same post, but she may get different comments for each.)

I was way luckier than I expected to be. I was brought up in an extremely conservative Sabbatarian Christian sect--you know, people who weren't members of the church were collectively known as "the World," and we had two-hour services every week. You took notes when you were considered old enough, which in most families was around twelve or so. Just about every week there was at least one mention of how vigilant everyone needed to be against Satanic influences on their children in which homosexual activism figured prominently.

So when I settled in my mind that I was definitely, permanently gay, my options were very clear and very polarized. I figured my parents would tell me that they still loved me but that we weren't going to be able to have any correspondence anymore. For about a month--not very long, I guess, though it seemed like an eternity--I flip-flopped over whether to tell them, but I come from a pretty out-with-it-already kind of family, so I decided to come out and just deal.

I told them just after New Year's in 1996. The next three days were notable for their lack of relaxed family fun, but when I went back to New York, it was with the understanding that they weren't going to disown me and I wasn't about to go all druggy and bathhousey. After that there were a few awkward moments--I've never in my life eaten very much at one sitting, but after I was out, there was a sudden danger that my not wanting a third slice of shoo-fly pie meant I had an eating disorder because, you know, Cherie Bank on Channel 10 did this report that said a lot of Men Like Me do. Over the next few years, I figured out the rules: I can mention a guy I'm dating or talk about my boyfriend, but gay issues in general are a no-go. I mention the word gay--nay, use the letters g, a, and y within any five consecutive words--and the subject is changed. Not pointedly, but resolutely.

When I wanted to bring Atsushi home two years ago, everything was fine. I mean, it was so fine it was kind of spooky. They put us in separate rooms, of course, but they spent the whole time doing their mischievous/playful/intimately ribald thing, which they don't do around people they want to distance themselves from.

My mother even tried to challenge Atsushi to a drinking game, but he doesn't drink. This was at the "Japanese" steakhouse in one of the malls near where I grew up, BTW. You know, run by a Korean family, with Chinese calligraphy all over the place and Polynesian drinks on the menu. The chefs joke and juggle knives. You can get chow mein noodles instead of rice. Atsushi found the whole thing a lot of fun but utterly bewildering, and the 'rents never let him forget it. "This isn't the Japanese you get in Japan, huh, Atsu?" Mom guffawed at one point. "Yeah, I bet you're wishing you'd gone ahead and gotten a beer now!" Dad chimed in. Right about then I took a long drink of vodka and started to hope that maybe they could find it in their hearts to like him a little less. They let him go without too many more incidents, though. Since then, they always tell me to give their love to him when we talk or write back and forth, and they send him Christmas presents.

Normally, I try to leave my parents off the blog because they aren't here to give their version of events when it differs from my own. (Well, that and it's not my place to tell their stories.) I'm only giving them walk-on parts now because I wonder whether things would have worked this way three or four years after I came out. It was never my intention to use my Japanese major to move to Japan; I came here and liked it and then fortuitously discovered that my grad school mentor and I were incompatible, but I would have been in New York for another five or six years if I'd stayed on track. It's hard to say what would have happened in a reality that never came to pass. I'd been out for six years when I brought up the idea of bringing Atsushi home, so the fact that the gay thing wasn't going anywhere was pretty apparent. Time was probably the biggest factor, along with a willingness to be persistent without being pushy.

Harriet Miers has withdrawn from consideration for the Supreme Court; you'll have heard that already. Right Side of the Rainbow has a good roundup of the reactions from conservatives and libertarians.

Given Madonna's dogmatic pronouncements about spirituality lately, it's nice to see that she's still capable of self-questioning on some issues of true import:

When asked about her gay icon status, she admitted she "hopes" she is still the biggest gay icon of all time.

However, she also reveals that she agrees with Kylie Minogue's summary of the Australian superstar being the princess, and Madonna the queen.

"That's very good," she says. "We like it that way."

...

The former Material Girl [%#$@*!--SRK] also hit back at criticisms from Boy George that her Kabbalah religion is homophobic.

“He’s just got a bee in his bonnet,” she says.

Oy. I can just hear her delivering that last sentence in her phony not-quite-plummy-so-let's-call-it-pruny "English" accent.

The Kylie part is very sweet, though.

As far as whether she's still a gay icon goes, if my corner of Tokyo is any indication, that's a question that needn't even be asked. The other night, a few of us ran into a guy who hadn't heard the single yet, and before we could stop ourselves, we all stared at him as if he'd just landed from Mars.

Personally, my position is that, despite my uncritical devotion to Madonna, this album had better be good. Two years ago I paid money for an album with her posing as Che flippin' Guevara on the cover, and the music did not compensate. Fool me twice, and all that.

I do like "Hung Up," though IIRC, Erasure had the bright idea of doing a tweaked cover of "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" like, two decades ago. (They tweaked it by grafting a bit of "Money Money Money" onto the beginning. For all I know, they also grafted a bit of "I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do" onto the end; I've almost never been able to listen to an Erasure song all the way through.) Madonna usually isn't the major trailblazer she seems to think she is, but she rarely leads off with concepts that are frankly tired. Then again, given her output over the last few years, we should be celebrating the fact that she's seen fit to deliver a hook without burying it.

(Via Gay News)

Cathy Young has posted a long and very, very good response to Maggie Gallagher's guest-blog entries at the Volokh Conspiracy. Gallagher has also responded to Young. Something near the end of Gallagher's post took me aback in a big, bad way:

I too share your hope that we can have SSM and simultaneously figure out how to increase the likelihood that children in this country are born to and raised by their own married mom and dad.

That first part came out of left field for me--I assume it means that Gallagher figures that SSM is inevitable, anyway, so she hopes we can make the best of the change. But she's been saying for some time, unless I've read her incorrectly, that she thinks support for gay marriage has been slowly starting to wane lately. In that light, it doesn't seem likely that she would be regarding it as an inevitable development. At the same time, while I've never read her as anti-gay, she can hardly mean that she's looking forward to the advent of gay marriage. I don't quite know what to make of that bit.

Young is also right that Gallagher didn't present her arguments very fluidly, but it's hard not to sympathize with her. The crux of the pro-gay marriage argument, on the part of many of its supporters, can be delivered in a snappy sentence: "Conventional marriage isn't always about pro-creation, and gays fall in love and want to provide for their families just like straights--what justification is there for not treating their relationships the same legally?"

The crux of the argument against gay marriage is not as easy to put succinctly, involving as it does all the messy hormones and impulses and choices and things that are involved in taking a child through the two-decade transition into someone who's healthy, self-reliant, and ready to assume a place in adult society. Half of the evidence involved is probably boring even to the research psychologists and demographers who generate it. But that doesn't mean it's illegitimate.

Eric has also addressed--I hope I don't sound self-infatuated linking this, since the post in question begins by citing me approvingly; I'm not really going to deal with that part--some of the issues raised during Gallagher's guest-posting stint:

I think this "if you disagree with me, you're a bigot" meme has gotten really, really tired. The problem is, the more time people spend talking only with each other and not with people they disagree with, the more likely they are to be convinced that not only are they right, but that their opponents are more than wrong; they are evil, bigoted, and analogous to Nazis.

The irony involved in reflexively dismissing people with opposing arguments as "bigots" would be delicious were it not for the fact that the practice has so coarsened public discussion of...well, just about everything. I sometimes think it should be banned, the way your ninth-grade English teacher banned the passive voice from your first few expository essays--not because it was incorrect in and of itself incorrect but because it was too easy to get lazy and overuse.

Am I glad I'm not on Virginia Postrel's bad side or what:

As regular readers know, I've written an extraordinary amount about Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Early on, my primary purpose was reportorial--to use my locational advantage to provide information and context for people outside of Dallas. But the more I learned, the more appalled I became.

For whatever reason, the president has picked a woman who not only has no constitutional or judicial experience but even in her business practice has demonstrated no interest in the law as anything other than a source of billable hours. At 60 years old, she appears never to have had a substantive conversation about law or policy with any friend. She comes from a closed and cronyish legal and business culture and appears to have gotten ahead through a combination of networking, nose-to-the-grindstone diligence, and willingness to do her law firm's management, rather than legal, work.

Oof! Bear in mind, Virginia has gone out of her way to be sympathetic toward Miers the person.

She ends her post with a link to Americans for Better Justice and a set of links to her own previous posts about the nomination. Not being able to see as many homegrown news reports as Americans who live at home, I can't assess whether Bush actually seems to be laying the groundwork for a withdrawal of the nomination. By all accounts, the proceedings so far are not doing his trusted friend any favors.

Things seem to have died down a bit, but it's a shame that so many people reflexively decided to see the debate over this nomination in Blue States vs. The Real America terms. Cultural insularity isn't irrelevant here, but it's not the central issue. The BOS-WASH and SAN-SAN population belts deserve to be informed, emphatically and often, that much of what's important in America goes on outside them. Hell, I grew up in Allentown, PA, and I can assure you it may as well have been the moon for all many people in New York (1:45 away), Washington (2:30 away), or even Philadelphia (1:15 away) knew about what life was like there.

However, the big-city power centers are still where most ambitious people go to seek the most viciously competitive environment in which they can test their ideas and competencies. In that sense, the arrogance of seeing yourself as a player in Big Decisions is a good thing. Miers is clearly a fantastic person--for goodness's sake, if she weren't, someone would have said so by now, given the way journalists have been beating the bushes for any opinions about her whatsoever--but there's no evidence that she's tested herself as a thinker or learned to adjust to working in a pressure cooker.

Don't take this the wrong way, dear and valued readers, but I had to send my laptop back to Toshiba for repairs (CD-ROM drive was freaking--which I think is pretty ungrateful, considering the choice diet of Kylie singles and Hitchcock movies I feed it) and am kind of enjoying not having an Internet connection at home for the next week or so. Last night, the man from Nittsu came to take my Dynabook, and when he left, I felt truly alone in the apartment...in a good way. Of course, I was looking forward to Atsushi's nightly phone call at 11:00, and I got a few cell calls and mails. But the temptation to check the websites of five newspapers to see whether they'd been updated since the last newscast on NHK was blessedly removed. No look at G-Mail when I got back from dinner or out of the bathtub, lest I miss some stray plaint from the office. Just a book or three and a glass of the plum wine Atsushi brought back for me the last time he came home. Anyway, I don't think posting will be all that light over the next week, but it may be more randomly distributed.

Oh, speaking of the Internet: is there something inherently snobby about not using it to meet people? In response to a direct appeal for information, I remarked the other night that I've never met a guy over the Internet and wouldn't really know where to go if I wanted to do so, and the person I was talking to kind of flipped. He was really affronted, and I didn't get it. I mean, okay, if pressed, I'd have to admit that I preferred the face-to-face-sparring method of flirtation even when I was more young and fun-loving. But I'd never imply that people who use web personals are pathetic, or what have you, for the very good reason that I don't believe any such thing. You just can never tell with people.

I was going to comment directly at Riding Sun, but I started to run long and didn't want to look like a blowhard. Well, also, my thoughts turned kind of gay (from where? you may well ask), and I didn't want to hijack what was an essentially straight thread before it got started.

The question is a perennial one:

As I've noted before, foreign men who come to Japan often find themselves much more popular with the local ladies than they might have been in their native country.

...


More than ethnic preferences, income levels, or any other factor, I suspect it's Japanese women's desire to "opt out" of their country's smothering salaryman-wife straitjacket that keeps non-Japanese guys in demand.

That's part of it, but I don't think it's all of it, or else you wouldn't see the same things in gay life. And do you ever! The things a perceptive commenter noted below the original post give a fuller picture, I think. Much of it can be boiled down to the fact that Japanese women can't really read Western cultural signals. "Doesn't that gorgeous, animated, articulate woman in the Escada suit and perfect makeup realize that the man she's with is a complete loser?" Well, no, obviously she doesn't. (cf. Rainbow Surfer Dude's wonderfully deadpan item 2: "Less need to be 'interesting' since the language barrier pushes down the upper limit of conversational complexity.")

Also...this conversation comes up not infrequently with friends of mine. A little while ago, several of us foreigners--in a group that included Japanese guys who date foreigners exclusively--were talking about why our relationships with Japanese men had tended to be with those who did not usually date non-Japanese. One of the Japanese guys present asked rather astringently what was wrong with preferring foreign men.

Obviously, nothing is, fundamentally. It's just that many gaisen Japanese, especially those who only want to speak English with you all the time, like the idea of dating a man who's always going to feel kind of baffled and clueless in Japan and need to be, you know, taken care of. I suspect, from the way I've seen many couples interact, that the same holds true for a fair number of foreigner-dating Japanese women--and I don't think that contradicts what Gaijin Biker wrote about their not wanting to be sentenced to a life of nothing but household drudgery. You can expect your mate to pitch in around the house and still want to be the one who calls the shots and is always one step ahead in terms of planning your lives together.

Added on 28 October: Thanks to Bilious Young Fogey for the link, though I must say that parenthetical makes me feel kind of square.

You know when you're working out and the destressing feels great so you push yourself really, really hard? And then a day and a half or so later you get a memo that reads, "TO: Stupid Bitch / FROM: Voluntary Muscles / TEXT: Repeat after me: 'I. Am. Not. Twenty. Anymore.' / END"?

Yeah.

I'd rather talk about other people's idiocy rather than my own, so let's change the subject, shall we? I can never understand why people don't live the way they say they want to live. Some problems are external--e.g., "My boyfriend's cheating on me, and I can't decide whether to let it blow over or to make an issue out of it"--and clearly difficult to negotiate. Where to draw the line between accepting your mate's imperfections and being a doormat is not always easy.

But the practice of causing your own problems and then wondering why you have them? What is up with that? "See, I'm an honest person, and my relationship with Kazu is...you know, I want it to be totally pure. I don't really cheat on him, you know, in terms of mind space? Totally his. I mean, really. But I figure once in a while if I hook up, it doesn't detract from that. I think maybe I should tell him, but I don't want him to think I'm not devoted to him. Like, I think he'd take it the right way and not think that screwing around on him affected the meaning of our relationship, but it's kind of a risk, so I haven't said anything. It's such a hard position, you know?"

No, honey, not really. It's not all that hard to find someone who's willing to have an open relationship; even a sizable proportion of straight marriages work that way in Japan. If that's what you want, you make it a criterion when you start dating. If you want to change the terms of an existing relationship, you do it. (Since Japan still recognizes the value of subtext and euphemism, it's often possible to get this accomplished without a cruel direct hit.) If your partner doesn't accept the change of terms, you either dissolve the relationship or find a way to accommodate each other without deception. Exposing your partner to the potential hazards of microbes and psychological baggage that you expressly promised to protect him from is not a sympathetically flawed action taken in a no-win situation.

The Nikkei says that the Koizumi administration is purposefully taking a combination of hard and soft approaches to its delicate relationship with the PRC.

The government--aiming to work out a resolution to problems with Japan-China relations, which have worsened since Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi's latest pilgrimage to the Yasukuni Shrine--has adopted a framework within which it can use both hard and soft responses. This approach has strengthened its unified front [with the PRC] on North Koreas nuclear disarmament. On the other hand, regarding the problem of Japan's United Nations member contributions, the government's approach has also involved moves to decrease the percent that comes from Japan, which opens the possibility that the contribution expected from the PRC would rise. This backdrop for this approach was a judgment that, given a reality in which relations between the two countries have become progressively more multipolar, including economic relations, there is no need to lean only in the direction of soft approaches.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Nobutaka Machimura was emphatic in an appearance on a 23 October Fuji Television program: "I'm surprised that everyone has succumbed to the most pessimistic arguments about this recent Yasukuni pilgrimage [by the Prime Minister]. They're clearly way too pessimistic. Do people really think that Japan's international stature would decline so abruptly?" Furthermore, he stated, "We haven't reestablished visits between our heads of state, but traffic on the economic and cultural fronts is brisk."

How do you solve a problem like China? You probably don't. The CCP is engaged in frequent games of chicken with China's own restless citizens, fomenting their discontent just enough for them to let off steam at Japan without having things get out of hand. The Koizumi administration's approach often seems haphazard, but trying to keep as many tools at the ready as possible is probably the only wise policy. Of course, the right tool still has to be used at the right time.

This story from the Asahi English edition doesn't have much detail, but it's a helpful reminder that, even in First World countries, major earthquakes cause disruptions that last long after the news cameras leave:

A year ago Sunday the Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake hit, leaving 51 people dead and thousands injured. One year later, more than 9,100 victims still live in temporary housing.

Many are battling financial and other difficulties and have yet to complete rebuilding work. About 1,000 households have abandoned such plans or say they have no prospect yet of rebuilding their homes that were lost in the Oct. 23, 2004, temblor.

With a second snowy winter looming, an estimated 400 households in the former Yamakoshi village, now part of Nagaoka city, and other communities in Niigata Prefecture are still subject to evacuation orders or advisories.

The English story combines information from these two stories. The Yomiuri conducted a poll and found that 44% of those still living in temporary housing have no plans to rebuild their houses. Most of the people affected are from a relatively small, particularly hard-hit area in Niigata Prefecture.

For its part, the Mainichi surveyed municipalities affected by last year's series of quakes. (Most articles talk about a single "earthquake," but there were actually three or four strong ones in rapid succession.)

The Kawaguchi Municipal Government that came under fire for failing to incorporate earthquake countermeasures in its disaster prevention plan admitted that it has not yet begun reviewing it.

"Multiple divisions must be involved in reviewing the plan. It's impossible for local governments that have fewer officials to quickly review their disaster prevention plan even if it's necessary," an official of the town's general affairs division said.

Nine municipalities are now storing water in case of a devastating disaster, an increase from four in the pre-quake period. Fourteen municipalities have stockpiled emergency food, as compared with 10 before the Niigata quake.

However, only seven municipalities, or 25 percent, have stockpiled both water and emergency food.

Only four municipalities have set up a system under which they provide subsidies to local residents to examine whether and how far their houses are quake-resistant and two others are prepared to provide subsidies to residents to make their houses quake-proof. Many of the municipalities that have no such subsidy systems cite their severe financial situations.

Only six of them have introduced satellite mobile phones and other communication devices in case their areas are isolated from surrounding areas.

Niigata Prefecture is not an earthquake hot zone in Japanese terms. However, as we saw last year, the low probability of a devastating quake is offset by the fact that many people live in remote villages on landslide-prone ground that makes destruction likely and rescue operations difficult. When a quake does eventually hit, people are in big trouble.

The NHK special turned out to be nothing all that revelatory, though it had the small virtue of laying out some of the major issues succinctly.

One of the new career models was represented by a woman in her 20s who lives in a small, spare apartment and gets by on temp jobs. Her point of view was that there isn't stability in a standard job with a single employer anymore anyway, so if she's going to live with the constant threat of disruption, she may as well be taking jobs that interest her while she's doing it. A former hotshot Tokyo graphic artist who quit his job, decamped with his wife for Okinawa, and now spends a lot of time fishing and, IIRC, takes freelance jobs when needed was featured as an example of another trend. (Atsushi, who's the same age, was gratified to see this guy pushed forward to exemplify trends in employment among young people.) There were a few high school students with scary post-Amuro-chan fake bakes, piercings, dyed 'n fried hair, and black and white makeup who said that they didn't see why they shouldn't do what they liked with their lives.

In the opposite corner, we had a bunch of middle-aged people. Some of them were sympathetic to the impulses of wild, free youth and figured the youngsters on parade would eventually settle down like those in generations before them. Others made the stock complaint that those who scale down their career ambitions are incapable of toughing it out through short-term hardship in order to reach a worthy long-term goal.

Atsushi and I cut out to go to dinner midway through the program, so it's possible that the five or six people who were serving as bland MCs did get around to asking interesting questions, but it certainly didn't happen while we were watching. No one saw fit to connect the dots between the middle-aged businessmen and the woman who subsisted on temp jobs, for example, and ask whether traditional (bearing in mind that that word refers to organizations that were mostly founded after the war) companies are, now that they can't offer lifetime employment, changing their work environments to make sure they stay attractive to young job seekers with other options. No one pointed out the entrepreneurs in the group and asked the disaffected high school students whether they'd thought about founding service-industry businesses that could satisfy their arty bent and attract talented peers of theirs with similar views of the relationship between work and play.

Of course, there's always the chance that these issues came up after Atsushi and I stopped watching. I doubt it, though. If they had, NHK would have found itself broadcasting an actual exchange of ideas, with awkward differences of opinion that went beyond those that viewers were already prepared to deal with. That's not usually in the program.

Prime Minister Koizumi has announced that Heizo Takenaka, the driving force behind the banking cleanup and Japan Post privatization, will retain his position after the cabinet reshuffling at the beginning of next month. Kazuo Kitagawa, the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, will also retain his position. (Whether that's connected to the privatization of the Japan Highway Public Corporation and other transportation bodies is not clear from the Nikkei article.)

...

One of NHK's social commentary shows is doing an installment on the future of Japan's youth, featuring an array of eyecatching fringe types. Whether anything illuminating will emerge remains to be seen. Atsushi (he's home for the weekend again) and I are a little dubious about the resolute freakshow aspect. Many of the teenagers being interviewed hang out in Shibuya, which is not exactly noted for attracting the studious rank-and-file.

You know what I love about Madonna? She's fearlessly delusional (via non-Pryhill Ace; the New York Daily News has the full report here):

Despite her many homes, the former Material Girl says she has renounced "the material world. The physical world. The world of illusion, that we think is real. We live for it, we're enslaved by it. And it will ultimately be our undoing."

Reading from Scripture at one point in the film, the mother of two — who won't let her children watch TV or eat ice cream — says, "I refer to an entity called 'The Beast.' I feel I am describing the world that we live in right now."

Dude, that's, like, all kinds of profound and stuff. You can take the girl out of Los Angeles....

One thing that annoys me, though: can we please stop referring to Madonna as "the former Material Girl"? I know that asking journalists to avoid shallow, jingle-like formulations is like asking Joan Rivers to avoid plastic surgery, but "Material Girl" was a single song. It was neither her first hit nor her biggest hit; she never so much as named a concert tour after it. The frame story for the video sent up the lyrics. Of course, Madonna made a lot of money and was doubtless happy about it, but her image and music were always much more about self-reliance and self-definition than about money-grubbing or acquisitiveness. The mass audience would have tired of her very quickly if there'd been nothing to her but sexual and religious button-pushing. One of the ways The Immaculate Collection was a botch job as a greatest hits album--in addition to that horrible Q Sound engineering and the tacky remixes--was in omitting hits such as "Angel," "Who's That Girl," and "True Blue." A lot of the time Madonna was ruling the airwaves, it was with unassuming, straightforward songs about romantic yearning, not the controversy-courting blockbusters.

It remains to be seen whether the new album will get us lifelong fans back to swooning; it's hard to imagine not topping American Life. Assuming her newfound loftiness hasn't dampened her sensuality, we should be okay.

Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty has posted a lengthy response to Maggie Gallagher's guest posts at the Volokh Conspiracy on gay marriage (via Gay Orbit). Kuznicki's commentary is worth reading in full, especially if you don't want to have to slog through all the comments at the Volokh Conspiracy to figure out what the main counterarguments being offered are.

I don't feel like reproducing my last year and a half of effusion on the issue, especially since it's all available under the marriage debate category on the left there. I do think that one of Kuznicki's points is worth responding to anew, though:

Meanwhile, Gallagher has also neglected the opposing argument, namely that same-sex marriages might actually strengthen the institution of heterosexual marriage. Although the empirical data on either side is scarce (and although this scarcity gives weight to the go-slow approach mentioned in the last comment I linked), still, I think there is at least a conceivable causal mechanism to explain why same-sex marriage might do a lot of good to the institution of heterosexual marriage: If we as a society send a message that marriage is a universal goal, one that admits of no exceptions and knows no gender lines, then it is reasonable to think that more people of all sexual orientations will want to get married.

But if large numbers of people–gays and lesbians, for example–are told that they do not need marriage, or that marriage cannot help them, or that they are unworthy of the institution, then some marginal number of straight people, especially those who identify most closely with gays and lesbians, will almost certainly come to have contempt for the institution of marriage and to see it as antiquated or irrelevant.

I'm perfectly willing to argue that homosexual relationships are no less moral than heterosexual relationships, that contribution to civilization in the form of the creation and upkeep of artifacts is just as important as contribution to civilization in the form of the creation and bringing up of children, and that the law should not be throwing obstacles in our paths when we try to care for our partners within the relationships we've chosen.

However, I've always found the argument above, even in the carefully qualified way Kuznicki presents it, to be ridiculous. The vast majority of people do not view homosexuality and heterosexuality as the same; that's true even among those who believe our relationships are just as valid (word of the week, apparently) as theirs. Despite all the changes in medicine and in the family structure over the last century, there simply remains no chance that a homosexual couple will suddenly finding itself producing a child that needs eighteen years of intensive looking-after. The number of people so bohemian in outlook that they regard their gay friends as facing the same real-life sex-related issues in all respects is so small that "marginal" hardly does it justice.

My friends hardly constitute a scientific sample of the population--good thing for America we don't!--but I doubt their attitude is untypical. A few years ago on our e-mail group, I tried to get a discussion about gay marriage going...and failed utterly. The replies were along the lines of "Of course, I think you and Atsushi should be able to get married--why the hell wouldn't i?" Even so, my friends' expressed preference has been for marriage; there have been a half-dozen weddings since we were in our late twenties. (The result, BTW, is that I'm now friends with [even] more Jews than I was in college: three of the girls converted in order to marry three of our Jewish buddies. Talk about populations that recruit!) If forced to choose between showing solidarity with gay friends and providing the most stable possible environment for their own children--assuming that's the choice they actually have to make--most people are obviously going to side with their kids.

Perhaps if I spent more time reading the WaPo's coverage of Japanese culture stuff, I would have known that Anthony Faiola, who was the irritant behind this flip-out of mine a few weeks ago, is a repeat offender. (Is Faiola supposed to be a Japan specialist? I got the impression that he was based in China.) This from Japundit about a more recent example:

It’s sort of an interesting enough article - Faiola reports that many Japanese women suffer from a stress disorder called RHS due to the unwanted presence of their retired husbands - but it’s hardly news, especially from a reporter who specializes on Japan topics for the Washington Post. And the issue has been reported on in the English language media in Japan for years.

As well, the entire “love letters and wooing words under pink cherry blossoms” stuff is a little suspect, too. The entire idea of marrying for romantic love is a recent affectation imported from the West. Arranged marriages were the norm for today’s 65-year-old cohort, as were strict ideas about the roles and responsibilities for each partner in the marriage.

Kind of makes you wish the Post and all the other papers out there could find stringers who actually understand Japan and write stories that dig a little deeper, and go beyond stereotypes.

That's the thing that's so annoying: a lot of these reporters probably have a healthy journalistic skepticism, but if they don't know anything about Japan, their warning bells don't go off when they should; they end up swallowing clichés the way a cormorant swallows fish.

...

I just looked at one of the WaPo staff pages. Faiola is based in Tokyo. Sheesh. At least his reporting was just dull this time, as opposed to very likely inaccurate.

This is why we love Eric. Notice, dear children, that it's possible not to hold feeling comfortable as the very highest value in the universe:

There weren't too many role models for me, which is probably why I'm such a nut. I was a fan of the Grateful Dead, and in my Marxist days I tended towards misguided idolization of the Black Panther Party leadership. Years later I came to adore a certain crazed junkie writer. But these weren't really role models. I thought of my own sexuality as crazy and uniquely non-conforming, and while I might not have always been comfortable with it, I always thought I had to be my own role model. I've never felt validated, and I never wanted to be validated. The conventional concepts of gay and straight annoyed me then, and annoy me now. Not only is the right to free choice in sexual matters being negated, it's increasingly being seen as an oppressive concept.

I wouldn't take it quite that far myself, of course. Civilization has had millennia to build up knowledge about what does and does not tend to work for people for people who want to live happy, productive lives. There's nothing cravenly conformist about heeding the wisdom of those who came before you (or those who are still around and have more experience than you do).

But things are just a bit out of hand these days, with the assumption in the air that no one can figure out how to live his life unless there's an available "role model" with the exact same characteristics. This is America; we're supposed to be a nation of pioneers. But no. It's considered unfair to expect someone to follow a path that hasn't already been machete-cleared, leveled, and bricked over in a tasteful herringbone pattern by someone else.

Eric's talking more about private life than about public life, but the idea's the same. Sure, we all need friends, and most of us like the feeling of belonging to a kind of "community" (even if the frequent, gruesomely cheery political use of that word gives us the heebs). But personal liberty means that you often have to make decisions that are specific to your own circumstances and don't have much precedent, and I'm not quite sure how the Logo Network spells salvation.

Unlike Eric, I'm pretty much a central-casting gay guy. But it was mostly my parents who were my role models for what kind of adult I wanted to be. When I came out, it was among my college friends, who were all straight. I certainly went through a lot of pain over acknowledging that I was a homosexual, but I don't remember getting flibbertigibbety over my "role" as a gay man. I mean, hello? You find somewhere with eligible men and get started flirting.

That the eligible men may be in a different city just means that you may have to make a tradeoff between staying in familiar surroundings and capitalizing on opportunities elsewhere. That happens to straight people all the time, too. Basic issues about persona are pretty universal, too: Am I good at initiating conversations, or do things work out better when I let someone come to me and break the ice? Does my demeanor seem friendly or unfriendly to people who don't know me? Do I like being the center of attention or mixing quietly with people in the crowd? Most people figure out what their best fit is through trial and error, and the error part is occasionally painful or embarrassing. These things happen.

Simply knowing that there are other gay people around is undoubtedly a comfort, and an important one, to gay youths. But figuring out you're gay is the beginning of the journey, not the end. The rest of it--making your way as an adult--is basically the same for everyone, regardless of sexual identity. That some people make feeling "validated" their highest priority doesn't mean the rest of us are always obliged to indulge them.

Jonathan Rauch's column for National Journal is up at IGF. It's about a gay wedding in Massachusetts. I still think there are important unaddressed questions about gay marriage as policy and as an institution. Rauch mostly leaves aside those questions this time out, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. His focus is on the reactions of family members. He delineates, with a few well-chosen strokes, how Beckland and Pope are starting out--both the resources they have and what they're going to be contending with:

Laura's parents, Lee and Ludene, both in their early 70s, have shown up at their grandson's wedding on the advice of their priest, who counseled support for their family even if they could not condone a same-sex marriage. They say they are open-minded Catholics, but today's event has pushed them to their limit. "I feel that it's wrong," Lee volunteers. "I don't think it's real. I kind of wish it hadn't happened." He loves his grandson, no doubt about it. But "this is hard for me, to see it happen." Ludene, who believes that marriage is for procreation, struggles to find a more conciliatory note. "We're living in a different age," she says.

Jamie's two younger brothers are enthusiastic about the marriage. It never occurs to them to regard a same-sex marriage as anything but real. His father, Kim, has been supportive all along. But his paternal grandparents, Jim and Carol, are guarded as they sit on a bench awaiting the ceremony's start. "We love Jamie, and I'm not going to drive a wedge in the family," Jim says. Carol mentions that both are Christians who are close to the Bible. "This will be interesting," she says. "I'm not the judge."

Rauch has in the past written about the social pressure required to make marriage work and how it would make gay marriage a benefit to society; he's done so in ways that push forward abstractions and skate over specifics, which I think weakens his arguments. It will be interesting to see how what he learns about people's concrete experiences from here on will affect his views.

I may not like the way gay marriage has been pursued politically, but of course it turns me to mush to see two of our men (or women)--who clearly had to go through some major crap to right themselves--find happiness with each other. Congratulations and best wishes to them.

(Oh, and Jonathan? Sweetness? Honey, Jamie could be your son. There's no "just about" about it. He was born when you were eighteen, and maybe most of your fellow rising Yale freshmen weren't having kids then, but plenty of Americans were. It's considered pretty early in most places, but not all that early. I was born when my father was twenty, and it never raises an eyebrow when I meet other people of working class extraction.)

If I have any readers who are fellow Pennsylvanians...well, first of all, hi! How's the old commonwealth doing? Second, next time you run into PennDOT, could you please kick it REAL HARD for me?

You wouldn't think PennDOT could find a way to make your life miserable on the opposite side of the planet, huh? Ha! You forget--Pennsylvania used to have more paved roadway than any other state. At least, that's what we learned in elementary school. It may still be true. Anyway, the point is, PennDOT functionaries have had a lot of practice getting their obstructionism down to a science. I shouldn't have been surprised to learn that their reach is now global. Save yourselves!

My birthday was in March; like a good boy, I did my driver's license renewal bureaucrap in February.

You know what's coming, right? I still don't have my renewed license, despite regular e-mails, a few phone calls, and (futile) attempts to actually open PennDOT's website to find out what the hell is going on. I thought about writing a letter of inquiry, as someone old enough to remember how paper correspondence works, but I got stuck in that mode...you know, when you're like, dammit, this is 2005, the website is SUPPOSED to be accessible, and I'm going to keep at it until I get the homepage to come up.

Yesterday, I gave up and went to the Lehigh County government site (with such exotic features as pages that open) and got the phone number again. After two or three unsuccessful loops through the phone tree (ACK!), I was connected with a flesh-and-blood operator who, to be fair, was very helpful. I'm confident, perhaps naively, that if I do what she told me to do, there is an unexpired driver's license waiting for me at the end of the process. That way when I visit my family in a few months, I'll be able to play obstacle course with PennDOT'S was-there-actually-a-pothole-there-or-did-they-just-decide-to-dig-a-hole-and-fill-it? projects like everyone else. I'll feel that I've really gone home, you know?

And while I'm on the subject of paperwork, that immigration processing center out in the wilds of the monorail line down from Shinagawa Station? Not as bad as I'd expected. This is the first time my visa's come up for renewal since they closed the little office in Shibuya (a seven-minute walk from my old apartment--man, was that convenient). Having people line up and ask for the forms they need was probably a good idea; the way they used to set them out in plastic trays just invited a free-for-all and guaranteed that some people would grab the wrong ones. There were long waits, of course, but as someone who's constantly complaining about the number of redundant mandarins in the Japanese government, I can't exactly bitch when they decide to consolidate two or three offices. And maybe I was just lucky, but everyone I dealt with was downright solicitous, even (dare I say?) amiable.

My cell phone was doing some weird things lately, and Atsushi pointed out that the inside of the tea kettle was getting corroded-looking; so I decided to use some errand time yesterday to get new ones. When I described the afternoon to Atsushi later, he laughed. "You've been contending with both the ancient and the modern today, huh?"

The kettle we had before was a regular aluminum job with a whistle--the sort of thing you buy when you're just moving into your first apartment and prioritize speed of acquisition over aesthetics. But while I was getting a new one, I figured I'd go for a 鉄瓶 (tetsubin: lit., "iron vessel", though the 瓶 part usually refers to bottles nowadays). A tetsubin is a traditional kettle for boiling water. I thought about looking through the catalogue at Seibu for one with an offbeat design, but when it's something as elemental as boiling water, it's kind of nice to go for the standard-warhorse model, so I did:





The good thing about an iron kettle is that, used over an open flame, it establishes an uncanny connection with our prehistoric ancestors, who had direct contact with fire, water, and mineral in slowly advancing out of subsistence on the raw provisions of nature.

The bad thing about an iron kettle is that it is a total pain in the ass to take care of--as I'd forgotten, not having used one for years, but quickly relearned yesterday. Those who care for their favorite old cast iron pans without a lot of huffing and puffing may wonder what I'm complaining about, but thing with a frying pan is, usually if you leave it sit for a while before cleaning it, all it has in it is grease. As long as you clean it before the contents go rancid, you're pretty much fine. You can't let water sit in a kettle, though, because it'll start rusting almost immediately. It'll also start rusting if you leave it wet, which is why you have to be sure to empty all the water and, while it's still hot, wipe around the spout and lid, where condensation is especially likely. (The instruction packet says, "Be careful not to burn your hands in the process." Yeah, no freakin' joke!) That means that if you're going to make a quick cup of tea before taking off in the morning, you need to factor in an extra 30 seconds or so.

The other thing you have to do, of course, is season it. So yesterday, while I was sitting hunched over my frighteningly competent new cell phone, I was also boiling kettlefuls of water and then dumping them. When they ran clear, it was ready to use. It took about an hour all told (for Tokyo, we have a very satisfyingly gusty set of gas jets).

Not so the cell phone, and it wasn't just because I was an overgrown boy playing with a new mechanical toy, though that was mostly it. The resolution power for both camera and display screen is unreal; I cropped one of my favorite pictures of Atsushi and set it as his...uh, what would we call it in English? 着信画面. Incoming call screen? I'm used to phones with good displays--this is Japan. But I haven't bought a new model for three years or so, and I'm still not quite used to it.

The ring tones are a trip, too, since phones now have their miniature version of surround sound. I went to one of the sites with Western pop music and looked at a few of the offerings. Eclectic doesn't begin to describe it; I made a beeline for the Tracey Ullman version of "They Don't Know." (Was that a hit in Japan? Do people remember it? I wonder. I don't think I've ever seen it in a karaoke book, but I wasn't looking, either.) It doesn't really apply to Atsushi and me very well--our friends kept trying to push us together and were frankly exasperated at the stately pace at which we courted each other, actually--but it's a very sweet tune to use to signal that your love is calling, so I programmed it in.

What isn't sweet is the fact that all the functions--the diacritical marks for kana, the delete button--are in different places. I asked at the shop whether going with the same manufacturer as my old model would help, but the saleswoman said National-Panasonic's moved everything around. It took me twenty minutes to type a four-line e-mail to Atsushi today. At least I haven't hung up on anyone, or anything.

The LDP's constitutional revision committee confirmed today that its proposals will, in fact, include an item that redesignates the Self-Defense Force (自衛隊) as the Self-Defense Army (自衛軍). Of course, the English there doesn't match up exactly, but the new title makes the SDF sound more like a substantial standing army and less like a modest squad that can be called in if there happens to be a need:

When the committee leaders met with the Prime Minister and former Prime Minister [Yoshiro] Mori on 14 October, they concurred on guidelines: (1) the philosophical underpinnings of Article 9, which decrees that Japan "renounces war," would be strictly maintained, (2) it would be stipulated in Article 9 Item ii that Japan maintains a self-defense army with the goals of defense of the homeland and of international cooperative efforts, and (3) in the revised text of Article 9, laws for "basic security," "international cooperation," and "emergency circumstances" would be established without explicit mention of a right to participate in collective self-defense operations.

It will be interesting to see what Japan's neighbors make of that, though the Bush administration will doubtless be happy.

Presumably for National Coming Out Day, the Washington Blade ran two editorials last week (at least on-line) about coming out--one by Log Cabin Republicans' Patrick Guerriero, and one by the National Black Justice Coalition's Keith Boykin.

Boykin's criticisms, especially, are aimed at people who remain closeted in order to play both ends against the middle:

If you don't come out, then you can't complain. You can't complain about homophobic politicians who want to take away your rights. You can't complain about bigoted ministers in church. And you absolutely cannot complain about the direction of the gay and lesbian movement.

...

Too many of us are good at offering critiques without offering help. "Why are there so many 'queens' in the movement? Why aren't there any people of color? Why are they talking about marriage, the military, hate crimes, AIDS, or fill-in-the-blank issue that 'real people' think activists shouldn't be talking about?"

Well here's another question: Why aren't you doing something about it? Posting an anonymous comment on someone's blog is not enough.

I'm not saying the activists shouldn't be criticized when they do something wrong. But I am saying we need to be participants instead of observers in our own liberation. If you don't like the way things are going, then come out and be visible so you can be the change you hope to see in the world.

Yes, yes, yes--with a side of sauteed morning glory greens. (One qualification: I don't see anything wrong with commenting anonymously on blogs. A person who's out in real life could still have legitimate fears about identity theft, for example, or be interested in protecting her relatives' privacy rather than her own.) But I can think of few more annoying gay personality types than the ones who piss and moan about how poorly our public advocates are handling things...and then expect sympathy because they "can't" come out at work or to the 'rents or to their friends from college. I think Boykin strikes exactly the right balance. Honorable people who are really willing to make the trade-offs that going along to get along requires recognize that they've disqualified themselves from bitching that our activists aren't doing enough to make the world safe for them. Honorable people who want to bitch that our activists aren't doing enough recognize that the way they live shouldn't offer cravenness as an alternative course of action.

Autumn is prime moon-viewing time in Japan. The yearning summoned up by the combination of chill, moaning winds and a cloud-wreathed moon is one of the major clichés of Japanese aesthetics, known by now throughout the world. But like most clichés, it still seems stark and real in its original formulations. The following are from the Shin-Kokin Waka Shu:

秋風のいたりいたらぬ袖はあらじただわれからの露の夕暮

鴨長明

aki kaze no/itari itaranu/sode ha araji/tada ware kara no/tuyu no yuugure

kamo no chōmei

Though the autumn wind
does not leave as it passes
sleeves here touched, there untouched,
on my sleeve alone settles
the dew of this eventide

Kamo no Chōmei

*******

たのめたる人はなけれど秋の夜は月見て寝べき心地こそせね

和泉式部

tanometaru/hito ha nakeredo/aki no yo ha/tsuki mite nebeki/kokochi koso sene

izumi shikibu

I am not waiting
for a suitor to arrive,
but this autumn night
I sit gazing at the moon
without any thought of sleep

Izumi Shikibu

Kamo no Chōmei is most famous as the writer of the Houjouki, but quite a bit of his poetry shows up in the third of the great court anthologies. Dew in classical poetry usually represents tears of longing. Though Chōmei knows that the autumn wind blows equitably--it literally and symbolically scatters dew everywhere--he feels isolated in his yearning, as if he were the only one weeping into his sleeve with stirred memories.

Izumi Shikibu is the daughter of Murasaki Shikibu, the writer of the famous (and massive) Tale of Genji. She's no Princess Shokushi, but she often turns images very well. In this poem, she slyly underscores her melancholy by pointing out that not only is the beauty of the moon keeping her from getting any rest, but she also has no lover to refocus her attention.

The Japanese have a worldwide reputation for loving nature, and that's not unjustifiable; they've written about it for over a millennium. However, one of the reasons that many Western attempts at waka or haiku fail is that they just describe beautiful scenes...and that's it. They sound merely quaint. Japanese poetry--the good stuff--doesn't just document the existence of a stand of pine trees that were sitting there being pretty. It describes nature to convey a moment of keen feeling on the part of the writer, when inner thought and external environment had a spark of connection.

This morning I apparently posted in the single nanosecond between Prime Minister Koizumi's paying of respects at the Yasukuni Shrine and the resulting Asiawide condemnation (both links are to the Mainichi):

Critics, especially in China and the Koreas, say that the shrine glorifies Japanese militarism, but Koizumi says that he is only mourning the country's war dead.

China in particular has taken a hard line with regard to Koizumi's Yasukuni visits, halting all meetings between the heads of government in both countries since he began attending the shrine.

Koizumi had said he would visit the shrine to attend its autumn festival, which runs from Monday to Friday.

What Koizumi is thinking when at the shrine is an open question. Whether the shrine glorifies Japanese militarism is somewhat easier to assess. The Asahi has a quotation from a PRC official I hadn't seen elsewhere:

"The Chinese government will staunchly oppose Prime Minister Koizumi's repeated visits to Yasukuni Shrine where the Class-A war criminals are enshrined--regardless of how the visits are made," said Wang Yi, the Chinese ambassador to Japan. "The fact that the prime minister has done such a thing on the day when the Shenzhou 6 made a successful return to Earth is a challenge to all Chinese people. The prime minister should accept historical responsibility for destroying China-Japan relations."

South Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ban Ki Moon summoned Japanese Ambassador to South Korea Shotaro Oshima in Seoul. Ban said the South Korean government felt "deep regret and disappointment" over Koizumi's actions.The leaders of China and South Korea have repeatedly called on Koizumi to refrain from visiting Yasukuni this year, the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

I'm not entirely sure what the Shenzhou 6 has to do with anything. Japan has a history of botched rocket launches, but the ambassador doesn't seem to be getting in even a veiled dig about that.

What's likely to happen is that Korea will do its grit-its-teeth-and-bear-it thing, and China will do its still-no-official-head-of-state-visits thing while continuing to try to use Japan as a target for domestic restlessness that's actually at least partially directed at the CCP. Today's visit didn't happen at a moment that was any more strategic than any other of late--there's no specific tricky development in the dispute over oil and gas deposits in the East China Sea, say, or trade relations. But as always, today's visit will be a convenient thing to bring out later as an indication that Japan cannot be trusted to have dealt with its misdeeds during the occupation of Asia.

I've discovered something worse than being told you look like Tom Cruise.

I don't mind that a lot of guys think some celebs are cute whom I find unappetizing--different strokes and all that. Also, as a white guy in Japan, you get a lot of hyperbolic comments comparing you to celebrities you only resemble in the most rudimentary terms of coloring. If you're dark, you look like Tom Cruise. If you're fair, you look like Brad Pitt. Now that I think of it, I haven't happened to be involved in this discussion when one of my black acquaintances was present, but I'm going to bet they get told they look like Denzel Washington. Maybe Will Smith, but my money's on Denzel.

Anyway, the point is, I have dark hair, so the script calls for Tom. If someone deviates from it, that generally means that the comparison is heartfelt rather than formulaic. Which is why this line nearly gave me a coronary: "You look just like Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love."

"Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love"?

JOSEPH FIENNES IN SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE?

Blech. Ew, ew, ew. Just, ew. That is not a way to get in well with me. Not.

Ew.

Prime Minister Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine this morning for its autumn festival. It was the fifth visit for him since 2001. I don't think there's been enough time for the rest of Asia to flip out; even the Nikkei story is barely two lines long.

This is the first piece I've seen that defends the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court on the basis of how she's going to do the job. "Why Harriet Miers is the sort of thinker who would make a good justice," as opposed to "Why someone without a Harvard law degree, two decades of publications to her credit, and regular invitations to dine with the Kristols could make a good justice":

It is true that Harriet Miers, in everything she does, gives high attention to detail. And the trait came in handy with drafts of presidential speeches, in which she routinely exposed weak arguments, bogus statistics and claims inconsistent with previous remarks long forgotten by the rest of us. If one speech declared X "our most urgent domestic priority," and another speech seven months earlier had said it was Y, it would be Harriet Miers alone who noted the contradiction.

...

It may be, in fact, that a details person is just what the Supreme Court needs right now. If anyone can be counted on to pause in deliberations over abortion cases, for example, and politely draw attention to small details like the authority of Congress and of state legislatures, or the interests of the child waiting to be born, it will be the court's newest member. As a justice, however, she will command the kind of respect that has nothing to do with being conservative, or liberal, or anything else but a person of wisdom and rectitude.

Okay, so Miers takes texts at face value, has a memory like a steel trap that helps her spot inconsistencies, stays focused on the job at hand, and is more likely to fulfill her job description with self-effacing meticulousness than to try to make a name for herself. You could certainly take issue with Matthew Scully's argument here--I'm not really convinced by it--but it is an argument, with evidence summoned to make a relevant point.

A belated happy 80th birthday to the UK's inimitable former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, which occasioned this week's second gay-shiver-of-pleasure-inducing comment referring to her:

Another guest, actress Joan Collins, said she adored Thatcher.

"She is the 'Iron Lady,' and I want to be just like that when I grow up," Collins said.

[sighs] Oh, and this is a good place to point out that Susanna, a lady of considerable gravitas herself, has written a very thoughtful post about what general patterns in differences between the sexes mean to individuals trying to live as well and happily as they can.

Japan Post privatization was approved by the House of Councillors today:

The Japan Post privatization bills were approved and enacted by a majority, mostly from the ruling coalition, in a session of the upper house on 14 October. The final vote was 134 in favor, 100 opposed. On 1 October 2007, the Japan Post Public Corporation will be privatized and spun off into four companies: one for postal service, one for postal savings, one for postal insurance, and one for window services.

My, things have changed since I was nearing the end of my éphèbe years.

The day after Maria Guevara turned 18, she packed her bags and moved out of her mother's Floral Park home.

She had a strained relationship with her father, who she said physically abused her when she was younger -- a charge he denies -- and she said her mother was too strict, setting an early curfew and denying her money for restaurants and fashionable clothes.

But after she moved into a friend's basement in Bellerose Terrace in March, Guevara did something her mother didn't see coming: She sued her parents for child support in Nassau Family Court.

...

But Maria, who just started her first year at Nassau Community College, argues that her parents should pay for school. She works part-time as a teacher's aide at the John Lewis Childs School in Floral Park, but three hours a day at $12 an hour doesn't pay for her living expenses and tuition, she said.

"I'm 18, but I still need support," she said. "I'm going to college. I don't have time to be working full-time. It's hard for me."

Telling an 18-year-old that she has to be home by 7 p.m. strikes me as a bit neurotic (though there may be part of the story we're not hearing--does Guevara's mother go to work at night and need her daughter to look after her little brother?), but the rest of her complaints? Sheesh. In my day, the standard speech was "Look, buddy, when you're 18, you can move out of this house and make your own rules. But until then, you're living under our roof and what we say goes. IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?" It was understood. I had parents indulgent enough to send me to a hoity-toity private college, but I took a year off after high school and worked full-time and saved, too. Starting college at 19 instead of 18 doesn't seem to have blighted my life much.

Oh, and the reasoning that goes "it's hard; therefore, I shouldn't have to do it"? What is that?

(Via Joanne Jacobs)