The White Peril 白禍

Japanese language and culture, as you've probably heard many times, are full of nuances as impossible to grasp as the wisps of smoke that curl toward heaven from a bowl of incense in a darkened room. Therefore, it may interest you to know that some concepts translate into and from English with no loss of meaning at all.

Consider, as an example, the reform of government programs undertaken by the Koizumi adminstration and the ruling coalition that supports it. The idea is to deregulate and even privatize certain operations in certain spheres--Japan Post reform has gotten the most attention, but the health-care behemoth is on the list, too:

Ministers attending a Cabinet meeting Tuesday agreed to give the report, presented Friday by the Council for Promotion of Regulatory Reform, an advisory body to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, serious consideration.

In another gesture supporting easing government regulations, one of the prime minister's key structural reform initiatives, the Cabinet approved a plan to revise in March the three-year deregulation promotion program that has been in force since April.

...

In line with Koizumi's public pledge to push forward with deregulation as an integral part of his reform agenda, in May the government established the Headquarters for Promotion of Regulatory Reform, made up of all Cabinet members.

One of the top discussions in the regulatory reform council was on the idea of lifting the ban on providing mixed medical services, enabling patients to receive a combination of medical treatment covered by government-backed health insurance plans and medical treatment not so covered.

The mixed medical service system currently is limited to hospitals designated by the government as medical institutions with specially advanced medical technology.

The ban, of course, prevents some patients from having access to the best combination of treatments for whatever ails them. Westerners who have swallowed the entire media diet of stories about the self-abnegating Japanese, and thus think of the place as populated by 125 million potential kamikaze pilots, seem to imagine that everything federal employees do is attuned to the greater good. If you're one such trusting soul, it may interest you to know that Japanese bureaucrats act like...well, bureaucrats:

Objecting strongly to the council's argument was the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, bureaucrats of which were anxious about a decline in the role of government-backed health insurance plans that come under the ministry's jurisdiction.

In defending its position, the ministry claimed that a mixed medical service system would deprive patients of the right to equal treatment.

Major university hospitals, including those attached to Tokyo University and Kyoto University, meanwhile, pushed for a complete lifting of the ban, arguing that progress in advanced medical technology was being hindered by too many regulations around the government-backed health insurance plans.

...

This resulted in a compromise being hammered out that ensured the ban remained, in return for a ministry promise to expand the current system to extend government-backed insurance coverage to exceptional cases currently not covered, such as heart transplants from brain-dead donors.

It's the sort of thing that belongs in a textbook, huh? Unelected officials find their authority (and thus their source of influence) threatened, and they justify their opposition by claiming that what they're worried about is, of course, that reforms will infringe on the rights of citizens. Being career civil servants, they're much better at strategy than their opponents, who, as the people who have to deal with the day-to-day problem being addressed, don't make their livelihoods by maneuvering. Then, somehow, their territory is actually expanded by the plan ultimately extruded by the chain of committees, compromise proposals, and negotiations.

I think it's fair to say that most of the people who go into civil service here are as patriotic and idealistic as their counterparts. The problem isn't really that Japanese bureaucrats are worse than bureaucrats elsewhere; it's that the system disproportionately favors them. They get used to having their way as a matter of course, but they still get to see themselves as sacrificing personal gain because of the revolving-door system (that is, you take lower-than-private-sector pay through your normal working life, then get a cushy job in a private or semi-public company on retirement so you can spend the next 20 years making good on the connections you've built up). The recent economic troubles have made that system shakier, and the various bureaucracies have, understandably, therefore been clinging all the more to the power they've got. Reform is, needless to say, difficult in such an environment. Even a slight loosening of restrictions on treatments people can get is a good thing, though.

I'm glad to see, finally, a news report that mentions that this may not be the deadliest disaster to hit Asia in recent memory:

Rescue workers pressed on into isolated villages devastated by a disaster that could yet eclipse a cyclone that struck Bangladesh in 1991, killing 138,000 people.

I tried looking it up a few days ago, but "bangladesh '100,000 deaths'" produces a string of links to general infant mortality rates, so I wasn't entirely sure my memory was serving me well. (BTW, the cyclone there is the word used for the Indian Ocean equivalent of a hurricane; it's not like the cyclone in The Wizard of Oz.)

It's not surprising that people wouldn't make the connection, of course. We can sincerely believe that all men are created equal, but that doesn't stop us from identifying more with those whose particulars we share. And there are lots of particulars. Video cameras have become better and cheaper, and the tsunamis struck in many places where tourists (who tend to have their cameras handy when they leave their hotels) were plentiful. The sheer number of people who were able to film the waves as they hit is astonishing.

Speaking of numbers, it may seem odd to read that there could be 1000 Swedish nationals--just Swedish nationals--killed. But it makes more sense when you consider not just people traveling directly from home but also the expats in Asia. It takes much less time (about 7 hours from Japan, Korea, or northern China) to fly to Southeast Asia than it does to fly home; costs are also low; and, if further incentive is needed, it's wet and cold up here.

Fortunately for surviving tourists, vacation spots tend to be easy to get in and out of--if not because they're that way naturally, then because governments that know the value of tourist income have taken pains to furnish them with superhighways and airports. The places least accessible to transportation are where the populations of locals with the poorest infrastructure in other ways is, too. Hearteningly, those omnipresent video cameras are now being used during flyovers to assess damage and find lone survivors. The scope of the damage is horrifying, but it's beginning to look as if it could have been a lot worse.

A long-running story in Japan this year has been the so-called "It's me" scam. It's become such a fixture of the news, in fact, that its Wikipedia entry is already posted; the latest victim surfaced last week.

It works like this:

A large number of people, especially the elderly, have fallen victim to the so-called "It's me, send money" scam in which swindlers posing as the victims' children or grandchildren call and ask them to send money.

Such swindlers typically call victims posing as their children saying, "It's me." They then lie that they had been abducted or caused a traffic accident, and ask the victims to remit money into designated accounts as ransom or compensation.

The victims believe that they are actually talking to their children or grandchildren and remit the money. After contacting their children or grandchildren, they realize they had been tricked. By the time they contact the financial institutions or police, the money has been withdrawn from the account.

The more sophisticated criminals will play recordings of sirens in the background to simulate an accident scene. If they know the cell number of the person they're impersonating, they'll repeat dial the number until the phone goes dead; that way they can explain to the victim that they'll be out of contact until the money is remitted. In one of the more recent cases, a man was swindled out of the equivalent of over US $400,000. Yes, I checked the number of zeros.

To American (and many other foreign) observers, this whole thing is incomprehensible. And by this point in time, the scam has been so incessantly publicized that it's hard to believe people are still being taken in by it. While it's true that criminals have changed their MO somewhat--often impersonating lawyers, police officers, or bank employees "on behalf" of close relatives--it boggles the mind that anyone is still remitting money to a strange bank account at the request of someone whose identity has not been confirmed.

The initial mistakes were, however, understandable. I suspect that many of the victims were hard-of-hearing and didn't talk to their children and grandchildren all that frequently, and strangeness of voice and idiolect could have been put down to agitation over the alleged emergency.

Additionally, it just isn't hard to believe in today's Japan that a relative has taken out a loan and is about to get into big trouble for being unable to pay it back, which is the story frequently used. Many of us Americans can still imagine our parents' or grandparents' demanding to know, "Just how did you get yourself into this jam in the first place? And why on earth didn't you tell me sooner?" Japan still teaches youngsters to depend on their elders a lot more than most Western countries do, though; in turn, it encourages those elders to see themselves as stewards of the family honor. Both of these are fine things that it would be nice to see America relearn. But Japan can take them to an extreme that can all but exclude personal responsibility, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were part of the reason that people have been squelching their native caution--in the most recent case, even after a helpful taxi driver got the police to warn the victim before she made the deposit--and forking over the money.

Apparently jealous of all the attention those fault lines in the Indian Ocean are getting, the ground below Niigata decided to twitch at its beleaguered inhabitants this evening. It wasn't really all that dangerous: 4.9 M, and a weak 5 on the JMA scale. But that's the kind of shaking you definitely feel, and the disaster a few months ago involved multiple strong quakes and weeks of aftershocks. This morning's quake was also strong enough to cause delays in the bullet train schedule, not because there were accidents but in order to conduct inspections. Just the sort of thing to get everyone back on edge just as things were returning to normal.

I didn't know this: the use of organs from brain-dead infants for transplants is not legal (I can only assume that's what "not approved" effectively means). A Japanese national who works in Chile therefore had to send his 10-month-old son to Miami to get a multiple-organ transplant. It looks as if the surgery was successful.

New Year's Day means pilgrimages to shrines, and as it approaches, the Yasukuni Shrine controversy is refueled yet again:

The question of whether Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will visit Yasukuni Shrine at the beginning of the year is attracting a great deal of attention as any visit is certain to further sour Japan-China relations. But there is domestic opposition to any cancellation based on outside protests.

It seems the prime minister cannot possibly please both sides.

Since his meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Nov. 21, the prime minister has remained silent about future visits to the shrine.

His silence on the matter was agreed on prior to the meeting.

According to lawmakers close to Koizumi, the prime minister believes that focus on his visit to the shrine would undermine the Japan-China relationship.

Rakutaro Kitashiro, chairman of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, said that a visit by the prime minister to the shrine would have an impact on companies operating in China.

His remark apparently also contributed to the prime minister's silence.

...

"No country should complain about another country's tradition," [Koizumi] said, indicating that he had reached the conclusion after weighing the options.

I'm not sure a tradition of honoring war criminals equally with citizens in good standing is entirely unassailable, myself. The issue is not an easy one, and the reason I've discussed it so often here is that both sides have a point. Which sounds more sympathetic at a given moment depends a lot on whether the wording its representative most recently tossed off to reporters was felicitous (in translation from Chinese to Japanese, in the case of Chinese politicians).

Ultimately, though, my view of the issue doesn't really change: while I have no doubt that the PRC is opportunistically looking for ways to cause problems that would get it leverage in trade negotiations with Japan and its adversaries, Japan is asking for it with its blithe let-bygones-be-bygones treatment of its own wartime conduct. If it's true that Japanese treatment of the dead requires enshrining them all equally, despite differences in how honorable their behavior was while alive--and my understanding is that it really doesn't--it doesn't strike me as excessive groveling to explain that. As it is, the pilgrimages look like yet another instance of non-acknowledgement of the seriousness of Japanese acts during the occupation of Asia. Perhaps fixating on them as an important issue in and of themselves is wrong, but the ill-feeling itself isn't groundless.

The LDP has drafted its Postal Service reform proposal, and having been developed by a committee, the thing appears to have fallen prey to all-things-to-all-people syndrome:

Having duly recorded the multiplicity of opinions [Gulp!--SRK], ranging from the argument that the current single-agent handling of mails, postal savings, and insurance functions should be maintained to opposition to privatization in its entirety, the committee hammered out a proposal in which post offices will be arranged as they are currently and will be uniformly charged with providing postal savings and insurance services nationwide. Mindful of opposing voices within the party, the committee also decided to forgo the use of the word privatization in the proposal.

Later in the (brief, as yet) report, the Nikkei explains that "the summary of points for debate released by the committee last month was predicated on privatization; however, because opposition within the party was so strong, the committee retreated into the wording 'postal reform,' which does not imply that the organization will be split into separate corporations or changed in other specific ways." So we're not privatizing the thing, just...rearranging it. Somehow. How, exactly, we'll tell you later.

The plan to priva...ACK!...reform Japan Post has been dragging out for a while now, and with this latest development, painful but necessary changes to its operations don't look as if they're going to be coming any time soon. Good thing much of the household wealth of the country doesn't hang in the balance, or anything!

Today, we're doing the yin-yang contrast thing.

Tokyo, you see, is a vertical city. Full of concrete and glass. It can get awful stressful! But...but...there are pockets of escape in Tokyo's gardens. Requisite in these gardens is a Japanese maple tree (shown--can you guess?--with red leaves filtering the sunlight. Hey, stop kvetching, you cynical rabble-rousers! At least they remembered it's not cherry blossom season). Some Japanese guy is shown saying that the Japanese feel relaxed and refreshed when they're around nature, which as we all know is unique among world cultures.

What goes discreetly unmentioned, of course, is that Tokyo wouldn't have to call every tuft of grass poking up between two sidewalk bricks a "restful out-of-the-way garden" if the city weren't so relentlessly grey and neon and overhead-wired. As does the specific dearth of tree-lined boulevards that are the hallmark of just about every other world city. It's a shame we couldn't work in a shot of Mt. Fuji's looming snow-capped bulk (nature!) through which a bullet train glides across the foreground, since someone somewhere might figure out that that's not Tokyo. I'm sure there's still time, though.

Far Outliers has a post up about one of the more perversely funny aspects of life as a foreigner in Japan: the Creole you end up cobbling together from Japanese and your native language. He The guy he quotes specifically remembers words used by Mormon missionaries, of which I thought these (the words--I haven't seen the missionaries) were rather sweet:

golden kazoku Family interesting in joining the church

kanji bandit, kanji jock Missionary who can read and write Japanese characters

Added on 20 December: You would think that having been reared in a church that was so obscure I had to go around saying, "No, we're not Seventh Day Adventists...no, we're not Jews for Jesus, either. See, it's like this...," I'd be especially careful not to slush other people's religions together. No such luck. Apologies to Joel for turning him into a different author and a Mormon.

The failure of a lot of the larger Asian countries to do something about their emerging AIDS problem--while places such as Thailand, which as a sex trip destination got hit very soon after the US did, have gotten theirs more or less under control--is in the news very frequently here. The latest story is that the PRC is making gingerly moves toward dealing with what everyone acknowledges is an AIDS disaster waiting to happen:

A study funded by the Chinese government shows few men who have sex with men have an understanding of how the disease is transmitted.

At least 80 percent of the men surveyed believed they were not at risk the official People's Daily reports.

The survey, conducted by the center of AIDS control and prevention found that only about 20 percent of those questioned knew how HIV/AIDS is spread.

...

The survey was conducted in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Information was largely collected from pubs, parks, public bathrooms, squares, cyber cafes and other public places.

The survey method was obviously not very scientific, so who knows how reliable the numbers are? But it's not unusual in Asia to believe that you're only at risk for HIV infection if you have sex with Westerners--a pattern that goes triple for the Japanese, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, AIDS first gained publicity as the sort of disease you find in big, crime-ridden American and European cities, which gave it the image of something that safe and orderly Japan, which in addition has a world-renowned health care system and traditional cleanliness fetish that make it feel insulated, would not be vulnerable to. Men who bring the disease back from business trips to Southeast Asian countries in which prostitution is easily available are the most commonly discussed way the virus has entered Japan, and the fact that the Japanese blood supply was still tainted long after the West had cleaned its up was highly publicized for a while. But people get complacent, and in my experience, a lot of Japanese gay guys are pretty blasé about STD's in general. No one is really sure what the infection rate is here, but it's pretty much a given that it's higher than the official figures.

Another, not really related, article on 365Gay reports that Andy Bell of Erasure is HIV positive. I'm not a fan--his singing always sounds to me like Phil Collins trying to imitate Alison Moyet (who is a favorite of mine)--but he's been one of the most out men in popular culture for years and years, and while I don't think he and his partner had an obligation to make this particular revelation, it's nice that they decided to.

Everyone is aware that Atsushi, always looking out for my well-being, has told me not to read the Asahi, yeah? And that the only reason I do is that I'm a disobedient boy? Okay. As long as we're straight (so to speak) on that, one of today's editorials is a model of weightless sentimentality, as you can see if I can just manage to pin the following citation down so it doesn't float away:

The most beautiful English word is "mother" to non-native speakers of the tongue worldwide, Britain's organization for international exchanges found in a survey. The British Council polled 40,000 people.

Other words that followed "mother" on the list included "passion," "smile" and "love." But "father" was not on the list, though I looked through it to the 70th place.

The phrase "mother test" has several meanings in the United States. One of them is that the the U.S. president, as commander in chief of the armed forces, must be able to explain to the mother of a U.S. soldier why her son or daughter might die in some armed conflict.

You can see where this is going, right? Actually, if you do, maybe you should tell me. I've read the whole thing, and I'm still not exactly sure what the big policy point is. The idea that adding a provision about withdrawing Japan's SDF personnel if the on-the-ground situation in Iraq deteriorates seems odd at this juncture--that strikes me as warranting half a paragraph, not a whole op-ed, but otherwise, the author doesn't, um, have, like, a whole lot to, y'know, say.

But you know what? That doesn't really matter. What really matters is that we're all once again assured that President Bush is a very bad man:

Was the addition of the provision a year later a ploy to soothe the stiff public sentiment against extending the term of the Iraqi mission? Couldn't appropriate measures be taken if it were not for such a provision? How did the troops fare in the past year without it? [Just fine, dumbass, which explains the almost complete absence of casualty reports--SRK]

This summer, I read the words of an American mother whose son had died as a soldier in Iraq. "It was the hollowest letter I have had in my life," she said of the form condolence letter she received from President George W. Bush.

QED.

Added (just barely) on 16 December: I'm not sorry I posted this one, but I do normally try to avoid just clipping the stupidest section of an article I don't like, appending some smarty-pants comments, and then pushing "Publish." I would, therefore, just like to repeat that I wasn't aiming to produce the ultimate slap-down of the arguments against the Iraq War in general or the deployment of SDF personnel there specifically. I was just dumbfounded that someone working for the Asahi actually got paid to write an editorial that could have been scribbled on the back of a bar napkin after 13 rounds of shochu.

Of course, I don't think that the Koizumi administration is being out of line in extending the deployment. There was, after all, a Diet election a few months ago, which voters were incessantly admonished to treat as a referendum on Koizumi's WOT and economic policies. Everyone who voted for an LDP or Shin-Komeito candidate knew that that meant formally supporting that coalition's war policy and had the chance to send the opposite message. I'm sure a lot of people struck an uneasy balance between foreign and domestic issues, perhaps hoping that Bush would be voted out of office in November and the Japanese support for the Iraq occupation would become less intense. But those are the trade-offs you have to make as a voter, and you don't get a do-over when external circumstances shift in ways you didn't gamble on.

I cannot make this scene. I turned on CNN while putting my jacket and bag away, naturally figuring American Morning would be featuring Bill Hemmer here in Tokyo. I mean, what better place to broadcast in the morning than from the Land of the Rising Sun itself!

And what's the first thing out of his mouth? "Zen Buddhism is synonymous with Asia and its traditional beliefs." Sufferin' Soseki. If no one minds terribly, I'm going to break my bottle of Perrier here off at the neck and slit my throat with it. Message to Bill's TelePrompTer writer-people: One hates to be a one-note sourpuss, but Asia is a large continent. It contains multitudes. No really--it keeps going west (no, the other...left, people, left! the hand that looks like an L when you hold it out in front of you!) after China for a while. There's India, there's Pakistan...gosh, all kinds of places in which Zen is useless for understanding the fabled Traditional Beliefs. Of course, they don't make Toyotas and Sony equipment or have Harajuku street erks in those places, so really, why should we care?

Besides, Bill Hemmer, stereotype-shattering man that he is (HOLY F**KING SH*T, they DID NOT just lead back in from the commercial break with synthesized koto music followed by a gong. They COULD NOT have. What is this, the commercial for SPAM Oriental from 1978?), apparently spent 20 minutes this morning going to a REAL JAPANESE TEMPLE and learning meditation! That'll teach me to be all making like a know-it-all.

It's the interview of Ambassador Howard Baker right now. He's just resigned, BTW--nothing embarrassing happened, mind you, he's just old and ready to retire. Naturally, he's talking like a diplomat, meaning he's saying nothing much but saying it very personably. Nice performance. Is it my imagination, though, or is he wearing a rust-colored tie and a pale lilac shirt? Never saw that seasonal combination for late autumn before. Maybe they're resignation colors. Or maybe they're a protest against that theme music.

Of course, it could be worse. They could have no one in an Exotic Locale, which would free up more time to interview various combinations of Peterson jurors in somber tones about why, exactly, they thought he should fry. (And I don't mean Amber, baby!)

How much do you want to bet that, even though it's December, cherry blossoms will make their way into this pageant before it's over?

Okay, enough of this.

Added at 23:19: Everyone giving those frantic "Hi, Mom!" waves from behind Bill's affably blocky frat-boyish head while he demonstrates the AMAZING TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT of Japanese cell phones? You look just as idiotic as you would back home.

I told you there'd be bile.

Oh, my. How very unfortunate. You know how, despite different cultures, languages, and aesthetic and spiritual traditions going back thousands of years, all East Asians are basically the same and can communicate with each other intuitively, using their yin-yang-mystical Oriental powers and stuff? Well, somehow, that's not the way it's working on the set of Memoirs of a Geisha. I can't say I'm sad. Why that book was hyped so much is beyond me. I do think it's funny, though, that the fact that a bunch of people with different native languages can't communicate is considered remarkable.

Added on 14 December: Laughter is, apparently, the universal language. Either that, or the chatroom is the great global equalizer. Maybe both.

The Japanese government publicized a new defense outline, including a rejiggering of the mission of the SDF, Friday. The Yomiuri's English article is ineptly translated but gives good background; the Asahi's English article gives more information about the outline itself. The new outline stresses that flexibility and resilience (not to mention missiles, which the LDP's coalition partner the New Komeito has not been keen on) will be key elements in the portfolio of possible responses to terrorist and military threats from here on. It also breaks new ground by naming names: China and North Korea are referred to as potential threats, and the Middle East is deemed a key strategic region with respect to Japan's defense. The old assumption that SDF activity would be limited to reactions to threats in or very close to Japanese territory is gone. And a good thing, too. The last time the government updated its SDF mission statement was to deal with the end of the Cold War, nine years ago. The world is a different place--or rather, we now recognize how different it is.

On the other hand, the head of the SDF announced this weekend that if the situation in Iraq becomes too dangerous, the non-combat SDF personnel, whose deployment there has been extended for a year, will be pulled out anyway. That's fair enough. They are not, after all, on a combat mission.

Atsushi told me about this last week, but I forgot until I just saw the ads for it: CNN has sent Bill Hemmer here to Tokyo, from which he'll be broadcasting for the first half of the week, giving a rare inside view of this most enigmatic of East Asian cultures! Are you excited? I'm excited. We'll learn about the latest controversies within the royal family, we'll talk with US Ambassador Howard Baker, and we'll see all those futuristic gizmos with which Japan has touched off a worldwide youth craze! This is great. I've always wanted to know more about Japan.

Pfft! Look, I know that not everyone lives here and that, given limited time, even a resource-rich network such as CNN is going to have to focus on familiar themes of interest to a broad audience. But do we really have to come here and say the exact same damned things for the home-folks every dad-blamed time? I suppose the Baker interview might be somewhat illuminating, but I'll probably need to take my Dramamine before I can confront the rest. Expect more bile than usual; Atsushi is already chuckling in anticipation.

Of course, CNN doesn't have to dispatch one of its Ken dolls here to be annoying; the Atlanta-based Barbie contingent isn't exactly acquitting itself admirably, either. I don't want to pick on Colleen McEdwards personally, since her sins are the same as those of just about every other news network anchor, but can we please remember that it's okay not to show off our telegenic smile occasionally? She interviewed some toxicologist about an hour ago about the poisoning of Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yuschenko, and I swear, it went something like this, "So, [twinkle, twinkle] how could such a large amount of dioxin get into Yuschenko's body? Would it really [beam] be possible to put that much in a serving of soup?...Now, he has these acute symptoms [moue, twinkle]--how long will it take, you know, until it's out of his system?" When I was little, newscasters were notorious for pasting on a look of inauthentic gravity all the time, but at least that showed some awareness of the nature of the topic at hand. I guess it's possible that Colleen et al's frown muscles aren't working anymore, but they seem too young for Botox.

And while I'm wound up, can all those with-it hair stylists please find some fad to replace the fake-split ends thing? I know they needed something to do after the Friends shag got old, and the sleek crown + egg-beatered ends routine was it. But that was years ago. Time for something new. If we're supposed to be looking at these people for minutes at a time while they tell us what's going on [twinkle, twinkle] in the world of politics and artificial Christmas trees, they could summon enough effort to be distinguishable by something more than the colors of their Escada suits. Christiane Amanpour's hair may look like a fright wig, but at least it's her idiosyncratic fright wig.

Added on 16 December: Too funny! Rachel Lucas, in her new guise, has noticed this abominable hair abuse, too. Only she actually had it perpetrated on her, the poor thing.

From the Mainichi:
Schoolboy attacks gun shop employee with golf club in failed robbery bid.*
* I know, I know. Since only hunting guns are sold in Japan, I guess they weren't likely to be loaded, and the shop clerk probably would've gotten into big trouble for brandishing one, anyway.

For a stretch there, I was remarking quite a bit on the repatriation of Hitomi Soga and the attempts to get her husband and daughters to Japan to live with her, largely because the developments weren't getting much play at home and it wasn't clear how things would pan out. I haven't lost interest in the story, but I was kind of wary of reading the Time interview with Charles Jenkins, largely because Nancy Gibbs is often the reporter Time gives big-deal human interest stories to, and for some reason, her approach really tends to annoy me. So I know every man, woman, child, and ficus tree in the Western world has read the thing by now, but for the sake of completism, I'll link it anyway.

It doesn't really contain a whole lot of new information about Jenkins's life in the DPRK. It was already known that he lived for years in a house with other American defectors and that they were tortured and assigned to beat each other up as punishment for disobedience. It was also known that the Jenkins-Soga family lived well for North Korea but was no more free than anyone else, and that their daughters were enrolled at the country's most prestigious foreign language institute, where they would probably be trained to do some sort of espionage work.

The part about how he first got into North Korean hands, however, is new. (At least, I haven't seen it narrated before.) While Jenkins is not an innocent party, his is a very sympathetic story, and it makes you glad that, at the very least, he and Soga had the comfort of falling in love with each other--I think I speculated a few months ago that theirs may have been a marriage of convenience, but it's nice to be proved wrong--and starting a family. And that they've now been able to come to Japan and bring their daughters with them.

*******

BTW, there's a push here in Japan again for sanctions against the DPRK, which has squandered the goodwill it earned by releasing Jenkins and (especially) his daughters by throwing together some bones and purporting that they're the remains of another abductee, Megumi Yokota. The cabinet is not all of one mind on the matter. A nice detail is that the Minister of the Environment (whose name--dead serious, here--means Lily Littlepond!) was one of those who said essentially, "If we cooperate with the US, we can fry their ass!"

The holiday-time newsletter from the citizen services division of the American Embassy (you can sign up for it if you're a citizen who lives here and register for it) contains this charming bit of advice for party animals here in Tokyo:

We note that an American Citizen was murdered in early December in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. The murder occurred in an office building within walking distance of the local police station. We previously advised Americans in our June 2004 newsletter of six reports of western foreigners (including Americans) allegedly overdosing on heroin, resulting in three deaths. The heroin was allegedly purchased in Roppongi. In the July newsletter, we noted that several Americans reported the theft of their purses and wallets, stolen from them while in bars and clubs in Roppongi. A number of Americans have also been arrested over the past year in Roppongi for various offenses. Americans are strongly advised to exercise caution should they choose to visit the Roppongi area.

I think I've been to Roppongi maybe seven or eight times since moving to Japan, and I've enjoyed myself there maybe zero times. It's not that I mind sleaze. I lived in the Dogenzaka section of Shibuya, in one of the two or three apartment buildings there among the love hotels, for five years. Loved every minute of it. Of course, my apartment was clean, quiet, and tucked at the top of a hill. But still, Shibuya is cool because it's kooky-sleazy. Roppongi is grim-sleazy. (BTW, I love the way the paragraph above seems to come within a hair's breadth of saying, "If you're going to buy heroin, at least don't get it in Roppongi!")

I think it's great that there's a neighborhood where foreigners who live here can congregate; but living abroad tends to produce a feeling of being off the chain, especially in younger people, and it's not surprising that when there's a critical mass of them gathered at a cluster of bars or clubs, they frequently cut somewhat looser than their parents might be back home hoping. That kind of atmosphere is ripe for crime, especially because so many Westerners have been brought up to think of Japan as 100% safe and are not on their guard as they would be in, say, Bangkok, New York or (especially, these days) London. One hopes people will learn to be more careful.

Added at 21:29: I've changed the title, since the way I originally had it struck me as being too on the obnoxious side of snarky. Besides, the new cyanide imagery is more in keeping with the ghoulishness of the newsletter.

The OECD's figures for its 2003 education survey are out, and Japan's rankings have fallen. The Mainichi's English report is here and is, naturally, not as complete as its original Japanese report here. What's interesting, as it so often is, is what was omitted from the English version: Japanese students trust their teachers less.

To what degree do students feel their teachers support them in class? Of 31 countries (including 7 major nations of Europe and the Americas, and also Hong Kong, the rank of which was high this year), Japan had a lower-than-average percentage of students who gave the most affirmative response "Always true" to any of 5 prompts about the degree of support from mathematics teachers, including "[The teacher] takes an interest in students' individual studies," and "[The teacher] provides opportunities for students to express individual opinions." Averaged over these five items, Japan ranked lowest of the 31 countries.

This is important, given the traditional close relationship students have been expected to form with their teachers. It's hard to know what to make of it, though--exactly what kinds of opinions do students want to be giving in, of all things, math class? Or is the issue just that lecturing at students is emphasized over student input? But that makes little sense--Japan's math education is famous for using directed drills to guide students, whenever possible, into discovering the next mathematical principle to be learned. More worrisome is that the article goes on to relate that Japanese students showed comparatively little confidence that their schools were teaching them useful knowledge (59%, 28 percentage points lower than average for the group) and were giving them the confidence to make their own decisions (52%, 18 percentage points below average). It's not possible to determine from the Mainichi how well-constructed the survey instrument actually was, though the OECD is hardly a piddling organization.

What is obvious is that the Ministry of Education and Culture's major concern is with the drop in reading and math scores. The reason I'm not obsessing over them here--besides the fact that those figures are amply sliced and diced in the English article--is that everyone has known for years that there are problems with the tendency to compare Japan's education statistics so favorably with those of other countries. Japan does not have a history of documenting degrees of literacy, for example. Functional illiteracy is not defined and measured. Are Japanese people better readers on average than citizens of most other countries? Sure, probably. Are they comparatively up in the exosphere? It's hard to tell. As the Monbusho likes to frame things, either you can't read at all, or you're literate. How well you read if you're in the latter category is not easy to assess, though from experience, I'd have a difficult time believing the Japanese average doesn't put the American average to shame.

Even the math scores have always needed more qualification. The level of achievement in computation and problem-solving among average Japanese really is a marvel. But Japan doesn't appear to do any better at producing math major material--people who can go beyond remembering why the harmonic function doesn't converge to their own conceptualizing--than other countries do. Now, since most of us don't need to come up with our own theories of mathematics, that doesn't matter all that much. It would be nice if American schools could teach students how to add fractions. But the idea that Japan turns all its students into Karl Friedrich Gausses does not obtain.

Even so, the reaction of the Ministry of Education is encouraging, lacking as it does any American-style references to Carol Gilligan or journaling. Whether the remedial programs that are implemented can quickly address the increased (and highly-publicized) disaffection of students remains to be seen.

Added on 9 December: Hong Kong's rankings were higher, but Simon is unimpressed. The reasons he cites are not entirely inapplicable to Japan as well.

Yesterday (depending on which time zone your bioclock is thinking in--you'll forgive mine for not being sure) was the Pearl Harbor anniversary. I was on a plane and so was unable to post, but Eric wasn't, and as usual, his piece has good links.

Considering the current Japan-China debates over sources of petroleum, this isn't a bad time to be reflecting on how the Pacific War began and on the long-term geography-based tensions we have in Asia. Of course, according to intellectual titans such as Noam Chomsky, the world is categorizable into white Westerners and everyone else, so inter-ethnic hostilities along other axes have to be downplayed.

Most of the tribute sites seem well-intentioned but poorly designed. Probably the best resource is the Navy's own page.

This is only Japan news to the extent that every diplomatic hotspot in Asia affects us here, but the PRC's Foreign Ministry has enlightened us about what's really preventing the East from becoming one big, happy family. This is the Vice-Director of its Information Agency:

The divisive activities of those movements agitating for Taiwanese independence are the undisputable* root of the tense relations between the two sides. They are the single largest threat to peace and prosperity in the Formosa Strait and the Asia-Pacific region.

Now you know. Of course, mainland China says these things at the drop of a rice-straw hat. What brought this week's installment on is that Taiwan has indicated that it will begin designating its resident diplomats "representatives of Taiwan," rather than "representatives of Taipei." The change is seen, doubtless accurately, as an assertion of Taiwan's autonomy as an overall entity.
* I know that's not what こそ actually means; if anyone has a better way to get the emphasis across, I'd like to hear.

Yesterday, I was waiting for the 7 to take me over to Times Square so I could meet my buddy for lunch (he later referred to me as a "terrific guy," which I am willing myself to believe was not a calculated attempt to grease our work relationship. Just kidding, K!). There were electronic clocks installed above the platform, which I don't think were there last year. And then the 2/3 has new cars with electronic displays that are either modeled after the newest Japanese train cars or just made by the same manufacturers. Very nice, though those were there last year (but still a big change, as I remember explaining to my reared-in-Kanto boyfriend, who assumed that train cars in developed countries just sort of all were like that). So anyway, I was thinking yesterday, with Tokyo smugness, Finally, New York! Trains like a real city!

But then, there's a backside flip-side to Tokyo's well-used trains that makes me glad I sometimes get a break from the place. Man alive. I thought the occasional reverse-peristalsis brought on by drunken motion-sickness was bad enough. Actually, it was bad enough, if Lee's experience is an indication of what sort of physiological soul-cry the salary-man/OL set can come up with when blowing chunks just doesn't convey enough angst.

Just five more days, and I'm back!

2 December 13:37 EST

When I'm back here in the States, people are always asking me this unanswerable question: "So...what's it like to be gay in Japan?" I never really know what to say. I can describe my gay life there just fine, obviously. But I'm a foreigner, of course, so I don't have anything like the experience my Japanese friends do. Sometimes, the way people put the question is, "How easy is it to be gay in Japan?" That's even harder to answer.

Japan, as you've no doubt heard in various contexts, is a shame culture rather than a guilt culture. I love our American forthrightness and sincerity, but (partially on ethical grounds and partially because of plain old temperament) I always feel a sense of release when I'm boarding a plane back to Narita. It comes from the knowledge that I'm returning to a place where every last little turn of phrase or arch of eyebrow isn't mirthlessly prodded for complex psychological motivations, where you can expect people to be polite and considerate in public, and where no one cares about your private life as long as you don't force people to reckon with it.

Of course, not everyone marks private off from public the same way. I would like to be able to establish Atsushi publicly as the person who would speak for my interests if I were incapacitated and with whom I've formed a household. I personally have no interest in discussing my sex life with anyone. If people insist on imagining it, anyway, I don't see how I can stop them; but I also feel no responsibility for preserving their complacencies by pretending not to be gay.

That sort of balance has not been struck by gay activism in America, but even approaching it would be unthinkable in Japan at this point. Forced arranged marriages are now unconstitutional in Japan, but marriage is still much more a social and economic contract than a meeting of the minds, to an extent that I think would give even the most biological essentialist, far-right American pause. And despite the dramatic rise in the median marriage age for both sexes, you're a weirdo if you're not married by your mid-30's.

Still and all, there are benefits to Japan's tradition-mindedness that I think a lot of gays in America have been too willing to cast off. The lack of gay ghettos means that it's pretty much impossible to wall yourself into a queer-positive echo chamber and start seeing rank-and-file straight people as an enemy arrayed against you. It also means that very few people see their homosexuality as their entire identity, with anti-gayness blamed for every disappointment, setback, depressive episode, and failed relationship. You never hear Japanese gays getting into princessy snits about not being approved of or officially sanctioned exactly like straight people in every last finicking little detail. At ordinary gay bars, you meet brittle, desperate guys who are obviously using a constant stream of sex partners to avoid dealing with their issues much, much less frequently than you do here in the States. (Even here, they're a minority, of course; their attention-whoring just makes them disproportionately noticeable. But the Japanese in general don't put the burden of self-definition on sex to the point that we do in the US.)

The bad side, obviously, is that it can be hard for people coming out to find resources, and that people have to keep their most meaningful relationships hidden. It's not uncommon for employees at the stodgier companies to be informed that they will not be promoted up the usual management-track escalator until they marry and start producing future contributors to the Social Insurance kitty. So many guys use pseudonyms in their gay lives that I only know the real first and last names of, I'd say, my ten or so closest friends. Japan's shame culture puts pressure on vulnerable gay kids as much as our guilt culture--there's no finessing that, and it sucks--but most adults who have come out to themselves seem pretty content.

So if you're willing to make the available trade-offs, being gay in Japan doesn't strike me as all that hard. (I guess I should point out that I live in what's probably the most gay-friendly part of the whole country, the Shibuya-Shinjuku axis of western Tokyo, though I now live a little outside Shibuya, rather than in the shadow of the 109 Building the way I did until March. Anyway, the point is, I'm talking about urban gay life and not about the provinces, but I don't think Japan is much different from other developed countries in those terms.) And if, like me, you're a foreigner and not subject to the full litany of rules Japanese people are, it's even easier. It's just an additional weird thing that makes you a typical gaijin. But as I say, my Japanese friends themselves are mindful of the social rules, but I don't get the sense that they live in fear.

2 December 09:38 EST

This isn't a surprise, but it's official now: Japan will extend the Iraq deployment of SDF personnel beyond the original end date. The extension will be for a full year, to avoid further arguments between Koizumi's LDP and its fractious (as least on issues of war) coalition partner, the Shin-Komeito. Discussion over the proposed new amendment to the Japanese constitution, which would allow the SDF to participate in combat missions with allies for purposes of collective self-defense, will of course continue over the same period.

1 December 10:16 EST

Another on-going issue is Japan's bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council (those who like their kanji compounds long and turgid doubtlessly get off on seeing 国連安全保障理事会の常任理事国入り cropping up in news reports lately). In cooperation with other applicants, including Germany and Brazil, Japan has apparently solidified its actual proposal. Of course, Germany and Japan have more than just their increased prominence as world powers to think about:

Japan's Takashima welcomed the panel's recommendation that the so-called "enemy state" clause be removed from the U.N. Charter.

The clause, dating to World War Two, allows for military action against Japan and Germany, without any endorsement by the Security Council. Japan pays almost as much money as the United States into the United Nations' coffers.

Intriguingly, the Reuters article emphasizes the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs's push for full veto power for potential new permanent members. By contrast, the Nikkei report is focused more on the slight but perceptible softening of its public stance:

これまで求めてきた常任理事国の拒否権の扱いについては、「拒否権つき」に固執せず、柔軟に対応する考えに転じた。

On the subject of how the veto power of permanent members, which Japan had sought until very recently, will be dealt with, [the Japanese government] has shifted to a way of thinking that will respond more flexibly [to the wishes of the governing body] and away from its hard-line demand that veto power be attached to new permanent membership.

1 December 18:46 EST

My news-gathering has been pretty lite this week, but Asahi has the results of its latest poll up, and they're interesting as always--particularly this nearly-even split:

Asked whether Koizumi should continue to visit Yasukuni, 38 percent of those polled said yes, and 39 percent said no.

Japan's neighbors have strongly criticized the visits to the Tokyo shrine that honors Japan's war dead, including Class-A war criminals.

...

Asked about China's stance, about 30 percent of the pollees said it was only natural, while 57 percent did not think so.

Those polled in their 30s and 40s were more opposed to Koizumi's visits, while more than 40 percent of those in their 20s or 70s and older said the visits should continue.

Among those who wanted Koizumi to continue his Yasukuni visits, nearly 60 percent said measures should be taken to win the understanding of the Chinese and South Koreans.

What, one wonders, did the other 40 percent say? Tell China and Korea to stick it? There's nothing much surprising about the age breakdown: those in their thirties and forties are the ones whose lives are most directly affected by the economic environment, and trade with China and Korea plays a major, major, major role in the current Japanese economy. People in their seventies remember the War; and people in their twenties, I suspect, just don't see what the big deal is one way or the other.

The poll also included questions about the Koizumi administration overall and the deployment of non-combat SDF personnel in Iraq specifically. Support/oppose figures haven't changed much for those.

Speaking of the Koizumi administration's performance in domestic terms, the three-pronged reform package has been finalized, naturally in much less aggressive form than was originally proposed. The amount of tax yen that will ultimately be spun off to regional and local collection is smaller than it appears:

Under the decentralization plan, the central government will transfer 2.4 trillion yen in tax-collecting authority-and thus spending-decision power-to local governments. But that figure falls short of the 3 trillion yen sought by prefectures and municipalities and includes 650 billion yen that has already been transferred in the current fiscal year.

As the Asahi mentions further down in the article, Koizumi--no fool, he--did not huff and puff and waste political capital fighting for every last coin, or even every last 10000 yen bill. But I think the changes will have the salutary effect of having framed government spending questions in terms of how much should be entrusted to local authorities, rather than how many hands money can be made to pass through on its U-turn from the provinces to Tokyo and back again.

30 November 10:29 EST