This building is located in Yoyogi, Tokyo.

Having recently seen the trailer for Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, which Hollywood has tried to turn into a movie to hit world movie screens for Christmas viewing (and Oscar nominations time), I can’t help but feel this film will be a dud.

Why? Well, I’m not a New York Times film critic, and I don’t have a Ph.D. in film studies, but one look at the trailer and it’s obvious that the American producers erred bigtime by deciding to cast Chinese actresses in the roles of the Japanese characters in Golden’s book.

For one thing, the big-name Chinese actresses “look” like Chinese women, from their faces to their hair to their body language, and they speak English in the movie with Chinese-accented English. It’s obvious they are not Japanese. The film becomes a travesty of movie-making.

It’s so un-authentic as to make one shudder as how deeply Hollywood goofed by not casting Japanese women in the main roles. I predict a huge blockbuster with critical raves from the Western media, but for the wrong movie.

Why did they cast the Chinese actresses instead of Japanese actresses?

The bottom line is the “bottom line”: the stupid producers thought, aided by their marketing departments, that the Chinese women in the movie had more global clout and name recognition than any Japanese women, and therefore more tickets could be sold with Chinese actresses playing the Japanese roles.

They are probably correct, from a marketing point of view. But for an authentic movie based on Golden’s bestselling book, Hollywood’s golden boys really goofed. The movie is laughable all the way through. But since most Western audiences can’t tell a Japanese from a Chinese from a Vietnamese from a Thai, watch this movie become a huge hit in North America and Europe (and bomb terribly in Japan).

Click here to see the trailer.

One of the first full-time jobs I managed to get as an English teacher in Japan was at the YKK Machinery and Engineering Group, in Kurobe, Toyama Prefecture.

Although YKK produces about 90% of the world’s zippers (though YKK calls them ‘fasteners’), most Japanese people are familiar with the company’s architectural products - the company chose to locate in Kurobe because of readily available hydroelectric power needed to produce aluminum, the raw material for most of what the company’s produces.

My roommate and I both lived in a large house built for former President Jimmy Carter (he had helped YKK set up a plant in Georgia at one point), and we taught at the Kurobe facility four days a week. On weekends I visited my girlfriend (from Tennessee) who lived on the Noto Penisula.

I don’t remember much about the place, except that there was a lot of snow that winter, most of my students were obsessed with horse racing, and the female students, who had been recruited from rural Toyama, had startlingly bad teeth. My roommate had also just turned 40, was getting a divorce, and had just been fired from his job as a salesman at a computer chip maker for sleeping with the boss’s secretary.

Not a happy time, but I’ve always had fond memories of YKK.

So, I’d like to invite Japundit readers to check out the YKK Fastening Awards. As the website explains:

Centering on the use of fasteners, buckles, snaps and buttons, this is a unique fashion contest aimed at aspiring designers.

A series of competitions have been held since the Spring, and finalists’ works will be displayed at a fashion show early in September.

A ’sample movie’ of those who made it through the semi-finalis can be found here (wmv).

Past awards are archived here (click on the links).

I don’t have an abnormal interest in toilets–honest–even though I just wrote about the subject a few days ago. But this report of a toilet college opening its doors in Singapore (where else?) was too good to pass up.

The article by the AFP-Jiji Press says the objective is to “teach cleaners how to improve their lavatory washing skills. ” The college also plans to offer courses on toilet design and architecture next year.

This article from Kyodo adds that they intend to use Japan as a model for the training, though they provide no details on exactly how they plan to use Japan as a model.

It isn’t as if the Singaporeans need to take a leaf from anyone else’s roll. As Kyodo reports:

The Singapore government has waged a war against dirty public toilets since the mid-1990s by launching campaigns to find the loveliest lavatories and slapping fines on people who fail to flush after using public lavatories.

I wonder how they enforce the law on flushing. I also wonder about the law enforcement officers. You know how they have meter maids to check on parking meter violations? Do they have Singaporean Permanent Latrine Orderlies (PLO) as in the novel No Time for Sergeants? Do the PLOs undergo special training? Are there acceptable levels of urine in the bowl that don’t need to be flushed? Are there scofflaws who will try to get away without flushing after a clear stream?

Come to think of it, maybe I really don’t want to know after all.

The reports also state that the toilet college will be run by the Singapore-based World Toilet Organisation. This non-profit organisation has 17 members, including the Restroom Association of Singapore, the Japan Toilet Association and the Beijing Tourism Bureau.

I smell a website!

Sure enough, here it is! The top page has news about the World Toilet Summit 2005 in Belfast, Ireland. There is also an advisory about the World Toilet Expo & Forum 2006, which the site says is “not to be confused with the World Toilet Summit”.

The site has links to other international organizations, including the previously mentioned Japan Toilet Association. This is in Japanese, but it’s worth a glance at the photos. The first five show kids checking out the Toilet Exploratorium in the Global Citizens’ Village at the Aichi World Expo this summer. The two photos at the bottom of the page are from a gathering to commemorate both the 100th meeting of the Maintenance Study Group and the publication of the Public Restroom Managers’ White Paper. (Will they use that as complimentary reading material in public restrooms?)

The WTO also has a page of what they call interesting websites, including one for toilet training a cat (which is possible–I have actually seen a toilet-trained cat), and a link to a website called the Bathroom Diaries. This in turn has a link to the world’s finest public toilets called The Golden Plungers, the first sentence of which reads: ” Branson, Missouri, features a bathroom Valhalla, otherwise known as the Shoji Tabuchi Theatre”.

I dare you not to laugh!

There are also links to the Virtual Toilet Paper Museum and the Tokyo Toilet Map featuring maps and photos of clean and dirty toilets in the metro area and a listing of those facilities that have toilet paper. (Hey JP! Be sure to add this to our collection of links on the left of the page!)

They also have a link to a site giving information on Japanese-style toilets. For those of you who have never seen one, we provide the photograph at the top of this post.

International Exchange at the Grassroots Level

I don’t have one of these models in my home, but I did have one in the first place I stayed in Japan. It was a single-family dwelling rented by the owner of the English school where I worked. The owner put a big sign over the front door that read, “International House”. He might as well have put up a sign that said “Foreigners’ Dormitory”, but the Japanese like euphemisms. (That’s why they like to call the bathroom the toiree rather than one of the 20 or so Japanese words they have for the fixtures or the room.)

The theory was that sharing a house would contribute to international exchange and understanding and blah blah blah woof woof. My boss told me that I should ask one of the Japanese teachers if there was anything I didn’t understand about Japan or Japanese society.

Well, I managed to use the Japanese-style toilet without mishap the first couple of days, but I was still unsure if there was something about the equipment that I didn’t understand and should have known. So, I asked one of my housemates, a Japanese guy named Hideki who had just returned from a year in New Zealand after graduating from university. (He has since become a junior high school English teacher.)

So much for the theory of international understanding. He barked out a half-contrived, derisive laugh and declared at the top of his voice, “You foreigners always ask this question! You mean you don’t understand how to go to the bathroom? Do it the same way you do it in the woods!”

Well, that wasn’t the problem. I was more concerned about which direction I should face at which time.

Hideki got me straightened out and pointed in the right direction.

The new school year began a couple of days after that, and the first classes were held in a new facility the owner had just purchased and refurbished. This involved the installation of new toilets, all of which were Western style fixtures.

The first time I had occasion to use one, I lifted the lid and was surprised to see a lot of Japanese writing and diagrams with stick figures on a decal attached to the underside of the lid. I bent down to examine it more closely and discovered that the text was a thorough explanation of the proper way to use one of these exotic Western devices. The stick figures, of course, showed the correct seating methods. Oh, was I tempted! “Hey, Hideki, you mean you guys don’t understand how to go to the bathroom? You need a mini-instruction manual and pictures?”

But I thought discretion would be the better part of valor, and held my tongue.

As it turns out, however, Japanese toilets have evolved into a new species since those days, reaching breathtaking levels of sophistication and complexity. In fact, I freely admit that it’s all I can do to operate one of these normally, much less figure out what all those switches and buttons are for.

Yes, I actually do need a mini-instruction manual and pictures!

The Liberal Democratic Party’s second in command indicated that the LDP will raise the nation’s consumption tax during fiscal 2007 in order to finance social security programs.

Asked by a moderator on a Fuji TV program whether the LDP’s election manifesto means the consumption tax — currently at 5 percent — will be hiked in the year starting in April 2007, LDP Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe said, “Yes.”

The LDP now has to consider the margin of increase, the party’s No. 2 man said.

Apparently, the thought of cutting costs has not occurred to the ruling party. Perhaps they need to maintain budget levels so they can ensure a steady supply of luxury ashtrays. . .

An informal look around the Intergoogle indicates that there are some interesting place names around the world that at first glance seem, well, out of place. But they aren’t out of place at all.

For example, there’s a town called Mandarin, Florida, and everyone has heard of Paris, Texas.

Just for fun, do you know of any other place names in Western countries that use place names from Japan, China, Taiwan or South Korea as names of cities or towns?

Add your comments below.

Daruma doll artisan Sumikazu Nakata of Takasaki, Japan is busy at this time of the year, prior to the upcoming parliamentary elections set nationwide for September 11.

It is a Japanese tradition to paint a black pupil in the left eye of a daruma doll after making a wish. If the wish is fulfilled, the other pupil is added.

There once was a time in Japan when tobacco was king, with puffing considered the norm and non-smokers treated as second-class citizens. Those days are long gone as smoking is now banned on trains, in stations, in certain areas of the city, and in other areas where large groups of people gather.

One of the more comical stories to come out of the no smoking era is the report that officials in Yamagata, Japan are planning to auction off 28 cast metal “luxury ashtrays” that were once positioned at various locations around municipal offices. The ashtrays are no longer necessary since smoking is now banned in government buildings.

The starting bid for each ashtray is set at 19,400 yen, which is about 10% of the original cost of the most expensive ones.

I was surprised that nowhere in the story did anyone ask why the municipal government found it necessary to shell out up to 200,000 yen in taxpayer money for an ashtray.

While most Western men married to Japanese women would agree with the Japundit view that adult Japanese women don’t take marching orders from anybody, much less their husbands, Japanese people would sometimes pretend otherwise.

Occasionally, when Japanese people - and I sometimes get this vibe from Westerners, too - find that I’m married to a “Japanese woman”, I get comments like, “It’s no wonder: Japanese women are kind, considerate, and obedient, and make good mothers.” Blah blah blah. You were initially attracted to her personality? Really. There’s chemistry between the two of you? That’s nice, but you must be so happy that your wife is willing to iron your socks.

It seems that Koreans also tend to ignore personal compatibility and instead use dehumanizing stereotypes to explain “what it is about Korean women that Western men like.”

In an recent old story that somehow appeared in a Google News alert about American celebrities who are involved with Korean women, the leftish Chosun Ilbo tries to find out why Nicholas Cage is attracted to Korean-American Alice Kim:

Kenny, an executive at a (sic) LA Koreatown broadcasting company, said in an interview with a Korean broadcaster that, “Korean women are submissive and kind. They are known to make breakfast, lunch and dinner for their husbands, help their husbands well, and raise children well.”

The Chosun Ilbo, presumably unable to interview movie stars or otherwise intelligent people (and ignoring the fact that Alice Kim is a total hottie), canvassed foreign English teachers residing in Korea for their opinion:

There are also those who feel that in the eyes of Western men, East Asian women possess a sort of mysteriousness about them. They say that one can grow fond of the unknown “Orient.” 24-year-old James Cecil, an American living in Korea, said, “Even Korean women who are not thought of as pretty by Korean men can give a sense of mystery to Western men.”

Everything’s a mystery when you can’t speak the local language, James. Korean university English instructor Zane Ivy (did you know what you were getting into when they approached you on the street, Zane?) also explains why Western men are attracted to Korean women:

Korean women are conservative. They are conscience of what people around them think, depend on their families and parents and are submissive.

Take it from a married man: these are not the ideal qualities most men are looking for in a life partner, or even a girlfriend.

As well, if the Chosun Ilbo is so willing to publish such overworn (and borderline misogynistic) stereotypes about Korean women, rather than actually interview international couples themselves to find out what makes their relationships tick, it makes you wonder if the rest of the paper’s reporting, particularly of the relationship between Japan and Korea, is also lazy and lacking in depth.

And the Chosun also loses 5 points (but don’t worry, there’ll be a re-test after school) for making a spelling mistake in Zane’s quote.

Click here for an Ohmy News interview with Yuko Tojo, whose grandfather Hideki Tojo was executed as a Class A war criminal for his actions as prime minister of Japan during World War II.

[Tojo] behaved like a samurai, and took responsibility for his failures as a good soldier. But by what definition was he a criminal?