FRAUD!!!
Contributor Sylvain Bouchard has discovered a site maintained by a Japanese woman who has been republishing original Japundit text and photographs as her own original work.
Some of the text and photographs she has used is copyrighted by the original author, and copyright notices are clearly included in the text that she stole.
The woman’s name is Hitomi Kurusugawa, and she claims to be a student at Tokyo University.
I never imagined that I would ever do this, but I would like to encourage all Japundit readers to visit the blog and let this woman know exactly what you think of her theft.
She does not provide an e-mail link, but comments are enabled under all of the articles that she stole.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>UPDATE 8:00 p.m.
Clicking the above link now displays the message: “YummyRamune’s site has been shut down by its owner…”
I, for one, say good riddance to foxy rubbish!
Thanks again to Japundit contributor Sylvain Bouchard for sniffing this one out and to all you fine souls in Japunditland for your support!
I will be talking about this on tomorrow’s Japundit Podcast.
Poor Mari….she’s my favorite. If I ever become a j-pop singer and part of the...
Shes definitely at the top of my hot list.
perfeckt 10:10
It’s a pity she’s so attractive. But that didn’t stop me from making a few nasty comments.
March 10th, 2006 at 1:38 pmwhat a weird case! My guess is that she craves attention for her friends and family, and in her imagination, wants people to think she has posted these great posts. I hope she will understand what she has done and apologize, and move on with her life. She certainly is attractive, as anton points out, but hey, she might be living in a dream world, craving approval and attention, so let’s help her gently grow up and stop doing this.
As evidence, one of her friends tells her in a comment on her blog:
“Sugoi..My oh my. Hitomi-sensei.. I must say thats a very well written and articulated blog.. I agree that here in America, if a person brings out a gun or a toy that has a strong resemblence of a gun, people would react immediately.. putting in mind that America was attacked by Terrorist and until today, is still being threatened… Anywho.. Im glad to hear from you again.. I would have never read your blog if it wasnt for your brother.. I hope all things are well.. Im pretty sure i speak for everyone that we missed you, and we all hope you could go online sometime..”
March 10th, 2006 at 1:53 pmWell, to put a positive spin on this, they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…
March 10th, 2006 at 2:01 pmHer bio profile states: Hello~~ I’m Hitomi!! I go to Tokyo University in Japan but I went to elementary, middle, and high school in Los Angeles, CA. ^^ Thats basically me. In summary, born in Japan, grew up in America, and back in Japan for college. Entries are sometimes in Japanese sometimes in English!
My guess, again just a guess, is she is lonely in Japan, away from friends and family, and seeking attention and approval for her insightful posts about life in Japan. I am sure she will apologize and say sorry when she finds out Japundit.com found out what she was doing…
Isn’t interet life amazing? Has anyone ever heard of a case like this before? Might make a good newspaper article in the New York Times or LA TIMES or something…. or even Japan Times…
March 10th, 2006 at 2:05 pmPosting copyrighted material is a direct violation of the Xanga terms of use. You should escalate to the site administrator if Hitomi does not give a satisfactory response.
March 10th, 2006 at 2:07 pmI don’t think this has to be war. I think she needs to be dealth with firmly and directly, and she needs to know what she has done, and why it is wrong, and then give her a platform to apologize once she has taken in the enormity of this fraud, and then let it be over….
I don’t think she was stealing other people’s posts and pics for money or fame, but just for attention and approval from her friends and family, and it’s a small crime, petty theft, in terms of Internet stuff.
She will apologize, I am sure. Let’s not hang her here.
March 10th, 2006 at 2:25 pmHang? Who said anything about hanging?
I would say let’s burn’er at the stake!
March 10th, 2006 at 2:28 pmI don’t think its even this “Hitomi”. Heres’s my logical deduction why: Honestly, that doesn’t even look like someone’s mugshot. If I had to make an educated guess I’d say that’s not even her picture period. A cropped picture from some mag. and “YummyRamune” and “LemonLimeRamune” username? isn’t that the cute little drink they sell at asian supermarkets?? The sound of it smacks of an unimaginative username of a Japanese wannabe with too much time on his hands. Its probably a coverup, a made-up username and made-up name of someone who has a beef with JAPUNDIT. Above all, how the heck does a medical student have the time to keep up with JAPUNDIT???
So in a nutshell, JAPUNDIT Admins, I dont think contacting “Hitomi Kurusugawa” will do anything. Chances are you wont get a reply back. Contact Xanga directly, show them the proof, and have this travesty promptly removed.
March 10th, 2006 at 2:39 pmFurious Joe, you might be right, good point. the entire site could be a fake name,fake pic, fake ID. worth checking out. this will be over with soon, I thinkk, as soon as Xanga confirms yes or no.
[as for how a pre-med student at Todai has time to read Japundit, she might be googling for Japan things,found Japundit, and decided to pass off some of the posts here as her own. Since she is , or says she is, a Japanese woman who grew up most of her life in the USA and is fluent in English and maybe finds Japundit a good place to lurk.]
But, that said, you might be very very right. good hunch!
March 10th, 2006 at 3:05 pmJust to let everyone know, I have written to both xanga and Todai about this.
Will keep all of you posted about what happens.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:15 pmActually, I found her out because I noticed in my stats that my blog had been accessed from her site. I didn’t find any links, but when I right-clicked on her (ahem, our) pictures, I noticed she hotlinked them, i.e. my server and Japundit’s server are actually hosting them for her! BTW, you guys really wrote some nasty things… Scary!:shock:
March 10th, 2006 at 3:26 pmI was particularly flatter by this remark:
Lol you should be a professional writer Hitomi-chan ^_^
considering it was under one of my own stories about Roppongi.
I say we administer corporal punishment – a good solid spanking will teach her.
I call first dibs.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:35 pmLooks like she’s being doing it since XMAS at least.
Well I guess plagerism is a form of flattery, isn’t it? If you’re good enough to be plagerized, you must be doing something right, right?
Wonder what her fan club will think of her now?
March 10th, 2006 at 3:43 pmI love kidcongo13’s style in the comments. Good job whoever!!
March 10th, 2006 at 3:51 pmAfter eating lunch, and thinking this over, I now think FuriousJoe is right: this entire thing is a fake site, by someone with a beef. Weird. Wired.
We might never find the culprit, so our punishment might have to be a virtual thrashing…
FJ wrote: I don’t think its even this “Hitomi”. Heres’s my logical deduction why: Honestly, that doesn’t even look like someone’s mugshot. If I had to make an educated guess I’d say that’s not even her picture period. A cropped picture from some mag. and “YummyRamune” and “LemonLimeRamune” username? isn’t that the cute little drink they sell at asian supermarkets?? The sound of it smacks of an unimaginative username of a Japanese wannabe with too much time on his hands. Its probably a coverup, a made-up username and made-up name of someone who has a beef with JAPUNDIT.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:22 pmbecause nobody that pretty and sexy becomes a premed student at Todai.
that is a fake borrowed pic.
cute. but no cigar.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:24 pmHer post of 1 April 2005 is apt…
“Has blogging ever gotten you into trouble???”
No dear. It hasn’t. You?
March 10th, 2006 at 4:43 pmIt seems she’s stealing from other blogs, too! She translated this article from Japanese almost WORD FOR WORD and posted it on her blog.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:48 pmI enjoyed my minute of righteous indignation as any good blog-lurking slacker should, but now that I’ve cooled down I think maybe spam-bombing YummyRamune’s comments is more of a response than is called for. It makes us look like the barbarians. We should at least give Yummy a chance to do the right thing before we go all burn-the-Danish-embassy on her/him/it.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:55 pmI agree with you, papa. we shouldn’t be the barbarians. Give Yummy a chance to do the right thing, if there is even a Yummy to do it. I suspect not.
I think maybe spam-bombing YummyRamune’s comments is more of a response than is called for. It makes us look like the barbarians. We should at least give Yummy a chance to do the right thing before we go all burn-the-Danish-embassy on her/him/it.
March 10th, 2006 at 5:07 pmThis gives it away: “There were many foreigners in there. It was very surprising. Living in Tokyo for all of this time, I have never seen so many foreigners in one place. ”
But if she is a freshman at Todai, who lived all her life in USA, then how can she write that she has lived in Tokyo for a long time.?
Holes everywhere.
1. An angry blogger is faking something.
or
2. Hitomi doesn’t realize that posting other people’s blogs as her own is a no no.
(It must be number 1, above)
March 10th, 2006 at 5:11 pmWhat is the use speculating about what this person is thinking, or feeling, or interacting with her friends?
Why don’t we just wait to see what the facts show us instead of making up scenarios out of thin air?
March 10th, 2006 at 5:43 pmGive Yummy a chance to do the right thing
Why?
March 10th, 2006 at 5:46 pmAgree, JP. Sorry.
What is the use speculating about what this person is thinking, or feeling, or interacting with her friends?
Why don’t we just wait to see what the facts show us instead of making up scenarios out of thin air?
March 10th, 2006 at 6:19 pmHow’s this for a reaction: YummyRamune has cut and run:
YummyRamune’s site has been shut down by its owner…
March 10th, 2006 at 6:32 pmKnew it!
March 10th, 2006 at 6:36 pmWell JP, as ever I blindly followed you, Oh Captain my Captain,
and tried to leave a message. Too late, alas! The blog appears to be closed to new comments.
I miss out on all the fun.
March 10th, 2006 at 6:37 pmJP, before you take all this down, might be instructive, if nothing else, to leave it up here for a while, so that other surfers around the world might learn from all this. It’s a good cautionary tale.
March 10th, 2006 at 6:37 pmIt’s a pity she was so attractive
Where’d that photo go?
March 10th, 2006 at 6:50 pmIntellecutal property is not particularly respected or even believed in here in Dai Nippon. And, med students cannot be compared to those in North America or Europe. They generally do have a lot of free time, like all university students here. They are universities in name only.
March 10th, 2006 at 7:01 pmWell JP, as ever I blindly followed you, Oh Captain my Captain,
Thanks anyway, Harry. As Papa and you correctly point out, the site is, indeed, down.
Yahoo! (Ooops. . . Hope I won’t get into trouble for that.)
March 10th, 2006 at 8:05 pmwhat a weird case! My guess is that she craves attention for her friends and family, and in her imagination, wants people to think she has posted these great posts. I hope she will understand what she has done and apologize, and move on with her life. She certainly is attractive, as anton points out, but hey, she might be living in a dream world, craving approval and attention, so let’s help her gently grow up and stop doing this.
As evidence, one of her friends tells her in a comment on her blog:
“Sugoi..My oh my. Hitomi-sensei.. I must say thats a very well written and articulated blog.. I agree that here in America, if a person brings out a gun or a toy that has a strong resemblence of a gun, people would react immediately.. putting in mind that America was attacked by Terrorist and until today, is still being threatened… Anywho.. Im glad to hear from you again.. I would have never read your blog if it wasnt for your brother.. I hope all things are well.. Im pretty sure i speak for everyone that we missed you, and we all hope you could go online sometime..”
No frakkin way. Wow. Thanks to Silvain.
March 11th, 2006 at 12:36 amDanny, His/Her whole blog was bogus. My money says her profile (especially her pic) was bogus too.
March 11th, 2006 at 3:24 amyup thats what I’ve been saying all along.
March 11th, 2006 at 4:11 amI’m glad it’s been solved peacefully and in a mature manner lol.
What makes you think the whole account was bogus? Before Yummy started the festival of plagiarism around the end of last year, I thought the earlier posts had a voice consistent with each other and with person described in the account profile. Then there is the deviantArt account that’s supposed to belong to the same person where there’s a self-portrait that looks to me like another photo of the same person pictured on the Xanga account. (Looks like Yummy also owns another deviantART account.)
Certainly it’s possible it could all be faked, but it seems like an aweful lot of time and talent to spend to what? Attract the attention of people interested in 20-year-old Japanese premed girls? Surely there are quicker and easier ways to that end. I think Yummy’s actions are easier to explain away as laziness than as malicious deception.
Anyway, it’s no big deal but I think it’s too bad Yummy took the cowardly way out of silently closing down the whole Xanga account. I don’t think that’s what any of the plagiarized writers were asking for. If Yummy would have removed just the copied articles and issued something approximating a sincere apology it would have restored the e-wa with no hard feelings. I Yummy was really looking for companionship, she/he could probably have made some good friends here among us Japundit groupies, especially if those photos are legit.
March 11th, 2006 at 12:47 pmYou are absolutely right, papa.
March 11th, 2006 at 1:07 pmYes, it does appear he/she was copying art and text on those other deviant sites, too. I still wonder if he/she did it out of naivete or malice or pathology?
March 11th, 2006 at 1:20 pmWill we ever know?
YummyRamune, if you’re still reading, you’re the only one who can answer Danny’s question. I think we’re all curious to hear the answer. Give us a good story and I’m sure it’s not too late for all to be forgiven.
March 11th, 2006 at 4:20 pmbut you’re still going to get a spanking, yummy …:twisted:
March 11th, 2006 at 7:01 pmif he/she/it hadn’t put that picture of a pretty girl there, nobody would care anymore about the whole incident.
March 12th, 2006 at 3:24 amkinda… sad.
Note that her comment on her Deviant site
“ipod heaven!
Journal Entry: Tue Jan 24, 2006, 10:26 PM
I finally decided to get myself an iPod nano yesterday, and I can’t believe how I managed to go through life until now without one!
I don’t know, I guess I kept putting off buying one because I assumed I was too busy to listen to music, while not at the apartment or in the train, that is. How naive of me! While listening to music, it seems I do everything better: I work better, and shopping is so much more fun.
Yesterday after I finished charging the battery for the first time, I decided to listen to music while I was cleaning up my apartment, and before I knew it, two and a half hours had past, and I had accomplished more than I had in the last 2 weeks!
That little piece of heaven I’m carrying around in my pocket is worth much more than the thirty two thousand yen I paid for it!
I’m in iPod heaven. . .”
is identical to the Japandit comment posted by Sylvian Bouchard on the 19th Jan, only with the dollars changed to yen, and car to train.
March 12th, 2006 at 2:17 pmCheck out her page by clicking here.
Scroll down and read the new comment that has been added.
March 12th, 2006 at 3:34 pm“if he/she/it hadn’t put that picture of a pretty girl there, nobody would care anymore about the whole incident.
kinda… sad.”
Yago: I can assure that JP and the rest of us would have gotten upset even if she had chosen to put a picture of Godzilla up there.
March 12th, 2006 at 5:26 pmThe way things look, we might have to make the Yummy Ramune Update a regular part of the Japundit Podcast.
March 12th, 2006 at 5:48 pmI bet she has other fake blogs, too. This last one is even worse than the other. Out of the three articles she posted, two are stolen. The one that’s not mine is that translation taken from a Japanese woman’s blog. Unbelievable!
>Ampontan
You’re right about that. Who cares about the picture! It’s the act that drew our attention.
BTW, I wanted to post a comment on “my” article, but now it says “deviantART is currently in read-only mode for system maintenance”…
March 12th, 2006 at 6:52 pmjust keeps getting weirder. Who is this person really?
March 12th, 2006 at 8:44 pmyes, everyone got upset at the stealing, but 80% of the messages here are speculating about his/her/its looks. Had it put a godzilla pic and we would have quickly dismissed it as a lonely geek.
March 12th, 2006 at 11:09 pmYummy Ramune is a thief and plagarist. Pure and simple. Should she be dealt with more leniently because she may be physically attractive..? I think not. No writer online or off would ever be anything other than outraged to see his/her work which he sweated over stolen without proper acredation. Frankly, its totally irrelevant whether Yummy Ramune is lonely, or sexy for that matter. She/he is certainly intelligent enough to know that plagarism is unethical and often outright illegal. The person in question should be given a chance to apologize; but under no circumstances should the essential dishonesty and wrongness of such behavior ever be in doubt.
March 13th, 2006 at 5:39 amIt’s pretty naive for us to think that the profile just so happens to be precisely accurate while everything else is nothing but bogus. Come on, guys. It’s most likely some lonely 40 yr old man in Wisconsin. Leave him alone already and move on.
March 13th, 2006 at 6:25 amIt is a sad fact that once a site gets popular it attracts thieves. It has happened to me in the past, and I am sure it will continue to happen in the future. All we can do it slam those that break the rules and shame them into maybe not doing it again. I’m past the point of giving someone a chance to do the right thing. They had that chance when they first decided to steal someone elses material.
One more thing, you also stand a lot better chance of getting hacked once your site becomes popular. (especially a msaage board being hacked) This has also happened to my site, so try to close up as many of your security loopholes as possible.
March 13th, 2006 at 9:13 am[...] iately contacted JP, the Japundit owner, to inform him of the theft. He reacted by writing an article on Japundit , urging readers to comment on her Xanga Blog (which “s [...]
March 13th, 2006 at 2:40 pmHow incredibly bizarre . . . and fascinating. This is like some watered down William Gibson story where an “idol” exists only in electronic form. For all we know, the art is created by some 52 year old man on Shikoku.
March 14th, 2006 at 2:31 amSuppsedly, this is Ramune’s brother, and he lives in Pasadena. http://kyosuke-wind.deviantart.com/
March 17th, 2006 at 1:16 amI just can’t believe that no one had files (jpgs) from her old website stored in their temporary internet account.
March 26th, 2006 at 7:13 am