Japanese Scientists Make Automated Translation Break-Thru!

According to the Christian bible, God punished the small bands of people who professed to believe in him but nevertheless committed sins by decreeing that different groups of people would speak different languages. The idea being that if people could not communicate with each other they would sin less.    

Obviously, the God-plan didn’t work in Christian societies and just as obviously long before the appearance of god-based religions thousands of different languages had already developed among different groups of people.     

It goes without saying that these different languages did not reduce the irrational and violent behavior of the groups concerned. In fact, they created their own set of problems whenever these bands of people confronted each other.    

One of the primary reasons for the problems that different linguistic groups have is caused by the fact that languages are the reservoir, the transmitter, and the controller of cultures. People who speak different languages have problems because of the cultural content of certain key words in their languages    

It is easy to learn that water is agua (ah-gwah) in Spanish and mizu (mee-zoo) in Japanese. There is no cultural conflict, no friction involved. But when words that are pregnant with cultural content are involved, their differences in cultural values and the control they have over the thinking and behavior of the people ranges from minor to enormous.    

To fully explain the cultural content and role of the Spanish term macho (mah-choh) requires several hundred words.  To fully explain the Japanese term kaizen (kigh-zen), or “continuous improvement,” requires as many as a thousand words or more (there is a whole book on the subject).     

When working as a trade journalist in Asia in the 1950s and 60s I learned that the cultures of China, Korea and Japan were bound up in hundreds of key words in each of the three languages, and that you simply could not understand their respective ways of thinking and behaving without intimate knowledge of these key words.     

But technology, the new “God” of humanity, is on the verge of eliminating some of the linguistic barriers that separate human beings.    

Most of the world is familiar with the “universal language” devices used by the fictional Capt. James T. Kirk and the intrepid crew of Star Trek to communicate with the various life-forms they encountered during their travels around the galaxies. 

Now, reality is rapidly catching up with fiction. Japan’s Council for Science and Technology Policy [CSTP] has challenged the country’s automated speech translation researchers to improve the present technology in the next five years to the point that automated translators will in fact be a reality for Japanese who want to communicate with English and Mandarin speakers.    

Prototypes of these translators have already been field-tested in China, and the word is that they worked perfectly as long as the conversations were simple. The process is based on storing hundreds of thousands of sentences and speech patterns into the devices that have exact equivalents in the target languages.     

The goal of the CSTP is to have universal translators on the market for all of the world’s major languages within ten years!     

The impact that this will have on the world is so potentially profound and broad that over a period of a few generations it will surely change the nature of human cultures—something that gods have not been able to do since they were first created!    

But this revolutionary change in the ability of human beings to communicate with each other across language barriers will inevitably increase the volume of conversations. Every word in each language that is pregnant with cultural nuances and uses will have to be explained in detail to make the communication complete.    

If you think there is too much babble in today’s world, consider what it will be like when this is multiplied many times over!­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

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Boyé Lafayette De Mente is the author of more than 50 business, cultural and language books on Japan, China, Korea, Mexico, Hopi Land and Navajo Land. See his website: www.cultural-guide-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.com.         

What would you do if you were suddenly faced by an android that looked exactly like you and acted exactly the same way you act—especially if you didn’t like what you saw?

     That is exactly what happened to Osaka University Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, one of Japan’s leading robotic engineers who recently created a robot that was not only in his own image but also had many—if  not all—of his subtle behavioral habits.

     The professor is not a bad looking fellow, so he was not upset with the appearance of his double, but what really got to him were some of the odd behavioral ticks exhibited by the robot that he found uncomfortable to watch.

In ancient times in Tokyo [meaning in the 1950s] I wrote a weekly column entitled “Only in Japan” that covered events, ideas and products that were unique to the country.

     Many of these things appeared humorous or childish to the average Westerner, but some of them, particularly unusual products and odd brand names, went on to become huge commercial successes.

      Among these early things was the name “Walkman” that Sony chose for its new portable radio, and a variety of children’s products introduced by Sanrio Company under the brand name “Hello Kitty.”

     The Walkman brand name took a little while to catch on overseas, but in Japan it made perfect sense…you could listen to the tiny radio while walking around.  Hello Kitty products were an instant hit in Japan because they were terminally cute – and the Japanese have an obsessive addiction to cuteness.

     It turned out that most Westerners are also turned on by cuteness if it doesn’t go to extremes, and Hello Kitty products are now bestsellers world-wide.

     Despite all of the fundamental changes that have occurred in Japan in the last 50-plus years there are still many “only in Japan” things that add to the ambiance of life.

    A new and intriguing “only in Japan” phenomenon is printing popular comic and animation characters, as well as the profiles of famous comedians, on toilet paper.

     “Character toilet paper” has, in fact, become one of the country’s hottest souvenir and gift items among younger Japanese and foreign tourists alike.  And by toilet paper standards, the rolls are not cheap – going for more than twice the amount of plain paper.

    Animation studios, entertainment companies and others have boarded the character toilet paper bandwagon, opening their own retail shops.

     The owner of Tokyo Atom Shop in Tokyo Central Station says that some of his customers – both local commuters and travelers – buy up to 50 rolls at a time to give as gifts.

     The shop at the National Museum for Emerging Science and Innovation sells a line of character toilet paper called Astronomical Toilet Paper. I don’t know what “astronomical” refers to, but it apparently appeals to young women, said to be the main buyers.

     Toilet paper sold at a shop called Yoshimoto TV Street in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, owned by media giant Yoshimoto Kogyo, features profiles of comedians that the company represents.

     The comedians obviously don’t object to their descriptions being printed on paper that is used to wipe indiscriminate derrieres.  One, in fact, is quoted as saying he finds this new form of publicity quite amusing.

     Without intending to resort to ribaldry, the most amusing toilet incident I ever witnessed occurred at a bar that used to be across the street from Shimbashi Station just south of the famed Ginza shopping mecca. 

     One evening in the mid-1950s I took an American friend and his wife to the bar for a few drinks. After a while the wife, who happened to be quite tall, noted that she had to go to the toilet. I pointed to a narrow hallway, and said: “First door on the right.”

     The toilet was about the size of a telephone booth and squat-style, with an elongated ceramic “bowl” over an aperture in the floor.  My friend’s wife had a bit of difficulty getting into the toilet, but she did it.

    Once inside the toilet she was able to squat down easy enough but when done she could not stand up or pull up her panties.  Finally, in desperation, she opened the door and waddled out into the hallway in full view of the bar patrons. There, she stood up, nonchalantly pulling her undies up at the same time.

     As she approached our booth, her husband and I were nearly choking in an effort to avoid laughing but she was smiling broadly. “Go ahead and laugh before you bust a gut!” she said.

     Toilets in present-day Japan include the most high-tech commodes and urinals in the world. They take your temperature, check your blood pressure, analyze your leftovers, and if you want, transmit the results to your doctor.  How times have changed!

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To see a list and synopses of books by Boyé Lafayette De Mente, go to www.cultural-guide-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.com. One of his latest titles: The Myth of Intelligent Life on Planet Earth!

The creative and innovating abilities of Japanese scientists and product developers are apparently unbounded—as is the variety of areas and things that attract their attention.

Among the recent and more far-out of their innovations are lines of men’s wear that “eat” body odors.

Now if that doesn’t strike you as being worthy of serious attention and effort by developers and researchers, you may have to spend some time reconsidering the power of modern-day advertising that is designed to program the minds of viewers and listeners to buy their products.

And if that doesn’t do the trick, you may have to resort to considering the modern-day sensibilities of women who because of advertising find the smell of sweat—their own but especially that of men—unpleasant and unacceptable.

There is more. It is a given that as men age their natural body odor changes…taking on a fetid smell to varying degrees. The older the man the stronger this smell becomes, and if not controlled by bathing and other means the smell can be a real turn-off for people with a keen sense of smell.

As it happens, most men of whatever age are either not conscious of their own smell or it doesn’t bother them. Basically, it’s kind of like working in a sausage factory. After a while you don’t notice the smell.

Women in Japan and other “advanced countries” are especially sensitive to male sweat because they have been programmed to consider it both unsightly and unpleasant. And this especially applies to both outer and under garments worn by men.

Now, Japanese apparel manufacturers have mounted an all-out war against sweat-soaked shorts and suits by creating fabrics that deodorized themselves. Talk about advancing the human condition!

But what the makers, buyers and sniffers (meaning women) are forgetting—if they ever knew—is that male sweat is loaded with sex-related chemicals called pheromones that are designed to attract females and turn them on.

If the odor of male sweat is eliminated altogether—and that is obviously the direction humanity is going in—and men no longer have this invisible sexual attraction going for them, what will happen to male-female relations?

Men are already becoming feminized to an amazing degree that flies in the face of nature…a portent of the time when females will be the dominate half of the species.

If you would like to know more about why and how this is happening, go to the book category of amazon.com and check out The Myth of Intelligent Life on Planet Earth!

Recent technological advances by Japanese scientists in robotics brings to mind the movie “The Rise of the Machines”—one of the Terminator classics starring now California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger—advances that pose a serious question.

 Will the new robots now coming online—and the incredible ones that are on the immediate horizon—be a boon to mankind (as the scientists claim) or will they evolve into a new order of intelligence that becomes self-aware (as in the movie “I, Robot”) and themselves decide on what the human-robot relationship should be?

Japanese scientists, who continue to make one break-through after the other in programming  robots to feel, hear, see and think like human beings, maintain that their goals are to create robots that will be able to act as assistants, caretakers and nurses for Japan’s rapidly aging population.

That sounds both benign and worthy of pursuing, especially since the elderly are expected to make up 40 percent of Japan’s population by 2055—with similar demographic changes in other countries as higher living standards and better education results in a decline in births and longer life-spans. 

Scientists in Japan are now engaged in creating the technology for a range of robots that includes caretakers, general servants, technicians and engineers. Technology already developed and being used includes most of the eye, hear, arm and leg functions that distinguish human beings.

The latest advances in robotics involves placing incredibly sensitive sensors all over the bodies of robots that emulate the tactile response of human skin—a development that has far-reaching and profound implications. The fingers of this new order of robots are just as sensitive as human fingers.

This growing effort to humanize robots is being spearheaded by a combination of government and private industry sponsorship under the heading of an organization called the Information and Robot Technology Research Initiative (IRT), which is aimed at fusing information technology and robot technology. In other words, the goal is to provide robots with human-like skills and brains.

Project teams are well into applying new control systems developed by such companies as Toyota and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. To avoid making the robots look like humans, and therefore a possible threat, these teams are coming up with forms based on the work the robots are designed to perform.

Their public rationale is that a robot designed to do mechanical repairs on a washing machine, for example, does not have to look like “Mr. Maytag;” a robot that prepares and serves meals would not necessarily have to look like a chef.

But people would surely be more comfortable if it did, and it is this human emotion that will no doubt determine the appearance of most future “domestic” and “service” robots!

The efforts of the IRT are being directed by Isao Shimoyama, a professor at the University of Tokyo, who says his goal is to create a class of robots that will be integrated into human society on the level that machines, electrical appliances and electronic devices now play.

The several million people who visited the Expo of 2005 in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture got a glimpse of the robotic world of the future, but the walking and talking robots that were introduced at that exhibition pale when it comes to the generation of robots that will go into the first stages of production in 2009.

The time has come when the Laws of Robots devised by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in 1940 should be dusted off and turned into non-fiction laws worldwide.

These laws would at least set standards that scientists should follow.Asimov’s First Law says: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; his Second Law says: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except when such orders would conflict with the First Law; and his Third Law says: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. 

What about one of the oldest laws of all: Laws are made to be broken!___________________________
Boyé Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor.  He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China. For synopses of his titles go to: www.cultural-guide-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.com.  His book, Bachelor’s Japan, originally published in 1960 and the first inside look at the mizu shobai in English, became a hot television and weekly magazine topic, and subsequently an international bestseller.     

It goes without saying that hate, intolerance, discrimination and violence have been the mark of mankind since the dawn of human history… and all efforts to curb this characteristic behavior through laws, religions and other forms of influence have failed.

In fact, male-dominated religions, the largest, most organized and most powerful of these efforts, have fueled rather than diminished the hatreds, the intolerance, the discrimination and the violence that have plagued humanity since day one.

But despite the evils that have been inherent in the dogma and teachings of religions and the propensity for evil that is part of the primitive nature of mankind, men in particular, ordinary people in many societies have achieved a level of civilization that is praiseworthy.

However, most countries in the world remain awash in irrational and violent behavior because their cultures are generally incapable of instilling in people the mindset that is necessary to build and sustain rational, positive, humane, and constructive societies.

The reasons for these cultural failures have been known to many people for ages, but the very evils that have traditionally plagued mankind have prevented most societies from being able to create the kind of cultures they could have.

The problem is that the beliefs and institutions that control the behavior of most humans make it virtually impossible for people to agree on and work together to develop and implement educational and training systems that would transform the way children are raised.

As simplistic and perhaps as other-worldly as it may sound, there is one training program that all children could be enrolled in at an early age that would go a long way toward instilling in them many of the cultural attributes that are the most desirable and admirable in human beings—and the only thing their parents would have to do is enroll them in this program and keep them in it from around the age of five to fifteen.

This program is nothing more esoteric or mysterious than the physical, emotional, intellectual and philosophical training provided by the modern-day version of karate (kah-rah-tay), originally imported into mainland Japan from distant Okinawa after that island was conquered by a Japanese warlord in 1609 and the residents were forbidden to have weapons of any kind.

Bereft of weapons, Okinawan warriors soon developed the ancient Chinese version of karate [“empty hand”] into a more formidable martial art, making it possible for them to inflict serious injury or death on a person using only their hands.

During the following centuries of the Tokugawa era [1603-1867] karate was gradually subsumed into the training of the samurai who ruled Japan and Okinawa. Later, after the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1867 and dissolution of the samurai class in 1870, karate became a part of the training of Japan’s imperial army and police forces.

By the early 1900s farsighted martial arts masters had transformed karate into a sport aimed at developing the character of the individual, with special emphasis on respect for others, concentration, self-confidence, diligence, a sense of order, perseverance, honesty and courage.

Today most people around the world are familiar with the word karate as a result of movies, video games and comic books which continue to present it as a fighting technique, but in real life training in karate is aimed at building the kind of character and behavior that all parents would like to see in their children.

The number of karate training centers around the world is growing [there are over 3,000 in the U.S. alone] as more and more parents come to understand that its remarkable benefits include improving the character, personality and behavior of their children.

I believe that the physical, emotional and philosophical discipline offered by karate training could go a long way toward reducing many of the evils that continue to afflict mankind—if not eliminating some of them altogether—and advocate making the training mandatory in all elementary and high schools.

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Boyé Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China. For synopses of his titles go to: www.cultural-guide-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.com. His books include: Samurai Principles & Practices that Will Help Preteens & Teens in School, Sports, Social Activities & Choosing Careers.

The entertainment trades in Japan were traditionally referred as the mizu shobai or the “water business.” There is no agreement on how the term mizu shobai came into use, but it is fairly obvious that the extraordinary number of natural hot springs in the country and the ancient Japanese practice of bathing in them for pleasure as opposed to cleanliness led to the association of pleasure and water.

The term mizu shobai apparently came into use during the early decades of Japan’s last shogunate dynasty (1603-1867)—a period that saw the rise of huge bathhouses that catered specifically to men seeking pleasures of the flesh, a great network of roadside inns around the country that featured both hot baths and sexual services, and the expansion of geisha districts and courtesan quarters in every city.

During this period mizu shobai referred to all of the entertainment trades, including the theater, but in time it came to be the most closely associated with the large red-light districts that flourished throughout the country, the thousands of roadside inns that provided hot baths and sake (sah-kay), and a huge number of nomiya or “drinking places.”

While organized prostitution was subject to the control of the shogunate government and the 200-plus daimyo provincial lords in their own fiefs, it was a sanctioned enterprise that was not under a cloud of moral righteousness. The Japanese did not associate sex with sin or the marriage contract, thus sparing themselves the suffering imposed on Christian and Muslim people by their religious leaders over the millennia.

The Untold Story of Japan’s Rise to Economic Prominence

As a trade journalist based in Tokyo during the most critical years of Japan’s climb up from the destruction of World War II, I found that the majority of the American and European importers who began trooping to the country from 1948 on—and thereafter made multiple annual trips—did not do so because they had so many problems with their suppliers—which were routinely formidable, to say the least— or to place additional orders!

No! They did so because they were able to consort with large numbers of beautiful young Japanese women in the mizu shobai (me-zoo show-by), or “water business”— the traditional Japanese euphemism for the night-time entertainment trades, especially the hostess-stocked cabarets!

In the mid-1960s when I was a Tokyo-based trade journalist I wrote that a growing number of Americans were being influenced by positive elements in Japan’s traditional culture and were approaching the cultural sophistication that the Japanese had reached by the 10th century.

In that instance I was referring to the arts, crafts, food, poetry, literature, entertainment and sexual practices. But in the following two decades Japan’s influence on the United States was to go well beyond these areas and become a serious national problem.

By the mid-1970s many segments of American industry were being threatened with extinction by the overwhelming power of Japan’s economic juggernaut, and it was not until then that American business leaders began to pick up on the Japanese concepts of kaizen (continuous improvement), kanban (just in time parts delivery), hinshitsu (quality), miryokuteki hinshitsu (quality with sex appeal), yugo ka (fuzzy thinking), and other Japanese practices.

In The Japanese Influence on America, a book I wrote in the early 1980s, I described the impact that Japan was having on American management and manufacturing processes—both of which had become obsolete and had already relegated many segments of American industry to the trash dump of history—and recommended practical steps for American manufacturers to take in order to not only cope with but to benefit from the Japanese challenge.

Now, the influence of Japanese culture on the U.S. has gone well-beyond beyond management and manufacturing processes, eating sushi, and singing in karaoke bars—all of which have their very positive sides.

On the other hand, we also seem to be hung up on adopting some of the worst elements of Japan’s traditional culture. . .elements which the Japanese themselves are actually in the process of giving up.

The outmoded elements of Japanese culture that Americans are importing include behavior that is based on policies instead of principles, and hiding behind facades (tatemae) rather than telling the truth up front (honne). Both American businessmen and politicians have become masters of the tatemae approach.

More and more Americans are now also emulating Japan’s traditional approach to human sexuality by condoning and celebrating it. Like the Japanese of old, we now elevate prostitutes and pornographers to star status. But we do not have the structure or restraints that were built into the Japanese way and kept it under control.

Our whole economy is driven by the exploitation of sex, especially female sexuality, and sexual behavior has become a kind of free-for-all, with the only restraints being the time and place—and even these are often ignored. And not surprisingly, this element of American culture has been adopted by most other developed and developing countries in the world—driving home the old adage that sex sells.

Today’s over-emphasis on female sexuality obviously derives from the efforts of religions to mask, suppress and deny the sexuality of females—a male ploy designed to keep women on the bottom.

I am all for emancipation from the ancient religious view of human sexuality that has brought unimaginable suffering to the Western world. . .but it needs to be de-commercialized and humanized.

There are still many positive things to learn from the Japanese, including their use of both sides of their brains (the rational side and the emotional side), which contributes to their extraordinary design sense and their appreciation of beauty.

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Boyé Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China. For synopses of his titles go to: www.cultural-guide-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.com.

The ancient Asian art of face-reading has gone high-tech in Japan. Japanese scientists are now applying high-speed photographic technology to the art, adding a new dimension to understanding human feelings and human communication—a development that could eventually change most human interactions.

This new development is being led by electronics manufacturer Omron’s Keihanna Technology Innovation Center [KTIC] in its O’kao (Honorable Face) face-sensing technology project. The KTIC has over one million photos of the faces of some 9,000 people that reveal different facial expressions that are then related to meanings and moods—taking the art of face-reading to a level never dreamed of before.

The researchers say the new technology can be applied in many ways, from linking people with devices and machines to revealing a person’s innermost thoughts that may be contrary to what they are saying—going beyond a sophisticated lie-detector to virtually reading a person’s mind.

Japanese researchers at Meiji University School of Science and Technology (MUSST) are taking this new innovation in a different direction by linking facial movements to operating electronic devices, giving the impression of virtual thought-control. MUSST’s main project is a robotic face [called Kansei or “Sensibilities”] that has a data base of half a million words with facial expressions that relate to meanings of the words.

The creator of the robotic face, Prof. Junichi Takeno, says his goal is to discover the mechanisms of consciousness. At this time his robot face has 36 expressions—probably more than the average person thinks he or she is capable of expressing.

Among the practical applications of the new face-reading approach: enhanced security systems; photo booth cameras that manipulate colors and contrasts to make the subjects more attractive; turn electronic devices off and on; manipulate household appliances that have embedded chips; and act as backups for drivers who become fatigued or whose attention is distracted—in other words, the ultimate remote controls.

Face-reading as both an art and science was originally studied and institutionalized in China some 3,000 years ago by physicians who began to relate facial features with intelligence, character, personality, sexuality and other human attributes as part of their health-care practices.

From the health-care industry, face-reading became a skill that was used by the Chinese military, by employers, and by men seeking more amorous female partners—the latter use making it especially popular among ordinary people. [Many of the readings are sensually oriented.]

From around the 14^th century A.D. Japanese priests and others who had occasion to visit China picked up on the face-reading theory and practice of the Chinese and introduced it into Japan.

I began studying the art in Japan in the mid-1950s after being inspired by the face-reader brought in by the military in 1939 to help decide what kind of training new recruits were best suited for. He was living in Chiba at that time and readily agreed to be interviewed.

I subsequently wrote a book entitled Face-Reading for Fun & Profit, went on a lecture tour in the U.S., and appeared on the then popular What’s My Line television show in New York. This activity helped promote the use of face-reading in the corporate world of American, with some companies using face-readers in their recruiting efforts as well as in their decisions to promote employees to higher positions.

Everybody face reads. In fact, it is the very first thing we do when seeing or meeting someone for the first time, and throughout life we continue to read the faces of people we are talking to or listening to, and everyone automatically makes judgments about the character, veracity, etc., of these individuals.

But there are over one hundred precise readings based on the size, shape and quality of the facial features, and without special knowledge or training most people recognize and react to less than half of this number.

I [naturally!] recommend my own book, which has been republished under the title of Asian Face Reading – Unlock the Secrets Hidden in the Human Face, as a good starting place. It is available from bookstores and Amazon.com.