There’s a sad statistic that’s on the rise in Japan these days: divorce.
The combination of the country’s rapidly aging society, high stress levels and a new law that enables a woman to claim up to half of her husband’s company pension is causing the number of older couples getting a “vintage year divorce” to rise.
When I was an English teacher, I taught a wide range of students, including a fair number of housewives, and I remember being surprised by the venom some of the women were capable of spitting when discussing their husbands. I didn’t understand at the time that at least some of this husband-bashing was part of a Japanese social custom you might call “out-humbling each other,” as women try to show that they have the most worthless, lazy husband in the room. (Japanese mothers and grandmothers will do the same thing when discussing their own children with others, having competitions to see whose kids were the most baka, and I’ve had to expressly forbid this kind of talk in my own home.)
The divorce rate in Japan is still comparatively low — currently around 2.2 per 1000 people per year, compared with 4 in the U.S. and 2.6 in the U.K. — but finding someone who is batsu-ichi (lit. “one strike out”) is a lot more common than it has been in the past. Coupled with the trend of women either marrying much later or not at all, it Japan has some tough issues to face as the 21st century progresses.
Check out this surreal story over at Danwei about a Chinese writer who visited North Korea, returned to China, and published a book about what he saw there, only to have the book banned from bookstores and wiped from the Web after the NORKS complained to the CHICOMS.
The first “trouble” it ran into was when a retired Chinese Foreign Ministry official called up the Foreign Ministry to report that The Real DPRK had “problems.” This individual had not read the book and did not go online; he had heard the audio version on Beijing Radio. When the Foreign Ministry received this old cadre’s report, it immediately telephoned Xinhua Lipin Book Co. to request a copy of the book for review. Xinhua Lipin couldn’t ignore this request, so it sent off a copy of The Real DPRK by courier to the Foreign Ministry. The company was quite nervous at the time, but then more than a month passed without the Foreign Ministry making any movements. This indicated that the book had its approval.
The real “trouble” for The Real DPRK began in the first part of July, 2008. The embassy of the DPRK in China sent a letter to the Chinese Foreign Ministry demanding that it halt circulation of The Real DPRK. The Foreign Ministry handed this matter over to GAPP, which issued an order banning the book.
However, “banning a book” is ultimately a process. At first, The Real DPRK was only taken off the shelves of major book stores. On 17 July, the DPRK embassy sent another letter to the Foreign Ministry, under the impression that many places in China were still selling The Real DPRK. So GAPP pressed bookstores across the country to remove book from their shelves.
Regarding the Sept. 2 article “The ‘gaijin’ debate: Arudou responds”: Debito Arudou’s claim that the word “gaijin” is racist not only borders on whining but also smacks of something that could only be brought up by a white person. I’m part Japanese and part black, and I’ll tell you right now that I would rather be called a “gaijin” over “nigger” any day.
Arudou sounds like someone whose whiteness got him special treatment in the United States. He sounds as if he must have been shocked when he went to another country and realized that being white there wasn’t the same as it was in the U.S. All of a sudden, he was in the marginalized category normally reserved for nonwhite minorities.
I have news: “Citizenship” does NOT make one part of the Japanese race, no matter how much one wishes it. In the eyes of the Japanese, Arudou is a gaijin. Japan is not where he is from. Arudou appears to be going through a major identity crisis. To think that one can walk into another country, change citizenship and then expect the whole country to accept one not as a foreigner but as a fellow Japanese is something ripped out of the pages of Western colonialism.
As reported over on Japan News Junkie the video below has been causing quite an uproar on the Japanese Internet.
It features two female Nagasaki University students who perform a dance (and flash a little upskirt) to a tune from the erotic game TimeLeap in front of the Atomic Dome in Hiroshima
Some are saying it it is insulting to the souls of the people who died in the A-bombing of the city. Others are saying it is no big deal.
According to the statement, Pyongyang has not only decided to suspend the disablement of its nuclear facilities, but is even “considering a step” to restore the facilities to working order.
The U.S. Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) has announced a new policy that will require its golfers to learn and speak English for face suspension of their membership.
“Why now? Athletes now have more responsibilities and we want to help their professional development,” deputy commissioner Libba Galloway told The Associated Press. “There are more fans, more media and more sponsors. We want to help our athletes as best we can succeed off the golf course as well as on it.”
Players were told by LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens that by the end of 2009, all players who have been on the tour for two years must pass an oral evaluation of their English skills or face a membership suspension. A written explanation of the policy was not given to players, according to the report.
Though the new rule applies to all players regardless of national origin, Korean players on the LPGA feel as if the new rule is aimed squarely at them.
“The LPGA could come out and say they only want 10 Koreans, but they’re not,” [said Angela Park, a Korean-American who was born in Brazil], according to Golfweek. “A lot of Korean players think they are being targeted, but it’s just because there are so many of them.”
British bank HSBC has been accused of the modern mortal sin of (Gasp!!)”cultural insensitivity” for an ad campaign that uses the image of a sumo wrestler in posters like the one shown below.
A spokesman for the Japan Society, said: ‘My colleagues don’t like this advertisement, and you can understand how some Japanese people in the UK would find this ad offensive.’
The head of the British Sumo Federation, said: ‘It looks terrible and it is insensitive to have made him up to look Japanese. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to get someone over from Japan who could adopt the proper athletic pose. I turn the page quite quickly when I see it. The whole thing is bloody awful. I’d like them to drop the advert. For a company that size, I would have thought they could use a little more judgment. They’ve shot themselves in the foot.’
The director of the Anglo-Japanese Society of Wessex, said the advertisement ‘insulted the honour of a nation, ‘ and: ‘The fact that the picture depicts a sumo wrestler who is not actually a sumo wrestler but has been made up to look like one would be considered a high insult to the Japanese community. It is culturally insensitive.’
Mrs: JP says: “I don’t see anything wrong with it. If people are so small that they get upset over something like this, we’ll never make any progress in dealing with the larger problems of the world.” (She also made a remark about the people who complain about such things having size problems in certain parts of their anatomy, but we won’t go into that here.)
Click here to read a first-hand account of a blogger who was on hand during some of the demonstrations currently going on in South Korea against the importation of U.S. beef. Fascinating stuff.
It even contains a video by a young gaijin woman who apologizes (in Japanese) for an earlier video in which she accused Japanese of racism towards foreigners, based on what she read on Debito’s sight.
Debito has a lot of misinformation on his site, especially regarding the extent of racism and manifestations of racism in Japan. The girl in the youtube below is an American living in Japan, and is an English teacher studying Japanese in her spare time. She been posting video blogs on youtube for sometime, and thanks to the fact that she is a white girl that is trying to speak Japanese, she gathered a Japanese following.
At some point she came across Debito’s site and decided to give a speech on youtube about human rights and Japanese racism towards foreigners in Japan. In her summary of the video, she included a link from Debito.org. The selection of topics are all from Debito’s site so it is obvious that she got her “opinions” from there.
Koreans will not be seeing any Japanese condoms as they slip into the tube each morning now that Seoul Metro has decided to pull prophylactic posters for Okamoto condoms from its subway carriages.
The ads, 54 by 39 centimeters, were placed next to the train doors - one of the most eye-catching spots. They did not have a picture related to a condom, but had phrases such as “No. 1 in Japan.”
The subway operator, however, removed all the ads Tuesday even though the contract had not run out, saying they may be against “public sentiment.”
“Apart from the inappropriateness of condom ads inside subway cars, we thought it could run counter to public sentiment following the eruption of a fresh dispute over Dokdo,” a Seoul Metro official said.
She said the breach of contract and possible indemnity is a matter between Okamoto and the subway operator’s subcontractor in charge of ad management.
Just when Prime Minister Fukuda was thinking he might have been doing a good job avoiding the sorts of frequent rows with neighbouring South Korea that marked the terms of his predecessors, another furore kicked off this weekend, culminating in Seoul announcing that they were recalling their Japanese envoy.
Yes it’s the continued dispute of the tiny Liancourt rocks, which lie… between the two countries. (Phew, almost said “in the Sea of Japan”. That was close.)
This time the row centres on a manual for junior high school geography teachers which urges the same consideration of the Liancourt rocks (known as Takeshima to the Japanese, and Dokdo to Koreans) as of the northern Kuril islands, which themselves are the subject of an unresolved territorial dispute with Russia. The problem is that later in the manual, it is explicitly stated that “the Northern Territories are an integral part of Japanese territory.”
Cue the flag-eaters in 3, 2, 1…
South Korean President Lee Myung Bak was said to be “deeply disappointed”, while the foreign Ministry announced that Ambassador to Japan, Kwon Chul-hyun, would be recalled in protest, and they’d be summoning Japan’s ambassador to Seoul, Toshinori Shigeie, for a good telling off.
(Next paragraph contains Perspective and Proportion - avoid if allergic)
The passage at the centre of the row appears in only one (of 14) approved Junior high text, and as the Asahi article notes, “only four of 14 junior high textbooks in geography and civics” make any mention of the rocks at all.
It is their popularity with some Western readers that has especially incensed Japanese bloggers. Many feel their country’s reputation has been “debauched” around the world. “Foreigners who don’t know the truth will believe these stories are true,” wrote one. Another railed: “Ryann Connell is a degenerate scatologist - a typical Australian.” And a third wondered: “Why doesn’t someone drop a hydrogen atom bomb on Australia?”
In an interview with the Herald late last year Connell admitted his transcriptions might have contributed in part to a lazy notion that if Japanese are not totally inhibited by their strict social codes, they are hopelessly debased by their bizarre fetishes.
“It does concern me that we resort to these stereotypes all the time,” he said. “Downtrodden salarymen, slutty schoolgirls, crazy housewives, corrupt old bosses and so on. And there have been times when I picked stories of questionable accuracy to write up. But by and large I’m presenting to the English-speaking world things that the Japanese are writing about themselves.”
JAPUNDIT has become quite the talk of the Japanese Internet, which has been boiling over with anger over the now-defunct Mainichi Wai Wai.
It seems that someone has picked up on this JAPUNDIT post that quotes from a Wai Wai column we found particularly amusing because it was so incredibly outlandish. Of course, we intentionally inserted the Wai Wai name into the report as a signal to readers that the information contained in it was at the least sensationalized and the most totally made up.
Most of the comments I have seen seem to take issue with the Mainichi for allowing such things to be published under their name in English. Though Wai Wai sourced much, if not all, of its material from Japanese language weekly magazines, most of the ire seems directed against the fact that it was presented in English for the world to see. I did not see much talk of anyone taking issue with the weekly magazines.
Some are saying that Mainichi should be prosecuted for promoting underage sex.
One comment said that since such information is printed in the newspaper, everyone will believe it.
One girl wrote about how, when she read this report while riding the bus, she burst into tears, and ended up crying herself to sleep that night out of shame.
Another young lady declared that she hated the way “Europeans and Americans” were talking about this story, and then went on to complain that the JAPUNDIT slogan (Japan - A whole lot more than raw fish) made her mad because it is insulting to Japan!?!
As a group, the Japanese are fortunate enough to enjoy extremely long lifespans, with the current average being 78.5 years for men and 85.5 years for women. There are many reasons for this longevity, including a healthier diet, an extremely safe society, and a tendency to build lifelong relationships that provide important support in later years. (My mother-in-law is still close friends with women she went to elementary school with six decades ago, something that’s unthinkable to me.)
Another reason Japanese live a long time is the health care system here, in which private institutions provide health services according to highly structured price schedules imposed by the National Health Insurance System.
Currently Japan is going through “Health Insurance Hell” as various changes that kicked in April 1st continue to cause mass confusion.
For starters, Japan used to offer free healthcare to everyone over the age of 75, but this has changed, and under the new system, some elderly users must pay a monthly premium. It’s not clear which groups this applies to, however, and it’s feared that the new system, which makes people pay more for health insurance the more often they use medical services, will keep sick people from going to the hospital.
In addition, the government saw fit to change the Health Insurance Card from a large booklet to a paper-thin card, which is easily lost or thrown away by elderly Japanese.
Word is that the BBC has purchased the rights to broadcast the Japanese TV show Tunnels no Minasan no Okage Deshita, which starts the Tunnels comedy duo of Kinashi Noritake and Ishibashi Takaaki.
The BBC is understood to have produced 11 episodes of the show. But, like other foreign media buyers who have dabbled in Japanese television concepts, it has not bought the rights to everything on the Tunnelsshow. Japanese television remains a preserve of sexism, ageism, exploitation and bullying that continue to astonish most foreigners exposed to it. “Major foreign TV broadcasters rarely use programmes produced in Japan in their entirety,” a Fuji TV official admits.
The BBC’s deal comes at a time when even long-term enthusiasts of Japanese television agree that standards are daily plumbing new depths. “Just when you think Japanese television is not going to go any sicker or lower,” says W. M. Penn, a television critic for the Yomiuri newspaper, “it goes one sicker and lower.”
But after years of insularity and pure domestic focus, Fuji Television is starting to realise the international commercial value that its vast menu of lowbrow entertainment now commands. In 2004 it sold a cooking contest idea to the US that became marketed as the Iron Chef.
The BBC was forced on to the defensive last year to deny reports that it planned to dumb down its shows after discovering that lower-income families were not tuning in. BBC research allegedly showed that high earners were more likely to watch its channels, while its staff felt that programmes such as Panorama were “too serious”.
One would think that China’s recent agreement with Japan to jointly develop gas fields in the East China Sea, which defuses a longstanding territorial dispute would be cause for happiness in both countries. But the history between the two nations being what it is has caused some Chinese to condemn the deal as surrendering national sovereignty to hated enemy.
Some messages left on message boards, which are normally tightly monitored and censored by the security services, have accused the authorities of “selling out” to Japan while others described those who made the deal as “traitors.”
A small demonstration against the agreement and Japan’s claims to disputed islands in the East China Sea was also held outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday by Chinese nationalists.
Demonstrations against government policy are almost unheard of in China. To take place, the demonstration would have to have been approved by the security services.
In question is Japanese involvement in the Chunxaio (Shirakaba) gas field, which is west of the line up to which Japan claims as its territorial waters. Some Japanese media is reporting that China has agreed to allow Japan develop the Chunxiao field, but the Chinese government is claiming that Japanese involvement will be restricted to investment only.
Four of Japan’s top robot startups have decided to pool their efforts in order to meet the threat of rival South Korea overcoming Japan’s lead int he race to commercialize robot technology.
Japan, which has long led the world in robo-technology, has created machines that can clean, dance, greet, feed, monitor, relax and befriend. But for all the buzz, so-called “intelligent service robots” have been slow to penetrate the average home, which is still more likely to shell out money for the latest flat screen TV than a pricey humanoid.
The companies — Tokyo’s ZMP Inc., Nagoya’s Business Design Laboratory Co., Osaka’s Vstone Co. and Fukuoka’s Tmsuk — say that new South Korean robot legislation passed earlier this year compelled them to form the “Association for market creation of the future generation robots” to cooperate in research, development and marketing.
Apparently the South Korean government is committed to having a robot in every house by 2020, and the country’s National Assembly has passed legislation to promote development and marketing through financial support.
After the dreadful knife attack in Akihabara last week, it was discovered that the killer had announced his intent on an internet message board, but his threat was not taken seriously.
Well anything in that vein is being taken very seriously now. On Monday, police made two unconnected arrests of idiots posting online death threats.
Yo Suzuki, 29, of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, was arrested after posting his intent to “to unleash an attack to ‘kill 100 people’ on the streets of Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district” on the 2-Channel bulletin board.
“I saw the TV coverage of the case in Akihabara and thought I’d create a bit of a stir,” Suzuki told the police, referring to the June 8 case where a random killer’s rampage on the Akihabara district of Tokyo claimed seven lives.
“I did it half as a joke,” he said.
Meanwhile in Fukuoka, a 17-year-old girl was arrested after using the same message board as Akihabara killer Tomohiro Kato, to threaten -
I intend to carry out a massacre at a station in Kyushu which will go down in history. I’m the same as Kato. I feel sympathy for him. I will be executed because I will kill more people than he did.
She too later claimed, “I was just joking. I didn’t imagine it would turn into such a big deal.” Well you got that wrong then didn’t you.
This time the row centres on a manual for junior high school geography teachers which urges the same consideration of the Liancourt rocks (known as Takeshima to the Japanese, and Dokdo to Koreans) as of the northern Kuril islands, which themselves are the subject of an unresolved territorial dispute with Russia. The problem is that later in the manual, it is explicitly stated that “the Northern Territories are an integral part of Japanese territory.” 
