菅直人

Japan's new Prime minister, Naoto Kan, came to office after the resignation of his predecessor Yukio Hatoyama early last month, becoming Japan's fifth premier in only four years.

A native of Ube in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Kan studied physics at Tokyo Institute of Technology and has a background in patent law and as a grass-roots activist.


Kan served as Health Minister in a coalition government headed by the LDP in 1996 and is popular for his role in admitting the Japanese government's responsibility for the spread of imported HIV-tainted blood among hemophiliacs in the 1980s.

Kan has led the DPJ before when he stood unsuccessfully against the LDP's Junichiro Koizumi in the 2003 general election, but stepped down in the wake of the unpaid pension contributions scandal sweeping through Japan's lawmakers at the time. Kan is seen as an opponent of Ichiro Ozawa's influence within the DPJ.


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今週の日本

An All-Japanese Mash Up

New York Times

一期一会—再见了，日本队

Caijing

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Zentai, la bonne combine

Liberation

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Last week's Japan news

Japan Statistics

Cases of School Bullying, by year:

1985: 155,000
1993: 22,000
1994: 56,000
2006: 125,000
2008: 85,000

Source: Japan Ministry of Education

Visitors to Japan, 2009:

South Koreans: 1,835,000
Chinese: 1,230,000
Taiwanese: 1,006,700
Americans: 729,000
Hong Kongers: 422,000

Source: Asahi Shinbun

Doctors per 1,000 people

Greece: 5.4
Belgium: 4
Italy: 3.7
France: 3.4
OECD Average: 3.1
UK: 2.5

Japan: 2.1
South Korea: 1.7


Source: OECD

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台東区役所 外人登録

I had to go to the Taito Ward Office this morning to change my gaikokujin torokusho (alien registration card). It was not very pleasant. First I had to pay 600 yen in the automatic photo booth they have there for the requisite photos - money I begrudge for a card I dislike. Then the woman who first attended to me got all hot and bothered when I didn't immediately and succinctly state my business but showed her instead the notice I'd received from the ward office.

"Is this for a change of information on the card?," she asked. I didn't know. I'd simply got a notice asking me to come down and get a new one. It didn't say why.

She exasperatedly motioned for a middle-aged man to attend to me. And, I mean, how busy are these people? It's 8.30 in the morning, there are only about 4 other Taito ward residents along the counter that runs the length of the vast hall that forms the ground floor, while there's a positive army of office staff behind the partition, sitting on their asses at their desks, doing god knows what with Taito ward's tax money.

The middle aged man came up to me - blustery, brusque, and cursed with the profoundly annoying habit of repeating everything he said in Japanese in loud, breathless, urgent, broken English, at least two of three times over in rapid fire succession, like an old-school teacher rousing a slowpoke pupil.

In the midst of all his rhetorical "giddy-up" exhorting, he had failed to check with me what information on the old card was still relevant, and we ended up going back to square one and refilling out the form. “Chekku, chekku, chekku!” he rattled out in bad breath at me the second time.

In spite of my having maintained our stressful "conversation" in close-to-perfect Japanese the whole way through, and written my occupation, address, etc. in kanji, I was still one of the "new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child" who had to be hastened and incited and pidgin-Englished into doing what I had to do. And his attitude had so browned me off, that that's almost how it ended up being: ill-humored gaijin having to be spurred along by industrious, "gambaru"-ing bureaucrat.

I have to go back in two weeks to pick up my card that proves I’m tagged and tolerated. I will go in my best halo this time, I promise.

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狭山事件

In early May, 1963, 16-year-old Yoshie Nakata never returned from her school near Sayama, Saitama Prefecture. The night she went missing a ransom note was delivered to her house.

Her sister delivered the 200,000 yen (about $550 at the time) demanded to the specified location, with police nearby. A man waiting at the spot spoke to her, and then fled. The police never found him.

Three days later, the girl's body was found at a nearby farm. She had been raped before being murdered.

In a panic, the police went into a nearby Buraku community - Japan's outcaste population - in late May and arrested 24-year-old Kazuo Ishikawa on an unrelated charge. Ishikawa, who was illiterate and a Burakumin, denied those and, later, the murder charges.

However, on June 20 after a month in custody he broke and admitted his guilt.

The police had lied to him, telling him that if he confessed he would be released after several years. Moreover, he never had access to a lawyer during his month-long interrogation.

He was instead convicted and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. He remains in prison to this day, still fighting for a retrial.

His cause has been taken up Dowa (Buraku) groups nationwide. The sign above is outside a public housing project in Demachiyanagi, Kyoto, which lies in a dowa community.

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ガンダム・カフェ


The Japanese sci-fi animation, Mobile Suit Gundam, with its beginnings in the late 1970s is still alive (or at least still mobile) and kicking (?) in Japan after all these years.

There are Gundam toys, movies, comic books and games. There are also gundam cafes. However, in April, the very first official Gundam cafe opened, in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district.

The cafe's sleek white armor-paneled facade gives way to an interior that is equally shiny and spaceship. The staff wear cute 1970s uniforms, there's lots of pink and icy blue neon, or "laser," there are Gundam toys for sale, of course there is food for sale, and there is even a special blend of coffee for sale, known as Jaburo Blend: a "whole bean coffee" that is also a "city roast."

Jaburo Blend comes with its own barely intelligible Gundam legend, about some massive Earth Federation Army being located in a hidden South American location, whereupon the till then secret Jaburo Blend also become known to earthlings in general, and can now be purchased by the curious at the Gundam Cafe, Akihabara.

When it comes to edible equivalents, there is the "1/144 Gunpla Yaki," a bean paste- or custard-filled confectionery in the shape of a Gundam mobile suit.

In the evening, Gundam Cafe becomes a bar.

1-1 Kandahanaoka-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Hours: 10am - 11pm. Closed Sundays.

Gundam Cafe website

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竹富島

Taketomi Island ("Prosperous Bamboo") in the Yaeyama chain of islands in Okinawa attempts to preserve Ryukyu (Okinawan) culture. The 7km long by 2km wide island with a population of 300, one third of whom is over 70, has no need for convenience stores.


The inhabitants still sweep the streets outside their own homes keeping the beautiful island in pristine condition, despite the daily influx of hundreds of day-trippers from the mainland via nearby Ishigaki.

The main village of Taketomi has beautiful, walled bungalow-style homes with terracotta-tiled roofs, topped with the ubiquitous shisa. The rocky walls surrounding the houses are alive with colorful bougainvillea and hibiscus plants.



Taketomi-jima is known for its beautiful beaches, aquamarine sea, butterflies and the local minsa, an indigo fabric used in kimono obi (belts).



© Johannes Schönherr & JapanVisitor.com


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柔道

Judo ("the way of gentleness") is a relatively new Japanese martial art, dating only from the Meiji Period. The sport was developed in 1882 by Dr Kano Jigoro (1860–1938), a weakling as a child who took up jujutsu training to strengthen himself during his studies at Tokyo University.



Kano developed and systemized judo as a martial art from the older jujutsu techniques, which had been formulated in a number of "schools" under various masters in the Edo Period (1603-1868) as a means of unarmed combat training for samurai warriors.

This systemization and rationalization of a previous feudal form was part of the general modernizing underway in Japanese society during the early Meiji Period, as people looked to transform samurai ethics into spiritual disciplines and practical self-help techniques more in tune with the prevailing Victorian zeitgeist of the day.


In 1882 Kano founded the Kodokan (at Eishoji, a Buddhist temple in Kamakura) to teach judo to others and as his new style increased in popularity, it evenually displaced jujutsu in Japan.

Judo is based on three major principles: throwing (nage waza), groundwork (katame waza) and striking (atemi waza).

Judo spread quickly overseas as Kano and his students actively promoted the sport in the USA and Europe. Gunji Koizumi (1885-1965) the "Father of British Judo" settled in London and founded the Budokwai. Mikonosuke Kawaishi (1899-1969) taught with Koizumi in England before moving on to Paris to set up a judo school.

In the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, judo became an Olympic sport for men and for women at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

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