Archive for May, 2007

Doraemon: The Final Chapter

It’s not uncommon for Japan’s amateur manga artists to create works of fan fiction starring their favorite characters from mainstream comics. The owners of copyrights usually look the other way in such cases, even allowing fan fiction comics to be sold on a limited scale at markets and in small comic stores. However, a recent news story reveals that authors of such work should be careful not to sell too many copies:

Tajima T. Yasue, the man who created an unauthorized last installment of “Doraemon,” the popular manga that features a blue cat robot and its friend, Nobita, has admitted to his misdeed and paid a fee to the publisher and the original author’s production company.

In the final story, Nobita, the boy protagonist, grows up to become a top robot engineer 35 years later and revives “Doraemon,” who has become frozen in place because his batteries have run down.

The 37-year-old former manga artist who penned the 20-page booklet in 2005, titled “Doraemon: Saishuwa” (Doraemon: The last installment), apologized to Shogakukan Inc., which published the original manga series, and also to author Fujiko F. Fujio’s production company, according to Shogakukan officials. Fujiko, creator of “Doraemon,” died in 1996.

The production of altered manga is common among fans. But more than 13,000 copies of the “Doraemon” booklet have been sold, earning a tidy sum for the man who no longer makes his living drawing cartoons.

The publisher and the production company had warned him that his unauthorized work violated their copyright to the “Doraemon” comic.

“It’s fine that fans make altered versions of manga for fun among themselves,” said Zensho Ito, president of Fujiko-pro, Fujiko’s cartoon production company in Tokyo. “But the booklet in question went beyond the limits.”

As the TV news report shows, copies of the unauthorized comic book are now selling for huge sums on auction sites. Apparently quite a few people want to own one of these famous bootlegs…

Former Taiwanese President To Visit Yasukuni Shrine

Looks like the Yasukuni Shrine is back in the news:

Former president Lee Teng-hui yesterday said he would like to visit the Yasukuni shrine, a controversial memorial to war dead where his elder brother is enshrined.

Lee’s elder brother served in the Japanese navy and died while on duty in February 1945 in the Philippines.

“I have not yet decided on the timing, but since I am here, I think that I should go see my brother,” Lee told reporters on his arrival at Narita airport near Tokyo.

“I will meet my brother for the first time in 60 years,” Lee said.

[...]

Speaking to Japanese reporters on the flight from Taipei, the 84-year-old former leader said he wanted to pray at the Yasukuni shrine because he did not know how much longer he would live.

The Yasukuni shrine honors 2.5 million war dead, including colonial subjects who fought for Japan. Visits to the shrine by Japanese leaders have long been a subject of dispute with China and South Korea which view the shrine as a symbol of Japan’s militarist past. Most controversially, the Shinto shrine lists the names of 14 top war criminals from World War II.

Lee Teng-hui is quite open in his pro-Japanese feelings. Not only is he nostalgic about his days as a student in Japanese-controlled Taiwan. He’s also a big fan of the manga Sakigake!! Otokojuku, going so far as to cosplay as Edajima Heihachi, the principal of the school in the series:

According to Wikipedia, his views have led him to be called “traitor to the Chinese race” by some groups in Taiwan. Such groups probably won’t be happy about his visit to pay respects to his brother’s soul either…

Update: Here is a video of the former president talking to the press at Narita Airport:

Game Shows Now No. 1 Cause of Death in Japan

Game Shows are now the No. 1 cause of death in Japan, according to the Onion Radio News [listen]. The Onion, as you most likely know by now, is a fine bastion of accurate, up to the date information about events all over the globe. However, the Japan Today news service has been kind of iffy in many ways. After reading this article by Blue Lotus, where she pwned them, I made the decision to stop reading them for good. I’ll get my news from the Onion, thanks.

Edit: link fixed.

Japan Probe Is Moving!

Update: The new server is live: Enjoy!

If you’ve tried visiting this site in the last few days, you’ll notice that it has either been very slow, or has been down for you. Japan Probe’s current shared host cannot handle over 2000 visitors an hour, so we will be moving to a new server. Effectively immediately, commenting will be turned off on this host. When the site is up and running on its new host I will edit this post to reflect the change and re-enable commenting. Depending on your location in the world, it could take several hours to several days for your internet service provider to recognize the change in our host, so please be patient! While you’re waiting, you can enjoy this video of Miss Universe 2007 Riyo Mori’s swimsuit competition appearance:

Note: If you’re looking to get into blogging and want a cheap host with lots of storage space, I fully recommend Dreamhost, the hosting company Japan Probe has used up until now. It’s not perfect, but it worked out just fine for our first year of blogging, in which had less than 20,000 daily visitors. [If you enter promo code: JAPANPROBE while signing up, you'll get a free domain registration and $40 off your first year of hosting on their L1 plan.]

Japan News for May 31, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• Hakuho officially became the 69th yokozuna Wednesday after the directors of the Japan Sumo Association voted unanimously to promote the winner of the last two Emperor’s Cups. [Link]
• Nineteen out of Japan’s 47 prefectures will likely experience at least a 20 percent drop in population in 2035 as the birthrate plunges and the proportion of elderly grows, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said in a report released Tuesday. [Link]
• Japan’s Farm Minister wrote a suicide note wishing “banzai,” or long life, to his country and Shinzo Abe’s government before hanging himself earlier this week. [Link]
• Legislator Muneo Suzuki has said on his homepage that Cabinet member Toshikatsu Matsuoka, who hanged himself on Monday, had revealed he had been instructed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Diet Affairs Committee to keep silent about his money scandal. [Link]
• The national peace hall in Nagasaki said Tuesday it will hold this year’s antinuclear exhibition at the Gernika Peace Museum Foundation in Guernica, Spain, from June 27 to Sept. 9. [Link]
• A 50-billion-yen ($411-million) project started Wednesday to give the red-brick building of JR Tokyo Station the appearance it had before the devastation of World War II. [Link]
• The mass-circulation Asahi Shimbun national daily failed to declare approximately 833 million yen as taxable income over a three-year period up to March 2005, company officials said Wednesday. [Link]
• The Osaka District Court has ordered a hospital to pay some 76 million yen in compensation to the parents of a doctor who committed suicide in 2004, ruling it had neglected to allow her sufficient time off. [Link]
• In a move that could finally bring relief to sufferers of respiratory diseases brought on by air pollution in Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday said the central government would contribute 6 billion yen to a compensation fund. [Link]
• A police officer on an anti-corruption unit was among six people arrested Tuesday in a bid-rigging investigation over a garbage incineration plant project ordered by Hirakata city. [Link]
• The president and two executives of a Yokohama-based clothing company were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of importing and storing about 50,000 fake Burberry brand items with the intent to sell them. [Link]
• Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. will exchange parts of up to 3 million microwave ovens, refrigerators and tumble dryers for free as they may emit smoke and catch fire, the Panasonic maker said on Wednesday. [Link]
• Three employees of a Japan Airlines Corp subsidiary are suspected of stealing digital cameras and other items left aboard planes by passengers, aviation industry sources said Wednesday. [Link]
• A golden bathtub worth about 120 million yen has been stolen from a hotel in Chiba Prefecture. [Link]
• A 37-year-old Japanese man who created a “final episode” manga for the robot cat comic character Doraemon because its creator had died has apologized and handed over some of the earnings to the copyright owners. [Link]

Afternoon Update:

• Japan has been ranked as the world’s fifth most peaceful nation in a report launched Wednesday by international businessman Steve Killelea in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit. [Link]
• A special adviser to Japan’s prime minister is visiting Washington to meet with U.S. officials about the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea. [Link]
• Sixteen people were hurt, two of them seriously, when a KLM passenger jet was hit by turbulence soon after taking off from Japan on Thursday, forcing it to turn around. [Link]
• Japan said Wednesday that the International Whaling Commission should allow four of its coastal communities to hunt minke whales because the tradition is so old that it qualifies as subsistence hunting. [Link]
• Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko enjoyed dinner with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth Tuesday night to mark the end of their three-day visit to the U.K. [Link]
• A Japanese government panel recommended curtailing an agency at the center of a scandal that has roiled Prime Minster Shinzo Abe’s administration and led to two suicides this week. [Link]
• Premium revenues for the nation’s major life insurers dropped in business 2006, reflecting fallout from revelations of an industrywide failure to properly pay out benefits, according to their earnings reports released Wednesday. [Link]
• Japan Sumo Association lawyer Keiji Isaji on Wednesday questioned stable elder Miyagino for the second time over an article in a weekly tabloid magazine that claimed he had played the role of mediator in fixing matches. [Link]
• Supermarket chain Seiyu Ltd said Wednesday it would resume selling U.S. beef at 158 outlets Friday, up from 52 at present, to meet strong demand from consumers. [Link]
• Japanese gamers will soon be getting two new DS Lite color variations to choose from. “Metallic Rose” and “Gloss Silver” will be the order of the day come June 23rd when they hit retail. [Link]
• Tokyo citizens will begin to experience service robots in public starting this December with JR East (the rail company) and their service robot called “Ai”. [Link]

Gundam: Live In Concert!

A classic video of a performance from the mobile suits of the original Mobile Suit Gundam:

Poor Guntank. They needed to push him off the stage because he couldn’t leave under his own power…