Archive for April, 2009

Brazilian Jero look-a-like

A Brazilian dude sings American enka singer Jero‘s Umiyuki:

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Coming soon: Japan national ‘anime shrine’

The Japanese government is going to build a national ‘anime shrine,’ reports the Asahi:

The Agency for Cultural Affairs plans to spend 11.7 billion yen to build a “shrine” dedicated to anime, manga, videogames and other contemporary Japanese art.

As the first government-built facility of its kind, the “national comprehensive center for media art” in Tokyo will serve as a base for promoting the popular culture.

From the information currently available about the plan, it sounds like it will be a gigantic manga cafe for foreign tourists:

The planned new center will collect and preserve works and information on anime, manga, games and other items. Visitors will be able to watch anime, read manga and play videogames there.

The agency plans to make the center a venue for showcasing cutting-age Japanese culture to the world and cater to foreigners with an interest in Japanese pop culture.

In a related story, Prime Minister Aso has vowed to create 500,000 new jobs by 2020 through the promotion of the anime/manga industry.

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Lucky Cider Commercial

A commercial for Lucky Cider featuring a girl singing in something resembling English:

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Japanese couple has bloody fight on China Eastern Airlines plane

Record China (Japanese) reports that the take off of China Eastern Airlines flight 537 from Shanghai to Haneda was delayed for an hour because a Japanese couple was fighting in the cabin.

Just as the plane was making preparations for take off, a Japanese man and his wife started yelling at each other, and the argument quickly became violent. At one point the wife apparently hit her husband in the face with a hard object, drawing blood. Crew members tried to stop the fight, but the wife would not promise to stop hitting her husband.

The captain of the airplane called the police, and the couple was separated. The man was taken off the plane, while the wife and their son were allowed to stay on the flight and return to Japan.

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Lego model of the battleship Yamato took six years to build

It’s finished! And now a YouTube video (and also on NicoNico video):

[via Watashi to Tokyo]

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South Korea protests about new Japanese history textbook

The AFP reports that Seoul is angry about a new history textbook made under the guidance of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and approved by the Japanese government:

“The government strongly protests that the Japanese government Thursday approved the history textbook which justifies and beautifies past wrongdoings based on false historical perception,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The government calls for a fundamental correction to this.”

The textbook published by a right-wing group will be available to middle schools from next year until 2011. Seoul officials say it glosses over Japan’s invasions of Korea and other Asian states before and during World War II.

Like many articles in the international press about protests over Japanese textbooks, it contains no actual quotations from the controversial books.

Mainichi also has an article up about the new textbooks, noting that the government forced the publishers to make several hundred corrections before it received final approval. It actually includes specific passages that were revised, giving us some idea of how the final textbook probably turned out:

The social studies textbook, published by Jiyusha, originally carried a passage on war history stating, “In areas that were invaded, Japanese troops … were also unable to fully avert unjust killings and abuse toward unarmed civilians and soldiers of enemy countries who became prisoners of war.” This passage was judged to be “difficult to understand,” and the wording was subsequently changed to “… carried out unjust killings and abuse, leaving behind great horrors.”

In another passage on the period after Korea’s opening, the phrase that Japan “assisted in modernization” was changed to “assisted in military system reform” on the basis that the original wording could be misinterpreted. Another section on Japan’s advance south was also changed over fears that it could be taken to mean that Japan contributed to independence of countries in Asia.

Sounds like the government already made fundamental corrections.

Most of the other history textbooks in use at Japanese junior high schools are even more direct in mentioning the not-so-pretty aspects of Imperial Japan and the war. (The last time a controversial textbook from the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform was approved by the Japanese government, only 0.4% of Japanese schools actually used the book in question. )

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