Archive for December, 2009

Big Brother vs. Chikan on the Saikyo line

Years of anti-chikan campaigns and women only train cars have failed to put a stop to the Saikyo line’s molestation problem, so it now looks like they will turn to surveillance cameras:

A set of high-definition security cameras will be installed in the No. 1 cars of Saikyo Line trains, such as in the ceiling and the overhead rack, on a trial basis by the end of this year at the earliest, they said. Most groping cases have been on the No. 1 cars of trains.

JR East and police say they hope the security cameras will provide “evidence” and serve as “deterrence” against molestation. But critics questioned the effectiveness of the cameras, voiced concerns about privacy and said they may be used for other criminal investigations.

The decision to install the cameras was made after police in Tokyo and neighboring prefectures asked metropolitan railway operators for them in late October, as there are no signs of a fall in molestation cases on trains.

According to the Metropolitan Police Department, the number of groping cases on trains handled by the police total around 1,500 a year. In the first half of 2009, the number of such cases came to 708, of which 75, or about 10 percent, occurred on the Saikyo Line.

In particular, gropers target the No. 1 cars — at the end of the train despite the number — of Tokyo-bound Saikyo Line trains as they are packed full during rush-hour because they are nearest to the stairs at many stations.

Even in the video clip included in the NTV news report embedded in this report, it is difficult to determine who is groping who inside a very packed train car. If any of you out there decide to ride in the first car of a Saikyo line train, I suggest you keep both of your hands within clear view of the cameras…

—

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Japanese women want scarred, disease-riddled, brutal men of history?

As you may have seen from previous posts on this blog, the popularity of history-related products and tours has been rising in Japan lately due to female fans of period dramas and samurai video games. Some in the Japanese media have portrayed the trend as a response to the ever-lessening manliness of Japanese men.

In a recent article for the Times, Richard Lloyd Parry interprets this trend as a sign that “Japanese ladies long for date with brutal men of history“:

Masamune Date is not an obvious heart-throb for today’s young Japanese women. He has an aristocratic lineage and love of the arts — but he is also a one-eyed ruthless killer. He lost an eye to smallpox and in his relentless pursuit of power is said to have slaughtered his own brother, as well as Christian missionaries, Korean peasants and countless of his compatriots.

The biggest turn-off might have been that Lord Date has been dead for 373 years, having flourished during the Azuchi-Momoyama Period.

In fact, he enjoys a celebrity in today’s Japan that would be the envy of many actors or rock stars. Books, television dramas, films, animations, comics and video games examine his life — and he is only one of several celebrity medieval samurai in the limelight. Japan is in the throes of a feudal warlord boom whose heroes are not smooth-cheeked young men but scarred, disease-riddled, brutal warriors whose kind died out centuries ago.

While I generally like his articles and appreciate his occasional readership of this blog, I cannot agree in the slightest with the message he is sending in both the article’s headline and the bolded sentence above.

It would seem that Parry has overlooked one of the very obvious causes of this trend, something that few Japanese language media reports have ignored. This is a boom fueled by TV dramas and video games, none of which depict the samurai in question as scarred, disease-riddled or brutal.

Date Masamune’s new female fanbase has been linked to the extremely popular Sengoku Basara video games, in which he looks like this:

When young women declare their love for Date Masamune, most are fantasizing about a smooth-cheeked young man from a fantasy video game. It may be amusing to point out that the real Date Masamune was a brutal man, but it is just plain silly not to mention that this boom has little or nothing to do with who he really was and what he really looked like.

[hat tip to Ponta]

—

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Fake Disneyland tickets

Be careful when shopping at discount ticket vendors. It seems that a criminal group has been attempting to sell forged Tokyo Disneyland tickets to such stores:

According to Atago Police Station, a Chinese man attempted to cash in on seven fake Disneyland tickets at a ticket vendor in Tokyo’s Minato Ward at around 2:20 p.m. on Thursday. An employee who detected the forgery reported his actions to police, and the man was arrested on suspicion of attempted fraud.

The bogus tickets were glossier than authentic tickets, according to the shop.

About an hour earlier, another Chinese man brought in 39 fake Disneyland tickets to a ticket shop in the capital’s Chiyoda Ward. He was subsequently arrested on attempted fraud charges.

—

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Namie Amuro + Gundam

One of the most-viewed videos on YouTube Japan today gives a sneak peak at Namie Amuro’s new Gundam-themed music video.

Some info from ANN:

Bestselling Japanese singer Namie Amuro has created an animated music video for her new “Defend Love” single with another Amuro — Amuro Ray, the main character of the Mobile Suit Gundam anime franchise. The “Defend Love” video will ship in Japan on a bundled DVD extra with the new Past < Future album on December 16. Veteran voice actor Tohru Furuya (Sailor Moon, Kimagure Orange Road) is reprising his Amuro Ray role for the video.

Here’s the full music video:

—

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Diplomatic protocol broken to please the Chinese

Forget about President Obama’s bow. This is the kind of story that actually makes the news in Japan:

A bitter conflict between ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) bigwig Ichiro Ozawa and Imperial Household Agency chief Shingo Haketa over the Emperor’s official duties highlights Japan’s failure to clarify relations between the Emperor and politics in the post-war period.

The dispute erupted between Haketa, grand steward for the Imperial Household, and the DPJ-led government over the administration’s request that a meeting be hastily arranged for Tuesday between Emperor Akihito and visiting Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping.

Haketa criticized the Cabinet for breaking a customary rule, under which the Cabinet should request a meeting between the Emperor and a distinguished guest from overseas at least one month in advance. The request was made just short of a month ago.

The exception was apparently made because of pressure from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. Many in both the ruling and opposition parties have criticized the decision, which looks very much like an attempt by the government to use the elderly emperor as a political tool.

“There are many people, even within the Democratic Party of Japan, who regard it as a poor decision,” Senior Vice Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Shu Watanabe said, emphasizing that the meeting should kept to a one-time exception if it cannot be canceled.

Members of the two other parties in the ruling coalition — the Social Democratic Party and the People’s New Party — also spoke out against the hastily arranged meeting.

“It shouldn’t be granted even as an exception,” SDP lawmaker Tomoko Abe said on the same program, while PNP lawmaker Akiko Kamei said she shared the Imperial Household Agency’s concern over political manipulation of the throne.

Nobutaka Machimura, a former chief Cabinet secretary and a member of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, also said when he was asked to arrange a similar meeting by an ambassador he knew, he turned the request down “according to the rules.”

DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa, who recently returned from a visit to China, has denied direct involvement and blasted those who think it was a bad idea to break the rule:

Ozawa dismissed this line of argument, saying it is possible that all national events involving the Emperor that are held with advice and approval from the government “result in the use of (the Emperor) for political purposes.”

“If any bureaucrat (in a division of the Cabinet) wants to say something about Cabinet policies, he or she should do so after offering to resign,” Ozawa said.

If the Emperor is not feeling well, he should skip events that have lesser priority, the former DPJ chief said.

“There are many people, even within the Democratic Party of Japan, who regard it as a poor decision,” Watanabe said, emphasizing that the meeting should kept to a one-time exception if it cannot be canceled.

Members of the two other parties in the ruling coalition — the Social Democratic Party and the People’s New Party — also spoke out against the hastily arranged meeting.

“It shouldn’t be granted even as an exception,” SDP lawmaker Tomoko Abe said on the same program, while PNP lawmaker Akiko Kamei said she shared the Imperial Household Agency’s concern over political manipulation of the throne.

Nobutaka Machimura, a former chief Cabinet secretary and a member of the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party, also said when he was asked to arrange a similar meeting by an ambassador he knew, he turned the request down “according to the rules.”

The Imperial Household Ministry has apparently been quite strict in enforcing the one month rule ever since the Emperor had surgery for prostate cancer in 2004 and it is unlikely that the Chinese government would not have known about the rule.

—

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)

Japanese girls want to marry Chinese?

A highly amusing article from the news organ of the Communist Party of China:

Nowadays, there is a popular saying among Japanese girls that goes “What we want is Chinese food and men, not French lovers or American houses.” This means Japanese girls have lost their interest in French and American men.

In Japan, men from China are becoming more popular with Japanese girls. More than 1,500 Japanese girls married with Chinese men last year, an increase of 30 percent, which is the highest in history.

A representative from Japan’s China information research institute told the reporter that the quick development of China’s economy and Chinese people getting richer are the most important reasons for Japanese girls changing their appetites. Also because Japan has more women than men and Japanese men compared to Chinese men are generally less capable when it comes to being both a considerate family man and a breadwinner.

Today’s Japanese men feel much more inferior compared with men from China because they found what they are lacking is not little.

A quick Google search found some international marriage stats from 2007, which included about 1,487 American husbands and 1,016 Chinese husbands (France appears to have been placed within the “other nationality” category). The population of Chinese living in Japan jumped from 606,000 in 2007 to 656,000 in 2008. During the same period, the population of Americans living in Japan hovered around 52,000.

[hat tip to Joe]

—

• Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
• Dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)