Archive for August, 2010

Japan’s Samurai Actors: A Dying Breed?

Al Jazeera English reports on “Japan’s dying samurai heritage“:

Samurai movies once made Japanese cinema famous worldwide.

In the 1950s, films such as the Seven Samurai by Akiro Kurosawa were extremely popular both in Japan and abroad.

But waning interest is now leaving many of Japan’s silver screen swordsmen out of work.

They probably have a point about the decline of samurai action movies, but it is a pretty huge stretch to claim that Japan’s samurai heritage is “dying out” because choreographed sword-fighting scenes aren’t as popular as they used to be.

Al Jazeera fails to inform viewers about the huge “history boom” taking place in Japan right now, which can be observed in high ratings for N-H-K’s historical TV dramas, sales of samurai-related video games, and increased tourism to castles and other samurai-related attractions.

—

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

Blood Dolphins

Starting this Friday, the Animal Planet network will begin airing “Blood Dolphins,” a TV series that follows around animal rights activist Ric O’Barry as he denounces what he sees as the “murder” and “enslavement” of dolphins. The title of the series is meant to teach us that the “blood trade” in captive dolphins is just as immoral as the trade in conflict diamonds:

The trailer for the series shows O’Barry and his companions doing the kind of things they did in “The Cove.” They harass fishermen and directly seek confrontations that will give them dramatic footage of angry Japanese trying to stop their activism. It looks like the goal of the series is to encourage further protests of the Taiji hunt by showing viewers that “not much has changed” in Japan.

However, it seems that they weren’t able to find enough new drama in Taiji. The show also involves trips to various aquariums so that O’Barry can get up on his moral high horse and tell people who evil it is to keep dolphins captive. One man in the Solomon Islands who had convinced the islanders to stop their traditional dolphin hunts and replace them with an economically beneficial dolphin-catching business is denounced; apparently to the point of tears. Just like in Japan, people whose livelihood depends on supplying dolphins to aquariums feel threatened and respond with anger.

Time Magazine’s Ecocentric and CNN have used the airing of the new TV show as an opportunity to post stories that present a sympathetic view of O’Barry’s cause. At least one reader of the Time website has seen fit to call their author out on his ridiculous post:

What piffle.

The article’s discussion of the ethics of killing animals went from “Westerners eat cows, chicken and pigs by the millions” to “Dolphins are great swimmers and killing them is an affront”.

Pathetic.

“Dolphins are always trying to communicate directly with us” – is that a joke?

These creeps need to get a grip and then get a life.

Please, stop with the anthropomorphism. Leave that nonsense to Hollywood.

Sadly, such voices will be drowned out by the anti-Japanese outrage that will no doubt hit the internet after “Blood Dolphins” airs on Friday night.

—

In a related story, a plan by the “Save Japan Dolphins” group to hold a rally on Taiji on September 1st has been canceled because organizers feared a counter-protest by Japanese nationalists. The mostly-foreign “Save Japan Dolphins” group’s own unreasonable extremism has attracted opposition from unreasonable Japanese extremists. What a surprise.

While we’re on the topic of Japanese dolphin hunting, here are a few great links that anyone interested in this topic should check out:

• “The Cove” Debate — From the Japanese Perspective: “An effective conflict resolution requires respecting and understanding of both sides especially when it involves two different cultures. To use such a situation as an opportunity to be a hero is a form of exploitation, and it can escalate the conflict further. Given how angry many Japanese are about this, I would say the filmmakers of The Cove are guilty of this. I feel this is a very unfortunately situation.” (Also check out his links and the comments section)
• Dice reviews “The Cove”: “Where they could have engaged in dialogue, the filmmakers did everything to offend and belittle people with whom they could have found a common ground. An issue that didn’t have to become a nationalistic one has now been turned into one. Once it’s reached that point, dialogue doesn’t matter as all sides aren’t interested in having any rational discussion, but only in pandering to their bases.”
• “Racist undercurrents taint whaling rhetoric” – Dougal McNeill notes that a lot of anti-whaling (and anti-dolphin hunt) campaigning in Australia has “uncomfortable parallels with past anti-Asian campaigns.” The same argument could be made about American views of the Taiji dolphin hunt, which are often expressed in with an uncompromising air of moral superiority that denounces the Japanese hunters and their supporters as “savage” and “barbaric.” ( “kill the Japs” / “we need to drop another nuke” comments are left on this site’s whale/dolphin-related posts just about every day)
• Penn & Teller ridicule people who believe BS about dolphins being super intelligent beings with special healing powers (Video): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Dolphins are violent predators that kill their own babies – dolphins are kind and gentle creatures who are always trying to communicate with us. They should be set free from aquariums, so that they can….rape and brutalize each other?

—

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

Purikura – Japanese Print Club Photos Make Your Eyes Bigger & Skin Lighter

The “Mezashi TV” takes a look at some of the interesting features of Japanese “Print Club” [Purikura] photo booths:

For years now, such photo booths made girls happy by washing out the colors in photographs to make one’s skin look smoother and lighter. In the last few years, photo booth manufacturers have strengthened these “beautifying” capabilities and have added another key feature: eye enlargement. The result is a photo that looks “cuter” but bears little resemblance to the person who actually stepped into the booth.

Here is what photo booths did to a FTV production staff guy & Mona Lisa:

It turned the man into a freakish alien-like creature, but girls on the street thought that it made Mona Lisa look “cute.” Some informal polling showed that girls are pretty satisfied with the results of their purikura photos. However, when men were asked to compare an actual photo of a woman with her post-purikura face, about half of them preferred the unaltered natural version. Since most girls aren’t taking these photos to impress men, the negative opinions a lot of guys have about them probably don’t matter so much.

Note: Some people may look at this post and assume that the popularity of skin-lightening and eye-enlargement features in purikura photo booths is evidence that “Japanese girls want to look White” or “Japanese girls want to look like anime characters.” Nothing in the report indicates that the girls have any such desire. They seem to just think that bigger eyes look cuter, and the skin-lightening feature erases pimples, wrinkles, and other blemishes that reduce cuteness.

—

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

Chimpanzee Entomologist Hunts for Bugs

Pan-kun the Chimpanzee is not a real entomologist, but he does play one on TV. Here he is teaming up with James the bulldog for a summer bug-hunting exhibition [clip from "Shimura Zoo"]:

—

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

Naked Irish English Teacher Hit by Truck in Gunma

A truck driver has been arrested in Gunma prefecture for driving away after he hit and killed Alan Buckley, an English teacher from Ireland. According to the Mainichi/Kyodo reports about the incident, Buckley was apparently drunk and not wearing any clothing when he died:

The police said they received a call that a man was lying on National Road 254 at around 3:25 a.m. The police suspect that the 32-year-old Irishman may have been involved in a hit-and-run accident. He was not wearing any clothes and appeared to have been drinking, they said.

Buckley arrived in Japan in July 2009 and was teaching English at three primary and lower secondary schools in the city under the JET program, or the Japan Exchange and Teaching program, organized by local and central governments.

A Japanese language report in the Sports Nippon Paper provides more details [here is my crude translation]:

Buckley was found completely naked, lying face down. There were tire marks on his back. On the nearby sidewalk, police found what are assumed to be Buckley’s short-sleeved shirt, shorts, and underwear. There were also empty beer cans strewn about the area. At around 1:50AM and 2:10AM, Buckley made two solo trips to a convenience store in the area and bought cans of beer.

—

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

HMV Closes Flagship Store in Shibuya

Crowds of people gathered outside the HMV store in Shibuya the other night to watch it close its doors for the last time:

The store was a local landmark that is credited with having helped popularize Shibuya-kei music:

The first Japanese outlet of the U.K.-based CD chain opened in Shibuya in 1990, and was moved to its current spot in 1998. It took the world by storm along with other CD megastores like Wave Shibuya Quattro — which no longer exists — as a hub of Shibuya-kei music, represented by such musicians as Kenji Ozawa, Pizzicato Five, and Suchadaraparr. HMV Shibuya carried a wide selection of music put out by independent labels and foreign musicians, and was always packed with young people keen on following the latest trends.

The move is said to be part of a strategy to shut down high rent stores and focus on more profitable online music sales.

—

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