Archive for September, 2010

Anti-Japanese Protests Held in China

Yesterday was the anniversary of 1931 Mukden incident, and a few protests were held in China demanding that Japan release the Chinese trawler captain who rammed a couple Japanese coast guard vessels:

The Chinese government has tried to keep the protests from getting out of hand by stationing plenty of police around the protesters. They have also censored online postings from citizens attempting to organize protests:

China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported that protesters had also gathered to demand the boat captain’s return in the northeastern city of Shenyang, previously known as Mukden, where the 1931 attack occurred.

Authorities have sought to forestall protests, blocking the websites of Chinese nationalist groups, telling university students not to protest and erasing discussion of organising demonstrations from the internet.

The website of the China Federation for Defending Diaoyutai remained offline on Saturday, and messages about organising protests over the incident were largely removed from online bulletin boards.

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American Baby Photo Becomes Japanese Internet Meme

Sometime back in 2000, Allen S. Rout, a systems programmer from Gainesville, Fla., posted a few photos of his 5-month-old son, Stephen, on his personal website. They were the kind of photos every parent takes, but one in particular stood out: Stephen wearing a pair of red overalls, smiling in a crib. “We’re really blessed,” Rout wrote as the caption. “Stephen is an amazingly happy baby.”

The photo had faded from memory until this past July, when Rout, curious about his online reputation, did a Google search of himself. Deep within the results pages, he found the picture of Stephen. Only, it wasn’t exactly the same picture.

He was surrounded by cartoonish word bubbles filled with Japanese writing: “Don’t call me baby!” they read. “Call me Mr. Baby!” And there were other images in which the photo was transformed further: Stephen has a pompadour in one, a head full of snakes in another. His face was pasted onto Kurt Cobain’s head, carved into Mount Rushmore and tattooed onto David Beckham’s torso. He was an eight-bit video game character. He became a three-dimensional sculpture.

Somehow, Stephen’s smiling face had permeated a corner of Japanese visual culture. It showed up on wacky television game shows, and occasionally it blotted out images of genitalia in pornography, to comply with Japanese law. There are so many iterations that, for a time, if you did a Google Image search for “happy baby,” the original photo of Stephen was the first result.

Read the rest here or on the NYT site.

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Japan’s White-collar Workers Don’t Want to Leave Japan

The Wall Street Journal reports on a new survey that shows a majority of Japanese white-collar workers would prefer to stay in Japan and never work abroad:

The results are downright depressing, given that Japan has recently suffered the ignominy of ceding its position to China as the world’s second-largest economy. The younger and more junior the employee, the greater the resistance to the expat life: 70.7% of “regular employees,” or those who aren’t managers, said they didn’t want to go abroad, according to a survey of 400 people conducted by the Sanno Institute of Management, a graduate school in Japan.

Common reasons were “I can’t speak English,” or “The overseas environment may not be safe.” Managing directors — usually older employees in their 40s and 50s — had the least resistance to working overseas, with only 42.9% saying they wouldn’t go.

A little bit more info from Kyodo:

With multiple answers allowed, 89.3 percent said they lack language capabilities, 52.5 percent capabilities in communicating with foreign cultures, 47.0 percent business skills, and 43.0 percent business knowledge about foreign countries.

Of those who replied negative, 51.5 percent cited high risks overseas, 50.7 percent poor capabilities, 37.3 percent heavy burdens on their families, and 34.7 percent a lack of interest.

Of those who replied affirmative, 77.3 percent said they want to broaden their mind, 75.8 percent want to gain experience that cannot be acquired in Japan, 41.7 percent want to enhance their language capabilities, and 28.8 percent want to work together with foreigners.

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Death Penalty Opponent Keiko Chiba: No Longer Justice Minister

The results of Prime Minister Kan’s cabinet reshuffling are in, and one of the ministers being replaced is Keiko Chiba (who had lost her seat in the Upper House election). When she was selected as Justice Minister under the first Kan cabinet, there was a lot of speculation about whether her longtime opposition to the death penalty would get in the way with her duty to authorize the executions of death row inmates. During her term in office she did sign off on a couple executions, but she also took the extraordinary step of opening Japan’s execution chambers to the media. She was hoping that media coverage would help stimulate public debate about the existence of capital punishment.

The new justice minister is Minoru Yanagida. Apparently he was given little notice about his new job, because yesterday night’s news contained a soundbite from Yanagida claiming that he did not yet have a position on the death penalty. He said he would “look into” the issue (“勉強します”). A news article from this morning states that he considers it the duty of justice ministers to authorize punishments handed down by courts.

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Former Blackface Musician Arrested

One of the top news stories on Japanese TV this morning was the arrest of Masashi Tashiro for possession of cocaine. Tashiro is a former TV star and musician who became famous in the 1980′s as a founding member of the group Rats & Star. The Rats & Star group was known for painting their faces black and mimicking American doo-wop music.

Tashiro’s career had been in the gutter ever since 2000, when he was caught filming up a girl’s skirt at a Tokyo Metro station. He was later arrested and charged in 2001 and 2004 for possession of illegal drugs. His drug arrests led some of Japan’s biggest entertainers to denounce their former comrade:

“I want him to disappear from the entertainment world because what he did was despicable”

– Ken Shimura

“The damned fool! I’d like to slap him!”

– Kenichi Mikawa

“I don’t want to be associated with such a man.”

– Takeshi Kitano

Because it was not his first drug offense, Tashiro was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in prison. He got out of jail in 2008, but it looks like he went right back to his old habits. This latest drug arrest will likely result in even more time behind bars.

For those who are interested, here are a few clips from the glory days of the Rats & Star:

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Japan Warns Citizens About Chinese Nationalists

Anti-Japanese anger is still strong in China over the arrest of a Chinese trawler captain who rammed Japanese coast guard ships, so the Japanese government has posted a safety notice for its citizens in China:

In a notice posted on its website and emailed Wednesday to Japanese nationals living in China, the embassy advised citizens to be vigilant of their surroundings when in crowded places, to be cautious in “speech and behavior” when interacting with Chinese and to refrain from “provocative actions.”

[...]

Small metal balls were also reported to have been lobbed into a Japanese school for elementary and junior high school students in Tianjin on Sunday night and a man was reported to have thrown beer bottles at the Japanese consulate in Guangzhou last week.

So far, no one has been reported hurt and the embassy notice said Chinese public security authorities have ensured the safety of Japanese nationals in China.

But latent anti-Japanese sentiments still simmer in China over the legacy of the war and there are reports that at least one protest march planned for Saturday in Beijing has received official approval.

The attack on a school has caused Japanese schools to postpone Sports Day activities that were scheduled for this weekend.

The Mainichi has connected the anger over the trawler to an event that occurred earlier this month in Beijing:

On Sept. 3, just days before the collision, Beijing celebrated the 65th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan in World War II — a landmark moment that has become entangled with the dispute over the Senkaku Island group. On this day, a group arrived at the front gate of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs carrying a red banner accusing the government of “betraying the country” for agreeing to co-develop the East China Sea natural gas fields with Japan. The small demonstration was mounted by the Baodiao activist committee, a group demanding China assert its authority over the Senkaku Islands. They are also anti-Japanese.

The demonstration was not held in front of the Japanese Embassy, and the charge of betraying China was aimed at the administration of President Hu Jintao. That the activists would stage such a protest on the Chinese government’s doorstep may be a sign of smoldering discontent with the power of the Chinese administration as the country looks forward to the 2012 selection of the next general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

A Yomiuri editorial has also argued that China’s “strikingly hard line” over the incident is because the CPC fears the anger of the people, who – largely thanks to the Chinese government’s own education system – have been turned into anti-Japanese nationalists:

Since the 1970s, China has claimed the Senkaku Islands belong to China. It has instilled this belief among its people through “anti-Japanese patriotism” education since the 1990s.

If Chinese people get the impression that their government is “weak-kneed,” it could ignite simmering public discontent over the country’s economic disparities and other ills, which could escalate into anger directed at the Chinese Communist Party leadership.

This fear has apparently driven the Chinese government to take a high-handed stance toward Japan over the collisions. But we think Beijing is barking up the wrong tree.

The Japan Coast Guard apparently has video tapes of the collision with the trawler, but has not made them public yet because the tapes could become evidence in a trial if the Chinese captain is charged with a crime. The Yomiuri thinks that public anger in China could subside once the tape is shown to the public and it becomes more apparent that the collision was the trawler captain’s fault.

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