Archive for October, 2010

Chinese Delegation Throws Nationalistic Tantrum at Tokyo International Film Festival

The Chinese delegation has withdrawn its participation in events at the Tokyo International Film Festival because the festival has allowed a Taiwanese delegation (not a “Chinese Taipei” or “Taiwan, China” delegation) to attend the festival:

Jiang Ping, the head of the Chinese contingent at the festival said Saturday that the Taiwan delegation should be renamed the “China Taiwan delegation”, shortly before the opening ceremony.

His Taiwanese counterpart flatly rejected the call, and on Sunday a government spokesman waded into the row.
“The Chinese delegation should not use politics to interfere in the movie exchanges,” Taiwan government spokesman Johnny Chiang told the state Central News Agency.

“The move has infringed the rights of Taiwan people participating in the the film festival.”
In the wake of the row, stars from both delegations missed the walk along the “green carpet” — changed from the traditional red to highlight environmental concerns — which kicked off the festival.

China boycotted the opening ceremony because it was angry about the Taiwan naming issue. Taiwan’s delegation also did not participate, apparently to show their disapproval towards China. The Japanese press is reporting that Taiwanese actress Vivian Hsu was reduced to tears when she heard that she would not be able to participate in the Green Carpet opening ceremony.

An article in the Chinese state propaganda rag Global Times quotes Jiang as saying that he has no ill-will against his Taiwanese “compatriots.” Instead, he blames the Japanese organizers for accepting the Taiwanese delegation’s application. The article implies that the acceptance of Taiwan’s application has something to do with the Senkaku boat collision dispute. It even mentions the nationalist groups who held anti-Chinese protests, as if they would somehow have influence over a film festival committee.

I am not entirely sure how the naming issue was handled at last year’s festival, but a quick check of the 2009 festival homepage shows that films from China are labeled as such, and films from Taiwan are labeled as “Taiwan” films　[Japanese pages also use the kanji for Taiwan]. It looks a lot like Taiwan participated as “Taiwan” last year. If that was so, where was China’s rage back in 2009?

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North Korean Defectors Ran Brothel in Tokyo

A group of North Korean defectors have been arrested for illegally operating an “adult salon” in Tokyo:

After defecting from North Korea, all 10 women entered a facility in South Korea that helps defectors settle in that nation, and all obtained status as South Korean nationals, according to the police.

However, the women found it hard to find work in South Korea. One was quoted by the police as saying: “We defected from North Korea because our lives there were difficult, but our lives didn’t improve in South Korea. In Japan, we earned a lot, partly thanks to the strong yen.”

The deported woman made profits of about 35 million yen at her salon between its opening and April this year. The woman said she had sent part of the income to relatives in North Korea, according to the police.

The MPD believes word that good money can be made by starting an adult entertainment business in Japan has been spreading among North Korean defectors.

The arrested massage parlor manager, meanwhile, is rumored to have once been a member of North Korea’s secret police, the MPD said.

The MPD intends to thoroughly investigate the woman, who comes from a northern region of North Korea and visited Japan a few years ago, by exchanging information with South Korean police.

After being questioned about the money sent to North Korea, one woman claimed it was being sent to family members.

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Flashback: Canadian Screws-up Japanese Surrender Document

The next time you visit the Edo-Tokyo Museum, look for this in the display cases:

It’s a paper that tells the story of Canadian Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave blundering his way into the history books by messing up the signatures on the official document of surrender:

The New York Times correspondent, Robert Trumbull, in a special dispatch to the Globe and Mail wrote, “Colonel Cosgrove emerges as the feature player in an incident [that] … put a touch of humor in the gravest ceremony of our time.”

For some inexplicable reason —and who among us has not had the same difficulty in filling out a form — Colonel Cosgrove wrote his name not on the line above “The Dominion of Canada,” as was intended, but on the line below. It was a blunder that set off a chain reaction, forcing the remaining signatories to sign below the place designated for their country. The New Zealand representative, the last to sign, had to affix his signature in the bottom margin of the page. “Col. Cosgrave’s botch … will rank high among the historic bobbles of our time.” hooted correspondent Turnbull in the Globe.

Several months later, the captain of the USS Missouri recounted what happened when the signing ceremony was over. “The Japanese came forward to pick up the Japanese copy of the surrender papers,” Capt. Murray recalled, “and (they) started to question something on it. General (Walter) Sutherland (MacArthur’s chief of staff) took a pen and drew a line on the thing and said ‘Now that’s fine. Now it’s all fixed’. So (the Japanese representative) took his copy and folded it up and went on down the gangway.”

What the famously abrupt Sutherland had done was amend the august surrender document with a series of cross-outs and scribbles. It is the Japanese copy of the surrender, the botched copy, that now resides in the Edo-Tokyo Museum. On the other copy, the one the Americans took back to Washington, Col Cosgrave got it right.

[via Reddit]

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Pet Crow Takes a Bath

A pet crow takes a bath in Japan:

You can see more pet crow videos at kacmte’s YouTube Channel.

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Another Anti-Japanese Protest in China

China’s latest wave of anti-Japanese protests is not yet over:

Around 1,000 people demonstrated at a temple in in Sichuan province’s Deyang city, a receptionist at a nearby restaurant told AFP.

The receptionist, who refused to be named, said police tried to stop the protest.

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Another witness at a different restaurant near the temple in the city centre said the protesters included university students chanting slogans. Both witnesses said the demonstrations were directed against Japan.

Many schools in the area held special weekend classes so that students could not participate in demonstrations. Japanese TV news reports said that the demonstrations may have had several thousand participants. Businesses that sold Japanese goods closed their shutters for the day, as they did not suffer from a repeat of last week’s violent rioting.

According to Japan’s TBS news, protesters held up signs and shouted things like, “Let’s make blood spill in Tokyo” and “Japan should be erased.”

Anti-Japanese rallies had been scheduled in at least two other Chinese cities, but strong measures taken by the police and university authorities prevented them from taking place.

Update: On Sunday, there were more anti-Japanese protests. Japanese TV news could confirm protests taking place in at least two cities. Security was quick to respond and no major incidents of violence were reported.

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Japanese Avatar Prank

A prank show uses a gang of real life Avatar Nav’i to scare Japanese comedians (warning: filmed with a camcorder, so the quality is pretty bad):

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