Archive for March, 2011

U.S. Official: Okinawans are “masters of manipulation and extortion”

The Asahi Shimbun has obtained a transcript of an off-the-record speech in which Kevin Maher (director of Japan affairs at the U.S. State Department) said some pretty nasty things about Okinawans:

According to students who attended the speech on “Military Bases and Their Impacts in Okinawa” at the State Department on Dec. 3, Maher started off by explaining the general situation surrounding U.S. forces in Japan.

In the process of the presentation, he delved into cultural traits, referring to the Japanese tendency to build consensus.

Maher went on to suggest that by pretending to seek consensus, Okinawan people were trying to get as much money as possible from Tokyo, according to the students.

Maher was quoted as saying “Okinawans are masters of manipulation and extortion of Tokyo.”

Maher also pointed out that Okinawa’s main industry was tourism. While an agricultural industry existed, “other prefectures grow more (goya) than Okinawa,” Maher said, in reference to the key vegetable eaten by local residents.

“Okinawans are too lazy to grow goya,” Maher allegedly said.

Other points Maher supposedly raised included the Japanese tendency to differentiate between “tatemae” (face value) and “honne” (true intentions) when speaking and that while “Okinawans claim MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) Futenma is the most dangerous base in the world, they know it is not true.”

He went on to point out that other commercial airports in Japan are also built in densely populated areas, according to the students.

He also reportedly said that Okinawan politicians will agree to a deal in Tokyo only to return to Okinawa and claim they did not reach an accord.

Tetsuji Shingaki, a prefectural assembly member who heads the Okinawa chapter of the Liberal Democratic Party, blasted the reported comments as “discriminating against Okinawa. Such a person should step down from the post as director of Japan affairs.”

Maher served as consul-general for three years from 2006 through 2009. The Okinawa assembly resolution noted that Maher had suggested during his tenure in Okinawa that the Futenma airfield was not particularly dangerous.

Maher currently oversees the negotiations on the Futenma relocation issue.

Maher seems to have denied the accuracy of the quotes:

Maher said of the account provided to Kyodo that he “cannot control how individual students themselves might interpret remarks” and “it would therefore not be appropriate” to attribute any specific remarks to him “based upon secondhand information coming from students or others.”

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, who is in Japan to meet with the Japanese government, will be apologizing for the “misunderstanding” that happened:

Campbell said Tuesday he plans to offer a personal apology for ”misunderstandings” stemming from Japanese media reports about alleged comments by a senior U.S. diplomat disparaging the people of Okinawa, but called the reported remarks neither accurate nor reflective of Washington’s view.

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Spinning Playground Slide

This playground slide in Yamaguchi prefecture looks pretty cool:

Apparently the company that manufactured the spinning slide went out of business shortly after the slide was installed at that park, so it’s the only slide of its kind in Japan.

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Free Distribution of “The Cove”

Last week, animal rights activists mailed free copies of “The Cove” were mailed to every household Taiji, Japan. Here’s a short report about Taiji’s reaction, from Sunday evening’s “Bankisha” news program:

Louie Psihoyos, director of “The Cove” and founder of Oceanic Preservation Society, said, “The people in Taiji deserve to know what millions of others around the world have learned about their town by seeing ‘The Cove.’ ”

“The Cove” was released in summer 2009 in the U.S., Europe and other countries. Theaters in Japan began showing the movie, edited specially for the Japanese market to hide the identities of Taiji fishermen to protect their privacy, last July.

The couple Taiji residents interview say that they won’t be watching the DVD. One woman says she wasn’t interested, so she threw it away.

The packages had no person’s name listed as the sender, something that is apparently quite odd in Japan. The distribution was supposedly the work of an anonymous group that calls itself “Umi o kangaeru gurupu” (a group that thinks about the ocean).

A few days ago, it was also announced that the Japanese dub of “The Cove” was being distributed for free via the film’s official homepage. It isn’t mentioned in the above report, and there’s a good reason for that. If you try to access the download page from a Japanese internet connection, you will receive the following message:

Our systems detect that you are based in Japan. We cannot allow viewing or download at this time.

The Cove DVD is available for purchase and rental in Japan from Medallion Media.

So, there you have it: they’ll distribute their movie for free in Japanese, but not to Japan. Great activism…

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Japan Suspends Use of Pfizer, Sanofi Pediatric Vaccines

The deaths of four infants have caused the Japanese government to suspend the use of two vaccines Pfizer’s Prevenar(meningitis and pneumonia) and Sanofi’s ActHIB (Haemophilus influenzae type b):

The deaths of the children in Japan occurred from March 2 to March 4, the ministry said. ActHIB was given to three of the four children, who were simultaneously vaccinated with at least one other vaccine from a different manufacturer, Carey said.

Pfizer’s Prevenar is a so-called pneumococcal conjugate vaccine that aims to prevent invasive disease caused by serotypes of the Streptococcus pneumoniae bacterium. The vaccine that protects against 13 serotypes generated $2.42 billion last year and a shot that fights seven serotypes had $1.25 billion in 2010 sales, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Surveillance in North America and Europe, where Prevenar has been used for at least a decade, hasn’t identified any major safety concerns, the WHO said in a 2007 report. Evidence suggests pneumococcal conjugate vaccines will have a “considerable impact on pneumococcal disease and overall infant mortality,” the United Nations health agency said.

Forbes interviewed a few vaccine experts, all of whom seemed to think the suspension was unnecessary. One has called the Japanese government’s decision “foolish”:

“I think the Japanese Ministry of Health was foolish to suspend the HIB and pneumococcal programs,” says Paul Offit, a researcher at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia who co-invented a Merck vaccine used to combat rotavirus. “It was the wrong thing to do.”

In all likelihood, Offit says, the four deaths are likely to be sudden infant death syndrome or another cause; he says two of the children had serious underlying health conditions. Any time a large number of people are given a vaccine, some of them will get sick and die just by chance.

In contrast, Offit argues, the problems caused by the bacteria the vaccines immunize against are very real. Pfizer’s vaccine, Prevenar or Prevnar, prevents illnesses causedby pneumococcal bacteria; Sanofi’s ActHIB prevents infection with the Haemophilus influenza. Both bacteria can cause meningitis, pneumonia, and other infections. Offit said the decision to stop giving the vaccines, even for a moment, represents “a really poor assessment of where the risks lie.”

Offit profited from the creation of the rotavirus vaccine, but does not get ongoing money from vaccine manufacturers for speaking, consulting, research, or as royalties.

William Schaffner, chairman of the department of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said that the deaths were “most likely, by far, a coincidence.” He does get some consulting and speaking money from vaccine makers.

America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have announced that they will not be taking action regarding the vaccines, as there is no reliable information that links the vaccines to deaths.

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Malawi: The Land of Slow Walking

A recent international survey of walking speeds in major cities found that people in Malawi are quite slow walkers. Whereas a Tokyoite takes an average of 12.83 seconds to walk 60 feet, residents of the Malawian city of Blantyre take 31.60 seconds!

Here’s the ranking:

Average walking times over 18 metres (60 feet) in seconds

1) Singapore (Singapore); 10.55
2) Copenhagen (Denmark); 10.82
3) Madrid (Spain); 10.89
4) Guangzhou (China): 10.94
5) Dublin (Ireland); 11.03
6) Curitiba (Brazil); 11.13
7) Berlin (Germany); 11.16
8 ) New York (United States of America); 12.00
9) Utrecht (Netherlands); 12.04
10) Vienna (Austria); 12.06
11) Warsaw (Poland); 12.07
12) London (United Kingdom); 12.17
13) Zagreb (Croatia); 12.20
14) Prague (Czech Republic); 12.35
15) Wellington (New Zealand); 12.62
16) Paris (France); 12.65
17) Stockholm (Sweden); 12.75
18) Ljubljana (Slovenia); 12.76
19) Tokyo (Japan); 12.83
20) Ottawa (Canada); 13.72
21) Harare (Zimbabwe); 13.92
22) Sofia (Bulgaria); 13.96
23) Taipei (Taiwan): 14.00
24) Cairo (Egypt); 14.18
25) Sana’a (Yemen); 14.29
26) Bucharest (Romania); 14.36
27) Dubai (United Arab Emirates); 14.64
28) Damascus (Syria); 14.94
29) Amman (Jordan); 15.95
30) Bern (Switzerland); 17.37
31) Manama (Bahrain); 17.69
32) Blantyre (Malawi); 31.60

Can it be true? Do people in Japan really walk three times faster than Malawians? To find out, a Japanese TV show dispatched a comedian to Malawi:

Everything he observes seems to prove that the survey was correct:

• When crossing the street, everyone is quite slow. One can really see the difference when you compare it with footage of a Japanese crosswalk.
• Malawians have great difficulty walking on a treadmill set to the average Japanese walking speed.
• They set up an experiment. Three friends of their guide are told to meet them at a location approximately 800 meters from each of the friends’ houses. The friends are told to leave their houses at 10:00. Japanese real estate agents advertise 800 meters at a 10 minute walk, but that’s not how things are in Malawi. The earliest friend takes 26 minutes to arrive, the second friend takes 29 minutes, and the third takes 48 minutes. The friends say that it’s no big deal, since people in Malawi don’t stress over hurrying up or waiting for things.
• At a “fast food” restaurant, they order 9 burgers. There are a lot of staff in the kitchen, but none of them seem to be in a hurry to make anything. It takes 30 minutes to make eight burgers. They forget to make one of the burgers.
• They visit a school. It’s 10:10 and no teacher is in the classroom, even though class should have started at 10:00. They find the teacher, who says the students will just have to wait until he’s finished getting ready.

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Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara Resigns

Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara has decided to resign in the face of a scandal over his acceptance of illegal political donations from a foreign national:

Japan’s foreign minister has announced his resignation in a televised news conference over donations he received from a foreign resident in violation of the country’s laws.

Seiji Maehara, who had been seen as a likely successor to Naoto Kan, the country’s current prime minister, said on Sunday he was stepping down after admitting he received several hundred dollars from a Japanese-born woman of Korean ethnicity, who owns a restaurant.

“I apologise to the Japanese people for stepping down after only six months and provoking distrust over a problem with my political funding, although I have sought to pursue a clean style of politics,” Maehara said.

The resignation is another blow to the embattled administration of Kan, whose public approval rating has fallen below 20 per cent.

An editorial in the Yomiuri had some pretty harsh things to say about Maehara:

This is a problem that cannot be forgiven just because the amount of money involved was small or because he may not have received it intentionally.

The Political Funds Control Law prohibits politicians from receiving donations related to their political activities from foreign nationals, corporations and organizations. The purpose of this prohibition is to prevent intervention in Japan’s politics by foreign countries.

Especially when politicians intentionally receive such donations, they may be subject to punishments such as imprisonment, fine and suspension of civil rights–including the right to vote or run for public office.

[...]

Maehara said his association with the female South Korean resident of Kyoto began during his middle school days, but he denied he intentionally received the money. He said he learned of the donation only a day before the Budget Committee meeting.

To begin with, it is common sense for politicians that political donations from foreign nationals are illegal. Moreover, Maehara is now the top government official responsible for steering Japan’s diplomacy.

Even if he really did not know about the donations, it is problematic that his office accepted them so easily. He cannot escape his responsibility to supervise his own office staff.

Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Katsuya Okada called it “a clerical mistake,” but the problem should not be brushed off so easily and irresponsibly.

Maehara has been a sharp critic of the money and politics scandals surrounding former DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa.

However, in addition to the illegal donation issue, other problems also surfaced. For example, a company that did not buy tickets to a fund-raising party was erroneously listed as having done so in Maehara’s 2009 political funds report. Also, his political organization received donations that year from a company at which an executive had been investigated by police in a tax evasion case.

We cannot help but conclude Maehara is too careless.

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