Archive for August, 2011

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda: Extreme Right-Wing Nationalist?

Few people expected that Yoshihiko Noda would win Monday’s DPJ election and become Prime Minister of Japan, so when the first English news reports about Noda’s victory appeared, few contained much about his political views or his past. He was virtually unknown, so most of the reports contained vague and general statements about how he had pledged to work hard at tackling the various problems facing post-disaster Japan.

In South Korea and China, however, Noda was not unknown. Just a couple weeks ago, Noda’s public views about pre-1945 history had incited anger from Japan’s nationalist neighbors. The Chinese media expressed concern about Noda’s historical views and his “hawk” stance towards China. Korean newspaper headlines about his election victory stressed Noda’s “extreme right-wing” views.

Some information on his views about war criminals, from a Kyodo Article:

Noda, who will likely run for president of the Democratic Party of Japan and thereby prime minister, reiterated Monday his view that Japan’s A-class war criminals are not war criminals, and thus there is no merit in asking a prime minister not to visit Yasukuni Shrine, which honors, along with the nation’s war dead, several convicted Class-A war criminals.

And from the Asahi Japan Watch:

In October 2005, when the Democratic Party of Japan was still in the opposition, Noda submitted a written question to the government in which he wrote, “The honor of all ‘war criminals’ has been recovered in a legal sense. In other words, those people who have been referred to as ‘Class-A war criminals’ are not war criminals.”

At the Aug. 15 news conference, Noda was asked if there had been any change in his beliefs on the issue.

“There is no fundamental change in my thinking,” Noda said.

He was also asked about the appropriateness of prime ministers visiting Yasukuni Shrine, which memorializes 14 Class-A war criminals as well as the war dead.

While saying such a decision was up to the individual who becomes prime minister, Noda did not say what he would do if he takes over from Kan on the grounds that was a hypothetical question.

The Economist’s Banyan column has commented on Noda’s legal viewpoint:

Some legal commentators have made a similar point in the past, arguing that Japanese law does not recognise the verdicts of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which convicted them. Legal hair-splitting aside however, Japan’s government accepted the verdicts as part of the 1952 San Francisco peace treaty, Article 11 of which begins: “Japan accepts the judgments of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and of other Allied War Crimes Courts both within and outside Japan, and will carry out the sentences imposed thereby upon Japanese nationals imprisoned in Japan.”

The bizarre part of Mr Noda’s argument is that he says the San Francisco treaty “restored the honour” of all Japan’s war criminals. When he made this point to Junichiro Koizumi in 2005, in response to the then-prime minister’s controversial visit to Yasukuni, even Mr Koizumi said he did not know what Mr Noda was talking about.

Observers in China and Korea are expecting that Noda’s election will cause a deterioration of their countries’ somewhat good relations with Japan. However, Noda is already backing away from his previous statements. He’ll probably follow the example set by every other recent Prime Minister, reiterating Japan’s official apologies and accepting the verdict of the war crimes trials.

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Bizarre Bold Commercials in Japan: TOUCH DE PON!

Procter & Gamble’s Japanese commercials for Bold use a foreign woman who speaks atrociously bad Japanese:

Her accent is so terrible that it barely even sounds like Japanese. Either she has no understanding of the Japanese language, or she is intentionally trying to butcher her pronunciation. I think this is supposed to be cute…or funny?

In one of the older commercials in the series, she plays the role of Mrs. Yamada, introducing herself to her new neighbors. When she hugs them, they comment on how nice she smells. It’s apparently because Bold makes clothing smell really great. If you tap your clothing (“pon!”), the fragrance is noticeable.

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Who is “Yoshiko” Noda? (Foreign Newspapers Misspell Japanese Prime Minister’s First Name)

Japan has a new Prime Minister, but it seems that quite a few English language newspapers are confused about the correct spelling of Yoshihiko Noda’s first name:

They have left out the “hi” in “Yoshihiko.” The resulting “Yoshiko” is a common first name for women in Japan.

A few of the papers, such as the Financial Times and the Australian, have actually managed to discover their errors and correct the spelling in their articles. The Christian Science Monitor and Asia Sentinel still have “Yoshiko” Noda in their articles.

The errors have also been shown on Japanese TV. About three minutes and twenty seconds into this video clip, we can hear an American journalist asking an Obama Administration spokesperson to comment on the election of “Yoshiko” Noda. The Japanese TV network provides a subtitles that fail to include the journalist’s error.

Why so many errors? It could be that some of these news organizations employ journalists who are unfamiliar with Japanese names. Perhaps a few of them actually knew the correct spelling of Noda’s first name, but were too rushed to go back and check what they’d written. After all, it’s just Japan: they’ll be getting another Prime Minister within a year anyway, so who cares if they misspell the name of this guy….right?

A list of news articles & tweets about “Yoshiko” Noda:

• Asia Sentinel (Todd Crowell)
• The Australian (Rick Wallace)
• The Christian Science Monitor (Gavin Blair)
• CNN (Saeed Ahmed)
• The Financial Times
• NASDAQ ( Kathy Lien of FX360.com and GFT)
• The Wall Street Journal (George Nishiyama and Hiroyuki Kachi)

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Real British Ninja

Meet Ken Andre, a 33-year-old British “ninja” who protects his community from the forces of evil:

The unemployed dad, who has been learning the Japanese art of Ninjutsu since he was a youngster, stalks the shadows of Yeovil, Somerset, when the sun goes down.

He sometimes spends all night out on the streets, waiting to swoop in and save victims of crime – wearing a hearing aid to pick up the faintest cries for help

Ken battles muggers, drug pushers, abusive boyfriends and boy racers with just his martial arts skills and a wooden pole.

The superhero insists he tries to settle the disputes as calmly as possible, but will use force if required, before calmly melting back into the shadows before police arrive.

[via FG]

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Videos: Record Rainfall in Japan

Last week, areas of Western Japan experienced record-setting heavy rainfall:

Osaka saw a record 77.5 millimeters of rainfall in a one-hour period through 4:08 p.m. local time., while in Miki, Hyogo Prefecture, rainfall of 54 mm per hour, the heaviest ever in August, was logged, the Osaka District Meteorological Observatory said.

The Tokyo area was also hit:

Rainfall totaled 90.5 millimeters per hour in Tokyo’s Nerima ward and 74.5 mm per hour in Kanagawa Prefecture’s Sagamihara, record deluges for August, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Lots of people recorded footage of the crazy rainfall and the resulting floods, and have uploaded videos to YouTube. Here are three popular clips that received thousands of views:.

An elevator in Tokyo’s Nerima ward was turned into a waterfall:

Outside the EST shopping mall in Osaka:

In the Gamou area of Osaka’s Joto ward:

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Chinese Cyberattacks on Japan

Japan’s National Police Agency has concluded that a July 10th cyberattack on its website was likely the work of angry Chinese nationalists:

Access to the NPA website was temporarily interrupted on the night of July 10 through the early hours of the following day as the apparent number of users accessing the website surged to about 20 times the normal level, the NPA said, adding that no data was breached.Through the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, the NPA asked the Chinese side to determine those involved in the act, it said.The NPA said there was writing on an Internet message board in China calling for attacks on the NPA website. The message referred to an incident in which Japanese Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets scrambled in response to the flight of a Chinese reconnaissance plane near the disputed Senkaku Islands, it said.

The website of Japan’s Finance Ministry experienced a cyber attack in July 12th, which seems to have been organized on the same Chinese message board.

An Asahi Shimbun editorial recently pointed out that the Japanese government has not been giving much attention to this very serious issue:

In sharp contrast to many Western countries that have been steadily expanding their budgets for research and development efforts to enhance cyber security, Japan has cut such spending by nearly 50 percent in the past five years.

This year’s defense white paper featured security threats in cyberspace for the first time.

It is obvious that the Japanese government needs to step up its efforts with a sense of urgency to make more effective responses to the problem.

Needless to say, Japan should focus on strictly defensive efforts in responding to the cyber menace to its security.

Japan should try to build sturdy systems for monitoring and defense by tapping available advanced technologies. Then, it should use these systems to strengthen cooperation with other countries and thereby play a leading role in the global battle against cyber attacks. With a strong commitment to these ambitious goals, the government should pour energies and resources into helping establish necessary international rules.

That’s a duty that Japan, as a major information technology power, has to undertake.

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