Strong, incisive, and definitely opinionated,
Yuichi Yamamoto is where I go to get
perspectives on Japan. I may not always
agree, but I am always impressed. The
Japanese media, unfortunately, don't carry
his brand of analysis.
- Gordon G. Chang -
Gordon G. Chang is known as the author of an
insightful and courageous book titled The Coming Collapse of China (Random House, 2001).
In early 2006 his second book Nuclear Showdown
was released from the same publisher.
About Us
Please click here for the profiles of the co-owners/co-editors of this blog.
Mission statement
Our way of thinking is that Japan's mainstream media are so taboo-ridden
that they cannot tell the truth wherever telling the truth is what really counts.
That's where TokyoFreePress kicks in. However, since we have no network through
which to gather facts and data on our own, we can't provide you with unfiltered news stories first hand. That's why we are aiming at 'First-hand views on
second-hand news.' For further details, you may want to refer to the January 21, 2009 article entitled Elaborating on the Mission Statement.
TokyoFreePress Gets Plugged on Forbes.com
On the eve of yet another rigged election for the House of Representatives, Gordon G. Chang, my long-time mentor, contributed a piece entitled Alliance in Peril to Forbes.com., in which TokyoFreePress gets plugged, though briefly.
In the fall of 2005, the LDP won a landslide victory. That means this time around it's DPJ's turn to win. You don't even have to look at the results tomorrow evening. This is just a ritual. Nothing will change. So the American people don't have to worry too much that the strategic alliance between Japan and the U.S. can be endangered if the DPJ captures power as was predetermined.
I have difficulty understanding why so many Americans think they should still uphold the obsolete arrangement signed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and an undercover CIA agent Nobusuke Kishi a little before the Berlin Wall was erected. This is where Gordon and I have been divided over the issue with the security treaty.
However, I really felt grateful and honored to be quoted on Forbes despite the perception gap between us because this will certainly boost TokyoFreePress's exposure to the American people.
Don't take me wrong - as I told him a couple of days ago, I would have nothing against an ad hoc alliance to flexibly deal with a specific situation. What I find outrageous is the "Till death do us part" sort of mindset.
Once again let me express heartfelt thanks, Gordon.
Posted by Yuichi Yamamoto on August 29, 2009
Mr. Dai Kashio as Co-Owner of TokyoFreePress
Effective as of February 2009, Mr. Dai Kashio became a co-owner of TokyoFreePress. He has supported this activity mainly as the technical assistant since the launch of this blog in August 2004. Although he will be committed to the same editorial policy stated above, you can expect him to bring a different flavor and new perspective into this site because his background is quite different from mine. (Yuichi Yamamoto)
New Partnership with a First-Class Blogger in the U.S.
Recently we have encountered this blogger by the name of Jennifer Dyer (http://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/about/) on the discussion forum run by Mr. Gordon G. Chang, our long-time mentor. (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/author/chang) She is a retired U.S. Naval intelligence officer. We may be divided over some geopolitical issues, but the important thing is that we share the same mindset to look into various issues from an unbiased and down-to-earth angle. Moreover, our new partner has what we don’t have: first-hand knowledge in some political/military issues. For that reason we look forward to learning a lot from Ms. Dyer through close interchange between the two sites. We also hope we can reciprocate. (Yuichi Yamamoto)
JMR featured Y. Yamamoto's piece
On October 20, 2005
Japan Media Review
ran my commentary
titled
"Questioning the Questioners"
which deals with the pivotal role Japan's mainstream media
played during the campaign period for Election 2005.
JMR was a joint project launched in March 2003 by -
The University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication
The USC East Asian Studies Center
GLOCOM (The Center for Global Communications at the International University of Japan)
and was a sister publication of Online Journalism Review.
This website went dead when the Bush Administration discontinued funding.
TFP gets plugged in Amy Chavez' Guidebook to Japan
In early-2005, prominent humorist and Japan Times columnist Amy
Chavez published
"Guidebook to Japan - What
the other guidebooks won't tell you" from GOM Press.
The author selected the TokyoFreePress as one of the Best 200 websites on Japan and
inserted the link to the TFP at the end of the section titled "Daily
Life" of "Part 2: Living in Japan" (page 223.)
On the surface her way of viewing this culture is different, if not 180-degrees, from the TFP's. Apparently approaches are quite different, too, as hers is much more lighthearted and laidback whereas the TFP chooses to address Japan issues more squarely. Notwithstanding the stark contrast, however, the TFP believes it has a lot in common with her Guidebook.
According to her website,
the American humorist living in Japan for quite some time now has once
said: "Sometimes, the only way to survive a foreign culture is through
humor." I, as the owner of the TFP, too, think that maybe I will be
better off, health-wise or otherwise, by making a caricature of this
culture and these people (Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Tokyo
Governor Shintaro Ishihara, et al.) because they do not really deserve
to be discussed seriously, in the first place, even from a Japanese native's point of view.
But for now it has really gladdened me that my blog has been plugged by
this first-rate humorist. Many thanks, Amy.
Monday, December 14 2009 @ 02:31 AM CST
Contributed by: Y.Yamamoto
Views: 878
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. - Charles MacKay
PRECAUTION: You may want to watch the audio-visual treat embedded here before you read my text explaining the background of these events. 2 minutes and 23 seconds into this video, you will see 143 people taking turns to shake hands with a man who looks like a stuffed panda with glasses. But don't mistake them for kids on a school excursion to Hong Kong Disneyland. They are lawmakers of the Democratic Party of Japan.
As I wrote in my most recent post, I am now in the process of shifting
my priority to a new activity so I can avoid further wasting the last days of my life on politics. However, I will still be in a warmup stage of the new project toward the yearend. That allowed me to temporarily come back to the blogosphere.
Actually I have exhausted my limited vocabulary to describe the terminally ill society which used to be my home country. Yet I have been so disturbed by all this fuss the country's new administration has been making, that I felt an urge to reiterate, one last time, my views of the widespread delusion that Japan is undergoing a dramatic change both at home and abroad.
In fact, Japan goes round in circles and remains an unviable nation. It still shows weak vital signs but that is simply because the United States, its almost equally sick ally, doesn't have the guts to pull the plug on Japan's life-support system. To be more precise, it's a mutual support system embodied in the 50-year-old bilateral treaty.
Take the issue with the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station for example. Some experts say Japan's new prime minister is bringing about a positive change
because he has the guts to say "No" to his American counterpart and that will help put Japan on an equal footing with the U.S. for the first time.
On the other hand some others fear that because of Hatoyama's "defiant" attitude toward America, the bilateral relations are turning sour with the frustration quickly mounting on the part of the U.S.
Despite the ostensible contention between the two camps, however, there is a consensus. Every pundit or scholar thinks things are changing, either for the better or for the worse.
But ordinary people are a little smarter than political analysts; they are sober-minded enough to tell that there's nothing new in the recent discord between the incongruous partners. They know the two countries are too much addicted to each other to think
about breaking up before death do them part.
Results of polls also seem to indicate people are divided over the relocation issue, but they know deep inside that these unaudited survey results are largely fabricated. In fact, most respondents, if there actually were some in these phony surveys, didn't give a damn to something to be likened to a marital dispute in their neighborhood.
The successive Japanese leaders have had one thing in common; in the face of a crisis or dilemma they invariably became
paralyzed like a spider in thanatosis and let things drift
until the problem solved itself.
Among other postwar examples, Ichiro Hatoyama, grandpa of the current
prime minister and the 6th postwar prime minister himself, was an especially skillful procrastination artist. When signing the 1956 Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration, the weak-kneed Hatoyama agreed to shelve the dispute over the Northern Territories as if he didn't know that in diplomacy, the right timing, once missed, would never come back.
When it came to the U.S.-Japanese relations, Ichiro Hatoyama was known for his tendency to act defiantly at times toward his American counterpart, Dwight D. Eisenhower. But he never really meant it; he just pouted to attract attention from his patron. That is particularly evident from the fact that he served as the first prime minister under the 1955 System from the CIA-funded Liberal Democratic Party. It never crossed his mind to make Japan a genuinely independent country.
Obviously, it's these defective characteristics, especially irresoluteness and lack of clear vision, that Yukio Hatoyama has inherited from his grandfather. The prime minister keep wavering between the 2006
bilateral accord about the relocation of the air station and his campaign pledge to negate it. But everyone knows the media-salient Futenma rift is fake.
Domestically, his administration has launched an all-out exercise to cut back on expenditures already funded in the extra budget for fiscal 2009. Encouraged by the support from the media, the prime minister is "mercilessly" chopping "wasteful spending," as if there can be anything which is not wasteful in this wasted country.
Here again, Japanese people at large are not really interested in the outcome of the ongoing cutback exercise. Reasons:
■ As a result of the recent revelations that Hatoyama himself is a habitual tax evader, he has lost the moral authority, totally and for good. ■ The prime minister has repeatedly said there should be no sacred cows, but people know there are many, in fact. Just for one thing the Emperor, his kin and their servants get paid an annual JPY17.5 billion, or USD195 million, for doing absolutely nothing. ■ The government finances have already been bankrupt for quite a while. Just killing dozen projects for bridges to nowhere doesn't make a bit of difference.
Ichiro Ozawa, for one, certainly knew that it would be useless if he bothered to save some expenses on his pet projects such as one to build a bridge to the People's Republic of China. On December
10, the de facto leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan visited Hu Jintao in Beijing, out of the blue and without any specific
agenda to discuss with the Chinese leader.
As if to show off the party coffers packed with a handsome amount of loot, Ozawa took along with him a cortege of 626 people, which included
143 Diet members from the DPJ. As you can see in the video embedded at the top of this post, every lawmaker privileged with the honor
of shaking hands and trying his/her pronunciation of ni hao, for up to 3 seconds, with the benevolently smiling Hu looked like a child posing before a camera alongside of a man in a giant panda suit at Hong Kong Disneyland. Just imagine what if Nancy Pelosi took along more than hundred highly-paid congressmen to China just to let them do the same thing.
You don't have to be Japanese-literate to comprehend Ozawa's message in the video because it was just a syrupy nothing about furthering the Sino-Japanese relations at all levels. (The same holds true with Hatoyama fielding questions from the press corps in Bali, Indonesia. He was basically saying that if the investigators can fully establish their case against him, he is willing to return the loot - so take it easy.)
· read more (617 words)
Wednesday, January 20 2010 @ 01:34 AM CST
Contributed by: Y.Yamamoto
Views: 296
For quite a while, my former fellow countrymen have been saying that the 1955 System is dead by now with a new Japan emerging on the horizon.
Simply, that can't be true. The three pillars of the rotten regime - the "2,670"-year-old imperial institution, the 120-year-old cartel of information, and the 50-year-old U.S.-Japanese security treaty - are still there and remain intact. In fact, the System is now in full bloom.
What has fallen apart, instead, is the entire society formed by these brain-dead people. It still shows weak vital signs, but that is simply because each component of the old edifice is functioning as a life-support system.
On the night of January 15 Ichiro Ozawa's former and current aides were vicariously nabbed by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office on behalf of their
boss. Commentators, most of whom are retired investigators, cited as the reason behind the prosecutors' move the fact that they had thought these villains would otherwise destroy all the evidence, and even their own selves.
These pundits were lying for sure. If the Prosecutors Office had really feared that a good part of evidence, which would have substantiated what the poor straw men had already coughed up while in detention, would be incinerated or shredded, they must have acted much quicker. In fact it was only January 13 when the investigators raided their offices and the head-office of Kajima
Corp., one of the dozens of construction companies the Secretary General of the DPJ
has had cozy relationship with.
On the other hand, it is true that suicide could not be ruled out, but it is equally true that the arrest was meant to save Ozawa's henchmen from possibly being whacked.
Now it seems as though it was not only Ozawa but also the law enforcement authority that wanted to stall for time so as to mitigate the damage to their common vested interests in what some independent journalists have called a kleptocracy.
In the face of the belated and half-hearted challenge from the Prosecutors
Office, the mastermind of the money-siphoning gadget does not look to wince at all. He even declared an "all-out war" against law enforcement. He must have a good reason
to believe it's winnable as usual and that once the dust settles, he can go on swimming the sea of
pus as he has done in the last four decades.
When the current Secretary General of the DPJ was with the then ruling Liberal Democratic Party, he was one of the key members of the most corrupt intra-party faction founded by the scandal-tainted prime minister Kakuei
Tanaka. It's been known that when his boss was arrested on the charge of
the Lockheed bribery case, Ozawa was always spotted sitting in the court gallery.
He did the same thing when his brethren, Shin Kanemaru and Noboru
Takeshita, were taken to court. That way, he has learned that robbers like them can always find ways to neutralize law enforcement, and that by doing so, they can minimize the damage resulting from investigations into their wrongdoing.
Needless to say, the most classic way for a nefarious felon to cover up the enormity of his crime is to willingly admit to the smallest part of it. That's what Ozawa is doing now with the illegal fund of 400 million yen ($4.4 million.) To him 400 million is just peanuts.
Another thing that makes Ozawa's life even easier is that for him it's a breeze to silence Diet members. Lawmakers in his own party are as docile as the members of the Chinese Communist Party, but key members of the major opposition LDP (mostly his former colleagues) are essentially no different. Ozawa is so unscrupulous as to make them look like small-time thieves, but he knows inside out that they are no cleaner.
All it takes for Ozawa to deter them from speaking up, therefore, is
to say, "I have first-hand knowledge about what you guys have been up to all the while. Let's face it; we are people of the same stripe. You better not spit into the wind."
Equally important, the de facto leader of the DPJ knows how to make the most of the Kisha Kurabu (Press Club) system to prevent the media obscurantists from telling the
whole truth about his wrongdoing. As Laurie Anne Freeman observed in her Closing the Shop (Princeton University Press, 2000), before he left the LDP for a new gold vein, Ozawa had already made it known to the members of the exclusive club that the only
way to keep their jobs is to hush it up or gloss it over whenever
he made a dubious move.
Freeman depicted the story about Ozawa's 1990
trip to Pyongyang. The then Secretary General of the LDP, along with Shin Kanemaru, went there to have clandestine
talks over some lucrative business with Kim Il-sung. At that time an Asahi Shimbun
reporter dared to describe what they did at the cost of national interests
as dogeza gaiko, or prostration diplomacy. The consequence: the guy simply lost his job.
Now all the mainstream news organizations are saying in concert that Ozawa should be held accountable for the source of the fund at issue as if Japanese people are dying for an explanation from the thief on how he got his hand on it while, in fact, it is just the tip of the tip of the huge loot-berg. This is how they marginalize the enormity of Ozawa's crime.
The Sankei Shimbun, the daily that falsely claims to be the most right-leaning of all, uses a little different trick to distort things about Ozawa. Taking advantage of his pro-Pyongyang, pro-Beijing stance, the newspaper is becoming more and more vocal about his unpatriotic argument that Koreans and other ethnic groups with permanent resident status should be given suffrage. Since the bandit has no ideological leaning at all, though, Sankei's campaign is totally irrelevant here and only serves to distract people's attention from his criminal acts.
Perhaps even more important, the Japanese at large are impossible dupes. The world's most gullible and suggestible people are still swallowing
whatever these editors and reporters are feeding them.
In the total absence of reliable information about people's take on the Ozawa affair, I spent the whole afternoon yesterday browsing through the web. For that purpose I used Google because the search engine has regained our trust thanks to its recent move in China.
When I keyed in a search string "小沢 暗殺" (ozawa assassination),
86,600 results came up. This was by far outnumbered by URLs that came up
when I used a search string "obama assassination." But I have
somehow gathered that people's desire for seeing Ichiro Ozawa physically eliminated is much
more real and compelling. · read more (346 words)
Recently I have started to think I should not waste what little time left to me discussing what people call politics. So I will suspend my blog activity at least
for a while, or possibly for good.
Before doing so, let me talk a little about the relationship between the
nation-state and the citizenry living there from the perspective of the
18th century's social contract theories.
Some five years ago I finally terminated my contract with the Japanese government. At the same time, I also parted ways with some other institutions, that inevitably included my family as I briefly touched on in my May 1 post about the myth of Japan's technological superiority. (Speaking of family, I still stay in touch with some of my kin because friends do not necessarily have to share the same values.)
One of the reasons I disengaged myself from the country of my birth was because when I became a pensioner, I realized that
I had been ripped off by the Japanese government since 1959, the year I participated
in the national pension program (contributory type.) It reached my patience threshold when I found out that a good part of my beneficiary
right was gone.
I was forced to enter into the contract 74 years ago. But I am not quite
sure if "contract" is the right word here. For one thing it does not
have a termination clause presumably because it's totally inconceivable
for an ethnic Japanese to leave the relationship with the nation which
was supposedly founded on February 11, 2,669 years ago by Emperor Jinmu, a son of the sun goddess.
Just the same, I have since abandoned all the rights and obligations set
forth in the Constitution which is filled with empty promises.
My registration is still retained on the computers
of the central and municipal government. So I would be allowed to have my Japanese passport renewed if ever I wanted to. It is also true that I am paying the income taxes
on my annuities because they are withheld, at a provisional rate, from the peanuts I receive every
second month. Needless to say, I'm having to pay the tobacco tax in an estimated amount of JPY 270K, or more than US$ 3K, every year, along with other value-added taxes.
In return, I get absolutely nothing.
However, I have somehow managed to evade other taxes and dues. For one thing, I haven't paid the premiums for the mandatory medical- and nursing-care coverages with 70%-coinsurance clauses since my retirement in part because it's out of the question to put my life and death in the hands of those unreliable doctors and incompetent nurses. Neither am I
paying the "TV viewing fees" to NHK, the state-run broadcaster, in part because none of its programs are worth watching at all.
I have dozen other reasons for not abiding by laws, but I don't want to specify them for now. That is what I would do if and when I was taken to court. I'm sure I would win because I have nothing to lose.
Currently I still have a roof over my head. I also have some, if not many, good friends locally. But I mean it literally and figuratively when I
say I am stateless. Maybe you have difficulty understanding how it feels
to be in that status in the country where a pathological obsession with homogeneity has prevailed in the last thirteen centuries.
On the other hand, I am not really through with America, the country I might have migrated to. You will understand what I am talking about if you know separation by divorce or bereavement does not always put an end to your relations with former in-laws.
In the past I learned many things from American people, especially how
to do business and how to make my life enjoyable. I cannot just write off all these
years I was in love with America.
Moreover, I still feel I have yet to
settle old scores with some of them, including the literary agent who subtly,
but flatly turned down my proposal amid the 2008 presidential campaign. The agent treated me as if I was one of those wannabe writers who just wanted to be institutionalized there. But actually, my aborted book that would have been titled The Unviable Japan was about my deliberate refusal to become institutionalized in Japan or any other country.
The last telephone conversation between the agent and me took place on March 4, 2008, but it was already indicative of the American Disease getting into its terminal stage.
I think the Americans have long been predisposed to Obamitis due to the fact that the United States is a nation which was
built by immigrants.
People always recapitulate the American history that way. But I see some sticking point in this all-too-familiar statement; it overgeneralizes the nation's formative process. It is true that the early settlers should
be given credit for the foundation of the United States, but it is not true that the later crops of immigrants, let alone their descendants, deserve
the same credit.
These late-comers are just reaping the harvest from the seeds sowed by
the nation's founders. It is, therefore, totally unrealistic to assume that they have high aspirations to rebuild their failing country. All we can expect from them is to further
undermine the American value system which has its origin in the founding
principles.
The real problem facing the nation, however, lies with the posterity of the earlier crops of immigrants. Today these people are at a loss over
how to recapture the lost ground which they once inherited from their ancestors.
Simply put, that is because of their utter ignorance about the contractual
relationship they are in with their country. As I observe, they seem to have great difficulty
distinguishing between the statehood and individual citizens. Given the way the American society has developed in the past, this is quite understandable. But now is the time they should revisit the gist of the mandate their ancestors gave to their representatives 221 years ago.
They don't have to be reminded all anew that amid the Civil War, Abraham
Lincoln said, "The government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth." Obviously the 16th Presidents
of the United States could not foresee that his ideal would be largely
distorted by his remote successors a century later.
But I think that if the descendants of the nation's builders don't want to be duped by the state anymore, they should relearn the essence of the Gettysburg address which all came down
to the following principles:
■ individual citizens and the country where they live are two separate
entities,
■ individuals create, reform, or destroy their country - it's never the other way around.
It now all hinges on their willingness and ability to get back to the basics
of the social contract whether or not America will be able to demonstrate
its innate resilience before having to resort to the Second Amendment.
Unlike Obama, I didn't attend Harvard Law School. Yet, I do know, as a
seasoned businessman, that the Constitution of the United States, or any
other country's for that matter, is the master contract between the government
and the people. Also do I know that there is no such thing as a contract which is not terminable.
Some have already started seriously talking about impeaching Barack Hussein Obama applying Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads: "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
I think their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is reasonable. Things
the president has said and done thus far all fall on "high crimes." · read more (357 words)
Sunday, November 22 2009 @ 11:24 AM CST
Contributed by: Y.Yamamoto
Views: 809
In the previous session of the interview with Lara, Chen Tien-shi (photo), which
was devoted to precisely defining the word "stateless," I found
out that both of us are only technically Japanese and that the two stateless
citizens are pursuing basically the same end.
But this time around, it
was revealed that there are two fundamental differences between us, as well.
On some important points we are diagonally different. Yet I'm inclined
to say we are 360-degrees different, so to speak.
One of the differences lies with the fact that she is a dedicated person
of deeds whereas I am an intransigent man of words. The farthest things from us two, therefore, are those unprincipled, surface-scratching pundits on the one hand and half-committed, hypocritical activists on the other. As is the case with Shihoko Fujiwara, another doer I admire, Lara also knows she should often compromise on the principle she upholds as a first-rate researcher for the cause of giving a helping hand to needy people.
Normally I shut my mouth before these activists because every word
I utter there rings hollow. But this time I dared to go straight ahead with my questions without
deference to her dedication to the grassroots activism. I thought
only by doing so we would be able to benefit from our conversation.
The other point where we are divided is that she values family bonds over
anything else whereas I am an avowed loner. I wish I could look like one who values blood relationship and affinity, but I can't, simply because my family has long fallen apart as is
true with other Japanese families. I might as well have written a voluminous book to explain how that happened.
The following excerpts are a reproduction of our conversation that took place on Friday evening on a to-that-effect
basis:
Yamamoto: My question No. 2 goes like this: "Tell me exactly what end you
have been pursuing with respect to the issues with statelessness. In other
words, do you think the bigger the stateless population, the better the
situation, or the smaller, the better?" I knew this question sounds
stupid, but I wanted you to answer it anyhow because I got an impression
that the author of Mukokuseki - Stateless stresses the positive side of statelessness. Lara: As I told you last week, statelessness is a multifaceted issue. When
I deal with a social outcast, as I do practically every day, it does not
make sense to stress the positive side of the issue by saying, "Be
proud of your statelessness." That is why I am actually doing what
the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948,) the U.N.
Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961,) etc. call for. Y: Don't you think these declarations and conventions have remained empty
promises most of the time just like our own Constitution has? I am opinionated
that the international organization which was founded when Chiang Kai-shek
was still governing mainland China has long been dead. That is why it always takes it for granted that there is nothing to be
proud of about being stateless. L: I agree that the U.N. hasn't lived up to our expectations. Otherwise,
these people wouldn't need us.
Postscript: We didn't discuss the raison d'etre of the United Nations more in detail, but actually I think it has created more problems than it has solved them. By comparison. the European
Union has by far outperformed the U.N.
Y: The next question was: "Do you think your solution to the problem
can be institutionalized in one way or the other?" I ask this question
because I don't think it's the right thing to institutionalize mutual support among individual citizens. As we have seen in the U.S. in recent years, that is
the surest way to kill people's innate spontaneity. L: I agree. The most important reason I can't institutionalize my activity is because the actual situation
facing stateless people largely varies from an individual to another. As
a matter of fact, I have launched a website named Mukokuseki Nettowaaku (Stateless Network) where people of various backgrounds share their experiences
and views. Aside from the website, we sometimes organize a forum to the
same end. The first forum was held in Tokyo on November 23, 2008.
These are as far as I could institutionalize myself. Without financial constraints I am under, I might be doing a little more. · read more (628 words)
Left: Ms. Chen Tien-shi, alias Lara, answering my questions Right: Lara on a study tour
It is something I am inclined to call a serendipity that the brilliant author
of Mukokuseki - Stateless (Shincho-sha, 2005) turned out to be my neighbor and that a restaurant
owned by her family is located just around the corner from my apartment.
Despite the differences in age, ethnicity and educational/occupational
background between us, we seem to have one thing in common: we are stateless
at heart.
Currently Chen Tien-shi, better known to her friends as Lara, spends weekdays
in Osaka as Associate Professor at National Museum of Ethnology (MINPAKU) but on weekends she comes home to spend time with her husband, son, parents
and siblings who are living in this neighborhood.
On Friday night I visited that restaurant without knowing Lara had already
flown back from MINPAKU. I ordered mapo tofu ("stir-fried tofu in hot sauce" as the Beijing Travel Bureau translated the name of the dish in 2008) for my late dinner. But when I was working
on my mapo tofu, Lara emerged from the innermost alcove typical of a Chinese restaurant, which I call a "family nook," and spotted me. She looked
a little tired from the hard-working week, but was kind enough to say,
"Let me answer some of your questions when you are through with your dinner." A couple of days earlier I had sent her six questions together
with my take on her book.
The first one was about how specifically she defines statelessness. You
don't have to define homelessness or joblessness, but when it comes statelessness,
it's not that simple. So I asked her:
"You wrote that according to the statistics compiled by the Justice
Ministry, there were 1,846 stateless people in Japan as of the end of 2003.
You went on to say that if you include unregistered people and those who
are 'unaware' of their real situation, the stateless population must be
much bigger. I can't agree more, but could you define these 'unaware' people
more specifically?"
Her answer: Obviously the biggest group that falls on this category is
found in Zainichi (Koreans living in Japan.) Especially, she added, a good part of their second and third generation belong in this group. Their parents and grandparents were recruited from the Korean Peninsula as forced laborers or "comfort women."
The population of Zainichi peaked at the vicinity of 2 million by 1945. After the war, some of them
chose to return to the Peninsula, but those who opted to stay on faced
the same difficulty that the Chen family encountered in 1972 when the Republic
of Korea came into existence in 1948 because, at the same time, the Korean
Empire-turned-Japanese colony ceased to exist. Yet the Japanese Justice
Ministry was unjust enough to issue their resident registrations just stating
they are "Koreans." Some of them found it unavoidable to become
naturalized in Japan - the very country that had inflicted unbearable humiliation
on them for 34 years from 1911 to 1945.
Ms. Chen thinks basically the same thing can be said of most refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia because countries by these names have been nonexistent at least since 1975 when the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Democratic Kampuchea (currently called Kingdon of Cambodia) were founded. To be more precise, there have never been such names. No matter whether they are fully aware that there is no "home country" to return to, they are stateless, literally and figuratively.
Japan has practically closed its door to "political refugees" because of its pathological obsession with homogeneity, and yet there are more than ten thousand such people living here with stateless status.
If you take account of "economic refugees," Lara concluded,
these 1,846 people certified by the Justice Ministry as stateless in 2003
must have been the tip of the iceberg. In my interpretation,
economic refugees include those the Palermo Protocol of 2000, or United
Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, termed "willing
participants in trafficking in persons," i.e. prostitutes.
Lara told me across the Chinese dining table that the definition of the
word statelessness should be given in a multilayered way - legally, factually
and from an inner angle.
In relation to my first question, I had also asked her where she classifies
herself and other "stateless citizens" including myself. She confirmed that as she
wrote in Mukokuseki - Stateless, she remained essentially stateless even after she acquired Japanese citizenship.
But she corrected me as to the particular part of my book review where I cited practical
consideration as the primary reason she wanted to become a legally
established citizen.
She said to the effect that that is only part of the reasons. "Most
importantly," she said, "I wanted to find out if my problem could
be solved just by legally establishing myself here. In other words, I wanted
to know exactly what it would be like for an individual to willfully enter into a
'contract' with a state." · read more (261 words)
The Chinese restaurant sits at the southern tip of Yokohama China Town. That means it's a one-minute walk from my apartment. Nevertheless, I had shied away from it until several days ago because its venerable facade and elegantly furnished inside gave me the impression that food served there must be unaffordable to the poor pensioner that I am.
Unlike cheap, dirty and more crowded eateries in other districts of the town, the particular
restaurant and neighboring ones mostly specialize in Taiwanese or Cantonese
cuisine. On October 10 they still observe the anniversary of the foundation of the Republic of China, though in a subdued way, nine days after mainlanders celebrated the foundation of the People's Republic of China, filling the entire town with ear-splitting noises and waves of the Five-Starred Red Flags
On Monday night, it was raining and I felt too weak to take a longer trip
to the other side of the town. I stopped in front of the particular
eatery and said to myself: "I prefer Taiwanese cuisine, so why don't
I give this one a try?" When I dared to step inside for a small dinner,
however, I found out I was wrong. Most items on the menu were reasonably
priced. And yet the restaurant owner, her family members and employees
were much more hospitable and polite than those boorish mainlanders I have to deal
with everyday.
When paying my bill at the checkout counter, I noticed that half-a-dozen
copies of a book were piled up on it. The book was titled Mukokuseki - Stateless (Shincho-sha, 2005.) The restaurant owner, who looked to be in her late-40s or early-50s, fondly told me that its author Chen Tien-shi is her youngest sister.
That is how I came across one of the few Japanese books which are worth
reading.
Tien-shi's father and his wife were among the millions of people who fled
mainland China in 1949. His family temporarily settled down in Peitou,
a rural city in the northern part of Taiwan. Since the young man, who was
a government employee at that time, was too ambitious to settle down there
permanently, he decided to come over to Japan to study business in the
early-1960s. As soon as he completed a higher-learning course here, he
brought his wife and five children to Yokohama China Town.
Tien-shi, which literally means a gift from god, was born in this neighborhood
in 1971 as the sixth child of the Chens. At the church she was christened after Saint Clara. That is why her kin and friends have called her Lara.
It was when the kid was 1-year-old that the Sino-Japanese relations were
normalized between Kakuei Tanaka and Zhou Enlai. Subsequently, then Foreign
Minister Masayoshi Ohira announced that the government had decided to renounce the Treaty of Taipei. These events sent shockwaves throughout the Chinese community in Yokohama, or anywhere else in Japan. Especially those who held Taiwanese nationality faced a serious dilemma. The Chen
family was no exception.
Some of the family members insisted they should acquire the Chinese citizenship
while some others said it was the right time to become naturalized. At the end
of the long discussion, the patriarch decided to go for the stateless status.
Despite his anguished decision, any family member but little Tien-shi did not totally lose their national identity because they still retained de facto citizenship in Taiwan.
It is against this backdrop that Tien-shi had to deal with an identity
crisis throughout her childhood and well into her early adulthood. · read more (634 words)
Wednesday, October 21 2009 @ 01:18 AM CDT
Contributed by: Y.Yamamoto
Views: 1,044
Soren Kierkegaard, who is often labeled a Christian existentialist, was the first to have advocated smart mistakes
Mistake - NOUN:
1. An error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge,
or carelessness
2. A misconception or misunderstanding
- The American Heritage Dictionary
People say, "Everybody makes mistakes." But I have made too many mistakes in my 74-year life to find consolation in the banal statement.
Thus far, however, I haven't raped, robbed, or murdered anyone. But since the AHD clearly distinguishes criminal acts from mistakes, the absence of criminal records doesn't make any difference to the fact that I am extremely error-prone. To me this is something very hard to accept because I have sometimes suffered a prohibitively costly consequence from these missteps.
On the other hand, if one means
to say by this notion that everybody commits a crime or two at times, he is just admitting the society where he lives has already fallen apart.
To differentiate mistakes from wrongdoings more clearly, I think we should shed new light on man's innate proneness to errors. My way of doing that would be like this:
"Everybody is entitled or even encouraged to make a mistake on the premise that it is a result of taking a calculated risk. No matter whether his action turns out a failure due to 'defective judgment' or 'deficient knowledge,' that is the only way he can learn lessons from life."
Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is one of the favorite
thinkers of American businessmen because his words, when wrenched out of
the total context, often seem to fit very well into actual business situation. I have heard dozen times American executives quote,
or requote to be more precise, Kierkegaard's words.
A retired businessman by the name of G. Kingsley Ward, for one, wrote in
his small book titled Letters of a Businessman to His Daughter:
"And in all likelihood, they would all concur with Soren Kierkegaard's
observations that, 'Life can only be understood backwards; but it must
be lived forwards.'"
Obviously Ward had been too busy to double-check the unabridged text of a
1843 entry in Kierkegaard's diary, which actually goes like this:
"It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood
backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be
lived - forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean
that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely
because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking
position." (English translation by Peter P. Rohde)
Ward's compatriots find this passage particularly (re)quotable especailly when they just want to say, "Let's go ahead with our plan although there still are risk factors involved in it." Although Kierkegaard's thoughts have a little more profound implication than an American businessman would find in them, they think the citation will make their message more convincing to their colleagues.
I know American people, in general, are the world's second poorest thinkers,
only next to the Japanese, especially when it comes to abstract thinking.
Yet I suspect Ward might have been able to tell his daughter how to make smart mistakes
if he had bothered to read the entire text of the particular entry in Kierkegaard's
diary, and preferably yet, some other pieces in the same journal, as well.
Once upon a time, the American society was accommodative of risk-taking
individuals, especially when they were smart enough to run calculated risks.
In those days the people didn't even need the ability for abstract thinking.
Contextual thinking would always suffice. I think this climate was the
real reason behind their resilience and self-purification ability. · read more (352 words)
On September 14, I wrote: "I will be interviewing Mr. [Yoshiro] Takeuchi
by the end of this month unless something happens to either of us in the
meantime." Unfortunately, this something happened.
Yesterday, he told me over the phone that he would never see me again.
He cited the following reasons for shying away from the proposed talk:
■ Everything I said in the regular meeting of the Takeuchi School and in my followup letters was totally unacceptable.
■ Everything I said there indicated that I have become totally learning-disabled with my brain seriously suffering senility.
More specifically the 85-year-old philosopher didn't like the following
remarks I had made:
■ We should not expect Obama or Hatoyama to deliver on their promises of change because they are downright swindlers.
■ Harry S. Truman should have used the Little Boy and the Fat Man on Tokyo,
instead of the relatively unimportant local cities, to exterminate the
imperial institution and decapitate Japan.
Takeuchi is one of those computer-illiterates. The only tools he can use when sharing his thoughts with others are his hoarse but solemn voice and the archaic fountain pen. Quite naturally he makes believe that it still makes sense to discuss socio-political issues out of the context of the Internet. Every time his message fails to get through, he thinks the receiver, not the sender, of the message is at fault.
These are why I had had to snail-mail him some letters along with the printouts of my blog pieces to elaborate on my points. In relation to the first one, I had sent him the hardcopy of my September 21 piece. As to Truman's choice of the target cities, I had had to consume another envelope and postage stamp just to send him the printout of my September 23 post.
How could he have thought I am more learning-disabled than himself?
But all he could say in our last telephone conversation was that my "rant"
was totally impermissible. This really indicated that it's not me, but
himself who is suffering a serious senile dementia.
Now it looks as though the private school the old philosopher started 20
years ago to "confront the climate immersed in tenno-kyo (the Emperor Cult)" has turned into a cult in itself. And now he
is the guru who forces his disciples, if implicitly, to swallow everything
written in his 1999 book titled Confrontation with the Emperor Cult as if it were the bible. He insists that the book was just a compilation of debates among his
disciples, but unfortunately for the poor philosopher, the number of his
students has dramatically decreased from more than 100 in 1999 to a mere
3 or 4 by now. · read more (325 words)
Wednesday, October 14 2009 @ 03:08 AM CDT
Contributed by: Y.Yamamoto
Views: 885
Outside of the Islamic sphere, sodomy does not constitute a crime. And yet
"conservatives" in non-Muslim countries, especially the U.S., are untiringly insisting that homosexuality is a sin. This is really ridiculous; there cannot be any moral implication in people's sexual orientations.
As far as I know, the only American "conservatives" who rarely talk about the gay issue are Ron Paul and Sarah Palin. Certainly they know homosexuality is not a moral issue, let alone a political one.
It seems to me that conservatives' allegation against gays is essentially self-contradictory because the word "homo," almost by definition, indicates that gays are downright conservatives. They fear anything new and different, and feel at ease only when there is no challenge for change. To them life is unbearable if it has to be a voyage in uncharted waters.
For that reason, they always choose to stay with people of the same feather or same gender. The last thing you can expect from them is to accept, let alone initiate, new ideas or innovative ways of doing things.
In recent years, self-proclaimed "liberals," too, have started
raising their voices, as if gays are not conservatives in nature, to demand special privileges be given to them just for being gays.
In truth, however, homosexuality is not a vice, let alone a virtue, but a deadly disease that disables its sufferers to change. The only privilege these sick and sickening people really deserve is confinement in mental hospitals.
With the gay issue constantly politicized these days, I can't but feel pity for straight Americans. On the one hand liberals are depriving them of their right to openly express disgust toward disgusting things, and on the other, conservatives are forcing them to feel obliged to invent phony moral grounds every time they say they don't like tomatoes, or whatever it is they don't like.
To make the pathological issue a little more complex, the two different sexual orientations often coexist in one person. Such a case is sometimes called bi-sexuality, but a more
vulgar way to refer to it is AC-DC.
The U.S. president, for one, is an AC-DC.
On October 10 he attended
the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign where he reaffirmed his
commitment to ban the discriminatory treatment of gays in the military.
According to a wire report by Associated Press, the president received a standing ovation
from the crowd of 3,000.
This is an unmistakable sign that Obama did not really mean it when he said, as he did thousands times, that he would bring about change in America.
The best thing the American people can expect from their leader is a mere
metamorphosis. Underneath the "change" on the surface, the progression
of the American disease will further accelerate. Most probably by the
end of Obama's first term, America will have fallen terminally ill.
For my part, I am 120% hetero.
Throughout my life I have always distanced myself from homos and AC-DCs
because I have believed that the change-disabling disease is highly infectious.
When looking back on my adulthood, I realize all anew that not a single
man could cause a change in the course of my life.
As I have always maintained, young women often remain unassimilated at the bottom
of "the chain of oppression" in this helplessly male-dominated and supposedly homogeneous nation. Small wonder that men have never outshone women in Japan, although
the opposite has not always been true. That is why I could encounter a certain number of Japanese women whose charms were so irresistible that I tried hard to change myself to deserve them.
It was through these relationships that I learned you can really change only when you become involved, in your entirety, with someone who is potentially your change agent. To be more explicit about the word "entirety," you've got to be committed to your mate from brain to genitals. Without internalizing the challenge facing you this way, you can't change yourself, let alone the country where you live.
Admittedly, though, some of my male friends and kin, especially my late father, have had a certain influence on me. But in the absence of romantic attachment to them, they have never been a major driving force for change. · read more (121 words)
Sunday, October 11 2009 @ 09:49 AM CDT
Contributed by: Y.Yamamoto
Views: 1,161
Left: Tokyo Governor Ishihara Center: Japanese lookalike of U.S. president Right: Hiroshima Mayor Akiba
When International Olympic Committee Chairman Jacques Rogge announced October
2 that the 2016 Summer Olympics will be hosted by Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo
Governor Shintaro Ishihara almost lost words and barely managed to mumble, "I
can't figure out the power dynamics (rikigaku) within the IOC." He was telling the
truth except that it's not only the dynamics inside the IOC but also the
dynamics governing anywhere else that the empty-headed governor cannot
understand.
Japanese media could not hide their disappointment either because their
unaudited poll results had invariably indicated the entire nation was supporting Ishihara's
silly bid. Fortunately for them, though, that didn't last long because
the Japanese people have been so used to losing a competition. Moreover,
it seems as though they have acquired special skills to derive a twisted pleasure
from a defeat since 1964 when two athletes committed suicide after they had failed
to come up to popular expectations at the Tokyo Olympics.
Then came the news that Barack Hussein Obama, who had also lost in his bid to have Chicago host the Olympic Games in 2016, was awarded the year's Nobel Peace Prize. Now it was my turn to be puzzled about the power dynamics at the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. But I don't care too much about it because by now I have become accustomed to seeing the American president rewarded, in many ways, for his promises rather than accomplishments.
Ironically enough, the two Committees unwittingly paved the way for another
moron by the name of Tadatoshi Akiba to make a bid to host the 2020 Olympics.
The Hiroshima Mayor, who has had a "slobbering love affair"
with Obama since April 5, thought that by 2020, we will be living in a
nuclear-free world and Hiroshima will be the ideal venue to celebrate Obama's feat. · read more (72 words)
On October 20, 2005
Japan Media Review
ran my commentary
titled
"Questioning the Questioners"
which deals with the pivotal role Japan's mainstream media
played during the campaign period for Election 2005.
