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Post by caucasoididiot on May 26, 2011 9:28:24 GMT -5
I wouldn't be surprised if they sell them in your neck of the woods, from what I've heard. Just watch out if you start seeing really big ones. (^_^)
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jun 29, 2011 11:25:27 GMT -5
Just back from my first Japanese visit in a couple years and have a few things worth posting here. To get the ball rolling, I'll start with an article from the Japan Times a buddy of mine pointed me to: No need to know the law, but you must obey itA few months ago I met with some Western diplomats who were looking for information about Japanese law — in particular, an answer to the question, "Is parental child abduction a crime?" . . . I don't think I helped much, since my contribution was something along the lines of "Well, it probably depends on whether the authorities need it to be a crime."But perhaps greater specificity is not needed, at least from the standpoint of law enforcement. Their perspective may be not so much "Was it a crime?" as "Was the peace disturbed?"It is here that the role of criminal law in Japanese society can take a turn down a darker path: when it is used primarily to serve the interests of the authorities rather than the public good.That law enforcement officials use the law to their own advantage — interpreted creatively if necessary — is hardly unique to Japan. Where Japan may differ from other countries, however, is that the legal system seems to lack institutions that act as a significant check on such usage.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jul 4, 2011 15:03:15 GMT -5
From The Japan Times, 28 June 2011
For comparison, it's about ¥80 = $1 right now
A 30-year low: Wives give salarymen just Y1,200 a day for spending cash
BLOOMBERG
Japanese men have seen allowances wither to the lowest in three decades as their wives pare household spending in an economy mired in deflation.
The salarymen received ¥36,500 per month for pocket money, amounting to around ¥1,200 a day and the smallest since 1982, according to a survey by Shinsei Financial Co. released Monday. Wives here typically manage their husbands' earnings and set their allowances.
The nation's growth of less than 1 percent in the past decade has crimped workers' pay, forcing housewives to cut back on pocket money and exacerbating the deflation that has plagued the economy for more than a decade. Wages have been dropping since the March 11 earthquake, and household sentiment is near a two-year low, making a consumer-driven economic rebound less likely.
"This makes me a little sad," said Hiroshi Miyazaki, chief economist at Shinkin Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. "It's a result of a very long period of deflation. Unfortunately, this trend's going to continue."
Workers' allowances peaked in 1990 at the height of the asset and real estate bubble, with men receiving a monthly ¥76,000, more than double what they get today, according to the survey.
Respondents in Monday's report said they spend the greatest proportion of their pocket money on lunch, dispensing an average ¥490. That matches the price of a double cheeseburger with small fries and a drink at McDonald's.
"People are becoming increasingly austere in their attitudes toward money," Shinsei said in the report. It has been conducting the survey since 1979, covering responses from about 1,000 men between their 20s and 50s.
To save money, workers said they bring their own lunch to work and eat out less. Men ate out 2.9 times a month after work and spent an average ¥3,540 each time, according to the survey. That compares with more than ¥6,000 in 2009.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jul 9, 2011 9:48:44 GMT -5
And now, a couple from the Hideo Gump department: While I believe this blogger is actually Chinese, the product presented is a typical Japanese one. It's a collection of plastic figurines of anime-style flight attendants tracing the history of All Nihon Airways uniforms for same. I'm not sure if the pink hair is truly regulation, though: Oops! Long url, this one.Now this next item was apparently invented in Korea, but the inspiration is clearly Japanese. As an aside, I wonder if Korea starting to play a cultural Canada to Japan's USA? Anyhow, I saw ads for these while watching Japanese morning TV. They're contacts to give you the anime eyes look: kokostiletto.blogspot.com/2009/05/kokos-newest-beauty-find.htmlSome of the pics on this page are even higher octane: www.asianfashioncity.com/contact-lens.htmlJust goes to prove that while beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, oddity is not so restricted.
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Post by ilmatto on Aug 14, 2011 8:11:58 GMT -5
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Aug 16, 2011 1:09:55 GMT -5
The houses are beautiful.
As for the contact lenses and stewardess figures: do the Japanese know how simultaneously culturally and psychologically flapjacksed up all that kind of stuff is? I ask...sincerely.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Oct 6, 2011 12:56:34 GMT -5
. . . do the Japanese know how simultaneously culturally and psychologically kraked up all that kind of stuff is? I ask...sincerely. Ever watch the old Babylon 5 show? In an early episode an alien character is enjoying a Zen rock garden and asks a Terran, "Is this from your planet?" I've always thought the best answer would be: "It's Japanese, so kinda from our planet." Which can be both good and bad. . . . Been trying to do some independent translations of the songs in Sono Shion's Suicide Club lately. As what you might call the movie's "punctuation," I suspect they're the bet clue to what he's on about, and I've become slightly dubious of some of the subs. I especially think that there's a darker undertow to the lyrics of the girl group "Dessert" that the translations don't catch, which might really affect how one interprets them. What I have here is Kuramoto Mitsuru's song, used in a crucial scene of the film but largely untranslated since there's a fair amount of dialogue over it. If you know the film you know the sequence, while if you don't any description would be a spoiler. However, this song encapsulates a lot of the film's irony. Start by giving it a straight listen, without visual cues. Now, the lyrics: それではみなさんさようなら Sore de ha Minasan Sayounara Well, Everyone, Goodbye赤い実見つけていそいそと 喰べて血を吐く女子高生 首に飾った白い珠 揺れてぼやける虚に 尊い光に包まれる Akai mi mitsukete isoiso to Tabete chi wo haku joshikousei Kubi ni kazatta shiroi tama Yurete boyakeru utsuro ni Toutoi hikari ni tsutsumareruRed fruits* are found and greedily Eaten by schoolgirls who vomit blood A whitened character† with a decorated neck Swings and blurs into the void Able to be engulfed by the sacred light *A different pronunciation of the same character would mean "truth." †Literally "ball" or "globe," but can mean person, especially when describing their nature. 青いジュースが美味しそう 飲んで血を吐く子供達 強く握った白い珠 ポロリ零れる虚に 尊い光に包まれる Aoi juusu ga oishi sou Nonde chi wo haku kodomo-tachi Tsuyoku nigitta shiroi tama Porori koboreru utsuro ni Toutoi hikari ni tsutsumareruThe blue juice looks delicious And is drunk by the children who vomit blood A whitened character who desperately held on Slipping and falling into the void Able to be engulfed by the sacred light 菜の花の絨毯の向こうの広い河 渡りたいけどどうしよう 母さんがよんでいる 「おぉ~い」 Nanohana no juutan no mukou no hiroi kawa Wataritai kedo dou shiyou Kaasan ga yondeiru "Ooi~!"A wide river beyond a carpet of rapeseed flowers I want to cross, but how can I? Mom is calling "Hey!" チュンチュンお声で目が覚めて 窓辺の景色を眺めたら 綺麗な金魚が泳いでる 蒼いお空を泳いでる 笑顔であたしを呼んでいる Chun-chun o-koe de me ga samete Madobe no keshiki wo nagametara Kirei na kingyo ga oyoideru Aoi o-sora wo oyoideru Egao de atashi wo yondeiruThe chirping birdsong returns my sight When I view the landscape from the window Lovely goldfish are swimming Swimming in the wide blue sky Calling to me* with smiling faces *A feminine form 菜の花の絨毯の向こうの広い河 渡りたいけどどうしよう 母さんがよんでいる 「おぉ~い」 Nanohana no juutan no mukou no hiroi kawa Wataritai kedo dou shiyou Kaasan ga yondeiru "Ooi~!"A wide river beyond a carpet of rapeseed flowers I want to cross, but how can I? Mom is calling "Hey!" 優しいお歌が聞こえたら みんなこの指止まってね いつか も一度 逢えるまで Yasashii o-uta ga kikoetara Minna kono yubi tomatte ne itsuka mo ichido aeru madeIf you can hear my gentle poem Everybody keep your finger on it* Until someday when we meet† again *Quite literal and a somewhat iffy translation. "Keep it in mind"? †Secondary meaning is "have a bad experience." それではみなさんさようなら それではみなさんさようなら それではみなさんお元気で Sore de ha minasan sayounara Sore de ha minasan sayounara Sore de ha minasan o-genki deWell then, everyone, goodbye Well then, everyone, goodbye Well then, everyone, be well Kuramoto actually has a cameo in that sequence as a bearded oden seller. To finish off, here's a very literally imaged fan vid that probably catches how this plays to a native speaker pretty well: Edit: Footnote added to penultimate verse.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Oct 6, 2011 20:17:34 GMT -5
Quick Review: Female Prisoner 701: The ScorpionCould one make a W.i.P. (Women in Prison) film that wasn't trashy and exploitative? Doubt it, but one interesting facet of the Japanese is how artistic can be their trash (and perhaps trashy their idols, but that's another thread). This early '70s film launched the popularity of actress/singer Meiko Kaji, who starred in an entire series of sequels, as well as the similar "Lady Snowblood" period series and classics like Love Suicide at Sonezaki. The iconic Sasori ("Scorpion") character is heavily referenced in Sono's "Love Exposure" as well as by Tarantino (at least, so I've heard). Kaji plays Matsushima Nami, a naive girl in love with a narc named Sugimi who convinces her to infiltrate a yakuza drug ring, only to cut a deal with them after they discover and brutally rape her. She is then imprisoned for attacking him but makes repeated escape attempts, resulting in increasingly sadistic punishments from guards and trustees alike. It's not one sided though; even hogtied Nami shows a preternatural ability to harm those who torment her. This film is subversive in a way that the Japanese Right would hardly approve of, I would hazard to guess. There is really no distinction drawn between the crooked cop and his organized crime buddies and the prison guards, or indeed most of the other prisoners, and there are a number of very pointed visual punctuations of this. The film opens with the Japanese flag and anthem at a ceremony lauding the guards as the protectors of Japan's morals in the postwar world. The flag will recur, in one pointed moment as a blood stain spreading on a white sheet. Another pointed image is a yakuza boss dangling from the window of his office, strangled with a telephone cord, before a banner reading "Beautiful Heart and Soul of Japan." Nami's only friends are a young prisoner named Yuki and a nameless murderess who seems to help her from a sense of fair play. The sense is one of ALL authority being abused, one hell of a note in a heirarchical society. Cops, criminals, men, women; the only real difference between the torment meted out by the guards and that by the prisoners when they rebel is that the first is lauded and the second punished. How much of this do Japanese audiences process, as opposed to just watching the blood'n'boobs? I'm not sure, really, but Japan is not a society that usually criticizes itself explicitly, rather implictly as here. The movie's violence is often cartoony (garden sprinkler spurts of blood were the standard then, which is why Sono uses them in that context), and yet manages to be some of the most brutal I've ever seen. There's a particularly nasty moment in which another prisoner tortures Nami with a light bulb. As an aside, the "Vengeance Song of the Foolish Woman" is something of a classic, but the incidental music sounds much like Gamera. Since this is a Daiei film from the same era, perhaps this shouldn't surprise us. Several years ago I rented the film at Hollywood and would recommend that if you choose to check it out, as there are some really worthwhile visuals, like an enraged trustee with a bloody kabuki face or reddened skies when the inevitable riot erupts, also a moment when Nami's long hair stands on end as she becomes a vengeful demon (a recurring image in Japan, which I gather is traditional). The YouTube I just watched was adequate but definitely something was lost. I'm just starting the sequel, "Female Prisoner 701: Cell Block 41." By the end of the first Nami has taken her revenge (Sugimi comes to, shall we say, a bad end), but there's a sense that her soul has been burned away, leaving only the avenging demon. It opens with her hogtied in a dungeon, the only sound a soft scraping as she clutches a spoon in her teeth and strokes it on the stone floor . . . sharpening it into a shiv. If it's the system that stinks, then vengeance isn't a cure . . . merely an endemic palliative. Tagline: だまされるとは女の罪だった。 Being fooled is a woman's sin.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Oct 6, 2011 22:13:04 GMT -5
Wow, was this series dark . . . but artful.
Checking imdb, the official English title of this second one is "Jailhouse 41." Odd, in a way, as it mostly follows Sasori across country with a group of escapees. As an aside, this is the first film in which she's called that in dialogue. Even here she's usually "Matsu," s shortened form of "Matsushima."
I'd say this sequel is actually better than the first (and the YouTube upload is MUCH better, watchable really). You don't really need the first to get the second, provided you have the basic back-story I've given, and I'd recommend this one if you're curious.
A visiting dignitary is coming to mark the warden's promotion, and so everyone must look bright and cheerful, to which end Sasori is hosed off for the first time in a year. Warden Goda confides to her, however, that he hates her for the eye she lost him in the first film and has vowed to drive her mad.
The celebration goes awry when Sasori whips out her shiv, and indeed this sparks a quickly quashed rebellion among the prisoners. The guards initially respond by tormenting Sasori, but Goda sees this as making her a martyr in the other cons' eyes and orders her publicly humiliated instead.
Shortly thereafter Sasori and a truckload of prisoners are serendipitously able to escape (after doing something dreadfully Freudian to one of the guards). SHortly thereafter they meet a witch, who in an entrancing scene sings the back-story of each escapee (a common theme being their victimization by men) before disappearing in a gorgeous sequence suggestive of having passed a vengeful mantle onto 701.
The rest of the movie involves the group's attempts to escape and their edgy relationship with Sasori, particularly the abrasive Oba. The authorities again come across as sadistic and amoral, caring not what they do so long as it is in the interests of "order." But again, there's no cheap sort of "well, if we just put all them {insert label here} jerks 'gainst the wall an' shot 'em things'd be OK" cop-out. One of the escapees is caught by a bunch of men on a company outing and, egged on by a middle-aged guy constantly reminiscing about raping Chinese women during the war, killed.
But then the escapees seize the tour bus, and in their rage victimize everyone aboard: men, women and children. There's an interestingly surreal moment when Sasori seems to brood on this, and there definitely seems to be a subtext of exploring the line between between righteous wrath and generalized, nihilistic retribution, though without any explicit answers.
Without giving away the ending, it does seem to suggest righteous wrath being that which sets wronged souls free. If this interpretation is correct, it may also confirm the idea that Sasori's own soul is dead. Certainly she's not a normal person in this film, remorseless and nearly silent, more spirit than human.
I believe the third film was called "Beast Stable" and I'm curious to find it. These aren't uplifting films, but they are fascinating.
Edit: Oh, there's a bit after the escape where one of the women sings a song and the subs vanish, because she's singing about penises (chin-chin). This radio station thought you'd like to know.
Re-edit: Found where someone snipped out just the scene of the witch's death. Check this out. If trashy Corman films had sequences like this . . .
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Post by caucasoididiot on Oct 7, 2011 12:42:11 GMT -5
Well, I seem to be on a Meiko Kaji kick. I found this really interesting video of the Lady Snowblood theme. No one else quite seems to be able to juxtapose images so well as the Japanese, as in the way this mingles violence with beauty. I've never seen any of Lady Snowblood, but this makes me really want to. Naturally, the subs are in French. After making my own translation English I looked up this one which is a bit different, though generally not significantly. 修羅の花 Shura no Hana Flower of Carnage死んでいた朝に とむらいの雪が降る はぐれ犬の遠吠え 下駄の音きしむ いんがなおもさ みつめて歩く 闇を抱きしめる 蛇の目の傘一つ いのちの道を行く女 涙はとうに捨てました Shindeita asa ni tomurai no yuki ga furu Hagure inu no tooboe geta no oto kishimu Inga nao mo sa mitsumete aruku Yami wo dakishimeru janome no kasa hitotsu Inochi no michi wo yuku onna namida ha touni sutemash(i)taOn a dead morning mournful snow falls Howls of stray dogs, the crunching of my shoes Walking and looking upon my destiny Embracing the dark, with only a bull's eye umbrella A woman on the path of life who long ago discarded tears ふりむいた川に 遠ざかる旅の灯が 凍てた鶴は動かず 哭いた雨と風 冷えた水面(みずも)に ほつれ髪映し 涙さえ見せない 蛇の目の傘一つ 怨みの道を行く女 心はとうに捨てました Furimuita kawa ni toozakaru tabi no hi ga Iteta tsuru ha ugokazu naita ame to kaze Hieta mizumo ni hotsure gami utsushi Namida sae misenai janome no kasa hitotsu Urami no michi wo yuku onna shin ha touni sutemash(i)taI turned from the river and the vanishing lanterns The frozen cranes move, crying rain and wind My wild hair reflected by the frigid water's surface Not even showing the tears, with only a bull's eye umbrella A woman on the path of bitterness who long ago discarded her heart 義理も情けも 涙も夢も 昨日も明日も 縁のない言葉 怨みの川に身をゆだね 女はとうに捨てました Giri mo nasake mo namida mo yume mo Kinou mo ashita mo en no nai kotoba Urami no kawa ni mi wo yudane Onna ha touni sutemash(i)taDuty and compassion and tears and dreams Yesterday and tomorrow, words without substance Abandoning myself to the river of bitterness A woman who long ago discarded herself
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Post by caucasoididiot on Oct 26, 2011 12:19:52 GMT -5
Just stumbled across the original Japanese trailer of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Makes a very interesting comparison with the English trailer.
男たち、美しく。 Otoko-tachi, utsukushiku. Men, beautiful.
洗浄のメリークリスマス Senjou no Merii Kurisumasu A Battlefield Merry Christmas (the Japanese title)
かくも エクサイティングに かくも センセーショナルに Kaku mo Ekusaitingu ni Kaku mo Senseeshonaru ni
Not sure about "kaku mo," but the rest is "exciting" and "sensational."
世界の頂点に立つ 大島Xの巨大なる伝言。 Sekai no chouten ni tatsu Ooshima (X) no kyodai naru dengon. The grand statement from world class director Ooshima. {Can't pull up that one character but must be "director").
男騒ぎの、 Otoko sawagi no The male uproar of
洗浄のメリークリスマス Senjou no Merii Kurisumasu A Battlefield Merry Christmas
Both reveal the kiss, which seems a spoiler to me, but presuming Ooshima had some say over the Japanese one I guess he must disagree. I like that the English one touches on the younger brother's garden sequence, but still hate its final voiceover.
Anyway, a great movie that I may really write up sometime, though a lot of my own reaction to it may be too personal to have much significance to anyone else.
"I am not as sentimental as Captain Yonoi. Things will be different now."
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Post by caucasoididiot on Oct 27, 2011 21:16:57 GMT -5
I wrote up the following for my War Movie thread, but then figured it fit better here. I gotta do something other than movies down here. I could write up shichi-go-san, the coming of age ceremony my son just did. I have a great picture of him and his mom in traditional clothes, but she doesn't want that kind of thing posted, and I s'pose she has a point.
So . . .
Otoko-tachi no Yamato (aka Men of the Yamato)
I happened to be in Japan when Private Ryan was released there, and unusually for a big Hollywood picture it got very little traction. But this 2005 film was clearly meant as it's Japanese equivalent.
The story opens with a woman showing up in a Kyuushuu fishing port and trying to charter a boat to a set of coordinates well out to sea. An old man and his grandson set out with her, his having recognized these coordinates as those of the battleship Yamato's sinking. He learns that she wishes to drop a funeral wreath there to honour her father who served aboard, and this serves as the frame story for the old man's reminiscence of also having served aboard the famous ship.
The story of the Yamato is truly an excellent choice for telling the story of Japan in World War 2, not least for the irony of the name itself. It was from the ads for this movie that I learned that the kanji 大和, while being an ancient name for Japan, literally mean "great peace."
Now, a lot of Observer's Brain stuff could come up here, but my capsule take on the issue is that Japan has never dealt with its war guilt as Germany did, and as I discussed re Das Boot. I believe that that was a terrible disservice both to Japan's fighting men and civilians who stood bravely under incredible hardships, and that with the wartime generation dying off it's probably too late to change that. This is a sad thing, and may yet prove a dangerous one in Asian politics.
This shows up in the film's prologue, which--if memory serves--picks up in about '43 with the war as something that just kinda happened and is going badly for Japan. The backstory of Yamato herself, a secret violation of naval arms limitation treaties meant to support a grab for key resource areas, is not discussed. To be fair, the movie does not justify Japanese aggression but simply fails to mention it. Indeed, Japanese right-wingers like Tokyo Governor Ishihara felt the need to "answer" this film with a far more jingoistic movie celebrating the kamikaze, but not having seen that one I can't comment on it in much detail.
Once I got what Yamato was trying to do, however, I had to approve. It's really aimed at young Japanese, symbolized by the grandson character, who have grown up in the rich, comfortable modern world of anime and convenience store sweets and have no conception of the hardships suffered during and after the war. It reminded me of a letter I read in the Japan Times my first time there, in which a man described the pain he felt watching his kids lightly toss food into the garbage when he could recollect eating weeds out of roadside ditches as a boy.
So, agendas aside, how does the movie play out? After a bit of shipboard life and shore-based time with families, the climax is Yamato's suicidal sortie against the Okinawa invasion. This is really an archtypical Japanese story: a powerful yet helplessly outnumbered warrior going to certain doom, having a duty to protect the homeland but with foreknowledge of inevitable failure. Extra tragedy is added by the fact that Yamato was home-ported in Kure, and Kure is supported by the city of Hiroshima, in which many of the crew's families lived.
The Japanese have a tendency to drop into a heavy-handed sentimentality with this kind of material, and for all the story's inherent power and some actors that I've quite liked in other things, I'm afraid this fell prey to that.
Much was made of the CGI reconstruction of the ship and the air attacks against her. Now, I saw it on a gummy internet stream, so perhaps didn't get the full impact, but frankly was sort of underwhelmed. Also, aviation geeks might want to stop that trailer at 6 seconds and look carefully. Yes, that's a US Air Force P-47 in US Navy colors, something that never existed. D'oh!
So, in the end I'm sort of ambivalent about this film. It's OK as an entertainment, and while it does make a worthwhile statement it ducks some definite elephants in the room. I might give it a second look someday, but don't think I'd recommend it unless you have an especial interest in the topic.
PS: Just discovered that the music is Hisaishi Jo, better known for his Miyazaki scores.
Edit: Just been watching it again on asianrice.tv. The prologue actually does start with FDR's oil embargo and admits that this was in response to Japanese actions in China. Now, strictly it was for occupying French Indochina, and a Chinese would quickly point out came after some nine years of war in China, itself a continuation of pressure going back to the 1894 war . . .
. . . but . . .
. . . how could I forget the following:
Defeat brings understanding, that's the only way Japan can be helped. Achieve understanding today and Japan will be saved. We are pioneers in the rebirth of our nation. Isn't that our heart's desire?
Admiral Ohnishi would likely have echoed that, though I'm sure it infuriated that putz Ishihara. Fcuk him.
Guess I shouldn't judge until such time as I see how well the United States adjusts to such a defeat . . .
Edit 2: I was actually mis-remembering, the woman was going out there to spread her father's ashes.
Thinking on the movie overnight, it was a bit better on a second viewing. The themes of survivor guilt and the difference between courage to die and courage to live had some real substance. Still, I don't know that that makes me reassess the whole.
I found a TV interview with a survivor that I'm working on translating and will link when I do.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Oct 31, 2011 10:39:26 GMT -5
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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 1, 2011 0:00:41 GMT -5
OK, enough of the heavy sh(i)tsumon for a bit. Hadn't checked out these guys for awhile:
Ken Tanaka, whose language videos are made by assistant Remi February and her great J-girl facial contortions:
Actually, Remi's mom probably pronounces "ivu" as "ibu."
Tofugu, last seen here clowning around in a Gojira mask, with some sage advice:
And recent discovery Ken Cannon, who (somewhat facetiously) takes Tofugu on and teaches Japanese from anime. His first bit is on honorofics (which I discussed a while back). He also has a useful bit on the myriad ways to say "I" in Japanese, but I'll give you his one on how to swear (which partly involves one's choice of "you," anyway):
Heh heh . . . I learned temee from sukeban-deka:
手前は許せね!
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Post by caucasoididiot on Nov 4, 2011 17:04:01 GMT -5
Well, I had several pages of my essay written and realized that I wasn't even up to Perry's Black Ships of 1853, so figured I'd best pull the plug. However, I do have one observation that I don't recollect seeing elsewhere, though it seems too obvious to be original.
Anyway, one aspect of Japan that is unique is that it was the only non-Western country that adopted the West's own methods successfully enough to challenge it. In plain terms this meant industrializing sufficiently to build a modern military and then demonstrating the capability and willingness to use it against first-string world powers. Other warrior societies, like the Zulu at Isandhlwana or the Sioux and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn Creek, might inflict flamboyant tactical defeats, but these only served to embarrass the powers involved into dribbling in sufficiently greater forces to assure submission. Of course, on the long-term global level, it can be argued that Japan followed the same arc. Was this a matter of luck, impersonal forces playing themselves out, or did they drop the ball in some way?
Japan had clearly been a warrior culture from the time the samurai seized power in the 12th century. Warfare had been endemic for centuries as warlords vied for regional or national eminence until lasting unification was finally achieved at the end of the 16th century. The Tokugawa Bakufu which would rule Japan until the late 19th century was certainly run by and for the samurai class, but it also brought about their transformation into a bureaucracy, for all that the sword remained both their badge of office and method of swift justice.
The Bakufu also elected to shut Japan off from the outside world, feeling that European imports like guns or Christianity ran too great a risk of disturbing the tightly defined and supervised society that they were erecting. This need not have happened. Hideyoshi--who had presaged the Bakufu with his own brief unification in the 1590s--had invaded Korea. Indeed the Dutch--who were allowed a very limited contact even during the exclusion era--offered to transport and support a Japanese army to challenge Spanish control of the Philippines. I've long wondered how world history might have played out in such a situation, had the Japanese chosen external wars rather than internal social engineering as a means of cementing national identity.
And that leads into the observation that I don't recollect seeing elsewhere: that for all that pre-modern Japan had an elaborate military tradition, it almost exclusively involved fighting among themselves. Barring Hideyoshi's Korean venture and Kublai Khan's opposite invasion of Japan in the 13th century, it was a tradition of samurai fighting each other with similar weapons, tactical methods and cultural assumptions about warfare. Even those exceptions were not terribly influential, with the Japanese choosing to withdraw from Korea and their Ming Chinese opponents satisfied to let them, and the Mongols' Korean invasion fleet being luckily destroyed by fortuitous typhoons (the "divine wind" or kamikaze). This is thus very different from the experience of the Greeks, whose history of warring city-states is similar in many ways, but who came up against numerous other cultures at formative periods. I think there is something to the notion that this made it hard for Japan's leaders, both national and military, to get into the heads of their enemies. It had traditionally been too easy and thus later proved too difficult.
Japan's isolation was challenged by Commodore Perry and his Black Ships in the 1850s, leading to the transformative Meiji Restoration of the '60s and '70s. This is one of many examples through Japanese history of profound revolutions coming from above. This period is fascinating, and you can learn nothing whatsoever about it from The Last Samurai, except that damned near anything that movie tells you is silly. Saigo Takamori was not an idiot who thought he could fight a modern war without guns. He was the leader of the Satsuma troops who, along with other clans like the Choushuu and Tosa, toppled the Bakufu by fielding armies trained and armed along modern Western lines. Later, he and the other Satsuma did fall out with the Imperial government, but his rebellion was sparked when the government seized their gunpowder. OK, rant over. Oh, except that neither were they so stupid as to wear useless armor, except for an occasional general for, like, decoration, and that the restoration was not overseen by big US international arms dealers who, y'know, didn't yet exist.
The Meiji Restoration was essentially staged by less favored samurai against those in the Bakufu, using the traditional authority of the Imperial household as what today might be called a "countre-narrative" to Tokugawa legitimacy, which was also attacked on the grounds that it was failing to modernize quickly enough to defend Japan against Western encroachment. They were not the only non-Western elite to try the latter, but were successful than, say, the Turks because they appreciated that Western military prowess didn't actually flow from the barrel of a gun, but from a material culture of factories that made the guns and a non-material culture of bureaucracies, public schools, conscription systems and the like that put them in the hands of trained and disciplined troops who could then be despatched to and supported in any corner of the globe that ship or train could reach.
The Japanese restorers thus studied European institutions carefully and installed a complete, modern state. They particularly followed German examples, not least because they felt these were most suited to preserving aristocratic authority. It was fairly successful in this until aristocratic titles were abolished by General MacArthur. However, in that age of mass, conscripted armies, the bearing of weapons that was the traditional mark of the Japanese ruling class could no longer be kept from the commoners. While the civil war period had seen large numbers of ashigaru peasant soldiers becoming ever more important elements of Japanese armies, ending this practice and disarming the peasantry had been a key aspect of the Tokugawa system.
The answer they came up with was to try to instill bushido values into the entire population. Again, this is a huge topic, but a lot of nominally traditional institutions like Shinto were only codified during this time and sometimes colored with this in mind, thus the stress on the Japanese being a chosen people ruled by a God-Emperor descended from Sun Goddess Amaterasu and fundamentally different from foreigners. Bushido itself seems to have been somewhat simplified, partly consciously but also due to having been drawn from Tokugawa era theorists who had not lived through the actual warring periods. I need to do more research on this, but traditional samurai warfare seems to display more pragmatism than the "Ours not to reason why, ours but to do AND die" attitude of Japan's second world war soldiery. As a final note, the demographics of the Japanese military at this time were such that the sword waving junior officers who exemplified this were rarely of samurai families, but rather the sons of impoverished rural farmers who saw military careers as a path to social advancement.
Japan became a regional power-political player very quickly. Its first overseas experience was a punitive expedition against Paiwan tribesmen in Taiwan in 1874. Twenty years later they gained this island after defeating China--along with ending Korea's tributary relationship with that country--after a war in which the Imperial Navy's fleet of modern ironclads defeated the Chinese navy and demonstrated that that country's belated attempts to modernize were bearing little fruit. Ten years after that, Japan surprised the West by taking on and defeating the Russians, destroying not only their Pacific Squadron based on the Dailen Peninsula but decisively smashing their Baltic Fleet after its long journey to Tsushima. Russia dissolved into rebellion, and this victory against a world power paved the way for the annexation of Korea and gave Japan a degree of "street cred" unmatched by any non-Western country.
The First World War was so decisive in Europe that its huge influence on East Asia is easily overlooked. Part of Japan's preparation for the Russo-Japanese War had been to sign a mutual defence pact with Great Britain. Fairly typical for the time, it stipulated that if either signatory were at war with a third country and that country was joined by a fourth, the treaty partner was obligated to declare war in support. In 1914 the British were doubtful that the Japanese would live up to their obligations and sent a mission to Tokyo to push them into declaring war and using their navy to secure the Pacific against German cruisers. They were surprised to find the Japanese enthusiastic and rapidly mobilizing to seize the German concession in Tientsin, causing the Foreign Office to do a rapid volte-face and try to restrain them. At the end of the war, Japan was acknowledged member of the "victor's club," its navy having participated in operations in the Mediterranean and its army having swept the Germans from China. It wasn't allowed to keep as much of its ally's territory as it would have liked, but it was granted the formerly German island possessions in the Marianas, Palau, Caroline and Marshall groups as League of Nations mandates. Japan had arrived.
It had also had its first run in with the United States. When Russia dissolved into civil war, several of the Allied nations had sent in contingents of troops to safeguard their interests. This ran the gamut from wishing to safeguard supplies that had, after all, been sent to be used against the Germans to desires to strangle the Soviet baby in its crib, and is a side-issue in an already lengthy analysis. The key point is that the Japanese had set up an independent nation around Vladivostok and recognized it, just as they would later set up the puppet state of Manchukuo as a fig leaf for their occupation of Manchuria. The European powers weren't particularly thrilled by this but had other things on their plate. The US was a different story, and lodged very pointed protests.
Japan backed down, but the story of how illustrates some points that are important to understand. Dutch journalist Karel van Wolferen has called Japanese society a "formless authoritarianism," in which there are rules to cover everything but it's not entirely clear who makes them. A corollary to this from my own observation is that the Japanese tend to make intricate sets of rules only to routinely ignore them. The Meiji state sort of reflected this in having lines of authority that converged in the person of the emperor (as had the German on the kaiser), but even there were somewhat nebulous. Note that the Showa Emperor's powerlessness against the interwar militarists seems to have been exaggerated--largely as a face-saving fiction the Allies agreed to to keep him out of the Tokyo war crimes trials for what they saw as highly pragmatic reasons--but the chain of command was deliberately tangled. This had been meant to give the Meiji era elder statesmen, a group called the genrou, the ability to to run the state through unofficial back room dealing backed up by personal authority and connections. The fact was that even after the government had decided to pull out of Vladivostok they didn't have the unambiguous authority to order the Army out of it, and it took the clan connections of one of the last living genrou to compel this. This problem would resurface later when the Kwantung Army in Manchuria would escalate the war in China independently.
This was a decisive moment for the United States on the world stage as well. It too was part of the victors' club, and calling the shots in a way that was resented by many Europeans who felt that they had done a lot more bleeding. Their young men were decimated, their economies shot and their finances a mountain of debt owed to the US. President Wilson, while proposing the League of Nations as a way to prevent future wars, was also expanding the US Navy to match the Royal Navy and floating bills which, had they passed, would have made the US Navy bigger than every other on the planet . . . combined. Republican parsimony kept that from happening, but their isolationism also kept the US out of the League, leaving it crucially weakened.
Japan actually played the immediate postwar era pretty smart. There is also a point of view that the "Taisho Democracy" of this period was really starting to flower, what with a growing national press and party system, though others counter that the term "Japanese democracy" is a contradiction. Either way, it went under as the militarists gained more and more control. It's also true that while Americans like to think of democracy as inherently moral, it does not seem to me to preclude imperial expansion. It didn't stop the British from taking over many a "lesser breed without the law" nor stand in the way of the United States' "manifest destiny."
Japanese policy during this era is linked with the name Shidehara, a diplomat and sometime foreign minister during that time. Japanese historian Ienaga Saburou has pointed out that even such "doves" saw political and economic domination of the region with a de facto subjugation of China as the cornerstone of Japanese policy, chiefly differing with the hawks only in believing that this could be done without clashing with Western powers. In practice this meant signing the Washington Naval Agreement which headed off a naval arms race, a very pragmatic move given that Japan could not have afforded it anyway.
This is another momentous "what if?" moment. Could Taisho Democracy have grown into something as good as postwar Japan's, perhaps even better with its one-party system only recently broken? Could the Pacific War and all its horrors have been avoided? What would the world look like today?
Now, had war broken out in, say, 1931, I'd be more sympathetic to the argument you get from some Japanese and anti-Roosevelt Americans that they weren't doing anything that everyone else wasn't doing as well. The US did traditionally stick up for China, but this wasn't wholly disinterested. Overtly racist US immigration policies angered the Japanese needlessly, and there was bellicosity from the US side as well. Japanese rule of Taiwan came under civilian authority and was fairly benign, leading (along with the influence of their political relationship with the PRC) to a much different memory of this than in Korea or China, where harsh, military administered systems pertained.
But as military control at home and adventurism abroad grew, this argument gets harder to support. Japan quit the League of Nations over criticism of its moves in China and seemed to care ever less about being provocative, going so far as to sink the USS Panay in 1937. Its armies--held up by the Red Cross in 1905 as a model of correct treatment of prisoners that European armies should aspire to--became brutalized by a frustrating guerrilla war. It was around this same time that Japan began to covertly violate the naval limitations treaties that it had signed after World War 1, and in a way that made sense only in terms of a surprise war against the United States.
I studied this decision in some depth a few years ago, and was surprised at what I learned. To backtrack a bit, all militaries engage in contingency planning for the wars that they think they may have to fight, so that they won't be caught unprepared. Both Japan and the US began doing this vis-a-vis each other in 1905, and developed oddly interlocking strategies. Japan's basic strategic need was to seize the Philippines, because this US dependency straddled Japan's sea lines of communication and could strangle it in time of war; Guam and a few other island bases would also have to be seized to complicate US counteraction. Japan's problem was how to make this stick against an enemy with an initially larger fleet, twice the population and several times the resources. They actually did hit on the only solution, which as the North Vietnamese can tell you is simply to not lose before the US gets tired enough to say, "The hell with it." The Japanese Navy planned to do this by jack-lighting a US fleet that would charge stupidly into their home waters before adequately prepared, and then offering peace terms to a United States that could build another fleet but would decide that it wasn't worth it. The first surprise I had was that charging in was exactly what the US was planning to do for much of this period, despite fearing exactly the lack of domestic resolve the Japanese counted on.
That actually suggests that the Japanese Navy got into their enemies' heads pretty well, but I suspect it was a slop shot. For one thing, it's counting on the US doing exactly what the Russians had done. It also relies on a degree of gutlessness on the part of the US, something that Japanese militarists played up in their propaganda. It was a fairly easy sell, given the foreign wars they'd fought. The Russians had been at the end of a long supply line at a time of instability back home, the Germans totally cut off. The Chinese were closer and fighting for their homes, but dispirited by disunity and a not even a shoestring economic base. To explain these victories as stemming from innate Japanese spiritual superiority was enticing but bred overconfidence. This was reflected in the all-or-nothing nature of the Japanese strategy which would fall apart if the US didn't play along. And the US Plan Orange strategists (the code name for contingency plans for war against Japan) had foreseen this danger well before the war. They had analyzed every contingency they could imagine (even the Pearl Harbor attack, which shows that even the forewarned can slip up). The only Japanese move they hadn't foreseen were the Kamikaze. The blueprint for Japan's defeat was dusted off on 8 December 1941 and put into action.
But my biggest surprise was when I learned that the Japanese didn't think it would work either. Now, I'm not talking here about the middle-grade officers whose agitation sometimes forced their superiors to be bolder than they were comfortable with; those guys believed in their own invincibilty, and may even have been buying into late war news reports of the ghosts of dead soldiers showing up to help repel US invasions. Neither am I talking about Admiral Yamamoto's well-known attempts to disabuse his government of hopes for easy victory. I'm talking about the hawk admirals who fought hard for the treaty violating naval build up who coalesced around an admiral named Kato (somehow, nearly everyone in that debate was named Kato) . . . they didn't think it would work either!
So, why did they do it? They had concluded that US and Japanese interests were so fundamentally opposed that war was inevitable. If so, they reasoned, Japan's only hope lay in engineering war at a moment of their own choosing when they had maximized the chance for an upset win, however small that chance might be. Now, I'm not saying that these guys were calling the shots of Japanese foreign policy, but it was the approach they advocated, prepared for, and which ultimately got handed to Admiral Yamamoto to try and make work. Actually, it's somewhat similar to German views of Russia leading to the First World War.
And now, my analysis of their failure to understand the enemy. Firstly, they failed to appreciate how it was only through something like their provocations in China that the US would divert resources into military rearmament. Believe it or not, this was back when being Republican meant being dead set against military procurement. True, Roosevelt's decision to begin building the US Navy up to its treaty-allowed limits was in part a response to European developments, but the later embargoes and forward deployment of the fleet to Pearl were all direct responses to aggressive Japanese moves. Secondly, even under those conditions they failed to appreciate that a US president would have had a hard time actually declaring war against them in response to anything short of an attack on the Philippines. Unwilling to compromise themselves, they couldn't imagine foreign powers doing so. Thus their war was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Shidehara had tried to point out.
Lastly, the strange hole in even Yamamoto's thinking. He had lived in the US and understood it better than most Japanese. While it's true that the strategy relied on making quick progress, and that surprise attacks maximize the chance to gain the upper hand (aside from being traditional), the only hope for victory lay in a weak US resolve. Why, then, begin the war with a surprise attack tailor-made to anger the average American and fan the flames? The famous delay in getting the declaration submitted in Washington just under the wire was not, in my view, significant. I can't imagine it detracting one iota from the power that USS Arizona's dramatically toppled mast held to motivate every G. I. Joe and Rosie the Riveter.
It's far from the only case in history, but a very strong one of, "What were you guys thinking?" Only the military was left to call the shots, and for all that they were smart enough to appreciate the odds against them, were unable to leap from that to a non-military solution. Trapped by their own historical assumptions and projecting them onto their opponents, they generated a solution which was self-defeating and ensured their very worst fears becoming real. Shidehara, who was briefly prime minister after the war and may have originated the constitutional renunciation of war, tried to tell them. Could his voice have been heard earlier, or are some historical tragedies as unstoppable as the tides? I doubt mankind will ever find an answer to that.
Anyway, one man's unfootnoted opinion.
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