Talking Points

Today was the most fun I've had in class in a while. First of all, sort of good news from Japanese class, where I've been thinking about asking to be pushed up a level. I'm generally sort of bored in class, and feel like I could use some higher-level stuff. That being said, because I'm in the second of three levels in regular-track, the only option is studying for the 一級, the highest level Japanese proficiency exam. Which I'm definitely not up for. But Takada Sensei has agreed to find me some extra work, which I'm, surprisingly, looking forward to.

Next up, I was one side in a debate in the Japan's Foreign Policy class. It was a ton of fun, all the more so because I was arguing a position that I do not agree with in any way. My opponent was arguing that Japan should continue to push for disarmament throughout the world. I was arguing that Japan should get a nuclear weapon of its own. I think I may have taken an unhealthy amount of emotional satisfaction from the whole thing.

Anyway, my arguments were as such.

Talking Points
1. There are no good reasons for Japan to maintain its “nuclear allergy”. There are, however, some minor benefits to be gained by obtaining it.
2. Arguing that Japan should have the bomb is not a right-wing argument. See Goyaboy quote.
3. Arguing that Japan should have the bomb does not put one in the same category as the warmongering Iranian President. Japan has no declared intention to attack, much less bomb, anybody. Japan is not a rogue state. A nuclear Japan is not a more dangerous Japan.
4. Arguing that nobody should have the bomb is not relevant to a conversation about, given a certain political climate, whether or not Japan should have the bomb.
5. Arguing that Japan having the bomb is constitutionally illegal is irrelevant. We are talking about how a country should act, not what its limits are.
6. Arguing that a Japanese push for a nuclear bomb would start an Asian arms race is absurd. Three out of four of its neighbours already have the bomb, and South Korea has been secretly enriching Uranium. Of the Asian actors Japan is the most stable, and the best candidate for nuclear weapons.
7. Japan, out of every country in the world, is the only one to know the horrible price of nuclear weapons. It is in the best position of any country to make responsible decisions on the use of nuclear weaponry.

Secondary Talking Points
1. If Japan goes nuclear, it will help rebalance world power away from the United States. This is an Iranian, and more importantly a Chinese and Russian, argument.
2. Insurance Policy. Perhaps a nuclear Japan is beneficial as a balance against a nuclear North Korea, all the more definitive because Japan will be able to take action.
3. American nuclear missiles in Japan are not placed there to defend Japan so much as to defend American interests, and America itself. This is inherently unreliable.
4. A nuclear Japan is not only the best thing for Japan, but the best thing for the world. If recent history has taught us anything, it is that the US cannot do everything on its own. Japan, as a stable, democratic regime, is well-suited for the responsible possession of nuclear weapons in the East Asian theatre.
5. Japan has few stable allies in its own theatre. While cooperation between neighbours can often effect security in a region, that possibility unfortunately is not available to Japan.Be careful not to connect re-armament in general to nuclear armament, since people against re-armament will automatically be against nuclearization.

A Kind of Weird Story

I had one of my strangest experiences in Japan last night. One of my best experiences, but still, very strange.

I'd been nicking for real Indian food for a while. My new homestay mother has been fantastic about making me veggie food, but I could have really gone for some paneer or authentic naan. So Junko has these rich Indian friends that work part time with her at her kindergarten. They were all going out Sunday night and I was invited along.

They took me to a club. I don't mean like a dance club, I mean like an English gentleman's country club but in downtown Kobe and instead of white owners and brown servants it was brown owners and yellow servers. I felt like I was viewing some bizarre version of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, as through a glass, darkly. Truly strange it was.

But delicious. I ate so much I almost burst this morning. Amazing.

Norwegian Wood

I went book shopping with Pat on Friday afternoon, first Nishikita then Umeda. We're both in the Japanese novels class. I bought Norwegian Wood and three other books. Started reading it on the train when I accidentally got on the wrong one and Pat proved more clever than I. I finished it just now. That's 2 am Sunday morning. I haven't read a book that quickly since I devoured Michael Chrichton's Sphere in one night in second year.

I'm not sure I liked it that much either. It sort of feels like a Tokyo-an Catcher in the Rye but with all the sexual stirrings of a Pat Barker book. It's a kind of brutal eroticism that pumps the entire work forward but proves pointless and ultimately self-destructive. There's a point near the end when the protagonist begins to take on some responsibility for the plot, but mostly he exists as a shadow to the soliloquies of others.

Or maybe I just haven't read anything but the Tale of Genji in a really long time. I wonder what my writing looks like? My English, these days, is in truancy.

Hikikomori and Others

I wasn't really planning on talking about what happened at Virginia Tech. I've watched the news in Japan, of course, and followed the story a little online, read Matt Good's take on it, got into a big discussion with Texas on the nature of Terrorism. (capitals added) But I wasn't planning on mentioning it here until I came across this article by Michael Zielenziger about Cho Seung-Hui.

Clearly, some of the evidence suggest that Cho was both enraged and very much socially isolated.We do know that some hikikomori are able to conduct themselves, from time-to-time, in the ‘real world’ while also retreating to their rooms…going to classes, or to work, then shutting themselves off. That is to say, they can have days and weeks of “normal’ behavior…and then have to seclude themselves. We also know that some social isolates grow so frustrated as to become very angry and frustrated as Cho was.

Hikikomori is a Japanese word. It refers to a pheonomenon, and the people afflicted with it, wherein a young adult, usually a student, locks themselves in their room away from stress, social, familial, and school-related. They don't go to school, or see friends. Their parents feed them, and they only leave their room for the bathroom. Sometimes it's not quite that bad. Sometimes I imagine it's worse.

It's a problem that in Japan is taken fairly serious, the Ministry of Education has a definition for it, but more and more it's being suggested that hikikomori is hardly a Japanese phenomena. Zielenziger continues.

Yet in many ways, the high-stress, high-pressure environment that Korean Confucian culture imposes on its youth…mirrors the stress Japanese young adults endure…and it is not unreasonable to suggest a young Korean, detached from his childhood environment, would retreat…or suffer some sort of traumatic incident after coming to the US.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize that we're really not all that different.

Assassins!

Every now and again I run into something that reminds me just how much Japan still resembles a third world country. Sometimes it's the little rickshaws. Sometimes its opinions on homosexuality. Sometimes it's political assassinations.

Take for instance the shooting of Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito Tuesday evening.

Ito, who was campaigning for Sunday's mayoral election, was shot twice in the back at about 7:52 p.m. by a man police identified as Tetsuya Shiroo, 59.

Shiroo is second in command of the local gang Suishin-kai, which is affiliated with the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, the nation's largest criminal syndicate with 40,000 members, police said. (The Japan Times)

That the gangsters are accepted as a natural part of Japanese society is tautological. But the rhetoric usually goes that Japanese gangsters are more like businessmen, with a couple shady cards up their sleeves. More and more it's looking like this whole pre-meditated affair has more to do with extremist right-wing politics than it does with "land deals, construction work and other development projects".

It is not the first time a mayor has been shot in Nagasaki. Hitoshi Motoshima was shot and seriously injured in January 1990 by a rightwing extremist after he refused to retract remarks that Emperor Hirohito, known posthumously as Showa, was partially responsible for World War II.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima are the only two cities ever hit by nuclear weapons. Their mayors have traditionally been pacifists who have appealed for world peace.

[...]

The National Police Agency said in its annual report last year that the country's estimated 10,000 hardcore rightists have become increasingly violent in recent years.

Matt and Women

I've noticed that there's something terribly cute about women who like to eat. Have yet to figure out why this is.

Nigawa Homestay a Success: Sources

Moved in to Nigawa homestay on Saturday. Forgot only one thing back with the Nakagawas, my cell phone, but I realized I'd forgotten it when we were only about 5 minutes driving away, so we went back and picked it up.

The Kishis, my new family, are fantastic. They are: Eiji, the father, who works in something like the welding industry?: Yoko, the mother (I fear I have her name wrong, since I always call her お母さん) who is very energetic and tends her own herb and mushroom garden; and Junko, my elder sister, who works as a kindergarten teacher. I have another elder sister who works in Tokyo at the moment, so I've never met her and I don't know her name.

It's weird because now I feel like I have too many families. It was hard enough when I had to distinguish between my Canadian family and my Japanese family. I need to work out some sort of code.

Nigawa, the area I'm in now, is quite close to school. I biked here today, which is great because I really miss biking. It's funny that nobody in Japan wears bicycle helmets, especially given that the roads are so narrow. One day, when the rainy season approaches, I will have to master the art of biking while holding an umbrella in one hand, something that Japanese people apparently have a genetic advantage in.

Mmkay, off to the gym.

Moving House

I change homestays tomorrow. Spent some of last night packing up all my worldly possessions, discovered that they have grown too numerous for my two suitcases. Not entirely sure what I'm going to do about that. I may need a box of some sort.

Decisions decisions.

Little yellow crescent moons.

The blogosphere has been having a bad run of it recently. A number of clever, older bloggers have taken it upon themselves to highlight the missing scale on the underbelly of the beast. I mentioned two articles yesterday, but the conversation has snowballed. Terry Glavin connected me with Oliver Kamm's commentary ("The blogosphere, in short, is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate.") which connects to the disastrous debate between blogger Guido Fawkes and veteran Guardian editor Michael White. ("It's all commentary.")

Which of course I wouldn't feel so bad about if I hadn't checked into China Confidential this morning and had my stubborn optimism dashed against the rocky shores of 'Fools, knaves, blowhards and nuts', more specifically that last one. I have an immense amount of respect for the Reporter - his content and his rhetoric, seperately - but recently he's begun mutating into something horrible, horrible. Commenting on the recent, peaceful, Moqtada al-Sadr-instigated demonstrations in Iraq.

The Islamist scum chanted: "Get out occupier!" They waved Iraqi flags and banners saying "Down with Bush, Down with America."

By midday their wannabe Iraqi fuhrer--a piece of human filth that should have been exterminated years ago--had not made an appearance at the rally.

And later, reviewing developments of the Iranian nuclear program.

Iranian monster-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the announcement with
pomp and ceremony at the heart of the regime's nuclear program, the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

Question: Why is he still alive?

Another question: Why are the Shiite and Sunni Islamist scum of Iraq still alive?

I mean, seriously, how can you condemn the holocaust and incite racial hatred in the same article? There was a day when China Confidential was about China. Those were fiery days, bold days, interesting days. But there's a certain lack of maturity being displayed here that I don't feel I need to elaborate on.

Maybe there's something to what Oliver Kamm was saying. "The great innovation of web-based commentary is that readers may select minutely the material they are exposed to. The corollary is that they may filter out views they find uncongenial." I mean, it's not like there's a lack of news concerning Asian involvement in the Middle East. It's the kind of news that keeps us out of the hyena pen.

Take for instance monday's visit by Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki to Japanese PM Shinzo Abe's residence, and the reassurances from Japan that support for the Iraqi reconstruction will continue.

Maliki said Iraq is making a new start for the future, having overcome many problems already. He indicated the country hoped for further support from Japan.

Japan's contribution to the reconstruction of Iraq has been both financial assistance and Self-Defense Forces activities.

Ground SDF troops were based in Samawah in southern Iraq for two years.

In addition, Japan has extended yen loans of up to $3.5 billion (417 billion yen) and grants of more than $1.5 billion. The financial assistance has gone toward improving infrastructure, such as electric power facilities, officials said.

In Monday's meeting, Abe also told Maliki that Japan will offer yen loans to rebuild water supply systems in Basra, southern Iraq. (Asahi Shimbun)

Now there's an uplifting story. Cheer up Reporter. It's not all yellow-stars and car-bombs and knocking off Philistines.

Quit being such a damn Fuhrer.

What I did on the internet this morning.

One of the big problems with the internet is its ability to eat up time. I have, for instance, a phone call to make and an email to write. But instead I eneded up doing this:

CBC.ca --> Confusing the virtual world with reality by Heather Mallick--> The readers strike back by Gary Kamiya --> caliban's role? on shakespeareforums.com + Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats + Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR --> Revisionist Photos: Removing the Horrors of the Third Reich From the Pages of History --> Various emails to various people regarding things I'd discovered today.

It's terrible. On the other hand, through the wonders of multitasking I managed to meet several of the new exchange students that have appeared on campus since last week, who, like the rest of us have gathered at the communal watering-hole of the computer lab. Their names are Patrick and Gemma and I think there's another one named Susanna who lives in Munich but goes to Oxford, but I haven't added her to Facebook yet. Plus, I need to learn where Munich is. (I suspect Germany, but I may be wrong and it may be in Ireland or something)

Anyway, must run to class. New teacher and everything. Japanese language. I'm hoping I've been bumped up to Level 3 and just nobody's bothered to tell me.

The Lucky Strike Problem (also, Hanami Photodump)

I have a pack of cigarettes in my front pocket. I haven't started smoking, mind you. I've just run into an interesting moral dilemma.

It started near the end of a 花見 (hanami, flower-viewing party) I threw last night on the banks of the Shukugawa near my home. Like 20 people came and it was a ton of fun and when it got late and we started to clean up there was a pack of Lucky Strikes that somebody had left on the tarp. There were only a few of us left, and nobody wanted them. Now somebody had paid good money for these, and moreover, the pack was practically full. By giving them to somebody I could reduce waste and increase somebody's utility. It was, apparently, an economic problem.

But of course I don't really like cigarettes. The other option was that I could simply throw them away. It would be a waste, true, but not much of one since ultimately it'd be like throwing away a pill of cyanide. I feel like this is what I should do. But at the same time, why throw away something perfectly good?

I guess it's sort of a weird moral dilemma. Maybe I shouldn't think so much about it.

Here are pictures from the hanami. Enjoy.

夙川さくら道

These are the the sakura at Shukugawa station near my house. I took this with my awesome, Japanese, super-hi-tech, air-reprocessing cell phone camera.

The Sakura Problem

So it's cherry blossom season in Japan. This means congregating in parks, laying out large blue tarpaulins and lazing around drinking sake until evening with friends and family. Conveniently, Shukugawa where I live happens to have one of the Kobe-Osaka area's best spots for watching the 桜 (sakura) blossom. Thusly, I've been thinking of throwing a 花見 (hanami, flower-viewing party) for exchange students and various and sundry Japanese friends. And in discussing this with my homestay brother Kenta I ran into a curious linguistic obstacle.

I kept saying, "桜は咲いています" (sakura ha saiteimasu), with the meaning "the sakura are blossoming", and he kept saying, "桜はまだ咲いていません" (sakura ha mada saiteimasen), which I interpreted as "the sakura are not yet blossoming yet." Which is a false statement, since if you go to Shukugawa there clearly are blossoms on the trees.

The misunderstanding was this: Japanese doesn't have seperate conjugations for the perfect, progressive, and perfect-progressive tenses. Generally one relies on context to distinguish between the different usages. (much the same way English distinguishes between the perfect tense and the idea of "having the experience of something" by context*)

In English we tend to say, "the sakura are blossoming," which covers a period from when the first flowers appear on the tree right up to the time when they all fall off.

But Japanese is different because Japanese is always different. They say, "the sakura have blossomed," meaning not that the process has started, but that the blossoms have matured, and that the tree is laden with little, pink blooms. Of course, these two sentences are exactly the same in Japanese.

There is an entire vocabulary surrounding different stages of bloomage, beginning at 一分咲き (ichibuzaki, one-minute-blossoms) and moving all the way to 満開 (mankai, entirely-open). Don't take my word entirely on that vocab though, because I'm still a little shaky on it. It is only when that final stage has been reached that the Japanese will say "the sakura have blossomed."

Having said all that, they should have blossomed by Friday. I will put up pictures!


*For example, I ask you, "where is Pierre these days?" and you respond, "Pierre has gone to France." Then I ask you, "has Pierre ever gone to Turkey?" and you respond, "he has."