Below, I translate an article by Nobuo Ikeda, Japanese economist and noted commentator on nuclear issues in the Japan blogosphere. This article and its translation are released under a Creative Commons BY-NC license.
I thought that opposition to nuclear power is not about individual concerns but an overriding sense of “moral duty”, but it seems like recently it’s shown itself to be simple selfishness. The local citizens’ brigade to “halt the scattering of radiation” list the towns and cities which have received rubble from the earthquake as part of an effort to stop all rubble from being buried.
As explained by Taro Kono, most of the areas devastated by the tsunami were unaffected by the Fukushima Daiichi accident and it thus makes no sense to refuse all rubble from Tohoku. The radiation in most of Tohoku is no different from Tokyo or Yokohama. Without the ability to clear the rubble and dirt from Tohoku, the reconstruction of the affected areas will hit a brick wall. Even Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto, who was stirring up fears about radiation last year, agrees that rubble does not have any problematic level of radiation.
On this citizens’ brigade website, there is a “doctor’s written opinion on accepting rubble into your hometown” which states that “regulations must be strengthened to 10 becquerels per kilogram”. The basis of this is an article written by one Yuri Bandashevsk. Cesium-137 is said to cause “functional modifications in the cardiovascular, nervous, endocrine, immune, reproductive, digestive, urinary excretion and hepatic system,” but the only evidence given for this is experiments made on rats! [Actually, if you merely glance at the linked article, you’ll see that Mr. Bandashevsk is clearly unqualified to do this kind of evaluation. –Avery]
Zero-risk fundamentalism like this makes it impossible to evaluate risk quantitatively. Looking at a page like this, you might be led to believe that “radioactive pollution is worse than an atomic bomb”, but in fact Fukushima Prefecture found that 99.8% of residents of evacuated areas will receive a real dose of less than 1 millisievert throughout their lifetime. I’d like to see the three self-styled physicists who wrote this opinion make a quantitative evaluation of the effects of 1 millisievert of radiation over a span of 50 years.
The anti-nuclear movement claims the great moral duty of protecting the environment, but trying to block the importation of rubble has nothing to do with this moral duty, but is rather based in the selfish principle, “I don’t care what happens to the victims of the tsunami, but I want zero risk in my backyard.” Yukio Hayakawa and Kunihiko Takeda, who torment an entire prefecture with vitriol like “Fukushima’s produce is poison,” operate on the same principle. When the movement becomes this depraved it is only a matter of time before it dissolves entirely.
Posted: February 5th, 2012 | Japan
The 32nd issue of “Kikan Kiyomizu“, published in the 9th month of the 7th year of Heisei, is a special edition on “70 years of Kiyomizu City and Toda Bookstore”, containing an article entitled “Memoirs of 70 Years of Toda Bookstore” published by the former chief librarian of Kiyomizu City Public Library, Harumori Yamanashi, in which we may read the following description of a bookstore ship.
One final scene which resides in my heart is that of a small boat which sat at the bend in the river afore the household of Shin’ichi Shibano loaded up completely with what appeared to be brand-new books. It was a perfect subject for photos and indeed seemed quite an appropriate motif for a port city.
The bookstore, which swayed gently with the ripples on the river, was one of my Kiyomizu rediscoveries. I later learned that it was made for the fisherfolk who went out to the ocean for many long, idle hours at a time, and who had thus requested such a bookstore ship.
A bookstore ship swaying on the river would be a picture of some grace, and I imagine if we were to search for photographs we might still find some remaining. It’s a sight I’d like to see.
Translated overliterally from the Jinbo Town Nerd’s Diary.
Posted: February 4th, 2012 | Japan
In the old days they didn’t have cars. The shortest way to get from Yamauchi to Imari was to walk over the mountain. That’s right, walk over the mountain. You know how many trail markers they had? Just one. This one.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 11th, 2011 | Japan, Travel
1. Hiromichi Kumazawa: Sent letters to various public officials declaring he was Emperor in 1920, and continued protesting his imperial lineage thereafter while running a general store in Nagoya. In 1945, his petition to MacArthur was spotted in the messy GHQ headquarters by a reporter for Life magazine and he became internationally famous for a short time. Lost many of his supporters in 1947 when he formed a political party, at which point he made the unusual claim that the Takenouchi Documents were real and had been stolen from his household by a wandering komusō during the Meiji period. His death in 1966 went unreported in the West.
Prominent supporter, Masanori Arita: Shady right-wing character who supported Kumazawa from the 1920s and cared for him until his death. Became private secretary to fascist underworld power broker Ryoichi Sasakawa who is a well-known philanthropist in Africa. It is unknown if Arita is still alive.
Apparent relative, Terumoto Kumazawa: Claimed that Hiromichi Kumazawa was adopted and that he was the true ruler of the Kumazawa household. (There are four other Kumazawas claiming to be the true Kumazawa Emperor, whom I will not list here.)
2. Tatsukichirou Horiwaka: A mysterious person who was rumored to be the illegitimate child of the Meiji Emperor. Actual place and time of birth unknown. Advocated for Pan-Asianism during the kindai, was involved in the Treaty of San Francisco for unknown reasons, and joined the World Federalist Movement after 1945.
Pretended daughter, Princess Kaoru Nakamaru: Journalist who interviewed business leaders, authors such as Norman Mailer, and world leaders such as Saddam Hussein for PBS in the 1980s, later Illuminati researcher and founder of “Taiyo no Kai” (organization of unclear purpose). Notable Japanese 2012 theorist who has written roughly a dozen books about 2012. Despite her claims it is not generally believed that she is actually Horikawa’s daughter.
3. Yoshimaki Miura: Caused a stir in 1955 by proposing that the Imperial Palace did not belong in Tokyo according to a philosophical system which he himself invented. Many government officials discussed this claim. Also, he claimed to be the true Emperor descended from a previously unknown Hokuriku Court.
4. Toyohiko Nagahama: Claimed to be the descendant of Emperor Antoku who died in 1185, making him certainly the longest of these to get around to staking his claim. Like Kumazawa, he never took on the styles of an emperor or tried to make enemies with the Showa Emperor, but only acted as a friendly old man trying to make the truth known. He never petitioned MacArthur and was thus only famous on the little island of Ioujima, Kagoshima where he lived. Locals referred to him as “Emperor Nagahama”.
Unknown relation, Masakaze Nagahama: Claims to be next in line to the noble and majestic Nagahama lineage, and has started a society to that effect.
5. Jikouson: Founder of the political(?!) cult “Jiu“. When the Showa Emperor renounced his divinity in 1946, Jikouson claimed that the kami which had taken up residence in the Emperor, Amaterasu, had now moved into her, and the Jiu headquarters became the Imperial Palace. Consequently she invented an original Japanese era, constitution, and flag, and named her prominent followers the Ministers of Defense, Culture, etc. in a virtual cabinet. The GHQ spied on her group to ensure it was not a nationalist organization.
There are about a dozen other pretenders but none are so interesting.
Posted: November 6th, 2011 | Japan
Imari Kawanami Shipyard is one of Japan’s most famous haikyo, or abandoned structures. It graces the cover of at least one book about haikyo and is known for its rocky outcrops into the bay and its amazing portholes that challenge photographers with their captured sunlight.
In November 2011, the City of Imari will demolish the shipyard.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: September 23rd, 2011 | Japan
新日本人に訊け！
Yoshinori Kobayashi
Asuka Shinsha, 2011
Yoshirin’s goal here was to interview six foreigners who became Japanese citizens, to ask them what they find so special about Japan, and what direction they hope Japan will take in the future. Obviously he picked people who immigrated to Japan as a political decision and not for mere social reasons. The book is intellectually strong because all of his guests already understand the importance of Japan’s self-identity and its role in the world. Rather than ranting about the need to destroy Japan, as some less socialized and more hate-filled expats do, they discuss how they would strengthen it.
However, while reading the book I realized that it could have been stronger if he added to this mix some ordinary folks who got Japanese wives and are contributing to the gene pool. After all, Japan’s self-identity is determined by its people, so how can we ensure that allegiance to Japan is preserved for children of mixed ethnicity, as Yoshirin hopes it will be for those of Ainu and Burakumin descent? Ordinary expats may be uneducated about Japanese history and how society functions, and would disturb the book’s structure, but through exposure to much greater minds we might get them to open up about their own experiences and hopes.
I will focus on the interview with Bill Totten, since he’s the sole representative of the Anglo-Saxon race. The other interviewees are two Chinese, a Taiwanese, a Tibetan, and a Zainichi Korean, who discuss issues in their own countries that I have little grounds to comment on, but many of the ideas Bill discusses, both on the American and Japanese sides, are things I’ve researched and thought about myself, and the way he orders them into a coherent whole made me consider how I arrange them in my own head. In general, I found the talk rather inspiring, and I wish my Japanese was good enough that I could take it in fully.
Yoshirin opens by informing us that unlike the other interviewees, Bill’s spoken Japanese was rough and lacked fluency, and he had to correct it. There are plenty of smart white expats who never achieve fluency; I worry that I may find myself among them in the future, and certainly I recognized some of my own grammatical simplicity in Bill’s language. I think this is due to the richness of readily available Western media, which can often supply us with news about Japan and even advanced research into Japanese history and culture. If we interact too much in English, we risk missing out on the equal richness and complexity of Japanese society. Anyway, Bill seems to agree with me on that theoretical point, and his Japanese was good enough to have a dynamic conversation with Yoshirin, which is much more than I can say of my own.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 25th, 2011 | Book Reviews, Japan, Kokoro
“SUNSET JAM”, said the poster at my local 7/11. An event would be held at an imitation German castle that an insane development company had built in the woods in the middle of nowhere, in a location barely accessible by bike over several hills of unkempt road. There was a place and time on the poster, but no description. What kind of music? Who would be performing? Only the enigmatic letters RGP, surrounded by illegible English, distinguished the event on an otherwise completely unmarked poster. Well, whoever it was was promising “FREE FOOD FREE DRINK” (actual meaning: all you can eat, all you can drink). I was also intrigued by the fact that there was only one poster for this, as far as I could tell, in the entire town. Were they trying to keep people away?
Anyway. That evening, there was another event in the city, but it started after 10pm and was quite far. I figured that, worst case scenario, I could duck out of SUNSET JAM, power bike through the wilderness back to town, and hop on the last train. The only unacceptable option was staying home on a Friday night. I did not know what I was getting myself into.
The first hour and a half of the concert was fairly boring. There was a tent, a horrible DJ pressing the “scratch” button on a synthesizer way too many times, some staff hovering around, drinks, and food. I was all by my lonesome for some 20 minutes, and wondered whether the event would be canceled. As time went on, some couples and families shuffled in, all of them wearing ridiculous faux-American T-shirts, one with dyed blond hair, and all seeming to know each other. The DJ kept telling us to eat and drink. I felt oddly like he was fattening us up to feed to his unearthly children.
Then the belly dancing began. Completely out of nowhere, the music stopped and some half-naked women went up on the stage and started dancing around. Wait, what kind of event was this? Why didn’t they advertise this on their poster? My cynicism dropped away and as I drank my free beer I was plunged into a universe of the surreal. The belly dancers hopped off the stage and mingled with the audience. One of them was extremely good. I did not know that rural Japan had so many belly dancers.
Then they were replaced, just as suddenly, with a African drum team in Mexican dress. A simple but undoubtedly un-Japanese beat rose out of the tent, causing drunk people to spontaneously rise from their seats and move to the dance floor. Men waving bottles of a clear, fizzy drink I had never seen before gathered under the stage, occasionally grabbing the drum from their buddy on the stage and hitting it a couple times.
When I started dancing the men slammed into me, grabbing my shoulder to dance together, hitting me on the back, inviting me to hit back and basically creating some sort of mock battle under the stage. I was strongly encouraged to grab one of their fizzy drinks and chug the whole thing. At some point I did. The drumming went on and on, building to a crescendo and collapsing again. I’m not sure how long this part of the “concert” lasted. I missed the last train, obviously, and was taken back to my apartment by some partygoers. My bike is still up there in the mountains.
I am unsure whether I accidentally ate dinner with a countryside pagan cult.
Posted: August 20th, 2011 | Japan
97% of my village in Japan uses an ordinary cable provider with access to dozens of channels. My apartment complex does not. Instead, I am hooked up to something called a テレビ共同受信施設組合 terebi kyoudou jushin shisetsu kumiai, or “Cooperative Television Reception Facility Union”.
Basically, I live in a valley that gets no TV. Some group, unknown to me except for the message I just received from their president, strung some wire up to the top of a mountain and put an antenna up there, which was connected to households around the are to create a Cooperative Television Reception Facility. This is, I guess, a lot cheaper than using the cable provider.
These things are apparently common both in urban and rural Japan. But they are only as good as their reception, and I just got a letter in my mailbox informing me that one of the channels broadcasting from over the bay can no longer be reached, and they have replaced it with another one.
I get a total of 8 TV channels this way, two of which often broadcast the same content. There is no option to buy more. This is the situation for many people in Japan, which is why the policies of the big channels, for example Fuji TV’s pro-Korean bias, are very important.
Posted: August 13th, 2011 | Japan
Today was an Earth Cycle Day of the Ox (土用の丑の日 doyo no ushi no hi). On this day Japanese people eat eels. And the full story is even better than this two-sentence summary.
The old Japanese calendar, drawing on the Chinese tradition, used the elements to distinguish between seasons. As everyone knows, there are five elements: earth, fire, water, gold, and wood. The latter four of these were assigned to the four seasons. The fifth became the Earth Cycle, which was assigned to the last 18 days of each season. Thus, all five elements got an equal share of the year.
So much for seasons. Months are irrelevant to this discussion, so I’ll pass over them. How about weeks? They revolved around the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Hare etc. There was also the rokuyo system but I won’t get into that either. Anyway, 12-day week, 18-day Earth Cycle, so most years there are two Days of the Ox in every Earth Cycle.
What does this have to do with eels? Well. The prevailing theory is that the Edo period teacher and inventor Hiraga Gennai was approached by some eel vendors having trouble selling their goods in the summer of 1822, even though eel is a traditional summer food. He drew up some slogan boards saying “Eat Eel on the Earth Cycle Days of the Ox”, apparently since ox (ushi) begins with the same syllable as eel (unagi). Why not just every day of the ox? Well, the summer Earth Cycle happens to dip into the hottest days of the year, so the sign would remind people that eel was a good food to eat in that weather.
The slogan boards were an instant hit, and the advertising spread throughout the country–in 1822. The calendar was reformed, the months were renamed, the complicated association with the elements was forgotten, the 12-day week was exchanged for a 7-day one–in the 1870s. Western buildings sprang up throughout Japan–in the 1880s. Baseball, curry, and steak became popular foods–in the 1890s. The empire conquered Korea and Taiwan, entangled itself in unwinnable wars, and lost everything. America took over for a few years and left. Cars were manufactured. Robots were invented. And in the 21st century still, every year the restaurants and grocery stores post up signs: “Eat Eel on the Earth Cycle Days of the Ox!”
Few people in Japan know what the terms Earth Cycle or Day of the Ox mean these days. Most likely nobody at all could tell you when an Earth Cycle is off the top of their head. (The Cycle has been neglected; lacking an official astrological recalculation, it is slowly drifting backwards into July and will reach early July by 2100.) But the saying remains.
The World’s Top 5 Most Obnoxiously Long-Lived Advertising Slogans
5. “A peach / Looks good / With lots of fuzz / But man’s no peach / And never wuz / Burma-Shave”, etc. (1927)
4. “All The News That’s Fit To Print” (1896)
3. “Ivory Soap: 99-44/100% Pure” (1891)
2. “They come as a boon and a blessing to men, The Pickwick, the Owl and the Waverley Pen” (1869)
1. “Eat Eel on the Earth Cycle Days of the Ox!” (1822)
Posted: July 21st, 2011 | Japan
This weekend I stumbled on Takeo’s Soga Shrine (武雄市素鵞神社), which is right on the main street of Takeo but appears neglected. It’s certainly such an impressive site that it could use a caretaker, but the honden is obviously a prewar construction, and other than some “historic site” style maintenance from the city there are no signs of human involvement here.
In a sense this is what drew me to the shrine– nature is much a more powerful force here, even viewed from across the street, than humanity could ever hope to be. Check this out. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 24th, 2011 | Japan
