Freewheel Burning

Japan recently constructed a small military base in Djibouti, ostensibly to protect Japanese cargo ships from Somali pirates. This is the first military base that Japan has constructed outside of Japan since the end of World War II.

The news didn’t even register on the major American news outlets, but how could it? The common American has all but forgotten World War II and is blissfully ignorant as to exactly how conservative the Japanese government really is. Most outside of Japan are unaware as to how Japanese domestic policy creates conditions ripe for organized violence against other countries (I don’t make that statement lightly).

Japan’s press has, to my knowledge, even downplayed the significance of the event, not surprising in a country with as castrated a press as Japan.

The significance of this event is this: In 1947, Japan amended its young Constitution to include the following:

“第九条　日本国民は、正義と秩序を基調とする国際平和を誠実に希求し、国権の発動たる戦争と、武力による威嚇又は武力の行使は、国際紛争を解決する手段としては、永久にこれを放棄する。 二　前項の目的を達するため、陸海空軍その他の戦力は、これを保持しない。国の交戦権は、これを認めない。”

“ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. (2) To accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

Japan, following a terrible history of violent expansionism into Eastern Asia, officially renounced warfare and gave up violence as a means of settling international conflicts. This marks one of the most progressive political actions in history. Its significance cannot be downplayed.

Despite wide public support for Article 9 (that continues to this day), conservative politicians, in collusion with a self interested and militaristic United States, have slowly chipped away at the core message of Article 9. Certain rightist politicians find the clause unnecessarily restrictive on Japanese sovereignty, and regularly discharge heated rhetoric implying Japan’s divine right to become a major world military power.

Of course, these hard-liners, which make up a considerable percentage of the Japanese Congress, forget what led Japan to create Article 9 in the first place. Selective memory, though, is not atypical of rightists in any country.

The base in Djibouti is simply part of a pattern. First, the Japanese established the Japan Self Defense Force, which, despite the name, is one of the most powerful national militaries in the world. They developed the de facto capacity for nuclear weapons by providing technological support to the Americans, despite being the only country to have experienced that horror firsthand. More recently, Japan bowed to US pressure and deployed troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, rightist have gotten exactly what they sought, and officially shredded the Constitution itself by creating an overseas base, which most certainly does aim to settle international disputes by means of force.

Obviously, this is a complicated issue. Japan must protect its economic interests and cargo ships that pass through the horn of Africa. However, it must also weigh out the costs of deploying its military overseas. It must insure that extreme voices who wish to once again assert an economically declining Japan in the world through displays of military might be held at bay, or history is well doomed to repeat itself.

Update: Apparently, there is some controversy over whether the base in Djibouti is actually the first of its kind or not. The Japanese military has established other bases of operations on foreign soil in the past, though they were intended to be temporary. This issue is up for debate, though it does not change my view that Japan violates the most important provision of its Constitution by sending its military overseas.

I’m slowly sifting through the 10,000 plus photographs that I took in my recent trip to Japan and was fortunate enough to find the photo to the left.

This is Kenichi Sakamoto, an 87 year old bookseller in the now fashionable Nakazaki-cho section of Northern Osaka.

I passed by the bookstore, “Aozora Shobo (青空書房）”　(“Blue Sky Books”) on my way to meet a friend. It looked welcoming enough and I decided to kill some time inside. Mr. Sakamoto struck up a conversation, asking me where I was from, why I was in Japan, etc. so I drilled him with questions of my own. It turns out Mr. Sakamoto opened the store in 1947 and has been running it ever since. Amazingly, he is celebrating his 65th year in business.

Sakamoto originally wanted to be a painter, but poverty forced him to start selling off his books to support his impoverished family after the war. After buying and selling books for some time, he opened his tiny store in a shopping area of Nakazaki-cho. Reflecting his artistic past and humble beginnings, Sakamoto stocks all kinds of book on art from all over the world, along with low-priced literary paperbacks.

I found out that Sakamoto is originally from Miyagi Prefecture, one of the areas hardest hit by the recent earthquake. A donation box for earthquake victims can be seen on the left side of his desk.

He wasted no time in expressing his sympathies for all affected and leveled his own harsh criticisms of the government’s slow response. He said he hoped that young people make the effort to be mindful when choosing their leaders, but that hope for Japan’s future rests on the proactive efforts on individuals. He believes that Japan’s people shouldn’t wait for the government to take care of things, but rather should do as he did and make use of whatever opportunities are in front of them.

Bookstores in Japan range from massive chains to these incredible used stores which stock their shelves with care. I’ve included some pictures of a few below. Sakamoto’s store was particularly friendly and inviting.

I discovered while walking away from the store that someone published a collection of essays written by Aozora Shobo customers. Not many bookstores can claim such an incredible distinction.

I’m completely behind on writing and tending to this blog, but I’ll take five minutes today to talk about Hideo Asano, a Korean-Japanese English language writer living in Shin-Imamiya, Osaka, Japan. I was sitting in Nara beside a pond, when a homeless looking man drinking a beer approached me speaking flawless English, though in an accent atypical of Japanese speakers. People like this are not uncommon in Japan. I have been approached more than a few times by English speaking Japanese men who either travelled the world in their youth, or Okinawans who took advantage of migrant farm work when Okinawa was a protectorate of the United States. Asano is the former.

He immediately started asking me about literature, a subject on which I am woefully deficient, asking me what my favorite Hemingway book was. I told him that I had only read one, “The Old Man and the Sea” but it had been more than 30 years since I’d read it. Unfortunately, I was unable to provide him with the conversation he sought, though searching through my mental files, I realized that I have read four Hemingway books in my lifetime, but none in the past decade. From what I remember, I am not a fan of Hemingway, a fact irrelevant to this post.

I had to leave when Mr. Asano started a racist rant on international marriages, though I bought one of his small photocopied books of poems. Our meeting however, prompted me to do some searching. It turns out that Mr. Asano is Korean, possibly explaining his views on Japanese-Gaijin pairings. He writes exclusively in English, having studied at the College of the Desert in Southern California. He has written several novels and multitudes of short stories and poems, in English, French and Japanese. Most notable is a book on the Mujahideen of Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion that I have yet to read.

Asano is living the true writer’s life, travelling from place to place in Japan with no real home and apparently hitting foreigners up for conversation and book sales. I did some searching through Japanese sites, and could find no mention of the man. He is completely unknown in his own country.

To be honest, he pissed me off. I have little tolerance for racist speech in any country. Other foreigners inexplicably apologize for racist attitudes within Japan, but I cannot. I hesitate to call Mr. Asano a flat out racist, but I do regret not giving him a little more of my time. He has much more to offer than initially meets the eye and I regret falling victim to my own prejudices and not finding out more about this facinating individual and his work. To that end, I recommend that you visit his website, and check out his work in Afghanistan.

Numbers of confirmed dead continue to increase. Numbers of reported missing have been decreasing in Iwate and Fukushima prefectures but are steadily increasing in Miyagi. For the first time since the event, the ratio of missing to dead has dropped below one. It is disturbing, however, that reports of missing friends and family continue to pour in even though more than 6 weeks have passed since the first earthquake.

Refugees continue to be concentrated in the three hardest hit prefectures. While overall numbers have dropped significantly, a constant flow of refugees being shuffled from one center to another keep refugee numbers in some areas constant.

 

 

If anything, this film should settle any arguments as to whether professional wrestling is mere silly performance or blood wrenching sport. When I lived in Japan, I often saw flyers for women’s professional wrestling matches and usually disregarded them. I wish I hadn’t.

“Gaea Girls” (another excellent Women Make Movies release) documents the daily lives of the women of “Gaea Japan,” a professional wrestling stable based outside of Tokyo. Behind the glitz and glamour of public wrestling bouts, the women train daily in an environment that appears more like a prison camp than a sports training facility.

The women are largely isolated, presumably far away from transportation and having none of their own. They live, train and work in a depressing prefab garage and training facility, with few amenities. Training, daily chores and meals are all taken in the same room, and rudimentary sleeping quarters are made out of converted closets. The ascetic conditions are reminiscent of those of the remnants of Aum Shinrikyo depicted in Tatsuya Mori’s fantastic pair of documentaries, “A” and “A2.” In essence, the two groups are the same.

Violence against of trainees is common. The senior members of group appear to be uninhibited in their daily psychological abuse and constant verbal beratement of their juniors, even in the presence of a foreign film crew. There is no indication that any of the girls are paid for their services. In fact, it is implied that the women’s parents are in fact paying Gaea Japan to violently abuse their daughters.

The elder wrestler Chigusa Nagayo, a former member of the Crash Girls, another wrestling group, does not live at the training facility, but rather arrives by car every morning. She rarely trains with the junior members and never seems to even break a sweat as she intensely hurls insults and physical pain on her trainees.

In a particularly painful scene, we watch as a prospective wrestler, Takeuchi, runs a brutal gauntlet against four of her seniors, spilling blood, sweat and tears profusely in order to achieve the ultimate goal of being allowed to publicly wrestle in a Gaea Japan match. At the end, Chigusa verbally reduces Takeuchi to a crying child, before finally informing her that she has passed her final test.

While the outcomes of the matches may be fixed, there is no doubt that the blood and injuries in women’s wrestling are entirely real. It is never explicitly stated, but one can assume that the girls depicted in “Gaea Girls” do not come from affluent means. The very few interviews in the film reveal that the women want to be “noticed,” indicating that many of prospective recruits have been overlooked and possibly abused for most of their lives.

A telling interview with Chigusa indicates a long history of parental abuse in a military family. Given her entirely masculine speech forms, it is implied that her father raised her as a son rather than a daughter. Clearly, she has serious personal battles to wage despite her smiles and light attitude when not in training. Many indications as to her gender conflicts are given in the multiple references to the forgone parenthood that she uses to justify her incredible abuse of her trainees.

The question though, outside of the obvious gender issues depicted in “Gaea Girls,” is truly a societal one. The violent physical and psychological abuse of juniors in the pursuit of skill and position most certainly is not restricted to wrestling groups. In fact, it pervades throughout Japan in just about every facet of personal and working life. While many of Japan’s successes can certainly be credited to the dedicated work ethic and often masochistic dedication of the Japanese, violence and abuse are not without incredible costs. One wonders exactly when and why Japan became this way, and if there is ever to be a future where it doesn’t exist.

UPDATE: News just came that a magnitude 7.4 earthquake just hit Miyagi Prefecture at 10:32 EST.

As of today, April 7, 2011, the numbers of confirmed dead continue to gradually rise though the number of people reported missing have begun to flatten. New reports of missing individuals continue to be reported to Japanese police, though the ratio of dead to missing has been decreasing.

In total, as of today, 12,608 people are confirmed dead and 15,073 individuals are still missing.

Reporting of number of refugees by prefecture has become spotty, but the worst appears to be over. As of today, Miyagi Prefecture only reported 58,000 refugees, as opposed to a high of 320,000 just two weeks ago. The numbers of refugees in Iwate and Fukushima have remained unchanged for the past two weeks.

 

As of April 1st, nearly three weeks after the incredible calamity that has stricken the north east region of Japan, the numbers of dead and missing continue to climb. While the total has not reached 30,000 yet, given the current trajectory, we would expect it to reach at least that. Miyagi prefecture is still the hardest hit and the continued nuclear crisis in Fukushima still prevents teams from engaging in extensive seraches for the dead and missing.

Finally though, the ratio of dead to missing has begun to decrease, indicating that confirmations of the dead may slowly be trickling in, while reports of missing loved ones have finally abated.

The refugee situation, however, is still dire. Nearly 200,000 people have yet to return to any type of home, and continue to languish in public shelters under what must be incredibly challenging conditions. Reports indicate that the delivery of supplies has improved in recent days, but Japan’s refugees still suffer under a blanket of government and bureaucratic inefficiency. It has been said that medical supplies brought in on helicopter were refused in the North East because landing the craft at a local airport would violate established buraucratic rules.

Gasoline reserves have only until recently been loosened, because rules state that Japan must keep a 70 day supply. Using the gas reserves given the present demand in the north east would decrease the supply to only 45 days. This, of course, causes one to wonder why Japan keeps reserves to begin with.

Despite Japan’s predilectin toward major disasters, the weakness and unneccesary rigidity of the central government of Japan has become painfully obvious to all. A government which feeds off keep the statu quo at all times is ill equipped to deal with sudden catastrophic events.

Despite government inefficiencies, the people of Japan deserve credit for coming together and providing relief where it can be provided in a civil and orderly manner. While this phenomenon of cooperation and civility is certainly not restricted to Japan, everyone is to be commended. However, the affected residents of the northeast will face incredible challenges for years to come.

I have been collecting the daily counts of missing and confirmed dead in my daily read of Asahi Shinbun. As of today, the Asahi reports that there are a total of  9737 confirmed dead, and 16,423 reported missing.  Miyagi Prefecture has experienced the largest numbers of dead and missing, while Iwate and Fukushima prefecture also have very high counts. Fukushima has a much larger number of missing compared with reported dead than any other prefecture, likely because evacuation zones around the Fukushima nuclear power plant do not allow access to aid in locating bodies.

Upward trends in both (see figure below) have been seen in all three of the hardest hit prefectures in the past two weeks, although the trend in confirmed dead and missing appears to be slowing. Miyagi Prefecture, however, has been reported ever more numbers of missing persons. As of now there are more than 25,000 people reported either missing or dead. Without running any formal analyses, I would expect that that number would level off to approximately 30,000 over the next few days, assuming that Miyagi Prefectures trend stabilizes within that time. 

The number of missing continues to outpace the number of death confirmations, likely due to bodies being washed out to seas, buried under rubble, and the limits of relief crews who are focused on helping the living cope with the loss of home and livelihood. Overall, there are nearly twice as many missing to confirmed dead, although, as noted above, Fukushima Prefecture has an exceedingly high disparity of missing to dead. As Miyagi Prefecture’s reporting of missing has incresased relative to a stabilizing trend of death conformations, the ratio of missing to dead has also increased.

Given the incredibly high numbers of dead and missing, it is only chance that has spared the larger urban centers of Chiba and Tokyo from what would have been devastation on a scale not seen since the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. This does not minimize or diminish the incredible toll that this disaster has had on human life and on the families who have lost loved ones, friends, home and livelihood. Japan will have numerous challenges lying ahead in its future.

According to the Asahi Shinbun, as of today, there are ‎6,911 confirmed dead and 10,316 reported missing from the recent earthquake and subsequent tidal wave. The missing and the dead are from 11 prefectures and the city of Tokyo. All affected are in the northeast of Japan, primarily concentrated around Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi prefectures.

Number of missing are not proportional to those confirmed dead. Fukushima has almost 6 times as many missing as confirmed dead, and Iwate has more than twice as many. The stress and sadness that relatives and friends of those missing must be overwhelming, and will be for decades to come.

A recent issue of the Economist ran a short blurb on Rimjin-gan, a news magazine from North Korea. Asia Press International is a vibrant Japan based news organization which specializes in all forms of human rights reporting. Since 1987, Asia Press International has provided a forum for over 30 activist writers and filmmakers. Their output spans the globe, but focuses on issues of political repression, warfare and health in developing countries. Asia Press International, with seven offices throughout Asia preserves a tradition of activist journalism which has largely been lost in today’s media.

Accurate reporting from North Korea is almost nonexistent. Much of which appears on the western media are reports of international talks, verifiable military actions and that which can be obtained from those lucky enough to escape one of the most isolated and repressive governments on the planet. Largely lost are reports of the experiences of average North Koreans, their attitudes toward the Kim dynasty and the grave state of human rights and health there. Enter Rimjim-gan, named for the Rimjin River which runs through North Korea.

All of Rinjin-gan’s journalists are North Koreans living in North Korean. Asia Press International was able to train them in techniques of covert journalism across the border in China, and provided some with satellite phones. Asia Press now maintains contacts with eight journalists spread throughout the country, who work at incredible risk to their own lives and the lives of their families. These on the ground informal correspondents record conversations with North Koreans, often unbeknownst to the subjects. This, of course, violates traditional standards of journalism, but as the subjects risk imprisonment, torture and death by outwardly stating their opinions, covert methods are preferred. Asia Press obscures the identities of interviewees.

What results is nothing short of incredible. A true independent and subversive press, unheard of in North Korea, provides a voice for those victimized by the Communist regime, and tells a story of food shortages, fear and widespread anger at the present government. A video shot by a Rimjin-gan reporter of a 23 year old woman foraging for food on a mountainside, clearly suffering the effects of malnutrition. She is foraging for food to feed her rabbits, whcih she sell at the market. When asked what she east, she plainly says, “Nothing.” Her parents are both dead and she sleeps outside. If she were born just 60 miles south, she’d likely be thinking about a hopeful future. Here, she likely doesn’t worry about much more than finding enough food to stay alive until tomorrow.