Jake Adelstein's Blog, page 9
December 17, 2022
Recent threats against FOreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) and the history of media intimidation
by Robert Whiting (reprinted with permission)
TOKYO — Over a recent early weekend, there were a series of threatening calls made in English and Japanese to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. The caller threatened to blow up the FCCJ and to harm two journalist members, including Jake Adelstein (author of Tokyo Vice and host of The Evaporated podcast series) for being ‘anti-Japanese’ and one other journalist, who’s name has been kept out of the press at her request. The FCCJ contacted the police, who responded swiftly. They traced the caller and quickly arrested the individual responsible — a woman with extreme right-wing and nationalist views.
The FCCJ issued a statement of gratitude to the police and instituted security measures for both staff and members. The organization thanked the police for their prompt and efficient response.
The FCCJ, established in 1945, exists, the statement said, “to provide foreign correspondents and other journalists with broad access to news sources in Japan and overseas, to defend the freedom of the press and the free exchange of information, and to promote friendship, harmony, and mutual welfare in both professional and social relations among foreign and Japanese journalists … We will not be swayed by terrorism or threats.”
This is not the first such incident for the FCCJ.
Longtime FCCJ member Mary Corbett remembers the Club received calls not to show ‘The Sun,’ the 2005 Russian film about the meeting between MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito, when no other theater would dare screen it, for fear of violence from right wing extremist over its portrayal of Hirohito.
Andrew Horvat, FCCJ president 1988-1989 had his own problems with ultranationalists, as he recalled in a recent e-mail:
“When I was president in 1988/89 I also received threats from right wingers but they were cleverly worded so that the police could not take action as the threats were veiled but of course quite clear to both parties.
“One of our members, Bob Whymant, had written a piece on Emperor Hirohito, who at the time was on his deathbed. Whymant recalled in detail allegations against the emperor regarding his role in WWII that the Japanese right had found offensive. One of the national dailies contacted me for a comment and I naturally defended the right of foreign correspondents to raise issues of concern to their readers. (I said that even though I personally disagreed with Whymant’s piece.) After that came the cleverly worded messages from self-styled defenders of Japan’s honor. I believe I received more than one such message … One of mine encouraged me to pack up and return to my country. The message, however, came from an ultra-right group so it was quite obvious that they had other than my airline reservations in mind.
“In addition, you may recall the attempted murder at the Club of the Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. I was at this conference and saw Tokyo’s finest tackle the knife-wielding would-be killer to the ground, disarm him and remove him from the room in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, the translator, Professor Hitoshi Igarashi was later killed apparently by an assassin responding to a fatwah.
“The police promised to step up surveillance of the Club and I think they did increase their patrols but of course they were conscious that in a democratic society you don’t want to see uniformed police standing around at the entrance of a news organization.”
The FCCJ was not be the only target of extremists over the years; The Mainichi Shimbun was attacked by yakuza for publishing reports detailing their activities. In 1994, a 44-year old captain in the Tosei-Kai, a Tokyo based ethnic Korean gang, named Hiroji Tashiro stormed into the Tokyo headquarters of the Mainichi and fired three .38 bullets into the ceiling. Tashiro was upset with an article published by the Mainichi’s weekly magazine that described the Tosei-kai as “over the hill.”
In 1987, a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun Kobe office was shot and killed by a right wing extremist who was angered by a story the reporter had written which described Japanese discrimination against members of the Korean minority in Japan. Another employee in the office was injured in the attack. Typed letters were later sent by the assailant’s group claiming responsibility.
There are thousands of right wing extremists active in Japan, many aligned with underworld gangs, and are notable for the use of black buses and loudspeakers which they use to espouse nationalistic causes. A favorite target is the Russian Embassy in Japan protesting over the Kuril Islands and other territories seized by Russia after WWII had ended. In 1990, a right wing fanatic hit the mayor of Nagasaki Hitoshi Motoshima in the back after the mayor stated that recently deceased Emperor Hirohito supported the war.
The largest ultranationalist group is Nihon Kaigi, which has approximately 40,000 members, including many prominent political figures. Nihon Kaigi denies Japan’s war guilt and aims to revise Japan’s Constitution, Article 9 of which forbids the maintenance of a standing army, among other things.
The assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July revealed the deep influence of the Unification Church on the Japanese conservative government, an anti-communist tool employed by the CIA/ KCIA/LDP alliance that helped shape post-war politics in Japan.
In the latest FCCJ episode, over the weekend of Dec. 10-11, six separate calls were made in English and Japanese to the front desk reception.
Two days before the latest threats against the FCCJ, a press conference was held by Jake Adelstein and other reporters to announce the release of “The Evaporated”—a podcast about missing people in Japan.“Their articles are rubbish,” she said in one call, according to a source, “and they should leave Japan or go to Korea. “
Said another, “I am personally against FCCJ activities because it was established by MacArthur in GHQ,”and still another went,“The staff members at the reception desk should quit because the FCCJ is an anti-Japanese organization.”
Police were able to identify the suspect because recordings left on the front desk answering machine showed the phone number from which the calls had been made. Under questioning, the suspect said she did not actually intend to blow up the Club.
Says Adelstein of the recent threat, “If you don’t address social problems or recognize they exist, nothing changes. I love Japan and many Japanese people are hard-working, honest, and polite. That doesn’t mean the society doesn’t have problems, such as child poverty, gender inequality, discrimination against: the handicapped, women, foreigners, especially Korean-Japanese — powerful organized crime, nuclear dangers, staggering injustice in the legal system, repression of the free press, sexual assault on women with impunity for many assailants, rampant labor exploitation, death by overwork, and political corruption. Ignoring the problems doesn’t make them better. If people are offended by that, they should rethink their love of Japan.”
SOURCES, FURTHER READING
Whiting, Robert Tokyo Underworld, Pantheon, New York, 1999
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%8F%E5%B0%BB%E7%9F%A5%E5%8D%9A
Samuels, Richard (December 2001). “Kishi and Corruption: An Anatomy of the 1955 System. Japan Policy Research Institute.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qzsBteZffImA-i1SpSVvDUOFoOVUA_Pi3r6ifLpWt-E/edit
Weiner, Tim (2007). Legacy of Ashes. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51445-3.
https://howwelldoyouknowyourmoon.tumblr.com/post/147695217233/the-unification-church-and-the-kcia (Dr. Jeffrey M. Bale)
https://apjjf.org/2022/17/McGill.html
“Church Spends Millions On Its Image” by Michael Isikoff, The Washington Post, September 17, 1984; Page A01. (Wiki) https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cult/unification/image.htm
December 11, 2022
The Evaporated: 神隠し(かみかくし）Gone with the Gods –On Air now
December 12 2022
People have a habit of vanishing in Japan—even hundreds of years ago, it happened often enough that myths were created to explain these sudden disappearances. 神隠し (kamikakushi)–to be hidden by the gods. Even now, every year over 80,000 people are reported missing. And that may be the tip of the iceberg–because only family members can make those reports. If your girlfriend, high-school buddy, co-worker just evaporates one day–you can go to the police but unless you can prove foul play, they may not even open a file on the case.
There are so many types of missing people in Japan, that there are different words used to describe them. But unfortunately, defining a vanishing doesn’t make people rematerialize.
Even now, every year over 80,000 people are reported missing in Japan. And that may be the tip of the iceberg
If someone you knew and loved went missing one day – with no warning, no explanation, and no evidence – who would you turn to in order to find the truth?
If you were the one looking for that person, what would you do if you found out an entire infrastructure exists, designed for the express purpose of helping people — like your loved one — vanish into thin air?
Would you try to find someone who doesn’t want to be found? Would you judge the person for disappearing in the first place? Would you enroll in private eye school?
Who else has gone missing … and why?
The Evaporated: 神隠し/Gone With The Gods is a multi-faceted deep dive into the phenomenon of Japan’s johatsu, or “evaporated people” — citizens who choose to just vanish from their lives–and those who do so without a choice. Some of the “evaporated” are escaping dire circumstances (debt, abuse, threats of violence), but others are ashamed of how their lives have turned out, or shackled by conformity. They want to start over. And in Japan, there’s a way. It’s a cultural phenomenon.
But it might also be the ultimate cover up. Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice, The Last Yakuza, and I Sold My Soul For Bitcoins joins forces with Shoko Plambeck, model, actress and former journalist lured back into the trade by the promise of solving some great mysteries of her homeland. And of course, sound engineer/journalist and aspiring private detective, Thisanka Siripala. Together they will take you on a midnight ride into the shadows of the rising sun. We consult experts, ex-yakuza, retired police officers, the employers of the missing, and talk to those who decided to vanish and those that helped them do it.
Paul Simon once sang, “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” but in Japan there are more than “50 Ways To Leave This World” and manuals that will show you the way. But they can also teach people how to make someone vanish and never be found. We’ll explain how that works as well.
This podcast will be brought to you Campside Media, “The New Yorker of True-Crime Podcasts” who produced critically praised works like Suspect, Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen. Sponsored by Sony Music Entertainment.
New episodes will be released one per week. For those who can’t wait, subscribe or try The Binge. See below. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts.
The Evaporated On The Binge!—Get all the episodes, all at once and a plethora of other true crime podcasts.
Is there someone in your life, in Japan, who has vanished without a trace or even with a trace, but can no longer be found? Share your story with us at Gone@campsidemedia.com
[image error]November 17, 2022
“A Man” Takes Imposter Syndrome To New Dimensions
by Kaori Shoji
Three minutes into A Man, you already know that Rie (Sakura Ando), who is minding her mother’s stationery shop in rural Miyazaki prefecture, will be dating the guy (Masataka Kubota) who walks into her shop one depressingly rainy afternoon. Rie is a single mom, having divorced her husband some years ago and she’s living with her young son and widowed mother. You can tell Rie doesn’t have much joy in her life. You can tell that this guy – Daisuke – has even less joy, even emotionally stunted. Of course, they hit it off. Then it’s three years later and Daisuke and Rie are married, with a new baby in their family. Life seems to be going incredibly well for them until Daisuke is killed in an accident. At the one-year memorial, his estranged older brother turns up from Gunma prefecture, clear across on the other side of Japan. Rie shows him Daisuke’s photo and he immediately says: “Who is that? That’s not Daisuke at all. That’s a completely different man.”
Memo: Spoilers ahead. Read at your own peril but stay if you want insight into the greater themes of the book and movie.
An occurrence like this happens more often than you may think, even in a super-ordered and family-oriented society like Japan. According to the Metropolitan Police Agency, between 80,000 and 90,000 people disappear annually in Japan, and those are just the numbers based on reports filed by their families. Many of these missing persons end up as suicides or like Daisuke, goes off the radar to live a completely different life. Legally, if a person has gone missing for 7 years the spouses and families become eligible for their life insurance. This is why some people opt to disappear instead of committing suicide, the reasoning being that after seven years at least their families will get a substantial payout whereas most life insurance policies have a suicide clause.
The reasons for disappearing varies but in many cases, money is a key factor. Debt, bankruptcy or sheer poverty. In Japan, once a person slips up financially, the odds of resurfacing are dismally low. It’s often simpler to disappear, change your name and assume a new identity, which is what Daisuke seems to have done.
[image error]In Japan, sometimes people vanish to resurface as someone entirely different. Of the 80,000 people reported missing each year, how many of them are truly missing?A Man （ある男）
©2022 “A Man” Film Partners
Based on the bestseller novel by Keiichiro Hirano and directed by Kei Ishikawa, A Man explores the world of identity scams, imposter syndrome and the ‘oyagacha phenomenon (the notion that one’s birth parents are like a box of chocolates; you just don’t know what you’re getting until it’s too late) that has become a reason and excuse for many of the ills of the Japanese existence. Failed in the university entrance exams? Failed in multiple relationships and can’t get married? Failed to land a high-paying job and now life is screwed? It all has do with oyagacha and how, if you don’t have the right lineage, you may as well give up and wallow in misery.
Daisuke suffers from oyagacha on turbo wheels. His past is revealed in tragic, harrowing increments by Kido (Satoshi Tsumabuki), a lawyer whom Rie hired to look into her late husband’s past. Understandably, she wants to know the real identity of the man she married and loved for the past three years. Intriguingly, Rie’s mother and son, now a teenager, doesn’t oppose her in this quest to dredge up what is effectively a pile of dirty laundry. In real life if something like this got out in a rural area, Rie’s son will be bullied relentlessly at school and her mother will be forced to close down the family stationery store out of shame. Yes, it’s that bad.
But in A Man, her family is actually supportive of Rie and by implication, the lawyer Kido. This is because Hirano is an advocate of the ‘bunjin’ or the ‘dividual,’ as opposed to the individual. Every one of Hirano’s books have dealt with the ‘bunjin’ in one or another, as a way to survive in modern Japan. The idea is to have multiple personalities, each specific to dealing with people and situations in the outer world. Instead of being locked into a restricting and uncompromising ‘me,’ multiple personalities enables the person to become more relaxed and fluid in their approach to life. Hirano has argued that the ‘bunjin’ method could be the only means to escape from ‘oyagacha.’ And by constantly updating the many bunjin in your mental stable, you can finally tell fate, destiny and parents to go f#ck themselves.
After Kido’s investigations, it turns out that Daisuke was a young boxer named Makoto Hara. Hara was his mother’s maiden name. Makoto/Daisuke grew up in an orphanage because his mother abandoned him after his father was arrested for a triple murder and put on death row. If anyone had the right to complain about oyagacha, it was Makoto/Daisuke, for his upbringing was nothing short of a horror show. He got into boxing because he wanted to batter himself to the point of becoming unrecognizable. In one scene, Makoto weeps that he wants to tear off his face because it resembles his father’s visage.
The more Kido digs into Makoto/Daisuke’s past, the more dirt he shovels up about the thriving identity business where desperate people buy and sell their birth names as a means to escape their lives. Initially Kido is mildly repelled by the identity scam game before getting becoming inordinately fascinated. That’s because Kido himself is a victim in the ‘oyagacha’ game – he’s a third generation ‘Zainichi (Japanese Korean resident)’ – and likely to be reminded of his ancestry more often than he’d like to admit. His in-laws for example, have no qualms about making racist remarks right in his presence, then following up with “but you’re third generation so of course you’re practically one of us.”
The ending scene is both poignant and abrasive. Kido has finally put Makoto/Daisuke’s case to rest but in the process, discovers that his own reality has become skewed and uncomfortable, like a once-beloved jacket that no longer fits. The story however, doesn’t leave Kido stranded. Now that Kido knows the ins and outs of the identity scam game, he too, can choose to disappear and become a completely different someone else. Before the ending credits roll, we see that the temptation is already there.
November 11, 2022
Washoku
Back in May when we had lunch, my sister Rinko – who is eight years older than me – fessed up about a guy in her life. “He’s working in the washoku diner around the corner,” she said. “He’s much younger than I am, maybe he’s in his twenties even. I can’t be sure since I’ve only seen him in the light in the diner. He’s always masked up and it’s dark in there.”
In his twenties.
I was so embarrassed for my sis. She looks young for her age but she’s pushing fifty and married for over a quarter of a century to my brother-in-law who is an extraordinarily decent guy. They have a daughter together. They have a grandkid together. I rolled my eyes so hard they were falling out of their sockets. “What are you, fucking crazy? You ARE crazy. I don’t even want to know you. We are not related, okay?” I said this in English because I was born in New York and came back to Tokyo when I had just turned eight and Rinko was fifteen. My sister remained completely bilingual while I had to relearn the language when I went off to Cali for graduate school. As we grew into adulthood, English became a private code to our interminable conversations. We pulled it out whenever we had news to share, was happy or sad, pissed off at each other or at the world. In other words, most times we talked. Rinko was much, much more adept at the language than I am which was embarrassing because I was the one who went to graduate school in the States and now teach economics at a posh university here in Tokyo.
Rinko looked at me, and I gotta say, my sister has these amazing eyes which nothing ever mucks up. Not all-nighters at work, various onenight stands her husband knows nothing about, the horrible crying jags when things go haywire in her life, her bipolar issues which have gone untreated and is most likely causing a lot of trouble that she will never admit to. Nothing pollutes those eyes. Every time I look into my them, so different from mine because I have the typical Japanese hooded slits instead of those dark, translucent marbles of hers. Whenever things go wrong in her life I look into her eyes like an optometrist and examine the damage, gauge her condition. This diner guy was bad news on steroids but – I could tell she’s going to be fine.
When I was 14 my teammates from the soccer club used to come over and hang around our kitchen in the hopes that Rinko, then a senior at university, would come home and open the fridge for a drink and banter a little, looking straight at them with her huge eyes, tossing her hair and swaying her hips a little as she padded out of the kitchen. Man, I could see them now, secretly drooling at the sight of my sister. When I was 17, my own girlfriend told me she liked talking to Rinko more than she liked talking to me. At the time, Rinko
2 was 25 and the mother of a 2-year old. To me, she was just an older woman who was settling down. Twenty five, that was OLD, right? My girlfriend had to be insane. But then, throughout her whole life people had taken to Rinko for reasons I never quite understood. I remember how, when we were living in Brooklyn, Rinko had a small cluster of guys who followed her around and called her ‘Rinnie.’ Sometimes one or another of them – twins from a brood of kids sired by a vicious Irish cop, Matteo from the Italian bakery, Benjie walking his huge German Shepherd – would spy me in the yard playing by myself and yell out, ‘Yo, baby bro, where’s Rinnie?’
Those eyes goddamn it.
According to Rinko this new guy seems pretty audacious and audacious always gets far with my sister. She said he doesn’t play games – because he has no time for mind fuckery. He’s a chef which means among other things, 14-hour days, six days a week. “He’s so nice,” she croons. “He always comes straight to my table and hangs around talking,” she says. “He’s always telling me that I’m adorable. Really, that just doesn’t happen at my age.”
“No kidding.” I lay the sarcasm on thick and say, “So he knows you’re a grandma right? I mean, he’s seen you around with family right? I mean, even I’ve gone to that diner with you guys. If he’s in his twenties, you and his mom could be the same age. You ARE aware of that right? And what would Mika (my niece, her daughter) think about it? I mean, get it together, sis. The diner is like, right there. You may as well be fucking the guy in the middle of your living room.”
My sister blinked, her long lashes briefly obscuring her pupils before they flared open. “Of course he knows the family! He’s paid me compliments with Shinji standing just a meter away. He’s always very solicitous around us. I’m not hiding anything from this guy and I’m not fucking him!”
Not yet you mean. But you will.
Shinji is my sister’s husband. He’s like, top-tier engineer in a company known as the Japanese equivalent of Space X and as such, he’s respected and solid in a way Rinko could never hope to be. She works in advertising and writes ad copy and columns on the web and gets paid peanuts for her trouble. Everything she earns, she spends on her daughter, her grandkid, food, clothing, trips, drinks, not necessarily in that order. Shinji has taken care of the mortgage, car payments and other big ticket items. He doesn’t drink and is very careful with money. Rinko always said that if they got divorced she’d be homeless in a month.
I give a disgusted sigh and turn away. It’s not nice to contemplate one’s own flesh and blood is a shameless middle-aged slut. At the same time though, I can’t help a tiny, almost indistinct wave of pride lapping at my insides. My sister – well, she’s different. She’s unlike any woman I’ve ever known and I’ve known my fair share of them.
As a teenager she was unpredictable in unpredictable ways – fearless and cowering and nasty and innocent: a combo that many in the male species found inexplicably alluring. Her homeroom teacher had a thing for her apparently. She consecutively failed every subject except English and he let that slide and kept her in his class for three years until graduation rolled around. In her report card, he commented on the “beauty and intelligence of her enormous eyes.” Yeah, he got it bad. Sometimes in the mornings when she was sprinting to get to the school gates before they closed (Rinko is chronically late, has been her whole life) this teacher would materialize out of nowhere and hold the gate open so she wouldn’t get into trouble. Men were like that around Rinko but she was 17 then. Of course they would fall over each other to get into a teenager’s pants. But now she’s pushing 50, I wanted to yell. Don’t fall for the eyes thing – this is a woman way, way past her prime.
When I was at university and Rinko turned 30, she asked me whether she would be okay from here on in. “So scared at gettin’ older, I’m only good at being young” she sang, from the John Mayer album which she loved. Then she said she didn’t think she could swing being middle aged. “I could stand being married to the same man for
5 years and years. I could probably stand having facial hair and wrinkles. I could handle being invisible to men because I’m old. But I can’t stand everything coming on at once. It’s starting to happen already. I’m not the same me anymore. I want to just disappear.”
Being a youngster and completely wrapped up in my own life, I scoffed at Rinko’s predilections and told her to put a lid on it. “Of course you’ll get old, everyone does. Get over yourself. You’re a mother for god’s sakes. Pull yourself together and think about your daughter.”
Two decades on I stick by my advice but I also realize I was being unfair. Because Rinko was a devoted and dedicated mother. Outwardly she was very loyal to Shinji. After Mika she had two miscarriages and she said she didn’t want the trauma of pregnancies anymore even though she loved babies and was very good around them. She redoubled her efforts to be present and aware as a wife and mom. She worked hard. She did all the heavy lifting as far as home and family were concerned and I never heard her complain.
Shinji left their apartment every morning at 7 and returned at midnight – the typical hours of an elite Japanese salariman – but he was around on weekends to be with his wife and daughter and help out around the house which surprised my parents to no end. “What a wonderful husband,” my mother told Rinko. “Make sure he gets plenty of meat meals and be careful some young woman doesn’t come along and snatch him up. Remember that you’re getting on. You’re not young anymore.” At every turn, my mother reminded Rinko of her age and ordered her to buy supplements and wrinkle cream and reading glasses. At 30, Rinko was told to prepare for menopause.
Rinko blinked and said nothing, as was her way of dealing with our mother. Privately, she said to me: “I don’t care about my workload, this way the weekdays are all mine. I think I have a pretty sweet deal. It’s a holy trinity of work, independence and freedom. It probably won’t get any better than this.”
Word got around that she slept with a client and then another. Someone told a friend of mine that he saw my sister getting soused at a bar in Shinjuku with a much older foreigner, and they were clearly on ‘more than friendly terms.’ ” And then the friend told me with a half smirk, “you know, you should reign in your sister a little. She’s not young anymore and she could get into real trouble.”
None of it reached Shinji because he occupied a completely separate space in society and was generally oblivious about personal issues to begin with. He loved Rinko but he just wasn’t interested about what went on in her head or how desperate she could get. He’s not a bad person, but as an engineer he had a hearty disdain for emotions. He just assumed, because my sister was functioning as an adult and a mother, everything was okay. He was and remains, an inordinately dense man. Which was all for the best. Anyone more sensitive or in tune to what Rinko was thinking would have chucked her out long ago.
Still, he broke down when she died. His grief was terrible to witness but then so was mine. In many ways, I know we blame each other for the way Rinko just upped and left us all. I haven’t spoken to him in years.
Rinko never tried to protect herself – she exposed herself to the raging elements and believed the universe would have her back. I told her time and again that she shouldn’t test fate like that because it was bound to catch up with her. She looked straight at me and said: “You know what the opposite of fate is? It’s freedom.”
After spending all my impressionable years with front row seats to my sister’s drama nothing much shook my equilibrium. We’re way different, I told myself. It’s not like I’m responsible for her, we just happen to be siblings that’s all.
I took off for a doctorate degree at UC Berkeley and didn’t come back to Tokyo for five years. Rinko and I kept in touch but it was all polite and familial. She could be like that when circumstances warranted, cut the drama and be a placid Japanese. I was relieved. There’s nothing like being a straight arrow 24-year old with nothing in the sexual escapades department to match one’s much older sister. She made me feel inadequate and disgusted, enraged and a little enthralled, all at the same time. I needed to distance myself, otherwise I was in danger of cutting off ties and never speaking to her again.
Meantime, Rinko was inwardly struggling in a blizzard of pain. I could see that now.
When Rinko was a teenager, our parents were too busy to think about her much. They just let her be, and then criticized and yelled at her later. One day when I was eight and Rinko was in high school, I overheard them saying to each other that she was man-crazy and they had better commit her to a mental institution before she wound up pregnant or worse. In the next breath, they agreed they couldn’t afford to pay for that institution and that Rinko had better get her act together anyway. I didn’t understand the conversation but I did vow to protect my sister. I didn’t care to be around our mother much but I adored Rinko. She could always calm me with a hug, or when I was really distressed, pull me on to her lap and pat my back upon which I would stop bawling and she would suggest getting ice cream. To this day I can remember what that felt like and the wonder of being loved and protected.
Rinko was never alluring in an obvious way. She was short and flat chested and her legs were too muscular to be sexy. Throughout her school years she wore sweats and jeans aside from her school uniform and made no attempt at girly-ness. On the other hand, she had a distinct look about her. Her hair wasn’t Japanese at all – they grew out of her head in big, bouncing curls and when we returned to Japan, none of the teachers in her middle school believed those curls were natural. My mother sat her down and cut it all off after which my sister cried for a week. Later, I would associate that haircut with WWII concentration camps – it was that bad. That was when I gleaned that deep down, our mother hated Rinko.
Thankfully, her high school was much more permissive. In the summers she couldn’t get her hair to stay down so she tied it up in the world’s clumsiest ponytail and let her succession of boyfriends brush it out after swimming practice (Rinko loved sports and was always entrenched in one activity or another.) She stood out like a weird plant or a sore thumb in a society where most everyone looked identical, as if they came off a conveyor belt. Other girls sported long, shiny hair down their backs and wore their uniform skirts right up above their thighs. They wore lipstick and foundation and went to karaoke with older men who paid them cash for the right to sit next to them and fondle their legs. Rinko wore her skirts knee-length and had her nose in a book when she wasn’t hanging out with one boy or another. She was always quoting Oscar Wilde and Antoine de St. Exupery, which no one understood or cared about and she seemed to live in a wholly separate world while firmly entrenched in the ranks of this one.
I don’t know how she pulled it off but Rinko wound up looking sexier and more interesting than the conventionally pretty girls. I observed how both these traits worked against her. Even before the terminology existed, she was one hot mess. She often came home with disheveled hair and swollen lips, on the verge of tears or wiping them away.
Death was always on her mind. “I warmed both hands before the fire of life. It sinks, I am ready to depart.’ I want that carved on my tombstone, okay?” she said to me though I was only in the third grade. Many years later, I found out that it was a quote from a guy named Walter Savage Landor.
What gave Rinko her particular power, and also that gaping wound quality which was part of it? Well, her youth, obviously. And because every straight male she ever came in contact with could sense she was crazy about men. And because she loved them, she hated disappointing them. She always gave in to whatever they asked provided they “had something” she really liked, a standard that included among other features, a passion for a school subject or a sport. Her boyfriends consisted of a math wiz who was also head of the kendo team, a wannabe novelist who taught her how to ski, a rich kid who rode a motorcycle and picked my sister up from wherever she happened to be, an extra helmet strapped to the back seat. My sister’s taste in men were to say the least, cliched. But they kept coming. And she almost always said yes. She fell for Shinji because he was tall and dark and lanky and taught her how to surf. He snatched her up while she was still in university and got her pregnant a few months after graduation. To me, he seemed like the sanest and most detached guy she ever dated which was a relief.
Fast forward to 2022 and this diner guy, Satoshi. He gave out he had apprenticed at a famed washoku restaurant in Ginza for six years. I could imagine her swooning as soon as he said the word “apprentice” because Rinko is a sucker for tradition and Japan-style machismo. Washoku is torturous and grueling and how I know is because at university, I had a job in a washoku restaurant and saw firsthand how the system abused the workers.
Like most guys in the business Satoshi started working right out of high school and endured the fist cuffs and yelling from his superiors, the all-night dishwashing and cleaning, peeling vegetables, soaking dry tofu, dried mackerel, shiitake mushrooms and whatever else that needed to be dipped in a basin of water at 2AM. He learned to function on three hours of sleep, often on the floor of the restaurant and subsisted on Red Bull and Kirin lager. He was also a smoker and apparently never thought to quit. A lot of cooks are like that, because a couple of minutes with a cigarette at various intervals during the day is the only down time they get.
After a couple of months of flirting whenever she showed up at the diner, Satoshi asked my sister outright for her number and then proceeded to text her, asking if she wanted to go for drinks.
At first she played it cool. She reminded herself of her advanced years – how could she take him seriously? And then in late May when the weather turned humid, she caved. By that time his texts had stopped coming but she would go to the diner and he would appear at her table and hang around making eye contact and smiling behind his mask. And then one night, he walked her back to her apartment building and asked “so when are we going out for drinks?” And that’s when she said, “okay, how about a week from tonight?”
It turned out that he was 41 – my age. Unfunny “brother” jokes whirled inside my head, thanks very much. And to her utter surprise, Satoshi was married with two kids, aged ten and four. A younger married guy with two small children was a first, even for my sister. “Pull out right now, while there’s still time and you have the will to do it. Don’t walk, just turn the other way and run,” I told her. But Rinko was already in it up to her small waist. The fact that he and she were so geographically close made matters much worse. She had to pass the diner to get to the train station and when she spied him clearing tables on the terrace or something, they would wave. Or he would drop whatever he was doing to walk over and talk to her. The entire neighborhood could tell they were close and it seemed like a matter of time before Shinji – dense as he was, finally caught on.
I didn’t want to be privy to any of it but my sister tells me everything and discounting the five years we were apart, I’ve always hung around and listened. Rinko ruined my relationship to women. We’re both surprised I’ve remained straight because most men would have quit on females long ago. “I feel kind of bad,” Rinko often said to me. “If not for me, I’m sure you would have been much happier with women.”
There’s no denying it. My own marriage fell apart in 7 years and I completely blame my sister for that. She turned me on women and then she turned me off. When I look at her it’s like I’m staring into an abyss of deceit and rampant selfishness offset by patches of motherly benevolence. I said this and she came back suavely with, “that’s just another symptom of Japan brand misogyny. “Don’t worry, you’re a man. Life goes in only one direction for Japanese women but you’ll still be out there when you’re 75. I foresee a long and happy relationship happening for you after you hit 45, with periods of infidelity that will have no bad consequences. Provided you follow my cue, of course. Watch and learn, little brother. Watch and learn.”
I’ve said that she’s different from any woman I’ve known but actually all Japanese women – give or take a few scratches off the surface are exactly the same. Don’t let claptrap like “Last Samurai” and the submissive geisha stuff fool you. Japanese women are ruthless, fearless and extraordinarily strong. The patriarchy is there and intact because it benefits women more than the men. For Japanese women, men are never the enemy. The enemy is age and their mother, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.
Once they get married, Japanese women will do pretty much everything they want, because age – looming on the horizon like Godzilla lurching closer with each passing year – justifies every misdemeanor and betrayal. Infidelity is fine because, as Rinko put it, “I need something to look back on in my old age when no one wants me anymore.” That pretty much sums up the morals of the Japanese woman for you.
On the other hand I knew where Rinko is coming from. Despite this being a super-aged society, any woman past 40 is seen as obsolete and as for the late 40s, she may as well be dead and buried. The news remind us at every turn that soon, one in two Japanese women will be over 50, as if this is a disaster on par with climate change. What about the men? No one comments on men getting old but apparently half the Japanese male populace are destined to die without ever once living with a woman. Rinko says this society is rigged so that women are blamed and made to feel like shit. “Whatever happens, it’s the woman’s fault. The falling birthrate is our fault. We get old, it’s our fault. Single men can’t get married, it’s definitely our fault.”
Japanese women are born with this deep knowledge that career ambition or railing against the glass ceiling ain’t going to turn the needle one millimeter in favor of their personal happiness. As soon as they learn to walk they want to be looked at and praised. As soon as they hit their teens they want to be desired. Then they want children, a house, nice things, money. Feminism wasn’t going to help attain any of that. Better to take control of the household finances, get some botox, and breast implants and go for some real happiness.
My ex-wife, like so many Japanese women, assumed control of our money right after our honeymoon, like it was the most natural thing in the world. My entire paycheck went into our joint account over which only she had access to, and gave me an allowance of 50,000 yen every month. She never failed to remind me that this was a very generous sum.
Rinko, sensing that I was short, often treated me to lunch and drinks, saying, “Hey bro, I need your advice about something,” like I was
16 doing her a favor. After I got divorced she treated me anyway. “I’m your older sister, I gotta do SOMETHING to show for it.”
“Satoshi says that his wife is the one in control,” Rinko told me, as if she found this bemusing to no end. “They have a house in Chiba. He says he doesn’t know what their mortgage is, because his wife controls everything. She gives him an allowance, but I don’t know how much.” I listened to all this, thinking I should maybe go for drinks with this guy too, in a yo, bro kind of way. After all, he and I were practically related. Hell, we were twins. Not that I bought that thing about not knowing the mortgage. He was only saying that to get on my sister’s good side, which indicated he wasn’t a fool and was reading Rinko pretty accurately. This made me nervous.
Rinko is that very rare Japanese woman who had no idea how much her husband made and was never much interested in money, which enraged my mother to no end. Her female friends thought this was bizarre and dangerous. Shinji’s own mother sat Rinko down and told her that to relinquish the household finances was inviting the devil in. “A man who controls the money will be up to no good in no time. And he will be unfaithful. Don’t be stupid, take control of his money, NOW before it’s too late.”
But Rinko never did. Contrarily, maybe that’s why their marriage lasted this long. Shinji always said his wife had absolutely no head for numbers or regard for money and he was fine with that. “She’s really good at what she’s good at,” was his way of putting it. Yeah, I guess. She could draw and write and had a natural flair for languages. She had beautiful handwriting and could churn out ad copy like a barista churns out espressos. She was wonderful with Mika and had a warmth and spontaneity that kids and young people found irresistible.
When Mika was little, Rinko made up songs and dances and the two of them would dance in their apartment where, despite its smallness had lot of floor space because – and this was SO like my sister Rinko hated furniture. She strove to give Mika the childhood she herself never had, and tried to have conversations with her that she never could with our own mother. They shared a real bond and Mika trusted Rinko completely.
“He says I give terrible blowjobs.” Whoa. This was end of June when she had slept with Satoshi twice. “Yeah, he said my teeth got in the way. But he’s so big.” Rinko has a very small mouth, like a flower petal. To the endless annoyance of her small circle of women friends (women tend to not like my sister very much. My ex-wife secretly hated her guts.) Rinko never uses make-up. She remembers to dab on sunscreen and that’s it. Her pores are non-existent and her lips are an amazing baby pink. Unlike the overwhelming majority of Japanese women she never thinks to hide wrinkles, freckles or blemishes and when she laughs her face spilts open, revealing perfect teeth. She treats her casual blasé as some kind of birthright and thinks its perfectly okay to show up in torn skinny jeans and one of Shinji’s shirts, with hair still damp from swimming in the municipal pool because Rinko dislikes Japanese gyms.
A hair stylist buddy (leave it to Rinko to have male friends in the hair and make-up industry, bartenders and cafe owners she knows by name, not to mention a certain chef with whom she’s on intimate terms) colors her hair but otherwise she doesn’t do a single thing to spruce it up and hates blow-drying with a vengeance. Yeah, if I were a Japanese female I would secretly hate her guts. Who the HELL does this woman think she is?
Rinko, you’re getting on and there. Now is not a good time to dive into an affair, especially when the guy lives in your neighborhood and cooks your meals. Surrender the ghost, turn in your woman badge and kneel at the altar of grandmotherhood.
“But he fills me with such a sense of well-being. And we have so much fun together. It’s so hard to resist. I want to be around him all the time.”
I suppress the urge to smack her face.
Looking back, I keep thinking that I should have been more involved in the conversation, pressed her for information, got mad and scolded her and physically barred her from seeing or texting Satoshi. But I was annoyed as hell and let her know. She blinked, laughed a little and apologized. “Sorry I’ve taken up so much of your time. I won’t talk about it anymore.”
And then a week later, she sent me a brief text saying it was over with Satoshi. I wasn’t surprised exactly, but it was kind of unsettling that she wouldn’t give out any details. It was the first week of August, exactly two months since their first date. “Wow, that was kind of sudden,” I cautiously texted back. “Yeah…like that Taylor Swift song, right? Suddenly, the summer between us was gone,” she wrote.
Two months seemed short but on the other hand, it was just the right amount of time. Speaking of Taylor Swift, that epic relationship she had with Jake Gyllenhaal lasted just three months and 13 years later, she made an MV about it which to be honest, I used to watch fairly often at night. Sister Tay is a favorite of me and Rinko and we used to send each other interviews and talk about her albums and sing snatches of songs when we met.
Two weeks after she said that the thing with Satoshi was over, Rinko asked if I was free for a drink. Over beer and wine in a little pub in Ginza, Rinko let her face crumple in pain. “I lost everything in one fell swoop. I loved that diner and now I can’t ever show my face there again because the staff could tell we were involved. Satoshi was a rock in my life – he made me feel secure and protected, and now he’s gone.”
“You knew this was coming, right? I told you it would never end well.” “Sure. But I thought I had a little bit more time.”
“So what if you did? The outcome would have been the same.”
“I keep asking myself what I could have done or said differently.” “Nothing. The outcome would have been the same. I warned you and warned you.”
I told her that she was getting off lightly. The consequences of getting caught would have been a monumental shitstorm but here she was, having drinks with her little brother, while her family was none the wiser.
My sister had lost weight. She never had much excess fat to begin with, but now she seemed boney and fragile. “It’s not the please god make it stop kind of pain. But the thorn is right in there. And I can’t get it out.”
Apparently, on their last meeting he had nailed Rinko so hard she gasped and screamed. “But he warned me he would do that. It was so weird, how he’s so hung up on sex. But he told me he and his wife hadn’t been intimate in years.” Another lie, and one so common I was floored Rinko fell for it. OF COURSE he had sex with his wife. Maybe he got her pregnant again, and they were expecting kid no.3. Guys like Satoshi were insatiable and traditional at the same time. In his scheme of things, it was only natural that he would sleep with his wife – she was his possession. Didn’t matter if the spark was gone or that maybe they didn’t like each other very much. Rinko on the other hand, was an object that caught his fancy for awhile. He could play it both ways – tradition at home and a slut in skinny jeans on the side. He was male and he could have both.
And because he was an old hand in the service industry, he could feed her just the right lines to make her feel special. And because he was a good chef, he knew just when to turn down the stove.
So on their last date they had sex, and he walked her back to the train station as he always did. But it was only 11, and usually Satoshi ran to make the last train. They would always stand around talking, touching and kissing and letting the night linger just a little bit more. But not this time.
“He told me he would be busy all next week,” said Rinko, who was letting the tears stream down her face. “And after that, the diner was closed for summer vacation. And during that time he would be visiting his parents. That was when I knew it was over. Usually we would never leave without setting a date for the next time we would see each other but this time he didn’t say anything. I could feel everything grow cold. He was saying goodbye.”
I was about to tell her that maybe she was paranoid, to have it out with the guy and ask him if this was really the case. But that was idiotic. Even from where I was standing, I could see whatever they shared, if they had shared anything in the first place, was gone.
Satoshi saw her, wanted her, hunted her down and now he was moving on. When a man is after a woman he would do and say anything in the world to get her to bed. He sifted through my sister’s marriage, family, the fact that her apartment building was not 30 meters from his workplace, the fact that she was pleasant and popular with every member of the diner staff, the fact that she saw him as a friend and trusted him. He sifted through all that and scooped up a woman he wanted to pin down and slice through like a mackerel and he did that exactly 5 times out of the 14 times they went out together. It seemed like a logical number, and a very logical outcome. He knew exactly what he was doing and he timed it so that every dish he handed to her looked great. And now the feast was over.
At the end of the night, Rinko looked at me hard. “Will I be alright, do you think? Will I get over this?” “Of course you will,” I told her though I was feeling a tiny bit panicky. Rinko actually looked sick, and her eyes held the kind of despair I had never seen. “Pull yourself together. The least you could do is not let him see you like this. Get some sleep, you look terrible.”
“Satoshi used to say I reminded him of a koi fish,” said Rinko. “That I was fresh, clean and free, swimming in his special pond.” Then she laughed. “If only that were true. I hate being a woman, it’s so demeaning. And defeating. As for being an OLD woman, I don’t want to fathom the indignity.”
That was the last time I had a real conversation with my sister. Three months later she was gone.
Rinko and Shinji had gone to Shimoda to for a last surfing session before winter set in and as was their way, went to separate parts of the same beach. Rinko had always been a good swimmer and a competent surfer but a swell gave way to an undertow and she hit her head on a rock. The doctor said that the bruise wasn’t too bad and she would have had a chance if she had climbed back on the board. Later, he took back that statement and said he was terribly sorry about the accident.
My mother went hysterical and told Shinji that he killed her daughter. “How could you be so stupid? Surfing at her age – it’s unheard of. I’ve never heard such stupidity. How could you let her?” She went on and on. My father had died 10 years ago so it was up to me to calm her down. Shinji couldn’t answer, he just looked down as his strong shoulders shook with his sobs.
“I warmed both hands before the fire of life. It sinks, I am ready to depart.” I hunted down Landor’s quote in an old book sleuthed in a used book store. Rinko loved those moldy brick and mortar places which were still around in Tokyo. I tore out the page and folded it into a square and placed it into her little hand as she lay in the casket.
My sister hated funerals so we made it just the family and sent the announcements out much later. Shinji later said that when the diner people heard she died, they sent over a wreath with a very nice letter. I never told him anything nor did I ever find out Satoshi’s last name.
Now, five years later, I always think of that summer as the summer of Rinko’s last affair. And it makes me realize just how I much I was living vicariously through my sister. Reckless and idiotic as she was, Rinko was on to something I couldn’t quite name, something that me and many others should probably aspire to, something to do with not sleepwalking through life and holding everyday close, like a cherished child.
In the end, she managed to cheat both fate and our mother and choose her own version of freedom, I guess.
Meanwhile, I’m getting closer to the age that she was when she died. And soon I’ll be older than her. Every now and then, I pull out my a photo I tucked into my wallet after her death. It’s of me and Rinko when we were living in Brooklyn. She was in the sixth grade and I was three or four, sitting on her lap. She’s in cut-off shorts and a t-shirt, wearing a Mets cap because the Mets had just won the World Series. Apparently, our neighborhood went berserk and everyone got caps.
She’s not looking at the camera but at me, and she’s laughing. I only hope I had said something, cracked a joke or made a remark, to get that laugh.
September 28, 2022
[嘘つきの安倍晋三には、こんな豪華な葬儀はふさわしくない」 殺された元総理は、日本を「真実を言えない国家」に改悪した
メモ・原文の記事の抜粋は丁寧に訳されたので紹介しました
嘘つきの安倍晋三には、こんな豪華な葬儀はふさわしくない
デイリービーストの追悼記事「嘘つきの安倍晋三には、こんな豪華な葬儀はふさわしくない」 殺された元総理は、日本を「真実を伝えることを知らない国」にした責任がある。thedailybeast.com/former-japanes…thedailybeast.com/former-japanes…Master Liar Shinzo Abe Doesn’t Deserve This Lavish Funeral
衝撃的な暗殺事件の直後、安倍晋三はその国際的な政治家としての手腕に賛辞を送られている。残念なことに、この賞賛は彼の国内的な遺産とは対照的である。公的な場における真実に対してとても冷ややかで、日本ではほとんどの人が政府の言うこと信じない。/2
安倍元首相と自民党の多くの議員が、韓国を拠点とする問題あるカルト集団、統一教会と密接な関係にあったことが死後に発覚し、自民党にダメージを与えている。現首相の岸田文雄氏の支持率は36％にまで落ち込んだ。奇妙なことに、安倍元首相を暗殺した犯人に対する国民の支持と共感さえ高まっている。/3
首相として、また自民党の党首として、安倍首相は日常的に行政に圧力をかけ、自分の望む結果を出させていた。特に、レーガノミクスを手本にした財政政策である「アベノミクス」の成功を証明することに熱心であった。/4
官僚たちは、その結果を改竄することに全力を尽くした。2018年12月労働省は長年に渡り雇用データを改竄していたことが暴露され、それにり日本の賃金は上昇しているように見えていたが実際は低下していた。/5
データの偽造は単なる見栄の問題ではなく、結果として2000万人以上の人々が労働に関するの手当を過少に支払われていたのである。/6
2019年1月、保守系新聞の日本経済新聞とテレビ東京が世論調査を行ったところ、5人に4人近くが公式統計を信用しなくなったことが判明。/7
そして2021年、安倍首相が大嫌いなリベラル派の朝日新聞が、国土交通省が安倍政権時代を中心に8年近くにわたって工事請負金額の数字を改ざんしていたことを明らかにした。この違法行為により、内閣府が発表する「月例経済報告」などの重要な指標を作成するための重要な経済統計が歪められた。/8
アベノミクスが実際に機能したかどうかは、膨大なデータを検証し、修正する必要があるため、わからないかもしれないが、彼の在任中に実質所得が減少、貧富の差が拡大したことは確かだ。/9
ここ数カ月の円安は、日本政府のデータにほとんど価値がないことを国際投資家がやっと認識したことと関係があるのかもしれない。/10
保守的な自民党のルーツは冷戦時代にさかのぼる。左翼政党が政権を取れないようにするため、CIAが日本に干渉し、財政的にも政治的にも大きな恩恵を受けていたのである。/11
自民党は数十年にわたり政府の主要政党であったが、決して統一された存在ではなかった。現在でも、中道右派から右翼民族派まで、さまざまな派閥が政権を争っている。各派閥はカリスマ的リーダーを中心に、末端のメンバーが忠誠を誓う。/12
安倍首相は細田派を実質的に率い、冷酷なまでの後援とライバルの排斥を繰り返して、細田派を支配的な派閥にした。2014年、2期目の首相就任時には、政府の重要な委員会や国家安全保障会議、日銀、原子力規制委員会などの主要機関のトップに側近を指名し、権力を強化した。/13
2014年には内閣人事局を創設、政府・公務員の人事権を拡大した。さらに国営放送のNHKの役員に取り巻きを任命、尊敬される公平な報道機関であったNHKを「安倍テレビ」と広く揶揄されるようなものに変え、メディアへの影響力を利用し自分の政党内の潜在的なライバルをその場にとどまらせたのである。/14
（森友文書の詳細の記述は割愛）2018年5月、大阪の山本真知子特捜部長が関与した38人の容疑者について不起訴処分と発表し彼女は詳細の説明や質問への回答を拒否。数ヵ月後、山本は昇進し別の地検に異動。疑問のある決定について尋問される可能性があったのに検察審査会の手が届かなくなった。/15
赤木正子さんは、夫の死をめぐって国に損害賠償を求め提訴した。昨年12月、政府は賠償請求に応じ、訴訟を打ち切った。/16
腐敗と不信の毒は日本企業にも回っている。安倍政権下の2015年に発覚した日本史上最大の不正会計問題で、東芝の関係者は誰も起訴されていない。/17
昨年、日本の経済産業大臣は、日本の原子力産業にとって重要な役割を果たす東芝と役人が結託し、外国人投資家に関する機密情報を共有したとき、自分の省は何も悪いことはしていないとあっさりと宣言した。/18
安倍元首相が「息を吐くようにウソをつく」という名言も登場。オリンピック招致の際「福島はアンダーコントロールされいてる」とうそをつき、首相就任8年目の2020年のクリスマスに桜を見る会で公費を不正に使用したことを認め、安倍は国会で118回も嘘をついたことを告白し、謝罪した。/19
しかし、安倍元首相は何ら責任を問われることはなかった。彼は犯罪者として訴追されることもなく、また彼をかばった人たちも訴追されることはなかった。/20
だから、真実を語れない日本政府が存在するのだ。嘘は報われ、真実を語ることは罰せられる。政府は都合の良い事実をでっち上げ、都合の悪い事実を隠し、信じてもらえることを望み続けるだろう。それが安倍元首相のレガシーである。/21
安倍元首相は、戦後憲法を破棄し、戦前の帝国憲法を基にした憲法を制定し、日本を再び軍事大国にする、という大望を抱いたまま首相を退いた。/22
それは、元法務大臣の長勢甚遠が2012年に宣言した、「基本的人権、国民主権、平和主義」を剥奪するものである。/23
法学者のローレンス・レペタは、安倍首相が採用しようとしている新憲法は、言論の自由の保護を排除し、普遍的人権を放棄し、個人の自由よりも公の秩序を重視し、首相に「非常事態」を宣言し憲法上の権利と法的手続きを停止する新しい権限を与えるだろうと指摘した。/24
退陣後も、安倍首相は党に絶大な影響力を行使し続けた。殺害された時も、自民党と自分の派閥のために選挙活動を行い、その影響力を行使していた。その影響力は、安倍首相の死後間もなく行われた総選挙の結果によって、さらに増幅された。/25
自民党はついに、安倍元首相の夢であった憲法改正を実現するための参議院の議席を確保したのである。しかし、果たしてそうだろうか。墓の向こうでも、安倍首相は自民党を支配しているように見える。/end
@la_neige_fleur
Medical worker. My partner holds Ph.D. in immunology and can give me advice. ショコラ・ヴィエノワです。長いんでノワで。誤字多めですのでご容赦を。日本のインフォデミックがひどいので海外のツイートを雑に訳したり。たまにお料理やハムスターの写真も。Follow on Twitter
September 25, 2022
outstanding tokyo English Standup comedy This Friday!
Tokyo’s English Stand-Up Comedy scene continues to grow as comedian Yuki Nivez prepares to host the fourth show in her series, Not Just a Diversity Hire.
Designed as an inclusive, misogyny-free comedy zone, Yuki first came up with the concept while performing regularly at stand-up shows around the city.
From the NJaDH About section:
The “Not Just a Diversity Hire” Comedy Nights began when founder Yuki Nivez realized the demand for a comedy space that was free from misogyny, for both performers and audience members. She wanted to be able to take to the stage without having to hear that she was “the diversity hire”. But she was also constantly hearing from audience members, especially women, that they couldn’t enjoy themselves because of the sheer number of jokes or performances that, often unconsciously, created an environment of hostility towards women.
Yuki believed that comedy was supposed to be about having a good time and while openly aggressive or intentionally triggering comedy was uncommon, she saw how there was an entire segment of the audience that wanted to enjoy comedy without having to confront the same sexism that they had to endure during their day-to-day life. Without seeking to censor the comedy of others, she decided to see what would happen if she curated a line-up and a space where the audience and the performers could feel free from those attitudes for an evening.
And guess what?
Everyone had a good time.
Since then, the show has grown to offer an inclusive venue to comedians of all kinds, but especially to those who know what it’s like to be treated as “the diversity hire.” While spectators can continue to rely on not having to hear misogynistic material, performers can expect a friendly audience who will let them be comedians and not categories.
Yuki’s goals for the future of NJaDH will continue to be comedy without misogyny, and inclusion without tokenism.
About the next show:
The next Not Just a Diversity Hire show on September 30th is a special edition, featuring Bobby Judo (flying in from Kyushu!), Yuki Nivez, Freddy Slash’em and Mx Terious.
The show will be followed by a panel discussion joined by guest speakers: Film director Lilou Augier, and creator of Femin Tokyo Podcast, Samantha Lassaux.
Panelists will share experiences that run the gamut from lamentable, to laughable, to learnable.
Don’t miss the chance to meet the performers, mingle, and share your thoughts and questions as well!
Info and tickets:Time: Friday, September 30th 19:30 pmLocation: Hypermix, MonzennakachoTickets: http://notjustadiversityhirespecial.peatix.com/
July 9, 2022
In peaceful Nara, The violent Death of ex-Prime minister Abe leaves residents shocked and saddened
The people of Nara mourn the senseless death of Shinzo Abe
Many mourned the violent death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Japan yesterday–whether they supported him or not, the people of Nara recognized that the loss of human life is always tragic.
reporting by Himari Shimanz, Beni Adelstein. Cameron Seeley also contributed to this report.
Flowers, tea and beers, as is customary in Japanese culture, laid by the public mark the site where Shinzo Abe was fatally shot. Yesterday, we paid a visit to the site ourselves to see all those who made trips from near and far to commemorate Abe’s passing. The overwhelming feeling on the day was that of sadness, with flowers periodically being taken away to make room for the endless flow of offerings. Even for those unfamiliar with his political work, many were sad to hear the news of his passing. One of the many who stopped to add to his growing memorial told us, “I’ve known Mr. Abe as the leader of Japan for most of my lifetime. Because of that, regardless of how his politics were, whether his politics were good or bad, it is really sad for someone who had taken on such responsibility and come this far to pass away. I know every person has their own opinions but I think that it comes down to an individual having passed away.”
A young girl, fighting back tears, expressed a similar sentiment noting how such a tragic incident could come out of nowhere, and she felt it was her obligation to pay her respects.
Many expressed shock at hearing the incident had taken place in Nara, a small Japanese city with significantly under 500,000 residents. One man from Osaka told us: “Nara is generally a safe place. Incidents don’t usually happen much in Nara. Places like Osaka, where we’re from, is where you see more incidents. We’ve never heard of any incident as big as this happening here in Nara.” Another local resident felt similarly; “I grew up in Nara and for anything like this to happen here is a shock to me.”
It was a shock to everyone when the unthinkable occured.
At 11:30 am July 8th, former Prime Minister Abe was shot from behind at a campaign rally outside the Yamato Saidai-ji Station in Nara. He went into cardiac arrest and showed no vital signs. After four and a half hours of medics trying to resuscitate him, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest serving Prime Minister, at age 67, was officially pronounced dead at 5:03 pm yesterday as the result of two gunshot wounds. The alleged attacker, 41 year old Tetsuya Yamagami, was arrested on site and was found with a handmade firearm. In Japan, a country with some of the world’s strictest gun’s laws, gun violence is extremely rare, let alone political assasination attempts; the most recent one having occurred in 2007 when Nagasaki mayor Icho Ito was shot by a member of a yakuza group, the Yamaguchi gumi. This is actually not the first incident Abe has been the recipient of violence from the yakuza, and in 2000, the Kudo Kai perpetrated an attack by throwing firebombs at the former prime minister’s office . At this point, it is unclear whether or not Yamagami has affiliations with the yakuza but it is a possibility worth being looked into.
Regardless of the motive, this incident is unexpected and quite perplexing. As one Japanese reporter puts it, “Guns are rarely the weapon of choice, let alone a handmade one. The use of guns is uncommon even among yakuza related incidents.” Officers who raided the man’s residence later that day found more crude electrically fired weaponry, including explosives and what appear to be nine and five barreled shotguns. All nearby residents were evacuated. Yamgami has confessed to the assasination of Abe and is awaiting prosecution.
Not only has the shooter left us with many unsolved questions, but also the security team for Abe is an issue being raised. Abe’s security, one passerby noted there was less security presence on the day than when Abe had been the sitting Prime Minister. “Mr. Abe visited my hometown too. That time he had a lot more bodyguards surrounding him because he was still prime minister. But now that he’s stepped down, his security team has gotten much smaller.” Another Osaka native pointed out, little to no security presence is not uncommon for politicians in Japan, “If it had been a politician without as much fame, there wouldn’t have been much security at all. At most you might see supporters standing by a no-name politician. It was only because it was Mr. Abe that there was even the smallest presence of security guards and police.”
While events unfolded on the day in only a matter of minutes, the significance of his death is likely to send ripples through the Japanese political system that will stand the test of time. Shu Kanazawa spoke to us after leaving flowers on Abe’s memorial. He expressed thanks to Abe for his work in politics and concern regarding the efficacy of his contemporaries policies. “As prime minister of Japan, you aren’t doing your job right if you don’t have your foreign policy together. Until now, the only prime ministers who were competent in foreign diplomacy were Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Abe. In that sense, I am really grateful for his work.” On the other hand, Abe’s control of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party as well as his deep ties to extremists right-wing groups have made him a controversial figure. He is also reviled by some for the role he played in largely limiting freedom of press rights in Japan. Views on “Abenomics” his fiscal policies aren’t singular either and he has been linked with questionable political and financial scandals. Yet, at the end of this eventful day, people came together to commemorate and mourn the loss of a leader who made a substantial impact in Japan and on a global scale. How Abe’s death might alter the climate of Japanese politics is not certain, however, the mourning and gift-giving are certain to continue for days, if not weeks.
The once peaceful and ordinary square around Yamato Saidai-ji station now marks a historical event that has left the nation with disbelief, grief, and shock.
Nara, once the capital of Japan, is a city known for its greenery, rolling hills, ancient Buddhist temples, friendly residents, slow-paced, languid, and peaceful life. It’s the last place one would expect Japan’s longest reigning Prime Minister to meet a violent end. The two shots fired that day will echo in the minds of the people there for many months or years to come.
In the peaceful city of Nara, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, met a violent end. Whether they supported him or despised him, many of the residents mourned his loss.
June 7, 2022
神隠し(かみかくし）Gone with the Gods (an original Podcast) coming IN 2022
People have a habit of vanishing in Japan—even hundreds of years ago, it happened often enough that myths were created to explain these sudden disappearances. 神隠し (kamikakushi)–to be hidden by the gods. Even now, every year over 80,000 people are reported missing. And that may be the tip of the iceberg–because only family members can make those reports. If your girlfriend, high-school buddy, co-worker just evaporates one day–you can go to the police but unless you can prove foul play, they may not even open a file on the case.
There are so many types of missing people in Japan, that there are different words used to describe them. But unfortunately, defining a vanishing doesn’t make people rematerialize.
Even now, every year over 80,000 people are reported missing in Japan. And that may be the tip of the iceberg
If someone you knew and loved went missing one day – with no warning, no explanation, and no evidence – who would you turn to in order to find the truth?
If you were the one looking for that person, what would you do if you found out an entire infrastructure exists, designed for the express purpose of helping people — like your loved one — vanish into thin air?
Would you try to find someone who doesn’t want to be found? Would you judge the person for disappearing in the first place? Would you enroll in private eye school?
Who else has gone missing … and why?
神隠し/Gone With The Gods will be a multi-faceted deep dive into the phenomenon of Japan’s johatsu, or “evaporated people” — citizens who choose to just vanish from their lives–and those who do so without a choice. Some of the “evaporated” are escaping dire circumstances (debt, abuse, threats of violence), but others are ashamed of how their lives have turned out, or shackled by conformity. They want to start over. And in Japan, there’s a way. It’s a cultural phenomenon.
But it might also be the ultimate cover up. Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice, The Last Yakuza, and I Sold My Soul For Bitcoins joins forces with Shoko Plambeck, model, actress and former journalist lured back into the trade by the promise of solving some great mysteries of her homeland. And of course, sound engineer/journalist and aspiring private detective, Thisanka Siripala. Together they will take you on a midnight escape into the shadows of the rising sun. We consult experts, ex-yakuza, retired police officers, the employers of the missing, and talk to those who decided to vanish and those that helped them do it.
Paul Simon once sang, “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” but in Japan there are more than “50 Ways To Leave This World” and manuals that will show you the way. But they can also teach people how to make someone vanish and never be found. We’ll explain how that works as well.
This podcast will be brought to you Campside Media, “The New Yorker of True-Crime Podcasts” who produced critically praised works like Suspect, Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen
Is there someone in your life, in Japan, who has vanished without a trace or even with a trace, but can no longer be found? Share your story with us at Gone@campsidemedia.com
[image error]May 13, 2022
Tokyo Comedy Bar Opens In Shibuya
Tokyo Comedy Bar launches in Shibuya by Phoebe Amoroso
After the past couple of years, we could all do with more laughs. Yet when Ben “BJ” Fox proposed opening a comedy venue in the middle of a pandemic, many people thought he was having a laugh – and not the right kind. It’s a fact he acknowledged at the venue’s opening night last Friday, describing the project self-deprecatingly as a midlife crisis.
There’s nothing sexier than a hard tall and thick hot mike. The audience, however, was gleeful and, as comedy-lovers, presumably grateful too. Tokyo Comedy Bar becomes the city’s only stand-up comedy club, bringing shows nightly to the heart of Shibuya. From roast battles and improv to hosting international comedians, the venue has big ambitions, impressively offering shows in both English and Japanese. As the name cunningly suggests, it’s also a bar, boasting craft beers on tap, and there’s no obligation to stay for a show.
We caught the late show of Tokyo Comedy Bar’s English two-part opening event, with BJ Fox MC-ing a line-up of six comedians. Admittedly, we were a little sceptical whether they could all deliver, but we were proved wrong; the laugh-a-minute from the audience was evidence enough that these performers knew their crowd, tackling everything from politics to sexuality, and especially life in Japan.
Jon Sabay kicked off the evening, riffing on expats versus immigrants drawing on his own family history, and then educating us on the true signs of whether someone is a gaijin. Up next, Bill Miller began his set by taking on Japanese apartment sizes in some near-the-bone humour that definitely wouldn’t make it onto NHK. A shout-out must also go to the musically talented Ruben VM for highlighting the most endangered species in the world in his song “Extinction,” and getting us all to sing a truly heart-warming song about nationalism.
Good beer, good cheerWith both opening shows sold out, it’s going to be exciting to see how Tokyo Comedy Bar will develop the city’s stand-up scene and whether it’ll bring fresh comedic talent to the stage. One thing, however, is for certain: after two years of almost all events being cancelled in the city, the venture couldn’t be further from a midlife crisis. It’s post-pandemic therapy, and long may it continue.
For the full event schedule, check Tokyo Comedy Bar’s website or Instagram.
BJ Fox Welcomes you!
Japan: The Shape Of Things To Come? Find out this Sunday (May 15)
Join some of the greatest experts on Japan to discuss the future of this island nation. This coming Sunday (May 15, starting 10am), sees a unique event at the Yokohama campus of Meiji Gakuin University and online via Zoom, called THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, marking the international departmen’s ten years of teaching global and transcultural studies.
Predicting the future is a lot harder than learning to make sushiThis one-day symposium features a panel of star speakers who will try to predict what will happen in the next ten years in Japan, East Asia, and the World. The star speaker is MUHAMMAD YUNUS, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, known as “banker to the poor”, live by Zoom link from the Yunus Centre, Dhaka, Bangladesh . The event also features Alex Kerr, author of books such as Lost Japan and Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan, noted professional economic journalist, Rick Katz, Hiroko Takeda author of The Political Economy of Reproduction: Between Nation-State and Everyday Life (2005) and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Japan (2021) along with Kyoko Hatakeyama(Professor of International Relations, University of Niigata Prefecture), David Leheny, Masafumi Iida, Eric Zusman, Mika Ohbayashi and Hiroshi Ohta.
It will be an interactive event, with 15-minute presentations and equal time for free discussion. This is a great chance to get into conversation with some elite experts on Japan and broaden your own knowledge of the country and Asia. Admission is free and open to all, but prior registration is required.
Click here for the Online program here:
Click here for the Online registration
The full press release is below:
A Symposium commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the Foundation of the Department of Global and Transcultural Studies, Meiji Gakuin University
SUNDAY MAY 15, 2022, MEIJI GAKUIN UNIVERSITY YOKOHAMA CAMPUS
As our department marks ten years of teaching global and transcultural studies, the world appears to be balanced on a knife edge. Internationalism is locked with nationalism, secularism with religious fundamentalism, democracy with authoritarianism, tolerance with intolerance. The Corona Pandemic has ushered in a new and frightening era of massive biohazards, while Russia’s attempted invasion of Ukraine has raised the specter of a return to Cold War type confrontation. Casting a long shadow over these massive ideological struggles is climate change, thought by many experts to be close to a tipping point from which will flow disastrous consequences for humanity and the natural environment.
This symposium will commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Department of Global and Transcultural Studies. It will be an opportunity to step back, take a deep breath, and survey the world and the prospects for the ten years to come. Each of our speakers will be invited to gaze into their crystal ball and forecast how global affairs will develop in the next ten years. We hope to examine their predictions ten years later, when the department celebrates its 20thanniversary.
Keynote speaker
Muhammad Yunus (2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner)
PROGRAM
9:30am: Doors Open; Registration
9:50am: Welcome and Opening Remarks by Leo Murata (president of Meiji Gakuin University)
10am
Panel 1: Prospects for Japan
Chair: Prof. Tom Gill (Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and Transcultural Studies)
Japan’s economic, social and demographic challenges for the next decade.
Alex Kerr (long-term resident of Kyoto, known for books such as Lost Japan and Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan)
Richard Katz (economist, New York correspondent of Toyo Keizai; will join online)
Hiroko Takeda (Professor of Political Science, Nagoya University)
11:45am
Panel 2: Peace and Security
Chair: Prof. Kōki Abe (Meiji Gakuin Department of International Studies)
Prospects for peace and security in East Asia in the shadow of China-US competition.
Masafumi Iida (Professor, National Institute of Defense Studies)
Kyoko Hatakeyama (Professor of International Relations, University of Niigata Prefecture)
David Leheny (Professor of Political Science, Waseda University)
1:15pm: Lunch (Please bring your own lunch. Alternatively, there are two convenience stores and one small restaurant near the campus.)
2:15pm
Panel 3: Renewable Energy/Environment
Can Japan meet its ambitious carbon reduction targets for 2030, and if so, how?
Chair: Prof. Paul Midford (Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and Transcultural Studies)
Eric Zusman (Senior Researcher, Institute for Global Environmental Studies)
Mika Ohbayashi (Director, Renewable Energy Institute, Tokyo)
Hiroshi Ohta (Professor, Waseda University School of International Liberal Studies)
4:00pm
Panel 4: Careers in the Coming Decade
Chair: Prof. Takayuki Sakamoto (Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and Transcultural Studies)
Seven of our graduates will discuss prospects for the fields in which they are working.
11KC1020 Rina Takeda, Sony Music Solutions Inc.
13KC1031 Kaji Deane, automotive distributor
13KC1045 Megumi Miura, project manager, Amazon Japan
14KC1018 Ruxin Wei, systems engineer, Intelligent Wave Inc.
15KC1025 Jinzaburo Tasaka, web designer, SoftBank
15KC1026 Yumi Tajima, fashion merchandiser
15KC1504 Vladislav Lushchikov, restaurant manager
5:45pm
Introduction of Prof. Muhammad Yunus by Prajakta Khare (Associate Professor, Meiji Gakuin Dept. of Global and Transcultural Studies)
6:00pm
Keynote Address
Professor Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, “banker to the poor”, live by Zoom link from the Yunus Centre, Dhaka, Bangladesh
“Global Economic Inequality: Now is the Time to Redesign”
Q&A moderated by Prajakta Khare
6:45pm
Yokohama International Study Association (YISA) – Officers of the Meiji Gakuin alumni association will explain the association’s activities and how to get involved in them.
7pm
Vote of thanks by Prof. Aoi Mori, Dean of the Faculty of International Studies, Meiji Gakuin University
