How the strong yen has weakened Japan

By Ian Rowley, with Hiroko Tashiro
19 January 2009
BusinessWeek

The currency's climb is hurting exporters, and there's no domestic demand to take up the slack

These are dark days in Japan. Over the holidays, an encampment for laid-off workers sprang up in Tokyo's Hibiya Park, just steps from the Emperor's digs in the Imperial Palace. Across town at the Kanda Myojin Shrine, nearly 100,000 salarymen turned out on the first work day of the year to pray for business success. And in the suburb of Chiba, the Kurata family skipped the big January sales at department stores and pulled the plug on an annual trip to see relatives in Kochi, 550 miles west of the capital. "My husband's winter bonus was much lower," says Azusa Kurata, a 48-year-old homemaker. "And things aren't getting any better soon."

She has plenty of reason to be glum. The Japanese economy contracted 0.6% in 2008 and may fall a further 4.6% this year, according to Barclays Capital. The Tokyo bourse finished 2008 down a record 42%. And as the yen has surged in value in recent months, global demand for Japanese cars, TVs, and other products has plummeted. Exports in November slumped 27% from the year before, the largest decline since 1957. "I don't think anyone can be optimistic about the Japanese economy until at least the middle of 2009," says Kyohei Morita, Barclays' chief economist in Tokyo.

The export numbers are the biggest cause for concern. Japan Inc. has long recognized that it needs to wean itself from overseas sales and get the nation's consumers to spend more. While the country is nowhere near as dynamic as neighbors such as India and China, it remains the second-largest national economy after the U.S., and its health is an important factor in global economic stability. But these days Japanese consumers are spending less, not more, so they're unlikely to contribute much to any global recovery. In fact, Japan's dependence on exports is greater today than it was two decades ago, figures Jesper Koll, CEO of Tantallon Research Japan. "There's a lot of huffing and puffing and blaming [the current situation] on the rest of the world, but Japan should have done a lot more to prepare itself for the global slowdown," Koll says. "Japan has completely failed to stimulate domestic demand."

THE HIT TO TOYOTA

Profits suffer when the yen starts climbing, and the problem is compounded by falling overseas sales. At Toyota Motor, for instance, a one-yen appreciation against the dollar shrinks operating profits by $450 million. In 2008 the dollar sank by 19% vs. the yen, so one greenback now buys just 90 yen, down from 111 last January. With sales also slumping, Toyota expects to post an operating loss for the first time since 1938. On Jan. 6, Toyota said it plans to shut down its Japanese factories for 11 days this winter. "The current crisis is unlike anything in the past," Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe told reporters on Dec. 23.

Why didn't Japan do more to boost domestic spending and shield itself from a downturn? As the nation's population ages and shrinks, growth opportunities are getting harder to find at home. So as long as the yen stayed relatively weak, it made sense to focus on overseas sales. But while manufacturers have boosted production worldwide in recent years, building factories from Thailand to Texas, they haven't eased up on investment at home. Domestic auto sales reached two-decade lows in 2007 and kept falling last year. Yet during the first half of 2008, car production in Japan hit an all-time high. As recently as last summer, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, and Subaru were all planning to add capacity at home, though most of those plans are now on ice.

Japan's other major industry, electronics, followed a similar path. Despite cheaper labor in Vietnam, China, and other developing countries, domestic production still accounts for at least half of total sales at Sony and Canon. Tech companies and automakers alike say it's important to maintain some manufacturing in Japan to be close to research and development labs. And they say producing at home helps keep innovations and new ideas from falling into rivals' hands.

Japan's policymakers bear some responsibility for the problems, too. Under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the government slashed spending programs that had been aimed at reviving the economy after the collapse of the early 1990s. That might have been fiscally prudent, but it cut into domestic demand and boosted the importance of exports for growth. Today, with Japan's longest postwar expansion at an end, the weakened domestic economy can't cushion the blow as companies cut back on investment and exports hit the skids.

Then there's Japan's ultralow interest rate policy. For five years until July 2006, the Bank of Japan kept its benchmark rate at virtually 0%, and as the economy recovered it raised rates to just 0.75%. That contributed to what investors call the carry trade--borrowing yen for next to nothing and investing in higher-yielding securities abroad. As everyone from housewives to hedge fund managers bought foreign currencies to do just that, the yen weakened, which made Japanese goods cheaper and inflated profits for Japanese corporations. But as the yen started to recover last year, investors rushed to sell their foreign assets, pushing the Japanese currency ever higher. "We had a cheap yen bubble, and now it has burst," says Eisuke Sakakibara, a former top official at the Finance Ministry and now a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. "Not raising interest rates earlier was a major mistake."

Some experts trying to find a way out of the mess are calling for the Finance Ministry to intervene to halt the yen's rise, which would provide an instant tonic to exporters. And in the absence of a global recovery, economists say Tokyo must boost spending to spur growth. "Everyone realizes the government has to keep the economy from collapsing," says Richard C. Koo, chief economist at Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo.

The malaise gripping Japan was in full view in Hibiya Park over the New Year holiday. Volunteers converted part of the park into a tent village, providing free food and shelter for some of the 85,000 temporary workers who have been laid off in recent months. But the 250 beds were quickly occupied, and the Health, Labor & Welfare Ministry was forced to open an auditorium in its building to provide extra shelter. Given the economic downturn and the difficulties faced by temporary workers, said one volunteer, a 61-year-old retired teacher who asked not to be named, "I thought I should do something."

BUSINESS EXCHANGE:

American Zombie

A decade ago, Americans and Europeans roundly criticized Japan for its so-called zombie companies--moribund enterprises on government-funded life support. Now, Mizuho Securities strategist Hajime Takata warns in the Nikkei daily, zombies may be rising again, but this time they are from overseas. Takata contends that the Detroit automakers, big banks, and other U.S. and European companies getting government bailouts may gain an edge when competing against Japan Inc.

Japan Works Hard to Help Immigrants Find Job

By Blaine Harden
23 January 2009
The Washington Post

Population-Loss Fears Prompt New Stance

The last thing that aging Japan can afford to lose is young people. Yet as the global economic crisis flattens demand for Japanese cars and electronic goods, thousands of youthful, foreign-born factory workers are getting fired, pulling their children out of school and flying back to where they came from.

Paulino and Lidiane Onuma have sold their car and bought plane tickets for Sao Paulo, Brazil. They are going back next month with their two young daughters, both of whom were born here in this factory town. His job making heavy machinery for automobile plants ends next week. She lost her job making box lunches with black beans and spicy rice for the city's Brazilian-born workers, most of whom have also been dismissed and are deciding whether to leave Japan.

"We have no desire to go home," said Paulino Onuma, 29, who has lived here for 12 years and earned about $50,000 a year, far more than he says he could make in Brazil. "We are only going back because of the situation."

That situation -- the extreme exposure of immigrant families to job loss and their sudden abandonment of Japan -- has alarmed the government in Tokyo and pushed it to create programs that would make it easier for jobless immigrants to remain here in a country that has traditionally been wary of foreigners, especially those without work.

"Our goal is to get them to stay," said Masahiko Ozeki, who is in charge of an interdepartmental office that was established this month in the cabinet of Prime Minister Taro Aso. "As a government, we have not done anything like this before."

Japanese-language courses, vocational training programs and job counseling are being put together, Ozeki said, so immigrants can find work throughout the Japanese economy. There is a shortage of workers here, especially in health care and other services for the elderly.

So far, government funding for these emerging programs is limited -- slightly more than $2 million, far less than will be needed to assist the tens of thousands of foreign workers who are losing jobs and thinking about giving up on Japan. But Ozeki said the prime minister will soon ask parliament for considerably more money -- exactly how much is still being figured out -- as part of a major economic stimulus package to be voted on early this year.

The government's effort to keep jobless foreigners from leaving the country is "revolutionary," according to Hidenori Sakanaka, former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau and now director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, a research group in Tokyo.

"Japan has a long history of rejecting foreign residents who try to settle here," he said. "Normally, the response of the government would have been to encourage these jobless people to just go home. I wouldn't say that Japan as a country has shifted its gears to being an immigrant country, but when we look back on the history of this country, we may see that this was a turning point."

Sakanaka said the government's decision will send a much-needed signal to prospective immigrants around the world that, if they choose to come to Japan to work, they will be treated with consideration, even in hard economic times.

There is a growing sense among Japanese politicians and business leaders that large-scale immigration may be the only way to head off a demographic calamity that seems likely to cripple the world's second-largest economy.

No country has ever had fewer children or more elderly as a percentage of its total population. The number of children has fallen for 27 consecutive years. A record 22 percent of the population is older than 65, compared with about 12 percent in the United States. If those trends continue, in 50 years, the population of 127 million will have shrunk by a third; in a century, by two-thirds.

Japan will have two retirees for every three workers by 2060, a burden that could bankrupt pension and health-care systems.

Demographers have been noisily fretting about those numbers for years, but only in the past year have they grabbed the attention of important parts of this country's power structure.

A group of 80 politicians in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said last summer that Japan needs to welcome 10 million immigrants over the next 50 years. It said the goal of government policy should not be just to "get" immigrants, but to "nurture" them and their families with language and vocational training, and to encourage them to become naturalized citizens of Japan.

The country's largest business federation, the traditionally conservative Nippon Keidanren, said in the fall that "we cannot wait any longer to aggressively welcome necessary personnel." It pointed to U.N. calculations that Japan will need 17 million foreigners by 2050 to maintain the population it had in 2005.

Among highly developed countries, Japan has always ranked near the bottom in the percentage of foreign-born residents. Just 1.7 percent are foreign-born here, compared with about 12 percent in the United States.

The Japanese public remains deeply suspicious of immigrants. In an interview last year, then-Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda suggested that the prospect of large-scale immigration was politically toxic.

"There are people who say that if we accept more immigrants, crime will increase," Fukuda said. "Any sudden increase in immigrants causing social chaos [and] social unrest is a result that we must avoid by all means."

Here in Ueda, a city of about 125,000 people in the Nagano region, a recent survey found that residents worried that the city's 5,000 immigrants were responsible for crime and noise pollution.

"The feeling of the city is that if foreigners have lost their jobs, then they should leave the country," said Kooji Horinouti, a Brazilian immigrant of Japanese descent who works for the Bank of Brazil here and heads a local immigrant group.

It is not just the residents of Ueda. The Japanese government, until this month, had done little to train foreign-born workers in the country's language or to introduce them to life outside the factory towns where most of them work, according to Sakanaka, the immigration expert.

By contrast, the German government in recent years has offered up to 900 hours of subsidized language training to immigrants, along with other programs designed to integrate them into German society.

Japan had moved much, much more slowly.

It changed its highly restrictive immigration laws in 1990 to make it relatively easy for foreigners of Japanese descent to live here and work. The change generated the greatest response from Brazil, which has the world's largest population of immigrant Japanese and their descendants.

About 500,000 Brazilian workers and their families -- who have Japanese forebears but often speak only Portuguese -- have moved to Japan in the past two decades.

They have lived, however, in relatively isolated communities, clustered near factories. Because the government hired few Portuguese-speaking teachers for nearby public schools, many Brazilians enrolled their children in private Portuguese-language schools. With the mass firings of Brazilian workers in recent months, many of those schools have closed.

Paulino and Lidiane Onuma sent their 6-year-old daughter, Juliana, to the Novo Damasco school here in Ueda, where she has not learned to speak Japanese.

Her parents, too, speak and read little Japanese, although they moved to Japan as teenagers. There has been no government-sponsored program to teach them the language or how to negotiate life outside their jobs.

"Japan is finally realizing that it does not have a system for receiving and instructing non-Japanese speakers," said Sakanaka, the immigration policy expert. "It is late, of course, but still, it is important that the government has come to see this is a problem."

Had they known there would be language and job-training programs in Ueda, the Onuma family might not have sold their car and bought those tickets for Sao Paulo.

"If those programs existed now," Lidiane Onuma said, "I might have made a different choice."

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

The Top 20 Japan Sports Stories of 2008

By Ken Marantz / Daily Yomiuri Sportswriter
27 December 2008
Daily Yomiuri


The pressure of the Olympics has different effects on athletes. Some thrive, some fall apart. Put Kosuke Kitajima squarely in the former category.

Dormant for years after sweeping the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke events at the 2004 Athens Olympics, Kitajima showed he could rise to the occasion again. In Beijing, Kitajima became the first swimmer in history to complete the breaststroke double in consecutive Olympics, a feat that was voted the top Japan sports story of 2008 by the sports staff of The Daily Yomiuri.

Three other Olympic stories filled top 10 spots, mainly because they were so unexpected--a gold in women's softball, a bronze for the 4x100-meter relay team and zilch for the baseball team.

For the second year in a row, a sumo scandal featured prominently, as three Russians were harshly given the boot for marijuana use that also led to JSA chairman Kitanoumi's resignation.

Golf star Ryo Ishikawa was back on the list, this time with a hefty bank account, and was joined by fellow teen Kei Nishikori, who put Japanese men's tennis back on the map.

1. Kosuke Kitajima

===

Completes historic Olympic breaststroke double

IT IS billed as a renewal of his rivalry with American Brendan Hansen. Instead, Kosuke Kitajima turns the breaststroke races at the Beijing Olympics into a two-act solo performance for the ages that secured his place among the greatest swimmers in history.

Kitajima opens the show by winning the 100-meter breaststroke, breaking Hansen's world record. Adding the 200 title, he becomes the fifth swimmer to complete golden doubles in consecutive Olympics and the first to do it in the breaststroke. (Hansen was a non-factor, finishing fifth in the 100 and failing to make the U.S. team in the 200.)

Kitajima's lone regret is his failure to eclipse the world record in the 200 he had set two months earlier at the Japan Open. He puts that down to the morning finals in Beijing, arranged to accomodate U.S. television. "If the race was an hour later, I might have gone faster," he said.

2. Russian wrestlers

===

Three careers in sumo go to pot in scandalWHAT STARTED as a lost wallet turns into a lost cause for three Russian sumo wrestlers and the latest headache for a beleaguered Japan Sumo Association. Wakanoho's dropped wallet, turned in to a police box, is found to contain a marijuana joint. The appalled JSA, while expeling Wakanoho, initiates a doping test, which then nets Russian brothers Roho and Hakurozan, who both initially deny reefer madness but later confess. Those two are also kicked out of the sport, while JSA chairman Kitanoumi, in the wake of scandals from the previous year, tenders his resignation.

3. Olympic softball team

===

Strikes gold behind Ueno's mound heroicsIN THE last softball competition before the sport is dropped from the Olympic program, ace Yukiko Ueno leads Japan to a surprising gold medal with a victory over the United States in the final. It snaps the Americans' 22-game winning streak and denies them a fourth straight title since softball was introduced in 1996. Ueno throws 413 pitches as Japan wins three games over two days for the gold.

4. Yomiuri Giants

===

Late-season comeback lands CL pennant

SEEMINGLY OUT of contention when they fell 13 games behind the Hanshin Tigers in July, the Yomiuri Giants storm back behind Central League MVP Alex Ramirez to capture their second straight CL pennant. Unlike in 2007, the Giants manage to make it through the playoffs and into the Japan Series.

5. Seibu Lions

===

Take last two on road to capture Japan Series

DOWN 3-2 in the Japan Series and facing the daunting task of winning the last two games on the road, the Seibu Lions do just that, beating the Yomiuri Giants at Tokyo Dome for their first title since 2004. The victory under first-year manager Hisanobu Watanabe caps the team's rebound from a fifth-place finish in 2007, its first time out of the top three in 26 years.

6. Ryo Ishikawa

===

Cracks 100 million yen mark in 1st season as pro

TURNING PRO to great fanfare earlier in the year, 17-year-old golf prodigy Ryo Ishikawa starts cold but finishes hot to become the youngest athlete in Japan pro sports history to earn over 100 million yen in one season. He had won his first title as a pro at the Mynavi ABC Championship in November.

7. Olympic relay team

===

Teamwork & luck land 1st track medal since '28

RETIRING SPRINTER Nobuharu Asahara could not have received a better farewell present--both from his teammates and from opponents who flub their baton passes or are disqualified, allowing Japan's 4x100-meter relay squad to win an improbable bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics. With the United States, Britain and Nigeria failing to make the final, Asahara & Co. cruise through the door of opportunity for Japan's first Olympic track medal since 1928.

8. Kei Nishikori

===

Teen ends Japan's 16-year ATP title drought

A PRODUCT of the Nick Bollettieri Academy that produced such greats as Andre Agassi, Martina Hingis and Maria Sharapova, Japanese teenager Kei Nishikori becomes the first Japanese to win an ATP tournament in nearly 16 years with a victory in Delray Beach, Fla. Making the main draw as a qualifier ranked 244th in the world, he defeats top seed James Blake in the final. Nishikori, who made the round of 16 at the U.S. Open, finishes the year ranked 63rd.

9. Olympic baseball team

===

Star-studded lineup finishes out of medals

DESPITE SENDING a team packed with top players from the Japan leagues like Yu Darvish and Shinnosuke Abe, Japan not only fails to take the gold in the final Olympics for baseball, but is left out of the medal picture entirely. A stunning loss to rival South Korea in the semifinals is followed by a crushing defeat by a team of U.S. minor leaguers in the bronze-medal game. So distraught is manager Senichi Hoshino, he falls on his sword and refuses to stay on the job and skipper Japan at next year's World Baseball Classic.

10. Gamba Osaka

===

Keep Asian club trophy in Japanese hands

A YEAR after Urawa Reds became the first J.League team to win the Asian Champions League, Gamba Osaka make it two in a row with a comprehensive 5-0 aggregate victory over Australia's Adelaide United in the final.

11. The global financial crisis hits the motor sports world hard, with Honda pulling out of Formula One and Subaru and Suzuki dropping out of the World Rally Championship.

12. World and Olympic champion wrestler Saori Yoshida suffers her first-ever defeat by a non-Japanese opponent, losing to American Marcie van Dusen at the World Cup to snap her 119-match winning streak.

13. Former stablemaster Tokitsukaze and three junior wrestlers are arrested in the hazing death of teenaged wrestler Tokitaizan in June 2007.

14. Teenager Mao Asada, despite a fall on her first jump in the free program, becomes the fifth Japanese figure skater to win a world title.

15. Pitcher Jeremy Powell joins the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks after a protracted dispute, eventually decided by the commissioner, over an earlier contract allegedly signed with the Orix Buffaloes.

16. The legendary Sadaharu Oh ends 50 years in uniform by retiring as manager of the Hawks for health reasons, also taking himself out of consideration for the job of manager of Japan's World Baseball Classic team.

17. With a little less drama than the previous year, Kashima Antlers capture their second straight J.League title with a victory on the final day of the season, their sixth title in the 16-year history of the league.

18. Corporate league pitcher Junichi Tazawa snubs the Japan draft and negotiates directly with major league teams, leading Japan pro baseball to consider a rule making it harder for such players to return to Japan.

19. Seattle Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki matches Wee Willie Keeler's 1894-1901 major league record of eight straight 200-hit seasons.

20. After a miracle finish to take the 2007 J.League title thanks to Urawa Reds' collapse, Kashima Antlers go on to complete the double by winning the Emperor's Cup on New Year's Day.

Househusbands on the rise

Editorial
Sunday, January 18 2009
The Japan Times Online

A recent survey conducted by the Kaji Kentei Jikko Iinkai (Housework Aptitude Test Association) reveals a great deal about the aspirations inside Japanese homes. Apparently, a surprisingly large number of married Japanese men — nearly 30 percent — would not mind being househusbands. This may not yet be a revolution in gender roles, but it involves more than just tidy homes!

The survey found that many men were already spending significant time doing traditionally "female" housework duties. In Hokkaido, men spent an average 54 minutes a day at housekeeping duties, while Tokyo men averaged 48.4 minutes. At the top, though, were Tokyo husbands in their 40s, who rack up an amazing 70 minutes of housework per day. That certainly gives a new spin to the old economic term "man-hour."

This shift may result from more than economic necessity or increased female employment. Attitudes are clearly changing. Several popular TV shows in recent years have revolved around a male character taking over domestic duties while the wife works. The fact that 57 percent of people said they turn to the Internet for solutions to housework problems shows that better information resources for "housework-challenged" men help considerably, too. Women readers should bookmark those Web sites as soon as possible.

Men, too, should take note. Among women in their 20s, three-quarters prefer a husband who can do housework. Nearly the same percentage feels that the old idea of domestic training in preparation for married life is out of date. Even more strongly felt is the sentiment among women about cleaning — one-third say they hate it, pure and simple. With these feminine attitudes taking hold, men may have to help with shopping, laundry, cooking and other domestic chores out of domestic self-defense.

As amusing as the survey is, it does indicate important and substantial shifts in attitudes toward equality, roles and fairness. In the future, wives will continue to work more, establishing more flexible conceptions of what men and women can or should do. If so many men are already thinking that housework is not so bad, then it could mark the beginning of very broad social progress. Not to mention cleaner homes all over the country.


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Matchmakers' 'marriage hunts' beating out fate to secure mate

By Mariko Kato
Wednesday, January 14 2009
The Japan Times Online

Many singles may prefer to leave it up to fate to find their significant other, but experts are saying those who elect to wait for "the one" may never make it to the altar.

Two sociologists recently coined the phrase "kon-katsu" (marriage hunting) in a bid to encourage singles to pursue marriage strategically. They hope this results in more marriages, and, ultimately, a reversal in Japan's declining birthrate.

The media spread the phrase last year and it soon became popular, resulting in a nomination for the 2008 "U-Can shingo ryukogo taisho" award for new popular words.

"Kon-katsu" is short for "kekkon-katsudo," a spinoff from the term "shushoku-katsudo" (job hunting), according to journalist Toko Shirakawa, who coined the word in the book "Kon-Katsu Jidai" ("Marriage Hunting Era"), published in March with coauthor Masahiro Yamada, a sociology scholar.

"We wanted to popularize the term to emphasize that you can no longer get married by simply wanting to. You have to search strategically for a partner, as you would a career," said Shirakawa, who writes on marriage, relationships and the declining birthrate in various publications, including AERA magazine.

Among the 20-to-34 age group in Japan, 69 percent of men and 57 percent of women are unmarried, according to a report by the internal affairs ministry.

Yet marriage remains high on the agenda for many. Among singles in the 18-to-34 age bracket, about 90 percent of both males and females want to tie the knot some day, according to a survey by National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

One major kekkon-katsudo tactic is to sign up with a professional marriage broker.

There are about 3,800 companies in the matchmaking industry nationwide, with 600,000 registered members, according to a survey by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. This includes online partner-search services on Web sites and offline agencies that offer data matching.

Last month, an effort to link the online and offline services was launched by the matchmaking service Web site Yahoo Enmusubi, run by Yahoo Japan Corp.

It joined forces with offline firms Zwei Co., Sunmarie and Partner Agent Inc., so that members can also request information from those firms.

"We wanted to encourage those who are hesitant about using online services," said Mana Yasuda, PR spokeswoman for Yahoo Japan. "They can create their profiles online, and sort out their priorities in looking for a partner. After they have perfected their self-appeal, they can go to the other companies to expand their search if they want to," she explained.

Membership in Yahoo Enmusubi costs ¥4,800 for men and ¥3,500 for women, and proof of identity is required. Once kon-katsu gained notoriety, the service has seen membership rise to 11,186 at present, Yasuda said.

Some marriage consultancies aim for successful matches by limiting membership to candidates with specific careers or academic records.

One such agency is Bridal Station Ginza in Chuo Ward, Tokyo.

Among the courses the agency has on offer is Doctor's Stage, where women are introduced to single doctors and dentists.

"Doctors are popular with Japanese women because they want someone they can respect, someone they feel they cannot surpass," explained Rumi Sato, PR spokeswoman for Bridal Station. "Even though doctors are busy and may not earn as much as business executives, they provide stability."

Female members are given counseling and introduced to two potential partners a month. They attend parties and seminars on such topics as manners or communications, and get subsidized access to a beauty-treatment clinic, a fashion stylist, hair and makeup salons, and a photography studio.

The cost for women to join Doctor's Stage is ¥400,000, which includes the one-year membership fee. For men who are considered highly sought-after because they have elite careers, membership is free. Of the 1,000 Bridal Station members, 40 percent are men.

Members treat the service as a school, according to Etsuko Satake, manager of Bridal Station.

"If you want to go to a university, you go to a preparatory school. If you want to marry a doctor, you come here. Some clients even call me 'tutor,' " she said. "I give suggestions for makeup or conversation suitable for dating a doctor. Fixing faults leads to a successful marriage, and for that you need someone to think objectively."

The matchmaking process in Japan began to grow complex in the 1980s, when attitudes toward career and marriage started to diversify, Shirakawa said.

The recession adds another layer of difficulty to the process.

"With full-time jobs no longer easily available or secure for life in recent times, some men are disinclined to marry because it would put them under financial pressure. They want their wives to work, too. But in Japan, it is still difficult for women to sustain a family and a career." she said.

"Some women meanwhile still pursue the old marriage model of their parents, with the husband being the main breadwinner," she said. "They look for men who can sustain the lifestyle they have enjoyed as single women."

Speaking recently in Tokyo, Kuniko Inoguchi, former state minister in charge of dealing with the declining birthrate, said marriage-minded women need help looking.

"Many regions in Japan cite the lack of opportunity for people to meet potential partners as a reason for their declining birthrate," she said.

The average fertility rate has been falling since the mid-1970s and hit an all-time low of 1.26 children per woman in 2005, according to a survey by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

Even though the term kon-katsu is new, the concept is old, according to Shirakawa. "People started entering arranged marriages a long time ago, more so than now," she said.

"The difference we wanted to make by coining the term now was to make people conscious of marriage hunting as a necessary activity. It is an effective way to find a suitable partner in life, and we wanted to encourage people not to be embarrassed."


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Japan's outcasts still wait for society's embrace

By Norimitsu Onishi
Friday, January 16, 2009
International Herald Tribune

KYOTO, Japan: For Japan, the crowning of Hiromu Nonaka as its top leader would have been as significant as America's election of its first black president.

Despite being the descendant of a feudal class of outcasts, who are known as buraku and still face social discrimination, Nonaka had dexterously occupied top posts in Japan's governing party and served as the government's No. 2 official. The next logical step, by 2001, was to become prime minister. Allies urged him on.

But not everyone inside the party was ready for a leader of buraku origin. At least one, Taro Aso, Japan's current prime minister, made his views clear to his closest associates in a closed-door meeting in 2001.

"Are we really going to let those people take over the leadership of Japan?" Aso said, according to Hisaoki Kamei, a politician who attended the meeting.

Mr. Kamei said he remembered thinking at the time that "it was inappropriate to say such a thing." But he and the others in the room let the matter drop, he said, adding, "We never imagined that the remark would leak outside."

But it did - spreading rapidly among the nation's political and buraku circles. And more recently, as Aso became prime minister just weeks before President-elect Barack Obama's victory, the comment has become a touchstone for many buraku.

How far have they come since Japan began carrying out affirmative action policies for the buraku four decades ago, mirroring the American civil rights movement? If the United States, the yardstick for Japan, could elect a black president, could there be a buraku prime minister here?

The questions were not raised in the society at large, however. The topic of the buraku remains Japan's biggest taboo, rarely entering private conversations and virtually ignored by the media.

The buraku - ethnically indistinguishable from other Japanese - are descendants of Japanese who, according to Buddhist beliefs, performed tasks considered unclean. Slaughterers, undertakers, executioners and town guards, they were called eta, which means defiled mass, or hinin, nonhuman. Forced to wear telltale clothing, they were segregated into their own neighborhoods.

The oldest buraku neighborhoods are believed to be here in Kyoto, the ancient capital, and date back a millennium. That those neighborhoods survive to this day and that the outcasts' descendants are still subject to prejudice speak to Japan's obsession with its past and its inability to overcome it.

Yet nearly identical groups of outcasts remain in a few other places in Asia, like Tibet and Nepal, with the same Buddhist background; they have disappeared only in South Korea, not because prejudice vanished, but because decades of colonialism, war and division made it impossible to identify the outcasts there.

In Japan, every person has a family register that is kept in local town halls and that, with some extrapolation, reveals ancestral birthplaces. Families and companies widely checked birthplaces to ferret out buraku among potential hires or marriage partners until a generation ago, though the practice has greatly declined, especially among the young.

The buraku were officially liberated in 1871, just a few years after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. But as the buraku's living standards and education levels remained far below national averages, the Japanese government, under pressure from buraku liberation groups, passed a special measures law to improve conditions for the buraku in 1969. By the time the law expired in 2002, Japan had reportedly spent about $175 billion on affirmative action programs for the buraku.

Confronting Prejudice

Fumie Tanaka, now 39, was born just as the special measures law for the buraku went into effect. She grew up in the Nishinari ward of Osaka, in one of the 48 neighborhoods that were officially designated as buraku areas.

At her neighborhood school, the children began learning about discrimination against the buraku early on. The thinking in Osaka was to confront discrimination head on: the problem lay not with the buraku but with those who harbored prejudice.

Instead of hiding their roots, children were encouraged to "come out," sometimes by wearing buraku sashes, a practice that Osaka discontinued early this decade but that survives in the countryside.

Sheltered in this environment, Tanaka encountered discrimination only when she began going to high school in another ward. One time, while she was visiting a friend's house, the grandparents invited her to stay over for lunch.

"The atmosphere was pleasant in the beginning, but then they asked me where I lived," she said. "When I told them, the grandfather put down his chopsticks right away and went upstairs."

A generation ago, most buraku married other buraku. But by the 1990s, when Tanaka met her future husband, who is not a buraku, marriages to outsiders were becoming more common.

"The situation has improved over all," said Takeshi Kitano, chief of the human rights division in Osaka's prefectural government. "But there are problems left."

In Osaka's 48 buraku neighborhoods, from 10 to 1,000 households each, welfare recipient rates remain higher than Osaka's average. Educational attainment still lags behind, though not by the wide margins of the past.

What is more, the fruits of the affirmative action policies have produced what is now considered the areas' most pressing problem: depopulation. The younger buraku, with better education, jobs and opportunities, are moving out. Outsiders, who do not want to be mistaken for buraku, are reluctant to move in.

By contrast, Tokyo decided against designating its buraku neighborhoods. It discreetly helped buraku households, no matter where they were, and industries traditionally dominated by buraku groups. The emphasis was on assimilation.

Over time, the thinking went, it would become impossible to discriminate as people's memory of the buraku areas' borders became fuzzier. But the policy effectively pushed people with buraku roots into hiding.

In one of the oldest buraku neighborhoods, just north of central Tokyo, nothing differentiates the landscape from other middle-class areas in the city. Now newcomers outnumber the old-timers. The old-timers, who all know one another, live in fear that their roots will be discovered, said a 76-year-old woman who spoke on the condition that neither she nor her neighborhood be identified.

"Me, too, I belong to those who want to hide," she said. "I'm also running away."

A Politician's Roots

Nonaka is one of the rare politicians who never hid his buraku roots. In 2001, he was considered a leading contender to become president of the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party and prime minister.

Now 83, he was born into a buraku family from a village outside Kyoto. On his way home at the end of World War II, he considered disappearing so that he would be declared dead, he once wrote. With the evidence of his buraku roots expunged, he had thought, he could remake himself in another part of Japan, he wrote.

Nonaka eventually entered politics, and, known for his fierce intelligence, he rose quickly. By 2001, he was in a position to aim for the prime ministership. But he had made up his mind not to seek the post. While he had never hidden his roots, he feared that taking the top job would shine a harsh spotlight on them. Already, the increasing attention had hurt his wife, who was not from a buraku family, and his daughter.

"After my wife's relatives first found out, the way we interacted changed as they became cooler," Nonaka said in an interview in his office in Kyoto. "The same thing happened with my son-in-law. So, in that sense, I made my family suffer considerably."

But rivals worried nonetheless. One of them was Aso, now 68, who was the epitome of Japan's ruling elite: the grandson of a former prime minister and the heir to a family conglomerate.

Inside the Liberal Democratic Party, some politicians gossiped about Nonaka's roots and labeled some of his closest allies fellow buraku who were hiding their roots.

"We all said those kinds of things," recalled Yozo Ishikawa, 83, a retired lawmaker who was allied with Aso.

"That guy's like this," Ishikawa said, lowering his voice and holding up four fingers of his right hand without the thumb, a derogatory gesture indicating a four-legged animal and referring to the buraku.

And so, at the closed-door meeting in 2001, Aso made the comment about "those people" in a "considerably loud voice," recalled Kamei, the politician. Kamei, now 69, had known Aso since their elementary school days and was one of his biggest backers.

Aso's comment would have stayed inside the room had a political reporter not been eavesdropping at the door - a common practice in Japan. But because of the taboo surrounding the topic of the buraku, the comment was never widely reported.

Two years later, just before retiring, Nonaka confronted Aso in front of dozens of the party's top leaders, saying he would "never forgive" him for the comment. Aso remained silent, according to several people who were there.

It was only in 2005, when an opposition politician directly questioned Aso about the remark in Parliament, that Aso said, "I've absolutely never made such a comment."

The prime minister's office declined a request for an interview with Aso. A spokesman, Osamu Sakashita, referred instead to Aso's remarks in Parliament.

In the end, Nonaka's decision not to run in 2001 helped a dark-horse candidate named Junichiro Koizumi become prime minister. Asked whether a Japanese Obama was now possible, Nonaka said, "Well, I don't know."

Hopes for the Future

That is also the question asked by many people of buraku origin recently, as they waver between pessimism and hope.

"Wow, a black president," said Yukari Asai, 45, one of the two sisters who owns the New Naniwa restaurant in Osaka's Naniwa ward, in Japan's biggest buraku neighborhood, reflecting on Obama's election. "If a person's brilliant, a person's brilliant. It doesn't matter whether it's a black person or white person."

After serving a bowl of udon noodles with pieces of fried beef intestine, a specialty of buraku restaurants, Asai sounded doubtful that a politician of buraku origin could become prime minister. "Impossible," she said. "Probably impossible."

Here in Kyoto, some had not forgotten about Aso's comment.

"That someone like that could rise all the way to becoming prime minister says a lot about the situation in Japan now," said Kenichi Kadooka, 49, who is a professor of English at Ryukoku University and who is from a buraku family.

Still, Kadooka had not let his anger dim his hopes for a future buraku leader of Japan.

"It's definitely possible," he said. "If he's an excellent person, it's just ridiculous to say he can't become prime minister because he just happened to be born a buraku."


http://iht.com/articles/2009/01/16/asia/16outcasts.php

Rent-a-friend in Japan

By Duncan Bartlett
12 January 2009
BBC News

In Japan, now back in recession, the economic situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse in recent months. But the Japanese still like to use their money to have fun, as Duncan Bartlett has been finding out.

Lola - or Rora - to give her a slightly more Japanese pronounciation - is a beauty and she knows it.

Customers pay by the hour for her company. Usually they just want to stroke her, but as a special treat for favoured clients, she will lie back in a chair, close her eyes and pose for photographs.

Lola is a Persian cat who works at the Ja La La Cafe in Tokyo's bustling Akihabara district. It is one of a growing number of Cat Cafes in the city which provide visitors with short but intimate encounters with professional pets.

When I called, there were 12 felines and seven customers, mostly single men.

One man, in his early 30s, was attempting to bond with an Oriental Longhair by means of a rubber mouse.

Yutsuke, who speaks with a lisp, is normally rather shy with people. He longs for a cat of his own but frequent business trips make that difficult. Besides, he lives alone, so the Ja La La is his solution to the problem.

The right pet

It costs about £8 ($10) an hour to spend time in a Cat Cafe.

If felines do not appeal, other establishments will rent you a rabbit, a ferret or even a beetle.

There are more than 150 companies in Tokyo which are licensed to hire out animals of various kinds and although beetles may be cheap, dogs much more popular.

First you pay a deposit and a hire fee. Then you are issued with a leash, some tissues and a plastic bag and given some advice on how to handle your new friend.

Kaori is a pretty waitress who regularly spends her Sunday afternoons with a Labrador. They go for a walk in the park if the weather is fine, or if it is wet they just snuggle up in front of the TV in her apartment.

"When I look into his eyes, I think he's my dog," Kaori told me. "But when I take him back to the shop, he runs away from me and starts wagging his tail when he sees the next customer. That's when I know he's only a rental dog."

Every need considered

Of course, it is not only animals whose loyalties can be decided by money, as people who work in Japan's vast entertainment business will testify.

The industry offers an enormous variety of opportunities to exchange money for company.

Very popular at the moment is the Campus Cafe, where men go to socialise with female university students. It is cheaper than the upscale hostess clubs in which businessmen and politicians drink whisky with women in kimonos, although that is a business which is in crisis because of the recession.

Only a small proportion of the trade involves sex. Most hostesses are flatterers not prostitutes and customers come to find comfort in their words, not in their arms.

One specialist agency is known as Hagemashi Tai, which translates as I Want To Cheer Up Limited. It rents relatives.

Actors are despatched to play the part of distant relations at weddings and funerals. For an extra fee, they will even give a speech.

But the firm's services do not stop there. It can also provide temporary husbands to single mothers who want them.

The website says the "dad" will help the children with their homework. He will sort out problems with the neighbours.

He will take the kids to a barbeque or to a park. He could also appear at the daunting interview with a nursery school head teacher which parents are required to endure in order to persuade the principal to give their child a good start in life.

Cry for help

There is a service for women who are about to wed too. Apparently, they can practice for married life with a hired husband, although whether this involves seduction or sock washing is not exactly clear.

And if things are not working out with a real husband, a woman considering a divorce may choose to hire a "mother" in order to discuss her marital anxieties.

Mr M.O. from Shizuoka near Mount Fuji called upon the services of I Want To Cheer Up Ltd because he needed a father.

Mr M.O. has been blind since birth and had a number of concerns that he felt he could not speak to others about.

"I kept it all inside and couldn't deal with the criticisms that had been directed at me by my parents and teachers," he testified.

After some discussion, the company sent an older man to have dinner with him. "Usually I can't open up when I meet someone for the first time but on that occasion, I felt I was really talking with a normal father. I'll use the service again," he said.

Loneliness is a problem faced by many people on these crowded islands. But the Japanese are prone to believe that, in the right circumstances, money can turn a stranger into a friend... at least for a couple of hours.

I love Japan!

By Makoto Tochigi, Senior staff writer
05 January 2009
Nikkei Weekly

So says author Alex Kerr in explaining why it pains him to watch Japan journey into the future

Alex Kerr, a 56-year-old writer and researcher of East Asian art and culture, is in love with a Japan that pains him to watch disappear. Also an activist, he has long championed preservation of the country's natural heritage and has even backed up his words with actions - and his own money.

Along the way he has been sounding the alarm that modern society is destroying the cultural and natural heritage upon which it stands. In recent years, he has noticed similar voices as well as a quietly emerging momentum toward preserving the country's cultural heritage and scenic beauty.

Transformation

Kerr first came to Japan in 1964 when his father, a U.S. Navy lawyer, was transferred to Yokohama. Kerr said he remembers plenty of beautiful naturescapes, tidy rows of traditional wooden houses and warm relationships among neighbors as Japan began its high-growth period. As the years wore on, though, Kerr noticed that architecture and cityscapes were undergoing dramatic changes.

"There is something wrong with (modern) Japan's way of development that disregards the beauty and richness of its nature and culture, invaluable pieces of heritage preserved for centuries," Kerr said recently. He bemoans modern society for rushing headlong into the destruction of the country's past for the sake of progress, rather than embracing those reminders of years gone by and developing them as tourism resources.

While noting that city governments and local associations in the U.S. and European countries actively commit to preserving their old urban districts, Kerr implied that Japan's development projects relentlessly transform not only infrastructure but even the everyday lifestyles of Japanese. The only sites that progress' steamroller bypasses, he said, are historically noteworthy shrines and temples.

The result is that today's Japan is made up of cities, suburbs and towns with little character. The beauty of rows of traditional Japanese houses has disappeared into nostalgia. In their place is a whole lot of ugly. "Concrete buildings and tangles of power cables overhead," Kerr said.

Unfortunately, not even Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, has escaped this fate. A sense of crisis over how Kyoto had lost much of its luster has prompted Kerr to preserve and restore old machiya town houses there. Over the past four years he has been involved in refurbishing eight traditional merchant houses in the proud city and converting them into inns and premises for Japanese art classes and cultural programs.

"Machiya houses are very beautiful because they used to be living and working places for Kyoto people," Kerr said.

He said the old houses are now attracting not only foreign visitors who want to experience how people used to live in Kyoto but also domestic guests - about 70% of whom are young women. The machiya are also attracting an increasing number of repeat customers.

House of the Flute

Kerr's involvement in restoring traditional wooden homes dates back to the early 1970s, when he interrupted his studies at Yale University in the U.S. to be an exchange student at Tokyo's Keio University. During his one-year stay in Japan, he used to hitchhike around the country and once happened upon a ravine in the Shikoku region dotted with villages made up of traditional wooden homes.

One of the wooden structures - a 300-year-old traditional thatched-roof farmhouse in the Iya, a remote region of Tokushima Prefecture - immediately reminded him of a childhood dream.

"Here is my castle," he thought to himself upon taking in the abandoned house, its hearth-inlaid wooden floor, its beams and rafters smoked black from centuries of fires burning in the hearth.

Almost immediately he was determined to buy the place.

After obtaining approval from the villagers, Kerr purchased the old structure with money borrowed from one of his father's friends. The house had been left empty for more than 17 years and was unlivable, so Kerr rethatched the roof and spent more than a decade restoring it and making it habitable.

He eventually named the cottage Chiiori, or House of the Flute, and, with the cooperation of the villagers and municipality, turned it into a tourist destination. Those who stay in Chiiori experience traditional village life and organic farming in a panoramic valley.

Chiiori, dedicated to reinvigorating the Iya region, is now only one of many similar projects that have taken root throughout the country as Kerr and like-minded preservationists continue to spread their gospel.

Ojika, a town on an island of the same name off the coast of Nagasaki Prefecture, has named Kerr its tourism ambassador. As such, Kerr is offering the townspeople advice on refurbishing 10 old houses so visitors can stay in them or so they can be used as other kinds of tourism facilities.

"The Ojika town office and nonprofit organizations are working hard to revitalize the region," Kerr said. "The people are acting on their own initiative, and this is the most important aspect when communities want to make themselves better."

Flicker of hope

The number of foreign tourists to Japan surpassed 8 million in 2007. In January 2008, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism appointed Kerr as its Yokoso! Japan, Visit Japan Campaign ambassador. The ministry hopes Kerr will help to increase the number of inbound tourists, but Kerr also intends to use the post to encourage a new kind of tourism in Japan.

"If a lot of foreign visitors - who generally have little patience with low-quality tourist spots, particularly half-inspiring places without aesthetic beauty - come to Japan," Kerr said, "they would have an immensely valuable impact on the country's tourism" efforts.

His reasoning is that any feedback inbound tourists give is likely to awaken service providers to the importance of things like scenic beauty and the serving of local dishes made with fresh fish and vegetables.

He pointed out that Japan has a great number of unused tourism resources, including a cluster of islands dotting the Seto Inland Sea that have a cadre of fans among Western travelers.

Regarding modern Japan's destruction of its cultural heritage - a theme Kerr has dwelled on in his books "Lost Japan," originally written in Japanese as "Utsukushiki Nihon no Zanzo," and "Dogs and Demons" - he said the rampage "has yet to be stopped."

Even so, he recognizes some changes taking place.

"Japan is now at a major crossroads in its cultural development," he said. "On the other hand, traditional performing arts such as rakugo, or comedic storytelling, and Kabuki are making new efforts to find a broader audience among young people." He also noted that talented young players of Tsugaru shamisen, a genre of music native to the three-stringed Japanese lute, are also coming into the spotlight.

There is a glimmer of hope, Kerr said, that has begun to flicker in the cultural and tourism sectors. On this glimmer, Kerr has place some heavy expectations. "It is my dream to see that light shine brightly and vigorously enough to eventually help us revive the beauty and richness of Japan's nature and cultural traditions, for which I have a wholehearted love."

Makoto Tochigi

(The Nikkei Weekly 12/29/2008 Edition)

tired and love.sick

11.01.2009 @ tokyo, japan

mini-napping away...

Resolve to eat Japanese - with chopsticks

By Kimiko Barber
3 January 2009
Financial Times (FT.Com)

In Chinese astrology, 2009 is the year of the Ox, a symbol of hard work, patience and stability - useful characteristics to get through the global financial and economic recession we find ourselves in. This is also a time for new year resolutions. Apparently the key to achieving these is, for a woman, to tell everyone of her intentions and for a man, make his declarations as practical and tangible as possible. For men and women on both sides of the Atlantic, diet and exercise goals for health and well-being ranked high among 2008 resolutions. These do not necessarily require financial investment, like a gym membership or a personal trainer. Simple, inexpensive changes to one's diet can also make a big impact.

When I was growing up in Japan during the 1960s, according to the tradition, on January 2 I sat down in front of a blank sheet of rice paper with a thick calligraphy brush and ink to inscribe my new year resolutions. More often I ended up drawing whiskers or a moustache on my brother's face.

As I get older (certainly) and wiser (debatable), I no longer compose a list of new year resolutions. Instead, I write down the things I like to do, books to read or places I wish to visit on the back page of a Chelsea Arts Club desk diary. This seems less daunting and more achievable than failing to keep up with more ambitious resolutions and feeling guilty and inadequate as a consequence.

Japan has one of the lowest obesity rates globally, while both Japanese men and women have the longest life expectancies in the world and suffer fewer cardiovascular diseases. It is a myth that Japanese women don't get fat - they are just as concerned about weight as women of any nationality. But Japanese women on the whole tend to be slimmer, keep their youthful appearance and enjoy active, healthy lifestyles for years longer than women in the west. It is not what we are but what we eat, and how we eat, that determines our health and figure.

I've longed to write a diet cookbook based on Japanese food, but because I did not have a medical background I was diffident about doing so. Then a few years ago, I was writing two Japanese cookbooks back-to-back. Testing all the recipes and eating everything with chopsticks to save washing up, I lost over 10kg and went down two dress sizes. Now I want to share the good news with my new book - The Chopsticks Diet.

Its essence is simple - eat delicious, balanced Japanese food with chopsticks. Chopsticks encapsulate the Japanese way of food - what we eat and how we eat. The traditional Japanese diet is built around the staple of rice with plenty of vegetables, fruits and fish, cooked and served to be eaten with chopsticks. Eating with chopsticks slows us down and therefore we eat less. It is said that there is as much as a 20-minute time lag between the stomach becoming full and the brain realising that you are full. If you eat fast, as most of us do nowadays, the brain cannot accurately monitor the amount of food your stomach is receiving and we end up eating more than we need. Slow eating is good for you.

Portions are much smaller in Japan. Japanese food is served in small dishes and there is a saying, hara hachibu, which literally means that you should eat until you are about 80 per cent satisfied and no more. Leave the table when you are still wishing to eat more but not when you are completely full. Eating smaller amounts of food is not only beneficial for your health but also keeps the costs of food down.

Eating with chopsticks not only physically slows you down, but it also requires more concentration and dexterity and makes you think about the food. A Japanese food saying, "eat with the eyes" captures the essence of The Chopsticks Diet. Take a moment to look and contemplate, and above all, enjoy engaging all five senses of the sound, scent, sight, touch and taste of the food. It will make you appreciate and respect food more.

One of the factors that sets the Japanese way of eating apart and makes the nation healthier and slimmer is the high component of carbohydrate-based energy. In the Japanese diet, carbohydrates, mainly in the form of rice and noodles, make up nearly a third of the total energy intake. In the west, however, carbohydrates are often portrayed as a villain among weight-watchers and many diets demonise them. What matters is the quality of carbohydrate. Good carbohydrates are those that are still in their natural state and less processed. They are nutritious, high in fibre, give you sustainable energy and leave you feeling satisfied for longer. Fibre-rich foods also help to lower cholesterols and are a great detox. Traditional Japanese meals feature many good carbohydrate foods such as fresh vegetables, rice, soba noodles, and beans. Also we don't add fat or dairy products to carbohydrates.

But the Japanese are eating more westernised, processed food today than ever. The most striking example is in Okinawa - the archipelago in the South China Sea, where septuagenarians were regarded as mere babies, octogenarians grew vegetables and being a centenarian was no big deal. Okinawa became the largest American military base after the end of the second world war. It took only a few decades for a new health profile to arise. Okinawans in their 40s and below who grew up on an American diet of animal protein and processed food instead of the traditional Okinawa diet are fatter and suffer from greater risks of cardiovascular disease, liver disease and premature death than mainland Japanese.

After a fortnight of festive eating and drinking, I am looking forward to writing my 2009 wish list, accompanied by a bowl of traditional Japanese new year ozoni - miso soup with a sticky rice cake. Miso, made of fermented soybeans, is an essential ingredient in Japanese cuisine. It is rich in vitamin E, calcium and minerals and the high quality protein of soyabeans, converted into digestible amino acid, is known to lower cholesterol, blood pressure and help to prevent arteriosclerosis. Miso also slows down the ageing process, it is anti-cancerous and, best of all, it is an amazing hangover cure.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a8452b00-d6c7-11dd-9bf7-000077b07658.html

The never-ending story

Spectrum - Arts & Entertainment
By John Mcdonald
10 January 2009
The Sydney Morning Herald

VISUAL ART

Genji: The World Of The Shining Prince

Art Gallery of NSW, until February 15

GENJI MONOGATARI, or The Tale Of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu has a unique status in world literature. The earliest date that we know the book was being read is 1008AD, allowing scholars to nominate 2008 as its thousandth anniversary. Genji is sometimes hailed as the world's first novel, but because it is no easier to identify the first novel than, say, the first oil painting, it is a title subject to endless qualifications. It is not unusual to read that Genji is the world's first "full-length" novel, the first "psychological" novel or the first novel to be considered "a classic".

No matter how one looks at it, Genji remains one of the most extraordinary works of fiction ever written. At a little under 1200 pages in the Edward G. Seidensticker translation that I've been reading, there is no disputing its "full-length" credentials. It is very far from what we would call a conventional novel because there is no plot, per se, only a series of episodes in the life of Genji, "the shining prince", whose beauty and ability are beyond comparison. Threads are carried over from one chapter to the next in a way that gradually deepens our understanding of the protagonists. There are, however, more than 400 characters in the book, many of them making the most fleeting appearance.

Neither is there a conventional ending. Even though Genji has disappeared from the story before the last chapters, the book finishes in a way that suggests it could have gone on forever. Perhaps only the indisposition of the writer called a halt to its progress.

Among the mysteries of Genji, one of the foremost is the identity of its author. "Murasaki Shikibu" is a mixture of nickname and title, as we have no inkling of the author's real name. We know she was a middle-ranking lady at the court of the Heian emperor in Kyoto. She was born in 973 or 975, while the date of her death is given as early as 1014 and as late as 1025. The mystery of Murasaki's identity has led modern authors to write novels about her, filling in the gaps with fictional speculation.

If we assume the book was largely finished by 1008, this reveals Murasaki as a prodigious talent. The worldliness and psychological acuity of the story suggest a maturity that can hardly be reconciled with an author in her 20s and early 30s. In English-language translation the book comes across as astonishingly modern. For although most of the action concerns courtly love and the incorrigible Genji's adventures with women young and old, rich and poor, these intrigues are depicted with a subtlety that brings the characters to life as thinking, feeling human beings.

When we consider that the greatest landmark of Anglo-Saxon literature at this period was Beowulf, the refinement and complexity of Genji is breathtaking. It is no wonder, in the words of Khanh Trinh, curator of the Art Gallery of NSW's exhibition, Genji: The World Of The Shining Prince, that Genji has become "a symbol of Japanese cultural identity itself".

This compact but attractive show is the AGNSW's contribution to the worldwide celebrations of Genji's millennial anniversary. The major Genji exhibition was probably the one hosted by the Yokohama Museum of Art from August to November last year but there is such a wealth of imagery relating to the tale that Sydney's homage to Murasaki cannot be taken lightly.

The show brings together works from public and private collections, mostly within Australia, that testify to the influence the story has exerted on Japanese artists over the centuries. The earliest pieces on display are decorated screens and works on paper from the early to mid-1600s; the most recent are manga comics. The truly dazzling part of the show is a selection of ukiyo-e prints by famous artists such as Harunobu, Kunisada, Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige and Yoshitoshi.

It would be tedious to discuss the background to these works or analyse their formal aspects. This is a matter for connoisseurs who can make the finest distinctions concerning the style and quality of a screen or a print. What the average viewer will see is a collection of images that chart the progress of Genji, from being the treasured possession of a rich and cultured elite to its current status as a tale beloved by all strata of Japanese society and arguably the world.

The elaborate folding screens of the early Edo period were no less luxury items in the 17th century than they are today. Sumptuous in their use of gold leaf, they feature episodes from the story painted by skilled artists who followed in the footsteps of earlier masters, or consulted instruction manuals detailing the proper manner of depicting each chapter. In the catalogue we learn that such manuals were probably in circulation as early as the 12th century.

This exaggerated respect for the past and a love of fine detail are such intrinsic components of Japanese culture that one can feel a little stultified by such works. Their beauty has a formulaic aspect, while the concentration on specific events in the story will confuse viewers who are not familiar with the tale. Even when one recognises certain episodes, they seem much less vivid in these screen paintings than they do in the novel itself.

The faculty of imagination, unique to every person and continuously self-renewing, provides a more effective window onto Genji's world than these codified, hieratic figures.

The universal resonance of the tale becomes more obvious with the beginning of popular printmaking in the 17th century. The golden age of Japanese woodblock printing arrived in the Edo period (1603-1868), when cheap, accessible images of exceptional quality became widely available.

In a manner that is uncannily similar to the Australian Government's efforts to regulate the internet, the new technology of printing was accompanied by a heavy-handed attempt to police the circulation of images. Indeed, this may be a general law: the more easily images can be produced and circulated, the more draconian and paranoid will be the response of the state.

The Kansei reforms, which were instituted in 1787, led to a crackdown on artists and writers whose works were judged to corrupt public morals. The great printmaker, Utamaro, was the most notorious victim of these laws, having his hands placed in chains for 50 days. To get around the new strictures, artists turned to classical tales such as Genji to provide a cover. So while it was forbidden to produce portraits of famous actors - the pop stars of their day - it was a simple matter to portray these actors as the shining prince and other characters from the novel.

Genji became a craze in the Edo period, giving rise to parody novels and imitations, kabuki adaptations, and a spectrum of imagery that went from the cheapest of prints to luxury editions. A range of new fashions and hairstyles grew out of artists' inventions. It seemed that the story provided an inexhaustible source of inspiration for treatments of courtly love, sex, violence, honour, intrigue, landscape, formal beauty and manifestations of the supernatural. Yoshitoshi, who was famous for his pictures of ghosts, has a particularly delicate example in this show. The Twilight Beauty (1886) portrays the melancholy shade of one of Genji's lovers who died suddenly during a night the couple passed in a gloomy, rundown house.

The final items in the show are manga comics, which translate Genji into the visual language of contemporary pop culture. The catalogue tells us there are more than 30 manga editions of Genji in print, including "educational" versions for students; romanticised versions for "young girls" and "ladies"; and "adult erotic" editions that detail Genji's affairs in explicit fashion. Despite the great claims made for manga by its devotees, these comic strip images seem pedestrian when shown next to ukiyo-e prints.

Ultimately, it is not the sheer variety of Genji items that impresses but the fact that the story has held a special meaning for the Japanese for up to 1000 years. It is a record that can only generate envy in a country such as Australia, which has spent so much time in the years following colonisation trying to find a set of national values to call its own. It is a process that seems to throw up ever more embarrassing by-products. For instance, it is a great relief to think that 1000 years from today we will not be celebrating Baz Luhrmann's Australia as a defining statement of cultural identity. If even the portrayals of Genji grow more superficial as they approach the present, those things that start out as proudly, transcendently shallow are in no danger of longevity.


http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2009/01/09/1231004267415.html

Key facts about Japan's imperial system

Reporting by Isabel Reynolds, Editing by Dean Yates
Reuters UK
Wednesday, 7 January 2009


Japan's imperial family on Wednesday paid respects at the tomb of the country's wartime emperor, Hirohito, who died 20 years ago.

Below are key facts about Hirohito and Japan's monarchy.

* Hirohito headed Japan's empire during its relentless expansion across Asia in the early 20th century, and debate has simmered since about the extent of his responsibility for the military campaigns carried out in his name.

* Having formerly been treated as a god, he renounced his divine status after Japan's WWII defeat in 1945. Under the current Japanese constitution, drafted by U.S. occupation forces, the emperor became the "symbol of the state and the unity of the people."

* Current Emperor Akihito, born in 1933, has made efforts throughout his reign to reconcile Japan with its former colonies in Asia and to help it project an image as a peace-loving nation.

* The small size of the modern imperial household has led to a dearth of male heirs. Akihito's eldest son Crown Prince Naruhito has only one child -- a daughter, Princess Aiko. Under current law, women may not accede to the throne, so upon Naruhito's death it will pass first to his younger brother, Prince Akishino, then to Akishino's son Prince Hisahito.

* Traditionalists believe Japan's imperial institution is the world's oldest hereditary monarchy. Eighth-century chronicles say the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami bequeathed her grandson a mirror, jewels and a sword, which he gave to the first emperor, Jimmu. The chronicles give Jimmu's reign as 660 B.C.-585 B.C., but there is doubt as to whether he ever existed.

* For most of the imperial institution's history, the emperor lacked direct political power and was primarily a symbolic and religious figure. Under the Meiji constitution, promulgated in 1889, the emperor became a constitutional monarch as well as a divine sovereign who was the focus of loyalty for his subjects.


http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE5060QM20090107

Japanese Suicide Hotlines Overburdened in Economic Crisis

by findingDulcinea Staff
January 08, 2009

Japan's telephone hotlines for those considering suicide are struggling, in a country with one of the the highest suicide rates in the world.

National Hotlines Understaffed
There are more than 30,000 suicides per year in Japan, where a national suicide hotline staffed by about 7,000 volunteers deals with about 700,000 telephone calls annually.

"We don't have enough volunteers," said Yukio Saito, head of the Telephone Lifeline association, to the Australian Associated Press. "I'm afraid that there will be a rise in suicides with the economic recession."

Japan has seen a rise in suicide rates, to the tune of 5 percent per year for the last 10 years. The Internet is contributing to the trend, Atlantic Monthly’s David Samuels wrote in a 2007 article.

“Once online, it is easy for such groups to attract new members from the free-floating population of lonely, curious, or dissatisfied souls who exist in all times and places, and in all cultures,” Samuels writes. “Vulnerable and unstable members of society are socialized into virtual communities whose shared vocabulary and values become an antidote to loneliness, even as they propel their members toward death.” The BBC reported in 2004 that Internet suicide clubs were growing in Japan, with the rise of specially designed suicide chat rooms to discover partners or groups with whom to take their own lives.

Background: Suicide elsewhere in East Asia
Suicide rates in China have also skyrocketed and are among the highest in the world as its citizens struggle to adjust to rapid economic reform that has led to massive societal upheaval.

Last month, Chinese state media reported that a two-year-old boy in the southwest China city of Chongzhou became an orphan after both of his parents committed suicide by drinking pesticide, after a fight. The tragic incident is just one of many, as Agence France-Presse reports that every two minutes, someone in China commits suicide. With 250,000-300,000 suicides a year, China accounts for about a quarter of all suicides globally.

Most attribute the problem to the fact that the Middle Kingdom’s 1.3 billion citizens are feeling the side effects of three decades of reforms, which have created a society increasingly devoted to profit and individualism. Meanwhile, the traditional family structure has broken down, and psychological problems are mounting.

“People have become more fragile,” said Zhang Chun, the head of a suicide prevention network in Nanjing, to AFP.

A report released earlier this year by the Chinese Association for Mental Health found that Chinese youth are particularly susceptible to suicide, as it is now the leading cause of death for those between 15 and 34. Some schools in Shanghai began having their students fill out mental health questionnaires after three students tried to commit suicide in the beginning of September.

In nearby South Korea, authorities are cracking down on cyberbullying following the high-profile suicide of actress Choi Jin-sil in October. The actress had been subject to false rumors on the Internet linking her to another actor’s suicide the month before. Her death also came a year after singer Yoo Na committed suicide after cyberbullying related to her plastic surgery.

A findingDulcinea article on intense academic pressure in South Korea mentioned that suicide in South Korea increased by 90.8 percent between 1997 and 2007, and 60 percent of all suicides occur in Asia, according to New American Media blog writer Peter Schurmann, who cites a Korea Times report. “In Korea, and much of Asia, there’s this notion of face. That maybe it’s better to take one’s life than bring shame on oneself and one’s family,” Schurmann says, although he also notes that suicide should not be used inappropriately to “essentialize Asian culture.” “I’ve known several families affected by suicide, Asian and Western, and they’ve all been devastated by it,” he says.

Reference: International suicide statistics
The World Health Organization reports that each year, about 1 million people commit suicide—16 people per 100,000 globally. One death by suicide occurs every 40 seconds, a rate that is expected to increase to 1 every 20 seconds by 2020. Suicide rates have increased by 60 percent worldwide in the past 45 years and is now one of the top three causes of death for those aged 15-44, both male and female.


http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/Asia-Pacific/2009/jan/Japanese-Suicide-Hotlines-Overburdened-in-Economic-Crisis.html

Japan's jobless fill tent village in Tokyo park

By Yuri Kageyama
Jan 2, 2009

TOKYO (AP) — A tent village set up in a Tokyo park for the country's growing number of jobless filled up so fast that it was moved Saturday to a government building to accommodate the overflow.

The government offered a ministry hall late Friday, responding to a request from volunteers, to house more than 250 unemployed and homeless people after the first comers quickly filled the tents, according to the shelter's Japanese-language Web site.

The homeless can stay in the building through Monday, and job counseling and other efforts are under way to place the people in other locations, it said.

The tent village that volunteers and unions opened on New Year's Eve highlights the serious social costs of the global recession for the world's second largest economy.

The government estimates 85,000 part-time workers will lose their jobs between October and March. Another 3,300 permanent employees are expected to become jobless over the same period.

Temporary workers have been the first to be fired in the latest wave of cutbacks as Japan's exports and company investments crashed after the U.S. financial crisis.

Temporary jobs at manufacturing were illegal before 2004, but today top companies, including Toyota Motor Corp. and Canon Inc., routinely rely on temporary staffing to adjust production to gyrating overseas demand.

Japanese Communist Party Executive Committee Chair Kazuo Shii, who visited the village, said the government needs to do more to help the unemployed.

"It is unforgivable that Japan's major companies have thrown so many workers out on the streets at the end of the year," he said.

For decades Japan promised lifetime employment at major companies, and government welfare programs for the jobless are still limited.

The tent village has also drawn some who have been needy for years.

Shigeru Kobayashi, 65, who has been unemployed four years, lives in the park.

"People talked about a recovery, but it never got good anyway," he said with a grin. "I'm unemployed. All I have is heart."

Tamotsu Chiba, 55, a theater producer and volunteer at the tent village, said he found the energy of the volunteers encouraging.

"There are so many different kinds of people here. This has given me a feeling of hope about Japan," he said.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jqn7kPA7IlkCCvrdjm1Dx9r7nkAQD95FG9V00

Armed and Elderly

By Chuck Colson
1/8/2009
Breakpoint.org

Japan’s Unique Crime Problem

January 8, 2009

Japan has a well-earned reputation as one of the most orderly societies on earth. Its crime rate, while rising in recent years, is still low by Western standards. When crime does spike, many Japanese are quick to blame foreigners.

But a recent crime wave is undeniably home grown—in more ways than one.

The surge in lawlessness involves not only property crime such as shoplifting, pick pocketing, and embezzlement, but also a rise in violent crime. In response, the government is planning three new prison wards—complete with “metal walkers and support rails.”

Metal walkers and support rails? Oh, did I mention that the new “usual suspects” are Japanese senior citizens?

Between 2000 and 2006, the number of Japanese over 70 charged with a crime more than tripled—to nearly 30,000 a year. Assaults have risen 17-fold and shoplifting and pick pocketing four-fold in the past decade. Even murder rates among the elderly are rising. All told, Japanese senior citizens were responsible for one in seven crimes, up from one in 50 in 1990.

While it’s true that Japan has the fastest-aging population in the world, the increase in the elderly crime rate was seven times the increase in their numbers.

If more senior citizens don’t explain the phenomenon, what does? A popular explanation is “financial hardship.” Koichi Hama of Ryukoku University spoke for many experts when he said that “it’s very difficult to live on their small pensions.” They shoplift to make ends meet, and then it escalates.

While this may be part of the explanation, Japanese elderly are hardly unique in their economic vulnerability. Around the world, economic downturns hit pensioners living on fixed incomes especially hard.

Yet we don’t read about crime waves among European and North American elderly.

An important part of the explanation lies in the increasing isolation of Japan’s elderly. Japan’s microscopic birthrate has produced an aging population with no one to care for it, whether children or paid caretakers. Japanese elderly are so starved for companionship that they buy talking dolls they think “are actual grandsons and granddaughters,” according to the manufacturer.

Thus, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that one-third of the “elderly offenders arrested for theft in Hokkaido” saw stealing as “a way to attract attention.” Or even that a 79-year-old woman who stabbed a younger woman in Tokyo said, “I had no place to stay, so I wanted the police to take care of me.”

Japan’s demographic collapse—the product of plummeting marriage and birth rates—has weakened the Japanese family and, with it, the entire society.

And that, sadly, is exactly what we can expect to happen in the increasingly hedonistic Western societies, where self-satisfaction and sexual license have become the driving ambition of millions.

No society that devalues marriage, that ignores the importance of child rearing, and that rejects the foundational role of families can sustain itself over time.

While we may not experience a geriatric crime wave like Japan’s, unless we change our ways, our future will be just as bleak—and lonely.


http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=10865

Lucky Bag Frenzy

NTDTV
January 03, 2009



It was shopping madness in Japan today. Thousands of shoppers lined up in front of department and retail stores across the country to get their hands on the traditional New Year special grab bags called "Lucky Bags."

STORY:
Shoppers rushed inside the Mitsukoshi department store in the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo where store workers, dressed as traditional Japanese New Year characters such as lions and god of good fortunes, encouraged the buying frenzy.

Store representatives estimated over 20,000 "Lucky Bags" were snapped up by eager shoppers.

The popular bags are priced between 10 thousand yen ( $100 USD) and 30 thousand yen ($300 USD) and are often filled with fashion items for a substantial discount.

[Yukiko Yamanashi, Businesswoman]:
"Lucky bags are such a huge bargain, I don't even know why some people aren't buying it! Sometimes you can buy clothes worth a 100 thousand yen or $1000 U.S. dollars for just 10 thousand yen or $100 U.S. dollars and everything from coats to shirts are included in the bag."

Still, many others sought to banish depressing thoughts of recession.

[Eiichi Kakegawa, Businessman]:
"Though the economy is worsening, I wanted to buy some lucky bags because it is sold at a discounted price. I also wanted to get some luck in this recession."

Bags are completely sealed and most stores do not say what is included in their lucky bags.

[Hisayo Kuwabara, Lucky Bag Buyer]:
"There's this excitement before you open your bag, then comes the surprise and some degree of disappointment, but most of the time I'm happy with what I got."

[Takashi Masuko, Lucky Bags Operation Dir.]:
"People tend to buy more Lucky Bags during recession. We've been preparing for this day since last August and since we were expecting some recession ahead, we changed the volume and items of our lucky bags to better satisfy our customers at times like this."

Economic signs ahead are not looking all that prosperous. Several companies have cut their outlooks as they expect another gloomy year. And the Japanese government has also warned its people they will face an "unprecedented crisis."

New Year's Day

20090101 ricoh 001


[edit]

By SHINO YUASA
Friday, 9 January 2009
TOKYO (AP)

A record 99 million Japanese visited Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples in the first three days of the New Year, the National Police Agency said Friday.

The agency said nearly 99.4 million people visited shrines or temples across the nation, up by 1.21 million from a year earlier, marking the highest number since it began compiling annual data in 1974.

Making pilgrimages to shrines or temples is a New Year tradition in Japan. Many people, including women wearing traditional kimonos, visited before dawn on New Year's Day and tossed coins, offered prayers and bought charms for the coming year.

The police said the high turnout reflected people's growing anxiety over Japan's recession-hit economy, which is expected to post no growth over the next year.

"There may be many people who prayed for economic recovery," an agency official was quoted by Kyodo News agency as saying. The official said good weather also might have helped boost the number of New Year visitors.

A police spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the report, saying the agency could only provide the statistics.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g1_tsyorJJCX_xLUVMb-qTtKA81QD95JESB03

December 2008

Dating by Blood Type in Japan
By NORIKO NAMIKI
ABC News
article

I ♥ Novels
by Dana Goodyear
The New Yorker
article

2008 Year in Review
Jiji Press English News Service
article

Ten things you never knew about... Japan
article

Living with recession in Japan
BBC News
article

Japan forecasts no growth in 2009
BBC News
article

Japan Firms Outsourcing IT Work Amid Downturn
Nikkei Report
article

Manga: Another way of seeing the world
by Amelia Newcomb
The Christian Science Monitor
article

Recession hits Japan's part-time workers
By Takehiko Kambayashi
The Christian Science Monitor
article

Japanese youths to be given 'moral education'
By Danielle Demetriou
Telegraph.co.uk
article

Japanese graduates scramble for jobs
By Chisa Fujioka
Reuters News
article

Addressing the loneliness of children in materially affluent Japan
Mainichi Daily News
article

Japan Reaches Out
by Hannah Beech
TIME Magazine
article

Happy New Year