More news from Japan! As before, a bit of a collage, really. I re-state the previous that I am not sure if the negative things I bring up are due to media working differently in Japan, whether the English translation page of the MDN Japanese news is the reason, whether Mainichi News itself is the reason, or whether things simply are “different” there. But I can with a great bit of certainty say that the Japanese news items differ quite a bit from those I see here in Sweden, or in the United States.

• Kimono snatcher leads police to booty of over 8,000 articles of women’s underwear
  This 60-year old fine lad steals panties and assorted things for over a decade. The cops need 5 minivans to confiscate it all out of his apartment when they finally catch him. What IS IT with the underwear fascination?
• Injured cop admits to stabbing self in stomach to avoid duty
  I can understand feeling a bit worn out and not wanting to go to work but… stabbing yourself with a knife? I know the work policies in Japan are akin to those of the U.S., in comparison to those in Sweden, where people with relatively mid-level jobs still get 5 weeks vacation a year and other benefits (whether that’s good or bad from a business point of view is of course another story, but for the individual, breathing is a good thing, at least occasionally).
• Woman busted for stabbing live-in boyfriend to death
  Not sure what to say here, but I figured I’d include it as I see a lot of this kind at the moment. People killing their significant others for… well, odd reasons.
• Woman who lived with mom’s corpse for 8 months wanted to collect her pension
  Title speaks for itself.
• Japan’s fertility rate marks 1st rise in 6 years while suicides fall
  Japan was (one of) the first industry countries to report a decline in its population, a trend that so far has continued uninterrupted for several decades. According to another report (no link available, sorry), the Japanese population would be halved by 2050. Well, this is good. And suicides falling is a good thing too — Japan is pretty high up on the list of suicide rates per capita, from what I can tell.
• And now for some upskirt/molestation pr0n!
  • Bank manager collared for shooting video up woman’s skirt on train
  • Firefighter fondles high school girl’s fanny on train
    
  • Kids TV director becomes 3rd NHK employee arrested for molestation in 1 month
• Aso regrets US House panel’s planned vote on sex slaves resolution
  This is in reference to a thing that occured in WW2 where Japanese soldiers, with the government’s blessing, abducted and forced Korean, Chinese, and other women into prostitution to boost the morale of the Japanese troops (Wikipedia article). It’s one of those things that I don’t understand about the country. Instead of extending an honest apology, they choose to dance around the issue and come up with excuse after excuse for why they shouldn’t apologize. Admittedly, the Japanese followed a long-standing tradition in the world in what they did, and the one major difference is only that the rest of the world had stated that “such actions were not to be condoned (anymore)”. Furthermore, sources claim the Nazi troops did the same thing to imprisoned Jewish women (Wikipedia article on a book with “Allusions/references to history”). In any regard, the current prime minister of Japan made this issue an issue again as he recently stated that the war crimes did not occur, despite past prime ministers’ apologies.
• Temperatures in Hokkaido soar above 30 degrees Celsius
  Some cozy “unusual weather” bits. Global warming? Nonsense!
• Japan won’t talk with N. Korea until denuclearization steps taken
  North Korea is a concern for everyone in the world at the moment, but Japan is a neighbouring country. This issue is probably a hundred times worse for the Japanese.
• World’s oldest man, 111, gets Guinness certificate in Japan; has no plans to die soon
  And finally, … I had no idea the world’s oldest man, and apparently also the world’s oldest woman, are Japanese.

That’s it for now.

This is probably a little one-sided as I only really read Mainichi (english translation) but there’re so many things I feel I want to comment on that I decided to start posting some News from Japan when I find them noteworthy. I personally disagree with classifying people based on their origin (aka racism), but I see some trends in the news items I read that I haven’t seen anywhere else. It may be the way in which Japanese news papers decide what is newsworthy, or it may simply be that trends differ in different places. That said;

• Private group to set up signs to halt suicides in forest near Mt. Fuji
  The trend of accumulating so much debt that one runs out of options, and commits suicide.
• 17-year-old girl hangs self at her high school
  The trend of committing suicide for other reasons, and the victims are often very young, sometimes as young as 12, and there seems to be a general trend of bullying in school being the claimed triggering factor. This kind of news item appears basically every day, sometimes several times a day.
• High school boy under arrest for murdering mom says she was ‘annoying’
  The trend of killing one’s family, the trend of the killer being very young, the trend of doing so for absolutely absurd reasons.
• In a rare move, prosecutors appeal death sentence
  And not a trend, but the epitome of why death penalties are wrong — utterly wrong. And the fact death penalties exist in Japan.

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070525p2a00m0na019000c.html

“OITA[, Japan] — A 79-year-old man who was ordered to appear in a summary court on a drink-driving charge faces new charges for driving to the court under the influence of alcohol, it has been learned.”

I finally had some time to sift through the thousands of unread entries in my RSS reader today, and came across some fairly interesting stuff. One of the things that really put me in an apprehensive mood was a post by Joi Ito (which in turn was posted by several other people) about 3 weeks ago, which can be found here. The post contains an image of a recently published book with the text (in Japanese) “Oi Nigger! Don’t be touching a Japanese girl’s ass!”, which was apparently about “foreigners committing crimes” in Japan. In fact, from what I can tell (I haven’t read the book or seen anything from it myself, except that one screen), the book is talking about the problem of foreigners committing crimes in Japan, with images and such.

The thing got a huge amount of attention, and the author of the book made a response to the international audience in Japan Today, here.

I’m not sure what to think of this all. I knew racism existed in Japan (against everyone not Japanese), and I do not have any illusions (like so many other people who are planning on moving there) on ever being seen as “Japanese”. No, I would rather be seen as “Kalle”, and I would rather see people as who they are as individuals, and to hell with belonging and becoming.

But this is just… wow. It smells and looks and feels like the racism of half a century ago. Where am I headed again? And why? I hate having to ask myself those questions when I’ve been set on this plan for over a year already.

“34,000 commuters inconvenienced after man run over by train on JR Chuo Line.”

That’s the title of a news article on Mainichi News (link which is broken cause MNN delete articles over 1 month old… stupidly).

The title speaks for itself, but does not convey the message they had in mind, no doubt. The commuters were inconvenienced because a guy was fucking hit by a god damn train. Where the fucking hell are your priorities, people? I’m talking about the article authors, here. Jesus fucking christ.