Japan

At the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, robots are finally heading in to gather vital data from areas too dangerous for human workers. That's a great step forward, right? Well, you'd think so – unless you're the kind of doltish chowderhead who can only digest such news in the most ridiculous terms possible: the stroking of idiotic national pride.

The April 14 issue of general-interest weekly Shukan Shincho (article not available online) opines:

Japan prides its cutting-edge technology in building robots -- yet it now faces an embarrassing situation where Japan must rely on the U.S. to provide robots to conduct work at the nuclear power plant -- how sad is that?... This embarrassing situation was caused to do blindingly believing that such incident would never occur.

Sad? Embarrassing? The disaster itself is horribly sad, and any errors made in response may be embarrassing – but do those words also describe people wisely using helpful technology to improve the situation? In the befuddled writer's world, we can't praise amazing technology that helps people cope with disaster until we know what's stamped on the passports of the people who created it. If the passports have this political entity's name stamped, then the technology is glorious and wonderful; if they have that political entity's name stamped, then it's all "sad" and "embarrassing".

Am I the only one who wonders when (or whether) humans will ever grow up? 

Here's an unexpected find: The 5 biggest tech myths about Japan. 

To summarize the article's brief but welcome myth busting: Japan does NOT have bizarre vending machines all over, does NOT have robots all over, and is NOT overrun with schoolgirls bearing unusual technology prowess. (I'm ambivalent on two other points: Japan's Internet speeds probably are pretty good by international comparison, and Akihabara does have lots of fun for techies, though I'll happily agree that these are not "OMG Japan is unbelievable" things.)

For more in the same tech myth-debunking vein, see Low-Tech Japan, Debunked: Japan's "Special Relationship with Robots", and technology-tagged articles in general.  

The site's seen a small rush of readers from well-known video game site Kotaku, which linked to A dose of dumb: Governor Ishihara's racist yammerings. Why is a gaming site turning its attention to the ethnocentric fantasies of Tokyo's xenophobic governor? Because it seems Shintaro Ishihara has turned his sights on "cleaning up" video games and comics of sexual content – and he's not above stepping outside the bounds of proposed legislation to suggest that gay characters on TV are some moral threat to the nation. Fans of comics and animation are rightly worried by the nutcase's potential influence over the pending Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths. 

Speaking of youths: What a waste of a youth. As the Kotaku article notes, Ishihara gained fame at the tender age of 23 by winning Japan's top literary award with a depiction of post-war rebellious, sexual youths. He and his younger brother Yujiro (who starred in the film version of the book) became idols within that youth culture, and Shintaro went on to hobnob with celebrities such as acclaimed author (and homosexual) Yukio Mishima. But that's just the start of the fellow's younger-day adventures. He motorcycled across South America, visited the North Pole, raced his yacht, wrote musicals and plays, ran a theater company, and – coolest of all – led a monster-searching expedition to Loch Ness. (A monster was not found, but that's okay.) If those things were all I knew of the guy, he'd be my hero! 

But what a change the years make. Now Ishihara is an ultra-conservative, hawkish, nationalist, gay-bashing, foreigner-hating crank who infamously denied Japanese WWII atrocities such as the rape of Nanking, who told an interviewer that women are "useless" past reproductive age, and who now wants to shield people from pop-culture acknowledgment of sexuality – the very thing upon which he built his young fame.

Take heart. Ishihara is now 78. Nature or fatigue will surely pull him away from command of Tokyo before he can cause too much damage. 

Via Slashdot, I came across The Puzzle of Japanese Web Design.

With respect to clarity, simplicity, and boldness of line, the Japanese have been a thousand years ahead of us in fine art and graphic design. Our best painters learned minimalism, cartooning, and much else from the Japanese during the “Orientalism” period of the late 19th century. Before that, western fine art was judged in part on its complexity and detail. And our posters and advertisements! Don’t ask.

Following that simplistic, stereotyping, jingoistic "us vs them" nonsense, there's a bizarre bit about chopsticks that somehow mistakes cheap, ugly, scrap-wood waribashi disposable chopsticks as the only form of chopsticks in Japan. It's really unrelated, but I can't resist: Read more

When you see the words "technology" and "Japan" appear together in the media, it's usually in the context of "Wow, Japan is a high-tech wonderland so many years ahead of us!"

Those of us living in Japan see a much more varied and complex picture. Thus, it was nice to come across the BBC's Revealing Japan's low-tech belly, a look at the computer-clumsy, Internet-inexperienced portion of the country that will never use the living room VCR as a clock (because it's been blinking "12:00" for the past nine years). Read more

You know what's so annoying – very mildly annoying, yes, but persistently so – about "cultural contrast" discussions? It's really not so much the more elaborate made-up claims backed by laughably imaginary evidence (the "special relationship with robots" is a good example). Rather, it's the non-stop rain of little claims, the ones that paint everything in sight as a "difference" or a "unique twist" – but then just leave those assertions hanging, without any attempt at backing them up.

Below is a fine example: a piece on the impressive uptake of mini-blogging service Twitter in Japan from the Mainichi Daily in June. (I've been told that it first ran in the Japanese version of the paper, though I haven't been able to locate a Japanese original). It was picked up by news services everywhere; here's the full article, which you may have already seen: Read more

Hey, how'd I let this one go untouched for so long? Of all the misconceptions about the Japanese language, "three writing systems" has got to be the most widespread, even among people who really should know better. Lately the meme has been working overtime on this Slashdot thread – which is so all-round packed with misconceptions about Japanese that my head gets all asplodey just trying to keep track.

I'll stick to addressing just one mistake here. The question to be answered is: How many writing systems does Japanese use?

And the answer is: ONE. 

Yes, whatever you may have heard, Japanese does not use "three writing systems". It uses precisely one. No more, no fewer.

"Huh? There are three: Kanji, then hiragana, then katakana.. That's three writing syst..."

No. ONE. Read more

The goofiness of culturology doesn't always stop at fuzzy fantasies about ethnic-powered cherry blossom appreciation and negative-space discernment and robot chumminess. Sometimes it gets down and physical, as seen in mightily suspicious claims of magical ethnic hearing powers and super-long Japanese intestines.

But wait – hold those bowels! Maybe there is something special going on in Japanese guts! Or so says a researcher in France, who claims to have found evidence of enhanced nori-digesting ability inside those insides. Uh-oh! I've long joked that I'd have a heart attack if any of the common and loopy "uniquely Japanese" claims ever turned out to be true; is this my end in sight? Read more

Back in 2005, Japan Times science writer Rowan Hooper noted US-based medical studies which, although inconclusive, suggested that aging-related conditions could be ameliorated through transcendental meditation (TM) techniques such as mindfulness and progressive muscle relaxation. Hooper went on to suggest that Japanese lifespans may be long due to similar effects brought about by two factors: Buddhism and "shikata ga nai mentality".

If you have any contact with "Japanology" musings, you've no doubt heard of shikata ga nai, or its other common form shou ga nai, as yet another entry on a loooong list of "uniquely Japanese" concepts. The phrase, as normally used, is a simple expression of resignation, of giving in or going along when things are beyond one's control – as in, "Oh well, what are you gonna do." Read more

Those who insist that food in Japan is all about dainty, lightweight portions must not know the Mega Mac, a four-patty Big Mac introduced by McDonald's to Japan as a short-lived gimmick, then given a permanent home in the menu when hungry gourmets demanded more. Well, Burger King Japan has outdone the Mega Mac: for a few days, it's offering a seven-patty Whopper.  Read more