By Jasper Sharp, from Midnight Eye - “Tora, Tora, Tora! Pearl Harbour was our only choice. Our race was corrupted from the day we lost the war…” Karin Amamiya, lead singer of ultra-nationalist hardcore punk band The Revolutionary Truth looms centre stage, barking out aggressive but heartfelt anti-American sentiments to a dwindling audience.

Troubled music for troubled times, one might think, though on the surface at least, there seems to be little immediate to worry about for the citizens of modern day Japan, currently one of the safest places on the planet. However, in recent times, and especially since the death of Emperor Hirohito marked the end of the Showa Period in 1989, the Heisei Period has seen a marked revival in the nationalist movement.

Nationalism, with its indelible associations of racism and the military right wing is a fairly dirty word to most people, and a subject which most would prefer to waft aside without giving a second thought. But for documentary maker Tsuchiya, who stood amongst the cowed observers at the gig with which the film opens and viewing the proceedings firmly from the other side of the political fence, there’s something more heartfelt about Amamiya’s plea. “I shivered. I don’t know why. I felt her pain, somehow, like a reflected light beam stabbing the heart.”

The New God documents Tsuchiya’s attempts to delve beyond the political rhetoric and intimidating facade of the fascinatingly complex figures of Amamiya and guitarist/band-leader Hidehito Itoh of The Revolutionary Truth, in the process discovering that all three of them have a lot more in common than their seemingly diametrically opposed standpoints might first lead one to believe. Handing Amamiya a DV-camera in which to film herself in a series of talking head shots, over the course of little over a month, he manages to get a whole lot more than he initially bargained for…

Read the rest of the story at Midnight Eye

By Elaine Lies, from Reuters - An elderly man nearing death who wants to give something back to the world, or just a prankster?

The mystery of who is leaving envelopes of 10,000 yen ($82) bills in men’s toilets at government offices around Japan has gripped the nation this week despite the existence of far weightier issues, such as a looming election.

Since April 9, some 4 million yen ($32,720) has been found in men’s rooms from the northernmost island of Hokkaido to the southern island of Okinawa, Japanese media say. Virtually all has been found in government office buildings.

The bills are individually wrapped in traditional Japanese “washi” paper with the word “remuneration” handwritten on the outside in ink.

Each comes with a handwritten letter in formal wording evoking Buddhist language, saying the giver hopes the money will be “useful for your pursuit of knowledge.”

Newspapers have devoted lengthy articles to speculation about the identity of the unknown benefactor, and the mystery dominated evening news programs Wednesday. One domestic news agency even sent out urgent alerts as the number of bills found mounted.

The only thing everyone agrees on, given where the money is found, is that the person leaving them is a man.
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Doki Doki Majo Shinpan, already toping Amazon
Japan’s “Best Seller” list due to pre-release sales. By Dennis “Corin Tucker’s Stalker” Farrell, from Something Awful - The problem with witches is that they look like ordinary 13 year olds, which gives Japanese men no choice but to corner and feel up every young girl they come across.

In the newly released Nintendo DS game Doki Doki Majo Shinpan (which was surprisingly developed in Japan and not in Germany as the name implies), you play the part of a modern day witch hunter. Instead of employing antiquated methods of witch finding such as drowning, burning, or asking someone if they’re a witch, you use the touch screen to grope underage girls to determine their witchiness, then grope them some more to disable their magic powers.

This is causing something of an uproar in the U.S. for the obvious reason that our culture is woefully ignorant of the looming witch threat. For far too long these magical broads have gone unburned, avoiding detection for so long that their very existence is mistakenly considered a fable, much like dragons and the deaf.

Even if we did accept the presence of witches in the modern world, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan still wouldn’t go over very well in the U.S. because the ability to uncover them through touching is an ability that’s unique to the Japanese. While our tactile senses do little beyond reporting pain and pleasure and cardboard to our brains, a Japanese person can determine absolutely everything there is to know about an object by merely touching or fondling it. No one knows how this physiological phenomenon came about, but it has been the basis of many DS games thanks to the handheld’s touch screen interface.

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan english website

Cyzo Magazine By Ryann Connell, from Mainichi Daily News - It’s a fact of life that without the facts of life, there is no life. Period.

Even so, in Japan the issue of sexuality among the disabled is shunned from the public forum and discussion about it is regarded as taboo, one of the many unmentionable issues that Cyzo takes up in its February issue.

“When people hear the word ‘disabled’ the vast majority associate it with words like ‘care’ and ‘help,’ but they never think of ’sex.’ You should see people’s faces when I start talking about sex — it’s like their brains have short-circuited,” Yoshihiko Kumashige, the cerebral-palsy quadriplegic head of Noir — an NPO devoted to discussing sex among disabled — tells Cyzo.

Just because they can’t use their bodies like many others doesn’t mean the disabled aren’t interested in sex. And though they may not speak about it, there is actually Tokyo sex services that cater exclusively to the disabled.

Enjoy Club is one such place and provides oral or hand relief to the disabled.

“We get requests to help out from care workers and local governments,” Enjoy Club’s operator, identified only as a man called Saito-san, tells Cyzo. “If the girl can’t handle the job on her own, I’ll go along and help her out. Otherwise, we offer exactly the same sex services as any other.”

At first sight, it appears as though anybody disabled in Japan can have their sexual frustration sated as long as they’re prepared to foot the bill. But things are never quite as simple as they look when it comes to disabled sex. Those knowledgeable in the issue say the biggest problem within Japanese society appears to lie in the widespread refusal to even acknowledge the existence of sexual desire among the disabled.
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Interview with Bruce Osborn, who took amazing portraits of Japanese parents with their children.

There surely are extensive sociological studies of the Japanese society: figures, numbers, tiny print on countless pages and lots of dry charts, too. But what about a more artistic, visual approach? In 1982 American photographer Bruce Osborn began what has become his lifelong work: the Oyako series. For the last 25 years he took pictures of one parent with one child in a white studio setting. Bruce even introduced its own version of the Japanese “Oyako No Hi” (parent and child) day: he organizes a huge photo session every year. After some time, Bruce would even repeat the same parent-child shoot to reveal the significant changes in the relationship between mother and daughter for example, the differing characteristics of fashion changing over the years or simply documenting people getting older.

In the photo: 1984: Parents Mitsuaki Ohwada/tattooist and Akie Ohwada/housewife. The child Keiko Ohwada is an elementary school student. Bruce: “Her parents were tattooists and the girl got a huge shock when she entered a sent?, a public bath, for the first time. Until that event it was in her mind that all the adults must have tattoos. Everybody around the house had some and it was a very natural thing for her.”

Link

From BBC Asia-Pacific - The US has banned exports of iPods, fine wines and fast cars to North Korea as part of the punishment for the country’s nuclear bomb test last year.

The sanctions are said to be targeted at North Korea’s elite, who reportedly enjoy luxuries despite the country’s desperate poverty.

Meanwhile the US set talks with North Korea on lifting financial penalties.

The moves come amid efforts to restart multilateral talks aimed at persuading North Korea to halt nuclear activities.

US envoy Christopher Hill said, after meeting his North Korean counterpart in Berlin, that he hoped the six-nation talks would resume by mid-February.

The talks ended inconclusively in December, having resumed after a break of more than a year.

The sanctions on luxury goods were “carefully considered and carefully targeted” to affect only the country’s elite, said US commerce department spokesman Richard Mills.
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Male otaku live out their fantasies at
“maid cafes,” where they are waited on
by maids whose costumes come from
erotic comic books. Sayaka is dressed for
work at the Mailish maid cafe.
From National Public Radio - At the recent Tokyo Game Show, the crash and ping of computer combat echoed around a cavernous hall, as hundreds lined up to be the first to try newly released games. For fans, computer gaming isn’t so much a hobby as a way of life, offering people a ready-made community and, in some cases, a new identity.

Take 24-year-old Kai. Sengoku Basara is her favorite computer game. An office worker by day, Kai spends her weekends dressed up as a 16th-century samurai, Chosokabe Motochika. Her chest is bound flat. She wears a gray wig, armored cuffs, high black boots, a red satin jacket and a red eye patch over one eye. Other women, all dressed as computer-game versions of samurai, surround her. “I don’t want to be a man,” she says, “I just like cosplay” — short for costume play.

“I’m a nerd. This is Japan’s new culture. To me, it’s just one of the ways of showing your creativity,” Kai says.

Kai is part of a new Japanese tribe — the otaku, or nerd. Once the target of playground insults, otaku are now becoming an economic force to be reckoned with. Japan’s nerds are out and proud.

Almost 200,000 people trekked out to a suburban convention center on their annual pilgrimage to the game show. Many dressed in elaborate hand-sewn costumes. All devote time — and money — to their passion.

The otaku market generated an estimated $4 billion in 2004, says Ai Ohara of the Nomura Research Institute, which has studied the otaku phenomenon.

And the Tokyo district of Akihabara is proof of geek spending power. Here, computer-game theme songs waft out of shops piled high with gadgets in an exuberant celebration of geekdom. Indeed, Japan’s nerds, with their exacting demands, are driving consumer trends.

Read the rest of the story at NPR

Momofuku Ando at he opening ceremony of
the refurbished Instant Ramen Museum in
Osaka, Japan, on 25 November 2004. From Reuters - TOKYO, Japan. The Japanese inventor of instant noodles, a snack that has sold billions of servings worldwide since its launch, died on Friday at the age of 96, according to an official at Nissin Food Products, the company he founded.

Born in Taiwan in 1910 while it was under Japanese occupation, Momofuku Ando ran clothing and other companies in Taipei and Osaka early in his career.

He was inspired to develop the world’s first instant-noodle product after coming across a long line of people waiting to buy fresh “ramen” noodles from a black market stall during the food shortages after World War Two, Japanese media said.

After his Chicken Ramen product became hugely popular in 1958, despite a luxury price-tag of 35 yen, he went on to bring out the Cup Noodle in 1971.

Providing the instant noodles in a waterproof styrofoam container that could be used to cook them using just hot water proved a stroke of marketing genius that made the product a hit with time-pressed people around the world.

Ando remained in the public eye until recently — appearing on television in 2005 to promote a version of the Cup Noodle adapted for astronauts to eat aboard the space shuttle Discovery.

Often seen devouring servings of the dish he invented, Ando opened a museum devoted to instant noodles in Osaka in 1999. Ando is survived by his wife, Masako.

Japan’s Defense Agency Director
General Fumio Kyuma From Yahoo News - Japan is to create a full-fledged defense ministry for the first time since its World War II defeat, when the United States stripped the country of its right to a military.

The government is to upgrade the existing Defense Agency into the Defense Ministry. The agency had a lower standing than full-fledged ministries as Japan’s 1947 constitution declared the country to be pacifist.

The creation of the ministry was a top priority for Prime Minster Shinzo Abe. The Diet, or parliament, passed the required legislation, with support from both the ruling coalition and main opposition, late December.

The move is based on “a change in the security environment surrounding our country,” Defense Agency Chief Fumio Kyuma said during a military exercise in Chiba, southeast of Tokyo, at the weekend.

“It is important to make our Self-Defense Force more powerful,” said Kyuma, who is to become the nation’s first defense minister since the end of the war.

Japanese troops will still be called the “Self-Defense Force” despite the creation of the ministry. The country has one of the world’s biggest military budgets at 4.81 trillion yen (41.6 billion dollars) a year.
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