Evidently, the Japanese Cabinet Office has a yearly PR budget to place ads in women’s fashion magazines like CanCam to educate “the kids” about the never-ending Kuril Island Dispute.

The ad back in 2005 featured a straightforward manga-based explanation, but Team Japan Gov went all “Japan Cool” this year and decided to place a map of the four godforsaken disputed islands on the back of an imaginary Japan-theme embroidered “stadium jumper” baseball jacket, which for those not living here, are all the rage with rural delinquent youngsters with bad taste and cookie-cutter rock bands that play unattended gigs in Shimokitazawa. Perhaps referencing this ironically-uncool-and-also-actually-uncool jacket is an attempt to target a taste culture navel-gazing enough to actually cry the necessary tears over this spilt milk very serious issue. (Not that a CanCam girl would ever be seen in a jacket like this.)

Seriously, however, Japan totally called “shotgun” for these islands a long time ago and then some other country took the front seat — even though Japan clearly called “shotgun!” Japan may have longer, better, and awesomer historical claims on these volcanic rocks (how more clearly could they have said “shotgun”?), but when you go on Imperialist Death Race 1937 in Asia, you are pretty much going “all in” with your entire local empire in the pot. Losing $2 chip properties like Shikotan is exactly what happens when you ask the dealer to “hit you” at 19. But hey, if there is some geopolitical legal technicality that would let Japan expand its empire once again after 60 years of totally boring, soul-crushing, pansy-making, samurai-shaming peacetime, the State should let the Ebi-chan Epigone know all about it.

So not only does the government do absolutely nothing to remedy the kind of social stratification that causes middle-class office ladies to fight to the death for a space on the palanquin of a Lehman Brothers employee, but then uses the popularity of the guide-to-being-beloved-by-rich-men to give everyone a rallying point of past nationalistic victimhood to take their minds off of more pressing contemporary issues. How can anyone whine about the consumption tax and stagnant wages when Khabomai is in Red hands!

Interesting, however, to see the government try to build up sympathy for this ancient issue in such an odd media context. Will the Cabinet Office continue to advertise their ancient territorial losses in 2045 — when translucent titanichrome cyber-textiles are all the rage in Neo-Shibuya?

See a full-color version of the advertisement here.

A mini-documentary about sexual assault on the Tokyo subway.

(If you have trouble viewing video in our lightbox player, please go directly to the video here.)

Directed by Ian Lynam
Research by Ariki Rie
Featuring Ito Aki
Music by Copy (courtesy of Audio Dregs)

The following text originally appeared as the March 24, 2007 entry on economist Ikeda Nobuo’s personal blog. We have published this translation without the author’s express permission, and we accept all responsibility for any issues resulting from its publication.

At the second session in yesterday’s symposium, we talked about the antagonism between blogs and traditional media. People often say that rhetoric on the Net is “conservative” or that there are lots of “Net Right-Wingers,” but I don’t think this is true. Mr. Sasaki and I had the same opinion: this isn’t a confrontation between “Left” and “Right” but a confrontation between generations.

If you look at the comments left on this blog about the “comfort women” issue, you’ll realize that hardly anyone is thinking about the problem from the standpoint of apologizing for the Pacific War; most everyone is ideologically naive. In the “Okutani Reiko [bashing] festival” as well, opinions were overwhelmingly criticizing social stratification (格差社会) and left-wing. So the problem at hand is not “ideology.”

What these “anonymous majorities” share is a distrust of the traditional media. For example, the traditional media is unable to level criticisms against funding for organ transplants or prosecutors’ investigations of national policy. Blogs provide an Antithese to the mainstream media’s phony self-narrative and hypocrisy of being an “Ally of Justice” that can’t manage to speak out against subjects with which they have connections.

I am part of the second post-war generation, so I was educated by teachers in the [pro-Socialist] Japan Teacher’s Union, who praised the democracy of the new constitution. It was an era where [left-leaning newspaper] Asahi Shimbun and [progressive publisher] Iwanami Shoten wielded intellectual authority. Until high-school, I believed in an anti-war/pro-peace ideology, and since that followed in the field of sociology into Marxism, I participated in things like campus protests. The more you studied Marxism, however, the more you understood that it’s pretty worthless stuff. And that resulted in the leftist ideology losing its intellectual authority throughout the ’70s.

But there was a considerable lag between the leftists’ decline on an intellectual level and the workings of the real world. Politically, Tanaka Kakuei consolidated his socialist “1970 System,” and there was support for progressive local governments (革新自治体) to redistribute economic growth through the excessive scattering of welfare money (バラマキ福祉). This Social Democratic-like system reached its heyday in the 1980s. The patriarchal “Japanese Management Style” was praised all around the world as a guiding model, but in reality, it decreased Japan’s potential growth rate (productivity).

Then at the end of the ’80s, socialism collapsed, and then the Bubble burst. Right as leftist ideology disappeared, lavish social spending also became impossible. The internet appeared in that post-socialist world, so the “establishment” to be rallied against was no longer “American imperialism” or “monopoly capital” but the hypocrisy of the media’s anti-government pose (despite its parasitic reliance on the administration for broadcast rights and kisha club access) and pro-peace/pro-equality stance.

This kind of protest is not allowed to take place openly in Japanese society, so anonymity was required. The media will not acknowledge this fact either, so they just describe the protesting voices negatively as “Net Right-Wingers” and “cruel 2Channelers.” Of course, there are negative elements in the protests, but the old “student conflicts” were little more than pure violence. The difference is that the students embraced Marxism as an ideology and as a political faction; the Net rebellion has neither an ideology nor an organization.

Young people’s means of lodging a formal objection have therefore shifted from violence in the streets to debate on the internet; and the target of their protest has moved from the government to the media. In most cases, this kind of rebellion is simply young people venting their excess energy, but there is a possibility that youth can create something new if they can skillfully channel that energy. The American counterculture of 1960 led to innovations like the internet and GNU and transformed the nation during the Clinton-Gore administration. It would be a real waste for Japan if the energy of youth is just wasted on 2ch ranting.

Bandō Mariko’s book Dignity of Women『女性の品格』 may be piggybacking on the immense popularity of Masahiko Fujiwara’s 2005 bestseller The Dignity of the Nation 『国家の品格』 but the former somehow manages to discuss the abstract concept of “dignity” in a way that avoids diatribe and provides practical information for the reader. A self-help book for women who would not admit to reading self-help books, Dignity of Women offers Japan’s second sex a total of 66 to-do lists for becoming a “strong, kind, and beautiful woman.”

A Tokyo University graduate, author Bandō Mariko’s first-rate credentials are the key to establishing the credibility such an authoritative self-help book requires. She led a 34-year career as a civil servant, beginning in 1969 at the Prime Minister’s office, while commanding a role as a working mother and a behind-the-scenes champion of women’s rights in the male-dominated world of Japanese politics. In addition, Bandō served as General of the Bureau for Gender Equality and Consul General to Australia before taking on her current position as professor at the Graduate School of Showa Women’s University. In other words, Bandō perfectly embodies the kind of woman that tickles the fancy of successful young career women. Yet rather than writing a biographical success story about being a professional woman with an indomitable spirit, Bandō has instead concocted a guidebook for the modern woman with a single crucial point: just because you may reach the very top tier of Japanese society populated mostly with “undignified” businessmen that doesn’t give you the right to start acting like them.

Ms. Bandō begins her book by recognizing the existence of the aforementioned The Dignity of the Nation but argues that dignity of an entire nation is not attainable without the dignity of every individual belonging to that nation. While she admits that courage, responsibility, sense of logic, integrity and resilience are attributes that must belong to dignified men and women, responsibility for the dissemination of dignity falls on the female.

Bandō’s tutelage is divided into behavioral and philosophical tactics, and it is the combination of the two, she writes, that brings about true dignity. The seven chapters — entitled “Manner and Dignity”, “A Dignified Way to Speak”, “A Dignified Way to Dress”, “A Dignified Lifestyle”,“A Dignified Social Life”, “A Dignified Behavior”, and finally, “A Dignified Way to Live” — can be grouped systematically into those that apply to a woman’s professional life and those that apply to a woman’s personal life. The over-usage of the word “dignity” on every page, however, quickly becomes grating, especially since a brief scan through the first few lessons is really all you need to comprehend what a dignified woman would and would not do. Throughout the course of the book, the dignified woman reveals herself to be a female social organizational construct as palpable as fashion subcultures like Kogyaru or O-nee-kei.
Continued »

Last week, Shōnen Magazine (2007/45) broke the news that bikini idol Hoshino Aki intended to run for election as a member of the Japan ☆ Idol Party (日本☆アイドル党公認). The Shōnen Magazine headline — “What? Aki-chan’s standing for election?!” — was typically disingenuous but reflected the very real shock that many commentators felt upon hearing the news. Details of Hoshino and the J☆IP’s platform remain sketchy, but here we try to make sense of the practical political implications of her four immediately-announced campaign promises.

1. FOREIGN POLICY

“I will make everyone smile by appearing in my bathing suit.”
「私の水着でみんなに笑顔を生み出します。」

Japan urgently needs to build stronger, friendlier ties with its Asian neighbors. Hoshino proposes a strategy of overcoming the nation’s negative image with sheer eroticism, and her stern commitment to wearing bathing suits over the last few years suggests a feasibility to enacting this measure.

Nevertheless, it seems unrealistic to expect other nations to complacently make goo-goo eyes at Japan’s elected representatives, swimwear or no, and in any case, Hoshino has yet to propose any concrete steps for forging this hypothetical goodwill into lasting political and economic cooperation.

2. EDUCATION

“I will replace summer homework with collecting Hoshino Aki trading cards.”
「夏休みの宿題をほしのあきのトレカ集めに変更します。」

This idea is so obviously misguided that it is difficult to believe that she means it seriously. Encouraging entrepreneurial spirit in the next generation is vital for the nation’s post-industrial future, but a solid grounding in basic subjects should come first. Japanese children are already falling behind India’s in key areas such as mathematics, writing illustrated diaries, and using old-fashioned butterfly nets to catch stag beetles.

Hoshino claims she just wants to be loved by everybody, and this measure smacks of a weak attempt to placate this particular magazine’s target demographic. But why make such glib remarks when a wider audience could be paying attention? Shōnen Magazine’s core readership cohort is not just shrinking: they lack the legal right to vote. Her strategists should have avoided the issue altogether.

The intention for broad appeal may be innocent in principle, but a long campaign among these lines may be interpreted internationally as an attempt to institute a somewhat sinister and dangerous personality cult within the Japanese political sphere, ultimately undermining any goodwill Hoshino may accumulate via previously-emphasized swimwear activities.

3. STRUCTURAL REFORM

“After winning this election, I will attend the Diet in a bikini.”
「当選のアカツキにはもちろんビキニで国会に登院します。」

Japan’s officially democratic system of government has ossified to an alarming degree, and everyone agrees that reform is necessary across the board. This proposal, however, addresses only the most superficial of the issues — quite literally.

Note also that this pledge follows logically from her first campaign promise. Is Hoshino’s platform really so vacuous that it must be filled out with repetition?

4. SOCIAL SECURITY

“I will receive my pension earlier than any other idol.”
「どのアイドルよりも一足先に年金もらいます。」

An idol intentionally drawing attention to her advancing age and intention to live off the public purse as soon as possible is, in a word, eccentric. Hoshino may have meant to signal a commitment both personal and political to ensuring that Japan’s social security system remains solvent and meaningful into the future, but there is a real danger that voters will perceive the statement as grasping and selfish. The danger is especially acute given the stark contrast with the naked populism of the rest of her platform.