Banging the Drum

That's my backstage pass from a gig in Shimokitazawa (Below North Creek), a hip little pocket of Tokyo. That is, hip until sometime last month. That's when my band of drummers (Kitamada) and I teamed up with some cool kids from the isle of Hachijojima to play a small club there. That's the moment I'm afraid the whole place went Jersey (that's bowling talk for right into the gutter) and Shimokitazawa's cool straight up the creek. That's that I guess and that leaves nothing to do now but bang the drum slowly for what was once trendy.





That's a sample of Hachijo Taiko (a style of Japanese drumming unique to the isle of Hachijojima) from Kitamda's Yoshio and Harumi Endo. In the world of Japanese drumming, or wadaiko, hachijo taiko is an island unto itself where Yoshio Endo is something of a legend. The song is traditional but beyond that nothing is scripted here. There are no notes on paper and nothing to memorize. The rhythm just flows like waves on the water in a musical odyssey that sweeps you away in whatever direction the wind happens to be blowing that day. Born on an island that was once used to confine political dissidents and others, this misfit isle of music known as hachijo taiko is hemmed in only by that realm of endless possibilities known as the imagination. That is kind of cool after all I guess. 

OMG!

Photo of AKB48 Theater in
Akihabara, Tokyo
 by Karl Baron via Wikipedia

Yokohama - This past weekend fans of Japan's all-female pop music phenomenon, AKB48, got the chance to vote for their favorite group member. The voting is traditionally (since ca. 2009 anyway) conducted via ballots that come packaged with what has been dubbed an "election single" by the band's producers and a stroke of evil marketing genius by critics. 

Anybody with a yen to vote was able to participate in this year's election process that was topped off with a jam-packed stage event featuring a bevy of performers from this Far Eastern nation's updated and more feminine answer to the Vienna Boys Choir. 

The winner of the periodic selection process gets the chance to stand front and center stage as the band's lead performer until she is voted out in the next election or reaches the group's ripe old retirement age somewhere shy of twenty five or so, which ever comes first.

This most recent vote proved to be an upset victory for the newest leader of a group which has been plagued by controversy in recent months. Just how upsetting was it? The expression on the faces of the less lucky contenders (pictured in the Tweet by Twitter user, @MnYooo_ij, embedded below) upon supposedly hearing the announcement of the winner may speak louder than the volumes of CDs the band has sold around the globe. Or maybe not, you can freely elect to make of them what you want.

うちが作った画像wwwwwwwww RT @onnawomigaku ＜AKB48総選挙＞指原莉乃が初のセンターの座に♪さしこおめでとう(*´▽｀*)でも周りの反応は・・・・みんなはこの結果みんなどう思います？ twitter.com/onnawomigaku/s…
— みにょり (@MnYooo_jj) June 8, 2013

Related reading:

Dancing to a Different Beat @ The Temple Valley Times

Rino Sashihara tops annual AKB48 popularity poll @ The Japan Times

In the Eyes of the World

Japanese Rep Tells UN Body to "Shut Up"

(see correction below)


On Tuesday the Japan Times carried an article (“Rights groups tell Japan to fully tape interrogations of criminal suspects”) noting how “the U.N. Committee against Torture issued a statement pointing out that Japan’s criminal justice system should do away with its traditionally strong reliance on confessions by suspects, and demanded it implement “safeguards such as electronic recordings of the entire interrogation process” to prevent wrongful convictions.” 

It's a welcome statement from the UN’s Committee against Torture (CAT). I just wonder if Japan will take it to heart right away. According to reports on Twitter and in the Tokyo Shimbun, Japan’s human rights ambassador, Hideaki Ueda, made another statement at the CAT meeting which raised eyebrows. During the meeting a delegate from Mauritius criticized Japan’s criminal justice system as being “medieval.” Ueda quickly retorted, declaring that when it came to human rights Japan was “the most advanced country in the world.” Recognizing that he misspoke, the Japanese official soon corrected himself, saying that Japan was rather “one of the most advanced countries in the world” on human rights issues. When the gaffe earned less-than-veiled snickers from the other international representatives present at the forum, Ueda immediately fired back with a less-than-diplomatic “SHUT UP” and chided the group for laughing. The Japanese representative’s response seemed almost medieval in light of modern standards of international decorum. 

When state officials from anywhere behave so badly with the eyes of the world on them, I shudder to think what goes in their corner of the globe when no one is looking.

Correction:

This appeared as a letter in the Japan Times on June 13 (entitled Medieval Standard of Décor). An online comment there points out that it contains factual errors regarding remarks made by Hideaki Ueda, Japan’s human rights ambassador to the U.N. The letter notes that, according to the Tokyo Shimbun, Ueda stated that Japan was “the most advanced country” in the field of human rights. In fact after exhorting the other diplomats in the room to "shut up" the ambassador simply reiterated that Japan was “one of the most advanced countr(ies) in this field.” After interviewing blogger Shinichiro Koike about the incident it seems that the Tokyo Shimbun didn’t go the extra step to check out his story and got some of the facts wrong. While Koike has since cleared up the minor misunderstanding on his blog, the factual errors continue to spread like a disease that has now infected the pages of this paper and I regret that I was the carrier. I should have checked the facts more thoroughly before dashing off my letter. It shouldn’t have been too hard to do, after all we no longer live in the middle ages.

Beyond the Outer Limits

                                        

"Television controls society. Now we will control Japan." 

                                                   

No that's not from the opening voice-over for the Japanese version of The Outer Limits. It's what Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) chairman, Hiroshi Inoue told the television station's new employees back in 2002. The author of a blog called Ruinet recently gleaned the Internet* for some choice words of wisdom that have fallen from the lips of the Japanese media mandarin over the years. Among them were some of the following that Inoue has uttered during the last decade and a half in speeches welcoming new employees to the TBS fold. 

(Note: I think a couple of these quotes cry out for a pounding of the fist on a desk or something while shouting them out loud in a dictatorial voice.)

1998 "TV is a brainwashing machine. Even lies turn to truths once they've been broadcast."

2002 "Television controls society. Now we will control Japan."

2003 "Most Japanese people are stupid. They don’t know anything until we in television tell them what to do."

2010 "You are the chosen ones. You are on the side that moves the world via journalism. On the other side is the general public who are moved by the information we provide. It’s we, the chosen, who say what in Japan is black or white."

While they all sound pretty bad, Inoue may merely be channeling a mainstream sentiment that runs through a big chunk of the global media landscape. Sadly it's one that's taking ethics beyond the outer limits.

*Here and elsewhere.

It's in the Mail

The Price of Peace with N. Korea



Is it better to rent or own? It’s an age-old debate and one where the White House has drawn a line in the sand right along the 38th parallel...(read on in the Japan Times' Reader Mail section). 

Best Guest Estimate

Washington D.C. - I slide the printed reservation across the counter surface and into the hands of the clerk manning the business side of the front desk.

After giving me the once over he starts to quiz me with a curious look on his face. "What's the guest's name?" He queries.

Somewhere in the heart of Washington D.C.

It's an odd way to phrase the question, I think to myself, but then assume it's his way of being polite and I just give him my name.

After checking my name against the hotel's guest list he tells me, "Go ahead and put the bags on the luggage dolly for the bellhop to bring up to the room. The suitcases will be there when the guest arrives."

I tell him, "I am the guest." 

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were the baggage delivery man." He replies, not all that apologetically.

Not knowing exactly what to say, I simply utter, "Oh," while nodding my noggin up and down like one of the mindless Washington Nationals bobblehead dolls I later almost buy in the lobby gift shop. I guess it's my sartorial style, maybe the baseball cap, that fools him. I don't know for sure. I never ask him for clarification.

He then offers: "Would you like the bellhop to carry your bags up to your room?" 

I wave off the courtesy and tell him I can carry them up myself. After all I guess I'm somehow suited for the job.

Superbowl Meets its Match

                    

"Why do we even have football when this sport exists?!"

                                                        -Andy Stone 

Fish Out of Water

This is where it happened. Right here, some seventy years ago, where the pond used to be. It was this place that spawned a mysterious illness that gripped an entire generation. Its  origin and the cure that would end it had eluded the finest medical minds of the time. 

After exhausting every possible scientific avenue they turned to the family priest, a figure of little note from an obscure religion born via an equally obscure figure less than a century before. 

"It flows from the water," he told them and within less than an hour they were hauling dirt and sand from the nearby cliffs to fill in the crystal clear tranquil body teeming with aquatic life. 

That's when it happened. It was a miracle. Within less than a month all were well. Every one of them went on to play, sing, dance, and live life to its absolute limits - that is everyone except the fish who used to live in the water. 


Related post: The Picture of Evil

Puzzling

Sometimes "we" at The Temple Valley Times turn to other Times' to make sure we are keeping pace with the times and other Times'. Recently we turned to the pages of The Japan Times and this time we were a little puzzled by what we read, but we love puzzles! 

Here's a puzzle embedded in a January 25, 2013 Kyodo news story ("Tepco plans to dump 'cleaned' Fukushima No. 1 water")published in the Japan Times.

Maybe they shouldn't put the puzzles inside the news stories.

Even More Puzzling

What's even more puzzling in this article, about plans on the drawing board at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco)to dump radioactive water stored at its crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima into the sea (phew!), is the next and last sentence which reads:

"But as the new facility is not capable of removing radioactive tritium, an official said Tepco will consider diluting the processed water before releasing it to the sea."

I'm not the only one who is puzzled either. One reader, dubbed "Crank Dub," writes in the comment section beneath the article on The Japan Times website: 

"So, forgive me if I've misunderstood this: they are going to dilute the contaminated water before putting it in the ocean. And what magic substance will they use to dilute this water? Perhaps water? Before putting it into the sea water? Genius. Whatever they're being paid, double it."

On second thought Crank Dub doesn't seem puzzled at all. He/she seems to get it and asks all the right questions. I'm just puzzled why the Kyodo reporter didn't do the same.

Related post: Times Mistaken 

The Picture of Evil

If you want to lay your eyes on the picture of pure evil, just visit my mother-in-law. That lady will show it you for sure. She has it stowed away in one of her jam-packed closets. It's a seventeenth, or maybe eighteenth, century calligraphy scroll depicting the Japanese kanji character for "evil." There used to be a second scroll, depicting the character for good, but it burned to a crisp in a terrible raging inferno over a century ago. Meant to hang beside each other in perfect balance, the works of art came with a stern warning. The caretakers of the scrolls were never to display one without the other, especially "evil," lest something awful befall those who gazed upon it. 

Now all my mother-in-law is left with is "evil," so she keeps it hidden away in a dark dank closet where nobody can find it unless they know exactly where to look. I've never seen it unfurled but I know exactly where it lies. It's buried under a huge pile of other useless crap and fortunately for me and everybody else my mother-in-law never displays it.