Japanese Culture

[SeijiSensei]

Japanese reputation for quality products suffers in the wake of scandals

The CEO of Kobe Steel resigned in the wake of reports that the company cut corners putting production over quality control. This follows on similar scandals at some auto manufacturers and Mitsubishi Materials.

No deaths or injures have been blamed on the Kobe Steel products at the center of the data falsification scandal, which primarily involved employees saying incorrectly that products met the company’s own lofty safety claims. Customers like Toyota and Honda have said they have not found any safety issues related to the company’s products.

Nevertheless, the scandal shook manufacturers in a country that has long enjoyed a reputation for precision and dependability. Already, when Kobe Steel made its disclosures, confidence in Japan’s manufacturing industry had been shaken by disclosures that Mitsubishi Motors and Suzuki Motor had cheated on fuel economy tests.

After Kobe Steel admitted its quality lapses, Mitsubishi Materials, another major supplier to a number of major Japanese companies, said its workers had falsified inspection data on components that went into cars and planes. Nissan and Subaru, both major automakers, said last year that their employees had improperly conducted safety inspections for cars sold in Japan.

Government officials have admitted that the disclosures tarnished Japan’s reputation for quality and promised to take steps to restore it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/b...o-resigns.html

[Cosmic Eagle]

Apparently, some reports say it's only subpar by their standard and still of stricter quality than most other places' (international standards)

[SeijiSensei]

When prison is seen as a respite for loneliness and despair

Every aging society faces distinct challenges. But Japan, with the world’s oldest population (27.3 percent of its citizens are 65 or older, almost twice the share in the U.S.), has been dealing with one it didn’t foresee: senior crime. Complaints and arrests involving elderly people, and women in particular, are taking place at rates above those of any other demographic group. Almost 1 in 5 women in Japanese prisons is a senior. Their crimes are usually minor—9 in 10 senior women who’ve been convicted were found guilty of shoplifting.

Here's a comment from one of the inmates, a woman of 80 who is serving three years for shoplifting:

“I enjoy my life in prison more. There are always people around, and I don’t feel lonely here. When I got out the second time, I promised that I wouldn’t go back. But when I was out, I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic.”

[Haak]

Reminds me of that old Irn Bru advert

YouTube

https://youtu.be/pdDhW9Lwepc

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[SeijiSensei]

Japanese women thrown out of sumo ring when trying to administer first aid.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43652428

Is this "impurity" thing a menstruation taboo?

[SeijiSensei]

As economy grows again, Japanese become nostalgic for the Eighties

A so-called Lost Decade and many economically stagnant years later, the family’s convertible and beach vacations are long gone — but Ms. Masukodera is helping to bring the rest of Japan’s bubble era back. She performs in a pop-music duo called Bed In that borrows heavily from the keyboard lines, electric drums and power chords of the ’80s. They dress ’80s, too: The shoulder pads are big, the skirts are mini and the hues are Day-Glo when they aren’t just plain shiny.

YouTube

https://youtu.be/uvUqVw0m3Tw

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I wonder if the revival of shows like Lupin and Kitaro is part of this trend?

[SeijiSensei]

112 Year-Old Nonaka Masazo Now World's Oldest Man

https://in.reuters.com/article/japan...-idINKBN1HH1DF

A farmer and lumberjack in his youth, Nonaka later ran a hot spring inn in his hometown of Ashoro, on Hokkaido island, 900 km (560 miles) north of Tokyo, and raised two sons and three daughters.

Nonaka enjoys dipping in a spa and is fond of sweets, especially a strawberry sponge cake.

Am I the only one who pays attention to this thread any more?

[Honoakari]

Japan just found a 'semi-infinite' deposit of rare-earth minerals — and it could be a 'game-changer' in competition with China

The newly discovered deposit is enough to "supply these metals on a semi-infinite basis to the world," [...]

There's enough yttrium to meet the global demand for 780 years, dysprosium for 730 years, europium for 620 years, and terbium for 420 years. [...]

Japan now has the opportunity to control a huge chunk of the global supply, forcing countries that manufacture electronics, like China and the US, to purchase the minerals on Japan's terms.

Wohooo! Nippon Banzai! This is the kind of news I've been waiting for.

[Verso Sciolto]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Japanese women thrown out of sumo ring when trying to administer first aid.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43652428

[...]

"Sumo sexism row rumbles on as girls barred from kids’ event" - By Junichi Miyagawa / Staff Writer for the Asahi Shimbun - April 12, 2018
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201804120032.html

... Similar to barring girls -active players and team managers- from the field at Koshien etc...

[SeijiSensei]

^Do you think the concerns about safety are real, or just sexist propaganda?

Meanwhile nineteen-year-old LPGA golfer Hataoka Nasa had an unfortunate day. She shot a 68 yesterday to climb into the final group on Sunday at the Lotte Invitational on Oahu. She played alongside young Canadian star and eventual winner Brooke Henderson, and recent British Open winner American Mo Martin. Nasa's day started well with a birdie on the first hole, but then she sunk into the kind of living hell only golfers would appreciate. She began a string of five bogeys and a double bogey to complete her front nine and shot even par on the back. She fell back six strokes from third place to nineteenth, which no doubt cost her tens of thousands of dollars. I suspect she'll come back. She's had a pretty impressive start to her career so far.

And besides, as an American who loves the space program, I've got to root for a girl whose mother named her after our NASA!

[Verso Sciolto]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

^Do you think the concerns about safety are real, or just sexist propaganda?
[...]

In reply I'd suggest re-examing the very questions asked.

[Verso Sciolto]

クールジャパンのセクハラ訴訟　被告の官僚ら棄却求める
北沢拓也 for the Asahi Shimbun - 2018年4月18日16時53分
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASL4L3FQCL4LUTIL00K.html

In the past those who set up and ran "Cool Japan" may themselves have been among the country's worst export products.

Not least among the criticism, one aspect recurring here too - as mentioned and referenced among the sources for the "Cool Japan" Wikipedia article:
"Government-Backed 'Cool Japan' Fund Hit by Harassment Claims"
By Yuji Nakamura and Takako Taniguchi for Bloomberg - July 11, 2017 at 10:28:59 GMT+9
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...assment-claims


次期社長に北川氏　クールジャパン機構
2018年3月3日05時00分
https://www.asahi.com/articles/DA3S13384948.html

経済産業省は２日、官民ファンド、クールジャパン機構の社長にソニー・ミュージックエンタテインメント（Ｓ ＭＥ）元副会長の北川直樹氏（６４）を起用すると発表した。６月２９日付。太田伸之社長は退任 する。
世耕弘成経済産業相は２日の閣議後会見で「どういう戦略で投資を進めて日本の価値を世界に発信 するのか、[...]

「セクハラは人権侵害」財務省は認識せよ
日本新聞労働組合連合（新聞労連）
中央執行委員長　小林基秀 - April 18, 2018
http://www.shinbunroren.or.jp/seimei/180418.html


"Women in media call for change after Fukuda sexual harassment case"
Mainichi, April 20, 2018 - Japanese original by Kasane Nakamura, General Digital News Center, and Takashi Kokaji, Morioka Bureau
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles...0m/0na/028000c

[SeijiSensei]

Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry

Two years ago, Kazushige Nishida, a Tokyo salaryman in his sixties, started renting a part-time wife and daughter. His real wife had recently died. Six months before that, their daughter, who was twenty-two, had left home after an argument and never returned.

“I thought I was a strong person,” Nishida told me, when we met one night in February, at a restaurant near a train station in the suburbs. “But when you end up alone you feel very lonely.” Tall and slightly stooped, Nishida was wearing a suit and a gray tie. He had a deep voice and a gentle, self-deprecating demeanor.

Then he remembered a television program he had seen, about a company called Family Romance, one of a number of agencies in Japan that rent out replacement relatives. One client, an elderly woman, had spoken enthusiastically about going shopping with her rental grandchild. “The grandchild was just a rental, but the woman was still really happy,” Nishida recalled.

Nishida contacted Family Romance and placed an order for a wife and a daughter to join him for dinner. On the order form, he noted his daughter’s age, and his wife’s physique: five feet tall and a little plump. The cost was forty thousand yen, about three hundred and seventy dollars. The first meeting took place at a café. The rental daughter was more fashionable than Nishida’s real daughter—he used the English word “sharp”—but the wife immediately impressed him as “an ordinary, generic middle-aged woman.”

Nishida's pretend daughter eventually convinced him to reach out to his estranged real daughter with a small measure of success.

Weddings are obviously a common line of business for the rent-a-family companies, but the Japanese have come up with some pretty ingenious reasons for using these services:

In Tokyo this winter, I met with cast members from both Family Romance and Hagemashi-tai. They had attended weddings, spiritual seminars, job fairs, standup-comedy contests, and the album releases of teen idols. One woman had been impersonating a man’s wife for seven years: the real wife had put on weight, so the husband hired the stand-in to go out with him and his friends. The same actress had also replaced overweight mothers at school events; the children of overweight parents may be subject to bullying. Ichinokawa and Ishii told me many more stories. A hostess in a cabaret club hired a client to request her. A blind woman rented a seeing friend to identify the good-looking men at a singles dance. A pregnant woman rented a mother to persuade her boyfriend to acknowledge their child, and a young man rented a father to conciliate the parents of his pregnant lover.

Renting replacements to receive scoldings and apologies is also a common line of business.

Rental apologies, the obverse of rental scoldings, can be particularly thorny. Ishii outlined some possible scenarios. If you make a mistake at work, and a disgruntled client or customer demands to see your supervisor, you can hire Ishii to impersonate the supervisor. Ishii, identifying himself as a department head, will then apologize. If the apology isn’t accepted, a different actor can be sent to apologize as the division head. If the division head doesn’t get results, Ishii dispatches a remorseful president. These situations can get complicated, because the real department heads and presidents aren’t aware that they have apologized.

[Verso Sciolto]

"Tokio member Tatsuya Yamaguchi investigated over indecent act with high school girl" - Kyodo News, via The Japan Times, April 25, 2018.

According to other reports the girl escaped by fleeing into the bathroom of his apartment and calling her mother from there.

It sounds like this man may well be another fitting representative of the country. From the referenced JT article:

Yamaguchi and [... names omitted...]— have been working as special ambassadors to promote the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games flag tour, [...]

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...ool-aged-girl/

May 1 - NHK World:

Sources close to the investigation say prosecutors heard Yamaguchi's account and decided to suspend the indictment because the victim withdrew her complaint.

[Verso Sciolto]

"Japanese actress accuses director, starts #MeToo group" - By Yuri Kageyama | AP - April 27, 2018

Chino's new group aims to stop sexual and power harassment in Japan's theater, film and entertainment industries, and offer counseling and legal help for victims, with the goal of showing that speaking out comes with no repercussions, Tanaka and Chino said.

"We want to build for the future," Chino's lawyer Izutaro Managi said. "This effort should be meaningful for perpetrators, as well as for victims."
____

Chino's group site (only in Japanese): http://nosekuhara.com

[Verso Sciolto]

"Researchers developing AI capable of generating haiku from images" - The Mainichi, May 2, 2018
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles...0m/0dm/069000c

SAPPORO (Kyodo) -- The development of artificial intelligence software that can write haiku poems based just on images is underway in Japan, with researchers hoping the project will improve how technology understands human emotion.

Posted below, found alongside - among the "Latest Articles".

[Verso Sciolto]

During their televised press conference, remaining Tokio members also appealed to members of the audience: to tell people to stop trying to identify the high school girl and to tell people to stop blaming her for the admitted sexual misconduct of Tatsuya Yamaguchi.

長瀬智也 (Tomoya Nagase):

[...] 被害者の方に純粋な気持ちがあったと思うと、胸が苦しいです。なので、被害者の方を責めたり、特定するよう な人が出ないことを心から願っています。そして、僕らもこの件とちゃんと向き合って、被害者の方とも向き合 います。[...]

Quotes, excerpts and full transcripts available from a.o.:
https://www.sankei.com/affairs/news/...020011-n1.html
http://www.asahi.com/and_M/interest/...805026484.html

[AnimeFan188]

There have never been so few children in Japan (at least, not
since they started counting):

"Self-driving cars. Food delivery robots on wheels. Automated checkout lines at the
grocery store.

As technology's capacity to replace human labor continues to grow, many workers in
the West fear losing their jobs to robots. But in Japan, people might not be so upset if
robots replaced them on factory assembly lines, a top official said Friday.

“The Western way of thinking is 'robots will steal my job,' " Japanese Deputy Prime
Minister and Minister of Finance Taro Aso said at a conference in Manila. “But in Japan,
robots will reduce the ordinary man's load.”

That's probably because Japan finds itself in a somewhat unique predicament: It's the
world's third-largest economy, but its population is shrinking — and quickly. On Friday
— the day before Japan's annual Children's Day celebration — the government
released a stark statistic: Since the government started counting in 1950, there have
never been so few children in Japan.

That data point shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. This is the 37th year in a
row that the population of children in Japan has continued to drop. In 2017, about
941,000 Japanese children were born — the lowest number since the country started
recording its births, in 1899. And the year before marked another milestone: the first
time in history that there were fewer than 1 million births recorded in the country."

See:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.ba88081aa13c

[Verso Sciolto]

Originally Posted by AnimeFan188

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.ba88081aa13c

“I'm 77 years old and still working,” Aso, the government official, said Friday.

Many ordinary Japanese people have been calling for your retirement because you rarely represent them when you claim to speak for them - out of both sides of your gaffe prone mouth. Please listen to these voices for a change. Resign, if you want to do something beneficial on behalf of the ordinary Japanese people.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Japan struggling to cope with tourism boom

A downside has emerged — something the media is calling "kankō kōgai", or "tourism pollution". [But] rude foreign tourists are a common media topic whose anecdotal coverage makes it impossible to quantify. [Still], a comment by comedian Takeshi Kitano has made a big impression: He said Japan has sacrificed its cultural integrity for the sake of money, thus implying that foreign tourism is polluting the Japanese spirit.

Given that the largest portion of overseas tourists came from mainland China in 2017 and more than 80 per cent of Japanese people hold an unfavourable opinion of the country, it would follow that, at best, the Japanese public only tolerates the foreign tourist boom.

THE JAPAN TIMES