Shibuya Dog Gone, on His Way to China’s Boilers?
Forgive me for making politics out of the theft of an adored landmark from a place I happen not to adore so much: Shibuya’s Hachiko, the namesake statue of the Tokyo intersection immortalized for a generation of film buffs in Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.” But this is too much.
The other night, some hoodlums made off with the plaza’s famous dog meeting place by setting up workers’ signs, cones, and a tarp to hide the crime from view. After they carted off the effigy of the loyal professor’s pup, speculation in the Japan Times is that a metal shortage related to the Beijing Olympics has led to the theft:
“I’m not surprised — nothing is sacred for these thieves,” said a source in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.
“They made off with 200 incense burners at a cemetery in Kanagawa and a bronze bell from a fire watchtower in Ibaraki. They’ll clearly stop at nothing. I fear Hachiko might be on his way to China,” he added.
All right. Sure, it’s possible that scrap metal scavengers took to one of the most public plazas on Earth, covered by a 24-hour NHK camera, to make an extra buck. But then again, cities can get a little carried away by their ideologies.
After all, Boston famously overreacted to a promotional stunt by some Cartoon Network pranksters whose Lite-Brites were mistaken for IED’s. I’m not accusing anyone in the Japanese government or local authorities of any prejudice, but an unnamed source in the media accusing China with no evidence and a reporter parroting it uncritically certainly do paint a picture, don’t they?
UPDATE: Aw, crap. April Fools! This will teach me to go by the date where I am, not where the story is. Apologies to the Japan Times for believing the worst.
links for 2007-03-31
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The government could impose penalty tariffs on Chinese paper imports on a preliminary basis subject to a final determination by Commerce later this year.
links for 2007-03-30
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FP asked Gerald Curtis, a top expert on Japanese politics, why Japan has so much trouble moving beyond its past.
A Passing Passage: When the U.S. was a model for China
I’m reading Margaret MacMillan’s Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World
In the early days of the republic, many Chinese looked to the United States as a model—of government, but also of a society. President Woodrow Wilson’s promises of a new world order founded on justice and peace, his talk of national self-determination, and his evident antipathy to Japanese attempts to dominate China and the rapid expansion of Japanese forces into Siberia in the wake of the Russian Revolution made him, briefly, a hero to nationalistic Chinese. That came to an abrupt end in 1919, when Wilson took a prominent role in the gift of former German posessions in China and Japan. The americans, so many Chinese concluded, were simply imperialists in republican clothing
Sometimes, it’s useful to remember that arrangements of the China–United States–Japan triangle have been so different in the last century as to seem a fantasy hypothetical—something out of a Star Trek: The Next Generation allegory.
links for 2007-03-27
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In this video recently posted by YouTube user oniazuma, a Japanese TV program takes a look at the Yasukuni Shrine and Class A war criminals:
links for 2007-03-25
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Venezuela said on Saturday it was working on a raft of oil deals with China, giving impetus to President Hugo Chavez’s attempts to break his country’s dependence on oil exports to the United States.
links for 2007-03-24
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SCMP: “…the drumbeating [within China] about being the top medal winner at the [Beijing 2008] Olympic Games has already damaged China’s image.”
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Nakamatsu said he planned to invent a missile shield system that can “make missiles turn around.” When asked how he planned to accomplish the feat, he replied, “I cannot give you a simple answer.”
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“Mainichi Shinbun reports that Shiro Asano, DPJ candidate for the Tokyo gubernatorial race, has decided to make challenging Gov. Ishihara’s nationalist views a part of his election campaign.”
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“China must be more transparent about its military intentions, top US general Peter Pace has said.”
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“China’s military is proposing officer exchanges and other confidence-building measures with the U.S. Army and may be inching closer to setting up a “hotline” for emergency communication with Washington, the top U.S. general said Friday.”
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“Japanese participants in the study said Tuesday the joint project was ending because both nations were unable to reconcile their positions on how to approach the study of international relations in Asia, the Japan Times reported.”
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“Japanese government ministers will “discuss proposals on a new framework that will ensure participation by the United States and China, the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitters,” a foreign ministry official said.”
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China and Japan will set up a working group to find out ways to prevent pollution by disused computers, air conditioners and other electronic junk from Japan. This will be the first time for the two neighbours to set up a discussion group for the handling
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the Chinese and Japanese teams, 10 on each side, will write separately their own take on the history between the countries, both ancient and modern, and will exchange any controversial points
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Yesterday, French presidential candidate François Bayrou called for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, saying that China was not doing enough to stop the bloodshed in Darfur:
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Japan is preparing new laws to protect offshore oil and gas rigs in a move that will raise the stakes in a long-running dispute with China over maritime boundaries in the East China Sea.
Aso Knocks Blonds, CNN Runs Un-Flattering Photo of ‘Asa’
Japanese Foreign Minister Aso Taro is in rare form, even for his inflammatory self. Making a case for the potential for Japanese diplomacy in the Middle East, he asserted that skin color would be a major advantage:
“Japan is doing what Americans can’t do,” the Nikkei business daily quoted the gaffe-prone Aso as saying in a speech.
“Japanese are trusted. If (you have) blue eyes and blond hair, it’s probably no good,” he said.
“Luckily, we Japanese have yellow faces.”
Folks on the CNN website posting a Reuters story picked a photo of Aso looking particularly pugnacious, and to add insult to injury, they fought back by spelling his name wrong in the caption!
Photo in context after the jump.
links for 2007-03-17
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But 渋 is in a class of characters which were simplified by a subtly different kind of rule. A couple more examples from the same class should make it obvious what the rule is…
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The Japanese government has stirred further controversy by again saying it had found no evidence that Asian women were forced to be wartime sex slaves.
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“A lawmaker has called for a national “Humiliation Day” on Sept. 18 to mark the start of Japan’s 1931 invasion and remind the Chinese public of foreign attacks, state media reported Thursday.”
links for 2007-03-16
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This post consists of two translated opinion columns concerning Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recent comments on the ‘comfort women’ issue, as summarized in the following newspapers:
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Journal archives online.
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The China Blog List (CBL) is a collection of links to English language weblogs focused on China.
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Exploring migrants, exiles, expatriates, and out-of-the-way peoples, places, and times, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Hello Project has announced (Japanese) that two new members of Morning Musume will be 16 year-old Rin Rin (Qian Lin – near right) and 19 year old Jun Jun (Li Chun – far right). Both are Chinese.
