Australia news.com.au reports on a breakthrough in human rights underway in Japan.

But how do they find out if Wonder Woman says “I do?”

A Japanese man has enlisted hundreds of people in a campaign to allow marriages between humans and cartoon characters, saying he feels more at ease in the “two-dimensional world”.

Comic books are immensely popular in Japan, with some fictional characters becoming celebrities or even sex symbols.

Marriage is meanwhile on the decline as many young Japanese find it difficult to find life partners.

Taichi Takashita launched an online petition aiming for one million signatures to present to the government to establish a law on marriages with cartoon characters.

Within a week he has gathered more than 1000 signatures through.

“I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” he wrote.

“However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?”

Befitting his desire to be two-dimensional, he listed no contact details, making it impossible to reach him for comment to explain if his campaign is serious or tongue-in-cheek.

But some people signing the petition are true believers.

“For a long time I have only been able to fall in love with two-dimensional people and currently I have someone I really love,” one person wrote.

“Even if she is fictional, it is still loving someone. I would like to have legal approval for this system at any cost,” the person wrote.

Japan only permits marriage between human men and women and gives no legal recognition to same-sex relationships.

Gavin Newsome needs to start preparing San Francisco’s City Hall for the ceremonies.

So the Alien has an actual model in Nature: the Goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni). It figures.

1:40 video

From Atomic Nerds via Karen L. Myers.

President Theodore Roosevelt demonstrating some wrist holds

Samuel Hill, a prominent attorney, railroad executive, and businessman of Seattle, Washington, concerned for his son’s health, decided that judu (which he had seen performed while visiting Japan on business) would represent an ideal form of fitness training. Despite his own Harvard background, he made inquiries in New Haven seeking an instructor, and was advised to retain Yamashita Yoshiaki, who was duly hired and imported from Japan.

A demonstration was arranged of Yamashita’s judo for President Roosevelt in March 1904. TR was a devotee of boxing and a strong believer in fitness, and before long Yamashita was giving the President of the United States lessons three times a week.

This fascinating October 2000 article, from Journal of Combative Sport, was recently posted on a martial arts list I read.

Tama, Stationmaster of Kinokawa, Japan

AFP:

In times of need, Japanese say they can even ask the cat for help. In this town in western Japan, people look to Tama, a nine-year-old cat working as master of an unmanned train station.

The tortoiseshell coloured creature, born and raised at Kishi Station on the provincial Kishigawa Line, wears a formal uniform cap of Wakayama Electric Railway and calmly watches passing passengers who greet her.

There are 10 train stations on the 14.3-kilometre (8.9-mile) line.

“Tama is the only stationmaster as we have to reduce personnel costs. You say you could ask for the cat’s help, but she is actually bringing luck to us,” Wakayama Electric spokeswoman Keiko Yamaki said.

The company feeds her in lieu of salary.

Tama was born from a stray cat brought to the station by a cleaner and kept by Toshiko Koyama, a local who runs a grocery store next door.

The station went unmanned in April 2006 as the line was losing money. But Tama stuck around.

She rose to national stardom in January 2007 as the railway company formally appointed her as “stationmaster”.

Her appointment had an immediately positive effect, boosting the number of passengers using the line in January by 17 percent from a year earlier.

For the year to March 2007, the number of passengers rose to 2.1 million, up 10 percent from the previous 12 months, according to Yamaki.

Happy with her successful job as stationmaster, the company promoted Tama to “super-stationmaster” in January this year, making her “the only female in a managerial position” in the company’s 36-strong workforce.

“She now holds the fifth highest position in the company,” Yamaki joked.

In reward for the promotion, Tama got a new “office”.

The stationmaster’s office, a renovated former ticket booth at the station, opened in April with the attendance of Kinokawa Mayor Shinji Nakamura and Wakayama Electric president Mitsunobu Kojima.

The office guarantees her some privacy.

“She declines to relieve herself when passengers are looking. We set the toilet where passengers can’t see,” Yamaki said.

Those who want to greet her must be careful so as not to miss her.

“She works nine to five and takes Sundays off,” Yamaki said.

Tama commutes with Koyama, the grocery store operator, from a shed next to the station. As Koyama tells her, “Ms Stationmaster, it’s time to work,” Tama comes along to the station, Yamaki said.

The stationmaster is set to appear in a French documentary film, being directed by Myriam Tonelotto, about wonder cats from around the world.

Japanese culture, behavior, customs, etiquette, and social expectations are very, very different from our own. Don Roley provides some useful advice for Occidentals considering studying martial arts in Japan.

When you take a Japanese martial art in Japan the first thing you need to understand is that it is not a business to the teachers. It is a relationship. In many ways it is like a marriage. But unlike a marriage- one side, the teacher, has all the power. The students defer to the teacher and follow his directions. There is no negotiations, no pick and choose of what to follow or not. The student pretty much jumps when the teacher says jump and sits when the teacher says sit. Your only choice should you not like the situation is to sever your ties and leave. Again, unlike a marriage leaving this relationship is much cheaper. Since you place so much control over yourself when you enter into this relationship, finding a teacher worthy of that trust is important.

Serena Kozakura, a 38-year-old Japanese Bikini Model, was able to get her conviction for vandalism overturned by persuading the Tokyo High Court her most prominent assets precluded her entry to the scene of the crime.

Mainichi Daily News

Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water reinterpreted in Japanese style:

Japanese inventor Kazuhiko Minawa has found a non-fossil-fuel-based energy source capable of supplying enough electricity to power a commercial holiday display.

Reuters

0:48 video

Greenpeace thinks it has found the way to defeat the clever Japanese, who manage to harvest hump-backed whales in defiance of an international ban on whaling… “for research.” After they’ve been “researched,” you see, Japan’s harvested whales are not simply discarded, but instead manage to find their way to Japanese dining tables.

This year Greenpeace (couch-Eco-warriors that they are) is following the humpback whales by satellite, and proposes to save them by asking its website’s bleating moonbat readers to select a name. Once they’ve named the puppy, the theory is that presumably it will be that much easier to guilt the Japanese about eating it.

And what a choice of names!
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Again, from Karen L. Myers.

November 10, 2007–April 13, 2008
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Currently underway at Washington’s Smithsonian-affiliated Sackler Gallery is an exhibition of the Etsuko and Joe Price Collection of Edo Period Japanese Painting. On previous display in Japan at four locations, the Price collection attracted more than 800,000 visitors becoming the most successful museum exhibition in Japanese history.

Paul Richard’s review, in the Washington Post, makes an interesting comparison:

For the beauty-loving samurai of 18th-century Japan, those competitive aestheticians, true mastery of ink and edge were arts of the same height.

Slicing through a torso with a curving steel blade and putting ink to silk with a liquid-loaded brush, both of these were stroke arts. Both required the same swiftness, the same lack of indecision. For the master of the brush and the master of the blade, who were sometimes the same person, the flawless stroke expressed a Japanese ideal—the beauty-governed union of sure, unhurried speed and centuries-old tradition, utter self-assurance and Zen purity of mind.

Roughly 150 different paintings will be displayed 50 at a time. During the unusual five-month span of the exhibition, several complete rotations are scheduled to accommodate the scale of the collection and to protect the light-sensitive works from excessive continuous exposure.

Smithsonian Press Release

The Shin’enKan Foundation offers a CD of the collection.

The New York Times describes the latest approach to self-defense in Japan, a country with a centuries-old tradition of state monopoly of force: disguising yourself as a vending machine. More active resistance would be “too embarrassing.”

On a narrow Tokyo street, near a beef bowl restaurant and a pachinko parlor, Aya Tsukioka demonstrated new clothing designs that she hopes will ease Japan’s growing fears of crime.

Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine.

The wearer hides behind the sheet, printed with an actual-size photo of a vending machine. Ms. Tsukioka’s clothing is still in development, but she already has several versions, including one that unfolds from a kimono and a deluxe model with four sides for more complete camouflaging.

These elaborate defenses are coming at a time when crime rates are actually declining in Japan. But the Japanese, sensitive to the slightest signs of social fraying, say they feel growing anxiety about safety, fanned by sensationalist news media. Instead of pepper spray, though, they are devising a variety of novel solutions, some high-tech, others quirky, but all reflecting a peculiarly Japanese sensibility.

Take the “manhole bag,” a purse that can hide valuables by unfolding to look like a sewer cover. Lay it on the street with your wallet inside, and unwitting thieves are supposed to walk right by. There is also a line of knife-proof high school uniforms made with the same material as Kevlar, and a book with tips on how to dress even the nerdiest children like “pseudohoodlums” to fend off schoolyard bullies.

The devices’ creators admit that some of their ideas may seem far-fetched, especially to crime-hardened Americans. And even some Japanese find some of them a tad naïve, possibly reflecting the nation’s relative lack of experience with actual street crime. Despite media attention on a few sensational cases, the rate of violent crime remains just one-seventh of America’s.

But the devices’ creators also argue that Japan’s ideas about crime prevention are a product of deeper cultural differences. While Americans want to protect themselves from criminals, or even strike back, the creators say many Japanese favor camouflage and deception, reflecting a culture that abhors self-assertion, even in self-defense.

“It is just easier for Japanese to hide,” Ms. Tsukioka said. “Making a scene would be too embarrassing.”

4:25 video

Japan undoubtedly has the funniest game shows.

Hat tip to Dominique Poirier.

saddle of oak and mulberry covered with deerskin

The Shōsōin treasure house is part of the Great Eastern Temple (Tōdai-ji) complex at Nara, the Imperial capital of Japan from 710-794 A.D. The treasure house came into as the result of the donation of some 600 precious objects to the Tōdai-ji Temple by the Empress Kōmyō in 756 A.D. in memory of her recently deceased husband the retired Emperor Shōmu.

Over the centuries, further donations were made, and today the Shōsōin contains 9000 objects.

The public is not admitted to the treasure house, but an annual exhibition takes place at the Nara National Museum. This year’s exhibition will be held October 24—November 12, and some of the items to be displayed have already been announced.

The Yoshida Kyōdai (aka the Yoshido Brothers) perform Kodo on the shamisen, used by Nintendo as the theme music for its Wii game console.

Their style of music is called Tsugaru-jamisen, a shamisen style originating in Aomori prefecture in the northern end of the island of Honshū.　

3:46 video

In this month’s Vanity Fair, Nick Tosches serves up a tour d’horizon of the world of sushi from Tokyo’s Tuskiji fish-market where fish merchants use out-sized samurai swords to slice 300 lb. (136.36 kg.) tuna into quarters, to the locally famous Daiwa hidden in nondescript Tokyo streets in search of sea pineapple, to super high end restaurants like Sugiyama and Masa in New York where dinner for one can cost $480.

Sample excerpt:

My companion, the Japanese translator Eva Yagino, speaks to the chef, Hiroyoshi Gota, who tells her that, among the many sakes sold here, there’s a special sake, made by the Miyagi brewer Uragasumi, that’s rarely available. The waitress pours us some, letting the cold sake overflow to the ceramic saucer beneath the masu, the sake box, made of the same pale wood, hinoki—a cypress that grows only in Japan—from which the best sushi-bar counters are crafted. A ceramic dish of sea salt is placed on the table, and Eva-san sets me straight: I’m to put a pinch of the salt on a corner of the masu, drink from that corner, raising the masu and ceramic saucer together, replenish the salt in the corner whenever I want, and in the end drink all the spillage in the saucer; then order more sake and do it again. As we sip our salted spillage, Eva-san translates the menu for me.

“Nodo-kuro,” she says. “A white fish with a black throat from the Sea of Japan. It is rarely caught.”

As she continues, I recall the way Tom Asakawa smiled when he said, ” … and other things.”

“Anglerfish liver. Ayu-fish guts. Sea-cucumber guts. Oh, and look at all these whale dishes: whale sushi; hari-hari nabe—that’s whale meat with mizuna, a sort of Japanese mustard green that looks like a dandelion green; whale bacon; whale skin; whale tongue; whale brain; shinzo (that’s whale heart); whale ovary—and, oh, here’s your hoya sashi, your raw sea pineapple. Sashi is what the restaurant people call sashimi.”

As I ponder my choices, Eva-san tells me about mamushi-zake. It’s a sake to which, during fermentation, a mamushi is added. The mamushi, a type of pit viper, is one of the two species of poisonous snakes indigenous to Japan. Introduced live into the fermenting sake, it releases its poison into the brew as it leaves this vale of tears. Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese are not big on snake eating, but there is this sake.

“I need to drink that,” I say.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Manichi Daily News reports that 11 Japanese kids were hospitalized by ghost stories.

UJI, Kyoto—Eleven junior high school students suffered hyperventilation and were rushed to hospital after talking about ghosts on a bus during a school trip Saturday afternoon, school officials said.

They are fully conscious and their conditions are not serious. Doctors said they suspect that the students suffered hyperventilation as a result of anxiety caused by the tales about ghosts.

PJM has a valuable essay by Nancy Rommelmann, accompanied by this 8:10 video.

In Germany, trompe d’oiel advertising on delivery trucks is used to atttract the attention of consumers.

But Japanese girls attract other kinds of attention with skirts silkscreened with trompe d’oeil images of lady’s undergarments.

Hat tips to Karen Myers and Frank Dobbs.

Japanese television shows can be very amusing. Here is an excerpt from a game show in which contestants compete in contests simulating the supposed athletic and acrobatic of Ninja Warriors. Makoto Nagano, a 34 year old fisherman, turns in a spectacular performance.

9:03 video

Japan has absolutely appalling gun control. Basically, you can’t have one. Wealthy Japanese collect non-firing replica firearms. And apparently frustrated Japanese enthusiasts make guns out of paper.

Original Japanese language page link

Translated (sort of) by Google’s Beta Japanese translatorlink

If you collect tsuba, you’ll love these.

Another of those totally demented Japanese television shows. This one features a contest of just how heavy a fish Japanese cats will carry away. They start small, and slowly increase the size of those fish a few grams at a time, and the obliging Japanese tabbies keep rising to the occasion right up to the 2 kg. (4.4 lb) mark.

Long (10:42 minutes), but amusing.

video

There is an an excellent introduction to the films of Yasujiro Ozu posted today on YARGB by the Boulder mathematician who signs himself MeaninglessHotAir, which is also described as “posted by Loner.”

the camera is usually stationary and positioned to capture the point-of-view of a person sitting on the floor. Most of the edits are straight cuts. There are no special lenses. There is no cross-cutting. There are no flashbacks. There are no dream sequences. There are no ghosts. There are no Samurai. From 1935 on there is sound and from 1958 on there is color. In that final movie the camera never moves within a shot and there is not one edit that isn’t a straight cut.

For Ozu, like Hitchcock, a movie was largely done when the shooting script was finished. He generally had a collaborator and for the final thirteen movies that collaborator was Kogo Noda. The scripts are all about character. What plot there is is in the service of the characters and the characters were generally created with specific actors in mind. When it came to shooting the script, Ozu told the actors exactly how he wanted everything done (though not generally why) and they did it and did it and did it until he was satisfied. What are his movies about? Donald Richie suggests in his Introduction to Ozu, that Ozu “had but one major subject, the Japanese family, and but one major theme, its dissolution.”

Those interested in this director will also find this essay of interest.

Le Monde publishes eleven photos taken over a period of two decades.
———————————————Hat tip to Erik.

The Wall Street Journal this morning published a sob story about the excessive difficulty of the California Bar Exam, which in 2004 was passed by only 44% of those taking the test. The WSJ does not tell its readers that the Japanese Bar Exam is passed by only 3% of aspiring attorneys. Lucky Japan! There must be considerably less unnecessary litigation in the Land of the Rising Sun.

But even the Japanese Bar Exam’s legendarily low pass rate looks like a piece of cake compared to the under 1% passing rate of the hardest test, the Japanese 8th dan Kendo examination (46:44 minute video).

There are more than two million practioners of the sport of Kendo, the art of Japanese fencing, in Japan. Since WWII, only 400 of these have successfully made it past the 8th dan examination. The Japanese Kendo Association actually distingushes ten levels (dan) of mastery of the sport, but the 8th dan, hachi dan, is the last level requiring a physical test, and the most difficult.