As the rest of the country was on vacation during the first half of the week, there was not a lot to be missed. And with the DOW and Greece pulling unforseen tricks out of their sleeves, the latter half will likely be spent avidly watching exchange rates and reading financial news.

Some tidbits:

The Financial Times drummed up some coverage on love hotel funds (perhaps spurred by the same weekly article we were), with super special obligatory commentary by foreign loveho tycoon Steve Mansfield.

In guffaw-worthy yakuza news, two Yamaguchi-gumi-affiliated Shouyuu-kai gang members were arrested Thursday for selling fake Viagra. Police say that the pair sold about 100 million yen of the stuff to around 7,000 wishful guys, and were outsted out by another group of three men who were arrested for the same crime in February.

A 63-year-old Yamaguchi-gumi boss is on the run after police issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of fraud and attempted fraud. The gangster rented a room in a municipal housing complex for two months under someone else’s name in order to take advantage of reduced rent for low-income earners. The boss weasled out of paying a total of 28,200 yen, and police suspect he may be involved in a conspiracy with two other rooms.

The manager of a delivery health shop in Gotanda went for a run himself and ended up with a broken foot during a robbery on Tuesday. He and a fellow employee were running from a man armed with a knife who had entered the shop late that night. The manager jumped through a window in an A-Team-worthy escape but broke his left foot when he landed. The robber got away without any cash.

And finally a video: “Yakuza’s Attempt at 早口言葉: Tounge-twisters in Kansai Dialect” (via @AdySan)

What started me on this chain of serious pontification, was a tweet from one of my favorite journalists covering Japan, Hiroko Tabuchi. (@hirokotabuchi if you want some good japan related tweets to read).  The tweet in question: Unshaven Women: Free Spirits or Unkempt?http://nyti.ms/9tbMPW “Is the fear that no man will want you and your hairy legs valid?” The article in the NYT itself was fairly interesting.

For hairy Japanese and barbarians.

In Japan, a certain degree of hairiness used to be considered sexy, in both men and women.  Body shaving wasn’t the big deal it is now as Western influences permeate Japan. Men, now, are also expected to be hairless. This seems odd to me.  It’s as if Japanese men have agreed to neuter themselves.  And of course, there are products to help rid them of any trace of icky manliness, such as the No! No! for Men neo-laser razor. Perfect for getting rid of those stray stomach hairs, or any hint of a five-o-clock shadow.

Three years ago, on a very long sleepless night, I had a strange dream about badger-dogs (tanuki) which I turned into a long short story. It’s my pontifications on hair, culture, and Japan from the viewpoint of a literate bake-tanuki, or were-badger dog. Obviously, it was inspired by the Miyazki Hayao film about Tanuki, several years ago, which I watched on the night I had the dream.  Whatever.

Anyway, for your enjoyment, I’m posting it here. It’s crude, rude, and probably inappropriate but then again anyway you talk about it, “pubic hair” is quite a mouthful.  For your reading pleasure: Letters From An Angry Werebadgerdog first edit. If anyone would like to contribute illustrations, it would be appreciated.

The National Police Agency announced today an immediate ban on designated organized crime groups and their activities in conjunction with the establishment of Japan’s version of the RICO act, the criminal conspiracy laws/kyobozai（共謀罪).  The Criminal Conspiracy Laws were passed in an extraordinary session of the Diet, where the newly ruling Democratic Party of Japan showed amazing and surprising leadership after a series of incidents in which organized crime groups targeted regular civilians in neo-terrorist acts.

The crackdown begins. With the passage of Japan's first comprehensive criminal conspiracy laws, the yakuza (Japanese mafia) were essentially outlawed today.

Prime Minister Hatoyama, addressing the assembled members, proclaimed, “The days that this country coddled organized crime members as if we were children with a Hello! Kitty doll are finally over. No longer will we tolerate collusion, cooperation and the appeasement of organized crime groups, these so called yakuza, these gokudo. We will not let them manipulate our stock markets, jack up land prices, evict the old and feeble from their homes to make way for unneeded new real estate developments. We will not let them exploit transient labor nor profit off of sex trafficking and drugs. We will no longer allow them to have a nine-fingered, sometimes eight-fingered grasp on the steering wheels of power in this country. We will remove them from this country as painstakingly as a laser removes the tattoo from the skin of those foolish enough to have decorated themselves permanently in their youthful folly. With laser-like precision, we will root them out, and eliminate them from the national body–as if they were not just tattoos but cancerous growths.” Hatoyama’s speech was greeted with a standing ovation, with only a smattering of muted protest about his wild use of mixed metaphors.

In Kobe city, the police in a daring raid seized the headquarters of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest crime group with 40,000 members, and arrested over a hundred top members of the same group on charges of racketeering, criminal conspiracy, destruction of property, extortion, and general nuisance prohibitory ordinances.  The Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters will be razed next year and turned into Kobe’s largest open air park. In honor of the film director, Itami Juzo, who was attacked by Yamaguchi-gumi members  in 1992 after directing the dark comedy MINBO NO ONNA, and died under mysterious circumstances—the new park will be called Itami Juzo Koen.

In Tokyo, the Tokyo Metropolitan Department (TMPD) raided the Ginza located offices of the Sumiyoshikai (Japan’s second largest crime group, with 12,000 members) and also the Inagawakai (Japan’s third largest crime group, 10,000) headquarters located directly across from the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo. The same day, the current acting head of the Sumiyoshikai announced plans to dismantle the organization and retire to Las Vegas.  The Inagawakai announced plans to cease all criminal activities and restructure the group as a political think-tank in an alliance with Fyuji Group’s newspaper, Bankei Shinbun.

Jodan Akushitsuna, acting general director of the National Police Agency, in a hastily arranged press conference at the National Police Agency headquarters in Kasumigaseki speaking to the Japanese press, explained, “Japan is not a third-world country and there’s no excuse for allowing organized crime groups to exist as quasi-legal entities. We know who they are, where they are and what they do. Their activities do not benefit the people of Japan. And even if you could argue that they are like a second police force, keeping street crime low–we only need one police force. We just need to do our jobs better. Today is the beginning of the end of the boryokudan (violent groups) in Japan. We gave them fair warning–we banned the publication and distribution of their fanzines. They should have known what was next.  We are willing and able to work with those who leave organized crime and help them find honest jobs in Japan’s service sector and entertainment industry. But make no mistake, and I say this to all those still remaining in yakuza organizations–walk out or be carried out. The choice is up to you.”

It’s not known what impact the dissolution of Japan’s underworld will have on the economy–with 86,000 yakuza now essentially out of a job. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare predicts that unemployment is expected to rise as rapidly as the price of methamphetamines. The Ministry of Trade and Industry predicts that sales of Hawaiian shirts, traditional Japanese swords, smuggled Russian firearms, and sweatsuits are expected to plummet.  The public security of Japan may also be at risk.  The power vacuum created by the dissolution of the Japanese mafia aka yakuza, may allow foreign gangs to roam the streets terrorizing the gentle people of this small island country.  In addition to this, a summary provision of the new criminal conspiracy laws, effectively bans both the sale and possession of child pornography, as well as games in which the rape and sexual humiliation of underage girls and boys is depicted.  Japan’s Entertainment Trade Association (JETA) immediately launched a petition protesting this crackdown on artistic freedom but their protests have been more or less ignored in the chaos after the laws went into effect today.

Masatada Guroto, formerly of the Guroto-gumi, and once one of the most powerful crime bosses in Japan, upon hearing the news of the crackdown reportedly said to NHK, “That’s the way it goes.  The yakuza have basically been taken over by a bunch of Koreans, anyway. It’s no fun for us Japanese yakuza anymore.”  The North Korean Japanese Association has demanded a retraction. In other news, Sega Entertainment announced that in light of the new laws that they would be ceasing production of GOKUDO BOI 8, which was scheduled to be released in the US as YAKUZA WARRIOR 7, in 2011.

(compiled from Kyogo News Service and Asahi Shinpun reports)

Sub-editor’s note: Now that Japan has cracked down on organized crime, banned the yakuza, and banned the possession of child pornography , I feel that writing about these subjects is no longer fruitful or useful. As of April 2nd, 2010, we will be closing this blog. Sarah Noorbakhsh, who has done an amazing job of running the web-site and turning it into something we are all proud of here, will be moving on to a position in PR at Toyoda International in Nagoya, and is currently reading a lot about Japanese cars. I am at a loss as to what I should do but for the time being have taken a job in PR as well. I’m now  a part-time blogger at the Mini Moni tribute website, Retro Mini Moni. I don’t know a lot about Japanese pop-culture but I’m willing to learn.

* happy April Fools Day! It’ll be a cold day in hell when the Japanese government bans either of these things. @<@

The Tokyo Managed Subway System May Soon Run 24/7

At the same time, merchants in Kabukicho, the former red-light district of Tokyo, located in Shinjuku are pushing to allow the area to be designated a special region where all businesses can stay open 24 hours a day. Currently, host and hostess clubs are forced to shutter their windows at one am. They are circumventing the laws by transforming the places into “girl’s bars” or “boy’s clubs” after hours, with stand up counters where customers can order drinks,–which makes them “bars” instead of cabarets, technically. Tokyo has a fair amount of latitude in how they run their own subway system, and while the 都営地下鉄 (toeichikatesu) routes are limited, if they run 24 hours a night there is a good chance they will become the last resort of the night owls and newly arrived passengers at Haneda. Longer hours should translate into more employment for the locals–and the cops as well.

I should say that I’m parodying one well-known author/poet with this masterpiece and whoever figures out who it is gets a pack of dried umeboshi and honorable mention on this humble blog. Hopefully, those of you familiar with Tokyo will get some of the subtler references.  By the way, remember on Valentine’s Day in Japan–the women buy chocolate for the men.

“Where is the romance?”
A “hard-boiled” meditation on dating in Japan
by Jake Adelstein, author of  ”WHY WOMEN SHOULD PAY FOR DINNER: A GUIDE TO COURTSHIP IN JAPAN”
—3rd version, 2010 for EH.

Where is the romance?
Does it even live in this city?
Can the dead really know it–
can it be found in the shadows
of this glittering necropolis?

For Tokyo is a ghost town
crowded and overflowing with
A billion spirits
that see
but are never seen
that touch
but are not felt,
that speak
but are not heard
and yet hear
but do not listen.
Maybe, it once was here.
Urban legends say
it’s buried in a coin locker in Shibuya station
but the key lies somewhere in the tracks of the Chuo line
and those that look for it
rarely come back
It’s certainly not in your computer
waiting to be found
or in your cell-phone
just one more twitter away
it does not live in a virtual environment
or in the love hotel where you stay

it might have been
on that train you rushed to catch
but just missed instead
or in the person
who you might have given your seat
if you had just been a little less tired
maybe at the yoga class
you keep meaning to go to,
if work didn’t always runs late.
rumors of its existence
persist nonetheless, like tobacco stains on teeth

there were eyewitness sightings
at Heartland
but they proved to be misleading.
traces of it in fancy dinners
that were really just about breeding
invitations of “hey, come over to my place and listen to music”
always make sure to keep it far away
and men who want to split the check
make sure it never stays

romance in the realm of hungry ghosts
is a hard thing
and corporeal existence
while it can be bought at the door
is no guarantee of locating it–
and even when found,
it only lasts until your wallet
is as empty as the experience.
ethereal, fleeting, legendary
where is the romance?
It is as elusive as the Japanese wolf
long believed to have been hunted
into extinction
never to return.

If you find it,
somewhere hidden between ambition
compromise, opportunity, and commitment
consider yourself fortunate, my friend
hold it gently, treat it well,
you are unlikely to catch it again.

Well, for me it’s the time of year when I began preparing to send out 年賀状  (nengajo=New Year’s Greeting Cards).  It’s an important thing to do in Japan and one  nengajou has the power to keep almost dead relationships alive for yet another year. To receive one and not reply is a terrible social mistake and it’s always important to send one along with a hand-written note if humanly possible. In many ways, your nengajo is considered a barometer of who you are and where you are in your life. They are not to be taken lightly although they weigh next to nothing at all.

And even though I’ve automated the process somewhat, I still find that I spend a lot of time pulling up New Year’s Cards (nengajo) from years past to make sure I have the correct addresses and am not forgetting any one.  Each year that process becomes a little more painful.  There are New Year’s cards from Sekiguchi Chiaki, my mentor, a great cop and and a great friend.  Hamaya-chan, my co-worker and teacher. Shibata–a retired yakuza who is probably burning in hell somewhere but hopefully up for reincarnation someday. There was some good in the man. And there is Helena.  Every year part of me hopes that this year, this year, I’ll get a Christmas card from her telling me she’s fine–that she started a whole new life–that I was played for a fool.  I wouldn’t mind being wrong about that one. I wouldn’t mind finding out I was the class-clown and not the class comedian.

I suppose I have other Pavlovian reasons for associating New Year’s with death. As the lone gaijin at the Yomiuri, I almost always got stuck on the New Year shift, and that meant tallying up the number of people who choked to death on sweet rice cakes (mochi)–which always included old people and sometimes children.  I think I did it for ten years straight and you know what–it’s not fun to talk to the families about the deaths of their loved ones on what should be a joyous occasion. I didn’t have to do it too many times but once is enough.  Talk about feeling like a jackal and a heel. Of course, there are a lot of suicides as well–even if you don’t write them up, you’re supposed to call and see if there is a heart-warming, really sad story behind the suicide.

I know, I know–you’re thinking, “God, this guy is depressing.” Well, I’m not moping around the house all day thinking about these things but they do cross my mind more than I would like.  In some ways, maybe it’s good to reflect on the past before starting a new year–a good chance to learn from previous mistakes and repeat them less often the next. 反省しない猿は進化しないよ。(A monkey incapable of reflection, doesn’t evolve.”–Charles Darwin. *Actually, he never said that but he might have).

I wonder how much of who we are is not just what we have done and what we remember but also what we have lost.   I should be experiencing merriment at the holidays but what I feel most is regret and I suppose something akin to sadness. Regret that I wasn’t a better a friend to those who are no longer here and regret that I wasn’t a better husband and a better father, although as a father, I have my moments. .  And I regret that if I had done things differently that there is a chance that some of the people no longer with us would be here celebrating the New Year’s festivities with me this year as well.

I could spare myself the pain or momentary melancholy by removing the New Year’s cards of those who will no longer be sending or receiving but I do not. Because it seems like it should be my duty to remember them, wherever they are, whether I believe in an after-life or not. Merriment not tainted a little by sadness seems like a cheap and tawdry thing. i don’t want a Prozac to make the whole world shiny and to make our battered, worn-out Christmas tree all shiny and new.  It’s a charming tree because it’s falling apart.

In the midst of all this, in mourning the vanished, I do try to remember to cherish the ones that remain. I know that’s important. I do find, these days, that gift-giving does seem to bring me more joy than getting anything, which I suppose is a good thing. I used to joke that the only time giving is better than receiving is when you’re talking about the death penalty or sexually transmitted diseases. Well, it’s still sort of a funny joke but I think I was probably wrong on that one. Anyway, I thought I’d leave you, our loyal and steadfast and long-suffering readers with an uplifting sentiment and/or benediction for the Christmas holidays.  I came across part of in “FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL BEINGS”, which is a commentary on the texts of Shantideva, a Buddhist philosopher, by His Holiness–the 14th Dalai Lama.

I had a talk with Tenzin Gyasato (the Dalai Lama’s real name) on a United Airlines plane in 2008 that was extremely helpful. It wasn’t exactly a coincidence but it was significant to me in a synchronistic way. And it came at a time when I really needed some good advice. But that’s another story.

By the way, the word maudlin, comes from old readings of the name of Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who reformed herself and was forgiven by Jesus Christ for her sins. The word originally meant “tearful sentiment” but now has become closer to meaning “insincere emotionalism.”  Mary Magdalene is a little more than a prostitute in some Christian lore (and thriller novels) and  plays an unusual role in Gnostic Christianity, the mystical and peaceful branch of Christianity that was stamped out by the Catholic Church when they took power. But I digress. I don’t think maudlin in it’s original sense is such a bad thing. Sometimes, it’s nice to get teary-eyed but not in a “I’m-frigging-crazy” Glen Beck way.

Yes, it’s probably a heresy to post a Buddhist benediction on a Christmas, but then again December 25th, really started out as a pagan holiday to celebrate the birth and magnificence of Mithra the Sun God–so I figure that in the secular–”let’s be nice to each other, shall we”–Christmas spirit–that this works just as well. Thanks for joining us this year. Thanks to Sarah for turning the blog into something worth reading on a regular basis and thanks to all the other contributors named and unnamed. Best wishes to us all.

**********************************************************************************

May those who go in dread

have no more fear.

May captives be unchained and now set free

And may the weak now receive their strength

May beings help each other in kindness

May the lonely no longer be alone

May travelers upon the road

Find happiness no matter where they go

And may they gain, without the need of toil,

The goals on which they set their hearts

--benediction attributed to Shantideva, Buddhist scholar, from the Bodhicharyavatara etc.

Heaven and Earth are closer than they appear to be. 

Amazon celebrated the book’s 10th day in the top 100 best-selling non-fiction books by marking it down considerably. It’s never too late to buy it as a sushi stuffer for a Japanese thanksgiving celebration.