Dr Naoto Ueyama, Chairman of Japan Doctors Union called upon the international community to unite and pressure the Japanese government to cancel the Tokyo Olympics scheduled to commence in July.
“I don’t think it can be said that the Olympics can be held in a safe way,” he said.
Ueyama said the international competition, which would gather over 80,000 people including athletes and staff from 200 countries, could distribute existing variants such as the U.K., Brazilian, South African and Indian strains across the globe, or behave as a petri dish for a new potentially more fatal mutation.
“And if that were to happen, the number of victims indeed would be on a number even unthinkable in a conventional war,” Ueyama said.
He noted it’s possible that the games could even produce a variant known as “The Tokyo 2020” strain, something that would make the games live forever in infamy.
Ueyama explained that viruses undergo constant mutations. This is why the annual flu vaccines are updated to accommodate that year’s most prevalent variant. Covid-19 will continue to change, in the process adapting existing mechanisms that circumvent the human immune system to infect a host’s cell with greater efficacy. Ueyama said slow vaccine rollouts that delay the development of herd immunity or gathering large groups of potential carriers together rik giving the different variants further opportunity to mutate.
“The IOC should recognize that they are calling upon the athletes, the people of Japan and global citizens to take on these risks,” Ueyama said. “We will be facing a situation where lives aren’t being lost in a battlefield but lives are being lost as a result of something which should be a peaceful celebration or even a celebration of peace itself.”
Not only could variants be less susceptible to available vaccines, they could also avoid detection by multiplying in areas that aren’t swabbed by current PCR tests. Ueyama said a variant that reproduces in the lungs, for example, would be difficult to catch with PCR tests that collect samples from saliva or nasal swabs. Such a “Tokyo Olympic strain,” as Ueyama coined it, would not only jeopardize developing countries or regions in conflict without access to running water or health care, but endanger vaccinated individuals in countries with aggressive immunization campaigns like the United States.
“The IOC should recognize that they are calling upon the athletes, the people of Japan and global citizens to take on these risks,” Ueyama said. “We will be facing a situation where lives aren’t being lost in a battlefield but lives are being lost as a result of something which should be a peaceful celebration or even a celebration of peace itself.”
Japan’s hospitals are already overwhelmed by the relatively low infection to population ratio. Ueyama said in the city of Osaka, a Covid-19 hot spot under an extended state of emergency, the medical system is facing collapse as patients are told to stay home due to the lack of hospital beds for infected patients. The chairman, who lost a colleague to the virus, said an increasing number of nurses are quitting their jobs as the rising number of patients and work hours strain their other obligations to their children or elderly relatives. The organization is also seeing doctors, especially in the Kansai area, suffer from severe exhaustion and stress.
Covid-19 is highlighting the nation’s deficit in medical personnel. When asked whether university hospitals in Tokyo would begin accepting more covid patients in case of an Olympics induced surge, Ueyama said even if the hospitals provided sufficient treatment facilities or beds, they lack the doctors and nurses needed to fully utilize them. Critical resources are also being stretched thin. Japan is one of many countries suffering the consequence of a serious global anesthetic shortage, without which critical patients can’t be intubated. The inability to implement proper treatments for those in need compounds the strain placed on weary medical practitioners riding Japan’s fourth virus wave.
The timing of the Olympics could further exacerbate the shortage in medical staff and resources. Ueyama said the months of July and August are characterized by a spike in heat stroke patients requiring urgent care. Three years ago, a heat wave following the end of the rainy season hospitalized a record number of people from heat exhaustion. In response to the Japanese government’s request for hospitals in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures to reserve beds for Olympic personnel, Ueyama said that would be implausible.
“During that season, if we imagine also that Covid-19 will not yet be under control, and not only this, we may see a continuing increase in the India strain, it will not be possible for hospitals to provide special treatment to those involved in the Olympics,” he said.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics may live on as a new strain of COVID19.
Ueyama said Japan’s belated vaccine rollout is also unlikely to affect Olympic safety. The current phase targeting the 65 and up demographic that makes up 20-30% of the population, is scheduled to conclude at the end of July, overlapping with the first week of the games. Regardless of whether Japan meets this ambitious immunization timeline, the Olympic volunteers that will be interacting with the athletes and their staff are under 65 years old, and therefore ineligible for the vaccine. Ueyama said the daily pcr tests for all Olympic personnel proposed as the compromise in the Tokyo 2020 playbook is insufficient to control and contain the virus.
The doctor criticizes the IOC’s insistence that it is safe to host the games in Japan. He recommended the establishment of a global framework enforced by an international body similar to the IAEA or the UN’s Security Council to deal with the current and future pandemics “to save all of humankind from this crisis.”
“Such a decision (to host the Olympics during a pandemic) is not something just to be made only by the IOC or only by the one host country. I am a fan of the Olympics. However, I do not believe they should go ahead while putting many people at danger and holding them will force many people to make sacrifices even in regard to their life, in order for them to take place.”
Special contribution from Stephanie Yanezaka @KawaiiStephanie on Twitter
😭 Records* is an agency that specifically targets singers outside of Japan who have a passion for anime with hopes of releasing music in Japan. Most of the music released are famous anime song covers. All artists must pay for their own recording and album cover photos.
Once you join 😭 many promises are made to you including performing at their festival, living in Japan, performing on TV in Japan, releasing songs in video games in Japan, etc.
I joined 😭Records when there were just a couple of artists working with the label. I was lied to on what companies the label worked with. So I believed the company to be legit. I was promised by the CEO Hiroaki Usotsuki** that if I record an anime cover album of 5 songs, I could perform at their festival in Japan. This was the main reason why I recorded with them. I’ve performed in Japan before booking my own gigs and thought this would be the same situation. I recorded the five songs and wanted to stop there before moving forward. But the CEO kept asking me to record more. They told me it would be better to have a full album to debut at the festival. I was hesitant but decided to move forward. At the end of my time with 😭 Records I had recorded 20 songs.
After I started recording, over 100 artists were signed to the label. It happened very fast!That’s when I knew I made a big mistake. He started saying that I had to now compete with all the other artists. I had to be a top 10 selling artist to perform at their festival, he said. The festival never happened again. Hiroaki only had the festival a couple times out in Japan and was using it to get people to record.
Because 😭 Records signed so many artists they had to make this website where you sign in to see what songs you can record with them and how much money you were making. The system was never up to date on payment or songs. That very system that they created was recently hacked and a mass email from the hacker was sent warning people of Hiroaki. In that system breach all the banking information of the artists was leaked. I was lucky to have never given them that information.
After the hack occurred many artists contacted each other about it and found out that most of the singers were not getting paid at all. Many artists at this point were with 😭 Records for over five years with no royalty payment.
Once the hack occurred it was also exposed that 😭 Records is not an official company in Japan. They were never registered as a company in Japan.
😭 Records is still accepting applications from foreigners online today. Even though they have never paid their past singers any royalties whatsoever.
This info was also released that 😭 Records also has another company called H●● Agency. H●● Agency is an outsourcing company that brings people to Japan like teachers, construction workers, etc.
This info was exposed that these employees also were not getting paid the proper amount of money or not paid at all. But these employees actually came to Japan with promises of housing arrangements, visa, etc. But all found out very soon that they were stuck in Japan with no place to go. Many had to sleep in the park to figure out a way back home. They also sell the workers to their clients with an outsourcing system with the CEO of H●● taking most if not all of the money.
Hiroaki owns multiple companies with many different names. He will probably get rid of H●● Agency due to everything getting exposed. But he can easily move on to his other companies he has and continues taking advantage of foreigners looking to find a home in Japan.
*Due to vague threats of legal actions and the failure of getting a response from the company in question, we have reluctantly not named the firm here. Within the arts community it is becoming infamous.
**This is not the CEO’s real name. See information above.
I grew up in Missouri, next to McBaine, Missouri, where I rode Bus 57 to school. On Bus 57, there is no Missouree–there is only Mizzou-rah. Riding this bus required learning to understand a little bit of rural Missouri redneck culture—to survive. If there is anything good to be said about redneck rhetoric, it’s that straight talk was generally appreciated and valued. Indeed, Missouri is still called “The Show-Me State” referring to the native demands for actual evidence to back up any far-fetched claims.
I bring all this up because The British Journal of Medicine published an amazing editorial Reconsider this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic games on why Japan should not be hosting the Olympics this year. The editorial goes into clinical detail and is backed up by multiple sources. It’s a brilliant essay but slightly obtuse and the people who should read it, won’t, and the British fondness for diplomatic wording detracts from the message.
So, in order to make the points a little more palatable (easy to understand),, I have channeled my inner redneck to bring you their excellent editorial in plain American, with only slight transgressions from the main text. I am not a 100% real redneck so please pardon any inauthentic phrasing here. I’ve done my best.
The original article is above and the “translation” is below. I hope that you find this elucidating and if you don’t, you are probably just an ignoramus (dumb-shit).
Thank you
Reconsider this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic games
Serious questions remain about managing the games safely
The government of Japan and the International Olympic Committee are determined to hold the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer. In February 2021, G7 leaders also supported Japan’s commitment to holding the Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo (Tokyo 2020) “in a safe and secure manner … as a symbol of global unity in overcoming covid-19.”1 While the determination is encouraging, there has been a lack of transparency about the benefits and risk, and international mass gathering events such as Tokyo 2020 are still neither safe nor secure.
Tokyo Olympics? You can’t fucking do it–No way. Don’t be an asshole
The Japanese or rather their government and the IOC which stands for international Olympic Committee are hell-bent on holding Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer, no matter what, not matter how dangerous, come hell or high water or a tornado or a volcano or this deadly fucking virus. It sounds pretty goddman dangerous to me. The leaders of G7 which are the really wealthy countries, that includes the USA (U-S-A!) they support Japan’s efforts to hold the Olympics and I’m quoting here, “in a safe and secure manner”– as a symbol of global unity and overcoming COVID19. Yada Yada.
Well that gung ho spirit is mighty fine but it’s totally unclear if this is going to be a clusterfuck or whether or not its actually going to be safe. A big international gathering event like the Olympics is “neither safe nor secure” and I’m not sure what the differences between these words is but in other words, it’s pretty goddamn dangerous. It would be like fucking Fern Granger without a condom while everyone knows that Fern will sleep with anyone and she’s not particularly careful and God knows if she had an STD test in the last year. Also I’m not slut-shaming here, because there are guys like Dave down at the Redhill Lounge that are total sluts and bad news, and sexually-transmitted diseases are serious problem and one should always use a condom before engaging in casual sex. I hear you can also get the rona from fucking which I guess makes sense. These Olympics needs a condom and Japan wants to ride raw.
The world is still in the middle of a pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 variants are an international concern, causing a resurgence of covid-19 globally.2 We must accelerate efforts towards containing and ending the pandemic by maintaining public health and social measures, promoting behaviour change, disseminating vaccines widely, and strengthening health systems. Substantial scientific advancements have occurred over the past year, but vaccine rollout has been inequitable, reducing access in many low and middle income countries. Huge uncertainty remains about the trajectory of the pandemic.3
The whole world is in the middle of a pandemic which is like an epidemic that is a pansexual: it will fuck anyone, anytime, anywhere. Just when you thought you had kicked its motherfucking ass, it turns out to have some mean ass cousins that you didn’t know you have to deal with. We call these cousins “variants”. It’s like the Greenhills who live past the railroad near where there used to be a post-office. It’s all one family with different people and they’re all mean and will fuck you up. But in less metaphorical terms these variants keep bringing back the virus like a zombie.
The whole world is in the middle of a pandemic which is like an epidemic that is a pansexual: it will fuck anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Although a special scheme for vaccinating athletes—marshalled by the International Olympic Committee4—may help save lives, it could also encourage vaccine diplomacy, undermine global solidarity (including the Covax global access scheme), and promote vaccine nationalism. Full transparency and clear lines of accountability are critical in any scheme to vaccinate athletes. Furthermore, prioritising athletes over essential workers at high risk in low and middle income countries raises ethical concerns that must be addressed.
We gotta lockdown this sucker by thinking about public health and doing all that stuff we have been doing, like washing our hands, wearing a mask, not spitting at people and not chewing tobacco or blowing smoke in people’s faces, or going to crowded bars getting fucked up. And if you’re one of those no maskers and no vaxxers, fuck you. Fuck you and the station wagon you rode in on.
We have got to VAX as many people as possible. We have got to improve our healthcare. Thanks to science there have been a lot of great things done in the last year but the vaccine rollout has been piss pour and unfair. If you are a poor country, you are like white trash or a minority in the United States and you are not given that vaccine. Nobody knows how this pandemic thing is going to play out.
Although a special scheme for vaccinating athletes—marshalled by the International Olympic Committee4—may help save lives, it could also encourage vaccine diplomacy, undermine global solidarity (including the Covax global access scheme), and promote vaccine nationalism. Full transparency and clear lines of accountability are critical in any scheme to vaccinate athletes. Furthermore, prioritising athletes over essential workers at high risk in low and middle income countries raises ethical concerns that must be addressed.
The Internationl Olympic Committee could do a lot more than just vaccinating athletes but they don’t give a shit about ordinary folk. If you ask us, essential workers which is like doctors and nurses and farmers and stuff should be a priority in getting vaccinated. Giving these coddled athletes the vaccines before other people in poor and middle-class countries is pretty shady and pretty shitty. It’s an ethical problem. It ain’t right. In case you don’t get it, the IOC are a bunch of assholes.
Poor control
Unlike other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has not yet contained covid-19 transmission.5 Despite its poor performance,6 Japan still invokes exceptionalism and continues to conceptualise covid-19 within previous planning for pandemic influenza.5 The second state of emergency in the Greater Tokyo area was lifted in late March7 despite early indications of a resurgence and an increase in covid-19 patients with variants of concern, which have now spread across Japan.89
The country’s limited testing capacity and sluggish vaccine rollout6 have been attributed to lack of political leadership.5 Even healthcare workers and other high risk populations will not have access to vaccines before Tokyo 2020, to say nothing of the general population. To properly protect athletes from covid-19, Japan must develop and implement a clear strategy to eliminate community transmission within its borders,5 as Australia did before the Australian Open tennis tournament.
Suga Couldn’t Even Drive A Tractor With Training Wheels
Unlike their Asian neighbors—hey Taiwan, nice job!—Japan has not licked this virus. In fact they are getting their ass kicked. Despite doing a shady job in handling the virus. Japan still thinks they are so so special and they keep treating this virus like it’s the flu which is pretty stupid. Stupid is as stupid does. Japan had a second state of emergency in the greater Tokyo area which is like Tokyo in places around Tokyo. It did not accomplish jackshit. They lifted the emergency while infections were rising and the weird mutant viruses were showing up all over Japan. Any dumbshit could see that there would be another resurgence like the Taliban in Afghanistan. Anyway, these killer mutant bad ass viruses are now all over Japan.
The leaders of Japan can’t tell there assholes from their mouths. Japan has a crappy capacity to test people for the virus. Their vaccine rollout is so goddamn slow that you would think the space time continuum in the country is in slow motion, like when you film something in slow motion on an iPhone, if you can afford an iPhone, or you have a friend who has an iPhone. Maybe you can also film things in slow motion on an Android phone but all i have is this old flip phone and that’s fine with me. Healthcare workers and old people and people who really need that vaccine are not going to get it before the Tokyo Olympics starts. And everybody else, they’re pretty much fucked. If Japan is going to protect the athletes that come there to play in these games, they need to get their shit together. They need to have a plan to stop the transmission, in other words, the spread of this virus within its own borders. You know who did this good? Australia did this. Australia did it before the Australian Open Tennis Tournament. They handled the virus really good if you don’t mind me saying.
Japan and the International Olympic Committee must also agree operational plans based on a robust science and share them with the international community. Waiving quarantine for incoming athletes, officials, broadcasters, press, and marketing partners10 risks importing and spreading covid-19 variants of concern. While international spectators will be excluded from the games,11cases could rise across Japan and be exported globally because of increased domestic travel—as encouraged by Japan’s official campaigns in 2020.51213Entrants will be asked to download Japan’s covid-19 contact tracing app,10 but this is known to be unreliable.14
The maximum allowable number of domestic spectators is still pending,11 but an overwhelmed healthcare system combined with an ineffective test, trace, and isolate scheme51213 could seriously undermine Japan’s ability to manage Tokyo 2020 safely and contain any outbreak caused by mass mobilisation.
Japan and the international Olympic Committee must create plans that are based on solid science and they need to share them with everyone in the whole wide world. By not requiring quarantines for athletes officials broadcasters press and marketing partners, there’s a pretty good chance that they are going to import some nasty mutant killer viruses into Japan. That will really suck.
Sure there will be no spectators at the Olympic games, that don’t mean it’s safe. There are 8000 ways this could get fucked up. You could have the virus go crazy in Japan and be exported on a global level—like they did with Pokemon, but you don’t want to catch them all. You don’t even want to catch one of these Pokemon. Japan has done this sort of fuck-up before and they are going to do it again. Japan had this dumb ass domestic tourism promoting program in the middle the pandemic called Go To Travel and the country has Gone To Hell. Those who are participating in the event are asked to download Japan’s shitty contact tracing app but it doesn’t work and you can’t count on it and it’s doubling down on stupidity
Sure there will be no spectators at the Olympic games, that don’t mean it’s safe. There are 8 millions ways this could go sideways. You could have the virus go crazy in Japan and be exported on a global level—like they did with Pokemon, but you don’t want to catch them all. You don’t even want to catch one of these Pokemon.
Nobody knows how many people will be watching or participating in the games but when you have an healthcare system that is overloaded and a worthless system for tracking testing and isolating people with the virus, you have a recipe for disaster. When you got a lot of people moving around you got a lot of ways to spread this virus. That should be pretty obvious to anyone who doesn’t have their head up their ass.
Safety first
Plans to hold the Olympic and Paralympic games this summer must be reconsidered as a matter of urgency. The whole global community recognises the need to contain the pandemic and save lives. Holding Tokyo 2020 for domestic political and economic purposes— ignoring scientific and moral imperatives—is contradictory to Japan’s commitment to global health and human security.
Assholes and Athletes First, Common Folk Can Suck A Donkey Dick
Is this really so-I’m-going-to-shit-my-pants-if-I-don’t-go-to-the-bathroom-now urgent do we have to have the Olympics this year? The whole world except the IOC and Japan cares about saving lives and kicking the ass of this pandemic. If Japan actually gives a shit about the health of the world and human beings in general, they should not be ignoring science and being nice to other people, just because a bunch of old bastards want some glory and some money. When you think about the whole spiel about Olympic values, world unity and the human spirit and all that, holding the 2020 Olympics is a bunch of hypocritical bullshit. Fuck that. When we say ‘reconsider’, we mean get your head out of your ass and postpone it or cancel it, you bloody bastards. Thank you! I hope you got that.
安倍総理は日本の「検査しなければわからない」というコロナ対策が素晴らしく上手くいったと主張したが、その後この対策は失敗し、感染率は再び急増した。これはGo To Travelという間違った英語名の旅行促進キャンペーンの実施を安倍総理が頑なに推進したことで拍車がかかった。このキャンペーンは結局、感染流行が再燃して多くの人がGo To Quarantine （検疫へ）という意味になってしまった。
Four seconds, after the counting of the ballots. That’s how long.
Four seconds in, and Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike knew she had won the Tokyo gubernatorial election for the second term. Her aides said later that it was more like two and a half seconds; a historical, landslide victory with nearly 60% of the vote in her name. The other candidates were dead in the water before they realized what hit them. Koike’s contender candidate Taro Yamamoto, an actor turned politician whose ideas for government reform made significant waves in the Lower House elections last year but who lost to Koike by over 3 million votes, told the press: “Mt. Yuriko was higher than I thought. I just couldn’t climb over it.”
If Yamamoto’s statement sounds rude or vaguely sexual, don’t worry – he probably intended it that way. Yuriko Koike was and continues to be, the first woman governor of Tokyo and her term in office has been defined by a lot of ruffled feathers in the male-dominated world of Nippon politics. Not just because she’s a woman, a fact which many older Japanese men still have trouble wrapping their minds around, but because Yuriko Koike has never ceased to remind everyone of her femininity.
It all seems a bit Marie Antoinette-ish. Let them refrain from everything. Let them stay home and Zoom their lives away while wearing face masks in the clammy Tokyo heat.
At age 67, Koike is well-preserved, perfectly coiffed and shod in a way that would earn applause from Carrie Bradshaw. She never loses her cool, raises her voice or looks harried. Her thirst for designer hand-bags is legendary, and rumor has it she keeps a room designated solely for the purpose of storing her darlings. Other rumors swirling inside the corridors of the Tocho building, says that she’s an old-fashioned gal who got to where she is today, by sleeping around with the right men yesterday. Or that she often treats her male staff as if they were hosts working in her own private host bar.
Ouch. That’s not nice, Yuriko-san, considering you’ve been waging war on host bars since day one of the pandemic. Most of these bars are located on YOUR turf in Shinjuku ward and yet you refer to them as “places of the night” that must be “refrained (your favorite word)” from visiting more than a few times a year. It all seems a bit Marie Antoinette-ish. Let them refrain from everything. Let them stay home and Zoom their lives away while wearing face masks in the clammy Tokyo heat.
Excuse the tone – I’ve just read through Jotei (Queen) – Yuriko Koike, the unauthorized biography by Taeko Ishii that came out on May 29. As of July 6th, the day after Yuriko Koike won her second term, the book had sold over 200,000 copies. “It’s not a flattering portrait of Koike-san,” said Ishii in an online interview. “It’s frightening to think that ultimately, this woman won’t rest until she becomes the next Prime Minister. Who put her in this position? We all did. Japan put her in this seat of power. It’s the culture of old Japanese men, who will empower women only if they’re attractive and will bend to their will. It’s the culture of Japanese women who believe that women politicians are clean and selfless and will battle old men politicians on their behalf. The whole of Japanese society created Yuriko Koike, Tokyo governor.” Ishii’s book is densely researched, especially in regards to Koike’s past. The governor has an impressive CV – for a long time, she had told the press that she had graduated from the University of Cairo in Egypt, at the top of her class and was fluent in Arabic. Based on an interview with Koike’s old roommate in Cairo, Ishii writes that Koike quit the university after two years and only pretended to have graduated. Her knowledge of Arabic is sketchy at best, and that she had told this friend, “I’m going to write an autobiography but I won’t include you because then people will know I lied.”
There are other examples of Koike’s brazenness. When victims of the Hanshin Earthquake back in 1995 came to her for help at her office, Koike started painting her nails, and then told them to leave. When the late Shigeru Yokota, father of Megumi Yokota who had gone missing when she was 13 years old, suspected of being kidnapped by the North Korean government, held a meeting with her present, Koike shed tears as she listened to his story. After it ended, she left and then came back for her precious handbag. Her words were, “Oh good, there it is. I thought my bag had been kidnapped!”
Ishii calls Koike “a monster” but from Koike’s point of view, that title may have just as well have gotten her re-elected. Koike has thrived on negativity, in particular the sexist, ageist jibes aimed at her by fellow politicians and the public. Four years ago when she was running for governor, Shintaro Ishihara – himself Tokyo’s ex-governor, called her “an old woman with too much make-up. Who would vote for her?” In that instant Ishihara dug himself into a hopelessly deep grave, and Yuriko Koike won the election.
This time around, it was former Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie, who did the honors. Horie is he head of his own political party, and had called for a complete reopening of the metropolis plus an acknowledgment from the Tokyo metropolitan government that they had been mistaken in installing “severe” shutdown measures during April and May. To this end, Takafumi Horie sent three contenders into the gubernatorial race, but in total vain. His public image went down the tubes too, after he publicly called Koike “a piece of shit” when she called out for limited entry to Tokyo supermarkets, to avoid congestion at the cash registers.
Ishii points out that Koike will be in power for as long as Japanese male politicians refuse to hold any meaningful political discussions with women in politics without resorting to gender issues, ageist issues and just plain mud-slinging. Koike may have showed these old men who’s in charge, hah! But after that personal triumph, she has left Tokyo staring into an abyss. She seems to have no real plans for the bad stuff: rising infections, the scaled-down but still expensive Olympics slated 12 months away, joblessness and bankruptcies and a floundering economy. What now, Yuriko-san? The answer surely, is not in your handbag.
*Editor’s Note: This was originally published at “The Empress of Tokyo Reigns Forever” but Kaori Shoji, the author, had some misgivings. ‘As a Japanese, I’d prefer not to refer to anyone as Empress unless they’re a part of the Imperial Family. Which is why I used the word Queen instead.’ However, queen is not quite a proper translation for 女帝 (jotei) so we used the term Imperatrix instead which has a closer meaning to the title of the book about Ms. Koike, and sounds a little like Dominatrix, which is also a nice fit for Madame Koike.
They say it takes more than a death to change the world but perhaps that’s not true in the case of 22-year old Hana Kimura (木村花). She was a professional wrestler and one of the cast members of Terrace House, the now defunct reality TV franchise that first launched in 2012 and went on for eight seasons. For the uninitiated, Terrace House follows the relationship dynamics of three boys and three girls as they live as housemates in a posh seaside house with a terrace. Hana-chan as she was called, starred as herself – an up and coming wrestling star with pink hair who was eager to get ahead in the entertainment industry. In an episode aired on March 31st, Hana-chan unleashed her anger over a laundry mishap committed by a fellow (male) housemate. The two made up, but the whole thing exploded right in Hana-chan’s face.
Hordes of Terrace House fans posted Hana-chan hating comments – upwards of 300 a day – and many demanded that she either leave the show or die, immediately. It’s said that the Covid-19 induced isolation further drove Kimura over the edge. Alone in her home, she couldn’t help but read and obsess over the hellish comments on social media, directed straight at her.
On May 23rd, Hana Kimura was rushed to the hospital after friends found her lying on the floor in her apartment, but it was too late. The details of her death have not been disclosed, but she left a note, apologizing to her friends and thanking her mom for “bringing me into this world.” Astonishingly, the anonymous cyber bullies who were at least partly responsible for her death resumed their bashing, accusing her of being ‘weak and needy’ and ‘not cut out to endure the hardships of working in the entertainment industry.”
All that hate though, faded away after Fuji Television Network, the creator of the Terrace House franchise pulled the plug on the show five days after Hana-chan’s suicide. Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Sanae Takaichi is now pushing for a law to hunt down those who post hate comments, and slap them with fines or worse. Even Prime Minister Abe has moved on the issue, remarking that “hateful comments on the Internet have the power to do irreparable damage, and they should be stopped, if possible.” Since then, things have been pretty quiet. Hana Kimura’s critics have seemingly disappeared off the face of the Net at least for now, and news commentators are continuing to express their ‘profound regret’ over her death.
That said, a certain apprehension hangs in the air; it seems that the Abe Administration is milking the Terrace House tragedy to its own advantage. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, PM Abe’s popularity has hit an all-time low and the belated delivery of two “Abenomasks” per household that he promised back in March, has become a running joke. It seems that most things he does these days is being ridiculed. The death of Hana Kimura may have been a welcome respite from having to deal with the social ills spawned by the lingering coronavirus, and the pile of political embarrassments racked up during the nation’s 49-day shut-down. Moritomo scandal, anyone?
it seems that the Abe Administration is milking the Terrace House tragedy to its own advantage.
In the meantime, media pundits are pointing out that both the Abe Administration and the Japanese populace should have their minds on other, more relevant issues, like the racial protests tearing the US apart, and now raging in Europe as well.
Political columnist Takashi Odajima observed in Nikkei Shimbun that the pandemic has afforded the US an opportunity to take a hard look at social injustice, while in Japan that same pandemic has given the government an excuse to cover things up. “In Japan, the government hides its scandals and inconvenient truths under the masks they insist on wearing,” he wrote.
You don’t have to be a pundit like Odajima, to get that sinking feeling: once again, Japan lags way behind the west when it comes to grappling with stuff that truly matters, in spite of, or maybe because of, an ongoing pandemic. While we’re still wrapping our faces and panicking about the number of new infections cropping up in Tokyo (more than 10! How horrifying!), protesters across the Pacific are risking their lives for racial justice. The comparison is scathingly humbling. Gosh, we’re small. And scared shitless of direct conflict.
Odajima pointed out that the Japanese are hopelessly bad at arguing a point, or any form of adverse social interaction unless it’s done among family members. He’s right. The bad stuff happens mostly at home and behind closed doors. In some cases they continue for years before anyone finds out. There’s anonymous groping on trains, and faceless bullying on the net but public protests in broad daylight rarely occur unless the protesters are hiding their faces behind masks. This explains why Hana-chan got so much flack – she dared to express rage over public airwaves, in her own name. And though it’s been pointed out that the show’s producers obliquely coerced her to do so, many Terrace House viewers were too naive to see the difference between the ‘reality’ of reality shows, and real life.
Maybe that’s just the way the Abe Administration wants it. Passive silence behind masks is vastly preferable to outright self-expression, in whatever situation. Imagine if the Japanese took to the streets to protest income inequality, the plight of temp workers, foreign laborers, and single mothers, domestic violence and rampant child abuse–just a few items off the top of an endless list?
The truth is that at this point, the nation needs many more Hana Kimuras–brave enough to express anger and negative feelings without fear of being punished for it. Hopefully, we can do that better, once the masks come off.
The whole world is somewhat baffled by how Japan is handling the coronavirus aka COVID19 aka Sars-CoV-2. The Diamond Princess debacle in which inept Japanese officials turned a cruise ship into a floating incubator for the virus did not bode well. Early on in the crisis, several politicians from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party expressed what was close to delight about the coronavirus disaster, stating that it would finally justify changing Japan’s constitution to a new one that gave the Prime Minister sweeping powers.
Japan has infamously under-tested, turning away most people who were not displaying already full-blown symptoms of coronavirus induced illness-–a fever over 37.5 degrees for four days, loss of sense of taste and smell, had been in contact someone diagnosed with the virus etc.– and has been extremely stingy in releasing information. Some suspect that Japan is hiding coronavirus cases and deaths in pneumonia statistics. Possible. Let’s assume that’s not true for the time being.
The Ministry of Health, which managed to get their own workers and medical staff infected on the Diamond Princess and then refused to test them, sending them back to work, where they infected others–doesn’t inspire confidence. The best they have done seems to be to warn people about the Three Cs (in Japanese 3の密. 密閉・密集・密接): closed spaces, crowds and close contact. Miraculously, avoiding an overlap of these three should keep you safe—until it doesn’t.
If a cute poster could stop the spread of COVID-19, Japan would win the war hands down.
Despite having the first cases of coronavirus in January, the number of deaths in Japan remains very low, 108 today (April 12th) out of a nation of 126 million people
This week I wrote a piece for the Asia Times–TB vaccines offers hope in Covid-19 war –about studies that show a correlation between low numbers of deaths in countries that had a universal tuberculosis vaccination program for decades–and coronavirus. The vaccine is called BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guerin). Infection rates also appear to be strongly impacted positively by the vaccine. The vaccine is nearly a hundred years old. It was developed by French physicians and biologists Léon Charles Albert Calmette and Jean-Marie Camille Guérin in the 1900s and first successfully tested in 1921. Some theorize that when the vaccine is given to very young children and/or infants, that it creates ‘attained immunity’ which helps the older generation (those most vulnerable) battle the virus. Personally, I sort of hope that it’s true, that BCG is the BFG (Big Fucking Gun) in the war against this pathogen, kind of like the iconic weapon in the first-person shooter DOOM. (It’s a video game). It has been suggested that the vaccine only works if given to very young children and that the strain of the vaccine matters as well. Could be.
NOTE: BCG vaccine has many strains (types). The BCG-Japan strain seems to be the one that actually works against the coronavirus. France uses the BCG-Denmark strain. If anyone reading this has access to materials about the BCG-Japan strain, please share them with me. I would like to know.
Could the 100-year-old vaccine BCG be the Big F*cking Gun (BFG) in the war on coronavirus? It would be nice if it was.
There are problems with the theory that BCG vaccine is a silver bullet (or a BFG). Correlation is not causation. France and England had a vaccination program but they have a high number of deaths. They also appeared to have inoculated their citizens when they were in their teens rather than as infant, and both countries use a different strain of the vaccine then the predominant one used in Asia. However, even if the BCG vaccination works/worked to prevent fatalities, is there any reason to believe it will work on adults? In the Netherlands and Australia clinical tests are underway. We shall see.
One of the joys of running this blog, with the help of others, since 2007, is that sometimes we are leaked good information that can be used to generate a solid news story. That is usually rare. The nature of the internet is that you tend to get lots of criticism, threats, accusations or wild conspiracy theories that can’t be verified. Comments are all read and edited before being posted. Many on-line sites have gotten rid of comments altogether. When I looked at the comments and letters today, I thought of doing the same….once again.
But then I read this letter below. It’s intriguing. The anonymous source asserts that they are a member of the medical community in Japan. I have edited it slightly for clarity and removed some possibly identifying details. Below the letter, I have added some notes and observations.
As the headline tells you, it is a conspiracy theory, of sorts. A “conspiracy” is usually defined as a secret plan by a group of people to do something harmful or illegal. If the writer of this letter is correct, the steps Japan has taken so far are not completely harmful. Indeed, it could be argued that testing everyone is not a great idea and that it overloads the health care system. Japan’s approach to the coronavirus has had its merits.
“The Japanese Society for Infection Prevention and Control (JSIPC) updated their coronavirus manual on March 10.
The tone is calm. “Japan is moving from containment measures to a period of spreading infection and we must adjust accordingly,” it says. Since March 6, Covid-19 testing won coverage under national health insurance – ergo, “as public money is being used for the coronavirus testing, it is necessary to carefully screen who gets tested.”
It gently chides anyone who seeks “needless” testing and urges medical professionals to prevent overcrowding at hospitals by instructing patients with light symptoms to stay home and avoid others.
Critically, it points out that since there is no specific treatment for Covid-19, the priority must be treating the illness via its pathogen causes.
“The foundation of treatment is symptomatic therapy,” the manual reads. When signs of pneumonia are found, it suggests using all possible methods of treatment, such as giving oxygen and vasopressors as necessary. Above all, it reminds medical staff of the top priority: “Protect the lives of seriously-ill patients, especially in cases of pneumonia.”“
This makes sense on some levels. However, if you don’t know who has the coronavirus, how can you possibly contain it? The manual does note that Japan has moved beyond containment measures (水際対策) and must conduct a sort of triage.
And so we come to the letter. It was written in response to the article TB vaccines offers hope in Covid-19 war and mailed to Japan Subculture Research Center.
I don’t know if it’s true nor can I say it’s untrue. Don’t believe it. I have limited resources, so I’ve decided to crowdsource this. I would like to know what you, the readers, think. And if anyone has supporting data, I’d love to have it–links and documents appreciated. If you can refute it, please do. Sometimes, many minds are better than one.
Send all mail, thoughts, comments, evidence and refutations to japansubcultureresearchcenter @ gmail.com with the heading, BCG and Japan.
Some short notes and observations on the letter are at the end of the document.
＊＊＊＊＊＊
Dear Mr. Adelstein,
I’m ●●●● and I’ve just been reading your report into BCG.
You’ve got the half the story, and while there are clinical issues with the variables and the science, you’re on the right track.
The other half is on the Japan side.
Have you noticed why Japanese aren’t talking about their immunity through BCG? There’s reasons for this.
Japan has invested a lot of capital into developing and selling Avigan as a coronavirus treatment. They’ve put the weight of Japan Inc behind this, and [Prime Minister] Shinzo Abe is their pitch man.
Did you notice the abrupt change in Abe’s policy around the end of February? That’s because Japanese researchers and doctors, including my colleagues, became aware at that time that BCG vaccines were possibly also working with the immune systems of most Japanese under age 70. NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) and MHLW [Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare] policies prohibit researchers and doctors from speaking publicly about this. But this is well-known in the medical community here.
What’s not understood is whether BCG is protecting children in the same way. We don’t have enough scientific or anecdotal evidence to rule out tuberculosis vaccine in Japan with confidence, especially because of the large number of foreign workers and tourists from at-risk countries, or whether BCG is working properly in tandem with other vaccinations in Japan. In layman’s terms, the younger generation of children in Japan don’t have the same immune system as the older generation. While we have decades of data about the health of the older generation, we still have insufficient clinical data about kids who haven’t been alive long enough to build up a reliable data base.
In the field of medicine, you can’t make a diagnosis or prescribe treatment based on anecdotes or hunches. We have to follow regulations and existing practices based on years worth of data and peer-reviewed studies. We simply can’t assume that BCG is protecting children from the novel coronavirus. Thus the medical community instructed Abe to protect these children as a preventive measure owing to the lack of available data on how their immune system would respond to Sars-CoV-2.
This also gave Abe and the MHLW political cover. Instead of doing nothing, they had to do something (1) . Abe couldn’t publicly announce that BCG was protecting the innoculated population of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. As you know, Abe is beholden to Keidanren (経団連・Japan Business Federation) and companies such as Fujifilm Holdings and their subsidiary Toyama Chemical, which manufactures Avigan (3). Who is going to buy Avigan if all they have to do is buy BCG? Why should Japan promote Avigan if most Japanese don’t need it? That is their reasoning. This is all about the sale of Avigan. (5)
This also explains why Japan was resisting international pressure to postpone the Summer Olympics. Abe and his panel of experts were assuming that BCG was protecting most of the population from the novel coronavirus. They had to cancel the games because of foreign pressure and the International Olympic Commission (IOC) (4), not because of any concerns about an overshoot of cases here in Japan.
There’s another issue that the media are overlooking. Japan now has millions of foreign residents and foreign tourists who didn’t get BCG shots. They are the most likely groups to acquire the novel coronavirus and spread it through the population in Japan. But Abe couldn’t say that due to policies of boosting tourist arrivals and preparing for the Olympics. Even if you think he’s a racist xenophobe, you have to credit him for respecting the rights of foreign COVID patients. Look at what China is doing with Africans, and you’ll understand Japan’s official thinking on this.
This also explains the Ministry of Health policy of keeping people away from hospitals (2). We don’t want people with colds, H1N1, ordinary coughs or sniffles to show up at hospitals demanding swabs, which also put health care workers at risk. They should stay home and rest anyway. MHLW set up a hotline for this purpose. If they didn’t, half of Japan would demand a test claiming to be sick. In most cases, patients with real COVID19 symptoms aren’t going to die anyways if they had their mandatory BCG vaccinations. Japan only wants to treat the most severe cases while protecting medical workers from infection. This is a reasonable policy. Most doctors support this, though some feel that we should be more proactive with outreach programs and advocacy on behalf of patients.
Try to see things from our perspective. We are watching more than a hundred doctors and nurses die in Italy. We saw the same thing in Wuhan. This scenario is Japan would serve nobody. It’s not selfish for us to protect ourselves. It’s good public health policy, and Japan is doing the right thing.
Please understand that the science isn’t black and white on this. Just because Japan made BCG shots mandatory doesn’t mean that every doctor gave them out, or that every parent took their kid to the doctor for the shot. Millions of people fell through the cracks and didn’t get vaccinated for TB, especially in the 1950s and 60s when Japan’s health care system was evolving. That’s why you are seeing numbers rise now, though on a much smaller level than in the U.S. or Italy. Most of the new cases now are people who didn’t get BCG shots. This is the common view of medical practitioners here.
This is especially true of patients in areas such as Taito-ku, which is the closest thing in Tokyo to Skid Row in LA. Many of these new patients are homeless, or they were born into impoverished families who didn’t vaccinate their children. You will see similar stories in impoverished areas of Osaka and other cities. Look at the data and you will find it.
You’re welcome to this information but ●●●
Good luck with your reporting. Ganbare.
Notes:
(1) In February, Prime Minister Abe’s request that schools nationwide be closed down was greeted with great puzzlement at the time. He later said that he had not consulted with experts when making the decision.
(3) It’s not clear how well Avigan, an anti-influenza drug does in fighting COVID-19 but Japan has offered to give it away to 20 countries that need it to fight coronavirus. It isn’t offering to give it away free to every single country in the world, so if you’re cynical you could see the giveway as free advertising, and/or free testing. Avigan was used to combat Ebola in the past.
(4) It would appear that after the Olympic Games were postponed that suddenly the number of Covid-19 cases jumped considerably. Correlation perhaps. Governor Yuriko Koike, who had been remarkably silent about the dangers of coronavirus, suddenly began talking about ‘a lockdown’ and the need for hyper vigilance with the pathogen only after March 23rd.
5) The Japanese government, including our friends at the Ministry Of Health, have conspired in the past to keep important medical data away from the public. The result was many innocent people being infected with AIDS and dying. Green Cross was the beneficiary and some of their executives were convicted of criminal negligence resulting in death. Government officials basically walked. See below and research more if you’re interested. Green Cross Executives receive prison terms in Yakugai (薬害エイズ) case.
On March 18th, the Japan Medical Association announced that there were 290 cases of doctors deciding that a patient needed to be tested for coronavirus, and even then the patients were not tested. The term used by JMA “不適切事例” literally translated means “inappropriate/unsuitable cases”.
The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems intent on keeping the official numbers of infected down and that means not only making the standards for getting a test very high (for example, you must have a fever of over 37.5 degrees Celsius for four days) but it also seems to be actively discouraging tests.
Japan’s testing for coronavirus falls severely behind many other countries. see https://ourworldindata.org/covid-testing
Nathalie Kyoko-Stucky interviewed one woman who was denied testing in Tokyo. This is her story.
Patient Zero, age 31 is a project manager in Japan working for an IT firm. She asked for her name to be omitted and some details of her story obscured for fear of being stigmatized socially. She lives in Tokyo.
“I started to feel very tired March 7th and had a low fever of 37.2. Thought i was just tired from work. On Monday, I felt really tired at work and on Tuesday, I struggled to go to the office and only stayed 2 hours and came home. Tuesday night, I started to get a cough and by 10pm I felt i was getting sick and my fever was 37.5 degrees.
Wednesday morning I woke up feeling sick and extremely tired and had a fever of 38 degrees.
Over the next few days, I stayed in bed sick. I started feeling a pain in my chest and it was getting painful to breathe. On Saturday, I called the Coronavirus hotline because by that point I had fever over 37.5 for 4 days.
I called them because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go to a normal hospital and accidentally spread it so I called for advice.
The lady told me that the Shinagawa Healthcare Center (品川保健所）is closed on the weekend, and I should call them on Monday when they opened. But, she said if I became sicker, I should just go to the hospital.
On Sunday there was still no improvement. I had pneumonia when I was in high school and my body felt similar to that time so I was a bit worried. So I called the hospital and told them my story and that at the minimum I wanted an x-ray. They told me, “Okay please come in.”
At the hospital they asked if I went to an onsen, had overseas travel, or if was in direct contact with a COVID-19 patient. I said no.
Luckily my x-ray came back clear for pneumonia, but the doctor diagnosed me with pleurisy.
Note:(Pleurisy (PLOOR-ih-see) is a condition in which the pleura — two large, thin layers of tissue that separate the lungs from the chest wall — becomes inflamed. Also called pleuritis, pleurisy causes sharp chest pain (pleuritic pain) that worsens during breathing.It can be caused by viral infections, pneumonia and other conditions
I felt the doctor was kind but his hands were tied.
On Monday, my fever was will going between 37.5-38, and my boyfriend called the health care center. It took hours to get through because the phone line was always busy.
After getting through to someone and explaining the situation, the women answering the phone said she can’t authorize a test because I have not traveled abroad and I have no direct contact with a COVID19 patient.
Her advice was, ” If it is still bad or gets worse in a few days, go back to the hospital and beg the doctor himself to call the healthcare center and request a test for me.
At that point I realized it’s impossible to get a test. I didn’t want to risk going outside and accidentally infecting someone.
Unfortunately, the part which is most frustrating for me now is that I don’t know if I actually have it or not.I was considering trying to go back to the US to help my mother who is in her seventies, but I cannot risk going back and spreading it to her.
Luckily today, on March 21, it was the first day that I haven’t had a fever since March 7. I lost my voice and talking still irritates my lungs but most of the chest pain is gone.
So I had fever for 14 days. It’s very surreal.
I was so surprised why they set up the hotline to call, but advice from both numbers was “just to go the hospital”.
I expected they would tell me where to go for example or perhaps advise me to stay home in quarantine.
What’s the point of a hotline if the advice is “just go to the hospital”?
Personally that made me feel like there is not much fear about it spreading in the medical establishment. This worries me.
Also as a side note, I had been extra careful , carrying hand sanitizer everywhere I went and also never was outside without a mask. I even was using taxis the majority of the time to avoid the train.
****
This is just one example of a person who most likely should have been tested for the virus and was not. If you have experienced something similar, please write us with the heading CVTESTS at japansubcultureresearchcenter@gmail.com
A priority item on the agenda of the first Shogun of Japan, Tokugawa Iyeyasu when he seized power in 1603, was to limit foreign travel to Japan. He issued several orders like the ones we’re seeing around the world at this moment: urging the Japanese to stay put in their own communities and urging all foreigners to get the hell out. By foreigners, Iyeyasu specifically meant the European missionaries who were spreading ideas – like a virus! – about an omnipotent God that transcended traditional Japanese values. They also extolled the virtues of non-violence and giving to the poor; two factors that the new Shogun viewed as particularly harmful to his authority. The ‘aliens’ had to go, and those who didn’t, were eventually executed or banished to Dejima Island, off the coast of Nagasaki. Iyeyasu’s son and grandson tightened the screws on the lockdown as they in turn, became the Shogun. Japan effectively bolted its doors to the outside world and Sakoku*・鎖国(shutting down the country)’ went into effect.
Initially, other clan lords were skeptical about this sakoku thing. Before Iyeyasu came along, Japan had a fairly robust import/export system, supported by a prosperous merchant class in Osaka. Without inbound travelers and foreign business, these merchants were sunk, as was the burgeoning currency economy. But Iyeyasu shrugged off their complaints and worries. He chose reclusive isolation over commerce and progress, and for the next 265 years, Japan became a ‘hikikomori (shut-in)’ in the global community. Everything passed us by: the Industrial Revolution and the locomotive, colonialism and corsets, Mozart and coffee, the printing press and chocolate. Everything.
*Writer’s Note – Contrary to the belief that the Tokugawa Shogunate coined the term ‘sakoku’ which literally means a ‘country in chains,’ it was actually invented by German explorer Engelbert Kaempfer in the late 17th century and later translated into Japanese.
In the meantime, the Japanese got a lot of practice on keeping calm and carrying on behind closed doors, in spite of or because of everything happening in the larger world. Sure, sakoku sucked in a hundred ways but it also created a uniquely weird culture that continues to enthrall or amuse people all over the world. Iyeyasu’s capital city of Edo – now called Tokyo, was a haven of stability and prosperity with an unparalleled ecological and recycling system.
The sakoku mind-set made all this possible – a willful and deliberate closing of the shutters to the outside world while making sure that plenty went on inside. Call it aloofness, coldness or a thick-skinned pragmatism. In times like this, such traits can come in pretty handy.
You may have heard that the Japanese aren’t very expressive – well that’s just not true. The Japanese are THE LEAST expressive people in Asia which probably makes us the most rigid people on the planet. Long before this virus thing the Japanese have been wearing masks – as a prevention against all ills including a bad skin day and questionable breath. The mask was also fashionable among teenage girls, as hiding their mouths made them feel more attractive. (Kissing with masks was a real thing in the early aughts too, because many young couples deemed it erotic.) We were also adamant about washing hands, gargling and refusing to eat off communal plates.
Smiling and laughing in public, talking to strangers, physical displays of affection – these things are normal in western cultures but they’ve never taken off here unless it became a fad. Like being friendly to foreigners and embracing diversity was a fad that many Japanese felt pressured into doing because hey, globalism and the Olympics 2020. But now COVID-19 has given the Japanese a very good reason to go back to the way we were. Unrelenting, inexpressive, rigid and distanced. It’s all cool. Show me a person with a secret stash of face masks and 30 rolls of toilet paper and I’ll show you a model Japanese citizen.
As for touching one another, it’s a whole other issue unto itself. The Japanese just don’t do this, and never had. Though many of us love the idea of casual cheek kisses a la Francaise, we just couldn’t muster the courage to try it on a Tokyo street. Now, we don’t have to pretend anymore. Social distancing may be a new and scary concept for the west but to us, it’s very familiar, like our parents to whom we pay the obligatory visit over New Year’s.
Speaking of which, I don’t ever remember being hugged by my late father, who devoted much of his life to wedging a good, 1.7 meter distance between himself and the rest of the world. It wasn’t just him of course, many Japanese males can’t bring themselves to get close to anyone they know, which paradoxically explains why there’s so much groping on the trains. But the virus has resolved that snag–what with schools closed and people ordered to work remotely, the morning trains are far less crowded and consist mostly of masked salarymen clutching phones with one hand and briefcases in the other, studiously avoiding all eye and physical contact.
You might say the Japanese are good at this. There is little of the sense of deprivation and loneliness that say, an American person might feel about the loss of casual physical contact. We’re not touching, we’re not smiling, but who’s to say we’re not having fun underneath our face masks?
Editor’s Note: And judging by the hanami crowds this weekend and in accordance with the Ministry of Health’s “Let’s go outside!” admonitions, it seems like Japan’s 鎖国（sakoku ) period may end very soon.
Just for the record, while big concerts and public events are not happening, there’s still plenty going on in Tokyo and most restaurants and department stores have stayed open. Other venues include:
1) Shinjuku Gyoen Park Located in Sendagaya, this place is heavenly for a stroll among the greenery and themed gardens.
Unanswerable questions of the year: Is Japan really going to war? Is Japan’s peacetime constitution going to be trashed by the ruling party and returned back to the Imperial Constitution, which did not give suffrage or equal rights to women?
This question will be on the mind and haunt your waking hours after reading “The Only Woman in the Room” by Beate Sirota Gordon. In this memoir, she takes us through the various events in her life made remarkable by the fact that in late 1945, she became a member on the US Occupation team that drew up Japan’s National Constitution. Not only was she the only woman in the room, she was just 22 years old.
Her passport said she was an American citizen, but Beate Sirota had lived for 10 years in Akasaka, Tokyo with her Russian Jewish parents (her father Leo Sirota was a celebrated musician from Vienna and a close friend of Kosaku Yamada). For the past five years, she had been in the US while her parents had been in detention in Karuizawa. The only way to catch a plane out of America and into a ravaged, defeated Japan to see them again, was to get a job in the army. Beate’s Japan experience and the fact that she could speak, write, and read with fluency got her that position.
“The Only Woman in the Room” is honest, plain and straightforward – written not by a professional author but an extremely well-bred, cultured woman who had forged a career for herself in a time when women – even in America – were expected to marry, have babies and sink themselves in domestic bliss. Or just sink. Across the Pacific, American women her age were sizing up future husbands at cocktail parties. Beate was commuting from Kanda Kaikan to Occupation headquarters and working on the constitution 10 to 12 hours a day. She often skipped meals, since food was scarce and the work was so pressing. Her male colleagues pushed themselves harder and put in more hours – and Beate mentions that she admired and respected them for that. Her tone is never feminist, probably because she comes from a generation told to revere males and elders. Besides, she grew up in Japan where women shut their mouths and looked down when a male spoke to them, and that was exactly what she did when she first landed in Atsugi and an official asked to see her passport.
On the other hand, though her tone is consistently soft and modest, her voice is clearly her own – and when it’s time to stand up for the Japanese and their rights, she apparently didn’t give an inch. What an ally the Japanese had in Beate, especially Japanese women whom she describes in the book and in interviews she gave later on: “Japanese women are treated like chattels, bought and sold on a whim.”
Rather than change the whole world, Beate wanted to contribute to the building of a modernized Japanese society. Rather than yell out for women’s’ rights and organizing feminist rallies, she sought to raise awareness about the historical plight of Japanese women and children. And just as earnestly, she wished to help her parents, in particular her mother, who was suffering from severe malnutrition. Beate wasn’t a saint nor interested in being one. Without meaning to, she came pretty close. Her prose is never condescending, nor does it brim with self-congratulations as in the case of many memoirs. She had a story to tell and she told it and as far as she was concerned, when the story was over there was no reason for fuss or lingering.
After the army stint, Beate Sirota Gordon returned with her parents to the US in 1948, married a former colleague in the Army and later worked as the director of the Asia Society and Japan Society in New York. She continued to give interviews about her work on the Constitution but only because she felt that the peace clause (the controversial Article 9) had to be defended repeatedly. She venerated her parents and remained very close to her mother until her death, while raising a family of her own, because family and love were precious and she knew first-hand the tragedy of losing them.
What culminates from her memoirs is her selflessness. Helping others, being fair, and maintaining a striking modesty in spite of her many accomplishments were the defining factors of Beate’s life. She died in 2012 from pancreatic cancer, four months after the death of her husband Joseph Gordon. The Asahi Shimbun printed an extensive obituary on the front page, lauding her work and reminding the readers how the Constitution had protected Japan all these decades, for better or worse. Mostly for the better.
We in Japan tend to take the Constitution for granted. Many people remember and harp on the deprivation of the war years but few bother to recall the dismal details of everyday life before that. Women couldn’t go to school; they were expected to serve their parents and male siblings before marrying into households where she continued to serve and slave her husband and his clan. These women brought up their sons in the traditional way – which resulted in an unending circle of entitlement and arrogance for men, and toil and servitude for females. In poor families, parents sold off their children. Soldiers and military policemen detained ordinary citizens on the slightest suspicion and beat them during interrogation. They were responsible for committing unspeakable atrocities in China and Korea.
There was happiness, peace, equality, and respect in the Sirota household when Beate was growing up, but she knew too well how the average Japanese in Japan fared; how women and children were cut off from beauty, culture, or anything out of the familial box. She wanted a magic wand that would somehow change all that, and her idealistic, 22-year old mind told her that if she couldn’t get a wand, the Constitution was bound to be the next best thing. The task was daunting – she was working for peace and gender equality in a country steeped in tradition and ‘bushido’ feudalism. At this point in 1945, not even American women had gender equality and there she was, giving her all to ensuring that Japanese women would get that right. And just for the reason, there wasn’t nor has there ever been, anything in the American Constitution that resembles Japan’s Article 9.
At the end of the book is an elegy by Beate’s son and part of it goes like this: “Your legacy is the art of living in beauty and truth, of speaking up and out for what is right, and of finding our best selves and sharing them.”
A guide to the Japanese underworld, Japanese pop-culture, yakuza and everything dark under the sun.
This question will be on the mind and haunt your waking hours after reading “The Only Woman in the Room” by Beate Sirota Gordon. In this memoir, she takes us through the various events in her life made remarkable by the fact that in late 1945, she became a member on the US Occupation team that drew up Japan’s National Constitution. Not only was she the only woman in the room, she was just 22 years old.