Fans of Japanese manga may be familiar with the genre gekiga (劇画), a term coined by renowned artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi in an attempt to demonstrate that not all comics are for children. Literally meaning “dramatic pictures,” the gekiga style is characterised by its realism and often-shocking plot twists. It started as an underground movement, but has since made its debut as an alternative style of manga.

Tatsumi is an animated gekiga film of sorts, inspired by and based on Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s life. In order to create the film, director Eric Khoo had his animators reproduce specific scenes from Tatsumi’s autobiographical work, A Drifting Life. Viewers are treated to an intimate view of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s life as a struggling artist, his failed relationships with members of the opposite sex, and an inside look into his journey to becoming one of the greatest manga-ka in Japan.

The manga of Yoshiro Tatsumi were used to create a worthy film.

Tidbits from Tatsumi’s short stories are interwoven between actual recollections about Tatsumi’s life, an inclusion that is initially confusing but eventually helps viewers understand more about Tatsumi’s thought process and the ideas that influenced him to push the boundaries of what was considered traditional in the manga world.

The 94 minutes of this film will be easier to follow if you are familiar with Tatsumi’s works already, but even if you aren’t, you probably won’t find it too difficult to differentiate experience from fictional narration. So if you’re interested in post-Occupation Japan and what life was like for artists back then, this just might be the film for you.

Tatsumi premiered in Japan during the 24th Tokyo International Film Festival, and is currently being screened at film festivals around the world. It’s slated for a 2012 release in the UK.

** This film is narrated in Japanese with English subtitles and may not be appropriate for young viewers **

Hello Japan! Hello Kitty!

Despite its stereotypical childish appearance and colorful design, this book is actually an extremely useful and entertaining  introduction to Japanese society and culture, almost worth introducing to 1^st year University students studying Japanese culture. According to the book’s editor, it was initially designed to be used, and read by Japanese people who travel abroad, so that they can practice easy conversation with foreigners and discuss Japan, its culture and society. That’s why you can find the book at Haneda Airport and Chitose Airport’s book shops in Hokkaido (Not at Narita). The striking thing about this book is that it features the world wide famous Japanese Sanrio character Hello Kitty, also known as Kitty White*, who introduces the reader to her family, to her friends and all the special events and particularities of her home country. Throughout the book, Hello Kitty speaks systematically in English and in Japanese, which also helps to sharpen the language skills of a non-Japanese reader, who hopefully has a small amount of knowledge about Japan and its language. Because you can constantly compare the words in Japanese characters and in English, the reader’s eye is continuously learning and registering from the reading. The second striking thing about this book, apart from the fact that it features Hello Kitty, is also the use of the romaji reading, to make it easier for the non-Japanese conversation partner to read the book too!

The book is divided into six parts and in each of these parts, Hello Kitty introduces 9 to 13 chapters for each topic such as:

1)   “Welcome to Japan”

2)   “Communication”

3)   “Sightseeing”

4)   “History and Culture”

5)   “Food and Cooking”

6)   “Japanese Lifestyle”

The illustrations are simple as Kitty, and very straightforward. While introducing actual places in Japan or Japanese typical meals, the book uses actual photos to make it more real. But it also illustrates using symbols for the most famous object or place on a map of Japan, so as to put a “face” to the city or the prefecture. For example, Niigata city is famous for its rice fields and sake.  Aomori prefecture is famous for its delicious apples. Apparently, Yamaguchi city is famous for its poisonous fugu fish and Nagasaki city for its castella cake. Fukushima is spelled “Hukushima” and it features a samurai warrior—not three melted down nuclear reactors.

In every chapter, you can find a “Did you know?” section, which explains something awkward or something unusual about Japanese life.

Under the chapter “Attending a funeral” Osoushiki (お葬式), you learn all the details and the steps you need to take when you attend a Buddhist funeral in Japan.

Kitty-sama feels your pain. Let her guide you through the tribulations of a Japanese funeral.

The opening illustration where Hello Kitty sheds a single tear is wonderfully Japanese in many senses. If Hello Kitty was introducing Korean culture or American Reality TV, she’d be shooting tears from her eyes like North Korea testing missiles after the death of the Supreme Leader. The funeral section is surprisingly concise and thorough. It covers everything from the protocol for burning incense to honor the dead to making a bow to the family members, and receiving the “return gift” after the sad feast. The “Did you know” for this section tells you: “that when you see a hearse on the street, we make a fist putting the thumb inside. This is to protect our parents, as thumb is referred to as “parents finger”, (oyayubi 親指) in Japanese.

From time to time, you also find a section called “for young people only” (wakamono dake若者だけ) where you can learn the slang used by Japan’s younger and ruder generations, such as “Are you serious?” マジで？ Maji-de? Or “You must be joking” うっそ〜 ussoo.

The book has some practical uses as well. Under the chapter “National Holidays”, you can find a calendar with Japan’s special days, such as the “Respect of the Aged Day” 敬老の日keiroo no hi, which is the third Monday of September, every year.

Just in time for 節分 (Setsubun)! Coming up in February!

This book is not childish at all, read it and you will learn much about Japan and its people, children, youth, adults and elderly people. And there are absolutely no pictures of green tea KitKats or high-tech toilets. We expected this book to be awful—it turns out to be awfully entertaining.

Hello Kitty’s Guide to Japan, English and Japanese/ハローティの英語で紹介する

Editor:　ナツメ社/Natsume Edition

Author:　桑原功次/Koji Kuwabara

Year of Publication: 2011

*According to some sources, although Hello Kitty aka Kitty White is a Japanese company created character, she is actually a British female national. Which is a bloody surprise, don’t you think, guv’nor?

Even if you estimate the number of yakuza members in Japan at 80,000–that still seems like a hard quota to fill, especially in smaller cities in Japan where the yakuza presence may be slim.  Police officers in Saitama, while not confirming the exact number,  said about the quota, “It’s not an easy number to fill. It almost makes you wish there was a gang war between the Sumiyoshi-kai and the Yamaguchi-gumi again….just kidding. Sort of.”  However, officers in Osaka said, “20? We could do that in a week. This town is infested with yakuza. On loan sharking charges alone we can round up twenty.”

The National Police Agency allegedly set a quota for yakuza arrests nationwide. First the exclusionary ordinances, and now this. Life isn't easy for the nine-fingered guy. (Illustration from the Shizuoka Prefecture PD)

The National Police Agency would not comment and it is unclear whether the quota is actually for the police headquarters of each Tokyo, Hokkaido, Osaka, Kyoto and the other 43 prefectures or the police stations within each Police HQ’s turf. One thing is for certain, when the NPA starts establishing quotas on cracking down on something, they’re very serious about it.

One thing that hasn’t changed though is the tradition of designating certain months of the year Special Concentrated Crackdown On Organized Crime Month(集中取り締まり月間). In the old days, the organized crime control cops (known as マル暴刑事・marubokeiji) would call up the local crime bosses and warn them to be on their best behavior. In the last two years, that practice has ceased almost completely. The days when crackdowns on the Japanese mafia were done with civility and decorum appear to be a thing of the past. Even raids on gang headquarters are now often done without advance warning. Times are changing.

This door to the shrine is seldom used but worth walking through. On the other side, the land of the gods.

The first visit to a shrine at the start of the New Year is important in Japan. We went and filled out a votive tablet (絵馬) for you. Good luck and best wishes in 2012!

This is our way of saying thanks for sticking with us and the blog for 2011 and expressing our best wishes for 2012. Even if you don’t believe in the Shinto Gods, it can’t hurt to have them on your side.

あけましておめでとうございます！

Ms. Stucky Post Power-Spot. "I feel like I'm floating on air!"

Jake feels the power.

The Kiyomasa Well (清正井), located in the Meij Jingu (明治神宮) Inner Garden is believed to be one of Tokyo premier power spots. No one is sure when the rumors began but around 2010, Japanese celebrities began whispering that if you took a photo of the well and used it as your cell-phone mainscreen that your good luck would bubble over, like the pure water that continues to bubble from the Kiyomasa well for many decades. We know that not everyone can make it to “the pond of power” so we decided to go for you guys. We’re so glad we did.

The well of Kiyomasa. It brings great luck to all those who visit it and carry a photo of it in their cell-phone. Please use it as you please. (Japan Subculture Research Center 2012)

It’s easy to miss the magic well of Kiyomasa, since the Meiji Jingu Inner Garden is a little off the beaten path to the main shrine. According to Meiji Shrine, the garden first belonged to Lord  Kiyomasa Kato and later Lord Li during the Edo Period. (When was the Edo period? Look it up. ) In the reign of Emperor Meiji, who was quite the radical reformer in his day, it was passed over to the Imperial Estate.

The well is fountain head of Nan-Chi (South pond) and the pure water bubbles out in a steady flow all year round. Apparently, it was a lucky strike when Lord Kato started to dig a basement. The well is famous for its simplistic design and the excellence of the well-water. Unfortunately, since the triple-meltdown in March, the shrine now asks people to refrain from drinking the water. However, photos are still okay!  You can even dip your hands into the relatively warm water. Swimming: not allowed. Enjoy the luck while it lasts!

The well is still so popular that lines form to take a picture of it.

Assistant editor and staff writer Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky tests out the power of the well. "冷たい！”

“Kiyoku, tadashiku, utsukushiku” 　『清く、正しく、美しく』 “We shall perform with Purity, Sincerity and Beauty”

Introduction:

Takarazuka Revue, is the 20^th century version of Japanese Kabuki, the primary differences being it incorporates Western music and instead of all men playing both female and male roles, all the performers are all women. In Takarazuka, which has a cult like-following in Japan, the most esteemed role of all is that of the 男役 (otoko-yaku) : the part of the male.

The cultural ramifications and sexual dynamic of this entertainment empire are extremely well-covered in the book  Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan by Jennifer Robertson.

Women perform all the male and female characters of the company’s musicals and shows; all the members of the troupe refer to themselves internally as “students.”  Male role performers are granted a higher status in the company. About 400 members represent the whole company. Forty new members directly recruited by the Takarazuka music academy enter the professional troupe each year. Top stars usually spend 6 to 10 years as junior students.

Once she enters the company, the student will belong to one of the five kumi, (factions), such as the Hana Gumi (Flower Troupe), Tsuki Gumi (Moon Troupe), Yuki Gumi (Snow Troupe), Sora Gumi (Sky Troupe), Hoshi Gumi (Star Troupe). The word “kumi” or “gumi” in Japanese is also often used by Japanese criminal organizations in faction names but there is no Goto-gumi in the Takarazuka. Each troupe has a leader, and this position is acceded to members according to strict seniority. There are more than 70 members in each troupe. In every troupe, there is a designated top star in the male role and in the female role, both together they are the goruden conbi, ゴールデンコンビ, (golden combination). Women who reached this position have reached the highest pinnacle of success for a Takarazuka star.

The Takarazuka Opera Company performs in two main theaters: one in Takarazuka City, Hyogo Prefecture and a theater in Hibiya, Tokyo, (Subway A13).

 History:

Ichizo Kobayashi is the founder of this cultural institution and its origins date back to 1910. This businessman, who owned the Hankyu Railways in Osaka decided to build the first indoor swimming pool in Japan in the village of Takarazuka near Osaka, in order to attract clients who would have to use the rail ways to get to that area. Having created a non-heated mixed swimming pool, this entertainment place called paradaisu (“Paradise”) did not get the success he was expecting. However, in 1911, in Osaka, the the department store Mitsukoshi engaged a group of ten male singers and musicians in the western style in order to entertain the clients of the department store and it was a rousing success. Kobayashi immediately decided to rip off the idea, recruited about twenty girls, and taught them to sing. He transformed the indoor swimming pool into a gigantic theater, whose purpose was to entertain families and children. In the beginning, the girls were part of a singing choir, Takarazuka shoukaitai( 宝塚唱歌隊,aka the choir of Takarazuka), however Kobayashi insisted on adding the word shoujo, 少女 (young woman) to the name that he gave to his group in the naming of Takarazuka shoujo kageki yousei kai (宝塚少女歌劇養成会-the association of opera training young girls).

In 1913, Kobayashi’s institution was named Takarazuka Kageki Dan (宝塚歌劇団) (The Takarazuka Academy of Music). Kobayashi then founded a school of music and dancing. Young women who were recruited had to spend two years in the Academy before joining the Takarajiennu, タカラジエンヌ, (“Takarasiennes”) from the professional troupe. This is how a new bourgeois type of culture was created that was aimed at people who could afford to spend money for pleasure and fun.

What type of performance:

The production of Takarazuka includes also Japanese traditional type of plays, such as the Genji Monogatari (源氏物語–Tales of Genji), European style of plays, such as “Mon Paris”, and also Broadway style shows, such as West Side Story. The shows at Takarazuka were, in the beginning essentially addressed to an audience of children, however the style soon became erotic and politically engaged. In general, the theater never represented contemporary Japan, except during the 1930’s and 1940’s, when certain military subjects were treated. Japanese people or society were almost never represented. The show offered the Japanese people a chance to  dream of lives in other parts of the world.

Sexual Politics:

The actresses of Takarazuka are recruited according to esthetic and physical criteria, such as their beauty, their height (taller than average for otokoyaku, 男役, (male performers), their voice and the shape of their face (square face, if possible, for the otokoyaku). Just by naming these criteria, we can see that clichés for male roles are established from the start.

During the first years of Takarazuka, in the 1910’s, the joyuu, 女優, (actresses, female comedians) were not viewed favorably by the public. They were judged as being decadent and leading a life of independent women. To which, Kobayashi has responded by creating an academy for young women who attend “school” as seito, 生徒, (students). This made it sound like the girls were not professional performers. This understanding also assured the parents that they had placed their child in a good school, where education was very strict and traditional. “Takarasiennes” was a name to refer to the term in vogue parijiennu, パリジエンヌ, (“Parisiennes”) or parisians. The Takarasiennes are hierarchized within the academy of music and dance. They have to study during two years and hold a relationship of sempai/kouhai, 先輩/後輩, (elder/smaller sisters) between the first year and second year students. This means that the kouhai have to respect the senpai and they have to clean the music and dancing rooms without electrical equipment such as vacuum cleaners. The teachers at Takarazuka are convinced that intense work and hardship education shapes the characters of the students. Men are also strictly prohibited from coming inside the academy. Takarazuka allowed young Japanese women to participate to artistic culture and more precisely allowed women work as artists in contemporary theatrical culture. There were very few actresses and singers during the early days of Takarzuka but the quasi-academic setting protected the image of its performers and reassured society that these women were engaged in a legitimate enterprise.

When Kobayashi started his musical company, he did not want the public to imagine that the Takarasiennes were delinquents. He played with the terms of designation to preserve the “purity and innocence” of his dancers. He has defined the brand image of his product: he made clear that his recruits come from wealthy families and that after they spent years within Takarazuka, his actresses were “ready” to become virtuous women, knowing how to take care of men and how to educate correctly their children. He therefore followed the myth of the “good wife/wise mother”, according to the term used by Jennifer Robertson, in Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (1998). This concept seems to have been invented during the Meiji period in order to catalyze society. Kobayashi even pretended that the young woman who graduated from his academy were going to be more disciplined and suited for family life because his school guided them in a healthy path and without direct relationship with men from the outside.

Takarazuka, at its start, present some characteristic of paternalism. Young Japanese women were trained to become model housewives. It seems that Kobayashi even tried to control his girls even after they retired, by ensuring a decent marriage with a respectable and rich man. This shows, once again, the importance of “economic” marriage for women (in Japan) and in general.

Language in Theater:

In the Japanese language, the speech of each gender is much more distinct than in most of other languages. For example, in French or in English, there is not more than one way to refer to oneself, as a person with male genitals or female genitals. When we refer to ourselves, we say “I”. In Japanese, at oral speech, females and males use the pronoun watashi or watakushi, 私, in order to designate themselves. However, females usually do not use or cannot use (although nowadays, anything is possible!) the pronouns ore, 俺, or boku, 僕, these terms are used by males.

Media controversy in the 1930’s:

In 1939, when the media turned against Takarazuka for the first time, the actresses, especially the otokoyaku actresses performing male figures were seriously been discredited. One of the first scandals of lesbianism had been denounced in the press at that moment. Effectively, these women disguised as men and imitating male voice and speech, with short hair were beginning to worry the public opinion. What actually worried the Japanese society was more the sudden love of the young Japanese women for the western culture and these otokoyaku.

The Fans:

Many of the fans seems to have been mature or married women, but what was unacceptable for the Japanese society in general were the pubescent and pre-pubescent shoujo, 少女, whose sexuality was beginning to be “deviant” or “deviating” by the Takazuka actresses. Official measures have been taken to put these young girls on the “right path” and to direct them into their femininity so that they could enter the symbolic adulthood described by the Restoration. The modern Japanese woman, as Robertson describes her to us readers in her book, was “fascinating, attractive, weak and different”, that is why it was desirable for men to control her. However, this soon began to be a necessity, because the woman was beginning to be “dangerous, strong and indifferent”. The Japanese state showed a strong will to describe the ideal shojo and a strong will to operate to contribute to form patriarchal military institutions, which idealized heterosexuality.

Kobayashi, the founder of Takarazuka was not a feminist, however he seemed to openly criticize society centered on masculinity. He was the first to wish that theater and opera were accessible to women as much as to men. Kobayashi seems to have used his Takarazuka actresses to circulate the ideal image of male and female behavior within the family cell. While bowing to the sexual politics of the times, he also seemed to subvert the culture and allow women greater access to the world of the performing arts. However, as the times have changed, Takarazuka has not. It will be interesting to see how or if it survives into the next century.

According to the organizers of the conference, over 100 people from 20 countries and more than 200 Japanese NGO participated to the Global Conference for Nuclear Power Free World in Yokohama between January 14 and 15^th 2011, ten months after the big Fukushima power plant accident. As of Saturday 14^th, there had been 16’600 live online viewers and over 6’427 tickets had been sold. On Saturday, over 3000 people visited the conference in Yokohama, according to organizers. The final tally will be on Monday. The conference conveyed people from different countries in the world who have experienced nuclear disasters, such as hibakusha (people who have been exposed to large amounts of nuclear radiation) or nuclear waste land residents and people who were irradiated during nuclear weapons tests. Their message was the same: “Call on your governments to shut down the  nuclear power plants and uranium mines in the world.” Ten months after the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, many people still have a feeling that the truth has not been told and that not enough has been done. “Only a global network of experts can be sufficient to support the victims of the Fukushima accident. The world has experienced Chernobyl and now Fukushima, we have to network, share information and learn from previous mistakes”, said the chairman of the Nuclear Free World Organizing Committee, Tatsuya Yoshioka. Many people from Tohoku committed suicide after they realized their land was forever tainted. One man in the last message on he posted on his desk before he died, wrote:  “If there were no nuclear power plants, if there were no nuclear power, this would not have happened”.

At the opening remarks of the conference, Japanese anti-nuclear “rebels” such as Eisaku Sato, former governor of Fukushima Prefecture gave a speech.

Eisaku Sato became governor of Fukushima Prefecture in 1988 after being elected at the Upper House in 1983. He came into disagreement with the Japanese government on nuclear power plant issues and the excess concentration of population and industry in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. He was forced to step down in 2006 and later prosecuted for corruption related to a dam construction project. Despite being found guilty, he denies all these charges and is now appealing to the Supreme Court. He has claimed that he was framed by TEPCO and their allies in the Japanese government because he raised issues about TEPCO’s lax safety practice. The courts determined that he actually received 0 yen in profits on the supposed construction fraud.  One of the prosecutors in his case was later convicted for forging evidence in another criminal investigation. He said that, from his personal experience, the municipal government headquarters of Fukushima only notified the Fukushima people of the meltdown six days after then national news began to report on it. Many local communities in Japan rely heavily on the nuclear industry to provide jobs.  When the city of Iwaki, in the Ibaragi prefecture went bankrupt, it was not only the famous “Hula Girls” who lifted up the local economy. They also agreed to let nuclear waste be stored there. In 2001, the Ministry of Finance was split in two, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade became unified the same year.  “To promote business and industry under the same agency is just like having the police and the thieves working under the same umbrella”, Eisaku Sato said.

Mrs. Rebecca Harms, Member of the European Parliament and vice president of the Greens/EFA group, from Germany, addressed the Japanese public at the opening ceremony of the Global Conference for Nuclear Power Free World, in Yokohama. She said her country has closed eight power plants after the Fukushima accident, although Germany is currently under conservative leadership. She said that the Fukushima limited evacuation decision is “not comprehensible after the lessons learnt at Chernobyl”.   Mr. Tetsunori Ida, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policy, in Japan, said that after the Three Mile Island, the Chernobyl accidents, and last year the Fukushima accident, nuclear energy was a questionable resource. He noted Japan has been shaken by the third nuclear catastrophe in its own history–Hiroshima and the Nagasaki were the first. “Japan is going through a third change in its history, after the revolution at the Meiji Period, after the Second World War and now after the Fukushima nuclear accident, we can say this: The Fukushima accident has created a Jasmine Revolution in Japan, generating public outcry and debate.”

Peter Watts, an aborigine and co-chair of The Australian Nuclear Free Alliance, said that the British government detonated a nuclear weapon on his neighboring lands in Australia in the 1950’s. Australia has four uranium mines, which is one third of the world’s total. Australia sells uranium to 15 countries, to the US, UK, France, Japan, South Korea, China, Spain, Taiwan, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Canada and South Africa. “TEPCO has bought Australian uranium, and the particles that were spread over Japan come from Australia. We must stop uranium mining”.

Shuntaro Hida, a Japanese medical doctor and Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor has been practicing his profession until March 2011. At the age of 94, he decided to retire after 3/11 and devote his time to giving advice the Fukushima mothers and victims. Having been a medical doctor during the US occupation, he knows that the US government did not disclose information about the effects of radioactivity and therefore some information is not well known in Japan. However, Mr. Hida has been networking with the NGO called “The Bridge to Chernobyl” and its president Mrs. Noro. Together they agree that many medical symptoms that have appeared in Chernobyl children also appeared in children of Fukushima and also the Kanto area, such as nose bleeding, joints, and pain in the bones etc. However, medical doctors cannot prove that these symptoms are related to radiation, and therefore will never admit publicly that there is any link with the Fukushima meltdown. According to his experience, observing the hibakusha from the Hiroshima atomic bomb, Mr. Hida says the symptoms appear after 6 months to one year. Ever since he retired from being a medical doctor in March 2011, he has been appointed to more than 84 conferences to inform Japanese people about the effects of radiation.   When asked if the Japanese government should keep the corpses of the animals that lived in the Forbidden 20km zone, Mr. Hida said: “The government should pay scientists from universities to research and study the corpses and the living beings and animals from the 20 km zone, even if it takes 10 or 20 years to conduct those efforts. These animals should not be destroyed or forgotten forever”.

Shuntaro Hida is currently 95 years and 15 days old, and is still in a good shape although he was a victim of the Hiroshima bomb, and he advises people to practice activities to stay healthy and longevity: “go to bed early (hayane), wake up early (hayaoki), get a good sleep (suimin), eat well, go to the toilet (eat a lot of fiber so that you poop regularly), play a lot, work a lot and practice good sex. Only a world without nuclear power can be a better world.”   Miss Kathleen Reiley, (67) a visitor at the conference, has lived 43 years in Japan, and has been working as a volunteer councilor at the National Cancer Center Hospital in Tokyo. She said that after the Tokaimura accident in Ibaraki prefecture in 1999, she observed that she has been meeting more children with solid tumors, 3 to 4 years after the nuclear accident. She also said that the Tokaimura has the most plutonium of any of the reactors, and plutonium attacks the bones. “I have asked the authorities for investigation to understand if there is a link between the children who get bone cancer or leukemia and the place where they live, but no one replied to my demand. I heard a boy from Fukushima today say that he felt, ‘our lives and health are more important than money, I do not want to get sick”.

It is not clear that the Government of Japan feels the same way.

Last stop.

For more than nine months, the 20 km zone around the Fukushima power plant has been a forbidden zone, where evacuation is an obligation for everyone, except one man. Since the nuclear accident, Naoto Matsumura refuses to leave his farm. At the age of 52, this farmer is physically in a good shape. In the city of Tomioka, Fukushima Prefecture, where he currently lives, there is no water and no electricity. “When I wake up in the morning, I take my dogs for a nice walk. I  brushing my teeth. I do this for about twenty minutes. And then I try to think about what to do for the rest of my day”. Matsumura usually eats instant ramen, which are easy to prepare with a bit of boiled water. He drinks mineral water when he manages to find some. In summer, he took showers in the greenhouse, with the water from the river, which he boils with charcoal he finds here and there. The water from the river is radioactive. Before the nuclear accident, Matsumura used to fish at the river. Last summer, he did his laundry there. With a large smile on his face, Matsumura says: “I love fishing. The rivers and the sea here are full of fish, however I cannot eat them, because they contain too much cesium. The rain of cesium particles spread by the crippled Fukushima Number 1 power plant （福島原発第一） after the nuclear meltdown back in March has contaminated them.”

Tomioka is a small town that stands between the Fukushima Number 1 and Number 2 power plants. It used to be a quiet little town on the Pacific coast of Japan, where 16,000 inhabitants lived before March 12. To this day, some elderly people have been coming and leaving, but there is only one citizen who has stayed and lived there continuously. Tomioka was been evacuated on the next day after the tsunami hit. The orders from the authorities were clear and simple: “Take the minimum amount of your possessions and get out.”

The refugees from Fukushima (Tomioka) have abandoned their houses, their belongings, their cars, their pets, but they hoped to come back afterwards. The last people who were resisting the orders like Matsumura, felt they had to give up the fight. TEPCO, the private operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, after first denying any meltdowns later revised their statements to acknowledge the core of three reactors had melted down and that  the “problem” might still be actually  solved… after 30 years. Matsumura notes that “TEPCO and the Japanese government have never stopped lying, out of their good will, in order to avoid panic among the population. Such good intentions, of course.”

Despite his white hair and mustache, Matsumura looks like a Hollywood actor. He smokes twenty “Mild Seven” cigarettes a day: “I buy cigarettes when I go out of the forbidden zone from time to time. I like smoking. If I quit smoking now, I may get ill!” He laughs.

Back in June 2011, according to a photographer who entered the forbidden zone to visit Matsmura: “Around his newly built house on the top of a hill in Tomioka, enormous spider nets invaded the vegetation, like everywhere else in the ghost town. Enormous spiders seemed to take advantage of the radioactivity and the evacuation of the zone in order to pullulate”.

Matsumura has been looking after 400 cows, 60 pigs, 30 fowls, 10 dogs, more than hundred cats and an ostrich. The ostrich was the official mascot of TEPCO; they brought it to the town, allegedly. The ostrich was supposed to represent energy efficiency. The ostrich needs very little food to survive and thrive; it’s a very energetic animal. Unfortunately, it also has a tendency to bury its head in the sand when dealing with danger and is not a very bright bird. It makes a fitting symbol for TEPCO and its executives. (There is, however, no past history of ostriches being arrested for criminal negligence resulting in death and/or injury. They’re stupid creatures but not evil.)

“What happened to the animals is that, when the people of Tomioka evacuated in March, everybody  opened the gates and the cages of the animals. They left their animals alone or returned them to nature, and especially the cattle and the pigs have become wild and they are currently living in the wilderness where they are growing”.

“I have seen animals dying, from diseases or for example, from being tied to ropes”.　“When the cattle are still young, we put a rope around their faces. I saw some cows bleeding to death, because, tied to their rope, they grew bigger”.

Matsumura goes to bed at around 6 PM, and gets up at the rising sun. He has no electricity in his house, and the temperatures go below freezing. When he wakes up, he listens to the silence that surround him. At least he can hear the sound of the living birds, dogs or cats, which are ill or depressed. He does not know if their pain is due to radiation.   Only the cows that have gone wild seem to be flourishing and healthy: “They are gorgeous and fat. They eat a lot of grass,” Matsumura says.

Six cows were born since March. They looked “normal”.

In Tomioka, human time has stopped twice. Once when the tsunami hit, and a second time during the massive evacuation.

A photo reporter who went inside the red zone in April 2011 spoke about his impressions: “While looking at the sea, there was no other noise than the noise of the wind and the waves hitting the rocks”. “Inside the houses, which have become ruins after they were hit by the tsunami, dirt has been accumulating in the living rooms”. “There is a cynical contrast with the town streets, which remained clean despite the lack of care”. “We have to search very closely to discover that, behind those quiet houses, in the back side of the walls, a window has been broken.”

Robbers and thieves have made their ways into the zone. “The ATM in stores were also tempting and easy prey. There were no policemen in the zone. The ATM have been broken up with hammers and looted in order to steal radioactive money, which currently circulates somewhere in Japan.”

“Farms have become death camps. The cattle houses are full of dead animals in the stage of decomposition”.

“The worms and the crows are cleaning the big parts”.

To erase the smell of the mass graves, more time will be required. However, all the cows that escaped are not out of danger. On a farm, Matsumura saw a young cow that was suffering. She was not in good shape. A rope attached to its face was blocking its jaw. After seven months, the calf had become a cow. “The skull that was growing fast was trapped within the rope. The skin and the muscle were cut vividly by the furrow created by the rope. The animal could not drink, nor eat.”

The cow was trying to get rid of its rope with its foot leg but without success. When Matsumura approached the cow in order to cut the rope, the cow escaped. Like many cows before her, she was going to starve to death.

Some gates have never been opened.

In this human desert, the air seems so pure, that one could forget the radioactive contamination that cannot be measured without a Geiger counter. Matsumura lives in his dangerous solitude like a king, and the forbidden zone is his kingdom. He treats the animals that live in there like his friends. He is a benevolent king.

Mr. Matsumura found two dogs caught in wild pig traps in the mountains. He set them free but couldn't save their legs.

Mr. Matsumura thinks the dog got caught in the wild boar trap while going on a stroll where he used to go with his master. The right paw was lost.

When he sees a cat or a dog, he stops, he strokes them and offers them a share of pet food crackers. For him, the  massively abandonment of the cattle to  a long and painful death in their cages, in their barns, was a hideous crime. In spring 2011, he heard that the veterinary services of the Fukushima prefecture were going to launch a campaign to kill the surviving cattle and other animals. Metallic wire fences had been prepared all over the forbidden zone in order to trap them in order to inject disinfectant in their veins, not poison, which would cause them to die a painful death. Matsumura was angry: “This massacre made no sense at all. They are living beings. I want to tell the whole world that they are not only going to kill the cattle, all the animals in the forbidden zone will be killed in secret!” In May 2011, there were about 2000 living cows. Three moths ago, there were 400 of them. As for the cats and dogs, we are not really sure about the numbers anymore.

Matsumura spends his days feeding the animals. Every morning, he goes from houses to houses in order to feed the cats and dogs that stayed in town, then he goes to feed the his pigs and wild pigs.

Matsumura also used to own 32 beehives, but he has only 3 left. Radioactivity seems to have decimated his bees. One day in June, Matsumura made an unexpected encounter in Okuma, a neighborhood in Tomioka. He does not like to go there because the level of radiation is very high, one of the highest spots in the forbidden zone. In Okuma, the corpses have been abandoned because they were too radioactive to be given back to their families. In the middle of the street, there was an ostrich. She was the only survivor of the local farm, which used to keep thirty other ostriches. That ostrich is very popular among the policemen who started to patrol inside the forbidden zone around August 2011.

“They gave her a name: Boss”.

Matsumura tried to attract the bird with dog food and put a rope around her neck so that he could keep her with him to enjoy her company. But she escaped. “Boss” seemed in very good shape after seven months of freedom. The policemen wearing anti-radiation suits used to take photographs of themselves next to her. Matsumura spends his days without a Geiger counter. He does not calculate the doses of radioactivity he absorbs on a daily basis in the food, in the air and in the soil. The whole world had been touched by the dignity of the Japanese people during the successive disasters that hit the country. For Matsumura, when asked to speak on the subject of TEPCO,  the operator of the power plant, he thinks they did not act with excessive moderation, but with apathy and indifference.

“The citizens of Fukushima protest very little. TEPCO took their houses, their land, the air and the water, and they accept it! No one was angry. Before the construction of the nuclear power plant, TEPCO said: ‘Problems will never occur, never’. Everyone has been cheated. I went myself to the headquarters of TEPCO in Tokyo to ask them for explanations. The only things that the leaders have been able to tell me is ‘sumimasen’ (we’re sorry). And the Japanese government has repeatedly announced during three months, that the radioactivity is not dangerous!”

Matsumura has been living without a Geiger counter, however recently, JAXA, the equivalent of the NASA in Japan has discretely given him a dosimeter.

JAXA has analyzed some sample of land and food taken from the zone. “Around Tomioka, the levels of radioactivity in the soil are superior to Chernobyl,” he was told. Matsumura likes the mushrooms in the forest. However he knows that those he took in the forest are highly contaminated. Despite his weariness, Matsumura is conscious of the risks he is taking. However, his sense of humor has not left him; it may outlast the radioactivity.

“There are good sides to this tragedy. The telephone is free, and I do not need to pay my electricity bills. Life has become cheaper.”

At some point, Matsumura has accepted to take a whole body counter check of the situation inside his body (internal exposure). The doctors exclaimed: “You are a champion of radiation!” Matsumura does not wish to comment any further on this subject. When he speaks about his family, he speaks very freely:  ”My father is 80 years old, my grandmother lived until she was hundred years old, so I had the hope to live at least until I get to my eighties. With the radioactivity, I think I will live until my sixties, at best”.

“Tomioka, for me, is the most beautiful place in the world, there is the ocean, the mountains and the forest. Nothing will make me leave this soil, on which my family has been living on for five generations”.

Update:

Dear readers and supporters of Mr. Matsumura,

If you live in Japan and if you wish to support Mr. Naoto Matsumura in his struggle to keep the animals alive, please feel free to use his Japanese Bank account. With Japan Subculture we will soon fix a pay pal system to collect donations from abroad. Mr. Naoto Matsumura is currently fighting to either convince the Japanese government not to kill these pet animals, or at least to keep the internal organs and to provide them to international scientific labs or universities in order to study them and collect useful data.

This is Mr. Naoto Matsumura’s private bank account:

東邦銀行　安積支店　普通　NO６３６７８９　松村直登
Toho Ginko (bank), Asaka Shiten (branch), No 636789 , Matsumura Naoto

Mr. Naoto Matsumura takes care of his friend. *All photos were provided courtesy of Naoto Matsumura.

This data, which comes from the 2010 Census, indicates that marriage rates for woman in the same age group are slightly lower –10.8% of unmarried women get hitched in that interval, only 2% of the female population. And after 45, only .1% get married.

According to some “marriage consultant”, there are a few reasons the Japanese are increasingly remaining single. First, it is becoming more socially acceptable to stay unmarried. “Peculiar” personality traits of men over 35 also play a part; many unmarried men over 35 are immersed in hobbies (otaku alert!) or work (salarymen alert!). They have few friendships and tend to go through life “unseen” (hikikomori alert!). Another problem- it is a tendency of both men and women to “shoot high” and spur compromise. Men in particular tend to overvalue themselves; even in cases when the relationship is unfolding pleasantly, and a couple suit each other, the consultant explains, often the man will think “I’d be better off single than with this person”.

because these people look happy.

Those who participate in konkatsu (marriage parties) are both more desperate and more selective (“specs” such as income and career become more important than in traditional dating), making one’s chances of finding someone through these parties very slim. Therefore, a man with a below-average income has virtually no chance of securing a mate through konkatsu.

There are many ways to analyze this data. I see the movement away from marriage as part of the passive rebellion occurring among the young in Japan.“Herbivore men”, who spurn the materialistic and status-seeking identities of their fathers, refuse to participate in demanding salary man jobs and aggressive spouse/girlfriend/one-night stand-hunting; but not knowing any other options (or in Japanese society, not having any), they sit out altogether- from the dating scene, from the job search.

More obviously, women also find themselves choosing to stay single rather than settling. More ambitious and educated than ever before, the new generation is very much at odds with tradition here. Wanting both a job and a husband is hard when most Japanese men still expect the woman to do all the housework, even if she works as well.

Written almost 11 years ago, this excerpt from the LA Times I think explains some of the data; ”During the “bubble” economy of the 1980s, women got choosier but remained more pragmatic than romantic in picking a mate. They still defined a good catch as a man with the “three highs”: higher education, high income and height. Now young women who can support themselves have added even tougher criteria for Mr. Right. Chikako Ogura of Aichi Shukutoku University says the new standard is the “three Cs”: financially comfortable, emotionally communicative and cooperative in housework and childcare.” You know, the typical Japanese male.

Fewer marriageable men on the market = less marriage. Doesn’t seem like brain surgery to me. Yet, I have heard from a number of haters that analyses invoking simplistic “demonizing” of asian men is a western interpretation, and that the issue is more complicated than that.

Of course, it is more complicated than that, but any analysis that fails to include the shifting expectations of women is simply incomplete. There is actually evidence that the declining birthrate can be at least partially attributed to women refusing to have children due to “ their husbands’ lack of participation in child rearing and housework” (Ishii-Kuntz, 1994, 2003). Again, opting out.

And from the same UN report, the discrepancy of hours spent on housework (according to a 2005 study, women spend a daily average of 4.26 hours doing housework compared to 1.38 hours for men) is one of the most oft-cited statistics by women.

Marriage Consultant highlights the fact that the young, choosier than ever, are passing up opportunities and waiting until it is “too late”. Specifically, men are starting to have more unrealistic expectations, and according to the U.N. data, the same could be said of women. God help you all!

FUCKIN' SALE. In flashy Osaka the use of English for decorative purposes in Japanese advertising reaches a new peak of perfection.

There are some stories that explain themselves pretty f*ckin’ eloquently.

God knows what the people in this Department Store in Osaka were thinking when they came up with this advertising slogan but Zarina Yamaguchi, a friend of a friend, was thinking “pretty damn funny” when she snapped this picture on January 4th. Zarina explains:

Well, a childhood friend of mine and I were strolling along the local street in Shinsaibashi, Osaka. Being around the extra-genki Osaka-jins and salesladies screaming ‘Irashaimasse’ from every direction for the ongoing New Year Sales has never made us feel more at home. On our way to catch up over coffee, I walked into this store to check some things. Truth is, I didn’t even notice the posters. When I looked around, each corner had posters that printed ‘fucking sale’. I didn’t know how to react but what caught me by surprise was that none of the people around me seem to understand the profanity. My friend Sarah and I, both of mixed Japanese descent, both bilingual in Japanese and English, were struck with the comical twist. Pretty sure I would have never seen this elsewhere, I had to snap a shot. 

The store is located in Shinsaibashi right next to Hearton Hotel Shinsaibashi and Planet 3rd cafe, she adds.

I should note that Zarina’s childhood friend is Sarah Kashani, my friend and one of the most knowledgable scholars on Koreans in Japan. Sarah verified the authenticity of the signage and the sale, although neither side has disclosed whether they actually bought anything at the sale.

2012 is going to be a fuckin’ awesome year in Japan. You can’t help but feel that way. Our thanks to Ms. Yamaguchi-sama for her contribution. We’re f*ckin’ grateful. 超感謝ですよ。

These cats are all dressed up for the fuckin' sale, dude.