November 13, 2024
Crunchyroll 360
Plus an annual subscription saves around sixteen bucks over the monthly rate.
Though then I recalled that my last annual subscription ran out a few days earlier than I expected it to. A little research confirmed that, according to Crunchyroll itself,
Our subscription services are billed on a 30-day cycle (or 90 days, or 360 days), not a fixed rate. Since all months do not have exactly 30 days, the billing date can fluctuate, which can result in these changes.
Ah, now it makes sense. With the more typical month-to-month payment systems, we don't mind getting screwed over in February because the seven 31-day months will make up for it. The whole system is still more irrational than it needs to be.
If I ruled the world, I'd create a calendar of twelve 30-day months with four one-day festival days for the equinoxes and solstices, plus an extra day for the New Year. Then I'd shift the year forward ten days so that the Winter Solstice fell on New Year's Eve.
In ancient times, kings and emperors issued debt relief decrees on special occasions to win the loyalty of the masses. Given the complexities of modern economies, that wouldn't work today without creating all sorts of moral hazards.
I would stipulate that no rents or interest could be charged during those five festival days. This rule would not apply to all the common per diem expenses, only to rolling monthly and yearly accrued charges.
I'm sure it would take no time at all for retailers to come up with all sorts of "Interest free!" sales.
Oh, and I would get rid of Daylight Saving Time too.
Related posts
The relative time of day
Daylight Saving (waste of) Time
Labels: business, crunchyroll, geography, hidive, netflix, politics, science, streaming, technology
November 06, 2024
Matt Alt on minimalism
To begin with, ascetic practices attributed to Zen Buddhism are not the same as the disciplined use of space due to the fact that there isn't that much of it.
Ongoing population decline notwithstanding, Japan is still home to 126 million people who live in a country the size of California. Only 11 percent of the total land area is arable and less than a third of that is actually usable for housing.
That certainly sounds like a good argument for a less-is-more lifestyle. Except what space is available is nowadays bound to be crammed to the gills with stuff (as George Carlin delightfully put it).
After all, Kondo wrote originally for a Japanese audience, that had apparently forgotten they were supposed to be minimalists living in the land of minimalism.
Though to give Kondo the benefit of the doubt, I believe this is largely a postwar phenomenon brought about by both a booming economy and the additional confidence that all your stuff will still be here tomorrow.
As I discussed in a post about how Edo-period cities handled the constant plague of massive urban fires, perhaps Japanese minimalism simply evolved as a way to cope with that pretty grim reality.
Starting with the Great Fire of Meireki in 1657, fire was such ever-present fact of life that the average Edokko could expect his house to burn down at least once during his lifetime.
This expectation didn't end with the Meiji. As Edward Seidensticker writes in Low City, High City, "From early into middle Meiji, parts of Nihonbashi were three times destroyed by fire. There were Yoshiwara fires in 1871, 1873, 1891, 1911, and of course in 1923."
As late as 1995, the widespread damage from fires throughout Kobe following the Great Hanshin earthquake was a big wakeup call. Fire is no longer the threat it once was in Japan's urban centers, which has allowed clutter to proliferate.
When one of those old Edo period storehouses shows up in a modern mystery series, it will be crammed floor to ceiling with a haberdashery of clutter, that the detectives will have to comb through to find the critical clue.
As Kyoichi Tsuzuki points out, "Simplicity isn’t about poverty at all. It’s about wealth." It's about being able to buy all that stuff and then being able to afford to store it someplace else. Or replace it on a whim.
It's also a good way to have your minimalist cake and eat it too. Before the fussy relatives come over, cart all that materialistic excess to the storehouse and show off your splendidly simple life.
Or I guess you could hire Marie Kondo to eliminate the need in the first place.
Labels: economics, geography, history, japan, japanese culture, religion
October 02, 2024
Tonbo!
International media distributor Remow teamed up with Nihon Eiga Broadcasting to bring historical dramas to overseas audiences with its Samurai vs Ninja website and YouTube channel. Remow has also gotten into anime licensing and continues to refrain from exclusives, sharing content on Tubi and YouTube.
Tonbo! (2024) is the best title in their anime portfolio so far. The manga by Ken Kawasaki and Yu Furusawa has been serialized in Weekly Golf Digest since 2014 and currently totals 52 volumes. So the viewer would do well to keep in mind that this isn't your usual shonen sports drama. It is written for golfers.
In other words, if you don't find Tonbo's inventive use of a 3 iron inherently fascinating, then the series probably isn't for you.
The plot merges the premises of Barakamon (2014), in which a professional calligrapher with a troubled past exiles himself to a tiny island and meets a bunch of quirky kids, and Rising Impact (2024), in which an eight-year-old golfing prodigy from the sticks is recruited to the elite Camelot Academy.
For idiosyncratic reasons I never divined, the names of several characters in Rising Impact are derived from the aforementioned Camelot, like Gawain and Lancelot. And speaking of Gawain (Misaki Kuno), a good part of the fun is listening to him (her) speak in a Tohoku accent you could cut with a knife.
In Tonbo! a professional golfer with a troubled past exiles himself to a tiny island in the Tokara archipelago and there encounters a quirky island girl named Tonbo, who turns out to be a golfing prodigy. He sees in her great potential, potential that will remain dormant and untested if she remains an island girl.
Along with smoothing out her more eccentric golfing habits (while not interfering with her unique approach to the game), he nudges her to leave the island when she graduates from junior high. The island has no high school. Students continuing their education live with relatives or attend boarding schools.
The Tokara archipelago is collectively governed as a village of Kagoshima Prefecture, so the favored destination for transfer students is the port city of Kagoshima and the surrounding areas.
While thoroughly entertaining, Birdie Wing (2022) and Rising Impact are so over the top that they more resemble superhero franchises that have to constantly invent new comically overpowered villains (and golf courses designed by M.C. Escher) to challenge the skills of the comically overpowered protagonists.
Tonbo! is far more realistic and treats the subject with the most technical accuracy. The main characters have actual character arcs, so there's no need for vaudevillian villains to create dramatic conflict. Instead, we focus our attention on how Tonbo evolves as an already gifted golfer and grows as a human being.
It's been an entertaining journey so far and I hope we can follow her all the way to a professional career.
The second cour is a continuation of season 1 starting with episode 14.
Tonbo! (2024) is the best title in their anime portfolio so far. The manga by Ken Kawasaki and Yu Furusawa has been serialized in Weekly Golf Digest since 2014 and currently totals 52 volumes. So the viewer would do well to keep in mind that this isn't your usual shonen sports drama. It is written for golfers.
The plot merges the premises of Barakamon (2014), in which a professional calligrapher with a troubled past exiles himself to a tiny island and meets a bunch of quirky kids, and Rising Impact (2024), in which an eight-year-old golfing prodigy from the sticks is recruited to the elite Camelot Academy.
For idiosyncratic reasons I never divined, the names of several characters in Rising Impact are derived from the aforementioned Camelot, like Gawain and Lancelot. And speaking of Gawain (Misaki Kuno), a good part of the fun is listening to him (her) speak in a Tohoku accent you could cut with a knife.
In Tonbo! a professional golfer with a troubled past exiles himself to a tiny island in the Tokara archipelago and there encounters a quirky island girl named Tonbo, who turns out to be a golfing prodigy. He sees in her great potential, potential that will remain dormant and untested if she remains an island girl.
Along with smoothing out her more eccentric golfing habits (while not interfering with her unique approach to the game), he nudges her to leave the island when she graduates from junior high. The island has no high school. Students continuing their education live with relatives or attend boarding schools.
The Tokara archipelago is collectively governed as a village of Kagoshima Prefecture, so the favored destination for transfer students is the port city of Kagoshima and the surrounding areas.
While thoroughly entertaining, Birdie Wing (2022) and Rising Impact are so over the top that they more resemble superhero franchises that have to constantly invent new comically overpowered villains (and golf courses designed by M.C. Escher) to challenge the skills of the comically overpowered protagonists.
Tonbo! is far more realistic and treats the subject with the most technical accuracy. The main characters have actual character arcs, so there's no need for vaudevillian villains to create dramatic conflict. Instead, we focus our attention on how Tonbo evolves as an already gifted golfer and grows as a human being.
It's been an entertaining journey so far and I hope we can follow her all the way to a professional career.
The second cour is a continuation of season 1 starting with episode 14.
Related videos
Tonbo! (Tubi YouTube Prime)
Barakamon
Birdie Wing
Rising Impact
Labels: anime lists, anime reviews, geography, japanese culture, manga, remow, samurai vs ninja, sports, tubi
September 11, 2024
Spy x Family
If nothing else, Spy x Family is a great homage to classic spy series from the Cold War era like Get Smart, It Takes a Thief, Mission: Impossible, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, and The Saint (in which Roger Moore plays a better James Bond than when he was cast as James Bond).
You know, back in the good old days when we could safely assume that democracies were superior to autocracies and the good guys acted on behalf of the greater good.
In Spy x Family, the European setting is roughly based on East and West Germany during the 1960s, though this East Germany is economically freer and more politically turbulent than that East Germany. A better comparison might be Taiwan and post-1997 Hong Kong.
Operating under the code name Twilight, super spy Lloyd Forger has been tasked with establishing a diplomatic back channel with reclusive party leader Donovan Desmond. Desmond's sons attend Eden Academy, so Forger's handlers conclude that the best cover story is for Forger to enroll his child at the academy.
To do that he will need a child. And a wife. And a dog. A family, in other words.
He rescues Anya from a shady orphanage and arranges a paper marriage with Yor Briar, who has reasons of her own to shed her single status. What Forger doesn't know is that Anya is a telepath and Yor is a professional assassin. And the dog can see the future, except only Anya can communicate with him.
Because of her psychic powers, Anya is privy to the secret lives of her pretend parents, though this knowledge is filtered through the eyes of a precocious six-year-old child (who is probably five but said she was six because she knew that's what Lloyd wanted and was desperate to get out of the orphanage).
As far as Anya is concerned, her top priority is keeping the family together, as fake as it may be, while helping Lloyd complete his mission. And while Lloyd and Yor are always telling themselves they'll go their separate ways, they find themselves growing increasing comfortable with their artificial family life.
There are additional sitcom complications, such as Yor's younger brother being a member of the State Security Service (the equivalent of the Stasi). While Yuri is aware that a foreign agent named Twilight is in the country, he is is too flustered by Lloyd's marriage to his sister to realize that he's right under his nose.
Yuri is equally unaware of his sister's sinister side job. Undoubtedly one of those siloed need-to-know things.
Directors Kazuhiro Furuhashi and Takahiro Harada deftly walk a thin line, keeping the tone of the story simultaneously smart and silly without being stupid. Lloyd's side missions are quite thrilling in their own right too.
If we could go back in time, the perfect cast for a live-action version would be Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore as Rob and Laura Petrie from The Dick Van Dyke Show. I'd love to seem them play against type and switch on a dime from normal (if somewhat goofy) middle-class parents to steely-eyed operatives.
The second half of the second season reverses the roles. Yor is sent on a mission that constantly throws her into precarious situations that call on her talents as a cool and competent cutthroat killer. In her absence, Lloyd has to figure out how to be a full-time father figure.
In the universe of secret superheroes, the controlling half of the dual personality—Clark Kent or Superman, Bruce Wayne or Batman—will ultimately determine the direction of the narrative. For Bruce Banner and the Hulk, the conflict arises out of the irradicable nature of the struggle.
This is the question that Lloyd will ultimately have to answer. The decision would end the show in its current form, but given such wonderful characters, I would very much like to see how our family of spies adapts after the Berlin Wall falls.
Spy x Family is a well-crafted series where the long arc of the show can be stretched out without frustrating the audience, allowing the writer and director to get creative with one-and-done episodic plots. Exactly what former network executive Paul Chato identifies as the recipe for a successful television series.
Crunchyroll has both seasons of Spy x Family and Spy x Family: Code White. Tubi has five seasons of The Dick Van Dyke Show and six seasons of The Saint.
Labels: anime, anime reviews, business, crunchyroll, geography, politics, streaming, television reviews
August 21, 2024
Girls' Last Tour
And thus was born the road trip genre.
Convergent literary evolution consequently produced epic road trips as far-flung as The Odyssey from the western tradition and Journey to the West from the eastern tradition. The theme established here and elsewhere is that getting there isn't so much half the fun as it is pretty much the entire point.
So it comes as no surprise that, at the end of the story, there is no there there, no end of the line, no actual destination in mind. Just the journey. Consider the rootless gunman from classic American westerns, epitomized by Shane and Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars.
They're going someplace. We don't know where and they don't either. They'll know where they're going when they get there.
In the world of narrative fiction, the eternal road trip is a neat device to keep the writer from telling the same story in the same place.
Written in the 16th century, Journey to the West follows the legendary pilgrimage of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who traveled from China to Central Asia and India to obtain sacred Buddhist texts. The story and characters have inspired countless adaptations, Dragon Ball perhaps being the most famous.
More recent examples of the road trip include Kino's Journey and Spice and Wolf. The road trip can show up as an arc in a longer series, as when Yuuta bikes off to the northern tip of Hokkaido in Honey and Clover. And often turns into a heroic journey, as in Frieren: Beyond Journey's End.
But Girls' Last Tour may present us with the road trip in its purest form.
They are apparently the only survivors of an unnamed military organization that fell apart through sheer entropy. Their uniforms and helmets place them in the first half of the 20th century.
Chito's halftrack is based on the Kleines Kettenkraftrad HK 101. Yuuri carries a bolt-action rifle and has what appears to be a Balkenkreuz on her helmet. Early on, they stumble across a graveyard of military equipment, including the wreckage of a Cold War era Tupolev Tu-95.
The remnants of every war ever fought everywhere. From there they venture into a ruined and depopulated megalopolis built by a highly advanced civilization. They are wandering through the decline and fall of a 22nd century Roman Empire that has so far regressed to the early 20th century and will certainly fall further.
And maybe that's not such a bad thing. Rather than with a bang or a whimper (T.S. Eliot), or with fire or ice (Robert Frost), this is a world destined to simply fade away. Hopefully to be reborn again another day.
Related links
Girls' Last Tour
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
Honey and Clover
Kino's Journey (2017)
Spice and Wolf (2024)
Labels: anime, anime lists, anime reviews, apocalyptic fiction, geography, history, japanese culture, manga, politics, thinking about writing
July 10, 2024
The relative time of day
If it is possible to quantify any aspect of Japanese society, an official body in Japan is bound to do it. That includes the time of day. Not only the clock time but the general divisions of the day in colloquial terms. We need only turn to the "Daily Time Subdivision Map" as defined by the Japan Meteorological Agency.
Whoa, 3:00 AM counts as dawn and 3:00 PM counts as evening? Well, in Japan, yes. Given the geography, this actually makes sense. The time zone for Japan is UTC +9:00. That's for the entire country, from Okinawa to Hokkaido. Moreover, Tokyo sits on the eastern edge of the meridian at 35 degrees north.
To that bit of geography, consider as well that Japan does not go on Summer Time (サマータイム). As a result, even in the middle of the summer, the sun rises over Tokyo as early as 4:30 AM and sets no later than 7:00 PM. In the middle of the winter, the sun rises before 7:00 AM and sets no earlier than 4:30 PM.
But 7:00 PM is pretty early in the evening compared to Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City is in the middle of the Mountain Time Zone at 40 degrees north and goes on Summer Time (MDT). At the height of the summer, the sun sets at a whopping 9:00 PM. Yet another reason I'm not a big fan of Daylight Saving Time.
Back during the go-go 1980s, when drinking with the boys after hours was de rigueur for every company man in Tokyo (and to a certain extent still is), a popular anecdote claimed that the typical salaryman preferred doing so under cover of the night. That was why Japan resisted going on Summer Time.
Midnight |
– |
3:00 AM |
Predawn |
To that bit of geography, consider as well that Japan does not go on Summer Time (サマータイム). As a result, even in the middle of the summer, the sun rises over Tokyo as early as 4:30 AM and sets no later than 7:00 PM. In the middle of the winter, the sun rises before 7:00 AM and sets no earlier than 4:30 PM.
But 7:00 PM is pretty early in the evening compared to Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City is in the middle of the Mountain Time Zone at 40 degrees north and goes on Summer Time (MDT). At the height of the summer, the sun sets at a whopping 9:00 PM. Yet another reason I'm not a big fan of Daylight Saving Time.
Back during the go-go 1980s, when drinking with the boys after hours was de rigueur for every company man in Tokyo (and to a certain extent still is), a popular anecdote claimed that the typical salaryman preferred doing so under cover of the night. That was why Japan resisted going on Summer Time.
Related posts
Crunchyroll 360
Daylight Saving (waste of) Time
Labels: geography, japan, japanese culture, politics, science, technology
April 24, 2024
The Amakusa Church
For example, Stiyl Magnus and Kaori Kanzaki are members of Necessarius, the Special Forces sorcery squad of the Anglican Church.
Okay, that part is fiction.
Kaori Kanzaki is a former leader of the Amakusa Catholics, descendants of the "Hidden Christians" that preserved the faith after the disaster of the Shimabara Rebellion in 1637.
That last part is not.
Jesuit missionaries arrived in Japan in the 1540s in the company of Portuguese traders. They were followed by Franciscans and Dominicans under the aegis of Spain. During the latter half of the sixteenth century, they enjoyed the patronage of Oda Nobunaga, the first of the Three Great Unifiers of Japan during the Warring States period.
Nobunaga had no interest in Christianity per se, but he was very interested in the firearms provided by the Spanish and Portuguese. Christianity was also a useful political check on the Buddhist factions in Kyoto that were a constant thorn in his side.
Alas, several years after Nobunaga's assassination, Spanish conquistadores were caught saying the quiet part out loud and Christianity quickly fell out of favor with the powers that be. As Hisaki Amano explains,
A Spanish ship en route from the Philippines to Mexico suffered serious damage in a series of typhoons and drifted ashore in Tosa (modern-day Kochi Prefecture). Under interrogation, the ship's crew responded that Spain was a world power that dispatched missionaries to convert the local population before occupying the countries.
Nobunaga's successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, began persecuting Christians with a vengeance, culminating in the martyrdom of twenty-six priests and believers in Nagasaki in 1597. Under the Tokugawa shoguns, Christianity was outlawed. Especially after the Shimabara Rebellion, simply being a Christian was deemed a capital offense.
That legal status was not amended until the late nineteenth century.
The Shimabara Rebellion erupted in 1638 on the island of Kyushu. Nagasaki was once a major Portuguese trading port and Shimabara had the highest percentage of Christians in the country. The rebellion began as a peasant uprising, and was soon joined by Catholic Christians chafing under the heavy hand of local leaders and the shogunate.
Although the rebellion was not without cause and the governor of Shimabara was later executed for misrule and incompetence, such a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the Edo government could not go unanswered.
At the age of seventeen, Amakusa Shiro became the leader of the Japanese Roman Catholics in Shimabara. After a tortuous siege, Shogunate forces overran Hara Castle in 1639 and killed upwards of 37,000 rebels and sympathizers. But the Hidden Christians persevered until the anti-Christian edicts were removed two and a half centuries later.
This is a case where the winners wrote the history books, so Amakusa Shiro was made the villain. He is one of the bad guys in Makai Tensho, a 1967 fantasy novel by Futaro Yamada that has Amakusa Shiro rising from the grave to exact revenge on the shogunate.
Three movies have been made from the book, the most recent in 2003. The best known remains the 1981 version starring Sonny Chiba as Yagyu Jubei, a role he returned to often in samurai action series such as Shogun's Samurai. Overseas releases appended Samurai Reincarnation to the title.
Tubi has a generous selection of Sonny Chiba films and series, including a dubbed version of Samurai Reincarnation and half a season of Shogun's Samurai.
Over the past century, and certainly since 1945, the image of Christianity in Japan has been thoroughly rehabilitated. Christian style weddings (fake pastor included) have become all the rage. Former prime minister Aso Taro is a Catholic. And Christmas (along with Santa Claus) is now one of Japan's most popular unofficial holidays.
Along the way, as evident in series like A Certain Magical Index, Hellsing, and The Ancient Magus Bride, Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, became a rich source of dramatic material. Unconstrained by the usual cultural preoccupations, Japanese writers often push those religious tropes in quite unexpected directions.
Labels: anime, anime reviews, geography, japanese culture, japanese movie reviews, politics, religion
October 28, 2023
Live cams from Japan
Granted, most live cams are about as exciting as watching paint dry. Except when Sakurajima erupts, which it does now and then. And Kabukicho is a town that never sleeps. Kabukicho Crossing should look familiar to anyone who's seen the opening credits to Midnight Diner on Netflix or Viki.
As with the network news feeds from Japan, once you've watched one or two channels, YouTube will suggest more of the same.
As with the network news feeds from Japan, once you've watched one or two channels, YouTube will suggest more of the same.
Sapporo (Hokkaido)
New Niigata Station (Niigata)
Asakusa Kannon Temple (Tokyo)
Kabukicho 1 (Tokyo)
Kabukicho 2 (Tokyo)
Kabukicho Crossing (Tokyo)
Rainbow Bridge (Tokyo Bay)
Shibuya Crossing (Tokyo)
Shinjuku Crosswalk (Tokyo)
Tokyo Tower (Tokyo)
Osaka Loop Line (Osaka)
Hiroshima Station (Hiroshima)
Sakurajima (Kagoshima)
Labels: geography, japan, japanese culture, streaming, television
October 21, 2023
Weather News
Aside from serious events that demand a more sober tone (like earthquakes), the presenters maintain a relentlessly upbeat attitude. Being easy on the eyes certainly helps as well (see the program guide).
The male co-anchors show up to talk shop and occasionally host a time slot but they are obviously not the main draws.
Hosted coverage begins at 5:00 AM JST and continues until 11:00 PM JST in six three-hour blocks: Morning, Sunshine, Coffee Time, Afternoon, Evening, and Moon. They will cover notable events like the recent annular eclipse and the Orionid meteor shower live.
Labels: geography, japanese culture, japanese tv, science, streaming, technology, television, weather
October 07, 2023
News from Japan (in Japanese)
Japan's commercial news networks and a number of regional television stations stream their news feeds on YouTube. These news networks are akin to the old school news agencies like Reuters. Stations often subscribe to more than one, including their competitors.
Because the primary purpose of these news networks is to provide their affiliates with broadcast content, the same blocks of material are reused and repeated throughout the day and week. But a broad slate of channels makes it easy to sample a fresh set of stories.
For a couple of fun peeks behind the scenes, Stay Tuned! (Netflix) is a slice-of-life comedy about a television station in Hokkaido. Wave, Listen to Me! (Crunchyroll) is an even wackier comedy about a late-night talk show host at a small radio station in Sapporo.
This is not a definitive list. Watch one channel and the YouTube bots will suggest a bunch more. The World Clock is a good resource for keeping track of the time.
News Networks
• All Nippon News Network (ANN) has 26 affiliates and originates from TV Asahi in Tokyo.
• Fuji News Network (FNN) has 28 affiliates and originates from Fuji Television in Tokyo. FNN has a live cam of the famous Shibuya Crossing.
• Nippon News Network (NNN) has 30 affiliates and originates from Nippon Television (NTV) in Tokyo.
• TBS News Dig is part of the Japan News Network (JNN) with 28 affiliates and originates from TBS Television in Tokyo.
Regional Stations
• HTB Hokkaido News originates from Hokkaido Television Broadcasting in Sapporo. HTB produced Stay Tuned! as part of its fiftieth anniversary.
• STV News originates from Sapporo Television Broadcasting in Sapporo. STV has been the highest rated television station in Hokkaido for over a decade.
• Nagoya TV News originates from the Nagoya Broadcasting Network in Nagoya and focuses on news from Aichi, Gifu and Mie prefectures.
• MBS News originates from the Mainichi Broadcasting System (MBS) in Osaka.
• Kansai News 24 is an ANN affiliate that focuses on news from Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Wakayama, Nara, Shiga, and Tokushima prefectures, known in Japan as the Kansai region.
• Sun TV News originates from Sun Television in Hyogo prefecture.
• Home Hiroshima News originates from Hiroshima Home Television in Hiroshima prefecture.
• Kagoshima News KTS originates from Kagoshima Television Broadcasting Corporation in Kagoshima prefecture, located in the southern part of Kyushu.
Of course, no news can be considered complete without the Weather News.
Because the primary purpose of these news networks is to provide their affiliates with broadcast content, the same blocks of material are reused and repeated throughout the day and week. But a broad slate of channels makes it easy to sample a fresh set of stories.
For a couple of fun peeks behind the scenes, Stay Tuned! (Netflix) is a slice-of-life comedy about a television station in Hokkaido. Wave, Listen to Me! (Crunchyroll) is an even wackier comedy about a late-night talk show host at a small radio station in Sapporo.
This is not a definitive list. Watch one channel and the YouTube bots will suggest a bunch more. The World Clock is a good resource for keeping track of the time.
• All Nippon News Network (ANN) has 26 affiliates and originates from TV Asahi in Tokyo.
• Fuji News Network (FNN) has 28 affiliates and originates from Fuji Television in Tokyo. FNN has a live cam of the famous Shibuya Crossing.
• Nippon News Network (NNN) has 30 affiliates and originates from Nippon Television (NTV) in Tokyo.
• TBS News Dig is part of the Japan News Network (JNN) with 28 affiliates and originates from TBS Television in Tokyo.
• HTB Hokkaido News originates from Hokkaido Television Broadcasting in Sapporo. HTB produced Stay Tuned! as part of its fiftieth anniversary.
• STV News originates from Sapporo Television Broadcasting in Sapporo. STV has been the highest rated television station in Hokkaido for over a decade.
• Nagoya TV News originates from the Nagoya Broadcasting Network in Nagoya and focuses on news from Aichi, Gifu and Mie prefectures.
• MBS News originates from the Mainichi Broadcasting System (MBS) in Osaka.
• Kansai News 24 is an ANN affiliate that focuses on news from Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Wakayama, Nara, Shiga, and Tokushima prefectures, known in Japan as the Kansai region.
• Sun TV News originates from Sun Television in Hyogo prefecture.
• Home Hiroshima News originates from Hiroshima Home Television in Hiroshima prefecture.
• Kagoshima News KTS originates from Kagoshima Television Broadcasting Corporation in Kagoshima prefecture, located in the southern part of Kyushu.
Labels: business, dlibjapan, geography, japanese culture, japanese tv, nhk, streaming, television, weather
June 14, 2023
The cruel compassion of the kirin
 |
| Japan's most famous kirin watch over Nihonbashi. |
A kirin has two mandates, choosing the emperor and ensuring the general welfare of the kingdom. The first is a one and done. In order to carry out the second, the kirin serves as chief advisor to the emperor, governor of the capital province, and commander of one half of the Imperial Army.
That last portfolio might seem odd, given the kirin's aversion to blood and violence. This aversion, coupled with the second mandate, the general welfare of the kingdom, is why kirin are known as "creatures of compassion."
Except a kirin is less a pacifist and more a military general directing the action from behind the lines. Adopting a "moral equivalent of war" approach, whereby the ends often justify the means, they can become so focused on their objectives that the fates of ordinary humans escape their attention.
Yari observes that for Taiki, "the fate of Tai always took precedence." This explains why Taiki returned to Kouki. Tai needed saving now. Everything else fell by the wayside, including the search for Gyousou.
When Taiki, Yari, and Kouryou break into the palace prison to rescue Seirai, Taiki can't yet persuade himself to kill the guard. But he has no problem with Yari and Kouryou dispatching a whole platoon basically for having the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Keiki commits half a dozen felonies when he first meets Youko. Kourin can barely bring herself to stab Youko in the hand, yet when ordered by the Imperial Kou, repeatedly dispatches her shirei to kill Youko.
Taiki's willingness to go to any lengths to get the job done is just getting started. Drawing on deep reserves of self-discipline, he forces himself to bow to Asen, even though doing so feels like "a spike driven through his forehead" and makes him literally bleed out of his eyes.
In the climactic scene, Taiki kills a guard and wounds several others. Hence Rousan calling Taiki a "monster" unlike any kirin before him. But as the example of Rokuta makes clear, a kirin has enormous latitude to expand its job description.
The existence of the kirin itself so defied the normal constraints of the world that it was reasonable to conclude that only Heaven could have made them that way. And so it followed that the Divine Will was whatever the kirin said it was.
But even kirin must yield to the supernatural laws that govern a kirin's nature. Like Kourin, Taiki pays a price for warring against that nature. Fortunately for him, unlike the Imperial Kou, who takes Kourin with him to the grave, Gyousou steps forward to tell Taiki that enough is enough.
It will still take Taiki months or even years to recover. When he does, unlike his younger self, this battle-hardened kirin will provide a strong check and balance on Gyousou's actions going forward. And I'm sure that Gyousou can be counted on to return the favor.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, geography, japan, japanese culture, politics
August 17, 2022
Camera strolls around Japan
The following two videos were upscaled and colorized from the original black and white film. The first dates to 1913–1915, and the camera is the obvious center of attention, few Japanese having ever seen one before.
Incidentally, this footage was shot during the Taisho era, the same time period as Demon Slayer.
The second is from the late 1940s. In a couple of frames toward the end, you can pick out speed limit signs written in English for the Occupation forces.
This documentary about everyday life in Tokyo was made by a German film crew in 1966.
To bring things up to the present, walking around Japan with an HD camera has become a popular YouTube hobby, though NHK has been doing it for years with its Somewhere Street series.
You can take your own custom tour around Japan practically wherever you want. Bring up Google Maps, zoom in on Japan, pick a city, and switch to Street View.
Incidentally, this footage was shot during the Taisho era, the same time period as Demon Slayer.
The second is from the late 1940s. In a couple of frames toward the end, you can pick out speed limit signs written in English for the Occupation forces.
This documentary about everyday life in Tokyo was made by a German film crew in 1966.
To bring things up to the present, walking around Japan with an HD camera has become a popular YouTube hobby, though NHK has been doing it for years with its Somewhere Street series.
You can take your own custom tour around Japan practically wherever you want. Bring up Google Maps, zoom in on Japan, pick a city, and switch to Street View.
Related links
Rambalac
Tokyo NSK
Off to Japan
Labels: anime, geography, google maps, history, japan
December 01, 2016
Earthquakes and the JMA
The Japan Meteorological Agency classifies earthquakes in absolute (Richter scale) and relative terms. This provides the public with practical information, especially when the epicenter often isn't directly below the locations most affected (click image for full size).
So the 7.4 magnitude (later revised .1 upward) earthquake the Monday before last rated at worst a "5-" in actual effect ("seismic intensity") on land.
The earthquake struck at 5:59 AM (Japan time). That meant the 6:00 AM news (2:00 PM MST) was immediately interrupted by "earthquake coverage," which follows a pretty standard format.
No talking heads (at first), no reporters babbling into the camera with no idea what is going on. The screen switched to a live feed from Onohama harbor in Iwaki, Fukushima, closest to the epicenter. Pertinent information is relayed via on-screen text or audio.
At 6:02 came a tsunami warning, worst-case at three meters. Not disastrous, but enough to be concerned about.
The audio at this point turned, well, excitable. I imagine the poor guy had just gotten to work and hastily swallowed a liter of coffee. Pretty much: "Flee for your lives!" The red-highlighted text on the screen said the same thing. With explanation points.
Recalling that 16,000 people died from the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, this concern is understandable. (The 7.4 magnitude mainshock this time has since been categorized as an aftershock to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.)
The fishermen certainly weren't taking any chances. As I said, the live feed was from Onohama harbor. It was fascinating to watch all the fishing boats rev up and head out to sea. In twenty minutes, the harbor was empty. Very impressive.
I do wonder about the "crying wolf" problem.
As it turned out, the deepest tsunami was five feet in one location and was more of a tidal surge. Most everywhere else along the coast, it was a foot to eighteen inches. One small boat capsized and nets drying on the docks got washed into the harbor.
But nobody is questioning the "better safe than sorry" policy, and certainly not in Tohoku.
Along with its early warning system, the JMA provides public data on earthquakes. Whenever NHK flashes a warning, I go to the JMA Earthquake Information site (Japanese/English). As you will see, earthquakes are a fact of life in Japan. (Click on a date in the left-hand column for details.)
As illustrated above, the colored round dots indicate the relative magnitude. Clicking on the map (such as here) lets you zoom in.
So the 7.4 magnitude (later revised .1 upward) earthquake the Monday before last rated at worst a "5-" in actual effect ("seismic intensity") on land.
The earthquake struck at 5:59 AM (Japan time). That meant the 6:00 AM news (2:00 PM MST) was immediately interrupted by "earthquake coverage," which follows a pretty standard format.
No talking heads (at first), no reporters babbling into the camera with no idea what is going on. The screen switched to a live feed from Onohama harbor in Iwaki, Fukushima, closest to the epicenter. Pertinent information is relayed via on-screen text or audio.
At 6:02 came a tsunami warning, worst-case at three meters. Not disastrous, but enough to be concerned about.
The audio at this point turned, well, excitable. I imagine the poor guy had just gotten to work and hastily swallowed a liter of coffee. Pretty much: "Flee for your lives!" The red-highlighted text on the screen said the same thing. With explanation points.
Recalling that 16,000 people died from the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, this concern is understandable. (The 7.4 magnitude mainshock this time has since been categorized as an aftershock to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.)
The fishermen certainly weren't taking any chances. As I said, the live feed was from Onohama harbor. It was fascinating to watch all the fishing boats rev up and head out to sea. In twenty minutes, the harbor was empty. Very impressive.
I do wonder about the "crying wolf" problem.
As it turned out, the deepest tsunami was five feet in one location and was more of a tidal surge. Most everywhere else along the coast, it was a foot to eighteen inches. One small boat capsized and nets drying on the docks got washed into the harbor.
But nobody is questioning the "better safe than sorry" policy, and certainly not in Tohoku.
Along with its early warning system, the JMA provides public data on earthquakes. Whenever NHK flashes a warning, I go to the JMA Earthquake Information site (Japanese/English). As you will see, earthquakes are a fact of life in Japan. (Click on a date in the left-hand column for details.)
As illustrated above, the colored round dots indicate the relative magnitude. Clicking on the map (such as here) lets you zoom in.
Labels: earthquake, geography, geology, japan, nhk, science, technology, tohoku earthquake
April 28, 2016
Japan's San Andreas
The 7.3 magnitude mainshock that struck Kumamoto prefecture on 16 April (Japan time) was preceded by a 6.5 magnitude earthquake and followed by more than 1000 aftershocks. Less a devastating head-on collision than the wheels falling off a truck at 60 MPH and the axles dragging along a road filled with potholes.
Unlike the colossal magnitude 9 quake that devastated the Tohoku region of Northern Japan in 2011, the Kumamoto earthquake did not trigger a tsunami. Occurring in a largely rural part of Japan on the southern island of Kyushu, it has caused only 49 deaths to date. The most severe damage was from landslides.
The earthquake struck along a shallow inland slip fault, specifically the Futagawa-Hinagu fault link, at the western edge of the Japan Median Tectonic Line.
Like the San Andreas, the Japan Median Tectonic Line is clearly visible on topographical maps. It begins its journey off the western coast of Kyushu, heads east-northeast, hugs the northern coast of Shikoku, bisects the Kii Peninsula, doglegs around Mt. Fuji, and plunges back into the ocean fifty miles east of Tokyo.
To the north, the Philippine Sea Plate is colliding with the Pacific Plate and the Okhotsk Plate. Moving at a brisk 48-84 mm/year to the west-northwest, the Pacific Plate rams the southern edge of the Okhotsk Plate and the northern edge of the Philippine Sea Plate, crumpling the bedrock of central Japan into the Japan Alps.
The collision between the Philippine Sea Plate and the Pacific Plate forms the Ogasawara Islands, that start at the Izu Peninsula and include Iwo Jima at its southern end. The Izu Peninsula sits at the feet of Mt. Fuji and is home to Hakone National Park and its countless hot springs—a mere 50 miles south of Tokyo.
Sitting on top of the convergence of four massive tectonic plates, perhaps the most amazing thing about Tokyo is that it continues to exist at all.
Unlike the colossal magnitude 9 quake that devastated the Tohoku region of Northern Japan in 2011, the Kumamoto earthquake did not trigger a tsunami. Occurring in a largely rural part of Japan on the southern island of Kyushu, it has caused only 49 deaths to date. The most severe damage was from landslides.
 |
| Not the edge of a cliff, a landslide (courtesy Japan Times). |
The earthquake struck along a shallow inland slip fault, specifically the Futagawa-Hinagu fault link, at the western edge of the Japan Median Tectonic Line.
 |
| A slip fault vividly illustrated (courtesy Japan Times). |
Like the San Andreas, the Japan Median Tectonic Line is clearly visible on topographical maps. It begins its journey off the western coast of Kyushu, heads east-northeast, hugs the northern coast of Shikoku, bisects the Kii Peninsula, doglegs around Mt. Fuji, and plunges back into the ocean fifty miles east of Tokyo.
To the north, the Philippine Sea Plate is colliding with the Pacific Plate and the Okhotsk Plate. Moving at a brisk 48-84 mm/year to the west-northwest, the Pacific Plate rams the southern edge of the Okhotsk Plate and the northern edge of the Philippine Sea Plate, crumpling the bedrock of central Japan into the Japan Alps.
The collision between the Philippine Sea Plate and the Pacific Plate forms the Ogasawara Islands, that start at the Izu Peninsula and include Iwo Jima at its southern end. The Izu Peninsula sits at the feet of Mt. Fuji and is home to Hakone National Park and its countless hot springs—a mere 50 miles south of Tokyo.
Sitting on top of the convergence of four massive tectonic plates, perhaps the most amazing thing about Tokyo is that it continues to exist at all.
Labels: earthquake, geography, geology, japan, science, tohoku earthquake
July 22, 2015
The book detectives
Shioriko Shinokawa (Ayame Gouriki) runs the "Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia" in the old historic town of Kamakura. She's quiet as a mouse, pretty as a picture, and brilliant as Sherlock Holmes.
The series begins with Daisuke Goura (Akira) coming to sell a collection of Natsume Soseki books that once belonged to his grandmother. In particular, one prized volume that appears to bear the famous author's signature, along with a mysterious dedication.
Shioriko concludes that the signature is a forgery, and that Daisuke's grandmother was the likely forger. That she would do so in a book she had always kept to herself only points to another mystery, one that reveals a curious truth about Daisuke's own past.
This first episode gets our two protagonists together so they can solve more mysteries of a literary nature. Each episode involves a specific classical work or famous author and Shioriko's exhaustive knowledge of world literature and the book collecting business.
Many of the episodes don't even involve a crime per se. The A Clockwork Orange episode starts as a shoplifting case and revolves around the missing last chapter in the first edition. An actual felony occurs at the end of that episode.
But nobody gets murdered, so this Kamakura isn't like those sleepy English villages where people are dropping dead right and left.
Ayame Gouriki pulls off the tricky task of being preternaturally pretty but more that bookish enough for the part. Despite the physical mismatch (he's eight inches taller), Akira (née, Ryohei Kurosawa of the band Exile) nerds it up and makes a good Watson.
Akira shares the Watson duties with veteran character actor Katsumi Takahashi, who also doubles as the Mrs. Hudson.
Thirty miles south of Tokyo, the ancient city of Kamakura is an ideal setting for a musty old bookshop. Minamoto no Yoritomo established Japan's first shogunate there in 1192, though it's better known today as home to the enormous outdoor statue of the Great Buddha.
Much of old Kamakura has been preserved as a veritable walk-through museum, a cozy place for cozy mysteries about books.
Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia's Case Files is based on the best-selling novels and manga by En Mikami (tragically, no English translations yet). The live-action 2013 Fuji Television series can be viewed on Crunchyroll (subtitled).
(The "free" version of Crunchyroll requires putting up with their obnoxious ad engine, whose primary purpose is to annoy you into buying a subscription. The free-market capitalist in me shrinks from pointing this out, but Adblock Plus works on this site.)
The series begins with Daisuke Goura (Akira) coming to sell a collection of Natsume Soseki books that once belonged to his grandmother. In particular, one prized volume that appears to bear the famous author's signature, along with a mysterious dedication.
Shioriko concludes that the signature is a forgery, and that Daisuke's grandmother was the likely forger. That she would do so in a book she had always kept to herself only points to another mystery, one that reveals a curious truth about Daisuke's own past.
This first episode gets our two protagonists together so they can solve more mysteries of a literary nature. Each episode involves a specific classical work or famous author and Shioriko's exhaustive knowledge of world literature and the book collecting business.
Many of the episodes don't even involve a crime per se. The A Clockwork Orange episode starts as a shoplifting case and revolves around the missing last chapter in the first edition. An actual felony occurs at the end of that episode.
But nobody gets murdered, so this Kamakura isn't like those sleepy English villages where people are dropping dead right and left.
Ayame Gouriki pulls off the tricky task of being preternaturally pretty but more that bookish enough for the part. Despite the physical mismatch (he's eight inches taller), Akira (née, Ryohei Kurosawa of the band Exile) nerds it up and makes a good Watson.
Akira shares the Watson duties with veteran character actor Katsumi Takahashi, who also doubles as the Mrs. Hudson.
Thirty miles south of Tokyo, the ancient city of Kamakura is an ideal setting for a musty old bookshop. Minamoto no Yoritomo established Japan's first shogunate there in 1192, though it's better known today as home to the enormous outdoor statue of the Great Buddha.
Much of old Kamakura has been preserved as a veritable walk-through museum, a cozy place for cozy mysteries about books.
Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia's Case Files is based on the best-selling novels and manga by En Mikami (tragically, no English translations yet). The live-action 2013 Fuji Television series can be viewed on Crunchyroll (subtitled).
(The "free" version of Crunchyroll requires putting up with their obnoxious ad engine, whose primary purpose is to annoy you into buying a subscription. The free-market capitalist in me shrinks from pointing this out, but Adblock Plus works on this site.)
Labels: books, geography, japanese culture, japanese tv, japanese tv reviews
July 08, 2015
Democratic impositions
I'm amused when neo-conservatives are criticized for running around the world imposing "American-style democracy" on foreign peoples. It's a policy memorably articulated by Rudyard Kipling about the long-forgotten Philippine-American War.
In September 1898, anticipating Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn rule" by a century, Kipling wrote to Theodore Roosevelt:
I agree with most critiques of neo-conservative adventurism, and hew to the Prime Directive in this regard (though preferring Captain Kirk's interpretation to Captain Picard's: sometimes you do have to send the Marines to the Shores of Tripoli).
The problem with the "American-style democracy" jibe is that no neo-conservative has ever imposed "American-style democracy" on anybody. The American political system is uniquely a product of our own history, geography, and demographics.
Bottom line: the Rube Goldberg machine called the United States is too weird to impose on anybody anywhere else. Rather, what neo-conservatives have been doing is running around the world imposing European-style parliamentary democracies.
All the more troubling, these parliamentary democracies tend to be modeled on unitary states with hyper-strong central governments and little shared sovereignty or "local rule." Japan, France, and Great Britain are three notable examples.
If any political system was going to be imposed on anybody, countries like Afghanistan and Iraq would have been better off with an "Articles of Confederation" framework that made the provinces fairly independent and got them on board first.
Functioning provinces first, nation-building second. After all, learning from our mistakes with the Articles of Confederation gave us version 2.0, the current U.S. Constitution.
Even then, the anti-federalists didn't lose the ideological battle until after the Civil War. Then over the next century, the political pendulum swung too far in the other direction. As it did in Japan.
The Meiji Restoration in 1868 upset 250 years of fairly strong local rule, abruptly centralizing power without the necessary checks and balances. The temptation is understandable: to rule by decree and to right wrongs "because we know best."
Because, you know, those provincials in the provinces are just too provincial to get with the times (exactly the same attitude that brought down the Tokugawa shogunate).
Alas, without the (implicit or explicit) consent of the governed, governing ends up a game of Whac-A-Mole. The people forever out of power may decide to shoot the people in power. Except that the people with the most guns are usually the military.
That was Japan during the 1930s. Creating "facts on the ground" that couldn't be undone by feckless politicians, middle-ranked army officers in Japan and China launched coups and started their own wars. In most cases, the government caved.
Wrote Robert Heinlein, "The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
In the end, it's not an election or a constitution that makes the difference. It's the widely-understood rules of the game and everybody's willingness to play by them. Common law becomes the rule of law by first being common.
The United States started with Jeffersonian republicanism before moving to Hamiltonian federalism. The rule of law predated the U.S. Constitution. Key elements of the Bill of Rights had already been written into state constitutions.
Before relying on--and yielding sovereignty to--the big, people must build trust in the small. They have to "trust, but verify." Otherwise, even the most perfect democratic system will never work, no matter how, by, or on whom it is imposed.
Take up the White Man's burden, No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper, The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead.
In September 1898, anticipating Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn rule" by a century, Kipling wrote to Theodore Roosevelt:
America has gone and stuck a pickaxe into the foundations of a rotten house and she is morally bound to build the house over again from the foundations or have it fall about her ears.
I agree with most critiques of neo-conservative adventurism, and hew to the Prime Directive in this regard (though preferring Captain Kirk's interpretation to Captain Picard's: sometimes you do have to send the Marines to the Shores of Tripoli).
The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules. It is a philosophy, and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous.
The problem with the "American-style democracy" jibe is that no neo-conservative has ever imposed "American-style democracy" on anybody. The American political system is uniquely a product of our own history, geography, and demographics.
Bottom line: the Rube Goldberg machine called the United States is too weird to impose on anybody anywhere else. Rather, what neo-conservatives have been doing is running around the world imposing European-style parliamentary democracies.
All the more troubling, these parliamentary democracies tend to be modeled on unitary states with hyper-strong central governments and little shared sovereignty or "local rule." Japan, France, and Great Britain are three notable examples.
If any political system was going to be imposed on anybody, countries like Afghanistan and Iraq would have been better off with an "Articles of Confederation" framework that made the provinces fairly independent and got them on board first.
Functioning provinces first, nation-building second. After all, learning from our mistakes with the Articles of Confederation gave us version 2.0, the current U.S. Constitution.
Even then, the anti-federalists didn't lose the ideological battle until after the Civil War. Then over the next century, the political pendulum swung too far in the other direction. As it did in Japan.
The Meiji Restoration in 1868 upset 250 years of fairly strong local rule, abruptly centralizing power without the necessary checks and balances. The temptation is understandable: to rule by decree and to right wrongs "because we know best."
Because, you know, those provincials in the provinces are just too provincial to get with the times (exactly the same attitude that brought down the Tokugawa shogunate).
Alas, without the (implicit or explicit) consent of the governed, governing ends up a game of Whac-A-Mole. The people forever out of power may decide to shoot the people in power. Except that the people with the most guns are usually the military.
That was Japan during the 1930s. Creating "facts on the ground" that couldn't be undone by feckless politicians, middle-ranked army officers in Japan and China launched coups and started their own wars. In most cases, the government caved.
Wrote Robert Heinlein, "The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
In the end, it's not an election or a constitution that makes the difference. It's the widely-understood rules of the game and everybody's willingness to play by them. Common law becomes the rule of law by first being common.
The United States started with Jeffersonian republicanism before moving to Hamiltonian federalism. The rule of law predated the U.S. Constitution. Key elements of the Bill of Rights had already been written into state constitutions.
Before relying on--and yielding sovereignty to--the big, people must build trust in the small. They have to "trust, but verify." Otherwise, even the most perfect democratic system will never work, no matter how, by, or on whom it is imposed.
Labels: deep thoughts, geography, history, japan, politics, social studies, ww2
March 16, 2015
Walk on water
When I was growing up, the space race competed with underwater sea adventures for gorgeous photo spreads in National Geographic (which nobody read for the articles). Jacques Cousteau was as big a star as the astronauts and took prettier pictures.
As with Stanley Kubrick's space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey, everybody knew that we were going to be living in cities at the bottom of the ocean any day now (because, you know, population).
Alas, by the time we made it to the Moon, real space exploration had grown ho-hum (sans white-knuckle disasters like Apollo 13). Living in space turns out to be pretty inconvenient. And mostly good for making cool YouTube videos.
The same goes for living under water. Somewhere along the evolutionary path, we homo sapiens got rid of gills, and good riddance.
But as it turns out, millions of people are living at the bottom of the ocean. The trick, you see, is first to raise the bottom of the ocean to sea level. That makes it a lot easier.
Over the past century, almost one hundred square miles of Tokyo Bay have been "reclaimed." I lived for a year in a housing project on reclaimed land in Osaka Bay, also home to Kansai International Airport, built entirely on a man-made island.
In Japan, it's actually more economically, politically, and environmentally efficient to carve up a mountain and dump it into the ocean than to move in the opposite direction, or push all urban development everywhere down to the water's edge.
The Tohoku earthquake has taken land reclamation in a whole new level. It's been four years since. The rubble has been removed, leaving behind empty fields and vacant lots where towns once stood. The question is how to prevent the "next time."
On 11 March 2011, 250 miles of coastline shifted up to eight feet eastward and dropped over two feet. Most harbor seawalls failed. Entire fishing villages were washed away. Fukushima Daiichi was swamped, its backup generators destroyed.
It soon became obvious that building sea walls able to defend against any possible tsunami was a fool's errand. And if built, the high walls would turn the place into a prison (which remains a problem even with the sea walls that are being built).
As a result, two basic approaches are being taken: 1) relocating retail and residential communities further inland; 2) a combination of sea walls and raising the ground level (click to enlarge).
Following the earthquake, parts of many coastal towns ended up underwater at high tide (and people complain about their mortgages being "underwater"). A good part of what was Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, will rise forty feet.
This once quaint fishing village now looks like a science fiction movie set: a forest of massive conveyor belts moving 20,000 cubic meters of soil a day. If you're looking for "shovel-ready projects," the shovels don't get any bigger than this.
Elaine Kurtenbach describes the government-industry complex that has been churning along now for half a century:
Rikuzentakata won't be going to the mountain; the mountain is coming to Rikuzentakata. Literally.
The Book of Isaiah sums up the process very well:
As with Stanley Kubrick's space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey, everybody knew that we were going to be living in cities at the bottom of the ocean any day now (because, you know, population).
 |
| As useless as the ISS (and more dangerous) but at least cheaper. |
Alas, by the time we made it to the Moon, real space exploration had grown ho-hum (sans white-knuckle disasters like Apollo 13). Living in space turns out to be pretty inconvenient. And mostly good for making cool YouTube videos.
The same goes for living under water. Somewhere along the evolutionary path, we homo sapiens got rid of gills, and good riddance.
But as it turns out, millions of people are living at the bottom of the ocean. The trick, you see, is first to raise the bottom of the ocean to sea level. That makes it a lot easier.
Over the past century, almost one hundred square miles of Tokyo Bay have been "reclaimed." I lived for a year in a housing project on reclaimed land in Osaka Bay, also home to Kansai International Airport, built entirely on a man-made island.
In Japan, it's actually more economically, politically, and environmentally efficient to carve up a mountain and dump it into the ocean than to move in the opposite direction, or push all urban development everywhere down to the water's edge.
The Tohoku earthquake has taken land reclamation in a whole new level. It's been four years since. The rubble has been removed, leaving behind empty fields and vacant lots where towns once stood. The question is how to prevent the "next time."
On 11 March 2011, 250 miles of coastline shifted up to eight feet eastward and dropped over two feet. Most harbor seawalls failed. Entire fishing villages were washed away. Fukushima Daiichi was swamped, its backup generators destroyed.
It soon became obvious that building sea walls able to defend against any possible tsunami was a fool's errand. And if built, the high walls would turn the place into a prison (which remains a problem even with the sea walls that are being built).
As a result, two basic approaches are being taken: 1) relocating retail and residential communities further inland; 2) a combination of sea walls and raising the ground level (click to enlarge).
 |
| Moving inland and higher up (courtesy Japan Guide). |
Following the earthquake, parts of many coastal towns ended up underwater at high tide (and people complain about their mortgages being "underwater"). A good part of what was Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, will rise forty feet.
 |
| Another way to stand on higher ground (courtesy Japan Guide). |
This once quaint fishing village now looks like a science fiction movie set: a forest of massive conveyor belts moving 20,000 cubic meters of soil a day. If you're looking for "shovel-ready projects," the shovels don't get any bigger than this.
Elaine Kurtenbach describes the government-industry complex that has been churning along now for half a century:
Pouring concrete for public works is a staple strategy for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its backers in big business and construction, and local officials tend to go along with such plans.
Rikuzentakata won't be going to the mountain; the mountain is coming to Rikuzentakata. Literally.
 |
| Making the mountains low (courtesy Japan Guide). |
The Book of Isaiah sums up the process very well:
Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
Labels: economics, environmentalism, geography, geology, japan, science, space, tech history, technology, tohoku earthquake
March 12, 2015
Now, Our Two Paths
Asahi Productions (Studio Shiroishi in Miyagi) has released an anime short about the rebuilding efforts in Miyagi Prefecture, hard-hit by the 11 March 2011 Tohoku earthquake. It's in Japanese but otherwise easy enough to understand.
(View the larger screen version here.)
Ima, Futari no Michi ("Now, Our Two Paths") begins a decade or so ago with Jun and Kunpei discussing their futures (Jun becoming a doctor, Kunpei a fisherman), and then gives us snapshots of their lives over the four year since March 2011.
The dates at the bottom right are the year (Heisei notation) followed by the numerical month or season (winter: 冬 spring: 春 summer: 夏 fall: 秋 New Year's: 元旦). Heisei 23 is 2011 (subtract 12 to get the Gregorian year).
The spring of 2011 finds Jun back in Miyagi, completing her residency at a clinic near her home town. Kunpei is a farmer. The buildings at the 2:20 mark are prefabricated housing units, still home to 77,000 (out of 230,000 total displaced persons).
A more in-depth description here. From a critical perspective, I'm impressed at how much story can be condensed into five minutes (it is very much a story of moments).
(View the larger screen version here.)
Ima, Futari no Michi ("Now, Our Two Paths") begins a decade or so ago with Jun and Kunpei discussing their futures (Jun becoming a doctor, Kunpei a fisherman), and then gives us snapshots of their lives over the four year since March 2011.
The dates at the bottom right are the year (Heisei notation) followed by the numerical month or season (winter: 冬 spring: 春 summer: 夏 fall: 秋 New Year's: 元旦). Heisei 23 is 2011 (subtract 12 to get the Gregorian year).
The spring of 2011 finds Jun back in Miyagi, completing her residency at a clinic near her home town. Kunpei is a farmer. The buildings at the 2:20 mark are prefabricated housing units, still home to 77,000 (out of 230,000 total displaced persons).
A more in-depth description here. From a critical perspective, I'm impressed at how much story can be condensed into five minutes (it is very much a story of moments).
Labels: anime, earthquake, geography, geology, japan, tohoku earthquake
September 01, 2014
How to sell a pilgrimage
Every spring, states in the U.S. engage in competitive advertising campaigns to lure tourists to their respective locales. Here in Utah, Wyoming (right next door) probably makes the biggest push. You'll see pitches as well from Texas and California.
Prefectures in Japan are motivated no less, especially those in the hinterlands experiencing profound population declines.
A TV program with a local setting can do wonders for the featured locale. The docudrama Ryomaden was a boon to Kochi, Sakamoto Ryoma's home town. The Tohoku region in Northern Japan is still cashing in on the popularity of the 2013 Amachan series.
As far as that goes, Matsuyama City in Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku deserves a medal for merchandizing genius. They're already an established attraction as home to eight of the 88 temples in the Shikoku Pilgrimage (the O-Henro).
But there's no resting on one's municipal laurels with a young demographic out there willing to spend, spend, spend on the (digital) comforts of life. So Matsuyama set out to build a pop-culture media empire based the Shikoku Pilgrimage.
It's called "Oh! My Ring" (there's an English version too), obviously playing off another popular goddess manga and anime series, Oh My Goddess. They'd like to virtually escort you on "An adorable journey around Shikoku's 88-temple pilgrimage."
That will hopefully encourage you to spend your next vacation in Shikoku and experience the real thing.
The "ring" refers literally to the loop of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, though it also hints at the Ring horror series, which it turn brings to mind authors like Masako Bando, who made Shikoku the equivalent of Steven King's Maine with books like Inugami.
(Which has much more of a Shinto vibe, but business is business; let's not get all sectarian about the religious affiliations of the various tourist traps.)
The "Oh! My Ring" website is already peddling smartphone apps, online manga, cosplay characters, and badges, T-shirts, posters, and a cafe. Plus actual information about the actual temples. I'm sure the kitchen sink isn't anywhere close to being full.
Prefectures in Japan are motivated no less, especially those in the hinterlands experiencing profound population declines.
A TV program with a local setting can do wonders for the featured locale. The docudrama Ryomaden was a boon to Kochi, Sakamoto Ryoma's home town. The Tohoku region in Northern Japan is still cashing in on the popularity of the 2013 Amachan series.
As far as that goes, Matsuyama City in Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku deserves a medal for merchandizing genius. They're already an established attraction as home to eight of the 88 temples in the Shikoku Pilgrimage (the O-Henro).
But there's no resting on one's municipal laurels with a young demographic out there willing to spend, spend, spend on the (digital) comforts of life. So Matsuyama set out to build a pop-culture media empire based the Shikoku Pilgrimage.
It's called "Oh! My Ring" (there's an English version too), obviously playing off another popular goddess manga and anime series, Oh My Goddess. They'd like to virtually escort you on "An adorable journey around Shikoku's 88-temple pilgrimage."
That will hopefully encourage you to spend your next vacation in Shikoku and experience the real thing.
 |
| Each of the 88 temples gets its own cute goddess. Collect them all! |
The "ring" refers literally to the loop of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, though it also hints at the Ring horror series, which it turn brings to mind authors like Masako Bando, who made Shikoku the equivalent of Steven King's Maine with books like Inugami.
(Which has much more of a Shinto vibe, but business is business; let's not get all sectarian about the religious affiliations of the various tourist traps.)
The "Oh! My Ring" website is already peddling smartphone apps, online manga, cosplay characters, and badges, T-shirts, posters, and a cafe. Plus actual information about the actual temples. I'm sure the kitchen sink isn't anywhere close to being full.
Labels: anime, geography, japan, japanese culture, manga, religion, shinto
March 06, 2014
Poseidon of the East (9)
The nyokai (女怪) is the guardian born shortly before the kirin and destined to watch over him.
When the capital of Japan was moved to Kyoto in the late 8th century, the streets were laid out in a grid pattern.
Incidentally, so were the blocks in Salt Lake City. The thinking of city planners 1000 years apart reveals curious similarities, such as housing the seat of government at the north end of the city and the wide streets. The streets in Salt Lake City were wide enough for a wagon and team of oxen to turn around.
When the capital of Japan was moved to Kyoto in the late 8th century, the streets were laid out in a grid pattern.
Incidentally, so were the blocks in Salt Lake City. The thinking of city planners 1000 years apart reveals curious similarities, such as housing the seat of government at the north end of the city and the wide streets. The streets in Salt Lake City were wide enough for a wagon and team of oxen to turn around.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, geography, poseidon, utah