To retard the spread of the novel coronavirus, most Guelphites, Ontarians and Canadians are mostly with the face mask program now. But I am still bitter by the reception of my March 5, 2020 letter “Shocked not to see people wearing masks.” At the time, online commenters in Guelph publicly dismissed me as an ignoramus, and I even received hate mail from a member of the City Council. Even family members and close friends in Guelph didn’t want to listen to me, and they were full of reasons not to wear masks that they had gleaned from television. In March, Canadians were two months behind the virus game, having complacently ignored the WHO’s increasingly dire contagion warnings until it was too late, and I knew full well that I was in the right. Vindication seems tasteless if it’s not at least as public as the as the violence of public humiliation. In the midst of a worsening pandemic, I have no regard for those people who dismissed me (with malicious prejudice) in March.
Saturday, November 14, 2020.
To retard the spread of the novel coronavirus, most Guelphites, Ontarians and Canadians are mostly with the face mask program now. But I am still bitter by the reception of my March 5, 2020 letter “Shocked not to see people wearing masks.” At the time, online commenters in Guelph publicly dismissed me as an ignoramus, and I even received hate mail from a member of the City Council. Even family members and close friends in Guelph didn’t want to listen to me, and they were full of reasons not to wear masks that they had gleaned from television. In March, Canadians were two months behind the virus game, having complacently ignored the WHO’s increasingly dire contagion warnings until it was too late, and I knew full well that I was in the right. Vindication seems tasteless if it’s not at least as public as the as the violence of public humiliation. In the midst of a worsening pandemic, I have no regard for those people who dismissed me (with malicious prejudice) in March.
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Friday, February 12, 2021.
Readers in Council, The Japan Times, 14F Kioicho Bldg., 3-12 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0094 The photograph accompanying the February 12, 2021 editorial "Olympic chief Mori's exit has been long overdue" is typical Japanese. 1) the English message "Wipe Out SEXSIST!" is spelled wrong, 2) it advocates murder - liquidate and eliminate anyone with unconventional, unpopular, or merely contrary ideas - and 3) it shows how a mountain has been made from a molehill. Japanese often make mountains out of molehills. They excel at making things more difficult than they need to be to satisfy the cultural belief that life is hard. If something is easy, then it needs deliberately to be made difficult in order to feel real. Mori's ouster is necessary to satiate the foreign moneybags behind the Olympics. This reaction to Mori's comments might indicate that Japanese have watched too much American television and are adopting American cultural fetishes. But I could be wrong. Wednesday, April 8, 2020.
Readers in Council, The Japan Times, 14F Kioicho Bldg., 3-12 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0094 Because now the COVID-19 pandemic is centered in the United States, and as an homage to President Donald Trump's weeks of irresponsibly belittling the gravity of the disease in the face of World Health Organization warnings throughout January, February and early March - comparing it to seasonal flu garnished with false promises of its transient nature - we should re-christen COVID-19 the "America flu," Even better, we can Germanize the spelling of "America" to make it look more menacing on paper: Amerika flu. Or not. Sunday, March 22, 2020.
Readers in Council, The Japan Times, 14F Kioicho Bldg., 3-12 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0094 I returned to Tokyo from Toronto on March 18 after a 17-day visit there to see my family and to wrap up some business. I left the day that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced border closures, restricted travel, and the “social isolation” policy and urged Canadians living abroad to return home as soon as possible before the means to do so evaporated. During my stay I witnessed the crisis in Canada balloon before our eyes. When I arrived I was shocked and angry about Canadians’ negligent approach to an emergency that the World Health Organization had already declared. Awareness was minimal. In mid-March, Canada was already two months behind the game and floundering as it tried to catch up fast. If I had stayed, as Trudeau urged, I would be trapped there with no health insurance. Thank God I was able to escape Toronto when I did, just as everything was collapsing, the country was slipping into panic and the nation was addressing the COVID-19 situation with the competence of the Titanic’s officers evacuating passengers, or World War I generals attacking the German lines. I was angry because I could see how the Canadian lifestyle and slow approach to spreading contagion cultivated the problem they are dealing with now. “Home” is a vague concept for me. My family, my work and my health insurance are all in Japan and I saw staying in Canada as a trap, rather than salvation. Japan in my salvation - a country of the living. But I could be wrong. Published in The Japan Times On Sunday on Sunday, March 29, 2020 as “Getting back just in time.” Saturday, February 29, 2020.
Guelph Mercury Tribune, 367 Woodlawn Rd. W., Unit 1, Guelph, ON N1H 7K9 I just arrived in the city for a visit with family and to wrap up some business here. I was surprised - even shocked - to see Canadians blithely neglecting to wear surgical face masks. I arrived wearing a mask from overseas. When the driver dropped me off (I was his last passenger), he asked: “What do you have?” I just stared at him unresponsive and dumb. “Sickness” he prompted. I was more than disgusted with his and with Canadians’ ignorance and negligence. Don’t Canadians know that we are in the midst of a global infectious disease pandemic? Canadians, Ontarions, and even Guelphites are not immune. The novel coronavirus is already here among us. So, I did not tip the driver. Published on Thursday, March 5, 2020 as “Shocked to not see people wearing masks.” Sunday, September 15, 2019.
Reader’s in Council, The Japan Times, 14F Kioicho Bldg., 3-12 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0094 About Masamichi Yabuki’s September 15 letter “Disturbing lack of regret by U.S.” I admit that I am disturbed by some Japanese persistence in spinning history, and I would probably be angry if the U.S. government ever apologized for using atomic bombs on Japan in the summer of 1945. It might be said that, although it was America that dropped the atomic bombs, if their use can be called a “war crime” then the possibility exists of calling it a war crime by the Japanese government against its own people for bringing the nation to that point, when their use was the only way of ending the atrocities of Japanese insanity. You see, “regret” is a Lazy Susan. It turns both ways. This is how I tend to look at it. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were crimes by the Japanese government against its own people. I don’t blame America so much as I thank it for bringing that conflict to an emphatic end. Does that sound odd? There’s more than one kind of logic, and I suggest this conclusion is logical. Whether it’s reasonable or even accurate are different matters. The war in the Pacific was a war that Japan started. It was total war. It was a war that Japan waged in a notoriously heinous and criminal fashion. It was a war that Japan stubbornly refused to give up long after its cause was lost. It’s a war that Japan has habitually used typically Japanese “gray” or vague language to mute its responsibility for. And, it's a war in which the Japanese allied themselves with the God damned Nazis! I suppose I ought to point out that in Western thinking, unlike in Asian thinking, “regret” does not an apology. An apology is when you say loud and clear, with a straight face and with genuine sincerity, “Yes, I did this thing. Yes it was wrong. Yes, I am responsible. Yes, I will make amends. Yes, I promise not to do it again.” Instead, what we get from the Japanese is “regret” for causing “trouble.” Frankly, that doesn’t cut it. Apologizing like this is not a bizarre national masochism like some Japanese conservatives and nationalists lament. It is a redeeming, purifying and intelligent homage to Reality. Japanese are still potentially very dangerous. Contrary to the accepted opinion, U.S. forces are based here less to protect Japan from Russia, China and North Korea by encompassing it under its nuclear umbrella than to protect itself from the Japanese. Those other things are also true, but they are only secondary. But I could be wrong. Published on Sunday, September 22, 2019 as "A-bombs ended WWII's atrocities." Friday, December 14, 2018.
Readers in Council, The Japan Times, 14F Kioicho Bldg., 3-12 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0094 When I came to Japan Emperor Showa had just died. Prime Minister Noburo Takeshita had just resigned and Chiyonofuji was the reigning sumo Yokozuna under challenge from the behemoth Konishiki. Tsutomu Miyazaki was murdering little girls, Odaiba was still under development, Shunichi Suzuki was still the Governor of Tokyo, and the new Tokyo City Hall in West Shinjuku was under construction. Ikebukuro’s Sunshine 60 building was then still the tallest building in the land. Takako Doi, rising to the zenith of her career, was a symbol of the “ona no jidai.” The blue-hued ¥500 notes that were discontinued in the late-1980s were in their final months of circulation, and vending machines still accepted them as they were retooled for the ¥500 coin. Since then I have seen several generations of vending machines and electronic station ticket gates, each one an incremental advance over its precursor. Similarly, the famous Japanese bullet trains have undergone several generations of advanced models. Rie Miyazawa scandalized people with her fine art nude photo book, “Santa Fe.” (I own two copies of it.) The Oedo Line subway in the capital didn’t exist yet. Not by that name, anyway. While it was under construction it was called the “Number 12 Line.” It was christened “Oedo Line” by Governor Shintaro Ishihara. I never liked that name. Better to call it simply the “Edo Line.” I don’t recall ever seeing a station platform safety gate or barrier in those days. It took a terrible accident at Shin-Okubo Station on the Yamanote Line in Tokyo, in which two Korean men were killed by an oncoming train while trying to rescue a Japanese drunk from the tracks, for train companies to get with the safety program and start a vigorous safety gate campaign. “Tachi-shoben,” public urination, was still fairly common. I haven’t seen that in a long time. The same is true of spitting in public. Gobs of spit everywhere really irked me in those early years. Most of all was the work place smoking. I used to work in an office that featured a blue cloud of tobacco smoke hovering overheard. I bought a charcoal filter gas mask and made no secret about wearing it at my desk. The Internet, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Starbucks, cell phones, digital cameras and e-mail didn’t exist yet. High school girls were enamored of “pokeberu” pagers, and they wore “loose socks.” Without a choice of international supermarkets, many foreigners here relied on care packages from home, or else the Foreign Buyers Club in Kobe. Christmas decorations were available then, but Halloween was not yet a thing. In Harajuku, Takeshita-dori was only half the story. In those days Inokashira-dori was closed to traffic every Sunday so that electric bands could take over the street. I took thousands of photographs. There has been a revolution in banking since then. When I arrived, ATMs were isolated inside banks. After 3:00 p.m. they were not accessible when the banks closed. There were no ATMs in convenience stores, department stores and stations. 24-hour access to money didn’t exist. And, ATMs did not accept foreign credit cards, bank cards or debit cards like many of them do now. Unfortunately, I got caught a couple of weekends with no money and had to spend my days at home with no food, drinking water, waiting for the banks to open on Monday morning. Those were the days! Published as "Looking back on the good, and not so good days" online and as "Those were the good old days - or were they?" in the print edition on Sunday, December 23, 2018. Thursday, August 2, 2018.
Readers in Council, The Japan Times, 4-5-4 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023 I recently visited Hiroshima for the first time. I wanted to go in July, before crowds descended on the city for the annual atomic bomb memorial anniversary. it is a beautiful city, and I would like to visit it again. Downtown is small enough to walk everywhere I wanted to go. Plus, the city is organized and primed to host international visitors. Multi-lingual tourist information is easily available, and in the Memorial Peace Park itself the park is well-wooded, signage is excellent, there re plenty of bench seats for resting and there are many public toilets available. No garbage receptacles, though. I worry that overuse of the word "peace" renders its true meaning and motivation anodyne: the Peace Park, the Peace Museum, the Peace Fountain, the Peace Boulevard, the Peace Bell, the Peace Clock, the Peace Cenotaph with the Peace Pool and the Peace Flame, etc. After roaming around the city on my own for a couple of days I joined a tour for my last day, before returning to Tokyo. It was then, while listening to my Japanese guide, that overuse of the word "peace" began to aggravate me. Others in the tour group seemed not to appreciate that in 1945 there was a war going on. It was total war. It was a war that Japan started and that Japan waged in a notoriously heinous and criminal fashion. It was a war that Japan stubbornly refused to give up long after its cause was lost, preparing to sacrifice its own civilian population in a fight to the death against battle-hardened U.S. Marines. And it was a war in which Japan allied itself with Nazis! In the summer of 1945 there was still no end in sight, so I'm thankful the Americans used their new weapon to force the Japanese government along. Of course, the A-bomb did not push Japan into surrender. Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Japanese General Staff was prepared to push on. What decided the issue was the very real threat that the Soviets would parachute into Sapporo and take the northern island of Hokkaido. Surrender to the U.S. became the lease offensive of a list of evil options. But I could be wrong. Published in The Japan Times on Sunday, August 12, 2018 as "Too much focus placed on 'peace'." I don't like the title chosen by the newspaper. The use of atomic weapons was a terrible thing, no denying. I am somewhat averse, but not completely averse to terrible things. Knowing how bad atomic weapons are, we may not legitimately judge the decisions, behaviours or values of the past by our contemporary values. We can do it, of course. We do it all the time. But doing so is illegitimate. Even worse was the use of conventional weapons which killed more people and did more damage due to more extensive use. People are prone to let atomic/nuclear weaponry distract them from the evils of conventional weaponry - and they are prone wrongly to judge the past by our present values. In addition, Allied forces were/are not free of accusations of wartime atrocities. The annual homage to Chiune Sugihara is interesting and predictable. While his efforts to save Jews are commendable, his actions make him simultaneously a hero to the world and a traitor to his country. Interesting. I've long suspected that his story is revived once a year in Japanese media as a purification ritual to distance themselves from their guilty association with war crimes, or at least with their Nazi allies. Or not. It's never suggested in Japan that Sugihara was a traitor. I admit that I'm not very interested in Mr. Sugihara, although I know his story quite well. Chiune Sugihara bores me. I know that there were dissenting opinions in U.S. power circles about the new weapons' use. Some dissenting opinions were fair and some were ridiculous, but none of them were/are convincing. By the summer of 1945 the Imperial Navy and Air Force were fundamentally gone and the USAAF was bombing Japan at will and largely unopposed. But the Imperial Army was still deployed, still armed, still dangerous and still game for war. Japan was sending out peace feelers, and it might be said that the stubborn Anglo-American insistence on "unconditional" surrender was a problem that by itself artificially extended the conflict by fortifying the Axis will to resist. Sunday, July 8, 2018.
Reader’s in Council, The Japan Times, 4-5-4 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023 Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's questionable grasp of Christian theology - specifically of Roman Catholic theology - is somewhat wanting. His recent criticisms of the Church in his country make him sound like a man who never really understood what he was taught in his catechism class as a boy, but who formed his religious ideas from popular culture instead and formed all his opinions on that basis. About his promise to resign if God's existence can be proven (“Prove God exists, and I’ll resign: Duterte,” Sunday, July 8, 2018), it must be said that proving God's existence is not really the issue. Putting aside for a moment sophomoric arguments about what constitutes "proof," I must first wonder what proof the President would possibly accept. None, I suspect. Sunday, June 24, 2018.
Readers in Council, The Japan Times, 4-5-4 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023 My life in Japan is contiguous with the Heisei Era. A retrospective of Japanese life in the Heisei Era is resonant with me because it touches many of my personal experiences here. My 1980s were occupied mostly with study - seven years of university. My leap into adulthood, employment and independence came with my arrival in Japan. My plan was to travel farther, to get as far away from my Canadian hometown as I could get without approaching it again from the opposite direction - to discover the diametrically opposite antipode and reside there. Tokyo is not it, but when I arrived here I discovered a country of the living: a place to be human. Rainy Season. I wasn’t prepared for it. Recruit Scandal. Doi Takako and the “ona no jidai.” The investigation, arrest and prosecution of the child murderer Miyazaki Tsutomu. His case introduced the term “otaku” to me. I was riding the Marunouchi Subway Line in Tokyo about 90-minutes before Aum Shinrikyo released deadly gas there. Attempts by prime ministers and cabinet ministers to dismiss homelessness as a lifestyle choice in the face of legions of homeless people sheltering in major train stations in the capital. Yukio Aoshima ran a delightfully minimalist election campaign for the Tokyo Governor’s office - and won! When Hideo Nomo cunningly escaped his rigged Japan League contract in order to play Major League Baseball he was openly vilified in the Japanese press as a traitor - until he was successful, when he was immediately eulogized as a hero. The yen was sky-high on money markets and Japanese ladies were dancing their money away at Juliana’s. Kogyaru culture and loose socks. Street music in Yoyogi Park every Sunday. A sick American president vomiting on Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. I got to see Chiyonofuji wrestle. Writing. 196 of my letters printed in The Japan Times. Published in The Japan Times on Sunday on Sunday, July 1, 2018 as "One life amid the Heisei era." I forgot to mention Miyazawa Rie's nude photo book, Santa Fe (1991). Miyazawa was a teenage model and at the age of 18, as soon as she was finished with high school, she and released this book of nude photographs shot in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It caused some controversy at the time, Japanese people wondering what it meant or what is said about young Japanese womanhood that this is the sort of thing they do directly out of school. I have two copies of the book. It's not erotic. Bound collections of full-frontal female nude photography is a genre in Japanese culture. Is it pornography? Maybe. |
AuthorI am a permanent foreign resident in Japan. I have no plan. I don't know what I'm doing. Archives
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