The White Peril 白禍

Atsushi is now on a plane. He will land at Haneda at around 9:30, arrive at our door at around 11:00, and leave for his parents' place at around 14:00. That gives us three hours together (sort of) to celebrate New Year's Eve, Japan's major holiday. Given how we'll have to shoehorn things in, I'm at least trying to make the house as close to spotless as possible, in the hopes that the effort will convey a celebratory air. Accompanying music by Heart. No, not the 70s stuff that we're all supposed to admire for creating a distaff Led Zep--sorry, Mom and Dad--but the 80s stuff that was out when I was in high school. You know, after the Wilsons looked at each other and said, "Millions of kids shell out for albums at mall record stores every day. Dammit, WE WANT THAT MONEY. Where's Diane Warren's card?" There's something very satisfying about lovingly, tenderly, soothingly moving a dusting glove over your favorite vases while shrieking "Who Will You Run To" along with Ann.

I don't know whether I'll be back between now and tonight's party. If I'm not, everyone have a happy and safe new year.

There have been some updates to ongoing stories here:

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The president of JR East has reportedly hinted that he will resign. It kind of seems a shame, because for once, we may be looking at a genuine freak accident:

The sources said the Construction and Transport Ministry's Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission believes a microburst may have caused the accident mainly because an anemometer placed near the accident site had recorded winds of only 72 kph at the time an express train on East Japan Railway Co.'s Uetsu Line derailed.

A microburst produces winds of 252 kph or greater in small areas with a radius of only several hundred meters to two kilometers.

According to investigations by the commission and other parties, a cold front was passing through the Shonaimachi area, generating thunderclouds at the time of the accident. Thunderclouds are thought to cause microbursts--a phenomenon in which cool air rushes to the surface in an intensely localized area, resulting in strong downdrafts.

Aviation weather experts have paid more attention to the sudden gusts, as they have led to fatal airplane crashes during takeoff or landing. But because a microburst is locally formed and does not last long, they prove difficult to predict.

There seems to be evidence that the bridge and artificial embankment were constructed in such a way as to force the air through in a sort of wind-tunnel effect; but at the same time, the driver was going well below the speed limit for that stretch of rail in those reported conditions. It's good to see JR East talk about installing new meters in the area, but if we're talking about something akin to wind shear in airline flights, perfect safety is going to be impossible to achieve.

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It's a bit late in the game, but two DPRK agents with major involvement in the 1970s abductions of Japanese citizens from beaches have been identified:

Two North Korean agents have been identified as the perpetrators responsible for abducting two couples who have since been repatriated to Japan, sources said Friday.

...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said some people in the intelligence agency "fell into blindly motivated patriotism and heroism," when he admitted in September 2002 that North Korea was responsible for abducting Japanese.

However, police authorities suspect that some of the abductors held important positions that could influence the agency's decision-making, because Sin, who was arrested in South Korea in February 1985 and then transferred to Pyongyang in September 2000, has been treated as a hero at home.

According to Hitomi Soga, 46, who was repatriated along with the couples, Sin served as a tutor for her and her fellow abductee Megumi Yokota. Soga and Yokota were forcibly taken to North Korea in August 1978 and November 1977, respectively.

Hitomi Soga, of course, is the wife of US Army deserter Charles Jenkins.

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The man whose wife and two sons were killed by toxic hydrogen sulfide gas at an Akita Prefecture hot spring resort area has died. He never regained consciousness.

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Oh, and I don't think I mentioned this yet, did I? The government is freaking because the population of Japan has begun to decline earlier than had been projected:

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on Tuesday confirmed what could be the start of a prolonged crisis for Japan: The nation's population is already shrinking.

The ministry released provisional figures that show the population on Oct. 1 was about 19,000 fewer than the estimated 127.776 million of October 2004.

...

Populations in 32 of the 47 prefectures fell since the last official count. Nine prefectures--Nara, Fukui, Nagano, Ishikawa, Yamanashi, Ibaraki, Miyagi, Gifu and Gunma--recorded gains between 1995 and 2000, but this time around, all nine prefectures saw population decreases. Akita Prefecture had the biggest drop, at 3.7 percent from the level five years ago.

The census results showed a trend toward population shifts to major metropolitan areas.

Tokyo had the biggest population gain, at 510,000, a 4.2-percent rise over the last census. Kanagawa Prefecture recorded a gain of 300,000, or 3.5 percent more, and Aichi Prefecture an increase of 210,000, or 3 percent more people.

Other prefectures boasting larger populations were Okinawa, with a 3.2-percent rise thanks mainly to a large number of births, and Shiga, with a 2.8-percent rise because of an increase in commuters to the Osaka and Kyoto areas.

The country gained 2.47 million households in the period, or 5.2 percent, to reach a total 49.53 million.

While there were more households in all 47 prefectures, the average number per household fell to 2.58, from 2.7 in the 2000 census.

The increase in metro area populations is actually rather interesting; given the much-publicized J-turn phenomenon of the 90s, it likely means not that people are moving into urban cores but that they're moving into bed towns that are part of contiguous areas of high population density.

From the Japan Defense Agency:

The Japan Defense Agency and the Self-Defense Forces are adding muscle to their defense preparations designed to respond to a hypothetical attack by the PRC's People's Liberation Army on, for example, Ishigaki Island or the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture. In January, the Ground Self-Defense Force will conduct its first joint remote island defense training with with United States Marine Corps. The Maritime Self-Defense Force will set its hand to developing Advanced Lightweight Torpedos in order to boost its response capabilities toward Chinese submarines.

The G-SDF will dispatch 125 personnel from the Western Army infantry regiment [link] (Sasebo City, Nagasaki Prefecture) to San Diego, CA, from 9 - 27 January. It will conduct reconnaissance training to facilitate landing and information gathering on a remote island that could conceivably be occupied. In addition to studying swim-based reconnaissance at the USMC reconnaissance school, the G-SDF will undergo ground training and acquire know-how for planning on-land assaults that incorporate complex conditions such as climate.

For its part, the SDF has (at least as of 2004, presumably the last year for which finalized records exist) increased the amount of assistance--supplies, equipment, transportation--it gives to the US military:

The number of cases in which the Self-Defense Forces provided supplies or support for the U.S. military more than tripled in fiscal 2004 from the previous year, the Defense Agency said.

The increase stems from a 2004 revision to the acquisition and cross-servicing agreement (ACSA), enabling the SDF to provide such assistance to the U.S. military even during routine training drills.

The agreement was originally intended only for U.N. peacekeeping operations or joint training drills.

But Tokyo and Washington have become increasingly interdependent in terms of military cooperation. In addition, enhancing Japan's role in logistics support for U.S. troops is part of an interim report on U.S. military realignment.

According to the Defense Agency, the SDF provided goods and services to the U.S. military in response to requests 212 times between April and December 2004.

For all of fiscal 2003, the figure was 67.

BTW, specifically regarding PRC-Japan relations, the latest conflict is over the suicide of a Japanese consul stationed in Shanghai. The Japanese government says Chinese officials pressed him to reveal information about Japan's policies regarding disputed islands. That incident was not, BTW, a factor in the results of a recent cabinet poll:

Fewer Japanese than ever feel well disposed toward China, with a Cabinet Office survey finding only about one-third of respondents had positive feelings about the country and a record-high 63.4 percent did not, according to the poll released Saturday.

The favorable response toward China fell 5.2 percentage points from the previous survey in 2004 to 32.4 percent, marking its lowest level since such questions were first asked in 1978.

The percentage of respondents who did not have positive feelings about China was up 5.2 percentage points from the 2004 survey, surpassing the 60 percent line for the first time.

A Cabinet Office official commented, "It may have been affected by large-scale anti-Japanese demonstrations across China and disputes between the two nations over the development of gas fields in the East China Sea and other issues."

The survey was conducted on 3,000 people aged 20 or older nationwide in early to mid-October. The response rate was 58.5 percent.

Concerning Japan-China ties, 71.2 percent, up 10.2 points from last year, said relations were not good, with 19.7 percent, down 8.4 points, saying relations were positive.

Figures for the ROK dropped also, but they remained above 50 percent.

Finally, apropos of nothing: the compound that means "torpedo" is 魚雷 (gyorai: "fish" + "thunder"), which I think is just about the coolest thing ever. Land mines are known as 地雷 (jirai: "earth" + "thunder").

Eric cites LaShawn Barber, who in turn is reacting to this Kathleen Parker column, about blogger conduct:

But unrestrained power coupled with little to no accountability is a dangerous thing. As a blogger who's been the subject of nasty and false statements made by bloggers and in comment sections by anonymous cowards, I know what people are capable of saying when they get caught up in online anonymity. When you're not man or woman enough to stand behind your words using your own name, high ideals like accountability and responsibility are mere afterthoughts.

I'd soften that just a little. There are people whose political positions would threaten their jobs if known at the office, or who feel that blogging under their full names would compromise not just their own privacy but their families'. I don't see why they should have to absent themselves entirely from the public debate. But what the anonymous bloggers who are honorable and civil understand is that they are under different constraints from the named. If you're anonymous, you get less leeway if your criticisms start to drift over the line from stern to insulting. You also get less credence if you're asking readers to accept your unsubstantiated account of something and have to do an extra-methodical job of laying out your case. Here's how Eric puts it:

If only the world of opinion consisted of verifiable facts! But it doesn't. Even the distinction between fact and opinion can be tricky. Many people believe what they want to believe despite evidence to the contrary. This leads to assertions of being wrong, of lying, and of being stupid or evil. In general, people who are willing to acknowledge that they have said what they said and are willing to defend it in a sincere manner are less likely to resort to insulting ad hominem attacks, they are more accountable, and less like the kids in Lord of the Flies.

BTW, that goes quadruple for gay bloggers, though I know Eric wasn't thinking specifically in those terms (and I'm approximately 110% certain that Ms. Barber wasn't thinking in those terms when she was writing that paragraph above). There are all kinds of good reasons not to post under your own name, but you're only inviting honest folks to laugh aloud at you if you sign yourself Jason the Raving Invert so you can stay closeted at your cushy I-banking job...and then freely take potshots at others and go on and on about what a daring truth-speaker you are.

Parker, for her part, is worried that a lot of blogs are all potshot and no truth-speaking because there's no one playing official referee:

What Golding demonstrated--and what we're witnessing as the Blogosphere's offspring multiply--is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding's children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow.

I've frequently enjoyed Parker's columns since 9/11. She can be sharp and intelligent in a plainspoken, unfussy fashion. However, she also has a weakness for cutesy metaphors that aren't as clever or, more importantly, telling as she thinks. The Lord of the Flies reference has emotional appeal, but what it fails to convey is that unearned power doesn't have to arise from a free-for-all. I don't think that even the screechiest, most self-important bloggers believe mainstream journalism is populated by loose-running willful tricksters like Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke. They think it's populated by conscientious, by-the-book mandarins who nevertheless don't recognize their own biases and are often out of touch with the people whose interests they're claiming to serve. (And their writing can be just as adversarial as that of bloggers.)

My blog is too small-scale to be one of those that Parker is thinking of, but for my part, I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that reporters do a lot more work writing their stories that I do translating and linking to them. But I also know from ten years of adulthood that many Western journalists fall back on cheap, easy, and unilluminating clichés about Japan; that articles about gay topics will frequently cite two or three extreme, grabby opinions by activists as if they represented the full range of what gay people believe about very complex issues; and that pieces about working-class life tend to strike a tone that evokes an anthropologist who's just returned from doing field work on Pluto. I dare say that most journalism that gets knowledgeable readers exercised isn't really inaccurate on a sentence-by-sentence basis; it just gives a distorted overall picture by emphasizing some factors at the expense of others. Blogging, with its variety of commentators, can help to correct that. It hasn't solved the problem of rampant incivility in society, but then, neither has anything else anyone's tried.

And here's the other post that got dropped.

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You knew this was coming, didn't you (via Gaijin Biker)?

Up to about a third of the $590 million U.N. fund spent for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead. The Financial Times says its two-month investigation showed the money appears to have been spent on administration, staff and related costs. The $590 million was part of the United Nation's $1.1 billion disaster flash appeal.

...

The newspaper said details of that appeal it obtained from U.N. agencies such as the World Health Organization and the World Food Program showed 18 percent to 32 percent of the expenditure related to staff, administration and other costs.

Some UN agencies aren't making good on their promises of transparency in allocating funds. You know, I derive quite a bit of amusement from slagging off the UN. The pharisaism that pours reliably from its every agency makes criticizing it pretty much a guilt-free operation. But we're not talking here about whether cronyism was involved in the appointment of some dumbass who's job is to hector us about smoking. We're talking about the aftermath of a natural disaster that was, for the regions it affected, epochal. It was exactly the sort of multi-national, Third World emergency that the UN's humanitarian divisions are supposed to be ideally positioned to deal with. And what we get is around US$18 million spent on overhead.

Okay, Chris at Powerblogs says that the posts lost yesterday were still in the mailing list, so, even though I realize that not every word I've ever typed needs to be preserved for posterity, I'll repost them. Here's the first one.

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Since Simon went group blog, he doesn't post as much of his own commentary, which--no offense to his co-bloggers--is a shame. A few days ago he gave a good pummeling to a piece in the South China Morning Post (presumably in the print edition, since he doesn't provide a link). The headline is "Still an inspirational leader."

Guess who it's about.

Assuming you've put down your coffee--no, really, please--here's the first paragraph:

Almost 30 years after the death of Mao Zedong, many are still trying to define the controversial leader. But, like China, Mao defies simple classification. And his name still evokes deep respect amonst many Chinese.

That Mao, he stayed refreshingly unhampered by attempts to pigeonhole him, he did. You gotta love him for that. Respect him, too. Assuming you're still alive, that is. Simon says:

The latest estimate is Mao was responsible for more than 73 million deaths. In case you're wondering, that's a record.

To make an omelette, you apparently have to break a WHOLE LOT of eggs (just to bring in yet another loathsome mass murderer). The SCMP piece also quotes an ethnic studies professor at--where else?--Berkeley (Jeff, can't you do something about these people?):

Ling-chi Wang, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California at Berkeley, said that while Mao's wrongdoings cannot be discounted, he "made an important contribution to Chinese history, as a leader who instilled a great sense of self-reliance and pride in the people."

I've heard some Iranians say that about Khomeini, too: "He brought in an oppressive government that made life hell for many of its citizens, but he stood up to the West and revived our pride in Persian culture." It's always struck me as taking the effort to make the best of adversity just a smidgen too far. The trade-off involved in giving even grudging respect to a leader who champions national pride while committing acts of world-class shamefulness is of dubitable ethical value. Anyway, "Mao sucked" is not an opinion that, in 2006, should have to be supported with all kinds of evidence as if it were controversial, but Simon does a patient, deadly job of it.

Jon Rowe's recent post on homosexuality in the context of the DSM has been deservedly linked by everyone (via Ex-Gay Watch for me). Mike notes that the implications cut both ways: "Those who would today classify homophobia as a mental disorder might want to reconsider." He's tacitly referring to this paragraph of Jon's:

The "regrettable tendency" to which I refer is the (mis)use of the concept of "mental illness" to enforce moral or social norms. Back in Socarides's day, it was the 1950s style social conservative morality which was "medicalized." Today it's PC. Previously, homosexuality and other behaviors which violated "traditional morality" were "mental illnesses." Today "racism" and "homophobia" are mental illnesses (or at least, some folks within the profession seriously advance this notion). As Pete Townshend put it: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

On a related but slightly different topic, I always get a charge out of the social conservatives who believe homosexuality is caused by abuse during childhood and/or that gays should go in for "reparative" therapy. These are often the same sorts of people who in general--and, in my view, quite correctly--are highly suspicious of Oprah-style recovered memories of molestation and who in any case believe that adults should get a grip on themselves, stop foisting responsibility for their own character development off on their parents, and carve out a life with the resources they have.

If you're gay, though--well, then to some people, you must have been sexually abused as a child (even if you have no such memories and know your parents and other elders would never do any such thing). And you're supposed to consult a helpful therapist to help you riffle through your inner filing cabinet looking for, you know, some incident when you were three and Dad took away your Tonka truck in a fashion that made him seem to be withdrawing from you emotionally (or worse). It's all very odd.

For those keeping count out of ghoulishness, the number of buildings affected by the Aneha scandal has reached 89:

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport announced on 30 December that a hotel in Kirishima City, Kagoshima Prefecture, had been newly confirmed as a structure for which architect Hidetsugu Aneha had falsified structural calculations. The number of problem buildings has now reached 89 in 18 prefectures.

This was the first building confirmed as fraudulently certified in Kagoshima Prefecture. The prefectural government had at first reported that there was no falsification, but a new examination demonstrated that the structural calculation documents contained falsifications.

The hotel, the Sun Hotel Kokubun, received its architectural confirmation in November 1999 and has 52% of the minimum standard earthquake resistance. It was reported to be closed for business on 27 December.

A woman and her two children have died at a hot spring resort, likely from inhaling noxious gas:

On 29 December, University of Tokyo tutor Yasushi Matsui (47) of Toshima Ward, Tokyo, was in critical condition and his wife and two sons died at the Doroyu Hot Springs in Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture; on 30 December, the Yuzawa Station of the Akita Prefectural Police began an investigation into the circumstances of the accident near the Okuyama Inn, where the four were found collapsed close to a snow-covered basin [as in a depression in the ground, not as in a birdbath--SRK].

The Yuzawa Station considers it possible that the family of four inhaled sulfur oxide hydrogen sulfide [Bad transation my fault, sorry; the article did, indeed, say 硫化水素.--SRK] gas that had accumulated in the basin and been poisoned; it is hurrying to establish the cause of death through autopsies of the dead woman and boys.

According to the investigation, the basin has a diameter of 2 meters and a depth of 1.5 meters; it is located about 10 meters from one side of the inn's parking lot.

I've somehow never managed to get to Yellowstone, but I'm assuming toxic gases are a problem at some of its fumaroles and things, too. In Japan when you go to see steam vents and the like in hot spring areas, there are often purposefully scary signs posted that warn you to leave the area immediately if you start feeling funny. They also warn that people with heart conditions and the like should stay away. Unfortunately, the ground has lots of cracks, some small and unnoticeable.

Damn. Atsushi's sick. In Japan, they use the same word colloquially for what we'd call a cold and for what we'd call the flu, so when someone says 風邪をひく (kaze wo hiku: "catch cold"), you don't know how serious it actually is until you find out more about the symptoms. Last night on the phone, he said he had a 風邪--which was a warning sign right there. Atsushi always downplays his ailments, in typical Japanese fashion, so he refers to a regular cold as 風邪気味 (kaze-gimi: "a bit of a cold") rather than 風邪 ("a [full-fledged] cold"), even if he's pretty stuffed-up and lethargic. In any case, he caught it from his immediate boss, who is apparently in the hospital with an IV drip, so we are not talking about a hot-water-and-lemon-and-brandy-and-try-to-avoid-going-outdoors cold this time around. I hope Atsushi doesn't get quite that sick, but it's the end of the year and they've been working him to death. His resistance is obviously down, and tomorrow he's going to be flying in and then joining the crush on the train to get to his parents' place in his hometown for New Year's Eve. Great for picking up more germs.

So we've laid in plenty of fluids and electrolytes. I've also made sure we're not out of...what's it called, that iodine gargle stuff? People who live in Japan will know what I mean--it's really great when you have a sore throat. And thanks to that nice Paul Smith, I am now the owner of three more pairs of insolently sexy boxers than I was on waking this morning. If Atsushi's going to have to spend most of the break in bed anyway....

Joel at Far Outliers--gentleman, scholar, and (as I learned a few months ago) great drinking buddy--has put up his thousandth post. He provides links to several of his posts that have been most accessed by readers. Congratulations to him on his second blogging anniversary.

Powerblogs had server problems, which means that the site was inaccessible for nearly twenty-four hours and that one or two comments have disappeared (sorry). Also, I've lost two relatively inconsequential posts that may or may not be restored. They were both links to good things at other blogs, so I'll just give them here without much commentary, which I'm not really of the mind to reproduce:

Simon posted a few days ago about a South China Morning Post article headlined "Still an inspirational leader." It's China we're talking about, so if you're now thinking, No, it couldn't be about..., well, yes, it is. The first paragraph of the article (which must have been in the print edition, since Simon doesn't link to it, goes like this:

Almost 30 years after the death of Mao Zedong, many are still trying to define the controversial leader. But, like China, Mao defies simple classification. And his name still evokes deep respect amonst many Chinese.

After all, there's nothing more important than being free from labels, even at the expense of a few lives. Simon says:

The latest estimate is Mao was responsible for more than 73 million deaths. In case you're wondering, that's a record.

Simon suspects that many of those people would fail to have respect for Mao if they were alive now.

The other post was by Gaijin Biker, who reports that the United Nations has--you'll want to be sitting down for this--been discovered to be guilty of bureaucratic waste. The story he cites is from UPI:

Up to about a third of the $590 million U.N. fund spent for the Indian Ocean tsunami relief may have gone to pay for overhead.

The Financial Times says its two-month investigation showed the money appears to have been spent on administration, staff and related costs. The $590 million was part of the United Nation's $1.1 billion disaster flash appeal.

...

The newspaper said details of that appeal it obtained from U.N. agencies such as the World Health Organization and the World Food Program showed 18 percent to 32 percent of the expenditure related to staff, administration and other costs.

A natural disaster that affects multiple Third World countries is just the sort of thing that the UN is supposed to be more suited than any other entity to deal with.

Oh, and I guess I could also mention here that I got a very perky e-mail notifying me that somewhere called Red Orbit, which apparently covers tech stuff and is not a site Michael uses as an outlet for any closet communist tendencies, named White Peril as one of its blogs of the day. That's very kind, though kind of bewildering, since I hardly ever talk about tech stuff. The post that was linked as a sample was this one complaining about the process of getting Toshiba to replace my CD-ROM drive. I was thinking of writing another post complaining about the user-unfriendly iPod remote control, too. Otherwise, the only time technology is a topic here is when Japan is making a deal with the US military to develop cool stuff. But Red Orbit looks as if it may be a good aggregator, so there's the link again.

Exactly one year ago today, I posted this:




Fat lot of good that did, huh? So I figure, as we go from the Year of the Cock to the Year of the Dog--stop that sniggering, you bitches in the back!--I may as well solicit resolutions from even more people this year. If the elements are going to dash your dreams, make 'em work at it, I say.

In 2006, I would like liberals to decide whether they believe in protecting (1) assertive individuality, even when it has sharp edges and raises uncomfortable questions or (2) the right of the government to adjudicate every potentially offensive manifestation of religious beliefs, sexuality, and even dietary choices. I don't really care which one they pick--though I'm hoping they go with (1), of course. They just need to knock it off with the cynical, opportunistic toggling back and forth between the two, depending on which tack happens to suit the finger-wagging point they're making at a given moment.

In 2006, I would like conservatives to decide whether they believe America's material prosperity and staggering array of consumer products are (1) evidence that our way of life is the best in the world or (2) evidence that we've lost our spirituality and are hung up on the trivial at the expense of the transcendent. I don't really care which one they pick--though I'm hoping they go with (1), of course. They just need to knock it off with the cynical, opportunistic toggling back and forth between the two, depending on which tack happens to suit the finger-wagging point they're making at a given moment.

In 2006, I would like everyone to forgo the opportunity to be an asshole sometimes. Say, every third opportunity to be an asshole. Yes, I know--your opponents don't make or respond to arguments, they just parrot the same empty talking points over and over and they ignore counterarguments and they suck and you're not going to put up with it anymore and you're willing to be a nice person but they force you to play offense all the time. I know, I know, I KNOW. I know because you've told us that about a million times. What I don't know is what you think you're accomplishing by adding one more uncharitable jerk to the din. Fearlessly offensive, gusty expressions of free thought can be a bracing corrective to namby-pambiness in the public discourse--within reason. When they become the public discourse, we're in trouble. If you want people to be respectful, rational, and fair-minded, you might want to get the ball rolling by setting them an example.

Best to everyone in the new year.

Yesterday's train derailment was very unfortunate, but unlike the disaster in Amagasaki in April, it doesn't seem to indicate any problems with JR. Cars were swept off the tracks by strong wind as the train went over a bridge; four people were killed and over thirty injured. The driver was going within the speed limit:

At the moment of the derailment, the train was estimated to be running at about 100 kph, well below the speed limit for that section, police said.

...

JR East officials said a wind meter was positioned about 1 kilometer north of the disaster site.

If the meter detects winds of 72 kph or faster, a warning is sent to an anti-disaster information system installed at JR East's Niigata branch, which is in charge of the Uetsu Line. An alarm will also sound at the branch, but drivers are not required to reduce their speeds in these conditions.

However, trains are obliged to slow down to 25 kph when wind speeds exceeding 90 kph are registered.

Train operations are suspended in areas with winds reaching 108 kph, the officials said.

But the wind meter near the accident site only recorded a maximum speed of 72 kph at 7:16 p.m., the officials said.

For that reason, the driver of the Inaho No. 14 was allowed to operate at the maximum speed of 120 kph in that section, according to the officials.

So it looks as if any human error that contributed was involved in the design of the bridge.

It's almost time for the New Year vacation. That means Atsushi and I will be entertaining--we're two of the party-throwers among our friends. It also means it's time for the yearly Great Gay Veuve Clicquot Exchange. (My theory is that there are actually only five bottles of Champagne Veuve Clicquot in existence in any given year, and they get passed back and forth in a sort of Chinese fire drill as host gifts at fag parties from mid-December to the first week of January. No one ever seems to open them.) Maybe I'll make stew or something. The weather's been unseasonably cold in Japan as in the States, so we're ready for the sort of warming food you normally don't need until the approach of February.

Of course, Atsushi and I already set a precedent for food randomness over the weekend. Usually, I make dinner on Christmas Eve; last year, I even roused myself to start preparing a week ahead of time and made sauerbraten and dumplings. This year, my flight landed on the 22nd, and Atsushi arrived on the 23rd (the banks were closed for the emperor's birthday). Between jet lag and general tiredness, I didn't make a single dinner while he was here. Christmas Eve we went to a tempura restaurant. Atsushi chose it because I love vegetable tempura and because Western-style restaurants tend to be packed on Christmas Eve. Tempura isn't quite as traditional as, say, goose, but...uh, you know...tempura was brought to Japan by the Portuguese. And Portugal's a Catholic country. So you can find a Christmas connection in there somewhere, especially if you're on your third glass of wine.

Hope everyone else enjoyed Christmas (or just the weekend).

Added at 22:30: This guy (via Gay News) obviously moves in very different circles from me. A Ten Commandments of cocktail parties that doesn't start talking about the drinks until Commandment #9? Whatever. I also like these:

Commandment #4:
[...] And don't forget the bathroom! Scented candles, an elegant bottle of hand soap, extra toilet paper, and a basket of high-quality napkins or paper towels make guests feel pampered.

I'm sorry, honey, if you're hanging out with the sort of people who can made to feel pampered by a pile of paper towels dumped in a basket, you need to find new friends. (My Crabtree & Evelyn guest towels, embroidered in saucy botanical patterns and housed next to the brushed-metal soap dispenser, are a big joke among our buddies.)

As for scented candles, this guy has dispatched them handily so I don't have to. I will only add that having tall, fat candles lit in an enclosed space in which tipsy people are unattended and desperately fumbling with their clothes is not the brightest idea.

Commandment #7:
Keep 'em moving! The entire point of a cocktail party is to mingle. To encourage that behavior, set up your bar and your buffet table on opposite ends of the room (or in different rooms altogether). That way you don't end up with traffic jams and a huge cluster of people in one spot. Also, sitting down is a no-no! To keep the energy up and the party moving, only provide half as many seats as you have guests. Besides, we all look thinner and more elongated when we stand.

In my experience, people who don't want to stand will not stand. If you've removed every stick of furniture from the room except the drinks table, they will stretch themselves out on your floor. They will close the lid of your garbage can and perch on it. If they know where the bedroom is and you've locked it, they will find your utility drawer, get a screwdriver, jimmy the lock, and sprawl on the bed.

And this David Lawrence character has also forgotten in their entirety two indispensable party ingredients: salt and club soda. Someone will inevitably spill red wine. If you're lucky, it'll be a few drops on one of your patterned throw pillows. If you're not lucky, as one of our friends wasn't a few years ago, it'll be a full glass that gets knocked over the edge of a table by someone who's getting a little over-enthusiastic about hitting on one of the other guests. (Three guesses what color the carpet was.)

Joe thinks I'm being too dismissive of That Movie. He's seen it and has posted about it. Here's (to me) the important part:

Homosexual and gay are not synonymous; all homosexuals are not gay. Homosexual acts may be circumstantial--a man in prison, a drunken evening--or experimental and do not mean an individual is homosexual by nature. But experimentation can lead to the discovery of a homosexual inclination.

Once that inclination is realized, how it is addressed matters to all of us. Because then there is a choice to be made: to accept homosexuality or to resist and fight it. To embrace it is to become gay. To resist it leads to all kinds of trouble.

...

Urbanization and mobilization--particularly World War II which brought women into the workforce and men together as it took them around the world--brought with it the beginnings of a gay identity. That identity is rooted in the collective experience of those who have gone through the difficult process of making the choice to embrace their homsexuality.

The nuclearization of the family has had a major effect, too. When you bring people up to choose their own spouses, and when they know that the bulk of their emotional sustenance and support through life's obstacles will be channeled through a partnership of two, it becomes far more urgent that their partnerships are based on not only duty but also compatibility. Extended family societies impinge more on individual identity--and they tend not to make the pursuit of happiness a high priority, let alone enshrine it in their founding documents--but they also provide a constellation of relationships with in-laws that makes difficulties with any one person easier to manage: you may not get along very well with your husband and mother-in-law, but your helpful sister-in-law and slyly sympathetic father-in-law can always be close at hand to keep you from losing your mind.

Getting back to what Joe writes, the "collective experience" part is a little on the Richard Goldstein side for me, but in a major sense, he's right. Those of us you see publicly calling ourselves gay are working culturally, both for better and for worse, off a framework developed by men and women after World War II, especially through the 60s and 70s.

That doesn't mean, of course, that our elders have turned their mind rays on us and turned us all into zombies. Poor Eric, practically tearing his hair out as usual to get people to remember that they're in charge of their own lives, notes the reactions to Brokeback Mountain in a splashy Inquirer article:

From what I've read, the film targets the mainstream heterosexual market, but that doesn't guarantee that they'll be lining up to see it in large numbers. Hype won't persuade people to see a film with which they can't identify, nor will a good scolding. (It's a real stretch to blame "heterosexual bigotry" for the failure of people to see a film.)

If only there'd been a major coordinated attack on the film by social conservatives with massive boycotts and picket lines in front of every theater! That might have triggered a Brokeback Mountain backlash [Say that five times fast--SRK], but the social conservatives seem to be learning what not to do. (I guess I should keep my trap shut about such things....)

MORE: I think, however, that it would be a mistake to misread this strategic silence as an indication of tolerance or an embrace of a live-and-let-live philosophy.

That's because the hard core opposition to the film arises from a moral collectivist belief that people are not responsible for their own actions:

"If [Brokeback Mountain] encourages even one confused boy to engage in sex with another male, that makes it an instrument of corruption, not one of enlightenment."

I may be in a minority, but I can't think of a single time--at any point in my life--where sex resulted from confusion.

I haven't read the short story for a while, but if the movie is faithful to it, the message it sends would seem to be that if you fall in love with another man, you end up living alone in a drafty trailer or murdered with a tire iron. Neither sounds all that encouraging, though naysayers can always work the angle of supposedly endless teenage impressionability.

In any case, I'm not sure what real, wide-ranging effect Joe expects the movie to have. Most of the public positions people are taking in response to it don't seem to deviate much from those they were already taking anyway, though I'm sure there will be at least some cases in which people are moved by it to think more sympathetically about gays. He ends this way:

What we must see, all of us gay and straight alike, is that it's in our interest to help open the closet door. We must make the choice to come out of the closet and become gay an easier one; the obvious one. Because that's the right choice, the good choice, the healthy choice, for our society and for all of us living in it.

I agree, obviously; I just don't know that a movie like Brokeback Mountain helps much. I can only speak authoritatively about my own experience, but what made the difference for me was a conversation with my soon-to-be first boyfriend. I don't remember it verbatim, which is kind of odd considering how it affected the way my life has gone since then, but what he said was basically this: "I'm not forcing you into anything. I couldn't if I wanted to. You want to take the line that you're just kind of feeling experimental and stuff, you go ahead. But let me tell you what I see: I'm offering you a relationship, and you're responding. If you want me to go away, you can tell me decisively to get lost, and you'll never hear from me again. But you won't." And I didn't, because he was right. He was just naming what I already knew I was, and it mattered because he was an actual person that I knew. I don't think even the most seductive pop culture artifacts would have really made up for the fact that the few stray gays I'd known until then (such as my high school homeroom teacher and the squalling brats in the college LGBA) were 180 degrees opposite from the kind of person I wanted to become. Cultural acceptance is important; it matters. But it can't do the most pressing job of getting people to own what they are and decide whether they're going to use it for good or ill.

Added at 16:27: Joe has also commented on the Christianity Today review.

How rattled are people about the Aneha scandal? This is posted in the mail/package alcove in the lobby of our apartment building. It opened in 2000, and there has never been any suggestion whatever that its structural strength calculations were questionable. Translated, the substantive parts sandwiched between the ritual greetings say:

Recently, the "scandal in which the Aneha Design office falsified structural calculations" has been reported in newspapers and the like. Please be secure in the knowledge that none of the structural calculations for this building were contracted out to the design office at Aneha.

Furthermore, we have obtained confirmation that "this building was erected based on properly executed structural calculations."

Additionally, the structural calculations have been checked through independent inspection by XXXX Estate's structural technicians, with no reliance on the design firm or body of inspectors [that originally certified the building]; and the strength and distribution of rebar concrete in actual construction has been checked by quality control experts.

I'm sure that cost a pretty penny, especially if the company's dozens of apartment buildings in metropolitan Tokyo are all being re-inspected. But it's understandable that such measures were deemed necessary, considering the multiple levels of negligence that have been shown to have allowed Aneha to get away with his deceptions. At this point, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport is considering providing assistance to owners of hotels and condominiums that have up to 50% of the mandated earthquake resistance level. The money would cover up to 15.2% of inspection and retrofitting costs.

Hi! Is it obvious that I'm jet-lagged and wide awake at 6 a.m.? I tried lying sleepless in bed for a few hours to get my body used to the idea that this part of the day is rest time, but I can only do that for so long before I go nuts. Then I tried reading, but my brain is too fried to concentrate. Ditto with sudoku. And I had enough TV, after two weeks in the States, to do me just fine for a while.

I could unpack my stuff, but I'm afraid I'm so hazy that I'd start putting the navy T-shirts away in the designated grey/black T-shirt drawer, and we would not want that.

So one more post, and then I'm going to try to sleep a bit before Atsushi gets here at 11:00 or so.

I was going to let this point drop--largely because the fights I've had about it have been with non-blog people--but it's something that apparently has to be said repeatedly, so here it is one more time.

I could have seen...yes, here it comes again...Brokeback Mountain while I was in the States. I decided not to. I'll probably get the DVD, or if it plays in some arty theater here in Tokyo, I may see it there. How that can be construed as meaning that I think people who have eagerly lined up to see it--and, subsequently, been very affected by it--are suckers, I cannot imagine. Do I really strike anyone as the kind of man to sneer at people for sincere, deep-seated responses to art? Chris has a post up about it that, as his often do, moved me to tears. One of the major functions of art is to remind us that we all labor, in our individual ways, within the human condition, and I'm glad this movie's been made so that people who see pieces of their own story in it can take comfort in that.

But those of us who don't see our story in it have to be allowed to appreciate it on our own terms and to our own degree, and that's where I find the implication that it's our homosexual duty to rally around Brokeback Mountain, the pop culture phenomenon, annoying. Gays deserve as much liberty to decide whom to identify with as anyone else does. Sometimes we'll sympathize with people without necessarily seeing them as reflections of ourselves, even if gay advocates deem it politically expedient to do so. We have to be as free to choose for ourselves as we are to speak for ourselves.

Personally, my highest hope for Brokeback Mountain is that it's kind of like Romeo and Juliet, making a generalizable point about the raw resilience of love in the face of social pressure by taking the circumstances to an unusual extreme. Given the frantic "It's not a gay movie!" PR fusillade, that appears to be the way its makers are also hoping it will be regarded. But that may not make it a metaphor for gay life in any kind of direct and overarching way.

In 2006, there are plenty of us who have been out our entire adult lives, with more experienced friends who showed us the ropes and became like family. I'd have to dig back in my memory over a decade to recall agonizedly burying a yearning for an electric connection to someone and tamping the dirt down over it just because he was a man. I haven't forgotten what that was like, obviously, and if it's depicted skillfully on screen, I'm sure I'll find it devastating and difficult to watch. I'm not saying every gay-themed movie has to be Beautiful Thing or The Sum of Us. It's just that self-loathing and the necessity of keeping things hidden don't govern adult reality for many of us, and it's not clear to me why we should push the line that Brokeback Mountain says more than it actually does about the gay experience just to get more exposure for gay love stories.

Christopher Hitchens does his James Thomson act on Christmas cheer (via Ann Althouse). OMG, that man is funny. I grew up in one of those literalist Christian sects that considered Christmas and Easter corrupt, the illegitimate grafting of pagan ritual onto Christianity as a cheap, expedient bid by nasty Papists to get converts. Passover, representing Christ's sacrifice for our sins, was the most important day of the year; and we believed that his autumn birthday was not meant for human observance.

Therefore, I have no problem celebrating Christmas as the Japanese do. Here, it's a couples' holiday. You spend the seven weeks after Hallowe'en listening to so much piped caroling, seeing so much tinsel and blinky lighting, and being exhorted to buy so many red-frosted cakes that by the solstice you're ready to shoot yourself. Christmas Eve finally arrives, and you and your honey go to a nice dinner and exchange presents. Then you forget all about it and go back to getting ready for the New Year.

In the States, where genuine religious conviction is part of the equation for many people, I can see why things get more contentious. I still think it would be nice, though, if people remembered to distinguish between censorship (the government kind) and the policies of private organizations. I think bans on crèches on public property and things like that are misguided; as long as other religions aren't barred from making displays of their religious symbols and, conversely, no one is penalized for not playing along with this or that celebration, I don't see what the big deal is.

When it comes to casual greetings, that goes quadruple. If I'm Merry Christmased, I Merry Christmas back. If I'm Happy Holidaysed, I Happy Holidays back. If I'm nothinged, I say, "Thank you. Goodbye!" Is this really difficult? I know all about the argument that Chanukah and Kwanzaa and the rest have been inflated in significance as a response to Christmas and that, therefore, it's only honest to treat Christmas outright as the Real Holiday of the season. But at the same time, for all the talk about how Easter is the most important day of the Christian calendar, it's the Christmas season in which public-sphere chatter (not to mention commercialization) reaches its frenzied peak and in which non-Christians are constantly being roped into merry-making...and are regarded as dried up cynics if they don't oblige. I find it hard to blame people for trying to find a way to endorse their Christian friends' general state of benevolence without seeming to endorse religious convictions they do not share.

Ah, you say, but the people pushing for denatured holiday greetings aren't the friendly Zoorastrians down the street but rather the PC-niks trying to erase any trace of spirituality from public life. Okay. Who cares? Even crabbed, obnoxious people can have a point sometimes. If someone's trying to get her first-grader's teacher fired for so much as mentioning Christmas, she should be opposed. But fulminating about blandly worded commercials or about store policies that instruct employees to say "Happy holidays" when they'd rather say "Merry Christmas"? Please. If we're going for plainspokenness in advertising, then "Christmas is the excuse for this particular sale, but really, we want your money even if you're Anton LaVey" should fill the bill. If we're going to let cashiers say what's in their hearts, how about replacing "We look forward to serving you again" with "Don't let the door hit your fat ass on the way out, bitch--assuming you can make it through with those three helpings of potato skins"?

Except at matey establishments with a lot of regulars, part of the art of working with the public is learning to be impersonally polite while giving the illusion of just-for-you friendliness. In a society as diverse as America's, yes, that often means using the most ideology-free greetings possible. Considering the general state of customer service today, you'd think people wouldn't be so eager to make a war out of efforts to be soothingly accommodating.

Added at 6:00: Oh, almost forgot:

Merry Christmas to you all!

If you don't find that sufficiently offensive, here, have a picture of three flagrant homosexuals:




Would have posted that here, but I forgot to bring my cable to the States with my digicam. Eric is on the left. Tom is on the right. If you know how the process of elimination works, you can find me.

The flight today was a real throwback. Narita was--surprise!--congested, so we circled a good twenty minutes before getting clearance to land. They'd warned us it was going to be turbulent, and it was. There weren't any scary drops or bone-jarring shakes; the plane just kind of swayed and swished its way down. It was like a water slide. A nauseating water slide. I could feel myself turning green (which at least coordinated with my light-purple sweater). The girl next to me threw up. I think it had been a good decade or so since I'd seen someone use a barf bag or been on a plane that had to circle before landing. Whether that's because I'm lucky or because technology and know-how have improved steadily, I don't know.

Our landing was not like the one described in the introduction to Robert Bruegmann's Sprawl, which I picked up to read on the flight (Virginia Postrel's been posting about it) and enjoyed immensely. Well, actually, I'm not the whole way through yet: the book isn't what you'd call dense, but if you're interested in the ways individual decision-making adds up to create society, there's a fact or stat in just about every paragraph that sends your imagination shooting off in several suggestive directions. Bruegmann had me by approximately paragraph two:

When the plane banks sharply to the left about an hour and a half into the flight from Chicago, I know that we are starting our long descent into New York's LaGuardia airport. Looking down, I can see long, wooded ridges running diagnoaly from the southwest to the northeast, alternating with wide stream valleys between them. This part of Western New Jersey is beautiful from the air. In summer the deep green of the oaks and maples on the ridge tops forms a striking contrast with the lighter greens that make up the patchwork quilt of fields in the valleys. At first glance, this landscape of cropland, farmhouses, roads, and streams seems timeless, little changed over the centuries.

...

It is difficult, at least at first glance, to imagine what all the people living in these houses do, where they work, shop, and play since there are not office buildings, shopping centers, or movie theaters in sight. It is possible that some of them work from their home, relying heavily on the phone, Internet, and express delivery services to keep them connected to the urban world, and it is possible that others drive to jobs in small towns nearby. The substantial number of houses, however, suggests that the majority must commute some distance to work, perhaps to nearby corporate centers tucked discreetly into the rolling hills or, further afield, to large business centers along highways like the Route 1 strip near Princeton. Others probably make their way daily into downtown Trenton or Center City Philadelphia, twenty and forty miles to the southwest, respectively, or into downtown New Brunswick, Newark, or even Manhattan, thirty, forty, and sixty miles, respectively, to the northeast. In virtually every case, however, no matter how rural the view from the living room window, these residents are more closely tied economically and socially to the urban world than they are to the apparently rural one they can see out their windows.

And, Bruegmann implies, that's okay. People make the trade-offs they need to maximize what's most important to them, and often that means they have to spend some non-negligible time commuting, and they have to do it by car. You would think that such a non-judgmental point of view wouldn't be so jarring, but after years of reading about how people need to be pistol-whipped by zoning boards and transport authorities into living on top of each other and not driving, it's nice to see. Bruegmann's historical overview of urban development, which indicates that "sprawl" is far from a new phenomenon, was fascinating, too.

Of course, this was all amusing to think about as the Narita Express barreled along toward central Tokyo; within a few minutes, I was moving through shoals of evening rush-hour commuters at Shibuya Station, then waiting in a long taxi line, then finally collapsing with a sigh on the bed in my third floor apartment. I love this life, but I recognize that most other people are not bookish, childless city types. Bruegmann seems to be doing a good job of arguing that the main reasons so many commentators want them to live as if they were are cultural rather than conservationist. I'm looking forward to finishing the book, assuming I ever get back to a normal sleep schedule. I'll be damned if I can tell you what time my body thinks it is right now.

Added on 24 December: Darn--I used to know a Peter Bergmann, so without thinking I changed the author of the book's name. It's fixed now.

Given the strike, it seemed prudent to ask the car service to leave extra time to get to JFK from Murray Hill--not that it needed extra prodding--and, naturally, traffic ended up being none too bad. It was rather touching to have taxis slide up to the curb (I waited outside with my stuff to make sure the drive didn't waste time buzzing for me) and be asked by the passenger riding shotgun whether I needed to carpool to the airport. Just try getting a cab in Manhattan if you look as if you're going to the airport at any other time! No glitches getting here and through emigration, though my thoughts as always ran along the lines of Why is it so easy for airport authorities in Asia to figure out how to set up enough tables for you to put your stuff back together after being scanned, while US airports make you take off your jackets and shoes and belt and take out your laptop...and then expect five people to reassemble themselves with a single 3'*3' slab of formica to lean on at the end of the line? Sheesh.

The problems I'm worried about, actually, are at the other end: Japan is expecting to be hammered by snow in Hokkaido and along the Pacific coast, so Atsushi's flight out of Kyushu on Friday could be delayed or canceled. We'll just have to wait and see. In other Japan news, the Building Contractors' Society of Japan is writing a manual to help people spot falsified structural strength calculations. That's nice, but I thought the whole scary point was the that falsifications were transparent and that it was a surprise no one had caught them. (BTW, here's yet more evidence that one of the construction companies, Huser, was warned ahead of time of Aneha's bogus figures. Residents of condominiums it built are asking to have the company declared bankrupt.) And there's more information about Kosuke Ito, the LDP Diet member who went to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport and asked for Huser to be treated gently:

Ito, who once served as director general of the National Land Agency, visited the director of the ministry's construction supervision division with Huser Management Ltd. President Susumu Kojima on Nov. 15, two days before the ministry disclosed the scandal.

"It'd be a problem if the company had to dismantle buildings (constructed based on falsified quake-resistance data)," the bureaucrat quoted President Kojima as telling him.

"Would you please consider his request?" Ito then told the division director.

The director said he rejected the request. "The safety of the residents is the top priority."

Ito denied having asked the bureaucrat for leniency for the Tokyo-based Huser. "People were already living in the condominiums, so the top priority was to ensure safety of the residents as soon as possible. I thought we had no time to lose, so I took him to the ministry on the same day."

...

In September last year, Kojima bought 50 tickets, each priced at 20,000 yen, to a fund-raising party for Ito's political fund-raising organization. Kojima has paid a 160,000 yen membership fee annually to the organization over the past four years.

Speaking of tense relations between government bodies, the Japan and PRC foreign ministers may meet. Or, if precedent is any indication, not.

Can't wait to get back home.

One sign of an advanced society is the TLC with which it treats artifacts of profound cultural significance.

Virginia Postrel has one of her interesting posts about sprawl up. Fun fact from my part of the world: New York is more densely populated than Tokyo. Of course, that's from official measurements, but it's really not so hard to believe. Simply dividing the total population by the total land area gives a nice, rough point of departure, but as Virginia points out about New York and LA, it doesn't tell the whole story by half.

If you visit Tokyo, as opposed to living in it, you may never really see much outside the major interchange stations on the Yamanote Line; but just a few stops beyond that inner ring, the landscape is completely different. When I lived in Shibuya, my apartment building was the only residential structure within a good five or six contiguous blocks. Where we live now, just four stations outside Shibuya in Setagaya Ward, just about everything is residential. The storefronts, even along major thoroughfares such as Komazawa Avenue, mostly have apartments above them. Zoning in Japan is kind of weird to many Westerners--there really is a lot of mixed construction--but as an overall pattern, Tokyo is one of those cities in which nighttime and daytime populations cluster in visibly different places, which means that the crushing density tends to follow people around--or, more accurately, that they create it by all moving together.

And like just about any other city, Tokyo doesn't stop at Tokyo. Urban-level average population density continues southwest through Kawasaki (1.3 million), Yokohama (3.5 million), and the smaller cities in Kanagawa Prefecture, including Atsushi's hometown of Kamakura (a comparative hamlet at 170,000). It also goes east through Chiba Prefecture, north through Saitama Prefecture, and west through the municipalities that have been annexed by the Tokyo Metropolitan District but aren't part of the original twenty-three wards. None of these places is in the mindspace that you'd think of as Tokyo, but they're definitely part of the metro area. By contrast, some land (such as hiking places deep in the mountains in Ome City, to which you have to take an old single-track train) is so unpopulated that even calling it rural seems a stretch, but it lies inside Tokyo Metro, so it's counted for a lot of statistics.

I'm trying hard not to shrug my shoulders and say, "That's what you get, scumbag" in reacting to this little story:

A middle-aged man died after being overpowered by train passengers at a station here for molesting a woman on a train on Tuesday morning, police said.

Local police are questioning the passengers who captured the man over details about the incident, and are trying to identify the man believed to be a 40-year-old company employee from Nishi-ku, Osaka.

...

After the man began to run away, four male passengers, including two police officers who were on their way to work, chased him for some 50 meters before tackling him on the platform. He fell unconscious shortly afterwards, and later died.

Assuming the accusation of chikan wasn't mistaken, and assuming the four guys who ran him down didn't keep whaling the hell out of him long after he'd capitulated--Aside: Why don't I ever get chased down train platforms by off-duty police officers who want to wrestle? Probably because I'd have to start grabbing boobies to get 'em heated up--I'm thinking we should chalk this one up to the occupational hazards of groping strange women on trains. If you're going to assault people, you're implicitly taking on the risk that they (or others) will come to the decisive defense of their persons. Same deal with breaking into someone's house or car.

Great. MTA strike. Luckily, I'm in Midtown and don't have business at far-flung points in the city before I leave tomorrow; the strike may interfere with my lunch plans, but that's about it. For people with little income and a lot of odd jobs to do to support themselves, however, this really sucks.

My father's a steelworker--unionized, started in the early 70s just before competition from the Japanese and Big Steel's own slow reflexes made life hell for a lot of the plant workers. I'm sure MTA workers are "underappreciated and disrespected." Isn't everyone? But the benefits (and retirement age) MTA is asking for exist practically nowhere on land or sea anymore:

"It's a pain in the neck," [a foreign currency analyst] said. "I'm very anti-union, especially this time of year. It's ridiculous. If you look what they're asking for, that's 50 years ago. Pensions don't work like that anymore. I'd kill for what they're asking for."

The patronage system in Japan is such that this is basically the first we're hearing of this:

Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizum held an end-of-year party on 20 December, inviting all Diet members newly elected to the lower house in September to the Prime Minister's residence. However, those legislators who are already members of factions that are opposed to the administration's policies were not invited. Within the LDP, some took this as the "flag hoisting for the Koizumi faction"; it is not inconceivable that in the movements of these "Koizumi Kids" will determine where September's general election goes.

Koizumi was originally a member of the Mori faction, then its de facto head, but he withdrew from it in 2001 when he was gearing up for real to run for Prime Minister. His former mentor has frequently expressed shock in public at Koizumi's political tactics--but then, given Mori's record of non-achievement as PM, I don't know that his opinions carry much substantive weight. However, he did, despite his general lack of popularity, play the connections game. Koizumi famously has not (except on certain occasions when his opportunism was blatant), and his ability to form a viable faction of his own has been dubitable. As always with early moves like this, we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Okay, just one more Brokeback Mountain post.

Actually, not even a Brokeback Mountain post, but a link to Tom being hilarious about it:

It's not fair of me to discount Cocksuck Canyon sight unseen, scent unsmelled, feel unfelt, ticket unbought, and cheap of me to not even respect its proper christian name. But really, why would any gay guy with any kind of sexual history need big screen affirmation of the varieties of homosexual experience, the cruelties of heterosexual ignorance, and the deep love and great thrills that can be found in that nexus? Or in that Lexus.

I have pre-judged incorrectly before. Angels in America always seemed to hold out the promise to me of everything I hated about angels, prepositions and America. But when I saw the first half a few weeks ago, unhappy with my lot in entertainment and ready to bolt at every commercial break, I found myself remaining. I'm not sure yet if the play is good, but I know the performances were great. I don't who that chick is who played the mormon's wife, but she's terrific. As is Mr. Pacino ("I'm sooooo ashamed") and pretty much all the others. I will gladly watch the second half when mischance allows.

Mickey Kaus has it exactly wrong when he insists that Brokeback M. is a gay movie and protests to the contrary only make it gayer. This really is a movie for straights, and Mickey K. has been viral marketed into a slavish delirium, "I'll go see it, but I don't want to go see it." That kind of mid-brow, pop-cult robotics shames all free-thinking replicants everywhere.

It gets better from there.

I've toyed for years with the idea of getting a Japanese driver's license and maybe a junky car. For some reason, I've never gotten around to it. Part of it is that I can get everywhere on foot, by cab, or by train without really feeling inconvenienced; and part of it is that I think Atsushi likes doing the driving because it means I'm letting him do something for me. So we have a claim on a parking space in our building (probably worth more per square meter than our apartment) that's empty while he has the Toyota in Kyushu.

The result is that my need to be at the controls of a motor vehicle gets saved up for eleven months of the year and only has an outlet while I'm home. Luckily for me, eastern PA has a lot of variety in the driving, so I get a good workout here. Within fifteen minutes of my parents' house--have I mentioned that they not only have giant creche out front but also one of those fan-inflated light-up snowmen just outside my bedroom window?--you can go from back roads to a tractor-trailer-heavy interstate to downtown. But the most fun to be had is around Philadelphia.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, four of the interstates through metro Philadelphia are 76 (the Schuylkill Expressway), 2