Monday, February 25, 2013
ASIA’s 50 Best Restaurants Unveiled
Les Créations de Narisawa, a Tokyo restaurant that applies French technique to local Japanese ingredients, topped the inaugural S. Pellegrino Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list, announced Monday night in Singapore.
NE ASIA: Permanent Dokdo Exhibition to Open in Beijing
A permanent Dokdo exhibition will open at the Korea Center in downtown Beijing early next month to publicize Korea's sovereignty over the islets.
Korean overseas missions and cultural centers have distributed PR booklets on Dokdo, but this is the first permanent exhibition.
The mov...
Korean overseas missions and cultural centers have distributed PR booklets on Dokdo, but this is the first permanent exhibition.
The mov...
AUSTRALIA: Sydney's small bar scene takes off
Leave the big pubs to the gamblers. Drinkers looking for an intimate Sydney watering hole have more choices than ever
TRAVEL: Air travel and the sequester
THE sequester is looming. Big cuts to America's federal budget are set to take effect automatically on Friday March 1st, unless Congress can agree on a new budget deal. If it does not, $85 billion will be cut from the 2013 budget and $1.1 trillion over the next decade. The axe will fall mainly on the defence budget, from which 8% will be chopped, but 5% must also be found from non-military programmes. One of those, says the government, is air travel. Last week Ray LaHood, President Obama's transportation secretary, warned Americans that the sequester could lead to massive air travel delays across the country.Mr LaHood said that about 10% of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which monitors air traffic safety in America, would be given a day off without pay ("furloughed") on any given day after the sequester hits. The FAA faces around $600m in cuts over the rest of the fiscal year, and would be forced to eliminate midnight shifts at over 60 air traffic control towers around the country. The FAA is even considering closing many other facilities entirely.Many of the facilities that would be closed, or where midnight shifts would be eliminated, are not crucial transit hubs. Air traffic control at New York's JFK, Chicago's O'Hare, Washington's Dulles, and many other enormous airports would be unaffected. But many business travellers rely on small ...
JAPAN: Post-Summit Decisions for Prime Minister Abe
Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, returned to Tokyo this weekend after his first summit meeting in Washington, DC, with President Barack Obama. Post-summit, Abe faces two important economic decisions. The first is his nomination for the next governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ). The second is whether Japan’s prime minister will urge his party onwards to participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). To succeed, Abe now has to confront some political hurdles at home.
The lack of a majority in the Upper House will mean Abe needs to ensure his BOJ head passes muster with his political opposition. Nominations for a new BOJ governor require approval from both houses of parliament. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has a firm majority in the Lower House after its sweeping victory on December 16, but the last time the LDP sought to replace the head of Japan’s central bank it ran into paralyzing opposition in the Upper House. In 2008, the LDP sought to replace then retiring BOJ governor Toshihiko Fukui with Toshiro Muto, a former vice minister of finance, but the opposition-controlled Upper House voted him down. This forced then prime minister Yasuo Fukuda back to the drawing board, and in the end, the current BOJ governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, then a vice governor at the BOJ, became the acting head.
This time round Japanese and global media have been full of speculation ever since the prime minister publicly called for a much more aggressive use of monetary instruments to end Japan’s deflation. Inflation targeting by the BOJ is one of Abe’s preferred policy goals, a core idea in what is now widely referred to as “Abenomics.” Kikuo Iwata, a professor from Gakushuin University, was seen as a bold choice for Abe, according to Bloomberg, since he has called for “a ramping up in Japan’s monetary base to end deflation.” But the name that has recently emerged as the likely pick is a man that was also a contender in 2008, Haruhiko Kuroda, the current head of the Asian Development Bank. Kuroda served in the Ministry of Finance where he managed currency policy from 1999 to 2003, and is on record arguing then that the BOJ should introduce inflation targets. Interestingly, even when LDP-DPJ bickering was at its worst, Kuroda managed to still attract DPJ support. The political calculus may win out, however, as leading media reports emanating from Tokyo today suggest that a compromise solution of picking the more experienced and internationally well-known Kuroda as governor, while nominating the more academic and policy aggressive Iwata as vice governor, is the most likely.
On TPP, the politics seem more precarious for the prime minister. In an unusually terse Joint Statement after the Abe-Obama meeting, the two governments confirmed their understanding of the terms of Japan’s participation:
Recognizing that both countries have bilateral trade sensitivities, such as certain agricultural products for Japan and certain manufactured products for the United States, the two Governments confirm that, as the final outcome will be determined during the negotiations, it is not required to make a prior commitment to unilaterally eliminate all tariffs upon joining the TPP negotiations. [The full statement is available here.]
While it leaves much to be desired in terms of syntax, it was apparently enough for most of Japan’s media to believe that their prime minister had just received a major concession from the White House. All of Japan’s major newspapers reported forward momentum coming out of the summit meeting for the prime minister’s TPP decision-making, and a meeting with coalition partner Komeito president Natsuo Yamaguchi on Monday suggested this interpretation was an accurate reflection of LDP intent. Moreover, on Monday evening (Tokyo time), Prime Minister Abe received his party’s approval for his government to make the final decision on when to participate in the TPP. Expectations now are for an announcement at the beginning of March.
Whereas the BOJ nomination may provide some short-term political feuding, it is unlikely to be a protracted conflict, and indeed may offer little dispute at all. The DPJ leadership has already indicated it understands the public will not be forgiving if politics were to leave the BOJ position unfulfilled for any length of time. The real political risk will be the prime minister’s decision on TPP. With an Upper House election in July, the broader question is what cost could accrue to the prime minister and his party at the polls when some key supporters, most notably the agricultural cooperatives that benefit from government protections for their activities, remain adamantly opposed.
Opinion polls suggest that anywhere from 60 to 65 percent of the Japanese people support participation in TPP, and the prime minister is gaining in public support (70 percent and rising after his Washington trip). Japan’s business leaders also openly call for Japan’s participation, and Abe seems buoyed by the stock and currency markets’ response to his “Abenomics.”
In Washington, Mr. Abe declared that “Japan is Back!” It may be too early to declare economic victory, but politically, he has certainly changed the tenor of Japan’s domestic debate. With a TPP decision seemingly forthcoming, it seems Mr. Abe is gambling on boldness. Let’s see if he can carry his nation—and his party—with him.
VLADIVOSTOK: At Least 17 Amur Tigers Dead in Russia's Far East in 2012
At least 17 Amur tigers died in Russia’s far eastern territories over the past year, most of them due to human actions, local wildlife experts said on Monday.
CHINA: The Bo Xilai Saga Continues
Disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai has refused to cooperate with Chinese authorities and has staged two hunger strikes, Reuters reported on Thursday citing two independent sources with ties close to the Bo family.
Once seen as a rising star and future Politburo Standing Committee member, Bo was ousted from the Communist Party last year after his recently dismissed police chief, Wang Lijun, sought asylum in a U.S. consulate, telling American diplomats there that Bo’s wife had murdered British businessman Neil Heywood. As the drama unfolded a series of other allegations emerged against Bo and his family, including that he wiretapped the phones of senior CCP officials.
Although Wang and Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, have both been tried and convicted of their crimes, Bo himself has yet to be formally charged but is presumed to be in CCP custody. He was last seen in March of last year.
According to the Reuters report Bo is causing party officials nearly as much trouble in detention as he was causing them in power. Both sources confirm he has gone on a hunger strike with one saying “He was on [a] hunger strike twice and force fed." Although he had not been tortured, according to the source, Bo had apparently grown so weak while in custody that at one point he was hospitalized in Beijing.
One of Reuters’ sources also said that Bo had refused to shave while in detention and now had a chest-length beard. The source went on to say that he was refusing to cooperate.
This would be wholly consistent with how Bo acted throughout his career. The Princeling son of Bo Yibo, one of the Eight Immortals who ruled China during the Deng Xiaoping era, the younger Bo is said to have, like many Princelings, seen it as his birth right to rule China. Bo's rapid rise through the CCP was partly attributable to his father's myriad connections. These included, among many others, General Secertary Jiang Zemin whom the elder Bo had helped come to power after he played a role in ousting his two immediate predcessors– Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang.
From the time he was mayor of Dalin in Northwest China, the younger Bo flaunted CCP protocols against self-promotion and personal extravagance. On Bo’s time in Dalin, John Garnaut has written, “It was his personal trophy town. It wasn’t long before he could control the colour of the water fountains and the accompanying soundtracks.”
Later, as Mayor of Chongqing, Bo shrouded himself in neo-Maoist populism as concentrated power in his office. His so-called “Chongqing Model” achieved high rates of economic growth but his personal governing style and disregard for the party hierarchy and the law made Bo a lot of enemies, including Premier Wen Jiabao. In stark violation of CCP protocol, for instance, Bo often seemed to be publicly campaigning for a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee, which he had been passed up for in 2007.
So while Bo’s current antics may come off as Martyr-like given his current state of limbo in CCP detention, they are little more than Bo’s life-long sense of entitlement and superiority in a new guise.
Particularly revealing was how one of Reuters’ sources described Bo’s actions towards his interrogators: “He wouldn't answer questions and slammed his fist on a table and told them they were not qualified to question him and to go away [emphasis added].”
Zachary Keck is assistant editor of The Diplomat. He is on Twitter: @ZacharyKeck.
Once seen as a rising star and future Politburo Standing Committee member, Bo was ousted from the Communist Party last year after his recently dismissed police chief, Wang Lijun, sought asylum in a U.S. consulate, telling American diplomats there that Bo’s wife had murdered British businessman Neil Heywood. As the drama unfolded a series of other allegations emerged against Bo and his family, including that he wiretapped the phones of senior CCP officials.
Although Wang and Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, have both been tried and convicted of their crimes, Bo himself has yet to be formally charged but is presumed to be in CCP custody. He was last seen in March of last year.
According to the Reuters report Bo is causing party officials nearly as much trouble in detention as he was causing them in power. Both sources confirm he has gone on a hunger strike with one saying “He was on [a] hunger strike twice and force fed." Although he had not been tortured, according to the source, Bo had apparently grown so weak while in custody that at one point he was hospitalized in Beijing.
One of Reuters’ sources also said that Bo had refused to shave while in detention and now had a chest-length beard. The source went on to say that he was refusing to cooperate.
This would be wholly consistent with how Bo acted throughout his career. The Princeling son of Bo Yibo, one of the Eight Immortals who ruled China during the Deng Xiaoping era, the younger Bo is said to have, like many Princelings, seen it as his birth right to rule China. Bo's rapid rise through the CCP was partly attributable to his father's myriad connections. These included, among many others, General Secertary Jiang Zemin whom the elder Bo had helped come to power after he played a role in ousting his two immediate predcessors– Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang.
From the time he was mayor of Dalin in Northwest China, the younger Bo flaunted CCP protocols against self-promotion and personal extravagance. On Bo’s time in Dalin, John Garnaut has written, “It was his personal trophy town. It wasn’t long before he could control the colour of the water fountains and the accompanying soundtracks.”
Later, as Mayor of Chongqing, Bo shrouded himself in neo-Maoist populism as concentrated power in his office. His so-called “Chongqing Model” achieved high rates of economic growth but his personal governing style and disregard for the party hierarchy and the law made Bo a lot of enemies, including Premier Wen Jiabao. In stark violation of CCP protocol, for instance, Bo often seemed to be publicly campaigning for a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee, which he had been passed up for in 2007.
So while Bo’s current antics may come off as Martyr-like given his current state of limbo in CCP detention, they are little more than Bo’s life-long sense of entitlement and superiority in a new guise.
Particularly revealing was how one of Reuters’ sources described Bo’s actions towards his interrogators: “He wouldn't answer questions and slammed his fist on a table and told them they were not qualified to question him and to go away [emphasis added].”
Zachary Keck is assistant editor of The Diplomat. He is on Twitter: @ZacharyKeck.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
TAIWAN: Ang Lee wins Oscar for best director
Taipei, Feb. 25 (CNA) Taiwanese director Ang Lee on Sunday (L.A. time) won the 2013 Academy Award for best director,
HONG KONG: Soaring Above the City on Foot
"Cities Without Ground," a quirky guide to Hong Kong by a trio of architects, offers a roadmap on the best way to explore the vibrant Asian hub—on foot, and high above the concrete streets.
KOREAN PENINSULA: First Female South Korean President Faces North Korea Crisis
(SEOUL, South Korea) — Park Geun-hye became South Korea’s first female president Monday, returning to the presidential mansion where she grew up with her dictator father. Park’s last stint in the Blue House was bookended by tragedy: At 22, she cut short her studies in Paris to return to Seoul and act as President Park Chung-hee’s first lady after an assassin targeting her father instead killed her mother; she left five years later after her father was shot and killed by his spy chief during a drinking party. As president, Park will face stark divisions both in South Korean society and with rival North Korea, which detonated an underground nuclear device about two weeks ago. South Koreans worry about a growing gap between rich and poor, and there’s pressure for her to live up to her campaign suggestion that she can return the country to the strong economic growth her strong-man father oversaw. North Korea’s atomic test will also present a challenge to her vow to soften Seoul’s current hard-line approach to its northern rival.
Pyongyang, Washington, Beijing and Tokyo are all watching to see if Park pursues an ambitious engagement policy meant to ease five years of animosity on the divided peninsula or if she sticks with the tough stance of her fellow conservative predecessor, Lee Myung-bak. Park’s decision is important because it will likely set the tone of the larger diplomatic approach that Washington and others take in stalled efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. Park technically took over as the clock struck midnight. Her swearing-in ceremony later Monday was to be attended by tens of thousands, including dignitaries such as U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso. South Korean superstar PSY, who rose to surprising global fame last year with his song “Gangnam Style,” was set to perform. Park’s first weeks in office will be complicated by North Korea’s warning of unspecified “second and third measures of greater intensity,” a
Pyongyang, Washington, Beijing and Tokyo are all watching to see if Park pursues an ambitious engagement policy meant to ease five years of animosity on the divided peninsula or if she sticks with the tough stance of her fellow conservative predecessor, Lee Myung-bak. Park’s decision is important because it will likely set the tone of the larger diplomatic approach that Washington and others take in stalled efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. Park technically took over as the clock struck midnight. Her swearing-in ceremony later Monday was to be attended by tens of thousands, including dignitaries such as U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso. South Korean superstar PSY, who rose to surprising global fame last year with his song “Gangnam Style,” was set to perform. Park’s first weeks in office will be complicated by North Korea’s warning of unspecified “second and third measures of greater intensity,” a
CHINA: Xi gets off to good start in first 100 days but drastic reforms are unlikely
China's new leader Xi Jinping has certainly lit up enough "fires" to generate exciting chatter at home and abroad about himself, his new administration and the future direction of the mainland economy since he officially took over the reins of the Communist Party on November 15.
TIBETAN Man Burns Himself, Protesting CHINA’s Policy in Tibet
Reports just coming out of Tibet say a Tibetan man sets himself on fire at about 8 PM local time February 24, 2013 in Haidong Prefecture in Qinghai Province, Tibet.
Phakmo Thondup, who is about 20-year-old, protesting China’s repressive policy in Tibet, set himself ablaze in Ja Khung Monastery in Hainan Prefecture in Qinghai Province.
Reports say the monks of the Ja Khung Monastery took him right away to a local hospital and is being treated for burns. There is ...
Phakmo Thondup, who is about 20-year-old, protesting China’s repressive policy in Tibet, set himself ablaze in Ja Khung Monastery in Hainan Prefecture in Qinghai Province.
Reports say the monks of the Ja Khung Monastery took him right away to a local hospital and is being treated for burns. There is ...
BRUNEI police probe death of woman found in concrete
Brunei police are probing the death of a Malaysian woman found encased in a block of cement in her friend’s garden, in the latest violent death to shock the sultanate.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
CHINA & JAPAN: 9 chats with top true-crime authors
A con man extraordinaire who fell for an epic Big Con. A killing – along with a blimp crash, race riot and transit strike – that turned Chicago upside down. The brutal murders of beautiful young British women in 2000 Japan and 1937 China. And the legacies of the worst school massacre in American history (not Newtown) and of that horrific day at Columbine High. The pointless and immensely tragic assassination of a now-forgotten president. The eternal fascination of Alcatraz. Plus a man named Roosevelt who tried, in vain, to turn back the violence and vice of New York City in the 1880s and 1890s. Over the past year, I interviewed authors who have tackled each one of these topics. With a couple exceptions, their books were published in 2012. And with no exceptions, all are great – if sometimes harrowing – reads. Here are excerpts from our chats. Click on the links to read the full interviews.
JAPAN & US: The anatomy of an alliance | Video
As Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe prepares for his first meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Reuters looks at the current state of ties ...
TRAVEL: Cuts a ‘calamity’ for air travel
The Obama administration is heightening its warnings about looming budget cuts by emphasizing an area the traveling public already dreads: gridlock in the skies.
The White House rolled out Republican Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Friday to warn that sequestration would bring “calamity” to air travel by forcing the FAA to close dozens of control towers and eliminate overnight shifts at others, in turn prompting airlines to cancel or delay flights. Delays would be as much as 90 minutes, he said.
Friday, February 22, 2013
JAPAN: Abe vows to revive Japanese economy, sees no escalation with China
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Americans on Friday "I am back and so is Japan" and vowed to get the world's third biggest economy growing again and to do more to bolster security and the rule of law in an Asia roiled by territorial disputes.
Stripping off the Mask: Jane Park Wells and the Ascent of Korean Women by Meher McArthur
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Asian Accents: This article is part of an ongoing series that explores the diverse range of artistic influences from Asia in the arts and culture of Southern California.
On February 25th of this year, Park Geun-hye will be sworn in as South Korea's first female president. Although being the daughter of former president Park Chung-hee gave her a considerable leg-up in the December 2012 elections, the fact that 51.6% of the Korean population voted for a female president (who emphasized her gender in her campaign) is huge in a country where the role of women has traditionally been very limited. Probably the most Confucian of Asian cultures today, Korean society has not encouraged female participation in the realms of business or politics. Until recently, the primary role of a Korean woman has been to provide her husband with children -- and ideally, sons . . .
JAPAN: Press Briefing on the Visit of Prime Minister Abe of Japan, February 2013
Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes held this conference call with National Security Council Senior Director for Asia Danny Russel and Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics Mike Froman, to preview Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's visit to Washington, on February 22, 2013.
JAPAN's Abe Aims to Forge Deeper Ties on U.S. Visit
Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to show President Obama that he has the clout and endurance to strengthen economic and security ties.
JAPAN: Donald Richie: 1924-2013
The passing of Donald Richie – writer, painter, filmmaker and Tokyo flaneur – marks the end of an era. Richie, who died Tuesday in Tokyo, was far and away the West’s foremost interpreter of things Japanese. American author Tom Wolfe called him “the Lafcadio Hearn of our time”.
Born April 17, 1924, in the small Midwestern town of Lima, Ohio, Richie first arrived in Japan in 1947, as a 22-year old typist with the Allied Occupation forces. His eyes were soon opened to the country that he would choose to call home for most of his life.
“If I had stayed in Lima, Ohio, I think my life would’ve been endless, like two thousand years,” Richie told Kyoto Journal in 1999, in a superb interview still online here. “But here, everything is so interesting, every day has something new you can do, people you can meet. Everyday you wake up and think ‘What am I going to learn today?’ And, of course, that’s what kept me here, and what made things go so fast."
Aside from a stint at Columbia University, where he graduated in 1953, and a period working as film curator for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Richie spent roughly half a century in Tokyo, documenting and delving deeply into Japanese art, society and culture.
When he first arrived in Japan, the country was in ruins and still seen as the enemy. But Richie found himself driven to understand and connect with Japanese on an individual, human level.
“Donald was a great humanist. Though he fraternized with the rich and famous, he wrote about everyman, the invisible. He elevated the ordinary to the extraordinary in this way,” Leza Lowitz, a Tokyo-based author, editor and personal friend of Richie, told The Diplomat. “For him, writing was a way of life. It was built into the way he lived: Observing, questioning, learning. He was always open to seeing. And in seeing, he was able to transform an ordinary experience into something extraordinary and sometimes transcendent.”
As an observer and writer, “prolific” is an understatement for Richie’s output. Throughout the course of his long life he produced some 40 books, on themes ranging from travelogues and historical novels to collections of short fiction and his renowned tomes on Japanese film scholarship. Volumes on flower arranging, the art of the Japanese tattoo, aesthetics, sympathetically written portraits of individuals and a riveting memoir also fill his bibliography.
Yet even this fails to capture the true extent of Richie’s contributions as a writer. In the introduction to The Inland Sea, his classic autobiographical travelogue of a journey through Japan’s Seto Naikai (Inland Sea) – the shallow, picturesque sea bounded by Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu – author Pico Iyer writes: “It is, in fact, an injustice to call Richie a writer on Japan; really, he is a writer on artifice and time and death, on being human. And most of all he’s a writer on the particularly modern art of learning how to be a foreigner.”
In the introduction, Iyer goes on to place Richie in the company of literary figures such as Graham Greene, Jan Morris, Paul Bowles and Somerset Maugham. He continues: “The only problem with Richie’s writing, in fact, is that it’s never been easy enough to find around the world, in part because people, knowing him to be a writer in Japan, assume that he’s a writer on Japan. And as a pure, reflective writer of a kind that seems all but antique, he has done nothing to sell himself to the world or to dress himself up with gestures or high concepts.”
This humility and approachableness are very evident in his writing. Even readers who never met him are afforded an intimate glimpse in much of his writing of Richie as a human being.
Picking up on this, filmmakers Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir produced a film version of The Inland Sea in 1992, which is narrated by Richie. The movie works on two levels. On one, it explores the geographical body of water and the traditional aspects of Japan disappearing around it. But more deeply, it dives into the metaphorical “Inland Sea” within the author himself.
Ultimately, Richie is best known for his association with film. Indeed, he almost single-handedly introduced the West to Japanese film, starting with his landmark 1959 study The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, co-authored with Joseph L. Anderson.
In The Japan Journals: 1947-2004, edited over the course of a decade by Lowitz, Richie tells the story of a trip to a film studio in the late-1940s when he met a director and “someone I guessed was a star” in “a loose Hawaii-shirt”. The duo turned out to be legendary director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune. In similar fashion, Richie had a knack for meeting people in high places and telling us about them
Richie later did the subtitles for three Kurosawa films and penned books on the director. He also became a great lover of Yasujiro Ozu’s films and introduced him to the West in another lauded study.
“His many publications on Japanese film were the touchstone from which all of us English-language critics on the subject sprang,” Rob Schwartz, Tokyo Bureau Chief of Billboard Magazine and reporter for The Hollywood Reporter, told The Diplomat. “As a friend he had a loving human warmth and deep generosity of spirit that is very rare in this world. This deep humanism informed his analysis and writing on film.”
Ultimately, it was Richie’s humanism, remarked upon by all who knew him, that defines his life and work, and helps explain the outpouring of tributes since his death.
“I loved his curiosity, compassion, sensuality and edgy wit…. He was gracious and generous.… I was in awe of his talents. Once, when he called a suggestion ‘brilliant’, I was over the moon,” recalled Stewart Wachs, a former associate editor of Kyoto Journal who edited Richie’s work over the years. “But with time I also grew humorously puzzled by his mangled spelling, and sure enough when I asked him about it he just laughed and said he trusted his editors to fix that and other minor blemishes while he rode the alpha waves that enabled him to be prolifically creative.”
Wachs continued, “Being Donald, he had actually put this too humbly, for his submission drafts were routinely extraordinary. He revised them extensively, making them a formidable challenge for any editor to improve.”
What turned out to be one of Richie’s most interesting works were his own journals, edited by Lowitz and published by Stone Bridge Press as The Japan Journals: 1947-2006.
Stone Bridge Press publisher Peter Goodman told The Diplomat he “was totally floored by what was there (in the Journals). I guess I had been expecting a linear and comprehensive account, but it was more like dipping in and out of a stewpot. There are time gaps and threads never followed to the end, but the palpable sense of time passing, a man aging, and an old postwar world fading away is astonishing. His life seemed so full of meetings, conversations, and travels, punctuated now and then by a celebrity or by an ordinary but engaging person.”
The Journals are interspersed with accounts of Richie’s encounters with some of Japan’s biggest movers and shakers, as well as artists and dignitaries visiting from abroad. Yukio Mishima, Toru Takemitsu, Truman Capote and Somerset Maugham make appearances, among many others.
Goodman added, “While he (Donald) indicated to me that they were expurgated, they are certainly not tame and reveal a penchant for adventure and exploration that some readers have found a bit shocking. So while I was expecting a more mannered ‘overview’, we got — thank goodness — a very full-blooded portrait of a man and the world he inhabited, and not entirely as the observer he became most famous for being.”
Lowitz said Richie was equally generous as a mentor. “Donald was an incredible inspiration to young writers such as myself. He was diligent and committed to writing – he did it every day, no matter what.”
She called him “a master of form”, explaining that “his work in the Japanese cinema informed his understanding of narrative. The films of Ozu, among his favorites, were exemplary because in a good film, the end is built into the beginning. He said ‘To become aware of form is a liberating experience’.”
This need for structure and form in order to achieve freedom was a recurring theme for Richie. It comes up time and again in his writing and recorded conversations and, indeed, was part of the very reason he chose to make his home in Japan, where he could never fully belong.
In 1999, he told Kyoto Journal, “I think you can only get freedom within bounds. I don’t know who said that — Sartre? . . . But I believe it. You set your own boundaries and then within those you find freedom.”
Born April 17, 1924, in the small Midwestern town of Lima, Ohio, Richie first arrived in Japan in 1947, as a 22-year old typist with the Allied Occupation forces. His eyes were soon opened to the country that he would choose to call home for most of his life.
“If I had stayed in Lima, Ohio, I think my life would’ve been endless, like two thousand years,” Richie told Kyoto Journal in 1999, in a superb interview still online here. “But here, everything is so interesting, every day has something new you can do, people you can meet. Everyday you wake up and think ‘What am I going to learn today?’ And, of course, that’s what kept me here, and what made things go so fast."
Aside from a stint at Columbia University, where he graduated in 1953, and a period working as film curator for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Richie spent roughly half a century in Tokyo, documenting and delving deeply into Japanese art, society and culture.
When he first arrived in Japan, the country was in ruins and still seen as the enemy. But Richie found himself driven to understand and connect with Japanese on an individual, human level.
“Donald was a great humanist. Though he fraternized with the rich and famous, he wrote about everyman, the invisible. He elevated the ordinary to the extraordinary in this way,” Leza Lowitz, a Tokyo-based author, editor and personal friend of Richie, told The Diplomat. “For him, writing was a way of life. It was built into the way he lived: Observing, questioning, learning. He was always open to seeing. And in seeing, he was able to transform an ordinary experience into something extraordinary and sometimes transcendent.”
As an observer and writer, “prolific” is an understatement for Richie’s output. Throughout the course of his long life he produced some 40 books, on themes ranging from travelogues and historical novels to collections of short fiction and his renowned tomes on Japanese film scholarship. Volumes on flower arranging, the art of the Japanese tattoo, aesthetics, sympathetically written portraits of individuals and a riveting memoir also fill his bibliography.
Yet even this fails to capture the true extent of Richie’s contributions as a writer. In the introduction to The Inland Sea, his classic autobiographical travelogue of a journey through Japan’s Seto Naikai (Inland Sea) – the shallow, picturesque sea bounded by Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu – author Pico Iyer writes: “It is, in fact, an injustice to call Richie a writer on Japan; really, he is a writer on artifice and time and death, on being human. And most of all he’s a writer on the particularly modern art of learning how to be a foreigner.”
In the introduction, Iyer goes on to place Richie in the company of literary figures such as Graham Greene, Jan Morris, Paul Bowles and Somerset Maugham. He continues: “The only problem with Richie’s writing, in fact, is that it’s never been easy enough to find around the world, in part because people, knowing him to be a writer in Japan, assume that he’s a writer on Japan. And as a pure, reflective writer of a kind that seems all but antique, he has done nothing to sell himself to the world or to dress himself up with gestures or high concepts.”
This humility and approachableness are very evident in his writing. Even readers who never met him are afforded an intimate glimpse in much of his writing of Richie as a human being.
Picking up on this, filmmakers Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir produced a film version of The Inland Sea in 1992, which is narrated by Richie. The movie works on two levels. On one, it explores the geographical body of water and the traditional aspects of Japan disappearing around it. But more deeply, it dives into the metaphorical “Inland Sea” within the author himself.
Ultimately, Richie is best known for his association with film. Indeed, he almost single-handedly introduced the West to Japanese film, starting with his landmark 1959 study The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, co-authored with Joseph L. Anderson.
In The Japan Journals: 1947-2004, edited over the course of a decade by Lowitz, Richie tells the story of a trip to a film studio in the late-1940s when he met a director and “someone I guessed was a star” in “a loose Hawaii-shirt”. The duo turned out to be legendary director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune. In similar fashion, Richie had a knack for meeting people in high places and telling us about them
Richie later did the subtitles for three Kurosawa films and penned books on the director. He also became a great lover of Yasujiro Ozu’s films and introduced him to the West in another lauded study.
“His many publications on Japanese film were the touchstone from which all of us English-language critics on the subject sprang,” Rob Schwartz, Tokyo Bureau Chief of Billboard Magazine and reporter for The Hollywood Reporter, told The Diplomat. “As a friend he had a loving human warmth and deep generosity of spirit that is very rare in this world. This deep humanism informed his analysis and writing on film.”
Ultimately, it was Richie’s humanism, remarked upon by all who knew him, that defines his life and work, and helps explain the outpouring of tributes since his death.
“I loved his curiosity, compassion, sensuality and edgy wit…. He was gracious and generous.… I was in awe of his talents. Once, when he called a suggestion ‘brilliant’, I was over the moon,” recalled Stewart Wachs, a former associate editor of Kyoto Journal who edited Richie’s work over the years. “But with time I also grew humorously puzzled by his mangled spelling, and sure enough when I asked him about it he just laughed and said he trusted his editors to fix that and other minor blemishes while he rode the alpha waves that enabled him to be prolifically creative.”
Wachs continued, “Being Donald, he had actually put this too humbly, for his submission drafts were routinely extraordinary. He revised them extensively, making them a formidable challenge for any editor to improve.”
What turned out to be one of Richie’s most interesting works were his own journals, edited by Lowitz and published by Stone Bridge Press as The Japan Journals: 1947-2006.
Stone Bridge Press publisher Peter Goodman told The Diplomat he “was totally floored by what was there (in the Journals). I guess I had been expecting a linear and comprehensive account, but it was more like dipping in and out of a stewpot. There are time gaps and threads never followed to the end, but the palpable sense of time passing, a man aging, and an old postwar world fading away is astonishing. His life seemed so full of meetings, conversations, and travels, punctuated now and then by a celebrity or by an ordinary but engaging person.”
The Journals are interspersed with accounts of Richie’s encounters with some of Japan’s biggest movers and shakers, as well as artists and dignitaries visiting from abroad. Yukio Mishima, Toru Takemitsu, Truman Capote and Somerset Maugham make appearances, among many others.
Goodman added, “While he (Donald) indicated to me that they were expurgated, they are certainly not tame and reveal a penchant for adventure and exploration that some readers have found a bit shocking. So while I was expecting a more mannered ‘overview’, we got — thank goodness — a very full-blooded portrait of a man and the world he inhabited, and not entirely as the observer he became most famous for being.”
Lowitz said Richie was equally generous as a mentor. “Donald was an incredible inspiration to young writers such as myself. He was diligent and committed to writing – he did it every day, no matter what.”
She called him “a master of form”, explaining that “his work in the Japanese cinema informed his understanding of narrative. The films of Ozu, among his favorites, were exemplary because in a good film, the end is built into the beginning. He said ‘To become aware of form is a liberating experience’.”
This need for structure and form in order to achieve freedom was a recurring theme for Richie. It comes up time and again in his writing and recorded conversations and, indeed, was part of the very reason he chose to make his home in Japan, where he could never fully belong.
In 1999, he told Kyoto Journal, “I think you can only get freedom within bounds. I don’t know who said that — Sartre? . . . But I believe it. You set your own boundaries and then within those you find freedom.”
GUAM: U.S. Gov’t to Air-drop Toxic Mice on Guam Snakes
(ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam) — Dead mice laced with painkillers are about to rain down on Guam’s jungle canopy. They are scientists’ prescription for a headache that has caused the tiny U.S. territory misery for more than 60 years: the brown tree snake. Most of Guam’s native bird species are extinct because of the snake, which reached the island’s thick jungles by hitching rides from the South Pacific on U.S. military ships shortly after World War II. There may be 2 million of the reptiles on Guam now, decimating wildlife, biting residents and even knocking out electricity by slithering onto power lines. (MORE: Marines’ Move to Guam: Just the First Step) More than 3,000 miles away, environmental officials in Hawaii have long feared a similar invasion — which in their case likely would be a “snakes on a plane” scenario. That would cost the state many vulnerable species and billions of dollars, but the risk will fall if Guam’s air-drop strategy succeeds. “We are taking this to a new phase,” said Daniel Vice, assistant state director of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services in Hawaii, Guam, and the Pacific Islands.
“There really is no other place in the world with a snake problem like Guam.” Brown tree snakes are generally a few feet (1 meter) long but can grow to be more than 10 feet (3 meters) in length. Most of Guam’s native birds were defenseless against the nocturnal, tree-based predators, and within a few decades of the reptile’s arrival, nearly all of them were wiped out. The snakes can also climb power poles and wires, causing blackouts, or slither into homes and bite people, including babies; they use venom on their prey but it is not lethal to humans. The infestation and the toll it has taken on native wildlife have tarnished Guam’s image as a tourism haven, though the snakes are rarely seen outside their jungle habitat. The solution to this headache, fittingly enough, is acetaminophen, the active ingredient in painkillers including Tylenol. The strategy takes advantage of
“There really is no other place in the world with a snake problem like Guam.” Brown tree snakes are generally a few feet (1 meter) long but can grow to be more than 10 feet (3 meters) in length. Most of Guam’s native birds were defenseless against the nocturnal, tree-based predators, and within a few decades of the reptile’s arrival, nearly all of them were wiped out. The snakes can also climb power poles and wires, causing blackouts, or slither into homes and bite people, including babies; they use venom on their prey but it is not lethal to humans. The infestation and the toll it has taken on native wildlife have tarnished Guam’s image as a tourism haven, though the snakes are rarely seen outside their jungle habitat. The solution to this headache, fittingly enough, is acetaminophen, the active ingredient in painkillers including Tylenol. The strategy takes advantage of
Thursday, February 21, 2013
NORTH KOREEA to Allow Mobile Internet for Foreigners
(PYONGYANG, North Korea) — North Korea will soon allow foreigners to tweet, Skype and surf the Internet from their cellphones, iPads and other mobile devices in its second relaxation of controls on communications in recent weeks. However, North Korean citizens will not have access to the mobile Internet service to be offered by provider Koryolink within the next week. Koryolink, a joint venture between Korea Post & Telecommunications Corporation and Egypt‘s Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding SAE, informed foreign residents in Pyongyang on Friday that it will launch a third generation, or 3G, mobile Internet service no later than March 1. (PHOTOS: Kim Jong Il as First Among Equals) The announcement comes just weeks after North Korea began allowing foreigners to bring their own cellphones into the country to use with Koryolink SIM cards, reversing a longstanding rule requiring most visitors to relinquish their phones at customs and leaving many without easy means of communication with the outside world. The two changes in policy mean foreigners in North Korea will have unprecedented connectivity while living, working or traveling in a country long regarded as one of the most isolated nations in the world. However, wireless Internet will not yet be offered to North Koreans, who are governed by a separate set of telecommunication rules from foreigners. North Koreans will be allowed to access certain 3G services, including SMS and MMS messaging, video calls and subscriptions to the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper — but not the global Internet. The lack of Internet access in North Korea has put the country at the bottom of Internet freedom surveys. Though North Korea is equipped for broadband Internet, only a small, approved segment of the population has access to the World Wide Web. During a visit to Pyongyang early last month, Google‘s executive chairman pressed the North Koreans to expand access to the Internet. Eric Schmidt noted that it would be “very easy” for North Korea to offer Internet on Koryolink’s fast-expanding 3G cellphone network. “As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean
CHINA: 4.8-magnitude earthquake hits Guangdong, felt in Hong Kong
A 4.8-magnitude quake hit northeastern Guangdong province at 11:34am on Friday, according to China's Earthquake Networks Centre.
Hong Kong residents have reported feeling shocks from the earthquake, according to the Hong Kong Observatory.
The observatory said it was analysing data on the quake and would release more information later.
Hong Kong residents have reported feeling shocks from the earthquake, according to the Hong Kong Observatory.
The observatory said it was analysing data on the quake and would release more information later.
SOUTH KOREA Country Specific Information
Republic of Korea
COUNTRY DESCRIPTION: The Republic of Korea (South Korea or ROK) is a highly developed, stable, democratic republic with powers shared between the president and the legislature. Korea is a modern economy where tourist facilities are widely available. English is rarely spoken outside the main tourist and business centers.
You can find more information about tourism in the ROK through the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) website (in English) or by calling 1-800-868-7567 from the United States and Canada. The KTO also operates a telephone information service within the Republic of Korea, that you can reach by dialing 1330 (02-1330 from cell phones) anywhere in the country. The KTO telephone service has English speakers and is available 24 hours every day of the year. The Seoul Global Center (SGC) assists foreigners with an English-speaking help line at (02) 1688-0120. The SGC is open from 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Read the Department of State's Fact Sheet on South Korea for additional information . . .
COUNTRY DESCRIPTION: The Republic of Korea (South Korea or ROK) is a highly developed, stable, democratic republic with powers shared between the president and the legislature. Korea is a modern economy where tourist facilities are widely available. English is rarely spoken outside the main tourist and business centers.
You can find more information about tourism in the ROK through the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) website (in English) or by calling 1-800-868-7567 from the United States and Canada. The KTO also operates a telephone information service within the Republic of Korea, that you can reach by dialing 1330 (02-1330 from cell phones) anywhere in the country. The KTO telephone service has English speakers and is available 24 hours every day of the year. The Seoul Global Center (SGC) assists foreigners with an English-speaking help line at (02) 1688-0120. The SGC is open from 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Read the Department of State's Fact Sheet on South Korea for additional information . . .
CHINA's Bo Xilai not cooperating on probe, been on hunger strike: sources
BEIJING (Reuters) - Disgraced former senior Chinese leader Bo Xilai is refusing to cooperate with a government investigation into him and has staged hunger strikes in protest and at one point was treated in hospital, sources with knowledge of the matter said.
JAPAN: Mr. Abe Comes to Washington
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to arrive in the U.S. today ahead of his meeting with President Barak Obama at the White House on Friday. The summit will be the first between the two leaders since Abe returned to power in December.
Abe had initially sought to make the U.S. the destination of his first overseas trip as Prime Minister but was reportedly rebuffed by the White House who said a trip would not be possible until after President Obama’s inauguration last month. As a result, the Japanese leader traveled to Southeast Asia instead as Tokyo looks to use common concern over China to strengthen ties with ASEAN member nations.
Abe’s trip comes at a time when Tokyo is facing a tougher regional security environment. Japan remains locked in a tense standoff with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, with few signs of a resolution in sight. The summit also takes place just a week after North Korea conducted its third nuclear tests, withmany speculating that it plans to undertake at least one more test in the near future.
The nationalistic Japanese leader has long been a strong proponent of strengthening the U.S.-Japan military relationship. Even so, the Chinese and North Korean challenges have made closer military ties with the U.S. a far more urgent matter for Tokyo.
Indeed, at Japan’s request the two sides announced they would consider revising their military treaty last November while Abe’s predecessor, Yoshihiko Noda, was still in office. At the time, Japan had said that revisions were necessary because of “qualitative changes in the security environment” since the last time the allies revisited the treaty in 1997. Working-level talks began the following month.
The U.S. has long pushed Japan to increase its security role in the region by upgrading its military forces and loosening restrictions on what types of operations they can participate in. These views are shared by Abe and, as a result of Chinese and North Korean actions, a growing number of Japanese. However, Abe’s eagerness to expand Japan’s defense role has reportedly unnerved some U.S. officials, who— while insisting they still would like the Self-Defense Forces to embrace “collective self-defense”— worry Abe’s defense policies will further worsen tensions with China and other regional powers like South Korea.
In revisiting the defense treaty, Washington will undoubtedly seek to resist Japan pressure to make a more explicit commitment to the defense of islands that Japan disputes with its neighbors. So far, the U.S. has adopted a characteristically ambiguous policy towards the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, affirming that the Islands do fall under its defense treaty with Japan, while insisting it does not take sides on territorial disputes.
Abe’s visit will also have a strong economic component to it, as the Japanese leader seeks to revise a sluggish economy that also faces long-term structural issues. Abe will want reassurances from Obama that the U.S. will continue to support his aggressive monetary policies that have come under fire from some of Tokyo’s trade partners. Abe will also seek to convince Obama to support exports of America’s natural gas to Japan, which remains highly dependent foreign energy imports.
President Obama, on the other hand, will be most concerned with getting Abe to commit Japan to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the cornerstone of Washington’s economic agenda in region. The high free trade standards the TPP requires have made it the target of certain powerful interests groups inside Japan, especially the heavily subsidized Agricultural sector. Given the leverage the U.S. has over Japan as a result of Tokyo’s standoff with China, it should not be difficult for Washington to overcome this resistance to the TPP.
Zachary Keck is assistant editor of The Diplomat. He is on Twitter: @ZacharyKeck.
The post Mr. Abe Comes to Washington appeared first on Flashpoints.
Abe had initially sought to make the U.S. the destination of his first overseas trip as Prime Minister but was reportedly rebuffed by the White House who said a trip would not be possible until after President Obama’s inauguration last month. As a result, the Japanese leader traveled to Southeast Asia instead as Tokyo looks to use common concern over China to strengthen ties with ASEAN member nations.
Abe’s trip comes at a time when Tokyo is facing a tougher regional security environment. Japan remains locked in a tense standoff with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, with few signs of a resolution in sight. The summit also takes place just a week after North Korea conducted its third nuclear tests, withmany speculating that it plans to undertake at least one more test in the near future.
The nationalistic Japanese leader has long been a strong proponent of strengthening the U.S.-Japan military relationship. Even so, the Chinese and North Korean challenges have made closer military ties with the U.S. a far more urgent matter for Tokyo.
Indeed, at Japan’s request the two sides announced they would consider revising their military treaty last November while Abe’s predecessor, Yoshihiko Noda, was still in office. At the time, Japan had said that revisions were necessary because of “qualitative changes in the security environment” since the last time the allies revisited the treaty in 1997. Working-level talks began the following month.
The U.S. has long pushed Japan to increase its security role in the region by upgrading its military forces and loosening restrictions on what types of operations they can participate in. These views are shared by Abe and, as a result of Chinese and North Korean actions, a growing number of Japanese. However, Abe’s eagerness to expand Japan’s defense role has reportedly unnerved some U.S. officials, who— while insisting they still would like the Self-Defense Forces to embrace “collective self-defense”— worry Abe’s defense policies will further worsen tensions with China and other regional powers like South Korea.
In revisiting the defense treaty, Washington will undoubtedly seek to resist Japan pressure to make a more explicit commitment to the defense of islands that Japan disputes with its neighbors. So far, the U.S. has adopted a characteristically ambiguous policy towards the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, affirming that the Islands do fall under its defense treaty with Japan, while insisting it does not take sides on territorial disputes.
Abe’s visit will also have a strong economic component to it, as the Japanese leader seeks to revise a sluggish economy that also faces long-term structural issues. Abe will want reassurances from Obama that the U.S. will continue to support his aggressive monetary policies that have come under fire from some of Tokyo’s trade partners. Abe will also seek to convince Obama to support exports of America’s natural gas to Japan, which remains highly dependent foreign energy imports.
President Obama, on the other hand, will be most concerned with getting Abe to commit Japan to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the cornerstone of Washington’s economic agenda in region. The high free trade standards the TPP requires have made it the target of certain powerful interests groups inside Japan, especially the heavily subsidized Agricultural sector. Given the leverage the U.S. has over Japan as a result of Tokyo’s standoff with China, it should not be difficult for Washington to overcome this resistance to the TPP.
Zachary Keck is assistant editor of The Diplomat. He is on Twitter: @ZacharyKeck.
The post Mr. Abe Comes to Washington appeared first on Flashpoints.
CHINA: Today in history, February 21
February 21
On this day. 1972: In what was arguably the most dramatic trip ever taken by a president of the United States, Richard Nixon arrived in China for an eight-day visit. The announcement that Nixon, a lifelong hardline anti-communist, would visit China stunned the world. The United States and China had been foes for a quarter-century, but Nixon recognized the need for better ties — which would also help the U.S. in its Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union. During his week-long visit, Nixon met with Mao and Zhou En-Lai; it is seen today as the beginning of China's drive to modernize...
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JAPAN: Sony thinks outside the PlayStation 4 box
No details are given on where the device will be sold, or at what cost, as Sony attempts to turn the PS4 into a wider entertainment device
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