August 21, 2010

By NORIHIRO KATO

GROSS domestic product figures for the second quarter show that China has overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy. I have been traveling while on leave from the university in Tokyo where I teach, and was in Paris when the news broke last week. My first reaction, frankly, was one of relief. In English, perhaps, one might say it was “a load off my shoulders.”

In Japanese, people use the phrase “right shoulder up” to describe a graph that keeps going up, with each year’s figures rosier than the last. Of course, if that climbing line is someone’s right shoulder, it means the left is languishing somewhere out of sight. We’re seeing only half the person.

Reading the papers that morning at breakfast, I saw a graph indicating the point in the 1990s when Japan’s G.D.P. had peaked, after which the line started jagging down and up, over the long run comparatively leveling out. The relief I felt had something to do with the person I saw there, no longer so awkwardly bent. Finally we know where Japan stands — on level ground.

It’s not difficult to find similar graphs. One shows Japan’s natural population growth. Every year from 1910 to 1977, the population increased by more than 1 percent. Then the growth began to slow. In 2005, for the first time, the population shrank. Right shoulder down.

Another graph on rice production from 1878 to 1980 shows the point in the 1960s when Japan’s rice production began to decline. Decades before China overtook Japan, the country had started downsizing, preparing for a smooth landing.

Three years ago, I saw a television program about a new breed of youngster: the nonconsumer. Japanese in their late teens and early 20s, it said, did not have cars. They didn’t drink alcohol. They didn’t spend Christmas Eve with their boyfriends or girlfriends at fancy hotels downtown the way earlier generations did. I have taught many students who fit this mold. They work hard at part-time jobs, spend hours at McDonald’s sipping cheap coffee, eat fast food lunches at Yoshinoya. They save their money for the future.

These are the Japanese who came of age after the bubble, never having known Japan as a flourishing economy. They are accustomed to being frugal. Today’s youths, living in a society older than any in the world, are the first since the late 19th century to feel so uneasy about the future.

I saw young Japanese in Paris, of course, vacationing or studying, but statistics show that they don’t travel the way we used to. Perhaps it’s a reaction against their globalizing elders who are still zealously pushing English-language education and overseas employment. Young people have grown less interested in studying foreign languages. They seem not to feel the urge to grow outward. Look, they say, Japan is a small country. And we’re O.K. with small.

It is, perhaps, a sort of maturity.

The rest of the world’s population is still exploding, and we are coming to see the limits of our resources. The age of “right shoulder up” is over. Japan doesn’t need to be No. 2 in the world, or No. 5 or 15. It’s time to look to more important things, to think more about the environment and about people less lucky than ourselves. To learn about organic farming. Or not. Maybe you’re busy enough just living your life. That, the new maturity says, is still cooler than right shoulder up.

Of course, some people don’t see things this way. The old guard — those politicians who led the charge in the heady 1970s and ’80s and fought back (however pointlessly) against the economic stagnation of the ’90s — still want to compete. Those men, best represented in my view by Tokyo’s governor, Shintaro Ishihara, speak as if they are under siege. They hate being beaten by China. For them, it seems, maturity only means striving to be No. 1. They won’t change. They are too settled in an earlier stage of development, in a dream of limitless growth. But society matures around them.

The new maturity may be the province of the young Japanese, but in a sense, it is a return to something much older than Mr. Ishihara and his cohort. Starting in the 19th century, with the reign of the Meiji Emperor, Japan expanded, territorially and economically. But before that, the country went through a 250-year period of comparative isolation and very limited economic growth. The experience of rapid growth was a new phenomenon. Japan remembers what it is like to be old, to be quiet, to turn inward.

Freshly overtaken by China, Japan now seems to stand at the vanguard of a new downsizing movement, leading the way for countries bound sooner or later to follow in its wake. In a world whose limits are increasingly apparent, Japan and its youths, old beyond their years, may well reveal what it is like to outgrow growth.

Norihiro Kato is a professor of Japanese literature at Waseda University. This article was translated by Michael Emmerich from the Japanese.

Not only does Apple ban iPhone applications that mimic basic functions already offered by Apple’s own iPhone offerings, the Google Voice app being an example of such rejection, but now developers are being told that their actual development tools must exclusively come from Apple. This essentially kills hundreds, if not thousands of applications developed with open source frameworks or third party development tools. It also raises the possibility that Apple will come under renewed European and possibly American anti-trust investigation for what appears to be, at least on the surface, blatant anti-trust behavior.

On the first count, Apple is standing on a very weak legal precedent. Like Microsoft’s argument over ten years ago, that Internet Explorer was irrevocably linked to the Windows desktop, Apple’s claim to exclusivity for it’s iPhone applications is troublesome. The mantra-like rationale being that consumers get the very best applications that meet Apple’s extremely high standards. Surely, however, consumers should be given the privilege to pick and choose between browsers, mail applications and 3G/4G voice tools they wish to use. And surely Apple should not be allowed to cherry pick those applications based on their country of origin (read Cupertino, CA) simply because they are the iPhone OS platform landlord.

Landlords, whether they be of the brick and mortar type or those working in  intellectual property space such as Apple, need to observe rules of commerce just like anyone else. And those rules are clear as illustrated by the European Union’s recent settlement with Microsoft allowing consumers to choose which browser they install in a Windows environment. The principle being that multiple applications within any software category ensure consumer choice. And consumer choice is good since there is a high level of competition which almost invariably results in a higher standard of product quality.

On the second count,  Apple is treading upon anti-trust law. To dictate that only Apple created shovels and pitchforks can be used to build software for the iPhone platform, is preposterous. Again, to return to the Microsoft example, even at Microsoft’s most maniacal anti-trust moments, the company encouraged multiple compiler vendors to make their tools available to developers. Names like Borland and many others could be cited as an example. If Microsoft had gone the extra distance of proclaiming that only their Visual C++ compiler would be the de-facto sanctioned compiler for Windows applications, then U.S. courts and most definitely, the European Union would have quickly interceded.

As the Chinese government loves to remind its critics when reacting to unpopular policies like Internet censorship, jailing dissidents and currency manipulation, they will not allow outside interference in their internal affairs. Chairman Jobs and Apple are making the same argument over application choice and developer tools, but in this case, they just happen to be making these announcements from Cupertino, California which is a problem.

It’s high time, therefore, that Apple come under investigation for its anti-competitive practices to ensure more openness and fairness on the iPhone playing field. To do nothing, will lead to a second cultural revolution whereby programmers, third party framework developers and even open source advocates will be ostracized from competing with Apple and not having their wares available in the App Store. That’s bad for consumer choice and it’s bad for iPhone application development.

Alternatively, Chairman Jobs could move Apple and all its employees to Shenzhen in southern China where the iPhone is actually manufactured to avoid the possibility of any governmental oversight. That would cement Apple’s Chinaization.

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

2010/03/09

“The Cove,” an examination of a bloody dolphin hunt, won the Academy Award for best documentary feature Sunday to the anger and dismay of residents of the coastal community where the film was made.

Directed by Louie Psihoyos, the controversial U.S. film was shot in the coastal town of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture.

The filmmaker employed hidden cameras and microphones because the local fishing cooperative would not allow the camera crew access to the cove where the dolphins were slaughtered.

Local residents were incensed that their faces were filmed without approval while hidden footage was taken of dolphins being killed.

A 35-year-old homemaker whose grandfather had worked on a whaling ship said: “We have eaten whale and dolphin meat for generations. I don’t understand why the film singles out the dolphin hunt for such a negative reaction. I cannot believe it received an Oscar.”

Taiji Mayor Kazutaka Sangen and the local fishing cooperative issued a statement Monday morning that said: “There are elements in the movie that make false assertions not based on any scientific evidence as though it were the truth. It is important to possess a spirit of mutual respect after understanding the long traditions and actual circumstances surrounding the dietary culture of a region.”

Officials of the local fishing cooperative claim that some assertions in the movie are false, including one that dolphin meat was being sold as whale meat to hide the fact it was contaminated with mercury.

While there are plans to show the movie at about 20 theaters in Japan this summer, lawyers for the Taiji town hall and fishing cooperative said they would lobby for a cancellation.

Town officials demanded that the movie not be shown at the Tokyo International Film Festival last fall, but organizers went ahead with one showing.

Officials with Unplugged Inc., the distributor of “The Cove,” said changes would be made before the movie is screened in Japan. The faces of local residents would be scrambled and subtitles added at the end of the movie saying there are differences in studies about mercury levels and that Taiji town was opposed to elements of the movie.

Tokiya Nitta, a lecturer at the School of Marine Science and Technology at Tokai University who has studied the history of dolphin hunting along the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture, said the movie could strengthen the opinions of opponents of the practice.

“In Japan, there is a history of hunting the dolphins with feelings of gratitude and respect because it helped the Japanese when they were faced with famine because of the war,” Nitta said. “However, foreigners appear to only focus on the cruel reality of the hunt.”

Daisuke Onitsuka, a professor of American studies at Shizuoka Eiwa Gakuin University, said the visual impact of the movie was likely a major factor behind the winning of the Oscar.

“While it undoubtedly is a propaganda movie, I believe that overseas it is not the arguments of the movie that are being accepted, but the clash with the Taiji fishing cooperative and town officials that was viewed as being interesting,” Onitsuka said. “The main reason it was praised was the visual impact produced through the use of hidden cameras.”

“China is like an adolescent who took too many steroids. It has suddenly become big but it finds it hard to coordinate and control its body. To the West, it can look like a monster.”

Liu Kang, a professor of Chinese studies at Duke University.

Chinese Team Searches Museums for Art Treasures

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/world/asia/17china.html

I was just across the street lost in some gardens, running around in 360 degree circles getting really confused so I couldn’t find my way back.

But I took some pictures while I was there to share with you:

http://kyotogardens.org

Almost instantly, a semi rebuttal cum discussion of this piece appeared in the New York Times exploring the hypothesis that computers might not be so good for our mental health after all.

Or put in a slightly different manner, computers are rapidly contributing to global sensory overload. We have become like a sparrow devouring enormous amounts of information yet without the requisite filtration system to retain what is of bodily value. This filtration system, as these authors argue, is based on good old analog thinking encouraging contemplation, discussion and deeper reflection. Instead, such age old skills have been sacrificed at the digital alter in favor of Twitter-like ambient awareness, an ‘on demand’ trivia feast lacking any real redeeming human qualities.

Part of the problem seems to be generational: those who are crying foul are more often than not analog veterans, information warriors of the past who bled to get knowledge somewhere in a university library stack.

Another part of the problem is misinterpretation. McCluhan, the guru most often cited in these discussions, has a doozy of an aphorism to sum up this predicament:

” Computers make us software.”

And as we all know, software is only as good as the human brain that carves it out of silicon.

In short, the media has changed: goodbye paper, hello silicon.

No big deal!

New York Times

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/26/style/flinen.php

TOKYO: Japanese linen, once made almost obsolete by the general preference for the much cheaper Chinese product, is quietly making a comeback. Up until now, linen had been about summer shirts and suits, but these days the subtext is changing from mere summer fashion to year-round lifestyle.

“‘People are starting to think differently about textiles, and more are buying or using linen in the way Europeans did in the 19th century,” said the interior stylist Mika Sonomiya. “Unlike cotton, good linen is expensive but grows more beautiful with time and washing.”

Sonomiya is a self-professed “laundry fiend” and considers the washing/drying of linen products to be the highest of stress relievers. She insists on 100 percent domestic linen for sheets, towels and wraps, used lovingly in every aspect of daily living.

“Before, I loved the feel of French linen but now I’ve come to recommend the Japan-made product,” she said. “It makes sense to support the domestic textile industry, not just for cost purposes but simply because new companies in that field are doing great work.”

Kyoto and the nearby Omi region had been well known for domestic linen, and a few textile artisans had kept the flame going. But the problem is, their linen products are often formal (mostly kimono materials and related paraphernalia) and too expensive to use on a daily basis, which had kept the average linen user from crossing over to home-grown products.

Recognizing the demand for more casual linen, the textile giant Teikoku set up an online linen shop called Teisen where finely woven sheets, towels, pajamas and other sundries bearing the “made in Japan” logo are available.

“But the ones to watch are the smaller companies,” Sonomiya said. “Hardly anyone knows about them, because they operate on such a small basis and rarely bother to advertise.”

In Omi, the family-operated Loop produces bed and bath items made from ramie and hemp – stitched by hand and the brand logo (artfully faded) stamped with typewriter keys.

Closer to Tokyo, Oldman’s Tailor, run by the young couple Toku and Yuji Shimura, has become a metaphor for domestic linen products in just seven years, from its start in 2001. Oldman’s Tailor has no shop, and there are no employees, apart from the Shimuras (not counting Yuji’s mother, who helps out by washing and then sun-drying the finished products). The office is in their home (located at the foot of Mount Fuji, an area once renowned for textiles) and the more than 200 linen products they create (by themselves or collaborating with weavers) are sold in a handful of selected boutiques, or online.

The Shimuras, intent on making linen products “that would enchant and entice people 100 years later” are not only dedicated craftsmen but also designers – towels, for instance, have a marine theme that is reminiscent of the captain’s cabin of a French naval fleet in the late 19th century.

Sonomiya, a fan of the couple’s work, said: “There’s an unmistakable air of authenticity and romance in everything they make. You can tell that they understand and love linen, how romantic and evocative it is.”

Analysts see the revival of Japanese linen as part of a bigger trend, one that bears the stamp of ecology. The textile artist Hiromi Kanzaki said she sees a shift from “design to materials” in Japanese fashion.

“It’s less about the cut and the silhouette” than “whether the material is natural and how it feels on the skin, where it was made, whether the process damaged the environment unnecessarily,” Kanzaki said. “People are much more attuned to that sort of information.”

The concern and interest in materials is bolstering the domestic textile industry, and design companies, quick to ride the wave, are now creating textile products made from domestic organic cotton, washi and wood charcoal and colored with 100 percent water-soluble plant dyes.

As the editorial director Masanobu Sugatsuke said: “Right now, no fashion trend could emerge or last very long without giving a big bow to the environment, because the consumer is so much more concerned about such things than they were 10 years ago. Now whatever is wasteful, excessive or selfish just won’t cut it anymore, no matter how snazzy the design.”

By SAM DILLON
NEWTOWN, Pa. — First, Ryan Gibbons bought a Hyundai so he would not have to drive his gas-guzzling Chevy Blazer to college classes here. When fuel prices kept rising, he cut expenses again, eliminating two campus visits a week by enrolling in an online version of one of his courses.

Like Mr. Gibbons, thousands of students nationwide, including many who were previously reluctant to study online, have suddenly decided to take one or more college classes over the Internet.

“Gas prices have pushed people over the edge,” said Georglyn Davidson, director of online learning at Bucks County Community College, where Mr. Gibbons studies, and where online enrollments are up 35 percent this summer over last year.

The vast majority of the nation’s 15 million college students — at least 79 percent — live off campus, and with gas prices above $4 a gallon, many are seeking to cut commuting costs by studying online. Colleges from Massachusetts and Florida to Texas to Oregon have reported significant online enrollment increases for summer sessions, with student numbers in some cases 50 percent or 100 percent higher than last year. Although some four-year institutions with large online programs — like the University of Massachusetts and Villanova — have experienced these increases, the greatest surges have been registered at two-year community colleges, where most students are commuters, many support families and few can absorb large new expenditures for fuel.

At Bristol Community College in Fall River, Mass., for instance, online enrollments were up 114 percent this summer over last, and half the students queried cited gas costs or some other transportation obstacle as a reason for signing up to study over the Internet, said April Bellafiore, an assistant dean there.

“Online classes filled up immediately,” Ms. Bellafiore said. “It blew my mind.”

Enrollments in online classes expanded rapidly early in this decade, but growth slowed in 2006 to less than 10 percent, according to statistics compiled last year by researchers at Babson College in Massachusetts. Some recent increases reported by college officials in interviews were much larger, which they attributed to the rising cost of gasoline. Pricing policies for online courses vary by campus, but most classes cost as much as, or more than, traditional ones.

At Brevard Community College in Cocoa, Fla., online enrollment rose to 2,726 this summer from 2,190 last year, a 24.5 percent increase. “That is a dramatic increase we can only attribute to gas prices,” said Jim Drake, Brevard’s president.

Dr. Drake and officials at several other colleges expressed concern that mounting fuel costs could force some students to drop out of college altogether, especially since only a fraction of courses at most colleges are offered online. Dr. Drake has put Brevard on a four-day week to help employees and students save gas.

David Gray, chief executive of UMass Online, the distance education program at the University of Massachusetts, said that at an educators’ conference this week in San Francisco, officials from scores of universities discussed how the energy crisis could affect higher education. “There was broad agreement that gas price increases will be a source of continued growth in online enrollments,” Mr. Gray said.

Once an incidental expense, fuel for commuting to campus now costs some students half of what they pay for tuition, in some cases more. Sergey Sosnovsky, who is pursuing pre-engineering studies at Bucks County Community College, paid $240 a month for gas during the spring semester, while his full-time tuition cost about $500 a month, he said. Other students here and in half a dozen other states told similar stories.

Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Mo., which enrolls residents on both sides of the Arkansas-Missouri border, had 52 percent more students sign up for Internet-based courses this summer than last, said Witt Salley, the college’s director of online teaching and learning.

One student taking online coursework for the first time is Kameron Miller, a 30-year-old working mother who lives in Buffalo, Mo., 40 miles north of Springfield. Her commute to classes in her 1998 Chevy Venture during the spring semester cost her at least $200 a month for gas, Ms. Miller said. This summer, she is taking courses in health, humanities and world music — all online.

“I don’t feel I get as much out of an online class as a campus course,” Ms. Miller said. “But I couldn’t afford any other decision.”

Among the four-year institutions reporting increased online enrollment, UMass Online, which enrolls students at its five Massachusetts campuses and worldwide, experienced 46 percent growth this summer over last among students at the university’s Dartmouth, Mass., campus. At Villanova University in Pennsylvania, enrollment in online, graduate, engineering, nursing and business courses has increased more than 40 percent this summer, said Robert Stokes, an assistant vice president there.

Waiting lists for Web-based courses have lengthened at some institutions. At the University of Colorado, Denver, for instance, 361 students are on the waiting list for online courses for the fall term, compared to 233 last year on the same date, said Bob Tolsma, an assistant vice chancellor.

In Tennessee, the six universities, 13 two-year colleges and 26 technology centers overseen by the Tennessee Board of Regents enrolled 9,000 students for online courses this summer, compared with about 7,000 last summer, a 29 percent increase, said Robbie K. Melton, an associate vice chancellor.

“We had to train more faculty and provide more online courses because students just couldn’t afford to drive to our campuses,” Dr. Melton said.

Sandra Jobe, a 46-year-old bookkeeper who is studying for a master’s degree in education at Tennessee State University, said she reduced the number of trips she had to make each week to the university’s Nashville campus to two from four by enrolling in an online course.

“The campus experience is good; I wouldn’t diminish that,” Ms. Jobe said. “But when you’re penny-pinching, online is a good alternative.”

South Texas College, which has five campuses in Hidalgo and Starr Counties in the Rio Grande Valley, saw a 35 percent increase in online enrollments this summer over last, said William Serrata, a vice president. Other years have seen summer increases of 10 percent to 15 percent, he said. “This really speaks to students’ not wanting to travel due to the gas prices,” Mr. Serrata said.

Elvira Ozuna, who is 37 and studying for an associate’s degree in occupational therapy, was driving four times a week, 50 miles round trip from her home to South Texas College’s campus in McAllen. But this summer she enrolled in two online courses, eliminating that commute.

Ms. Ozuna said she found online work more difficult than classroom study. “But I saved on the gasoline,” she said.

Distance education is no silver bullet that can alone solve the challenges posed for higher education by rising gasoline prices, officials warned.

For one thing, many students, especially in rural areas, lack the high-speed Internet connections on which online courses depend.

“The infrastructure doesn’t exist to give all rural students clear online access,” said Stephen G. Katsinas, a professor at the University of Alabama. “Rural America is where the digital divide is most dramatic.”

Furthermore, most colleges still offer only a fraction of their courses over the Internet. Bucks County Community College, for instance, will offer 414 credit courses during the fall term. Only 103 of those will be offered online, and another 48 as hybrid courses, that is, partly online but with some campus visits required. So most students will still need to come to campus.

Mr. Gibbons, who is 20, works days and aspires to be a writer. He said his online course, “Introduction to the Novel,” had been a good experience, especially the Web-based discussions of Jane Austen’s novels. (He likes posting comments by e-mail better than speaking in class.) He said he still preferred on-campus study, “but with the price of gas jumping up, I’ll probably be taking more courses online now.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Man disguised as schoolgirl arrested for trespassing in Ibaraki school

IBARAKI —
A 30-year-old man was arrested Monday night for sneaking into an Ibaraki high school, wearing a schoolgirl’s uniform and wig, police said Tuesday.

Shigemitsu Kajiro, 30, was caught by a teacher in a corridor around 5:30 p.m. after the teacher noticed he was wearing shoes which did not match the school’s uniform. After discovering the student was a man, the teacher took him to a staff room and called police. The suspect has so far said nothing about what he was up to or whether he had done this before, police said.