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The Konno’s House: Like Father

It gives the opportunity to think about family

 

This is beautiful. The house of the Konno is in Tagajyo city in Miyagi prefecture and is next to Tohoku History Museum. The building is registered as a tangible cultural asset of the prefecture. Its huge thatched roof catches visitors’ eyes. Its main house, built in 1769, is Spartan. It has six rooms and a large kitchen. The family was kimoiri, the village headman, in the Edo era. His house shows his power quietly. There are two rooms to have officials down the corridor. Since then time has changed, but it is still easy for ordinary people to realise that the family was affluent. With a good structure, houses like this deserve to be called yashiki or castle if you like.

 

Old houses are preserved across the country, but what is remarkable about this house is that it offers the opportunity to learn the traditional family system. There are two toilets. One is for the master; and the other for the rest of the family. The kitchen, too, is divided into two. One is for the family use; and the other for servants. It is surprising to see these clear differences in social status and positions under the same roof. This makes visitors think about how patriarchy was like. Besides, unlike today where families sit around the table to eat together, people at that time used low tables to eat meals individually. This makes a difference in how children think of their fathers between the past and today. Fathers were very scary in the past.

 

With little information on him, it is unclear whether the master was scary or not. But he does not seem to be unkind. That is evidenced by the fact that there were two families who had lost their houses in the Konno’s house where his wife, mother and grand-father and sister lived. This suggests he had a strong sense of justice.

 

Regardless the number of family members, people learn from their families. I guess that people around the kirimori learnt important things, such as how to live and die, from his behaviour and works. Although he was a politician who has to play a dirty trick, he did good things, which is why this house is still worthwhile. Household and Buddhist altars inside the house suggest this. Worshipping his ancestors, he prayed for his family’s prosperity, health, the success of his job and peace in the village. He had care and compassion not just for his family but people in the village. He protected all of them.

 

The Japanese word ie (family) contains a meaning of “spread a blanket on things”. This can be interpreted as “defend”. Meantime, the English word family is derived from “serve”, which originally came from “slave”. This can mean “working for others”. These things are linked: home is the place where people do them at home. “A house is a fine house when good folks are within”, a British proverb says. They are common but important and are steadily disappearing today. Isolation of individuals and solitary death of elderly people are increasing. But Japan’s triple disasters made family values stronger than ever. What will it be like in the future? Who knows, but because somehow people feel fragile, this house may be valuable enough to be a cultural asset. If so, it’s a pity.

Illness In Tohoku

Illness that disaster victims in Tohoku are suffering is connected with society and economy. To recover from it, something spiritual is important

 

Devastated Fukanuma seaside after disaster

NOTHING was there. Fukanuma seaside in Sendai in Miyagi prefecture was destroyed by a devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11th. The debris from the disaster is left on sea-swamped rice paddies. “I can’t believe it”, say security guards there. They were shocked out of their wits by the sights that changed completely. Dead bodies were found and a few people are still missing there. “It makes me cry”, the guards lament. They are not the only people who are suffering from pain. To recover from and prevent illness, what is needed for disaster victims?

 

After the disaster, including the nuclear accident at Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, there are many people in Tohoku, the devastated region in the north-east, who got sick. According to Mainichi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, more than three hundred people need mental care among disaster victims in the seaboard of Iwate prefecture. Tohoku University School of Medicine found that more than one hundred people got flu in evacuation centres in Miyagi in late March. It warns that the risk of the outbreak of infectious disease is growing.

 

The main cause of infectious disease is that it is difficult to maintain a sanitary environment of refugee centres. Some 54 thousand refugees live there together. At first water was in short supply thus they could not wash hands or gargle. Neither could they clean bathrooms and floors. Vaccines and medicines did not come either because of disturbed medical supply-chain. In Sendai, the flu had been widespread for a few months before the earthquake. So refugees are likely to catch infectious disease in such an environment.

 

To maintain clean refugee centres with sanitary conditions, alcohol is used instead of water. Medicine has been given by medical companies and medical universities. Tohoku University is working together with Miyagi to call for people to wash hands and gargle thoroughly in order to prevent the spread of infectious disease. Meanwhile, the prefecture formed a mental care team with doctors who have degrees in western medicine, nurses, clinical psychotherapists and mental health welfare professionals. Acupuncture is practiced too.

 

Despite those all-out efforts to improve health, they are not enough to solve the underlying cause of illness. As Fritjof Capra, a physicist and system theorist, says in his book The Turning Point, “Health is really a multidimensional phenomenon involving interdependent physical, psychological, and social aspects”. The appearance of illness is attributable to social and economic environment, which affect individual minds and bodies. Mrs Yukari Oba, a member of staff at social service department of Miyagi prefecture who is in charge of its mental care team, says, “To care minds of victims, it is very important to help them secure food, clothing and materials for housing, get back to their ordinary life and solve the problem of employment and other economic issues. In doing so, they can feel peace of mind and safety”. It is clear that unless those are achieved or solved, victims will continue to feel stress or anxious that affects their minds; hence never recover from illness.

 

There are three major causes of their stress and worries. The first is nuclear power plants in Tohoku. Miyagi and Aomori run Mekawa nuclear power station and Rokkasyo nuclear reprocessing plant respectively. The danger is that the former is located in an active fault zone. It threatened local people when a major earthquake happened in Miyagi in 2008. Although Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan decided to stop Hamaoka nuclear power plant, other plants will continue to operate. Meanwhile, after the nuclear accident in Fukushima, local farmers and tourist industries were hit hard by rumours. Japanese government temporarily banned exports of agricultural crops from places near the nuclear plant while neighbour countries stopped imports due to fears of radiation. For the same reason foreign tourists rapidly decreased.

 

The second is unemployment. Agriculture and fisheries are important industries in Tohoku. The region has 487 thousand farmers, consisting 5.21% of its population, which is the highest in Japan. But because of aging and depopulation, the primary industry is hollowing out. In 2007, while its agricultural and fisheries output was over 900 billion yen, that of manufacturing industry was more than 6.7 trillion yen. Then came the quake and tsunami. There are growing worries over job security. The Japan Research Institute, a think-tank, predicts between 140,000 and 200,000 people lost jobs and 10-20% of that comes from fisheries and agriculture. (On May 26th unemployment in the region exceeded 110 thousand.)

 

There is a variety of reconstructing plans, including reconstruction of local industries and the use of energy, but many of them are defective. The government has passed a 4 trillion yen($50 billion) supplementary budget for clearing the debris and other urgent tasks. The ideas of special economic zones in the region and deregulation in various sectors are discussed, which are expected to bring private investment and young people into highly-protected areas such as agriculture. But Yasushi Harada, a senior economist at The Tokyo Foundation, a think-tank, points out that the recovery of private assets of fishermen and farmers should be more important than such things. In fact, many of reconstructing plans miss that point although they show some ways to create jobs for disaster-victims, including relocating collectively for job opportunities, creating new local industries and reforming education to change jobs, all of which indicate a breakaway from the primary industry. Mr Harada also says that financial investment is too much, showing that the government and the Ministry of Finance plan to raise tax.

 

The third cause of worry for disaster victims is related to the second: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It aims to bring free-trade and competition to various areas from agriculture, forestry, fisheries to health by deregulation that allows private companies to enter those markets. But many people, including mayors, farmers, fishermen, doctors and experts, oppose TPP. One poll conducted by Japan Agricultural Newspaper shows73% of 638 local mayors were against it while it was only Tokyo where the majority approved TPP; almost all of the mayors in Tohoku opposed it.

 

True, appropriate deregulation is needed. For example, Japanese forestry has been sluggish for a long time. To stop it, the government is so far surprisingly doing well to modernise the market. Japanese rice is highly protected, sending its price higher. A proposal for agricultural policy reform from The Tokyo Foundation says, “the right policy is that farmers receive direct payment from the government to maximise external economy effects after entering into free-trade to increase profits as much as possible”.

 

However, TPP has a negative aspect to national interest. Compared with other developed countries, Japan is dangerously low in the amount of grain production. Based on this, Hideyuki Sekioka, an expert on American-Japanese relations, maintains that Japanese paddy farmers should continue to be protected like those in countries such as Britain and France. Japanese private forests need urgent protection, too. While land is public property in other developed countries, it is not in Japan with private rights over land strongest in the world. Because of the decline in the forest industry in the last few decades, the management of private forest became sloppy. Now Chinese investors are showing their interest in them. Private forests in Tohoku are relatively managed well, but there are still ones whose ownership is unclear there.

 

What’s more, there is a fear that reconstructing is subject to the central and foreign governments. Local people should take a leading role in rebuilding their disaster-hit industries, but that is unlikely to happen. After all, TPP and the U.S.-Japan Regulatory Reform and Competition Policy Initiative are “two sides of the same coin”: they bring most benefits to American multinational companies at the expense of national interest. America pushes Japan to endorse TPP anyway. Ron Kirk, the head of Office of United States Trade Representative, urged the Japanese government to go ahead with TPP the other day. That may explain why regaining private property of local people in disaster-hit area is not included in many reconstructing plans.

 

Dr. Tetsuro Ishii claims in Mainichi Shimbun that TPP will do serious damage not only to local agriculture but also to medical system as a whole in the wake of disaster. With aging and depopulation, local hospitals in Tohoku are short of doctors, which was partly caused by deregulation in medical industry demanded by the past American initiative.

 

In the worst case scenario, TPP will destroy not only local communities but Japan as a whole. People in Tohoku have co-existed with Nature. For example, they traditionally make straw dolls to pray for good health. As Mr Sekioka fears, reform in agriculture threatens to break up agricultural cooperative as well as such traditional values. It will be a mistake to put more emphasis on free-market and competition than on the recognition of connectedness with Nature and co-operation.

 

History suggests that Tohoku should avoid trusting the central government too much. This region was once called Ezo with a bit of racism and caution. When the Meiji reformation was taking place, the region backed the old regime and fought to the end against the new government only to defeat and suffer unfair treatment. After the nuclear accident at Fukushima, there seems to be a growing sense of anger and disillusionment with the government among people in the region. For Tohoku, which has served to provide staples for the country, participation in TPP is like adding fuel to the fire. It should be careful with the central governement that has deceived many times in the past.

 

The best cure for illness of disaster-victims is to solve social and economic issues based on the sense of solidarity and mission that a growing number of local people have. These spirits will keep illness at bay. Mrs Oba thinks, “to bring out the individual healing power is important”. Miyagi is due to finalise its reconstructing plan by September, but the governor of the cash-stripped prefecture, Yoshihiro Murai, is likely to proceed with free-market reform in the face of opposition from local fishermen. “There’s always pain when there’s revolution”, he told to The Economist. A determined reformist he may be, but the governor is like a doctor who forgets that medicine is a benevolent art.

Sumo In The Wake Of Disaster: Marginalised

This post examines the absence of Japan’s national sport from the mainstream media

 

These days it is not hard to see that sumo is losing its status as Japan’s national sport. The deadly earthquake and tsunami happened on March 11th, and some other sports held charity matches in an effort to raise money and encourage victims of the disaster. Compared with them, sumo looks quiet. Japanese mass media appears to push it away.

 

In the aftermath of the disaster, some sports stars have shown great performances. There was a football charity match last month, which Kazuyoshi Miura, the king of football in Japan, played and scored a dramatic goal. Some golfers such as Ryo Ishikawa and Ai Miyasato took an immediate action. Although they had trouble deciding when to start a new season, Japanese baseball teams turned out to be successful in providing fans with exciting opening matches; with a great encouragement of people in Tohoku region, Tohoku Rakuten‘s Hisashi Iwakuma, a pitcher, was brave and calm enough to win the game.

 

But sumo is quiet so that rikishi, sumo wrestlers, look as if they voluntarily refrain from playing the game. The big difference between sumo and the other sports is the way the media covers the game. Sumo does not get as much coverage as other sports do. It is not only because there is not a tournament until May. Nowadays people have more bad stories on sumo than good ones; the wrestlers tend to be portrayed negatively.

 

The reason for the diminishing presence of sumo is a series of scandals. And the underlying cause of scandals is money: bad wrestlers have no sense of money. Salaries are different depending on the place in the ranking list. The gap between the top and the bottom is great; that makes illegal gambling and match-fixing attractive to some of wrestlers at the bottom and stable masters. Indeed, many of those who were involved with the illegal betting are young. At the same time, some top officials are keen to protect their vested interests. Nor does the relationship with yakuza, Japanese gangs, go away.

 

To remove “pus” from sumo, reform is under way. If modernised, sumo wrestlers may improve their money habits. After all, modernisation is about introducing free market: modern sports such as football and baseball make billions of money. That may allow sumo to become more commercialised. Thus, wrestlers have to learn more and more about money.

 

Mainstream media, including foreign correspondents, seem to be backing the change. That is part of reason why NHK, the national broadcaster, cancelled to air both a test meet in May and the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament.

That is a wrong decision. There are two reasons why. First, NHK should treat sumo fairly like other sports. Not all sumo wrestlers are bad; some of them are raising money and offered foods for charity. One stable managed to raise over three hundred million yen. Those are good reasons for the televised media coverage they deserve.

 

Second, the main reason for the cancellation may have less to do with sumo than with money. Because it does not pay the Japan Sumo Association the broadcasting fees, NHK can save money. That is helpful for the broadcaster as it pays billions of yen to The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) from its license fee, which makes the broadcaster nervous about its finance.

 

But, with taxes and advertisement fees in decline, MIC and commercial television are also financially struggling, let alone the cost of starting digital terrestrial broadcasting. For that reason, they are targeting NHK’s license fee. As a result, NHK cuts spending. That may be why it decided to stop broadcasting the sumo game.

 

Two executives of mainstream media are to blame as well. Katsuji Ebisawa, a former NHK’s controversial president, was appointed as the chairman of The Yokozuna Promotion Committee in 2007. His appointment was arranged by Tsuneo Watanabe, the president and chief editor of Yomiuri Shimbun, who had taken up the post before and is exercising his powerful influence on MIC to cause trouble to NHK. Over the past years the position turned into an honorary post for them: two of them were criticised for being superficial. Thus it is doubtful if they worked hard to improve sumo. Did they order private broadcasting companies to bash sumo? A sumo expert thinks that sumo has been made a scapegoat for Japan’s sluggish economy and dysfunctional politics to avert people’s eyes from them.

 

It is a pity that those who are working hard and deserve credit for helping the victims end up being deprived of playing the tournament. Sumo reportedly lost over 1.6 billion yen (over $19 million) by cancelling the Spring Grand Tournament, let alone its income from television, which was as much as 450 million yen ($5.5 million). Nor did wrestlers get pay.

 

Critics of sumo’s modernisation say that sumo should stick to tradition. True, it has been a sport and a show business for hundreds of years. But the aspect of Shinto ritual is fundamental to sumo. While modern sports emphasise competition, it does not quite fit sumo. Nor is it quite a fair game. Think of physical sizes of sumo wrestlers, which range from small to extremely large. Nothing is more important than the sumo etiquette: politeness and respect for each other. It is based on spiritual seeking or bushido, the code of honour and morals of samurai.

 

After all, sumo needs meaning. It should redefine its role and purpose in the contemporary society. If each of wrestlers has a meaningful aim and shares it with others, they can resist temptations of the outer world and can change their minds. Under the new governance, sumo should include that. And the media should stop bashing wrestlers.

 

Education is also the key to regaining its reputation. Physical punishment should be separated from hard workout. The former is violence, and the latter physical and mental training. Critics are pushing sumo stables to reform the way they train young wrestlers. But they should find out why the system has been sustained until today. To make young wrestlers realise their social role is needed by using the carrot and stick well. Strike while the iron is hot, before it is too late.

The Rebirth of the King of Pop

A legendary Japanese pop singer will stay at the top not as the king but as a servant of the God of music

The King went into hospital in 2010. He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer last July. After he left hospital, he looks to have changed internally.

The King is Keisuke Kuwata. He is one of the most popular Japanese pop singers in the country. With songs associated with summer, the sea, romance, he has been loved by many Japanese people for decades. Although they have been taking an indefinite break since 2008, his successful band, Southern All Stars, are seen as Japan’s national music group. Their hit songs include Itoshino-Ellie (Ellie My Love), Manatsuno-Kajitu (A Fruit of Midsummer) and Tsunami.

Despite his remarkable success, he was thinking that he was missing something important for the last few years. So he decided to get back to the way he used to enjoy playing music.

In doing so, he wants to rediscover the joy of music. “The reason why I played music in the past was simple: I like the Beatles or Leon Russel”, he told to AERA, a weekly magazine of Asahi Shimbun[*]. While his band continued to create lots of hit songs, he became a craftsman creating such songs too much to keep the joy of music in his mind: as a result, he found himself being “too good at gaining people’s favour”.

Such soul-searching is not unique. Bob Dylan, a legendary American folk singer and an icon, seems to keep ecstasy of music all the time. But he is doing so in a slightly different way from Mr Kuwata does: as Tim de Lisle, a journalist, points out in Intelligent Life Magazine[†], “he has spent a lifetime defying expectations….Inside the old man, a sullen teenager is still trying to get out”. In other words, both musicians are forever young.

With youthful and energetic spirits, they show keen interest in society. The Japanese singer returned to work after cancer treatment with new songs. One of which, Imagine All the People, is critical about the way the government runs the country and pension system. Not to mention, Dylan’s songs such as Blowin’ in the Wind, were protest songs, and he was involved in the US civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s. But while Mr Kuwata begins to emphasise our time rather than love songs these days, Mr Dylan stopped singing his influential songs in the late 1960s because he was fed up with the image people had of him. Worse, Mr Dylan took drugs.

It is clear that being in hospital was a turning point for Mr Kuwata. Cancer fears haunted him; this sadness and loneliness are expressed in his song called Mr Moonlight, which has a soulful melody and lyrics. Mr Dylan, too, survived a serious motorcycle accident in 1966, which provided him with a chance to retire from the music world for a while. But, unlike Mr Dylan, Mr Kuwata found that his desire for music became stronger than ever before: now he thinks that playing music makes him believe that he can overcome the disease.

With the passion for music growing ever stronger, he released his fourth solo album “Musicman” this February. The driving force was “to pursue the joy of music as a singer”, he says to WOWOW, a pay-TV broadcaster[‡]. The title of the album means a mysterious creature of the universe, which suggests that when he spent months in hospital, he may have found his mission or meaningful work. After all, it seems that the disease transformed the King of Pop: he now serves for the God of music. If that is odd, put it this way: a young man just grew up. That still sounds cool.■

memo

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[*] Asahi Shimbun weekly AERA, a big interview with Keisuke Kuwata, February 28^th 2011

[†] Tim de Lisle, Bob Dylan’s Curious Dotage, Intelligent Life Magazine, Spring 2011

[‡] WOWOW monthly programme guide, March 2011

Don’t Give Up, Japan!

People in Japan never give up like flowers bloom in spring

What Makenaide and You’ll Never Walk Alone have in common, and why Japanese people like the former song

On 11th March, an earthquake of magnitude 9.0, the biggest in Japan’s history, struck Tohoku region, north-east of Tokyo. It caused severe damage to the area, killing thousands of people; there are still thousands of people missing; and survivors are left without homes. In such a difficult time, music can often help and encourage people. And many Japanese people would think this is one of the songs they choose to play and sing now: Makenaide.

Most of the Japanese people have heard of this song. It was released in 1993 by ZARD, a J-pop group. It became a million seller. This popular song is to Japanese people what You’ll Never Walk Alone is to British and American people. Indeed, those two songs have something in common.

For one thing, there is an aspect of prayer or comfort. They are often played after a disaster or tragedy happened. A FM radio station in Tokyo played Makenaide after the devastating earthquake. Supporters of Liverpool, an English football club, sing You’ll Never Walk Alone to pay tribute to the people who lost their lives in the Hillsborough disaster. Recently, fans sang it after a European football match between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan, in which a Japanese football player had played, to show their supports for Japan.

Both of the songs have strong links with sport. Japan’s National High School Baseball Championship used Makenaide as its theme song before; in popular 24-hour TV, a charity project presented by a Japanese TV broadcaster every summer, the song is always sung to encourage a runner who runs long distances throughout night and day to finish the goal. You’ll Never Walk Alone is a sporting anthem: supporters of many football clubs around the world, especially in Europe, sing it.

For another, these songs reflect hard times. Japan just entered into “lost decade” in 1993 after the bubble burst. You’ll Never Walk Alone was first created for musical, Carousel, in 1945, just after the Second World War, which left Britain devastated even though they won.

There is a difference between the two songs, however. While Makenaide is no doubt a pop song (J-pop, literally), the most important aspect of You’ll Never Walk Alone is that it is religious. The latter even sounds sacred: after all, it is an anthem, which is derived from antiphon. That explains why it was sung in the Obama inauguration in 2009.

That needs to be thought in the context of Japan in the 1990s. At that time, popular culture was clearly widespread there and other developed countries, which is partly attributed to a decline in religious values. In this cultural context, it is not surprising that Makenaide is not similar to the English song.

But why has it gone down well with Japanese people for more than a decade? It is because its lyrics are straight and easy to sing. The tune is often played in athletic festivals of elementary or junior high schools in the country: it sticks in children’s ears.

More important is the meaning of the song. Makenaide means gannbare (meaning in Japanese work hard or don’t give up). In other words, it gives people a sense of patience and of effort to do something. Listening to it may even unconsciously develop stoicism, which foreign observers applaud these days. With those aspects of the song, it brings Japanese people together. That is why they like it. The same idea can be applied to You’ll Never Walk Alone.

With the catastrophic earthquake, tsunami and a nuclear crisis threatening millions of people there, now is the time for Japan to cooperate. “Don’t give up until the end”, the song says. Indeed, it’s too early to do so.■

Chernobyl Charity Match: Stay In Mind

It was a small event. Still, an important progress was made.

On 27th February, while the 2011 Tokyo marathon was taking place on a massive scale, a small charity kick-boxing match was held in Tokyo. When 36,000 runners were running in the centre of the city, 35 fighters were fighting on a small ring. Although it was small-scale, the charity game produced important results.

Trigger, a group to develop and support amateur young fighters, presented “Smile for Chernobyl by K-1” at Gold Gym South Tokyo Annex. Hiroyuki Iwakuma, the head of Chinese Fighting Promotion, who is involved in the group, and Mari Sasaki, the bureau chief of Chernobyl Children’s Fund (CCF), who has known him since she was at college, planned and organised the game. It was aimed at helping child victims of the Chernobyl disaster.

The game was important for both Trigger and CCF. First, Trigger. It is positioned between local training schools and K-1, a worldwide kick-boxing tournament, focusing on sending young talents to the top game. Today it has been hit by the recession; the number of matches and sponsors are smaller than before, hence less opportunities to develop young fighters decreased, making a generational change difficult.

A dark cloud is hanging over K-1. Mr Iwakuma says that companies paid around 100 thousand yen ($1,214) for advertising a few years ago, but it fell to between 20,000 and 50,000 yen today. Back in 2010, Fighting Entertainment Promotion, the host organisation of K-1, announced a tie-up with Puji Capitals, an investment bank in Shanghai, to expand the game in Asian and European markets. Conversely, they fear that the Japanese market is shrinking and facing a critical moment. Such a situation made Trigger take a new action.

It was the first time for Trigger and K-1 to host a charity game. There are reasons for that. First, K-1 is show business, thus needs TV broadcasting and sponsor companies: its first priority is to make profits out of the game. Unless there is no chance of making money, there is no incentive for them to host the game.  If an electric power company promoting nuclear power becomes one of its sponsors, it is clearly difficult for them to have a Chernobyl charity match.

There is another reason why charity matches were never held in K-1. If it were culture in Japan, such an event would attract many people thus generating reasonable profits. But it isn’t. “Martial arts are not really culture in Japan”, says Mr Iwakuma. Compared with football or baseball, K-1’s history is much shorter and its population is perhaps small. Culture, he says, means that everyone has the same ideas about things they do wherever they are. It is in China that martial arts are so. Chinese people go to see the game of martial arts with their families. In Europe and South America, football is similar to that.

Meanwhile, this event was helpful for CCF, too. People are forgetting the Chernobyl disaster today. The Japanese media has barely reported about the tragedy for a while, either. The fund emphasises that what is needed now is to know it.

Normally, it is those who know the disaster that join events CCF organises. This time is different. “We want people who do not know about Chernobyl or those who are not interested in it to know about it. Thus, we are grateful for this charity game”, says Mrs Sasaki. In fact, much more people came to see the game than the organisers expected: around 200 people gathered.

How interested the participants would be in Chernobyl remains to be seen, however. Fighters and their coaches were concentrated on the game, taking it seriously. Many of them thought “why Chernobyl?” at first when asked to join the game by Mr Iwakuma. Fans seemed to be excited about auction items with autographs of famous K-1 fighters. Not many people seemed to pay attention to Mrs Sasaki’s speech on the ring about Chernobyl. Thus, it is unclear whether they properly understood the purpose of the game. But this worry does not really matter. She achieved her aim to tell them about Chernobyl. The auction was successful, raising a few hundred thousand yen. And, fighters are pure and have a desire to know about the tragedy. “We will see how they will act after the game”, Mr Iwakuma says optimistically.

The charity match will make child victims in Belarus and Ukraine delightful. Martial arts are widespread in the region as a sport policy introduced by the Soviet government encouraged people there to do them in the past. There are some children with cancers who like them, for example, a Belarussian boy who had been doing karate for a long time. He suffered from thyroid cancer. Though he was told to stop doing karate, he was determined to become healthy by continuing it rather than quitting. He is a fully-fledged member of society now. Mrs Sasaki thinks that they will feel very encouraged by the support they receive from Japanese fighters and martial arts fans. It brought them “a hope of life”.

If this charity game has influences on the world, they will differ across countries. In Japan, such a charity game should continue. The country is the only victim of atomic bombs. The recent Tiger Mask movement suggests that Japanese people are increasingly interested in charitable giving. According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2011, many Japanese companies promote corporate social responsibility (CSR). But the country encourages nuclear power, too. Western countries might be interested in the game. Martial arts are popular there. Although CSR is not regarded as important in European companies, many Americans and Britons make charitable donations. There is a view that Europe is not as keen on nuclear power as it used to be. China, by contrast, looks unlikely to be affected. It is seeking resources around the world to keep its economy growing: it promotes nuclear power. Many Chinese companies disdain CSR.

In such a complicated world, martial arts give future societies a glimmer of hope. Mind plays an important role in achieving success or goals. Mr Iwakuma says that a scientific approach to training is quite inadequate. But, if fighters work hard with specific images, they will realise that they can do unconsciously what they could not: thoughts take shape. In fact, this event was what he had been thinking about for a while. The scale of the event was small, but it will stay in their mind somehow or other. Like martial arts, it is no surprising to see that something emerges out of them. Its value is surely great.

Oh Sunshine: Showing Something New

Oh sunshine creates something new in Japan which often did the opposite before

Japanese popular music used to be very local like mobile phones Japanese electronic companies produce. Even though many talented musicians made lots of songs in Japan, most of them are consumed in the country. While Japanese pop songs have little impact overseas, the country has been importing millions of pop songs from around the world, particularly from western countries like America and Britain, for a long time. Musicians in the country have translated import music into something Japanese people liked. That is similar to Japanese mobile phones, which are sometimes referred to as “the Galapagos effect”. But now a new rock band may be changing that.

It is oh sunshine formed by Emily Connor, an American vocalist living in Tokyo, and Mikio Hirama, a Japanese famous guitarist, in 2010. They made its first mini album, oh sunshine, this January. Their lyrics are written in both English and Japanese. Youtube shows their growing popularity in North America, Australian and Japan.

The combination of American and Japanese musicians is rare in Japan’s popular music. It is not surprising that excellent Japanese musicians create something in collaboration with foreign artists. But when it comes to what language they use, they hardly do so in Japanese. Neither do Japanese people see American singers sing songs in Japanese. Nor do they bother many Japanese singers’ pseudo English. Thus, singing in Japanese as well as real English, Emily is quite distinct from other singers. Her Japanese is excellent. And history shows that foreign singers singing in Japanese, for example Mrs Rosanna Zambon, who is a successful Italian singer, go down well with the Japanese.

That is significant for Japanese pop music, or J-POP. When she was a teenager, Emily had already been interested in Japanese popular music. This is notable as American culture has been much more influential than those of other countries for decades. The word “J-POP” was invented in a bid to make Japanese pop music more global in the early 1990s when Japan’s economy introduced deregulation and privatisation. J-POP has become widespread in Asia today. Maybe, it is achieving its aim: to be on a par with western music.

That progress means that there are still differences between J-POP and western popular music. It may be true that the world is shrinking. In bounce, a free paper from a music store, Hirama says, “I think that the cultural difference between Japan and America is eroding”. Takahiro Matsumoto, a successful Japanese guitarist, won the award for Best Pop Instrumental Album of the 2011 Grammy Awards, which proved that Japanese professional guitarists have the high standard. Hirama also plays the guitar brilliantly. But, perhaps, Japanese songs put more emphasis on the lyrics than the rhythm. The words of beautiful are literally beautiful, which Emily sings sadly.

The unit is taking on an exciting challenge of creating a “real” music that crosses cultural, generational and national borders, and a sound that shakes people’s “souls”. Can they achieve it? You never know. All I can tell you is that to increase fans, karaoke is important as it is a good way to promote songs. But rock and English are not easy for ordinary Japanese people to sing and speak.

Motohiro Hata: A Protect Song

Ai by Motohiro Hata on YouTube

His song reflects women’s both changing minds and environment. Its difference from old musicians is that it protects women.

Mr Motohiro Hata, a Japanese singer, is increasingly popular in Japan, particularly among women. His song called Ai (meaning “love” in Japanese) reflects how Japan’s society has changed.

He was an ordinary man when he was younger. In college, he did not study at all. This is not strange in Japan: most of the students in Japanese universities do not work as hard as those in other countries. What he was doing hard instead was playing the guitar. Neither is this that special.

His enthusiasm and commitment, however, made him different from other ordinary students aspiring to be a musician in future. Like professional athletes, those are needed to be successful in every job. Besides, he is gifted with his voice made of “iron and glass”. His efforts are proving successful: sales of his guitar tab books were the highest in Japan in 2009 and 2010, selling around ten thousand last year, according to Doremi Music Publishing Co., Ltd.; he won second prize in the third CD Shop Award in January; and he is nominated in the category of Best Song of 2010 in the 16^th McDonald’s Tokio Hot 100 Award presented by the J-Wave, a popular FM radio broadcaster.

His success may reflect Japanese women’s both changing minds and environment. The low marriage has increased; some women go marriage hunting, suggesting that being housewives gives them a sense of safety; family values are disappearing; and Japan’s economy is stagnated for a long time with unemployment rising. All this suggests that they feel lonely in today’s society. It seems that he provides what they want for them. In fact, Google Trends shows that while social unrest grows, his popularity has been up for the last few years (see chart). One person posted a comment on a website saying that 80% of the audience in his concert was female fans, compared to 20% of men. A female sales assistant at a music shop writes: “His songs make me feel as if he breaks my glass heart into pieces…and strokes my heart gently in a tender voice”.

Popular music has connected with social or political issues. Folk songs in the 1960s were often considered as “protest songs”, singing from the bottom of heart songs against racism or The Vietnam War. In a sense that his songs reflect today’s society, he is not different from old musicians. But the difference between them is that he rather protects his female fans than protests against authorities.

In future, the loneliness will persist or become more widespread. Then, demands for his songs should be high. Besides, with China developing economically, its society may become similar to Japan’s. It is not surprising that he will become popular in China too.

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