"Japan faces 'extinction' in 1,000 years, researchers say"

Image borrowed from "Japan's Children Population Clock."

Story from Japan Today, 5/12/12:

Japanese researchers on Friday unveiled a population clock that showed the nation’s people could theoretically become extinct in 1,000 years because of declining birth rates.

Academics in Sendai said that Japan’s population of children aged up to 14, which now stands at 16.6 million, is shrinking at the rate of one every 100 seconds.

Their extrapolations pointed to a Japan with no children left within a millennium.

“If the rate of decline continues, we will be able to celebrate the Children’s Day public holiday on May 5, 3011 as there will be one child,” said Hiroshi Yoshida, an economics professor at Tohoku University.

“But 100 seconds later there will be no children left,” he said. “The overall trend is towards extinction, which started in 1975 when Japan’s fertility rate fell below two.”

Yoshida said he created the population clock to encourage “urgent” discussion of the issue.

Another study released earlier this year showed Japan’s population is expected to shrink to a third of its current 127.7 million over the next century.

Government projections show the birth rate will hit just 1.35 children per woman within 50 years, well below the replacement rate.

Meanwhile, life expectancy—already one of the highest in the world—is expected to rise from 86.39 years in 2010 to 90.93 years in 2060 for women and from 79.64 years to 84.19 years for men.

More than 20 percent of Japan’s people are aged 65 or over, one of the highest proportions of elderly in the world.

Japan has very little immigration and any suggestion of opening the borders to young workers who could help plug the population gap provokes strong reactions among the public.

The greying population is a headache for policymakers who are faced with trying to ensure an ever-dwindling pool of workers can pay for a growing number of pensioners.

But for some Japanese companies the inverting of the traditional aging pyramid provides commercial opportunities.

Unicharm said Friday that sales of its adult diapers had “slightly surpassed” those for babies in the financial year to March, for the first time since the company moved into the seniors market.

Unicharm started selling diapers for babies in 1981 and those for adults in 1987, said spokesman Kazuya Kondo, who declined to give specific figures on the sales. 

Link: http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/japan-faces-extinction-in-1000-years

Link to Japan's Children Population Clock: http://mega.econ.tohoku.ac.jp/Children/

The first set of boxes shows the decrease in the number of young children (ages 0-14) between last year and this year, a decrease of 280,000 children.

The second set of boxes shows the actual number of children as it decreases every second.

The last set of boxes is the countdown calendar, the amount of time left before there is only one child left in Japan.

I have been using an article from The Daily Yomiuri (Dec. 6, 2004) entitled "Japan heading for extinction / Data in white paper on birthrate make depressing reading" as the introduction to my Contemporary Japanese Society and Culture class for some time, advising my students that they got to Japan just in time. Many paranoid articles about the declining birthrate/aging society soon followed and fit nicely with my course intro. Add some natural disasters, hikikomori, suicides, increasing HIV/AIDS rates, the dangers of nuclear power and other social problems and you have a convincing argument. Now I am happy to have this contemporary source to add as well (sorry to give away my secrets to any possible future students...).

Of course, a lot can happen in a thousand years...

Oh no! Osaka garbage collectors with tattoos!

Here's an update on the tattoo situation in Hashimoto's Osaka. Story from The Daily Yomiuri Online, 5/14/12:

50 Osaka City Bureau Officials Sport Tattoos Despite Ethics Code

About 50 employees in the Osaka city government's Environment Bureau said in a survey they have tattoos, despite an ethics code that frowns on such body decorations, according to sources.

The city bureau enacted an internal ethics code in May 2010 stipulating its officials should not have tattoos or similar body decorations.

Last year, however, some Osaka residents reported to the city government that they had seen garbage collectors with tattoos.

In March, the city government conducted the survey on all of about 3,200 officials in the Environment Bureau.

In the survey, the employees were asked if they had tattoos, and, if so, which part of their body was tattooed.

The city bureau said it had instructed all tattooed officials to remove their tattoos if possible.

Separately, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto has instructed that a survey be carried out on all 30,000 city government officials, including the Environment Bureau's employees but excluding about 800 city-run schools' teachers and workers, to check which officials have tattoos.

It is expected the number of city government officials sporting tattoos may increase further.

Link:  http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120513001933.htm

Giving Maneki Neko a Run for Its Money...

Image borrowed from Maneki Neko Luck Cat.

The cat in the story and video below is apparently doing Russian Sign Language. It might look a bit familiar to cat people in Japan... Anyway, seems like a good way to start out the last week of classes here. Story from MSN.com:

Watch a genius kitty ask for food in sign language 

Here's something great: A cat telling its owner in sign language that it would like to eat. This video is from February, but it's still picking up fans just because of its delightful protagonist. 


Link: http://now.msn.com/living/0513-genius-cat.aspx

"Osaka city gov't surveys employees over tattoos"

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"'Cove' town in Wakayama plans to open dolphin park"

What do you do when your fishing practices are wildly unpopular? Open an amusement park... More on The Cove, from Japan Today, 5/2/12:

The dolphin-hunting Japanese town of Taiji, made infamous by the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove,” plans to open a marine mammal park where visitors can swim with the creatures, a media report said.

The town intends to section off part of the cove and turn it into a place where people can swim and kayak alongside small whales and dolphins, Jiji Press news agency reported, calling it “a marine safari park.”

The cove is the scene of an annual slaughter when the fishermen of Taiji corral dolphins, select a few dozen for sale to aquariums and marine parks, and stab the rest to death for meat, turning the sea red.
The 2009 film “The Cove” brought Taiji to worldwide attention, winning an Oscar the following year, after showing the bloody slaughter. Activists continue to visit the town to protest the hunt.

Taiji, in western Wakayama Prefecture, aims to officially launch the project within five years after negotiating with the prefectural government, which manages the bay, and with pearl farmers operating there, Jiji reported.

The plan, compiled by a panel of residents, calls for the creation of “a whale park” stretching roughly 28 hectares by putting up a net at the entrance to Moriura Bay in northwestern Taiji, it said.

Black whales and bottlenose dolphins caught in waters near the town would be released into the pool, which would be developed as a nature park that also includes beaches and mudflats, it said.

“We want to send out the message that the town is living together with whales,” Taiji Mayor Kazutaka Sangen, was quoted as saying.

The local government will also study whether it is possible to raise large whales there, the agency said, adding it intends to use the park for therapy and ecological research.

The town caught 928 dolphins in 2011, according to Wakayama Prefecture.

A town official, who declined to be named, told AFP by telephone that the town “is no way going to stop” its annual dolphin hunt, adding local residents see no contradiction in both watching and eating dolphins. 

Link: http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/cove-town-in-wakayama-plans-to-open-dolphin-park

IBASYO: Self-Injury Among Japanese Women

Several years ago it seemed as though wrist cutting was featured in the Japanese media quite a lot. I even had a (male) friend who was doing it. Today my colleague (thanks, EK!) sent me a link to a recent article and YouTube video about the photo project on wrist cutting by Kosuke Okahara.

In Japan, Suffer the Children

“She just took the razor and then she started cutting in front of me.”

That was how the photographer Kosuke Okahara began a six-year connection with several young Japanese women who regularly harmed themselves through cutting, making thin, repetitive slashes on their wrists, forearms and thighs. 

The theme of his photographs, assembled in a compelling new video presentation by the Asia Society, is called Ibasyo, which Mr. Okahara says means inner peace or “a place where one can feel.” His poignant pictures are all the more remarkable for their rare penetration of Japan’s famously closed-off society and what he calls “our culture of shame.”

Link to the complete story: http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/in-japan-suffer-the-children/?src=recg

I am not so sure if hikikomori should have been so easily associated with wrist cutting in the article. Or the idea that males do the former and females do the latter. But we are more interested in the work of Okahara. In the video Okahara brings up several interesting points about ethics and the place of the photographer in such a project - these kinds of considerations should be familiar to visual anthropologists.

Extras:

Link to Okahara's webpage: http://www.kosukeokahara.com/index.htm

Wrist cutting certainly isn't unique to Japan. But here are a couple of links about the research of the problem in Japan:

Study probes teens' wrist-cutting: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2006/02/06/Study-probes-teens-wrist-cutting/UPI-70131139221527/

Patterns of self-cutting: a preliminary study on differences in clinical implications between wrist- and arm-cutting using a Japanese juvenile detention center sample: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15298650

Finally, here's a link to a bizarre YouTube clip from the movie, Tokyo Gore Police. This is not a real commercial or product, although several blogs present it as such (more weird Japan...). Whatever it is, it is very disturbing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZt2_kqoqqI 

お花見: Cherry Blossom Viewing 2012 Part 3 - The 'Hood

I am blessed to have beautiful and bountiful sakura in my own neighborhood and so I am happy to share these photos with you with the rationale that one can't get enough hanami.

 

AJJ Presentation: The Face(s) of the Japanese Deaf 2012 - and - some comments on the McCartney/Portman/Depp sign language collaboration...

The Anthropology of Japan in Japan (AJJ) group is holding their spring workshop this weekend at Osaka Gakuin University. The meeting schedule can be viewed at their blog:

 Link: http://www.ajj-online.net/www.ajj-online.net/Blog/Entries/2012/4/9_Program_%28tentative_as_of_April_6%29.html

Of special interest might be this paper:

Bicultural and Bilingual in Japan: The Face(s) of the Japanese Deaf 2012

Abstract: There is much variation within the so-called deaf community in terms of identity and language use because of diverse educational, family, work, social and regional backgrounds. Japanese Deaf researchers explain this situation as a process of pluralization created by multiple groups and individuals rather than falling under the hegemony of major organizations or heuristic models. This paper has two goals: providing 1) a general overview of contemporary deaf people in Japan including their own ideas of biculturalism (Deaf and Japanese) and bilingualism (Japanese Sign Language and a signed version of Japanese), and 2) a visual anthropology of sign language use through photographic portraits of individuals focusing on facial expression. The data for this paper comes from long-term ethnographic fieldwork with a local Deaf organization in Osaka, Japan - in particular, its classes, clinics, workshops, projects and lectures conducted in Japanese Sign Language (with no interpretation) to share perspectives and explore the place(s) of deaf people in Japanese society. 

By coincidence as I was putting this presentation together, the new video for the Paul McCartney song "My Valentine" came out along with comments and criticism of the sign language use by his featured collaborators, Natalie Portman  and Johnny Depp.

Link to "My Valentine" video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4dzzv81X9w

Here is an example of the criticism from MSN.com:

Depp, Portman screw up sign language in McCartney vid

Johnny Depp and Natalie Portman probably jumped at the opportunity to appear in the video for Paul McCartney's song "My Valentine," but they probably wish they hadn't used sign language for some of the lyrics: Some deaf fans are claiming Depp and Portman's signing is rife with gaffes. When Depp attempts to sign the word "valentine," several YouTube commenters note that in British sign language, he's actually saying "enemy." Not really the sentiment Macca was going for. Portman fares just as badly, if not worse. Her naughty-looking sign at the 56-second mark for the word "appear" is actually the word for "tampon." What's the sign for "whoops"?

Link: http://now.msn.com/entertainment/0418-depp-portman-sign-language-mistakes.aspx

You can find a lot of commentary to support or critique the sign language in the video but my thoughts as related to my upcoming AJJ presentation are as follows. Despite some flaws in the signing (and the comment that a certain sign in American Sign Language has a different meaning in British Sign Language should not be a criticism. Rather it illustrates that ASL and BSL are two different languages. The extended middle finger that has an obscene meaning as a gesture in America means "brother" in Japanese Sign Language and "mountain" in Korean Sign Language. Spoken languages are rife with examples of similar sounding words with very different meanings...) I see the main problem in the video to be a lack of facial expression. Portman is beautiful but her facial expression rarely changes - and it should to express the meaning of the song lyrics she is signing. Depp certainly looks cool but his facial expression remains constant as well. The song is about love and romance but these emotions/feelings are missing from the sign language. It is akin to someone singing the song in monotone. There seems to be a focus on hands (and rings with Depp) at times with no view of the face. Sign languages use the entire body and so the focus on just the hands is only presenting a part of the communication process. And there are scenes where there is singing but no signing. This is akin to there being gaps in the lyrics. Who is this video really for? Is it a video for deaf people to enjoy or another case where sign language is being (incorrectly) used for artistic effect?

Am I being too critical as an academic? Perhaps I should enjoy the video and be happy that there is sign language? Maybe this will encourage others to study sign language? I imagine my Japanese deaf friends might applaud the video on the surface but critique the flaws among themselves (however I cannot speak for Japanese deaf people...). Many of my foreign friends make fun of the mistakes Japanese artists make in their songs with their English usage. The difference here is the lack of politics - English is not a not a minority language used by a group of people historically discriminated against. American Sign Language is (and so is JSL). Greater understanding of the nature of sign language along with its role in identity is needed.

Anyway, if you are in Osaka over the weekend, please check out the AJJ Spring Workshop. Yoroshiku!

Visual@45: すごい焼肉だ！

Who needs cake?

Trans-Asia Photography Review: “Women’s Camera Work: Asia”

Announcement:

The spring 2012 issue of the Trans-Asia Photography Review, entitled “Women’s Camera Work: Asia,” has just been released. This issue includes over 200 photographs, representing past and present women photographers working in Thailand, Japan, India, China and Korea, along with scholarly writings, which expand our knowledge of the field.

Link: http://tapreview.org/