Due to unforeseen circumstances, the blog will not be able to return until June.

Until then, cheers!

Wilhelmina

I have to confess I haven’t missed Japanese TV at all. This month, I’ve watched little but news, sports and, of course, the occasional Korean drama. It is nice not to have to watch Japanese TV, nice not to face column deadlines nor the need to condense my thoughts into 800 words (although, on most topics, 800 words is probably much more than anyone wants to read of my thoughts).  So what conclusions have I come to since my return?

1.  I’m not going to sign up for Twitter. The lazier side of my nature was at first attracted to the idea of staying in touch with the world and avoiding regular blog entries by tweeting away in 140-character chirps. It sounded easy and, no doubt, it is for agile young brains. But after spending the better part of the last three days studying up on the Twitter vocabulary and following the public Twitter feeds of a few well-known personalities in hopes of figuring it all out, it does not seem easier than blogging at all. It seems way too easy to be confused by who’s talking to who about what when faced with an onslaught of tweets, retweets, comments and referrals. I could easily imagine my confused attempts to chirp quickly leading me instead into a downward spiral of shrill trilling and shrieking. Life is far too short to try to sort it all out. I have got to conserve the waning brain cells for actual content.  So no tweeting for me.

2.  My main project for the foreseeable future will be to drag forestriverpress.com (kicking and screaming all the way) into the digital world. I hope to make it an e-book publishing venture and will start by writing a little e-book sequel to The Couch Potato’s Guide to Japan–a short, final summing up of 25 years of TV observations and some guesses on the future of the medium that I hope to have ready this autumn. In that respect, the good news this past week was the announcement Amazon will start a Kindle e-book service in Japan before the end of the year. The details on just what this new venture will involve are still scarce. Hopefully, it will also mean a Japanese version of the Kindle Direct Publishing service <https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help>. Now available in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France and Italy, KDP allows self-publishing e-book authors to make their books readily available in the Amazon Kindle store. More details on Kindle’s Japan plans as they surface.

3.  For now, I’ll also begin blogging once a week on Wednesdays. It will be a general blog commenting on everything from TV and the Japanese media to current events and the inherent humor of the expat life, which doesn’t seem to fade even after almost 40 years. Hosting a lively Comments section seems to be one of the keys to having a successful blog  but I confess to having neither the time, energy nor IT expertise to smoothly monitor one.   I am interested in readers’ views and opinions though so if you would like to get in touch, you can reach me via this website’s Contact section.

Well, that’s about it for my short-term plans. Please drop by any Wednesday (Japan Time) if you’d like and feel free to pass the invitation on to anyone else you think might be interested.  Maybe someone could even tweet it for me.

Until next week, Cheers!  Wilhelmina Penn (aka Kathleen Morikawa)

PS: What will I be watching until then? So far, the only thing in the new spring TV lineup that looks tempting is the TBS Friday night drama “Mo Ichido Kimi ni Propozu” (I Will Propose to You Again) starting on April 20 at 10 p.m. <http://www.tbs.co.jp/propose2012/>. The series ponders the question of whether one can fall in love with the same person twice? When his wife, Kanako (Emi Wakui), suffers amnesia and forgets their five years together, car mechanic Miyamoto (Yutaka Takenouchi) sets out to win her love all over again. This pair were among the most popular stars of Japan’s golden age of dramas in the 1990s and that makes this series definitely worth a glance. (And that makes this column exactly 800 words.  Guess one can’t kick 25-year old habits overnight or even in a month).

I’ve written the weekly “Televiews” column for the Daily Yomiuri since March 1987. This week, I decided to bring it to a close. It’s always hard to know when to bow out and when to carry on. Then, sometimes, something unexpected happens to hasten the decision and make the choice obvious. Late on the evening of March 1, I received an e-mail informing me the Friday, March 2 column, which had already passed through the weekly copyediting process two days before without incident, would not appear.

Sure enough, the next morning a wire service story on Lady Gaga sat in my usual spot along with a tiny notice: “Televiews does not appear this week.”  The March 2 column I wrote was all about the TV specials scheduled to commemorate the first anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

The article began by describing a silly Beat Takeshi variety program that had a very touching story tacked on to the end of it–a Japanese man’s brave rescue of three German tourists and two elderly Japanese near Sendai during the tsunami. The column went on to detail a long list of Japanese and bilingual satellite TV March 11-related specials and ended with this paragraph:

“Despite this huge selection, I can’t find anything on the two topics that interest me most. I’d love to see a roundtable of international experts discuss the pros and cons of josen (decontamination) and a documentary chronicling how the disaster has affected and energized Japan’s antinuclear movement.  TV coverage of the latter seems to begin and end with personal profiles of actor-turned-nuclear activist Taro Yamamoto. No, I can’t seem to find my dream specials anywhere in the lineup. Maybe next year? Or perhaps, they’ll be tacked on to the back of a silly variety show too. You just never know.”

Yes, you just never know. The March 1 e-mail explained the column had been pulled one hour before the final deadline and that the primary reason for the decision was: “The management was anxious about the space of the introductions that occupied in the story.” No further explanation of that sentence has been forthcoming.

For twenty years, the Daily Yomiuri never touched a word I wrote (except to correct my grammar;-). That was a very nice time but, now, it was obvious that it was time to call it quits. I was asked to reconsider that decision but my mind was made up. I felt I couldn’t, in good conscience, continue–especially at this time as Japan continues to cope with the aftermath of March 11, 2011.

The job of a columnist, even a lowly TV columnist, is to aim for the truth, give expression to their conscience, be loyal to their readers, develop a “voice” and opinions (as the late, great Andy Rooney said: we’re paid to have an opinion) and,  hopefully, be funny too.  Over the years, I have tried to aspire to those goals. After 25 years, I was not interested in spending my last years at the Daily Yomiuri teetering on the slippery slope to self-censorship. If I can’t write relatively freely on one of the most important media topics of the day, really, what’s the point of continuing?  It’s time to move on.

The farewell column–celebrating Televiews’ 25th anniversary and my departure–appears in the March 9, 2012 edition.  Who knows? Perhaps I’ll be tempted to start blogging on Japanese TV in April when the new spring season starts? For now, I’m just going to take a nice long TV break.    Wilhelmina Penn

On September 10, Akira Ikegami, the nation’s most erudite TV news specialist, hosted a four-hour special that traced the roots of Japan’s involvement in nuclear power back to 1954, just nine years after the bombing of Hiroshima. Ikegami claims the Shigeru Yoshida government was spurred on by the United States’ “peaceful use of atomic energy” argument and a young Diet member named Yasuhiro Nakasone, who later went on to become a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader and the prime minister from 1982-1987. On September 15, 2011, Nakasone, now 93, was interviewed by NHK’s “News Nine” and he still felt nuclear power was necessary for Japan.  It makes one wonder how many prefectures will have to be polluted and how many livelihoods destroyed before the powers-that-be no longer deem nuclear power necessary for Japan?

The six month anniversary of the disaster also feels like the appropriate time to indefinitely suspend this section of the blog. I’m going to stop posting articles related to Japan’s March 11 disasters. I really haven’t had the heart for it lately. It’s getting more difficult to maintain perspective, harder to understand what’s going on and even harder to accept it. It’s time for a rest, new writing projects and an attempt to get back to the rhythms of normal life.  Despite a half year of observing and reading as much as I can in English and Japanese–television, newspapers, weekly magazines, websites, blogs and government statistics–the confusion and the questions only grow. So many questions, so few clear answers.

Q. Are my favorite English-language websites over-exaggerating the problems at Fukushima or is the mainstream Japanese media under-reporting them? Perhaps a little of both but I suspect it’s mostly the latter. The print media are chasing many facets of the story but Japanese TV, despite an excellent special now and then, has been carefully choosing its words, not wanting to cross lines that will offend the people of Fukushima or people in power in Tokyo. In so doing, the truth becomes watered down and the constant din of competing and conflicting messages leaves the head numb after a while, jolted to attention only by the latest aftershock. For all of Japan, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, is still shaking.The occasional strong tremor reminds us that six months later nothing is really over–not the quakes and not Fukushima. The one thing the media has been excessively frank about is that everyone has to be prepared for another major quake at any time, anywhere.

Q. What has happened to Japanese television’s in-depth coverage of the anti-nuclear movement? Few of their demonstrations, their leaders or their arguments make it onto our TV screens. This week, four young people (age 19-22) are conducting a 10-day hunger strike from Sept. 11-21 in the Tokyo heat outside the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).  There has been no national TV coverage of the event but complete details (including videos of the hunger strikers explaining their motives) are available at <http://hungerstrike.jimdo.com/>.  Some of the more interesting Fukushima reporting of late has come from an unlikely source—a Kansai comedy duo called “Oshidori Mako and Ken” from the Yoshimoto Kogyo agency. They’ve been delving into the issues, monitoring TEPCO press conferences and producing an informative Japanese-language blog at <http://www.magazine9.jp/oshidori/110914/index.php>.

Q. The new media catchphrase is “josen” (clean-up and decontamination). (In some communities, residents without masks or protective gear are volunteering to dig up the toxic soil themselves.) The “josen” concept is being pitched to the public as a way to give people their lives back, a hope upon which to cling but is it really possible? If clean-up were really a valid alternative, why is Chernobyl still off limits 25 years later? How can Fukushima be different? Or, like planting sunflowers, will it just prove to be a false hope? These are questions that seldom get asked on TV.

Q. How thoroughly is food being checked and tested and what elements are the authorities testing for? Shopping is no longer fun. Last week, a major Sapporo department store held a Fukushima Food Festival but the cameras showed only a handful of customers milling around in the background as a local TV announcer gushed on cheerfully and nibbled a Fukushima peach. Who could blame the wary shoppers?  Who knows what is really safe anymore?  Suddenly food from the southern hemisphere is high on my list–Chilean salmon, Argentinian shrimp, lamb and green tea from Australia.

Q. Why does the media seldom emphasize that our national chemistry studies are still a work in progress? We are only slowly working our way through the periodic table of elements.  In the first days after the Fukushima disaster, all the media talked about was iodine 131 with a half life of 8 or 9 days. That sounded manageable. It sounded like something with which this nation, raised on “gaman” (perseverence) and “gambari” (strenuous efforts),” could cope. Then, we gradually discovered something called cesium and people began to notice it has a half life of about 30 years. Hmmm…less manageable but still with gaman and gambari, perhaps…  We are only now occasionally being taught about plutonium with a half life of 24,000 years, give or take a hundred.  And if that were not depressing enough, neptunium, americium, strontium and a host of others “ums” are all waiting in the wings for their turn on stage.

Q. And yet despite all this, where does the nation’s stoic calm come from? I’m constantly awed and impressed by how serenely people go about their daily lives and how ordinary people keep the wheels of society moving smoothly. The downside of this admirable virtue is that sometimes the resolve seems infuriatingly misdirected and naive.  In August, for example, was it really wise for Fukushima’s Hanawa-machi, just 70 km from the Daiichi plant, to carry on as usual with its 4th annual Fukushima Doro (Mud) Festival, an event that involved slipping and sliding about playing volleyball in a muddy field? And one’s heart aches for the children of Fukushima. How long will adults make them live and play in heightened radiation areas, wearing dosimeters to school each day? How can anyone condone a “new normal” in which mothers have to chide: now don’t forget your handkerchief, your backpack, your indoor shoes, your mask and your dosimeter.

Q. What’s going on at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant?  Who knows? We do get daily press conferences but little information on the brave people struggling to get the plant under control. The Government of Spain honored the heroes of Fukushima with an award but these courageous workers are getting very little attention at home. Seldom do we hear anything about them on Japanese TV and, in this way, an important part of the story goes untold.

Q. Why did Hokkaido’s lady governor Harumi Takahashi approve the resumption of commercial operation of the third reactor at Hokkaido’s Tomari Nuclear Power Plant on August 17?  An HTB television survey shows the majority of the population are against it. The survey asked simply: do we need nuclear power? Sixty percent answered “no” and only 17 percent “yes.”  Hokkaido’s wide open spaces offer good prospects for solar, wind and even snow power. (A system that stores winter snow for summer air cooling is already in use in some Hokkaido buildings.).  Unlike Tokyo residents, even now, with only one of Tomari’s three reactors on line, Hokkaido has not needed to consider any serious conservation measures.

Takahashi’s decision was symbolic too.  It made Tomari’s No. 3 reactor the first in the nation to resume operation after the 3/11 disaster. The “datsu genpatsu” dream of more quickly moving Japan away from nuclear power seems to have departed with former Prime Minister Kan. Takahashi’s decision was not entirely unexpected. Born in Toyama Prefecture and the granddaughter of a former Toyama Prefecture governor, she was formerly a METI bureaucrat who did not arrive in Hokkaido until 2001. (Gee, even I’ve lived in Hokkaido longer than that.) In 2003, she ran for governor with the backing of the LDP and won. The government of new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda seems likely to allow those nuclear reactors now in operation to live out their lives. For Hokkaido, that means the reactors would shut down in 2029, 2031 and 2049 respectively.  Will our luck hold out that long?

Q. When PM Noda (who now has a blog in English <http://nodasblog.kantei.go.jp/>) tried to give his first major address to the Diet on Sept. 13, he was almost drowned out by opposition hecklers; but can the politicians, especially the LDP, really afford to heckle? Afterall, the LDP ruled, almost uninterrupted, for over 50 years. Noda’s Minshuto Party are just the new guys on the block, so to speak. Neither the LDP nor Minshuto have distinguished themselves these last six months with their power games, verbal attacks and counter attacks. Many politicians seem strangely insulated from the real world and the “new normal” beyond the Diet doors and their behavior appalls voters. With their intransience, heckling and bickering, the legislators have been acting….well…like children. Ironically, it is the children who are acting like adults.

So many questions and the only clear answer, the only possible solution, is to concentrate on the nation’s children.  The only way out of this mess that the 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90-somethings have created has to be concerted, immediate efforts to do what is best to protect the health of the children and to preserve as much of the archipelago for their generation as possible. It will require some tough, perhaps unpopular, decisions on how to best contain the spread of the radiation to other prefectures and strict, enforceable rules to limit contamination of the food chain and other products. Government needs to show real leadership on this and then move over and give the children a chance. The voices of the hunger-striking young people outside METI and the Fukushima children addressing the government in the video below <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-UOwS2ukz8> are far more eloquent and profound than anything we’ve heard coming out of the Diet debates this year.  Japan’s greatest need now is to listen to the children and let them decide their own future. If the politicians have the courage and determination to do that, there may finally be hope on the horizon.

And now, because this is Japan, I leave you with a musical interlude from one of Japan’s many all-girl teen idol groups. This one–Seifuku Kojo Iinkai–has been around (with an ever-changing cast of young members) since the 1990s although they are having trouble getting attention for their latest song.  It’s called Datsu Datsu Genpatsu and it’s rather catchy. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv4gUdn6Lcc>