In the midst of our annual Thanksgiving pigout, we’ve often justified our gluttony on the grounds that the ensuing expansion of our girth really shouldn’t be frowned upon by society. After all, isn’t the disapproval of fatness of a modern phenomenon, egged along by the Fitness Industrial Complex? In Medieval times, we tell ourselves, our [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Japan'
First Contact: The Ainu
November 20th, 2009 · 3 Comments
Every eight to ten months, we run across a story more-or-less identical to this one lamenting the declining visibility of Japan’s Ainu minority. It’s certainly a sad tale, given that forced assimilation was the nation’s official policy throughout much of the twentieth-century. Yet the Ainu have received equally callous treatment from the West, particularly at [...]
Tags:Ainu·First Contact·genetics·Japan
A Life Spent in Limbo
November 13th, 2009 · 2 Comments
Since 1983, the average amount of time a condemned American convict spends on death row has tripled to 153 months. Yet that mammoth stretch of time is nothing compared to that endured by Sadamichi Hirasawa. When he passed away from natural causes in 1987, the alleged mastermind of Japan’s most infamous and lethal bank robbery [...]
Tags:art·death penalty·Japan·Sadamichi Hirasawa·Teigin Case·Unit 731
The Herminator Bids Auf Wiedersehen
October 13th, 2009 · 6 Comments
Our first-ever overseas assignment was covering the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. We thus have incredibly vivid memories of Hermann Maier, the celebrated Austrian skiier who just decided to call it a career. We were at the downhill slopes the day of the crash shown above, and remember instantly thinking “He must be dead” [...]
Those Wage Earners Left Behind
September 4th, 2009 · 1 Comment
As you’re stuffing your face with sweet sausages and Budwesier Chelada this holiday weekend, we hope you’ll pause for a brief moment to remember those who really could have used a Labor Day respite: victims of karōshi, who remain far more numerous than they should be.
Karōshi translates from the Japanese as “death from overwork,” and [...]
Tags:economics·games·Japan·karōshi·law·public health·statistics·suicide
Farewell, Arena Football League
August 4th, 2009 · No Comments
We can’t say we ever watched more than 90 seconds of an Arena Football game, so news of the league’s imminent demise didn’t exactly make us cry hot, salty tears. But 22 years is a long time for an upstart pro-sports league to make it—the likes of the USFL could only dream of achieving such [...]
Master at Work
August 3rd, 2009 · No Comments
So we’re back to working hard on the screenplay, trying to bang out a second draft by (gulp) August 28th. To get in the right frame of mind, then, we’ve started watching a bunch of cinematic classics that have resided too long on our “must see” list. Chief among these was Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, [...]
Tags:Akira Kurosawa·Japan·movies·Now the Hell Will Start·Stray Dog·Tokyo·World War II
Sports Transition Fail
July 27th, 2009 · 2 Comments
In response to our recent post about Japanese tackle football, a commenter asked a salient question:
I’ve always wondered if some of the high-ranking sumo wrestlers could make it in the NFL as blitzing specialists. There’s been a long history of association between football and wrestling in the US, with a lot of highschool wrestling teams [...]
Tags:football·Japan·Masaru Hanada·sports·sumo
Divorce in Ye Olden Tymes
July 27th, 2009 · 3 Comments
Following up on last week’s divorce theme, we thought we’d take a look back at pre-modern marital splits. While divorce may not have been common in the West until the advent of women’s lib, it was apparently a staple of several Asian and Middle Eastern societies for centuries:
The outpouring of scholarly and popular works dealing [...]
Tags:divorce·Indonesia·Japan·Malaysia·marriage·Medieval history·Ottoman Empire
“Speed Like the Wind”
July 24th, 2009 · 7 Comments
After receiving word that a team of Notre Dame pigskin alums will soon take on Japan’s national football team, we got to wondering about the uniquely American sport’s history in the Land of the Rising Sun. Our natural assumption was that it was brought over during the post-World War II occupation. But it was, in [...]
“Kobe 55.7 Percent”
July 6th, 2009 · 3 Comments
We touched down on Spaceship Earth after the Vietnam War’s conclusion, so we can’t say that the late Robert McNamara ever loomed particularly large in our imagination. But we do recall being gobsmacked by The Fog of War, perhaps the most thought-provoking documentary we’ve encountered. As a small memorial to McNamara, the most memorable [...]
Tags:Japan·movies·Robert McNamara·The Fog of War·World War II
Stepping Into a More Brutal Ring
July 2nd, 2009 · 2 Comments
We were saddened to learn of the death of Alexis “The Explosive Thin Man” Arguello, one of our all-time favorite boxers. And we were surprised to discover that just a year before his passing, Arguello had been elected the mayor of Managua. (Okay, we admit it—we don’t keep up on Nicaraguan municipal politics like we [...]
Tags:Alexis Arguello·Bill Bradley·football·George Weah·Great Sasuke·Japan·Kevin Johnson·Peter Boulware·politics·sports
The Mob Psychology of Desperate Men
July 2nd, 2009 · 2 Comments
It took us well over a week, but we finally got around to finishing Harp of Burma last night, while sitting on the 2 train back from Brooklyn. Yes, a week-plus is an awful long time to tackle a so-called children’s book, one which clocks in at a measly 132 pages. But such is life [...]
Tags:anthropology·Burma·cannibalism·Harp of Burma·Japan·psychology·World War II
“Step Into My Dojo…”
June 25th, 2009 · 2 Comments
This morning’s sumo-related post stirred up memories of another Hawaiian-born legend of the sport: Konishiki, aka “The Dump Truck.” Though he never attained the exalted rank of yokozuna—perhaps due to anti-foreigner prejudice among sumo’s elite—Konishiki never let the disappointment get in the way of his artistic ambitions. As evidenced by the above video, the truly [...]
Scouting for Hawaiian Titans
June 25th, 2009 · 5 Comments
The sumo world is saddened by the passing of Larry Loyes Kukahiko Aweau, the man most responsible for the sport’s “Hawaiian invasion.” A judo black belt whose cousin was among the first Americans to wrestle in Japan, Aweau spent decades combing the 50th state in search of sumo talent. His greatest scouting find was an [...]
Tapping Into Japan
June 23rd, 2009 · 6 Comments
Last night we started reading Harp of Burma, a book often touted as Japan’s post-World War II version of All Quiet on the Western Front. It provides a soldier’s eye view of Lieut. Gen. Renya Mutaguchi’s ill-fated campaign in Burma, which ended up turning into one giant suicide mission as the war turned against the [...]
Tags:chemical weapons·Haruki Murakami·Iran·Japan·Tokyo subway attacks·writing
Against All Cetaceans
June 18th, 2009 · 5 Comments
We’ve always been puzzled by the fact that the two main holdouts against international whaling laws are Japan and Norway—nations from opposite ends of the globe, with no apparent shared culture or history. How did these two countries form such a strong alliance in favor of the continued slaughter of aquatic mammals?
The stock explanation is [...]
“Survivor Dosimetry”
June 4th, 2009 · 2 Comments
We could easily spend the rest of the year—and probably a fair chunk of 2010—blogging exclusively about Cold War nuclear testing. But since doing so would certainly lead to a mass exodus of readers, we’ll spare you the endless geek out. For now, content yourself with this short-yet-fascinating report (PDF) on the Nevada Test Site’s [...]
Tags:Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission·atomic testing·Hiroshima·Japan·Nevada·World War II
A Yardstick for the Fuzz
May 29th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Several years ago, we read a revealing interview with Wilbert Rideau, former editor of the newspaper at Angola State Prison. He was asked whether harsher sentences, including the death penalty, would deter criminals. Rideau bluntly answered “no”—criminals never think they’re going to get caught. That’s in part because (as noted in the chart above) the [...]
Tags:crime·Germany·Guatemala·Japan·Louisiana·prisons·statistics·Wilbert Rideau
Chasing the Dragon
May 15th, 2009 · No Comments
Today’s installment of NtHWS Extras is gonna have a past-is-prologue feel, as we look back at Japan’s alleged narcotics profiteering during World War II. We’re accustomed to hearing plenty about the Taliban’s reliance on narco-dollars, but Japan’s wartime opium production is now largely forgotten. At the time, however, American politicians were fond of harping on [...]
Tags:Afghanistan·drugs·heroin·Japan·North Korea·Now the Hell Will Start·NtHWS Extras Month·opium·Taliban
Comfort Girls at the Ledo Stockade
May 8th, 2009 · 4 Comments
An appreciable slice of Now the Hell Will Start takes place in the Ledo Stockade, an United States Army prison in North-East India. The place was known for the casual brutality of its guards, several of whom had worked as chain-gang supervisors back in Uncle Sugar. The stockade’s abysmal conditions play a key role in [...]
Tags:Japan·Ledo Stockade·Now the Hell Will Start·NtHWS Extras Month·prostitution·South Korea
“The Palm Beach of Manchuria”
April 29th, 2009 · 4 Comments
The best novel we’ve read so far this year is Ian Buruma’s The China Lover, a criminally underrated fusion of first-rate historical reportage and thoughtful meditation on the nature of art. The book’s backbone is the true-life tale of a Japanese actress-turned-politician, whose career is recounted through the eyes of three lonely, movie-obsessed observers. The [...]
Tags:Ian Buruma·Japan·Manchukuo·propaganda·The China Lover·Tokyo Rose·World War II
Microkhan’s Kind of Research
April 3rd, 2009 · 4 Comments
The Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists rarely fails to be a highly entertaining read, and the latest issue is no exception. Most of the articles are far too technical for the layman to grok; Microkhan’s eyes certainly glaze over at the mere mention of “alpha-acids isomerization yield”. But the issue’s lead piece, [...]
