General Japanese Culture Thread

So y'all are saying that what we need is The Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short, but with vampires. Combine the whole Vampires Are Rich thing with how they get that compound interest machine going and how they get to bite a bunch of sexy women with cocaine in their blood...

Wall Street by Night. Let's get on this.

I'm pretty sure all of you here have heard of it already, but there actually is a practice of transfusing blood specifically from a young person into an older one with the intention of creating a health benefit, literally called "young blood transfusion."

Thank God it's mostly ruled as a pseudoscience. I can't imagine how much even more and literally bloodsucking billionaires might get if it was a real, effective thing.

Think the gig economy, but inside of ridesharing, it's bloodsharing.

We have. It's why Peter Thiel came up, because he's a big fan of it.

Besides, this is TV Tropes. Of course we'd know if there were actual billionaire Vampire Vannabes buying the blood of the poor for immortality.

This doesn't feel relevant to Japanese culture anymore, folks, let's wrap it up.

I have never really understood Japanese idol culture, but I found a recent video breaking down a recent 'scandal' over weatherwoman (also internet meme IIRC) Hiyama Saya. I thought it was just pop stars, but apparently weather presenters can become Serious Business.

Bumped into news that ex-table tennis player Ai Fukuhara took her son back to Japan after she divorced Taiwanese tennis player Chiang Hung-chieh back in March 2021. They agreed to share joint custody. They got married after Rio and they had a reality show in Taiwan.

Chiang appeared in a Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ) conference, explaining his case. It's mentioned that he got a court ruling, requiring Fukuhara to surrender their son back.

However, Fukuhara refused and her lawyer/s said that the case must be handled in the child's best interest.

That's a big hotbutton issue in international relations, yeah. As far as I'm aware, cases like that have basically zero recourse for a non-Japanese father.

The same goes for a non-Japanese mother. Although Japanese parents also gets shafted too.

Random musing about WWII Imperial Japanese forces.

Have been reading Shattered Sword, The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Anthony P. Tully and Jonathan Parshall for past few days, in preparation for my WWII alternate history webnovel.

In chapter 5 of the book, it briefly touches upon toxic and hyper-nationalistic/patriarchal warrior culture of Japan during its time and how its influence was shown by Imperial Japanese Navy. That, of course, includes the officers involved in the Battle of Midway and their decisions.

Oh, the chapter also mentions how the Japanese Navy officers considered themselves much more civilized than IJA officers, because of course they would.

It all comes back to the Satchō rivalry in the end.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/australia-escalates-diplomatic-campaign-against-japanese-child-abductions-20230803-p5dtm7.html

In the wake of the Fukuhara case, the Australian Foreign Minister met with a Japanese Diet lawmaker from the Japan Innovation Party who's a critic of the current laws that are used for loopholes in "child abductions".

@dRoy: Do you have links I could read regarding the military culture of Imperial Japan. I would like to get an impression of what it was like.

I don't have links, but in addition to the book title mentioned in my previous post The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945, by John Toland is also a great one.

It's actually one of my primary sources for my webnovel in regards to writing Japanese parts, along with the likes of Tojo Hideki and the Second World War, by Hosaka Masayas (or however it's pronounced in English).

Edited by dRoy on Aug 12th 2023 at 7:51:02 PM

Thanks!

Recently I finally finished Shattered Sword (full title and the authors mentioned in my previous posts) after much struggle. The book spares no punches in condemning Imperial Japan's mindless warrior culture that resulted in a lot of mistakes during the Battle of Midway.

One of the most prominent cases was Rear Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon, after losing three carriers out of four (they weren't sunk just yet but most certainly inoperable) choosing to engage with the enemies and ultimately losing the final carrier (and his life, by his own choice), instead of preserving it.

Sure, Hiryu did manage to take out American carrier Yorktown, with the coup de grace by submarine I-168, but had the Japanese kept Hiryu for latter campaigns it would have been incomparably more valuable. Of course, it obviously still wouldn't resulted in Japan winning the Pacific War, but anyway.

The author even almost said "Honor Before Reason" by verbatim while describing the thought process and Japanese warrior culture that caused the said decision.

Bushido is kind of fucked up like that.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230829/p2g/00m/0na/042000c

Two cents that a LDP proposal to potentially allow joint custody will be derailed in a way by local feminists who fear the wife's life in a divorce will be in danger.

Tragic news for Japanese fiction fans: As a result of Tokyo Laboratory and Toho announcing the dissolution of the former's film processing business in November of this year, Tokyo Laboratory will be getting rid of original film plates starting in December.

What is Tokyo Laboratory? They're a theatrical film developing and print production company that also process visual effects and other special effects, conversion from one film or video format to another, subtitling and other titling (such as opening and closing credits), telecine conversion, video editing, VHS duplication, and DVD production. They're owned by Toho and that this move is the result of both

Why am I bringing this up here? Because if nothing is done by anyone (a good chunk of those who worked with Tokyo Laboratory are defunct), this will be a severe loss of art that was produced over the decades? Doesn't Japan have something to rescue such art from being lost?

Edited by HallowHawk on Sep 8th 2023 at 3:48:47 AM

To my limited knowledge Japan's IP laws don't have any protections for this sort of thing.

I have to say, this coming less than a weak after a Japanese You Tuber was imprisoned for streaming a Steins:Gate spinoff.

to be fair they got him on streaming videogames, there is no fair use under JP IP laws.

Adding to all of this 27% of voice actors plan to quit over our goverments tax fuckups :D

Couple weeks ago, I finally finished the Battle of Midway arc in my webnovel. And boy howdy, almost never before a book have been so helpful in my writing as Shattered Sword, The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway when it comes to a single arc!

One of the last chapters of the book discussed the fate of the First Carrier Striking Force / First Air Fleet's survivors. Basically the sailors and low ranked officers got shoved into a special, quarantined medical facilities - by Emperor's order, no less.

There they were on total surveillance, cut off from even interacting with other fellow soldiers and their family. Only ones who could treat them were medical personnel who signed NDA. Not too surprisingly, it resulted in shortage of personnel and some of them treated the survivors awfully for being a bunch of losers.

After THAT ordeal, the survivors were then sent off remote posts of Asia without even getting to meet their families where most of them perished. Oh, and unsurprisingly, the higher ranked officers like Yamamoto Isoroku and Nagumo Chuiichi...got scot free.

Apparently one of the "special patients" - which was an actual designation - secretly got a hold of morning newspaper through a nurse and lamented, "If we have to resort to this kind of bullshit, no way we're gonna win this goddamn war'' (paraphrased).

Jesus. While I already knew that IJN never came clean with the defeat in Midway, I didn't know they went THAT far to suppress the truth. That was pretty harsh.

Speaking of war atrocities, what other things got suppressed in Japan?

Apparently, Nintendo's newest community guidelines for Japanese eSports tournaments, specifically to prevent for-profit events, cap the number of players at in-person events to 200, keeping entry fees low, and prohibiting cash prizes, is because they don't want their events to be considered gambling under the Amusement Business Act.

Can anyone give me a low down on the Act?

I'm not sure because "Amusement Business Act" doesn't appear to be the exact name of any law, but I'm guessing they're referring to the Act on Control and Improvement of Amusement Business, also translated on Wikipedia less literally as the Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Act.

I've done my best to read through the legalize, but from what I can tell there's nothing really in the act that prevents e-sports tournaments on grounds of being gambling. In fact, the act barely touches on gambling at all. Half the act is about "adult" businesses handling things like prostitution. The other half is mostly about things like bars and nightclubs, with a smaller part of it handling "gaming" locations like Mahjong parlors and pachinko parlors, and vaguely other gaming locations that includes arcades. And the rules applying to those places are simply that they have to submit a request for license to the local government to run such a business, they can't operate between midnight and 6 am, they can't allow minors inside - unless it's an arcade or similar in which case they can't let them in after 10 pm -, and some other miscellaneous rules like not having the lights too dark, not making too much noise, or not doing certain types of advertising or solicitation.

The only thing gambling-related that affects video game tournaments are that gaming businesses are forbidden from giving prizes to customers based on the results of games played. And all that does in prevent arcades from being able to hold game tournaments with prize money, it's doesn't stop anyone else.

Now some general googling did lead me to find this paper seemingly written by a Japanese lawyer on the state of e-sports in Japan, and it does go over some legal issues, which are mostly in other laws and acts.

• Since video games, unlike traditional sports, have IP holders, anyone hosting a video game tournament would need permission from the game's publisher to not run afoul of copyright laws. This can be problematic simply because there's no standardized way to go about this, nor is there any unified organization dealing with video game IP rights to handle things with like there is with music.
• The "Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations" (不当景品類及び不当表示防止法) forbids businesses from offering prizes/bonuses to customers who purchased their good or service that exceeds a monetary value of 100,000 yen (that's currently about $667 USD). It appears it isn't clear-cut, but arguably this makes it illegal for publishers (or any related companies that directly profit from game sales) to offer prize money in tournaments exceeding 100,000 yen because that could be argued to be a company offering a monetary reward to buyers that would entice them to buy the game. This a big part of why prize money in Japanese game tournaments are lower than elsewhere, because the publishers of the games refrain from offering high amounts of money for fear of running afoul of this law.
• The part of the Japanese Penal Code directly dealing with gambling defines gambling with the requirement that players of a game either gain or lose monetarily. Or in other words, in needs to be a game in which the winner takes the loser's money. So if you hold a game tournament with prize money in which everyone who competes has to pay a fee to enter the tournament, then that technically runs afoul of the anti-gambling laws because the losers will take a loss of the entry fee while the winner gains from the prize money, and it's technically taking the loser's money since the tournament is taking their money and then paying the winner. To avoid this there would either have to be no entry fee, or the prize would have to be paid out by a third-party sponsor that never touches those fees so the winner's money definitely isn't the losers' money.
• As I explained up above, the act in relation amusement business forbids them giving prizes for game results, so arcades can't hold game tournaments with prize money. They hypothetically could if held in a temporary location outside their usual place of business, but only if the tournament doesn't run longer than a single day, otherwise this outside location is considered a regular location and is subject to all the same restrictions.

With all that typed out, I don't think most of the Nintendo's new guidelines has anything to do with avoiding gambling laws. The only thing that does is the one part of their guideline that specifically states it's for legal reasons (at least in the Japanese version of the guidelines), which says that entry fees must only be used to pay for the tournament and not be used for prize money. And notably, a couple other points tell you not have sponsors paying for things or to pay players performance fees, which is basically just them telling you not to use the legal loopholes available to you.