General Japanese Culture Thread

I can't say that I'm all that confident such a thread won't crash and burn within a week, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Back to actual topic, I saw complaints that instead of actually selling music CD, some doujin circles sells download coupons for their music releases, possibly in response of buyers uploading them to video sharing websites. I have spotted a few in the upcoming 37th iteration of Music Media-Mix Market, which is on this Sunday. What is your opinion on that?

Internet culture: I think the current tangent may lead to territory extremely close to some banned topics. And I think discussion of /pol/ culture would be better suited to the racism or sexism threads.

How exactly are these coupons authenticated?

Well, seems like the only professor of Japanese language and culture in the Helsinki University has been fired, largely due to budget cuts. This means it's impossible for students to get their bachelor's or master's degrees in anything except linguistics (which is not guaranteed, as it only has one staff member left). Somewhat significant as he got his Ph D with the direct support of the Japanese Embassy.

facepalm

Why the hell......

Wasn't deemed important enough to keep in the face of the government cuts from education. They're probably eliminating the smaller departments to keep the most important ones running, although that does leave 100 students studying Japanese language and culture in limbo.

JP language program is suffering even in countries with closer ties to Japan like the US.

Such a valuable skill, too. Bilingual people = $$$$

Is it accurate to translate zaibatsu (財閥, lit. "money clique") as "Financial Group"?

More or less? "Cartel" would also be a fitting one-word descriptor.

There are legal cartels?

Not in the US but elsewhere probably.

I didn't think the word actually implied criminality in itself, just how it's been used since the 80s or so. I thought it just meant a colluding group of related businesses under a central directorate.

I'm not well-versed in economics by any means but cartel according to what I'm reading is when a group of businesses band together to control prices of a certain industry/product.

Public cartels (where the government works with business ostensibly for the public's benefit) are fine but private cartels (where a few businesses dominate the market and only set up conditions for their own benefit, shutting out new competitors) are considered illegal as they violate antitrust laws.

edited 6th May '16 9:25:07 PM by wehrmacht

Ah, that's right. I was forgetting. Which is different than a zaibatsu which seeks to dominate across different industries, not control a single one.

While term is still used for extremely large corporations spanning many sectors (like Mitsubishi) the zaibatsu were specifically entities of the Empire of Japan. Pretty much extensions of the state itself.

Human Rights Watch says that bullying of LGBT students is at "epidemic levels" in Japan.

I want to be surprised by that, but I really can't even pretend.

RE Zaibatsu: I ask because I keep seeing the term being translated as such when it comes to fictional post-war Japanese corporations in Japanese animation, comics, video games, etc. that have the term as partof their name (e.g. Daitokuji Zaibatsu, Mishima Zaibatsu).

In post-war cases "conglomerate" is probably a better term, or just keep it in Japanese. The zaibatsu system was dismantled after World War 2, although its power is still felt.

I recently watched this music video, which is a collaboration between AOA and T.M.Revolution, of all people. I thought the rivalry between Jpop and Kpop (on top of some really nasty anti-Korea sentiment), something which should be stronger in Japan would be very intense that this collaboration is impossible.

edited 7th May '16 7:49:27 AM by murazrai

Considering that there are Japanese fans of K-Pop as well, and that K-Pop groups often releases singles in Japanese, Translated Cover Versions or otherwise, there's a bigger market for it than you think.

Well, a few results from this Google search that I just made now (and which mysteriously didn't turn up in previous searches) indicate that the "financial group" translation exists in academic discussion of the zaibatsu compeltely unrelated to fictional depictions. And the kanji for zaibatsu is used to denote the South Korean chaebol, a similar term that describes modern conglomerates such as Samsung and Hyundi (each of which apparently has the English loanword "Group" in their formal names).

Some K-pop artists are more popular in Japan than in South Korea. AOA is one of them if I'm not mistaken.