General Japanese Culture Thread

Japan's Cabinet OKs amendment that bans corporal punishment after spate of tragic cases.

Well, it's not nearly enough, but progress is progress.

This actually reminds me of a story regarding shifting values:

In a book called Dignity of the Jo, a teacher of jojutsu (stick fighting) basically described how his father was raised by his grandfather.

This was during the late Edo period. The grandfather would take his son as a really young child to the execution ground to play with the heads of criminals. These places sometimes allowed people to use bamboo blades to saw a little into a corpse's neck (rest buried underground) as a sort of public shaming of the dead or otherwise left as a warning to would-be offenders.

The reason for this was the mentality that was required in martial training at the time. Especially when armed with a jo, getting that death blow was necessary as a match with a swordsman was far from ideal. Effectively creating a process of violentization, the grandfather taught his son brutality that can be applied in combat and to accept a very violent reality around him. These days this is wholly unnnecessary and would be considered psychological violence, but the story is meant to hammer home that practicing the classical martial arts today is genuinely a hobby with rarely the right "feeling" or purpose. Back in the Edo period, the really hardcore schools fought for their lives.

Japan's modern hatred of drugs is entirely a relic of the American occupation. Pre-1945, the country was very much down with de 'erb.

Now I can't help but get an image of Japan looking at how weed legalization is getting increasingly popular here and being like "...yo, what the fuck?!"

And then America would be like "*toke* Look, man, I've been through a lotta shit lately. *cough cough* I need this shit."

Edited by PhysicalStamina on Mar 19th 2019 at 8:24:08 AM

Sounds more like an excuse for the TMPD to start beating foreigners with sticks.

That is if they don't just unperson them, drug use is a good way to get unpersoned with haste.

You basically get deported and put on a no-fly list, which was at one point shared with the US. Also people still go on about the rat experiment? Yeesh...

Edited by TerminusEst on Mar 20th 2019 at 12:58:58 PM

Which rat experiment?

Rat Park. While it's findings were significant, it had flawed methodology and is often been represented as the "real" source of addiction.

How was it flawed if I may ask? Because that's a fairly interesting study that I haven't heard any thing about some how.

It was a little too simple and later studies showed that addicted rats usually curbed their addictions when placed in a really positive and comfy enclosure with other friendly rats.

That second part seems to re-enforce that addiction comes from wanting to escape life though.... if being with friendly rats in nice environments helps it clear up.

I can see the part of the experiment being too simple.

Edited by Imca on Mar 20th 2019 at 2:13:24 AM

Some interference with the experiment, mixed results in replication etc.

Long story short it's generally not considered wrong per say, but there was a perpetuation of an idea that physical addiction isn't real.

Edited by TerminusEst on Mar 20th 2019 at 2:16:43 AM

That makes sense, thanksies.

So "not exactly wrong, but way more complex, and takes there is more factors then just physical components to mean that physical components don't exist"?

A simple summary of it, yes. There's also the cultural layer of it being opposed to the War on Drugs rhetoric, which nobody considers a success. So people ran with it, misunderstanding the issue.

The neurological mechanism behind physiological addiction to various substances is well known. This is probably going off topic, however.

A bit on traditional Japanese tattoos:

I remember Joe Rogan saying he had to wear long sleeved shirts to hide his evil tats when over in Japan doing MMA because of the Yakuzis

I've always found it quite fascinating that the yakuza are very likely not wrong when they point to their roots as law enforcement in the Edo period. Their rituals do have that certain creepy/ meticulously spontaneous/ superficial/ profound Yedo aesthetic flair to them.

A quick intro/ recap for those who can't see it: here.

When the oh-so-awkward-to-touch, info network, money-making and somewhat too seedy side of your operation gets semi-abandoned as governmental and social styles change, guess what it continues doing, considering that certain strata of society are still going to be underserved and underrepresented in many ways?

Don't get me wrong: they're not angels. But, they actually form a societal function that was... tolerated and then developed quite predictably over time, no matter how much nobody wants to admit it.

There are members of Japanese society who can only find one way to achieve upward mobility through no fault of their own. The wrong family name, a child of an ostracized "bad luck" widow, a learning disability that nonetheless doesn't impede you when not having to suffer through normal social interaction or paperwork... and, your "more legitimate" options are slim.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Mar 21st 2019 at 9:26:54 AM

A lot of the yakuza can be traced to the tekiya street merchants and bakuto gamblers of Edo (although a single origin is impossible to pinpoint). The hierarchy and terminology comes from these structures. The largest modern syndicate, Yamaguchi-gumi, were a dock workers union originally.

Although I agree, I wouldn't be too suprised if there was a symbiosis of order keeping between law enforcement and the underworld going that far back.

Although the amount of yakuza has collapsed to 39000 according to the NPA, from the height of some 89000 in the 90's. Those anti-yakuza ordinances really hit hard.

Edited by TerminusEst on Mar 20th 2019 at 6:58:48 AM

Or maybe there's not much of an incentive to continue in the field anymore, or there's not enough people to join up these days.

The decline could also be attributed to the far-Right, because IIRC a lot of them use far-Right organizations as a front for their activity. Maybe a few of them went full throttle into it.

Probably some combination of all of that plus the anti-Yakuza efforts.

The exclusion ordinances had an effect on all of those, they were genuinely a big thing. Of course, the groups adapted. Jake Adelstein (a former police reporter in Japan) noted that the laws might actually work for the more ruthless gangs that aren't traditional yakuza, like Kanto Rengo.

Edited by TerminusEst on Mar 20th 2019 at 9:21:56 AM

NHK announced that the new era name to succeed the Heisei era will be made on Monday at 11:30 AM.

Abe is involved in the name selection.

Excitement and curiosity rising!

Excitment falling... dread and worry rising.

It'll probably be something slimy and politically inoffensive, honestly. The same way the name "Liberal Democratic Party" is.