Kurashi - News From Japan

Today is the anniversary of my grandfather's birthday. In Japan, Buddhist sutras are read daily at temples and at a family altar on anniversaries related to life and death. By a lucky coinsidence, a link appeared to the Heart sutra (Flash), in Japanese called Hannya Haramita Shingyo, so I invite everyone to listen. The central passage is "shiki soku ze ku ku soku ze shiki" which translates as "emptiness is form and form is emptiness". I love how this sutra connects ancient India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan - and recently, America and Europe as well. Read more here and here . The photo is from the gate at Sogenji, my Rinzai zen temple in Okayama prefecture.

There is a debate in Japan about the country's constitution. Most attention is on the wording about the military and Article 9 . The new draft that has recently been approved by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party also eatures five types of individual rights not stated in the current Constitution pertaining to government information, intellectual property, the environment, personal data protection and dignified treatment for disabled people and crime victims. Wikipedia has an interesting background to the background about Article 9, citing the spirit of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war. Read more about the debate about Japan's new constitution here .

Kyodo reports that the Japanese Embassy has criticized a U.S. Senate bill calling for retaliatory tariffs over Japan's 22-month-old import ban on U.S. beef, and issued an explanation of what Japan was doing to end the impasse. "We are disappointed," the embassy said in a statement distributed to news organizations soon after 21 senators introduced the bill to impose punitive tariffs worth $3.14 billion annually on Japanese products by the end of the year if Japan fails to end the import restriction. In a press conference, Japanese Ambassador to the United States Ryozo Kato said, "It's not a productive move." U.S. beef is also banned in Korea, and has been banned for over 10 years in Europe. In Tokyo today consumer organizations are arranging a demonstration with street performances to protest against U.S. beef imports. I'm trying to find photos. BSE/food safety previous

Tonight, NHK's program series called "Project X" deals with Judo as an Olympic sport. I love the images from Tokyo Olympics in 1964. I work right next to the Olympic Stadium, designed by architecht Kenzo Tange, and it is a truly great monument. Ian Buruma has described the open weight Judo contest in the 1964 Olympics. The Japanese expected their Judo champion, Kaminaga Akio to win against his huge Dutch opponent, Anton Geesink. Such a victory would have signaled the "superiority of Japanese culture, of the Japanese spirit". But, Geesink won. The Japanese around the mat actually cried... "Once again, Japanese manhood had put to the test against superior Western manhood, and once again it was found wanting". But the humiliation subsided when Geesink showed the proper respect by bowing the traditional bow. "Geesink... would be treated as a hero in Japan forever after... One quality has stood out to serve Japan better than any other: the grace to mak...

Kyodo reports that the Japan Coast Guard sent to prosecutors on Monday a case in which JFE Steel Corp, a unit of JFE Holdings Inc, and four employees of the company allegedly released highly polluted wastewater from a steel mill into Tokyo Bay, the coast guard said. Japan's second-largest steel manufacturer is suspected of discharging wastewater containing highly toxic cyanide compounds or hydrogen ion exceeding regulatory standards at Chiba port, in the eastern part of Tokyo Bay, from a mill operated by its East Japan Works in Chiba. This has been big in the news, and JFE , which was established from the merger of NKK and Kawasaki Steel in April 2003, needs to be reminded of what they said as a corportate message for 2005: Last year we set a goal of “zero accidents” in each work place. Unfortunately, we were unable to eradicate serious accidents in spite of active safety programs. We will continue to emphasize the improvements, investments and education that are necessary to incre...

Great song here from the soundtrack of a movie called Cha no aji (Flavour of tea). Enjoy!

Today, NHK reports that 3/4 of the prefectures in Japan have made no budget allocations for assisting rural communities, in case of a major earthquake. The NHK survey is quite alarming. There are no plans to help isolated towns in case of power outages, no mobile phones, and no storage of food or medical supplies... This weekend marks one year since the huge Niigata earthquake. Read more here . And here is Niigata prefecture's own page with information. For photos, please refer to this page . Exactly one year ago, I did my first NHK live radio broadcast... And what a day to begin. The entire Shibuya NHK building was shaking, and it was clear that this was a big one.