Something Knew Japan

First published by The Japan Times （Food & Drink/2014/07/08） Spring usually comes in early May in Hokkaido, and it is high season to pick sansai, or edible wild mountain plants. Among them, the Alpine leek — kitopiro in Japanese and pukusa in the native Ainu language — is the most attractive. With its intense garlic-like flavor, the plant is an important ingredient in Ainu cuisine. Traditionally, women gathered the wild plants while the men were out fishing and hunting. Ainu cuisine? Even for Japanese people, it is hard to imagine the food of the north’s indigenous people, repressed by Japanese rule for over a century until relatively recently. The majority of the remaining Ainu population is to be found in Hokkaido, but its recipes can be found in Tokyo’s Okubo district, served at HaruKor — probably the only restaurant in Tokyo that specializes in Ainu cuisine. In the Ainu language, the word haru means “food,” while kor means “to have,” and so the restaurant’s name expre...

First published by The Japan Times （Community/2015/03/04） Today, no one would deny that the following case is a war crime and that these acts represent some of the most serious violations of international humanitarian and human-rights laws. Capt. X, an officer with an invading army, came across two young sisters on the battlefield. He sexually assaulted the older girl before taking the small amounts of cash the pair had on them, and their clothes and underwear. He confined these two young women to his company’s living quarters for seven weeks, and organized or tolerated the abuse and rape of the sisters by his subordinates. After seven weeks of this ordeal, the sisters were shot dead. This account can be found in official documents preserved in the National Archives in Tokyo. The captain was a Japanese soldier, 28 years old, while the two victims were French sisters, the youngest aged 14. It happened in March 1945 during the Japanese invasion of Indochina, France’s colony i...

First published by The Japan Times （Opinion/2013/04/11） On March 31 about 6,000 people attended a meeting in Tokyo to demand that Korean high schools remain eligible for free tuition. In February, the Abe Cabinet revised the law to exclude ethnic Korean schools, chosen gakko, from the free-tuition provision for students, enacted in April 2010. Certain municipalities have already begun to cut off subsides for ethnic Korean schools. The nuclear issue with North Korea and the past abductions of Japanese citizens are cited as the pretext. All children are guaranteed the right to learn. Japan has ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has expressed concern about the exclusion. Children at chosen gakko always become the targets of punishment despite the irrelevance of diplomatic disputes. According to Chong Yong Hwan, a lecturer at Meiji Gakuin University: “Japan regards chosen gakko as a secret...

A section of Aichi Prefecture art festival, titled 'After "Freedom of Expression?", shut down three days after its Aug. 3 opening to the public. The exhibition featured works of art refused to display at public galleries,  dealing with the themes such as 'comfort women', the emperor, Article 9 of Japanese constitution or criticism of the government.  A major factor in the decision to cancel it is that the statue symbolizing 'comfort women', a replica of the Statue of Peace in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, was severely criticized. The organizers received a considerable number of threatening emails, phone calls and faxes, including one which hint darkly the arson attack, Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura said. The Statue of Peace sculpted by South Korean couple, Kim Soe-gyeong and Kim Un-sung, who involved in the democratization movements in the 1980s as students of art at Chung-ang University in South Korea. Since then, they have created art wo...

On Friday, March 1, 2013, two U.S. Navy sailors convicted of raping and injuring a woman in Okinawa in October 2012 were sentenced to nine and 10 years in prison. The crimes resulted in strong protests, especially in Okinawa, against the frequent crimes and sexual assaults involving members of the U.S military forces in Japan. Even though the Americans in this case expressed remorse, it will certainly not be easy for the victim, a Japanese woman in her 20s, to easily erase that nightmare incident from her memory. Indeed, as numerous so-called wartime "comfort women” (Imperial military sex slaves) and rape victims of members of the U.S.  forces have testified painfully, the awful experiences they underwent dominated the rest of their lives. Here in Japan, unfavorable or shameful aspects of the nation's history are routinely passed over as if nothing happened. Incredibly, even the Great Est Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, and the subsequent, ongoing catastr...

This year, the new Ainu law was enacted to replace the 1997 Ainu Culture Promotion and Dissemination of Information Concerning Ainu Traditions Act. While Japan legally recognized the Ainu as the indigenous people of Japan for a first time, it has never consider for the rights of the Ainu people as international criteria on indigenous people. In common with the previous law, the new law focuses on mainly traditional and cultural aspect by promoting Ainu industry and tourism, but neglecting to protect the Ainu’s right to self-determination, the collective right to live in freedom, to the lands and resources. The law has also not regulated the repatriation of the Ainu ancestral remains the Ainu human remains sometimes by committing the ‘grave-robbing’ to aide for the studies. The issue of the remains’ repatriation has been a major importance for the Ainu people for very long time. continue on the website. Japan's indigenous Ainu sue to bring their ancestors' bones back ...

74 years ago today, 8:15 am, the atomic bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima from an American B-29 bomber. The hibakusha, survivors  exposed to radiation, and the descendants of the victims have been suffering from various diseases caused by nuclear weapon. The Japanese government has taken a stance of not joining a U.N. treaty banning nuclear weapons. On August 9,1945, at 11:02am. the second atomic bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki.