Random Japan

THAT SINKING FEELING

• A survey conducted by a Japanese NPO and a Chinese newspaper found that more than 90 percent of people in the two countries basically hate each other.
• Officials at the National Police Agency say that although crime levels in Japan are at historic lows, 81.2 percent of people believe “the domestic security situation is deteriorating.”
• A survey by the health ministry found that 6.4 percent of Japanese boys consider themselves addicted to the internet.
• The figure for girls was 9.9 percent.

Masked hero helps carry bags, babies up and down Tokyo subway stairs

In a green outfit with silver trim and matching mask, a superhero waits by the stairs of a Tokyo subway station, lending his strength to the elderly, passengers lugging heavy packages and mothers with baby strollers.

“Japanese people find it hard to accept help, they feel obligated to the other person, so the mask really helps me out,” said Tadahiro Kanemasu.

The slender 27-year-old has spent three months being a good Samaritan at the station on Tokyo’s western side. Like many in the city, it has neither elevators nor escalators and a long flight of dimly lit stairs.

The TaxMan Came

And He Really Paid


Worship At High Altitude 

In The Lowlands 


Tied Up In Knots

Over Work

Long-gone writer tells it how it is

BY ROGER PULVERS

When Kenji Miyazawa was writing his stories and poems nearly a century ago, Japan was a country with a two-pronged mission: To become the first non-white, non-Christian nation to create a modern prosperous state — and to be the leader of an Asian revival.

The Japanese people were obsessed with their cultural identity and their place, as an imperial power, among the first rank of nations in the world. It was an obsession that would lead them to prosecute an aggressive and brutal war in Asia and the Pacific.