Inactivity

Not much posting this month 'cause I am on my travels. I will be back.

Not very kosher

Further to my posts about the surprisingness of Japanese bread [1,2], it seems, as in so many things, that the Chinese are catching up fast.

Tsuneo Watanabe

Japan’s most powerful media baron, Tsuneo Watanabe, has stepped from the shadows and is fighting the nationalist sentiment that his empire had once encouraged, according to the New York Times.

"This person Koizumi doesn't know history or philosophy, doesn't study, doesn't have any culture. That's why he says stupid things, like, 'What's wrong about worshiping at Yasukuni?' Or, 'China and Korea are the only countries that criticize Yasukuni.' This stems from his ignorance."

Yum

I'll have one dollup purple sweet potato with one cream cheese. One salt and some green tea. And a single cone of peanut.



Very tasty. The milk comes from a local farm.

So today's embarrassment was driving through the centre of Hiratsuka for about three miles with a six pack of beer on the roof. I thought that young tough looked at me a little strangely as I set off from the supermarket.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his luck

Draw a sketch, press the submit button, and swap it for a random drawing by someone else. I have cast my masterpiece on the virtual ocean and left it to fate to decide who will gaze upon its enigmatic scowl.

The smallest website

Guimp, the smallest website, punches above its weight. It has more content than many a flabbier site, including an art gallery, a drum machine and a piano. They have just added to the games section. My favourites: Pacman, footy and pinball.

Depressing

The Chinese authorities seem to have banned Memoirs of a Geisha, apparently on the basis that it is offensive to the Chinese for Chinese women to play Japanese women (or possibly because of a cultural misunderstanding based on the idea that geisha are prostitutes and that for a Chinese woman to play a Japanese prostitute is insulting). There was a bit of a fuss in Japan about Japanese parts being given to foreigners, which I disagreed with but could at least understand. This smells like racism to me.

So let's recap, this is a not particularly good movie directed by an American and intended for a mainly Western audience, based on an orientalist novel by an American about a blue eyed geisha, which sets out to titillate long held Western fantasies of Asian women and which uses a queer assortment of variously Asian actresses to play the main Japanese roles. It is a movie which had to be promoted in Japan under the slogan "Japan like you have never known it" and which has now stirred up all kinds of anger in China and been banned over there for making a Chinese actress the heroine. Don't know about the Chinese decision but, if I was Japanese, I think I would want to ban it!

Chinese Swan Lake

Not really into ballet myself, but this looks like something to see when it arrives in Japan.

A Japanese bestiary

The weird and wonderful world of Japanese beasties. My favourite, rather boringly, is the kappa. When I mentioned Japanese monsters, A. immediately reeled off her "favourites": karakasaobake, hitotsumekozou and rokurokubi.

Sandy in Monkey was a kappa. In the Edo period, there was a widespread belief in these water monsters. There were even "kappaology" tracts on their natural history [1,2]. The Yoshitoshi print above shows a basic "kappa control method".

Google's China censorship

The effects of Google's decision to censor itself to the specifications of the Chinese Government:

A search for "Tiananmen" on Google.com images.
A search for "Tiananmen" on Google.cn images.

[Via Peking Duck]

Update: To be fair, Google has pointed out, and you can see it at the bottom left hand corner of the example page above, that it will always tell its Chinese searchers that it has filtered results, if Chinese policies or laws force it to do so. There was no such honesty in the Chinese Government's previous ad hoc censoring. The company writes, in its own defence, "This is not, to be sure, a tremendous advance in transparency to users, but it is at least a meaningful step in the right direction."

Turning the Pages

The British Library has got an online exhibition here called "Turning the Pages". Some of the Library's most beautiful books have been put on the web, including the Lindisfarne Gospels and Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbook.

Probably shouldn't grumble but they are using specially commissioned viewing software that is supposed to simulate the feel of reading a book. It is flashy but it takes ages to download and then you have to fiddle about with a silly magnifying glass to see any detail. I suspect some company got paid a lot of money to make something flashy when a simple bit of html would have sufficed. Even something as basic and ugly as this does a better job of what is after all the purpose of the viewer: letting people see these beautiful manuscripts.

Anyway, the books are lovely.

A very long view on China and the internet

The news that Google has bowed to Chinese attempts to censor the internet and this podcast discussion of print culture in 17th Century England and Government attempts to tame it seemed related in a strange, tenuous sort of way. (Podcast is about 40 minutes long).