Japan rewrites history… again
And this time it isn’t the Chinese or Koreans they are offending, but their own people! Although whether the top hierarchy in Japanese government regard Okinawans as their own people is another matter, considering how they have been treated since it changed from the Ryukyu Kingdom and became part of Japan. Frequently they have been seen as the black sheep of the Japan family, and have been given the least government funding and roughest time of all the prefectures. It’s no coincidence that 75% of the US military forces stationed in Japan are in Okinawa. The “real” Japanese don’t want to be burdened with the forces and potential problems they could create, but Okinawans are supposedly expected to just deal with it quietly.
In the story below, Japan is once again trying to rewrite the history textbooks regarding actions during the Battle of Okinawa, and make future generations forget about their actions. This kind of action is quite scary to contemplate, and it’s no surprise that Okinawans are up-in-arms about this. This news article is taken from www.japanupdate.com - an English-language website and newspaper about news in Okinawa.
Battle of Okinawa history book revision angers Okinawans
Date Posted: 2007-04-05
Japanese high school textbooks have eliminated statements that Okinawans were forced by Japanese soldiers to commit suicide during the Battle of Okinawa, rather than be captured.
The order to modify textbooks came from the Education Ministry, and is being called a gross modern day revision of history. More than 94,000 Okinawans died during the three-month closing battle of World War II, with an estimated 25% committing suicide. The battle, referred to as the gtyphoon of steelh, claimed the lives of more than 200,000 including 12,520 Americans.
Screeners at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology asked the five textbook publishers to change the sections referring to suicides, eliminating any reference to Okinawans having been told to commit suicide. They said the old textbooks provided misunderstandings to students. The new approved verbage states gMass suicides and killings took place among the residents using hand grenades given them.h, deleting reference to the Japanese Army.
Japanese Bruce Willis (a must see)
OK - I’m sure you’ve all seen the Die Hard films, and witnessed Bruce Willis saving everyone as Los Angeles detective John McClane. Well I bet you didn’t know that Bruce has a Japanese counterpart, called Puchi Bruce. He’s actually a Bruce Willis impersonator and is devoting his life to being just like Bruce Willis from the Die hard films. As you can see below, the likeness is uncanny!
Puchi Bruce? Bruce Willis?
Tokyo English teacher murder - trail gone cold
Last week I reported on the murder of Lindsay Ann Hawker, an English teacher with the Nova company who was living in Tokyo (see articles here and here). Unfortunately, as I predicted in the articles I posted, the 
trail on the suspect seems to have gone cold. When her father and boyfriend arrived in the country the media here in Japan perked up a little, but since then virtually nothing has been reported. CCTV footage was released of the suspect meeting Hawker on the Saturday morning, but no new leads have been found since. Will Ichihashi ever be found by the authorities? Is he even still alive? A number of people feel he may have committed suicide and will be found in the forest at the base of Mt Fuji, where many people have taken their own lives. I don’t share that opinion though. Although I don’t avidly watch the crime reports on Japanese TV, it’s not often that I’ve heard of a murder suspect killing themselves here. If you have brought shame on your company, self etc then suicide is seen as a potential way to atone. However, murder doesn’t seem to have the same shame and embarrassment involved in it for some reason.
Bite Back - Shame of Japan
Following up slightly from my previous post about the dolphin slaughter in some towns in Japan, my attention was turned this morning to whaling, something that Japan is doing far too much of (in my opinion) 
in the name of scientific research. Incidentally, the Japanese must now be the most whale-savvy nation in the world - I’d love to know the things they have discovered and what their current lines of research are with the whales they catch and kill. This particular article I will quote about whalers in Japan and other countries has been take from the excellent dive news site, www.divemagazine.co.uk, and credit should go there, and to the author John Nightingale, for this. I’m just trying to pass on an important story and message for everyone. Please post your comments here and/or on the forum over at Dive Magazine. So without further adue, here is the article:
Five hundred tons of whale meat, part of the harvest from Japan’s whaling operation in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, appears to have mysteriously disappeared. The likely explanation seems to be that it was dumped overboard rather than brought back to be added to the growing whale meat mountain in Japan. Despite government efforts to persuade people to eat it (see right), demand for whale meat is at an all-time low and the price has fallen by almost 40 per cent over the past dozen years. So entrenched have the Japanese policy-makers become over this issue, that Japan decided to increase rather than decrease her ‘allocation’ and went on to slaughter 854 minkes and ten fin whales last year.
A weekend in Kyoto and Osaka
That’s where I will be from tomorrow evening until Monday morning, or rather Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe to be 
precise. As long-term readers of this blog might remember, I went to the Kansai region back at the end of March last year, and loved it there. Kyoto is such a beautiful city, and if I wasn’t in Okinawa then I’d probably choose to be there. I could have spent hours sat by the canal in Gion on an evening, watching the tourists and businessmen go by, while the occasional maiko or geisha will pass on their way to an appointment. Hopefully I’ll be able to take in some kabuki (traditional Japanese theatre) and do a few other cultural bits & bats (you can tell I’ve planned this really well!). It will also be my first time to visit Kobe and so I’ll go and see the museum about the Great Hanshin earthquake that struck the city in 1995, killing over 6,400 people and causing over $200 billion in damage. For those economists and businesspeople out there, you might recall the Nikkei 225 dropped 1,000 points in the day following the earthquake. Indeed, this earthquake was one of the main reasons Barings Bank collapsed, due to Nick Leeson’s speculations in Japanese derivatives.
The worst thing about going to the Kansai region this weekend is that I sincerely doubt I am going to be able to listen to the Good Friday rugby league derby between Wigan and St Helens at the JJB Stadium. The game will be a 24,000 sell-out and is thought to be one of the closest derbies in recent years. Wigan have a 6 point start with the bookmakers, but when it 
comes to 
a derby like this, all form goes out of the window. Having been a Wigan supporter for around 13 years now, I will be cheering the “Cherry and Whites” on against their old rivals. But even as I want every St Helens player to have a shocker, I’ve got to hold some small reervations. My cousin, despite being a Wigan supporter as a child, is now playing in the St Helens team. Consequently, he usually gets the “boo/cheer” from my family and friends when he plays against Wigan (much to the puzzlement of the crowd around them!). I’m going to go for a 22-18 Wigan victory, with plenty of big hits, and a sin-binning or 2 in there for good measure. If you’re not familiar with rugby league, then you should click this link for a short video clip showing some of the big tackles involved in what I believe is The Greatest Game.