Raw Japan

from Russell Boyce:

The politics of bowing in Japan – How low do you go?

By Michael Caronna, Chief Photographer Japan

In Japan nothing says I'm sorry like a nice, deep bow, and lately there's been a whole lot to be sorry for. Ideally the depth of the bow should match the level of regret, allowing observers to make judgements about how sincere the apology really is. Facing massive recalls Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Toyota Motor Corp's managing director Yuji Yokoyama faced journalists at separate news conferences.

Toyota Motor Corp's managing director Yuji Yokoyama (R) bows after submitting a document of a recall to an official of the Transport Ministry Ryuji Masuno (2nd R) at the Transport Ministry in Tokyo February 9, 2010. Toyota Motor Corp is recalling nearly half a million of its flagship Prius and other hybrid cars for braking problems, a third major recall since September and a further blow to the reputation of the world's largest automaker.      REUTERS/Toru Hanai

Toyota Motor Corp President Akio Toyoda bows at the start of a news conference in Nagoya, central Japan February 5, 2010. Toyota Motor Corp President Toyoda apologised on Friday for a massive global recall that has tarnished the reputation of the world's largest car maker. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

from Global News Journal:

Interview with North Korea border crosser Robert Park

 (Photographs by Lee Jae-won)

North Korea said on Tuesday it had  detained a U.S. citizen who entered its territory, apparently confirming a report that an American activist crossed into the state to raise awareness about Pyongyang's human rights abuses.   Robert Park, 28, walked over the frozen Tumen river from China and into the North last Friday, other activists said. The Korean-American told Reuters ahead of the crossing that it was his duty as a Christian to make the journey and that he was carrying a letter calling on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to step down.

Park had an exclusive interview with Reuters last week before starting on his journey. The following are excerpts from the conversation. He requested that the comments be held until he was in North Korea.  

Reuters: Why are you planning to go into North Korea?

Robert Park: The North Korean human rights crisis by murder rate is the worst in the world. An estimated 1,000 people a day die by starvation and starvation is a murder case. North Korea has been sent more food aid than any nation in the world but the food has not gone to the people who need it. So this is murder.

But not only that, there are concentration camps in North Korea that are of the same brutality as in Nazi Germany.

Tizzy over emperor’s China audience

Just one month after U.S. President Barack Obama set off a furore in the blogosphere with his deep bow to Japanese Emperor Akihito, the elderly royal is back in the headlines due to a hastily arranged audience granted to China’s heir apparent.

Visiting foreign dignitaries are often granted audiences with the emperor — nothing unusual there.

But the meeting of Chinese President Hi Jintao’s likely successor, Xi Jinping, with Akihito sparked a furore in the Japanese media when it was revealed that the government had obtained a waiver of a customary requirement that applications for royal audiences be made a month in advance.

The decision prompted an outpouring of criticism from conservative as well as liberal media, opposition lawmakers and even some ruling party members, who charged that Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s three-month-old government was making “political use” of the emperor, a sensitive topic in a country where World War Two was fought in the name of Akihito’s father, then-Emperor Hirohito.

Japan’s U.S.-drafted, post-World War Two constitution designates the emperor as a “symbol of the State” without political power, although Akihito, who turns 76 next week,  has played an important diplomatic role in improving ties with Japan’s Asian neighbours, including through a historic 1992 visit to China, during his two decades on the throne.

Circumventing the one-month “rule”, said to have been created by Imperial Household Agency bureaucrats to protect the frail emperor’s health, also raised concerns in some quarters that Hatoyama’s government was leaning too far towards long-time regional rival  China and distancing itself from key security ally Washington, with whom ties are being frayed by a feud over a U.S. Marine airbase on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa.

Will Obama find time to shoot hoops in Tokyo?

U.S. President Barack Obama will have his work cut out during his 24-hour stay in Japan from Friday as he and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama try to soothe concerns that the decades-old alliance is fraying as the two countries adapt to China’s rise.

 Other U.S. presidents have also had rough agendas in Tokyo, given a relationship historically plagued by trade spats and security angst.

But most have found time for a friendly photo op — sampling local culture or cuisine or squeezing in some exercise time.

Jimmy Carter jogged and swam at the U.S. ambassador’s residence and sampled “yakitori” chicken kebabs at a restaurant in downtown Tokyo with his family in 1979.

Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy were served Japanese tea in a traditional ceremony by Yasuhiro Nakasone at the then-prime minister’s mountain cottage, where the two leaders famously forged their chummy “Ron-Yasu” relationship at a summit in 1983.

George H.W. Bush lost a tennis match against Emperor Hirohito and his heir, then fell ill and threw up at a state dinner in 1992.