Heard on a Prairie Home Companion Joke Show:
A couple goes to the theater, and afterwards the woman turns to the man and says “I don’t get Japanese theater!”
The man looks at her and says “What part of “Noh” don’t you understand?”
Attempts to upgrade hanko security [via].
Nanjing massacre deniers hit with defamation lawsuit in China. Being a Chinese lawsuit, it has no legal force in Japan as such, but it does raise interesting issues about liability when working with oral history and living testimony. [via] In other Nanjing massacre news, plans to make a movie about the atrocity. [via] They’re calling it a Chinese equivalent to “Schindler’s list”: They could make a thoroughly parallel film by focusing on John Rabe…. The plan is to debut next year on the 70th anniversary.
New book I want to read: Karen Nakamura, Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity [via and] Disability must be one of the last aspects of diversity which remains understudied in Japanese studies.
Weak: Japanese anti-Global Warming propoganda. Seems to me that a simple coastline revision would be dramatic enough….
English Teacher Imports Decline in Japan, for several years. About time?
Update: Ralph Luker’s catalog of women history bloggers includes a few of our own!
To clarify “anti-global warming”: the global warming show did not say at any time that there was any doubt about global warming. The program was very clear that global warming and carbon dioxide emissions are real problems and went into specific detail about how global warming is damaging the environment in Japan. The program was also extremely goofy, as Japanese public education shows often are, in contrast to similar programs in the US which are (in my experience) very serious.