Amazing New Japanese Technology for Auto Designs

American & European Auto Makers
Could be Left Further Behind

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

In boxing terms, American automobile manufacturers are now on the ropes and unless they can get their act together they could soon be on the canvas. New technology developed by Japan’s Ichikoh Industries Ltd., now makes it possible to eliminate side mirrors—allowing for a fundamental breakthrough in the exterior design of automobiles.

This new technology will make automobiles more aerodynamic and much safer than president-day cars, and given the philosophy and management practices of Toyota and other Japanese auto manufacturers they will be the first to have this new technology on the road.

Japan’s automobile designers have long wanted to have an alternative to side mirrors that would give them more freedom in the exterior design of cars, prompting Ichikoh Industries, a primary supplier of side mirrors, to come up with a substitute based on charge-couple-device (CCD) cameras and radar devices.

The company’s prototype vehicle using the new technology has a monitor inside the car built into the dashboard that gives the driver a 360-degree view around the vehicle—back, front and sides, day or night, and in all kinds of weather.

One of the most impressive features of the new system is that unlike mirrors which show only line-of-sight views, its cameras and infrared sensors lets the driver see areas around the car that are blind spots on present designs.

Ichikoh predicts that as soon as the first cars featuring the new interior view monitors appear on the market they will take off like a flash—leaving any car maker who still uses side mirrors far behind.

Another piece of high-tech pioneered by Toyota that is changing the basic design of cars is the use of LEDs in their headlights rather than the conventional system that requires the light source to be located at least 30 centimeters behind the headlight lens.

LEDs can be closer than 10 centimeters from the headlight lens, meaning there are many new options as to their shape and where they can be placed. One prototype created by Toyota’s headlight supplier (Koito Manufacturing), runs along the side of the hood of the car and is shaped like a samurai sword.

Another break-through in the basic design of cars that is planned by Toyota: small fuel cells and motors built into the wheels of cars.
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Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente
See the author’s website, www.phoenixbookspublishers.com, for a list and descriptions of his 30-plus pioneer books on Japanese business practices, culture and language. All of his books are available from Amazon.com, other online booksellers and retail bookstore chains.

The Most Dangerous Man in Japan is Not a Yakuza or Politician!

The Weapon of the Most Dangerous Man
In Contemporary Japan
Is a Single Word!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Japan’s history is filled with extraordinary individuals, from samurai warriors and ninja assassins to military leaders, who could be described as the most dangerous men of their era.

In contemporary times, this label has often been applied to one or more infamous yakuza gang members, including Yoshinori Watanabe, former boss of the Yamaguchi Gumi, Japan’s largest group of professional gangsters (which has its own telephone directory, listing 101 gangs throughout Japan).

But I have long had my own candidate for “The Most Dangerous Man in Japan” title—and man whose only weapon and whose only form of attack is a single word: the interrogative “Why?”

In my opinion the most dangerous man in Japan today is a combination martial artist, scholar, professor, former NHK TV host, debate enthusiast, prolific author (over 100 books), and accomplished poet named Michihiro Matsumoto.

Matsumoto began his professional career in 1962 as member of the Foreign Department of Nissho Iwai trading company, then went on to serve as a simultaneous interpreter and translator at the American Embassy in the early 1970s, associate professor of Business Administration at the Sanno Institute, executive assistant at Nikko Securities, instructor at International Christian University, host of NHK-TV’s popular English/Debate Interview Program, and professor of Foreign Studies at Nagoya University.

In the 1980’s Matsumoto founded the Matsumoto Debate Institute. In 1986 he became the president of the Kodokan Debating Society and in 1998 he became president of the International Debate Development Association, concurrently serving as professor of Intercultural Communications at Honolulu University.

Matsumoto’s checkered career in commerce, government service, academia and public broadcasting has been about as un-Japanese-like as you can get because in a culture in which employees didn’t ask questions, hunkered down, and remained with the same organization for life, he didn’t stay quiet and he didn’t assume a low profile.

Having pattered his early life after that of Japan’s most famous samurai warrior, Musashi Miyamoto [1584-1645], author of the noted treatise Go Rin Sho (Go Reen Shoh) or Book of Five Rings on how to fight duels-to-the-death and win, Matsumoto questioned everything and everybody, and wherever he went he soon became known as a maverick—as someone who didn’t think or act like the typical Japanese and invariably upset the famous wa (wah) or harmony that was the foundation of Japan’s traditional culture.

Matsumoto’s professional and public life became epitomized by the question “Why?”—the word he constantly used in an effort to force people to publicly explain and justify their opinions, policies and actions, something that had long been taboo in Japanese society.

His dedication to the why/because way of interacting with other people has finally begun to pay off. A growing number of Japanese are adopting his philosophy—a phenomenon that is particularly conspicuous among some academics, senior business executives and leading politicians.

Matsumoto has, in fact, been something like a virus that started out as a tiny irritant but has now begun to impact on Japan’s contemporary culture in fundamental ways that are having a slow but profound affect on society in general.

But this does not mean that Matsumoto himself is no longer Japanese in any traditional sense. He is, in fact, more traditional in his overall philosophy than most of his contemporaries, having remained a strong advocate of the value of the fabled spirit of the samurai, and he uses this spirit as the foundation for his teaching.

Just as Kendo (The Way of the Sword) was the primary principle in the discipline and training of the samurai, Matsumoto’s uses the same principle in teaching English, calling his method Eigodo (The Way of English), and in his debating tournaments.

Matsumoto’s latest book, Kokka no Kigai (Koke-kah no Kee-guy), or The Spirit of a Nation [Nisshin Hodo, September 29, 2007], is a call for Japan to return to the positive elements of the samurai way.

The Spirit of a Nation was, in fact, written to counter a 2006 book entitled Kokka no Hinkaku (Koke-kah no Heen-kah-kuu), The Dignity of a Nation, written by mathematics professor Masahiko Fujiwara.

Fujiwara’s book is a critique of capitalism and democracy and basically calls for the Japanese to return to the militaristic style of government and business administration that characterized pre-World War II Japan… It sold over two million copies during its first year in print.

Matsumoto’s philosophy represents not only the best path for Japan to follow into the future, it is also the country’s best defense against those who advocate a return to the aggressive, militaristic principles and policies of the past.
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Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente.
The author is the writer of 40-plus books on Japan’s culture, language, management practices and sexual mores, including KATA—The Key to Understanding & Dealing with the Japanese. To see a list and descriptions of his books, go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.

Two Adventurers Cross Pacific in Amphibious Jeep Called “Half-Safe”

Journalist-Author Celebrates 50th Anniversary
Of Crossing Pacific Ocean & Bering Sea
in Amphibious Jeep Called “Half-Safe”

Margaret Warren De Mente

PARADISE VALLEY, AZ—In the winter of 1956/57 Boyé Lafayette De Mente, my soon-to-be husband, was a Tokyo-based journalist working for The Japan Times.

The newspaper carried a brief article about the landing of an amphibious jeep called “Half-Safe” (after a popular deodorant of the day!) at Kagoshima, on the southern tip of Japan’s Kyushu Island.

A few weeks later the jeep, owned and driven by Ben Carlin, its Australian “captain,” arrived in Tokyo. Being of a sporting if not adventurous nature my husband-to-be contacted Carlin and made arrangements to interview him.

During the interview, Carlin invited Boyé to accompany him on the last leg of his around-the-world trip on the jeep—a journey that had started in 1948 from New York with his then American wife Elinore, but which had ended abruptly some 500 miles off the eastern seaboard of the U.S. when the engine of the jeep conked out.

Carlin, his wife and Half-Safe were picked up by a Swedish freighter and deposited in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Carlin rebuilt the engine and once again the two set off across the Atlantic Ocean. After a stop in the Azores, they made the coast of Africa, and from there finally reached London by land and water.

Elinore went to work as a secretary while Carlin, over a period of several years (he was a notoriously slow worker), virtually rebuilt the jeep from scratch and they set off again, heading for the Near East, the Mid-East and Asia. Somewhere in India Elinore jumped jeep, left Carlin, and later divorced him.

Carlin recruited another “mate” (a young man from Australia) because the jeep required a two-man crew when at sea. This young man hung in with Carlin until they reached Kagoshima, Japan, and there he too decamped from the adventure, so Carlin was on his own when he arrived in Tokyo in the late fall of 1956.

For reasons Boyé has never fully explained, apparently to anyone, he accepted Carlin’s invitation to join him on the last, longest and most dangerous leg of the around-the-world journey, scheduled to begin in late April, by which time the storm-tossed North Pacific and Bering Sea would have quieted down.

A few days before the departure date a number of startling incidents involving Carlin and the jeep resulted in several of Boyé’s co-workers and friends urging him to quit the enterprise before it started. But despite a calm and basically un-aggressive nature Boyé refused to back out.

On the morning of May 1, 1957, Half-Safe departed from Tokyo amidst great media fanfare, first from the front of the Mainichi Newspaper Building, and then from the front of the nearby Yomiuri Newspaper Building.

For the first few hours of the journey, several cars filled with reporters followed the Half-Safe as it made its way out of Tokyo and headed north. One man had been assigned by his company to go all the way to Wakkanai on the northern tip of Hokkaido with the jeep. But a series of incidents involving Carlin resulted in him disappearing after three days and nights, never to be seen or heard from again.

Each day and night brought new incidents—not all of them involving Carlin’s irascible character—including a number that threatened to end the adventure before it really got started. This included the jeep springing a leak when they were crossing the straits separating Honshu Island and Hokkaido, collisions with submerged rocks as they neared the port of Muroran, and finally, on what was to be the big day of their departure from Wakkanai, Hokkaido, Carlin jumped from the dock onto the jeep for the benefit of cameramen, cracking a section of the cabin that he had constructed to enclose the jeep from the outside elements. This caused another one-day delay for repairs.

Getting underway the next day turned out to have another set of dangers that threatened the jeep before it got away from the dock. From that point on, the adventure and the dangers really began. The two adventurers encountered Russians, Japanese fishing nets, sea lions, technical problems, the frigid waters of the North Pacific and Bering Sea—and each other!

After enough incidents and adventures to fill several lifetimes, the Half-Safe arrived in Anchorage, Alaska on September 1, exactly four months from the day it left Tokyo. The safe arrival of the two in Alaska made news worldwide, and was listed in The Guinness Book of World Records, as well as Car and Driver’s Amazing Stories.

By agreement with Carlin, Boyé did not write his account of the crossing until five years had elapsed, to give Carlin time to get his own book published.

Boyé’s account of the crossing, which he chronicled in a book entitled ONCE A FOOL – From Tokyo to Alaska by Amphibious Jeep, reveals in precise detail the unexpected threats the two wayfarers encountered, including exact—but rare—conversations between them.

In his words, once they set off into the North Pacific the confines and noises of the jeep induced a kind of semi-coma that they came out of only when the daily 24-hour routine of “four on four off” was broken by some emergency.

Their two encounters with Japanese fishing nets and Carlin’s behavior following the last incident is high drama of the most absurd kind.

On another memorable occasion, Boyé stands on the tiny prow of the jeep for several hours in a cold rain and high seas pumping air into a torpedo-shaped yellow tank holding 660 gallons of gasoline to force gas into inboard tanks, with the tank jumping and rearing like a wild animal.

What is perhaps the most remarkable of all, Boyé hung in with Carlin until they reached Anchorage, where he also “jumped jeep,” parting company with his strange companion and flying to Phoenix, Arizona to see his family and recuperate.

And in yet another believe-it-or-not episode, 10 years after Boyé left the jeep in Anchorage, had spent another six years as a trade journalist in Tokyo (where we were married) and moved back to Phoenix, one of our friends spotted Carlin driving Half-Safe down Van Buren Avenue in the center of the city.

Carlin had eventually made it back to Halifax, Nova Scotia then continued for several years touring the U.S. in Half-Safe, lecturing and showing films of the Pacific and Bering Sea crossing, ending up in his hometown of Perth, Australia where he died in the 1980s, and where Half-Safe is on permanent display at his old school.

Boyé went on to have an extraordinary career as the author of more than 40 books on the business cultures and languages of Japan, Korea, and China. We now make our home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, from which he has crossed the Pacific over 100 times—by air!

His book, ONCE A FOOL, became a bestseller in Alaska, and is still available from Amazon.com, other online booksellers, and through major retail chains. To see a full list, with descriptions, of Boyé’s 70-plus books (on Japan, Korea, China, Mexico, Arizona and Hawaii), go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.


Contact:
Margaret Warren De Mente
Paradise Valley, Az 85253
Email: mdemente@cox.net

Builder Takes Aim at World’s Obsolete Cities!

Japan’s Amazing Mori Building Company
Changes Conception and Creation of Cities

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Basically, the world’s cities have not changed in some 5,000 years.
That stuck-in-the-past mode is now being challenged!

ROPPONGI HILLS—It is astounding to note that within the last half a century some of the world’s most extraordinary accomplishments in the managing, designing, manufacturing and marketing of leading-edge products have come from a country that just 60 years ago was primarily viewed as a feudalistic society based on an ancient warrior mentality.

That country is, of course, Japan—a tiny island nation that kept itself isolated from the rest of the world during the Industrial Revolution, and then, following its defeat in World War II transformed itself into the world’s second largest economy in less than 30 years.

Beginning in the 1970s hordes of American and European businesspeople began making the long trip to Japan to find out why and how such a small and previously insignificant country could become such an economic powerhouse in such a short time.

What the world generally had not understood about Japan before—and still does not fully appreciate—is that for more than a thousand years prior to the modern era the level of intellectual activity in Japan was very high and the ability of the Japanese to quickly understand and master technology was unsurpassed.

Another element in the character of the Japanese that has traditionally been underestimated is their courage in discarding old traditions and charting new courses—a level of courage that generally does not exist in the United States and European countries.
Once politically and culturally free to exercise this courage, large numbers of Japanese quickly began to distinguish themselves as avant-garde thinkers and entrepreneurs.

One of the most outstanding present-day examples in this group is Minoru Mori, President and CEO of Mori Building. Since the early 1980s Mori and his company have been pursuing the goal of recreating cities that are both user and environmentally friendly, using the most advanced technology that now exists.

Roppongi Hills, the business, dining, residential and shopping complex on a rise overlooking downtown Tokyo that I referred to in an earlier column, is now the centerpiece of the Mori concept of what cities should be like.

There are three basic parts to the Mori mission: total safety and security; the integration of the city environment and nature; and the integration of art and culture into the complex. These three parts incorporate six themes: the combination of urban facilities and nature; the merging of tradition and innovation; the mixing of business and culture; the convergence of universality and uniqueness; the merging of the local and the international; and the fusion of stimulation and tranquility.

The integration of the latest technology throughout the Roppongi Hills complex is a marvel of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The convenience and ambiance of its facilities has to be experienced to be fully appreciated. The variety of its artistic, cultural and health-related activities is equal to what one expects in a large modern city.

Mori Building, with the advice and help of some of the world’s leading architects and designers and such luminaries as Yoshio Karita, formerly director of protocol for the Imperial Household, is now engaged in a long-range plan to not only recreate Japan’s cities but to spread the concept around the world.

Internationally, the most spectacular of Mori’s overseas projects to date is the towering Shanghai World Financial Center, which became a symbol of the new China before it was completed. The 101-story tower, which rises from a garden setting, includes offices, conference facilities, restaurants, shops, a five-star hotel and the world’s highest observation platform.

Mori Building is now working with other wards in Tokyo and with other cities in Japan to replace large areas of traditional buildings and streets with multi-use complexes similar to Roppongi Hills—a program that will continue for decades if not generations, until all of the main cities have been transformed.

The Mori urban redevelopment vision is encapsulated in the word “hills,” chosen because of the deep meaning the term has for people—and now represented in Tokyo by Ark Hills (the first project), Roppongi Hills (completed in 2003), Omotesando Hills, Atago Green Hills, Holland Hills, and Moto-Azabu Hills.

Each of these projects follows through with the “hills” image by incorporating slopes and hills in the design so that it represents a microcosm of nature—very much like Japan’s traditional landscaped gardens.

In the past, Westerners trooped to Japan to discover the secrets of its economic power. Now I suggest that city leaders and planners from around the world make the trip to Tokyo to learn how they should be rebuilding their cities.
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Copyright © by Boyé Lafayette De Mente
To see a catalog of 30-plus books on Japan by the author, go to his personal website: www.phoenixbookspublishers.com.

Japanese Cabarets and the Art of “Selling Sex in a Glass”

Porn Mogul Larry Flynt

Created the Phrase
But Japan’s Cabarets Did it First!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Larry Flynt, the Kentucky hillbilly who made a name for himself in the late 1960s and early 1970s as the owner of a chain of night clubs featuring go-go dancing, and went on to become a mogul of porn publishing, once said that the success of his clubs was based on the art of selling sex in a glass.

Flynt was the first to conceive and use this provocative phrase, but Japanese operators of hostess-filled cabarets mastered the art of selling sex in a glass in the late 1940s and early 1950s, during the heyday of the American occupation of Japan and the opening of Japan to American importers who poured into the country in a torrent from 1948 on.

One of the largest of these Japanese cabarets during the late 1950s was the Mikado in Tokyo. It had more than 1,000 hostesses on its staff, which, combined with Las Vegas style live entertainment, made it a mecca for resident foreign men and foreign buyers who filled the city’s hotels during that era.

The Mikado and the hundreds of other cabarets that sprang up in Japan following its surrender to U.S. forces were just the most conspicuous elements of the country’s entertainment industry…which was not only the first industry to recover after the war, but the most profitable enterprise in the country for many years.

The key to this astounding proliferation and success of cabarets, nightclubs and bars in post-war Japan was the presence of huge numbers of sex-hungry foreign men and some five million young Japanese women who worked in them as hostesses, providing the Occupation forces and civilian foreigners with access to the companionship and the wiles of women who had been culturally programmed in the art of enticing and pleasing men.

The traditional word for all of Japan’s night-time entertainment trades, including the world of the geisha and hot-bath massage parlors, was mizu shobai (me-zoo show-by), or literally “the water business.”

There is no agreement on how the term mizu shobai came into use, but it is fairly obvious that the extraordinary number of natural hot springs and the ancient Japanese practice of bathing daily (without sexual discrimination) led to the early association of water and pleasure. Shinto, the native Japanese religion, advocates both scrupulous cleanliness as well as the lusty celebration of human fertility.

During Japan's last great shogunate dynasty (1603-1868) bathhouses, in which the pleasures of the flesh were as much of an attraction as the hot water, a great network of roadside inns around the country that featured hot baths and sexual release, and both geisha districts and courtesan quarters played major roles in the country—economically, socially and politically.

While organized prostitution was subject to the control of the shogunate government and the 200-plus daimyo (die-m’yoe) provincial lords in their own fiefs, it was a legitimate enterprise that was not under a cloud of moral righteousness. The Japanese did not associate sex with sin or with the love of one person for another, and thus over the ages they were spared the suffering imposed by religious leaders on Christian and Muslim people.

Perhaps the strongest criticism one might make in regard to the sexual mores of feudal Japan is that it was a man's world, with all of the customs and institutions designed to satisfy the needs and whims on men, and generally to ignore those of women. While this was unfair and deplorable, it nevertheless was responsible for many of the feminine characteristics for which Japanese women are known and admired — and, of course, was primarily responsible for the many aspects of the mizu shobai that foreign male visitors to Japan found so fascinating.

However, in present-day Japan, the women are getting their revenge. In many ways, the tables have been turned on men, and it is women who call the sexual tunes. Japanese women in general are willing, eager participants in the ongoing play between the sexes, and there is a growing trend for young girls to take the initiative in their relations with men.

The heyday of the hostess-filled cabarets ended in the 1970s but they were soon replaced by go-go dance clubs, small upscale bars that featured equally upscale hostesses, and izakaya (ee-zah-kah-yah), or pubs, by the hundreds of thousands.

In the 1980s the go-go clubs were quickly replaced by hard-rock dance clubs that catered to both men and women, and the number of geisha declined rapidly because of competition from hostess bars, but the mizu shobai survived and remains today one of the largest industries in the country.

While a great deal of the attraction of Japan’s mizu shobai continues to be its sexual overtones, its cultural role goes well beyond this physical element. Drinking alcoholic beverages has traditionally played a far more basic and comprehensive role in Japanese culture than in most other countries.

From the earliest times, sake (sah-kay) the native brew, was an integral part of the Shinto ritual of communicating with and pleasing the gods, and from this early use it spread throughout Japanese society as the primary vehicle in bonding with others, in sealing agreements, and in maintaining good relationships.

The strict etiquette that reigned during Japan’s long feudal age (1192-1968) prevented people from behaving in normal ways except when in drinking situations, further increasing the role and importance of alcohol in their lives.

Still today, the Japanese tend to believe that you cannot really get to know people until you drink with them—and this factor alone continues to fuel the thriving mizu shobai.
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Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente
For a more detailed view of Japan’s mizu shobai, see the authors ebook, Mistress-Keeping in Japan, described on his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.