Another “Only in Japan” Tale!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

In ancient times in Tokyo [meaning in the 1950s] I wrote a weekly column entitled “Only in Japan” that covered events, ideas and products that were unique to the country.

Many of these things appeared humorous or childish to the average Westerner, but some of them, particularly unusual products and odd brand names, went on to become huge commercial successes around the world.

Among these early things was the name “Walkman” that Sony chose for its new portable radio, and a variety of children’s products introduced by Sanrio Company under the brand name “Hello Kitty.”

The Walkman brand name took a little while to catch on overseas, but in Japan it made perfect sense…you could listen to the tiny radio while walking around. Hello Kitty products were an instant hit in Japan because they were terminally cute – and the Japanese have an obsessive addiction to cuteness.

Itturned out that most Westerners are also turned on by cuteness if it doesn’t go to extremes, and Hello Kitty products are now bestsellers world-wide.

Despite all of the fundamental changes that have occurred in Japan in the last 50-plus years there are still many “only in Japan” things that add to the ambiance of life.

A new and intriguing “only in Japan” phenomenon is printing popular comic and animation characters, as well as the profiles of famous comedians, on toilet paper.

“Character toilet paper” has, in fact, become one of the country’s hottest souvenir and gift items among younger Japanese and foreign tourists alike. And by toilet paper standards, the rolls are not cheap – going for more than twice the amount of plain paper.

Animation studios, entertainment companies and others have boarded the character toilet paper bandwagon, opening their own retail shops.

The owner of Tokyo Atom Shop in Tokyo Central Station says that some of his customers – both local commuters and travelers – buy up to 50 rolls at a time to give as gifts.

The shop at the National Museum for Emerging Science and Innovation sells a line of character toilet paper called Astronomical Toilet Paper. I don’t know what “astronomical” refers to, but it apparently appeals to young women, said to be the main buyers.

Toilet paper sold at a shop called Yoshimoto TV Street in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, owned by media giant Yoshimoto Kogyo, features profiles of comedians that the company represents.

The comedians obviously don’t object to their descriptions being printed on paper that is used to wipe indiscriminate derrieres. One, in fact, is quoted as saying he finds this new form of publicity quite amusing.

Without intending to resort to ribaldry, the most amusing toilet incident I ever witnessed occurred at a bar that used to be across the street from Shimbashi Station just south of the famed Ginza shopping mecca.

One evening in the mid-1950s I took an American friend and his wife to the bar for a few drinks. After a while the wife, who happened to be quite tall, noted that she had to go to the toilet. I pointed to a narrow hallway, and said: “First door on the right.”

The toilet was about the size of a telephone booth and squat-style, with an elongated ceramic “bowl” over an aperture in the floor. My friend’s wife had a bit of difficulty getting into the toilet, but she did it.

Once inside the toilet she was able to squat down easy enough but when done she could not stand up or pull up her panties. Finally, in desperation, she opened the door and waddled out into the hallway in full view of the bar patrons. There, she stood up, nonchalantly pulling her undies up at the same time.

As she approached our booth, her husband and I were nearly choking in an effort to avoid laughing but she was smiling broadly. “Go ahead and laugh before you bust a gut!” she said.

Toilets in present-day Japan include the most high-tech commodes and urinals in the world. They take your temperature, check your blood pressure, analyze your leftovers, and if you want, transmit the results to your doctor. How times have changed!
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Boyé Lafayette De Mente (b.1928) has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China, including the first ever on the Japanese way of doing business. See: http://www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info/

New Japanese Technology May Result in Self-Cleaning Houses!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Modern conveniences have take much of the drudgery out of keeping houses and buildings clean—at least to the eye—but in addition to the ongoing problems of keeping bathrooms and kitchens free of unsightly visible blemishes, there are less visible as well as completely invisible problems that can seriously affect the health of the occupants.

Japanese scientists have created robotic devices that do much of the work once done by housewives, maids and cleaning personnel but these robots only go so far and do so much, have not yet become commonplace, and do not address more dangerous threats presented by homes and buildings.

Now, a Japanese research team at Matsushita Electric Works Ltd. has come up with technology that makes it possible for buildings to sanitize themselves, eradicating bacteria and mold, destroying toxic compounds like formaldehyde, and in fact, clean away dirt.

This new technology makes use of the reaction of photo-catalysts to the presence of light, both natural sunlight and fluorescent lighting, to degrade and destroy both visible and invisible contamination that plagues houses and public places—this includes keeping the sides of toilet bowls and wash basins clean, deodorizing toilets, sanitizing counters, tables and other surfaces, and keeping mirrors from clouding.

The secret of the home-and-building cleansing and sanitizing technology lies in the photo-catalytic materials that Matsushita scientists have created, and is said to just be the beginning of other potential applications for the technology.

One of the more interesting uses of the technology—developed by the Yokohama Waterworks Bureau—is to combine a “water curtain” with the glass of windows that have been coated with a photo-catalyst. When sunlight strikes the windows it causes the water to spread out in a thin layer over the glass, turning each window into a kind of self-contained refrigeration unit.

Another even more exciting use of the technology, developed by Nippo Corporation, is in road-paving material containing photo-catalytic materials that will suck in and destroy smog-causing nitrogen oxides contained in car exhaust. This paving material was introduced in 2008.

Another technological innovation in Japan that will take the old finger-print way of identifying people another step forward is being introduced by NEC Corporation. This new technology reads both fingerprints and finger vein patterns, with both biometric functions incorporated in one small device.

The device reads both the finger prints and finger veins in approximately one second, and therefore competes handily with the individual print and vein readers marketed by Hitachi, and palm vein readers marketed by Fujitsu—with the advantage that it is just one unit.

So far, the market for fingerprint and veinprint readers has primarily been offices and buildings that require high security measures, and ATM’s, but it is expected that the technology will spread to private homes, eliminating keys which can be lost as well as compromised, and to computers and other things.

And still in the extraordinary innovation scene in Japan, we now have socks and stockings that give you a foot massage. There are five places on the soles of our feet that are “pressure points”—that is, nerve endings that connect with various other parts of the body.

Acupuncturists and masseuses have long been aware of these pressure points and use them in the ministrations. Now all you have to do is to wear a “tsubosto” sock or stocking, and every time you take a step you massage yourself.

These socks and stockings have tiny protrusions made of a titanium-silicon alloy that connect with the therapeutic pressure points on the feet. The very small “bumps” apply gentle pressure to the nerves.

The socks are made by Tsubosto Co. in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward…and are imprinted with such images as butterflies and flowers to make the tiny protrusions less noticeable when you take your shoes off. I haven’t tried them, but I’m going to get a pair at the first opportunity.

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Boyé Lafayette De Mente (b.1928) has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China, including the first ever on the Japanese way of doing business. See: http://www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info/

Americans Adopting the Worst Elements of Japanese Culture

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

In the mid-1960s when I was a Tokyo-based trade journalist I wrote that a growing number of Americans were being influenced by positive elements in Japan’s traditional culture and were approaching the cultural sophistication that the Japanese had reached by the 10th century.

In that instance I was referring to the arts, crafts, food, poetry, literature, entertainment and sexual practices. But in the following two decades Japan’s influence on the United States was to go well beyond these areas and become a serious national problem.

By the mid-1970s many segments of American industry were being threatened with extinction by the overwhelming power of Japan’s economic juggernaut, and it was not until then that American business leaders began to pick up on the Japanese concepts of kaizen (continuous improvement), kanban (just in time parts delivery), hinshitsu (quality), miryokuteki hinshitsu (quality with sex appeal), yugo ka (fuzzy thinking), and other Japanese practices...all of which I had been promoting in my books on Japan for well over a decade.

In The Japanese Influence on America, a book I wrote in the early 1980s, I described the impact that Japan was having on American management and manufacturing processes—both of which had become obsolete and had already relegated many segments of American industry to the trash dump of history—and recommended practical steps for American manufacturers to take in order to not only cope with but to benefit from the Japanese challenge.

Now, the influence of Japanese culture on the U.S. has gone well-beyond beyond management and manufacturing processes, eating sushi, and singing in karaoke bars—all of which have their very positive sides.

On the other hand, we also seem to be hung up on adopting some of the worst elements of Japan’s traditional culture. …elements which the Japanese themselves are actually in the process of giving up.

The outmoded elements of Japanese culture that Americans are importing include behavior that is based on policies instead of principles, and hiding behind facades (tatemae/tah-tay-my) rather than telling the truth up front (honne/hone-nay). Both American businessmen and politicians have become masters of the tatemae approach.

More and more Americans are now also emulating Japan’s traditional approach to human sexuality by condoning and celebrating it. Like the Japanese of old, we now elevate prostitutes and pornographers to star status. But we do not have the structure or restraints that were built into the Japanese way and kept it under control.

Our whole economy is driven by the exploitation of sex, especially female sexuality, and sexual behavior has become a kind of free-for-all, with the only restraints being the time and place—and even these are often ignored. And not surprisingly, this element of American culture has been adopted by most other developed and developing countries in the world—driving home the old adage that sex sells.

Today’s over-emphasis on female sexuality obviously derives from the efforts of religions to mask, suppress and deny the sexuality of females—a male ploy designed to keep women on the bottom.

I am all for emancipation from the ancient religious view of human sexuality that has brought unimaginable suffering to the Western world…but it needs to be de-commercialized and humanized.

There are still many positive things to learn from the Japanese, including their use of both sides of their brains (the rational side and the emotional side), which contributes to their extraordinary design sense and their appreciation of beauty.

I recommend The Advantages of Using Both Sides of Your Brain [something the Japanese are very good at], available on amazon.com.

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Boyé Lafayette De Mente (b.1928) has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China, including the first ever on the Japanese way of doing business. See: http://www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info/

The Extraordinary Merits of Japan’s Modern-Day Karate

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Most countries in the world today remain awash in irrational and violent behavior because their cultures are incapable of instilling in people the mindset that is necessary to build and sustain rational, positive, humane, and constructive societies.

I believe that the physical, emotional and philosophical discipline offered by Japan’s modern-day version of karate (kah-rah-tay) training could go a long way toward reducing many of the evils that continue to afflict mankind—if not eliminating some of them altogether—and I advocate making training in this former martial art mandatory in all elementary and high schools around the world.

As simplistic and perhaps as other-worldly as it may sound, this is one training program that all children could be enrolled in at an early age that would go a long way toward instilling in them many of the cultural attributes that are the most desirable and admirable in human beings—and the only thing their parents would have to do is enroll them in this program and keep them in it from around the age of five to fifteen or older.

The story of karate as a Japanese fighting art began on the historically independent island kingdom of Okinawa after it was conquered by a Japanese warlord in 1609, and the residents were forbidden to have weapons of any kind.

Bereft of weapons, Okinawan warriors soon developed the ancient Chinese version of karate [“empty hand”] into a more formidable martial art, making it possible for them to inflict serious injury or death on a person using only their hands.

During the following decades of Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate era [1603-1867] karate was gradually subsumed into the training of the samurai who ruled Japan and Okinawa. Later, after the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1867 and dissolution of the samurai class in 1870, karate became a part of the training of Japan’s imperial army and police forces.

By the early 1900s a few farsighted martial arts masters who were not associated with training the military or police forces began to teach karate as a sport aimed at developing the character of the individual, with special emphasis on respect for others, concentration, self-confidence, diligence, a sense of order, perseverance, honesty and courage.

But this type of enlightened training did not become widespread in Japanese society because of the militaristic nature of the post-samurai government—a situation that did not begin to change until some two decades after the establishment of a democratic form of government in 1945/46.

Today most people around the world are familiar with the word karate as a result of movies, video games and comic books which continue to present it as a fighting technique, but in real life most training in karate is aimed at building the kind of character and behavior that all parents would like to see in their children.

The popularity of training in modern karate is now growing in Japan, and the number of karate training centers around the world is increasing [there are over 3,000 in the U.S. alone] as more parents come to understand that its remarkable benefits include improving the character, personality and behavior of their children.

The World of Martial Arts Information Center lists these benefits as: learning the value of time, the importance of perseverance in achieving success, the dignity of simplicity, the value of character, the power of kindness, the influence of example, the obligation of duty, the wisdom of economy, the virtue of patience, the improvement of talents and the importance of respect.

Since ordinary people now have the opportunity to influence beliefs and events on a scale that was not even imaginable until the advent of the Internet, I suggest that this amazing power be utilized to introduce millions of people around the planet to the extraordinary benefits of modern-day karate with the goal of getting it incorporated into a universal Earth culture.

Anyone interested in pursuing this proposal might go to amazon.com and check out: Samurai Principles & Practices That Will Help Preteens & Teens in School, Sports, Social Activities & Choosing Careers! It is especially aimed at parents and teachers.
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Boyé Lafayette De Mente (b.1928) has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China, including the first ever on the Japanese way of doing business. See: http://www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info/

Eliminating “Old Men Smell” & Sex Pheromones

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

The creative and innovating abilities of Japanese scientists and product developers are apparently unbounded—as is the variety of areas and things that attract their attention.

Among the recent and more far-out of their innovations are lines of men’s wear that “eat” body odors.

Now if that doesn’t strike you as being worthy of serious attention and effort by developers and researchers, you may have to spend some time reconsidering the power of modern-day advertising that is designed to program the minds of viewers and listeners to buy their products.

And if that doesn’t do the trick, you may have to resort to considering the modern-day sensibilities of women who because of advertising find the smell of sweat—their own but especially that of men—unpleasant and unacceptable.

There is more. It is a given that as men age their natural body odor changes…taking on a fetid smell to varying degrees. The older the man the stronger this smell becomes, and if not controlled by bathing and other means the smell can be a real turn-off for people with a keen sense of smell.

As it happens, most men of whatever age are either not conscious of their own smell or it doesn’t bother them. Basically, it’s kind of like working in a sausage factory. After a while you don’t notice the smell.

Women in Japan and other “advanced countries” are especially sensitive to male sweat because they have been programmed to consider it both unsightly and unpleasant. And this especially applies to both outer and under garments worn by men.

Now, Japanese apparel manufacturers have mounted an all-out war against sweat-soaked shorts and suits by creating fabrics that deodorized themselves. Talk about advancing the human condition!

But what the makers, buyers and sniffers (meaning women) are forgetting—if they ever knew—is that male sweat is loaded with sex-related chemicals called pheromones that are designed to attract females and turn them on.

If the odor of male sweat is eliminated altogether—and that is obviously the direction humanity is going in—and men no longer have this invisible sexual attraction going for them, what will happen to male-female relations?

Men are already becoming feminized to an amazing degree that flies in the face of nature…a portent of the time when females will be the dominate half of the species.

If you would like to know more about why and how this is happening, go to the book category of amazon.com and check out The Myth of Intelligent Life on Planet Earth!
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Boyé Lafayette De Mente (b.1928) has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China, including the first ever on the Japanese way of doing business. See: http://www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info/

SELLING SEX IN A GLASS*

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

The entertainment trades in Japan were traditionally referred as the mizu shobai (me-zoo show-by) or 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 in the country and the ancient Japanese practice of bathing in them for pleasure as opposed to cleanliness led to the association of pleasure and water.

The term mizu shobai apparently came into use during the early decades Japan's last shogunate dynasty (1603-1867)—a period that saw the rise of huge bathhouses that catered specifically to men seeking pleasures of the flesh, a great network of roadside inns around the country that featured both hot baths and sexual services, and the expansion of geisha districts and courtesan quarters in every city.

During this period mizu shobai referred to all of the entertainment trades, including the theater, but in time it came to be the most closely associated with the large red-light districts that flourished throughout the country, the thousands of roadside inns that provided hot baths and sake (sah-kay), and a huge number of nomiya (no-me-yah) or “drinking places.”

While organized prostitution was subject to the control of the shogunate government and the 200-plus daimyo (die-m’yoh) provincial lords in their own fiefs, it was a sanctioned enterprise that was not under a cloud of moral righteousness. The Japanese did not associate sex with sin or the marriage contract, thus sparing themselves the suffering imposed on Christian and Muslim people by their religious leaders over the millennia.

THE ROLE OF ALCOHOL
Drinking for ceremonial as well as recreational purposes has been an established custom in Japan since mythological times, with sake (sah-kay) having been sanctified by the gods of Shinto as well as temporal leaders.

The Japanese are now among the champion drinkers of the world, imbibing sake, beer, whiskey, vodka and other drinks with equal enthusiasm. Drinking plays a significant ritualistic role in the lives of most Japanese businessmen and many professionals. (The Japanese have traditionally believed that you could not get to really know a person until the person got drunk and ignored etiquette and role-playing.)

THE UBIQUITOUS NOMIYA
The most common feature of Japan's mizu shobai today is the hundreds of thousands of nomiya (no-me-yah) or "drinking places." There are several different varieties and classes of drinking establishments, including what are typically referred to as bars, lounges, nightclubs and cabarets, along with beer halls, pubs and places that specialize in sake.

There is a great deal of overlapping in the use of these terms but there are basic differences in them, including some that are prescribed by law. One of the most important of these legal differences is that, regardless of what they are called, a nomiya must be licensed as a cabaret to employ hostesses who sit with, dance with, and otherwise personally entertain patrons. Another legal factor is that a place must be licensed as a restaurant to stay open after midnight.

In cabarets, patrons are automatically assigned hostesses as soon as they come in and are seated, and are charged a hostess fee that is more or less based on time as well as on the class and standards of the individual cabaret. If a patron has a favorite hostess, he may request her for an additional fee.

Big spenders may allow more than one hostess per guest to join them at their tables or booths. They may also allow the girls to rotate, giving more girls the opportunity to earn fees. (Some places automatically rotate the hostesses in order to run up the bills of their customers; a ploy that yakuza controlled places routinely use on naive customers, including foreigners.)

Cabarets posing as night clubs generally allow patrons to choose whether or not they want the company of hostesses — a concept introduced into the mizu shobai by the founders of the first postwar night clubs in the late 1940s, most of whom were foreigners, including some Americans.

JAPANESE PUBS
One type of drinking establishment that originated during the Edo period (1603-1867) and was modernized in the 1970s is known as izakaya (ee-zah-kah-yah), the Japanese equivalent of an Irish pub or American tavern.

There are many izakaya chains, with Yoro no Taki (Yoe-roe no Tah-kee) being the largest (and rapidly spreading to the American West Coast). Yoro no Taki has some 1,800 branches in Japan, most of which are franchises.

Another of the izakaya chains is Tsuhachi (T'sue-hah-chee), with some 400 outlets. The Murasaki chain, with nearly 650 outlets, combines the atmosphere of a cafe-bar with a furusato izakaya (fuu-rue-sah-toe ee-zah-kah-yah), or "hometown tavern."
The big attraction of the izakaya are the low prices for the basic alcoholic beverages (sake, beer and shochu), good solid food and the fact that they cater to women as well as men.

"SINGING BARS"
As most people know, one of the most popular types of bars in Japan today is the karaoke (kah-rah-oh-kay) bar, or bars that provide microphones, sound equipment and tape-decks for patrons who want to sing to the company of orchestra-like music. Karaoke means "empty orchestra," and refers to the illusion that the singer is performing with a live orchestra.

Many Japanese practice singing several songs in private (often for years) so they won't be embarrassed when they are called on to perform in public.

Singing in a karaoke bar means more to most Japanese businessmen than just having a good time. Besides relieving stress and providing personal satisfaction, such performances are seen by many as important to one's overall character and personality.

In explaining the importance of the karaoke bars to foreign guests, Japanese businessman will often say that you must understand karaoke in order to understand the Japanese, and that if you truly want to communicate with them you must learn how to sing along with them as well as perform on your own. There is a great deal of validity to this firmly held and often expressed belief which obviously accounts for the number and popularity of such bars.

The fact that very few Westerners, especially Americans, can carry a tune much less sing decently, is a social handicap when they are in Japan visiting or on business. My advice is to learn at least one song, even if it is as simple as "Old Grey Mare" or "I've Been Working on the Railroad."

Notwithstanding all of the new and different kinds of drinking and carousing establishments Japan, cabarets remain the favorite of middle-aged and older men who can afford the cost because they combine drinking with the attention of very attractive young women who are either available or work very hard to give that impression.

Even though cabaret customers may not end up trysting with their favorite hostesses, they go back time and again for the sexual lift they get— and end up drinking an awful lot of alcohol. For nowhere in the world have the purveyors of male-oriented "recreation" become more skilled at "selling sex in a glass"* than the operators of Japan's cabarets and their cadre of hostesses.
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Boyé Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China. For synopses of his titles go to: www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.com.
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*The phrase “Selling Sex in a Glass” was coined in the 1970s by Larry Flynt, now the publisher of Hustler Magazine, and then the owner-operator of a chain of go-go clubs in Ohio. I served as his publishing consultant when he inaugurated the magazine… initially to promote the clubs. I resigned the position when he decided to go porno with the magazine.

Asian Art of Face Reading Goes High Tech!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

The ancient Asian art of face-reading has gone high-tech in Japan. Japanese scientists are now applying high-speed photographic technology to the art, adding a new dimension to understanding human feelings and human communication—a development that could eventually change most human interactions.

This new development is being led by electronics manufacturer Omron’s Keihanna Technology Innovation Center [KTIC] in its O’kao (Honorable Face) face-sensing technology project.

The KTIC has over one million photos of the faces of some 9,000 people that reveal different facial expressions that are then related to meanings and moods—taking the art of face-reading to a level never dreamed of before.

The researchers say the new technology can be applied in many ways, from linking people with devices and machines to revealing a person’s innermost thoughts that may be contrary to what they are saying—going beyond a sophisticated lie-detector to virtually reading a person’s mind.

Japanese researchers at Meiji University School of Science and Technology (MUSST) are taking this new innovation in a different direction by linking facial movements to operating electronic devices, giving the impression of virtual thought-control.

MUSST’s main project is a robotic face [called Kansei or “Sensibilities”] that has a data base of half a million words with facial expressions that relate to meanings of the words.

The creator of the robotic face, Prof. Junichi Takeno, says his goal is to discover the mechanisms of consciousness. At this time his robot face has 36 expressions—probably more than the average person thinks he or she is capable of expressing.

Among the practical applications of the new face-reading approach: enhanced security systems; photo booth cameras that manipulate colors and contrasts to make the subjects more attractive; turn electronic devices off and on; manipulate household appliances that have embedded chips; and act as backups for drivers who become fatigued or whose attention is distracted—in other words, the ultimate remote controls.

Face-reading as both an art and science was originally studied and institutionalized in China some 3,000 years ago by physicians who began to relate facial features with intelligence, character, personality, sexuality and other human attributes as part of their health-care practices.

From the health-care industry, face-reading became a skill that was used by the Chinese military, by employers, and by men seeking more amorous female partners—the latter use making it especially popular among ordinary people. [Many of the readings are sensually oriented.]

From around the 14th century A.D. Japanese priests and others who had occasion to visit China picked up on the face-reading theory and practice of the Chinese and introduced it into Japan.

I began studying the art in Japan in the mid-1950s after being inspired by the face-reader brought in by the military in 1939 to help decide what kind of training new recruits were best suited for. He was living in Chiba at that time and readily agreed to be interviewed.

I subsequently wrote a book entitled Face-Reading for Fun & Profit, went on a lecture tour in the U.S., and appeared on the then popular What’s My Line television show in New York.

This activity helped promote the use of face-reading in the corporate world of American, with some companies using face-readers in their recruiting efforts as well as in their decisions to promote employees to higher positions.

Everybody face reads. In fact, it is the very first thing we do when seeing or meeting someone for the first time, and throughout life we continue to read the faces of people we are talking to or listening to, and everyone automatically makes judgments about the character, veracity, etc., of these individuals.

But there are over one hundred precise readings based on the size, shape and quality of the facial features, and without special knowledge or training most people recognize and react to less than half of this number.

I [naturally!] recommend my own book, which has been republished under the title of Asian Face Reading – Unlock the Secrets Hidden in the Human Face, as a good starting place. It is available from bookstores and Amazon.com

___________________________Boyé Lafayette De Mente (b.1928) has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China, including the first ever on the Japanese way of doing business. See: http://www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info/

Astounding Advances in Robotics Rings Bells!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Recent technological advances by Japanese scientists in robotics brings to mind the movie “The Rise of the Machines”—one of the Terminator classics starring now California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger....advances that pose a serious question.

Will the new robots now coming online—and the incredible ones that are on the immediate horizon—be a boon to mankind (as the scientists claim) or will they evolve into a new order of intelligence that becomes self-aware (as in the movie “I, Robot”) and themselves decide on what the human-robot relationship should be?

Japanese scientists, who continue to make one break-through after the other in programming robots to feel, hear, see and think like human beings, maintain that their goals are to create robots that will be able to act as assistants, caretakers and nurses for Japan’s rapidly aging population.

That sounds both benign and worthy of pursuing, especially since the elderly are expected to make up 40 percent of Japan’s population by 2055—with similar demographic changes in other countries as higher living standards and better education results in a decline in births and longer life-spans.

Scientists in Japan are now engaged in creating the technology for a range of robots that includes caretakers, general servants, technicians and engineers. Technology already developed and being used includes most of the eye, hear, arm and leg functions that distinguish human beings.

The latest advances in robotics involves placing incredibly sensitive sensors all over the bodies of robots that emulate the tactile response of human skin—a development that has far-reaching and profound implications. The bodies (and fingers) of this new order of robots are just as sensitive as human bodies.

This growing effort to humanize robots is being spearheaded by a combination of government and private industry sponsorship under the heading of an organization called the Information and Robot Technology Research Initiative (IRT), which is aimed at fusing information technology and robot technology. In other words, the goal is to provide robots with human-like skills and brains.

Project teams are well into applying new control systems developed by such companies as Toyota and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. To avoid making the robots look like humans, and therefore a possible threat, these teams are coming up with forms based on the work the robots are designed to perform.

Their public rationale is that a robot designed to do mechanical repairs on a washing machine, for example, does not have to look like “Mr. Maytag;” a robot that prepares and serves meals would not necessarily have to look like a chef. But people would surely be more comfortable if it did, and it is this human emotion that will no doubt determine the appearance of most future “domestic” and “service” robots!

The efforts of the IRT are being directed by Isao Shimoyama, a professor at the University of Tokyo, who says his goal is to create a class of robots that will be integrated into human society on the level that machines, electrical appliances and electronic devices now play.

The several million people who visited the Expo of 2005 in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture got a glimpse of the robotic world of the future, but the walking and talking robots that were introduced at that exhibition pale when it comes to the generation of robots that will go into the first stages of production in 2009.

The time has come when the Laws of Robots devised by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in 1940 should be dusted off and turned into non-fiction laws worldwide. In summary, these laws state that under no circumstances can a robot harm a human being…and they would at least set standards that scientists should follow.

In the meantime, we are getting a preview of the future!
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Boyé Lafayette De Mente (b.1928) has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China, including the first ever on the Japanese way of doing business. See: www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info

JAPANESE SCIENTIST "CLONES" HIMSELF!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

What would you do if you were suddenly faced by an android that looked exactly like you and acted exactly the same way you act—especially if you didn’t like what you saw?

That is exactly what happened to Osaka University Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, one of Japan’s leading robotic engineers who recently created a robot that was not only in his own image but also had many—if not all—of his subtle behavioral habits.

The professor is not a bad looking fellow, so he was not upset with the appearance of his double, but what really got to him were some of the odd behavioral ticks exhibited by the robot that he found uncomfortable to watch.

It seems that the professor had programmed the android to be an exact duplicate of himself in both appearance and in behavior….resulting in him finally seeing himself as others see him…which turned out to be a bit of a shock.

The good professor was further disturbed by the fact that his peers, coworkers and students all agreed that the android was a virtually perfect clone…that it exhibited all of his behavioral traits…putting him in a position of experiencing something that no one else had ever experienced before.

Prof. Ishiguro’s creation of an android clone of himself was not inspired by any ego trip, but by a strong desire to understand the scientific basis for human individuality…something that has never been identified much less quantified.

In addition to seeing his outward self as others saw him, Prof. Ishiguro extrapolated that if his inner self was revealed in the same way both he and everyone else who saw him would be even more surprised or shocked.

While this thought was even more disturbing to him, as a scientist he saw it as a big step forward in understanding the internal makeup of humans…which led him to begin asking questions of his students that surprised and shocked them. With one telling example being asking them to compare their daily activities with that of cockroaches...which, like humans, eat, sleep and propagate themselves.

Prof. Ishiguro notes that all individuals have personalities and characteristics that distinguish them from others to varying degrees, but the lives of most people are based on their financial and social status rather than inherent qualities that differentiate them from cockroaches.

He sees this phenomenon as a cultural failure that is the source of most of the self-made problems that have afflicted mankind since day one. He says that the most important thing that humans can do and other life forms cannot do is think about the fundamental questions of life and the world at large, and respond—rationally or irrationally.

While he doesn’t spell it out, he infers [correctly] that most people do not habitually think and respond in a rational, positive manner, which more or less puts them on the level of cockroaches.
Prof. Ishiguro adds that the only people who deserve to be called individuals are those who ask what human beings are, and have well thought-out perspectives of themselves and the role in life they should play to achieve the fullest potential of human beings…which makes him a philosopher first and a robot-maker second.

Many past philosophers have come to the same conclusions about humanity as Prof. Ishiguro, but none of them were robotics engineers, and none of them had the ultimate goal of creating robots that were indistinguishable from human beings in attitudes, values and behavior.

The closer the professor gets to this goal the more important it will be for him to program the androids so that they are, in fact, different from human beings—to make sure that they are not programmed to have the human propensity for irrational thinking and destructive behavior.

All of this may appear at first glance to be idle contemplation, but given the astounding advances that Prof. Ishiguro and other Japanese scientists are making in programming robots the eventual appearance of human-like androids is probably inevitable. And at some point, they could look at human beings as cockroaches…and put their foot down!
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Boyé Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan and East Asia since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, business journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on Japan, Korea and China, including the first ever on the Japanese way of doing business. See: http://www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info/

Japanese Scientists Make Verbal Translation Break-Thru

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Throughout history languages have separated human beings into exclusive groups, making communication difficult or impossible, exacerbating their cultural differences and contributing to wars and other kinds of violence.

The primary reason for this linguistic plague is the fact that languages are the reservoir, the transmitter, and the controller of cultures. People who speak different languages have problems because they think and behave in different ways.

When working as a trade journalist in Asia in the 1950s and 60s I learned that the cultures of China, Korea and Japan were bound up in hundreds of key words in each of the three languages, and that you simply could not understand their respective ways of thinking and behaving without intimate knowledge of these key words—a fact that I subsequently used in a series of “cultural code word” books on these countries.

But technology is on the verge of eliminating some of the linguistic barriers that separate human beings—and much sooner than you might think.

Most of the world is familiar with the “universal language” devices used by the fictional Capt. James T. Kirk and the intrepid crew of Star Trek to communicate with the various life-forms they encountered during their travels around the galaxies.

Now, reality is rapidly catching up with fiction. Japan’s Council for Science and Technology Policy [CSTP] has challenged the country’s automated speech translation researchers to improve the present technology in the next five years to the point that automated translators will be a reality for Japanese who want to communicate with English and Mandarin speakers.

Prototypes of these translators have already been field-tested in China, and the word is that they worked perfectly as long as the conversations were simple. The process is based on storing hundreds of thousands of sentences and speech patterns into the devices that have exact equivalents in the target languages.

The goal of the CSTP is to have universal translators on the market for all of the world’s major languages within ten years!

The impact that this will have on the world is so potentially profound and broad that over a period of a few generations it will surely change the nature of human cultures.

This revolutionary change in the ability of human beings to communicate with each other across language barriers will inevitably increase the volume of conversations, since every word that is pregnant with cultural nuances and uses will have to be explained in detail to make the communication complete.

To fully explain the cultural content and role of the Spanish term macho (mah-choh), for example, requires several hundred words. To fully explain the Japanese term kaizen (kigh-zen), or “continuous improvement,” requires as many as a thousand words or more (there is a whole book on the subject).

If you think there is too much babble in today’s world, consider what it will be like when this is multiplied many times over by universal translation technology embedded in your cell phone!
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Boyé Lafayette De Mente is the author of more than 50 business, cultural and language books on Japan, China, Korea, Mexico, Hopi Land and Navajo Land. See his website: http://www.business-cultural-language-books-on-china-japan-korea-mexico.info/

New Crown Jewel of Tokyo Hotels

Peninsula Tokyo Sets New Standards
For Combining Culture & Convenience

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Luxurious hotels that were perfect reflections of traditional Japanese culture first appeared in Japan nearly four hundred years ago, when the Tokugawa Shogunate decreed that some 270 of the country’s fief lords would spend every other year in Edo [Tokyo] in attendance at the Shogun’s Court.

Since this edict made it necessary for the lords and their entourages to spend several days to several weeks marching in stately processions between their fiefs and the Shogunate capital, the Shogunate also required the construction of a network of luxury inns, called honjin (hoan-jeen), for the exclusive use of the lords, their high-ranking retainers, members of the Imperial family, and court nobles.

Japan thus became the first country in the world to have a national network of luxury hotel accommodations for travelers—setting a precedent and establishing a tradition that was not to appear anywhere else in the world until the 19th century.

The first Western style honjin was constructed in Tokyo in 1890, and was christened The Imperial Hotel. Patronage of the new hotel grew rapidly and an annex was soon added. In 1910 it was decided to replace the buildings entirely with a much larger facility. Work did not start on the new hotel until 1917, and the Mayan-like second Imperial Hotel was officially opened to the public on August 31, 1923.

On the following day, at precisely 11:58 a.m. the Tokyo and Yokohama area was struck by a great earthquake that destroyed virtually every Western style building in the two cities—except for the new Imperial Hotel. The designer of the hotel, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, had “floated” the foundation of the hotel on huge pilings driven into the reclaimed land, allowing the massive stone-block building to ride out the waves of the earthquake like a boat.

For the next several decades the Imperial Hotel set the standard for Western style hotels in Japan, and then it was eclipsed by a stream of new international hotels, most of which incorporated some elements of Japanese arts and crafts into their interiors and furnishings, giving them a cultural façade that brought to mind the traditional honjin of the lords.

But none of these hotels did more than add a few surfaces touches of Japanese culture to their appointments…that is until the arrival of Peninsula Tokyo on the scene in 2007—exactly eighty-four years to the day after the Great Kanto Earthquake made the Imperial Hotel known around the world.

The architects and designers who created Peninsula Tokyo incorporated elements of traditional Japanese arts and crafts in virtually every aspect of the hotel, from the entryway to the floors, the ceilings, the walls, the rooms and the furnishings—all of which complement the ultimate in Western-style conveniences.

But the builders did not stop there. They also made Peninsula Tokyo the most high-tech hotel in the world. In fact, there are so many high-tech features in the rooms that a small manual is provided for guests to guide them through the futuristic amenities…one of the most practical of which is a cell phone that acts as an in-house phone when you are in the hotel and automatically converts to a mobile phone when you are out on the town.

Naturally, Peninsula Tokyo has a selection of gourmet quality Chinese, Japanese and international restaurants, one of which takes up all of the 24th floor and provides a 360-degree panoramic view of central Tokyo and the adjoining Imperial Palace Grounds.

In addition to being across the street from the outer Imperial Gardens, Peninsula Tokyo adjoins the core business district of Marunouchi as well as the Hibiya and Yurakucho restaurant and theater districts, and is a five-minute stroll from the Ginza, Tokyo’s most famous shopping and entertainment district.

For newcomers to the Asian scene, the pedigree of Peninsula Tokyo is impeccable. It is a member of the famous Peninsula group of hotels that began in Hong Kong in 1866 and now includes properties in New York, Chicago, Beverly Hills, Bangkok, and Manila. Peninsula Shanghai is scheduled to open in 2009.

Old Asian hands arriving at Peninsula Tokyo will immediately recognize the famed Peninsula Hong Kong connection: Rolls Royce Phantoms lined up in front of the hotel for use by guests, and the lobby restaurant where breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea is served and iconic Peninsula pageboys page guests who have phone calls or visitors.
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Boyé Lafayette De Mente is the author of more than 40 books on Japan, including Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in Business, the first book ever on the Japanese way of doing business, published in 1959. His most recent book on Japan: Elements of Japanese Design—Understanding and Using Japan’s Classic Wabi-Sabi-Shibui Concepts.

Foreign Cultures Still Transforming Japan!

“French Maid” Shops

Help Japanese Make Friends!

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Coffee shops were among the first new businesses to appear wholesale in Japan following the end of the Pacific War in 1945. By 1950 there were dozens of thousands of them, with the larger ones featuring such themes as Russian Cossacks, fashion shows, art galleries, etc., with the waiters and waitresses dressed in the appropriate attire.

The shops were a runaway success for several reasons. First, because there were no other public places where large numbers of people could go for coffee and light snacks—and they were heated in the winter…and by the mid-1950s air-conditioned in the summer!

And second, company offices at that time were generally not heated in winter or air-conditioned in the summer, and most of them did not have private offices for managers and executives or special rooms for business meetings—resulting in hundreds of thousands managers and employees holding their meetings in the new coffee shops.

By the mid-1960s the overall number of coffee shops in Japan had increased but the foreign-culture-theme approach had virtually disappeared.

Now the theme approach has made a comeback, featuring a “French maid” theme not only in coffee shops but also in casinos, karaoke bars and souvenir shops. This new phenomenon first appeared in Tokyo’s famed Akihabara “Electric Town” discount and wholesale shopping district, which attracts several million Japanese and foreign tourists annually.

The petite, cute “French maids” in the various shops wear short-skirted uniforms that include aprons, socks that come just above the knees, and stylized bow ties.

Japanese professors (who specialize in commenting on social behavior of every kind) say this new phenomenon is a spin-off from the custom of young girls to make the uniforms of their favorite animation characters , wear the costumes on holidays and weekends, and gather at popular meeting places to show them off.

Other professors say the real reason for the proliferation of the “French maid” concept in coffee shops, karaoke bars and casinos is that they encourage the usually reticent Japanese to begin conversations with strangers, and come out of their “shells.”

These profs say that the Japanese have become great at communicating via email and text-messaging but that they are still reluctant to engage strangers in instant conversations and make friends the way Americans and other Westerners do.

“French maids” in karaoke bars sing along with patrons and take requests—at ¥500 a pop!
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Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente. To see a list and description of 40-plus books on Japan by the author, go to http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.

It is Now Alright to Smile in Japan!

Dramatic Shift in Japanese Culture

Upsets Social Critic

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Cultural changes in Japan since the 1950s have been both profuse and profound—beginning with and prompted by the introduction of personal freedom and individuality into Japanese society for the first time in the history of the country.

One of the new elements in modern-day Japanese culture that is both amazing and enlightening – in comparison with earlier times – is the custom of smiling. Traditionally, the Japanese were known for smiling when they were embarrassed and when referring to personal tragedies, but not smiling in situations that Westerners considered funny and not continuously injecting humorous comments or actions into their behavior that would elicit smiles in other countries.

It is not fair or correct to say, however, that earlier Japanese did not have a sense of humor and did not laugh and smile in their daily lives. They did have (and still have) a highly honed sense of humor, and both smiling and laughter had their place.

But it is true that the Japanese have traditionally been restrained in their use of humor and in smiling because of the formality and strictness of their etiquette in their relations with others. A serious demeanor in virtually all formal situations and in the workplace was a key part of the culture of the Japanese. At the very least, it was considered rude for clerks, receptionists and others to smile when dealing with customers.

There was a time and place for humor and for laughing in pre-democratic Japan, but to engage in such behavior when it was not the time or the place could have very serious consequences. During the long samurai era (1192-1870) a smile in a formal situation could get you shortened by a head. And still today in offices and workplaces a smiling face can get you labeled as insincere and not worthy of promotion to a higher position.

But beginning around the 1970s the new breed of Japanese began adopting the Western custom of smiling as an integral part of creating and maintaining harmonious relations with others—something that was diametrically opposed to traditional Japanese behavior.

Now, says noted Japanese social critic and author Tomomi Fujiwawa, the Japanese born after 1970 have gone so far in substituting smiles for seriousness and sincerity that it has begun to have a deleterious affect on their ability to solve problems.

In an interview published by the Japan Economic Weekly Fujiwara is quoted as saying that there is now too much smiling in Japan and that he fears for the future of the country. He says that the constant smiling that one sees in restaurants and stores gives an impression of peace and harmony, but in reality it can be and often is misleading and can make genuine communication difficult or impossible.

Fujiwara adds that people who have become conditioned to smiling their way through life become susceptible to “running amok,” when they encounter challenges or obstacles that they cannot deal with by smiling.

Having been intimately involved with Japan since the late 1940s my own judgment is that adoption of the Western way of smiling and using humor in private and public relationships by the younger generations of Japanese has been one of the best things that has happened to the country.

One of the primary cultural traits of the Japanese born and raised before the spread of unrestrained smiling was a deep-seated feeling of being fundamentally different from people in the rest of the world, of not feeling at ease with foreigners, of experiencing extraordinary stress when dealing with foreigners.

This feeling no longer exists among post-1970 Japanese and has dramatically subsided in those who are older – and is one of the reasons why so many resident foreigners and foreign visitors regard Japan as a kind of paradise – made so by the friendly outgoing personalities of the people and their continuing attention to the care, comfort and needs of others.
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Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente
For a list and descriptions of the author's 40-plus books on Japan, go to: phoenixbookspublishers.com

The Amazing Globalization of Japan!

Japan Leading the Way in Globalization

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

TOKYO (BNS) -- The changes that have occurred in Japan since the end of the long samurai/feudal era in the early 1870s is one of the most remarkable sagas in modern history – changes that are, in fact, incredible, particularly to someone who has been directly involved in them since shortly after the end of the Pacific War in 1945 when the industrial areas of the country and vast stretches of housing were mostly rubble.

In fact, contemplating Japan’s rise to economic superpower status between 1948 and 1968 is now like a dream…and then to take into account the additional changes in the physical infrastructure and the culture of the country since then evokes even more incredulity.

Why and how the Japanese were able to transform themselves into leaders in virtually every scientific and technical field of human endeavor and their country into the world’s second largest economy in less than 30 years is a story that has not yet been fully told.

Much of both the “why” and “how” portions of this question can be found in the heritage of the samurai that became embedded in Japan’s culture over a period of a thousand years—a heritage made up of the ability to focus with incredible precision, to work with equally incredible energy and perseverance, to strive for perfection in everything, and to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for achievement and success.

And now Japan is on the cusp of economic globalization, putting itself in a unique position to take advantage of all of the positive and beneficial principles and practices that this includes.

Japanese companies are continuing to dramatically increase their holdings in foreign assets, from buying into leading companies to long-term contracts for raw materials. As witnessed by the business news media, the number and value of these investments is multiplying at an amazing pace.

A single issue of The Nikkei Weekly (The Japan Economic Weekly) reveals new tie-ups and manufacturing operations in Australia, China, Denmark, England, Germany, India, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, the United States, and Vietnam—not to mention several South American nations as well as other African countries.

And this list of overseas investments made by Japanese companies in recent weeks and months is by no means complete. The overall scale and potential of these and other globalizing efforts is simply staggering.

Both foreign countries and foreign corporations are also playing key roles in the rapid globalization of Japan’s economy by continuing to expand their investments in Japan, becoming significant shareholders in a growing number of companies. There is now hardly any Japanese company of note that does not have foreign stockholders.

Of course, the level and pace of globalization in other countries, especially the United States, China and India, is also rising rapidly but Japan seems to be leading the pack, and while its ranking as the second largest economy in the world will soon fade, the transformation to a global economy will surely help ensure the future welfare of the country.

While there are unique factors that often make it easier for Japan to globalize than other countries, I believe the Japanese example is a good one for other nations to follow.

Obviously, politicians and diplomats are incapable of bringing about world peace and prosperity. With Japan helping to lead the way, the globalization of the world’s economy could achieve both of these long-sought goals.
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Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente. To see a list and description of 60-plus cultural and language insight books by the author go to http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/; also Amazon.com. His current bestsellers include: Japan’s Cultural Code Words; Samurai Strategies (that modern business people can use); Chinese Etiquette & Ethics in Business; Survival Chinese; and Why Mexicans Think & Behave the Way They Do.

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/.