Birthday Card from My Church, Kobe Eiko Kyokai Church
T. Nagaoka sent me Birthday E-Mail
Japanese Average Life Span：Men;80.87 and Women; 86.61
August 15 is 70th Anniversary of Last World War 2
Prime minister Abe's Discourseof Post-war70th's Anniversary
New Book: "Postwar Japanese Hierology" by Hiromi Shimada
1 Year after from the Sediment Disaster of Hiroshima
A Boy and A Girl was Murdered in Osaka
Roadside memorial: students lay flowers in honor of Natsumi Hirata, a 13-year-old girl who was killed in
Osaka last month along with 12-year-old Ryota Hoshino|KYODO
It still takes a village to keep our kids safe
by
Philip Brasor Special To The Japan Times Article history
Hirata and Hoshino were caught wandering the streets on security cameras during the wee hours of Aug. 13 before they were
presumably picked up and killed. Neither child was homeless, and the question became: What were they doing out so late? In interviews, Hirata’s classmates said that she often went out at
night and hung around on the streets, sometimes not returning home for several days.
What made the story incomprehensible to most reporters is that Hirata wasn’t considered furyō (delinquent) or even a
runaway. Her wandering ways had less to do with typical adolescent rebelliousness than with the fact that she could go out, which means her death was implicitly tied to a lack of
adult supervision. She didn’t seem to be the product of a broken home, though it’s been pointed out that her father is unemployed and her mother works late every day to provide for the
family. Some media suggested that the parents often fought and that maybe the girl wanted to escape such an atmosphere, but there appears to be something else, a parent-child dynamic that
doesn’t fit the usual complaints about permissiveness.
In its Aug. 31 issue, Aera wrestled with the implications but also pointed out that the problem of wandering kids is by no means a
widespread phenomenon. The majority of minors are home by a reasonable hour and do not roam back alleys at night, though the number who do is increasing.
Except for Nagano, every prefecture in Japan has a regulation that prohibits children from being out at night without good
reason. The National Police Agency has reported that in 2014, 429,000 children were confronted in public by police officers nationwide and brought back to police stations. Not all of these
cases took place at night, but most probably did. A good portion may have been potential runaways, but such distinctions become blurry when parents don’t report their children as missing. At
the same time, 1,210 adults were actually arrested for taking their children out after midnight, almost four times the number arrested for the same charge 10 years earlier.
The term that experts have adopted for such a dynamic is “flat,” since the relationship between parent and child is not
vertical but horizontal. According to an expert on criminal psychology interviewed in Aera, though some people have characterized these relations as being akin to a “friendship,” there is
very little warmth involved. The children don’t regard their parents with fear or respect for the simple reason that they don’t see much of them and haven’t developed any opinion one way or
the other. The parent may eschew discipline out of either a fear of alienating the child or laziness, but in any case the children feel no “guilt” about staying out late and, regardless of
their parents’ feelings about this tendency, they in effect are unable to stop the children from going out.
But another reason for the increase in wandering children is a change in the social atmosphere. In a recent feature, the Asahi Shimbun talked to Osamu Mizutani, a former public school teacher who
himself walks the streets at night talking to young people he meets. He cites the rapid spread of convenience stores since the late 1980s, which provide wayward kids with rendezvous points
with clean toilets and snacks. Two decades ago, they would assemble in the dark behind a convenience store, away from adult eyes. But now they hang around in front because they know “no one
will challenge them.” Mizutani reckons that had even one adult confronted Hirata and Hoshino during their midnight ramblings, maybe the tragedy wouldn’t have happened. “Society has become
uninterested in children,” he said.
In a report on NHK’s news show “Close-up Gendai,” smart phones were also cited as contributing to the increase in wandering
children. The social networking app Line has made it possible for kids to create virtual communities that don’t require face-to-face contact, and so they have no sense of danger when they
meet strangers.
As one policeman told NHK, parents buy smart phones for their children expressly so that they can keep track of them. Both
parents and children think that if something happens to the latter they can call for help, but that doesn’t always happen, and certainly wasn’t the case with Hirata and Hoshino. A well-known
children’s advocate, Kazuki Arai, says he uses Line to
monitor the actions of wayward adolescents, and has found that they are subjected to violence even more than people think, but that they don’t tell anyone except their friends online. Some
teen girls even text about being raped.
And this is something that the media, despite its natural tendency to emphasize the sordid details of tragic stories, hasn’t
stressed enough. The man who was arrested for the murders of Hirata and Hoshino has already spent time in prison for abducting children, but even
if parents do warn their kids not to talk to strangers, there seems to be little discussion of what might actually happen if they do, and thus the peril isn’t communicated effectively.
Pederasty isn’t a subject deemed fit for public discussion, and as long as kids aren’t made aware of what some people are capable of, they may not be sufficiently cautious.
But without a stronger disciplinary will on the part of parents, even this scare tactic could backfire. If kids walking around
at night are confronted by adults who try to get them to go home and who are then accused of being potential molesters, it’s going to be more difficult to get adults to act. Arai says that he
knows of people who have tried to talk to young people on the street and the young people threatened to call the police on them. But if that happens, by all means call their bluff, because in
the end, getting the police involved is exactly what you want.
My Twin Niece are Inviting Italian Chamber Orchestra to Kamakura
Welcome Back to Japan
Megumi & Sayuri Ikeda
was Introdused by the Magazine " OZ "
Someone else’s website in materials used in Olympic logo presentations, including one at its launch,apparentl Kenjiro Sano, whose logo for
the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was scrapped Tuesday, stood
byhis design but said he decided to retract the logo because he felt his design did not
have the supportof the public and was marring the image of the Tokyo Olympics.“I swear my design did not involvecopies or
plagiarism,
” Sano, 43, said in a statement on his website late Tuesday.
“Any attempt ofsuspected copying or plagiarism should never be permitted.
”He apologized to artists and other involved parties over some of his works unrelated to the Olympic logo, while blaming some media for
giving
him a “bad image” and reporting “as if all of my designs
were copies.”“I made the
decision (to retract the logo) after judging that it is difficult
to let this situation continue, to protect my
familyand staff from persistent attacks and bashing over the ruckus,” Sano said, adding that
the
privacy ofhis family has been breached with their pictures exposed online. “I feel the situation has becomeunbearable as a human being,”
the
statement said.Sano now will not be paid the ¥1 million prize
forwinning the design competition.The latest suspicion surfaced over the
weekend, when he was
allegedto have taken a photo from y without permission.
The Japan Times Sep.1,2015
Olympics
organizers under fire as event mishaps grow
Kyodo, AP, AFP-JIJI, Staff Report, Sep.2, 2015
Print: Sep 03, 2015
Last Modifie The Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizing committee faced growing criticism Wednesday over its handlingof the
event, a day after it dumped the games’
logo amid plagiarism claims and as compensation claimsloomed from sponsors
already using the design.During a Diet committee
session, Olympics
minister
Toshiaki Endo said the games’ organizing committee,the Olympics logo
selection committee and its designer were all responsible for the
withdrawal of the logoon Tuesday.“Each of the three parties are responsible in their own
way,” Endo said after the organizersdecided Tuesday to
go
back
to the drawing board and design a new logo at the request of its creator KenjiroSano, who said it no longer had public support.The major
opposition
Democratic Party of Japan said thatwhile the organizing committee carried the heaviest
responsibility,Endo must take his share
of the
blame
as the minister.The retraction was another blow to the country’s games
preparations after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July
scrapped plans
for
the new National Stadium amid fierce public criticism overskyrocketing construction costs.Tokyo Gov. Yoichi Masuzoe said on Twitter that he
saw
similar underlyingproblems with both
issues of “uncertainty in where the responsibility lies and insufficient informationdisclosure.”A Tokyo assembly
member, who asked not to be named, said that former Prime MinisterYoshiro Mori, who heads
the organizing committee, and the committee should
have better handled thelogo incident.Meanwhile, Endo indicated that the organizing committee
may be liable for yet morecompensation after it
emerged
that
some sponsors had already ordered goods featuring the scrappeddesign. The committee
already has to compensate contractors for work on the
scrapped stadium plan.A senior official at the
Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which ordered ¥46 million ($380,000) worthof goods bearing the
now
defunct logo, said it planned to review whether it was possible to seek paymentfrom the organizers. The logo has also been displayed at various
locations
such as airports, while officialsof companies sponsoring the games have printed it on
their business cards.“Although this was adisappointing
development,
we would like to contribute to building anticipation for the games,” said anofficial at All Nippon
Airways Co., which removed the logo from its website
Tuesday evening.”I wassurprised by the sudden
(decision),” said a high-ranking official of a corporate sponsor. “Given the troublerelated to
construction
of the new National Stadium, I’m worried about a decline in the value of the TokyoOlympics.”JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. revealed plans to
delete
the
logo from its commercial footage.The company said it was not yet known how much it would
cost to remove the logo.Sano, in asking forhis logo to
be
pulled, denied it was plagiarized but said he was concerned that the controversy was marringthe Tokyo Olympics’ image, and that his family had
been
subject to harassment. He apologized to artistsand other involved
parties over some of his works unrelated to the Olympics logo, while blaming some
media for giving him a “bad image” and
reporting “as if all of my designs were copies.””I made the decision(to retract the logo)
after judging that it is
difficult to let this situation continue, to protect my family andstaff from persistent
attacks and bashing over the ruckus,” Sano said, adding that the
privacy of his familyhas been breached with their pictures posted
online. “I feel the situation
has become unbearable as ahuman being,” the statement
said.Sano will not be paid the ¥1
million prize for winning the designcompetition.He was accused of plagiarism by Belgian designer Olivier
Debie, who
filed a lawsuit againstthe International Olympic Committee to prevent use of
the Tokyo 2020 logo.The committee rejected theallegation and
presented
what they claimed was
Sano’s initial blueprint for the logo. But that, too, cameunder suspicion due to its resemblance of a design by
the late Jan Tschichold
of
Germany.On
Tuesday,Debie said he would
press on with the lawsuit, which was filed in a Belgian court in August and allegesSano’s Olympic
design
was plagiarized from the logo he made for a theater in the Belgian city of Liege.“My initial reaction was
to say, ‘There you go, we’ve won.’ But at their
press conference, they completelybeat around the bush and
said they were scrapping the logo for some obscure reasons,” Debie said. “So the
case
continues. It remains current because a press conference can’t terminate a legal action. TheOlympic Committee must recognize the plagiarism of
the
logo.”The first hearing of the case is
set forSept. 22 in a civil
court in Liege, with a decision expected to follow in the coming weeks or months.“Plagiarism
is impossible to prove but the facts are there,” said Debie.“The layout and the
typography are virtually identical. When I see the Tokyo 2020 logo, I say
to myself,that’s the logo I created in 2011.”
Sports journalist Gentaro Taniguchi said, “The debacle
over the Olympics’ two symbols — the stadiumand the logo — has
significantly damaged the
Tokyo Olympics and Japan has lost the confidence of theinternational
community.”
The Japan Times September 2, 2015
A Huge Statue of Buddha, Todaiji Temple, Nara
3 Holy Places of Kumano Sanzan, in Kumano, Wakayama
Kumano Kodo pilgrimage routes, Wakayama
Kumanokodo Road (Kumana kodo) is a generic term of pilgrimage routes leading to Kumano Sanzan (three major shrines, Kumano-Hongu-Taisha, Kumano-Hayatama-Taisha and Kumano-Nachi-Taisha).
