Carcinogenic Japan

Less than three years after arriving in Japan, I developed an endocrine problem which caused my health to deteriorate. Through the years, I’ve had friends and acquaintances who have developed serious health problems, many of whom have died from cancer. I wondered why.

What was causing all the cancer? Is it in the green tea that most Japanese drink everyday? Is it in the fish they like to eat raw or cooked in some sugar and soy mixture? Is it in the air we breathe here? Is it in the water? I discovered the answer, and it appears to be all of the above — and more.

The carcinogenic substance that finds its way into the air, the drinking water, and the agricultural soil is dioxin, a toxin which is one of the end result of burning plastics and industrial wastes. One gram of dioxin is enough to kill an estimated 10,000 people, and the Japanese government has estimated yearly dioxin emission at a very conservative 5.3 kg (1998).

Japan has the highest dioxin emission in the world, and 90% of Japan’s dioxin emissions are generated from incinerators. About 70% of the world’s number of incinerators are concentrated in Japan. Tall incinerator towers dot cities here, and depending how the wind blows, dioxin is carried in the air to pollute these cities. In a test done on mothers living down-wind of an incinerator, some have been advised to reduce breast-feeding.

Dioxin finds its way into agricultural soil through agrochemical and herbicide use; and eventually, in the vegetables we eat here. In 1999, dioxin-tainted vegetables were discovered. Aside from vegetables, fish from Tokyo Bay were found to contain unusually high levels of dioxin, a result of these agrochemicals. Aside from causing cancer, dioxin is an endocrine inhibitor which alters the functions of hormones.

But there are also other sources of toxic contamination. Japan has limited natural resources, and the Japanese have resorted to recycling household water by chemically treating it in order to make it potable again. Many years ago, I was watching the News on television and they showed some politicians drinking water recycled from the toilets, telling the public that it was safe to drink. What are those chemicals and to what extent can these be detrimental to our heath? Some of my visiting friends from abroad have remarked that the tap water tastes like chlorine.

Many public baths still use wood to heat the bathing water. The wood used are chemically treated, and one such chemical is arsenic. There is a public bath near my house, and depending how the wind blows, the nauseating smoke coming from their chimney enters through the windows of my house. Just breathing this invisible smoke induces vomiting.

Another cultural tradition is the Japanese penchant for packaging that is pleasing to the eye. The amount of paper, plastic and cardboard wastage that goes into packaging a gift is huge. The Japanese are so very fond of gift-giving, so much so they have two seasonal gift-giving traditional times, one in August and the other at the end of the year. And that’s aside from the many other occasions which requires a gift. A Japanese female friend of mine said that she had to purchase 50 boxes of chocolates, an “obligatory gift” in her company to male employees on Valentine’s day.

Benzene and nitrogen dioxide emissions from auto-mobiles are other air pollutants worth mentioning. The pollution situation still falls short of environmental standards, and it doesn’t help that the Japanese have a nasty habit of letting their cars run idle, often for long periods of time.

I’m sure the Japanese government is doing what it can to reduce the toxic pollution, and who am I to say what they should or should not do. Seemingly obvious solutions like a culture re-think: the over-packaging for a start, or the use of other means than burning wood to heat baths, if public baths are really that necessary. Re-usable chopsticks, instead of the wooden disposable type would go a very long way to conserve trees and obviously reduce the amount of incinerated garbage. But what stands out as an apparent remedy that perhaps has more to it than meets my simple eye (like logistics), is to re-locate the incinerators outside of cities.

But we shouldn’t leave it only to the government to find solutions. We have a very major role to play in reducing the carcinogens in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Sort your household garbage, and make sure plastics are not included in the “burnable” bin. Use canvas bags or any bag which you can re-use to carry your groceries. Find ways to contribute to reducing wastage and controlling pollution. The life you save may be your own.

Cancer is the major cause of death in Japan, but it is a subject of discussion considered taboo among the Japanese. I had asked my doctor what caused my endocrine system to go haywire, and he replied “I don’t know.” If they could just change another culture-think, examine the implications of being labelled the “Dioxin Capital of the World,” then they would know the root cause of cancer in Japan.

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References:
• Dioxin Levels High in Incinerator-Happy Japan
• Dioxin Found Deadly for Sure
• In Japan’s Burnt Trash, Dioxin Threat
• Tokyo Metropolis: No Time to Waste
• Air Pollution Not Improving

See also:
• Presentations at International Conferences
(see articles by Shigeki Masunaga on his research on dioxin pollution in Japan)
• Low Carbon Economy

• The Washington Post: Japan Staunches Stench of Mass Trash Incinerators

 

Help Find Lindsay Ann Hawker’s Killer

Friends of Lindsay Ann Hawker were on the streets of Tokyo on Sunday, distributing flyers, asking the public to join the campaign to search for Lindsay’s murderer who remains at large. They wore t-shirts with a photograph of the killer to remind the public what he looks like.

Six months ago today, Tatsuya Ichihashi lured Lindsay to his flat for an english lesson, and then beat her to death. He fled while police were searching his apartment.

The flyer reads:

“Tatsuya Ichihashi is wanted in connection with the brutal murder of Lindsay Hawker in Japan six months ago today.

“Since fleeing the scene in Chiba, Tokyo, he has not been sighted and remains on the run. After Ichihashi escaped, police found 22-year old Lindsay’s body in a bathtub on the balcony of Ichihashi’s flat.

“Lindsay was a beautiful girl who didn’t deserve to die — she had her whole life ahead of her, and her family now urge you to help them get justice for Lindsay.

“Please remember the suspect’s face and if you see him, or see anything suspicious, please report it to the police on 0473 970 110 or log onto Help Us Get Justice for Lindsay to report any information and to find out more about the campaign to find Lindsay’s killer.”

We implore you to help track him down.

Japan’s Sense of Justice

 

Japan’s Sense of Justice: The Horrendous Murders of Hartevelt, Blackman and Hawker

Issei Sagawa fired a bullet through the head of Renée Hartevelt while she read a poem to him in German. He then proceeded to cut out Renée’s flesh, some of which he ate raw and others he fried in a pan.

He roams free in Tokyo, and is referred to as Sagawa-kun (kun means “young, cute and innocent” in japanese). He has appeared on television programmes and magazines, and has written a book on the gruesome murder he committed, which became a best-seller.

Lindsay Hawker was beaten and strangled, then stripped and buried in a bathtub of sand by Tatsuya Ishihashi. Friends of Lindsay had to pressure the police to have them investigate her disappearance. While eight policemen were at Ishihashi’s apartment where her body was found, her murderer walked away a free man.

The dismembered corpse of Lucie Blackman was found in a cave on the property of Joji Obara. Lucie’s head was encased in a concrete block. Her family had to force Japanese police to act on her disappearance. Obara had bought hacking tools and cement, but the recent trial of Obara in Tokyo found him not guilty of the crime.

What does this tell us? Do the Japanese have any sense of justice when it comes to crimes committed against foreigners? Do they care at all? How could a book on the gruesome murder of Renée become a best-seller? What explains their morbid fascination?

Where security is touted as one of the most positive aspects of living in this country, what reasonable explanation do the police have for their apathetic attitude? Lindsay did not come home for two days and did not show up for work. Anyone with a modicum of common sense should be alarmed.

Lucie was not found on the premises of a quiet old man tending to a vegetable garden. She was found on the property of a known rapist who laces the drinks of his victims in order to incapacitate them. The Japanese judge who acquitted Obara reasoned that there was no proof that Obara alone was responsible for her death. Is Obara considered innocent of the crime because there were others involved?

Weird is a soft word to describe this state of affairs. It is abnormal, aberrant, and disturbing that most Japanese seem to feel no sense of repugnance nor shame for crimes committed against foreigners.

Renée Hartevelt: The Cannibal of Japan
Lindsay Anne Hawker: Tokyo Victim was Stripped, Beaten and Strangled
Help Us Get Justice for Lindsay
Lucie Blackman: How Family Forced Police to Act

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Where is Japan Heading?

 

Japan’s Disturbing Superiority Complex

Something very worrisome is happening in Japan. The publishing company, Shinyusha, has two best-selling comic books that belittle Korea and China.

Aside from textbook revisions of history, now the Japanese take the art of denying on a contemporary plane. In illustration form, these two comic books target the youth market whose opinions are malleable and whose own sense of identity is yet to form.

So the young Japanese, who one day will take over the future of their country, are told that China is the “world’s prostitution superpower” and is a source of disease, and that South Korea cheated in the 2002 Word Cup soccer game.

Let’s say that freedom of speech is some form of acceptance of these highly defamatory publications. It is appalling, but what is equally appalling in all this is that the Japanese government has voiced little or no condemnation nor shock.

What does this tell us of Japanese society? Underneath the politeness and the genteel outward appearance lies a highly questionable national identity. There can be no dialogue with people who think this way.

Denying reality is such an amazing human phenomenon… What will the future hold for Japan in the hands of people raised with these kinds of attitudes?

Ugly Images of Asian Rivals Become Best Sellers in Japan: The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.

In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan’s fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan’s worsening relations with the rest of Asia.

But the comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan’s conflicted identity, its longstanding feelings of superiority toward Asia and of inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features.

They also point to Japan’s longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity… Much of Japan’s history in the last century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea’s rise to challenge Japan’s position as Asia’s economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here.

 

Sabre-Rattling: Koizumi Visits Yasukuni Shrine

Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine today. I didn’t have my camera when I passed by the Shrine this morning, but the main avenue leading to the Shrine was lined with blue-and-white police vans and police cars, and the area was surrounded with police in combat gear.

What does Koizumi think he will accomplish by visiting the Shrine when Japan’s neighbours are so sensitive to the past? The wounds of War remain unhealed.

Please don’t tell us that you are doing this as a private citizen. Do you take us for fools? As Prime Minister, you represent the Japanese people and whatever you do, you are above all, a Prime Minister. What private citizen has a contingent of police vans and police force accompanying him? If there is a conflict of interests between your role as Prime Minister and your wishes as private citizen, then you should think of alternative ways to express your patriotism that does not compromise your more obligatory function. Assuming you are aware of this, therefore the “I-am-here-as-a-private-citizen” is a very poor excuse.

And what date is it today, Mr Prime Minister? On this day, October 17 in 1978, fourteen Class A war criminals were enshrined at Yasukuni. Why did you choose to visit the Shrine today?

For the Japanese who are not against these visits, you are ignorant of the atrocities committed by your country during the War. I do not see how you can be proud of that and to express it by honouring the war criminals at the Shrine.

We see you are not afraid of the reaction from the people of Korea, China and other nations. So if you speak for the Japanese people with these visits, then you must understand when Japan’s neighbours see this as a provocation and lash out at Japanese people or Japanese corporations.

Koizumi is asking for trouble by visiting the Shrine. What he has done is a diplomatic blunder. I am surprised by his total lack of foresight and total lack of sensitivity for those who suffered during the War.
Japan’s Sins of the Past, by Justin McCurry: The reign of terror was the work of the notorious Unit 731, a secret arm of the Japanese army based near Harbin, north-east China, which since 1935 had combined expertise and unspeakable cruelty to develop biological weapons to help pave the Japanese army’s way into strategically important areas of south-east China.

Between 1939 and 1945, the unit is thought to have killed, maimed or poisoned more than a million mainly Chinese, Russian and Korean civilians by contaminating their water supply and showering towns and villages with pathogens such as the bubonic plague.

By 1942, the plague and other killer diseases had spread to several locations along the Zhejiang-Jiangxi railway. The Japanese showered seven pathogens on the province in what is thought to have been retaliation for the “Doolittle” air raids on Tokyo by US bombers.

In addition to the plague, the area was infected with typhoid, typhus, dysentery, cholera, para-typhus and anthrax.

Yet its work was to remain secret for years. The unit’s activities were referred to just once at the Tokyo war crimes trials. Rather than prosecute the unit’s senior members, the US occupation authorities in Japan granted them immunity in exchange for access to years of extensive research into biological weapons.

Wikipedia | Yasukuni Shrine: About 1,000 POWs executed for war crimes during World War II are enshrined here. This was not a political issue back then as Yasukuni was supposed to enshrine all Japanese war casualties. However, on October 17, 1978, 14 Class A war criminals (according to the judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East), including Hideki Tojo, were quietly enshrined [here] as “Martyrs of Shōwa.”

Japanese PM Visits Tokyo War Shrine
updates:

Young Ultranationalists Take to Blogging: “A lot of people are agitated, saying that any rightward leanings by young people are superficial, and that those who think Koizumi’s stance (re Yasukuni) is righteous, fail to understand the historical realities,” says an educator. “In the despair stemming from the present low-growth society, where many young people have difficulty in obtaining a grasp of which direction they’re headed, there’s a trend toward a ‘herd instinct,’ where more people gravitate to the same behavior as a way to relieve their anxieties. Nationalistic behavior and the support for Koizumi might both be considered examples of this phenomenon.”

 

Can Japan Forget?

The Nanjing Massacre: In December 1937, Nanjing fell to the Japanese Imperial Army. The Japanese army launched a massacre for six weeks. According to the records of several welfare organizations which buried the dead bodies after the Massacre, around three hundred thousand people, mostly civilians and POWs, were brutally slaughtered. Over twenty thousand cases of rape were reported. Many of the victims were gang raped and then killed.

A number of Japanese politicians and writers claimed that the Massacre had never ocurred and history textbooks were rewritten by the authority describing the Massacre as a minor incident. They claimed that they had “liberated” Asian peoples from Western colonialism. The Nanjing Massacre is one of their so-called “liberations”.

May the victims of the Massacre be remembered and not buried in lies.

Japanese Atrocities in the Philippines

On the [Bataan Death] march, the men witnessed arbitrary executions of their fellow American and Filipino soldiers and of Filipino civilians who had offered food or water to the marchers. Bert Bank remembers:

One of the POWs had a ring on and the Japanese guard attempted to get the ring off. He couldn’t get it off and he took a machete and cut the man’s wrist off and when he did that, of course, the man was bleeding profusely. [I tried to help him] but when I looked back I saw a Japanese guard sticking a bayonet through his stomach.

On the second day, a fully pregnant Filipino woman threw some food out… this POW in front of me picked up the food and started eating it; and a Japanese guard came… and decapitated that POW… and then he went and cut the stomach out of the Filipino woman. She was screaming “Kill me, Kill me,” and they wouldn’t do it.

A Survivor’s Account of the Nanjing Massacre
The Hundred Head Contest
Manga Depicting Nanjing Massacre

 

Does Tokyo Really Remember?

Vain and Hasty judgments seem to be in the making at the office of Prime Minister Koizumi. The Japanese Head of State wants to launch a pre-emptive war against North Korea because it is developing a missile programme and nuclear bomb capabilities.

I think this is a case of: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

True, Bush administration officials have stated that they want to solve through diplomacy the crisis created by North Korea’s resumption of its nuclear weapons program. But those same officials have stressed that all options, including the use of military force, remain on the table. When South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun came to the United States in May, he sought an assurance that the controversial doctrine of preemptive war embedded in the administration’s national security strategy would not apply to North Korea.. U.S. officials rebuffed his request. — Are We Headed for War with North Korea?

Two countries pointing a gun at each other. One asks the other to put his weapon down. He says, no. Do the Americans think that North Korea can be so naive as to put his weapon down first when he extends an olive branch to the Americans?

Koizumi jumps in with: North Korea is a threat and they are targeting us (vanity knows no bounds). But for North Korea, it is Japan that is the threat because it is an ally of the United States and North Korea’s defense policy is aimed at the United States.

American propaganda machinery will try to ensure that Japan sees otherwise because their economy depends so much on the “barter trade” they have with Japan (see series of posts on: Deficit Politics), ie the gangland-type arrangement of dollars in exchange for protection.

So why does Koizumi want to jeopardise the lives of the Japanese people for by coming into the fray with a gun also pointed at them? Does not Japan remember the War it initiated in Asia? Forced “Co-prosperity” by attacking sovereign nations? Does not Japan remember that they provoked the United States to joining the War by bombing Pearl Harbour? No more nuclear bombs, you say, but do you not remember that you had brought this on yourself?

North Korea’s military stance, in my assessment, is not for provocation purposes but for defence. They have a form of government that the Western world does not abide with, and a difference in ideologies is not a rational reason for going to war.

Japan, War and North Korea

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Tokyo remembers 1945 bombing raid

 

Pointing the Finger: Japan’s “Rat-on-a-Foreigner” Service

My respect for the government of Japan wavers on the service offered by the Ministry of Justice that allows Japanese citizens to send them an email on “foreign neighbours that cause them anxiety.” The service is meant to identify illegal foreigners in Japan.

A foreigner that causes anxiety is not necessarily an illegal alien. How could an ignoramus who thought up this service be working at the venerable Ministry of Justice?

If a Japanese in a foreign country caused anxiety to his neighbour (let’s say, by singing karaoke off-key or by cleaning up after the dog…), and reports him to his Justice Ministry (“There’s a mad alien picking up dog poo in the street”)–who is crazy, dumb and stupid in this situation? If they want to identify illegally-staying aliens, another criteria is necessary; and I don’t think the neighbours should decide that.

Amnesty: Service to Rat Online on Illegal Aliens a Racist Ploy
Dead Man Returns 22 Years Later