Asia Exile - Times Online - WBLG

Conspiracy mongering in Dili

Like everyone else, I've been dismayed and baffled by the chaotic, scrappy violence and the protracted political crisis in East Timor. I spent a lot of time there, before, during and after the referendum on independence in 1999, but it's more than six years since I've been back. (Partly for practical reasons, partly for the more personal ones described at length here.) So I have found it hard to form a view about the causes of the violence, triggered after 600 soldiers of the tiny East Timorese army deserted in March.

This week, though, came a breakthrough - the resignation of East Timor's prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, who has been blamed for much of the trouble. Not only is he accused of incompetence in dealing with the deserting soldiers and their grievances, an Australian TV documentary has also presented evidence that he had armed hit squads to assassinate his political enemies. Now Alkatiri's gone, a new prime minister will be apppointed by President Xanana Gusmao - and all will finally be well.

That's the gist of much of the foreign coverage over the past few days . But is it that simple? A number of reporters, with long experience of Timor and whose judgement I respect, suggest a much more complicated version in which Mr Alkatiri may himself be a victim of prejudice and conspiracy.

The sacred ground of adoring husbands

Pass the tissues. No comment is necessary on this touching and deliciously bizarre story from this morning's Daily Yomiuri.

Men to sing wives' praises in a field

A village in Gunma Prefecture known for producing premium cabbages will find its fields full of something else this year--husbands declaring their love for their wives.

Legend has it that the village, now known as Tsumagoimura, is where the heroic Prince Yamatotakeru, son of the 12th Emperor Keiko and described in the "Nihon Shoki" (Chronicle of Japan), mourned the sudden death of his wife during an expedition to the east.

The prince is said to have cried out loudly, "Azumahaya!" (Oh, how I miss my wife!)

A group from the Tokyo area, who spend weekends on their farm in the village, liked the legend and decided to launch the Japan Aisaika (adoring husband) Organization in autumn 2004.

The organization, which is nonprofit, designated Jan. 31--which can be read as aisai (1/31, one for I and three for sa, or san in Japanese, and one for I)--as Beloved Wives Day.

The contest was proposed by a committee, chaired by the village mayor, Hajime Matsumoto, tasked with promoting the village as a sacred ground for adoring husbands.

The acompanying photograph depicts a crowd of people in a field of cabbages.

A burning ring of vinaigrette

Among the reasons I hold Japanese journalists in such high regard are their exquisitely honed sense of irony and their perfect comic timing. Time and again, in the newspapers or on the TV news, a seemingly straightforward story will be transformed into a masterpiece of Beckettian absurdity by a single deadpan detail.

Take this story from Kyodo news agency (published in the print version of today's Yomiuri).

Police have arrested and sent to prosecutors a 49-year-old doctor on suspicion of attempting to set a hospital on fire in western Tokyo, police officials said Wednesday.

An insurance fraud? A sad case of mental breakdown by an overworked medical professional? It sounds routine enough, anyway, one of those unfortunate things that simply happens from time to time.

The kicker is in the second paragraph:    

Why shouldn't North Korea test the Taepodong?

Taking everything into account, balancing up the pros and the cons, all things considered - I am anti-intercontinental ballistic missile.

Long, metallic, phallic objects, charged up with jet fuel, and mounted with nasty warheads - they give me the willies. When they are in the hands of unreconstructed Stalinists, with bad hair and gulags, then my unease multiplies. Much better all round to melt them down to make Meccano kits for underfunded schools, or spend the money on improved broadband internet access for Pyongyang.

All that said, I can't understand why North Korea shouldn't conduct a long range missile test.

We may not like the North Koreans, but there are certain facts about them that we have to accept. They have a large military, as does the United States. It possesses, and is developing, ballistic missiles (like Britain and the United States). Obviously, it is going to test them - Britain does, and the Americans do too. It may be alarming, but it is hypocrisy to claim that they are not entitled to do so.

The argument then becomes one about proliferation. The rest of the world, it is claimed, is trying hard to limit the spread of powerful and destructive long range weapons; the North Koreans cannot be allowed to flout these principles and make things more dangerous for for everyone else. But legally this isn't true - it is three years since North Korea pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it is certainly not signed up to anything promising not to test conventional weapons (the so-called "ban" on testing in 1999 was nothing more than a voluntary, self-imposed moratorium).

And who really is making the world dangerous? Kim Jong Il is not my cup of tea, but I believe that he is a rational man and I can see that he finds himself in a difficult position. He was already stranded by history, marooned on a shrinking iceberg of communist rhetoric with no obvious way of stepping off and maintaining his power. His economy was failing, his people were starving, and his military was grinding to a halt. Then George Bush appeared and unambiguously announced, in the "axis of evil" speech, that Kim was in his sights. He demonstrated the kind of thing he had in mind by invading Iraq the following year.

In such circumstances, how would you expect a leadership to react? To quietly roll over and surrender (as anti-American resistance was supposed to have done so after the defeat of Saddam)? Or to leverage what few military resources it has at its disposal and at least give its declared enemy something to think about?

A mode of style, an exquisite fancy

Years ago I came across a quotation from Oscar Wilde to the effect that the Japanese do not exist - they are "an exquisite fancy of art". I've been on the look out for the source ever since. Now, of course, it is just a Google away.

It turns out to be from an 1889 essay of Oscar's called The Decay of Lying: An Observation. It's in the form of a dialogue between two typically irritating aesthetes named Cyril and Vivian. It begins thus:

A DIALOGUE

Persons: Cyril and Vivian
Scene: the Library of a country house in Nottinghamshire

CYRIL: [coming in through the open window from the terrace] My dear Vivian, don't coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods, like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature.

VIVIAN: Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her . . . blah, blah, blahedy-blah . . .

Vivian is a chap, by the way.

It takes a bit of getting used to but, as usual with Oscar, perseverance is quickly rewarded. The passage on Japan comes towards the end. When I first saw the quotation from it years ago, I took it to be an example of what has become known as Orientalism, the distancing and exoticising of a foreign culture,a habit to which the imperial British over the years have been particularly prone. In fact, the opposite is true.

Here is the passage (it's Vivian speaking, as usual):

The Lion King and I

The World Economic Forum, that gathering of politicans, plutocrats and intellectuals which meets every year in the Swiss town of Davos, is holding a meeting in Tokyo. Last night I went to a welcome reception at the Prime Minister's Residence, the Sori Kantei. It's an outstanding piece of modern architecture, a soft, gentle structure of wood, glass and concrete with stands of bamboo and miniature rice paddies planted around it. In the twilight, washed by gushing, rainy season rain, it looked very beautiful.

The Davos fat cats were in their suits and ties, but Koizumi, of course, wore only an open-necked shirt. June sees the beginning of the "Cool Biz"campaign which he set in motion last year, whereby office workers are encouraged to discard their jackets and ties in order to save on the air conditioning. Koizumi is stepping down in September, and he had just emerged from his last parliamentary session as prime minister. "I feel very relaxed  because at last I am done with fielding questions in the Diet," he said as he greeted the Forumists. "I think that no prime minister in the world has to respond to so many questions as the Japanese Prime Minister."

After his remarks he began to mingle with the crowd. I was standing in the front row beside two very tall Americans. I'm 6' 3", and they each had a couple of inches on me. Koizumi approached; this was our exclusive conversation:

Elementary, my dear Peepo

Among its many unique institutions, Japan has the cuddliest police force in the world. They really are sweeties, the Japanese rozzers, and just the sight of them provokes feelings of tender protectiveness more often aroused by children or small, appealing animals. There they go, in their neat, bright uniforms and their clunky, old-fashioned bikes, toddling up and down the highways of the world’s least crime-stricken society. It’s hard to believe that their guns are real, and impossible to imagine them ever being fired (prudently, they are attached to their uniforms by a cord, like a child’s mittens). They are one of the things that impart to Tokyo it’s quaint, Trumpton atmosphere: a tribe of earnest boy scouts, protecting the city from evil-doers.

For giving directions to tourists, lending train fares to stranded drunks, and adding to the general level of cosiness, the Japanese police cannot be faulted. When it comes to solving crimes, however, the record is patchier.

Take the murder of Hitoshi Igarashi, which will enter legal oblivion on 11th July, as the fifteen year statute of limitations reaches its deadline.

The King of Mt Merapi and the Queen of the Southern Seas

It's less than a fortnight since the Java earthquake, but two or three generations of news have already been and gone - the "terror" arrests in Canada, death of al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and soon the maelstrom of the World Cup. I arrived there late on the day after the Saturday quake, and left the following Thursday.For the purposes of a daily newspaper, there wasn't anything very new left to say.

Day One: describe the immediate impact of the disaster, and recount the stories of survivors. Day Two: the terrible scramble for those trapped beneath the rubble. Then on Days Three and Four you concentrate on the aid effort, inevitably rather shambolic at first, but increasing in efficiency and effectiveness. On Day Five you might write a more general story about the region. But after that competition from more rapidly changing situations in other parts of the world edges the story out of the news pages. It makes me a little sad, and causes me to wonder whether I have become cynical. At this stage after the disaster, of course, the vastly more catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami was still ain important headline. But, given its smaller scale and the relative competence of the aid effort, it's not surprising that attention should have turned elsewhere.

And now, of course, Mt Merapi, the turbulent volcano which overlooks the earthquake zone, looks as if it is brewing a major eruption.

Foreign Service

One of the few sources of light relief during foreign disasters is the opportunity they provide for sniping, sniggering and sneering at British diplomats. Bomb, earthquake or revolution - almost inevitably stories will emerge of Brits on the ground let down by the flakiness and arrogance of their local embassy. Ah, how we journalists love to smirk at those complacent envoys, with their diplomatic bags and wine cellars and their general chinless air of inheriting the earth!

So it is with pain and reluctance that I report an oustanding case of diplomatic assiduousness.