WIT Life #175: Japan Cuts 2011
Film, Translating/Interpreting, Uncategorized, WIT Life, Writers 
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
The 2011 Japan Cuts Film Festival at Japan Society is back and better than ever, with a lineup of 32 films and 33 screenings in total. Like last year, I decided to volunteer in various roles such as ushering and ticket taking, as that allows you to stick around and enjoy the movies. The first movie I worked at was Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano (名前のない女たち) which was screened this past Friday night.
Director Hisayasu Sato, known as one of the “Four Heavenly Kings of Pink” for his work in ピンク映画 (pinku eiga) or soft-core porn films, incorporated his background into this movie released in Japan last year. It tells the story of a meek OL who is scouted in Shibuya to work in Read More
WIT Life #174: Saga Setting the Nuclear Standard
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Yesterday’s NYT had an interesting article about Japan’s nuclear policy going forward. Increasingly local governments are being depended on to determine this, though they believe these are decisions the central government should be making. Currently the debate is taking place in the rural prefecture of Saga located in Kyushu, where battle lines are drawn between nuclear power plant operators who insist their facilities are safe and wary citizens. In the middle is Saga governor Yasushi Furukawa who is being looked to for approval or rejection of restarting two of the four reactors at the plant. After being shut down for routine maintenance, the question is whether Read More
WIT Life #173: Homeless by mandate
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Almost four months have passed since the earthquake/tsunami hit Japan, and one might think that after this amount of time things have gotten back to some semblance of normal. That seems to be the case for the most part in Tokyo, where except for limited electricity usage and the omnipresent uncertainty regarding radation levels, it is back to business as usual. However, for those who lived in the disaster area, it is a different story. I recently spoke to a close friend over Skype, who told me about her brother who had lived with his family in Tohoku.
They, like many others from the disaster zone, cannot be cleared to return home due to restrictions on entering areas that exceed a certain level of radiation. Instead, they have spent the last few Read More
WIT Life #172: Global Justice
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Last week New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman profiled the Harvard University political philosopher Michael J. Sandel. This professor’s classes were picked up by PBS and made into a television program that has attracted worldwide attention. Last year, Japan’s NHK TV broadcast a translated version of the series, which sparked a philosophy craze in Japan and prompted the University of Tokyo to create a course based on Sandel’s.
As Friedman details, the PBS series is now available at http://www.justiceharvard.org, and here you can find a thought-provoking discussion of the ethical and global implications of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and nuclear disaster among students in Tokyo, Shanghai, and at Harvard.
It is interesting to see Japanese students voicing their opinions in a proactive way, and I am curious to see what kind of feedback the university course has received since being introduced.
WIT Life #171: Radiation fallout (both literal and emotional)
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
As more information comes out regarding the lack of disclosure as well as intentional cover-up that took place regarding Japan’s nuclear crisis, people are becoming more and more empowered. This article from Sunday’s New York Times details how citizens have begun protesting, a relatively rare action in Japan. This longer article from this morning’s NYT discusses how little PM Kan knew about what was actually happening.
Media reporting on this issue tends to be either sensational or opaque, so I really value the “on the ground” reports I periodically receive from friends in Tokyo. Here’s an excerpt from a recent mail (long but worth reading) from a close friend describing the continually changing information being provided to them, as well as her thoughts regarding the situation going forward. It provides a backdrop that illuminates why the normally docile Japanese have been taking to the streets:
“Here life is slowly returning to “normal,” but still lots of worries about the radiation affecting Tokyo and outlying areas. There are new setbacks to the nuclear plant situation each day and we wonder Read More
WIT Life #170: Super Cool Biz
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Newspaper articles from this week have highlighted Japan’s handling of energy challenges in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, and subsequently damaged nuclear power plants. The first from the Wall Street Journal talks about the development of a new summer style called “Super Cool Biz” in response to a government decree to conserve electricity (節電 or setsuden) by 15%, or setting workplace temperatures to 82 degrees!
This new effort builds on the previous “cool biz” campaign, but takes it a step further by Read More
WIT Life #169: Happy Doll Fundraiser
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WIT Life #168: Sake Guy John Gauntner
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Last night I had the chance to brush up on my sake skills at the sold out sake tasting event Back to Basics held at Japan Society. It was led by former JET John Gauntner, known as the world’s leading non-Japanese sake expert. He currently lives in Kamakura, and is well known among sake brewers and others within the industry as the window to making sake popular outside of Japan. His presentation gave a comprehensive overview of sake in less than an hour, presenting the audience with the essentials in easy to remember sound bites. His enthusiastic employment of the phrase “Absolutely!” in punctuating the rhetorical questions that he posed to himself had a particularly great impact.
We learned that translating sake as “rice wine” is a misnomer, as it is brewed in a way more similar to beer. Gauntner discussed how sake is one of the few products in the world that is Read More
WIT Life #167: Japan and War as Seen Through the Lens of Film
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Recently I had the chance to see two films from 2010 that examine the issue of Japan and war. One was Anpo: Art x War which was screened at Columbia University last week, and the other is Caterpillar currently being shown at the IFC Center through this Thursday. The former is a documentary directed and produced by Linda Hoaglund, and the latter is a film made by the director Koji Wakamatsu of United Red Army fame (shown at Japan Society a few years ago and coming to IFC later this month).
Anpo uses a mixture of paintings, photos, anime, films and music by Japanese artists to Read More
WIT Life #166: Monkey Business
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Last weekend aside from going to the glorious Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, I attended a panel discussion at Asia Society about contemporary writing from Japan. I had heard about the event from former JET Roland Kelts, who in addition to publishing books of his own and lecturing at both NYU and Tokyo University, is a contributing editor to the inaugural issue of the English language version of the Tokyo-based literary magazine Monkey Business (currently available for purchase!). The magazine is run by award-winning translator Motoyuki Shibata, who served as editor of the English version along with colleague Ted Goossen.
All three were on hand at this event, which was divided up into the two sections of Read More
WIT Life #165: 自粛
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Recently in my work interpreting for Japanese groups and in casual conversations with Japanese friends, certain expressions keep popping up. In my mind, they have become a sort of post-disaster vocabulary, phrases which are unique in their relevance to the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami which hit Japan on March 11. I would like to discuss one of those words, 自粛 (jishuku), which means self-control or voluntary restraint.
Immediately after the disaster, 自粛 referred to people holding back from going out and enjoying themselves as usual, in order to show respect to the victims and people in the disaster area. Nomikai were postponed, vacations were canceled and people forced themselves to put on somber faces that reflected the seriousness of the tragedy. It became enough of a phenomenon to received the name of 自粛ブーム (self-restraint boom).
However, soon there was a backlash to this movement as seen in Read More
WIT Life #164: More notable Nihonjin
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Interesting article in the NYT today profiling the new head of the M.I.T Media Lab, a 44-year old Japanese venture capitalist named Joichi Ito. Ironically enough, Ito attended both Tufts and the University of Chicago in the past, but didn’t graduate from either as he didn’t like their learning styles. However, his accomplishments include serving on the board of the Internet governance organization Icann and the Mozilla Foundation, and along the course of his career he has invested in more than 12 start-ups such as Flickr and Twitter. In Japan, he helped establish Read More
WIT Life #163: Two Japanese recognized by Time’s Top 100
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
Two Japanese men were selected to be on Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people worldwide. Both received recognition in regard to their handling of the recent earthquake/tsunami. The first is Mayor Katsunobu Sakurai of Minami Soma, a town 15 miles from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. In an earlier post I highlighted an article about his Read More
WIT Life #162: Japan Tobacco
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
My interpreting travels currently take me to Raleigh, NC, once home to a thriving tobacco industry. However, in addition to formerly being a center for textiles and furniture, those days are gone and different sectors have risen to take their place. As the group I am working with is studying economic revital
ization, yesterday we visited the American Tobacco Historic District, once home to America’s largest tobacco plant. It has been converted into a multi-functional area which maintains the character of the historic buildings, while at the same time incorporating modern aspects to create a vibrant community of businesses and restaurants (We got to visit the headquarters of Burt’s Bees which is housed there!).
In an interesting incidence of convergence, before heading to the district I read an article in the WSJ about how Japan’s disaster has affected its tobacco industry. It highlights how Read More
WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer/Interpreter/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.
I finally had a chance to sort through the pictures from my recent trip to Japan, which brought back many happy memories. I think I found them hard to deal with until now as they represent the demarcation between pre and post quake (I left the day before it hit). But I bit the bullet and looked at them for the first time since my travels, and I felt ok. I tried to think of my friends rebuilding their lives post-disaster and somehow getting by thanks to their hope for the future. As trite as it sounds, at this point they are taking things one day at a time as that is all they can do in the midst of the immense uncertainty that remains.
On a lighter note, one of the things that I love to do when I go back to Japan is check out the new flavors of items in konbini and other stores. One brand I am always sure to find is Read More
