*Insert moobs joke here*
Where to start with this monstrosity? Much like Ms McCarthy hides her head in the sand in the face of scientific evidence, Mr Arudou resorts to name-calling and trying to tweak emotions in the face of a calm evaluation of the situation. As ever, the apparent effort that has been put into the overdone and tortuous wordplay that would not be out of place in a satire but sits uneasily in a serious piece far outweighs the effort in researching the facts. One could be forgiven for thinking that he wasn’t even in the country for the last month. 
Mr Arudou, Debito, Dave, or whatever you want to be called: have some balls and come out and say you are against nuclear power; don’t dress up your opposition in cowardly paranoia about how The Japanese State is out to get you and everyone else.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan was on the scene with rescue teams almost immediately.
No he wasn’t. He did take a helicopter flight over Fukushima the day after the earthquake (allegedly delaying vital work), called off one visit to the scene due to a bit of rain, then finally arrived over three weeks after the earthquake, an even slower response than the three days it took the then Prime Minister to visit the site of the Kobe quake.
I thought Kan did the best he could
Yes, a lot of people thought that, although that isn’t saying very much…
Japan’s "nanny state": the assumption that "father knows best"
Surely a nanny state is one where nanny knows best? Or is that too sexist?
The reflexive, obsessive control of information has done our people a great disservice.
Just because the NHK news (and the broadsheets too) aren’t running around like headless chickens proclaiming we’re all going to die, unlike, say, CNN (which I seem to remember you saying you were watching) it doesn’t mean that they are controlling information. Did you actually watch the NHK coverage or the press conferences?
lipstick on a wasteful political boondoggle
:roll:
the story came under more demanding global standards of scrutiny. [...] This caused burgeoning speculation
Which was it? Is the global standard rampant speculation when the facts are lacking?
a media meltdown poisoned by gross mutations of logic.
Like the ones you’re making in this article?
Japan adjusted "safe levels of radiation exposure" to suit political expediency.
No it didn’t. It upped the exposure rate for workers from 50 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts in accordance with practices in other countries for dealing with emergencies. Furthermore, Edano has been talking about reviewing the 20 km exclusion zone (outward, not inward), but has explicitly ruled out raising acceptable exposure rates in the air or in foodstuffs.
While Japan’s media cartels as usual skimped on investigative journalism
NHK Newswatch 9 had an interview with one guy talking about how readings in the turbine room were hidden from the workers and there was only one dosimeter per team, not per person as required by the regulations. Such a cover-up by Team Japan! Furthermore, tonight had another anonymous worker, a team leader, talking about how they have a mountain to climb but are still at the bottom looking up – radiation levels are so high that they can only screw in one bolt before having to exit the area.
People moving to a safer location were treated as deserters.
However, one popular destination, Hong Kong, is actually more dangerous.
We were told that nuclear power was safe.
That was bollocks when you first said it and is still bollocks today.
Part of it is due to the lack of class-action lawsuit mechanisms in Japan’s judiciary
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
This is a society, remember, that has never experienced a popular grassroots revolution in its history.
What about Sakamoto Ryoma? The UK has never had a grassroots revolution. Do you tar my homeland with the same brush? Iran had a grassroots revolution about 30 years ago and that worked out really well.
What, pray tell, has he accomplished, exactly? He got himself allowed into an Onsen in Hokkaido over 10 years ago (and probably hasn’t been back to that place since then.) Has he accomplished anything that directly affects my life here in Japan? Anything? Anything at all?
You seem to be the self proclaimed expert on all things Debito. In spite of your atrocious spelling and hideous grammar, you ought to be able to provide us with a list. By all means, please do so.
Bookworm, I’m not sure if you know what “kusogaijin” means (you didn’t know how to write “nihongo jouzu da ne” in your last incarnation), but just for your information, it’s not a compliment. If you’re being called that, you might want to ask people around you if you’re unknowingly insulting others or something.
Mike what you smoking dude?
Simon clown, yes I know what it means, it means shit forigener or outsider. Im aware of what everything these people say means. Kisama, boke, and all the other sweet things our gracious host call us. I see your comrades have got it through their dense heads Im not Debito…lol.
Ken, I know you try and let everyone say their piece around here, but isn’t it time to ban this troll? I’m sure he’ll come back under another handle, but “bookworm” seems a little disingenuous given that his rants sound like an ignorant 5th grader from the backwoods of Alabama. Being the voice of dissent is one thing. Being a troll and attention whore is another.
Bookfan – you remind me of some of the pathetic sad-sack foreigners I met in Japan, and trust me; the problem is usually an internal one. But that’s just typical human nature right? It’s not me but the world that needs to change? I’m a victim of discrimination in a society with its own norms and culture. It just makes sense that they should change to make me more comfortable.
Grow up.
I can’t imagine why. No doubt you get called the same in your own country.
Interesting.
Looks to be a clear case of projection to me.
Agreed. This thread has descended into chaos.
OK, bookworm will be canned from now on.
Mr Arudou says:
So, he recommends that the public throw away their smoke detectors and avoid all medical xrays, both of which use man-made isotopes. For good measure, let’s ban CRT televisions, microwave ovens, mobile phones, and even light bulbs, all of which produce man-made radiation. We can use solar power instead to generate electricity, that natural source of radiation, responsible for one in three cancers worldwide, including 66,000 deaths from melanoma, a figure growing every year.
I’ve tidied up the above comment and submitted it as a letter to the JT editor.
Mike, WTF are you talking about?
Hi, I used the term stalker.
I followed your link, and then I had a look at Mikes parody interview, and the page on Daves site, and listened to his sound files where he called Mike out.
I think, to be fair, if someone who is published wrote an interview that parodied me, I would have to take action to protect my own professional reputation. Back home, it would be a job for my lawyer, i guess. I don’t know why Dave didn’t do that. Maybe the system in Japan isn’t very good for defamation suits.
Anyway, Dave is right about Mike having lied on his resume about where he graduated, isn’t he? I mean, I couldn’t put on my resume that I graduated from Yale because people would be ‘more likely to know where it is’, could I?
N.B. if you say that I can, I will always say that I graduated from Yale from now on, lol.
@”james grey”
Do you think a web parody is worthy of a lawsuit? Do you also think debito should sue everyone on this site? Unlike Mike’s parody, we actually mention debito by name.
As we’re talking about defamation, What are your feelings on debito’s handling of the ballet school case? Or Tony Lazlo? Or that sushi shop? Or McDonald’s? Or NHK? Or any of the others he has accused of racism? Can they sue debito? His opinions are published in a national newspaper with far more impact than Guest’s parody. Please explain.
As for the interview with Mike, I would think that before debito tried the ambush journalism in public, his first step should have been a bit more professional, this being a matter of professional opinion, to just honestly ask for clarification privately. Only then going for the jugular if the explanation is not sufficient or the “fraud” is continued. Do you disagree?
And lastly, do you think debito is really concerned about this Mike Guest matter on principle, or only because the parody pissed him off and he wanted payback?
Not rhetorical questions. Please respond honestly.
@level3
All I am trying to say is that if someone who works in the same business as me tried to make me look like shit in public, I would take legal advice. Perhaps back home, a letter from my lawyer inviting them to come to court next time would be enough to put an end to it. But I have in the past taken legal action against other academics who have deliberately mis-represented what I have said or written after they failed to issue retractions. In those cases, I didn’t have a choice. I have a wife and kids to feed, and a mortgage, so anything that might affect my job is something I take pretty seriously.
As for Dave, I am not suggesting that he should have taken legal action, rather I am suggesting that Mikes frat house joke interview should have been kept between him and his friends perhaps. At least he should have thought a bit more carefully before putting it in the public domain. I mean, as a perspective employer, it doesn’t look like the level of maturity that is desirable in a university professor. After all, how did Mike expect Dave to react?
As for all the other issues you mention (MacDonalds, Sushi, Lazlo- who I have met, IMHO a complete jerk), I don’t know what Dave or anyone else’s beef is about them, but I don’t really want to spend lots of time reading about them on the net. I am not so interested in those issues (whatever they are) and I have other things to do (feed the baby, laundry, work). All I can comment on is this discussion because that’s all I know about.
Maybe Dave did go after Mike because he was pissed off at him. Isn’t that a good enough reason? What has Dave done to piss you off so much?
In the end I have to ask you straight up, can I change my resume to say I graduated from Yale just because ‘I thought people would be more likely to know where it was’. Thats kind of an out-right lie on Mikes part isn’t it?
And lastly, I see that you are writing @”james grey” now, and not @james grey. Next you will be accusing me of being Dave, right?
James, what Mike did was akin to someone who attends Bernard College (which is NOT Columbia University and has refused multiple offers from Columbia to be absorbed into the University) putting this on their resume: Bernard College (Columbia University). Look up the relationship. It is NOT the same as saying they attended Cornell University when they actually attended Cornell College or any of the other faulty associates Dave tried to make to discredit Mike.
It’s another hack job by the man who claims to hate ad hominem attacks but always seems to resort to the same when he’s questioned about anything.
Were they really masterful then, or was the whole concept of 24 hour news just new, so they looked “innovative.”
And the IAEA’s “operational intervention levels,” that is, levels at which action should be taken, for Iodine 131 is 3000 bq/kg! Page 43 below.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1467_web.pdf
You do understand what parody is, right?
And that it’s protected by law.
Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised that a debito apologist would be a big fan of frivolous lawsuits.
It’s more than that James. It is that he often either doesn’t know what he is talking about or lies outright to enhance his reputation as an activist. And, unfortunately, newcomers to Japan believe his nonsense outright – that is what a lot of people here take issue with. If you want an overview of the issues of foreigners in Japan, there are plenty of reputable sources (Apichai Shipper, for one). Read them and don’t bother about Debito.
Besides, the college that guest went to is affiliated with UBC.
http://www.calendar.ubc.ca/vancouver/index.cfm?tree=6,234,612,760
Another Debito lie that has been taken at face value even in anti-debito comments.
“I think, to be fair, if someone who is published wrote an interview that parodied me, I would have to take action to protect my own professional reputation.”
If someone wrote a parody on you which follwed with a positive responses from the readers, it basically means that your professional reputation was shit to begin with.
I don’t give a flying F*** where Mike graduated. He could of been a high school drop out for all I care. It still doesn’t change the fact that his parody was brilliant.
@james grey. If Dave Aldwinckle or Debito Arudou were just another outspoken English teacher in your local pub who happens to update a blog as a hobby, I could understand your point-of-view: Mike Guest’s parody would have likely bordered on defamation. But, I am sorry, that is NOT how the Japan Times–a national English-language newspaper–markets his columns. It is not how some Debito.org readers interpret his columns. And it certainly is not how Dave/Debito markets himself.
He is marketed — perhaps inadvertently by the Japan Times — as some kind of “authority” on civil rights, human rights, Japanese law, Japanese history, multi-culturalism, sociology, political science, and whatever else tickles his fancy that week. On top of that, he petitions his readers for money in order to maintain his website and pursue lawsuits. And then, of course, there is the questionable issue of promoting his (self-published?) books with every new column and blog posting.
What are his credentials? For what reputable organization did he work that entitles him to be taken more seriously on these subjects in a published newspaper column than the malcontent complaining at your local bar? Which mainstream publishing houses are requesting to have the rights to his work?
In reality, he is a just another ordinary guy who filed a lawsuit once, promoted it shamelessly on the internet, and wrote a book about his personal experiences through an obscure publishing house. All facts. We can all discuss whether his 15 minutes of fame were up a long time ago or just recently or never. The only problem is that the Japan Times does not agree with the point-of-view that Dave/Debito is an ordinary guy.
When a national newspaper publishes somebody’s work, it should not surprise anybody that his columns are taken seriously; Mike Guest writes a parody about his public modus operandi; and websites scrutinize his facts, his logic, and his research.
Well, at least during the first hours they were the only ones who had reporters live on the scene. Whether that was a calculated scoop, or just blind luck, it certainly put them in the forefront.
This debacle, however, has turned me off to them in a big way.
Yipe. That makes the Tap Water Baby Catastrophe even more ridiculous. Thanks, I’m going to bug off and read this.
Dear Japan Times, in June I will be forced to undergo a physical examination by my Japanese corporate overlords, during which I will have to drink radioactive barium, which of course will melt my face off like Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Approximately how many zeroes should I add to the lawsuit figure?
It was actually the perfect storm. CNN was the only news organization with people on the ground in Baghdad during the initial days of the invasion. I can still remember them broadcasting from their hotel room while the bombs were dropping outside. It was a first – you had live 24 hour coverage inside a warzone as it was happening.
Not just newcomers either, but a lot of people outside Japan stumble onto his crap and use it as a basis from which to confirm all their prejudices.
Not to derail into another pet peeve of mine, but SSCS are one such group. As they claim Japanese government and society is inherently backwards and unchanged since WWII, that falls right in line with debito.
They read his crap and say “see! Japan is a backwards country of sneaky greedy whale-hating lowlifes”
For that, I cannot forgive his use of fake activism as a means of first cloaking and then spreading his own prejudices and emotional deficiencies.
James,
I feel the need to vindicate myself here. The page (not a resume)from my univ. website that Debito showed had my Theology degree listed as Regent College (Univ. of British Columbia). And I did in fact graduate from Regent College. Regent is on the UBC campus, officially affiliated with UBC (despite what Debito said to the contrary- he doesn’t know), and students can share courses/credits etc. While completing my Master’s at Regent I also took several Linguistics and Education courses at UBC and received an ESL teaching certificate at UBC. Hence, the bracketed listing of UBC on the (very old, outdated) page that Debito found(which had been fully and knowingly approved by my senior professor at that time).
On the sound files, I said “people know UBC” because this ambush took place at a EFL Conference after an academic presentation on an EFL matter. I believed that talking about a Theology degree at Regent was irrelevant to the presentation (despite being a very fine graduate school for Theological studies), but that UBC, where Regent IS located and where I gained an ESL teaching qualification, was. In fact, I thought Debito was going to call me out on not having a PhD. I did not believe that I was required to provide an oddball question from the audience my full and complete CV with every detail crossed and signed (unlike you would to a potential employer or official).
And if I sound wimpy on the files it was because 1) here was a guy trying to pick a fight with me in public and I wasn’t expecting it (he had prepared his line of fire- I was caught flatfooted), especially as people were standing around hoping to talk more 2) I had no idea why Debito was bringing up credentials, especially as a kind of academic pissing contest. He simply lied on his website about my ‘having challenged his credentials’- he just plain pulled that out of his butt.
Keep in mind that Debito attended an academic presentation with no purpose except to ambush me and record me without my knowledge or permission. Ethical? And of course Debito’s whole line of ambush had absolutely zero connection to the content of my parody.
So ‘lying about (my) resume’ is really, really, really stretching it. Debito is all about hyperbole and pushing an agenda first and foremost- both in my case and in the case of discussion about the Fukushima situation. People should not take what this man says at face value, and in fact it seems that most reasonable no longer do.
Having beers one night with a couple of US Embassy employees we started talking about how the Hokkaido posting was probably the least desirable for embassy staff. That got us on the topic of Debito.
My drinking companion claimed that Debito actually tried to get his American citizen back. He was refused because all the public information on his blog made it obvious Debito had made the choice of his own free will and knew exactly what he was doing.
If true, it would explain a lot of the stress Debito seems to be experiencing.
Steve, that was most uncalled for.
bookfan is most certainly not Debito, and I have edited (yes, I know I said I wouldn’t :roll:) out the more unpleasant parts of your comment.
I don’t suppose the parody that started it all is still up ?
Where might one find it?
http://www.eltnews.com/columns/uni_files/2010/10/today_a_unifiles_interview_wit.html
And a lot of the Canada…
If true thats some delicious irony…
I left a (very neutral and polite this time) comment on his blog entry, asking him to provide a source for the “NO GRASSROOTS REVOLUTIONS” claim, and mentioning that “Sakamoto Ryoma would probably disagree”.
He deleted it
Very sour strawberries indeed.
Stereo, 2-Belo, LB, do you mind if I use the incidents you mentioned in my next article?
By all means — I don’t hold copyright on 1970s Japanese leftist protest movements. :D
＠james grey
All I hope to see is that people avoid double standards.
You say “All I am trying to say is that if someone who works in the same business as me tried to make me look like shit in public, I would take legal advice.”
Is this not exactly what debito did to Mike Guest at a conference?
As for maturity in releasing parodies into public, I again hope you hold debito to the same standard. Such as in his childish parody cartoon of Tony Lazlo
http://www.debito.org/?p=5595
If Mike Guest is guilty of some sort of libel or immaturity, then debito is, too.
Again, as for making people look like shit in public, then his accusations (and refusal to make retractions, or just leave them buried deep in the comments section without changing any headlines, when proven wrong) against the dance school, the silly claim that McDonald’s use of a smiling pudgy gaijin in an ad campaign was racist, the claim that NHK is “covering up” the possible influence (which he insists is the only influence) of a young girl’s half-foreign heritage as the cause of her suicide, his insinuation that Lazlo is an ex post facto golddigger (sure, maybe Lazlo is an ass, from reading the comic I only know he’s deliberately bad at washing dishes and stubborn)..the list goes on (see every article on this site). Debito makes irresponsible claims that many in Japan are racist.
Again, you say “he should have thought a bit more carefully before putting it in the public domain. I mean, as a perspective employer, it doesn’t look like the level of maturity that is desirable in a university professor” Surely this applies to debito as well? Single standard.
I think his most despicable axiom is his firmly stated belief that nobody should ever get married to a Japanese and have children. Because debito had problems, he assumes the hundreds of thousands of other international marriages are all doomed. It’s quite a pitiful attitude.
As for the naming of universities and beating of chests about which university one attended, again please choose a standard and stick to it, compare apples to apples.
Mike Guest has satisfactorily explained his situation and how debito exaggerated the facts. Guest did not make a false claim, the worst he can be accused of is not fully explaining his situation in every case in which it comes up.
Should debito announce each time he mentions he went to Cornell that his father is a professor there, and this may or may not have given him an edge in the application process (and certainly the ability to cover tuition costs)?
Again, I mainly don’t like debito anymore because I was a fan. I used to contribute to his site. But the cases in which he edited comments, and his growing alarmism and repeating jumping of sharks turned me off. He still has a use as a place for people to report possible cases of racism in Japan, but he has a pretty sad record of retracting any cases that are proven wrong. You have to take everything on debito’s site with a huge grain of salt.
There IS racism in Japan. I’ve experienced it! I’ve been stopped by cops for no reason. I’ve been denied apartments specifically because I am a foreigner.
But debito’s Boy Who Cried Wolf act doesn’t help anyone. Debito is parody of himself.
Anyway, welcome to tepido. If you’re a debito fan, then I recommend that you check out a few stories on this site. Judge for yourself, just try to stick to a single standard.
Thanks for the tip, LB. I’ll do that next time.
Yep, sorry. Sure wish there was a window to edit comments after posting.
Thank you Ken!
Much appreciated.
When one takes into account that Debito Arudou was not in Japan, but rather thousands of kilometers away in a very different timezone on a very far away continent in a province far from the Pacific Ocean during the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant disasters, his complaints of “leaking limited information” and being “woefully under-informed” take an entirely new context.
It’s regrettable that Mr. Arudou failed to disclose this, as it provides valuable insight into what he could deduce from his limited vantage point, which for Japanese information, was probably almost exclusively the internet. This is a very different from the way most people that can understand Japanese — like Mr. Arudou — in Japan — unlike Mr. Arudou when he wrote that column — consumed news about the disaster. The internet was merely one source.
While the Internet is an invaluable source of information, it is still no substitute for the primary real time news sources available to those who were actually inside the country during most of the disaster. Even streaming internet video is still no substitute for the TV source. And there is no way that the foreign press can report about Japan better than the Japanese, because they don’t have home field advantage.
Mr. Arudou should know this, because he wrote a blog entry about how the Japan Times reported that most of the overseas press reduced or closed their Japan offices during the recession. Because of the cutbacks, Almost all of the overseas press was caught unprepared and inadequately staffed. They lacked the Japanese language staff, the interpreters, and the connections that the Japanese media due to their poor foresight and priorities.
This was obvious to those inside Japan who were multilingual and watched both sources in real time: crucial timely data was often delayed due to translation backlog and time shifting for western audiences. Translated information was often abridged and sometimes misinterpreted. They had put themselves in the position where they were the scavengers in the information food chain.
So one has to wonder: if they’re the bottom feeders, how is it that those in foreign countries perceived foreigners and their press as having “more demanding global standards of scrutiny”, like Mr. Arudou saw from Canada? Some Westerners, including apparently the ethnically American Mr. Arudou, believe that quantity trumps quality. And the western news, who is trying to readjust its business models to survive in the 21st century, need juicy content, in large quantities, to survive as a for-profit business. The foreign press, which has no duty to prioritize accuracy over ratings outside of its country, spun the story so its readers and viewers got the exciting doomsday scenarios that they know gets the eyeballs for its advertisers. It’s not a “global [standard]“.
Some people may think there’s no harm in over-exposure to false pessimistic or doomsday messages. For some that have never built a career in Japan, this may be true. There are, however, people that have made real investments in their career in Japan. They may have left “for the sake of the kids or family” when they were panicked by the information. I wonder if they’ll feel the same way if they become unemployed in this very tough job market due to their overreaction to something that Rosie Di Manno of the Toronto Star wrote and can no longer provide for the kids or family that they were trying to protect.
Quantity of information is not necessarily better than quality information. Perhaps the preference for celebrity anchors talking to ‘experts’ representing special interest groups imagining implausible doomsday scenarios in one’s news is a western cultural value, which is why the American-Japanese Mr. Arudou seems to prefer it over the ‘just the facts and analysis’ Japanese news.
If Japan’s old-school teevee-rating-unfriendly method of just reporting known facts and reasonable hypotheses is Mr. Arudou’s definition of “father knows best” and “obsessive control of information,” then I’ll take that any day over what he seemed to prefer: the gossipy, hysterical junior high school student complaining about how tomorrow is the end of the world because of a rumor overheard in the school cafeteria by one’s best friend that day. Where’s the nanny when you need her?
Relevant: http://i.imgur.com/uKxSv.gif
+1
Eido, please please please submit that to the Japan Times so more people see it!
+1,000,000
What Simon said.
Sure, please do.
Just to add, ikki 一揆 in Japanese means uprising. There are quite a few ikki in Japan, though all of them were subdued eventually.
Major ones are
Yamashiro kuni ikki 山城国一揆 (1485-1493)
Ise Nagashima ikkou ikki 伊勢長島一向一揆 (1570-1574)
Shimabara Amakusa ikki 島原天草一揆 (1637-1638)
As to the letter to the pope, I remember I saw it in some book but cannot find it.