Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

I went to see the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha." Here in Japan the title was changed to "SAYURI."

The movie was kind of strange but also very interesting.

The characters in the movie speak in English. The hairstyle of the Geishas were appearently different from real Geishas walking on the streets in Kyoto.

The story was good in first half but the latter half was kind of difficult to understand. I actually did not like the story.

Some of Japanese argue Japan portrayed in that film was too strange to see. But how many of Japanese know the old time Japan, especially the life of Geisha? How many of us know how to wear traditional kimono?

So in that sense Hollywood made the best of their efforts.

One thing I find they are better than Japanese films is the scenes of the evening party. Usually those scenes are very bright like today's party room with fluor lamps on the ceiling. That never happened in 1930's. But in the movie "Memoirs of a Geisha," the room was not very bright and the Geisha's face was lit by orange paper lantern. That should be real scenes of those days, I think.

The thing I was kind of disturbed by was the main character was played by Chinese actress, Zhi Zhang. She is a great actress, but the point is the character she played might aggravate Chinese people. The story took place in 1930's Japan. It was a time Japan was invading China. The Geisha fell in love with Japanese rich man who once fought in Manchuria. Then after the war she helped him with reconstructing his business sleeping with American military man.

Today is the time the relationship between China and Japan has become worst in post-war time. It is due to our stupid prime minister and his uneducated conservative supporters.   

As one of Japanese citizen who is very aware of how apologetic Japan should be to China, I could not enjoy this movie although the Chinese actress did played that role as Hollywood actress.

I went to Egypt last week. 14 hour flight from Tokyo.

I really had fun visiting pyramids and old ruins.

An Egyptian guide I met talked so much about the war in their neighboring country, Iraq.

He repeatedly said to our tour group that the US started the war because they wanted oil, not to provide democracy. He was so emotional about that. I've seen very few American tourists visiting there. I understood why.

I recommend Americans not visit there nowadays although the pyramids and ruins were magnificient.   

Yesterday I went to the meeting to hear the testimonies of Nanking Masscre survivors. Two people showed up and talked about their experience in ther villages near the former Chinese capitol, Nanking, December 1937. They are very old people. One of them is 85 year-old man, and the other is 77 year-old woman. They were child at the time the masscre occured.

Japanese army came into their villages. The stories they told the audience (mostly Japanese) were horrible. Their parents were killed in front of them.

The old man's villagers were gathered on the ground and shot by machine-guns. 23 of them were all together killed and later stabbed by the swords. The old man was saved but sexually abused by the soldiers.

The old lady's mother was shot to death in front of her and she was also shot in her hand. Her life had changed greatly since then. She had to be married to someone for her life at the age of 12 or 13.

After the meeting I walked past the Parliament Building. The meeting was held near the parliament. It was very peaceful place. See the picture in the Photo Gallery. The contrast between the stories of the survivors and the landscape of the capitol was so big.

The reality was they are co-related. That place made a decision to dispatch troops to China at that time and caused them such painful memories. Yet the goverment has not compensated the victims. Some of the politicians expressed apologies but always after that, some of the cabinet members said something to turn down. Current prime minister visited war crimials' shrine. Their stance is so inconsistent.

Some so called right wingers are trying to rewrite the history. They believe nothing bad was done by Japanese army. They think or want to think the atrocities were made up by Chinese.

This nation is on the crisis. Now is such an important time to strengthen relationship with neighboring Asian nations but top politicians who have to place importance on national interests are deteriorating that. Unless Japan reviews and compensates the past atrocities, we will have no future.  

Democrat Congressman J. Murtha, who is Vietnam veteran and voted for invasion of Iraq spoke out on PBS and said the US troops should withdraw from Iraq in 6 months. He claimed the war was wrong.

He looked so desperate and passionate about this issue.

One Japanese video journalist named Jimbo Tetsuo, who got Master's degree of Journalism at Columbia University said that America always has the power to swing back even when things go wrong too far. Mr. Murtha proved that.

In contrary, our society is less powerful to swing back because we don't have so many people who have courage to do the right thing no matter how opposition is strong. Unlike America, Japanese are group oriented and do not respect other's individualism.

Please swing back, America. You can do that.