The video below has been making the email rounds recently, and it certainly doesn’t look like a fun commute. At any rate, I think the train line itself is pretty easy to identify. I think I know which station it is based on some cues in the video, but I’m not saying what I think just yet.
I’ll write down what I think with some way to timestamp it. Tokyo densha otakus, what station do you think is in that video and why?
March 1st
“Today marks the declaration of Korean independence. There will be peaceful demonstrations all over Korea. If our meetings are orderly and peaceful, we shall receive the help of President Wilson and the great powers at Versailles, and Korea will be a free nation.”
On this day in 1919, at 2:00 p.m., Korean Nationalists involved with what would come to be known as the Samil Movement read the Korean Declaration of Independence to crowds throughout the country.
The Declaration was written by the historian Choe Nam-seon and the poet Manhae and propagated by a core group of 33, mostly Christian and student, activists. Although the core group of activists, concerned about lage demonsrations, met initially in the Taehwagwan restaurant in Seoul, public demonstrations around Korea attracted up to a total of two million people.
(Read on …)
February 19th
On this day in 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, permitting the relocation of Americans of Japanese descent and Japanese immigrants to internment camps throughout the West. The Executive Order was issued based upon the recommendations Western Defense Command sent to General Headquarters in Washington on December 19, 1941:
(Read on …)
January 7th is a big day for anniversaries in Japanese history.
Two Prime Ministers assumed their posts on this day - Prince Kimmochi Saionji in 1906 and Count Keigo Kiyoura in 1924.
Prince Kimmochi Saionji was in the midst of an interesting succession of Prime Ministers - he was Prime Minister twice, the 12th and 14th, and was both preceded and succeeded both times by Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Taro Katsura, the 11th, 13th, and 15th Prime Minister.
Saionji, not yet a prince, but still a marquis in 1906, took over the Prime Ministership from Katsura for the first time on January 7, 1906 when Katsura resigned due to controversy surrounding the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War.
The controversy was primarily the disappointment of the Japanese public at the relatively modest rewards secured by Japan despite a decisive, resounding victory over Russia - the young modern Japanese state’s most significant military victory to that date and a major step towards getting the respect from the West that Japan sought. During the war, American visitors to Japan commented on the remarkable public enthusiasm for the war - women wore hair ornaments shaped like little battleships and kimono printed with patriotic and martial patterns, significant triumphs were met with exuberant public celebrations, and more.
The Russo-Japanese War was to that date the largest-ever clash between states (in terms of troop and ship numbers) and saw the first use of the telegraph, telephone, machine guns, barbed wire, illuminating star shells, mine fields, advanced torpedoes, and armored battleships in war. (Read on …)
December 18th
On this day in 1947, the massive Zaibatsu, who ran the prewar and wartime economy of Japan (as well as, possibly, large parts of the government) were broken up by GHQ.
But also. . .
On this day in 1956, Japan’s membership in the United Nations was officially accepted. While Japan was already facing pressure from the US to renege on its Article 9 pledge to renounce war and its accoutrements, and there was no shortage of hostility against the country left over from World War II, Japan’s accession to the UN was apparently not hotly contested.
In order to join the UN, a country must be recommended by the Security Council, approved by the General Assembly, and agree to abide by the requirements of the United Nations Charter. Potential political obstacles to Japanese membership in the UN - mainly the objections of China or other victims of Japan’s wartime aggression - were rendered null by the San Francisco Treaty of 1952, which officially ended World War II. In it, its author, John Foster Dulles, included a clause requiring all signatories of the Treaty to not only not oppose Japan’s membership in the UN, but support and promote it. Chinese opposition was rendered moot by the facts that UN membership is decided by the General Assembly, not the UNSC, and that China’s seat, at the time, was held by the Republic of China, or Taiwan, not by the People’s Republic of China.
Japan’s membership in the UN was not only a part of the country’s postwar recovery and rise in international stature, but also in line with a turn towards greater independence in foreign policy (Read on …)
On December 13, 1937, the ancient walled city of Nanjing fell to the Japanese Imperial Army, an event followed by what only be described as a massacre.
As always, discussion and dissention are welcomed, preemptive insult-tossing is not.
December 7, 2007
On this day in 1941, the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor.
Last year, TPR brought you this brief summary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the US’s entry into World War II.
This year, we bring you the speech itself.
Listen to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt explain America’s declaration of war.
What is striking is how much happened on December 7th and 8th, 1941, and how little of it is remembered now - how many major events have been pushed aside as Pearl Harbor went from surprise to symbol to legend (to schmaltzy film.)
On December 8, 1941 (Japan time), Japan not only attacked Pearl Harbor. . .
August 15, 2007
At noon on this day in 1945, people throughout war-weary Japan, from balmy Sapporo, in fear of Soviet invasion, to sweltering Nagasaki, which had felt the brunt of American industrial might, gathered around radios to hear something few had ever heard before - their Emperor’s voice.
The following is one of two quasi-official translations of Showa-tenno’s “Jewel Voice Broadcast.” This one attempts to capture the spirit and formality of the Emperor’s original speech, however, as the Emperor spoke in a formal, archaic Court Japanese (kind of like having his own dialect), a translation both intelligible and capturing the spirit of his words is impossible.
Happy Independence Day to TPR’s American Listeners. Here’s a bit of OTR to bring pride to your patriotic hearts.
“And it wasn’t any ordinary guy who kept the Japs back that night. It was one of the most extraordinary guys in the world. You. Al Schmid. Marine.”
Pride of the Marines was based on the true story, originally appearing in Roger Butterfield’s book, of USMC Sergeant Albert “Al” Schmid, who received the Navy Cross for his heroic actions at Guadalcanal and the Purple Heart for injuries he sustained there.
Pride of the Marines is not a war story, though. At least not about battles and battlefield heroics. It’s of an ilk that surfaced, then receded for far too long in mainstream entertainment. . .
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Alan Ladd and twenty girls - trapped by the rapacious Japs!
From 1934 to 1955, after Hollywood stars made movies, they reprised their roles on the Lux Radio Theater.
On November 22, 1943 Alan Ladd and Loretta Young went into the CBS studios to broadcast the radio version of their topical film China.
Alan Ladd plays Mr. Jones, a cynical oil hawker in China in 1941, who thinks the “Japs” are good customers. He runs into Loretta Young’s Carolyn Grant, a teacher in Chengdu, whose girls are the hope of the new China for which the brave Chinese soldiers fight.
As Mr. Jones is trying to get to Shanghai and falling for Miss Grant (of course), he sees an orphan baby he and his traveling companions had picked up and named “Donald Duck” killed, along with old women, by barbaric Japanese forces. The climax comes on December 10, 1941, when Mr. Jones finds out, from a smug Japanese general, that the Japanese “like America very much. So much that we’re going to take it away from you,” and that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor three days before.
