Earthquakes in Asia

Japanese troops save an elderly man whose hometown has been destroyed by the Sendai earthquake and tsunami, magnitude 8.9, on 11. March 2011.

We have been following the news from Japan (live stream here: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/), and our thoughts go out to all the brave people, civilians and officials, who are doing their best to save lives in the greatest earthquake in recent Japanese history. Earthquakes happen all over the world, and we include here some photos of rescue operations during the last 5 years in Asia.

South Korean rescue workers and dogs arrive in Japan. Source: AFP

Source: Reuters. More images at Tagesschau.de (http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/bilder/erdbebenjapan122.html)

In 2008, a devastating earthquake struck Sichuan Province in China. Here, the famous pandas of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding are being rescued.

The toll on human life was much greater. At least 68,000 people were killed in the 8.0 Ms quake centered on Wenchuan County on 12 May 2008.

Rescue workers help an elderly man.

In contrast to the numerous photos from Japan and China, it is slightly more challenging to find material from the Central Asian countries that have also been suffering from earthquakes during the last decade. These countries have also received less news coverage, globally. Above, rescue workers from the Kyrgyzstan Red Crescent Society pose for a group photo in the Alai region of Osh City in 2008. The town Nura and the village Kura were completely destroyed in the magnitude 6.6 earthquake that was felt in in Tajikistan and Xinjang Uighur as well.

Unicef specialist Yang Zhenbo among schoolkids in Sichuan after the earthquake 2008. (Source: Unicef)

And life goes on. See Claudia Janke's impressive photo series after the earthquake in Pakistan 2005. People rebuild their homes and even have time for a quick smile in spite of their difficult circumstances. But healing takes time and comes with a heavy cost - that's why international mutual help and aid always will be necessary.

EDIT: In 2010, the Yushu earthquake hit the Tibetan plateau with a magnitude of 7.1 Ms. Don't miss these images of Tibetan monks as rescue workers.

(The comparison is pretty pathetic, but Ainur has only experienced one "real" earthquake in her life and can only marvel at the survival stories above. Please correct any mistakes you can spot in this post, as it was written in a great hurry and emotional turmoil.)

Charles Bronson vs. Toshiro Mifune!

We have a soft spot for Charles Bronson, descendant of Lipka Tatars, and likewise for Toshiro Mifune, epic movie hero of the Land of the Rising Sun. In Red Sun (directed by Terence Young, France/Spain/Italy 1971) east meets west in the original sense of Rudyard Kipling's lines:

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

Edit (29.7.2011): Added link to better-quality video.

Not Cool Enough For Hollywood?

KevJumba's message is sadly relevant (visit his homepage - cute overload warning). It's not just an American issue. We are being denied Chirayliq potential on a global level. (Found here)
The fact remains that Hollywood productions get distributed around the world, while Asian productions - especially Central Asian, but also the more "marketable" Chinese, Korean and Japanese - frequently are limited to art house cinemas and private initiatives. For example, I wonder if we will ever get to see Goemon anywhere in Europe. (It's a fantasy spectacle based on the legend of Ishikawa Goemon, a thief who stole from the rich and gave to the poor and dared to defy the powerful warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi.) Needless to say, Goemon is full of cool, handsome, cute, sexy and all-round awesome Asian guys and girls.
EDIT: The Trailer was too wide to embed, so you'll just have to go to YouTube by yourself.

You have to keep in mind that Japanese movie budgets are usually only a fraction of the cost of a major Hollywood production. Expect Final Fantasy, not Star Wars. The director of Goemon, Kazuaki Kiriya, is famous for Casshern, a science-fiction epic which doesn't let the special effects get in the way of a good plot and compelling characters. Here's the trailer:

Samurai Soul

"Samurai Soul" by Ulfuls, a Japanese rock band from Osaka. A comment on the condition of Japanese masculinity?... The lyrics are sweeter than I expected. Here's a translation.
The lead singer and soulful (hence 'ulful') samurai is Atsushi 'Tortoise' Matsumoto.

Photo from this interview. The next one I picked from another interview - it's one of the rare photos where guitarist Ulful Keisuke (first guy on the right) smiles! Click to view larger.


Drummer Sankon Jr.'s teeth are so adorably mixed up.

Posing like the Shinsengumi... (just look at Hijikata Toshizo at the National Diet Library's portrait gallery!)

Mystery: Mishka Babitchef

I'm looking for information about the first Ethiopian pilot, Mishka Babitchef, a descendant of Russian emigrants. According to the website MediaEthiopia, he received his pilot license in the presence of Emperor Haile Selassie in October 1930. He had a sister, W/O Atsede Babitchef, who was married to the nobleman Dejach Nessibu Ze-Ammanuel.
The Russia-Ethiopia connection is of more interest than a mere historical curiosity - since Pushkin's great-grandfather, Major-General Abram Petrovich Gannibal, was said to have been an Ethiopian (altough this is disputed; at any rate, he was from the East of Africa). Anyway, it tickles one's imagination to know that Russian emigrés in turn arrived in Ethiopia and assimilated.
I have very little knowledge of Ethiopian history, and I would be grateful for any further information on the background of these interesting persons. Google is not very helpful at this point - the spellings of the names only occur on MediaEthiopia's site. The whole thing is complicated by the fact that there's a contemporary Russian actor with the name Михаил Бабичев... Perhaps there are other spellings that are in use. I would also like to know more about the Japanese artist Fumio Mizuno (水野富美夫, 1917-1994), who lived in Ethiopia for 25 years and painted beautiful portraits of women. (some photos from an exhibition in Japan 2005)
If anyone knows where to search, or what to look for, I would be grateful for a tip.

Found in Finland

The Finnish board of museums (Museovirasto) has an interesting internet exhibition of "A Thousand Unknown People" (Tuhat Tuntematonta) on old photographs. Among these photographs of ordinary and not-so-ordinary Finns through the ages (and their pets) are a few chirayliqs, too.

Tadao Watanabe is one of the "unknowns" who has been identified by attentive visitors. He was a Lutheran missionary who married a Finn, Siiri Pitkänen. I have written about them earlier.

This couple has not been identified, but we know that they are Tatars. The photo was dedicated to "Mrs Aishä Ishakova from Höseyin Abudarov" in March 21, 1913.
So, what did the Finns look like 100-80 years ago? Any blond and blue-eyed chirayliq candidates?


This gentleman looks strikingly similar to the Tatar man above.


I always find that Finns look Scandinavian, but a special kind of Scandinavian, if you know what I mean.


This guy looks like Andy from my comic Goldenbird. After a bourgeois makeover, to be sure.


Finns and Russians just happen to be neighbours, they have nothing else in common... Just coincidence upon coincidence... Let's not jump to conclusions...

Soldier boys trying to look tough. Same as everywhere...

But I think these guys, who were working for the national railways, are my favourites.

Free Junichi and Toru!

Greenpeace Japan exposed a scandal involving the corrupt and powerful whaling industry (which is funded with taxpayers’ money). Two of their activists are now awaiting trial for intercepting a box of stolen whale meat and delivering it to the police.

Greenpeace was tipped off in January 2008 by a former whaling fleet member that crew members of the Japanese whaling fleet regularly take whale meat off the ships and sell it for their own profit.

In April, Greenpeace activists were able to track one of at least 93 boxes of “personal baggage” with a variety of labels such as “cardboard” or “salted stuff”, that were sent from the whaling ship Nisshin Maru, addressed to the private homes of crewmembers. The two activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki removed one of the boxes to verify its contents, which turned out to be not cardboard, but 23.5 kg of prime whale meat cuts, worth between 100,000 yen (US$1,000) and 300,000 yen (US$3,000).

Concluding the four-month undercover investigation, Greenpeace Japan held a press conference in Tokyo, exposing the full details of the whale meat embezzlement scandal. As evidence, Junichi and Toru displayed the box of stolen whale meat that they intercepted, and then delivered it to the Public Prosecutor in Tokyo, along with a full dossier detailing the investigation, including details of the suspected crewmembers.
In May, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors' Office confirmed that there would be an investigation into the whale meat scandal.

However, on June 20th, Junichi and Toru were arrested for stealing the package, and on the same day the Tokyo Public Prosecutor suddenly announced that he had dropped his investigation into the whale meat embezzlement scandal.

After 26 days in police detention, Junichi and Toru are out on bail, but they still face criminal prosecution.

Find out more about the case and how you can help Junichi and Toru!

Junichi (31) is the director of the Oceans Campaign of Greenpeace Japan. A husband and father, he often spends his weekends hiking to nearby Mt. Takao with his son. Junichi speaks of providing an opportunity to children of the future to be awed by Earth’s grand nature.
Joining Greenpeace in 2001 as a campaigner working on toxic materials, he has worked to promote "Zero Waste" in Japan, and was instrumental in the landmark Zero Waste Declaration adopted by the town of Kamikatsu, in Tokushima prefecture, which aims to eliminate waste by 2020. Since then, he has acted as Greenpeace Japan's Campaign Director and now the Director of the Oceans Campaign to promote sustainable coastal fisheries in Japan and an end to so-called research whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

Toru (41) is the actions coordinator of Greenpeace Japan. He is married and has a two-year-old daughter. He joined Greenpeace because he was "really impressed that there were so many good people" involved. Toru supports the whales campaign because "simply, I think whaling should end now. A year ago, I was a new Greenpeace volunteer helping out when our ship the Esperanza was coming to Yokohama. I began to understand the whaling issue, and felt that whaling is going to end in 1-2 years".


Here is a video with the story:

Extra!

Greenpeace Japan's Whale Campaign has a simple and cute little action for promoting awareness and love for whales - attaching whale figures to public drinking fountains in schools and parks. Here are some photos:

Chirayliq Olympics

Some photos from Spiegel.de...


Zhang Xiangxiang - Gold!


Park Kyung-Mo & team - Gold!


Kosuke Kitajima - Gold! Cho-kimochii!


Just to show off how extremely cute Kosuke-san is... as if that's not enough, his website is called "Frogtown"!


Elnur Mammadli beats Wang Ki-chun with an ippon in 13 seconds! Gold - first one ever to Azerbaijan in judo!

Tatars in Japan

"History of Turks-Tatars in Japan Episode 04", uploaded by kizilmaske87 (who has lots of other nice clips on YouTube of Chirayliq interest).
Let's practise our Turkish and Tatar (for non-Turanians, the subtitled bits are in Tatar). I especially like the slideshow of 1920's photos towards the end of the clip. Because it is a Turkish production, the narrator speaks about "Turk-Tatars". ^_^

Episode 4 tells the story of the first large immigration wave in the 1920's. First, many Volga (Idel-Ural) Tatars arrived after the revolution to Manchukuo. Until 1930, the center for Tatars in the Far East was Harbin, then it moved to Japan. Tatars settled in Yokohama, Tokyo, Nagoya and Kobe. In the beginning, most of them were single men doing trade. Then they started to bring their families, or get married. They settled close to other Muslim families. Some did business for the Muslim community as butchers or grocers. But most of them were in the textile business, selling clothes all over Japan.

Exactly like the Tatars in Finland!

Episode 5: Kurban Ali, translator at Manchuria Railways, organized the Tatars (he looks almost like Ymär Abdrahim, a Helsinki businessman in the 1920's-1930's!) in Shibuya. There were 3000 Tatars in Japan, 400 in Tokyo and 600 in Kobe. In 1927 they got permission from the Japanese government to open a madrasa (school) in a rented space in Shin-okubo (Tokyo). The same building was used also as a prayer and meeting room. Here is it in March 2007, photographed by Ainur, who has been inside it and had some tea, too!



Episode 7: Now it gets really interesting...

In 1933 two famous intellectuals, Ayaz Ishaki and Abdurreshit Ibrahim (of course there's a research project about him at Freie Universität Berlin), came to Japan. Ibrahim became a community leader. He had previously been in Japan and had contact with important political personalities. Among these was Mitsuru Toyama, a leading thinker of Japanese nationalism and Asianism. In 1909 he established Ajia Gikai (Asian Parlament) together with some Japanese and Turkic leaders. It is claimed that many high level Japanese converted to Islam and joined this association to help liberation movements of Muslim nations in Asia. Ibrahim died in Tokyo in 1944. Ayaz Ishaki, a writer and journalist, had been a member of the Muslim Turko-Tatar parliament established in Ufa 1918-20. He was an advocate of Idel-Ural unity. He opened branches of the Idel-Ural Turk-Tatar Culture society in Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe and Kumamoto. However, Ishaki and Kurban became rivals...

Yes, there were Japanese Muslims:


From SELÇUK ESENBEL - Japan's Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945
PS. The story of how the Tatars of Japan became Turks is quite interesting. Turkish soldiers were among the Allied forces in the Korean war. The Tatar community helped wounded Turkish soldiers in Japanese hospitals with such zeal that a Turkish general asked them how Turkey could reply to their kindness. The Tatars (who probably like the Finnish Tatars were stateless for a long time) requested Turkish citizenship, and received it in 1953. After this, Tatars started to emigrate. There are only 70 of the original population left.

Takiji Kobayashi

"1920s proletarian novel strikes chord with young underemployed" - The Japan Times, Friday, July 18, 2008



I first read about Takiji Kobayashi (小林 多喜二 1903-1933) in the Finnish socialist literary magazine Kirjallisuuslehti (1934, p. 290). He was a politically conscious writer and dissident in imperial Japan, tortured to death by the police. His rediscovered novel, Kanikosen ("Crab-Canning Boat", 1929), deals with the difficult working conditions and labourers' collective struggle 80 years ago, and the modern-day part-time proletariat has discovered its relevance.

Shinchosha Publishing Co. said that in a normal year around 5,000 copies of the book would be reprinted. But this year, it has already printed nearly 380,000 copies.

The Japanarchy blog has a big post on Kobayashi, including many images of the manga based on Kanikosen. The comments include valuable discussions, too (how often do you see that?!). A must-read if you are interested in radical labour activism and Japan in the 1920's and 30's. Warning: The post includes some difficult photos of the deceased Kobayashi.
Here is a 10-minute clip from the 1953 movie by Sô Yamamura.

And here's an article by a guy who worked at fish-processing ships himself, and what he felt when he read the manga versions.

(Crossposted at 1920 A.D.)

Finnish-Japanese Couples

A small Northeast-European country with only 5 million inhabitants has small chance to make an impression on an East Asian superpower with 127 millions. Regardless of that, Finnish-Japanese contacts have generally been positive, and as a result, both Finns and Japanese (but especially Finns) sometimes imagine that there is a special relationship between Finnish and Japanese mentality. After all, they are only separated by one country...

Never mind the imagined relationships, here are some very real unions between Finns and Japanese, which I find inspiring and also very cute.

Siiri Pitkänen and Tadao Watanabe, sometime in the Taisho period (1910's). They met when he came to Finland to study to become a missionary. They lived in Japan and Finland in the 1920's, often far apart, and their longing letters to each other have been published in the book "Kirsikankukkien vuodet" (Cherry Blossom Years). Some of their correspondence reflects family tragedy and marriage arguments, but there are many sweet and longing letters to the "dear quarrel-partner". The article where I found the photo is available online in Finnish.


Here is another handsome couple from the ladies' magazine Hopeapeili (1962/5). The marriage of Miss Pirkko Päiwiö and embassy attaché Minoru Yamashita was a big event in Finland's small society circle. The little article about the "great adventure" describes Mrs Yamashita's future as a challenge. Just the thought of moving to Japan and studying the language makes the reporter's "tongue tie a knot" (pelkästä ajatuksesta kieli solmuun), but "apparently Japanese isn't that difficult". A bigger challenge is the cuisine: Mr Yamashita "has somewhat shown appreciation even of kalakukko and pirogues. A Finnish wife will undoubtedly make sure that also lighter Finnish delicacies will not be missing from the young couple's table, even in Japan." Oh, that old-time food nationalism... I hope they were happy even without the kalakukko.

The Genghis Craze

This 2007 movie, about the early years of Genghis Khan, deserves a much longer post. The director, Sergei Bodrov sr., is Russian. The film is an international co-production between companies in Germany, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia. The lead actor, playing Temujin, is the (very very chirayliq) Tadanobu Asano from Japan. The film was shot in the People's Republic of China, principally Inner Mongolia, and in Kazakhstan. To top it all, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film as a submission from Kazakhstan.

(Wait a sec - "Music by Tuomas Kantelinen"? This truly is a pan-Eurasian production... Heart-warming!)

Of course, there's bound to be trouble.

This is not the first movie adaptation of Genghis Khan's life, and I'm sure it won't be the worst (in the fabulous "yellowface" genre, I think John Wayne takes the prize with his incredible line in The Conqueror (1956): "this Tartar woman...is for me...and my blood says...take her!!" Oh my Tengri, there's even one with Omar Sharif), though I understand the Mongolian concerns about historical accuracy and respect for their culture.


Especially the Japanese interest in the ancient warlord has been a bit disturbing. In 2007, a Japanese movie was released under the name Aoki Ookami (The Blue Wolf; a.k.a. Genghis Khan - To the Ends of the Earth and Sea). According to an online review, it was a commercial failure in Japan, and the producers scrapped the plans for a sequel. This film was shot entirely in Mongolia, but the leading actors are all Japanese. Takashi Sorimachi (of GTO o_O and Yamato fame) is kawaii. Check out his pout in the beginning of this video.

Ok, getting off topic there...

If you want to see REAL Mongols dressed up and playing Genghis, check out this gallery by Michel Setboun.

PS: An interesting tidbit of information is the fact that the script writer of Mongol, Arif Aliyev, qualifies as a chirayliq. His name sounds Tatar, but it doesn't really matter as much as his friendly smile.

More about Aliyev