123’s blog

Fun & Dirty: Boryeong Mud Festival

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:29:08 +0700

The Boryeong Mud Festival is an annual festival which takes place during the summer in Boryeong, South Korea. Now the annual event is underway and drawing a whole bunch of photographers snapping pictures of big-noses cavorting away - most of the participants are foreign tourists. See Chosun Ilbo's gallery photos as below. They also took a rare Koreans-only photo!

Old Boryeong Mud Festival Photos:

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Chinese Village Feast Treating 6,000 People at Once

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:27:03 +0700

The Dragon Boat Festival or Duanwu Festival (aka: Tuen Ng Festival) is a traditional Chinese festival. It occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month on Chinese calendar. In 2008, this falls on 8 June. The focus of the celebrations includes eating zongzi (large rice wraps), drinking realgar wine, and racing dragon boats. After all, there will be a big feast! These photos of a huge 'Dragon Boat Festival' feast are taken from Houjiao Cun, a small village in South China's Guangdong Province. The preparation work for 608 tables that sits 10 people each must have been quite hectic!

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Five-Year-Old Blind Piano Girl Can Play Any Song After Just One Listen

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:25:43 +0700

A blind five-year-old pianist from South Korea has stunned the music world after a video of her performance received more than 27million hits.

Yoo Ye-eun, who was born blind and adopted in 2002, has never had a formal piano lesson but can play any song after just one listen.

And now her remarkable talent is set to propel her to stardom as clips of her amazing performance have attracted millions of viewers to Korean website Pandora TV. A similar clip on YouTube has so far received two million hits.

The video opens with the gifted youngster being lifted up to the piano seat by the show's host, before settling down to play.

Ye-eun's adoptive mother, Park Jung Soon, said: 'She has perfect pitch even though she has never learnt to play. We never taught her.'

In May she performed a duet of 'You Raise me Up' with seven-year-old British singer Connie Talbot, who last year starred in reality show Britain's Got Talent.

After taking part in the national celebrations for Korea Day, the five-year-old's rise to fame continued last week with a performance in front of the Singapore Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong.

The youngster has been dubbed 'a five-year-old genius Mozart' and her performances have led to many offers, including one from doctors who tried but failed to restore her sight.

Video description: As she was introduced, a squeaky voice could be heard asking "where's the piano" and the camera panned down to reveal the doll-like Ye-eun searching for her seat. Audience members, including the Korean boy band Super Junior, were reduced to tears as Ye-eun's stubby fingers groped for the right keys and she sang "You Were Born to be Loved" -

Ye-eun, whose act includes classics from such composers as Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, practices every day on a piano donated by the Super Junior boys while listening to music on the internet. Asked by Reuters what she wants to be when she grows up she replied: "A pianist. A great pianist."

"She can play the piano after listening to a song once," said her adoptive mother, Park Jung Soon. Mrs Park says she discovered her daughter's talent two years ago when she was singing a pop tune and Ye-eun began playing along on a borrowed piano. "She has perfect pitch even though she has never learnt to play."

Five-Year-Old Blind Piano Girl

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Japan's Local Festival Calendar

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:06:38 +0700

Wonderful calendar of Japan's local festivals with photos...

January:

January 1
Horan Enya in Bungo Takada City, Oita Prefecture

February:

February 4
The Sapporo Snow Festival in Sapporo, Hokkaido

February 14
The Kokuseki-ji Somin Festival in Oshu, Iwate Prefecture

March

March 1-14
The Todai-ji Shunie in Todaiji Temple, Nara City, Nara Prefecture

Mar 24 – May 13
Koinobori Festival in Tatebayashi City, Gunma Prefecture

More than 5,000 koinobori (cloth carp) swims the sky of Tatebayashi City at four venues

April

April 11
The Onbashira Festival in Suwa, Nagano Prefecture

May

May 12
The Kanda Festival in Akihabara, Tokyo.

May 15
The Aoi Festival in Kyoto

May 20
The Sanja Festival in Asakusa, Tokyo

May 25
The Kan Kan Pu parade in Wakayama Prefecture

June

June 6
The Hokkaido Yosakoi Soran Festival in Sapporo, Hokkaido.

June 7
A festival at Ogamiyama Shrine in Tottori Prefecture

July

July 16
The Gion Festival in Kyoto

July 21
The Kokura Gion Daiko Festival in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture.

July 23
The Tenjin Festival in Osaka

August

August 1
The Hirosaki Neputa Festival in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture

August 3
The Akita Kanto Festival in Akita

August 5
The Yamagata Hanagasa Festival in Yamagata

August 6
The Sendai Tanabata Festival in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture.

August 13
The Gujo Odori dance festival in Gujo, Gifu Prefecture

August 26
The Yoshida Fire Festival in Fuji Yoshida, Yamanashi Prefecture

September

September 1
The Bon Odori dance festival in Toyama

September 15
The Danjiri Festival in Kishiwada, Osaka Prefecture

October

October 7
The Nagasaki Kunchi festival in Nagasaki

October 22
The Jidai Festival in Kyoto

October 22
The Shinko Festival in Kyoto

November

November 3
The Karatsu Kunchi festival in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture.

December

December 3
The Chichibu Night Festival in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture

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Tea and Chat Japan's Latest Defence for Robbery?

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:43:19 +0700

Police aren't recommending the tea defence for everyone!

A Japanese woman and her six-month-old daughter escaped unharmed from an armed robber after the mother calmed him with a cup of tea and a chat.

A middle-aged man allegedly pulled a knife and demanded money from the 30-year-old woman as she was walking along a corridor in her Tokyo apartment building with her baby, a Tokyo police official said.

When the housewife told him she had no money, the man followed her home and barged into her flat.

But rather than screaming, the woman calmly made the would-be robber a cup of tea and sat down with him for a chat, whereupon he put his knife away and began a 20-minute monologue about his troubled life, detailing his financial woes.

Police said the woman then gave the man 10,000 yen (£47) and left a wallet with a further 30,000 yen on the table and fled outside to call the police from a nearby public phone when the man was looking the other way.

When she returned to the flat with police, the man was gone.

Police said the woman told investigators that she couldn't believe how she could act so calmly and bravely.

But police aren't recommending the tea defence for everyone.

"I think she was very lucky," the official said. "The suspect might have eased up because of the baby's presence. I don't think serving tea always works with robbers."

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Pictured: Inside the cellar where father locked daughter for 24 years and repeatedly raped her

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:12:32 +0700

Confession: Josef Fritzl says he locked his daughter in a cellar for nearly 24 years

This is the man who today confessed that he imprisoned his daughter in an underground chamber for 24 years and fathered her seven children.

Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, was raped repeatedly since being lured into the dungeon built below the family home in a small Austrian town. Police said she had been "broken" by the experience.

Josef Fritzl, 73, admitted to police that all the children were his.

Three of them - Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five - were held captive with their mother in a series of windowless rooms and never saw the sunlight until they were freed on Saturday.

Incredibly, three others, Alexander, 12, Monika, 14, and Lisa, 16, were raised in the home by Fritzl and his wife. They were adopted by the couple and went to school, leading apparently normal lives.

The other child, a twin, died shortly after birth and the body burned by Fritzl in a boiler. Detectives today revealed details of the complex of rooms where Elisabeth was held since August 1984.

The three children kept prisoner with her were born there and are thought to have spent their entire lives underground.

Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigations unit in the province of Lower Austria, said: "He has now said that he locked up his daughter for 24 years and that he alone fathered her seven children and that he locked them up in the cellar."

The case echoes that of Natascha Kampusch who was kept in a cellar by a paedophile in Vienna for eight years from the age of 10 until she escaped last year.

Police are now trying to discover how Fritzl managed to keep his daughter as a sex slave without the apparent knowledge of his 60-year-old wife Rosemarie at the three-storey house in Amstetten, 80 miles west of Vienna.

Elisabeth was this afternoon said to be suffering from a serious physical condition which was deteriorating.

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Bathroom: Bright decorations cannot disguise the ramshackle state of the hiding place

Sinister: The narrow corridor that leads to the cramped cellar where Elisabeth Fritzl was locked up for 24 years

Captive: This tiny door led into the sequence of underground rooms where the four were held

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Shocked Austrians wake up to the full horror of their third 'girl-in-a-cellar' scandal in just two years

Elisabeth, who was described as pale and malnourished with hair that had turned white, has told police she was held captive since shortly after her 19th birthday, having been abused by her father since the age of 11.

Detectives said she appeared "greatly disturbed" during questioning. She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be protected.

Fritzl, an electrical engineer, had built a series of connected chambers, less than six feet high, behind a concealed door at the house.

The chambers had areas for sleeping, cooking and washing. Investigators said the basement labyrinth even contained a padded cell.

They refused to show pictures of rooms where the children had been born and hwere the four slept. It is believed the complex extended out beneath a plot of land at the rear of the family home.

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Elisabeth Fritzl, left, as a teenager and Monika, 14, one of her daughters allowed to leave the dungeon

The only door to the complex was controlled by an electronic lock that only he knew the code for. Fritzl was arrested yesterday and the children have been taken into care.

His wife told detectives she was unaware of the imprisonment and years of sexual abuse taking place in the basement. Amazingly, the couple also rented rooms to lodgers who failed to notice that anything was amiss.

The three imprisoned children were taught to read and write by their mother with Fritzl passing clothing and food through a hatch. A tube provided ventilation.

Their extraordinary captivity only ended when Kerstin fell seriously ill and had to be taken to hospital nine days ago. Police said the 18-year-old had been "surprised" when Fritzl allowed her to go to the hospital.

It was the first time she had left the dungeon.

Doctors found a handwritten note in unconscious Kerstin's pocket. It was from her mother ? begging medics to save her daughter.

Baffled by the illness, the hospital launched an appeal for missing Elisabeth to come forward and provide her medical history. Fritzl freed Elisabeth and the other two children. Kerstin remains in a coma.

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Dark secret: The banal facade of Fritzl's house in the Austrian town of Amstetten

Prison: An aerial shot of the Fritzl house, where Elisabeth was held captive for 24 years

Today police said that when he was arrested, he initially said "nothing" although he was now co-operating with officers.

"He led a double life for 24 years," said Mr Polzer. "The family lived upstairs. He had children with his own daughter who lived downstairs.

"He did not want to give any details to officers who investigated it."

Mr Polzer said of the underground chamber: "There are a number of rooms. Everything is very, very narrow and the victim herself, the mother of these children, told us that this was continually enlarged over the years."

Police are looking at planning records to see if Fritzl ever notified authorities about the building work.

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Family of mystery: Daughter Lisa, who lived a normal life, Fritzl's wife Rosemarie and his second son, Alexander at the age of 12

Fritzl had fooled the authorities over the years by telling them that his " missing" daughter had mysteriously returned on three occasions - in 1993, 1994 and 1997 - to dump three children on his doorstep.

He claimed each time she had left a note saying she was unable to look after them and persuaded authorities she had left to join a cult.

Fritzl and his daughter were picked up on Saturday close to the hospital where Kerstin is being treated.

He kept Elisabeth prisoner by telling her the cellar was booby trapped to explode if she attempted to escape.

Police took the retired electrician with them to discover not just the secret opening to the underground cell, which only he knew, but to slowly,carefully gain entrance because of the fear of hidden explosives.

Held captive: Natascha Kampusch

The small, keyless door to the dungeon, barely three feet high and two feet wide, was concealed in a workshop in part of the cellar by a shelf filled with cans of paint and other containers.

"Behind the shelf was a door made of reinforced concrete, secured electronically and running on steel rails," said local police official Heinz Lenze.

"Only the suspect ( Fritzl) knew the code."

Once inside astonished police found a labrynth of tiny rooms and tight, narrow stone-lined passageways, with uneven floors and a ceiling no higher than 5ft6ins, that was continually renovated and enlarged over the years as Fritzl's "family" grew.

The retired electrical engineer, desperate to keep his evil plan secret, dug out much of the basement with his bare hands, making regular trips to local building suppliers for materials. Foam insulation was liberally applied as an effective means of sound-proofing.

"It was a prison which he installed with skill and energy," said Mr Lenze.

The only source of light for Elisabeth and the children was a harsh striplight overhead.

Quite aside from the appalling mental damage, doctors are also concerned to discover what damage has been done to their eyesight after a prolonged period underground.

A television, video recorder and a large radio were their only contacts with the outside world - apart from the hatch through which Fritzl passed them food that was cooked on 'small hot plates' on an ancient cooker, and clothes.

Some toys, paper and glue were also found in the dungeon to provided some distraction for the young captives. Their handwork can clearly be seen in the photo of the bathroom where, in an effort to alleviate their unimaginable torment, various poignant children's drawings adorn the wall.

Mr Polzer said: "The lives of the three children in the cellar is in no way comparable with the lives of their three siblings.

"Since the day they were born they have never seen the light of day. They never had any doctor to care for them when they were sick.

"They learned to speak from their mother in isolation. They were pale, and experienced having to be nearby during the ordeal their mother was put through."

The case has prompted widespread disbelief in Austria over how such abuse could have been repeated - and why it went unnoticed for so long by the authorities.

"The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong," the newspaper Der Standard said today.

Questions are being asked about how neighbours could have failed to notice what was happening.

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Middle-Aged Japanese Women Seek One Last Thing: Love

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:33:18 +0700

Japanese women aged 40 married, had kids, got a career and it's all going really well. They should have no worries in the world, but according to a recent survey, for some reason, they feel lonely often, many of them are looking for one last thing: love.

"It wasn't just what university he came from, he also had to have gone to good high and junior high schools. And he had to be working for top-ranked company. He needed to be 15 centimeters taller than I am and be a good driver. I didn't want anyone whose eating manners were bad. They had to know a lot about wine and champagne, but also be sensible drinkers. And, on top of all that, he needed to have similar values and be a person I could respect, or there was no way I'd marry him," a 40-year-old woman working as an architect tells Sunday Mainichi, outlining what she wanted in a husband while she was still in her 20s.

Gradually, as the woman went through her 30s, she found herself relaxing her conditions and found herself a boyfriend when she accepted about one-fifth of what she had been looking for. As time passed and she still couldn't find a husband, her ideals became even less stringent, particularly around the time of her birthday. Finally, at 39, she tied the knot.

"I guess I had a lot of things I wanted, but I got married in the end, so I have no worries now," she tells the current affairs weekly produced by the Mainichi Newspapers. "I guess it might have been because marriage put my mind at ease, but my career is also progressing better."

Sunday Mainichi notes that Japanese women aged 40 or thereabouts are the first generation in this country who've been able to pursue careers and motherhood. While most of them are making a fist of it, according to the weekly's survey of 120 married 40-something women, are lot of them are also pondering about what it actually means to be a woman as opposed to just being a wife or mother.

"I married, had kids, got a career and it's all going really well. People tell me I should have no worries in the world, but for some reason, I feel lonely every day," a 43-year-old woman tells Sunday Mainichi. "I guess I dream of falling in love again, to feel that thrill. I realize I sound like a silly schoolgirl, but perhaps I'm getting the feeling that my 'use-by' date as a woman is approaching."

Others have similar sentiments.

"When people get into their late 40s, the number going through menopause increases dramatically. Menopause brings with it the impression that you're finished as a woman," a 44-year-old woman in the publishing industry tells Sunday Mainichi. "I have a really strong urge to confirm for myself one more time that I'm still a woman."

Women now in their 40s came of age during Japan's heady "bubble" economy of the late 1980s, and it appears their attitudes toward playing around were shaped during those times, the weekly says.

"Having been through those days, there are parts of me that would find it relatively easy to plunge into an extramarital affair," a 44-year-old housewife tells Sunday Mainichi. "And I look at others around me and think the same about them."

Of the 120 married women in their 40s that the respectable magazine surveyed, 17 reported they were seeing men other than their husbands. Of these, eight were involved with men who were also married, but the remaining nine are entangled with people such as their child's swimming coach or tutor, or their own tennis coach. All these men were at least 10 years younger.

"Honestly, I really want to love my husband all over again, but it doesn't look like I do anything for him anymore," a 41-year-old woman working for a foreign manufacturing company tells Sunday Mainichi. "I don't want to reach my 'use-by' date for a woman like this. And that was what I was thinking when I first met my boyfriend."

Many women see a fling as their final chance at love.

"Extramarital love is still love, right?" a 43-year-old dentist tells Sunday Mainichi. "It may be our last chance at love, so we give it everything and justify our actions."

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Otaku Cannibal Killer Tsutomu Miyazaki Executed in Tokyo

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:30:45 +0700

Japan’s most reviled serial killer – a “cannibal nerd” who preyed on primary-school girls and drank their blood – has been executed in Tokyo.

The hanging of 45-year old Tsutomu Miyazaki brings to 13 the number of death-row inmates who have faced the gallows since last August: a pace that has provoked rising criticism of Japan’s new justice minister, Kunio Hatoyama.

But even amid growing public discomfort in Japan over the continued use of the death penalty, the hanging of Miyazaki raised few little in the way of condemnation.

His crimes may have taken place two decades ago, but the mere mention of Miyazaki’s name remains sickening for many Japanese. Unrepentant throughout his long run of trials and appeals, Miyazaki entered Japan’s public consciousness as one of the worst monsters the country had produced.

A voracious sexual predator, he kidnapped girls aged between four and seven years old, molested and murdered them. In some cases he ate parts of their bodies, in others he slept next to their corpses.

"The atrocious murder of four girls to satisfy his sexual desire leaves no room for leniency," Chief Justice Tokiyasu Fujita said in January 2006 when Miyazaki’s final appeal was thrown out and the death penalty handed down.

During his trial, Miyazaki sketched cartoons and often talked nonsensically. He blamed the outrages of which he was accused on a “rat man” alter-ego of himself – a character he also drew in cartoon for the court. Miyazaki’s defence rested in the argument of his lawyers that he was not mentally fit to be held responsible for his crimes. Court-ordered psychiatric examinations reached no unified conclusions.

His extraordinary appetites for pornography and manga comics gave the Japanese media its first example of a “killer geek”. Since then, it is a label that has been repeatedly applied to any murderer who appears to share those tastes – last week’s stabbing frenzy in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district was carried out by a man instantly branded in the public eye as a killer geek.

For his victims’ families and Japanese society at large, the Miyazaki killings were particularly shattering. Miyazaki began his spree of abductions and killings at the very peak of Japan’s 1980s economic bubble – a phase where the country’s mighty corporations seemed to hold the world at their feet and society boasted of its unique “harmony”.

Miyazaki’s hanging, which was carried out with the executions of two other convicted murderers yesterday, comes as the question of Japan’s continued commitment to the death penalty has come under close scrutiny. The country is to introduce jury trials for murder cases next year, and the question of how far ordinary Japanese will be happy to sentence criminals to death has yet to be resolved.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda told reporters yesterday that there had been no discussion about halting the executions. “In Japan, the majority view is that capital punishment should be maintained, so I feel no need to change what we have continued doing until now.”

Amnesty International Japan criticized the fast pace of executions under Hatoyama, saying in a statement, ‘‘The latest executions were carried out only two months after the previous ones. That indicates Japan is following a path of mass executions.’’

With 137 countries having legally or effectively terminated capital punishment, Japan is going against the international trend of abolishing the death penalty, the human rights group said. Following Tuesday’s executions, the number of inmates on death row now stands at 102.

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'Human Flesh Search' Turns Netizens into Cyber Lynch Mobs

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:42:33 +0700

In China "human-powered” search engines can turn netizens into cyber lynch mobs, and private lives are turned upside down by collective cyber-vigilantism.

"Human flesh hunting" is a literal translation, but the term '人肉搜索引擎', applied to the Internet, means a search engine that runs on people power – "human flesh searching engine."

Chinese netizens have made up their own cyber vocabulary. Some are "Chinesied" translation of words that Americans have turned into verbs meaning internet acts, such as "spam" and "friend." More are their own inventions that can perplex infrequent web users. A popular new expression, for example, is "very pornographic, very violent (很黄很暴力)," used to describe something that is cool and interesting. Similarly, using the words, "human flesh" (instead of, for example, "human powered") to modify "search engine" also reflects a fashion in diction.

In December 2007, a 31-year-old Beijing woman named Jiang Yan (姜岩) jumped off the 24th floor balcony of her apartment. A post on her blog before her suicide blamed her death on her husband's extra-marital affair. News of this "death blog (死亡日记)" spread on the Chinese Internet and soon, a mass of outraged netizens launched a "human flesh search engine" to track down the guilty parties. Within days, every detail of her husband's personal life was all over the Internet. For months, this man, his alleged mistress and their parents were bombarded with attack messages and even death threats. In March, the husband sued three websites for cyber violence and privacy violation. On April 17, a Beijing court began deliberating the case – the first anti-"human flesh search" case to come before the Chinese courts.

"Ren rou sou suo" apparently started out harmlessly enough in 2001, when an interactive entertainment website called mop.com enlisted viewers to help track down information about movies, books, songs and other trivia. Those who had clues posted them on a "human flesh search engine" area of mop.com and were rewarded with "mop money (猫扑币)" – an Internet currency only redeemable on mop.com – if they proved right.

Gradually, the search process itself became a form of online entertainment. Xinghuanet.com, for example, reports how a participant cyber-named Judy, a professional by day and an "internet detective" by night – figured out the school of a student who had insulted his teacher, located two hawthorn trees in a romance novel, identified the workplace and MSN address of a woman who posted provocative personal photos on a blog. Judy posted her findings anonymously, with the aim of "helping right wrongs and have fun at the same time."

As human flesh search engines have gained in popularity, the appetite for them has grown voracious – with marital affairs, sex scandals and violence their preferred targets. These are also the topics most guaranteed to attract the broadest participants and audience.

Netizen detectives have recently exposed a man who had an illicit sexual relationship, a woman who wore high-heel sandals and stepped on a kitten's head, a "foreigner" sex and Shanghai who slept with many Chinese women, etc. Once the personal information appeared on-line, those implicated were bombarded with curses, threats and even "execution orders." Some were fired from their jobs.

An information expert thinks large-scale human flesh search engines are unique to China, a claim that appears to be true. This is understandable as a consequence of China's ubiquitous manpower and ingrained tradition of "people's war" tracing back to Mao. On the other hand, because China's laws are imperfect, the Internet is seen as a way to seek justice. Unfortunately, like any mass action, things can, and do turn ugly. The painful lessons from the Cultural Revolution might be too remote for the young netizens to take.

A couple of weeks ago, Grace Wang (王千源), a Chinese student at Duke University, became the latest target, and human flesh search engines entered the political realm. On the day of the Olympic torch relay in San Francisco, Wang had written "Free Tibet" on a protestor's back. She later defended her action in the Washington Post, saying that "I did this at his request, and only after making him promise that he would talk to the Chinese group." Instantly, some angry Chinese students launched a human flesh search, and found personal information about Wang and her family. Grace Wang says her parents had to go into hiding in China, with no help from the police.

Ironically, the human flesh search engine backfired in Wang's case, and she became a hero in the Western media (see, for example, the New York Times). The BBC invited her to mediate a "conversation" between Chinese and Tibetan students, despite the fact she knows little about Tibet. This is a lesson to the Chinese "angry youth" that their approach, however effective at home, does not work in the West.

Not all Chinese netizens think the human flesh search engine is a good thing. Some are calling for a cessation of cyber violence, others want more complete Internet laws, and some believe it will take time for China's cyberspace to establish rules to govern itself. An article on www.thefirst.cn claims, optimistically, that flesh search engines began with entertainment, peaked with hunting sexual scandals, and now will morph again into exposing corruption in government.

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Japan's New Sex Trend: Elder Porn

nobody@vox.com(BIENTHUY (LTS)) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:26:32 +0700

Shigeo Tokuda, 74, is, in fact, his screen name — he prefers not to disclose his real name because, he insists, his wife and daughter have no idea that he has appeared in about 350 porn films over the past 14 years.

Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that's because he's kept his part-time job — as a porn star.

In his double-life, Tokuda arguably embodies the contemporary state of Japan's sexuality: In surveys conducted by organizations ranging from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the condom-maker Durex, Japan is repeatedly found to be one of the most sexless societies in the industrialized world. A WHO report released in March found that one in four married couples in Japan had not made love in the previous year, while 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all. These figures were attributed to the stresses of Japanese working life. Yet, at the same time, the country has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with "elder porn" one of its fastest growing genres.

Tokuda is rare among Japanese porn stars in that his name has become a brand. The Shigeo Tokuda series he's just completed portray him as a tactful elderly gentleman who instructs women of different ages in the erotic arts, and he boasts a body of work far more impressive than most actors in their prime.

Tokuda's exploits have proved to be a goldmine for Glory Quest, which first launched an "old-man" series, Maniac Training of Lolitas, in December 2004. Its popularity led the company to follow up with Tokuda starring in Forbidden Elderly Care in August 2006. Other series followed, and soon elder porn had revealed itself as a sustainable new revenue stream for the industry. "The adult video industry is very competitive," says Glory Quest p.r. representative Kayoko Iimura. "If we only make standard fare, we cannot beat other studios. There were already adult videos with Lolitas or themes of incest, so we wanted to make something new. A relationship between wife and an old father-in-law has enough twist to create an atmosphere of mystery and captivate viewers' hearts."

Director Gaichi Kono says the eroticism of their elders is captivating to younger viewers. "I think that as a subject, there is this something that only an older generation has and the young people do not possess. It is because they lived that much more. We should respect them and learn from them," says Kono passionately.

But Tokuda stresses the appeal of his work to an audience of his peers: "Elderly people don't identify with school dramas," he says. "It's easier for them to relate to older men and daughters-in-law series, so they tend to watch adult videos with older people in them." The veteran porn star plans to keep working until he's 80, or older, as long as the industry will cast him — and given the bullish market for his work, he's unlikely to go without work.

"People of my age generally have shame so they are very hesitant to show their private parts," Tokuda says, "but I am proud of myself doing something they cannot." Still, he laughs, "That doesn't mean that I can tell them about my old-age pensioner job."

Japan's adult video industry is believed to be worth as much as $1 billion a year according to industry insiders, with the largest rental video store chain Tsutaya releases about 1,000 new titles monthly, while and the mega adult mail-order site DMM releases about 2,000 titles each month. Although films featuring women in their teens and 20s are the mainstay of the industry, a trend toward "mature women" has become evident over the past five years. Currently, about 300 of the 1,000 adult videos on offer at Tsutaya, and 400 out of the 2,000 at DMM, are "mature women" films.

Ryuichi Kadowaki, director of Ruby Inc. which specializes in "mature women" titles, says that when the company started the genre a few years ago, the term referred to actresses in their late 20s, and last year it was expanded to ladies in their 70s. And the company sees the advantage of the "mature" titles is their enduring appeal: "Adult videos with young actresses sell well only in the first three months after the release," Kadowaki explains. "On the other hand, 'mature women' films enjoy a steady, long-term popularity, which after 10 years or so might lead to a best-seller." And then there are the cost savings — a popular young actress can earn up to $100,000 per film, while a mature actress is paid only $2,000. The market for "elder porn" has doubled over the past decade, according to Kadowaki. "In the view of the aging society," he adds, "I think that in the future we will see a steady increase in demand."

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