2007年8月30日 星期四

為什麼日本古典名著的譯注相當重要:『浮世澡堂』為例

為什麼日本古典名著的譯注相當重要:『浮世澡堂』為例


式亭三馬『浮世澡堂』(『浮世風呂』)周作人譯 北京:中國對外翻譯出版社 2001

式亭三馬『浮世理髮館』(『浮世床』)周作人譯 北京:中國對外翻譯出版社 2001、


{芥川龍之介全集} 中的{戯作三昧}翻譯
是很認真的 不過翻譯者顯然沒有參考周先生的譯注
所以他將
芥川龍之介 引的一小段『浮世澡堂』的


「神祇(しんぎ)、釈教(しゃっきょう)、恋(こい)、無常(むじょう)、みないりごみの浮世風呂(うきよぶろ)」といった光景は....

反而翻譯錯了
據周先生說:「神祇(しんぎ)、釈教(しゃっきょう)、恋(こい)、無常(むじょう)」等為日本歌曲本的分類慣例

所以{芥川龍之介全集}將恋(こい)翻譯成 「色」
似乎多此一舉....


{芥川龍之介全集}是近百年作品
『浮世澡堂』是近二百年作品
它們真需要詳注
可惜周先生只注半部 『浮世澡堂』




※上掲画像はモノクロです

和洋古書善本特選目録第13号 和書の部(76)
浮世風呂 
四編(滑稽本) 式亭三馬作 北川美丸・歌川国直画 明治期刊 1帙8冊 315,000円

四編八冊(四編の中・下巻合冊)。初版は文化六~十年刊だが、本書は丁子屋平兵衛・美濃屋甚三郎合版の文政版。前編の版本は文政三年再刻のもの。ただし、 四編(第八冊)裏見返しに「発行書肆」として「東京日本橋通一丁目北畠茂兵衛」等十一の書肆名が載り、各冊の初めに「東京(戯作者)式亭三馬戯編」とある ところから、明治期に文政版の版木を使用して刊行されたものと考えられる。
銭湯を舞台に、人物の会話の応酬の形でさまざまな話を連ねた作品。
四編下第十三丁落丁・蔵印有

立原正秋 Masaaki Tachihara

立原正秋 Masaaki Tachihara ...

食道癌で死去する2ヶ月前に、ペンネーム「立原正秋」への改名が認められ、これが本名になる。

美食家としても有名だったが、小島政二郎の美食随筆に対しては「味なんか何も分らない人だ」と徹底的にこきおろした。

The novelist Masaaki Tachihara (1926-1980), known for his dignified style, once wrote about his pen name. Most of his mail would be addressed to his pseudonym, but on rare occasions, a letter would arrive bearing his real name. When that happened, he would stare long and hard at his real name, and feel strange, thinking, "Who on earth is that?" I remember it went something like that.


Tachihara's first novel, Bakushu (Autumn Wheat) was published in the literary magazine Bungei Kenkyukai. It was well received by literary critics, which led to his decision to become a professional writer. In 1958, he published Tanin no Jiyu (Other People's Freedom) in the magazine Gunzo, followed by Takigi Noh and Tsurugi-ga-saki.

He won the 55th Naoki Award for his novel Shiroi Kesho ("White Poppy", 1965), as well as being nominated for the Akutagawa Prize twice. One of his books, Wind and Stone, translated into English by Stephen W. Kohl, is highly appreciated in the West.

Tachihara's interests in Japanese culture led to his becoming a collector of ceramics including many Korean Yi Dynasty works. He lived in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture from 1950 until his death of esophageal cancer. Before he died, he officially changed his name to Tachihara Masaaki. His grave is at the temple of Zuisen-ji in Kamakura.


2007年8月29日 星期三

戯作 松平 定信

退閑雑記. 巻之1-13 / 定信 [撰]
タイカン ザッキ
taikan zakki
松平 定信, English 1758-1829
マツダイラ, サダノブ
matsudaira, sadanobu 
古典籍
文学-散文(日記・随筆・紀行など)

『宇下人言』は定信の字をいじって付けた名前として知られている。 (定⇒宇下・信⇒人言)

Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758-1829), the renowned ruler of the Shirakawa domain (part of present-day Fukushima Prefecture), took over the post of roju (one of the highest-ranking government posts in Tokugawa Shogunate) from the unpopular Tanuma Okitsugu during the late Edo Period (1603-1867).

Once he took office, Matsudaira carried out a set of drastic reforms known as the "Kansei reforms,"寛政の改革 changing the Tanuma administration's method of giving important posts to people with political connections and through bribes to one that attaches importance to their competence and character.

The word miidashi (discovering) is said to have become a buzzword at the time. For example, it was used to describe how to discover talent in people. Matsudaira handpicked talented people regardless of their family lineage.

At the same time, however, he apparently spent much time and effort to look into their backgrounds to ensure they were clean, historian Hirofumi Yamamoto says in his book.





Aside from his political reforms, Sadanobu was also known as a writer and a moralist, working under the pen name Rakuō (楽翁). Some of his notable texts include Uge no Hitokoto, Tōzen Manpitsu, Kanko-dōri, Kagetsutei Nikki, Seigo, and Ōmu no Kotoba, among others.[9] Some time after his passing, it was discovered that he had written a satirical text parodying daimyo life, titled Daimyō Katagi. Scholars have since been somewhat taken aback by this discovery, since the text falls into the category of gesaku, which Sadanobu officially opposed.


戯作(げさく、ぎさく)とは、近世後期、18世紀後半頃から江戸で興った読み物の総称。明治初期まで書かれた。戯作の著者を戯作者という。



11病院拒否 搬送3時間 奈良の女性流産

Her water broke two hours into the journey.

2007年8月28日 星期二

吉川英次


邱兄
您是否翻譯Yoshikawa傳 請告訴一些資訊

今天讀

Just imagine what it feels like to be cool again

08/27/2007

When he was a young, impoverished factory worker, Eiji Yoshikawa (1892-1962) used the pen name Kijiro when he wrote senryu (satirical poems). He later became a novelist.

On his way to work every morning, he would buy a single roasted sweet potato, eat half for breakfast and save the rest for lunch. A senryu he wrote from this period goes: "When you know/ You can't get any poorer/ You can only laugh."






He was born Hidetsugu Yoshikawa (吉川英次 日本語 Yoshikawa Hidetsugu) in Kanagawa Prefecture, in what is now a part of Yokohama. Because of his father's failed business, he had to drop out of primary school to work when he was 11 years old. When he was 18, after a near-fatal accident working at the Yokohama docks, he moved to Tokyo and became an apprentice in a gold lacquer workshop. Around this time he became interested in comic haiku. He joined a poetry society and started writing comic haiku under the pseudonym "Kijiro."



--
鍾 漢清
Hanching Chung (or HC/ hc)

Thanks for the helpful criticisms and stimulating questions in private conferences.

每天耕耘(改頭換面)的blogs (代表):
http://hcdeming.blogspot.com/
http://chinese-watch.blogspot.com/






鍾先生您好
很抱歉
我沒有譯過吉川英治的作品
沒辦法提供什麼意見
遠流出版過他的宮本武藏
也許他們能提供較多的資訊
邱振瑞




謝謝
您或許知道最近出版司馬遼太郎的宮本

網路咖啡店游民5400人 Net cafe refugees

也許是前兩周
日本電視大幅報導
網路咖啡店代替昔日"太空艙"旅館
的消息


Survey: 5,400 without homes live in Net cafes

08/29/2007

BY DAISUKE FUKUMA THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

About 5,400 people with no place to call home live in Internet cafes, with those in their 20s making up the largest age group, a labor ministry survey showed Tuesday.

The nationwide survey, the government's first focusing on so-called Net cafe refugees, indicates that the situation for the working poor is worsening, especially among young people.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare surveyed managers and clerks of about 3,200 Internet cafes and manga kissa (comic book cafes) across the nation that operate around the clock.

The results showed that on a daily basis, about 60,900 people use such places as overnight shelters, and 7.8 percent of them, or about 4,700, stayed at the cafes because they had no homes.

The ministry defined Net cafe refugees as those with no fixed address who stay overnight at Internet cafes for more than half the week.

Based on the survey results, the ministry estimates that about 5,400 people can be categorized as Net cafe refugees.

Half of the Net cafe refugees, or about 2,700 people, were temporary staff workers, day laborers or held other "nonregular" jobs, the survey showed.

About 300 refugees were regular employees, and about 1,300 were unemployed.

Of the nonregular workers, about 600 were dispatched from staffing agencies for short-term jobs lasting for less than one month or for just one day. About 1,200 were directly hired as part-time workers or day laborers at construction sites.

About 26.5 percent of the Net cafe refugees were in their 20s, the largest age bracket, while those in their 50s accounted for 23.1 percent, and those in their 30s made up 19 percent.

The ministry also polled about 360 Net cafe refugees in Tokyo and Osaka.

Asked why they did not have a home, 32.6 percent in Tokyo and 17.1 percent in Osaka said they could not afford the rent because they had quit their jobs.

Some 20.1 percent of Net cafe refugees in Tokyo and 43.9 percent in Osaka said they had to leave company dormitories and other housing facilities provided by their employers when they quit.

The average monthly incomes were 107,000 yen in Tokyo and 83,000 yen in Osaka.

About 40 percent of those polled said they have lived on the streets in the past.

In Tokyo, many respondents said they slept at fast food restaurants and sauna facilities as well as Internet cafes.

Another ministry study targeting 10 staffing agencies that mainly dispatch workers for short-term jobs found that about 51,000 people are dispatched to day jobs every day.

On average, those dispatched worked 14 days a month and earned 133,000 yen.

Seventy percent of the workers surveyed were younger than 35 years old.

Still, 45.7 percent of the workers, the biggest group, said they felt fine with their current situation when asked what type of employment they wanted in the future.

But more than half of the male respondents between 25 and 34 years old said they wanted permanent employment.(IHT/Asahi: August 29,2007)

2007年8月25日 星期六

創案

我前幾天將它翻譯成"創始提案" 顯然有問題



WIKIPEDIA

石川馨いしかわ かおる1915年7月13日- 1989年4月16日)は、東京都出身の日本化学工学者。工学博士。東京大学名誉教授、武蔵工業大学学長。

[編集] 来歴・人物

日本の品質管理の父と賞され、QCサークル活動の生みの親。日本における品質管理、特にTQC(Total Quality Control、全社的品質管理)の先駆的指導者の一人である。

1962年、雑誌『現場とQC』(1973年に『FQC』、1988年に『QCサークル』と改称)を創刊。 職場内で小グループをつくって自発的に品質管理活動を実践していくことを提唱し、この小グループを「QCサークル」と名づけた。

また、クレーム事項に関連する多数の要因をマッピングする手法のひとつ、特性要因図(cause and effect diagram、ishikawa diagram、fishbone diagram)を創案した。

「品質管理は教育に始まり教育に終わる」との名言を残している。




そうあん 創案

(名)スル
初めて考え出すこと。また、その考え。思いつき。
「新たに―した技法」

an original idea.
~者 the originator.




Japan in the Passing Lane: An Insider's Account of Life in a Japanese Auto Factory

Japan in the Passing Lane: An Insider's Account of Life in a Japanese Auto Factory

起案 起草

きあん 0 【起案】

(名)スル
草案を作ること。起草。
「条文を―する」

三省堂提供「大辞林 第二版」よ

kian, proposal making for approval
這收入 "TQC 用語詞典" (1986)
內容(組織變更 人事關係 預算 設備投資 製品關係 實施期日等等)
很能表現日本公司的組織-官僚文化......


2007年8月24日 星期五

ファミリーマート、28日に不二家商品の販売再開

ファミリーマート、28日に不二家商品の販売再開

 ファミリーマートは品質問題で店頭から撤去していた不二家商品の販売を28日に再開すると発表した。1月に撤去して以来、品質管理担当者を3度にわたり不二家の工場に派遣して衛生管理を検査。「状況は大幅に改善された」(同社)と判断した。

 ファミマは約7000ある全店で、「ミルキー」と「カントリーマアム」の2商品から扱いを始める。これにより、不二家商品を扱う小売店の数は品質問題が発覚する前の97%まで回復する。

 大手コンビニではセブン―イレブン・ジャパンやローソンなどが4月以降、相次ぎ不二家製品の販売を再開したが、ファミマは慎重な姿勢を崩していなかった。(21:00)





2007年8月22日 星期三

中共歌侮日本豬

看了中共某一Excel檔中的動畫

誰說豬不會笑--@_@```豬都笑了(哇~好有趣 中日難兩合喔 )

……革命多 文物多 美女多…..

香港人說他二奶多 台灣人就笑了….

然後轉向大罵日本豬……

Gaijin at the gates

Gaijin漢字為外人
標題仿約20年前的書--台灣最近推出
Barbarians at the Gate : Fall of RJR Nabisco

其實原先"外人"就是 "
Barbarians " (未開化的野蠻人)
不過現在美國大百貨商可真的是先進

Japanese business

Gaijin at the gates

Aug 16th 2007 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition

Japan is courting foreign investors, not for their money but for their ideas

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

SEIYU, a Japanese discount retailer, this week forecast its sixth straight annual loss. But its chief executive did not bow in contrition as other Japanese bosses might have. Instead, Ed Kolodzieski gushed about the firm's bright future, his southern American twang a testament to his former role as an executive at Wal-Mart, which owns a majority of the Japanese firm. Despite Seiyu's terrible performance, its American parent is pouring in money to modernise its stores.

That is just how Japan wants it. The government is trying hard to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). It has revamped the commercial code, made it easier for foreign firms to buy Japanese ones and set up a whole bureaucracy to win over hesitant investors. Yet this enthusiasm underscores an oddity: why should a country that has an excess of capital seek out foreign money?


The answer is not for the cash, but for the people and ideas that come with it. Japan hopes foreigners can reform companies, introduce competition and shake up old industry structures in ways that domestic firms cannot. “It is important that we have more new players in the Japanese economy, with new ideas and new business models,” says Nobuyuki Nagashima of JETRO, a government agency that used to promote Japanese exports, but which now has an additional mandate to attract foreign investment.

The notion that gaiatsu, or “foreign pressure”, can spur reform has a long history in Japan. In 1853 the “black ships” of America's Commodore Perry forced the Japanese market open at gunpoint, helping to unwind centuries-old feudal traditions. More recently, if less flamboyantly, foreign firms have disrupted the Japanese market by creating competition.

For example, Renault's Carlos Ghosn restored a near-bankrupt Nissan to health by drastically cutting suppliers and staff (though it has faltered lately). The arrival of Starbucks forced other coffee-shop chains to improve. Foreign insurers unleashed a bevy of new products that have been aped by domestic rivals. And foreign private-equity funds have fixed and flipped many foundering firms.

But Japan's embrace of foreign investment has been less successful than these examples suggest. Although Japan's inward FDI doubled between 2000 and 2005, it still amounted to only 2.4% of national output, far less than in other big economies. In America the comparable figure is 15%, and in Germany, France and Britain it is between 30% and 40%. This means that foreign firms' share of the economy is far smaller than in other countries (see chart).

Japan lags so far behind for both economic and cultural reasons. Consumer spending is sluggish, wages and prices are falling and the population is shrinking. “Japan is a somewhat saturated market already—the incentive for foreign investment is not that high,” explains Frances Cheung, an economist at Standard Chartered, an investment bank. Nor can Japan compete as a regional export hub with the likes of Singapore and Shanghai. The tax code makes life difficult for foreign firms and red tape abounds. As a result, Japan is losing the race to attract global capital, says Seiji Adachi of Deutsche Bank.

Cultural factors are an even bigger hurdle. Many companies resist foreign takeovers for fear that the new owners will restructure too harshly, slashing jobs and spurning suppliers of long standing. In fact, restructuring is hard, which makes takeovers less attractive. Foreign investors say they struggle to find managerial talent. People tend to work their way up the hierarchy in a single firm for their whole careers, leaving few managers in the labour market. All told, foreign companies often find that investing in Japan involves too much effort for too little profit.

Yet garnering FDI is critical for Japan's future. In manufacturing, labour productivity at the Japanese affiliates of foreign firms is as much as 60% higher than it is at domestic firms; in services firms it is 80% higher, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Thanks to its declining population, Japan will have to increase productivity dramatically to maintain living standards. Yet productivity is lower than in many other countries and by some measures is falling further behind.

Furthermore, acquisitions by foreign buyers have tended to increase the overall value of Japanese firms. Three years after an international takeover, profits have increased by 35% on average, according to ABeam Consulting, and the overall value of firms acquired by foreigners has increased nearly twice as much as those bought by domestic competitors.

Foreign firms can bring competition to Japan where local ones might not because they do not feel bound by existing approaches or business relationships, notes Nicholas Benes of JTP, a firm that advises on mergers and acquisitions. They are also often the most efficient in their industries. Steven Vogel of the University of California at Berkeley has found that foreign-owned firms are more likely to restructure than Japanese ones. And the investment reaches economically stagnant corners of the countryside, not just the relatively prosperous big cities.

Heang Chhor, the head of the Tokyo office of McKinsey, a consultancy, believes there is good reason to invest: trillions of yen will be spent over the next decade by the elderly on everything from holidays to health care. In 2025 the country will still account for at least 10% of global output.

This is what attracted Wal-Mart in 2002, when it bought its stake in Seiyu. So far, it has had scant success: Seiyu's share price has fallen by three-quarters since Wal-Mart invested, thanks to the same inefficiencies that afflict most Japanese retailers. So the American firm is trying to change the very way the Japanese business operates, particularly by introducing Wal-Mart's advanced IT system, called RetailLink, which analyses store performance and customer trends.

“Seiyu is bogged down in old customs that are wasteful,” explained Toru Noda, the company's chief operating officer, when it revealed more losses this week. Wal-Mart brings proven skills in managing big supermarkets, he said. “It is what we would like to learn to do.”



2007年8月21日 星期二

heatstroke salt lozenges

LOZENGY━━ n. ひし形(の物,紋); 【医】錠剤, 糖錠, 薬用ドロップ.

Salt candy sees brisk sales thanks to record heat

08/21/2007

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

TOYONAKA, Osaka Prefecture--If you can't beat the heat, at least try to make it more bearable.

That sums up candy maker Iseki Shokuhin's marketing strategy as Japan wilts under record heat.

The company's Necchu Ame heatstroke salt lozenges are selling like pancakes.

Each lozenge contains 0.25 grams of salt, which along with fluids, is considered vital in preventing heatstroke.

Toyonaka-based Iseki Shokuhin has been shipping as many as 10,000 packs daily to convenience stores and supermarkets around the country, up from 2,000 to 3,000 last summer.

Still, the product is out of stock at many shops, company officials said.

They said that people engaged in outdoor activities, such as children's baseball teams and construction workers, are buying the product in bulk to fight the summer heat.

Iseki Shokuhin decided to develop the product at the request of a construction company worker.

"Our workers are sucking salt during break time in order to prevent heatstroke. But salt alone doesn't taste good and salt lozenges currently on the market don't have enough salt in them," an official told the candy maker in spring 2006.

The company was urged to raise the salt level in test productions. It finally came up with the Necchu Ame, which boasts 10 times the salt concentration of conventional products.

Each yellow lozenge measures about 2 centimeters in diameter. Lemon aroma was added to keep down the salty taste.

Iseki Shokuhin executive Masaru Iseki appears happy about the product's brisk sales, especially because lozenges are generally not a popular item in summer.

"We were able to cultivate demand in an unexpected way," the 45-year-old said.

A 100-gram package sells for around 230 yen, excluding 5 percent consumption tax. (IHT/Asahi: August 21,2007)

2007年8月20日 星期一

Japan and India Forge Economic Ties

August 21, 2007

As Japan and India Forge Economic Ties, a Counterweight to China Is Seen

NEW DELHI, Aug. 20 — When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan touches down in India this week, it will be the highest-level step yet in what analysts say is a long-term effort to balance, if not contain, China’s growing economic and political might.

As Beijing’s influence in Asia and around the world has grown, their common interests have forced Tokyo and New Delhi to begin warming their historically chilly relationship and to start forging closer economic ties. “The key issue facing the whole region is how to accommodate the rise of China,” said Suman Bery, the director general of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, a New Delhi research group. Indian economists estimate that Japanese investment in India will reach $5.5 billion by 2011, compared with just $515 million in the 2006 fiscal year.

Mr. Abe is on his first trip to India. He and his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, are expected to unveil public-private partnerships and new business initiatives. Leading the agenda will be a $100 billion infrastructure project to create a high-tech manufacturing and freight corridor between New Delhi, India’s capital, and Mumbai, its port and financial center. It would be the most expensive development project in India, and a third of the bill would be paid by Japanese public and private money. Mr. Abe and Mr. Singh are expected to announce that the two governments have reached formal agreement on the deal.

Japanese business leaders traveling with Mr. Abe will disclose similar deals this week — on natural gas, transportation, currency swaps and Japanese investment in Indian educational projects, Indian officials said. Chief executives from Toyota, Mitsubishi, Canon, Hitachi and others have joined a new India-Japan business leader forum, which will meet for the first time on Wednesday in New Delhi.

Consultants are trying, so far in vain, to coin the catchphrase, like “the Samurai and the Swami,” that will sum up the nascent strategic economic relationship between the countries.


swami

━━ n. スワーミ ((ヒンズー教の導師の尊称)).

n., pl. swa·mis.

  1. Hinduism. A religious teacher.
  2. A mystic; a yogi.
  3. Used as a form of address for such a person.

[Hindi svāmī, master, swami, from Sanskrit, being one's own master, possessing proprietary rights.]

Courting India has come slowly for the Japanese, who were highly critical of India’s surprise nuclear weapons test in 1998. While Japan is a large lender to India, until now it has not been a major investor or business partner. Instead, Japan has virtually sat on the sidelines while countries from Switzerland to Brazil cemented business alliances in India, where economic growth is about 9 percent a year.

Japan’s trade with India was about $6.5 billion in 2006, according to the Indian government — about 4 percent of Japan’s trade with China. “Whatever doubts Japan had for so long, now India is smelling like roses,” said Jagdish N. Bhagwati, an economist and a professor at Columbia University and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “They want to get in before it is too late.”

For Japan, India is an attractive market, both for its growing consumer spending and cheap labor. Tokyo also has an interest in diversifying its Asian trading partners and reducing its dependence on China. As an increasingly confident China has flexed its muscle regionally and globally, anti-Chinese sentiment has been rising in Japan, as has anti-Japanese sentiment in China.

“India is a much safer bet, in business terms,” because it lacks the historical baggage, said Richard Tanter, professor of international relations at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia.

Then there is the straightforward economics. Japanese and other automakers, for instance, view India as a potential manufacturing center that could offer lower labor costs than China. But India’s manufacturing and export potential are still crippled by an inability to move goods in and around the country.

The proposed New Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor could address that problem. The nearly 1,500-kilometer corridor would include a high-speed freight line and nine 200-square-kilometer investment regions dedicated to industries like chemicals and engineering, as well as three ports and six airports.

Infrastructure projects like the industrial corridor are “the kind of thing Japanese companies are particularly good at — roads and harbors and ways to get into developing countries,” Mr. Bhagwati said. Japanese companies were heavily involved in the construction of New Delhi’s clean, efficient subway system.

India, which desperately needs more power generation, could be a particularly fertile market for Toshiba, which bought the nuclear power plant manufacturer Westinghouse last year.

Any deals between India and Toshiba would be far in the future, though. India’s government is still deeply divided over a deal with the United States that allows India access to civilian nuclear technology, and Japan may not support the United States-India nuclear deal, given Tokyo’s aversion to nuclear proliferation.

Still, on Monday, Mr. Singh stressed India’s commitment to nuclear energy during the opening of a new research center in New Delhi, calling oil imports an “unbearable burden.”

The most successful India-Japan business partnership to date is a venture by the automakers Suzuki and Maruti, which has become one of India’s leading carmakers after a troubled start in the early 1980s. Sales of its reliable, zippy and cheap Marutis were up 17 percent in the quarter that ended in July from a year ago, to 1.6 million units.

Toyota’s India partnership, Toyota Kirloskar Motors, which dates back to 1999, makes about 60,000 units a year. But, last month Toyota executives said they expected the unit to produce 10 times its current capacity by 2015.

Culturally and economically, Japan and India remain far apart, a fact that government officials and economists said could complicate building a stronger relationship. Speaking Monday during a meeting in a New Delhi hotel to discuss the Japanese prime minister’s visit, Mr. Bery, the director of the New Delhi research group, said Japan’s manufacturing is “state of the art,” which has “not been our strong suit.”

Minutes later, the five-star hotel fell victim to one of New Delhi’s frequent power disruptions, the lights flickered out and the meeting carried on in the dark.

Saburo Shiroyama 城山三郎


Saburo Shiroyama 城山三郎


Saburo Shiroyama 城山三郎 日文Wikipedia

【中文詞條】城山三郎
【作  者】葉渭渠
(1927~ )
日本小說家。原名杉浦英一。出生於名古屋。1945年第二次世界大戰結束後曾從事短歌的創作。不久進入東京商業大學﹐專攻理論經濟學。畢業後﹐在愛知學藝 大學研究並教授經濟理論。1957年開始文學創作﹐處女作《輸出》開闢了“經濟小說”這一新的題材領域﹐描寫派駐海外的貿易人員在對外貿易中的激烈競爭及 其困苦生活。代表作品還有《日本銀行》﹐它描寫戰後初期日本銀行職員在物價飛漲下艱難的生活﹐以及財政界一些大人物的營私舞弊。《董事辦公室下午三點鐘》 反映纖維企業資本家之間的競爭和傾軋。《官僚們的夏天》描寫通產省的官僚中“國際派”和“民族派”關於推行自由化路線的論爭。他還著有《火紅的落日》﹑ 《黃金時期的日子》和《今日不再來》等小說。我國曾翻譯出版《城山三郎小說選》。


(用作者名字google一下,還可以找到他在中國經濟史等方面的學術作品篇名。

[
]田中正俊 著,戰中戰後:戰爭體驗與日本的中國研究
羅福惠 等譯 ,廣東人民出版社,2005
;
田中正俊,既是一位親歷"二戰"的日本老兵,也是一位有良知的日本著名歷史學家,是日本國內對近代史上日本對外侵略戰爭歷史反省最深刻、最具理論高度的學者和代表人物,被我國歷史學家劉大年稱為"固守真理者"。本書就是他從歷史的高度深刻反省日本侵略戰爭的一部著作。他以自己的親身經歷、見聞,研究日本戰爭責任、戰後責任,遺留化學武器問題等;通過談論歷史學研究方法、近代日本與東亞殖民等,批駁"大東亞戰爭肯定論""必然論"。其研究歷史尤其是東亞史的一些觀點和方法對我國的史學工
者:[]田中正俊 著,羅福惠 等譯)

『もう、きみには頼まない -- 石坂泰三の世界』(文春文庫)

Writer Saburo Shiroyama (1927-2007) liked business leaders with backbone. In his book "Mo Kimi ni wa Tanomanai: Ishizaka Taizo no Sekai" (I won't count on you any more: The world of Taizo Ishizaka), Shiroyama depicted the life of Ishizaka (1886-1975), who was president of Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Co. during and after World War II.

Ishizaka, who was known for his outspoken views, became the chairman of Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) and led the business world through the period of high economic growth. Fascinated by his personality, Shiroyama chose the words that Ishizaka shot at the finance minister, whose attitude was noncommittal, as the title of his novel.

When Shiroyama died last month, writer Hiroyuki Itsuki said, "An age in which economic activities came hand in hand with aspirations has come to an end," in an obituary that ran in The Asahi Shimbun. I don't think Shiroyama would have been fascinated by the leaders of companies that make slight of their customers in this age.


Author's epitaph a reminder of waste of war

08/20/2007

Perhaps because he is a figure literally inseparable from the Showa Era (1926-1989), there has been a slew of new books published about novelist Saburo Shiroyama, who passed away this spring at 79.

He was a writer who spent most of his life thinking about war, motivated by his experience in the military. He joined up when he was 17.

When I had the privilege of meeting him the year before his death, our conversation turned to the topic of Kamikaze suicide pilots during World War II. Toward the end of the war, there was a suicide attack plane called Ohka (cherry blossom). The craft had no wheels. (It was attached to the bottom of a larger aircraft from which it was launched.) It was a pure weapon, created for the sole purpose of crashing into its enemy. Once, Shiroyama saw the real craft on display in an air museum in the United States. He was shocked at the small size of the cockpit.

A young pilot would have to contort his body to fit into this plane. He would become a part of this weapon.

Shiroyama said seeing the actual craft was an acute reminder of what those times were like, how individual humanity was totally ignored. People were treated as expendable objects.

He spoke of his affection and sadness for the fallen pilots. He was fighting back tears as he said, "I can never forgive the leaders who sent these young people to their deaths."

On this Aug. 15, the anniversary of the war's end, we were without Shiroyama for the first time. But there are still those like him, of the war generation, who question the responsibility of a leadership that sent human lives to the front line recklessly.

Susumu Iida, 84, of Yokohama, is racing against time, trying to write down how it really was in the battlefields in the southern Pacific, where so many of his fellow soldiers died of starvation and disease.

He himself had a close call with death. The military leadership repeated inferior operational plans, provided no supplies and let unspeakable numbers of soldiers perish in vain. Iida feels that turning a blind eye to that responsibility and calling the fallen soldiers "war-dead-turned-gods" will only muddy the truths of the war.

One of the new books published this summer about Shiroyama quoted a poem he wrote in his youth. He wrote that "wars sell off by measure those lives that still beat warm." We could hear his gritty anti-war message as we mark this 62nd summer.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 15(IHT/Asahi: August 20,2007)


日本現烤麵包

......以日本為例,結合健康概念的Nature Lawson在門市推出現烤麵包、Famima引進流行時尚概念、Sunkus與Circle K則與生活雜貨和現烤麵包等複合經營,新成立的gooz日本餐飲便利店,同時銷售現烤麵包、調理便當及飲料等便利性產品。不論如何變化,烘焙商品似乎是各 家業者最大的交集。.......



........日本烘焙業不但大型化、連鎖化,而且開枝散葉。機器製麵包連鎖領導品牌山崎集團是最佳成功案例,除了在日本有1,800家店麵包專門店,六年前,更發展出一個現烤麵包連鎖加盟品牌Daily Hot。

2000年成立第一家店的日本Daily Hot,販賣各式現烤麵包、三明治、便當、炸物小點、飯糰、咖啡飲料等,其中麵包銷售業績占比約37%、米飯類48%,其他是食品飲料。

萊爾富協理趙坤仁分析,同樣是餐飲業,Daily Hot的策略是,「在對的時間點,用對的方式供應對的商品」,所以可以創造最佳業績。

這種經營形態,產品不侷限單一業態領域,而是鎖定食物的主要採買者—女性,依每天各時段飲食所需推出不同的食物,所以能在日本大受歡迎,2006年店數突破300家,其中加盟店約占三分之二。預估2009年店數可達500家。......


超商與現烤麵包 戀曲2007



日本咖哩

我前一陣子才讀到日本咖哩大商的人到上智大學開課
讀賣新聞還附一日本百來年前第一次接觸到curry的回顧....



日本咖哩飯:

牛腩切塊汆燙後涼水沖洗淨,同洋蔥切塊丟入滾燙的熱水,待水沸開中小火悶煮一小時,加入馬鈴薯、紅蘿蔔,過半小時,開大火加入調進蜂蜜和蘋果的日本咖哩塊,慢慢攪勻,即可澆在飯上。

單身飯食

2007年8月17日 星期五

NEC's 'Big Brother' Lab

這種所謂"公開創新"的新辦公環境之設想和做法
可真是有點不可思議
我不看好這種試驗
不過姑且看看 NusinessWeek的說法




NEC's 'Big Brother' Lab

To boost innovation and discover how good ideas are generated, NEC has set up a lab where researchers will work under high-tech surveillance

by Kenji Hall


Everybody knows that the boss could be reading employees' e-mails and monitoring their mouse clicks at any given moment. But what if the snooping extended beyond the PC screen to every corner of the office?

It sounds ominously Orwellian, but NEC (NIPNY) thinks that eavesdropping on some of its best brains' water-cooler chats and brainstorming sessions, and knowing what books they're reading, could improve its chances of becoming a leader in high-tech innovations. To test the theory, the Japanese company created the Computers & Communications (C&C) Innovation Research Lab on a campus near the western city of Nara.

The idea is simple: Wire a lab with the latest networking tech; add security cameras, microphones, and sensors; and invite researchers from all over the world to work there. The experiment is sure to raise privacy concerns, but NEC officials say they have safeguards in place to allay fears that they're creating a "Big Brother" work environment.

"Open Innovation"

Keiji Yamada, who proposed the original concept and now heads the lab, says the company hopes to stitch together the video, voice, and other data files to get a better grasp of how hot new ideas are hatched.

NEC officials won't say how much they're spending or how many researchers will be assigned to the lab, and no projects have been formally announced. But they say the lab's mission is to spend the next three decades developing future generations of network-linked computers and other gizmos.

Yamada says "open innovation" will play a huge role in making it happen. In the past, NEC had relied almost entirely on its own army of scientists to continuously feed a product pipeline that runs the gamut from cell phones and laptop computers to wireless towers and undersea telecom cables.

Seeking Innovation Insight

But researchers at the lab will be encouraged to openly compare notes with outsiders in a more interdisciplinary approach. Officials have been negotiating with 20 companies, universities, and research organizations to lure top talent to the C&C lab. "We want to understand how technology can improve collaboration over time and distances," says Yamada. "We realize that we can't accomplish this alone."

NEC's experiment reflects the lengths to which some will go to remove the guesswork from innovation. In an era of rapid technological change, companies are launching new products faster than ever, setting off a race to replicate success. In NEC's case, a run of mixed earnings is forcing the Tokyo company to consider a radical rewiring of what many analysts characterize as a stodgy corporate culture. (After a 3.5% decline in operating profit, to $598 million, and a 5.6% fall in sales last fiscal year through March, the company forecasts this year's profits to rise 85%, to $1.1 billion, on a 1% rise in sales.)

Nothing like a high-tech playpen that goes against the company's traditional notions about research to help change the mindset. The key, says San Jose State University professor Joel West, will be for NEC to seek out new partnerships, not simply turn to the familiar chain of smaller Japanese suppliers and universities. "Open innovation is about finding new combinations and new sources of knowledge," says West, an open innovation expert.


Walls Are Watching

Walking into the C&C lab can feel like entering a bugged room. More than 100 sensors along the ceiling communicate with radio frequency identification chips in researchers' ID badges, relaying to the lab's servers where everyone is. Those computers also receive data from 30 high-powered microphones and two dozen cameras, which capture researchers as they move around the room, write on whiteboards, and run through presentations.

All the action plays out on a bank of screens at the back of the room, and nothing escapes their notice. As a researcher enters a camera's sights, he shows up on one of four live video feeds and as a green line on a two-dimensional map of the room. If he takes a book off a shelf or makes a phone call, the servers pick up his virtual fingerprints. "We'll keep about 10GB of compressed video, audio, and other data per day," says Kazuo Kunieda, a senior researcher and manager at the lab. Only senior lab officials will have access to the secure files, adds Kunieda.

That's enough assurance for Sebastien Cevey, a 23-year-old Swiss graduate student from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Cevey says he doesn't equate what the company is doing to spying. "I will ultimately have the last word on whether the data is used or not," he says.

To encourage collaboration and interdisciplinary projects, the lab has laptops on tables and near couches, and no cubicles so researchers are free to work anywhere. The main room's only partitions are functional: Sliding whiteboards hide bookshelves filled with reference materials, and glass walls allow anyone to peer into conference rooms at the back of the room.

Industry Skepticism

In the hallway, video panels on the walls act as two-way communication devices (and evoke the two-way telescreens of George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984), recording and playing video clips on command, and a separate screen acts as a video link to labs in other parts of the world. In another room, there's a proprietary mapping system that helps researchers with their search for scientific papers and potential collaborators by creating a diagram of authors' names with lines connecting those who have worked together.

It's an impressive showcase of technology but some observers are skeptical about the payback. With its expertise in networking equipment, NEC researchers might be better off tackling concrete problems, such as finding a single elegant solution for the confusing mess of phone, cable, and Internet services, says Jeneanne Rae, co-founder and president of Alexandria (Va.)-based research and consulting firm Peer Insight. "I'm all for creativity…but if there is no focus, this will soon be a waste of time and money," Rae adds.

And to reap the benefits of an open innovation system, NEC would have to be as aggressive as Cisco (CSCO), IBM (IBM), and others have been at creating an ecosystem of partnerships, something many Japanese companies haven't often shown a willingness to do. As for how NEC's surveillance of researchers would sit with Silicon Valley's techies? San Jose State's West says, "It would be a real hard sell in the Valley."

Hall is BusinessWeek's technology correspondent in Tokyo

Noriko Awaya 淡谷のり子

淡谷のり子 - Wikipedia

淡谷のり子. 基本情報. 出生名, 淡谷のり. 別名, ブルースの女王. 出生日・地, 1907年8月12日. 出身地, 日本青森県青森市. 死没日・地, 1999年9月22日(享年93(92歳没)).


"...Each August, I recall an anecdote about Noriko Awaya, who at the time of the war was known as the Queen of the Blues. It happened in the final days of the war, when Awaya visited a base to perform a concert for the Special Attack (kamikaze) Forces.


Before her performance, the officer assigned to escort her said, “Among the men in the audience will be some who have missions today. Please excuse them, as they will be forced to leave their seats in the middle of your concert.” When she entered the hall, she saw that many of the soldiers were innocent-looking youths, more boys than men. She remembers thinking, “Even kids like these must sacrifice their lives.” As she was singing, soldiers dotted around the hall began to stand up in ones and twos. They saluted her, turned about, and exited. Needless to say, they were heading out on the last missions of their lives.


Seeing this, Awaya wailed. She said, “As a professional singer, I have never cried on stage. But today, please forgive me. Please let me cry.” I was deeply moved when I heard this story.


Noriko Awaya was a stubborn woman who defied the pressure placed on her by the military authorities to sing wartime songs and instead continued to sing the blues, music that was out of synch with the times. Ignoring the wishes of the military, which tried to make her sing in costumes typical of women in wartime, she stuck to wearing extravagant dresses. She was confident that this was what the soldiers wanted...."






Doomed kamikaze inspired 'queen of the blues'

08/15/2007

Mention the "queen of the blues," and there was a time when everyone in Japan knew it meant Noriko Awaya. Not anymore.

Remembering that Aug. 12 was the centenary of her birth, I had occasion to recollect this highly principled blues singer who refused to sing military songs during World War II.

Not only did Awaya refuse to record them, but she also kept them out of her repertoire even when she performed for soldiers at the front, convinced that these songs did nothing more than encourage soldiers to go to battle.

Just as in peacetime, she would sing only pop numbers in her evening gown. According to "Burusu no Joo Awaya Noriko" (Noriko Awaya, the queen of blues) by Teruko Yoshitake, Awaya's scarlet lips, eyeshadow and false eyelashes once offended a military policeman so much that he yelled at her, calling her "indecent." But Awaya shot back: "How can you expect someone (as homely as me) to appear on stage without makeup?"

Throughout her career, there was only one time when she cried on stage. It happened during her performance at a tokkotai (special attack forces, known as kamikaze squadron) base in Kyushu. While the show was still going on, the time came for some members of the audience to depart on their suicide mission. One by one, they saluted and left. Overcome with emotion, Awaya turned her back to the audience and wept.

A documentary film titled "TOKKO," directed by an American woman of Japanese descent, is currently showing in Tokyo. Whereas tokkotai pilots are synonymous with fanatical suicide bombers to many Americans, director Risa Morimoto has succeeded in drawing out these men's true feelings through sensitive interviews with former kamikaze pilots. "I wanted to live. I didn't want to die," says one.

Awaya believed there were no such things as automatons that tokko pilots were supposed to be. She also believed that each pilot was just an ordinary human like everyone else, and that no person was ever born to be a soldier.

None of the troops she visited and performed for ever requested her to sing a war song. They invariably asked for blues numbers, her specialty. Awaya recalled later that she sang for them, willing them to return alive--which was all every man really wanted.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 12 (IHT/Asahi: August 15,2007)



2007年8月15日 星期三

"Kaidan".Yūrei (幽霊, Yūrei) 妖怪 (Yokai)

Nighttime chills a cool experience for children

08/14/2007

Wikipedia article "Kaidan".

Yūrei (幽霊) are Japanese ghosts. The name consists of two kanji, 幽 (yuu) meaning faint or dim and 霊 (rei) meaning soul or spirit. Alternative names include 亡霊 (Borei) meaning ruined or departed spirit, 死霊 (Shiryo) meaning dead spirit, or the more encompassing 妖怪 (Yokai) or お化け (Obake).

The telling of spine-chilling kaidan ghost stories is a traditional Japanese summer pastime to beat the heat. The Japanese words yurei and obake both translate as "ghost," but they are not the same, according to a book overseen by Hinako Sugiura (1958-2005), an expert on popular culture in the Edo Period (1603-1867).

Yurei, says this book, is a spirit that holds a grudge against someone and haunts only that person. A typical example is Oiwa, the heroine of "Yotsuya Kaidan," a well-known classic Japanese ghost story. Poisoned by her husband Iemon, Oiwa terrorizes only Iemon in her ghostly revenge.

Obake, on the other hand, is said to be fixated on a particular site or object, and indiscriminately haunts anyone who comes near it. Okiku, the maid servant in another classic ghost story falls into this category. Okiku was killed and dumped into a well by a vicious samurai.

Insubstantial as these ghostly heroines are, I guess I can see how they differ.

Also in the realm of the supernatural is Nurikabe (plastered wall), a folkloric specter in "Gegege no Kitaro," a popular comic series created by Shigeru Mizuki. An image of Nurikabe was recently found on a picture scroll dating to the Edo Period. According to legend, Nurikabe played tricks on people walking at night, making them believe there was an invisible wall blocking their way.

Mizuki has given Nurikabe a somewhat humorous appearance--a huge wall with little eyes and legs.

On the Edo picture scroll, however, it has the body of a lion, and its head has three eyes and sharp fangs. This grotesquely fearsome image probably mirrored people's fear of the eerie and paranormal.

It's creepy to walk down a deserted street at night. The destination seems too far. Nurikabe is probably a projection of this unsettling feeling. This leads me to presume that every folkloric monster was closely connected with how people lived and perceived nature in the olden days.

Mizuki contends that people are most likely to encounter such beings in their childhood, when their minds and senses are still receptive to many things. If one wants such an encounter, says Mizuki, the trick is to do nothing in particular and just drift aimlessly.

2007年8月14日 星期二

Wal-Mart's Japan unit sees 6th straight annual loss

許久沒去日本
有機會當實地觀察諸如 Starbucks 等性質之企業
對於 早有"咖啡體驗"的日本人的影響力

外國百貨公司等的潰敗
比較容易了解
這是過份成熟的產業
不過 還是要了解是經營績效

也許便宜的好東西在日本很多

Wal-Mart's Japan unit sees 6th straight annual loss

By Taiga Uranaka
Reuters
Tuesday, August 14, 2007; 6:40 AM

TOKYO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (WMT.N) Japanese retail unit Seiyu Ltd. (8268.T) said it now expects to post its sixth straight annual loss in 2007 on sluggish sales, but dismissed speculation that the results would prompt Wal-Mart to pull out of Japan.

The world's largest retailer has invested more than $1 billion in the 393-store Japanese supermarket chain since 2002, but has yet to see anything more than temporary upswings in sales amid stiff competition with rivals such as Aeon Co.(8267.T).

The continuing losses have raised speculation that Wal-Mart will either prop up the struggling unit or consider withdrawing from Japan as it did from South Korea and Germany last year.

But Seiyu Chief Executive Ed Kolodzieski said on Tuesday Wal-Mart would stay in the world's second-biggest retail market.

"For Wal-Mart Stores, the Japanese market is clearly a very important market," he told a news conference. "I can tell you I have not had one single discussion with senior Wal-Mart executives ever about the topic of leaving Japan."

Seiyu accounts for some 10 percent of Wal-Mart's international sales. Revenues outside the United States accounted for roughly one-fifth of Wal-Mart's overall sales of $345 billion in the year ended January 31.

Kolodzieski stressed that there were signs of an uptick, but he fell short of promising a return to profit for 2008.

Seiyu, which is owned 53.6 percent by Wal-Mart, said it now expects to book a group net loss of 5.9 billion yen ($50 million) for calendar 2007, worse than the consensus forecast for a loss of 3.1 billion yen in a poll of four analysts by Reuters Estimates.

Previously it forecast a profit of 800 million yen. It cut its sales forecast by 3 percent to 963 billion yen.

Citing weak sales of clothing and appliances, Seiyu posted a net loss of 6.9 billion yen for the first half, in line with a downwardly revised estimate announced last month. First-half sales dropped 1.4 percent to 461.6 billion yen.

Seiyu has been trying to boost sales and cut costs using Wal-Mart's expertise, but it has not posted a profit and its share price has lost three-quarters of its value since the U.S. retailer first took a small stake in May 2002.

Seiyu said many of the stores it has remodeled have managed to post growth, but it has been hurt by weak demand for clothing and durable household goods such as gardening items and electrical appliances.

"We have also encountered some sales difficulties that we had not anticipated," Kolodzieski said.

Seiyu is aiming for a sales recovery from this autumn, predicting same-store sales will grow 1.4 percent in the second half, marking a recovery from a 1.1 percent fall in the half-year ended in June.

The company said it was encouraged by results from stores that were turned into 24-hour operation, adding the total number of 24-hour stores would be over 300 by the yearend from 262 a year earlier.

Prior to the earnings announcement, shares of Seiyu ended the day down 2.3 percent at 127 yen. Seiyu's shares have lost about 9 percent since the start of 2007, against a 12 percent fall in Japan's retail sector subindex (.IRETL.T) during the same period.

2007年8月13日 星期一

滝川精一Takikawa, Seiichi

Japanese Maverick : Success Secrets of Canon's God of Sales-US-
ISBN:9780471580119 (Hard cover book)
Kraar, Louis /Takikawa, Seiichi /Publisher:John Wiley & Sons Inc Published 1994/01

A Japanese maverick wins US following 日本の異端者、アメリカの支持を勝ち取る ・ワンポイント! maverick 一匹狼、異端児 (以下本文)

日本の異端経営者 キヤノンを世界に売った男・滝川精一 

行銷之神 台北:天下文化 1996


起業家スピリット 逃げるな、嘘をつくな、数字に強くなれ

滝川精一/ この著者の著作一覧

出版社名 日本経営協会総合研究所

発行年月19923

目次

1 生みの親と育ての親

2 昭和ヒト桁人の青春

3 退屈の苦痛から限りなき創造の喜びへ

4 逃げるな、嘘をつくな、数字に強くなれ

5 日系世界人

6 天職三昧 自由自在

7 好日




日本文化デザイン大賞

北野武 氏(映画監督)
(ビートたけし:俳優、タレント)

「HANA-BI」撮影風景

[授賞理由]
「赤信号、皆でわたればこわくない」「コマネチ、コマネチ」などの諧謔的ギャグと、その鮮烈とも言える社会風刺で日本の「お笑い」を革新するとともに、文 化の重要な要素として認知させたことは、どのように高く評価してもし過ぎることはない。その意味で「ビートたけし」は戦後史に残る日本文化の革命児であ る。 そして、彼がそのすべての行為を大衆に最も近いところで成し遂げたということは、エンターテイメントと芸術の関係性の再構築が問われる今、更なる感動を 持って認められなければならない事実である。
そのことのみならず、映画監督「北野武」として、同様の革命を日本映画にも引き起こし、その再興に火をつけ、そこに新たな可能性をもたらすとともに国際的 にも影響を強く与える映像世界を作り上げたことは、まさに「天才」としか形容のしようのない偉業である。
今年、その二つの頂点を「菊次郎の夏」という珠玉の作品に結合し、日本文化に最高のプレゼントを贈ってくれた。
深い感謝をこめて賞を贈呈したい。

日本文化デザイン賞

磯村尚徳 氏(パリ日本文化会館館長)

パリ日本文化会館

[授賞理由]
現代の日本に最も求められながら、さまざまな理由から成立が困難だったプロジェクトを実現し、「デザインの世紀」「縄文展」などの企画および図書館などの 事業によって、日本文化の真の姿を広く国際社会に認知させたパリ日本文化会館の実績は高く評価されるべきものである。 それと同時に、磯村館長をはじめとするスタッフの日常的な広報努力は、日本の新しい外交のあり方を示すものであり、今後の日本の指針として受け止められな ければならない。



久多良木健 氏
((株)ソニー・コンピュータエンタテインメント代表取締役社長)

プレイステーション2

[授賞理由]
20世紀の音楽や映画は、制作者の作ったものを観客が受動的に観賞するという、一方向のエンタテインメントであった。今世紀末に登場したインタラクティブ なビデオゲームでさえ、今後の人類が経験する全く新しいコンピュータエンタテインメントのほんのはじまりに過ぎない。 久多良木氏とソニー・コンピュータエンタテインメントのメンバーは、プレイステーション発売からたった5年の間に、会社としても、ビジネスとしても、また 社会現象としても歴史に類を見ない奇跡的な大金字塔をうちたてた。
そして、私達がいまだ体験したことのない全く新しいコンピュータエンタテインメントの世界をさらに切り開くリーダーとして、今も日夜努力を続けている。こ の素晴らしい過去の実績を表彰させていただくと共に、さらなる活躍と発展を期待するものである。



十四代沈壽官 氏(薩摩焼宗家)

盛金七宝地雪輪文大花瓶
(韓国大田万博出品作品)

[授賞理由]
薩摩の沈壽官家は、慶長3年、豊臣秀吉による朝鮮の役により渡来した李朝陶工が家業の始祖である。迫害を受けつつも苗代川に窯を築き土を探し、藩の保護の もと一族の立場を守り、日本の陶磁技術に大きな開花をもたらした。江戸期、明治維新と時流に対応して、錦手、浮彫などの新技法にも苦心した。
1926年生まれの沈壽官氏は、1964年に十四代を襲名し、始祖以来の薩摩焼の技法を継承。韓国の美術史関係の大学に招かれ学生達に史実を語り、日韓交 流の真意を説いて理解の糸口を開いた。1979年の日韓シンポジウムでは、歴史、文化の共有を説き、1998年にはソウルで「400年ぶりの帰郷-沈壽官 の陶芸展」を開催。文化交流を通した日韓のパイプ役という貴重な活躍を続けている。
制作面でも家業継承とともに自らの薩摩切子写し、井光黒なども加え、全国で個展を開催。地域性を超える普遍的な実績により、日本の陶芸のルーツを考えさせた功績は大きい。

企業文化賞

滝川精一 氏(キヤノン販売(株)名誉会長)

文化庁メディア芸術祭表彰式

[授賞理由]
キヤノン販売は、早くからマルチメディア社会の実現を予見し、映像の世界で築いた高品位で信頼性の高い技術やデザインをベースに、激変するネットワークビ ジネス環境の中で、世界中のハードウェア、ソフトウェアを組み合わせて付加価値を生み出し、顧客のニーズに呼応したよりよい製品や価値あるシステムを提供 し続けている。その姿勢と実績は、情報化社会に対するかけがえのない貢献として、今後さらに同社への評価を高めることだろう。
また、永年にわたりキヤノン販売グループを率いてきた滝川名誉会長が、企業として文化支援に尽力されるとともに、CGアーツ協会理事長や文化庁メディア芸 術祭の運営委員長として、日本のコンピュータ・グラフィックスおよびメディア・アートの前進に多大な貢献をされていることにも心から敬意を表したい。 企業文化賞を新設するにあたり、第一回受賞者としてここに顕彰させていただくものである。

2007年8月11日 星期六

So a series of inevitable and accidental events sealed Nagasaki's fate.


A south wind blows in Nagasaki as a reminder

08/11/2007

White clouds drifted high above the bronze memorial that forms the centerpiece of the Nagasaki Peace Park on Thursday. The breeze was blowing from the south, just as it did on Aug. 9, 1945.

Katsuki Masabayashi, 68, was catching cicadas on that breezy day 62 years ago. A split second after the blinding flash, he felt the tremendous blast. A piece of bamboo pierced his belly, and he instinctively cried out for his father, even though he knew he had already died in the war.

His younger sister, whom he was carrying piggy-back, shuddered and moaned, "Mommy." Masabayashi described these moments as he read his "plea for peace" during Thursday's ceremony to mark the 62nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

"The act must never be justified, whatever one's position or personal reasons may be," he stated firmly, his voice carrying above the incessant droning of cicadas.

Charles Sweeney, the chief pilot of the B-29 plane that dropped the A-bomb and changed the lives of Masabayashi and many other Nagasaki citizens forever, returned to the city the following month.

Standing in the ruins of ground zero, Sweeney raised his head to gaze at the blue sky.

In his memoir, "War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission," Sweeney recalls he felt neither regret nor remorse for what he had done, firmly convinced that Japan's wartime leaders were to blame.

A Roman Catholic, Sweeney never knew that the Urakami area of Nagasaki leveled by the bombing was home to one of the highest concentrations of Catholics in Japan. * Home of the faithful * Until his death in 2004 at 84, Sweeney held fast to the "argument of the parties who dropped the bombs"--that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki speeded up Japan's surrender.

Kokura, the primary target on Aug. 9, lay under a dense blanket of smoke from an earlier U.S. air strike, making it impossible to see from the air. After three aborted attempts to release his deadly payload, Sweeney decided to take his chance on his second target--Nagasaki.

The city was overcast. But a momentary break in the cloud cover appeared. It was 74 hours and 47 minutes after the Hiroshima atomic bombing.

So a series of inevitable and accidental events sealed Nagasaki's fate. The second A-bomb earned Sweeney a decoration and brought death to 74,000 people directly under the blast.

Fumio Kyuma had to resign as defense minister in July after he said the atomic bombing "could not be helped." And voters in the July 29 Upper House election passed harsh judgment on the ruling coalition.

The path to complete nuclear disarmament, something that Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors fervently pray for, remains as arduous as ever.

Another Nagasaki A-bomb anniversary has come and gone. It was as if the south wind blowing in Nagasaki was saying "wake up."

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 10(IHT/Asahi: August 11,2007)

2007年8月10日 星期五

Uniqlo

the name "UNIQLO" was born, as a portmanteau of the words "unique" and "clothing".




Style: Uniqlo, the Gap of Japan, sees global designs in $900 million Barneys bid

If you haven’t yet heard of Uniqlo, chances are you will soon.

The wildly popular casual apparel chain that’s often called the Gap of Japan is turning its ambitions overseas — and upmarket. Uniqlo’s parent company, Fast Retailing, has updated its $900 million proposal to buy luxury chain Barneys New York.

Back home, the down-to-earth Uniqlo brand has soared to success partly because of Japan’s decadelong economic downturn that ended in the early 1990s. By focusing on good-quality basics at ultra-low prices, Uniqlo weathered the slump while introducing Japan’s notoriously finicky shoppers to bargains.

Now, Fast Retailing wants to woo overseas converts by going head-to-head with mainstays like the Gap Inc. and Limited Brands. It’s opening Uniqlo outlets across Asia and Europe and just christened a mammoth flagship store in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo district. Japan has long been famous for its auto and electronics exports, but this is a rare case of a Japanese retailer making it big abroad.

Uniqlo’s minimalist stores brim with pared-down must-haves — such as denim pants, polo shirts, cotton socks and casual blazers — stocked in a rainbow of colors. Despite the chain’s name, a melding of “unique clothes,” its lineup is utilitarian, above all.

Then there are the prices: polo shirts for $16, four-pair sets of cotton dress socks for $8.35, jeans at $33.67, wool sweaters for $16.80. And that’s before the clearance sales.

“As a poor student, I have to say thanks,” said Satoru Takano, 20, said after window shopping at Uniqlo’s five-story outlet in Tokyo’s glitzy Ginza shopping district. “Basically all these clothes are from Uniqlo,” he said with a wave over his polo shirt and twill pants.


@ Go to www.uniqlo.com/us to view the latest fall styles.

新單位 新新單位

新單位 新新單位


這種書 充分表現出日本人的入世精神和幽默風趣
更深入地看 這是一種新社會心理學和經濟學

2007年8月9日 星期四

日本出版07年版數字內容白皮書: “手機漫畫高速增長”

這我根本毫無心得可言
轉貼

我對所謂 "パッケージ流通"和翻譯
還沒弄清楚




“手機漫畫高速增長” 日本出版07年版數字內容白皮書
DATE 2007/08/10
  【日經BP社報導】 日本數字內容協會出版了2007年版“數字內容白皮書”,總結了影像、音樂、遊戲、圖書及圖像等數字內容的市場規模與動向。

該白皮書的內容顯示,06年日 本數字內容市場規模比上年增長8.3%,達2兆7699億日元,為歷史最高紀錄。“網路下載與手機下載推動了內容的流通及用戶的增加,從而促進了市場規模 的擴大”(數字內容協會)。

預計07年將持續增長,估計同比增長10.7%,達到3兆663億日元。另外,包括未數字化在內,06年整個內容產業市場規模 為13兆9890億日元。


  數字內容的流通通路有包裝流通、網際網路流通與手機流通三種。06年這三種流通方式所佔比率依次為67.5%、16.7%、15.9%,而 05年的比率分別為70.5%、14.0%、15.5%。由此可見,包裝流通的比率下降,而網路類的網際網路流通與手機流通實現了增長。

  從網際網路流通與手機流通各自的市場來看,市場佔有率減少的是手機音樂下載業務。其對像是來電音樂、來電彩鈴、整曲 彩鈴,05年的銷售額為1610億日元。06年略有減少,為1602億日元。但是,網際網路流通的音樂下載卻同比大幅增長42.1%。可見,通過個人電腦 下載並欣賞音樂的群體正在增加。

  手機流通方面,實現大幅增長的是電子圖書。“其中,漫畫下載市場正在快速增長”(數字內容協會)。06年手機電子圖書市場比上年增長了331.3%,達69億日元。(記者:堀切 近史)

■日文原文
「ケータイ マンガが急成長」,デジタルコンテンツ白書2007年版から



「ケータイ・マンガが急成長」,デジタルコンテンツ白書2007年版から

DATE 2007/08/08 17:40
KEYWORD

コンテンツ / インターネット / ゲーム / パソコン / オーディオ / パッケージ / 携帯電話機 / ネットワーク / 企業・市場動向

 デジタルコンテンツ協会は, 映像や音楽,ゲーム,図書・画像などにおけるデジタル・コンテンツの市場規模と動向をまとめた「デジタルコンテンツ白書」の2007年版を発刊した。

同白 書によると,2006年におけるデジタル・コンテンツの国内市場規模は対前年比8.3%増の2兆7699億円で過去最高。「インターネット配信や携帯電話 配信によるコンテンツ流通の定着化と利用者の増加が,市場規模の拡大を後押しした」(デジタルコンテンツ協会)。

2007年も引き続き成長する見通しで, 同10.7%増の3兆663億円になると見込む。なおデジタル化していないものを含めた2006年のコンテンツ産業全体の市場規模は,13兆9890億円 である。


(画像のクリックで拡大)

 デジタル・コンテンツの流通経路を「パッケージ流通」「インターネット流通」「携帯電話流通」の三つに分類すると,2006年におけるそれぞれの割合は 順に67.5%,16.7%,15.9%となっている。2005年におけるこれらの割合は,70.5%,14.0%,15.5%だったことから,パッケー ジ流通の比率が下がる一方,いわゆるネット系のインターネット流通と携帯電話流通が伸ばした。


(画像のクリックで拡大)

  インターネット流通と携帯電話流通の内訳をみると,その市場シェアが縮小した品目が携帯電話機に向けた音楽配信である。着メロ・着うた・着うたフルが対象 となっており,これらの売上高は2005年に1610億円だったが,2006年には1602億円と微減となった。もっともインターネット流通における音楽 配信は同42.1%増と大幅に伸ばしており,音楽配信はパソコンで入手して楽しむ層が増えていることがうかがえる。

 携帯電話流通で大幅な成長を記録したのが,電子書籍である。「なかでもマンガの配信市場が急速に伸びている」(デジタルコンテンツ協会)という(デジタルコンテンツ白書2007の紹介ページ)。2006年における携帯電話機向け電子書籍市場は,対前年比331.3%増の69億円だった。

Japan's Prodigal Novelist Returns

昨天與著名的日本文學翻譯者和小說家邱振瑞談「日本記者做為作家,像井上靖…..等等」

後來邱先生跟我們談許多日本名作家「自卑感」和「亮相」之要求(司馬遼太郎、切腹的…… ),我說這些故事應該寫下來:還有選鈔票上的文化人,他們是否上像之考量……

對於春上,我讀過他幾本雜誌,現在就不考古。下文,Time的文章,還是稍微有點深度…..




Japan's Prodigal Novelist Returns

By BRYAN WALSH/TOKYO



Haruki Murakami doesn't much go in for metaphors, but even he wouldn't deny the aptness and symbolism of the moment when he decided he would write his first novel. It was April 1978 and Murakami was in the stands at Tokyo's Meiji-Jingu Stadium, watching a baseball game, beer in hand. He was verging on 30, and nearly a decade into running a jazz café with his wife Yoko. A journeyman American batter named Dave Hilton came to the plate for the Yakult Swallows, stroked the first pitch into left field, and safely reached second base. As he watched the batter swing at the ball, "I just felt all of a sudden that I could write," Murakami says, sitting today in his Tokyo office, a light jog away from the stadium.

Murakami's first novel, Hear the Wind Sing — with its title taken from a Truman Capote short story and featuring Beach Boys lyrics on the back cover — would be published within a year of his revelation. That such a moment came while watching an American athlete play an imported game is entirely in keeping with a man whose work — at least in its early stages — was not shaped by Japanese literature, but by the secondhand foreign paperbacks he read growing up near the port of Kobe, and the jazz and rock he absorbed as a student in Tokyo. Long before his self-imposed exile overseas, to avoid the crush of his celebrity in Japan, Murakami was an expatriate in his mind. "His work referenced not classic Japanese culture but pop culture, mainly from the U.S.," says Motoyuki Shibata, a professor of American literature at Tokyo University who has known Murakami for years. "He could create great literature with it."

Murakami has been embraced abroad as no other Japanese writer has. His books have been translated into about 40 languages. (In Japan, where Murakami is also regarded as an accomplished translator of American literature, the flow is neatly reversed: his recent rendering of The Great Gatsby sat atop the best-seller list for seven weeks.) Last October in Prague, he was awarded the prestigious Kafka Prize, dedicated to authors whose work "addresses the readers regardless of their origin, nationality and culture." It's difficult to imagine a better recipient than Murakami, who today splits his time between Tokyo and universities in the U.S. "The first [Murakami] story I translated for The New Yorker, they asked me to put in a Japanese reference at the top," says Philip Gabriel, a professor of East Asian studies at the University of Arizona. "He was so nonspecific to Japan that readers didn't realize where he was from."

A strong sense of otherness has always been in Murakami's nature. It began with his early preference for foreign novels (to the chagrin, one presumes, of his parents, who were both teachers of Japanese literature). It continues to this day in the deliberate distance he keeps from Japan's literary community, and in his abstemious mode of living. "Writers and artists are supposed to live a very unhealthy, bohemian kind of life," says Murakami. "But I just wanted to do it differently." So he rises at 4 a.m. to write for hours before swimming or running, training for marathons and lately triathlons as well. Murakami says he needs the exercise to keep up his stamina for the draining work of writing — the prolificacy of his output is legendary — but there's also an element of physical pleasure in his declaration that he weighs as much now, aged 58, as he did in his late 20s.

His themes and his audience have also kept him young. Ian Buruma writes that Murakami's fiction expresses "a general breaking away from family dependence, and the often lonely, fragmentary attempts by young people to choose their own way of living." You can tell that Murakami is quietly pleased by the kind of age-group such work attracts. "The sons and daughters of my friends are reading my books, and they call and ask if they can meet me," he says, bemused. "And they're surprised to discover the author is the same age as their parents!"

But as he approaches his 60th year, something is changing in Murakami's heart. His status as a truly global writer is assured — over 100,000 copies of the English version of his most recent novel, After Dark, have been printed since its release in May — but with the world conquered, and precocious undergraduates from Sydney to San Francisco at his feet, the postmodernist master dismisses the foreign adulation with a tired hand, and finds himself returning to the world of his parents and his birth. Despite the title — and a cameo appearance by Colonel Sanders of KFC fame — 2002's Kafka on the Shore was Murakami's most overtly Japanese novel yet, delving into the florid mysteries of Shinto. He continues his homeward orientation in After Dark, a slip of a novella that explores a single night in and around Tokyo's sleepless Shinjuku district.

The studied disconnection from the world that has made Murakami's early work so beloved of the fashionable literati — and the lonely young — has receded. In fact, responsibility is his animating principle these days. "I have a gift to write about these things," Murakami says of 1997's Underground, his oral history of the Tokyo subway gas attacks and a book he sees as a career turning point. "At the same time, I have a responsibility." Though he says he doesn't want to talk about Japanese politics, he returns to the subject again and again throughout a 212-hour conversation, bushy eyebrows bobbing as he worries about "politicians who rewrite history," and the growing tendency in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Japan to forget about wartime atrocities. Japanese history has always been in the background of his works — and his best novel, 1994's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, dissected the groupthink that led Japan into a catastrophic war — but now he wants to act. "Before, I wanted to be an expatriate writer," he admits. "But I am a Japanese writer. This is my soil and these are my roots. You cannot get away from your country." Though he offers no specifics, Murakami hints that his next novel will address Japanese nationalism.

Quite what his readers will think of Murakami's foray into the morass of contemporary Japanese politics remains to be seen. In his literature, and his life, he has made detachment an almost heroic pose. Murakami maintains that he hasn't changed. "I'm just the same way as before — independent," he says. "I am Japanese but still, I'll be myself." It is not an entirely convincing statement — but then there is nothing wrong with a politicized, compassionate and explicitly Japanese Murakami, especially if he puts his uncompromising self at the service of enlightened causes.

And it's that self that his fans — in any nation — will find themselves seeking out. Wherever Murakami moves as he continues his career — he says he plans on writing until 80 at least — expect his global readership to follow, even for reasons they can't quite articulate. Murakami, John Updike writes, "is a tender painter of negative spaces." Perhaps that ability to finger the ineffable is what finally explains his global appeal. "When I write fiction, I go down to the dark places," says Murakami. What could be more universal than the nameless stuff of our deepest dreams? Murakami doesn't illuminate the darkness — he lets symbols be — but with the company of his voice, we don't face it alone.

Eizo Matsumura, a photographer who has known Murakami since his jazz-club years, tells a story of that voice. Due to a hearing difficulty, Matsumura usually needs to read lips in conversation, except with close relatives and friends, but he can hear Murakami perfectly. "I don't know how to explain it," he says. "Maybe it's the vibrations, maybe it's something else." It almost seems too perfectly poetic, like something out of, well, a Murakami story, but the joy that rises in Matsumura's face can't be faked. "I can hear his voice," he says. "I always find it wondrous."

With reporting by Yuki Oda and Toko Sekiguchi/Tokyo