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日本厚生勞動省今天發表的統計指出，二零零七年日本民眾的平均壽命是女性八十五點九九歲，男性七十九點一九歲，連續兩年刷新紀錄，女性連續二十三年維持全球首位排名，男性則由前年的第二名降至第三名。 厚生勞動省發表的「簡易生命表」指出，二零零七年日本女性的平均壽命比二零零六年升高零點一八歲，男性則升高零點一九歲，男女的差距為六點八零歲，比前一年縮短零點零一歲。 厚勞省進行國際的比較指出，日本女性連續二十三年維持首位的排名，男性則次於冰島的七十九點四歲和香港的七十九點三歲，名列第三。 厚勞省分析指出，日本民眾的三大死因癌症、心臟病和腦中風，由於治療成績提高而有助平均壽命的延長，今後可望繼續這種趨勢。 |
It's the hottest season of the year in Japan, and that means it's eel season. So, bottom's up!
A canned drink called "Unagi Nobori," or "Surging Eel," made by Japan Tobacco Inc., hit the nation's stores this month just ahead of Japan's annual eel-eating season, company spokesman Kazunori Hayashi said Monday.
"It's mainly for men who are exhausted by the summer's heat," Hayashi said of the beverage, believed to be the first mass-produced eel drink in Japan.
Many Japanese believe eating eel boosts stamina in hot weather.
The fizzy, yellow-colored drink contains extracts from the head and bones of eel and five vitamins - A, B1, B2, D and E - contained in the fish.
The Japanese particularly like to eat eel on traditional eel days, which fall on July 24 and Aug. 5 this year.
Demand for eel is so high that Japan has been hit by scores of eel fraud cases, including a recent high-profile incident in which a government ministry publicly scolded two companies for mislabeling eel imported from China as being domestically grown.
The eel involved in recent scandals was prepared in a popular "kaba-yaki" style, in which it is broiled and covered with a sweet sauce. The $1.30 drink costs about one-tenth as much as broiled eel, but has a similar flavor.
Eel extract is also used in cookies and pies made in Japan's biggest eel producing town, Hamamatsu.
In 2007, the number of visitors to Japan from South Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong was almost double that of 2002.
SHIRETOKO NATIONAL PARK, Japan — Once prohibitively expensive, Japan is suddenly drawing soaring numbers of Asian tourists who splurge at the nation’s department stores, lounge in its hot spring resorts or explore remote corners, like this stretch of pristine mountains and forests on Japan’s northernmost tip.
Taiwanese tourists in Shiretoko National Park in Japan, whose economy has slowed while its neighbors’ grew quickly.
While a boon for Japan’s faltering tourism industry, the new tourists are also a sign of larger economic changes in one of the world’s most dynamic regions.
Japan itself was once known for its free-spending tourists, who flocked to boutiques from Hong Kong to Fifth Avenue. But as Japan’s economy stalled for the last dozen or so years, rapid development in countries like China and South Korea raised living standards there.
Those countries are now catching up with slow-growing Japan, long the region’s dominant economic power. Indeed, Japan’s dwindling, but still potent, lead in technology is a major draw for Asian tourists, who are as likely to visit a Toyota car factory as a Zen temple.
At the same time, there has been a decline in the number of people going abroad from Japan. The number of Japanese traveling abroad has fallen 3 percent from the peak in 2000 of 17.8 million, the government-run Japan National Tourist Organization said.
The decline was particularly pronounced among Japanese in their 20s, whose trips abroad fell to 2.8 million last year, down 40 percent from a decade ago. Officials from the tourist group attributed the drop among the young Japanese to falling wages and more modest lifestyles.
By contrast, the number of visitors to Japan from South Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong almost doubled last year from five years earlier, to 5.36 million, according to the tourist group. Those four regions alone accounted for nearly two-thirds of all foreign visitors to Japan last year, the organization said.
But far from being concerned about yet another sign of their nation’s declining status, many Japanese seem to embrace this change. The government helped open the gates five years ago by waiving visa requirements for tourists from Taiwan and South Korea.
Asian visitors are now regarded by a growing number of Japanese as a financial shot in the arm for Japan, whose vitality has been sapped by economic maturity and an aging population.
“Asia has closed the gap in economic power,” said Yukiko Fukagawa, an economics and politics professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. “And Japan is slowly realizing that maybe this is not such a bad thing.”
In the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo, the excitement these days is all about the large numbers of rich Asian tourists, most from China. This has pushed stores to begin hiring Chinese-speaking clerks and keep stacks of Chinese bills by cash registers.
At the marble-columned Mitsukoshi department store, one of Tokyo’s fanciest stores, wealthy Chinese buy Japanese and European-brand clothes and handbags by the dozen, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, apparently on a whim, for a watch or painting in the store, said Shoji Saito, manager of overseas-related business.
Mr. Saito said the store had not experienced such big-spending shoppers since Japan’s own go-go era in the 1980s.
“Asian tourists are our new growth market,” he said.
Many Asian tourists interviewed said they liked to shop here because Japan has the latest fashions first, and at prices way below those in many other Asian countries, where tariffs are steep. They also said they liked visiting Japan because it was close, safe and cleaner than much of the rest of Asia.
But many also say they are drawn by a deep fascination for Japan. Now that they can afford to come, they say they want to see the country that has long been the region’s front-runner in high technology, fashion and other realms of popular culture. They said they felt envy and respect for Japan as the region’s only fully developed nation, even if they did not always see eye to eye on matters like the events of World War II.
“We feel very close to the Japanese culturally, but they are also still ahead,” said Kao Yu-jeng, a 50-year-old schoolteacher who was part of a Taiwanese tour group visiting Shiretoko park, on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. “We want to know more about what makes them tick.”
According to the Taiwanese government’s Tourism Bureau, Japan passed Macao last year to become the second-most-popular overseas destination for Taiwanese going abroad, after Hong Kong.
“Japan used to be a very distant presence,” said Hsu Ya-shan, assistant director in the Tokyo office of the Taiwan Visitors Association, a Taiwanese government-run tourism promotion agency. “Now, it feels a lot closer.”
Officials at the Japan National Tourist Organization called the surge in Asian visitors an unexpected result of their Visit Japan program, a 2003 advertising campaign whose goal was to double foreign visitors to 10 million by 2010. While they initially envisioned planeloads of arriving Westerners, it was Asians who actually showed up, officials said.
During the 1980s, Americans were the largest group of overseas visitors to Japan, but have now fallen to fourth behind South Korea, Taiwan and China.
“Japan always had this huge, unnatural imbalance of sending out far more tourists than it took in,” said Daisuke Tonai, a senior assistant manager at the tourist group. “The situation is finally becoming more normal.”
Mr. Tonai said surveys also showed Asian tourists came to Japan for different reasons than Westerners. While Americans said they came to see cultural attractions like temples, Asians cited shopping, followed by hot springs and nature. Visits to factories are also popular, he said.
Recently, a top draw for Asian tourists is Hokkaido, Japan’s least developed major island, with open spaces and picturesque farms reminiscent of the American Midwest.
Mr. Kao, the Taiwanese teacher, called Hokkaido’s natural beauty a welcome change from pollution-choked cities in Taiwan, and China, where he has visited.
As the group’s bus wound along Shiretoko’s rugged coastline, the tour guide, Yu Li-fang, warned the travelers of the dangers of entering a true wilderness area.
“What do you do if you see a bear?” she said.
“Run,” one voice said.
“Kill it,” said another.
“Do you know how to kill a bear?” Ms. Yu asked, only half jokingly.
While the group did not encounter a bear, many members did experience a different kind of shock at a gift store, where the prices were far higher than in Taiwan.
“Taiwan is getting closer, but Japan is still ahead when it comes to prices,” Lin Hsiao-ching, a 44-year-old homemaker, said with a laugh. “We still have to keep an eye on every bill.”
Japanese ‘itasya’ gain in popularity in Taiwan
By Hsieh Wen-hua
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| A car belonging to Liu Chien-liang, chairman of the Taiwan Itasya Culture Promotion Association, attracts attention on Sunday at the “Fancy Frontier” cartoon and comic festival at National Taiwan University Sports Center In Taipei. PHOTO: HSIEH WEN-HUA, TAIPEI TIMES |
When we see flags advertising unagi in front of restaurants and smell the savory aroma wafting in the air under the sweltering summer sun, the sensation makes us want to eat eel, even if we have to stand in line.
But this year, dark clouds are looming over this annual national event. Since last year, consumers have grown increasingly distrustful of eel imported from China. As a result, the price of domestic eel has continued to rise. On top of that, the soaring cost of oil used to maintain water temperature to keep eels alive caused prices to jump even higher just before summer. If we stick to domestic eel, we must be prepared to pay more, whether we eat it in restaurants or at home.
Consumers are also suffering from the aftereffects of attempts by dishonest dealers to disguise imported Chinese eels as domestic product.
"Before the midsummer eel season/ I've had it up to here with scandals over eels" is a satirical poem that appeared in The Asahi Shimbun's senryu column.
Can we simply believe "domestic eel" labels after all those lies? Suspicion, coupled with high prices, could cause consumers to stay away from eel. Such dark clouds are blocking the sun during the peak eel season.
Let me cite another anecdote about a man who eats rice with the smell of broiling eel. When the proprietor of the restaurant serving the fish asks the man to pay, the man makes his coins clink and says: "I will pay for a smell with a sound."
It is a funny story that dates to a time when broiled eel was a luxury to ordinary people. While we are checking the contents of our purses, it looks like we will be spending the summer day fretting over whether the eel in front of us is domestic or not.
(Thanks Hans)
日本規格協會舉辦每年一度的品質月（品質月間毎年 11 月）並徵募品質川柳 和標語。
品質月間は、全国への品質意識の高揚を目的として1960年（昭和 35年）に創設され、以来毎年11 月に行われている全国的な運動で、本年で47回目を迎えます。
品質川柳の例：
「この原料 木から採るのか 種がある」 （検査係り）
「スローガン 会社の弱みを むきだしに」 （体質表現）
「頭さげ ありえぬことが 多すぎる」 （三面記事）
（第46回品質月間テキスト、 No.343から）
標語の例：
誉めて育てる人づくり、磨いて極める物づくり
見る目 気づく目 工夫の目 みんなで実践 品質革新
破るぞ常識、超えるぞ限界 殻を破って品質アップ！
一人ひとりが職場の主役 みんなで高める品質向上
思い出そう 質を鍛えた日本の強み 今なら間に合う匠の継承
(第46回品質月間標語から )
品質月間歷年來的品質川柳 和標語請參考以下網址。
http://www.juse.or.jp/q-month/monthly_04.html
日本規格協会 Japanese Standards Association.
http://www.jsa.or.jp/
以下以一家公司的網頁來看他們的品質川柳：
http://www.net.sfsi.co.jp/jinmachi/jin-katudo.html
～ＱＭＤＩ活動～
目的
品質超優秀企業になる！
欠陥ゼロのモノづくり！
品質意識の高い企業風土の確立！
品質の基本
決め事をしっかり守る！
初めから一度で正しく仕事をする(DIRFT)！
５ゲン主義(現場,現物,現実,原理,原則)で臨む！
品質川柳
社員全員に品質川柳を募集しました！
<優秀作品の紹介です>
障害を 出すも防ぐも あなたの手
品質は オンリーワンの 合言葉
品質は 顧客の信頼 創りだす
見たつもり ちょっとの油断 命取り
つかみ取れ 顧客の信頼 皆の手で
信用を 不良一つで 手放すな
品質が もたらす信用 利益増す
クオリティ 顧客の満足 私から
「まあいいか！」 神町電子の 辞書になし
君の手で 買い手に示せ 確かな品質
品質で 大きくつかむ 夢未来
品質は 人質だよと 皆が言う
如果以"品質川柳"或"川柳"作搜尋、可以找到很多公司和個人部落格都有品質川柳、可見是一種日本特有的文學文化、並且深入各基層。
http://search.goo.ne.jp/web.jsp?JP=0&CK=1&from=goo_dict&PT=goo_dict&MT=%C9%CA%BC%C1%C0%EE%CC%F8
http://www.microsoft.com/japan/athome/security/gymnasium/articles/securityhole.mspx
個人ユーザー向けセキュリティ > セキュリティ川柳道場 ... 近い将来、日本語での受付を開始すべしと考えておるので、より多くの皆様からの連絡を、より製品の品質向上に結び付けたいと思っております。友よりも 警告メール 多くうけ ...
http://www.yoshikawa-group.co.jp/manu/blog/
第三工場では数年前から品質標語を変えて品質川柳 の応募をしています。 今年の最優秀作品はこちら！ 『 厳しさで 守る品質 育つ腕 』 ペンネーム：星一徹. 第三チームのHさん、おめでとうございます。票が割れ、二次投票をくぐり抜けて選ばれました。
東京工業大學1990年代進行的改革中，建立起來“經營工學專攻”（系）， 包含四個講座（所）：開發、生產流通工學講座11人（技術創新、技術政策；生產管理、品質管理，等）；財務經營工學講座2人（工業經營、經營財務、會計情報、理財工學，等等）；經營數理、情報講座4人（運籌學、應用概率論、數理計畫法、經營情報システム，等）；技術構造分析講座7人（科學史、技術史、科學技術社會論(STS)、科學方法論、知識構造論）。顯然，其中主要的是：科技史，科技哲學、科技與社會，以及科技政策；另外，與情報資訊分析、產業經營聯繫在一起。【曾國屏「論走向科學技術學」2003 http://sts.ustc.edu.cn/artview.php?num=31 】
TOKYO, July 24 (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co. (7201.T: Quote, Profile, Research), Honda Motor Co. (7267.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Toray Industries (3402.T: Quote, Profile, Research) will join hands to develop a new carbon fibre material for auto bodies, the Nikkei business daily reported on Thursday.
The companies, along with textile firms Mitsubishi Rayon (3404.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Toyobo (3101.T: Quote, Profile, Research), aim to be able to mass produce the material by mid-2010s and to make vehicles 40 percent lighter than steel-use cars, the newspaper said.
The Japanese government is also helping the project in the hopes of staying ahead of the global race to develop eco-friendly vehicles. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to provide 2 billion yen ($18.5 million) for the project over five years, it said.
One of the issues is the high price of carbon fibre, but it is expected that the cost gap between carbon fibre and steel will narrow over time as steel prices continue to rise, it said.
The use of carbon fibre will also likely improve fuel efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent, the paper said.
Plastic parts maker Takagi Seiko Corp (4242.Q: Quote, Profile, Research) and researchers from the University of Tokyo are also participating in the project, it said. ($1=107.93 Yen) (Reporting by Sachi Izumi, Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
TOKYO, July 24 (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co. (7201.T: Quote, Profile, Research), Honda Motor Co. (7267.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Toray Industries (3402.T: Quote, Profile, Research) will join hands to develop a new carbon fibre material for auto bodies, the Nikkei business daily reported on Thursday.
The companies, along with textile firms Mitsubishi Rayon (3404.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Toyobo (3101.T: Quote, Profile, Research), aim to be able to mass produce the material by mid-2010s and to make vehicles 40 percent lighter than steel-use cars, the newspaper said.
The Japanese government is also helping the project in the hopes of staying ahead of the global race to develop eco-friendly vehicles. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to provide 2 billion yen ($18.5 million) for the project over five years, it said.
One of the issues is the high price of carbon fibre, but it is expected that the cost gap between carbon fibre and steel will narrow over time as steel prices continue to rise, it said.
The use of carbon fibre will also likely improve fuel efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent, the paper said.
Plastic parts maker Takagi Seiko Corp (4242.Q: Quote, Profile, Research) and researchers from the University of Tokyo are also participating in the project, it said. ($1=107.93 Yen) (Reporting by Sachi Izumi, Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
きょうか-し きやう― 3 【狂歌師】 
Mushizuka (a historic site designated by Tokyo) Kan-eiji Temple
Mushizuka was built in 1821 by bequest of Sessai Masuyama, a feudal lord of Ise Nagashima (present-day Mie Prefecture), in order to console the sprit of dead insects which were used as models for drawings. Sessai interacted with many literatus such as Nanbo Ota, and was active as a patron of them. He also mastered the art of realistic painting of Nanpin-ha School in China, and produced many paintings of flowers and birds. Among them, "Chu-chi Jo," a picture book of insects, is especially famous for its minuteness and accuracy.
I am growing rice again this year on a plot of mountain land that I lease.
I weeded the paddy the other day during a break in the tsuyu rainy season.
As I bent down and looked closely, I could see all sorts of small aquatic life around the roots of the rice plants.
Tadpoles wriggled away and diving beetles scuttled off in panic, but water striders glided over the water as if nothing could ever bother them.
There were dragonfly larvae, too. They will soon be flying around to herald the arrival of summer in this mountainous land.
There are various traditional sayings about rice farming, and many concern animals.
For instance, a paddy where snakes live is said to be a good paddy. Such a paddy is heavily populated by frogs, which eat insects that harm the crops, but are themselves eaten by snakes. Rice grows well in this "food chain" of life.
Not everyone may be familiar with the word "biodiversity," but it simply denotes a rich variety of life- forms within a given ecosystem.
I saw the paddy ridges crawling with earthworms. Insignificant as they are, these creatures are "natural hoes."
They excrete the soil they eat, and their excrement becomes enriched soil in turn. In some areas, the amount of earthworm excrement per square meter may amount to as much as 25 kilograms a year.
I am reminded of a poem by Hiroshi Yoshino, which goes: "Life, apparently, is designed not to be self-contained ... All of us living beings have been scattered around/ Not knowing, nor having been told/ That we all complement one another."
The Earth is home to 1.75 million known species of creatures.
After the rainy season ends, the green rice crops will start growing ears.
Nanbo Ota (1749-1823), an Edo Period (1603-1867) writer of kyoka (humorous short poems of 31 syllables), wrote in his ripe old age: "Living to the age of 70/ Has always been a rare feat/ All those grains of rice I've consumed in 70 years/ Are countless gifts from heaven and earth."
Nurtured by a rich variety of life forms, the crops that are now green will turn into an undulating sea of gold in autumn.
--The Asahi Shimbun, July 12(IHT/Asahi: July 21,2008)
2008年7月14日12時15分
大野晋さん
日本語研究を通じて「日本とは何か」を追究し続けた国語学者の大野晋（おおの・すすむ）さんが１４日午前４時、心不全のため死去した。８８歳だった。通 夜は１７日午後６時、葬儀は１８日午前１０時から東京都台東区谷中７の１４の８の天王寺で。喪主は妻千恵子（ちえこ）さん。
東京・深川生まれ。４３年に東京帝大（現東京大）国文科を卒業後、橋本進吉の上代特殊仮名遣いの研究を継承して音韻や文法の研究に取り組んだ。 ５３年に「上代仮名遣の研究」を発表、「日本書紀」の万葉仮名に清濁の区別があったことを指摘するなど、上代語の解釈に新分野を開拓した。５７年の「日本 語の起源」などでは、国語の語彙（ごい）の歴史的な変遷について究明し、顕著な成果を残した。
６０年から９０年まで学習院大学教授を務めながら、国語を通じての幅広い視野に立った日本文化論を展開。日本語がどこから来たかを問い続け、７９ 年から南インドのタミル語と日本語との関連を論じた新説を発表、反響を呼んだ。独自の文明論に発展したこの学説には批判も多かったが、研究の集大成として ００年に「日本語の形成」、０４年には「弥生文明と南インド」にまとめた。
６３年に帰宅途中の女子高校生が殺された「狭山事件」に際しては、脅迫状を言語学の立場から分析、被告の無罪を訴えた。また、６６年から３期、国語審議会（現・文化審議会国語分科会）委員を務めるなど、日本語教育のあり方についての「ご意見番」としても知られた。
最近は約３千の古語の語源や変遷をたどる「古典基礎語辞典」の編集に教え子らと取り組み、「この辞典ができるまでは死ねない」と最後まで語っていたという。同辞典は来年、刊行予定。
著書に１００万部を超すベストセラーとなった「日本語練習帳」や、「日本語の年輪」「日本語の文法を考える」「岩波古語辞典」（共同編集）などがある。
TOKYO: A Japanese labor bureau has ruled that one of Toyota Motor Corp.'s top car engineers died from working too many hours, the latest decision against overwork in Japan, where stoic acceptance of extended overtime has long been the norm.
The man who died was aged 45 and had been under severe pressure as the lead engineer in developing a hybrid version of Toyota's blockbuster Camry line, said Mikio Mizuno, the lawyer representing his wife. His identity is being withheld at the request of his family, who continue to live in Toyota City where the company is based.
In the two months up to his death, he averaged more than 80 hours of overtime per month, the criteria for overwork, according to Mizuno.
He regularly worked nights and weekends, was frequently sent abroad and was grappling with shipping a model for the influential North American International Auto Show in Detroit when he died of ischemic heart disease in January 2006. His daughter found his body at their home the day before he was to leave for the United States.
The ruling was handed down June 30 and will allow his family to collect benefits from his work insurance, Mizuno said.
An officer at the Aichi Labor Bureau on Wednesday confirmed the ruling, but declined to comment on the record.
In a statement, Toyota offered its condolences and said it would work to improve monitoring of the health of its workers.
The ruling is the most recent in a string of decisions against long working hours in Japan, which is struggling to cut down on deaths from overworking, known as "karoshi." Such deaths have steadily increased since the Health Ministry first recognized the phenomenon in 1987.
Last year, a court in central Japan ordered the government to pay compensation to Hiroko Uchino, the wife of a Toyota employee who collapsed at work and died at age 30 in 2002. She took the case to court after her application to the local labor bureau for compensation was rejected.
OGA, Japan — The Japanese have long taken an easygoing, buffetlike approach to religion, ringing out the old year at Buddhist temples and welcoming the new year, several hours later, at Shinto shrines. Weddings hew to Shinto rituals or, just as easily, to Christian ones.
When it comes to funerals, though, the Japanese have traditionally been inflexibly Buddhist — so much so that Buddhism in Japan is often called “funeral Buddhism,” a reference to the religion’s former near-monopoly on the elaborate, and lucrative, ceremonies surrounding deaths and memorial services.
But that expression also describes a religion that, by appearing to cater more to the needs of the dead than to those of the living, is losing its standing in Japanese society.
“That’s the image of funeral Buddhism: that it doesn’t meet people’s spiritual needs,” said Ryoko Mori, the chief priest at the 700-year-old Zuikoji Temple here in northern Japan. “In Islam or Christianity, they hold sermons on spiritual matters. But in Japan nowadays, very few Buddhist priests do that.”
Mr. Mori, 48, the 21st head priest of the temple, was unsure whether it would survive into the tenure of a 22nd.
“If Japanese Buddhism doesn’t act now, it will die out,” he said. “We can’t afford to wait. We have to do something.”
Across Japan, Buddhism faces a confluence of problems, some familiar to religions in other wealthy nations, others unique to the faith here.
The lack of successors to chief priests is jeopardizing family-run temples nationwide.
While interest in Buddhism is declining in urban areas, the religion’s rural strongholds are being depopulated, with older adherents dying and birthrates remaining low.
Perhaps most significantly, Buddhism is losing its grip on the funeral industry, as more and more Japanese are turning to funeral homes or choosing not to hold funerals at all.
Over the next generation, many temples in the countryside are expected to close, taking centuries of local history with them and adding to the demographic upheaval under way in rural Japan.
Here in Oga, on a peninsula of the same name that faces the Sea of Japan in Akita Prefecture, Buddhist priests are looking at the cold math of a population and local fishing industry in decline.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that the population is about half of what it was at its peak and that all businesses have also been reduced by half,” said Giju Sakamoto, 74, the 91st head priest of Akita’s oldest temple, Chorakuji, which was founded around the year 860. “Given that reality, simply insisting that we’re a religion and have a long history — Akita’s longest, in fact — sounds like a fairy tale. It’s meaningless.
“That’s why I think this place is beyond hope,” Mr. Sakamoto said at his temple, which sits atop a promontory overlooking a seaside village.
To survive, Mr. Sakamoto has put his energies into managing a nursing home and a new temple in a growing suburb of Akita City. That temple, however, has drawn only 60 households as members since it opened a couple of years ago, far short of the 300 said to be necessary for a temple to remain financially viable.
For centuries, the average Buddhist temple, whose stewardship was handed down from father to eldest son, served a fixed membership, rarely, if ever, proselytizing. With some 300 households to cater to, the temple’s chief priest and his wife were kept fully occupied.
Not only has the number of temples in Japan been dipping — to 85,994 in 2006, from 86,586 in 2000, according to the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs — but membership at many temples has fallen.
“We have to find other jobs because the temple alone is not enough,” said Kyo Kon, 73, the head priest’s wife at Kogakuin, a temple here with 170 members. She used to work at a day care center while her husband was employed at a local land planning office.
Not far away at Doshoji, a temple whose membership has fallen to 85 elderly households, the chief priest, Jokan Takahashi, 59, was facing a problem familiar to most small family-run businesses in Japan: finding a successor.
His eldest son had undergone the training to become a Buddhist priest, but Mr. Takahashi was ambivalent about asking him to take over the temple.
“My son grew up knowing nothing but this world of the temple, and he told me he did not feel free,” he said, explaining that his son, now 28, was working at a company in a nearby city. “He asked me to let him be free as long as I was working, and said that he would come back and take over by the time he turned 35.
“But considering the future, pressuring a young person to take over a temple like this might be cruel,” Mr. Takahashi said, after giving visitors a tour of his temple’s most important room, an inner chamber with wooden, lockerlike cabinets where, it is said, the spirits of his members’ ancestors are kept.
On a recent morning, Mr. Mori, the priest of the 700-year-old temple, began the day with a visit to a rice farming household marking the 33rd anniversary of a grandfather’s death. Bowing before the home altar, Mr. Mori prayed and chanted sutras. Later, he repeated the rituals at another household, which was commemorating the seventh anniversary of a grandfather’s death.
Increasingly, many Japanese, especially those in urban areas, have eschewed those traditions. Many no longer belong to temples and rely instead on funeral homes when their relatives die. The funeral homes provide Buddhist priests for funerals. According to a 2007 report by the Japan Consumers’ Association, the average cost of a funeral, excluding the cemetery plot, was $21,500, of which $5,100 covered services performed by a Buddhist priest.
As recently as the mid-1980s, almost all Japanese held funerals at home or in temples, with the local Buddhist priest playing a prominent role.
But the move to funeral homes has sharply accelerated in the last decade. In 1999, 62 percent still held funerals at home or in temples, while 30 percent chose funeral homes, according to the Consumers’ Association. But in 2007, the preferences were reversed, with 28 percent selecting funerals at home or in temples, and 61 percent opting for funeral homes.
In addition, an increasing number of Japanese are deciding to have their loved ones cremated without any funeral at all, said Noriyuki Ueda, an anthropologist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and an expert on Buddhism.
“Because of that, Buddhist priests and temples will no longer be involved in funerals,” Mr. Ueda said.
He said Japanese Buddhism had been sapped of its spiritual side in great part because it had compromised itself during World War II through its close ties with Japan’s military. After Buddhist priests had glorified fallen soldiers and given them special posthumous Buddhist names, talk of pacifism sounded hollow.
Mr. Mori, the priest here, said that after the war there was a desire for increasingly lavish funerals with prestigious Buddhist names. These names — with the highest ranks traditionally given to those who have led honorable lives — are routinely purchased now, regardless of a dead person’s conduct in life.
“Soldiers, who gave their lives for the country, were given special posthumous Buddhist names, so everybody wanted one after that, and prices went up dramatically,” Mr. Mori said. “Everyone was getting richer, so everyone wanted one.
“But that gave us a bad image,” he said, adding that the price of the top name in Akita was about $3,000 — though that was a small fraction of the price in Tokyo.
Indeed, that image is reinforced by the way the business of funerals and memorial services is conducted. Fees are not stated and are left to the family’s discretion, and the relatives generally feel an unspoken pressure to be quite generous. Money is handed over in envelopes, and receipts are not given. Temples, with their status as religious organizations, pay no taxes.
It was partly to dispel this bad image that Kazuma Hayashi, 41, a Buddhist priest without a temple of his own, said he founded a company, Obohsan.com (obohsan means priest), three years ago in a Tokyo suburb. The company dispatches freelance Buddhist priests to funerals and other services, cutting out funeral homes and other middlemen.
Prices, which are at least a third lower than the average, are listed clearly on the company’s Web site. A 10 percent discount is available for members.
“We even give out receipts,” Mr. Hayashi said.
Mr. Hayashi argued that instead of divorcing Japanese Buddhism further from its spiritual roots, his business attracted more people with its lower prices. The highest-ranking posthumous name went for about $1,500, a rock-bottom price.
“I know that, originally, that’s not what Buddhism was about,” Mr. Hayashi said of the top name. “But it’s a brand that our customers choose. Some really want it, so that means there’s a strong desire there, and we have to respond to it.”
After apologizing for straying from Buddhism’s ideals, Mr. Hayashi said he offered his customers the highest-ranking name, albeit with a warning: “In short, that this is different from going to a shop in town and buying a handbag, you know, a Gucci bag.”
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TOKYO (AFP) — Covering her face with her hands, 20-year-old Riyo Mori of Japan heard the MC's voice and the thunderous cheering of the crowd telling one year ago that she was the new Miss Universe.
With a 250,000-dollar tiara on her head, Mori walked confidently on the stage as Japan's first Miss Universe in 48 years as an estimated one billion people watched around the world on television.
But it was not only Mori who was surprised. Watching back in Tokyo, Madoka Niino, a 28-year-old working in an advertising agency, thought that perceptions of beauty in Japan were finally changing.
"Beautiful women traditionally were supposed to be reticent and dedicated," she said, pointing to the portrayal of Japanese women in Hollywood.
On Monday, 21-year-old Hiroko Mima, who was chosen among 4,000 candidates here, will represent Japan in hopes that the country can retain its newfound status as a beauty pageant powerhouse.
Ines Ligron, a French woman who has trained Japanese contestants for Miss Universe for 10 years, sees an evolution in Japanese women.
"They are becoming much more outgoing, confident and opinionated. They feel free to challenge themselves on a global level, which was unheard of before," Ligron told AFP.
Mori is hoping to start her own dance school in Japan. In 2006, Kurara Chibana was runner-up in the Miss Universe competition and is hoping to work internationally as a reporter.
Beniko Kishi, the CEO of a company that runs several beauty and lifestyle brands, said Japan was a very different place than in the years after World War II, when Western concepts of beauty were held on a pedestal.
"Since the end of the war, Japanese had been blindly following the Western standard of beauty and they tried so hard to imitate and look like Western models or actresses regardless of our physical differences," she said.
"But in recent years, Japanese have stopped looking only outside and started looking inside again. They are beginning to find their identity (of) being beautiful in the way they are," she said.
The change can be seen in the advertising world, where Japanese models and actresses have replaced Westerners as the faces of beauty products.
Leading cosmetic maker Shiseido recently launched an advertising campaign for its Tsubaki shampoo with the slogan, "Japanese women are beautiful."
"Women today choose products and services for their own measurements. They always ask themselves if it suits for them," Kishi said.
She said that the trend extended beyond appearance. More women are flocking to fitness and yoga clubs or choosing to eat organic food.
"Women now know that beauty is growing from the inside. You cannot hide it with expensive cosmetics anymore, so it is essential to look closely inside and to build a better condition," Kishi said.
Tokyo and other big Japanese cities have witnessed a boom in after-hours schools where women can take how-to advice in beauty and lifestyle and earn certificates.
"Recently I feel that there is a belief that women are considered to be beautiful when they strike a perfect balance between their career, household and beauty," said Mikiko Koyama, a 25-year-old consultant.
Ligron said she was trying to give Japanese contestants in Miss Universe more self-confidence and not simply focusing on their appearance.
"I personally hate the idea of 'beauty queens' because I would never consider manufacturing packaged-women to represent their countries on a global stage. Instead, I try to enhance the best of their personalities and minds and try to place invisible wings for them to fly high," she said.
She defended Miss Universe from critics who charge that beauty pageants demean women by putting them in a competition for approval.
"10 years ago, I believed that beauty pageants were just a joke -- old-fashioned and completely empty of any outcome for the girls entering them," she admitted.
But she said that with the Miss Universe Organisation, "I started to understand the reward of helping young girls find their inner beauties."
"Now I believe what beauty pageants teach young girls is how to achieve their goals in life. It teaches them to believe in themselves," she said.
這回透過日本辭典更容易了解它的創始人之背景 –不過，這只是Okura 家族的「生財有道」之一面，
我 1989-94可能在這hotel 十來次，數次以hotel Guests身份免費參觀（ Staying guests may receive a free admission ticket by inquiring at hotel Guest Relations desks ）
「大倉集古館」簡史：中文有漢寶德的參訪記載。
Back in 1917, an avid collector of Buddhist artwork by the name of Kihachiro Okura established, on his own land, a museum in which to hold and display his treasures. Over the years, this collection was added to by his son, the founder of Hotel Okura, Baron Kishichiro Okura, whose interests included modern Japanese painting, or Nihonga. Today, the Okura Shukokan Museum of Fine Arts houses some 2,000 items and 35,000 volumes — a collection that contains a number of officially registered National Treasures, Important Cultural Objects, and Important Art Objects.
http://www.okura.com/tokyo/
http://www.hotelokura.co.jp/
------ 「大倉集古館」的創業者
おおくら-きはちろう おほくらきはちらう 【大倉喜八郎】
(1837-1928) 実業家。越後の人。戊辰 (ぼしん)戦争の際、官軍に武器を売って巨利を得、
The Okura store in Tokyo.
T Magazine’s women’s fashion director keeps one step ahead of the trends.
After a few days of walking around Tokyo, all of the stores started to look alike — California faux vintage, embroidered hippie dresses, Birkenstocks. So it was a huge relief to come across Okura in Daikanyama. Here the clothes have a modern aesthetic but with a nod to traditional Japanese culture. (Most of them are even made in Japan!) This means over-dyed work pants in washable linen or jumpsuits in a stiff, heavyweight cotton or an unlined, unstructured jacket — all in Okura’s favorite shade of indigo blue, called aizome. There is even a small selection of Japanese obis and kimonos but in these surroundings you can imagine wearing them as contemporary pieces.
The store itself looks like a beautiful old farmhouse or noodle restaurant with a curtain — as opposed to a door flagging the entrance. The inside is decorated with found materials like beach wood clothing racks and scrap metal shelves (Okura opened in 1993 — long before the current recycling trend!).The overall effect is that of having discovered a Zen haven in the middle of a very hectic city — and it makes you want to bring back a souvenir!
新型インフルエンザ対策を検討している厚生労働省の研究班（研究代表者＝庵原俊昭・国立病院機構三重病院長）は４日、医師や検疫所職員ら６４００人を対象にした大流行前ワクチンの接種を、８月から実施すると公表した。
ワクチンは、中国やインドネシアで人に感染した鳥インフルエンザウイルスをもとに作製。安全性と有効性が確認されれば、来年度は医師のほか、警察、消防職員、電力、ガス会社員など社会機能の維持に従事する１０００万人に事前接種する方針だ。
（2008年7月5日 読売新聞）為預防禽流感大規模爆發，日本厚生勞動省研究小組前天召開首次會議，準備下月起對包括醫療人員在內的6,400人接種禽流感疫苗，是全球首次有政府推動大規模接種禽流感疫苗。
6400醫護官員 下月首試
將接種疫苗的6,400人中，包括全國的檢疫官、機場警察、海關官員、傳染病指定醫院及醫療所員工等。是次大規模接種計劃除為預防禽流感大規模爆發外，亦希望測試到疫苗對未知禽流感病毒是否有效。
接種計劃將分段進行，研究人員會先對各3,000人接種中國病株疫苗及印尼病株疫苗，以收集副作用 反應等資料，之後便會在明年3月前為400人接種疫苗，詳細調查這些人體是否存在抗體。其中有200人接著會接種越南病株疫苗，然後再追加接種中國病株及 印尼病株疫苗，以調查是次追加接種的影響。研究小組預計明年春天之前，將可完成資料搜集並整理出研究結果。
若上述研究證明到疫苗的安全性及有效性，厚生勞動省計劃陸續對「維持社會職能必須行業」工作者進行接種，當中包括警員、自衛隊官員、國會議員等，涉及約1,000萬人，但實施接種先後次序仍未有定案。
厚生勞動省估計若爆發大規模禽流感疫情，會有3,200萬人受感染，最嚴重的情況下可能有64萬人 死亡，因此研究出的疫苗，主要是針對最可能突變感染人類的H5N1型病毒，至今儲存量已達2,000萬人份量。另外，日本政府亦計劃儲備「特敏福」等感冒 治療藥，目標儲存量為總人口的約4至5成。 ■中央社
A view through a window looking onto a commercial complex in Chiba, Japan, that uses transparent solar panels on window glass to generate power.
KUMAGAYA, Japan — With its towering furnaces and clanging conveyer belts carrying crushed rock, Taiheiyo Cement’s factory looks like an Industrial Revolution relic. But it is actually a model of modern energy efficiency, harnessing its waste heat to generate much of its own electricity.
The Keihin mill captures heat and gases to generate power.
Engineers from China and elsewhere in Asia come to study its design, which has allowed the company to slash the amount of power it buys from the grid.
The plant is just one example of Japan’s single-minded dedication to reducing energy use, a commitment that dates back to the oil shocks of the 1970s that shook this resource-poor nation.
Now, with oil prices hitting dizzying levels and the world struggling with global warming, the country is hoping to use its conservation record to take a rare leadership role on a pressing global issue. It will showcase its efforts to export its conservation ethic — and its expensive power-saving technology — at next week’s meeting in Japan of the Group of 8 industrial leaders.
“Superior technology and a national spirit of avoiding waste give Japan the world’s most energy-efficient structure,” Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in a speech outlining his agenda for the meeting. Japan “wants to contribute to the world,” he said.
Mr. Fukuda has already urged the leaders of the Group of 8 nations to adopt numerical targets as they discuss new ways to curb carbon dioxide emissions, a focus of treaty talks aimed at a new global agreement by the end of 2009. The existing pacts, the original climate treaty from 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, have been called failures by energy and climate experts.
The rising cost of energy is expected to dominate the meeting, on Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. President Bush and other leaders are facing calls to expand offshore drilling and to rein in hedge funds and other investors blamed for speculating on world energy markets.
Japan is by many measures the world’s most energy-frugal developed nation. After the energy crises of the 1970s, the country forced itself to conserve with government-mandated energy-efficiency targets and steep taxes on petroleum. Energy experts also credit a national consensus on the need to consume less.
It is also the only industrial country that sustained government investment in energy research even when energy became cheap again.
“Japan taught itself decade s ago how to compete with gasoline at $4 per gallon,” said Hisakazu Tsujimoto of the Energy Conservation Center, a government research institute that promotes energy efficiency. “It will fare better than other countries in the new era of high energy costs.”
According to the International Energy Agency, based in Paris, Japan consumed half as much energy per dollar worth of economic activity as the European Union or the United States, and one-eighth as much as China and India in 2005. While the country is known for green products like hybrid cars, most of its efficiency gains have been in less eye-catching areas, for example, in manufacturing.
Corporate Japan has managed to keep its overall annual energy consumption unchanged at the equivalent of a little more than a billion barrels of oil since the early 1970s, according to Economy Ministry data. It was able to maintain that level even as the economy doubled in size during the country’s boom years of the 1970s and ’80s.
Japan’s strides in efficiency are clearest in heavy industries like steel, which are the nation’s biggest consumers of power. From 1972 to 2006, the Japanese steel industry invested about $45 billion in developing energy-saving technologies, according to the Japan Iron and Steel Federation.
The results are visible at the Keihin mill on Tokyo Bay, run by Japan’s No. 2 steelmaker, JFE Steel. Massive steel ducts snake from the blast furnaces and surrounding buildings. These capture heat and gases that had previously been released into the air or burned off as waste. Now, they are used to power generators that produce 90 percent of the plant’s electricity. (The plant’s main fuel remains the coal used to heat its huge blast furnaces.)
Such innovations allow the mill to produce a ton of steel using 35 percent less energy than it did three decades ago, said Yoshitsugu Iino, group leader of JFE Steel’s climate change policy group. Mr. Iino calculates that if the global steel industry adopted Japanese conservation measures, it could reduce carbon emissions by some 300 million tons a year.
But even with corporate efficiency gains, Japan’s emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse-gas emission from human activities, have grown, largely because of rising living standards and continued reliance on coal, according to climate scientists. James E. Hansen, NASA’s leading climatologist, sent an open letter to Mr. Fukuda on Thursday seeking a greater commitment to emissions cuts.
At next week’s summit meeting, Japan plans to back an initiative that could make its frugal energy levels the new standards for global industries.
Now, its government is pushing an initiative that could set Japan’s levels of energy conservation as targets for global industries. Mr. Fukuda has proposed what is called a sector-based approach to new targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This means is setting the same numerical goals for all companies in an industry, regardless of location. The Kyoto Protocol set mandatory national limits for industrialized countries.
The sector approach has been embraced by Japanese industry groups, which say their high levels of efficiency should become the global standards. This would also give Japanese companies more opportunities to sell their energy-saving technologies and skills around the world.
The Bush administration has focused on developing sector-by-sector partnerships with Japan and other countries to find ways to curb emissions, but remains opposed to mandatory limits.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries, which makes the waste heat generator at the cement factory in Kumagaya, started developing the technology in 1979. But the generators were too expensive to sell outside Japan while energy prices were low. But overseas orders took off three years ago, after energy prices began rising.
Since then, the company has sold 64 units, mainly through a joint venture in China.
“Japan rushed to embrace these technologies back in the 1980s,” said Katsushi Sorida, head of the waste heat plant department at Kawasaki Plant Systems, a subsidiary that markets and installs the units. “Now the rest of the world is finally catching up.”
