Ghost of a Flea is, naturally, the source of this article about a new Kylie monument to be erected in her hometown of Melbourne. Apparently, her antipodean assets will be fittingly framed with her famous “Spinning Around” lamé hotpants. I haven’t seen anything really recent, but word seems to be that her recovery from cancer treatment is going well.

By way of the Nikkei , a South Korean newspaper reports that a US embassy in Southeast Asia may be harboring some North Korean refugees:

On 3 May, the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo reported that, according to American government sources, 5 or 6 refugees who are DPRK nationals are under protection at a US embassy in Southeast Asia and that procedures to move them to the US are in progress. For safety reasons, the name of the country and the planned arrival time in the States are not being disclosed.

The US government has adopted a policy that would allow it to accept North Korean refugees through the North Korea Human Rights Act passed in 2004, but there have been no instances of asylum actually granted within the US to such refugees since the establishment of the law; when the current group enters the US, it will constitute the first such case.

Good move, of course–it’s hard to imagine anyone who deserves a chance to start over in the States more than a North Korean who’s managed to get out through the northern border and tough it out afterward. (The PRC is the DPRK’s primary backer; it’s not exactly hospitable to refugees.) It could complicate the 6-party talks, I suppose, but it’s not as if there were any pretense of amity between us and North Korea anyway.

The Lucie Blackman case is well-known in Japan and England; US readers may not be familiar with it. Blackman was a British woman who quit her job as a BA flight attendant to take an under-the-table job at a hostess bar here in Tokyo. Several months later she was murdered, or killed accidentally in the course of a Mickey Finn, by a customer of the bar where she worked. This article from around a year later lays on the apocalyptic atmosphere a bit thick–as if Japan were a month away from sinking into Third World conditions–but it’s a pretty comprehensive discussion of the development of the case. Blackman’s family had to push hard and publicly to get police to investigate when she went missing.

The Asahi reports that Blackman’s father helped launch a safety-minded service two years ago:

The idea bore fruit in July 2004 with the launch of Safety Text, through which users send details of their plans for a day to registered recipients back home.

Messages are stored for up to 24 hours, allowing users to cancel the text once they arrive at their destination. If they do not make contact, the alarm is raised.

Facial photographs and contact details that are stored in the system would be then transmitted to the police to ensure a prompt investigation.

“If Lucie had such a service, she might have wished to disclose that she was going off with this Japanese businessman (just in case),” Blackman said. “Then she might have been found in several hours, not seven months.”

…

As part of the campaign to raise awareness of personal safety, the trust has distributed “personal safety information packs” for travelers to more than 650 educational establishments across Britain. It also warns women to make sure their drinks aren’t spiked with date-rape drugs.

That poor family. You can see how they’d look for solace in trying to prevent what happened to their daughter and sister from happening to anyone else. But I’m not sure a system such as Safety Text is likely to help much. There’s an inherent risk in going back to the apartment of a lascivious-minded stranger, and no messaging system can exercise judgment on someone’s behalf. Blackman, after all, called her roommate several times after meeting up with Joji Obara on the day he killed her. (I guess I should say “allegedly,” but there appears to be next to no doubt.) She probably wasn’t out of contact until very shortly before being drugged. And given that she hadn’t been in Japan long, she might not have been entirely aware of which municipality she was in.

Besides, whatever information is given to police, they need to feel a reasonable need to act on it before they’re going to go searching for someone. Blackman told her roommate she’d be back in about a half-hour and then didn’t show up. If it were my friend, I’d be worried, but I doubt I’d be all that worried until the next morning. People in their early twenties do get sidetracked and end up staying out all night. The first serious cause for alarm was the phone call the next day saying Blackman had joined a cult, but it’s pretty certain she was dead by then. The Safety Text system might have accelerated the recovery of her body, which is worthwhile in itself, but it seems unlikely to have prevented her death. (Given the wording Blackman’s father used in that quotation, he may be aware of that himself.)

This is kind of old news by now for those who have followed the abductee issue, but President Bush met with the families of several abductees and a few North Korean defectors last week:

“It is hard to believe that a country would foster abduction. It’s hard for Americans to imagine that a leader of any country would encourage the abduction of a young child,” Bush said about the North Korean regime and its leader, Kim Jong Il.

Wearing a blue badge on his suit lapel to express solidarity with the families, Bush called on Pyongyang to return abductees, saying, “If North Korea expects to be respected in the world, that country must respect human rights and human dignity and must allow this mother to hug her child again.”

In her press conference later Friday, Sakie Yokota expressed her hope that the U.S. president’s first meeting with an abductee’s family would encourage other world leaders to unite in pressuring North Korea to resolve the issue.

“I thanked the president for sharing time with us in his busy schedule. He said he was never too busy to find time to talk about human dignity and freedom. I really wish leaders of all countries would share that thought,” Yokota said.

Of course, “solidarity” is a rather vague term. To judge by precedent, the abductee issue will be readily backburnered at future meetings with the DPRK once negotiations over nuclear development start getting sticky. That’s not to cast aspersions on Bush’s sincerity or sympathy; it’s just to say that if the Yokotas and others expect a change in diplomatic approach, I’m not so sure they’ll get one.

Just in case you need your memory jogged about what a vile hellhole North Korea is, Human Rights Watch gives the genteel version here. Note that while I focus on the thirteen Japanese abductees here, the number of South Korean abductees numbers in the thousands:

According to South Korea’s Unification Ministry, a total of 3,790 South Koreans were kidnapped and taken to North Korea between 1953 and 1995, of whom 486 remain detained. Some of the abductees have been used in propaganda broadcasts to South Korea, while others have been used to train North Korean spies. North Korea has rejected repeated requests from families of the South Korean abductees to confirm their existence, to return them, or, in the cases of the dead, to return their remains.

It’s not clear that having the US play policeman–a role for which it’s usually criticized–will have much effect on the issue. At the same time Washington can hardly prove to be more impotent than, say, the UN:

The North Korea Human Rights Act, which the U.S. adopted in 2004, opens up the possibility for North Korean refugees to be admitted for resettlement in the United States. Thus far, however, little action has been taken, and it is unclear how many refugees could benefit or when. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution for the third straight year calling on North Korea to respect basic human rights. In November 2005, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution against North Korea, citing “systemic, widespread and grave violations of human rights.”

North Korea has largely shunned talks with U.N. human rights experts, except for a few meetings on children’s and women’s rights. It has not responded to repeated requests by Vitit Muntarbhorn, special rapporteur on North Korea, to engage in dialogue.

Dialogue only works as a problem-solving tool among people who can trust one another to be working from similar principles.

No, guys, I haven’t forgotten about you. Remember in March when I said that it was the end of the Japanese financial year and that things should start to get a little less hectic in April?

Right.

In truth, the busy-ness was only part of it. The ugliness of the debates over, say, immigration and the rape allegations at Duke has not exactly provided an incentive to get right in there and contribute. At least, it hasn’t provided any incentive to me. So despite the DPJ’s much-discussed win last week and the death of urban planning critic Jane Jacobs and other newsworthy stuff, I didn’t feel much like posting. I don’t think I even remembered to mention that I’d been blogging for exactly two years as of mid-April. (Did I?) Anyway, thanks to those who have kept checking back despite the silence.

The Nikkei lead editorial spot was devoted to a single piece today–no surprise, considering the topic:

On 1 May, the “Corporate Law,” with its nearly 1000 articles, goes into effect. It is the new fundamental law that has been set up to bundle Section 2 of the Commercial Law with the Limited Company Law, among others, which up to now stipulated how enterprises may be constituted.

A variety of options have been established to permit companies from start-ups to corporate giants to be created and operated in accordance with their respective statures. That means the large-scale deregulation of entrepreneurial activity. Enterprises will have to take decisive responsibility for themselves and set strategies with a new level of clarity.

A few notes here: Japanese has a good handful of words that can be translated “corporation,” depending not only on the kind of organization but also on which aspect of corporation-ness is being emphasized. The most literal equivalent to the Latinate sense of embodiedness in our English terms is 法人 (houjin: “law” + “person”). The strictest equivalent of limited, both in terms of meaning and in terms of use in company names, is 有限会社 (yuugen-gaisha: “limited company”), which is the word used in the name of the law referred to above.

In the era of numerous legal restrictions, they were like so-called “rails” that had been laid down. From here on, [enterprises] will have to decide for themselves which directions to travel. Without being kept in line by government supervision, they will get direct feedback on their business acumen in the results of applying it. Toshitaka Hagiwara, chair of the Nippon Keidanren’s Joint Committee on Economic Regulation and chairman of the board of Komatsu, sees the new law this way: “We won’t be able to exploit our increased number of options if we don’t adopt solid policies based on what will truly profit those with a stake in our organizations, starting with our shareholders.”

Making money for shareholders was, of course, approximately priority number 953 in the Japan Inc. era. Expansion was the goal, and with the book value of assets (especially property) increasing so rapidly during the Bubble, it was easy to justify.

Yes, I know that the Bubble burst a decade and a half ago. Unfortunately, the Japan Inc. mindset and ways of doing things still have a hold on too many organizations. Outside a handful of world-famous giants, most companies have only a hazy idea of what competing in global markets would actually require of them. That means that whether the nationwide corporate culture in Japan is really ready to make the most of the its new options is an open question. The new law abolishes minimum capitalizations on public companies and LLCs. It allows terms of up to ten years for directors and allows for the requirement that board members be shareholders. It also eases the dissolution of holding companies and the spinning off of subsidiaries.

It doesn’t address other factors, such as the financial sector’s continuing poor lending judgment. (Risk assessment and risk management are still underdeveloped here in just about every field. So, for that matter, is the financial sector itself.) And a quite extraordinary number of people–even around my age–still look on their companies as social entities to which they owe loyalty, rather than enterprises to which they contribute productivity. That’s not to say they don’t work hard. But most people, including those who go on to become CEOs, still don’t seem to think in terms of developing their own talents their own way and looking for the organizations (and niches within organizations) where they best fit. The relaxing of regulations on corporate structure is itself a sign of a cultural shift, naturally, but how much of one remains to be seen.

The Amagasaki train derailment was exactly one year ago today.

The representative of the families, Naho Asano (33), whose mother and aunt both died in the accident, was in tears as she appealed to JR West: “There’s nothing more important than people’s lives. I want it etched in the consciousness of JR West that it’s people’s lives that it’s conveying.

A recent survey suggests a better etching tool is needed.

Chrissie Hynde’s one of those people like Madonna for me–I’ve been a swoony fan for over two decades, but never, ever would I want to meet her. What a bitch. But then, she’s a rock star, so she’s supposed to be a bitch and make maddening pronouncements about political issues she doesn’t understand and blow a lot of money on living high.

Anyway, there’s an interview with her in Billboard on-line that, in two passages, tickled my funny bone big-time. The profanities come thick and fast, naturally, so even though they’re bleeped in the original anyway, I’ll put the citations below the jump.

Japan Defense Agency chief Fukushiro Nukaga says Japan and the US Department of Defense have come to an agreement on the military restructuring issue:

Japanese Defense Minister Fukushiro Nukaga told reporters after his three-hour meeting Sunday with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that Japan wanted to have an appropriate sharing of costs in transferring 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to the Pacific island of Guam.

Japan has offered to pay $2.8 billion. It would also finance loans to the United States worth $3.3 billion, the remainder of its $6.1 billion share. Japan would shoulder 59 percent of the realignment cost.

“We have come to an understanding that we both feel is in the best interests of our two countries,” Rumsfeld said after the meetings.

…

Japan and the United States are close allies. On Friday, Japan’s Cabinet approved a six-month extension of its non-combat support for the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan, officials said.

Of course, there are still some hurdles to be cleared, but they’re mostly internal, related to NIMBY and environmental issues raised over proposed new sites for some military facilities to be relocated within Japan. None of the reports I’ve seen indicates that Nukaga gave word of any changes on those.

The Nikkei, BTW, says that Ambassador Thomas Schieffer was present for part of the negotiations in Washington. No statement from him that I’ve seen, though, which is as per usual. His presence hasn’t really seemed to register much, at least compared to Howard Baker’s. Interestingly–and I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before–the restructuring of US military presence is not listed as one of the “Issues in Focus” on the US Embassy homepage.

And just to drive home that one-big-happy-family feeling….

Courting the likelihood of another outburst from overseas, 96 members of a suprapartisan lawmakers’ group visited war-related Yasukuni Shrine on Friday, the first day of an annual three-day spring rite.

The politicians belong to a group called Minnade Yasukunijinja ni Sanpaisuru Kokkaigiin no Kai, which literally means, “A group of Diet members who visit Yasukuni Shrine together.”

The 96 lawmakers who visited Friday included former Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Makoto Koga, who currently serves as the head of Nippon Izokukai, an association for bereaved family members of the nation’s war dead.

Well, all right, then. (BTW, that name really is a mouthful–皆で靖国神社に参拝する国会議員の会. They must have some eyecatching letterhead.)

Now, I know I have a few readers who cook, and all I can say is, My dears, you are NOT adequately taking care of America while I’m gone.

On Japanese cable, they tend to air US shows with almost no commercials; that means that a show that’s an hour long at home has fifteen minutes of dead space at the end, and on some channels, they fill up the time with kitchen gadget commercials.

So it is that I’ve just spent several minutes laughing my ass off at a commercial for something called the Pasta Express. I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a parody. Are people seriously that easily gulled? You pour boiling water into a plastic tube full of pasta and let it sit for fifteen minutes? We’re making wallpaper paste, I assume? The commercial is beyond ridiculous, purporting to save the hapless householder from such difficulties as aiming the pot so that the pasta lands in the collander and…uh, I’m not sure what else the point is. You can’t possibly be shortening the cooking time by not having a heat source keeping the water boiling. And even the commercial makes the pasta look clumpy when it comes out of the tube.

But you can apparently use the thing to make hotdogs or boiled vegetables and other things that are difficult to make with an ordinary stockpot and stovetop, too. Yet another advance in modern life.