Maeda, Meet Nifong; Nifong…

Sheesh. I can’t find a good word for it, since I don’t want to disrespect “shit,” a perfectly respectable word that is now having hard times the last few centuries. FYI Maeda’s arrest is the first arrest that the Supreme Prosecutors Office has ever made on its own, according to a media report.

Silver lining? Gives the lie to big bad conspiracy theories about the Japanese bureaucracy and the public prosecutors. Hey, you take what you can get.

Sunday Funnies: I Am Not a Feminist , But…

Anecdotes and selective data to reinforce the prevailing conventional wisdom…it’s what I’ve always railed against when I see it in the mass media. Here’s Kate Harding writing in a similar vein in Salon, on an AP report that claims to have identified “a disturbing trend: Women in the U.S. are drinking more, and drunken-driving arrests among women are rising rapidly while falling among men.” The second part cannot be denied; the first part is… I’d say the jury is out—which is actually Harding’s point.

Which somehow brings me to this NYT report on the new, hybrid jury-judge panel system that has been brought in for criminal trials here. I have a problem with this:

”…opinion polls have shown the Japanese public to be highly skeptical of the jury system, primarily because of deep cultural aversions, including a reluctance to express opinions in public, to argue with colleagues and to question authority.”

Now I know the first part is true, and I’m ready to go along to some extent with the thrust of the assertions in the second part. But are the two, in fact, linked? It sounds vaguely plausible. But do the opinion polls show the linkage? I’d like to see how they do that, because I don’t see a line of questions that tease it out.

Going back to feminism, the same friend who sent me the last article also has been passing around another NYT report, this one about the growing social acceptability of “lavishing adoring (albeit nonsexual) attention on men for a hefty fee” as an occupation for young women. The report goes on to claim:

“[W]ith that line of work, called hostessing, among the most lucrative jobs available to women and with the country neck-deep in a recession, hostess positions are increasingly coveted, and hostesses themselves are gaining respectability and even acclaim. Japan’s worst recession since World War II is changing mores.

Members of the middle-class resorting to the overt use of their sexuality to earn a living in these hard times is not a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, as this Salon report shows, nor is it absolutely gender-specific, as least in the world of TV dramas. But are the increased “respectability” and “acclaim” linked to the current recession? They appears to have far more to do with the more gradual, more enduring emergence of everyman—and woman—as a media force. Some of this new breed of celebrities—such as the tetujinchefs—have seen their fame last much longer than their allotment of 15 minutes. From this perspective, Eri Momoka, the “single mother who became a hostess and worked her way out of penury to start a TV career and her own line of clothing and accessories” is merely the water trade’s variation of the dokusha models, the amateurs who have taken over some of the traditional trendsetting role of entertainers and professional supermodels.

And speaking of the water trade, the report does not explore the world of the celebrity hostess’s cultural ancestors, the geisha, and even the high-class prostitute oiran, European courtesans, and the Classic Greek hetaeras, professionals whose cultural, social and even political influence has been obscured by the multiple filters of Victorian and contemporary sensibilities. Then there are the economics. Do the $100,000 hostesses receive healthcare benefits? Not likely. Pension plans? And who pays for their clothes? Like the geisha, these things add up. And like the professional athlete or the futures trader, old hostesses tend to fade away. Which is where the sugar daddy—again as in the case of the geisha—comes in.

Not that NYT is obliged to explore these avenues. But the stories are there for those who are willing to make the effort. For those who aren’t, there’s always the Case of the Earwax-Cleaning Murder to turn to.

And Have You Ever Heard of a Singing Waitress?

They were two lawyers and I have a legal background too, so talk turned to workplace discrimination and the reasons why the more expensive restaurants have few if any female waiters and the legal implications thereof. The hardest part is staying on your feet all day, so the reason can’t be physical. Yet have you heard of any lawsuits? Which reminded me, diners always have waitresses, at least in the movies.

So, what’s going on? And has a man ever successfully applied for a waiting job at Hooters? Bonus question: Would he have to wear that uniform?

Violence in Sports

Janne brought up a couple of interesting points under the more general issue of special treatment of sports under the law in his comment here. I wouldn’t be surprised to find plenty of blogs and websites on both of them created and maintained by professionals. But I don’t have the time to go look around just now. In the meantime, here’s my own two cents’ worth on one of them.

Violence is a formally accepted element of many, but not all, spectator sports: First, there are individual sports* like boxing, wrestling and contact martial arts, where brutal, if not brute, force is the point of it all. Next, there are the various forms of football ranging from American football to soccer, where force is an inevitable element of the game but is not directly connected to the objective of the game itself. Third, there are team sports such as cricket, where physical contact is in principle forbidden. Baseball, though a similar sport in form, probably falls in the second category, since base running can and sometimes does result in violent physical contact. Fourth and finally, there are individual sports where physical contact is in principle forbidden (or unthinkable). The other side of the coin for the sanctioned violence are the forbidden kind that occur in the follow of the game, subject to a variety of penalties, ranging from losing field advantage and/or the ball to suspension (itself ranging from minutes to entire games) to advantageous scoring opportunities (penalty shots). In my view, it is the existence of these penalties and the rules to impose them that internalizes the violence as an accepted element by the parties to the game and gives it de facto immunity from criminal prosecution. Treat them as any other acts of violence, and the sports themselves would become unplayable.

And then there is fighting. Fighting among the players routinely breaks out in professional team sports in North America (though rarely, if ever (if I understand correctly) in soccer). In fact, it’s even part—implicit, true—of the attraction in ice hockey. They are almost always touched off by play action, but are themselves not part of the flow of the game. Indeed, the fights themselves interrupt play. Here again, though, the sports authorities are generally allowed to manage their affairs, usually by way of suspensions and fines, free of criminal prosecution. The players, by submitting to the authority of their respective sports bodies, accept this state of affairs. If this type of violence is accepted by the parties, if only implicitly by way of accepting a set of rules that impose penalties on aggressors, then it is difficult to distinguish it from that which occurs within the flow. More generally, note that the law recognizes a range of acts of violence that results in physical harm when there is consent, such as tattoos, body piercing, and some forms of cosmetic surgery. There is no inherent difference between the consent in these activities and consent, if somewhat implicit, in sports.

Of course de facto immunity does not provide an absolute shield from criminal prosecution. It goes without saying that spectators are not bound by this state of affairs beyond the wayward foul ball or hockey puck. And the authorities do go after particularly egregious cases. North American authorities have sought and won conviction of players committing violent fouls within the flow of the game that resulted in serious injury.

The third category falls somewhere between the second and fourth categories, and so let’s skip it for this post. It does pose an interesting question, but I don’t feel competent to attack it unless I am aware of the case law. (Do cricket players “fight” during matches at all? Is that “cricket”?)

Then there is the fourth category. In tennis, if a fist fight broke out between Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal after a hard-fought match, I am sure that it would be treated like any other fight such as one between, oh, you and me. There is no implicit acceptance of violence here. That does not, of course, mean that it would immediately result in criminal prosecution. The authorities in liberal democracies often will not go after simple assault and battery cases if there is no injury and no one files a criminal complaint. Even if there is some physical harm, they will sometimes let the case go if the victim has settled with the assailant and has agreed not to press charges. It should be no different in tennis, or any other sport in the fourth category. Unfortunately, with John McEnroe long retired, we shall never have the opportunity to know.

* For the purposes of this argument, doubles (think tennis) and series of two-player games (think team tennis) shall not be considered a team sport. Why this should be so deserves to be explored on its own, but I’ll reserve that for another occasion since it requires more thinking than I can afford at this moment.

Supreme Court Justices Vote Their Background on Discriminatory Nationality Rules

On June 4, the Japanese Supreme Court in a plenary ruling by a majority of 10 to 5 struck down as unconstitutional the provision of the Nationality Law that discriminates among children with unmarried parents, one Japanese and one non, as unconstitutional. Two of the five dissenters agreed that the provision was unconstitutional but required an act of the Diet to rectify the situation.

The current Nationality Law automatically gives Japanese citizenship to any child born out of wedlock from a Japanese mother. But the Act gives automatic citizenship to a child born out of wedlock to a Japanese father and a non-Japanese mother only if the Japanese father legally recognizes the child as his own before the child is born. This discrimination was somewhat eased—but totally eliminated—by a 1984 amendment, which conferred citizenship on children who had been recognized by their fathers post-birth when (and only when) their parents married (conferring post-facto legitimacy to such children). All the justices agreed that the discrimination had been constitutional at its incipience in 1984, but the majority cited changing family relationships as well as international trends and general provisions in treaties protecting children against discrimination by circumstances of their birth in their ruling.Tens of thousands of children believed to be living in Japan under those circumstances are expected to be affected by the most recent ruling, as the authorities have decided to accept all applications on behalf of such children. Needless to say, their mothers will be on much firmer legal ground with regard to their residency in Japan.

There’s a lot of food for thought here regarding constitutional law, demographics, gender issues, xenophobia/-philia, and whatnot, so I’m disappointed as well as somewhat surprised that the Anglo-Saxon media has ignored it altogether. (It was splashed all over the June 5 front pages in Japan.) In the meantime, I want to point out something that has failed to draw any attention here.

Of the 15 Supreme Court Justices, six are career judges (straight out of the leagal training center), two are former prosecutors (again straight out of the legal training center), two are former civil servants (one woman and one former head of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau), four are former private lawyers, and one is a former academic (elite scholars have not historically sought to register as lawyers, which they are entitled to do after a certain number of years teaching law). Now this syndicalist breakdown of the Supreme Court has been remarkably consistent over the decades. There usually has been an ex-ambassador in the lineup; on this court, the Foreign Ministry has been set aside, likely to accommodate the female ex-civil servant. (I can think of a couple of capable female diplomats who will be in line to kill two birds with one stone in, say, another ten years or so.)

But that’s not my point. My point is this. The five dissenters include the two prosecutors and the two ex-civil servants, and one of the six career judges. Both the ex-civil servants as well as one of the two former prosecutors ruled the measure constitutional, while the other ex-prosecutor and the career judge considered the measure unconstitutional but deferred to the Diet to rectify the situation.

Now this is not Pakistan; none of these justices are going to be removed from office because of their votes, other than through a once-a-decade national plebiscite on te4h occasion of a House of Representatives general election. I can only assume that they are voting their conscience. Which makes it all the more remarkable their faithfulness to the hive minds of their respective constituencies.