Kumamoto International Archive

Archive of the Kumamoto International Facebook group, 2011–present.

Kirk here with some news / history. Important events in the history of Hansen's disease (leprosy) have unfolded here in Kumamoto. One such event was the 2001 Kumamoto District Court ruling that held that the central government’s segregation policy was unconstitutional.
That was a big step forward but this article indicates that there's still a lot of work to be done.
Survey: Fearing prejudice, 38% of leprosy patients use false names | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis
Nearly 40 percent of leprosy patients are still living under false names to shield themselves and their families from prejudice and discrimination, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed.

Kirk here with a note about Daikichi Irokawa. He has a clear connection to Kumamoto (Minamata disease) but I'm a fan for a number of reasons. If you're interested learning more about the life of an outstanding progressive intellectual, read the article.
VOX POPULI: Remembering the pioneering historian Daikichi Irokawa | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis
Historian Daikichi Irokawa, who died on Sept. 7 at age 96, broke free of the restraints of academia to blaze a trail in modern and contemporary history.

William. The Aso Volcano Archeology Museum has announced it will host something called the Aso Night Museum this weekend and a few weekends following. The link does not provide the time, but I guess it's at night. It looks fun - if you have a car. Scroll down on the link for wonderful photos.
阿蘇火山博物館 × ネイキッド阿蘇ナイトミュージアム
阿蘇火山博物館とネイキッドがコラボレーション。夜の阿蘇火山博物館と阿蘇の大自然の中をめぐるナイトウォーク。

William. China's President Xi announced that the country will stop funding overseas coal projects and try to itself become carbon neutral by 2060. This puts a bit of pressure on Kyushu's largest power company, Kyuden, to eliminate coal from its energy mix as well. Here's a quick look at major Kyushu power plants and their type. There are two coal gas power plants nearby, in Ashika and Matsuura. Kyuden's got to get moving.

Kirk here with an article about Aileen M. Smith, Eugene Smith's wife, whom Andrew heard speak the other day:
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210907/p2a/00m/0et/015000c
Here's a like to Andrew's post:
https://www.facebook.com/Kumamotoi/posts/5995116257228423
'Justice will see the light of day': Minamata disease book coauthor Aileen M. Smith - The Mainichi

Kirk with a one-sentence summary of a Japanese news article: A local (in Kumamoto!) company has developed a COVID-19 vaccine that they think they can make available (that is, get through testing required by the government; chiken [治験]) before the end of 2022.
But don't wait for it! If you're not vaccinated, get whatever is available. :)
https://news.goo.ne.jp/article/kumanichi/region/kumanichi-dr403697.html

Douglas here. Taking into account the present interest in the film, "Minamata", I thought some of you might be interested in getting hold of the book, "Minamata Bay, 1932" by Norio Iriguchi.
The book is hard to get as it was printed in 2012 and is now out of print.
The ISBN number is ISBN978-4-535-58622-2. Amazon Japan has it listed at https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Norio-Iriguchi/dp/4535586225/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Minamata+Bay%2C+1932&qid=1632187593&s=english-books&sr=1-1
I had the honour of proof reading it, and having many additional suggestions included in the book.
I found the description of the Minamata area and its history to be extremely interesting. I even got my name mentioned in the Acknowledgements!

Kirk here with a note about the full moon and the lunar calendar. Tomorrow (9/21) we should be able to see the full moon (though there may be some clouds) -- and it's free! According to the old lunar calendar (kyureki / 旧暦 or taiinreki / 太陰暦), this particular full moon appears on August 15 (which, again, is 9/21 this year in our modern calendar). "Jugoya" in the explanation from the Kumamoto International Foundation that I quote below refers to the 15th (jugo / 十五) evening (ya / 夜) of the month. Since it was a lunar calendar, the 15th was always a full moon. The correspondence with the harvest season gave it special significance as a time to give thanks.
There's a song about "jugoya" that I think most Japanese people are familiar with from their childhood:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYZl86wD6Q4
The following is the explanation from the Kumamoto International Foundation. It came to me in a mailing list I'm subscribed to ("Anshin-Anzen disaster prevention and daily life information e-mail magazine"). I think it's great that they send the original Japanese text along with the English translation. If you're studying Japanese, you can refer to the English as you read the Japanese.
----- text from the International Foundation -----
【Moon Viewing 】
　Jugoya is an event that we appreciate for harvesting in fall, enjoying the beautiful moon at Full Moon Night. The moon that night is called “the harvest moon”, and it is said to be the most beautiful of the year. It is customary to offer Japanese pampas grass, dumplings, and crops.
Japanese pampas grass : We think of them as ears of rice and pray for a good harvest. They have sharp cuts, so they are said to be amulets.
Dumplings : Their round shapes describe the full moon. 。
Crops : We offer farm products that were just harvested, for example, taros, chestnuts, and young soybean pods to thank for the harvest.
It is said that we are able to take good health and happiness by eating dumplings and crops that we offered after viewing the moon. There are some similar events in other countries in Asia. People eat mooncakes in China and Songpyeonin Korea.
【お月見について】
　十五夜は秋の美しい月を観賞しながら、秋の収穫に感謝をする行事です。この時の月を「中秋の名月」と呼び、一年で最も美しい月だと言われています。お月見には「ススキ」、「お団子」、「農作物」を供える習慣があります。
ススキ・・・稲に見立てて、豊作を祈念します。また、切り口が鋭いので魔除けになると言われています。
お団子・・・丸い形が満月を表します。
農産物・・・里芋や栗、枝前といった収穫したばかりの農産物をお供えして収穫に感謝します。
お供えしたお団子や農産物はお月見の後に食べることによって健康と幸福を取り入れると言われます。
お月見は他のアジアの国でもあります。中国では「月餅」を、韓国では「松餅」を食べます。

Andrew here. I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see Minamata, the film about the disease and the efforts of Eugene Smith to publicise it globally, yesterday in Minamata city.
I didn’t know a great deal about the disease before seeing the movie but I found it both informative and touching, helping me to understand the horrors of the disease and the impact it had on the victims, their families, and the community. This was made even more poignant for me by somebody affected by the disease being present at the screening and Aileen Smith, the wife and collaborator of Eugene during his time in Minamata, giving a short talk after the movie had finished.
While the movie is clearly tailored towards a Western audience, the Japanese audience members I spoke to afterwards all enjoyed it and thought it captured what the people of Minamata went through. They all hoped that as many people as possible would see this movie so they could learn about the tragedy that unfolded here and the corporate indifference which perpetuated it.
I highly recommend it to all. It is not just a movie about a tragedy that took place in this prefecture, but it is also a moving story containing lessons about environmental pollution and human dignity which resonate to this day.

William. Minamata is one of the most beautiful towns in Japan. Its seacoast is splendid, and I found myself cracking oysters from the rocks and nibbling them up - and then I thought, maybe this is not the wisest thing to do. The first sign of the mercury poisoning in Minamata was cats going into convulsions - they had consumed the mercury-contaminated fish. Fortunately, the source of the pollution is gone, but its legacy remains.
Minamata's Message to the World (1976)
This award-winning documentary by director Noriaki Tsuchimoto describes one of the first and most dramatic cases of mercury contamination, affecting fishers'...

William. Kumamoto's oldest human just turned 112. Hayashi Shinobu (林シノブさん) was born in 1909. Her husband died when she was 34, and she worked to raise her three children by herself. Many females from that era had katakana names as their parents were illiterate; money had to be spent for a scribe to assign a kanji, which was often done for sons but not daughters. Here's to a life well done. https://kumanichi.com/articles/398990

Kirk here with some information on Japanese classes. The image you see was converted from a pdf that is linked to from the following page on the International Center's website:
https://www.kumamoto-if.or.jp/kiji003349/index.html
I'm not sure if there's an English version of the same information but the important point is that there are many venues that offer Japanese classes and that you can call the phone number or send an inquiry to the e-mail address shown at the bottom if you are looking for a class that will meet your needs.
This list of opportunities is not complete. Please feel free to add notes regarding other opportunities in comments to this post.

Kirk here with some news about the Hanabata Hiroba (downtown near the Kotsu Center). They were planning on embedding brass plates with little history lessons on them but that plan has been cancelled. The plates (already made and installed) have the names of venerated historical figures and, because they were to be embedded in the pavement, people would wind up stepping on those names. That caused a backlash and so the plan has been scrapped -- after spending lots of money to make and install the plates. Personally, I'm less bothered by having the names embedded in the pavement than I am by the name that had been given to the plates: Rekishi sign (歴史サイン). Rekishi, meaning "history" is fine but whether we're taking about the English "sign" or the Japanese "サイン" (a loanword offspring that has declared independence from its English parent), "rekishi sign" just doesn't sit well with me as something to be embedded in pavement. Or is it just me?
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/b9bec17c4f11ad15533282d202fb6a1b3d1d2c49

William. A friend of mine recently visited Crater Lake in Oregon. It occurred to me that, if Tateno gap had not opened, the Aso caldera would also be a huge lake. Maybe that would have been cool.

Kirk here with a note about stormy weather. Fortunately, the erstwhile super typhoon Chanthu (No. 14 in Japan) is no longer a typhoon -- more of a tropical storm -- but it's still a good idea to be careful. The image is from the following site:
https://www.tropicalstormrisk.com

Kirk here with a share from "Untapped Kumamoto." This page is fairly new and so still has a relatively small following but the quality is high so I'm sure it will grow. It you haven't checked it out, please take a look.
https://www.facebook.com/untappedkumamoto/posts/2381382061992128

William. Autumn is here, and perhaps you're itchy to get out. A place to visit which, if you haven't, you can't actually say you've lived in Kumamoto, is 釈迦院御坂遊歩道3333段石段 (shakainmisakayūhodō 3333 steps - there are actually more; I counted them once), which is one of the longest 参道 (sandō, a road approaching a shrine) in Japan. Near the peak is an outcrop with a beautiful view of the Yatsushiro sea and its surroundings, and many stop there, but THAT IS NOT THE POINT! Continue upward and visit the shrine, the purpose of the steps. It's not a particularly spectacular shrine, but it does have the most excellent 参道 of any in Japan. There is a bus from Kotsu Center, but the optimal transportation mode is a car. Elevation is about 600M from the trailhead.

Hi! Kirk here with a little heads up about the "Return To Japan Support Group":
https://www.facebook.com/groups/returntojapan
If you become a member of the group, you will see that it is sponsored by a company called MetroResidences, which will let you rent a place to stay in Tokyo.
Generally speaking, the group is quite good; it has over 20,000 participants and you can get quick responses to your questions.
However, there's a serious problem. That is that the administrator tells people that they have to quarantine in Tokyo, even though it's also possible to rent a car and travel to far off places like Kumamoto. In my view, this is a clear conflict of interest; the obvious choice for renters is MetroResidences. In fact, I know of at least one Kumamoto International participant who rented from them, apparently as a result of participating in the support group.
Please look at the first image. Here the administrator says that you have to (which I take to mean "must") quarantine in Tokyo. This was in response to an inquiry about whether or not you can take a connecting flight to another region of Japan. While it's true that you can't take a connecting flight, staying in Tokyo (that is, renting from companies like MetroResidences) is not the only option. As you can see in the second image, other people had already pointed out that it's possible to rent a car. But, when I said the exact same thing, but in a comment to the administrator and with a link to previous discussion, I was disciplined (third image).
Actually, even before I was disciplined, I had called Kumamoto's Consumer Center to report a possible conflict of interest. The person I spoke with said he would pass the information on to people in Tokyo who deal with such national issues.
Here's the text of the post I linked to, which may have irritated the administrator even more than my just saying that you can rent a car:
===== quote starts =====
I would like to respectfully request a revision of the "group summary" which is located here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/returntojapan/announcements
"Be aware any long-distance driving plans may not be suitable under the quarantine rules. (for example stopping at rest areas along the way)"
I am not aware of the Japanese government saying that we should not stop at rest areas. And, if we are going to drive more that a couple of hours, I think that stopping at rest areas is important to maintaining alertness and safety.
The following Sankei Shimbun article (in Japanese) says that car rentals have increased significantly since the government changed its stance and decided to allow people to travel to their homes and isolate there:
https://www.sankei.com/.../20200422.../
I have not, however, been able to find an official government statement that is either pro or con regarding stopping at rest areas or indicates how far we can drive. It seems that the government has decided not to publish clear rules on relevant websites. Instead they are responding to individual inquiries via the following (and other) hotline numbers:
0120-565653
If you call the number (you may need to speak Japanese) as I did, I think you will find that we are allowed to rent cars and travel distances that would necessitate stopping to rest.
Also, as I have written in a previous post, my plans to drive from Narita to Kyushu were not met with any disapproval or warnings when I when through the entry process at Narita.
Since this is a support group, I don't think it should discourage us from doing something that the government says is OK, especially something like stopping to rest, something that is necessary for safe travel. Not adjusting the group summary without a clear justification is also problematic because there is at least an appearance of a conflict of interest: MetroResidences stands to benefit if more people decide to rent a place to stay instead of a car.
===== quote ends =====
If you are or become a member of the group, you can read the discussion this post engendered here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/returntojapan/posts/1210049706159548
In one of the comments a participant said that she had been banned for saying that it was OK to drive to Kyushu, just as I have no been. Like I say, conflict of interest. Suppression of information that might lead participants away from a MetroResidences rental.
Well, that's the gist of my complaint. There's a lot of good information that gets exchanged in the support group but be aware of the conflict of interest and the possibility that the administrator will discipline you of you try to tell people that renting in Tokyo isn't the only option.
Finally, I'd appreciate it if you would share this post with anyone who is considering traveling abroad. They will probably want to refer to the good information available in the group but I would like them to go in with their eyes open, especially if they might prefer renting a car to staying in Tokyo for two weeks. Thanks!

(Fiona) Here is further information in English about the new Soup Kitchen that is providing meals at Gran Paletta twice a week. If you'd like to donate to the crowdfunding or offer your services as a volunteer you can get in touch with the organisers as posted below.

Kirk here with a little report on my experience getting a PCR test that would allow me to get in to Hawaii to visit family. This post is related to (or, in a sense, an extension of) an earlier post by Chuck Waterman. First, here's the link to the post by Chuck:
https://www.facebook.com/Kumamotoi/posts/5807263189347065
Before I went to Hawaii I got my test at the Haga Kodomo Clinic in Mashiki. It's one of the clinics listed on the following page:
https://townwifi.com/aftercorona/pcr/list/?id=43
One of the things we talked about in relation to Chuck's post was the hefty fee: 33,300 yen. I've forgotten the exact amount but Haga Kodomo Clinic is significantly lower -- just over 20,000 as I recall. Moreover, I didn't realize it at the time but Haga is the ONLY place in Kumamoto on a list of facilities recognized by the State of Hawaii. One thing I'm still fuzzy about is what kind of PCR test (that is, from what facility) you need to get in to various places throughout the world. It seems that China, like Hawaii, has designated certain facilities but I'm not sure about other countries / regions.
I learned from Jackie Benke (Thanks Jackie!) about a new facility behind the Shiyakusho (City Hall?) in Kumamoto City that will start administering PCR tests on the 18th of this month for just 5,000 yen. I don't know, however, if a test from such a facility will be admissible in other countries. Be careful about that. Or, they may charge more to fill out the proper form in English.
I hope that those of you with wisdom and knowledge that I lack will share what you know in a comment on this post. Thanks!
https://www.tku.co.jp/news/?news_id=20210913-00000012&fbclid=IwAR3g0ZtW0QSgIQoSqNemvZVuOHTZFu-44V5KkinZX271-T16q1Bp9LiGCK4