Senbatsuru

On February 21, 1955, Sadako Sasaki, a 12-year old girl from Hiroshima, Japan, was hospitalized with leukemia, brought on by the atom bomb dropped on that city in 1945, when she was 2. She was about one mile away from Ground Zero at the time. The bomb had taken a decade to do its damage to Sadako, but the damage was done. Doctors gave her a year to live, if that.

Sadako had other ideas. An old Japanese belief holds that a person can be granted a wish by making 1,000 origami cranes. (A group of 1,000, held together with string, is called a senbatsuru. Thus the post title.) Sadako had a wish. She wished to get better. On August 3, she was given a crane by her friend, Chizuko Hamamoto. At that, she resolved to fold the necessary cranes, and spent hours every day working towards the 1,000-crane mark. There was a lack of the amount of paper she would need at the hospital, but Sadako made do however she could, with whatever kind of paper was available. Medicine wrappings, the wrapping paper from other patients' get-well presents, Chizuko would bring paper from school, whatever worked.

Unfortunately, after 644 cranes, Sadako ran out of time. She died on October 25. Her classmates folded the other 356, and laid them as well as her own to rest along with her. (Although the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum maintains that she made it to 1,000.) A statue of her stands at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, where cranes continue to be placed to this day. There's a good chance that, if you think back, you'll recall reading the story in school once.

Given that Japan is, once again, dealing with nuclear radiation, it feels appropriate to bring up the story. While far and away the best thing you can do to help from home is always going to be to send money (hint hint), here's an instructional video on how to make an origami crane.

You know. Just in case.

Remember What I Said About Japan Still Not Having It Quite As Bad As Port Royal?

Yeah... never mind.

Seriously. Never. Freaking. Mind. Still technically true, per capita, but never mind.

Whoever's up there-- God, Shinto gods, Godzilla-- you can stop now. You proved your point, whatever it is.

(In related news, if we could cut out the talk about the effect on Japan's stock market until we're a bit further into cleanup, that'd be great. The Nikkei is probably the least of concerns for a whole hell of a lot of Japan right now. Businesses that can supply food and water? That's much more useful.)

If you have any spare money laying around, the American Red Cross could use it. This donation link will cover readers in the United States and Canada; other nations, there's surely a charity near you.

People More Badass Than You

You've trained, you've sweat, you've sacrificed, but you finally did it. You've completed that marathon.

Pansy.

You've trained more, you've sweat more, you've sacrificed more, but you finally did it. You've completed that Ironman triathlon.

Wuss.

Try the Tendai marathon on for size.

Tendai Buddhist monks, based at Mount Hiei near Kyoto, Japan, are intimately familiar with the Tendai marathon; to them it is a path to spiritual enlightenment. For not only do they have to do the running, along the way they must meditate as well. This would normally be fine. Hey, great, a chance to stop and catch their breath.

Except there are about 255 of these stops.

And they have another marathon the next day. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. With peers completely unconcerned as to whether you live or die.

Welcome to the 1,000-day challenge. Just to qualify to run the 1,000 day challenge, one must first complete a 100-day kaihogyo, in which one must run 40 km (24.8 miles) per day, with all the meditation stops, every day for 100 consecutive days. There is a prescribed route, but it's unmarked, much of it along uneven back roads as well as the streets of Kyoto, and you aren't given a map. If you go off-course, too bad; you simply have to find your way back to the route. Your diet is to be vegetables, tofu and miso soup. You're running in a straw hat, sandals, and are dressed in all-white. Your day begins at 1:30 AM. With all the stops, a single 40-km marathon can easily last seven and a half hours.

You are only permitted to sit down once.

And all that time, you carry with you a dagger and a rope cord. That is the consequence for failure, and all along the route, you will see grave markers of countless 19th-century monks who chose that option. For you, it's pretty much symbolic, and nowadays you can simply try again next year, but face death on the mountain and your fellow monks won't be quick about treating you.

As if that weren't enough, one of the 100 days must be a kirimawari- a 33.6 mile (54 km) run. Runners will tend to lose an entire day of sleep completing the kirimawari, but they just have to push on through.

This is just the qualifier.

Should you complete the 100-day kaihogyo, you then have the option of undertaking the 1,000-day challenge. Should you say yes, you then embark on a seven-year oddysey.

And those 100 days you just did don't count.

In years 1-3, you'll be doing one 100-day kaihogyo per year just like the one you ran in the qualifier, except there's no kirimawari. Amidst it all, Tendai monks are required to partake in other training and duties in the Mount Hiei temple. 300 days down. (In the middle of each 100-day term, there's a four-day retreat during which you don't have to run, and which still count towards the 100 days. However, modern monks tack an extra four days onto the end of the run of their own free will.)

These first three years are referred to as "basic training".

In years 4-5, you're still doing a 40-km run, with the meditation stops as always, but now it's for 200 consecutive days. (You might be wondering at this point about what happens in winter. Yeah. Good luck with that, Mr. Monk.) 700 days down, 300 to go.

In year 6, you're back to a 100-day year. But you're not getting off that easy. Oh, no. Remember that 40 kilometers? It's now 60 (37.3 miles). Per day. For 100 days.

In year 7, the final year, you only have two kaihogyos to go. This is when they stop toying with you. Remember that 60 kilometers? It's now 84 (52.2 miles). Per day. For 100 consecutive days. With meditation stops. On back mountain roads and the streets of Kyoto. That dagger's probably looking mighty tempting right about now, though by this point there are plenty of people along the course rooting you on, as word gets around fast that someone's getting close to the end.

Oh yes. You are required to bless them.

The final 100 days send you back to the 40-km kaihogyo, which to anyone that's made it past the 84-kilometer hell seems almost like a victory lap.

A single Year 7 day can hit the 20-hour mark, meaning you aren't worrying too much anymore about performing the other duties and training in the temple, which is small comfort when you've only got four hours a day when you aren't running. As for the lack of sleep, the Tendais aren't too worried about you. They have a saying, "Ten minutes' sleep for a marathon monk is worth five hours of ordinary rest." In addition, by this point you should be trying to rest individual parts of your body during the run.

But wait, there's more.

During Year 5, you will face the seven-day doiri. Mercifully, you will not be running. You'll only be walking 200 meters a day, to retrieve water from a nearby well as an offering for the emperor.

Unmercifully, the walk takes place at 2 AM. And you will not be drinking any of this water. Or any other water. Or food. You won't be sleeping either. Of course there was a catch, silly. This is the Tendai marathon.

All day long, you'll be praying and chanting, performing 100,000 prayers, with two monks by your side simply to make sure you don't break any rules. Prior to the doiri, you'll be reducing your food intake in order to prepare your body. As the London Observer puts it:

The first day is no problem, but there is some nausea on the second and third days. By the fourth and fifth days the hunger pangs have disappeared, but the monk has become so dehydrated that there is no saliva in his mouth and he will begin to taste blood.

Day 5 seems like a slap in the face: your mouth is dehydrated and you're allowed to rinse it out, but you better spit out every last drop of water that you've got in there.

On the occasions you go outside, however, you are allowed to keep all the rain that you can absorb through your skin.

By the end of the doiri, that 200 meter walk can take hours. You will be pale at the end of it There is, of course, a spiritual purpose: to bring you face-to-face with death. Doiri participants report a kind of mental clarity beyond the concepts of good and bad.

Unsurprisingly, they can also smell food being prepared miles away.

The doiri used to last ten days. They shortened it after they found that almost everybody died by the end of Day 10. The idea is to get you CLOSE to death, not to kill you.

Anyone who manages to survive the 1,000-day challenge is declared a Daigyoman Ajari- Saintly Master of the Highest Practice, and only has a 100,000-prayer fasting ceremony to go, 2-3 years after the running is over.

However, since 1585, only 46 men have attained that rank (though some places report 49). Even taking the higher number of 49, that's an average of one completion every 8.7 years. The better part of nine years and of all the people who set out on the challenge, one guy makes it. The most recent completion was by one Genshin Fujinami in 2003.

Do you still feel like an ironman?

(For more information, oh dear Lord will you be shelling out money for a used copy of this book.)

Japanese Minorities

Japan may look friendly, it may look inviting. It may very well be to you. But underneath the surface, it can be a very, very cold place.

Particularly if you live there.

Particularly if you're an ethnic minority.

Unlike the United States, Japan does not have laws banning racial discrimination in any way. The general concept of equality is mentioned in the constitution, Article 14,

"All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin. 2) Peers and peerage shall not be recognized. 3) No privilege shall accompany any award of honor, decoration or any distinction, nor shall any such award be valid beyond the lifetime of the individual who now holds or hereafter may receive it."

However, in practice, Article 14 proves to be little more than lip service. Much of Japan's legislation is toothless, with informal practices carried out regardless of what the law says. Any minority is fair game for discrimination, or at the very least, patronization. And when legislators attempt to fix the problem, they end up sorry they tried.

In 2002, a human rights bill was bogged down before coming to a vote, with opposition coming from concerns of freedom of expression over an anti-hate speech clause, and a proposal that Japanese nationals be the only people allowed to be human rights protection monitors. North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens played a factor, worrying some about who might end up in a position of influence.

In 2005, the bill was attempted again, with watered-down language concerning hate speech, but still failed to find sufficient support.

We'll cover five of the more prominent groups here, and how they're affected.

Gaijins
The most obvious, the ones that don't look the part at all. 'Gaijin' is a catch-all term for Westerners- Americans, Europeans, Brazilians. Yes, there is a Brazilian contingent in Japan. The Japanese are an insular people, with a very, very complex culture. A culture they on the whole think too complicated for an outsider to ever really understand, no matter how hard they try.

The Japanese mean well in this regard- they want the outsiders to understand, and as most visitors to Japan will attest, the help is welcome. The problem comes when someone decides to move to Japan, and as the years go on, they're seen as just as much of an outsider as when they first arrived. If you happen to be black, you'll get looked at in a kind of gawking manner. There aren't very many blacks in Japan. They've been seen on TV, and often imitated by Japanese looking to make fashion statements, but to see an actual black person standing there is a noteworthy thing. The noteworthiness decreases with further interaction, when one's personality is allowed to assert itself, and the merits of that personality begin to determine how one is regarded afterwards, but it can be a very disconcerting first impression.

It's still never going to be a perfect fit, though. When Japan was hit by the global economic downturn, the Japanese government, in an effort to fight a rising unemployment rate, offered Brazilian and Peruvian immigrants payouts to return to their homeland. And if you happen to need political asylum, look elsewhere. Since 1982, Japan has accepted only 508 refugees out of 8,263 applicants, an acceptance rate of only 6.1%. Comparably industrialized nations routinely receive tens of thousands of applicants per year, with the United States taking in over 1,300 Iraqi Palestinians in a single instance last July.

Chinese
As one's ethnicity creeps closer to Japan itself, though, the helpfulness dries up. The Chinese are one of if not the largest minority group in Japan, sitting alongside the Koreans. Japanese sentiment towards Chinese immigrants is analogous to American sentiment towards Mexican immigrants. While there are some successful Chinese in Japan, it takes twice the effort to get half the results.

In addition, Chinese immigrants are seen as likely to commit crimes, with the fact that the Chinese show the highest crime rate among immigrants. However, it should be noted that the overall crime rate of Japan is very low compared to that of other industrialized nations, with the vast majority of crimes being committed by the Japanese themselves. And even if the identity of the suspect isn't certain, the Chinese are often blamed anyway.

Zainichi
The word means simply 'staying in Japan', but in practice it's primarily applied to the Koreans, both North and South. The problems here stem overwhelmingly from the North. Starting in 1959, North Korea advertised a repatriation program, which was initially quite popular, in fact more popular than South Korea's program. Then word came back about how things actually were in North Korea. Migration dried up quickly- 74,779 of the eventual 93,000 or so repatriated to North Korea did so from 1959-1961- though continued in fits and starts until 1984. Then North Korea started simply kidnapping Zainichis, and Japanese who had married Zainichis. Relations between Japan and North Korea predictably soured.

However, according to Tessa Morris-Suzuki, professor of history at Australian National University and author of "Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan's Cold War",

"in the second half of the 1950s the Japanese government actively sought to persuade Zainichi Koreans to choose repatriation to North Korea over the option of remaining in Japan. In his conversation with the [International Committee of the Red Cross] official in 1956, [Inoue Matsutaro of the Japanese Red Cross] is reported going on to say that the government had “decided to undertake repatriation, if necessary by provoking individual demands to go to the North”. Precisely how the government intended to “provoke individual demands” is not clear. It should be noted, though, that precisely when this conversation was taking place, the Ministry of Health and Welfare was conducting a campaign to slash the very limited welfare benefits available to Koreans in Japan. Some 60,000 Zainichi Koreans had their welfare payments reduced or cancelled: a move which undoubtedly made the prospect of life in North Korea look more attractive than it would otherwise have seemed."

The South Koreans end up taken along for the ride. As a condition of naturalization, Zainichi Koreans were once required to take Japanese names, carry special identification, and submit to fingerprinting, under threat of deportation. While these requirements are no longer in force, informal pressure still remains to take a Japanese name.

Ainu
I mentioned during the Olympics that the Ainus were one of the indigenous races that took part in 'Anthropology Days' in 1904, also known as the biggest slap in the face of multiculturalism the Olympics has ever known. Events included mud fighting and rock throwing.

At least St. Louis recognized the Ainus as an indigenous people. Until 2008, Japan didn't. In fact, only five years before St. Louis, Japan, having previously banned the Ainu language, taken land, and making the people take Japanese names, labeled the Ainus "former Aborigines." This might have been a factor in the Ainus agreeing to participate in Anthropology Days.

As such, the Ainu, living mainly on Hokkaido, were expected to fully assimilate, with most Ainu ending up ashamed of their own culture simply because they were told to be. The Ainu culture was damaged nearly to the point of extinction, and those who remain report high dropout rates, high poverty rates, 60% of the income of majority Japanese households, and an equal number stating they'd lost touch with their culture, to the point where it's impossible to tell just how many Ainu are left.

And it is a distinct culture. Men wear beards. Women wear facial tattoos before reaching marriage. Clothes are often made from elm tree bark. The Ainu have a history of story-telling through sagas, known as Yukar, though subjugation has taken away much knowledge of it. (Some is available, though, at Amazon of all places.)

There is hope, however, as the new Prime Minister elected in August, Yukio Hatoyama, is from Hokkaido. Hatoyama has pledged measures to further recognize the Ainu and bring them back from the brink. He's got a long road ahead.

Burakumin
The Burakumin are proof that in Japan, you don't really have to be a minority to be a minority. If you've ever heard of India's caste system and the 'Untouchables' at the bottom, the burakumin occupy much the same position in Japan. The burakumin are descendants from the lowest class citizens of the Edo period, who tended to work in 'unclean' jobs handling corpses in various states, such as butcher, tanner, leathermaker, or gravedigger.

Officially, the class was abolished in 1871 through the Emancipation Edict. In practice, as said before, many laws in Japan are utterly without teeth, and the Emancipation Edict is no exception.

Hiding buraku heritage is hard, and the social penalty for being found out can be severe. Being a burakumin can keep someone from gaining a job, or a mate. A 2006 survey showed that 1 in 5 Japanese consider buraku descent as an important factor as to whether to marry a potential spouse. Marriages that are already scheduled can and do get cancelled if one finds out that the other is a burakumin.

And it's not getting any better. In 2009, Google added some old maps to its Google Earth service of Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo, but was unaware that those maps, which marked off ghetto areas, can to this day be used to track the lineage of modern burakumin, perpetuating the prejudice.

Ironically, in Japan, the dead are revered. One of Japan's most important occasions, the Obon Festival, lasts for three days, during which, according to Buddhist belief, ancestral spirits of the dead temporarily return to the land of the living. This is most famously celebrated through paper lanterns, lit and floated down a river, each lantern denoting one passed spirit returning to the realm of the dead at the conclusion of the festival. Many Obon Festivals also use taiko drums to keep rhythm during dance, and are often the focus of contests.

Taiko drums made with leather, historically made by the burakumin. Who also consigned those spirits' earthly vessels to the ground.

For more on civil rights in Japan, or the lack thereof, check out debito.org.