X-JAPAN - WEEK END

Week End

I hear a knock on the door

激しくせまる
失いかけた意識のなかで
おまえがささやく
追いつめられた心溶かす

鈍色の肖像
切り刻まれた記憶を映し出す
咲き乱れたhateful black heart
心にせまる

研ぎ澄まされた transient feeling
人波の中
ヒステリックにざわめく風に
止まらない涙を

胸に抱きしめ 孤独を色どる
I’ve nothing to lose
(Love me till the end)
Except your heart

手首を流れる血をおまえの体に
絡みつけると一瞬のうちに更みがえる記憶に視界を
閉ざされ笑いながら逃げていくおまえの姿を
見つめる傷ついたオレが立ってる

Week End
Week End Week End
Week End I’m at my with end
I’ve nothing to lose

(Love me till the end)

Except your heart
I hear a knock on the door
激しくせまる
失いかけた意識のなかで

おまえがささやく
冷たい指先のばし
傷口に口づけ
赤く染まった凶気を抱きしめる

鏡を見つめながら振るえる体に
流れはじめた澄き通る血を青白いおまえの心に
絡ませ幻覚に消えて行く最後の涙を
拾い集めて血の海にまどろむ

Week End
Week End
I still love you
Week End

But I cannot carry on
手首を流れる血をおまえの体に
絡みつけると一瞬のうちに更みがえる記憶に視界を
閉ざされ笑いながら逃げていくおまえの姿を

見つめる傷ついたオレが立ってる
Week End
Week End Week End
Week End I’m at my with end

Week End

—————————————————–

This is what happens when a time sensitive work project goes wrong on a Sunday and you have to work to fix someone else’s mess.

Seven dead in Tokyo knife attack

Seven dead in Tokyo knife attack

A man armed with a knife has killed seven people and injured 10 others in central Tokyo, Japanese media say.

The incident occurred in the Akihabara district, a busy shopping area known as Electric Town that is popular with young people and tourists.

A suspect, said to be 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato, has been arrested.

Police spokesman Jiro Akaogi told reporters: “The suspect said he came to Akihabara to kill people. He said he was tired of life”.

The dead include six men, ranging in age from 19 to 74, and a 21-year-old woman, Kyodo News said.

Reports say the suspect drove a rented truck into a crowd in the early afternoon and then began stabbing people at random.

The moments after the stabbings in Tokyo

James Slaymaker, a British man working in Japan, got to the area shortly after the stabbings. He described the scene to BBC News:

“As I walked down the street, I noticed there were a lot of police cars. I noticed there was a guy literally just lying there with tape on his eyes and blood pouring out of the side of him. I was appalled.

When I walked round the corner I saw a woman lying on the floor
Kamran Zaffar, eyewitness

“I could see carnage - bodies everywhere. Some were conscious, some were not, lying by the side of the road and on the road. There were people everywhere, a lot of onlookers.”

Another eyewitness told Kyodo News: ”The man jumped on top of a man he had hit with his vehicle and stabbed him with a knife many times. Walking toward Akihabara station, he slashed nearby people at random.”

Crime increase

The Akihabara district specialises in electronic gadgets and video games and is especially popular with people interested in comic books and distinctive fashion.

It is also home to one of the first shops to sell personal robots and robotics. The area is often crowded on weekends.

Once rare in Japan, there has been an increase in knife crime in recent years.

In January, a 16-year-old school boy armed with two kitchen knives injured several people on a crowded shopping street in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward.

The Akihabara attack occurred on the same date that a man with a history of mental illness went through a primary school in 2001, stabbing children at random.

Eight children died and 15 pupils and teachers were injured in that attack, in a school in Ikeda, in the city of Osaka.

Early reports suggested Mr Kato could have been a gangster, though these were later played down.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7442327.stm

Some people are just crazy enough to play “Grand Theft Auto” in real life.  I remembered playing “San Andreas” in college where I randomly drove a car into a crowd people and kept whacking them with a baseball bat…I am more disturbed by the fact this guy was around my age range…

It seems like there are underlying tensions in Japanese society at this time.  The government of Japan really needs to fix their economy or else moral decay and crime will worsen in Japan.

Japan Day in New York City

Japan Day was held today at Central Park near the entrance at 98th Street and 5th Avenue.  This year’s events consisted of some traditional concerts and pop culture concerts, a robot exhibit, some free food and free canned tea.

I met up with the rest of my friends around the afternoon no thanks to delays in PATH but we all got there in time.  After we all got together, we went to find a picnic area around the Japan Day section of the park and went about having our picnic.  Some of the friends prepared rice balls, some fruit salad, and some crackers.  The food was good and it was a nice sunny day to relax after a hectic week at work.

The free tea they were giving away was great.  The flavours they offered were white tea, green tea, and darjeeling tea.  I preferred the darjeeling and the green teas over the white flavoured ones.  Instead of watching the various performances and concerts we spent most of our time just chilling in the picnic area and enjoying the scenery.  Later, two of my friends joined us before we went around the exhibits.

The performances were very lively and the crowd was excited by them.  However, there were a few Japanophiles who were just acting like rude punks while some people were performing.  Most of them were wearing Naruto, or some weird Japanese costume and jumping around like idiots while some random people watch in amusement or took pictures of it.  Other than that it was fun.

Most of the exhibits were closing shop around 3:00 PM while the final acts were performing on stage.  The funny thing was two other friends showed up just as things were wrapping up.  They had made the fatal error of trying to drive to New York from Bergen county when today was also the day for the Israel’s 60th Anniversary festivities, Japan Day, some NYPD event, and random tourists coming to Manhattan on the weekend.  As a a result it took them about 3 hours to get here and all they could do was just enjoy the leftover picnic food.

After the Japan Day festival ended, we headed out to the East Village for some fast Japanese food, some gourmet pudding desert, and some shopping at the Sunrise mart before calling it a night.    The weather actually got hotter as the night went on instead of cooling down.  Today was a fun day, and it looks like this is the start of the summer season.

On a sad note, I really am disappointed with Puerto Rico for voting for Hillary.  Do these people really want McCain to win in 2008 or are they just brainwashed like the rest of the Hillary supporters?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7429996.stm

Hillary Clinton has said her fight for the Democratic presidential nomination will go on after winning a largely symbolic victory in Puerto Rico.

With only two state contests left to fight, she is trailing Barack Obama by 1,915 delegate votes to 2,070, according to AP’s rolling count.

Japanophiles and their Uyouku masters are useful idiots indeed.

It looks like some Japanophiles and Uyouku posted my blog on a Japanese-language Korean BBS.  This would explain why I had almost 1,000 hits viewing my entries that are tagged under “korea”.  It’s funny because most of them were poking fun at StarCraft 2, Japanese government’s denial of comfort women, and some random tidbits about East Asian linguistics.

I’m glad I disappointed these clowns, but I do appreciate their stupidity in creating a spike in yesterday’s web traffic.  This way enough people will stumble upon the China earthquake relief posts.

~LiM

Death toll rises in China quake

Death toll rises in China quake

The most powerful earthquake to hit China in 30 years has killed at least 10,000 people in south-western Sichuan province, with many more still trapped.

In one county alone, 80% of buildings collapsed, and up to 5,000 people died.

Officials say there is no news yet from the towns at the epicentre, which have a total population of more than 24,000.

President Hu Jintao has urged “all-out” efforts to rescue victims, and has ordered troops to help with disaster relief work.

The 7.8 magnitude quake struck on Monday, at 1428 local time (0628 GMT).

The number of dead is expected to rise once contact is made with Wenchuan county, which was at the epicentre of the shock.

Telephone lines to the area are down, and roads are blocked by fallen rocks and boulders.

The BBC’s Michael Bristow, in nearby Chongqing, said torrential rains have also prevented helicopters gaining access.

A top official from Wenchuan, Wang Bin, appealed via satellite phone for outside help.

“We are in urgent need of tents, food, medicine and satellite communications equipment through air drop,” he said.

“We also need medical workers to save the injured people here.”

Mr Wang was also quoted by the state news agency, Xinhua, as saying that farmers’ houses in two of the towns had collapsed, and 30,000 people in the county’s main town were staying outdoors, afraid to go home.

Rescue forces are approaching the area on foot.

Cries for help

There were also harrowing reports from the scene of a school collapse in Dujiangyan city - south-east of the epicentre - where 900 students were buried and at least 50 dead.

Teenagers buried beneath the rubble of the three-storey Juyuan Middle School building struggled to break free, while others were cried out for help, Xinhua reported.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed to the scene, bowed three times in grief before some of the bodies that were pulled out, according to Xinhua.

“Not one minute can be wasted,” Mr Wen is quoted as saying. “One minute, one second could mean a child’s life.”

At another school in Dujiangyan, fewer than 100 students out of 420 are reported to have survived after their building collapsed.

Devastation in China

Another of the worst-hit areas appears to be Beichuan county, about 50km from the epicentre.

Some 80% of buildings there were reported to have been destroyed, leaving between 3,000 and 5,000 people dead and up to 10,000 injured.

Meanwhile hundreds of people were reported to have been buried in two collapsed chemical plants in Shifang in Sichuan, and at least five other schools were reported to be in ruins.

More than 150 people were killed in the other provinces of Gansu and Shaanxi, and in Chongqing municipality, Xinhua said.

US President George W Bush expressed condolences to victims’ families, while Japan offered to send aid.

“The Chinese government are to be commended for their quick and efficient response. The UK stands ready to assist,” said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

Dozens of aftershocks have been reported since the quake, which was felt in Beijing, and the Thai capital Bangkok.

The earthquake was China’s worst since 242,000 people were killed in 1976 by the Tangshan quake.

Sichuan province is the most populated part of China - home to 87 million people.

RECENT CHINA QUAKES
March, 2008: 7.2 quake in Xinjiang - damage limited
February 2003: 6.8 quake in Xinjiang - at least 94 dead, 200 hurt
January 1998: 6.2 quake in rural Hebei - at least 47 dead, 2,000 hurt
April 1997: 6.6 quake hits Xinjiang - 9 dead, 60 hurt
January 1997: 6.4 quake in Xinjiang - 50 dead, 40 hurt

The BBC’s Quentin Somerville says this is probably the most significant natural disaster to hit China in recent memory, but that the Chinese army has a good record of mobilising and getting people to safety.

He also says it is one of the most open and speedy responses to an emergency he has ever seen from Chinese state media.

The fact the quake was felt in Beijing, he says, means millions of people will feel connected to the disaster and will be watching TV screens closely to see how the government responds.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7397489.stm

This is a human tragedy.  First Burma and now China but at least Beijing is smart enough to call for immediate aid instead of taking their sweet time like the Burmese junta.  The most disgusting part of this ordeal are the countless pro-Tibetan supporters who celebrated when news of the earthquake broke out and claimed that it was karma at work.

I really find it disgusting that such people would celebrate the deaths of tens of thousands of random Chinese people while continuously raving on about how Tibetans are being killed or eaten by evil Chinese people.  It’s double-standards like this that simply tune me off from the “Free Tibet” movement especially when their supporters were dumb enough to use low-handed tactics to get their views out during the Olympic Torch Relay.

Anyway, their attitudes towards the Chinese earthquake and their biased support of the Tibetan cause is just another sad indicator of how much Sinophobia has become popular in the mainstream.

I know it had already become part of the American psyche in recent years as noted by Asianweek magazine:

“China is now America’s number 3 Enemy. A February 2008 Gallup Poll found that Americans declared that China had replaced North Korea as our number 3 enemy. Is anyone surprised that China is perceived to be a greater threat than the long time trouble maker North Korea? It seems that every day our fellow Americans are feeling more and more threatened by China’s growing economic power, in addition to China’s growing international influence in Asia, Australia, South America, Africa and the Middle East..”

“Chinese have always been an economic threat. Ever since our arrival in America, Chinese immigrants, and later Chinese Americans, have been a consistent economic threat to our fellow Americans. We worked hard, long and for low wages when we first arrived, and today, it is so ironic that we have the same problem.”

“How do Americans feel about Chinese American? In 2001 the Committee of 100 commissioned a national survey of adult Americans and the results revealed that a third of Americans feel Chinese Americans are more loyal to China than the U.S. When presented the choices of women, African Americans, Jewish Americans and Asian Americans as presidential candidates, the surveyed Americans were most reluctant to vote for an Asian American.”

Enough Korean and Japanese nationalists called for more acceptance of Sinophobia after minor scuffles in their respective torch relays.  According to anti-Chinese hippies, if fellow Asians hate on Chinese then it must be ok, since they not only eat Tibetan babies, spread SARS, and harvest organs from religious minorities, but they also take all the good jobs from the rest of the world.  If you’re ethnic Chinese living outside of Greater China, I recommend you prepare for heightened anti-Chinese sentiment after the 2008 Olympics end.

Protesters! You’re not helping the Chinese and Tibetans AT ALL!!!

I often see and hear critics of China say “we are only opposed to the Chinese government, not the Chinese people, and not the country of China.” First of all, that’s probably not true. Those people are probably racists who throw around the word “chink” left and right.

Of course, that’s just my assumption, and no I don’t have anything to back it up (not more than just a hunch anyway). What I do know is that those people have NO idea what’s going on. In fact, they probably don’t even have eyes. If indeed critics of China want the so-called “best” for China, then why aren’t the Chinese people welcoming them with open arms? Why are there throngs of Chinese Americans pouring onto the streets of San Francisco waving the five-star red banner of the People’s Republic of China? Surely, they could claim that Chinese in China are brainwashed by the “communists,” but what about all those pro-PRC Chinese Americans? They all live in America, some of them were even born in America. So why are they so strong in their support for their supposedly oppressive Motherland?

The answer is simply one of identity. This would obviously explain why Chinese in China are so vocal in their support for the government in recent days. This answer also explains why so many overseas Chinese have supported the Chinese government since the outbreak of Tibetan protests. As long as a Chinese person identifies with China, he/she will identify more with the Chinese government than they will with the government under which they live overseas. This, of course, is true not just of Chinese, but of all peoples. Americans, whether or not they live in the US or abroad, will identify with their home country. Americans might complain about President Bush at home, but they would seldom welcome the same criticism from a French or Russian citizen.

So what is it exactly that these protesters want? Do they want freedom for Tibet? Do they want democracy in China? Or do they simply want to piss off the Chinese government and the Chinese people? If it’s the first two, they are woefully failing. If it’s the last one, then they are enjoying tremendous success.

Instead of co-opting the people of China, these rude and often violent protesters have rallied the Chinese people behind the Communist Party in a surge of nationalist sentiment. Nothing would better reach that end than to physically attack a torch-bearing Chinese Paralympian.

Personally, I believe the Dalai Lama is a good man. I think Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are also noble organizations. That is precisely why they are trying to work behind the scenes with the Chinese government to improve human rights in China. Attacking the Olympic Torch and calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics will not only offend the Chinese government, but will also be considered a slap on the face to China and the Chinese people. In the end, violent protests will be overwhelmingly counterproductive.

And what about the Chinese people? Are we to assume that they don’t know what’s best for themselves? Are we to assume that Western protesters and Western politicians better know what is best for the Chinese people than the Chinese people themselves? How pretentious of the West to even entertain such thoughts.

Of course Chinese people want better human rights and more democratic governance in China. They also know how best to achieve these results. Infiltration and co-option of the Communist Party will prove to be far more effective than violent protests. In other words, the Chinese people know what works and what doesn’t, and violent protests most definitely do not work.

China has had 2 revolutions in the 20th century, coupled with several disastrous Maoist campaigns. In the end, however, China in the 21st century has survived and prospered. While the Chinese people want better governance, they don’t want it at the expense of territorial integrity or economic stability. The collapse of the Soviet Union doesn’t just haunt the Chinese government, it also haunts the Chinese populace. Russia went from superpower to Third World country almost overnight and only now is it starting to recover (at the expense of democracy, ironically). I am CERTAIN the Chinese people don’t want that to happen to China. Of course, what the Western protesters want these days is precisely the dismemberment of China.

So in the end, if you think advocating for Tibetan independence is simply anti-CCP and not anti-China, then you’re just deluding yourself. Almost no Chinese person, not even those vehemently opposed to communist rule in China, would support independence for Tibet or Xinjiang or Taiwan for that matter. Protesters, if you really want to help the Chinese people, STOP politicizing the Olympics and offer your hand in friendship to the Chinese people. Pissing off the very people you are supposedly trying to help is NOT going to change anything.

And here’s some food for thought for everyone who wants to “help” the Chinese people. Say you succeed in transforming China to a liberal democracy. Do you think an elected Chinese government would allow Tibet to become independent? I don’t think so. After all, wasn’t it an elected American government that wiped out all the native inhabitants of this country?

A Poem Dedicated to the last 150 years of this planet.

By a Silent, Silent Chinese.

When we were called the Sick Man of Asia, we were the Yellow Peril.
When we are billed to be the next Superpower, we are a threat.

When we closed our doors, you smuggled drugs to our markets.
When we embraced Free Trade, you blame us for taking away your jobs.

When we were falling apart, you marched in your troops and wanted your “fair share”.
When we were putting the broken pieces together again, “Free Tibet” you scream, “it was an invasion!”

So, we tried communism, you hated us for being communists
When we embraced capitalism, you hate us for being capitalists.

When we have a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet.
When we tried limiting our numbers, you said it is human rights abuse.

When we were poor, you thought we were dogs.
When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts.

When we build our industries, you called us polluters.
When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming.

When we buy oil, you call that exploitation and genocide.
When you fight for oil, you call that liberation and democracy.

When we were lost in chaos and rampage, you wanted rule of law for us.
When we uphold law and order against violence, you call that violating human rights.

When we were silent, you said you want us to have free speech.
When we were silent no more, you say we are brainwashed racists.

Why do you hate us so much? We asked.
“No,” you answered, “We don’t hate You.”

We don’t hate you either,
But do you understand us?

“Of course we do,” You said,
“We have NBC, CNN and BBCs…”

What do you really want from us?
Think hard first, then answer…

Because you only get so many chances,
Enough is enough, enough Hypocrisy for this one world.

We want one world, one dream, and peace on Earth.
This big blue Earth is big enough for all of Us.

Bernanke is a fucking idiot.

So I have read that JP Morgan is going to buy up what’s left of Bear Stearns for just a nominal $2 a share. Meanwhile Bernanke and his dumb fuck cronies have decided to cut another 25 basis points (0.25%) from the interest rates on Palm Sunday of all days…

I am told that the Hang Seng, Nikkei 225, TAIEX, and the Australian bourses are bleeding as a result of this development. The European bourses will get it just as bad and then the DJIA will be fucked even if Bernanke is dumb enough to cut some more basis points or put out more emergency funds. The exchange rates are only going to get worse and I reckon that the Fed will at least another 100 basis points on Tuesday.

Ben Bernanke is someone who loves inflation so much that he would be willing to have non-stop anal sex with it if he could. If George W. Bush says that we are not in a recession one more time, I swear I am going to go campaign for Hillary Clinton and petition for a movement to investigate if John McCain (born in the Panama Canal Zone, which is technically just US territory) is even technically a natural born American.

And yes; both Ron Paul and Jim Rogers were right.

Update: Bush is indeed a fucking idiot. America deserved to get fucked up by their stupidity for first bringing him to power in 2000 and then keeping him in power in 2004 when all signs point that he should have been replaced by John Kerry.

Here is what this fucktard, idiot grandson of a Nazi collaborator had to say about the American economy:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7297048.stm

President George Bush has attempted to restore confidence in the US economy, amid the deepening financial crisis.

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York the President acknowledged that growth had slowed but said that the economy is basically sound.

He said the economy was “obviously going through a tough time”.

America is now reaping what it sowed. Karma is indeed a bitch. First Iraq and now the entire world is going to pay dearly for 100% American-produced stupidity.

It’s official: The American dollar is garbage

As of this post, the US Dollar is now at parity with the Swiss Franc (CHF) and can buy up to 99 Japanese Yen. On another note the Canadian dollar is once again more valuable than the US dollar, while it will cost $2.02 to buy a British Pound Sterling. Also, the Euro is now equal to $1.56 US dollars.

The Benjamins have gone from heroes to zeros in the 8 years Bush has been in power. This is what happens when you go into a fruitless war in Iraq…

The 500 Euro is what’s happening right now…If it’s good enough for Jay-Z and Giselle Bundchen, then it’s going to be great for the rest of us

People need to understand that the rest of the world is not having stronger economic growth but rather it is the United States ongoing economic decline against the rest of the world that is leading to these exchange rates. At the rate things are going the Chinese Yuan or renminbi is going to be less than 7.00 Yuan to the Dollar by the mid-summer if the Federal Reserve keeps cutting interest rates as I think.

The currency of the 21st century…Will it be all about the Chairman?

Well it is clear that Bernanke may cut interest rates next week anyway regardless of the recent problems. Bear Stearns is just the beginning of many problems for the investment banks and it will only get worse due to the current links between traditional retail and investment banks. I actually thought at one point that Glass-Steagall was a sensible law which kept commercial and investment banks as separate entities, created the FDIC, and other provisions which were designed to curb dangerous speculation. Unfortunately, the provisions which prevented banks from offering financial services was repealed in 1999 when Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

The Glass-Steagall wall was devised to prevent a repeat of the 1920s’ scams, in which banks made speculative investments, turned the debts into securities, and sold them off to unsuspecting investors with the blessing of the bank. With Glass-Steagall, commercial banks were tightly supervised and given access to federal deposit insurance, to keep savings secure and prevent runs on banks. Investment banks, meanwhile, were not government-guaranteed and were free to do more speculative transactions for consenting adult customers. But Roosevelt’s newly created SEC subjected securities markets to much tighter structures against self-dealing and insider conflicts of interest.

If you fast forward to 2000, much of this protective apparatus has been repealed. Regulators who didn’t believe in regulation and a compliant Congress have allowed financial engineers to evade what remains. In the 1980s, regulators began allowing exceptions to Glass-Steagall. In 1999, Congress finally repealed it outright, permitting financial supermarkets like Citigroup to operate any kind of financial business they desired, and profit from multiple conflicts of interest. The scandals that pumped up the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, as well as the most flagrant cases like Enron, and the crash that followed, were the result of the SEC and the bank regulators ceasing to police conflicts of interest. In the scandals of the 1990s, corporate CEOs, their accountants, and stock analysts working for their bankers, all conspired to puff up corporate balance sheets and pump up stock prices on which executive bonuses depended. This is a little harder today, thanks to the honest accounting requirements of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (which the Bush administration hopes to water down). But the same kinds of conflicts and potentials for abuse exist when a mega-bank underwrites a leveraged buyout by an affiliated hedge fund, and then hypes the sale of securities when the fund is ready to sell the company back to the public.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_bubble_economy

It’s time America learned from Japan to deal with their version of the bubble economy and the credit and real estate meltdowns…According to reliable sources America is going to be fucked in in FY2008 for Q1, Q2, Q3, with a slim chance of recovery in Q4 (assuming America is not officially in a recession).

When freaky-deaky equals hara-kiri

When freaky-deaky equals hara-kiri
By William Sparrow

BANGKOK - The Japanese population is believed to have peaked at about 127.5 million in 2005. Since then the figure has declined, with some estimates suggesting the population could shrink to 105 million by 2050. The drop is feared to have negative impacts on the nation’s labor force and grave social and economic consequences. Recent reports seem to indicate that the sexual proclivities of Japanese men are contributing adversely to the situation.

More and more men, reports maintain, are turning to masturbation and sex toys rather than to their female counterparts. And further exacerbating an already declining birthrate of 1.29 children per women found in a 2004 survey by The Daily Yomiuri, is the fact that some men are increasingly turning their backs on sex.

“Sex is just way too much trouble,” a 35-year-old Japanese man told Shukan Asahi this week, adding that ever since he used masturbation as a teenager, he’s never desired a woman again. “As long as I have a sex toy available, I don’t need women. I can’t come when I have sex, and you’ve got to put a lot of emotion into dealing with women. Self-pleasure is a hell of a lot less demanding than trying to please somebody else.”

Pornography, masturbation aids, Internet porn sites and social networks that lead to “virtual relationships”, soaplands and Japan’s widespread prostitution industry all allow men outlets for sexual fulfillment while not fulfilling other needs, such as procreation. The alarming trend has led medical experts in Japan to coin a new term for a condition they call “vaginal ejaculation dysfunctional disorder”.

“There has been a definite increase in the number of men showing signs of vaginal ejaculation dysfunction disorder, which includes such afflictions as premature and delayed ejaculation. There are physical reasons believed to be behind this, including prejudice against women, past trauma and overuse of masturbatory aids so that a vagina is unable to provide sufficient stimulation,” Dr Tsuneo Akaeda, head of the Akaeda Clinic in Tokyo’s Roppongi entertainment district, told Shukan Asahi.

“Some of the masturbation aids coming out nowadays are absolutely incredible. Guys become used to using these and there is no doubt that many men are unable to obtain the necessary satisfaction from a female vagina that they need to ejaculate.”

Meanwhile, Japan is quickly becoming the world’s oldest population. By 2025, 27.3%, or 33.2 million people, will be aged over 60, a study titled “The Illusion of Immigration Control” found.

Low birth rate coupled with the aforementioned sexual dysfunctions make the problems that Japan faces immediate and daunting.

“With Japan’s labor force expected to decrease by 10% in the next 25 years, the economic outlook is far from bright. In all likelihood, the domestic market will shrink, production will fall, the government’s revenue base will contract inexorably and it will struggle to meet welfare and medical payments for an increasing number of elderly as the dependency ratio (the number of workers supporting the elderly) will shift dramatically. In 1950, one elderly person was supported by 12 members of the working population, by 1990 it was 5.5 workers, and by 2020 it is estimated to be 2.3 workers. Naturally, the government is concerned about such a scenario,” Julian Chapple wrote in a 2005 study titled “The Dilemma Posed by Japan’s Population Decline”.

The government has put forward a number of proposals to reverse the trend. These have included the “Plus 1″ (indicating the increase the government hopes to see to the birthrate), softening of immigration laws, child care initiatives, subsidies to parents for medical care and child care and working with Japanese employers to allow more “flex” time for parents. While the government has given the situation the appropriate attention, so far most of the initiatives have made little change and failed to stem the decline.

Japan, like many societies, can at times struggle with open communication and education about sex. So, perhaps the answer is being overlooked: encourage more sex between partners and husbands and wives through better communication and education.

William Sparrow has been an occasional contributor to Asia Times Online and now joins Asia Times Online with a weekly column. Sparrow is editor in chief of Asian Sex Gazette and has reported on sex in Asia for over five years. To contact him send question or comments to Letters@atimes.com.