dottocomu

Collaborative mapping for the cherry-blossom advance

The sakura zensen -- the line showing the northmost extent of cherry-blossom trees in bloom -- becomes a staple of news programmes around this time of year, as the populace waits for the chance to hit the local park with some beers and indulge in a bit of flower-gazing, that most quintessential of Japanese spring pastimes.

Since this is 2006 and everything must be done collaboratively, via the Web, and if possible involve cellphones, a group of Japanese companies have set up a site called Sakura Mapping that aims to construct a Google Earth-based map of the cherry blossom front line. If you have a GPS cellphone, sending a photo of some blossoms to maps@mapping.jp with the location info in the file header will update the project's Google Earth file; for non-GPS phones, you can enter an address or other information in the body of the email.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]

Turning obscure islands into art havens

Intriguing article by the Guardian's Justin McCurry about plans by entrepreneur Soichiro Fukutake to turn several islands in Japan's Seto Inland Sea into art museums.

Each exhibition room in the museum is tailor-made for individual works. The five Monet paintings, for example, hang on creamy white walls made from the plaster that was used in old Japanese castles. The floor is covered with 700,000 cubes of Italian marble. Stretching across an entire wall is Monet's Water-Lily Pond (1915-1926), which Mr Fukutake bought after seeing it at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in 1998.

[...]

Mr Fukutake, 58, has other ambitions for the islands of the Seto inland sea, many of which are underpopulated and accessible only by patchy ferry services. The businessman, who owns an international chain of English-language schools, hopes to open a museum on Inujima - which he also owns - and then tackle the aesthetic wasteland of Teshima, for years an illegal dump for industrial waste.

Guardian Unlimited | Arts news | Japan's lord of the isles puts art hoard on show at visionary museum

FT on Japanese dog-owning habits

The Financial Times has a lightish-weight piece that uses dog ownership trends (and the services that are springing up to pamper pets) as a window into Japan's ageing society and declining birth rate. Some of the conclusions are doubtless true, though we wonder whether as Japan's economy pulls out of the nosedive the birth rate isn't set for a similar recovery. We would think that the recession has pushed up the age at which couples cross the psychological income threshold that allows them to feel financially secure enough to have kids, but that it should move down again in due course.

Japan is in the midst of a canine frenzy. Last year, the number of dogs kept as pets leapt by 1.5m to 11m, according to the pet food manufacturers' association. Spending on pets - mainly dogs and cats - will this year top Y1,000bn for the first time. In a society with a chronically low birth rate, dogs outnumber babies (of under 12 months) by 10 to one.

[Read: Financial Times article]

Reuters on Japan's royal succession

News and rumours had suggested that a simple regulatory change would pave the way for Japan to be ruled by an empress; a Reuters article today, however, suggests it may not be that simple:

Topping the list [of objections] is the argument that while Japan has had eight reigning empresses, none of those passed the throne to her own child. Instead, traditionalists believe, the imperial lineage stretches back through 2,600 years of patriarchal succession.

"It's not simply that Japan is more male chauvinistic than other countries," Portland State's Ruoff said.

"It probably is, but that's not all there is to it. It's because a substantial bunch of hard-core supporters of the throne believe a reigning empress is the end of history," he added.

[Read: Reuters article]

Towering inf-urn-o (sorry)

We've written before about the appearance in Tokyo of budget, high-rise repositories for your loved ones' remains, but here comes the most up-to-date and, we must say, creepiest version yet. Tops' "automatic remains management audiovisual system" envisages multistorey car parks full of urns of ashes, stored for recall at the swipe of an IC-chipped card over a sensor. Urns are conveyed to a chapel where a video message from the departed and the appropriate sutras can be played back, having first been edited according to the family's wishes if needed (see Tops' website for a Flash animation of the system in action). All of which suits a space-strapped city like Tokyo, though it creates the problem that since holidays in Japan tend to be rare and universal (i.e., everyone heads for the same places at exactly the same time), a visit to a communal burial site could leave you stepping over bodies in more than one sense if you want to spend some quality time with a video of the deceased.

[Via Slashdot Japan (Japanese)]