Section 31 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 March 23 Sunday.
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Gunma Prefecture. I am walking along the road, and for sacramental purposes I am carrying flowers and water. The sun is very bright. The graveyard is larger than I remember, and confusing, at least to me, but in due course we arrive at the grave. The bright sun sharpens the glyphs which have been cut into the stone.

The flowers at the grave are renewed, and two candles are lit in front of the grave. From the flame of one of the candles, sticks of incense are lit. A bundle of joss sticks is handed to me, and I place it in the niche which has been cut into the stonework for that purpose.

Brightness of sun. Bright orange of two oranges ornamenting the grave. The smoke of burning incense. Water washing across the stonework.

The bones of three people are interred in this grave.

This is only my second visit to the graveyard, but by now the visits to the house in Gunma have become many, far too many to count or remember. Always, the arrival entails the same ritual - light a stick of incense at the family altar, which is inside the house itself, and then place the smoking joss stick in the incense burner, and then ring, once, the very clear bell which reverberates through the mind, and then meditate for a few moments, with the transitory eternity of the echo of that bell reverbrating through the silence of the mind.

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Section 31 Entry 0002. Date: 2003 March 24 Monday.
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Yokohama. The kerosene truck comes round. "Raishu saigo," says the driver, a statement easily within my linguistic competence - next week will be the last week for deliveries. That makes sense. It's a warm spring day, and the season of kerosene heaters is plainly drawing to a close.

The driver, a kid in his early twenties, wears white gloves. White gloves are standard gear in Japan for just about anyone doing any kind of manual labor. What really surprised me was when I saw a TV program about an old man living in the mountains in a remote area of Japan, and he, too, wore white gloves when he went scrambling up the hillsides to hunt for wild plants.

The wearing of white gloves is evidently a long-standing practice. My maternal grandfather was the skipper of a cargo ship which called at one or more Japanese ports shortly after the Second World War, and a letter that he wrote at the time mentions a man in a group of stevedores who was wearing white gloves.

By contrast, in New Zealand most manual work is done with bare hands, and work gloves are only pu on if there is a pressing need for them. Consequently, when I first came to Japan, the ever-present white gloves struck me as over-delicate, even effete. Now, however, they've become a normative part of the cultural background which usually escapes my notice. The kid who drives the local kerosene truck has sold me kerosene on a number of occasions, but today was the first time that I noticed his white gloves.

After five years in Japan - soon, in fact, to be six full calendar years - I've reached the stage of accepting the environment around me as being pretty much totally normal, and most of the time most of what enters my field of vision goes unremarked, and often, even, unnoticed.

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Section 31 Entry 0003. Date: 2003 March 24 Monday.
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News analysis of Japanese TV (thirteen minutes of news about the war in Iraq) followed by analysis of English-language edition of The Asahi Shimbun (Iraq-related content only).

Tonight I sat down in front of the TV with my computer and typed in a step-by-step account of the first thirteen minutes of the news on NHK One, the main Japanese NHK television program, all of which dealt with the war. During the day, I've watched chunks of CNN, and I've also listened to other American coverage coming via radio. (The 810 AM frequency here in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, controlled by the American military, switches between news providers, so I have lost track of precisely which sources I have listened to.)

The difference between the Japanese coverage of the war and the American coverage of the war is primarily one of focus. The American news and the Japanese news both cover the same events, but the American focus is close up and personal - individual American faces, individual American soldiers, individual American opinions, so my impression is that if you did a statistical analysis of the American news then the news, USA-style, would look like this:-

America, America, America, America, USA, America, Baghdad, America, America, America, America, USA, America, Saddam, America, America.

Tonight's news on NHK, by contrast, went like this, as near as I could follow it (I didn't videotape it for analysis, but just typed in these notes as the news flowed). This analysis is aimed at capturing the image focus. My Japanese is pretty weak, so most of the time I was pretty fuzzy about what the announcer was saying. Anyway, here's the image analysis:-

NHK news broadcast starting 2100 Monday night February 24, Japan time (which, using the time-translating gadget built into the shortwave radio that I haven't used for months, I figure as being, approximately, 0700 or 0800 or thereabouts on Monday morning on America's East Coast.):-

1. Announcer says Hussein gives a speech. Snippet of some of Hussein's speech - excellent picture quality, much better than the quality on CNN earlier in the day, which for some reason seemed muddy. Hussein is clearly speaking against a white background which is very obviously set up to imitate the interior of a tent, complete with a mock tent door. One American announcer earlier in the day (I heard this by radio, I think) described this background as a "sheet," rather missing the point (which I take to be a kind of "warrior of the desert" image).

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Later, at 2131 or thereabouts, I again saw CNN footage of Saddam Hussein's speech, and again it was muddy, particularly around the chin, so it was unclear that the face was in fact Saddam's. I don't know what's going on here. Maybe NHK and CNN got their images from different sources or maybe NHK has done something technical to the image data to sharpen up Saddam's image. Or maybe the Japanese TV system just quite simply delivers a better-quality picture than whatever system is being used to originate the CNN images. Or maybe NHK and CNN were showing different segments of the speech, and maybe the picture quality is different in the two segments. (I'm assuming, of course, that American image-makers are not in a position to muscle CNN into muddying up Saddam's face.)

(Note that I've been viewing both the CNN image of Saddam Hussein and the NHK image of Saddam Hussein on one and the same 25-inch TV, and both CNN and NHK come to me courtesy of one and the same cable television company. For whatever reason, the NHK image of the Saddam Hussein speech, Saddam's "cut their throats" speech, looks clear, sharp and well-lit, whereas the CNN image is significantly dimmer and has muddy shadows. Possibly the technical deficiencies of my cable TV company are to blame, as the cable TV company has failed to deliver CNN 100% of the time - the CNN signal failed once this evening, and it also failed right in the middle of Bush's 48-hour ultimatum speech.)

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2. Announcer says something about Iraqi television, and then we see scenes of angry Iraqis, possibly coming courtesy of Iraqi television. We see (I think) an Iraqi soldier being interviewed by Iraqi TV.

3. We see TV scenes of the downed Apache helicopter which the Iraqis say was shot down by villagers. (These same pictures were on CNN earlier in the day.)

4. The Japanese announcer speaks of some kind of American bombing.

5. Pictures of Baghdad's center - bombing pictures.

6. B-52s taking off from an English base - pictures.

7. American tanks on the road - we are five minutes into the news and this is our first view of the Americans. What we see, really, is not people but machines.

8. Japanese announcer provides continuity.

9. Firefight at night - green-lit scenes that I have already seen on CNN. These scenes have presumably been chosen for their action value.

10. American military press conference - "We have a number of killed in the action ... I believe that that number will remain less than ten."

11. Cut to Iraqi military press conference with Japanese subtitles. Neither press conference gets given much time - the Americans, however, get substantially more time than the Iraqis.

12. Cut to fighter taking off from flight deck.

13. Cut to bombs going off in Baghdad by night.

14. Cut to British troops in combat, fighting for a building. (A picture of one of the British soldiers saying something about the combat situation reminds me, absurdly, of some old Monty Python movie.)

15. Cut to British soldier under "harassing fire" speaking on radio. (Parenthetical comment: this makes me realize that British combat forces, as living breathing human beings, are more or less missing from American war coverage, although they are mentioned from time to time as dead bodies.)

16. Bush descending from helicopter, wife by his side.

17. "I know that Saddam Hussein is losing control of his country" - Bush - a brief fragment of Bush's speech.

18. Back to Saddam Hussein speech.

19. Freeze frame and zoom in to a closeup of Saddam Hussein. (I assume that this was done by computerized trickery by the NHK technicians, or someone, and was designed to provide a suitably dramatic stepping stone to transition us out of Iraq and into the wider world.)

20. Anti-USA demo - not in Iraq.

21. Pro-USA demo - in the USA.

22. Oscars - Adrian Brody (Adrien Brody?) - "I'm accepting an award at such a strange time". I think he then invites us to pray for peace.

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Adrien Brody. Best Actor for role in movie "The Pianist".

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23. Cut, cut, cut - American troop scenes. These scenes seem to have been chosen for their action value.

24. Japanese announcer speaking about bombing.

25. Shot of British spokesman with announcer's voiceover.

26. British spokesman speaks about captured port.

27. Japanese announcer voiceover. Says Hussein was not speaking live.

28. Japanese announcer - speaking about the Pope.

29. French President Chirac is on TV - announcer is saying something about the Pope.

30. Shot of the Pope.

31. Cardinals in red hats.

32. Rome.

33. Chirac.

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My Japanese was too weak for me to follow more than "the Pope" and "Chirac" so I couldn't figure out what the connection was. Later, I got on the Internet and checked with Google News, and apparently Chirac has told John Paul II that France and the Vatican should work together to "defend the primacy of law, justice and dialog".

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34. Japanese announcer - speaks about Koizumi - Koizumi said, I think, that Iraq is a "muzukashii mondai," a "difficult problem".

35. Shots of Japanese politicians. Announcer provides commentary.

36. Announceer saying something about Japanese people in Iraq.

37. Shot of someone from the Japanese foreign ministry.

38. Foreign ministry man speaks.

39. Japanese announcer - baseball. It took us (by my watch) thirteen minutes to get to this point.

Now for The Asahi Shimbun, today's English-language edition, which in Japan is bundled with the International Herald Tribune, and today started on Page 19. The relevant pieces are:-

Page 19: "Japan eyes billions for postwar Iraq" - Japan will contribute to the rebuilding of Iraq. "Dateline Iraq - sauce sources secured" - Japan has enough dates to go on making sauce. "Tokyo balks at request to shut Iraqi Embassy" - America may have asked ("an unconfirmed request") and Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi may have said no.

Page 20: "Atomic Bomb dome wrapped in 'peace ribbon'" which apparently included messages such as "Don't kill the children of Iraq."

Page 21: Editorial: "U.S. and Europe at odds" with smaller heading "War in Iraq must not widen the split". Another editorial, "Koizumi's U.S. leanings" with smaller heading "Must an alliance mean blind support for the war?" Interview with a teacher, "Let's accept refugess from Iraq after war ends". Related, from a Korean source, a Dong-a Ilbo editorial, "A practical approach to Iraq war is in S. Korea's interest".

Page 21: column headed Vox Populi, Vox Dei with the headline "Decision Making: Faith or facts or both" writing about the "contrasting styles" of George Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. This column dates from March 15, which was when it was first published in The Asahi Shimbun in Japanese, although it only made it to the English edition today. It's worded pretty subtly, but basically it makes the point that Bush is in the grip of God, and it sums up:-

"As Bush launches a war, counting on faith as his spiritual guide, there is practically no hope Koizumi, whose mode of action is to move with the tide or wait for the emergence of the right atmosphere, could, even if he wanted to, talk the president into changing his mind. One can imagine this much from a study of their characters."

If anyone's interested in following the Japanese response to the war, today I found a reasonably lively news site, www.japantoday.com/e/. It's a general news site on which people are able to post comments, some sillier than others, and a few even sillier than that.

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Saddam's tent setup: as we watch Saddam's "cut their throats" speech, there is a white background behind him. To the left of the screen, there is a long, narrow triangle of black, one side rigidly straight, the other side curved. If you have a tent with a slit in it, and if you fold back one side of the slit to make a doorway, then that is precisely the shape you get. The image that has been created in Saddam's TV studio is of a man sitting in a tent with white walls, with a doorway open to the night. This is my own analysis, but it seems pretty obvious to me - I've had a lot of outdoor experience involving tents.

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