Hate writing. Love having written.
The Accidental Yakuza
When PTSD-suffering US Marine Veteran Hiro McAllister sets out in search of his Japanese father—following scraps of evidence left by his recently deceased American mom—he finds himself drawn into Tokyo’s underbelly and the inner-workings of a Yakuza crime syndicate. Driven by a need to find his father—as well as money to support to his brother who’s rotting in an underfunded psychiatric facility—Hiro gets caught in a web of deceit, lawlessness, and murder. From the oil fields of Iraq to the neon lights of Tokyo and to the shores of the pacific island Guam, The Accidental Yakuza is a psychologically complex crime thriller about family, friendship, and redemption. At its heart is a compelling, existential anti-hero, and it will appeal to readers who enjoy the tightly plotted issue-driven fiction of Deon Meyer as well as the darkly comic, hardboiled fiction of Carl Hiaasen.
The novel is based, in part, on a real-life corruption case in Guam that was controversially suppressed in the eighties; but it also draws attention to the increasing role Guam has in US-North Korean relations due to its US military bases—an issue that looks set to remain of great topicality in the West.
Hail to the Plastics Czar
“Look Daddy!” she squealed, bursting into the house. “I got a yoyo!” The beaming smile, the bright of my child’s eyes, this delight in the smallest of things is joy, pure and simple. In the split second it takes her to hand me the yoyo, I wonder whether I can still pull off the walking the dog trick, but this question becomes moot as I palm the toy. The weight is wrong. The fluorescent green wheels are but thin malleable shells, sharp with flash (the excess plastic that squeezes between the molds during injection) and void of the mass necessary to yoyoing a yoyo. The string is kinked and too short. And less than twenty-four hours later, the yoyo lands in our trash.
A similar fate awaits far too many plastic products because they fail prematurely, should never have been made in the first place, and are priced too cheaply for us to care. You may have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling swath of plastic debris stuck in the North Pacific gyre, whose size is estimated as small as the state of Texas or as large as the continental US. It turns out the patch is not an undulating crust of floating refuse as I had visualized but something barely visible and rather more insidious. Of course, the chunky bits do exist. Google dead seabird plastic and you’ll find images of birds decomposing around digestive tracts clogged with plastic bits. We humans are discriminating enough not to purposefully eat the stuff. But that won’t stop it from getting into our systems. We should be very concerned with the concentration of particles suspended just below the ocean’s surface where they continue to photo-degrade into synthetic fragments small enough to be ingested by tiny aquatic organisms. And thus they begin their journey up the food chain.
Cans, sippy cups, water bottles, plastic wrap and almost everything else made of polymers leach chemicals. Even the in vogue “BPA free” plastics seep byproducts associated with a host of problems, including low fertility rates (perhaps not a bad thing), endocrine disruption, reproductive disorders, impotence, heart disease in females, type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, asthma, and strangely, the effectiveness of chemotherapy.
In 2015 a team of environmental scientists conducted a forensic analysis of the patch and calculated that China and Indonesia are responsible for 30 percent of the mismanaged plastic waste that washes out to sea. The United States placed 20th in the rankings of responsibility for the mess. Be that as it may, it’s time that we all assume some personal responsibility for our consumption of plastic.
MR. McGUIRE
I just wanna say one word to you. Just one word.
BEN
Yes Sir.
MR. McGUIRE
Are you listening?
BEN
Yes I am.
MR. McGUIRE
Plastics.
BEN
Exactly how do you mean?
MR. McGUIRE
There’s a great future in plastics.
It’s unlikely that Charles Webb, whose novel inspired the 1967 film, The Graduate, anticipated the scope or irony of Mr. McGuire’s prescience. Of course, plastics have been beneficial too. Think food preservation and disposable medical devices. But look around you for a plastic product. Ask yourself, does that product perform as intended, will it continue to do so for an appropriate length of time and are you really better off with it?
President Roosevelt throned a slew czars, including a transportation czar, manpower czar, production czar, shipping czar, intelligence czar and synthetic rubber czar, mainly to manage the wartime allocation of resources. These were not just feel good titles, but positions invested with the statutory power and executive backing necessary to make things happen. If I were Plastics Czar, I’d mandate a digital platform designed to bridge the disconnect between the end user and manufacturer and give customers a direct say in the triggering of government action. What? How?
First a PLASTICode––Product Longevity Accountability Suitability Test of Integrity Code––akin to the unique ISBN number for books, would be assigned to every plastic product. To obtain the code, the manufacturer would have to provide product specific information including a Declaration of Performance (what the product promises to do), the type of plastic used, whether it can be recycled, its propensity to leach, the expected life-span of the product, the year the product went on the market, country of origin and other useful information. Anybody could access this data online.
Importantly, a rating and review functionality would channel customer feedback directly to the manufacturer. That way instead of feeling helpless the next time your dishwashing rack fails after a couple weeks use, you could avail yourself of a voice directly into the ear of the source of the problem. If I were in the business of making things, I’d want to know what my customers are thinking. Products generating enough negative reviews would be subject to audit. If found to be substandard or in non-conformance with the Declaration of Performance, then tariffs (in the case of imports) or penalties (in the case of domestic products) would be levied. True government of the people, by the people, for the people.
I can already hear the chorus line. We don’t need more regulation. The free market is the best arbitrator of commerce. This would be expensive and complicated. To that I say, the too big to fail, socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor ethos we saw play out in the 2008 meltdown made amply clear that free markets are anything but. As to the expense, these are mitigated if the real costs (externalities) of our infatuation with plastics are factored into the analysis. Empowering the citizenry with direct connection to the manufacturers of the stuff that clutter our homes and lifestyles, and tangible consequences when products perform poorly, might just trigger the cultural shift necessary to caring about product integrity and ultimately result in reduced consumption.
AirBnB-Version Refugee
Dear Airbnb, Kudos on your acknowledgment of the racial bias that has bubbled up in the Airbnb ether. Automatically blocking calendar dates when a guest is rejected on the basis of availability is a clever step towards accountability. And it’s a neat example of how morality can be built into technology. A bigger challenge and opportunity awaits. A PR coup of unparalleled proportions. One that would demonstrate that you, gatekeepers of the sharing economy, disrupters of the status quo, connectors of the unconnected, are willing to look beyond market share and profit margins for the sake of the greater good. Call it and own it. Airbnb—Version Refugee.
4.6 million human beings have fled Syria’s bloody five year civil war. 7 million are internally displaced. The truth is that each of us would, in the face of such unimaginable violence, do exactly the same—seek refuge. Walls can be raised. But that will not stop the flow. People will continue to flee unbearable circumstances. What choice do they have? The only appropriate response is one rooted in morality. We must rally to help our fellow human beings despite the disruption to our way of life. Sadly, this crisis in involuntary migration has triggered the worst in us. Hostility stemming from deep seeded insecurities. Xenophobic hate fanned by politicians wanting to cash in on a competitive edge sharpened with the politics of fear.
What doesn’t get as much coverage is that it has also brought out the best in us. Thousands of volunteers are doing what they can to help despite the overwhelming scale of the crisis . We know from past failures that successful integration mitigates future tensions. Shelter is a huge and primary problem. This is where Airbnb—Version Refugee steps in to do what it can do best. Connect those in need with those ready to step up to the plate and free up that extra room or clean out that attic space. What better way to begin real integration than by bringing people into our homes. Focus on families with young children. UNICEF targets the most vulnerable because this provides the biggest return on investment. Count on kids, who will have the easiest time with the language, to bridge the divide. Prepare this generation to become productive, integrated members of society. Families brought into the fold with the backing of an existing member of the community will have a better shot at success. Dare to imagine the friendships, the understanding, the dissipating of fear.
Is Airbnb going to solve the refugee problem? Of course not. But small wins with positive outcomes add up. This small win approach is key to the world’s big challenges, like climate change. Why wait for lethargic, monolithic, vanilla government responses when we, who have seen the writing on the wall, can take matters into our own hands. It’s why firms are innovating to increase energy efficiency or avoid waste. Not because it’s mandated, but because their future demands it. Our government has, given its complicity in the instability that has fueled this crisis, failed abysmally in its responsibility to take on its fair share of the burden. Airbnb could facilitate a means showing we actually do care. If Airbnb needs a boardroom friendly rationale, cast this in terms of an investment in future business. Airbnb relies on tourism, and stability is key to travel. If you need a rationale to get on board, follow the cue of Toni Robinson and the rest of the self-help gurus who agree on one thing. The key to happiness is taking care of others.
A Room in the Right Wing
Franklin D. Roosevelt knew Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor. So he upped the number of sailors on the Arizona in a purposeful sacrifice of Americans to build support for the war he wanted to wage against Japan. This is but one of the “historical truths” perpetuated by Toshio Montoya (writing under the pen name Seiji Fuji) in his collection of essays entitled, Theoretical Modern History II, The Real History of Japan. Balderdash, one might conclude and leave it at that, except that Montoya is Chairman of the APA Group that operates one of Japan’s largest and most popular hotel chains. And each of their 52,310 hotel rooms comes equipped with a copy of this tome.
The brand–that opened its first overseas hotel in New Jersey in 2015–targets budget minded travelers and mostly delivers on the promise of “high functionality, high quality, and environmental friendliness.” It’s a cut out the unnecessary frills sort of affair and given the reported 30 percent plus operating margins (in an industry where 5 percent margins means you’re doing fine), the company is clearly getting something right. Montoya claims that an APA room’s carbon footprint is about a third that of the competition. Plausible, given that APA room dimensions are about a third that of the competition. Small, it turns out, has moral implications, though less environmentally sage and in line with Japanese packaging OCD, each of the four cotton swabs in the inventory of disposable plastic toiletries were individually wrapped.
Compact proved just fine–with the exception of the bathroom, a four by four module designed for the space station. Annoyingly, closing the door for a number two required swiveling to two-o-clock to keep my knees out of the way. I’m six one, but still. A shame because the commode was equipped with one of those supremely civilized bidet spigot systems that I’ve learned to appreciate. Jonesing for a read (I’d forgotten my Kindle in our previous location–it was found, of course, and returned a few days later) I picked up Montoya’s book and wedged myself in for a history lesson.
It was thus that I learned of FDR’s machinations at Pearl Harbor and that the Nanking massacre and the forced sexual slavery of Korean (and other) “comfort women” never happened. Pure fabrications, according to Montoya, tooted by China and South Korea to distract their citizens from their respective domestic economic crises. He links this regional economic malaise to South Korea’s “long tradition of neglecting safety” as evidenced by the tragic sinking of the SV Sewol and the capsizing of pleasure boats on the Yangtze. The kicker is that in 2007 the Japan Times reported that four APA properties were shut down because an architectural firm faked safety data resulting in hotels that failed to meet Japan’s earthquake safety standards. The catastrophic failings in both the design of and response to the meltdown of the Fukushima reactors are a more recent, glaring, and dangerous examples of shortcomings in the safety department. Interestingly, Montoya does mention the disaster, but this to lament the rise in construction costs and labor shortages (affecting development expenses) triggered by the remediation and rebuilding.
Montoya blames Japan’s “masochistic press” for having made “Japan the world’s most anti-Japan nation.” To right this, he proposes establishing a Ministry of Information with an annual budget of 300 billion yen (about 3 billion dollars) staffed with 3,000 quick response counter information specialists whose task it would be to “make corrections to articles and news reports [regarding Japan] that are inconsistent with reality.” In a revealing specific, Montoya recommends that Japan tap into the “Jewish information network” by using “American marketing companies funded by Jewish people” to respond to Chinese and South Korean information wars on historical issues.
As an unabashed supporter of Prime Minister Abe, a staunch right of center nationalist, Montoya pledges complete support of the administration’s efforts to scrap Article 9 of Japan’s constitution. That’s the one that prohibits Japan from engaging in warfare as a means of settling international disputes. Montoya feels that US policy in the region has created a power vacuum and that Japan is the only country that can restrain China’s military expansion. “It is fair to say,” Montoya opines, “that all the disorder occurring in the world of late is caused by the ‘Obama Doctrine’ in which military power is just shown off, not exercised.” I’m not sure how he reconciles this with the last major exercise of US force, its disastrous aftermath, and its unquestionable nexus to the disorder of which he speaks. At a minimum it evidences amnestic tendencies. Incidentally, Montoya feels that a Trump presidency would be an ideal opportunity for Japan to reassert herself.
Biases built into history as written by the victors are real. I believe that dropping the atomic bombs on largely civilian populations was a mistake and that race probably played a part as Montoya alleges. On the flip side, I don’t think Montoya would concede that Japan’s imperial and bloody march through Asia was motivated by the belief that their’s, the Yamato, was a divine race–with all other races considered inferior. Montoya legitimately points a finger at the US military industrial complex and its relationship to US aggression but in the same breadth plugs superior Japanese military technology as necessary to regional stability. He’s adamant that America’s sanctions forced Japan into war but glosses over that fact that these were in direct response to Japan’s annexation of mineral rich Manchuria.
Montoya recounts a meeting with the Charge d’Affaires Ad Interim at the Haitian embassy in Tokyo whereby they agreed that, “no country is more wonderful than Japan when evaluated from a global viewpoint.” Perhaps this is true. But with North Korea lobbing increasingly sophisticated missiles into the Sea of Japan and Chinese territorial grabs in the South China Sea (ruled illegal by UNCLOS), a thoughtful, calculated and coordinated response is necessary. Japan’s role in deescalating tensions will be substantially less effective if commandeered by those who view the past through such a clouded lens.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Fiction
Random House
2014
448
***WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014***
Richard Flanagan’s masterpiece, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” is one of those reads powerful enough to move one to tears—more than once in my case. I heard a radio interview in which Flanagan recounted how his research landed him in Japan, face to face with a notoriously brutal former Japanese prison guard known as “the Lizard.” Flanagan’s father suffered at the hands of this very man whose trademark vicious and repeated slaps were much feared. Wanting to experience this for himself, Flanagan finally persuaded the now “courteous, kindly and generous old man” to demonstrate the slaps for him. He reported that the first and second strikes were not unbearable, but that after the third one, he felt as if the whole building was shaking and swaying—because it was, thanks to an earthquake that had just hit. Flanagan went on to describe the fear he saw in the man’s eyes and his realization that, generously, it must be said, whatever evil was, it wasn’t in the room with them.