Japan will be the first stop on my fall around the world adventure. I will be tracing the path the parents of Kenjiro (my father's father) took from Akita to Utashinai. No doubt a boat ride from Honshu to Hokkaido, landing at Otaru, east to Sapporo, then far north to Utashinai.
As such, I thought I'd whimsically bring you up to date on Japan. An appropriate subject is the wives of their two latest Prime Ministers. First, a quote from Time magazine on Yukio Hatoyama's spouse (maybe at Stanford University?):
— Married to Miyuki Hatoyama, a designer, cookbook author and former actress whom he met in California. The two have a son in his 30s who is studying engineering in Russia.— His wife is an energetic and quirky figure who gives inspirational talks and calls herself a "life composer." In a book she wrote called Very Strange Things I've Encountered, she said her soul visited Venus on a triangular-shaped UFO. "It was a very beautiful place and it was really green," she wrote.
Miyuki was definitely kooky, but Prime Minister Naoto Kan's wife of 40 years is, well, refreshing. Nobuko Kan just released a book entitled, What on Earth Will Change in Japan After You Become Prime Minister. It's a spicy tell all about her husband's shortcomings. He can't cook a simple meal, has trouble reading speeches, and a lot more. She questions whether he is fit for the job and predicts a short tenure. He just recently attained his position as PM, so the book must have been largely written over the past few years. Said Naoto, "I'm afraid to read it." He refers to Nobuko as "the opposition at home." This photo from the recent Canadian G8 summit looks like Naoto beseeching Nobuko to stop waving.
They are not only husband and wife...they are cousins, a not uncommon relationship around the world. Johann Sebastian Bach, Werner Von Braun, Albert Einstein, Rudy Giuliani, Jesse James, Jerry Lee Lewis (when Myra Gale was 13), Thomas Malthus, Edgar Allan Poe, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (okay, Eleanor was his 5th cousin), Eisaku Sato (another PM), Toyotomi Hideyori (you need to know Japanese history), Queen Elizabeth II (Philip is a second cousin)....and a lot more fall in this group of cousins marrying each other.
Turns out the First Lady of Japan is said to be the PM's intellectual equal. She provides advice on everything to him. That does not mean he accedes anything. The book within a month of publication is already into a third printing. You need to understand the Japanese to appreciate that something like this could well save him from joining that conveyor belt of PM's. This was not a trashy condemnation but a playful attempt at deprecating humor. While a current First Lady has never in Japan, or anywhere else, resorted to this sort of ploy, married couples in Japan definitely identify with this attitude.
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Tropical Depression Bonnie has weakened, and ships are already heading back to the oil spill area.
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