Wednesday, September 6, 2017

annual whale hunt - contrasting documentary viewpoints

Japan Times (7 Sept 2017) gives a good overview of "Whale of a Tale," the newly released story with builds in local villagers point of view for the annual killing in the Taiji cove that was forcefully presented by the lenses of "The Cove." Excerpt of online news article follows, with URL to full article and movie URL.

    The anthropological foundational ideas of point of view and context are well illustrated by both documentaries.

EXCERPT
..."Quite simply, I was fascinated by the controversy," Sasaki tells The Japan Times, "but I was also pained by what I felt was a very one-sided way of viewing things.
     "'The Cove' showed us what the Taiji fishermen were doing to dolphins in a way that made any counter-arguments difficult if not impossible. As a filmmaker based in the United States, I knew that using hidden cameras and bypassing authority is a very effective way to make a documentary, but I wouldn't call that journalism. And there were a lot of misleading passages and untruthful depictions in that film.
     "And as a Japanese I could understand how the people of Taiji felt betrayed and outraged. Their response was to try and cover things up, or put up a wall of silence and hope the foreigners would go away. Well, the foreigners were never going away. Unless the Taiji locals spoke up about their side of the story, things were going to get worse."
     Sasaki dedicated six years to meticulous research and interview and says she now feels like something of an expert on cetaceans, the scientific classification for sea mammals.
     Taiji has gotten a little wiser, too. It has gradually opened itself up to overseas media and protesters that routinely visit the town. In fact, all the attention has given the local economy a bit of a boost — what could be more appropriate for the digital age than "outrage tourism"? Also, last month Taiji Mayor Kazutaka Sangen visited the town of Klaksvik in the Faroe Islands with hopes of forging a sister city relationship. Fishermen there share the same practices and methods of hunting.

google map link
flickr, photos search
movie page, www.okujirasama.com 

Thursday, June 22, 2017

film - So Long Asleep: bringing some of the 1940s forced laborers' mortal remains back to Korea

---[Pr. David Plath writes, 6/2017] 

So Long Asleep (60 minutes) follows an international team of East Asian volunteers as they excavate, preserve and repatriate the remains of Korean men who died doing slave labor in Hokkaido during the Asia-Pacific War. On the 70th anniversary of the end of the war we travel with them as they carry 115 sets of remains on a pilgrimage across Japan and over to Korea for reinterment in the Seoul Municipal Cemetery. Using a dark past to shape a brighter shared future the project offers an upbeat model for remembrance and reconciliation that could be adapted widely.
     The film and the repatriation project are featured in a 4-page special segment of the Spring 2017 issue of Education About Asia.
     See the DER website to view a trailer. Dialogue is in English, Korean and Japanese; in the DER edition the dialogue carries English subtitles. Separately, project participants have prepared editions with subtitles in Korean and in Japanese. For the Korean version, contact Professor Byung-Ho Chung (bhc0606at gmail) and for Japanese contact Professor Song Ki-Chan (kichans at hotmail).


An extended essay by Pr. Chung about the project appears in Asia-Pacific Journal; Japan Focus online magazine, as well, http://apjjf.org/2017/12/Chung.html



Tuesday, March 21, 2017

nanotechnology to trace antiquities

Story about microscopic particles suspended in water and applied to cultural relics that attract smugglers and buyers.
Maybe just the news of this fingerprint tracking feature will dampen the interest of smugglers; or they will will use an expendable person to take the risk?
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/21/520922468/archaeologists-in-syria-use-data-water-to-confound-antiquities-smugglers


Friday, February 17, 2017

Sonic Japan - audio recordings around the society

Sound recordings bring listeners up close to the immediacy of the context and events at hand. The Sonic Japan project has collected a variety of settings to let you explore the many cultural places around the society and language of the Japanese islands. Thanks to the initiative of colleagues in Australia, Japan, and the USA, this project has taken full form. Details of method, funding, contributors and links to follow via Twitter, Facebook, or the collection itself at Soundcloud can be found at http://sonicjapan.clab.org.au/about and this website also groups the recordings to browse by map, by places list, and by cultural theme. The soundcloud address is https://soundcloud.com/sonicjapan/

soundcloud.com
Sonic Japan is a collection of sound recordings made in Japan that enables listeners to traverse an array of themes pertaining to everyday life through a ...

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

anthropology in 10 minutes or less (Youtube channel)

https://www.patreon.com/Anthropologyin10orLess

blurb: 

Anthropology in 10 or Less: Your Basement Based Source for Anthropological Inquiry

My name is Michael Kilman and I am an anthropologist. I lecture at several universities and last year, after searching YouTube for Anthropology Videos, I realized that someone needed to make them. As a result, as of January of 2017 I launched a new YouTube Series called Anthropology in 10 or Less. 

This show will explore the four fields of Anthropology, which include: Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistic Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology. Each episode will focus on a specific topic within these four fields and cover the topic in less then 10 minutes, making Anthropology more accessible to the general public and as a teaching tool, or study tool for students.  

www.patreon.com
Follow Michael Kilman on Patreon: Read posts by Michael Kilman on the world's largest platform enabling a new generation of creators and artists to live out their passions!


Friday, January 13, 2017

accents on website, finding yourself

It seems like everyone else has an accent, but from their point of you it is you yourself who sounds *not from around here." The project described here lets users hover across the many languages there.
article source credit, http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-interactive-map-hear-accents-around-world/

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There are many websites that exist just to stoke your curiosity. Localingual is one of them.

Land on the website and a colorful world map takes up your screen. There is no mention of what exactly this map is for, but let your mouse travel around the map and ratchet up your speakers. Travel to any country in the world and listen to the unique accents of that country!

Localingual

The website came from the mind of a world traveler. David Ding is a former Microsoft engineer fascinated by dialects and languages. His backpacking trips allow him to experience both. So he took this interest and started the site as an encyclopedia for languages:

My dream for this site is for it to become the Wikipedia of languages and dialects spoken around the world.

...[truncated]