Kissing Your Socks Goodbye

By her own account, Marie Kondo was an unusual child, poring over lifestyle magazines to glean organizing techniques and then stealthily practicing them at home and school, confounding her family and bemusing her teachers.

As she writes in “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,” which comes out this month in the United States and is already a best seller in her native Japan and in Europe, she habitually sneaked into her siblings’ rooms to throw away their unused toys and clothes and ducked out of recess to organize her classroom’s bookshelves and mop closet, grumbling about poor storage methodologies and pining for an S-hook.

Now 30, Ms. Kondo is a celebrity of sorts at home, the subject of a TV movie, with a three-month waiting list for her decluttering services — until recently, that is, because she has stopped taking clients to focus on training others in her methods. Last Friday, I brought her book home to practice them.

What better moment to drill down and ponder the fretful contents of one’s sock drawer? Global and national news was careering from the merely hysterical to the nonsensical (the Ebola cruise ship incident was just peaking). Closer to home, other anxieties beckoned. But in my apartment on Second Avenue, the world was no larger than my closet, and I was talking to my T-shirts.

Let me explain. Ms. Kondo’s decluttering theories are unique, and can be reduced to two basic tenets: Discard everything that does not “spark joy,” after thanking the objects that are getting the heave-ho for their service; and do not buy organizing equipment — your home already has all the storage you need.

Obsessive, gently self-mocking and tender toward the life cycle of, say, a pair of socks, Ms. Kondo delivers her tidy manifesto like a kind of Zen nanny, both hortatory and animistic.

“Don’t just open up your closet and decide after a cursory glance that everything in it gives you a thrill,” she writes. “You must take each outfit in your hand.”

“Does it spark joy?” would seem to set the bar awfully high for a T-shirt or a pair of jeans, but it turns out to be a more efficacious sorting mechanism than the old saws: Is it out of style? Have you worn it in the last year? Does it still fit?

 ...

The contents of one of Ms. Kondo’s own drawers.

You can find YouTube videos of her technique, but it’s not so hard: Fold everything into a long rectangle, then fold that in upon itself to make a smaller rectangle, and then roll that up into a tube, like a sushi roll. Set these upright in your drawers. And pour your heart into it, Ms. Kondo urges: Thank your stuff, it’s been working hard for you.

“When we take our clothes in our hands and fold them neatly,” she writes, “we are, I believe, transmitting energy, which has a positive effect on our clothes.”

She proposes a similarly agreeable technique for hanging clothing. Hang up anything that looks happier hung up, and arrange like with like, working from left to right, with dark, heavy clothing on the left: “Clothes, like people, can relax more freely when in the company of others who are very similar in type, and therefore organizing them by category helps them feel more comfortable and secure.”

Read more at NYTS.

3 Reasons Why Japanese Localization Is ... Different

Japanese translation projects have earned quite a reputation in the translation and localization industry. It is too time intensive, say some. It is far costlier than other language projects, say others. And Japanese clients are notoriously fussy about that ever-moving-goal called “quality.”

But this relatively small island alone is the third largest in the world’s economy and the amount of content that gets localized to or from Japanese is enormous. So it makes sense to learn what it takes to be successful at Japanese localization.

Rules? Which Rules?

Language is a living thing — actor and subject, evolving and dying, a nearly inaudible whisper and a forceful storm. Efforts at structuring and containing it, while noble, quickly come up against its everyday realities.

That doesn’t mean that these efforts are never undertaken. Quite the opposite. In France, for example, the 379-year old Académie Française strives to police, protect, and preserve the French language. When you consider its very public fight last year against the efforts of the French government to open up higher education to English, you can see that is no easy goal. But these efforts at linguistic purism are the passion of similar language academies around the globe.
Except in Japan. Japan does not have a centralized regulatory body to fulfill the “officiate and prescribe” role that these other nations do.

So how then do translators ensure that they are properly translating from or into a language that has three writing systems?

The answer: It depends.

The Quality Question

Across all language projects, the notion of linguistic quality remains largely a relative one. The variables are based on factors as diverse as audience, deliverables, locale, generational differences, and even mere preferences.
Stating that the linguistic quality of Japanese translation is highly subjective is a gross understatement. It has multiple writing systems (kanji, which is ideographic; hiragana and katakana, which is collectively known as kana and is phonetic; and romaji, which is used in specific situations for writing Japanese with the Latin alphabet), two computer input methods (direct kana or keyboard romaji), no centralized authority’s take to fall back on, and the variables mentioned above to contend with.

The choice of words/writing systems is often driven by cultural differences, context, target audience, or company policy. Kana words are used ever more frequently, because kana is more likely to be used for foreign concepts and terminology. Software or online content are one such area. Much is also generation specific. While the younger generations may prefer katakana to kanji, older generations may sometimes not understand modern katakana.
Add to this the distinctive grammatical structure of Japanese. It is an agglutinative language, having more in common with Native American languages than with neighboring China’s. Unlike English, its word order is subject-object-verb not subject-verb-object. The differences are so stark that translators often have to restructure sentences, reorder words, add words or omit words altogether to arrive at the proper translation.

Japanese reading comprehension is also highly context dependent. This means, for instance, that when sorting in Japanese, one may have to manually index characters by considering their reading in order to arrive at the correct table of contents, index, or sorted lists.

No surprise then that Japanese localization is plagued with high error rates, longer project cycles, and budget-breaking costs.

Customer Care Conundrum

As if these challenges were not enough, Japanese localization projects generally call for greater attention to the customer service experience. Like Japanese characters themselves, translations are expected to be aesthetically driven. Business relationships, too, are expected to show attention to style, presentation, and visual coherence.

Our own experience with Japanese localization, for example, has revealed

• low tolerance for design errors
• preference for the visual over the textual (often calling for re-design of original source materials)
• presentation valued more than substance

This may be, too, why Japanese business relationships place greater emphasis on harmony rather than confrontation, constructive or otherwise. According to Robert Whiting, the author of You Gotta Have Wa, the concept wa, or peace, is a core Japanese value and critical to succeeding in its market. For an unprepared non-Japanese, wa may prevent them from discovering the root cause of a problem or an issue.

Learn more about this topic? Please go to Libor Safar's blog.

Charles Tuttle, Publishing Books to Span the East and West

Charles E. Tuttle and his wife, Reiko Tuttle.

Charles Egbert Tuttle, Jr. (April 5, 1915 – June 9, 1993) was an American publisher and book dealer who was internationally recognized for his contributions to understanding between the English- and Japanese-speaking worlds. Belonging to a family long associated with publishing, he travelled to Japan in a military role at the end of World War II, and established a publishing company there. Tuttle was the founder and eponym of the Charles E. Tuttle Company, now named Tuttle Publishing. Many of his company's books on Asian martial arts, particularly those on Japanese martial arts, were the first widely read publications on these subjects in the English language.

Tuttle was born on April 5, 1915, in Rutland, Vermont, United States of America. His family had long been involved in printing books and stationery, dating from the mid-19th century in the US, and tracing their history back to Richard Tottel in the late 16th century in London. His father, Charles E. Tuttle, Sr., published African-American literature and dealt in rare books, and also worked closely with the Vermont Historical Society.Tuttle attended local schools, the Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard University for his education. At university, he studied American history and literature. After graduating in 1937, he worked in the library of Columbia University for a year, then joined the family business.

In 1943, Tuttle's father died and, with World War II in progress, he enlisted in the
United States Army. He completed officer training and, when the war ended, was selected as part of the Allied forces occupying Japan.He arrived in Tokyo in October 1945, expecting to take charge of the library of the Diet of Japan (as he had been ordered), only to find that General Douglas MacArthur's staff had changed his assignment. He spent the next two years helping the Japanese newspaper industry. In 1947, Tuttle met Reiko Chiba, who belonged to a wealthy Japanese family from Hokkaidō; the two were married in 1951.

Tuttle founded his publishing company in Tokyo in 1948, with the mission to publish "books to span the East and West." His company was the 31st corporation approved by the occupying administration. In its first year of operation, it imported and distributed US paperback publications to the occupying forces, and the next year, it released its first publication. In 1951, the company began an intensive publishing program, producing English translations of contemporary Japanese literature, dictionaries of Japanese and other Asian languages, books on Japanese art and culture, and books on Japanese martial arts. Notably, many of its books on Asian martial arts were the first widely read publications on these subjects in the English language.

In 1971, the Association of American Publishers named Tuttle as its Publisher of the Year. In June 1978, he and his nephew, Tom Mori, founded the Tuttle-Mori Agency. In 1983, the Japanese government awarded him the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 3rd Class (Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon), for his contributions to the advancement of Japanese–American understanding. Through the late 1980s, Tuttle focused on the rare book business.

Following a brief illness, Tuttle died in his sleep on June 9, 1993, in his home town of Rutland, and was survived by his wife. Reiko Tuttle continued to run Tuttle Antiquarian Books until 2001, when she sold the business to two long-serving Tuttle company employees. She died on April 14, 2006, in Tokyo. Reflecting on the couple's contribution to Vermont, J. Kevin Graffagnino, Executive Director of the Vermont Historical Society, wrote: "Charles and Reiko Tuttle epitomized Vermont’s tradition of making a difference without fanfare or self-congratulation."

Read more at Wiki, and Tuttle Publishing.

Smart Toilets Arrive in U.S.

Like iPhones, app-packed commodes are objects of desire in Mr. Fujimori's Japan. The lids lift automatically. The seats heat up. Built-in bidets make cleanup a breeze. Some of them even sync with users' smartphones via Bluetooth so that they can program their preferences and play their favorite music through speakers built into the bowl.

Three-quarters of Japanese homes contain such toilets, most of them made by one of two companies: Toto Ltd. , Japan's largest maker of so-called sanitary ware, or Lixil Corp. , where Mr. Fujimori is the chief executive.

Now Mr. Fujimori is leading a push to bring them to the great unwashed. In May, Lixil plans to add toilets with "integrated bidets" to the lineup of American Standard Brands, which Lixil acquired last year for $542 million, including debt.

While bidets have often served as a byword for Old World debauchery in the U.S., Mr. Fujimori said Americans would welcome bidet-equipped toilets into their homes once they see them sold under a familiar name. Few people realized they needed smartphones until Apple's iPhone came along. So it will be in the U.S. with American Standard's new toilets, Mr. Fujimori said.

"Industry presents iPhone—industry presents shower toilet," Mr. Fujimori said in an interview at Lixil's headquarters in Tokyo. "We can create the same type of pattern."

Toto and Kohler, a U.S. manufacturer of bathroom fittings, have been selling toilets with bidet functions in the U.S. for several years. Beyond a niche market of Hollywood celebrities and early adopters, however, they feature more prominently in American bathroom humor than American bathrooms. The price, which can range up to more than $5,000 for high-end models—more than 10 times the price of some conventional toilets—is only one reason.

In a 2011 appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," the actress Whoopi Goldberg called her Toto Washlet "the greatest invention on the face of the earth." Homer Simpson, on the other hand, merely looked bemused when, during a 1999 episode of "The Simpsons" that was set in Japan, a hotel toilet announced: "Welcome. I am honored to accept your waste."

Toto, which pioneered bidet-style toilets in Japan in 1980 with its Washlet line, entered the U.S. market in 1993.... Please read the whole story at WSJ.

Photo :A Toto Washlet alongside Meiji-era toilets in Toto's company museum. Toto entered the U.S. market in 1993. Eric Pfanner/The Wall Street Journal

Rising Sun-Japan and the Art of Survival

Three years ago this March, a 9-­magnitude earthquake, the strongest ever known to hit Japan, created a tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people outright, displaced hundreds of thousands more and removed entire villages from the map. By triggering the failure of the Fukushima nuclear plant, it also left the landscape contaminated and led to Japan’s curtailing of its nuclear-power system.

I was living in Beijing when the quake hit, and I saw Chinese coverage shift from its normal churlish outlook on Japan to growing respect for the stoic discipline with which its people bore hardship. One photo ran on TV and front pages across China. It was an aerial shot of the Japanese, very young to very old, forming a long, snaking but always orderly line for disaster supplies. The amazed Chinese reaction was: Imagine a society in which people would patiently wait their turn for hours rather than rushing pell-mell to the front.

David Pilling, who from 2002 through 2008 was The Financial Times’s bureau chief in Tokyo, also learned of the earthquake in Beijing, his new post. He quickly returned to Japan to report on the disaster and its consequences. He conceived of this book, whose ambition, he says, is “to create a portrait of a stubbornly resistant nation with a history of overcoming successive waves of adversity.”

As anyone familiar with Japan knows, tenacity is highly celebrated as an individual and a collective trait. Words like ganbaru (“to endure”), ganbatte (“keep going”) and gaman (“plucky resolve”) pop up ­routinely in conversation. In Japan’s accounts of its own history, setbacks and the resulting brave rebounds play a central narrative role (much as the constant ­movement westward does in America’s understanding of its past). This is also the way Pilling structures his story, with opening and closing sections about destruction and recovery in the devastated Tohoku region. Between them come extended ­discussions about Japan’s long record of dealing with adversity, and the recent politics and economics of what is often — and, as Pilling shows, misleadingly — referred to as Japan’s “lost decades” following its 1980s boom.

The book author David Pilling

The ground-zero disaster reporting will command the attention of any reader. ­Pilling vividly recreates the waves of ­different sorts of destruction. First the earthquake itself, which “went on for a time-stopping six minutes.” Then the tsunami, which was not the single cresting “Great Wave” famous from Hokusai prints but a rise in sea level of as much as 130 feet in some ­areas. Pilling describes a multistory gymnasium where towns­people were waiting out the tsunami. Water filled the building, and more than 60 people were trapped and drowned. Pilling arrived in Tohoku in time to witness the next stage, in which survivors walked across a flattened landscape searching for any sign of the people, belongings, entire neighborhoods that had disappeared. For me, these scenes powerfully recall John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” — and although the causes were obviously different, in each case the longest-lasting source of damage came from radiation.

At the end of the book, Pilling returns to Tohoku and, of course, finds people defying hardship and persevering. They include a photographer friend who ­daringly makes repeated trips into the “exclusion zone” around the failed nuclear plant, to document what has happened there.

Please read the while book review by James Fallows at Tmagazine. 

Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival ,by David Pilling

 Penguin Press HC, (March 13, 2014),$20.15

What the U.S. Can Learn from Uniqlo

Rich country, rising unemployment, sluggish growth, big debts. Sound familiar? Japan’s notorious “lost decade,” the long stretch of economic stagnation that followed its massive property bubble in the late 1980s, looms large in the American mindset today. A lot of people think we may be headed down the same path.
The parallels between what happened to Japan and what’s happening to the U.S. have inspired a flurry of teaching points on what not to do next. The latest come from Tadashi Yanai, the mastermind behind Uniqlo, the discount Japanese clothing brand whose stores have spread across the globe like wildfire at a time when Japan’s economy and many Japanese companies are staring into the abyss. In the latest McKinsey Quarterly, Yanai focuses on what still struggling Japan can learn from Uniqlo’s success. But a lot of those lessons can also be applied to the U.S. Here’s a sampling of what Yanai has to offer: 

1. Don’t look down on developing countries 
Japanese companies seem to have their eyes in the rearview mirror. They have become introspective. I   think we should get back to something more like we were at the end of the war when Japan rose to prominence from a situation in which it had nothing. (It was during this period that Fast Retailing got started, in 1949.)

We’ve lost that spirit, maybe because we are under the illusion that we are rich and superior. But many countries are just as rich, and in Japan, income has stagnated for many people for a decade or more. Japan is still very comfortable to live in, if you are Japanese. But there’s a difference between being comfortable and being viable. We are gradually losing our viability.

 2. Leadership means working the global sales floor
One thing Japan has to get rid of is the idea that things are one way here and different everywhere else. The Japanese are really strong at home, and incredibly weak away from home. We need Japanese who are strong away, or who don’t distinguish between home and away. We’re trying to build this idea into Uniqlo’s culture. For example, English is spoken at business meetings with foreigners, and we want all emails to be in English in a few years…

My advice for young Japanese is simple: get out of Japan. One of our weaknesses as Japanese is our ineptness at communicating with other cultures. Even people who speak English well are closed off psychologically. They don’t speak frankly like I do. There’s this uniquely Japanese standoffishness, this hesitancy to become too involved. And it’s detrimental to globalization.

3. Don’t work backwards
We saw food distribution as a backward sector, so we went into partnership with a food group, Ryokuken, in 2002. But vegetables are not an industrial product; you don’t know exactly when they will be ready or in what volume. We eventually understood that it would be impossible to succeed unless we ran our own farms, and we did not want to be farmers. After two years, we shut operations down.

4. Don’t give up your national identity
We opened our first store outside Japan in 2001, in London. And we failed spectacularly. We quickly opened 21 outlets in Britain—and shut down 16 of them by 2003. In retrospect, that was probably good, because we learned so much. Our big mistake was to try to do things the British way. We never capitalized on our strengths…

All this sounds pessimistic, but I don’t see this as the counsel of despair. Japan has everything—people, goods, money, technology, information. As a nation, we are honest, hard-working and serious…

Even if we experience failure, we can pick ourselves up and try again. That’s what Uniqlo did—and that is what Japan can do…

Written by Roya Wolverson , please go to Time magazine to read the whole article.