Unapologetic and ain't even gonna discuss it.

A group of six American former POWs ended their official visit to Japan today. Earlier this week, soon to be ex-Foreign Minister Okada* apologized to the men for the treatment they had received as POWs. The treatment included being forced into slave labor for certain Japanese companies and enduring beatings at the hands of people at the said companies, which the POWs said were worse than what they received from the understandably angered soldiers whom they had been fighting.

They have not received an apology from the corporations (or their successors) for the brutality they endured. In fact, those corporations have refused as much as a meeting with these men. Which corporations?

Nippon Steel

Mitsui Mining Company (Now Nippon Coke and Engineering Company)

Kawasaki Heavy Industries

and a number of so far unnamed others. Up to 60 companies used POWs as slave labor. None made any public comments on the visit of the former POWs/slave laborers.

I hope to never hear again about some supposed special Japanese honor---at least concerning those who run these companies.

I am personally embarrassed about Nippon Steel being listed here.

Related article here. I hope to get a fuller listing of the 60 companies later.

*Okada will be replaced by Seiji Maehara---not related to the apology

Non-communicative communication

Glad to see that the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) written by anal retentive types who understand neither testing nor language acquisition has been redesigned. Supposedly, according to a recent article in Metropolis magazine---which is well worth the price---the unimaginative, 1950s-types have made the test "more communicative." Obviously, they are not aware of the meaning of the word "communicative" when it comes to language. As far as I have been able to learn, they are once again testing passive/receptive skills and require no language production. Not a single word.

Frankly the test designers are incompetent. Do these same doofuses run the English language "education" system in Japan? Isn't there sorta like a basic rule to "test what is being tested"? If so, how can you test for communicative ability without testing communication?

The only reason to take such a test is for motivation (which will soon disappear after wasting chunks of your life with dry, arcane crap, much of which you will soon notice few Japanese actually use---and you won't remember) or because you need it for an equally unenlightened company for employment.

Isn't there a field known as linguistics with a sub-field known as Second Language Acquisition? Are the test writers so ignorant that they are unaware of it? Are they trying to perpetuate a for profit-first-and-foremost scam? Or is it different for the Japanese language? What century is it here?

Oh, and another eikaiwa chain, GEOS, bites the dust.