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Aron Iosifovich Katsenelinboigen (; September 2, 1927 – July 30, 2005) was a founder of predispositioning theory, a subject in decision theory and systems theory that models development in the context of uncertainty.

Career

Katsenelinboigen was born in Izyaslavl in the Ukrainian SSR. At fourteen, he enrolled at the Uzbekistan Institute of Economics, transferring four years later, in 1945, to the Moscow State Institute of Economics. There he graduated the following year and spent a further three years pursuing post-graduate work. He received a PhD in Economics in 1957 and became a Doctor of Economic Science in 1966.

In 1973, Katsenelinboigen emigrated to the United States, where he continued to research indeterministic economics and develop predispositioning theory. He became a United States citizen in 1979. He also began to explore the application of predispositioning theory in fields other than economics, such as biology, psychology and theology. From 1990, when Vera Zubarev became one of his pupils, he and she began researching its application in literature and art.

In 1974, after a brief sojourn at the University of California, Berkeley, Katsenelinboigen joined the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. During this time, he was also a visiting professor at Princeton University, where he presented a course on the Soviet economy. In 1977, he joined the Wharton School's Department of Social Systems Sciences and became a full professor before moving to the Department of Decision Sciences in 1987. He retired in 2004.

Katsenelinboigen's use of positional and combinational styles of chess as metaphors for the mental processes underlying decision-making continue to be taught by Zubarev at the University of Pennsylvania.

Positions

 Professor, Decision Sciences Department, University of Pennsylvania, 1987-2005.
 Chairman, Social Systems Sciences Department, University Pennsylvania, 1985-1986.
 Professor, Social Systems Sciences Department, University of Pennsylvania, 1981-1987.
 Research Professor, Social System Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, April 1978 – 1980.
 Visiting Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, 1974-1978.
 Visiting Lecturer, Department of Economics, Princeton University, 1977.
 Visiting Research Economist, University of California, Berkeley, January–August, 1974.
 Professor, Economic School, Moscow State University, 1970-1973.
 Head of the Department of Complex Systems, Central Economic-Mathematical Institute, U.S.S.R.Academy of Sciences, 1966-1973.
 Senior Research Fellow, Central Economic-Mathematical Institute, U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, 1963-1965.
 Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Economics, U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, 1960-1963.
 Research Fellow, Institute of Economics, U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, 1956-1959.
 Research Fellow, Institute of Aviation Technology, Moscow, 1956.
 Research Fellow, Institute of Ceramics, Moscow, 1953-1955.
 Teacher at Booksale Vocational School, Moscow, 1951-1952.
 Consultant at the Collector of Public Libraries, Moscow, 1951.
 Planner, "Freser" factory, Moscow, 1950-1951.
 Planner, "Kaliber" factory, Moscow, 1949.

Grants
 Ford Foundation, Research Competition in Soviet/Russian and East European Studies 1975. For two years (1975–1977). The topic of investigations "The Price-Command Mechanism in the Soviet Economic System."
 A.C.L.S., For the Fall Semester of 1977/1978 academic year. The topic of investigations "Vertical and Horizontal Mechanisms in the Soviet Economic System."
 National Council for Soviet and Eastern European Studies. For the 1980-1982 academic years. The topic of investigations "Towards the Concept of Measuring An Economic Potential: The Soviet-American Case."
 University of Pennsylvania 1987. For the purpose of developing a research agenda on a new topic area: indeterminism.
 University of Pennsylvania 1992. For organization of the International symposium "Calculus of Predisposition".
 University of Pennsylvania 1993. For the development of a new concept concerning mechanisms of evolutionary change (normal and pathological)
 SEI Center at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania 1994. For the development of a new concept concerning the political system of a corporation

Honored positions
 Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia.
 Member of the ACTR/ACCELS National Board of Senior Advisers

Books

 Automation of Production Processes and Problems of the Organization of Labor, Moscow,"Mashgis," 1956, pp. 1–143. (in Russian)
 The Economic Effectiveness of Complex Mechanization and Automation in Machine Building, Moscow,"Ekonomica,"1959, pp. 1-233. (in Russian)
 The Calculation of Cost of Production in Automated Processes. Moscow, "Finizdat," 1958, pp. 1–87. (in Russian)
 Optimality and the Mechanism of Prices, (together with I. Lakhman and Iu. Ovsienko). Moscow: "Nauka," 1969, pp. 1–124. (in Russian)
 Methodological Problems of the Optimal Planning of a Socialist Economy, (together with Iu.Ovsienko and E.Faerman). Moscow, TSEMI, Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., 1966, pp. 1–246. (in Russian)
 Studies in Soviet Economic Planning, White Plains: M.E. Sharpe Publisher, 1978, pp. 1–229.
 Soviet Economic Thought and Political Power in the U.S.S.R., NY: Pergammon Press, 1980, pp. 1–229.
 Some New Trends in Systems Theory, Seaside, CA.: Intersystems Publications, 1984, pp. 1–269.
 Basic Economics and Optimality (together with S. Movshovich, Iu.Ovsienko), Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications, 1987, pp. 1–225. The Russian version of the book Growth and Economic Optimum, Moscow: "Nauka," 1972, pp. 1–152.
 Vertical and Horizontal Mechanisms as a System Phenomenon, Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications,1988, pp. 1–350.
 Soviet Political and Economic System, vol.1, pp. 7–237; vol.2, pp. 5–276; vol.3, pp. 5–311, Benson: Chalidze Publ., 1988. (In Russian).
 Selected Topics in Indeterministic Systems, Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications, 1989, pp. 1–336.
 The Soviet Union: Empire, Nation, and System. New Brunswick:Transactions, 1990, pp. 1–471.
 The Aesthetic Method in Economics. Benson: Chalidze Publ., 1990, pp. 1–392. (In Russian).
 Indeterministic Economics. New York: Praeger Publ., 1992,
 Russia: Problems and Conflicts. Philadelphia: The Coast Publ., 1993, pp. 1–87. (In Russian).
 Evolutionary Change; Toward a Systemic Theory of Development and Maldevelopment. Newark: Gordon & Breach Publishing Group, 1997, pp. 1–217.
 The Concept of Indeterminism & Its Applications; Economics,Social Systems, Ethics, Artificial Intelligence & Aesthetics. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997
 A Conceptual Understanding of Beauty. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003
 18 Questions And Answers Concerning The Torah, 2007
 "ВОСПОМИНАНИЯ: "О Времени, О Людях, О Себе"

Books edited
 Popovsky, M., On the Other Side of the Planet, vol.1,Philadelphia:Coast, 1994, pp. 1–388 (In Russian).
 Popovsky, M., On the Other Side of the Planet, vol.2, Philadelphia: Coast, 1995, pp. 1–468 (In Russian).
 Popovsky, M., On the Other Side of the Planet, vol.3,Philadelphia: Coast, 1996, pp. 1–426 (In Russian).
 An Aesthetic Approach to Live, History, Society, Business, Science, Art & Literature (together with Matthew Mandelbaum). Philadelphia: Friends of Art, 1997, pp. 1–254

Translations

 "How Keynes Came to America" by John Kenneth Galbraith. Stamford, CT: The Overbrook Press, 1965, pp. 3–18. Translated from English into Russian and published in Ekonomika I Matematicheskie Metody, vol.33, no 4, 1997, pp. 66–73.

Selected articles
 "Calculations of Norms of Inventories on the Mass Production Lines," Card Catalog TESKO, No. 434/4, Moscow, 1950, pp. 1–6.
 "Concerning Higher Qualifications for Workers on the Production Line," Vestnik Mashinostroeniia, no. 9,1950, pp. 62–65.
 The Problems of Tariff Scales for Jobs and Workers when Introducing the New Methods of Labor Organization," Vestnik Mashinostroeniia, no. 11, 1954, pp. 78-79.
 "The Possibilities for Increasing the Labor Productivity on the Ceramic Factories," Steklo i Keramica, no. 11, 1954, pp. 23–23.
 "Discovered Reserves," Stroitel'naya Gasetta, March 13, 1955.
 "Automation of Production Processes in Machinbuilding Industry and Organization of Labor?" Cotsialistichesky Trud, no.1 1957, pp. 9–17.
 "Technological Progress and Its Influence on the Cultural Level of Workers," Filosfskie Nauki, no. 4, 1959, pp. 14–22.
 "Application Mathematical Methods in Economic Investigations" Vestnik Akademii Nauk U.S.S.R., no. 4, 1959, pp. 14–22.
 "Automation and Economics," Newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya, August 18, 1959.
 "Technological Progress and the Reduction of Expenditures in Manufacturing Industries," Cotsialistichesky Trud, no.11 1959, pp. 42–49.
 "The Economic Effectiveness of Complex Mechanization and Automation in Machine Building," Problems of Economics, no.11 1959, pp. 85–99.
 "Problems of Labor under Automation," Cotsialistichesky Trud, No11 1960, pp. 76–80.
 "The Economic Effectiveness of Complex Mechanization and Automation in Machine Building," in Socio-Economic Problems of Technological Progress (Materials ofScientific Session of the Economic, Philosophical, and Judicial departments of the Academy of Sciences of USSR,) Moscow: Nauka, 1961, pp. 81–104.
 "Some  Methodological Problems Concerning Analysis of Labor Organization Under Complex Automation of Production Processes," in Economic Problems of Automation of Industrial Production," Moscow: Mashgiz, 1961, pp.206-214.
 "Main Problems of Raising Workers Skills Under Conditions of Intensive Technological Progress." In Industry and Labor in the U.S.S.R, G.V. Osipov (ed.), London, Travistock Publications, 1966, pp. 207–222; in Industria y Trabajo en la URSS. La Habana: 1975 (in Spanish).
 "Certain Theoretical Aspects of Optimal Planning of National Economy." Matekon, Vol. II, no. 4, 1966, pp. 3–18.
 "The Problem of Application Mathematics in Economic Theory," Voprosy Ekonomiki, no. 4, 1967, pp. 98–107.
 "Centralism and Economic Autonomy in a Socialist Economy" Matekon, Vol. IV, no. 4, 1968, pp. 3–29.
 "Toward Coordination and Self-acting." In  Informatsionnyj Bulleten' no.9, 1968. Moskva: Nauchny Sovet Academii Nauk USSR  po Problemam    Concretnykh  Sociologicheskikh Issledovanij, pp. 99–109.
 "Methodological Problems of Control of Complex Systems," Problemy Metodologii Systemnykh Issledovanij. Moscow: "MYSL," 1970, pp. 87– 124.
 "Optimal Control and the Price Mechanism," Matekon, Vol. VI, no. 3, 1970, pp. 260–285.
 "Capital Charges in Optimal Economic Models," Matekon, Vol. VII, no. 4, 1971, pp. 370–390.
 An Introduction to the Russian Translation of the book E. Fels, G. Intner, Methodik Der Wirtschaftwissenschaft, "Progress," Moscow, 1971, pp. 5–21.
 "Concerning Some General and Particular Aspects of Different Levels of Management in the Socialistic Economy," Modeling of Economic Processes, Moscow State University Publisher, 1972, pp. 61–101 (in Russian).
 "Systems Analysis and the Problem of Values," Sistemnye Issledovaniia, Moscow, "Nauka," 1972, pp. 3–25.
 "On the Various Methods of Describing the Socialist Economy," Matekon, Vol. X, no. 2, 1973, pp. 3–25.
 "Systemanalyse and Wertlehre," Ideen des Exakten Wissens, West Germany, No. 5, 1973, pp. 283–290.
 "General Systems Theory and Axiology," General Systems, Vol. XIX, 1974, pp. 19–26.
 "Constructing the Potential of a System," General System, Vol. XIX, 1974, pp. 27–36.
 "Variations in Means of Description of Economic Systems," Collective Phenomena and the Applications of Physics to Other Fields of Science, Prepared for delivery at a Seminar "Moscow," U.S.S.R., 1-15, July, 1974, Brain Rese arch Publications, 1975, pp. 38–44.
 "Disguised Inflation in the Soviet Union: The Relationship between Soviet Income Growth and Price Increased in the Postwar Period," The Socialist Price Mechanism, ed. by A. Abouchar. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 19 77, pp. 171–183; the short version of this article may be seen in Economic Aspects of Life in the U.S.S.R. Main Findings of Colloquium held 29–31 January 1975 in Brussels. NATO-Directorate of Economic Affairs, 1975, pp. 101–111.
 "The Potential of a System," Systems Thinking and the Quality of Life, Proceedings of the 1975 Annual North American Meeting of the Society for General Systems Research, New York City, January 27–30, pp. 50–54.
 Comments on Professor Vsevolod Holubnychy, "The Present State of Cybernetics and Republic - Level economic Planning." Ukraine in the Seventies (ed. Peter J. Potichny's), Mosaic Press, Oakville, Ontario, 1975, pp. 97–101.
 "Conflicting Trends in Soviet Economics in the Post Stalin Era," The Russian Review, Vol. 35, no. 4, 1976, pp. 373–399.
 "Market and Plan, Plan and Market: The Soviet Case," Papers and Proceedings of the Eighty-ninth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, September 16–18, 1976, Atlantic City, NJ, pp. 61–66, The Soviet Econom y, Continuity and Change, ed. by M. Bornstein, Westview Press, CO, 1981, pp. 61–70.
 "Colored Markets in the Soviet Union," Soviet Studies, Vol. XXIX, no. 1, 1977, pp. 62–85. The enlarged version of this article is published in Internal Contradiction in the USSR, no. 2, 1982, Chalidze Publications, pp. 54–132, (in Russian).
 "Soviet Science and the Economists/Planners," Soviet Science and Technology: Domestic and Foreign Perspectives. Published for the National Science Foundation by the George Washington University, Washington, D.C., 1977, pp. 230–242. The revised version of this article was published in Survey, Vol. 1, No.1 (102), Winter 1977-1978, pp. 42–52. USSR: Internal Contradictions, no. 11, 1984, pp. 243–268 (In Russian).
 "Some Observations on the Plan-Market Relationship in Centrally Planned Economies," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 434, November 1977, pp. 186–198.
 "Economics and the Problem of Values," The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States, Vol. XIII, 1973–1977, no. 35-36, pp. 209–216.
 "Vertical and Horizontal Mechanisms in Complex Systems." Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual North Meeting of the Society of General Systems Research, Washington, D.C., February 13–15, 1978, pp. 276–280.
 "Quelques Commentaires sur les Mecanismes Verticaux et Horizontaux dans L'Economie Sovetique," Reveue D'Etudes Comparatives Est - Quest, Vol. 9, no. 4, 1978, pp. 7–20.
 "Domestic Factors Shaping Soviet Foreign Policy: Economic Conditions and Cultural Forces," Perceptions: Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 1978, pp. 59–64.
 "L.V. Kantorovich, The Political Dilemma in the Scientific Creativity," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 1978–1979, Vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 129–147. The enlarged version of this article is published in Internal Contradic tions in the USSR, no. 2, 1982, Chalidze Publications, pp. 284–334 (In Russian) and in revised form in Ekonomika I Matematicheskie Metody, vol.33, no 3, 1997, pp. 31–42.
 "Interaction of Foreign and Economic Policy in the Soviet Union," The Papers of the Peace Science Society (International), Vol. 28, 1978, pp. 26–36. The enlarged version of this article is published in Internal Contradictions in the USSR, no. 4, 1982, Chalidze Publications, pp. 13–50, (in Russian).
 "Labile and Invariable Valuations," Paper was presented at the Fourth International Congress of Cybernatic & Systems, 21–25 August 1978, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (in press). (The Summary of the paper is published in the boo k Current Topics in Cybernetics and Systems, ed. by J. Rose, Springer-Verlag, 1978, pp. 253–254).
 "The Mechanisms of Distribution Consumer Goods and Services in the Soviet Economy." Paper was presented at the International Conference on the Service Sector of the Economy, University of Puerto Rico, June 26, July 1, 1978 (in press).
 My Meeting with a Prominent Turkish Poet: Nazim Hikmet, Edebiyat, Vol. IV, No. 2, 1979, pp. 191–192.
 "Creation as a General Systems Phenomenon," Proceedings of the Silver Anniversary International Meeting, Society for General Systems Research, London, England, August 20–24, 1979, pp. 76–80.
 "On Variety of Ideologies," Quarterly Journal of Ideology, Vol. iii, Spring 1980, no. 1, pp. 9–22.
 "Jews in Soviet Economic Science," Soviet Jewish Affairs, Vol. 11, no. 1, 1981, pp. 29–51.
 "Exchange and Values," Value Judgement and Income Distribution, ed. by R. Solo and C. Anderson, Praeger Publishers, 1981, pp. 165–184.
 "Divergence and Convergence as General Systems Categories," Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual North American Meeting of the Society for General Systems Research, Toronto, Canada, January 6–9, 1981, pp. 215–224.
 "Belief, Art and Science as General Systems Phenomena," Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Conference of the Southeastern Region of the Society for General Systems Research, April 21–23, 1981, Louisville, KY, pp. 239–246.
 "Some Regional Problems in the USSR," Planning under Regional Stagnation, eds. W. Buhz and P. Friedrich, Nomos Verlags-gellshaft, Baden-Baden, 1982, pp. 115–133; International Contradictions in the USSR, no. 5, 1982, pp. 10–43 (in Russian).
 Book review "Political Change and Social Development: The Case of the Soviet Union" by Alexander Shtromas. The Russian Review, vol.41,no.3,1982, p. 340.
 "A Little Bit on Russia's Awful Past, Hectic Present, and Shadowed "Future." The USSR: International Contradictions, No. 7, 1983, pp. 37–74 (in Russian).
 "Corruption in the USSR: Some methodological notes," Corruption, Causes, Consequences and Control, ed. by M. Clarke. Frances Pinter Publishers London, 1983, pp. 220–238. USSR: International Contradictions, no. 8, 19 83 (in Russian).
 "Openness of The Soviet Union." Paper delivered at the Fourth Annual Sewanee Economic Symposium, Market Economics, Planned Communism and the Third World: Economic Strength and Dependence, March 3–5, 1983, Sawanee, TN, USA (in press).
 "Indetermining the Future: A Systems Approach to Some Old Problems." 6th International Congress of Cybernetics and Systems of the WOGSC September 10–14, 1984, AFCET, Paris, Vol. 1., pp. 301–306.
 "Planning, Market and Measurement," Acta Slavica Iaponica, The Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, tomus II, 1984, pp. 1–13.
 "Some Notes on Vertical and Horizontal Economic Mechanism," Regional and Industrial Development Theories, Models and Empirical Evidence, ed. by A. Anderson, W. Isard, T. Puu, New York: North Holland 1984, pp. 383–405.
 "The Story of a Jewish Favorite: Aron Katsenelinboigen sounds great," Time and We, no. 81, 1984, pp. 172–202 (in Russian).
 "Some Comments on R. Ackoff's Concept of Interactive Planning." Planning for Human Systems: Essays in Honor of Russell L. Ackoff. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, pp. 179–193.
 The Paradigm of the Manifold (Homogeneity) and the Singular Variety (Heterogeneity) as Applied to Social and Biological Systems. Proceedings of the International Conference Systems Inquiring: Theory, Philosophy, Methodology, Los Angeles, May 27–31, 1985, Vol. I, pp. 275–283. As an article was published in Terapia Familiar Epistemologia Sisteactica, no. 16, 1987 (in Spanish).
 "Mathematical Economics in the Soviet Union: A Reflection On the 25th Anniversary of L.V. Kantorovich's book: The Best Use of Economic Resources", Acta Slavica Iaponica,Vol. 4 (1986), pp. 88–103. Internal Contradictions in USSR, no. 15, 1986, pp. 46–79 (in Russian).
 "Toward a Model of Indeterministic Systems Development" (together with M. Kavesh). Proceedings of the International Conference of Mental Images, Values and Reality, May 26–30, 1986, Vol. 1, pp. 79–84.
 "Toward a Unified Theory of the Physiological Field" (together with D.Giacomo&M.Weissmark). Seventh International Congress of Cybernetics and Systems, London, September 3, 1986, pp. 376–378.
 "What to Undertake?" Country and World, no. 1(37), 1987, pp. 46–47 (in Russian).
 "Is the Soviet Union Changing?" Nation, June 13, 1987, p. 812.
 "Gorbachev's Paradox," Internal Contradictions in USSR, no. 19, 1987, pp. 97–181 (in Russian).
 "Respite or Change of the Tradition," Vremia i My, no. 96, 1987, pp. 104–128 (in Russian).
 "Will Glashost Bring the Reactionaries to Power?," Orbis, Spring 1988, pp. 217–230.
 Respond to the letter by prof. G.Gibian concerning my article [61], Orbis, Summer 1988, pp. 442–444.
 "Gorbachev's Paradox or How to Help Him to Enter in History" Vremia i My, no. 99, 1988, pp. 105–125 (in Russian).
 "Yanov vs. Solzhenitsyn", Vremia i My, no.100,1988, pp. 204–214 (in Russian).
 "Towards Constructing a Typology of Corporate Leadership". Systems Research, vol.6,no2, 1989, pp. 103–116.
 "Anti-Semitism and the Jews State", 22, no.64, 1989, pp. 165–188 (in Russian).
 "Some Notes on Anti-Semitism", Word, no.7-8 1990, pp. 121–142; no.12 1992, pp. 121–130.
 Answers on questions concerning the future of the Soviet Union, Vremia i My, No.108, 1990, pp. 149–151 (in Russian).
 "Beauty as a Measurement of Performance: An Introduction to the Calculus of Predispositions", Proceedingd 5th IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control, September 5–7, 1990, Philadelphia, pp. 98–103.
 Interview concerning the future of the Soviet Union, Vestnik, no.23,1991,pp. 8–11 (in Russian).
 "Change and Evolution". Systems Research, Vol.8,No4, 1991, pp. 77–93.
 "To Whom the Future Belongs? Thoughts Concerning Present State of the Past Soviet Union." Vremia i My,no.115,1992,pp. 148–164 (in Russian).
 "Russian Imperial Concept", Interview to the newspaper Novoe Russkoe Slovo, March 2,3,4,5,8, 9,10 1993 (in Russian).
 "A Szovjet gazdasag Militarizalasarol", 2000. December Mcmxciii, pp. 6–9 (in Hungarian)
 Dialog with Vera Zubareva concerning "angels". In the book "About Angels: A Treatise" by Vera Zubareva. Publisher: Odessa (Ukraine),1995, pp. 122–131.
 "Socio-Economic Mechanisms of Change and Biological Evolution". World Futures, Vol.46, 1996, pp. 171–193
 'Can One Measure Beauty?". The Coast, no, 5, 1996, pp.285-293 (in Russian).
 "Internal Mechanisms of Change." In Sustainable Peace in the World System, and the Next Evolution of Human Consciousness, Proceedings of the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the ISSS, July 14–19, 1996, pp. 365–376.
 "Is Capitalism a Danger for Modern Society?" Interview to the journal Vremia i My,no.135,1997, pp. 182–201 (in Russian).
 "Some Features of a Crossing Mechanism of Change." Proceedings of the Forty First Annual Meeting of the ISSS, Seoul, Korea, July 22–25, 1997, pp. 755–765.
 "Behind the Iron Curtain." Interview to the journal The Red and Blue, vol. LV, no. 3, 1997, pp. 6–8, 26-27.
 "Systemic Oneness. Systemic Vision of the Devil in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov." Transactions of the Association of Russian-American Scholars in the U.S.A., vol.XXVIII, New York, 1996–1997, pp. 303–311 (in Russian).
 A letter to the publisher of The New Review, book 210, 1998,pp. 323–325 (in Russian).
 "The Theory of Predispositioning and Literary Analysis." Slavic and East European Journal, volume 42, no.4, Winter, 1998, pp. 736–739.
 "In memory of Andrey Malishevski." (In Russian.) In the book A.V. Malishevski, Qualitative Models In the Theory of Complex Systems. Moscow: Nauka, 1998, pp. 519–521.
 "To the Strategy of Russian "perestrojka."  Kontinent, Appendix to no. 1, 1999, pp. 56–67 (in Russian).
 "God and Indeterministic God." Creative Transformation. Vol. 9. No.4, 2000:14-18.
 "A Dialogue That Takes Place Somewhere and Still Continues." In the book About Angels, About God, About Poetry by V. Ulea. University of West Alabama: Livingston Press, 2003, pp. 95–115.
 "The Language of Predispositioning." Iconicity in Language. Internet Journal, 2003.
 "License for Subjectivity"

External links
 Site dedicated to Aron Katsenelinboigen
 Essay in Honor of Dr. Aron Katsenelinboigen
 In Memory of Dr. Aron Katsenelinboigen
 Vladimir Shlapentokh, Aron Katsenelinboigen «Word» 2006, №50 In Russian.

1927 births
2005 deaths
20th-century American philosophers
Systems scientists
Plekhanov Russian University of Economics alumni
Soviet emigrants to the United States
University of California, Berkeley staff
University of Pennsylvania staff

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Helsinki, Finland – February 20, 2017 – Cinia Group, Finland-based provider of intelligent network, cloud, and software services, today announced an interconnection agreement with TTK, one of Russia's largest communications providers. The result is the fastest and lowest latency data connection yet between European and Asian countries.
The new agreement connects Russia's largest fiber-optic communication network with Cinia's Northern Digital Highway, which provides the most direct connection from Central European network hubs to the Finnish-Russian border. The new route further increases the speed and reliability of TTK's Eurasia Highway, connecting European and Asian countries.
Cinia's Northern Digital Highway leverages the Cinia C-Lion1 submarine data cable, a direct route between Finland and Germany opened in 2016. The data cable provides a record-breaking capacity of 144 terabits per second (Tbps) and directly connects to key European network nodes such as DE-CIX Frankfurt, the largest Internet exchange point in the world.
New interconnection allows TTK to diversify its current data transmission routes to Western Europe. Cinia's aim is to expand its international long-haul optical transmission infrastructure to enable interconnected real-time business operations in Europe and Asia, and to enable data center operators to benefit from Nordic countries' cool climate, strict privacy laws, and low energy pricing. Interconnection with TTK helps position Finland as the key gateway between the East and the West.
TTK Company is one of the TOP-5 Russian telecommunications companies as well as principal backbone service providers to domestic, international carriers and biggest Russian corporations. The company is the leading provider of broadband Internet access, TV and telephony services to end-users all over Russia. TTK operates the largest fiber-optic backbone network in Russia, with a length of more than 76,000 km. The transcontinental TTK's backbone network, known as EurasiaHighway, is interconnected with the communication networks of almost all the neighbouring countries, including China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, Finland, Transcaucasus, the Baltic and CIS states. EurasiaHighway is the optimal route between Europe and Asia.


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DVB News: Japan's lack of transparency threatens Burma's development (as PM Abe seeks to contain China)
Posted on November 27, 2013 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
Hi Blog. A bit of a tangent today. The author of this article asked me for some input some months back, and I steered him towards some resources that talked about Japan's historical involvement with Burma (and deep ties between the ruling junta and Japan's WWII government — to the point of using the Imperial Army's public order maintenance style over its colonies as a template to repress domestic dissent). Even with recent changes in Burma's government, Japan's engagement style is reportedly not changing — it's still up to its old nontransparent policymaking tricks. I put up this article on Debito.org because it relates to the Abe Administration's perpetual use of China not only as a bugbear to stir up nationalism and remilitarization, but also something to encircle and contain, as Abe visits more Asian countries in his first year in office than any other PM (without, notably, visiting China). Nothing quite like getting Japan's neighbors to forget Japan's wartime past (and, more importantly, Japan's treatment of them as a colonizer and invader) than by offering them swagbags of largesse mixed with a message of seeing China instead as the actual threat to regional stability. Result: Who will agitate for the offsetting of Japan's historical amnesia if the descendants of their victims (or their governments, lapping up the largesse) will not? These are the "arrows" Abe is quietly loosing, and this time outside Japan in support of his revisionism. Arudou Debito
Japan's lack of transparency threatens Burma's development
Demographic Voice of Burma News, October 31, 2013, By Jacob Robinson,courtesy of the author
http://www.dvb.no/analysis/japans-lack-of-transparency-threatens-burmas-development-myanmar/34024
Excepted below
Japan's traditional approach to diplomacy – characterised by "quiet dialogue" – is becoming a threat to Burma's fragile reform process. In recent weeks, the Japanese government has demonstrated an alarming lack of transparency regarding both its role in Burma's peace process and land grabbing problems at Thilawa, Japan's flagship development project near Rangoon. Eleven News also reported on Tuesday that a Burmese parliament member demanded greater transparency about how Japanese financial aid is distributed to Burma's health sector.
Perhaps of greatest concern is Japan's abysmal response to land grabbing problems at Thilawa. When landgrabbing reports first surfaced in January 2013, a Japanese company developing Thilawa responded to media inquiries by saying that land issues were the sole responsibility of Burma's government. The following month, a spokesman for Japan's embassy in Burma took the same position, saying that Thilawa land issues were "very complicated" and that Burma's government was solely responsible for land grabbing issues.
This kind of detached and dismissive response from Japan was nothing less than a public relations disaster. It also set off alarm bells among members of the international community who were hoping that Japan would play a responsible role in Burma. It wasn't until this October – over 10 months after the initial land grabbing report – that Japan's government finally decided to take some responsibility for land grabbing by holding a meeting with Thilawa landowners. Not surprisingly, The Irrawaddy reported that the meeting was off-limits to the media and held behind closed doors.
Japan's secretive approach to such an important issue is an ominous sign that Japan is stubbornly clinging to its "quiet dialogue" approach to diplomacy, whereby Japanese officials "gently encourage" foreigners to capitulate in stuffy private meetings that are tightly controlled and choreographed by Japan. Japanese officials just don't seem comfortable doing business any other way. But being uncomfortable isn't an excuse. There's a good reason why transparency has become a rallying cry for Burma's opposition, and Japan will need to adapt. A lack of transparency breeds corruption, and corruption stifles development. So if Japan really wants to foster sustainable development in Burma it simply has to change its ways…
In other words, Japan is starting to destroy an amazing opportunity that practically fell into its lap when Burma's military decided to give Japan a prominent role in developing the "new and improved" Burma. One reason why Japan has been so favoured lately is because it's viewed as a "friendly" alternative to China. But if people start to equate Japan's tactics with those of China, the whole game changes and Burma will be less willing to grant Japan special privileges.
Japan also made a huge mistake by asking Yohei Sasakawa to serve as Japan's official peace ambassador in Burma. Sasakawa is a member of Japan's far-right historical revisionist movement which still somehow thinks Japan was the victim rather than the aggressor of World War II. Sasakawa also cultivated personal ties with Burma's former military dictatorship, and not surprisingly Sasakawa has yet to disavow his father's controversial support for fascism.
In his blog, Sasakawa even sings high praises for former junta leader Than Shwe, an outrageous position which immediately puts him at odds with millions of Burmese citizens. As a personal friend and apologist of Than Shwe, it's clear that Sasakawa should have been disqualified from the peace process from the beginning…
Full article at http://www.dvb.no/analysis/japans-lack-of-transparency-threatens-burmas-development-myanmar/34024
Bad Business Practices, Bad Social Science, Gaiatsu, History, Human Rights, Japanese Government, Tangents
UN News: "Independent UN experts seriously concerned about Japan's Special Secrets Bill" Fine, but too late.
Posted on November 22, 2013 November 22, 2013 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
Hi Blog. First the news, then commentary:
INDEPENDENT UN EXPERTS SERIOUSLY CONCERNED ABOUT JAPAN'S SPECIAL SECRETS BILL
UN News, New York, Nov 22 2013 1:00PM
Two independent United Nations human rights experts today expressed serious concern about a Government-sponsored draft bill in Japan that would decide what constitutes a State secret.
The Special Rapporteurs on freedom of expression and on the right to health requested further information from the Japanese authorities on the draft law and voiced their concerns regarding its compliance with human rights standards.
"Transparency is a core requirement for democratic governance," the Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, Frank La Rue, <"http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14017&LangID=E">said.
He stressed that secrecy in public affairs is only acceptable where there is a demonstrable risk of substantial harm and where that harm is greater than the overall public interest in having access to the information kept confidential.
"The draft bill not only appears to establish very broad and vague grounds for secrecy but also include serious threats to whistle-blowers and even journalists reporting on secrets."
Meanwhile, the Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Anand Grover, who visited Japan last year and studied the response to the disaster in Fukushima, underlined the need for to always ensure full transparency in emergency contexts: "Particularly in calamities, it is essential to ensure that the public is provided with consistent and timely information enabling them to make informed decisions regarding their health."
"Most democracies, including Japan, clearly recognize the right to access information. As much as the protection of national security might require confidentiality in exceptional circumstances, human rights standards establish that the principle of maximum disclosure must always guide the conduct of public officials," concluded the rapporteurs.
The bill in question establishes the grounds and procedures for classification of information held by the Government of Japan.
Independent experts, or special rapporteurs, are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.
For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan has issued a protest of their own, in pdf format, at http://www.fccj.or.jp/images/FCCJ-State-Secrets-Protest-eng.pdf
However, my comment is pretty straightforward: The snowball is rolling and a version of this legislation, even if "watered down" (or perhaps not), will probably be rammed through into law, since both houses of Parliament are in the hands of ultraconservative parties without a viable opposition party anymore.
Why wasn't this seen coming down the pike in the first place before it got to this stage? The warning signs were all there from last December's election (before that, even, if you read PM Abe's manifestoes about his "beautiful country") about Japan's rightward swing. This consolidation of information control has always been part and parcel of state control — no surprises, especially in Japan. So this public reaction of both naiatsu and gaiatsu is too little, too late. Get ready for the politicized criminalization of public disclosure. Arudou Debito
Gaiatsu, Japanese Government, Japanese Politics, Media, Tangents, United Nations
Asahi: Hate speech protests spreading to smaller cities around Japan
Hi Blog. It is getting more difficult for the "Japan is not shifting hard right" claimers out there to continue arguing as such. Consider the emerging evidence of xenophobia-fed nationalism spreading nationwide, according to scholars of the Internet. Their research as it appeared in the Asahi follows.
The more these people howl in public, the more likely their invective will be normalized as a tone of public expression. Legislation against hate speech must be carefully considered, created, and passed ASAP — it must not just be left up to the courts to restrain (as expressions of racial discrimination and exclusionism already are). However, I don't see much chance of legislation happening under the Abe Administration, for these bigots are in fact his base of support. Courtesy of Debito.org Reader JK. Arudou Debito
Hate speech protests spreading to smaller cities around Japan
The Asahi Shinbun AJW, November 07, 2013, courtesy of JK
By RYUICHI KITANO/ Staff Writer
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201311070011
Hate rallies mostly targeted at ethnic Koreans living in Japan have spread beyond Tokyo and Osaka to smaller regional cities over the past six months or so.
A group of scholars who analyzed Internet postings by organizations behind this disturbing phenomenon found that between March and August there were at least 161 instances of street marches or vehicles mounted with loudspeakers blasting hate-filled slogans.
The group, called "Kodo hoshu (active conservatives) archive project," includes Kei Nakazawa, a professor of literature at Tokyo's Hosei University, as well as sociologists in the Kansai region.
It found that March had the most instances of protests with 35. July had the least with 14. The average number of participants was 43, although in some protests in Tokyo's Shin-Okubo district, which boasts a sizable Koreatown, as many as 200 protesters took part.
In addition to Tokyo and Osaka, protests were also held in Hokkaido as well as Aomori, Yamagata, Gunma, Chiba, Aichi, Shizuoka, Nara, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Oita prefectures.
The hate speech-filled protests picked up pace in January. In June, police made a number of arrests after a clash between protesters and those opposed to such behavior.
Subsequently, protests in major urban areas became temporarily less popular. However, protests in smaller regional cities have continued.
The protests go beyond those organized by Zainichi Tokken wo Yurusanai Shimin no Kai (Group of citizens who do not tolerate privileges for ethnic Korean residents in Japan), which are generally directed at ethnic Koreans. The group is known more commonly as Zaitokukai.
In a similar vein, there have been protests by nuclear energy supporters that have raised opposition to anti-nuclear groups.
Sound trucks also gathered in front of a Russian consulate general demanding the return of the Northern Territories.
There has even been a protest against the peace movement in Hiroshima.
Despite the difference in targets, the basic pattern of the protests is similar, with activists shouting slogans such as "Kill them" and "Get out."
Groups like Zaitokukai use the Internet as an abetting and organizing tool. They also videotape the actual protests and post them to video-sharing sites.
The group of scholars focused on data that remained in cyberspace.
Five or six group members began analyzing postings and videos from about July and broke down the number of participants and the arguments they made at the protests. Some members also attended actual protests to gather on-site study.
The group plans to go over the data from February and earlier to broaden the range of the study.
Nakazawa, who is also a novelist, first paid attention to the hate speech protests in Japan about four years ago.
"The harshest protests were those held between late last year and early this year," she said. "Scenes of protesters yelling insults were reported widely in foreign nations and that hurt Japan's reputation.
"We want to provide numerical data about what is actually going on so that it can serve as materials for debate on whether legal restrictions should be placed on such hate speech protests."
Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE Col 69, Nov 7 2013: "Japan brings out big guns to sell remilitarization in U.S." about PM Abe's charm offensive through Gaijin Handler Kitaoka Shin'ichi
Hello Blog. This month sees my 69th Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE column, and I'm happy to report that even after nearly six years of monthly articles (and nearly 12 years of semimonthly reports), I don't feel like I'm losing my stride. In fact, this month's entry is one that I'm particularly proud of, as it helped crystallize a feeling I've had for quite some time now about the rightist shift in Japan's politics — and how it inevitably leads (in Japan's case) to militarism. It spent a couple of days in the JT Online Top Ten, thanks everyone!
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Version follows with links to sources
Last month in Hawaii I attended a speech titled "Japan's new National Security Strategy in the Making" by a Dr. Shinichi Kitaoka. A scholar and university president, Dr. Kitaoka is deputy chairman of the "Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security" within the Shinzo Abe administration.
I sat in because I wanted to see how a representative of Japan's government would explain away Abe's militaristic views to an American audience.
Dr. Kitaoka did not disappoint. He was smooth. In impeccable English, to a packed room including numerous members of Hawaii's military brass, he sold a vision of a remilitarizing Japan without a return to a prewar militarized Japan. (You can see the entire speech at http://www.vimeo.com/77183187.)
He laid out how Japan would get around its ban on having a military beyond a "self-defense force," i.e., one that could project power beyond its borders. It would be the same way Japan got around its constitutional ban on having any standing military at all: Japan would once again reinterpret the wording of the Constitution.
His logic: If Japan has a sovereign right to "individual self-defense" (i.e., the right to attack back if attacked), it also has an inherent sovereign right to "collective self-defense" (i.e., the right to support Japan's allies if they are attacked). A reinterpretation must happen because, inconveniently, it is too difficult to reform the Constitution itself.
That legal legerdemain to undermine a national constitution should have raised eyebrows. But Kitaoka was culturally sensitive to what his American audience wanted to hear: that the ends justify the means. He immediately couched Japan's freer hand as a way to better engage in the U.S.-Japan security alliance, as well as participate more equally and effectively in United Nations peacekeeping operations. Japan could now assist the world in "human security" through a "proactive peace policy."
As further reassurance, he gave five reasons why Japan could not return to 1930s-style fascism. Back then, 1) Japan needed more territory, resources and markets, which were being denied them by economic blocs formed during the Great Depression (conveniently omitting the entire "liberating Asians from white imperialism" narrative that underpinned Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"); 2) there was hubris on the part of Japan's military, convinced that neighboring territories were weak and easy targets; 3) the international community had little economic integration or punitive sanctioning power; 4) the military was not under civilian control; and 5) Japan lacked freedom of speech.
Then his rhetoric entered what I call "perpetual wolf-at-the-door territory," reflecting the typical ideological polarization of a trained geopolitical security analyst. They see the world only in terms of power, potential threats and allies vs. enemies. (That's why I stopped studying security issues as an undergrad at Cornell.)
Kitaoka sold China as the polar opposite of Japan. Japan is a "peace-loving" society with a "peace Constitution" and capped military expenditure, while China is a nuclear power with an enormous and expanding military budget. Japan has, if anything, "too much" freedom of speech, unlike China, where dissidents are jailed. Japan has no territorial designs abroad (not even the constant threat of invasion from the Korean Peninsula is worrisome anymore — the U.S. has it covered), while China is claiming islands and expanding into markets as far away as Africa! If Japan steps out of line, it would be hurt by international sanctions, as it is fully integrated into and dependent on the world economy, while China . . . isn't. China is safeguarding its national security and enhancing its prestige through a nationalism that is "obsessed with national glory" while Japan . . . isn't.
In fact, Kitaoka managed to trace just about every problem in his speech back to China. His conclusion in a Yomiuri Shimbun column on Sept. 22 was stark: "We should now take the place of the (prewar) Republic of China, which was invaded by Japan, and think about how to defend ourselves from unjustified aggression, and consider what should be done to defend ourselves more aggressively." History, to Kitaoka, has come full circle.
So, in order to maintain regional security and balance of power, Kitaoka announced that Japan would adopt two measures by the end of 2013: 1) A comprehensive "national security strategy," the first in Japan's history, integrating foreign and defense policy; and 2) a new "outline of defense planning" through the establishment of an official "National Security Council."
This would be led by a PM Abe unfettered by the "cancer of sectionalism" between "pro-Western" and "pro-Socialist" camps in Japan's bureaucracy. Abe's strong executive leadership would break the hold of Japan's leftists (whom Kitaoka dismissed as "vocal minorities") and give the "majority" their proper hand in policymaking.
Then Kitaoka felt he was in a position to make guarantees to the audience. He told them not to worry, for there was "zero possibility" of Japan intervening in the Koreas, including over the Takeshima/Dokdo disputed rocks, "without a request from you." Japan would also not go nuclear, because nukes are unnecessary in a land so "narrow and densely populated" with no place to put them!
What about Japan's ability to project power at sea? Despite the recent unveiling of the Izumo (one of three SDF "helicopter-carrying destroyers"; see "Watching Japan and China square off in East China Sea," BBC News, Nov. 12, 2012), Kitaoka says Japan has "no use" for them. After all, the whole archipelago is full of "unsinkable aircraft carriers" — the Japanese islands themselves. So pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
My favorite part of Kitaoka's speech (other than when he defied his doctorate training by calling Koreans an "emotional people," and dismissed several counter-opinions as "stupid") was when he blamed the putative ineffectiveness of the U.N. Security Council on a struggle between democratic and undemocratic member states, with China and Russia getting in the way. The U.N. would be more effective if more democratic countries were allowed into the UNSC — India, Germany, Brazil and . . . Japan, naturally.
Nice segue. Told you he was smooth.
This is why I am devoting a whole column to this event: The Abe administration is clearly on a charm offensive, sending out an articulate "gaijin handler" with an elite pedigree (Kitaoka is president of the International University of Japan, professor emeritus at Tokyo University, a former ambassador and U.N. representative, and a member of several major think tanks) on a whistle-stop U.S. tour to reassure American power brokers that they can relax their grip over Japan's security.
After all, that seems to be what the U.S. wants. The schizophrenic U.S.-Japan security relationship has demanded for decades that Japan make more contributions to the geopolitical order, while making sure U.S. bases underpin Japan's regional security and stop regional worries about a resurgent militarist Japan. As Maj. Gen. Henry Stackpole, former commander of the U.S. Marines in Japan, put it in 1990, the U.S. is the "cork in the bottle." Thus, Kitaoka is softening up the crowd for Abe to uncork Japan's military potential.
Now it all makes sense. This is why Abe is making so much noise recently in places like the Wall Street Journal and domestic media about Chinese aggression and regional security.
Abe has a timetable to meet. His national security council is due this month. The defense planning outline is due in December. It's time to rile up the Japanese public once again about the Chinese wolf at the door, and get them ready to sign off on Japan's remilitarization.
Look, when Japan's gross domestic product fell behind China's in 2011, we all knew there would be blowback in terms of Japan's national pride. But so much so quickly? Who would have thought that a troublemaking Tokyo governor could create such geopolitical mayhem by threatening to buy some specks in the ocean outside his prefecture, throw Japan's left-leaning government into chaos and get Japan's most right-leaning government in generations elected by the end of 2012?
Then again, it's not so surprising. Watching Kitaoka's speech, I realized again just how smooth Japan's elites are. They know whose hands to shake, whose ears to bend, and how to behave as public campaigners in the diplomatic community. Hey, that's how they somehow got the 2020 Olympics! They know how to say what people want to hear. That is the training of a lifetime of tatemae (pretenses masking true intentions).
Sit back, folks. We're going to get an official and resurgent Japanese military. With a probable nod and a wink from the Americans, there's not a lot we can do but watch Abe's military machinations march to fruition. In 10 years, let's see how many of Kitaoka's public promises about a peaceful, internationally cooperative Japan hold.
More discussion of the Kitaoka speech at www.debito.org/?p=11896. Debito Arudou's updated "Guidebook for Relocation and Assimilation into Japan" is now available as a downloadable e-book on Amazon. See www.debito.org/handbook.html. Twitter @arudoudebito. Just Be Cause appears on the first Thursday Community page of the month. Send your comments on these issues and story ideas to community@japantimes.co.jp.
Articles & Publications, Bad Social Science, Cultural Issue, Gaiatsu, History, Ironies & Hypocrisies, Japanese Government, Japanese Politics, Media, Unsustainable Japanese Society
Restoration Party Shinpuu's xenophobic candidate in Tokyo Katsushika-ku elections: "Putting Japanese first before foreigners"
Hi Blog. As Tokyo is having some elections (or by this time of blogging, had; sorry), I thought it within the role of Debito.org to archive yet another example of xenophobia used as a campaign strategy.
Courtesy http://www.shimpu.jp/chihon/senkyo/tokyo_katsushika/kaneko73101001.jpg
His slogan, front and center: "More than foreigners, Japanese are first!" (Gakokujin yori nihonjin ga daiichi!), setting up a false dichotomy (the fact that foreigners can't vote in the first place makes that clear). He's also calling for limits to foreign products being "dumped" (i.e., being sold overseas for lower than production cost or domestic pricing in order to capture market share — which is kinda rich to say given Japan's trade record) and for a hardening of policy against Japan's low birthrate (sorry, potential pun acknowledged). He also wants (see below within his public statement) an end to "superfluous (kajou na) support for foreigners", whatever that means.
In case you're wondering whether anyone would have the courage to put this up on campaign poster walls (or wonder whether Japan's election laws would allow for such divisive language), he does and they do:
(Courtesy RW, photo taken November 5, 2013 in Katsushika-ku, Tokyo)
If you want to know more about what Kaneko wants done, have a look at this:
Courtesy http://www.shimpu.jp/chihon/senkyo/
Keep an eye on this party, folks (http://www.shimpu.jpn.org). It's the most brazen, but by no means the only xenophobic party of grumpy old Japanese men out there who want to jerk Japan's political chain hard right. It helps to have somebody extremely hard-line so that other hardliners (such as Ishihara/Hashimoto's Japan Restoration Party — without the New Wind) look milder by comparison. Helps to normalize the invective. Arudou Debito
Bad Social Science, Hate Speech and Xenophobia, Human Rights, Ironies & Hypocrisies, Japanese Politics, Media, Problematic Foreign Treatment, 日本語
DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 6, 2013
Posted on November 7, 2013 November 13, 2013 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
1) Kyoto District Court orders anti-Korean Zaitokukai to pay damages in first J court decision recognizing hate speech as an illegal form of racial discrimination
2) Come back Brazilian Nikkei, all is forgiven!, in a policy U-turn after GOJ Repatriation Bribes of 2009
3) Tokyo Metro Govt issues manual for J employers hiring NJ employees: Lose the "Staring Big Brother" stickers, please!
4) Japan Times Community Pages expanding from two-page Tuesdays to four days a week
5) AFP: Asylum-seeker dies after collapsing at J detention center while doctor at lunch
6) Dr. Kitaoka Shinichi, Chair of Council on Security and Defense Capabilities, speaks at UH EWC Oct 11, 2013 on Japan's need to remilitarize
MIDDLING NEWS
7) Donald Keene Center opens in Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture. His life and library can be seen, for a price.
8 ) TheDiplomat.com: "In Japan, Will Hafu Ever Be Considered Whole?", on the debate about Japan's increasing diversity
9) Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE Column 68 Oct 1 2013: "Triumph of Tokyo Olympic bid sends wrong signal to Japan's resurgent right"
By ARUDOU, Debito (debito@debito.org, www.debito.org, Twitter @arudoudebito)
Good news from the Japanese judiciary. A lower court in Kyoto has finally ruled for the first time that a) hate speech exists in Japan, b) it is an illegal activity, subject to restriction, sanction, and penalty, and c) it is covered under international treaty (since Japan has no law against hate speech) such as the UN CERD.
That is a hat trick in terms of jurisprudence (on par with the Ana Bortz Case and the Otaru Onsens Case, although they were arguably more about issues of business and access to services than abstract concepts like freedom of speech).
Let's hope a higher court does not overturn this. But I think the zealous bigots at Zaitokukai are realizing they've gone too far and set a spoiler precedent. About time — when their followers advocate murder and massacre of an ethnic minority, I think that's when even timorous Japanese judges, who are sensitive to media attention, have to draw a line somewhere. Here's where it was drawn. Articles from the Mainichi/Kyodo and Japan Times follow:
Mainichi: The Kyoto District Court ordered anti-Korean activists Monday to pay damages for disrupting classes at a Korean school by staging a demonstration during which they directed hate speech at the ethnic Korean community in Japan, banning them from staging further demonstrations. It is the first court decision in connection with hate speech, which fans discrimination and hatred toward a certain race or minority, lawyers for the school said.
In an apparent policy U-turn, the GOJ decided last week to lift the ban on certain South Americans of Japanese descent (Nikkei) from re-entering Japan. This after bribing them to leave in 2009 so that they would not become an inconvenient unemployment statistic (not to mention that it was cheaper to pay their airfare than to pay them their social welfare that they had invested in over the decades, or pay them their pensions in future when reaching retirement age).
The reasons for this U-turn are being discussed in a recent Japan Times article, excerpted below. The article speculates that a couple of embarrassing lawsuits and visa-denials might have tipped the GOJ's hand (I for one doubt it; Japan's visa regimes, as can be seen for example in its perennial stance towards refugees, are generally impervious to public exposure and international pressure). I believe it was more an issue of the GOJ facing reality (as happened more than one year ago at the highest policymaking levels, where even the GOJ still maintained the stance that if immigration was an inevitability, they had better bring back people with Japanese blood; after all, the only ones in attendance were all Wajin and one token Nikkei).
Debito.org has spoken out quite hot-tonguedly about how ludicrous the Nikkei Repatriation Bribe was, not the least because of its inherently racialized paradigms (because they only applied to Nikkei — people who were also in even more dire financial straits due to the economic downturn, such as the Chinese and Muslim factory workers laboring in conditions of indentured servitude, were left to fend for themselves because they lacked the requisite Japanese blood).
So as a matter of course Debito.org cheers for the lifting of the ban. But the Bribe and the Ban should never have happened in the first place. So the GOJ can also take its lumps even if they are ultimately making the right decision.
Does this mean that the numbers of registered NJ residents of Japan will start to increase again? I will say it could happen. I stress: could, not will happen. But if it did, that statistic, not any asset bubbles and transient stock-market numbers that people keep championing as the putative fruits of "Abenomics", will be the real indicator of Japan's recovery. That is to say, if Japan ever regains its sheen as an attractive place to work for international labor, then an increase in Japan's NJ population will cause and signal a true leavening of Japan's economic clout and prowess. But I remain skeptical at this juncture — as I've said before, the jig is up, and outsiders generally know that Japan has no intention or enforceable laws to treat immigrants as equals, no matter how much of their lives and taxes they invest.
At this time, I believe international migrant labor will continue to vote with their feet and work elsewhere. So good luck with significant numbers coming to Japan even with this ban lifted.
Debito.org Reader JF found this sticker up in Ikebukuro a few weeks ago. Issued by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Youth and Safety Policy Division, it says that the employer of this establishment will not hire illegal foreign workers. The slogan above says, "Office declaring its promotion of the proper employment of foreigners", complete with The Staring Eyes of Big Brother that probe all souls for criminal intent, sorta thing. Like this one snapped in Tamagawa last September:
JF comments: "I sort of see what they are trying to say with it, but I still think this sticker is bad style and puts all of us in a bad light. Suggesting yet again that many foreigners work illegally, while the actual percentage is probably tiny."
It is, the number of so-called "illegal foreigners" long since peaking in 1993 and continuing to drop, despite police propaganda notices claiming the contrary (see for example here and here). JF did a bit more searching about the origin of the stickers, and discovered a downloadable manual directed at employers about how to hire foreign workers legally. Here's the cover. Entitled "Gaikokujin Roudousha Koyou Manyuaru" (Hiring Manual for Foreign Workers), you can download it from Debito.org at http://www.debito.org/TokyotoGaikokujinHiringManual2013.pdf. Synopsis of the Manual follows…
Good news. With an imminent tie-up between The Japan Times and The New York Times, the Community Pages (which I have written for since 2002) will expand from its present two pages on Tuesday to four days a week. The JT explains in more detail below.
Proud to be part of this writing crew. We are the only English-language newspaper that is covering issues in this degree of depth in ways that matter to the English-reading NJ communities, and now we're getting even more space. Bravo. Thank you to everyone for reading and encouraging this to happen. — Arudou Debito, JUST BE CAUSE Columnist, The Japan Times
Here's another long-standing issue within Japan's criminal justice system — the two-tiered system of incarceration for foreigners only. When one is being detained for a violation of Japan's criminal code, you have prison for those convicted and the daiyou kangoku interrogation centers for those awaiting conviction (and almost everyone (95%) who is indicted under this system confesses to a crime, thanks to the unsupervised and harsh interrogation techniques). Almost everyone who confesses to a crime (the most-cited figure is >99%) gets convicted and probably goes to prison.
But then there are the detention centers for foreigners with visa issues who can be incarcerated indefinitely. This is unlike Japan's prison system where 1) there are international standards for incarceration, and 2) there is a maximum limit — as in a prison sentence — to the duration for inmates. Not so Japan's foreigners. And not so, as you can see below, Japan's asylum seekers, where yet another NJ has died in custody due to, the article notes below, lax oversight over the health of their detainees.
I bring this up because this case will no doubt soon be forgotten. Like the other issues of violence, unsanitary food leading to hunger strikes and suicides, Immigration brutality leading to an uncharged murder of a detainee, and more. No wonder some people would prefer an overseas refugee camp than come to Japan to languish and perhaps die in a Gaijin Tank. Best to archive it here as yet another brick in the wall.
AFP: An asylum-seeker collapsed and died after staff at a Japanese immigration center failed to call for a medic, allegedly because the doctor was having lunch, a pressure group said Thursday. Anwar Hussin, a member of Myanmar's Rohingya ethnic group, fell ill shortly after he was detained on Oct 9, according to People's Forum on Burma, a Japan-based NGO headed by a Japanese lawyer.
Citing the 57-year-old's cousin, the group said Hussin had been complaining of a headache all morning and fell unconscious as he began eating lunch in his cell. Fellow detainees—seven people of different nationalities—called for help because he was vomiting and having spasms, the NGO said. Detention center staff rejected their requests that a doctor be called, saying Hussin was just "having a seizure" and that the duty medic was on his lunch break, the group said, citing detainees who had spoken to the dead man's cousin.
A doctor was summoned 51 minutes after Hussin's collapse, according to a timeline given to his cousin by the center. Staff made an emergency call four minutes after the doctor's arrival and 55 minutes after being made aware of the problem, the timeline showed. Hussin died in hospital on Oct 14, it said.
On October 11, I attended a speech by Dr. Kitaoka Shinichi, President of the International University of Japan in Niigata, and currently the Deputy Chairman of the Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security for PM Abe. I attended because I wanted to see what was making one of PM Abe's leading advisors tick. Dr. Kitaoka did not disappoint.
He spoke in excellent English, and came off as a very articulate, passionate, and fluent advocate of his cause, which is essentially to make Japan strong enough militarily to deter China. He did not feel a need to be restrained by a diplomat's training, calling various schools of thought "totally wrong" and "stupid", nor an academic's subtlety that should come with a doctorate, where he said with firm certainty at various stages that "no Japanese" wants things like expansion of Japan's borders (he also called Koreans an "emotional people"). Almost all of the geopolitical problems he referred to in his talk were traced back to China, and he made a strong, reasoned plea for Japan's inherent sovereign right for collective self defense in order to "contribute to peace and stability" by being empowered to assist Japan's friends and allies (particularly, naturally, the Americans).
Dr. Kitaoka was very smooth. He pushed all the right rhetorical buttons with an American audience (this one at the EWC quite full of American military brass; as you can hear in the speech, the audience was quite emotive), contrasting rich, democratic, non-nuclear, and "peace-loving" Japan with richening, undemocratic, nuclear and unfree China, which is increasing its defense budget every year and seeking territorial expansion (he even mentioned China's dealings in Africa in that context). He also smoothed feathers to head off the "Genie in the Bottle" argument (which is one image the US military uses to justify its continued presence in Japan — to stop Japan from remilitarizing) by pointing out five conditions why today's Japan is different. (See them well elaborated in his Yomiuri article scanned below.)
So to this end, Japan would need its first National Security Council, which would hopefully be established by November 2013…
Donald Keene, currently aged 91, had his Donald Keene Center opened up on September 21, in order to transmit "the excellence of Japanese literature" (watashi wa ninon bungaku no subarashisa o tsutaetai). This is an important event, as it counts as an established NJ legacy on the scale of Edwin Dun and of course Lafcadio Hearn/Koizumi Yakumo.
Now, where Debito.org has taken issue with Keene is with not with his scholarship or contributions to the field of Japanese studies (indeed admirable), but with his naturalization while publicly denigrating NJ. As chronicled here and in the Japan Times, he himself made a big fuss about how he was becoming a Japanese citizen for selfless reasons, e.g., to "become one of them", to show "solidarity with the Japanese people" in their time of great need, so that he might help victims of the Tohoku Disasters in some way.
Fine. But he also threw in all sorts of irrelevancies and nastiness, such as making himself out to be morally superior to other NJ residents (contrasting himself with those allegedly fleeing Japan like the mythical "Flyjin", mentioning how he wasn't committing crimes like they were — despite actual NJ crime trends). It was a poor show of social science by a trained researcher.
If he's going to be mean, then he's going to have his record scrutinized like everyone else. So, despite his promises to "contribute to areas affected by the [Tohoku] disaster", by now what has he done? Put his Donald Keene Center in Tohoku to attract tourists? Sorry, Kashiwazaki is quite far away from the disaster areas, and the Donald Keene Center website doesn't even mention the events in Tohoku as any form of motivation. Visited Tohoku like other NJ to help out with relief efforts? Well, according to Wikipedia, he gave a speech in Sendai; thanks, but… Or opening up his library for free to the public? No, sorry, that's not how business is done:
I was contacted recently for a few quotes on this subject (an important debate, given the increasing diversity within the Japanese citizenry thanks to international marriage), and I put the reporter in touch with others with more authoritative voices on the subject. I will excerpt the article below. What do you think, especially those readers who have Japanese children or are "half Japanese" themselves?
TheDiplomat.com: By the year 2050, 40 percent of the Japanese population will be age 65 or older. With Japanese couples having fewer children than ever before, Japan is facing a population decline of epic proportions. However, one demographic continues to grow: Japanese and non-Japanese mixed-race couples. But in one of the world's most homogeneous countries, is Japan ready to accept their offspring?
Biracial Japanese nationals like Takagi are an increasingly common sight in Japan. The latest statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare indicate that one out of every 50 babies born in 2012 had one non-Japanese parent. Additionally, 3.5 percent of all domestic marriages performed last year were between Japanese and foreigners. To put those numbers into perspective, the earliest reliable census data that includes both mixed race births and marriages shows that fewer than one out of 150 babies born in 1987 were biracial and only 2.1 percent of marriages that year were between Japanese and non-Japanese.
Takagi is one of a growing number of hafu – or half Japanese – who have grown up between two cultures. The term itself, which is derived from the English word "half," is divisive in Japan. Hafu is the most commonly used word for describing people who are of mixed Japanese and non-Japanese ethnicity. The word is so pervasive that even nontraditional-looking Japanese may be asked if they are hafu.
Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE Column 68 Oct 1 2013:
"Triumph of Tokyo Olympic bid sends wrong signal to Japan's resurgent right"
Courtesy http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2013/09/30/issues/triumph-of-tokyo-olympic-bid-sends-wrong-signal-to-japans-resurgent-right/
Version with links to sources and comments at http://www.debito.org/?p=11880
That's all for this month! Thanks for reading!
ARUDOU, Debito (debito@debito.org, www.debito.org, Twitter @arudoudebito)
DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 6, 2013 ENDS
Tokyo Metro Govt issues manual for J employers hiring NJ employees: Lose the "Staring Big Brother" stickers, please!
Posted on November 2, 2013 November 3, 2013 by Debito Arudou, Ph.D.
Hi Blog. Debito.org Reader JF found this sticker up in Ikebukuro a few weeks ago:
Issued by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Youth and Safety Policy Division, it says that the employer of this establishment will not hire illegal foreign workers. The slogan rimming above says, "Office declaring its promotion of the proper employment of foreigners", complete with The Staring Eyes of Big Brother that probe all souls for criminal intent, sorta thing. Like this one, snapped in Tamagawa last September:
(which says, "We won't overlook crime! If you see anyone suspicious, call the cops!")
It is, the number of so-called "illegal foreigners" long since peaking in 1993 and continuing to drop, despite police propaganda notices claiming the contrary (see for example here and here).
JF did a bit more searching about the origin of the stickers, and discovered a downloadable manual directed at employers about how to hire foreign workers legally:
http://www.seisyounen-chian.metro.tokyo.jp/chian/gaikokujin/24manual.pdf
Here's the cover:
Entitled "Gaikokujin Roudousha Koyou Manyuaru" (Hiring Manual for Foreign Workers), you can download it from Debito.org at http://www.debito.org/TokyotoGaikokujinHiringManual2013.pdf.
It opens reasonably well, with the first sentence in the preface (page 1) stating that illegal overstaying foreign workers aren't just a cause of the worsening of public safety (yes, that old chestnut again), but they also have human rights, and influence the economic competitiveness of Japan. It talks about the five-year goal of halving the number of illegal overstayers starting from 2003, and how that did indeed succeed, but there are still about 70,000 illegal foreigners still extant, with about 70% of them entering the country with the goal of working illegally (I don't know how they determined that without installing a "mental goal detector" at the airport, but anyway…). It also talks about the change in policy sloganing away from "strengthening policy against illegal foreign labor" in 2003 to the promotion of "proper employment of foreign workers" in 2009 and 2010; okay, that's a bit better.
The manual defines "illegal labor" on page 3, and the new immigration procedures of 2012 on page 2 — with very clear outlines of what employers should check to make sure everything is legal (the Zairyuu Kaado (ZRK), the replacement for the old Gaitousho), and what criminal fines and penalties might happen if they don't. Page 4 describes what is on the ZRK, who gets it and who doesn't, and what types of visas in particular should be checked for work status. Page 5 tells the employer how to read official documents and stamps, and page 6 elaborates on how to spot forgeries. There's even a GOJ website the employer can use to verify details on said NJ employee, with a surprising amount of technical detail on how the ZRK is coded (see here and here) discussed on page 7. The manual continues on in that vein for a couple more pages, essentially telling the employer how to read a ZRK (or old remaining Gaitousho) and visa stamps like an Immigration official. Pages 12 and 13 talk about visa regimes and what times of work fall into each, and 14-15 offer more warnings to employers about not following the rules. The book concludes with how to treat longer-term NJ, and offers contact numbers for questions.
COMMENT: I welcome more thoughtful comments from other Debito.org Readers, but I think this manual (overlooking the "Staring Big Brother" stickers; albeit that may just be a cultural conceit of mine) is a good thing. For one reason, it's inevitable: Employers have to be told the rules clearly and the punishments for not following them (as opposed to the NJ alone getting punished for overstaying, with little to no penalty for the employer — who often wants or forces NJ to overstay in order to put them in a weaker wage bargaining position); let's hope employer punishments are "properly" enforced in future. For another, the illustrations are less racialized than usual, to the point where it is unclear who is "Japanese" and who is "foreign" on page 16. Good. Definitely progress, compared to this.
My only misgiving is that this feels like a training manual for how to operate a complicated piece of consumer electronics, and for that reason is dehumanizing. It also might deter people from hiring NJ if things are this potentially mendoukusai. That said, I'm not sure in what other way that information could have been transmitted; links to better-executed foreign employment manuals for other countries welcome in the Comment Section. What do others think? Arudou Debito
"Pinprick Protests", Discussions, Human Rights, Immigration & Assimilation, Japanese Government, Japanese police/Foreign crime, Labor issues, Media, Practical advice, 日本語

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