"The Cove" Japan Screenings Still Under Threat

[Catoneinutica]

All animal-rights arguments aside, for anyone in Japan to the right of the Asahi, "The Cove" could just as well be titled "Kryptonite," or "A Plenitude of Pure Pwnage," so embarrassing it must be. On the one side, you've got doltish but violent fishermen and other assorted snarling buffoons, and on the other side you've got cute chix and a beatific-looking old guy who just wants redemption for what he did to Flipper. And they send the fishermen down to depths of defeat through the use of a bit of ridicule and...high-tech gadgetry of a type that would give any Son of Yamato a schtiffy were it not being used against him.

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: High alert for 'The Cove' launch - Police, theaters brace for protests as dolphin-hunt film opens Saturday

Theaters planning to screen controversial dolphin-hunting documentary "The Cove" from Saturday are working closely with police to develop high-alert security measures against threatened disruptions by protesters. The U.S. film, which won the 2009 Oscar for best documentary, contains secretly filmed footage of a dolphin hunt in Taijicho, Wakayama Prefecture. Twenty-four theaters have decided to screen the film, and six will begin on Saturday. Those six have vowed to cooperate with police efforts to see the opening day pass without incident.

The film's release in Japan was initially scheduled for June 26, but was canceled after several theaters withdrew from agreed screenings following forceful protests. "We won't stand for the hypocrisy and frivolity of theaters that support Westerners' anti-Japanese actions by showing such a movie," a protest group said.

Theater N Shibuya in Tokyo was one of several theaters that decided to cancel screenings in June. "We got numerous protest phone calls and received a notice saying protest activities would be staged," a staff member of the theater said. Spokespersons for Cinem@rt Roppongi in Tokyo and Cinem@rt Shinsaibashi in Osaka said they decided to cancel June screenings because, "We're concerned that the controversy would create an environment where our customers can't enjoy movies safely."

Media coverage of the uproar significantly raised public awareness of "The Cove." On June 9, soon after a media report that the film's initial release was canceled, a symposium comprising journalists and film industry figures was held in Tokyo to discuss the implications of the controversy. The venue was filled to capacity, with still more people wanting to attend. A speaker at the symposium said: "The movie has its pros and cons. But whether to show it or not is a totally different issue." Another panelist said, "People should join in the debate only after watching the movie."

Outside the venue, protesters handed out flyers objecting to the film being screened in the nation, but there were no major troubles on the day. "The Cove" director Louie Psihoyos said the controversy has attracted the attention of many Japanese people, who have become interested in knowing more about what is actually depicted in the movie. Takeshi Kato, president of Unplugged Inc., the film's distributor, said, "We've begun to get more phone calls from people supporting the screening of the film [than opposing it]."

Rising support has encouraged a total of 24 theaters across the nation to commit to screening the documentary. Protests have already been staged near Theater Image Forum in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, and Yokohama New Theatre in Yokohama, demanding that those venues cancel their scheduled screenings. The Yokohama District Court has banned a Tokyo-based protest group from making speeches near the Yokohama theater.

Police will discuss security measures for Saturday with each of the six theaters screening the film. Koyo Yamashita, manager of Theater Image Forum, said, "We'll cope with the situation, including making our own efforts to guard our theater." Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, manger of Yokohama New Theatre, said, "We're hoping to make it through the screening without causing our customers any trouble."

[Mulboyne]

[YThq]ksip8QCiTFg[/YThq]

There was an early 10:00am screening of "The Cove" in Yokohama. Around 50 people appeared to have turned up for that one. No trouble has been so far reported at any of the 6 cinemas showing the film. Protestors seem to be nearby but the police are present in some numbers.

Reactions are difficult to judge. Some have come out saying the film is clearly one-sided but they went to see it because they supported the principle of free speech. One older man said it was the first time he'd heard about the trade in live dolphins for shows. A journalist said he thought it was a good film.

[6810]

red snotted for agreeing with Take. WTF? I stand by it. Monotheists suck.

But monotheist? Fucking great album!

[Behan]

red snotted for agreeing with Take. WTF? I stand by it. Monotheists suck.

But monotheist? Fucking great album!

Come on, you are Take.

[Mulboyne]

Shibuya was sold out for all three screenings today which is roughly around a 1,000 people. Apparently, there was a small shouty moment outside between supporters and protest groups but nothing serious.

Toy can't read too much into reactions so far, not least because we are largely dependent on the small number who will speak up and the smaller fraction who get reported. Nevertheless, a couple of people have now sounded surprised about the trade in aquarium dolphins. With all the talk beforehand from opponents about protecting "food culture", it's possible that audiences didn't realize the film addressed that aspect as a key motive for hunting dolphins.

[6810]

Come on, you are Take.

You are! And there are a few others I suspect too. After all, some of the reactions to his posts are just a little too vociferous to be believed.

In fact, I might go so far as to say that the entire cohort of FG is Take and that we all know that it was the lizard men via David Icke and some Jews who blew up the WTC...

Conspiracy? Who said conspiracy...?

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

...about protecting "food culture"...

As a friend pointed out to me the other day, whaling and dolphin culling and all that other controversial shit is not about protecting food culture or whatever, but about protecting amakudari. There are countless agricultural cooperatives, food cooperatives, fishing cooperatives, associations, chambers and the like that are all headed by ex-bureaucrats and survive through government subsidies. Bureaucrats all want their turn to retire to one of these places and thus encourage their survival. People can protest for or against whatever they like, but until Japan goes broke and can no longer pay for places to put bureaucrats out to pasture, this sort of thing will continue.

[Samurai_Jerk]

As a friend pointed out to me the other day, whaling and dolphin culling and all that other controversial shit is not about protecting food culture or whatever, but about protecting amakudari. There are countless agricultural cooperatives, food cooperatives, fishing cooperatives, associations, chambers and the like that are all headed by ex-bureaucrats and survive through government subsidies. Bureaucrats all want their turn to retire to one of these places and thus encourage their survival. People can protest for or against whatever they like, but until Japan goes broke and can no longer pay for places to put bureaucrats out to pasture, this sort of thing will continue.

That kind of shit really pisses me off. It's like with all the concrete pouring. Why can't they turn all of these uselss destructive jobs into qausi-governmental groups focused on cleaning the environment up or something like that? Preserve the cushy Amakudari positions and kick backs but at least get something useful done. Or at the very least do fuck all but stop steamrolling over the last bits of nature left in Japan.

[6810]

As a friend pointed out to me the other day, whaling and dolphin culling and all that other controversial shit is not about protecting food culture or whatever, but about protecting amakudari. There are countless agricultural cooperatives, food cooperatives, fishing cooperatives, associations, chambers and the like that are all headed by ex-bureaucrats and survive through government subsidies. Bureaucrats all want their turn to retire to one of these places and thus encourage their survival. People can protest for or against whatever they like, but until Japan goes broke and can no longer pay for places to put bureaucrats out to pasture, this sort of thing will continue.

How is this any different from the US, may I ask? Are you this vociferous on message boards about your own country? Or is it only Japan which pisses everyone off so much?

[Yokohammer]

How is this any different from the US, may I ask? Are you this vociferous on message boards about your own country? Or is it only Japan which pisses everyone off so much?

It is the country one lives in that pisses one off, and rightly so.
Not all of us are tourists, Hairdo included.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

I'm not from the U.S., but agree with you that it has a bureaucracy almost as corrupt as Japan's.
My citizenship is Australian and Irish, but I have lived in neither country since the days of Bobby Sands and the Knack. Frankly, I don't know WTF is going on in either of them.
What I can say is that the cuntry taking at least 1/3rd of everything I earn is funneling it to sleazy paper pushers who promote these "national ideals" to keep themselves in cushy posts while they eat away at the pension I am paying for but will never be able to draw on.
This site is fuckedgaijin. If you have a problem with me complaining about the way Japan works compared to other cuntries, go to fuckedgringo or fuckedwog or some other site like that. I am a gaijin and I am fucked. I reserve my right to complain about how this cuntry is run.

[Iraira]

I'm not from the U.S., but agree with you that it has a bureaucracy almost as corrupt as Japan's.
My citizenship is Australian and Irish, but I have lived in neither country since the days of Bobby Sands and the Knack. Frankly, I don't know WTF is going on in either of them.
What I can say is that the cuntry taking at least 1/3rd of everything I earn is funneling it to sleazy paper pushers who promote these "national ideals" to keep themselves in cushy posts while they eat away at the pension I am paying for but will never be able to draw on.
This site is fuckedgaijin. If you have a problem with me complaining about the way Japan works compared to other cuntries, go to fuckedgringo or fuckedwog or some other site like that. I am a gaijin and I am fucked. I reserve my right to complain about how this cuntry is run.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Screwed-down Hairdo again.

[Yokohammer]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Screwed-down Hairdo again.

Me too.

[6810]

I never said complaining was bad. Done my own fair share. I myself am no cut and runner or even a sympathiser as the anti-Take brigade may paint me.

The longer I'm here, the more I see the corruption, inefficency, unlawfulness and general all-round gangsterism as just a case of same shit, different toilet.

But I've done my complaining. It's out of my system. Once the initial rage valve is opened, there is only a certain length of time you can stay angry at the world before it gives you wrinkles, hair loss and stomach cancer. But then again, ignorance isn't any better cos it just gives you dementia...

So in short, I'm all for pointing out the flaws, I'm all for a bit of moral outrage every now and again, but the endless opposition position of "I'm a foreigner and I know how Japan is fucked much more than the Japanese and here's why... blah, blah blah..." is just tired, played out and done. Surely there are more productive avenues of criticism. And I say start with the/my self. Whatever.

Oh, and monotheism. I'm totally with Take on this. Dude might be a douche, but he shoots straight and often says what's right even if it's within a prism of ethnic superiority... but then again... sound familiar?

Back to the monotheists... In a spot of snot I was alerted to one god and all else being demons.

Funny thing about that is - only a monotheist could say it. Coming at it from a more Buddhist perspective (which has roots and reality predating the Jew and pre-Jew Stew that gave birth to the twisted, deformed and inbred re-articulations of itself - though not always so, there are some good uns out there) we could say that all is "divine". Or that all is "god". Even that which is not. And the multiplicity of these are all in dialog. Need some less religious reference points for fucking monotheism in the ass and giving birth to beautifully deformed mega kids? Deleuze.

Over and out!

[Mulboyne]

Cinema Today reports (Japanese) that attendance has remained high for screenings of "The Cove" even on Monday. It's obviously still early days but tickets are selling out and some cinemas have had to turn people away.

Cinemas sell programmes with details of the films they show (see below) and the report indicates around 30% of audiences are also buying that. The demographic seems to be mostly concentrated around people in their 20s & 30s with a roughly even gender split. The reports says it looks like couples have been going to see the film which leads the journal to wonder if "The Cove" is an unlikely date movie.

[hundefar]

All animal-rights arguments aside, for anyone in Japan to the right of the Asahi, "The Cove" could just as well be titled "Kryptonite," or "A Plenitude of Pure Pwnage," so embarrassing it must be. On the one side, you've got doltish but violent fishermen and other assorted snarling buffoons, and on the other side you've got cute chix and a beatific-looking old guy who just wants redemption for what he did to Flipper. And they send the fishermen down to depths of defeat through the use of a bit of ridicule and...high-tech gadgetry of a type that would give any Son of Yamato a schtiffy were it not being used against him.

Have we seen the same movie? First they spend a long time going on about how intelligent dolphins are and talk about their 'babies' and that kind of anthropomorphism. They spend some time on mercury levels in dolphin meat, but they sort of lose that when they decide to let that old crazy guy who used to train one of the flipper dolphins rant about it. They also don't go into the political aspects of the whole thing. What I most disliked about it was how they painted a picture of all Japanese as exactly the same and living in constant fear. The director seemed to try to cast himself as some sort of rock n'roll activist, which was sickening. Terrible movie.

There are plenty of good reasons to criticise the Taiji dolphin hunt, but somehow it all came down to dolphins are cute and clever. It had me rooting for the whalers when they slaughtered the dolphins.

Maybe if some of the cute chicks had been naked?

[Greji]

Maybe if some of the cute chicks had been naked?

Have you ever thought about directing?

[Yokohammer]

There are plenty of good reasons to criticise the Taiji dolphin hunt, but somehow it all came down to dolphins are cute and clever. It had me rooting for the whalers when they slaughtered the dolphins.

I have to agree with this.

Right crusade, wrong reasons.

The Cove is to the Taiji dolphin hunt what Sea Shepherd is to whaling in the southern ocean whale sanctuary. Both distort reality and create unnecessary friction while completely overlooking the actual underlying reasons why these activities should be examined more closely and possibly sanctioned.

[Mulboyne]

[Yokohammer]

With regard to whaling and the like, it irritates me to see people condemn "bad arguments", which they believe are alienating audiences, without acknowledging that others, including Japanese, having been making scores of different arguments - on moral, legal, economic, diplomatic and medical grounds - without making any headway either.

I come across this a good deal in my own work. I've heard it called the "Goldilocks defence", where you're told that there is in fact a perfect strategy to achieve your goal but you just haven't found it yet, probably because you don't understand Japanese people well enough.

Good article.

But re your follow-up, arguments based on any of the emotional aspects of dolphin and whale hunting aren't likely to work because, basically, they're illogical and indefensible. You have different groups of people with opposing emotional reactions to the same issue, and ne'er the twain shall meet.

Unfortunately, the most prominent and vociferous players in the save-the-dolphins/whales game (in this discussion The Cove and Sea Shepherd) are using primarily emotional arguments as well as tactics that stir up strong opposing reactions. Such arguments are just too easy for the opposition to use to their own advantage. Sea Shepherd has thrown a spotlight on the issue, to be sure, but the way they've gone about it is easier to condemn than praise, and thus I feel that they're doing more damage than good. The reporters who uncovered the shady means being used to buy votes in favor of Japan's position at the IWC, on the other hand, have made a positive contribution that might make people think and start looking toward the real problems involved instead of the superficial bullshit.

Naturally the media focuses on the most sensational and outrageous aspects of anything, which doesn't help. They are playing their role in the country's "aikido defense," which uses the opponent's own force and momentum against them. Repeating the same arguments more frequently or with more force only makes the situation worse.

There most definitely are methods that will work better re Japanese audiences. It's not rocket science, and there are well-understood sociological principles involved. But it's much easier to condemn outright, which is a sure path to failure. And as long as such methods are being used they will be actively counter-used as a smoke screen to detract from the real issues. The first step is to stop the extremism and sensationalism and get down to some thoughtful discourse. If the IWC isn't working out then other diplomatic channels need to be explored. The rest is just a lot of noise that is more likely to produce undesirable backlash than positive results.

[Catoneinutica]

I don't think "The Cove" made its case very well.

For Kaori Shoji, at least, it seems to have made its case extraordinarily well:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ff20100625a1.html

[Greji]

For Kaori Shoji, at least, it seems to have made its case extraordinarily well:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ff20100625a1.html

Her bona fides for the article ends in the first paragraph "..... aboard a Sea Shepherd (the renowned, independent ocean conservation society) boat....."

[Catoneinutica]

Her bona fides for the article ends in the first paragraph "..... aboard a Sea Shepherd (the renowned, independent ocean conservation society) boat....."

Okay, let me rephrase that, then:

Although her bona fides end in the first paragraph with, some would argue, an extraordinarily credulous assessment by her of Sea Shepherd, for Kaori Shoji, at least, the film seems to have made its case extraordinarily well.

-catone
-diagram that muhfucker of a sentence

[Takechanpoo]

[Takechanpoo]

[Mock Cockpit]

If dolphins are so fucking clever you'd think word would have got around Dolphinville to stay the fuck out of Taiji. Maybe those dolphins are really just committing suicide?

[FG Lurker]

Me too.

Yeah, same problem here too.

[Greji]

I am a gaijin and I am fucked. I reserve my right to complain about how this cuntry is run.

I'd like to call a "Me Too!" on this as well.

Hair if you need another fucked fucker to bitch with you, count me in....
Hopefully, we won't upset Jack's delicate sense of J-culture.

[Yokohammer]

Hopefully, we won't upset Jack's delicate sense of J-culture.

You mean the one he gets from wanking to J-porn?