Sexologist

Sex career no bed of roses

"Kim is a sexologist. He is also easygoing, charming and has the ability to put visitors immediately at ease. Discussions involving sex seem no more threatening than a chat about the latest fad or the weather. His patients, for the most part, are homemakers with dysfunctional or nonexistent sexual relationships with their husbands.

Kim might be compared to Alfred Kinsey, the highly controversial U.S. sex researcher. Like the late Indiana University professor, the 54-year-old Kim has dedicated most of his life to examining human sexuality-a subject that has, to some degree, remained off-limits in Japan to this day.

Later this month, a movie based on the life of Kinsey-a zoologist and biologist, whose project involved research on more than 18,000 Americans-is scheduled to open in Japan.

Kim has been hired as a lecturer for a string of events promoting the movie.

Since opening his counseling center in 1999, Kim has treated hundreds of people. Of about 200 patients who visited his office last year, 5 percent were virgin females, and 5 percent were males. The rest were homemakers in their 30s to 60s suffering from sexless marriages.

"About a third of my clients have gone to psychiatrists for help," says Kim, explaining that the depth of the problem has robbed so many women of their dignity and confidence.

"The problem is that once a couple gets married, that often turns out to be the end of the story for husbands. They soon lose sexual interest and deal with their wives as they would their mothers," Kim says.

This problem extends beyond sex, he says. "These husbands won't even hold hands with their wives. Kindness and understanding are beyond them. Eventually there is no real contact at all-the wives just become their personal servants..."

Internationl Herald Tribune/Asahi Newspaper, August 6, 2005

Hiroshima

The burning and the haunting: how for some the nightmare of Hiroshima will never end

Despite the line, "In Japan, where discussing mental illness is taboo", this is overall a well research and sincere article based on a BBC television report marking the sixty years anniversary of the atomic destruction of Hiroshima. The idea that talking about mental illness is taboo in Japan often still appears in English media reports on Japan, even though, for example, depression ("utsubyou", anxiety disorders "fuanshou", PTSD and trauma ("torauma") are health problems that are regularly discussed on television and in daily newspaper and popular magazines.

The most impressive point this article drives home is that nuclear weapons are terrible weapons that continue to corrode and effect the mental and phsyical health of the civilians of the cities that are vicitm to these weapons for generations after they explode and destroy without mercy. - Timi

Survivors describe the horrors of August 6 1945 and the scars that remain

"The nightmares that have stayed with her are understandable, but probably the mildest manifestation of the physical and mental scars that remain with many of those who survived. Some hibakusha have only started to talk publicly about their experiences in the last decade. Although they now receive special state welfare provision and much public attention, for many years after the war they were stigmatised. Women, in particular, found it hard to marry.

"They used to call women like me a 'pikadon girl' or an 'atomic girl'," said Kinuko Laskey, who was 16 when she was caught in the blast. "They would say, you don't know what sort of a baby she will give birth to. Others said that the radiation could be genetically transmitted or was even contagious."

Mrs Laskey attempted suicide several times before marrying a Canadian serviceman and emigrating to Vancouver. The explosion split open one of her eyes and drove hundreds of shards of glass into her body. For a whole year her mother covered up reflective surfaces, including pans, to prevent her daughter from seeing her disfigurement. By the time of her death last year, she had had numerous operations that had eventually made the visible damage almost indiscernible.

Flashbacks, hyper-vigilance and poor sleep have been reported among hibakusha. Many survivors become very anxious when talking about their experiences, as if they are stepping back into the horrors they are describing.

In Japan, where discussing mental illness is taboo, both doctors and survivors play down the possibility that some victims of Hiroshima might still be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, emphasising instead the desolation caused by losing loved ones and the anticipatory fear of radiation-related illness..."

The Guardian, Saturday August 6, 2005

War Sex Victims

Comfort Women May Forgive but Not Forget

"For a decade now, Song Shin Do, 84, the only Korean former comfort woman who lives in Japan, has refused monetary compensation but fought bitterly for an apology from the Japanese government, taking every defeat handed down at the courts with a poignant stoicism that has won her grudging admiration.

But today, Song, a small wizened woman with a sharp tongue, says she is ready to call it quits, exhausted from the long-drawn-out lawsuits that have rejected her strongest wish -- to be able to die satisfied that there is repentance and that what they did to her will never be repeated.
Song said she was duped into becoming a sex slave when she was 16 years old to serve the Japanese Imperial army that colonised the Korean peninsula and most of Asia in the early 20th century.
''I was raped repeatedly by Japanese soldiers daily and was told I was serving the country. No woman should experience such a life again,'' she told a public gathering late last month.
Activists supporting hundreds of aging sex slaves like Song explain the elusive wish for a sincere apology from the Japanese government must be viewed, not as an act of the past, but a deep blow to their struggle to pressure militaries to respect the right of women to be protected from violence during wars and conflicts.
''Song and other former comfort women are a powerful symbol of how women have been butchered by militarism in the past and which continues today in conflicts across the globe," said Mina Watanabe, curator of the newly- opened Women's Active Museum on War and Peace.
The museum is a heroic effort undertaken by women's groups and international pacifists to leave a record of the cruel comfort women system and other human rights violations committed in post world war conflicts around the world.
Watanabe explained that the museum has a wide collection of testimonies of former sex slaves and is a crucial landmark in highlighting the vulnerability of women in armed conflicts and current sexual trafficking.It provides evidence to support the urgent need for better laws to punish acts of violence against women and develop a system where victims can be cared for by governments..."

Inter Press Service News Agency, Tokyo, 6 August, 2005

Community Suicide Prevention Akita

Community the key to preventing suicides

Worth reading the whole of this excellent and informative article by Professor Yutaka Motohashi, professor of Public Health at Akita University. The article places emphasis on the need for funds for suicide prevention programs, not just for research programs on the suicide. The majority of the suicides reflected in the high annual suicide rates are preventable and many of these needless deaths could be prevented if there is a stronger resolve in the political and social will to do so. - Timi

"... It is said that suicide and unemployment rates are commensurate. That connection is certainly evident in low-income prefectures.

In 2000, the Akita prefectural government embarked on an extensive program that targeted suicide prevention. The mainstay of the program placed emphasis on primary prevention through public health activities by improving health standards of both individuals and the wider community.

A noteworthy aspect of the program is that it chose not to center around the typical secondary mode of prevention-the early discovery and treatment of depression.

The prefectural government established venues in local communities equipped to provide health education and advice. Residents are able to participate as they wish.

In fiscal 2001, the prefectural government designated six towns as a model area and urged them to come up with primary ways of preventing suicide.

Today, these six towns have very active "community advisers," all local citizens who listen to concerns expressed by others. They also set up venues where residents can get together to discuss their interpersonal problems.

In 2001, these six towns had a combined 30 suicides. In 2004, that figure dropped to 13.

No other town recorded a similar decline, which suggests the prevention program was working.

There are those who point out that while this remedy may work for rural communities, it would not apply to cities.

But the "Akita model" is not an atypical case.

There is no difference between rural and urban communities in that they all contain people who are suffering and want to live but need help in seeking assistance.

The issue is how to create a support network that fits and meets the needs of individual localities.

The essence of what was achieved in the rural communities can be applied in various ways in cities. Cities, for example, could be divided into clear-cut areas that have assigned health workers who diligently establish themselves in their assigned areas. The areas could also draw on the power of local people to help bring down suicide rates.

The central government, meanwhile, should provide the necessary powers to local governments to help them implement measures that fit the local situation. Preventing suicides is a matter of "local autonomy."

Presently, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has placed suicide prevention research as the centerpiece of its prevention programs. In my view, it is actual prevention activities that need to be urgently put in place, not research.

To begin with, perhaps the government should help the other prefectures to establish prevention programs on a par with Akita's. But rather than force the same set of activities onto the various prefectures, it should allocate funds that local governments can use at their discretion. The annual budget for Akita's suicide prevention program comes to just under 10 million yen. If the central government allocated 10 million yen to each prefecture, it would add up to only 470 million yen.

Could the government not add this to the health ministry's annual suicide prevention budget of 855 million yen?

If only the government would continue to earmark this additional amount until 2010, the year by which its target of reducing suicides by 30 percent is supposed to be reached.

There are still many prefectures that have not undertaken any kind of suicide prevention measures. But if they are given funds, they surely will take action.

Suicides are like automobile accidents in that they are by and large "avoidable deaths."

A public outcry arose in the 1970s over what was termed traffic warfare. Since then, traffic fatalities have been significantly reduced. The traffic safety activities that were enforced involved the central government, local authorities, schools and workplaces. They would also serve as an effective model for suicide prevention activities."

International Herald Tribune/Asahi Newspaper, August 3, 2005