![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ng_moonmothThis is in response to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lone_cat's request for more on the life of Isao Kobayashi, who was introduced in "The Most Powerful, Master Emotion". It is based on ysabetwordsmith's and my exploration of current T-Japanese culture, and my own extrapolations from this into the next twenty years. Content describing events prior to its November 2015 posting has been vetted and may be considered canonical. Events beyond that date are extrapolated from current conditions and trends, and are subject to revision as future events in Terremagne and T-Japan become known.
WARNING: This work is a future obituary of a Japanese citizen. Although the style is primarily journalistic, rather than graphic, many of the major events in T-Japan during his life are mentioned, some of which⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠ refer to events readers may find distressing. Hovering over the warning triangles will reveal what lies beneath. Please consider your tastes and headspace before deciding to read this.
OSAKA: Isao Kobayashi, who was spared from nearly certain death as a kamikaze pilot by the surrender of Japan following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki only to be disgraced and isolated by changes to his body wrought by the weapons' deadly aftereffects, has died. A press release from the Osaka headquarters of Kobayashi Cleanup KK announced his recent passing, stating: "Kobayashi Cleanup KK announces the death of Isao Kobayashi, eldest son of our third Chairman Tetsuo Kobayashi. Kobayashi-san died honorably by his own hand at Kobayashi corporate headquarters on October 18. Kobayashi recognizes the important contributions that Kobayashi-san made to our corporation and its business activities." Isao Kobayashi had been involved with the company in some fashion from its rise to prominence following the end of World War II until his retirement in 2012.
As the eldest son of the president of what at the time was a small but successful firm providing cleaning services to offices and factories, Isao Kobayshi was expected from childhood to eventually assume his father's role and eventually become chairman. Coming of age during World War II, Kobayashi enlisted in the army at age 15 near the end of the war, when the demand for manpower had grown so intense that almost any man who sought to enlist was accepted. Correspondence with his father and grandfather indicates that he sought to learn about leadership and how one properly exercises one's authority.
Being a smaller and younger individual, Kobayashi was assigned to one of the last few cadres to undergo kamikaze training. His training was nearly complete when the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan's subsequent surrender, ended the need for soldiers of all types. Kobayashi's brigade was disbanded, and he returned to his family in Osaka.
The increase in activity from Japan's rapid industrialization for war, and later on damage from Allied bombing raids, had provided an excellent opportunity for Kobayashi Cleanup to expand their business. By the end of World War II, it had grown to become a regional company with operations over a wide area of central Honshu.
Desperate for additional manpower to clean up the industrial waste and rubble, regional authorities in lower Honshu contacted Kobayashi Cleanup, expressing interest in having them create and staff cleaning brigades. Kobayashi was assigned to lead a team in Nagasaki in 1946.
Following the efforts there, Kobayashi led other cleanup efforts. The scope of his assignments increased rapidly, until, by 1951, he was given primary responsibility to supervise the efforts of Kobayashi Cleanup in Minamata. His cooperation with the medical staff retained to investigate the unusual ailments suffered by people and animals in the area was considered to be essential in the process of uncovering Chisso Corporation's poisoning of Minamata Bay and obtaining restitution for the lives damaged and lost by their actions.
Shortly after Chisso's government-mandated waste treatment operations began and the most toxic areas of Minamata Bay had been filled in, items mentioning Kobayashi's position and activities in Kobayashi Cleanup suddenly almost completely disappeared from company literature. Press releases that had once prominently featured cleanup efforts led by Kobayashi and associated the presumptive future chairman with those efforts now contained no mention of him. Records indicate that Kobayashi Cleanup continued to employ him, and a scant few bits of other information show that he was often sent to assist in cleanup efforts that were later found to have been some of the most hazardous undertaken by Kobayashi Cleanup. Aside from a brief mention of a 1957 visit to corporate headquarters, no mention of Isao Kobayashi's activities can be found. Most notably, when company custom would have had Isao Kobayashi assume the office of president following his father's being named Kobayashi Cleanup's chairman upon the retirement of Sadao Kobayashi from that position, Isao Kobayashi's younger brother Hideki became president.
This mysterious absence ended without publicity in 1978, when he was listed as a "Special Advisor" on the staff roster that accompanied informational releases from Kobayashi Cleanup's nascent Robotics Division. Still, there was no mention of his activities in other corporate literature, and none of the division's releases mentioned the nature of his contributions. His tenure in that position lasted until 1991, when the Robotics Division launched its Autonomous Vehicles Initiative and he was named its director.
It was at this time that the reason Kobayashi's career did not proceed as it would have been expected became known. In a momentous press conference called to announce the formation of the Autonomous Vehicles Initiative and his designation as director, Kobayashi was called to the dais to accept the position and the respect of the leading executives of the Robotics Division. Despite the attending press having received a briefing letter indicating that Kobayashi had developed a "disfiguring condition during his many years of industrious work on behalf of Kobayashi Cleanup", gasps of shock overtook the audience when the glowing silver eyes that marked him as someone who had manifested superpowers were revealed. This prompted a deluge of questions concerning the propriety of assigning a superpowered individual a position of significant power and influence. Kobayashi handled the situation with his trademark politeness and calm, frequently calling on various Robotics Division executives to demonstrate that he had the solid support of Kobayashi Cleanup top management.
Beginning with a single prototype having limited autonomous capability, the Autonomous Vehicles Initiative under Kobayashi quickly spawned a broad range of autonomous rescue vehicles (ARVs) capable of navigating dangerous and unpredictable environments to reach people and hazardous conditions inaccessible to humans. Kobayashi's insistence on adaptability and durability resulted in Kobayashi Cleanup's ARVs coming to be regarded as a worldwide standard of excellence against which other ARVs are measured.
Kobayashi's and Kobayashi Cleanup's reputation reached its zenith following the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, where Kobayashi Cleanup's ARVs were instrumental in locating and repairing damage resulting from the tsunami and subsequent hydrogen explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex. The rescue and cleanup effort also represented a personal triumph for Kobayashi, who for the first time publicly demonstrated his powers of Invulnerability and Regeneration by fearlessly entering areas containing deadly levels of heavy metals and radiation to better position ARVs for many of the exploratory and repair operations that located and sealed compromised areas of the power complex's cooling ponds.
The Fukushima Daiichi mitigation effort also became recognized as a pivotal event in the long and often difficult process of advancing Japan's reconciliation of superpowers and superpowered individuals with their culture. The actions of Kobayashi and Russian superhera Ilyana Cerenkova in responding to requests for aid from Japan's Ministry of Civil Defense and SPOON's Atomic Disaster Response team, accepting the authority of and acting in response to direction from the executive team managing the cleanup, and interacting with non-superpowered individuals as equals and with respect, were widely shown across Japan. This not only demonstrated that superpowers could be used in ways that benefited Japan and its people, but that superpowered people could respect and act in harmony with Japanese cultural values. It was not long before the public, and popular media, hailed Kobayashi as the first authentically Japanese superhero. Other superpowered individuals, many of whom had also chosen to reveal their previously concealed powers in support of the Fukushima cleanup, soon felt they no longer needed to hide their abilities. This led to increasing acceptance and normalization of soups and superpowers in Japanese culture.
Having seen the autonomous vehicles perform admirably in an exceptionally challenging environment, and perhaps disconcerted by the publicity and adulation he had been attracting, Kobayashi announced his retirement from the directorship of the Autonomous Vehicles division and Kobayashi Cleanup, and once again disappeared from public view. Occasional rumors of his presence trickled in from places around the world, but no sightings were ever confirmed, and no communication with Kobayashi ever reached the public.
The next record of Kobayashi's existence is a purchase of an airline ticket from Bangkok to Tokyo, and a train ticket from Haneda Airport to Osaka Central Station, in late September of this year. No subsequent records of any sort of transaction were found; it is believed that Kobayashi stayed with relatives in Osaka between his return to Japan and his death, and chose not to venture into public -- or even to visit any corporate facility where his presence would have been recorded.
The mysteries that accompanied Isao Kobayashi's life also accompany his death. First and foremost, there is no information regarding how his powers of Invulnerability and Regeneration were overcome. And though a properly executed and attested Affidavit of Termination, listing current Kobayashi Cleanup chairman Hiroshi Kobayashi as kaishakunin (second) and witnessed by Hiroshi Kobayashi's personal physician, was filed on the same day as the press release announcing Isao Kobayashi's death, the spaces provided where the date, time, and location of death can be entered were struck through. No record of the treatment or disposal of the body can be found.
Chairman Kobayashi also released a personal statement that day. This read, in part: "I have been deeply honored by Kobayashi-san to have been asked to act as his kaishakunin and help him bring his life to an honorable and proper close. The chair I now occupy was his by right of birth; despite being unable to occupy it himself owing to the prejudices of his time, he continued to be loyal to his employer and family, and remained a diligent and capable employee until his retirement. Kobayashi Cleanup KK owes much of its current stature and success to his efforts."
At the bottom of Chairman Kobayashi's personal statement was a set of columns of handwritten Japanese characters, as would appear in a calligraphic rendition of poetry. This section was not included in any of the translated texts when the statement was released. When Albert Tanaka, Professor of Japanese Literature in the department of Cultural Anthropology at the Westbord Institute of Social Sciences, was shown the statement, he identified it as being typical in form and content of the "death poem" a samurai would write before performing seppuku. Asked for a translation, Professor Tanaka replied that it had been written in a somewhat archaic style and vocabulary that fell out of common usage around the time of the Meiji Restoration, and offered what he described as an "approximation" of its content:
"Bonfires dot the fields.
The farmers strive to complete --
The autumn harvest.
"The golden heads proudly stand;
Their deaths nourish the people."*
These are most likely Isao Kobayashi's last words.
*Professor Tanaka notes that the last line of the first stanza refers to the late autumn rice harvest, which began in the Osaka area three days before the Kobayashi Cleanup press release and the filing of Isao Kobayashi's Affidavit of Termination. He also adds: "A more emotionally accurate translation of the last line of the poem would be 'They gladly yield their lives to improve the vitality of the community.' I have been so far unable to do satisfactory justice in English to Kobayashi-san's thoughts."
SOURCES: Yomiuri Shimbun (Tokyo); Mainichi Shimbun (Osaka); Kobayashi Cleanup KK press release; personal statement by Kobayashi Cleanup chairman Hiroshi Kobayashi; poetry analysis by Albert Tanaka
Notes:
Honshu is the principal, and largest, of the islands constituting Japan. Osaka has been the economic center of Japan since the seventeenth century. Many of the largest Japanese companies have their corporate headquarters there.
The technology supporting industrial, and later autonomous, robotics proceeded much more rapidly in Terremagne. Integrated circuit "chips" small and complex enough to be used in controlling industrial robots became commercially available in the mid-1960s, about ten years earlier than the local timeline. Combined with the mechanical advances developed by gizmologists and super-gizmologists, factory automation quickly became practical, and soon indispensable. This drove research to the extent where the prototype Kobayashi autonomous robots in 1991 were roughly comparable to current autonomous robots here. The Autonomous Vehicles Initiative was a response by Kobayashi to concerns such as these.
Read about the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami. Because many of the safety issues that were improperly dealt with at the L-Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex were attended to in T-Fukushima, damage to the complex was less severe. Even so, most of the hazards faced in L-Fukushima were present in T-Fukushima.
Japanese culture's relationship with superpowers and soups has been, and continues to be, problematic. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, any physical manifestation of superpowers was considered analogous to being possessed by a demon. This always resulted in the unfortunate person being excluded from society, and frequently led to attacks and deaths. As soups became more prevalent around the world, and were shown to be good citizens in many places, the general Japanese public began to tolerate overt soups with non-concealable physical attributes in public spaces. Even so, they were granted a good deal of space -- evidence that they were only grudgingly accepted, and still considered outcasts and non-Japanese. Even into the 1980s, an overt soup entering a shop that was not soup-friendly would frequently prompt the current customers into abandoning their intended purchases and quietly exiting.
By the time of the Fukushima earthquake, things had improved somewhat. Japanese soups who did not obviously look "different" or employ their powers in public could expect to be treated politely, but formally, in nearly all cases. It was possible to be soup-friendly without jeopardizing one's stature or livelihood; many people and businesses would actively welcome interaction with soups. But being obviously superpowered, either by appearance or actions, is still risky in many areas of Japan. And public display of superpowers is still sufficient to make one's Japanese nature disputable.
Samurai were the warrior class of feudal Japan. During the Tokugawa Shogunate, samurai were offered, and accepted, positions in the government. Many of their attitudes, forged on the battlefield, came to permeate Japanese culture. Although the Meiji Restoration marked the end of the influence of the samurai in government and society, the cultural influences remain strong, even today.
(These links are unsettling⚠.)
A samurai pledged to place their life at the disposal of their lord, up to and including being ready to die rather than disobey, or fail to carry out, an order. An example of this attitude in more recent history was the World War II kamikaze missions. Kamikazes were pilots ordered to crash explosive-laden aircraft into Allied ships as a last-ditch effort to slow or stop the impending invasion. As the number of incoming soldiers decreased, younger and smaller soldiers, who would be less effective on the battlefield, were preferentially "chosen" to undergo kamikaze training.
(fromysabetwordsmith:) T-Japan has a very respectable set of legal parameters regarding end-of-life issues. Suicide is considered an appropriate way of paying for certain major crimes. Assisted suicide is an option for people with incurable diseases or other unbearable suffering. These factors make some other countries uncomfortable, but are congruent with Japanese culture. Also worth mentioning is that some crimes are considered so disgraceful that suicide is not permitted as an escape. Hence why Japan tipped the Maldives to put the whalers on suicide watch, guessing (probably right) that the captain would have made the attempt.
(These links are unsettling⚠.)
Seppuku was a form of ritual suicide permitted to samurai. Although a common popular culture view outside Japan is that of a disgraced samurai seeking to regain his family's honor by their death, seppuku was more commonly performed as an alternative to being captured in battle, or to protest the actions of one's lord. The practice of seppuku has nearly died out in Japan. Inability to find someone to serve as one's second, and kill the samurai after they had mortally wounded themself, has also played a major role.
Many Japanese who were about to die wrote death poems when their time drew near. Some examples of death poems are here. Isao Kobayashi's presumed death poem is a tanka. The tanka form begins with the 5/7/5 pattern that has evolved into the modern haiku. Learn more about tanka here.
An Affidavit of Termination is a T-Japanese legal document declaring a person's intent to end their life. The person who intends to die names a kaishakunin (the term that once described the "second" who assisted in the seppuku ritual by decapitating the samurai); being asked to perform this act is considered a great honor. The two take oaths together, before someone who has been authorized by the government to attest to the sincerity and validity of the statement. This is typically a medical, mental health, or end-of-life professional, although some police departments have an officer who has the appropriate credentials and training. (Hiroshi Kobayashi's physician is a gerontologist with end-of-life training.) Following the death, the kaishakunin confirms that the deceased's wishes were carried out. A properly filled out and filed form serves as a death certificate, and precludes police investigation into the manner of death, the kaishakunin's role in it, and the disposition of the body. The phrase "died honorably by their own hand" in a death notice or obituary indicates that an Affidavit of Termination was properly executed and filed.
I've got another bit of demi(science)fiction lined up, that will fill in the holes in Kobayashi-san's bio. As of the time of the obit, though, that's secret history. Stay tuned...
lone_cat's request for more on the life of Isao Kobayashi, who was introduced in "The Most Powerful, Master Emotion". It is based on ysabetwordsmith's and my exploration of current T-Japanese culture, and my own extrapolations from this into the next twenty years. Content describing events prior to its November 2015 posting has been vetted and may be considered canonical. Events beyond that date are extrapolated from current conditions and trends, and are subject to revision as future events in Terremagne and T-Japan become known.WARNING: This work is a future obituary of a Japanese citizen. Although the style is primarily journalistic, rather than graphic, many of the major events in T-Japan during his life are mentioned, some of which⚠⚠⚠⚠⚠ refer to events readers may find distressing. Hovering over the warning triangles will reveal what lies beneath. Please consider your tastes and headspace before deciding to read this.
OSAKA: Isao Kobayashi, who was spared from nearly certain death as a kamikaze pilot by the surrender of Japan following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki only to be disgraced and isolated by changes to his body wrought by the weapons' deadly aftereffects, has died. A press release from the Osaka headquarters of Kobayashi Cleanup KK announced his recent passing, stating: "Kobayashi Cleanup KK announces the death of Isao Kobayashi, eldest son of our third Chairman Tetsuo Kobayashi. Kobayashi-san died honorably by his own hand at Kobayashi corporate headquarters on October 18. Kobayashi recognizes the important contributions that Kobayashi-san made to our corporation and its business activities." Isao Kobayashi had been involved with the company in some fashion from its rise to prominence following the end of World War II until his retirement in 2012.
As the eldest son of the president of what at the time was a small but successful firm providing cleaning services to offices and factories, Isao Kobayshi was expected from childhood to eventually assume his father's role and eventually become chairman. Coming of age during World War II, Kobayashi enlisted in the army at age 15 near the end of the war, when the demand for manpower had grown so intense that almost any man who sought to enlist was accepted. Correspondence with his father and grandfather indicates that he sought to learn about leadership and how one properly exercises one's authority.
Being a smaller and younger individual, Kobayashi was assigned to one of the last few cadres to undergo kamikaze training. His training was nearly complete when the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan's subsequent surrender, ended the need for soldiers of all types. Kobayashi's brigade was disbanded, and he returned to his family in Osaka.
The increase in activity from Japan's rapid industrialization for war, and later on damage from Allied bombing raids, had provided an excellent opportunity for Kobayashi Cleanup to expand their business. By the end of World War II, it had grown to become a regional company with operations over a wide area of central Honshu.
Desperate for additional manpower to clean up the industrial waste and rubble, regional authorities in lower Honshu contacted Kobayashi Cleanup, expressing interest in having them create and staff cleaning brigades. Kobayashi was assigned to lead a team in Nagasaki in 1946.
Following the efforts there, Kobayashi led other cleanup efforts. The scope of his assignments increased rapidly, until, by 1951, he was given primary responsibility to supervise the efforts of Kobayashi Cleanup in Minamata. His cooperation with the medical staff retained to investigate the unusual ailments suffered by people and animals in the area was considered to be essential in the process of uncovering Chisso Corporation's poisoning of Minamata Bay and obtaining restitution for the lives damaged and lost by their actions.
Shortly after Chisso's government-mandated waste treatment operations began and the most toxic areas of Minamata Bay had been filled in, items mentioning Kobayashi's position and activities in Kobayashi Cleanup suddenly almost completely disappeared from company literature. Press releases that had once prominently featured cleanup efforts led by Kobayashi and associated the presumptive future chairman with those efforts now contained no mention of him. Records indicate that Kobayashi Cleanup continued to employ him, and a scant few bits of other information show that he was often sent to assist in cleanup efforts that were later found to have been some of the most hazardous undertaken by Kobayashi Cleanup. Aside from a brief mention of a 1957 visit to corporate headquarters, no mention of Isao Kobayashi's activities can be found. Most notably, when company custom would have had Isao Kobayashi assume the office of president following his father's being named Kobayashi Cleanup's chairman upon the retirement of Sadao Kobayashi from that position, Isao Kobayashi's younger brother Hideki became president.
This mysterious absence ended without publicity in 1978, when he was listed as a "Special Advisor" on the staff roster that accompanied informational releases from Kobayashi Cleanup's nascent Robotics Division. Still, there was no mention of his activities in other corporate literature, and none of the division's releases mentioned the nature of his contributions. His tenure in that position lasted until 1991, when the Robotics Division launched its Autonomous Vehicles Initiative and he was named its director.
It was at this time that the reason Kobayashi's career did not proceed as it would have been expected became known. In a momentous press conference called to announce the formation of the Autonomous Vehicles Initiative and his designation as director, Kobayashi was called to the dais to accept the position and the respect of the leading executives of the Robotics Division. Despite the attending press having received a briefing letter indicating that Kobayashi had developed a "disfiguring condition during his many years of industrious work on behalf of Kobayashi Cleanup", gasps of shock overtook the audience when the glowing silver eyes that marked him as someone who had manifested superpowers were revealed. This prompted a deluge of questions concerning the propriety of assigning a superpowered individual a position of significant power and influence. Kobayashi handled the situation with his trademark politeness and calm, frequently calling on various Robotics Division executives to demonstrate that he had the solid support of Kobayashi Cleanup top management.
Beginning with a single prototype having limited autonomous capability, the Autonomous Vehicles Initiative under Kobayashi quickly spawned a broad range of autonomous rescue vehicles (ARVs) capable of navigating dangerous and unpredictable environments to reach people and hazardous conditions inaccessible to humans. Kobayashi's insistence on adaptability and durability resulted in Kobayashi Cleanup's ARVs coming to be regarded as a worldwide standard of excellence against which other ARVs are measured.
Kobayashi's and Kobayashi Cleanup's reputation reached its zenith following the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, where Kobayashi Cleanup's ARVs were instrumental in locating and repairing damage resulting from the tsunami and subsequent hydrogen explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex. The rescue and cleanup effort also represented a personal triumph for Kobayashi, who for the first time publicly demonstrated his powers of Invulnerability and Regeneration by fearlessly entering areas containing deadly levels of heavy metals and radiation to better position ARVs for many of the exploratory and repair operations that located and sealed compromised areas of the power complex's cooling ponds.
The Fukushima Daiichi mitigation effort also became recognized as a pivotal event in the long and often difficult process of advancing Japan's reconciliation of superpowers and superpowered individuals with their culture. The actions of Kobayashi and Russian superhera Ilyana Cerenkova in responding to requests for aid from Japan's Ministry of Civil Defense and SPOON's Atomic Disaster Response team, accepting the authority of and acting in response to direction from the executive team managing the cleanup, and interacting with non-superpowered individuals as equals and with respect, were widely shown across Japan. This not only demonstrated that superpowers could be used in ways that benefited Japan and its people, but that superpowered people could respect and act in harmony with Japanese cultural values. It was not long before the public, and popular media, hailed Kobayashi as the first authentically Japanese superhero. Other superpowered individuals, many of whom had also chosen to reveal their previously concealed powers in support of the Fukushima cleanup, soon felt they no longer needed to hide their abilities. This led to increasing acceptance and normalization of soups and superpowers in Japanese culture.
Having seen the autonomous vehicles perform admirably in an exceptionally challenging environment, and perhaps disconcerted by the publicity and adulation he had been attracting, Kobayashi announced his retirement from the directorship of the Autonomous Vehicles division and Kobayashi Cleanup, and once again disappeared from public view. Occasional rumors of his presence trickled in from places around the world, but no sightings were ever confirmed, and no communication with Kobayashi ever reached the public.
The next record of Kobayashi's existence is a purchase of an airline ticket from Bangkok to Tokyo, and a train ticket from Haneda Airport to Osaka Central Station, in late September of this year. No subsequent records of any sort of transaction were found; it is believed that Kobayashi stayed with relatives in Osaka between his return to Japan and his death, and chose not to venture into public -- or even to visit any corporate facility where his presence would have been recorded.
The mysteries that accompanied Isao Kobayashi's life also accompany his death. First and foremost, there is no information regarding how his powers of Invulnerability and Regeneration were overcome. And though a properly executed and attested Affidavit of Termination, listing current Kobayashi Cleanup chairman Hiroshi Kobayashi as kaishakunin (second) and witnessed by Hiroshi Kobayashi's personal physician, was filed on the same day as the press release announcing Isao Kobayashi's death, the spaces provided where the date, time, and location of death can be entered were struck through. No record of the treatment or disposal of the body can be found.
Chairman Kobayashi also released a personal statement that day. This read, in part: "I have been deeply honored by Kobayashi-san to have been asked to act as his kaishakunin and help him bring his life to an honorable and proper close. The chair I now occupy was his by right of birth; despite being unable to occupy it himself owing to the prejudices of his time, he continued to be loyal to his employer and family, and remained a diligent and capable employee until his retirement. Kobayashi Cleanup KK owes much of its current stature and success to his efforts."
At the bottom of Chairman Kobayashi's personal statement was a set of columns of handwritten Japanese characters, as would appear in a calligraphic rendition of poetry. This section was not included in any of the translated texts when the statement was released. When Albert Tanaka, Professor of Japanese Literature in the department of Cultural Anthropology at the Westbord Institute of Social Sciences, was shown the statement, he identified it as being typical in form and content of the "death poem" a samurai would write before performing seppuku. Asked for a translation, Professor Tanaka replied that it had been written in a somewhat archaic style and vocabulary that fell out of common usage around the time of the Meiji Restoration, and offered what he described as an "approximation" of its content:
"Bonfires dot the fields.
The farmers strive to complete --
The autumn harvest.
"The golden heads proudly stand;
Their deaths nourish the people."*
These are most likely Isao Kobayashi's last words.
*Professor Tanaka notes that the last line of the first stanza refers to the late autumn rice harvest, which began in the Osaka area three days before the Kobayashi Cleanup press release and the filing of Isao Kobayashi's Affidavit of Termination. He also adds: "A more emotionally accurate translation of the last line of the poem would be 'They gladly yield their lives to improve the vitality of the community.' I have been so far unable to do satisfactory justice in English to Kobayashi-san's thoughts."
SOURCES: Yomiuri Shimbun (Tokyo); Mainichi Shimbun (Osaka); Kobayashi Cleanup KK press release; personal statement by Kobayashi Cleanup chairman Hiroshi Kobayashi; poetry analysis by Albert Tanaka
Notes:
Honshu is the principal, and largest, of the islands constituting Japan. Osaka has been the economic center of Japan since the seventeenth century. Many of the largest Japanese companies have their corporate headquarters there.
The technology supporting industrial, and later autonomous, robotics proceeded much more rapidly in Terremagne. Integrated circuit "chips" small and complex enough to be used in controlling industrial robots became commercially available in the mid-1960s, about ten years earlier than the local timeline. Combined with the mechanical advances developed by gizmologists and super-gizmologists, factory automation quickly became practical, and soon indispensable. This drove research to the extent where the prototype Kobayashi autonomous robots in 1991 were roughly comparable to current autonomous robots here. The Autonomous Vehicles Initiative was a response by Kobayashi to concerns such as these.
Read about the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami. Because many of the safety issues that were improperly dealt with at the L-Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex were attended to in T-Fukushima, damage to the complex was less severe. Even so, most of the hazards faced in L-Fukushima were present in T-Fukushima.
Japanese culture's relationship with superpowers and soups has been, and continues to be, problematic. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, any physical manifestation of superpowers was considered analogous to being possessed by a demon. This always resulted in the unfortunate person being excluded from society, and frequently led to attacks and deaths. As soups became more prevalent around the world, and were shown to be good citizens in many places, the general Japanese public began to tolerate overt soups with non-concealable physical attributes in public spaces. Even so, they were granted a good deal of space -- evidence that they were only grudgingly accepted, and still considered outcasts and non-Japanese. Even into the 1980s, an overt soup entering a shop that was not soup-friendly would frequently prompt the current customers into abandoning their intended purchases and quietly exiting.
By the time of the Fukushima earthquake, things had improved somewhat. Japanese soups who did not obviously look "different" or employ their powers in public could expect to be treated politely, but formally, in nearly all cases. It was possible to be soup-friendly without jeopardizing one's stature or livelihood; many people and businesses would actively welcome interaction with soups. But being obviously superpowered, either by appearance or actions, is still risky in many areas of Japan. And public display of superpowers is still sufficient to make one's Japanese nature disputable.
Samurai were the warrior class of feudal Japan. During the Tokugawa Shogunate, samurai were offered, and accepted, positions in the government. Many of their attitudes, forged on the battlefield, came to permeate Japanese culture. Although the Meiji Restoration marked the end of the influence of the samurai in government and society, the cultural influences remain strong, even today.
(These links are unsettling⚠.)
A samurai pledged to place their life at the disposal of their lord, up to and including being ready to die rather than disobey, or fail to carry out, an order. An example of this attitude in more recent history was the World War II kamikaze missions. Kamikazes were pilots ordered to crash explosive-laden aircraft into Allied ships as a last-ditch effort to slow or stop the impending invasion. As the number of incoming soldiers decreased, younger and smaller soldiers, who would be less effective on the battlefield, were preferentially "chosen" to undergo kamikaze training.
(from
ysabetwordsmith:) T-Japan has a very respectable set of legal parameters regarding end-of-life issues. Suicide is considered an appropriate way of paying for certain major crimes. Assisted suicide is an option for people with incurable diseases or other unbearable suffering. These factors make some other countries uncomfortable, but are congruent with Japanese culture. Also worth mentioning is that some crimes are considered so disgraceful that suicide is not permitted as an escape. Hence why Japan tipped the Maldives to put the whalers on suicide watch, guessing (probably right) that the captain would have made the attempt.(These links are unsettling⚠.)
Seppuku was a form of ritual suicide permitted to samurai. Although a common popular culture view outside Japan is that of a disgraced samurai seeking to regain his family's honor by their death, seppuku was more commonly performed as an alternative to being captured in battle, or to protest the actions of one's lord. The practice of seppuku has nearly died out in Japan. Inability to find someone to serve as one's second, and kill the samurai after they had mortally wounded themself, has also played a major role.
Many Japanese who were about to die wrote death poems when their time drew near. Some examples of death poems are here. Isao Kobayashi's presumed death poem is a tanka. The tanka form begins with the 5/7/5 pattern that has evolved into the modern haiku. Learn more about tanka here.
An Affidavit of Termination is a T-Japanese legal document declaring a person's intent to end their life. The person who intends to die names a kaishakunin (the term that once described the "second" who assisted in the seppuku ritual by decapitating the samurai); being asked to perform this act is considered a great honor. The two take oaths together, before someone who has been authorized by the government to attest to the sincerity and validity of the statement. This is typically a medical, mental health, or end-of-life professional, although some police departments have an officer who has the appropriate credentials and training. (Hiroshi Kobayashi's physician is a gerontologist with end-of-life training.) Following the death, the kaishakunin confirms that the deceased's wishes were carried out. A properly filled out and filed form serves as a death certificate, and precludes police investigation into the manner of death, the kaishakunin's role in it, and the disposition of the body. The phrase "died honorably by their own hand" in a death notice or obituary indicates that an Affidavit of Termination was properly executed and filed.
I've got another bit of demi(science)fiction lined up, that will fill in the holes in Kobayashi-san's bio. As of the time of the obit, though, that's secret history. Stay tuned...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Wow!
Date: 2015-11-14 03:30 am (UTC)I really enjoyed reading this exploration of Japanese culture. It shows the ups and downs of dealing with changes over time.
RE: Wow!
Date: 2015-11-14 03:53 am (UTC)You are very welcome. And thank you in return for boosting the signal, and your significant help in aligning my thoughts and concepts with your universe.
>> I really enjoyed reading this exploration of Japanese culture. <<
I sure hope I did well enough with it. I'm always wary of writing about a culture I'm not a member of.
>> It shows the ups and downs of dealing with changes over time. <<
Something that is far too often neglected. Acknowledging that things change makes a story feel truer to life to me.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-14 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-14 04:34 am (UTC)Thanks for reading.
I work out a lot of backstory for everything I write. Sharing it with readers is a way I like to show my appreciation. Anything in here you'd like some backstory on, or should I just pick something?
no subject
Date: 2015-11-14 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 06:20 am (UTC)Fukushima Daiichi was a nearly perfect field trial location. The mitigation effort had the opportunity to try out, and then evaluate, a number of ARVs. The Atomic Disaster Response team (thanks for letting me borrow them and Cerenkova!) may well be their first customer, and buy in some quantity -- it makes sense for them to have some and use them.
Kobayashi Cleanup's Robotics Division operates a proving ground and storage depot on the northern outskirts of Osaka, adjacent to the rail line that passes by the Osaka Airport on its way to joining the main rail line running the length of Japan. The storage depot holds equipment that has passed functionality and fitness tests, but has not yet undergone field trials. Robotics Division staff monitors coverage of worldwide disasters to see whether any of the equipment might be helpful, and offers its use to the stricken areas.
The compromised cooling ponds, which had sustained earthquake damage before being overrun by the tsunami, and the reactor buildings damaged by the hydrogen explosions, provided an excellent field testing ground for a number of radiation-hardened ARVs Kobayashi Cleanup had devised in anticipation of such an event. Allowing radioactive substances to escape their containment structures is regarded much more seriously in Terramagne, due to the potential metagenic effects of radiation and heavy metals. Cultural factors added urgency in Fukushima: Soups in 2011 Japan were still generally regarded as frightening and not truly Japanese, so no company would want to be seen as doing less than they could have to avoid having someone develop superpowers and thereby compromising their Japanese identity.
One of the most helpful Kobayashi Cleanup ARVs was a submersible of roughly the same configuration and size of a sea turtle, with a carbon fiber shell enclosing a dexflan sheath with a waterproof inner lining around the machinery and internal batteries. Propulsion was by means of flipperlike protrusions outside the shell, given shape and motion by an internal support structure. The "head" provided mounting points for sensors and cameras; a wide variety of mountable devices is available. The "tail" contains waterproof connections for power and data cables.
Isao Kobayashi took responsibility for heading into the compromised areas, which had high concentration of heavy metal and radioactive materials. Driving a garden tractor pulling a flatbed trailer holding a "turtle" and a shore station, he would go out to a cooling pond to park and set up a ramp along which the "turtle" could walk into the pond on its "flippers". With cables from a power generator and a shore station connected to its "tail", the turtle would examine the walls of the cooling pond for leaks using a light, a camera, and temperature and flow sensors. Once the leaks had been mapped, a larger and more powerful turtle, capable of mounting and carrying a tube that could deliver an expanding sealant into leaking areas, was deployed to seal leaks in the ponds.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 02:16 pm (UTC)Interesting use of bio-mimicry, I take it you wouldn't mind if I mention the ARV's in some hypothetical future piece?
no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 04:35 pm (UTC)I'm following current trends in L-robotics research. Using forms found in nature as inspiration for locomotion designs often does very well. Life has invested hundreds of millions of years of design work in solving such problems. Even though the production speed is glacial by technological standards, that's still a lot of time to get it right.
So, for exploring aquatic environments containing nasty susbtances, including electronics-scrambling levels of radiation, and with a good chance of pointy objects as well, I wanted something with a tough exterior (carbon fiber and dexflan, with slots for lead plates to harden the electronics as needed) and neutral buoyancy (there are air bladders outside the dexflan, a two-way air pump, and a tank of compressed air you can fill at any dive shop), with a small cross-section, that favors precise movement over speed (to move in close, even if slowly) and doesn't stir stuff up near the sensor cluster. Turtle structure fits those constraints well. Plus, having it use turtle-style locomotion is convenient for making it self-launching and self-storing; you won't need a crane to haul it out of the water and put it on whatever you're using for land transport.
>> I take it you wouldn't mind if I mention the ARV's in some hypothetical future piece? <<
Absolutely not. Design your own! If you can think of it, and why a particular configuration would be useful, someone at Kobayashi can undoubtedly build it and make it work. Then you can try it out in your fiction, and see how well (or poorly) it works in the field.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 04:58 pm (UTC)Hence my amusement now.
Hmmm... I could see how a squid ARV could be useful for marine salvage work. [I've a half formed story in mind that would require something like that.]
no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 05:53 pm (UTC)Convergent evolution! Another reason why Kobayashi Cleanup built turtles is that they are culturally favored in Japan because of their durability and long life. Makes it easier for folks to relate to them.
No word yet on whether anybody nicknamed the big construction turtle that took the sealant hose down to the cracks in the cooling ponds Gamera. Even though it doesn't fly...
Yay!
Date: 2015-11-19 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-14 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-14 05:59 am (UTC)Any backstory you'd like me to unlock as your commenting perk?
no subject
Date: 2015-11-14 06:48 am (UTC)I must admit that I wonder whether he has simply chosen to assume another identity with an age consistent with his (possibly) youthful appearance.
(Part of this is fuelled by a completely unrelated piece of my own I'm working on which contains an official death - it's the way my mind is working at the moment.)
no subject
Date: 2015-11-14 07:27 am (UTC)Kobayashi-san actually did choose to die. The upcoming demifiction, from a time after the secret history will be released, covers the event in more detail.
>> I also note that he was a 103 year old with Regenerative powers. <<
102, actually. He was born in mid-December, and the Affidavit of Termination was filed in late October.
By way of appreciation, here's the backstory concerning how his superpowers grant him significant life extension:
His Invulnerability means that environmental hazards that would compromise normal persons' DNA would have no effect on him, and his Regeneration would, by default, repair genetic damage and probably keep the telomeres at the end of the DNA chains longer. So I think that by the time he gets to 85ish (Fukushima) or early 100s (his suicide), he's starting to show signs of wear, but still appears young and vital.
>> I must admit that I wonder whether he has simply chosen to assume another identity with an age consistent with his (possibly) youthful appearance. <<
The obituary's speculation that the tanka is Kobayashi's death poem is indeed correct. The second stanza is strongly indicative of his attitude: that finding a method of ending his life, and choosing to use it, is an essential part of being an authentically Japanese soup. He recognized that how he conducted his life had been instrumental in integrating superpowers into Japanese culture, and how he would conduct his death would be equally important. By choosing to exit the stage to "nourish the community" of younger soups who had not had to face the harsh conditions of his life with his head held high, he helped confirm to Japanese naries that soups would recognize their obligation to reach the "honorable and proper close" his kaishakunin mentioned in his personal statement. This also contributed greatly to the normalization and integration of soups and superpowers into Japanese culture.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-14 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-14 07:35 am (UTC)*returns bow* There is nothing you need apologize for. As I said in my previous comment, this is by way of appreciation for your reading the piece and deeming it worthy of comment. *bows in acknowledgement*
no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 05:06 pm (UTC)You know... Ilyana's one real superpower is actually a superpowered version of DNA repair. The rest was the result of being exposed to a very radioactive environment, causing chromosome breaks, and her repair mechanism accidentally including the DNA from the C. neoformans fungus in the contaminated facility.
Which is a round-about way of saying she might have a similar 'problem' as Kobayashi.
Something I may just have to consider.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-15 05:34 pm (UTC)Japanese culture has a low threshold for "personal space". While people are expected not to bump into one another if possible, they have been living for quite a while with a lot of people in not very much territory, As a result, the cultural norm accepts many strangers being close to one another.
Giving someone more than the culturally standard amount of personal space for a given situation most commonly shows either respect or discomfort/fear. So the bubble of empty space around an overt soup, dating from the first instances of that in the 1970s and still somewhat present even by the time of Fukushima, serves as a cultural marker indicating that the soup is not culturally favored, and viewed as an outsider. This in return makes the soup uncomfortable, because they are clearly not being treated as a Japanese would be.
Japanese who are uncomfortable around soups would not want to be in an enclosed space with one, for fear that the nonhuman soup characteristics might assert themselves with violence (common enough in Japanese history). This is why a soup entering a shop or restaurant can cause it to empty -- politely and without panic, but it will still empty out, and customers entering will rapidly become much scarcer. Naturally, this does not predispose the shopkeeper to maintain the usual forms of politeness around a business transaction, which will be honored mainly in the breach. The soup will get to make their purchase, and the shopkeeper will get paid, but the closing conversation will run more like "Here's your stuff. Now get out." than "Thank you for patronizing my humble shop."/"It was a pleasure. You have fascinating and exquisite merchandise."
During this time period, some shopkeepers who observed that the vast majority of Japanese with superpowers were still culturally well-behaved, and did not deserve the general scorn they were facing, were willing to treat them by cultural norms. Playing on the use of "cricket" as a term for describing a closeted soup who displays their form and powers only as much as unavoidable, the 19th-century Japanese custom of keeping caged pet crickets was revived. Displaying a live cricket in a prominent place, such as in a window or by the cash drawer, served to signal that the shopkeeper would treat soups patronizing their place with respect, and expected other customers to do likewise. Word got around quickly among soups, and soup-friendly naries, noticing how the soups were behaving, also began preferring shops displaying crickets. Soon, soup-friendly shops could count on having customers who would support a soup's presence to the extent of intervening to keep soup-hostile people far enough away from them to avoid disrupting the soup's shopping.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-17 08:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-18 05:59 am (UTC)The period 2011-2015 turns out to be pivotal in defining Japan's relationship with soups and superpowers. The Fukushima Daiichi cleanup, which demonstrated convincingly that superpowers did not inherently preclude participating in, or acting within the constraints of, Japanese culture, has ignited serious discussion about defining how soups are expected to conduct themselves as Japanese. The "polite, but formal" treatment of "out" soups I mentioned in the notes indicates that mainstream Japanese are still unwilling to admit soups into their inner circle of friends.
This attitude may be starting to change. One driver is the normalization of superpowers in the Maldives. Japanese soups are deciding to escape the isolation their culture creates by leaving to become members of a thriving new culture, and Japan is noticing. The effects of this are becoming noticeable in many urban areas. Less educated and poorer areas remain less tolerant of soups and superpowers.
There's now an intense public debate as to whether to move from the current uneasy tolerance to actual acceptance of soups. This could still go either way as of now. Powerful entities are weighing in on either side,
The arrest and impending prosecution of the Japanese whalers who ran afoul of Steel ("Between a Whale's Past and Present", "Coming Back to Your Breath") has intensified the discussion. The Maldives have grown rather uneasy about admitting more Japanese soups to the country, considering what that bunch did.
Meanwhile, Japan would like to look a bit less barbaric than killing and eating fellow sapients makes one look. The Maldives is currently engaged in substantive talks with the UN about devising a declaration of sapient rights modeled after the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which any creature that could demonstrate sapience would be granted standing to pursue appropriate remedies for violations of those rights. It's still slow going, because there's lots of disagreement about what sapience is and how one proves it. But at least folks are talking about it. Nonhuman soups are starting to weigh in, too.
One possibility being discussed right now for Japan to improve their worldwide standing regarding their soups is to follow up remanding the sailors to Maldivian justice by affirming the declaration of sapient rights and using the difficulty of determining whether a given cetacean target is in fact sapient as an excuse to cease whaling. This has a chance to work, because the few holdouts who have decided that whaling is truly important may be willing to treat it as an honorable sacrifice, done in the name of better international relationships.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 01:47 pm (UTC)Hmm...
Date: 2015-11-19 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-22 03:33 am (UTC)FWIW, this demifiction works for me. Well done!
My thoughts on *how* he accomplished the sought-for-death suggest assistance from either Alicia, Judd, or both. I think they would have both the ability to "help", also the will, and compassion for Kobayashi-san's circumstances. If you choose to comment on such speculation, I will feel honored. I won't be disappointed if you choose not to, though. It is always the storyteller's prerogative to choose what to reveal and when.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-22 06:04 am (UTC)Regarding responding to comments, I appreciate engaging with commenters, and enjoy showing that appreciation by sharing some of the backstory I generated while writing the piece, and lean toward something likely to be of interest to the commenter.
Right now, the portion of Kobayashi-san's history between his disappearance following Fukushima and his reappearing twenty years later is secret history. He shared some of it with Hiroshi Kobayashi in the interval between his return to Japan and his death; Hiroshi Kobayashi recorded it in his journal, which was not released until after his retirement from Kobayashi KK.
Alicia and Judd, and others with similar powers, were not involved. It was Kobayashi-san's view that demonstrating that superpowers did not compromise one's humanity was essential to Japanese culture's acceptance of soups as people. This specifically meant to him that he must understand how to end his life without the assistance of superpowers, lest he and other soups be ranked with demons or (semi-) divine creatures, rather than people.
To this end, he spent the period after Fukushima seeking out, and learning from, people who had mastered control of body functions usually considered "automatic", such as heart rate, respiration, and temperature control. He sought to discover how to suppress his superpowers, so he could die a human death. His return to Japan was occasioned by his attaining this level of mastery.