The severe theatre of Chinese justice has been impressing Chinese and international audiences alike, although perhaps for different reasons.

The pair shown allegedly used axes to rob a Shaanxi province jewellery store of valuables worth some 600,000 yuan ($95,000), but were caught 4 days after the robbery.

Both shackled criminals and heavily armed security forces were all on display to local citizens in an effort to thoroughly cow the perpetrators and discourage the public from following their example:

Even those familiar with the near legal invulnerability of Japanese teachers have been astonished by a court verdict which saw a teacher who stole ¥766 of food from a supermarket being awarded ¥18,000,000 after her employers had the temerity to attempt to punish her.

The case centres on a 60-year-old former Osaka high school teacher, originally arrested in 2008 after being caught red-handed stealing pork and cucumber worth ¥766 from a Nara supermarket, although charges were eventually dropped.

However, the prefectural school board decided it should not be employing a known thief as a teacher, and sacked her in 2009 as punishment, also stripping her of her teaching license.

She then sued the board in late 2010, demanding she be reinstated.

The court finally rendered a verdict in early 2012, ruling that “compared to the amount she shoplifted, the financial damage inflicted on the woman by stripping her of her teaching license and similar was too great.”

The board appealed, but lost and was told to pay a severance payment equivalent to the value of her lost  teaching license, which was set at approximately ¥18,000,000.

The school board responsible has said it will not appeal the ruling further as it doubts its chances of winning, and instead agreed to pay the settlement.

There is considerable outrage at this latest example of the pampering enjoyed by Japan’s teaching profession, already notorious as being perhaps the nation’s leading employer of sex criminals:

“Like it’s the amount that matters!”

“She steals from the shops and then steals our taxes…”

“I don’t think it’s the amount she stole which is at issue, but the fact she stole it in the first place…”

“How can you justify employing a thief as a teacher? What would her pupils think?”

“It’s hard to imagine this was the only time she was doing this. It is shoplifting after all.”

“Shoplifting is a crime of habit. It’s obvious she did it before she was caught. So why do these moron feel they ought to waste so much of our taxes on her?”

“They should consider the damage a woman like this inflicted on her students by teaching them.”

“Why didn’t they press charges against her for shopifting anyway?”

“And why did it take her nearly 2 years to decide to sue the school board!”

“She’s certainly been an education to her students.”

“Considering how much they had to pay out for nothing in return, in purely monetary terms they should have just kept her on.”

“No wonder they never get fired.”

“Teachers really are nothing but scum, aren’t they?”

“Japan’s civil servants are innocent when they steal, and can even draw a pension…”

“What happened to our courts?”

“They are run by civil servants as well.”

Talented Taiwanese cosplayer Monpink’s various Vocaloid cosplays have caught the eye of many a Miku-fan, particularly her faithful rendition of Hatsune Miku’s stripy bikini…

Monpink (also known as 小夢夢) certainly seems to rank amongst the upper echelons of Vocaloid cosplayers:

Tomodachi ga Sukunai’s Yukimura will be displaying her abundantly flat feminine charms in Wave’s Beach Queen figure of her, featuring her in a cute pink bikini, and available in November 2012.

Yukimura can be pre-ordered now.

Police are hunting an apparent Precure fan for stroking a little girl in public, alarming creepy otaku watchers everywhere.

According to the Osaka police report, a man approached a group of 3 elementary school girls on their way home whilst mumbling and talking to himself, and then proceeded to stroke one of them on the head.

Their assailant was described as being of uncertain age, and wearing a pink Pretty Cure T-shirt and a hat of unknown colour.

Police ask anyone seeing him or any other suspicious person to report the matter to police.

Online there is a certain lack of surprise that this turned out to be a Precure fan:

“You guys again!”

“Those Pretards have been stroking the heads of little girls again, eh?”

“This stuff only ever happens in Osaka! It’s wrecking their image…”

“Stroking a little girl’s head is nothing compared to wearing a Precure T-shirt!”

“Do they even have adult sizes for those?”

“You can get sukumizu in adult male sizes so I’d think so.”

“Any adult wearing a Precure shirt is a serious cause for concern.”

“I’m more concerned about that hat of unknown colour he had. Scary stuff.”

“Osaka’s warning system lists scores of these incidents every day…”

“There’s one which describes a young man in school uniform carrying a sports bag ‘silently following’ a middle school girl on her way home. Some of the people reporting these things are clearly suffering paranoid delusions…”

Tokyo Disneyland has had a rare brush with controversy, after it decided it will allow gay marriage ceremonies, delighting Japan’s typically quiet gay rights advocates and mildly annoying the less tolerant masses.

As might be expected of Japan, the impetus for the change came not from vociferous protests from gay rights advocates or religious maniacs finally being defeated, but from a minor administrative policy change brought on by a hint of controversy.

When a Tokyo-based lesbian couple asked if they could book a “marriage” ceremony (Japan has neither same sex marriage or civil partnerships, so it is the ceremony only), they were condescendingly told “ordinary customers are watching, so we would like one of you to come dressed as the bridegroom.”

This greatly disappointed the couple, and they made their dissatisfaction known on Twitter, and Tokyo Disneyland (often called “TDL” or, less flatteringly, “ratland”) was soon conferring with its masters in America as to whether it could allow a marriage ceremony between two women dressed as brides.

They relented, and a week later it was made known that “marriage ceremonies between same sex couples wearing the same costumes are possible.”

Tokyo Disneyland conceded that “even if same sex marriage is not legally recognised, we judged it was possible to hold these marriage ceremonies.”

The couple in question was later treated to the Mickey Mouse wedding of their dreams, and their success was widely reported.

The USA’s various Disneyland resorts have offered similar ceremonies for some time, although unlike Japan’s these are actually legally recognised (in certain states at least).

As there is virtually no pressure for or against legally recognising same-sex marriage in Japan, a fake Disney wedding is likely the most homosexual couples in Japan can ever hope for, although those who have changed sexes are already able to marry without issue.

Japan’s legal definition of marriage is actually laid out in the nation’s constitution, using language which would traditionally be interpreted along strict “man and wife” lines, so many are of the opinion that no less than a full constitutional amendment would be required to allow it.

Others are of the opinion that some careful changes to civil marriage law could allow it – although given that even a law enabling something as inoffensive as allowing married couples to retain different surnames (although Japan already has a long tradition of allowing men to adopt their wife’s surname) has repeatedly failed to be passed and faces significant public opposition, this also seems a distant prospect.

The intimate details of saucy pirate Liliana‘s personal hygiene and her various female companions amply fill the newest of Queen’s Blade Rebellion’s most recent foray into the fascinating world of sapphic sex warriors…

As ever delivering at least twice as much action as any other anime, Haiyore! Nyaruko-san offers both anime essentials of beach and onsen service together in its 6th episode.

Yozora reappears in Wave’s Beach Queens line, but this time with a svelte black swimsuit and short hair, though she may find the waters a bit chilly when she gets released in November 2012.

Yozora can be pre-ordered now again.

Record numbers of young Japanese are choosing to kill themselves rather than face the prospect of becoming dirty NEETs, according to police suicide statistics, with their numbers more than doubling in the last 4 years.

Police began collecting statistics on how many young people killed themselves because of difficulties finding work in 2007, and since then there has been a 250% increase, to 159 in 2011.

Of the 150, 52 were actual students, 41 of whom were at university and 4 of whom were high school students.

Police determined suicide motives through interviews with families and the content of suicide notes, leaving some scope for the true number to be even higher.

The financial crisis, strong yen and recent spate of disasters are all identified as the most immediate indirect causes of the increases, with the direct cause being higher rates of rejection for smaller graduate intakes and greatly lengthened job searches.

Suicide has been the leading cause of death for young Japanese for some time, but whilst overwork after getting a job has long been seen as a major cause of this, Japanese killing themselves just because they cannot find decent job offers is thought to be a new trend.

The career path and subsequent life of most Japanese has traditionally been seen as being determined almost entirely by two events in their youth – their final high school exam results, determining which university they can get into (university life is regarded as a vacation between the horrors of Japanese school and work), and the graduation job offer they secure whilst interviewing in their last year of university.

As a result, pressure in both these periods is incredibly intense, and even more so when job offers for graduates are scarce and salaries pitifully low – the increasing numbers who fail to become salaryman drudges or pampered civil servants face a lifetime of poverty and humiliation (as well as bachelorhood in the case of men) as dispatch workers, “freeters” or – worst of all – NEETs.

The “NEET” (Not in Education, Employment or Training) label originated as a piece of innocent bureaucratic jargon in the UK, but was somehow picked up by the Japanese media and soon turned into the ultimate term of disparagement for feckless young people and social failures.

Unsurprisingly, 2ch’s substantial NEET component is mystified as to why anyone would chose death over joining their ranks, although the more gainfully employed seem to concur that a lifetime as a servile and poorly paid drudge is indeed preferable to one as a freeloading layabout who divides their time between trolling on 2ch and watching anime:

“Death is actually preferable to becoming a NEET!”

“Why is the Japanese race so obsessed with what other people think of them?”

“They chose death rather than a life of unsightliness. Truly, this is a mirror on the Jap character.”

“At least they could have burned themselves to death on the genkan of the companies which rejected them!”

“If I were to become a NEET, I’d off myself! A life with no goals, just leeching off your parents – that is worse than being a corpse!”

“Since graduating I’ve spent over a year looking for work… all I’ve had is a bit of part-time work to distract me. It’s tough for kids today.”

“It’s hard having that much pride.”

“For a university graduate, death is probably preferable to living your life out as a NEET.”

“There was a time when it was actually nice to be a salaryman as well…”

“Won’t having been a NEET damage your career track?”

“Killing yourself because you can’t find work is imbecilic. Abandon all your brainwashing and try looking in another developed country! You can change your values!”

“I’m sure many of the ones killing themselves were scum anyway, useless wretches whose only abundant attribute was their pride! When confronted with the inescapable reality of their failure to get a post, they just couldn’t stand it.”

“I think some of them were suicide candidates and would have killed themselves anyway. This was just the event that triggered it first. The real cause was something more fundamental.”

“Japanese can only judge themselves through the evaluations of others. Judge yourself, by yourself! Ignore the self-serving naysayers! There are too many of these slaves around.”

“Well, if you can’t get a job just after graduating, your future prospects are very dim. If your family blames you for your failure, you might well choose death.”

“If it was tiresome, killing yourself might be the way out. Being brave and sticking to it could be tiring.”

“They maintained their pride as human beings. A wise man cornered would choose death rather than a life as a mere idle NEET.”

“NEETs don’t even have the courage to die!”

“You guys would amount to the same whether dead or alive – that’s the ultimate in shame.”

“When did just having a job become such a virtue? It’s like we were infected by communism or something.”

“This is a test of your true character. If you can live on, anything might happen.”

Anime fans have given their verdict on the late night anime series with the greatest endings, providing a ranking which more than makes up for its mildly amnesiac qualities (mere 20th century anime need not apply) with sheer quality.

The ranking:

1. Ano Hi Mita Hana

2. K-ON!!

3. Bakemonogatari

4. Clannad After Story

5. Puella Magi Madoka Magica

6. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

7. Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou

8. Another

9. Ano Natsu de Matteru

10. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha

The “thinkopad,” a 3D mouse pad allowing users to rest their wrists on the scrotum and testes of a crossdressing bunnyboy, has lately been exercising the disgust and opprobrium (and in some cases, naturally, the desire) of Japanese online, being quite out there even by the standards of Akihabara and 3D mouse pads.

The pad, available in certain select Akiba stores:

The pad’s bulging testicles are said to be quite soft, and a much better fit than the now staid penis pad, although probably not as effectively shaped as the other major anatomical features favoured for such products.

Incidentally, the “thinkopad” name is pronounced “chinkopad” in Japanese, which just happens to sound like “penis pad.”

This is all too much, even for 2ch:

“This is crazy!”

“Who thinks of these things…”

“Totally messed up.”

“Right, ¥4200 is way too expensive for this.”

“The name is pretty clever though…”

“I like the way they make you ask for it by name at the register!”

“This is an otoko no ko, right?”

“An ahegao version would be choice.”

“Tourists: ‘…’.”

“If you don’t like it, don’t buy it! I’d like one.”

“Japan is done for.”

“Just where is Japan headed?”

MegaHouse are making a figure of Persona 4 belle Yukiko Amagi in their “High Priestess” figure line, and are plotting its release in August 2012.

Yukiko is available for pre-orders now.

A teacher busted for taking upskirt pictures in an anime shop now faces evidence tampering charges as well, after he swallowed his memory card after being rumbled.

The 54-year-old middle school teacher has been accused of approaching a woman in her twenties at an Osaka anime store (the Nipponbashi branch of Animate, pictured) one afternoon.

He then inserted a small camera he had concealed in his shoulder bag into her skirts for the purposes of offending her modesty.

A shop assistant noticed his clumsy technique and called him out on it, at which point he apparently swallowed the SD card which had been inserted into the camera.

He denies the charges, saying “I was just following a pretty lady” and “I followed the woman, but I absolutely did take any peeping photographs of her.”

He has been charged under prefectural anti-nuisance ordinances, with “obscene conduct,” and police have asked for him to be X-rayed to ascertain whether he swallowed the card, with a view to charging him with destruction of evidence as well.

The idiosyncratic Gift edition of Saber is reincarnated as Fate/Unlimited Codes‘ pretty Saber Lily, the third of the Saber series sculpted by Toda Satoshi.

The figure is scheduled for September 2012.

Saber Lily can be pre-ordered now.

The 6th outing of bodily fluids exchange anime Mysterious Girlfriend X has inspired even harder enthusiasm from fans than the saucy beach episode – and all thanks to extreme cuteness rather than bizarre fetishes and busty maidens (it must be a coincidence that both these also appear in abundance).

Fox News reports that the Japanese will soon go extinct if they do not start making more babies soon, warning that this might be of consequence even to Americans and blaming the usual suspects of herbivorous men, otaku virgins and weird Japanese who prefer making friends “with robots.”

Fox’s article is as insightful as might be expected from America’s premier news source (although it is broadly factually accurate – many of the reports cited will already be familiar to Sankaku complex readers):

Japan has a problem, a lack of children, and it seems likely there will be even fewer in the future.

Japanese researchers have now warned of a doomsday scenario if it carries on this way with the last child to be born there in 3011 and the Japanese people potentially disappearing a few generations later.

Academics from the city of Sendai, which was hit hard by last year’s tsunami, calculate there are now 16.6 million children under the age of 14 now in Japan.

And they say that number is shrinking at a disturbing rate of one every 100 seconds.

So if you do the mathematics, as they did, then the country will have no children within a millennium.

Another study recently showed Japan’s population is expected to fall a third from its current 127.7 million over the next century.

Government projections show the birth rate will hit just 1.35 children per woman within 50 years, well below the replacement rate.

[...]

The question everybody asks is why is there a lack of children?

The answer seems to lie in several reasons.

One reason is the cost. Japan is an extremely expensive country and getting a child through college can wipe out a family’s finances.

But research shows it goes much deeper than that as the Japanese state does throw a lot of money at people with children.

Another argument is that there are more effeminate men now called “Herbivores” there who are either not interested in sex or women don’t find masculine enough.

Then some suggest many young Japanese people prefer “virtual” friends with a robot or on the internet, while others suggest their fascination with comics rather than relationships is the cause for a lack of babies.

A study was released earlier this year in which it showed Japan’s young people are shunning the idea of marriage and having children.

The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research study also showed one in four unmarried men and women in their 30s had never had sex, and most young women preferred being single.

It also showed over 60 percent of unmarried young men didn’t have a girlfriend, and nearly 50 percent of women of the same age weren’t dating.

If that wasn’t bad enough, young Japanese people are also, it seems, increasingly not interested in sex.

A survey by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 36 percent of males between 16 and 19 had “no interest” in sex.

Japan’s falling birth rate could seem to be an interesting fact but of little consequence to a country like the United States, yet it could have a huge impact on how Japan interacts with the outside world in the future, even affecting how it supports international obligations and alliances.

“Japan will be more likely to prioritize healthcare than international security,” Brad Glosserman and Tomoko Tsunada wrote in Foreign Policy Magazine. “Older societies are typically more risk-averse, and Japanese — ‘reluctant realists’ at the best of times — will be increasingly unwilling to put their most precious resource, their young, in harm’s way,” they said.

Japan’s population isn’t falling faster because people there are living longer.

Japan has a life expectancy of about 86 years for women and 79 for men at present, and the ages are expected to rise in the coming decades.

More than 20 percent of Japan’s people are aged 65 or over, one of the highest proportions of elderly in the world.

Japan’s graying population is a real problem for the country’s leaders as they need to ensure the dwindling numbers of workers can pay for all the care needed for the growing army of pensioners.

It should come as no surprise that the Japanese response to all this research has been one of sublime indifference…

Finland’s precious moe ambassador Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen is soon to receive a Figma from Max Factory, complete with all her wargear and due in September 2012.

Eila is pre-orderable now.

Tokyo’s 79-year-old fuhrer Shintaro Ishihara’s latest rant against young people is to accuse of them of failing to have sex and produce more taxslaves due to worries about their small penises and propensity to premature ejaculation.

Speaking at a government education panel, aside from the now traditional accusation that young people are suffering from “information overload” from too much TV and Internet, he also tried his hand at some sexology:

“You can’t have sex with a girl if you are thinking about your penis being too small, or that you’ll not last long after insertion. If you’ve no sense of yourself, you’ll not be strong at it.”

He introduced this and other wisdom he “heard from doctors” to the panel to their polite edification, although the online reaction was rather less polite:

“As expected of his excellency!”

“His excellency Ishihara would know all about these two problems, what wisdom!”

“Not even big enough to thrust through a paper door?”

“Given the content of his novels, I suppose he is advocating getting round the problem by just drugging your victim first?”

“Perhaps his worries about these matters were why he wrote those novels…”

“I’m pretty sure the less sex problem is more to do with not finding partners who’ll put out for you in the first place…”

“Why blame a lack of sexual experience on a small penis and premature ejaculation? You can’t really have either without some experience in the first place.”

“Rise up, Japan!”

AKB48 idol Mariko Shinoda latest gravure posing spree has been attracting not onanistic approval for its sexiness but instead ridicule for its unusually dreadful choice of fashion.

Fortunately for Shinoda, not all idol fanciers are preoccupied with her idiosyncratic fashion sense and advanced years (she is 26), and her defenders have leapt to her defence with plenty of her much more conventionally sexing gravure posing:

There is still a certain amount of debate as to just how Photoshop dependent she is, with some accusing her of using more than a little airbrushing to smooth out her bony frame and inconvenient nose.

According to a global survey conducted by the BBC, Japan is now regarded as the nation with the most positive influence on the world, and China is now regarded as a more positive (and less negative) influence even than the US.

Japan is now globally viewed as having the “most positive” influence on the world, having just edged out Germany.

Canada and the UK follow in third and fourth place, but the sharp rise of China’s popularity has seen it now viewed as not a more positive influence than both the USA and EU, but a less negative one than the US as well.

Unsurprisingly, the most negatively viewed states continued to be such international pariahs as Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia and Israel – an interesting mix if ever there were one.

The poll, this time based on random telephone surveys of 24,090 people in 22 countries taken at the end of 2011, has been carried out at the behest of the BBC for several years now:

Those wondering about how China secured its popularity need look no further than its notoriously generous provision of arms and infrastructure to some of the world’s more unsavoury regimes, whom the BBC naturally chose to include in this unweighted survey:

Meanwhile, the USA is reviled by tyrannical dictatorships the world over:

North Korea provides an admirable study in how to annoy people:

Aside from its neighbours (and, oddly, itself), seemingly everybody loves – or at least does not hate too badly – the influence of Japan:

No less than the Embassy of Finland in Tokyo has interviewed the creator of Strike Witches about the inception of adorable Finnish witch Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen.

Finland’s Tokyo embassy operates an official Twitter account (run by “Fin-tan”), and when curious Strike Witches fans quizzed them as to whether they knew of the appropriation of the Nazi-allied nation’s top fighter ace in the form of Eila, they were amazed to discover that the embassy’s answer was “we know everything.”

This later saw the embassy courting Japanese otaku by graciously honouring Eila’s birthday and soliciting Finland shaped mascots for an official competition (this was in fact loosely based on a fairly unsuccesful 2ch thread, which itself was based on an earlier effort with bashful Britannia):

The winner:

This all culminated in the latest overture to otaku – an interview with Strike Witches creator Shimada Fumikane:

Eila can now be called the driving force behind the embassy’s official Twitter account. Fin-tan spoke with her creator Shimada Fumikane about her inception.

“The Strike Witches project began 7 years ago,” he says. “I aimed for those who are interested in WWII history and warfare, and used the aces of each nation as a motif for the characters. Those characters are the ‘dream team’ battling against the Neuroi, and that forms the setting.”

[...]

Each of the Strikes Witches is based on their respective national characters. In Eila’s case, he conferred with staff as to how to represent Finland’s character: “Her trademark monotone delivery, calm aloofness, sense of duty and compassion, and willpower, along with her cool and smart looks, all of which hide her passion, are Eila.”

[The embassy also generously plugs the Strike Witches movie]

Where Eila’s highly cordial relations with Sanya come into all this (given that it was Russia which attempted to invade Finland, forcing Finland into reluctant alliance with Hitler) is perhaps something neither he nor embassy staff are keen to dwell on.

Resorting to the antics of a squadron of young nymphomaniacs flying around in their pantsu to engage the interest of the Japanese certainly constitutes a unique marketing coup for Finland, although it is not clear whether any of the other nations so featured will be following suit…

Zombie moe anime Sankarea’s noted predilection for maiden groping seems only to be getting stronger in the latest episode, with fands being delighted by the generously animated action on display.

The Mistress of the Crystal from Mawaru Penguidrum is as haughty as ever even in her new Nendoroid form. She is accompanied by a servile retinue of three penguins and will be released in September 2012.

She is pre-orderable now.