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Tama-chan | Pana Wave

Tama-chan, the wayward Arctic Bearded Seal that has been living in the urban rivers near Tokyo since last summer, is back in the news again. The soap opera of Japan's infatuation with the young pinniped has acquired three main subplots.

First, there is the continuing controversy about Tama-chan's being given a juuminhyou, or legal residence permit, in Yokohama. This document, which provides the legal basis for identification in Japan, is denied to foreign-born residents and native-born residents of foreign ancestry, effectively making them non-persons. Protestors have tried dressing as cute seals to see if that would cause officials to grant them a juuminhyou; thus far the strategy has been unsuccessful.

The saga of the newly naturalized pinniped became darker when he appeared on May 5 with a fish-hook embedded in his face near his right eye. Local animal-welfare personnel debated capturing Tama-chan to give him veterinary treatment; fortunately, the hook vanished about a week later. [more]

Tama-chan has also been involved in the activities of Pana Wave, Japan's controversial cult. The group, which believes that the world will end this Thursday, May 15, because of a astronomical disaster involving electromagnetic waves and the Andromeda galaxy, is obsessed with Tama-chan, and seems to believe that it can avert cosmic disaster by rescuing the seal from the polluted urban river.

[The reporter] added [Yuko Chino, the cult leader] spent 90 per cent of the 25-minute interview talking about Japan's celebrated stray wild seal, nicknamed "Tama-chan", which she said was unable to find enough food.

The wild seal sparked a media frenzy after straying into a river along Tokyo's industrial belt last year.

A group linked to the cult failed in its attempt to catch and transport the animal to a makeshift pool at a dome-like building owned by Pana Wave in the village of Oizumi, about 150 kilometres west of Tokyo.

Addendum 5/14:

On Wednesday, May 14, Tama-chan hit the mainstream American press when both the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor reported on the wayward seal and his connection to Pana Wave. From the Monitor:

Its shocking reappearance came last week, when the worst fears for a wild seal living in such a densely populated area were realized by close-up pictures of a fishing hook through its right eyelid.

"Tama-chan, are you OK?" was the anxious question asked everywhere last week, as a nation pushed aside its worries about North Korea's nuclear missiles, the SARS outbreak in China, and perennially awful economic news.

The Asahi newspaper even drew a comparison with embattled Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. A cartoon showed a premier with barbs piercing his face labeled "Record low stock prices"; "Dissension within the Ruling Party"; and "North Korean nukes." The caption read, "Jun-chan (his nickname), are you OK?"

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Jim Urban vs. the Urban Legend

I see that the story of "Ted Heuvelman's" (Theodore Winnen's) record Alaska brown bear has been hotting up again. Some new variants have surfaced. In the latest version, the bear was a known man-killer, responsible for at least two previous victims. It's not a story I would normally follow, but some threaded discussions have cited my December 11 post as an authority, and my weblog traffic has set new records.

The tale is worth bringing up once more because of a new link, a private web page created by Jim Urban, Winnen's companion on the hunt that started the stories rolling. It's a fascinating document, as much for Urban's prose style ("The blast of Ted’s .338 Win-Mag rang out and sent a direct hit to the bear’s nerve center bringing him to his hindquarters.") as the tale itself. A handy fact sheet is appended, comparing the truth with the urban legend.

I think there's a potential scholarly publication to be had in the evolution of the "Ted's bear" story. In the first place, there's the choice of name: as I've noted before, "Heuvelmans" is a name mostly known in cryptozoology circles.

Second, there's the acretion of what can be called mitigating circumstances. The various fictionalized versions of the bear hunt feature some or all of the following:

• The hunter was not looking for bear
• The hunter was using a small-caliber firearm
• The bear attacked him, and was shot in self-defense
• The hunter was a Forest Service ranger (and hence presumably "on duty")
• The bear was freakishly large, and may have suffered from acromegaly
• The bear set a new world record
• The bear was a known man-killer

All of these "facts" make a more exciting story than the truth, which is that Winnen had a tag for bear, was looking for bear, was armed for bear, and that, in the words of Winnen's companion,

The solemn look alone was enough to make one feel threatened, but oddly the bear showed no sign of aggression.

The fictional additions also make a more justified story, one which maintains the illusion that the slaughter of this magnificent animal was in some way an act of virtue, not a quest for bragging rights and a rug.

The third aspect of this evolving tale that I find fascinating is its timing. The original incident occurred in the Fall of 2001. I first became aware of it in October, 2002, when an article in the Irish Examiner linked the story to the Smithsonian. Since my initial post, bear-related searches accounted for several weblog hits per day during late 2002 and early 2003, slowly dropping off through March. Total weblog hits fell during April, partly due to my Blogger meltdown, but also because everyone's attention was focused on the war in Iraq. Now, immediately after victory has been declared, people seem to be chattering about the bear. And this is also the first time I have encountered the "man-killer" variation. In other words, the story is not only surviving, it is growing. The bear is becoming more evil. I don't think the timing is a coincidence.

When I was an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz in the late 1960's, one of my professors explained what he called "The Elephant Cycle". He proposed that the recent rise of elephant jokes was a response to the inner tensions created by the civil rights movement. The elephant was a symbol of the African male, with the trunk representing in for a more problematic organ.

I still can't decide whether the "Elephant Cycle" was ridiculous or perceptive--a bit of both, perhaps. But it seems more reasonable to me now than it did then. And I suspect that the escalation of the "Ted's bear" story at precisely this time is a redirection of moral ambivalence about the invasion of Iraq.

Ridiculous? Perhaps. But....

It was a dangerous bear all right. I knew if it once stood on its hind paws and charged that it was him or me. So I raised my gun and aimed at the massive cranium, right between the strange, solemn eyes.

Yes, there were conservationists and PETA activists standing by the river waving picket signs. But a hunt is not a focus group, Sonny. If I had taken the time to explain the facts of life to those bleeding heart liberals, the brute would have used its Teeth and Claws of Mass Destruction on me, as it had on several hunters before. So I stepped up and shot it, right in the nerve center. Then in two or three vital organs, and than a few more times until it stopped twitching. What a magnificent brute! I knew then that I had been damn' lucky to have taken my preemptive action.

The conservationists were still yelling their fool heads off. But they quieted right down when, one by one, fawns and squirrels crept out of the bushes to dance on the bear's huge carcass. That old boar had been tyrannizing them for years. A young rabbit even asked to have his picture taken with me and my hunting rifle.

That's his skin there on the wall above the television.

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Can we reach a consensus here?

So what's the true story about the losses at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad?

A story from the Chicago Tribune claims that most of the artifacts are still there; in fact, that only 38 objects are missing. (This seems ridiculously low, since hundreds of artifacts have already been recovered.) More realistically, a Reuters story notes that it is impossible to assess the damage since the museum's records have been destroyed.

Museum officials complain that the US Marines, who have been given responsibility for finding the missing objects, are not helping. Colonel Matthew Bogdanus, who commands the taskforce conducting the search, counters that the Iraqi officials are not helping either. Some items are being returned, but some of them are copies. Fake material is also being sold on the streets of Baghdad to gullible foreigners.

Iraq Museum curator Dr. Donny George has called on US forces to seal Iraq's borders in an effort to prevent artifacts from leaving. Outside Iraq, Interpol is getting involved. German police are checking art dealers.

Meanwhile, scholars despair of protecting Iraq's many archaeological sites, which were looted even under Saddam Hussein's rule.

"After the 1991 war, the looting began on a large scale," said Jabbir Khalil, chairman of the State Board of Antiquities. "There was no authority, and many sites of southern Iraq were plundered, particularly in the middle of the desert, far away from the authorities. It is so difficult to settle and live in these areas. You can't put guards there. From these sites, the European and American markets for Iraqi antiquities was born."

"Before the war, we had 1,600 guards protecting various sites," said Hanna A. Khaliq, general director of excavations. "Now we have nothing, no cars, no people. The sites are not safe. The looting will continue."

More links on the continuing crisis of archaeology in Iraq can be found here.

[many links from MetaFilter]

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Mice build road-signs

Researchers in Oxford have found that mice move small objects around when exploring new areas, apparently placing them as temporary landmarks, not unlike Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail of pebbles.

In possibly related news, British rodents seem to be getting smarter and more resistant to common poisons. Richard Strand, executive director of the British Pest Control Association, complains:

We've witnessed the rise of behavioural resistance in mice. Where once they'd have gone quite happily into bait boxes, the past 10 years have seen them change their behaviour quite distinctly. .... No matter how good our poisons are, if the mice won't take the bait, we can't kill them.

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Catalogue demographics

Customers of the Smithsonian Catalogue, according to DMNews, a direct marketing trade publication, "are 75 percent female with an average annual household income of $75,000+ and an average age of 60+." As a result, the new issue contains more jewelery and fewer bed and tabletop products.

Online and mail-in orders each account for 15 percent of the total; the remaining 70 percent are phoned in.

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Kodomo no hi

May 5 is officially Children's Day in Japan, but it is traditionally all about boys. On this day, Japanese households make a display of ningyo musha (Samurai dolls), prepare and eat special food, hang carp streamers (koinobori) outside the house, and sing the Koinobori Song.

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