Haiku for the Greening of Mitsubish (r)

[freebrma@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Re: Haiku for the Greening of Mitsubishi

Mr. Tanaka:

Thank you for raising the issue of possible racism in the effort to
communicate with the Mitsubishi Keiretsu by way of haiku on March 20th.  

I am replying by email because I cannot afford to mail you materials about
Mitsubishi's worldwide practices.  From my limited knowledge, I can tell you
that Mitsubishi is operating in collusion with a number of governments with
patently racist agendas, including the SLORC.  I hope you will take the time
to read this.

If you want to know how offensive Mitsubishi's behavior is to people,
contact the Penan of Sarawak, Malaysia, whose logging blockade was broken up
on behalf of logging companies selling to Mitsubishi by government forces
using batons and tear gas.  Talk to folks in Kenai, Alaska, where
Unocal-Mitsubishi has created dozens of toxic pits through illegal dumping.
Talk to tribal peoples from Irian Jaya, Indonesia, from which Mitsubishi
also sources timber.  When one tribal leader protested against logging
there, the Indonesian military cut off his head as a symbol to other tribes
considering same.  Talk to the Stone Band in Northern Alberta, where 5,000
indigenous peoples are being robbed of their means of existence by a
Mitsubishi operation called Al-Pac, the largest bleach kraft pulp mill in
the world, clearcutting aspen forests across 1/4 of this large Canadian
province.  At this moment, Al-Pac is dumping dioxins into the Stone Band's
life blood, the Athabasca River.  Or talk to worried mothers in Azusa,
California, which ranks eighth in the U.S. for heavy particulates in the air
thanks to a Mitsubishi-owned mining operation.  Or loggers in British
Columbia whose livelihoods are being pulled out from under them because
Mitsubishi is using only 15% of the trees it cuts down to produce nine
million pairs of chopsticks per day.  Mitsubishi doesn't want to sell
"stained" chopsticks, so in order to find out if the wood is stained,
Mitsubishi workers (who work for Mitsubishi but are not necessarily
Japanese) cut down the trees and look at the trunks.  As it happens, 85% are
stained.  The "stained" trees used to be left behind where they were cut,
but the B.C. government has since ordered the Mitsubishi company to burn
them).  Talk to indigenous people in the Bikin region of Siberia, home of
the last 200 Siberian tigers, where Mitsubishi-owned feller bunchers each
cut 250 trees PER HOUR using one worker.  Mitsubishi, the great employer.
The story is repeated in Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, and around the world.

As I understand it, Mitsubishi started as a great Samurai family, was
consolidated into a business entity in the 1700's, and enjoys a highly
visible presence in Japan today; a number of ministers of the government of
Japan sit on Boards of Directors of Mitsubishi companies which also enjoy a
number of governent contracts (a practice which would be illegal (considered
unfair to competing contractors) under conflict-of-interest laws in a number
of other countries); and Mitsubishi has been charged with industrial
espionage abroad.  But I don't believe there has been ANY intention, nor
have I read any evidence, to equate this company with the people of Japan,
who remain the greatest hope of bringing to an end the terribly insensitive,
racist, wasteful, and exploitive practices of this company.

For my part in my back yard, I have taken personal risk in opposing the film
industry for using rainforest wood; and I have taken part in the largest
civil disobedience action in U.S. forest history to save Headwaters forest
in California.  But Mitsubishi remains the NUMBER ONE CORPORATE DESTROYER OF
FORESTS in the world.  

------------------------------------

Country music has spawned largely from American culture; however, I am not
offended when Burmese exiles pick up a guitar and sing a modified version of
"Take Me Home, Country Road" or other songs learned and altered in the
student camps on the Thai-Burma border. 
PepsiCo uses red-white-and-blue logos to sell product, but I don't see
demonstrations of any kind against Pepsi (including the logo as it appeared
on the cover of Boycott Quarterly with the red part dripping with blood) to
be anti-American.  Unocal's age-old motto is "The Spirit of '76" -- a
commercial attempt to link the U.S. revolutionary spirit of 1776 with its
Union 76 gas stations.  Yet, rather than being "obsessively focused" on
Mitsubishi, as you charge, I am far more focused on ending the Unocal
pipeline operation in Burma, and happily take their American mottos to task.  

I'll admit, I don't know much about the history of Japanese literature.
Throughout the history of the English language, however, something called
"poetic license" (the "license" to violate rules of a given form of verse
for effectiveness) has consistently led from one form of literature to the
next.  The Sonnet form originated in Italy, yet Shakespearean Sonnets are
considered classics.  So too is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, inspired by
Boccacio's "The Decameron".  

Akiro Kurosawa is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of
our time.  Should we refer to his use of the Shakespearean tragedy (itself
inspired by Greek tragedy) as "pseudo-tragedy"?  Are his films to be
regarded as an insult, unsuitable for the English- or Greek-speaking viewer?
Conversely, because of their Shakespearean inspiration, are they not
Japanese enough to be a reflection of Japanese arts & culture?

I wouldn't suggest that any of the haiku directed to Mitsubishi are
classics, or that their forms mirror the classic Japanese haiku.  But I do
believe that forms of expression are borrowed and used constantly in hopes
of creating a greater impact on the reader.  If the
pseudo-haikus-in-question fail to cause such an impact due to violation of
form, that may be stupid, but it isn't racist.  

Prior to writing my haikus, or psuedo-haikus as you call them, I have done
everything I know of to communicate my displeasure with Mitsubishi for the
past six years.  I have written letters.  I have organized parties of people
to write more letters.  I have demonstrated.  I have organized
demonstrations throughout North America and at five annual auto shows here
in Los Angeles.  I have provided information about Mitsubishi's activities
to a number of different auto dealerships and their customers, and have
leafletted at major retail outlets selling Mitsubishi Electronics products
(following leafletting at Circuit City, the company dropped their Mitsubishi
line for other stated reasons).  I have taken video documentation of
Mitsubishi's activities and our demonstrations which have been used in a
documentary and forwarded to the company.  

At the same time, security guards hired to protect Mitsubishi from
nonviolent demonstrations have illegally ejected me from public grounds for
videotaping a demonstration; broken the fingers of another demonstrator;
locked a number of demonstrators up for hours without counsel; and caused
several bruises to another demonstrator as they forced him from public
grounds.  In the last case, the young man's crime was wearing an
anti-Mitsubishi T-shirt.

I understand that you're critical of the method rather than the general
opposition to Mitsubishi's rainforest destroying and pro-SLORC activities.
But considering the above, Mr. Tanaka, can you please tell me, what can
U.S.-based peoples like me do to break down barriers - both our own and
Mitsubishi's - to better communicate with this company, without having these
activities branded as "racist"?  

If you would like more materials about Mitsubishi from something other than
email, contact the Rainforest Action Network's Mitsubishi Campaign at (415)
398-4404.  Or they can get you in touch JATAN, a Japan-based rainforest
advocacy organization.

Sincerely,
David Wolfberg
L.A. Rainforest Action Project/
Campaign for a Free Burma

At 03:23 AM 3/22/96, you wrote:
>From: TANAKA Tomoyuki <tanaka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: Haiku for the Greening of Mitsubishi 
>
>    > 
>    > HAIKU D'ETAT   "Mitsubishi out of Burma"
>    > March 20, 1996   Osaka, Japan
>    > 
>    > In the rain I saw
>    > Strange men armed with chainsaws
>    > Cut down my playground.
>    >      - Carol Schlenker, Tokyo
>    > 
>    >		[many other pseudo-haiku poems in English written
>    >		by people with Anglo-Saxon names]
>    > 
>
>while i am sympathetic to the Free Burma movement and have
>participated in demonstrations, video-showings, etc., i highly
>object to the method you have taken to attack Mitsubishi:
>offensive pseudo-haiku poems in English written by Americans.
>
>please stop producing/collecting/distributing these offensive
>pseudo-haiku poems.
>
>(1) pseudo-haiku in English is an insult to the Japanese culture. 
>(2) i believe they are largely a product of American racism.
>	(elaborated below)
>
>i'd like to see some evidence justifying an attack obsessively
>focusing on Mitsubishi.
>(i don't want to receive any material by e-mail).
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>(1) pseudo-haiku in English is an insult to the Japanese culture.
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Chapter 4 "the stupidity of English haiku" of the book "nihongo
>no rizumu" by BEKKU Sadanori explains why pseudo-haiku poems in
>English are stupid, from the viewpoint of Japanese rhythm.
>5-7-5 syllable (or 3-line) English pseudo-haiku does not
>preserve the essence of Japanese haiku, the 4-beat rhythm.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>(2) i believe they are largely a product of American racism.
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>these stupid pseudo-haiku in English (practiced mainly in the
>USA) is a symbol of American disrespect of Japanese culture.
>
>and i can see how racist white Americans would take pleasure in
>using this form in criticizing Mitsubishi.  it's like how white
>American racists often call me "Tanaka-san" or "Nipponese"
>(instead of "Mr. Tanaka" or "Japanese") when they want to insult me.
>
>if you want to criticize Mitsubishi, please do it fairly.
>please don't combine it with underlying American racism, by
>focusing on a superficial understanding of Japanese ethnicity
>and using offensive pseudo-haiku in English.
>
>
>;;; (Mr.) TANAKA Tomoyuki   (Tanaka is my family name.)
>;;;
>;;; mailing address:	TANAKA Tomoyuki
>;;;			Eigenmann Hall 393
>;;;			Bloomington, IN 47406, USA
>;;;
>;;; e-mail address:  tanaka@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
	=====B=O=Y=C=O=T=T=====U=N=O=C=A=L=====
	Los Angeles Campaign for a Free Burma
		freebrma@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
"In political tactics there are such things as dialogue and so forth, but in 
our military science, there is no such thing as dialogue.  Someone may say, 
'Look, friend, please don't shoot.' Well, that is not the way it works."
	-- Saw Maung, Fmr. SLORC Chairman.  
                       .  .  .
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                 STOP THE PIPELINE!