March 2001

    Betsy Hersher: Headhunting Informaticists | Medicine: Billion-dollar Cottage Industry | Hockey History: Portland Buckaroos | Film: Suzhou He (Suzhou River) | Bumper Stickers: This is America / Introducing: Runker Room Discussion Board | Problems in Hockey: Ref Razzing | Tech Crash Fallout| Shop 'n' Scan | Spring Trip To Japan | Blue Moon Rises Again | Executive Order 9066: 50 Years Before and 50 Years After | Film: Yi Yi (A One and a Two) | New Photo | Battles Without Honor & Humanity: The Films of FUKASAKU Kinji: Gunki hatameku moto ni (Under the Fluttering Military Flag a.k.a. Under the Flag of the Rising Sun) / Gendai no yakuza: Hitokiri yohta (Modern Yakuza: Outlaw Killer) / Jingi no hakaba (Graveyard of Honor and Humility) / Kenkei tai soshiki boryoku (State Police vs. Organized Crime a.k.a. Cops vs. Thugs) | Portland "International" Airport

  • Portland "International" Airport
    Portland's efforts to remain a gateway to Asia had a serious setback today, as the last direct passenger flights from Portland to Japan took off for Tokyo and Nagoya this afternoon. Delta Airlines' decision to end 13 years of international air service in Portland comes just as the finishing touches are being put on a major renovation and expansion of Portland International Airport (PDX), including an extension of Tri-Met's Airport MAX light rail train line. With the economic downturn in Asia and the resulting drop in air traffic, PDX could not compete with Vancouver BC (YVR) and America's major West Coast airports: Seattle-Tacoma (SEA), San Francisco (SFO), and Los Angeles (LAX), which is where we will now have to go first to catch a plane to Japan. Some feel another factor was the past record of the local branch of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which earned the city the nickname "Deport-land". Many people will be affected, among them a stewardess acquaintance of Dorami-chan, who has to move to L.A. Air freight service between Asia and Portland will continue, but from a passenger standpoint, PDX now clings to its designation as an "international" airport on the basis of short connector flights to YVR.

    (31 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Battles Without Honor & Humanity: The Films of FUKASAKU Kinji
    Over the next few weeks, the Northwest Film Center is showing a retrospective of rarely seen works from the 1960s and 1970s by FUKASAKU Kinji, a Japanese director known in the West for his science fiction films like The Green Slime and Message From Outer Space, but whose main impact in Japan was from his yakuza films. Films like this give me a glimpse of the Japan my parents left and which I missed growing up in Canada.

    Fukasaku's most recent film is 2000's controversial Batoru Royaru (Battle Royale) a story of high school students who must play Survivor-to-the-Death on a desert island.

    In Portland, these films were moderately well attended by audiences consisting mainly of young white males. Many of the few females who came walked out during the scenes of violence against women. A viewer discretion warning was read out before every screening, and it got longer and more inclusive with each successive film. The opening credits were written in a jagged bold red font, further hinting at what was to come.

    • Gunki hatameku moto ni (Under the Fluttering Military Flag a.k.a. Under the Flag of the Rising Sun) (Japan 1972; Dir: FUKASAKU Kinji) ***1/21/2
      A war widow seeks to clear her husband's name by asking surviving members of his unit what they remember about the circumstances of his death. What emerges is a Rashomon-like account of the closing days of the Pacific War from a Japanese perspective. An effective anti-war statement, made just as a generation that had never known war was coming of age, around the time of my first visit to Japan.

      Cultural notes:

      • Imperial soldiers sentenced to die insist on a last meal of rice, so they can be executed "like a Japanese."
      • Funeral customs: Reikyuusha - ornate Japanese hearse, photo of the deceased, wooden tablet with name of the deceased.

    • Gendai no yakuza: Hitokiri yohta (Modern Yakuza: Outlaw Killer) (Japan 1972; Dir: FUKASAKU Kinji) **
      An account of the brief career of a street punk (Bunta Sugawara) who is taken in by a yakuza oyabun, but refuses to play by the rules of the yakuza world, which finally takes the necessary measures to restore order in a bloody finale. Caught in the crossfire is an inexplicably faithful girlfriend. The film looks like a manga come to life: same facial expressions, camera angles.

      Cultural notes:

      • Romaji - Roman lettering was far less evident on street and store signs then than it is today.
      • Pachinko - before video games, there was this Japanese pinball game for mindless entertainment. The name comes from the sound the balls make.
      • Hanafuda - a picture card game, used for gambling by the yakuza (in fact, this is the origin of their name)
      • Sekihan - a special Japanese rice; I wonder how many Portlanders caught the significance of the contents of the girlfriend's shopping bag at the end?

    • Jingi no hakaba (Graveyard of Honor and Humility a.k.a. Death of Honor) (Japan 1975; Dir: FUKASAKU Kinji) **
      Docudrama(-style?) account of an Occupation-era junior yakuza who runs afoul of the underworld establishment through his uncontrollable violent behaviour and a heroin habit. Again there is a faithful, hardworking, underappreciated girlfriend. Again interesting camera angles, which appear to be inspired by manga. Memorable image: He and a prostitute frozen in a drug haze in one bunk, while in the next bunk an old man prays at a Buddhist altar.

      Cultural notes:

      • Potatoes - a valuable commodity in early post-War Japan. People would heat them up unskinned on a hotplate and eat them plain.
      • Oden - a kind of Japanese stew with atsuage, fishcakes, kombu (kelp), potatoes. People sold it from yatai (roadside carts), a practice not seen so much today.
      • Sangokujin - people brought from occupied countries like Taiwan to work in Japan during the War. Tokyo Governor Ishihara recently got into hot water for publicly using this now-politically-incorrect word.
      • U.S. Occupational Force - is shown to actually cooperate with yakuza. They don't take their shoes off in houses ("Animals!" says one yakuza), so roll-up mats are laid on top of the tatami when they come to visit.
      • Tuberculosis - a problem in early post-War Japan, not so much today.
      • Kotatsu with coals - today these space heaters are electric
      • Fires - people kept warm outside by gathering around fires in empty cans, oil drums, etc. Even the yakuza douse their fires with plenty of water when they leave.
      • Noshigari - ceremonial white paper that is wrapped over the top of gifts; the custom was maintained in early post-War Japan, even when the package was clearly a box stamped "U.S. Army" (black market goods?).
      • Nigori sake - cloudy, unfiltered sake
      • Funeral customs: After cremation, the ashes and bones of the deceased are transferred to an urn by hashi-to-hashi; this is why similar behaviour with food is considered a chopstick taboo. I wonder how many Portlanders realized what he was nibbling on, and why even the tough yakuza were so repulsed?
      • The final shot is an aerial pan over then-present day Shinjuku, where we see the bottom of the Sunshine Building under construction. This distinctive tower was one of the first skyscrapers in postwar Tokyo. I was visiting Japan shortly after it was completed, and got to see it as part of a Hato Bus tour.

    • Kenkei tai soshiki boryoku (State Police vs. Organized a.k.a. Cops vs. Thugs) (Japan 1975; Dir: FUKASAKU Kinji) ***
      A film about the symbiotic relationship between the yakuza, police, politicians and businessmen in a western Japanese city, based on events that actually happened. This time Bunta Sugawara plays a detective, but it is hard to tell who is on which side. That is, until a new detective arrives, intent on eliminating what he views as "corruption". Once he finishes the job, he retires and uses the contacts he made to become a corporate executive.

    (30-31 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • New Photo
    I have changed my photo on my home page. More than one person who knows me commented that my previous photo made me look uncharacteristically serious, like a samurai or Dirty Harry, and that it might scare people away. It was taken last summer, while I was dressed in formal Japanese wedding attire. Maybe something about wearing haori and hakama affected my expression ... Anyway, I was in Western clothes for this new photo -- my real self?

    (29 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Yi Yi (A One and a Two) (Taiwan 2000; Dir: Edward Yang) [Official Website] ****
    NJ, a computer company executive in present-day Taiwan, faces a midlife crisis when he meets Sherry, an old girlfriend at a wedding. Each of other members of his family has a story as well, but they intersect only minimally. They share the same apartment, but live very separate lives -- a comment on the effect of Westernization and capitalism on traditional Chinese family values? Feeling spiritually empty, NJ's wife retreats to a monastery, which gives him an opportunity to meet Sherry in Tokyo to resolve things. During his time there, we never see him call home to see if his children are alright. While daughter Ting-Ting tentatively pursues her first romance, young son Yang-Yang is left to his own devices, photographing the backs of people's heads because it is something they cannot see themselves. The way NJ tries to keep his cool despite the chaos around him reminded me a bit of Gustad in Such A Long Journey.

    Westernization Watch:

    • Ah-di's wedding: white dress and tuxedo
    • Little Yang-Yang won't eat the Chinese food at the reception, and has to be taken to a nearby McDonald's
    • Yang-Yang has a Batman and Robin poster in his room. His grandmother has pictures of Cary Grant and Natalie Wood in hers. A framed cover of the Beatles' Hard Day's Night album hangs in the living room.
    • Coca Cola figures prominently -- smells of a "product placement" deal
    • Most of the buildings, apartments and furniture
    • Most of the clothing: a jacket with a Stars and Stripes motif, T-shirts that say "USA" and "Stanford" (only the grandmother wears Chinese clothes)
    • Most of the music: Summertime, classical pieces, Shirelles, Bob Dylan (the one exception is Ue o muite arukoo (Sukiyaki), sung by the Japanese client Ota)
    • NJ and Ota speak to each other in English (the only Japanese NJ knows is "Ohayo gozaimasu (good morning)"

    Watching closely:

    • Ting-Ting and Yang-Yang both have Tetsuwan Atomu toys in their rooms. Tetsuwan Atomu is the famous manga (Japanese comic) character created by TEZUKA Osamu. Yang's production company is called AtomFilms.
    • In Taiwanese cars, the driver's side is on the left. When Ota approaches NJ's car after their restaurant meal, he starts to go for the left door, which would be the passenger side in Japan, then corrects himself.
    • When NJ reminisces about the first time he held Sherry's hand, the Tokyo streetcar that goes by is the one that runs close to Dorami-chan's parents' home.
    • NJ and Sherry go to the Japanese beach resort of Atami to talk things over. I drove through there on my 1998 Sakura Tour of Japan.

    Trivia:

    • Director Yang is a former computer engineer.
    • TEZUKA Osamu trained as a medical doctor.
    • One of the co-producers is Nemuru Otoko Seisaku Iinkai, which also produced OGURI Kohei's 1996 film Nemuru Otoko, a film I saw at the 1996 Toronto International Film Festival.

    (28 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Executive Order 9066: 50 Years Before and 50 Years After
    This evening I dropped off to the folks at Portland Taiko the taiko goods we bought for them in Japan, and got a chance to take in the latest exhibit at the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center (both organizations share office space as offshoots of the Oregon Nikkei Endowment).

    The premise behind the title is that an event like the Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is not isolated in time -- there were existing conditions that allowed it to happen, and there have been effects as result of it. Executive Order 9066: 50 Years Before and 50 Years After continues through 02 June 2001.
    Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center, 1117 NW 2nd Avenue, Portland OR USA 97209 (503) 224-1458

    We also walked over to the Japanese American Historical Plaza, where the cherry blossoms are in full bloom this week. Many people were walking around reading the inscriptions on the stones. A group of South Asian men -- H-1B tech workers? -- asked us to take their picture with the "War and change" poem. Evidently the words spoke to them.

    (25 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Blue Moon Rises Again
    Time flies -- it is the end of another school term at OHSU. The Winter Term is usually the most stressful for first-year students in the Medical Informatics Master's Degree Program. This year the class organized a post-exam get-together for themselves and program veterans like me. We went to the Blue Moon Tavern and Grill, a favorite watering hole in the Nob Hill district of Portland, which had been unavailable until recently due to a fire-related closure. The interior has been restored to its former glory, and new sliding windows have been installed that allow an entire wall to be opened to the outside should the weather warrant it, as it did this fine day.
    Blue Moon Tavern and Grill, 432 NW 21st, Portland OR USA Tel: (503) 223-3184

    (22 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Spring Trip to Japan
    I am just back from a short visit to Japan.

    (21 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Shop 'n' Scan
    This evening I dropped by the local Fred Meyer Store to buy some Oregon wine to take to Japan as gifts. I got to use their recently installed Self Serve Checkout system, which makes the shopper the cashier. You take your shopping cart or basket of goods to the checkout station, scan the bar code of each item, insert cash or swipe your credit card, bag your items, and head out the door. Right now, the novelty of self checkout is enough to get people to use the system. I didn't get a discount for doing this, though I did save a bit of time (which, as the saying goes, is money). There are only four such stations at this store, but I think more will be coming. Grocery stores are going the way of banks. I am glad I made my money as a bag boy when it was still a viable occupation!

    Apart from the scanning technology, what makes all this possible is the universal zebra code system used by all grocery stores and producers to identify goods. Medicine needs to arrive at a similar consensus on coding systems before medical informatics can begin to provide widespread systems that deliver similar efficiencies.

    (15 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Tech Crash Fallout
    Every day lately has had news of layoffs at various tech sector companies, but little is heard of the fate of their many foreign tech workers who have come to the United States on an H-1B visa. This kind of visa must be sponsored by the employer, so when the job ends, the visa ends -- unless the worker can find another job within 10 days and transfer the visa to the new employer. If, after finishing this medical informatics Master's degree, I, as a Canadian, get a job in the United States, I will be allowed to stay on the basis of an H-1B visa, so I can empathize with these H-1B tech workers for what they are going through.

    (13 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Problems in Hockey: Ref Razzing
    My recreational hockey team, Gang Green, was on the short end of a 6-5 final score in last night's inaugural championship game of the Sherwood Ice Arena Men's "B" Fall/Winter League. Our opponents, Deschutes, were sponsored by the Oregon microbrewery of the same name, but I will still drink their beer because rather than being defeated, I feel we beat ourselves: too many faceoffs lost (my fault), wingers (still!) not knowing their assignments in the defensive zone, two regular defencemen away (prior commitments -- who woulda thought we'd still be playing?), overly long shifts by one line (an issue all season), and a goalie not his usual sharp self (by his own admission).

    Our cause was also not helped by the yapping the referees had to endure from a few of our players. Valuable minutes were lost as calls were argued (the timeclock does not stop in our league until the last two minutes). I thought they were doing their job equitably -- we got powerplays when I was tripped and again when I was elbowed in the head.

    Referee abuse is a growing problem in hockey at the community level. Many leagues face referee shortages as an increasing number of refs decide that the job is not worth their trouble.

    The taste of victory was so close that most everyone on Gang Green has signed up for the Spring/Summer League and another run at a title.

    (12 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Bumper Stickers: This is America
    Canadian friends often ask me, "What is it like to live in the United States?" My usual answer is that things are not that much different here than in Canada. Portland's climate is similar to the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. Today was overcast but warm, with signs of spring everywhere: cherry blossoms, crocuses, daffodils, new leaves and robins tugging at earthworms. But little things remind me that I am in a different country, like the bumper sticker I saw while walking today that called for "Healthcare For All". The number of uninsured Americans could reach 60 million by 2007, meaning that almost one of every four non-elderly Americans would lack health coverage. The idea that healthcare can be anything but universal is foreign to Canadians accustomed to Medicare.

    This is a good time to introduce a new feature I have just added to the Runker Room: my Discussion Board. Clicking on "Discuss This Topic" at the bottom of each diary entry will take visitors to the relevant discussion board, where they can leave their opinions on topics mentioned on these webpages, such as Canucks in America. You can use an alias, and don't need to enter a password. The message boards will hopefully be lively and make your Runker Room experience more interactive.

    Thanks to Alisa Sanada's Real Japan, where I first saw this kind of discussion board

    (10 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Suzhou He (Suzhou River) (China 2000; Dir: Lou Ye) ***1/21/2
    Hitchcock's Vertigo transposes well to modern-day China, maybe because there is very little here that is uniquely Chinese, other than the faces of the actors and the language they speak. The bustle of Shanghai is captured through a handheld camera. Most of the action takes place in run-down colonial era buildings. The American influence in everyday life shows: Budweiser beer, Camel cigarettes (we also see a Toshiba billboard, karaoke and a pack of Mild Seven smokes).

    (08 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Hockey History: Portland Buckaroos
    Tonight my recreational hockey team, Gang Green (2nd place) overwhelmed the Sharks (3rd place) 9-3 in the second semi-final game of the Sherwood Ice Arena Men's "B" League. Thanks to some hard work by my linemates, I scored two goals, our 2nd and 6th. (In the other semi-final, Nike (1st place) were eliminated 3-2 in overtime by Deschutes (4th place, but bolstered by several late-season additions). To celebrate, we went to the nearby McMenamin's and wound up talking about Portland OR hockey history, in particular the Portland Buckaroos.

    (03 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Medicine: Billion-dollar Cottage Industry
    In her talk to us earlier this week, informatics headhunter Betsy Hersher mentioned how a physician with informatics aspirations should read widely, beyond the realm of medical journals, to gain an enterprise- or industry-level perspective on healthcare. Today, I found some interesting articles in the healthcare management realm that characterize health services in the U.S. as largely a cottage industry -- individual practitioners dispensing care out of an office, with little or no capacity to engage in operations research and development. Having just spent a long evening "handcrafting" today's load of surgical pathology reports for OHSU , I certainly agree.

    Intelligent organizations realize that knowledge about performance is the basis of operating effectively. Businesses promote efficiency and ensure their competitive survival by investing in research and development: automakers 4% of their annual budgets, aircraft manufacturers 8%, pharmaceutical companies 20% (they claim).

    But operations research is not in the consciousness of most healthcare providers -- they are busy just trying to get the day's work done. Even with awareness, there are infrastructure hurdles -- healthcare organizations spend only an estimated 2% of their budgets on computers and communication, compared with a 10% average for other business sectors -- and there is a shortage of standardized performance measures and data suitable for electronic interchange. The work is only beginning for medical informaticists!

    (02 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

  • Betsy Hersher: Headhunting Informaticists
    We students in the OHSU Medical Informatics Master's Degree Program had the good fortune to be visited yesterday by Betsy Hersher of Hersher Associates, Ltd, a retained executive search firm that works on behalf of client organizations to recruit senior-level executives in healthcare, education associations and service organizations.

    She gave a presentation about careers in medical informatics, in particular the position of Chief Medical Information Officer, a role that has changed from controversial to a widely recognized, vital component of the healthcare information system team. The physician role in IS is multi-faceted and addresses many functions/needs simultaneously, the most important of which include:

    • Consultant/advisor
    • Liaison (between docs and geeks/others)
    • Interpreter/translator (from medspeak to geekspeak and back)
    • Quality and cost management
    • Use of data
    • Setting the vision
    • Applied clinical informatics

    In a recent survey conducted by her company, 58% of healthcare organizations have a physician on their IS team. Of those that did not currently have a physician in their IS organization, 34% said they were planning to hire one.

    The CMIO is vital to the whole clinical systems continuum: the electronic patient record, clinical data repository, quality clinical decision support, and outcomes. Doctors already have some useful skills for the job from their medical training, but they also need to learn how to manage people, projects, and resources.

    And to those who would say that physician informaticists are no longer "real doctors", she pointed out that moving into the development and implementation of clinical systems, care mapping, and outcomes measures is just another form of healing. The "data doc" is here to stay!

    (01 March 2001)
    Discuss This Topic
    		 [Back to TOP]

[HOME] [What's New?]
1