Ouch Podcast Extra – October 2011
bbc.co.uk/ouch/podcast

Presented by and Liz Carr 

Liz	This is an Ouch podcast extra. Recently Mat Fraser visited Japan and met disabled people living there in the wake of the tsunami and nuclear power station meltdown. He called us on our regular Talk Show but we didn't have time to include it all. So here's Mat with the full story. 	
liz	Where are you Mat? 	
Mat	Konnichiha!	
liz	Konnichiha!	
rob	Konnichiha!	
mat	I'm in a hotel just outside of Sendai airport in downtown Japan.	
liz	So that begs the question why? Why are you there? 	
mat	Well oh gosh so many reasons, Liz. Basically do you remember the guys from Shine On came over to film us doing the podcast?	
liz	Okay we had a Japanese film... yes absolutely I remember that.	
mat	That was a while back, about a year and a half ago. Anyway I stared down the camera and challenged any crip in Japan to a fight. Everybody mocked me at the time I seem to remember. About a year later out of the blue I got a call and they were covering the Odazuna Championships which is a pro-wrestling style all disabled fight basically, and I got invited to take part. And so then when I agreed to do it they thought they might build one of the programmes around my being here and so I spent... I did the fight event which was, believe me, one of the most bizarre and incredible things I've ever seen. 	
liz	Tell us, come on tell us a little bit more about that first. 	
rob	Because what we're forgetting here, is that since you laid down this challenge, Mat, there has been a fairly major tsunami, and I'm wondering really a bloke with thalidomide coming along to start fights with disabled people in the wake of a tsunami it's the last thing they need isn't it surely? 	
liz	Not the most supportive olive branch is it? 	
rob	No. 	
mat	No or even the twig off a bamboo shoot. You'd think it was a bit incongruous to say the best...	
rob	What I thought we'd be better off sending a food parcel rather than you but hey ho. 	
mat	Although probably they would eat me raw as a piece of sashimi but anyway, if they were cannibals which they're clearly not. You forget people at the beeb that I'm actually being filmed right now the NHK crew who have become my pals over the last week. Anyway, the thing was basically that this is a group of crips and their mates, their allies who are all really into the pro-wrestling style of fighting which is the kind of WWF over the top slightly rehearsed kind of wrestling that they have, but also can cause injury. And this is their wrestling championships of 2011. The reason it's become very special is because Mr Kunin Takahama who is a massively famous comedy TV producer on mainstream comedy Japanese television, decided he wanted to take part and host the event so he kind of elevated the exposure up to this massive event. And so guys all I can say is you've not really lived until you've seen a load of Japanese spastics beating the hell out of each other in a professional wrestling ring with the lights, the smoke, the music and the audience full of disabled people absolutely loving everything and screaming for blood.	
liz	And I have to ask what did you all wear? Did you wear those ridiculous all-in-one lycras?	
rob	Fundoshi is that what they're called?  Fundoshi, the little adult nappies? 	
mat	It was the traditional kimono by one of the Orochi who was the sort of psycho girl with profound Cerebral Palsy. I mean she can't walk so she's like squatting on her knees arms kind of sort of semi flailing as a permanent basis, with Okawa who's a guy who has the use of one arm, hence his nickname Singlearm, lying on the canvas as she pounded the hell out of his head. And then attacked the judges, threw the chairs everywhere just like WWF style. It was amazing. I was in a kind of rehearsed fight because unbelievably when they saw my fighter profile they decided that I was too strong for a lot of the fighters. I know, Rob, I know. 	
rob	Are you sure it was strong they said not pitiful? Are you sure? Was it lost in translation there somewhat maybe? 	
mat	No I mean I'm going to hopefully get to downsize some of the files and clips that I took on my flip camera and put them up on the site if that's possible, because I really want the Ouch favourites, the people who love Ouch to see this because it's taken us 20 years to go from po-faced rights to being able to mock ourselves as we do so well on the Ouch podcast. These guys just jumped from nothing straight into spasagags at the wrestling match. One guy called Zombie Yakaneda who's like one of the heroes, really profound Cerebral Palsy, permanent wobbler, you know the thing wobbling, dribbling fantastic-ness, broke his ribs but he broke his ribs two weeks ago and as they commented jokily at the time at the match, we couldn't really tell because it's hard to tell with him whether he's crying or laughing. And it was that kind of comedy that was accompanying the event. I mean really I've never seen anything like it. 	
liz	And coming from you, Mat, that's quite something. 	
rob	From a man that has seen a lot of things that a lot of human beings don't necessarily want to see. 	
mat	I think between the three of us we've seen most things in the world.	
liz	Until now. 	
rob	And still genuinely shocked. 	
mat	But this is a new one.	
rob	But this seems to be providing quite a lot of levity against what I'm presuming quite is a bleak backdrop of... 	
Mat	Well absolutely. 	
rob	... the area of Japan you're in right now, so tell me a little bit more about that. 	
mat	Six and a half months since the disaster and I think that basically what I was witnessing was a desperate need to have a laugh because life's been so awfully tough for everybody in Japan but especially for groups of disabled people. And as you know we saw on the television a lot of coverage and footage of Sendai. You know I've been travelling around with the NHK crew and they took me to the coastal region of Sendai. And they have a thing called gama here in Japan which is the incredible Japanese reserve and quiet patient ability to withstand adversity. And I have to say I got to this site and it's... I mean if you imagine Sendai's about the size of Manchester and it's an entire size of about Salford that just got wiped away. And I'm standing on a hill after watching a Buddhist priest with a family and he's praying on their behalf presumably for the victims of their family. And you look and there's still the... they've razed it to the ground completely but there are still the foundation marks, you can see where the houses were amongst the rubble and the dust and the now growing leaves. And you look down and there's like a spatula or a plate and it really brought it home to me. I have to say I lost any gama that I might have collected in Japan because it's different when you watch in on television, guys. And I mean I started blubbing I just did it was overwhelming and I found it very sobering. And that kind of changed the mood after the hilarity of the wrestling match.   	
liz	Of course. 	
mat	The rest of the week has been me interviewing crips in various different states of adversity because of either the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear power plant incident or all three.	
liz	We had... there's been disabled people knocking on the doors looking for other disabled people tell me about that?	
mat	Yeah. That's in Ishinomaki I joined a young crip wheelie, he's got the sports car, the flashy jacket, the rings, the gelled sticky up hair - he had a stroke five years ago, he lives with his parents and he tirelessly with his mates, some of whom are able-bodied, are trying to set up an organisation but they don't have a database of disabled people. They want to help disabled people who have been affected by the recent disasters but there is no database, there's no government database. This is against a backdrop of the Japanese traditionally being ashamed of disability. So not everyone's going to admit they've got a crip in the house, so to speak. So these guys with limited mobility and impairments are sort of tracking from house to house leafleting saying, "Have you got any crips in there? Can we help? Do they need any help?" 	
rob	Has this been a successful campaign, is this working?	
mat	Well it's just... as I commented to the film crew at the time what I was witnessing was literally the beginning of grass roots disability activism. The sort of stuff that we heard about that started in Berkeley in 1971 these guys are doing right now. You know the hardest bit I think of the whole week was I interviewed him by the rubble that was his house and just I don't know how he had the strength of character to conduct that interview without completely breaking down I really don't.	
liz	You've been in and you've been filming in Fukushima where there was the nuclear incident as well. How are disabled people coping in that area and in those conditions?	
mat	Well the conditions are pretty weird. For us nuclear incidents to us are what happened in a film or abroad and to actually be at the border of the 20km exclusion zone next to policemen who, you know, you wonder for their health in 20 years time frankly because they've got prolonged exposure was very sobering. And there's an eerie nothingness around there, it's very strange because it's been completely evacuated. I went to some temporary housing where I met a 60 year old disabled woman with mobility issues who's being cared for by her 80 year old mother and of course their story was the same as many crips; they got evacuated to emergency shelters with two or three hundred other panicking able-bodied Japanese people and they just didn't have the facilities to cope. So this poor woman spent 15 days sitting in her wheelchair before anybody came and asked her if she needed to wash. And that kind of stuff the hardship that a lot of crips have been suffering is just typical of the stories that I've been hearing all week, I mean against which is obviously their incredible resilience and occasional stories of like Mr Okawa from Sendai who realised that this was the case, the Sendai emergency centre where he was, and he like... because let's not forget it was also snowing and freezing cold at that time. And he went and got 15 other crips and said, "Come on" up to his office which served, to all intents and purposes, as an independent living centre, and they all duveted up and sat in their chairs and waited for 24 hours until electricity came back on so some of them could charge their chairs and they did get heating. And that kind of grim hardship this is what they've been going through. 	
rob	It seems like almost a little bit of a contradiction because on one level we've got this real big society, grass roots activism that you've been mentioning but you also mention about this almost this level of shame about people with disabilities being almost hidden by family members in the house.	
mat	Well yeah the activism is against their history of shame. This isn't Berkeley, California. Japan doesn't have a Disability Discrimination Act. It has an incredible politeness and a willingness to help but coming from an historic place of shame about disability which is very hard to shake off for a lot of people. So it's up to a few, you can call them radical, or you can call just call them really, really hacked off disabled people to go, "Hold on a minute, this just isn't good enough. What are we going to do about it?" And they get a group of friends together and they start to try and change things. You know there's no government funding for these independent living centres these are volunteer based charity organisations. So that makes it even more difficult for them. 	
ROB	And is having disabled people knocking seven bells out of each other on television do you think this is going to have a residual impact and eventually result in, I don't know, maybe some legislation or something like that?	
mat	Directly no, Rob. And listening to you say it, it does make it sound nigh on ridiculous but you've got to remember that Japanese culture is very different to our culture and the fighting, you know the joy of fighting and combat and warriorville is very much ingrained in the social consciousness of Japan. And so for them to chuck a load of spas's into a wresting ring and watch them beat crap out of each other isn't as weird as perhaps it might sound to our delicate British ears. 	
liz	And how have people responded to you out there Mat then? 	
mat	Bowing. 	
liz	I mean apart from... really? 	
mat	Yes. Lot of amused going to get 'the fork' in the restaurants because everyone uses chopsticks for everything even western breakfast in the hotel, I saw a guy eating egg on toast with chopsticks, and of course I need the fork. And I didn't bloomin' bring a fork did I? The other thing here is they have baby forks because kids until they're about four use forks. So more often than not I'm given the baby fork. 	
liz	For your little arms?	
mat	For my little arms and little hands. 	
rob	Do you they bring you a bib as well? 	
mat	Yes nice. And then I get to sit on mummy's knee - oh no, no. 	
liz	Mat, it's been brilliant to talk to you. With all that you've been through and the radiation areas are you okay, are you safe?	
mat	Oh fine. You know everybody said eat iodine pills when you go over, but of course the Japanese are the world experts on coping with radiation after the Second World War, and wouldn't you know it, as luck would have it, the traditional Japanese diet of Miso soup and eating as much seaweed as you can stuff into your gob is the best defence. So I have been eating shredded nori, I've been eating wagami, I've been eating rice balls covered in seaweed, rice with seaweed, just seaweed on its own. 	
liz	Thank you for the...	
rob	Mat Fraser too strange to live, too weird to die. 	
Liz	Mat, enjoy the rest of your trip if enjoy is the right word. But we look forward to seeing you soon. 	
ROB	It's really fascinating. 	
mat	Arigato!	
Liz	Arigato.	
rob	Arigato. 	
liz	Sayonara.	
rob	That was Mat Fraser on the phone from Japan recorded recently. See you back here in a couple of weeks for our November show. 
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