Last Son of Toshogu?

It's very rare that I will write about myself on this thing - in fact, I don't think I ever have. However, this time round, I'm forced to, because

a) All the juicy installs seem to have gone into hiding

b) Everyone is too busy arguing about payment on Hijack This support forums

c) People keep emailing me about something.

What are they asking me? Information on the latest top secret installs? The inside info on some "We're not Adware, Guv'nor!" company? How many Adware guys it takes to screw into a lightbulb? (The answer is five, by the way - but they've got to really want to screw it).

No - they keep asking me what the "Toshogu" thing is all about. If you've seen me on a forum, chances are, you've seen this.

Well, here's the deal. Expect another post like this sometime in 2008.

Toshogu is the legendary resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan for over 250 years. He doesn't get out much anymore (mainly because he's dead), but if he could, he'd have liked "Guns. Lots of guns". Its many buildings and architecture represent many thoughts / feelings and a particular state of mind. For various reasons, this is the state of mind I have carried into my online work. The Hagakure states, "One should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths". I prefer one or two.

However - that's not the whole story.

Toshogu was a freedom of information network based in China, with people like me helping out when we could. Only a small network, but we helped distribute word from the West as and when possible. Unfortunately, certain people (like, those in charge) in China weren't too keen on these kind of antics, and I witnessed first hand people who I had known for quite some time, simply dissapearing into thin air. No word or warning - they just didn't log into their PCs anymore and that was that. The rule went, if someone was away from their keyboard for more than 4 days, it was all over bar the shouting. You don't need a computer in a detention camp.

The "official" list of Chinese digital prisoners weighs in at around the sixty-three mark, though this tally is thought to be some way off. There are many more than this, whose stories we won't even have heard about, yet are currently rotting away in some awful cell somewhere being subjected to the kind of abusive treatment we banned people from practicing on animals sometime in the 1960's. Would I go back to China? No. Do I like China anymore? I like the people and I like the country. The people in charge are not my favourites, as you probably guessed. This site gets quite a bit of traffic, and if I can open people's eyes to stories like

this,
this and
this, then I'm happy to do so. There's more than enough Spyware infections to go around, and I can happily cover those in due time. But to limit myself to just that would be a major disservice to the people I support in their fight to have free flow of information and ideas. One of my proudest moments to date was finding out that this site ends up on lots of Chinese aggregators and newsfeed sites like this one. The site also gets used as a feed for some Chinese language websites, so with any luck my next proudest moment will be when I start getting blocked on their search engines.

But that's where the Toshogu thing comes from, and that's why I write about China every so often. So now you know.

Just don't tell anyone ;)