Innocent Japan suffers more abuse

from evil foreigners---the US in particular.

A few days ago, Merill Lynch announced that several companies, including Japan's Mizuho bank, were investing around $6 billion in its stock. I learned from one of my young right-leaning contacts, that this was, in his opinion, due to pressure on Japan from the US government to buy stock in companies which were suffering from the sub-prime mess. He had read that a few months ago. He couldn't recall the source, but he is a fan of Sankei Sports, a rightwing paper. I am often amazed at how he can blame the US for any and everything he believes wrong with Japan. If pressed for details or rational, he ducks with "I don't know" or "He (the writer) didn't say."

For example:

-Japans recent food scandals were partially the result of the US and Europe FORCING pure Japan to replace its "produced on" labels with "use by." This change somehow caused the pure Japanese food companies to engage in lies, deception, and fraud.

-According to one of the nutjobs he reads, if Japan were to be attacked, the US would violate the security treaty it has with Japan and do nothing but defend itself. Strangely, this seems be the reverse of the actual treaty in which the US is obligated to send its young men and women to be killed defending Japan, but Japanese young men and women in the military are under no obligation to assist the US in defense of Japan. (In fact, they would be prohibited from assisting in combat or combat rescue---no collective action). He could not explain how the US could defend itself at Yokota air base without defending Tokyo.

-Just before he explained how Mizuho was probably being forced to buy ML stock, he told how the Japanese government had to protect the purity of Japan by restricting non-Yamato ownership of airports to no more than 15%. You see, some sneaky Australian company bought a 20% share of Haneda airport. I did not think to ask him if perhaps the Japanese government had forced the Australian company to buy into Haneda. (Article on this purchase here.)

Wareware nihonjin. Omae wa baka gaijin.