Stop the insanity! Done. Next Item?

The world has changed a lot since the days of the Bush administration when it seemed like international diplomacy was run by a group of loony-tunes.

A few weeks ago, Dear Father* Kim Jung Il of North Korea, feeling lonely and neglected, decided to ring a bell by launching a missile---err satellite---while President Obama was in Europe making a speech about (yawn) eliminating nuclear weapons. Like Pavlov puppies , the US and its erstwhile ally Japan immediately began slobbering.

Resisting the urges of the calmer, more rational folks who suggested some military action against North Korea as long as they themselves didn't get their asses shot off, President Obama sprang into action.

Obama rejected the old Bush wimp-out by refusing to merely call Kim and North Korea bad names such as Axis of Evil. No, Obama decided to hit North Korea where it hurts; to do that one thing that all sends the fear of god through the souls of all dictators and tyrants. Obama, with Japan at his side (the Japan that suddenly remembered that the Six Party Talks about North Korean nukes were about more than just hostages/abductees) went to the UN!

Things did not go as planned at the UN, however, for Russia and China stunned the planet by refusing to play along. No problem, says Barack, we'll talk it over. No more pushy USA, we'll get results by drawing upon the natural love and admiration that the international community always had for the US before Bush.

After much deliberation and singing of Kumbaya, the UN issued a fierce statement saying something along the lines that North Korea had done wrong when it committed the heretofore unheard of act of violating a UN sanction or something like that.

Kim Jung Il, upon receiving the UN nasty-gram, immediately went into a panic and began running around in circles screaming "Oh my god, what shall I do now!" After his generals calmed him down, the unpredictable Kim decided to do that which nobody could have predicted: They decided to withdraw from the Six Party Talks and restart the nuclear facility. (clang! clang!)

Meanwhile, back in Japan, the fearless rightwing was shocked and saddened to learn that the US-Japan alliance had failed. That girlie-man Obama had ruled out shooting down the North Korean missile before it reached the Land of the Rising Sun. This was the evidence they needed to do something that they had never done before and start whimpering that the US was an untrustworthy ally. Many had already reluctantly come to the conclusion that had Japan not had Article 9 which prohibits it from having military unless they are called self-defense forces, it would have been able to have defended itself and shot the missile down at launch. It would have been able to have done this even though it was off just a little---about a day---in its detection of the launch.

Had the Japan rightwing had its way, by god, and attacked North Korea it would have ended the problem in a heartbeat. Japan would have been back on track to regaining its rightful position as the much-loved and respected leader of Asia. China would have shown admiration for Japan's new military assertiveness. South Korea, after seeing an attack on its fellow Koreans by their beloved ally Japan, would have been waving the hinomaru and shouting "Go Nippon!"

It's such a relief to have returned to saner times.

*More commonly called Dear Leader nowadays.

Thinking of getting drunk in Roppongi? Justice in Unique Japan

Hatoyama: As the Japanese place so much importance on the value of life, it is thought that one should pay with one's own life for taking the life of another, whereas Europe is a civilization of "chikara to tousou" ("force and strife"). So, conversely, things are moving against the death penalty. This is an important point to understand. The so-called civilizations of "chikara to tousou" are the opposite of us. From incipient stages, their conception of the value of life is weaker than the Japanese. Therefore, they are moving toward abolition of the death penalty. It is important that this discourse on civilizations be understood.

...the philosophy here espoused by Hatoyama and other senior Liberal Democratic Party conservatives, including former Education Minister Ibuki Bunmei (now LDP secretary general), is heavily influenced by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, and affiliated scholars like environmental archaeologist Yasuda Yoshinori and comparative economic historian Kawakatsu Heita. “Yasuda is the most prolific proponent of the environmental determinist school of thought, according to which Japan is a "civilization of beauty and compassion," in contrast with Judeo-Christian and Islamic states, and even China,” writes Wetherall. “His books are standard reading for romantic nationalists.”

Well, then folks in Texas must place more importance on life than most others on earth if you consider the number of executions. So must China. An old quote from someone whom many non-Japanese consider an idiot, but I suspect is not an especially uncommon belief in Japan.

Those UN [from the UN Committee on Torture] comments echo earlier reports by the Japan Bar Association, Human Rights Watch, the International Bar Association and other UN panels that say Japan’s treatment of criminal suspects is unfair and leads to coerced confessions. In about 99% of criminal trials, defendants are found guilty, and in the bulk of cases, the defendant has confessed to charges. Lawyers are not allowed to be present during interrogations, either before or after indictment. Suspects often allege psychological and sometimes physical abuse.

You don't want to be arrested in Japan. You want no trouble with the police. There ain't no innocent until proven guilty. You are screwed as soon as you are arrested. So is your lawyer it seems:

....lawyers – the last line of defense in this potholed legal landscape – are not immune from harassment. Tokyo lawyer Yasuda Yoshihiro was arrested in 1998 and held for 300 days...

but the judges will make sure justice is upheld:

...Takano Takashi, a lawyer and professor at Waseda University’s school of law. “I’ve seen many judges sleep during trial.”.... after 25 years practicing law, just five of his clients have been completely exonerated. “Some lawyers go their whole lives without winning a case,” he explains.

If you get arrested, guilty or not, just bend over and kiss your own ass goodbye. Now you know one reason Japanese crime is relatively low. You also know why people are so reluctant to involve the police or other authorities in matters, even relatively serious ones. Now do you really want to take any chances here?

All quotes from Certain Justice. Japan’s Detention System and the Rights of the Accused by David McNeill. Japan Focus.

Ministry of Justice Human Rights hearing

Somehow, the Ministry of Justice in Japan and the term "human rights" don't seem to fit well together, but Debito Arudo at Trans-Pacific Radio writes of a MoJ sponsored Human Rights meeting he attended earlier this year. Seems the right-wing nutjobs attended and were able to disrupt the meeting with little to no interference from the MoJ bureaucrats running the show. Even more interesting is what happened as the meeting ended which shows exactly how many Japan---and non-Japanese view discrimination in Japan:

The last straw was when one of the attendees referred to a famous Korean born to a Comfort Woman as a “bastard child” (shiseiji). Our side demanded the representative from the Ministry of Justice do something. It was within his ministry’s mandate to silence hate speech. He remained silent.....

....It almost came to blows. Even then, no security was called, and nobody was asked to leave. The meeting was brought to a close a half-hour early.

But here’s when it got really interesting. I was about to leave when one of disrupters actually came up to me with a smile and a friendly tone of voice. He turned out to be an assemblymember from Hino City, near Tokyo, and was quizzical as to why I was here.

After all, this is his view: White people in Japan have it good here because of Japan’s inferiority complex towards them. So discrimination cannot happen towards them. It only happens towards the lesser peoples of the world, and they’re only here taking advantage of the Japan we Japanese built up. They shouldn’t be here asking for anything. Therefore I as a superior Caucasian should have nothing to complain about.

I have seen and heard this attitude a lot. Several years ago, after Shitaro---oops, how childish of me---Shintaro "Blinky" Ishihara went into one of his bigoted rants about the Chinese and (shockingly) it was covered by the foreign press, a Japanese apologist wrote to the International Herald Tribune and explained it away because Blinky was talking about Chinese. Not Americans (synonymous with white folks in Japan, though many will tell you a few repressed minorities live there as do the rich Jews who control the country). Therefore, there should be no problem for white folks since it was the Chinese who Shit (hand slipped, sorry) Shintaro was insulting and demeaning.

U.N. Rep responds to Japan's assertion of homogenuity

A few days ago Japan's Education Minister, Bunmei Ibuki (who is in need of education himself), made the bizarrely inaccurate and false claim that Japan is a homogeneous society.

The U.N. special rapporteur on racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia responded:

"There is no such thing as pure blooded or a pure race. Where do the Ainu fit in to Japanese society? Or the Chinese and Koreans?"

"I am absolutely shocked at his remark. Here is the education minister, the person who in charge of educating Japan's children about their history, saying something that is so outdated."

I am shocked that he is shocked. I would assume he would have a lot to respond to about Japan. I guess since he is in Japan now, he was able to see and hear about Ibuki's comment directly.

One would not likely see many European politicians get a free pass for bigoted and racist comments the way Japan's leaders do. Perhaps nobody expects any better of them.

Have not as of yet heard much domestic criticism of Ibuki's remarks. That may change since a U.N. representative has commented on them. Or it may just be ignored by the Japanese language press and of course Japan's elite.

Abe agrees with Ibuki as this is in keeping with his vision of a "beautiful country." I assume that means a Japan with no non-pure Japanese defiling it.