We can help

(Revised and reposted.)

Apologies to Billy Swan. (Oh well...soundtrack has been removed....)

Ouch, that hurts

...We already have a country that operates on the notion that it can mass-produce the poor and force young people to join the military and go off to fight on a battlefield somewhere. That would be the US...Minoru Morita in his interesting new book, Curing Japan's American Addiction.*

and it especially hurts because it is so close to true, except only certain young people go and many of them are either poor or not far from it.

Mr. Morita has some interesting things to say in the book, but unfortunately he seems to have an extreme form of the affliction that Paul Krugman had when he was in his NYT columnist blame-every-bad-thing-in-history-on-George Bush mode (before Paul won his Nobel Prize). Morita, however, blames everything wrong with Japan on Bush, Koizumi, and---naturally and most especially---the US.


Life in the shadows, the result of a vast US conspiracy by Bush, Koizumi, the LDP, and evil, evil, yes we do mean EVIL foreign money.

*Available in exchange for your evil foreign money at Amazon.com or for pure Japanese yen at Amazon Japan.

A younger guy whom I know, of about 30-35 years old, often talks about how women cannot do the same work as a man. We aren't talking physical labor either. They simply can't do it mentally or "spiritually" for lack of a better word. He works in a branch of a British company. He received his university degree in the US. He is an office manager. He will be quite upset to hear that:

Former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi has backed Yuriko Koike in her bid to become Japan's first female leader...

However, he will be reassured to learn that:

...an analyst said the backing of the popular politician was unlikely to lift her to victory. (from Reuters as I hold my nose)

Despite that, I wonder if the LDP will succeed in distracting voters enough to remain in power.

It is kinda like wondering if US voters are dumb enough to be distracted by the McCain campaign's "lipstick on a pig" and other absurdities.

Words of Wisdom?

As usual, the anniversary of Japan's surrender was marked with a number of ceremonies. And, as usual, the right-wingers had a nice gathering at Yasukuni. Even some of Fukuda's cabinet showed up in order to keep thier and the LDP's extreme right credentials in order.

This is nothing new and just goes to show that some of the nutjobs will never change. Fortunately, we have a young generation of non-Japanese (and Japanese) who will put things into the proper touchy-feely, lovey dovey perspective with deep and thoughtful observations:

Meanwhile, a 24-year-old Canadian visitor to Yasukuni...said Japan and its neighbors must "understand and acknowledge one another's traditions and beliefs" to overcome diplomatic tensions.

"I can understand where both sides are coming from," he said of the dispute over visits by politicians to Yasukuni Shrine, but added that Japan's neighbors might be better off if they avoided overreacting and viewing the visits as diplomatic statements and instead "accept it for what it is."

All those mistaken foreigners (and the Japanese who marched in anti-Yasukuni protest Friday) should show more patience and tolerance for the rightwingers of Japan who are visiting Yauskuni in innocence and purity.

North Korea---Still the same

after all these years. About the only difference is that its military power has dwindled to mainly a threat of mass murder of Seoul's civilian residents by artillery and a possible nuclear threat.

The right-wing in Japan has been playing up the kidnapping of its citizens which the government (including the LDP) ignored until Koizumi went to North Korea and the right saw it as a way to convince the public to rewrite Article 9. I can't have any sympathy for the rightists, but that does not mean that N. Korea is not guilty of horrendous crimes.

For decades they have committed international terrorism (blowing up aircraft, blowing up a number of ROK government officials, infiltrating agents into South Korea, murdering and kidnapping South Koreans, attacking/killing US troops, and more). It was, and still is, amazing that after all that, many South Koreans consider Japan a bigger threat than North Korea ever could be. Tells you something about what Japan must have done to create such hostility. It isn't all a result of ROK propaganda, as I had heard that sentiment from folks who had lived under the Japanese occupation and it was very much their own genuine fear and opinion.

Anyway, North Korean troops have recently killed a 52 year old woman tourist who had gotten up before dawn to watch the sunrise and was shot twice as she supposedly wandered into a restricted area. Tells you that North Korea does not trust it own citizens either---if you did not already know that.

North Korea has demanded an apology from South Korea for the incident. The South has done the same from the nutty North. Bush may have been wrong on many things, but he was not at all wrong when he called the North part of the "Axis of Evil."*

Full article from the New York Times is here.

Related NYT article here. The North has rejected talks with South Korea.

*4:30pm: I do wonder if the US really should have removed the North from the terrorist list. Perhaps only as a gesture to hopefully nudge NK to move on the nuclear issue---few would assume that Kim Jong Il and his military and government have any intention of dropping terrorism as a tool to be used when they think it is needed.