Angus McGillicuddy comments

@proxy Like many people, you're confusing UBI with GBI. GBI is just another way of doing welfare; UBI is a total rethinking of a nation's complicated, expensive, and inefficient systems of tax collection and social payments.

"more than 250 years of isolation"

The isolationist policies began in the 1830s under Tokugawa Iemitsu, the third Tokugawa shogun. The Edo period lasted more than 250 years; the isolation did not.

To be clear, the programme explicitly defines 東京圏外 as outside Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, and Kanagawa.

All the comments here are jumping to the conclusion that people are being encouraged to move to remote rural areas. The term being used is 東京圏外, which just means "outside the Tokyo area". This includes urban areas with six- or seven-digit populations.

This website is called "Japan Today", but these stats don't seem to be Japanese, and the article also doesn't bother to tell us what country they're talking about (though I assume it's American?) This article doesn't seem to be aimed at most JT readers, who most likely reside in Japan, and are also likely not Americans.

http://asaa.asn.au/japans-youth-crime-wave-subsides-to-a-ripple/

In a country with the death penalty? The only reason to do this is for sadists to put more people on death row. And to feed the fears of those who believe the thoroughly debunked canard that "youth crime is on the rise" (it has plummeted precipitously over the past several decades in Japan).

Otherwise, I'd say the cutoff between age of minority and agree of majority was arbitrary, whether 18, 20, 21, or whatever.

There is negligible reason for Japan to feel any pressure to change their school year ...

You haven't been following the news, then. It was proposed to make up for the three months of school that have been lost due to the school shutdowns. Other reasons include moving exam season out of the flu/allergy season, etc. There are actually quite a few reasons to do it that have nothing to do with foreign "pressure".

Abe and his Nippon Kaigi, buddies were not going to allow anything like this to happen

What are you talking about? Abe was one of the loudest supporters.

Since when is "orderly" a translation of 令?! Can anyone give even a single example of this?

Gotta love them delicious subsidies! They more than make up for the utter lack of demand!

Woohoo! Watch them bridges burn!

So, you buy the line that whale is this ancient, traditional Japanese cuisine. While whaling has existed in Japan since prehistoric times, it did not become widespread until the 20th century, and eating whale did not become common until the late 1940s, when whale meat was introduced into school lunches to make up for nutritional shortages in the post-WWII period. By the 1970s the population had already moved on from whale meat---today, most Japanese who didn't grow up in the post-war period have never even tried whale meat. Those who have, typically consider it inferior to other meats, such as beef. It cave 5th this state of affairs a generation before the moratorium cane into effect.

Don't be fooled. Pushing for whaling is strictly political.

What is the obsession JT commenters have with tying age of majority to age of drinking/smoking? How common is that, even? In the States it's 21, in many Canadian provinces it's 19, and in many parts of Europe it's 16.

The rest of the world doesn't care. Get over yourselves.

Loaded question—no drug is "harmless", including all the prefectly legal over-the-counter drugs that aren't criminalized.

Emperors have rarely abdicated in Japan, the last time being 200 years ago.

Just because it's been 200 years since the last one doesn't make it rare. It used to be common practice.

Like girl_in_tokyo says, there's is virtually no dialogue amongst the Japanese on the issue. By far the most common pro-death penalty excuse I hear from Japanese people is that it "deters crime"---usually followed by "and crime is on the rise"---statements which are both empirically false. It's trivially easy in the internet age to verify both statements, but because there is no dialogue on the subject, it would never cross most people's minds to.

A deal's a deal, and there are two sides to the deal. On the Japanese side, the deal is recognition—permanent recognition—of the atrocities committed. Japan is reneging on this aspect of the deal. Denialism and revisionism must be dealt with or the deal is void.

If the Japanese government is working in good faith, then why demand, for example, the removal of statues?

Whatever you think of Korea, Japan's "apologies" don't mean anything when they keep retracting them, as well as teaching revisionist versions in which the women supposedly "volunteered".

I'd have a lot more respect for them if they just said " we eat whales so go buzz off".

Except they don't eat whales. I was once at a seminar with about 45 people in the room, and the subject of whaling came up. The speaker asked the room who had ever tried whale in their life. I was the only one to raise a hand (I've tried a bite).

Every once in a while, my local supermarket sticks some whale or dophin on the shelf. It sits there unsold for days, gets marked down, and then tossed out. Nobody eats this stuff, outside of areas where they do whaling and have had the stuff forced into kids kyūshoku. Most people I know who've even tried it say they don't like it.

But he was a top LPD acolyte until not so long ago ...

Can you elaborate on this? His Wikipedia article at least doesn't say anything about the LDP.

@Kobe White Bar Owner: I don't know if that PDF was in response to what I wrote, but the PDF I'm talking about was put out by the LDP itself, highlighting their proposed rewordings.

The LDP wants to change more than Article 9, though. I remember reading (in Japanese) a pdf with the LDP's proposed changes to the constitution, by I can't find it now ... does anybody know where to find it?

Gotta double-check those kanji: 大谷 in this case is "Ōya", not "Ōtani"—that's a forest in Ōya, in the vicinity of Shizuoka University.

Mr Yamamoto cannot be a racist as there aren't any laws that pertain to this issue in Japan....

I came across a racist freak online who claimed Japanese aren't racist, because "racism" was an invention of white people that had nothing to do with the Japanese ...

Yamamoto's "clarification" was that 「アフリカが『黒い大陸』『暗黒大陸』と表現されたことが念頭にあっての発言で、黒人を指して言ったわけではない」—basically, that "black" meant the continent, not the people, so the SJWs can all, like, shut the heck up already.

Well ... the internet has its particular way of letting you know you're wrong. Better to be embarrassed in public than stay ignorant, though ....

Im still permanent

You're not "permanent", papagiulio—there's no such thing as "permanent residence" in Japan, only "long-term residence", which has to be renewed every seven years.

You've got your facts garbled, @Jonathon Prin. The national government sets 13 as the minimum age any prefecture is allowed to set the age of consent, but every prefecture has set that age of consent at 18. Hope you haven't been "taking advantage" of your misunderstanding ...

The more countries with nukes, the more likely someone, somewhere, sometime will end up pushing the button.

I would assume a story with a headline like "Samsung's Galaxy S8 hits stores" at a website called "Japan Today" would give at least some information about the phone's availability in Japan.