camnai comments

A minister in the Abe government making sense? I thought for a minute I might be reading The Onion.

North Korea is probably the world's safest country, as long as you don't offend anyone in the Party.

If Kan had not been the prime minister, we would have had to try and evacuate Tokyo. I was amazed at how the (former LDP) members of his own party joined with the LDP to start playing political power games at a time when there was serious risk.

I find the anti-Arab racism among the presumably white commenters here quite surprising, considering how worked up they get when they are the object of racism from the Japanese. The same with the Japanese commenters, considering how they complain when they get treated badly in Europe or North America.

Dr Fujita makes a lot more sense than Dr Onue, unless in the last couple of years there have been more women from poor countries coming here to work in the sex trade than there were before. Logic, however, is soluble in xenophobia.

How about just taking Japan the way it is and not trying to turn it into a pale imitation of back home?

'Passed' for 'died', unless you're born and bred in the deep south or otherwise related to Johnny Cash.

Over the last couple of generations, anyway, there has been less obvious inequality in Japan than in some other developed nations, because their plutocracy had to go underground after it failed the country in World War II. That degree of equality may be changing, but it usually correlates with less crime. And, as someone has pointed out, there is also the yakuza. The kind of crime Japan happily lacks is the unorganized kind.

I suppose I could google it, but why doesn't the story identify this NHK executive? Anyway, Japan would be best advised to STFU on this one. Whether it's 300,000 or only 256,722 doesn't make much difference. Complaining about it only plays into the hands of those in China who want to divert their population's attention from the dictatorship they live under.

Why are they driving Toyotas? Gee, I don't know. Why are so many of them carrying American weapons?

Amusing, since all their economic policies mitigate against young people starting families.

After Abe's government has just condemned about a quarter of its young people to a lifetime of temporary work, he thinks he's going to get them to have children? And he says he wants to get more women into the workforce...and have more babies at the same time? His economic flailing is never going to solve those problems, so obviously Japan is never going to accept any refugees. A few years ago there was a disaster movie called 'Japan Sinks'; as a series of volcanic explosions destroyed the country, Japanese citizens tried to flee to other countries, and the filmmakers took this opportunity to fan anti-foreign sentiment by having foreign governments refuse to accept them, forcing the hero to detonate nuclear explosives in the sea and thus stop the volcanoes. Yes, it was only a movie, and Japan is not going to sink, but the attitude of the film seems to be finding a parallel now: 'nobody would help us if we were refugees, so we don't have to help anybody now.' And Japan wonders why it is respected, perhaps, but not liked.

I guess it's over, then.

Since the girl was/is a minor, I can understand why she is not being named, but surely some enterprising reportage could reveal the name of the management company, rather than JapanToday just copying this from other media and legal reports. Perhaps we could also have a story on what mechanisms exist for removing incompetent judges from the bench?

Certainly the Democrats would love to see him as the Republican candidate.

Japan should take in a lot more refugees than the handful it does.

There are records dating back to the 9th century of tsunamis of the scale of those in 2011. And they had their backup generators in a basement when flooding was a significant risk. There's no way Tepco should be able to get out of its responsibility to the people whose livelihoods and communities its negligence has destroyed by hosing down some buildings and removing a few inches of topsoil. This was a totally man-made disaster. Those of us who have no choice but to buy electricity from Tepco will pay for it; I would rather be doing that as a taxpayer than as a customer. At least that way I'd be paying civil service salaries to the people who would have taken over had it been nationalized, rather than to the hand-picked favourites who succeeded the corporate executives responsible.

Democracy would be a fine idea for the U.S. as well.

Damned if I know. I wasn't alive in 1945. I would be very much against their use now.

Considering the predicament that the immense stupidity of its leaders had gotten Japan into over the previous 20 years, and the situation the Emperor had let himself be placed in, I would say in this speech he pretty well nails it. It's definitely one of the most important speeches of the 20th century, and the Japanese people by and large followed his instructions, the country going almost overnight from being the Daesh of its day to one of the best citizens of the international community. The change in attitude is very difficult for anyone who wasn't alive then (I wasn't) to wrap their heads around. I notice, however, a rumbling in the background about two thirds of the way through the speech; was there an air raid going on while he was recording this? And was NHK called 'NHK' then, or was it still 'Domei', the propaganda outlet NHK is in danger of becoming again today?

Reporters for the major newspapers here are assigned early in their careers to a certain beat, and never leave it. They thus come to identify more with the people they are supposed to be reporting on than with those they are supposed to be reporting to.

Americans...

METI, obviously trying to operate on the edge of their creative abilities, was attempting to ride on the coattails of a British campaign called 'Cool Britannia', which perhaps they didn't realize was a pun on the name of an old Imperialist hymn called 'Rule Britannia'. The joke, back in the Tony Blair era, was funny the first time you heard it...not so much so by the tenth. Its adoption here suggests how restricted is the competence zone of certain bureaucrats and their advisors, and how utterly lost they are once they stray outside of it.

Considering Mr Abe's attitude to how history should be written, of course it will vindicate him. His friends are probably at their desks writing it as I type.

The story is seriously incomplete without more information about who is doing the protesting and why.

Unfortunately it takes three weeks before the Prosecutors can step in and tell the National Police Agency they don't have a case. Whoever it is in the NPA that is responsible for this woman, and then Toyota, being treated as if she were part of an international drug smuggling conspiracy needs to be transferred to embassy guard duty. The price of getting a talented foreign executive to accept a job in Japan has just gone up about 25 per cent. This is how you turn Tokyo into a backwater.

Ironic that the Alamo gets in at the same time as the Blue and John Crow Mountains.

The security kabuki industry must be drooling over this opportunity.

I've always been surprised at how lenient the Japanese courts seem to be in murder cases when the victims are elderly.

Sorry, but if you wish on an artificial star, it probably doesn't count.