Capuchin comments

The Panda's death is very sad and all but is it really such important news that they need to interrupt regular programming? At a time when the country should be having a very serious debate about it's own future and government in the wake of the Fukushina committee report instead we treated to tear jerking images of a baby panda. It's really quite frightening.

On the plus side the image of some opportunistic entrepreneur sitting on a pile of now unsellable panda merchandise gives me a grim sense of satisfaction.

I wonder if he dreamt up that "People first" slogan while he was busy fleeing the Capitol after the Tohoku earthquake.

@jonobugs

Officially registered cults/religions number in the tens of thousands in Japan. I think it's partly because as someone mentioned before Japan breeds a very collectivist culture through its education system, media etc. But the main reason is that religious institutions are exempted from tax. You'll find that many of these "cults" are little more that shrewd businessmen men who fabricate their own doctrines to dodge taxes.

If you want to see just how widespread this stuff is just dig up some information about one of Japan's biggest cults Soka Gakkai. I'm not sure what is scarier lunatic weirdo cults like Panawave or giant conspiracy cults like Soka Gakkai.