Lloyd Weems comments

This is part of Japan's attempts to whitewash its war time brutality in the Philippines. It's also part of a campaign to deepen military ties ahead of a Japan-Philippines-US alliance against China, which will be a key part of Abe's diplomacy after he amends the Constitution.

It follows on from the Emperor and Empress's visit to the Philippines earlier this year. Here's a fascinating and highly disturbing article which analyses that visit in great depth:

http://apjjf.org/2016/05/Kihara.html

Setting the global standard for weird, tiny hands.

Kerrang! Should be renamed 'Kerrching', as they are getting a cut of that soft-power budget.

And maybe that's why the presenter was less than gracious. You know, there are lots of real, hard-working bands that graft for years for no money to build a fan-base and make a career. Of course, it's not the girls' fault and there's no need to be rude. The article is garbage.

A complete waste of time and money. Except, of course, for those friends of the LDP who will make a vast profit.

The ridiculous government expenditure being eyed for the Maglev will make it one of the greatest boondoggles in human history, a colossal turkey the increasingly poor Japanese taxpayers will be subsidising for hundreds of years.

Plastic uimbrellas might not be the best item to test the moral standard of the borrowers --- who returns these these 100 yen things anyway? They are pretty much a one-way use item.

¥100 or ¥10,000, surely the principle is the same. The borrowers should return them.

the consequences of the officers not drawing their weapons are unknown.

Well, if they hadn't drawn their weapons they couldn't have shot anyone.

More childish passive-aggression from Japan. And who started it?

"The outspoken politician, infamous for racist gaffes, triggered the ongoing diplomatic row between Japan and China by announcing in April 2012 a plan by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to purchase three of the five Senkaku islets.

“They asked me what I wanted to do most, so I told them that it’s to fight a war with China and win. I said that as a Japanese citizen,” he said.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/16/national/politics-diplomacy/ishihara-bows-wants-war-china-compares-hashimoto-young-hitler/#.V1kh6OR-ZIU

Still wanna change the Article 9, Prime Minister Abe?

Of course he does. He's an old man. The only force he uses abroad is in cutting up his food at banquets.

But as temp workers have increased so much recently (of note, thats due to a LDP initiative a few years back promoting a privatized labour market) it means the temp agencies have increased their power

Yep, it was Koizumi and his Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy, Takenaka Heizō. Takenaka resigned from politics in 2005 and returned to academia at Keio University.

And where is he now? He's chairman of Pasona, Japan's second largest temp-staff agency.

You couldn't make it up.

You're the disgusting side of the internet.

No, they're just people.

The IOC needs a bigger carpet to hide all the scandal under...

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/news

Well done Mayor Fukuda. Let's hope he doesn't get shot in the back for his bravery.

I wonder if alcohol was involved.

Trump is a liar, a fraud and a criminal.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/trump-fails-to-create-promised-jobs-and-investment-in-scotland-locals-say-a6801466.html

It's beyond comprehension that anyone would ever vote for him, for anything, ever.

called the 27-year-old man to a dining bar in Fuchi last December, bound his upper body with an adhesive tape and kept beating him and poking his head and hands with an ice pick.

And none of the other customers noticed anything? Or said anything? I know nobody wants to get involved here but how could you possibly ignore some poor devil having an ice pick stuck in his brain and carry on eating. Weird.

Isn't it time to step down?

No, because he won't receive the full pension if he quits. He's desperate for money and entirely shameless, hence the refusal to fall on his sword.

Don't most households have 2-3 TVs? Its 2016, not 1950.

Actually, it's 1965. But with smartphones.

she was given special powers by a water goddess

You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

The 'war on the media' is largely a figment of the vivid imagination of the gaijin press corps in Japan

Yeah, right. That's why Japanese people call NHK Abechanneru , why Naoki Hyakuta wanted to have Okinawa newspapers "crushed", why an Asahi Shimbun journalist and his family received death threats. It's the gaijin!!

Expose what on the part of the police?

Pretty much everything, really:

"Ichikawa Hiro, a lawyer who gave testimony on police corruption in the Diet, says, ‘There is an institutionalized culture of illicit money-making in the NPA, and since it has gone on for so long it is now very deep-rooted’ (Akahata 2004:116). In 2009 a veteran police officer named Senba Toshirō, while still serving on the force, published a lengthy exposé of police corruption: financial scams, fabricated evidence, forced confessions, beatings of suspects, drug abuse by police officers, embezzlement from police slush funds, and much else. Senba’s sensational conclusion: ‘The largest organized crime gang in Japan today is the National Police Agency’ (Senba 2009:73)".

The laughs keep coming:

"Even so, cases where police officers forewarn local gang bosses about impending police raids are still being reported. A Hokkaido detective who held the police record for most firearms confiscated in a single year eventually confessed that he had cut a deal with a Hakodate yakuza gang: they gave him the guns and in return he pretended not to notice their 2-ton shipment of cannabis and crystal meth. In 2008 as many as 23 detectives and inspectors in the anti-yakuza squad of the Aichi Police Department were implicated in a bribery scandal involving the Blue Group, a Nagoya-based federation of brothel-owners and moneylenders with strong ties to the Kōdō-kai. Though one police inspector, who admitted to having accepted a ‘loan’ of ¥8.5 million from the Blue Group, received an official reprimand, the internal investigation otherwise appears to have fizzled out."

http://apjjf.org/2012/10/7/Andrew-Rankin/3692/article.html

That's what the boys in blue were up to a few years back. I wonder what they're doing now?

These are the numbers published by the government. I wonder what the real numbers are?

I bet a lot of these attacks are on the Hanzomon line in Tokyo.

That's my line and it's a total nightmare. Yet Tokyu Corporation is still building apartments way down in Kanagawa and Kawasaki hand over fist.

@ Garfield1275

I see your point and agree. Very often these Quote Of The Day comments are just taken directly from the original without providing a link to them so we can read the whole thing for ourselves - it may well be in this case that the professor did just that.

They do their best but, at the end of the day, they're just not designed to handle the sheer volume of people.

And it's only going to get worse as provincial Japan collapses and more people crowd into the Kanto area. The railway companies that own land alongside some of the longer suburban lines are throwing up apartment buildings like crazy, without any thought to town planning or commuter access.

Why the same laws aren't used to lock up the fascists is a question "journalists" should be asking the police.

Good luck with that. The LDP and their bully boys have declared war on the media and any journalist poking a stick into the filty deeds of the police is just asking for the smack of firm government. It would be a brave journalist indeed who tried to expose the police in this current climate of media intimidation.

Aren't a lot of these attacks on train staff committed by drunken off-duty police? As are many of the molestation attacks on female passengers. Perhaps if the police had better quality recruits there wouldn't be so much trouble.

Welcome to the real world where the poor and the needy are exploited directly and indirectly by the rich and famous. This happens in every society.

So no-one should do anything because that's the way of the world? Hopefully you'll never be in charge of anything if that's your attitude....

Abe said the commitment by the leaders to “use all policy tools — monetary, fiscal and structural” was an endorsement of his own “Abenomics” three-pronged strategy for reviving Japan’s sluggish growth.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. They said absolutely nothing of the sort. They didnt want anything to do with his crackpot Lehman Shock 2 nonsense.

A strange protest. I wonder who they are and who organised this. It seems there have been protests but most have been airbrushed out of media coverage. Why is this image being promoted by Fuji Sankei and not others?

http://www.gettyimages.co.jp/detail/%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B9%E5%86%99%E7%9C%9F/protesters-take-part-in-a-demonstration-against-the-g7-summit-%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B9%E5%86%99%E7%9C%9F/534540884/license

http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2016/may/26/g7-summit-opens-in-japan-in-pictures#img-9<><>

President Obama has restored some much-needed dignity and integrity to the office he holds. It's a great shame he will be leaving the world stage soon.

His staff are experts and I'm quite sure the ceremony will be conducted with sincerity and honesty.

It's called Never10

I used that. Worked a treat.