moonbloom comments

...if we go back in a time machine and take proper cautionary measures.

Finally someone other than LDP...in Tokushima.

Well, it's a start, and hopefully something to build on.

This was way too late.

Buying weapons is an extremely lucrative activity for government officials (not only Japan, although Japan definitely surpasses most countries in the amount of the public's money it uses).

No one should expect the LDP to curtail these activities, nor have they since the days of the infamous Lockheed Scandal, which shed light on the collusion of the LDP with yakuza in using the public' money to enrich themselves in buying commercial airplanes as well as military vehicles and equipment (the Prime Minister himself was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and had to resign in disgrace).

Of course this enormous scandal has been downplayed and no one raises their voice even as the military budget continues to break records every year, while normal citizens struggle with the daily grind.

One thing you can count on in Japan is the government to do everything it can to protect their monetary interests.

Hence people need to continue working, and a state of emergency held off on (that in itself would require more government spending, when it would rather use tax payers' money for projects that the government can profit off of, such as buying weapons).

Standard working procedure for the LDP and associates. That is the way it was founded. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world/cia-spent-millions-to-support-japanese-right-in-50-s-and-60-s.html

These changes implemented only after a campaign was started.

...Aaaand what'll you know, the US media is also complicit in presenting this as though Abe and co. wanted to postpone this all along for the sake of the athletes and citizens-

[ Facing heavy global pressure and rising athlete dissent, the International Olympic Committee sharply reversed course Tuesday and agreed with Japanese officials that the Olympics and Paralympics will not take place this summer in Tokyo in the wake of the growing novel coronavirus pandemic.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday proposed a one-year postponement to IOC leadership, including President Thomas Bach. The IOC quickly agreed that the Games would be held about one year after the previously scheduled start date, July 24.

“I have made a proposal of about a year,” Abe said. “President Bach said he agreed 100 percent, and we agreed to hold the Olympics by summer 2021.”

Abe said he and Bach agreed “to cooperate in order to hold the Olympics in the complete form, as a testament to victory over the infection.”

In a joint statement, the IOC and Japan’s Olympic organizing committee said they made the decision “to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.” ]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/03/24/japan-olympics-postponement/

Consider it swept under the carpet, Aso-san.

Yes and Japanese citizens/educators also don't seem to mind.

Having a clear understanding about Abe's class A war criminal maternal grandfather's role in and view of the situation may help us understand why Abe has been so persistent in trying to airbrush this issue-

[ Nobusuke Kishi (岸 信介, Kishi Nobusuke, 13 November 1896 – 7 August 1987) was a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. He is the maternal grandfather of Shinzō Abe, twice prime minister in 2006–2007 and 2012–present.

Known for his brutal rule of the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo in Northeast China, Kishi was called Shōwa no yōkai (昭和の妖怪; "Devil of Shōwa").[1] After World War II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as a Class A war crime suspect. However, the U.S. government released him as they considered Kishi to be the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction.

Kishi's racist and sexist views of Chinese and Korean women as simply ‘disposable bodies’ to be used by Japanese men meant he had no qualms about rounding up women and girls to serve in the ‘comfort women corps.' ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi

Yes well the state always throws the book at those who go against big companies.

Not surprising as the population has declined in number.,,and yet young people (Japan's most important resource) killed themselves in large numbers.

For unemployed people that's a sizeable amount, regardless of how it's divied up.

Hmmm, good timing to coincide with the Olympics, when all eyes are on the host country...

Hollywood big boys finally having to face the music.

Formerly actresses like Marilyn Monroe had to simply grin and bear it...and actually it wasn't just the actresses, apparently- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5046339/Marilyn-Monroe-told-Rock-Hudson-sleep-way-top.html

SpeedToday  08:18 am JST

I didn't think Japanese did these kind of things. DNA is different, right?

They generally would not, not because of their DNA, but on account of how they are socialized from a young age.

As another poster pointed out, it is probably the yakuza, who are go to extreme lengths (i.e. pillaging a farmer's whole harvest) to pay tribute money to their superiors.

It used to be that they would physically grab you.

After the law was passed, at least they don't do that anymore.

It was not an attitude confined to California. The spirit of the time was based on the theory of eugenics. Standardized testing was based on it and was said to prove the superiority of certain people.

If the Japanese ruling party had a shred of independence from their overlords (who via the CIA financed their formation and rise to power n the 1950's and 60's) they would be able to deduce and then verbalize something which would acknowledge that it would be difficult to honor an agreement that Trump reneged on. They are not able to for obvious reasons.

Sh1mon M4sada,

I agree that the politicians here have been cleverer in understanding that they can enrich themselves better if they create a more stable work force.

However, your statement that ch'aebols only think about enriching themselves while the Japanese corporations were "the pioneers of leftie ideas" is completely false. In fact the corporations worked closely with Japanese bureaucrats in using yakuza to break strikes and any opposition. It is the workers and opposition parties (yes, EXACTLY like the public forces in South Korea) who lifted their voices and forced Japan Inc. to provide better working conditions.

Sh1mon M4sadaToday 06:35 am JST

hmmm, Japan doesn't have chaebols...as a matter of facts Japan's corporations were the pioneer of cushy lifetime employment and other 'leftie' ideas, whereas SK chaebol were just there to enrich themselves at the expensive of the rest of the country.

Well Sh1mon M4sada I think you need to learn a little more about Japan-

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/japans-political-thugs-exposed-1553629.html

[ JAPANESE citizens have long suspected it, but for the first time it has come out in court: the nation's notoriously bribeable politicians are in hock even to the underworld syndicates, or yakuza, which perform much of their dirty work for them. And, appropriately, the politician at the centre of the bribery and gangster scandal is Shin Kanemaru, whose family name translates as 'circle of gold'.

The link between the political world and the yakuza came out this week in a court statement by the public prosecutor at the beginning of a long-awaited case over the Sagawa Kyubin trucking company. The case involves about 500bn yen ( pounds 2.3bn) in fraudulent loan guarantees and bribes made by the company to other firms and to politicians.

This kind of corruption has become standard fare and on its own would have raised few eyebrows among the cynical electorate. But during their investigations the prosecutor's office also dug up evidence that executives from Sagawa were acting as go-betweens for Mr Kanemaru, the most powerful politician within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and the Inagawa-kai, the main yakuza gang in Tokyo.

The revelation of this 'circle of gold' linking politicians to crime syndicates is highly embarrassing to Mr Kanemaru and the LDP. 'Our country has been made to look ridiculous,' editorialised the Mainichi newspaper in Tokyo. ]

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world/cia-spent-millions-to-support-japanese-right-in-50-s-and-60-s.html

[ "This story reveals the intimate role that Americans at official and private levels played in promoting structured corruption and one-party conservative democracy in post-war Japan, and that's new," said John Dower, a leading Japan scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We look at the L.D.P. and say it's corrupt and it's unfortunate to have a one-party democracy. But we have played a role in creating that misshapen structure."

The American occupation forces freed accused war criminals like Nobusuke Kishi, later Japan's Prime Minister. Some of the rehabilitated politicians had close contacts with organized crime groups, known as yakuza. So did Yoshio Kodama, a political fixer and later a major C.I.A. contact in Japan who worked behind the scenes to finance the conservatives.

A United States Senate subcommittee discovered that Lockheed Corp., seeking lucrative aircraft contracts, had paid $12 million in bribes to Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and the Liberal Democrats. The conduit was Mr. Kodama -- political fixer, tungsten smuggler and C.I.A. contact. ]

Of course you want to say this is all in the past, right? Well, everyone knows how eager Abe was to shred his hanami party guest list. And everyone knows Abe is the grandson of class A war criminal Kishi Nobusuke, who worked closely with yakuza.

✕

[ u_s__reamerToday  09:42 am JST

Anyone care to explain?

Maybe, the Japanese, who have a neurotic penchant for comparing themselves to other peoples, will begin to wonder about themselves, ask questions about their own society: their capitalist values, the disparities in wealth, the socially-structured injustices and their feckless, responsibility-averse politicians who preside over the worsening standards of living of the majority. My teaching Korean films to Japanese students has produced precisely this effect. ]

Great that your university allows you the freedom to do this.

sensei258Today  04:22 pm JST

No, teenage males who want to disrupt the final exams.

Actually no, if you've been following the news (i.e. the controversy over showing the documentary in Kanagawa which makes it plain that the Japanese gov't did use coercion and chicanery to make Korean women service Japanese soldiers) it is obvious this is totally about Japanese neo-nationalists.

It's also plainly stated in this story that not only schools but also a community center where cultural exchanges take place between foreigners and Japanese was targeted.

Interesting that when certain nationalities are targeted, no one generally seems to mind...had this involved overt hatred towards US or UK nationals, you can bet this article's comments would be lit up.

In the end, what does it matter? Everyone knows about the [ working poor ] situation in Japan, and its low ranking in life satisfaction survey. Foreigners like myself are fortunate to be able to have certain privileges/priority to certain jobs, but one cannot fail to see how hard it is for the average Japanese citizen.

[ Yes, Ghosn escaping Japan while on bail is illegal. However, the real criminals are the prosecutors who locked him up in solitary confinement indefinitely with constant threats of "Confess or it will get worse for you."}

Well-stated.

I had read that a FBI guy took a deep look into Japanese industries and found that most of them were connected to or involved with the yaks. I have heard they are connected to any industry that has to do with foreign labor like IT etc.

Yes that is correct. Unfortunately after the war we (the US) released A list war criminal core yakuza ring leaders and intimate associates from prison such as Kodama Yoshio and Kishi Nobusuke and then actually supported them financially to put the hammer down on student and worker activists. With this assistance the yakuza and their government associates have completely taken over Japanese society...after the Olympics it'll be onto the casino projects.

Sounds like you hope other yaks don’t kill themselves.

Was referring to his choice of living a pointless futile life of crime, one in which he was involved in killing other people.

Eerie that this occurred the day after Lebron passed him on the the all-time scoring list.

More yakuza wonderfullness.

Hopefully some of his associates will learn a lesson or two from his untimely end, and refrain from emulating him.

If it is Sex related..... the Yakuza actually have somewhat of a Mandate from the Japanese Government to handle that vice. Many other countries.... instead of gifting it to organized criminals have just legalized it. Some things.... if there is enough demand and plenty of supply.... you just cannot stop.

The yaks are not just in sex-related businesses, they are a core component of Japanese society and are deeply entrenched in all matter of businesses both legit and not, as well as the government (most often as financial supporters of ruling party candidates)...all areas of major entertainment, loads of restaurants, hotels, real estate, construction, etc. They are a major force pushing for the casinos to open sooner rather than later.