voiceofokinawa comments

OssanAmerica (Mar. 14 07:06 pm JST):

That's why Henoko is a better location than Futenma. But some people keep trying to block the move. 

You think Henoko is the best choice for Futenma's relocation site, because the target area is less populated than the current site in densely populated Ginowan City. But will not Henoko-based Ospreys be flying over other parts of Okinawa to transport troops and arsenal should a contingency occur?

Britain and Italy would not have signed this joint project unless Japan firmly assured them that there would be no problem for Japan to export the jointly developed finished products to third countries. In other words, PM Fumio Kishida's decision to sell or export lethal weapons to third countries, despite the long-held three principles controlling arms export, is a fait accompli.

LDP, the party which he heads, approved the exporting of next-generation fighter jets to third countries in a knee-jerk fashion. But will other parties, especially those in the opposition camp, do likewise?

Wasn't the issue debated in British and Italian parliaments?

With this generous financial support, can IAEA carry out its job as an effective nuclear watchdog?

The purpose of Cultural Revolution that stormed China in the latter days of the Mao era was to eradicate everything concerned with the past and traditions.  Red guards destructed everything that smacked of the past.

I hereby ask: Are traditional values and wisdom all bad? Must they be done away with completely for more modern ideas and values?

Jimizo,

It's true that constitutions often change and are rewritten. But the change is usually over wording, or addition of clauses, not the change of the spirit behind it.

Or when there is a regime change, along with it a constitutional change. Even so, universal values remain the same.

Constitutional rules are written on the basis of common sense. Thus, marriage is stipulated in Article 24 of the Japanese constitution as a union between two agreed sexes, i.e., an agreement between man and woman. Same-sex marriage is out of consideration here.

Without knowing the real cause of the crash, they are to resume Osprey flights? 

If Osprey pilots may need upgrading their flight skills, people living under their flight routes must

always feel scared of another fatal accident.

If you think you are outnumbered in a war, you may be tempted to use nuclear arsenal to change the situation. So, Putin's warming to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine may not be a simple bluff.

Speed (Mar. 12  04:59 pm JST),

However you're killed, it doesn't matter -- you die, it's horrible and the end. Whether it's by firebombs, a bullet or a nuclear blast, it's all hellish and I don't think one way of dying is any worse than another.

Why are weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, banned internationally in a war? Your theory allows the free use of such weapons.

The following figures are what I picked up on the Internet for the Pacific War.

Number of deaths on the Japanese side, excluding A-bomb victims

 IJA soldiers: 2,300,000

 Civilian deaths in Japan proper: 800,000:

 Total: 3,100,000

 U.S. soldiers: 1,600,000

 British soldiers: 85,000

 Total: 1,685,000

 Total number of war dead in Asian-Pacific countries: more than 20,000,000

Were these 20 million people in the Asian-Pacific countries killed at the hand of atrocious IJA soldiers?

Some people say this huge U.S. military footprint in Japan, especially in Okinawa, is the end result of Japan's Pearl Harbor Attack. Futenma Air Station's Henoko relocation in Okinawa is a point at issue. In other words, the U.S. is keeping bases as a retaliation of Pearl Harbor against Japan 79 years after the war ended.    

About 140,000 died in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki from the two atomic bombs. If that were a retaliation for Pearl Harbor, that was no doubt too excessive beyond anyone's imagination.

The fact that such an event as a memorial service to mourn and pray for the solace of the war dead makes the Americans react with so much brouhaha seems to me to tell something very serious and considerable.

In Japan, it is usually the case that annual memorial services are held not only for the war dead but also for the victims of natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, etc.

Correction:

The acronym IPA in my post above should be IJA, Imperial Japan Army.

smithinjapan (Mar. 10  07:00 pm JST),

Facts about Pearl Harbor and Great Tokyo Air Raid:

Pearl Harbor--

Military personnel deaths: 2488

Civilian deaths: 46

 Great Tokyo Air Raid--

 Mostly civilian deaths: about 100,000

If the Tokyo Air Raid was carried out in retaliation against the Pearl Harbor Attack and IPA soldiers' atrocities in Southeast Asia, the differential in these figures is absolutely too much.

Gen. Curtis LeMay and his subordinate Robert McNamara planned the Great Tokyo Air Raid and carried it out. While designing the master plan, they talked with each other, saying that they could be subjected to a war crime tribunal if the U.S. lost the war. So, both men were fully aware of what they were doing.

Tax dodgers are severely punished by law in any country, and yet it is the law lawmakers themselves in Japan who initiate to violate the law by making loopholes in it. Hence, the brouhaha about the slush fund scandal currently storming the Japanese political scene. 

PM Kishida says exporting next-generation fighter jets serves national interest. But these fighter jets are lethal weapons, no doubt, whereby Japan is supposed to be unable to export such weapons to third countries for profits under the pacifist constitution. And so, Kishida is instigating the nation to take the initiative in violating the constitution. 

Britain and Italy would not have participated in this joint project unless they had been assured by the Kishida government that there would be no constitutional restraint and the Japanese people’s opposition to the selling of the finished products. 

Is taking the initiative to violate law and principles a prerogative of the government or powers that be?

I wonder if this trilateral joint project hadn’t been subject to parliamentary debates in Britain and Italy.

One of the decisive factors that determines the course of a war between two warring countries is their respective GDP or resources. The U.S. won the Pacific War (WWII) over Japan because its GDP was twenty times as much as Japan's at the time when the conflict started.  

Some of the war strategists, especially those in the Navy, knew about it, but they went to war against the U.S. anyway, believing Yamato-damashii (Japanese fighting spirit) will win out.

But you know the rest of the story.

Correction:

Wagner's chief was Yevgeny Prigozhin. I apologize for the mistake.

Facts are that (1) Alexei Navalny was a political arch-enemy of Vladimir Putin: (2) Navalny was recuperating in Germany from a nerve-gas attack to kill him; (3) Wagnel's Prodizhin, a visceral anti-Putin regime, was mysteriously killed in an aircraft accident, the mastermind of which is rumored to be Putin; (4) that when he returned from Germany to Russia in 2021 Navalny was arrested and sentenced to a 2.5-year imprisonment, which was eventually extended to a 19-year imprisonment. 

The cause of his death may be natural death as Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, says. 

But is it really?

When the tri-partite project to develop next-generation fighter jets came up on the table, probably with support by the U.S. government, which wants to make Japan a future partner in jointly developing lethal weapons, such as Aegis Ashore, for example, Tokyo must have assured both Britain and Italy that there would be no impasse on that.

In other words, the Japanese government had already broken the pacifist constitution. That is always a fait accompli. Explanation to the Diet and the nation comes after it.

Probably, behind the scene is the U.S. government, now encouraging Tokyo to go ahead with the joint project. Washington must have a far sight in the future of Japan-U.S. relations and eventually encourage Japan to participate in joint defense projects with it, to save money.

In light of pacifism struck home in its pacifist constitution Japan has maintained three principles of non-production, non-export and non-purchase of lethal weapons. And so, at the start of negotiations to jointly produce next-generation fighter jets, the UK and Italy must have sought Tokyo's assurance that Japan's pacifist constitution and the three non principles are no hindrance for the joint project of producing next-generation fighter jets which could be exported to third countries for profits.

The other problem I see with the current system is how to write long vowels as in Shohei Otani. Wikipedia represents the name as Shohei Ohtani. But to be consistent, they should write it as Shohhei Ohtani. Unlike in stress-oriented English, the long-short vowel distinction is very important in accent-oriented Japanese.

In every litigation involved with the landfill work for Futenma's relocation to Henoko, seven so far, the Okinawa Prefectural Government (OPG) has lost to the central government completely. Doesn't the OPG know there is no separation of powers in the Japanese political system and that the judicial and executive branches are all part of the same gang?

And so, I propose the OPG change its current litigation strategy. Futenma is an illegal property by nature because it sits on illegally confiscated private lands. In other words, the U.S. Marines are using Futenma, and occupying the land, like illegal squatters, and so they have no right at all to demand for a replacement to be provided in exchange for its "nominal" return.

The national broadcaster NHK has a program called "Another Stories". When I complained about the illogicity and ungrammaticality of the expression, they replied that the expression was a proper expression (noun) and so they had every right to call the program by whatever name they liked.

In comparison with other languages, like French, for example, Japanese is very nonchalant about using loan words or supposed loan words (Japanese-made English loans). This may be related with the nation's national character to easily succumb to or adapt to a superb foreign culture. 

It was the Chinese language, especially its writing system, that played a role model for elite Japanese; today, it's the English language that overtook Chinese. English loans or supposed English loans (Japanese-made English loans) are inundating the Japanese language like hell.

I wonder how Japanese will have changed in a hundred years from now.

Economic development and population increase seem to be intertwined with each other very closely. So, countries with a declining birth rate will have no bright future for economic development as against countries with an increasing population.  

That's how entrepreneur Elon Musk sees the future of Japan.

But the decline of a birth rate is not Japan's problem alone. It will hit every country sooner or later. Population and economic growth would not go hand in hand forever, as Musk optimistically hopes they will.

He is sure to address in his Congressional speech that the bilateral ties between Japan and the U.S. have been strengthened and that Japan would share more responsibility in its defense, thus doubling and tripling its defense budget despite the pacifist constitution.

Accordingly, U.S. bases in Japan, especially those in Okinawa, will be more strengthened and fortified with Japanese taxpayers' money; the construction work of Futenma relocation to Henoko will be further facilitated despite a strong local opposition.      

What a sad state of affairs it will bring about!

In ancient times when there were no borders marking countries, the islets in question must have been called by the same name, from which Dok(-Do) in modern-day Korean has been derived and Take(-shima) in Japanese.

Yubaru (Today  12:39 pm JST),

Are you being obtuse on purpose here? HERE is the LEGITIMATE and ONLY response. (Once again!)

 Who's being obtuse here, you or me? I've repeatedly asked you if an agreement between fences over stolen goods is effective and legally binding under a nation's criminal law. You have been mum on that question on purpose?

Yubaru,

 your "ideas" are wrong. Plain and simple. You just wash-rinse-repeat the worn out drivel, over and over again

You call my argument "drivel" and often lambaste me by saying that I am 100% wrong, without presenting a legitimate argument of why it is so. TI's not a conscientious argument. It's nothing but name-calling without any significance at all.