Yasumasa Arai comments

A person who likes to have a talk with its friend, shall come to knock the firend door. It is a simple rule of universal.

****I write here a column of Kankoku Mainichi Keizai Newspaper, released on Nihon Keizai Newspaper, Febr. 25, 2015. which is the matter of fact of currency swap treaty, under going to terminating coming month. It's OK. One thing I am shocked, they write this matter in quite different sense from us, average people of Japan, here in Tokyo, with which once we used to recognize how friendly Japan support Korea as her counterpart , for instance,on the occasion at Asia Monetary Crisis of 1997. Their column said Japan had bluntly and cold withdrew her money from them. It seems they have had almost no acknowledge or thanks to Japan's generous attitude to help them. It is quite sad ,if we are standing out of the fact what was really happen then. Yassie.

*Pax Americana is the best choice for Pacific and East Asia , still now !

FarmboyJan. 25, 2014 - 08:57AM JST 2.At Yasukuni, the spirits of the war criminals, as well as any remains, if they exist, should be moved to another location using the appropriate Shinto ceremony. This will allow shrine visits by politicians to Yasukuni shrine, since all countries have places for their war dead. China and Korea should accept this as a move forward.

Farmboy, your idea is smart and understandable, I think to the most of people of Japan. Your idea is able to make it of segregation between enshrining a war dead person as the State Authorized War Dead (SAWD) and as the Religion (Shinto) Authorized War Dead(RAWD). I believe that the people of Japan have sincerely and undoubtly accepted the judgement of Tokyo Tribunal to WWII. They also respect it in following the international way how to treat the dead war criminals. Every country, as you know, has its own religious way to treat a person- in-dead under judged as criminal. The Japanese society is inherently polytheism. So, they have a cultural tradition of Aminism which takes every spirit, either of good one, and even of bad one taken by enshrining as gods or spirits. The former idea may be easy for you to make a sense and the latter one be a little hard, but it is our firm and deep desire of halting its wake-up and not coming- back to our world again. For an example, famed Kanda Myojin Shrine, of Tokyo is enshrining General, Masakado- Taira, who was a war-criminal in 10th century in Japan. I ask you to understand it as this is the way of religious transaction in Japan. I know this is quite different idea from unitheism, like Christianity and others, where evil spirit is to be denied and ousted parmanently from this world. I am sorry that I have no knowledge how Chinese and Korean society have their ways with respect to the like case. The Yasukuni dispute is definitely no more than the domestic problem. This is out of diplomatic card to make hostility.

Also with universal health care, more people die in hospital than at home, which often means no autopsy.

A person who died at it's home, the autopsy is inavoidablly carried out by law. Yes, I remember when my father- in- law died, his corpus was immediately moved to the police, from his home and stayed one night at police. We have an odd feeling, but it is as sense.

I think that is decent and sincere investigative journalism, trying to make sense of the situation. The most important is how our tax money is spent {would it be better given directly to the homeless or filtered down through the Yakuza }?? The homeless are not in a position to rescue themselves and find themselves inevitably in a "gray-zone". It may not be right, but it is a fact. As for government money going through a series of contractors and sub-contractors is concerned, this is how things work the world over. The point is, I think, that the relatively new Ministry of the Environment has not yet acquired the proper contract writing skills. I am astonished that 5 sub-contractors out of 50 or more are not properly identified. It's bad management on both sides. If you say this is a rotten system, you are quite right. In this respect, the investigation is a valuable contribution and I hope that the authors are continuing their investigation into examples of such mal-practice. I am a retired engineer with a 40 year career with a large chemical company in this country and experience of working with contractors. It is quite ridiculous that sub-contractors have not been identified before-hand. So the point I want make is this country is not all rotten and dysfunctional. I acknowledge the work done by the journalists here but I would say that the title of the article is inadequate, since it does not reveal the true extent of the problem.