JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
- RCS (RCSコーポレーション), Kanto
- Salary: ¥180,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month includes performance bonus
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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BrightEyes
Time for the US to pull out. Japan needs to man up a bit. It has been relying on US protection for too long and doesn't have the guts to do what it needs to do to defend itself. The US should pull out while Japan will still be upset about that. No need to wait around for a few more decades while the country slowly makes its peace with its former victims and then pretends that the US presence has long been some sort of imperialist venture. Leave now. They'll positively freak out. Then they'll miss us. Then they'll deal with it. Then they'll thank us.
Of course, we could always stay around a little longer if they begged.
Posted in: Okada says U.S. troop burden on Okinawa needs easing
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BrightEyes
Funny. You've got one woman who worked as a sex-industry reporter and somehow these candidates represent the nexus of politics and porn. Meanwhile the LDP bigwigs are frequenting the Soaps and we're to believe that they're somehow very serious.
Posted in: Politics meets porn in Japan
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BrightEyes
Item 1:
Item 2:
Gee. I wonder if there's a connection between these statements.
Posted in: Walkman outsells iPod in Japan
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BrightEyes
I find it amusing how many people think that China could actually stand a chance against Japan in a conventional war. The Chinese can't even take Matsu and Quemoy from the Taiwanese. The Japanese MSDF is way stronger than the Taiwanese navy. The Chinese could as soon invade the moon as they could Japan. The only real threat the Chinese represent is the nuclear one, but if they won't use it against Taiwan, there's little reason for Japan to fear that they would use it against them.
Japan needs the US alliance for one reason and one reason only: It's politicians haven't got the guts to use the power they have. Japan doesn't lack arms. It lacks guts.
Posted in: Hatoyama unlikely to change U.S.-Japan alliance
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BrightEyes
My God!
I agree with Nigelboy too.
What is the world coming to?
Posted in: Voting under way in general election with DPJ favored to end LDP rule
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BrightEyes
No.
Any city that elects Ishihara as its governor does not deserve to host any international event. Period.
Posted in: Would you like to see Tokyo get the 2016 Olympics? If your answer is no, then why not?
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BrightEyes
These boycotts are going to result in more people playing this game than if they had ignored it. There were like 2 copies at Amazon. Now the thing is going to be on the torrent sites and will be a cult hit with thousands of man-boys with low self-esteem getting their jollies fantasizing about raping women who in real life could probably kick their asses.
Posted in: Boycott of violent Japanese video game urged in U.S.
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BrightEyes
The hilarious thing about all of this is that the only matter of importance in blood types when dealing with relationships is the rh factor. If an rh positive man has a baby with an rh negative woman and that baby is also positive, then the woman can develop antibodies which will create problems for later children who are also rh positive. This can now be handled medically without too much difficulty, but it is something that people planning to have children should know.
Nevertheless, many Japanese who are obsessed with their ABO types don't have any idea about the one protein in their blood which actually could have a bearing on their relationships.
Posted in: In Japan, you are what your blood type is
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BrightEyes
I always thought she was a sweetheart. The world is a sadder place without her in it.
In her too-short life she brought more happiness and pleasure into the world than all the mouth-breathing puritanical hypocrites and posturing closeted perverts in the world.
Posted in: Ai Iijima's last days shrouded in mystery
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BrightEyes
Sarge,
Sorry, but Connery had the best all time 007 wisecrack, and, true to character, he pulled it off without saying a word.
(Bond Walks in on Fiona Volpe in the bathtub)
Fiona: Give me something to put on!
(Bond picks up her shoes, carries them to the tub and drops them)
Posted in: Which actor's portrayal of James Bond is the best?
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BrightEyes
Wanderlust,
You are right about Connery in Never Say Never Again. He was already losing it in Diamonds Are Forever. In my opinion, he should have stayed retired after You Only Live Twice. The funny thing about Connery is that middle age was really unkind to him, but he regained all of his animal magnetism when he got older.
Posted in: Which actor's portrayal of James Bond is the best?
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BrightEyes
The character of Bond is essentially a killer. The two most menacing Bonds are Connery and Craig. Connery has a sort of devil-may-care swagger and confidence that everyone, save Craig, has tried to imitate but has not quite captured. Connery pulled this off because he honestly looked like a man who just believed, from the very depth of his being, that if it came down to him or you, you would be the loser and it would be quite painful. So much the worse for you. The swagger of the later Bonds didn't ever catch that hard edge, though I have to admit, even though I was never fond of him, Lazenby probably came closest.
Craig didn't even try. Instead he went with his own reading of the character. His Bond is both deeper and darker. He has an aura of anger, deep-seated and nonspecific anger, searching for an outlet. He is a highly unstable mix of melancholy and rage. I think Dalton went for this, but just couldn't pull it off. Craig nailed it.
So I think Craig and Connery were the best, but Craig is the more interesting characterization in my view.
Posted in: Which actor's portrayal of James Bond is the best?
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BrightEyes
American needs Japan, but not nearly as desperately as Japan needs America. Without American diplomatic, strategic and military patronage, Japan would be at the mercy of North Korea.
Without Japan, America would be further in debt to Saudi Arabia and China.
To posit equivalency is simply absurd.
Posted in: Can Uncle Sam bounce back?
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BrightEyes
Funny how after eight years of Bush so many of the reason-challenged here think they can already fault Obama for the mess the country is in.
Pathetic.
Posted in: Now comes hard part for Obama: governing
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BrightEyes
It's a great day to be an American. Congratulation President-elect Obama.
Posted in: Obama sweeps to victory, says change has come to America
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BrightEyes
Cleo,
It seems that you are now accusing me of believing that the cause of the Allies in the Second World War was morally superior to the cause of the Axis.
You are correct.
I do indeed believe the cause of the Allied powers was morally superior to that of the Axis.
Do you believe otherwise?
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
Sailwind,
I understand the bond between military men on opposite sides. I just don’t believe it’s worthy of the blind respect you seem to believe it is. That’s all.
You see, that’s the bond that made American military officers fete Goering like royalty after he surrendered himself to them. That’s the bond that caused General Charles Willoughby to shield people like Arisue Seizo, Hattori Takushiro, and Tsuji Masanobu, war criminal extraordinaire and one of the principal culprits of the Bataan Death March, from prosecution.
It’s the ethos of the warrior, as opposed to that of the soldier. The warrior is the man who chooses arms as a profession not because he is willing to endure hardship and put his soul at risk to protect something greater than he, but simply because it suits his basic nature to dominate others and to kill them. He cares little if his cause is just or about the ends to which his lethal skills are applied. I despise warriors. It is they, above all, who make war not only possible, but inevitable.
Soldiers, on the other hand, fight because they have to, and they only do so after they have genuinely exhausted and they deserve respect to the extent that their cause was just.
War is very serious business and it should only be undertaken in deadly earnest. If those you are killing don’t absolutely need killing, or are not advancing a cause so evil that it absolutely requires killing, then you have no business being enemies in the first place.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
Cleo,
You know, I am still having trouble understanding the argument that you are trying to make. I wonder if you have an argument at all. This is our exchange as I understand it:
You assert that winners write history.
I point out that that is total nonsense and I provide countless counter-examples to refute the claim.
You make counter-factual arguments based entirely on your own understanding of how the world works, an understanding which I showed to be at variance with reality with previously noted numerous examples.
I point this out.
You continue to insist that no, even though you can’t provide a single concrete example to back your premise, you are right. As evidence you refer to counterfactual arguments based on your flawed understanding of the world.
This approach lacks cogence.
Incidentally, I noticed that even though you made a significant retreat from your earlier assertion “winners write history” now has become something like “winners write history if and only if they completely dominate and occupy their foe.”
Very catchy that.
Too bad it also is demonstrably false. One need look no further than two of the examples I have ALREADY provided: that of the American South after the US Civil War and Japan after World War II. In World War II, Japan DID surrender. American generals DID occupy the nation and (quite literally) lay down the law. Still, there is no shortage of Japanese writing the history of World War II. Many who did were former officers of the Imperial Army. Many of those officers were even hired by the victorious power to write their own history.
Moreover, we can see that even in cases where the conquered were essentially extinguished and had not even developed the capacity to write that they are not necessarily judged to be wrong.
Is there a Cherokee work on the Trail of Tears? Do most people think that the policy of expelling them from their homeland was right?
No. The Cherokee lost. They lost everything and were almost exterminated. And yet most people who have read their history (overwhelmingly based on accounts written by non-Cherokees) seems to sympathize with them and not those that drove them from their homes.
How about the Australian aboriginals? Did they win? From my understanding they were totally dominated, expelled from their lands and, in many places, hunted like animals.
Do we now all treat the ruthless proponents of “white Australia” as being in the right? I mean, after all, they did win. Do our sympathies lie with those who exterminated them?
Even when the winners do write the history they condemn themselves in their own writings.
So, to sum up, every point that you have asserted in this argument has been shown to be at variance with reality.
Every single one.
Without exception.
And that was the strong part of your post.
You then tried to make the argument that the people in the photo were right to commemorate a unit involved in the commission of atrocity to further a manifestly evil cause because they BELIEVED they were doing the right thing.
See if you can follow me here: I don’t care what they thought. I care only what they did and what cause they served.
You see, I believe in right and wrong. Whether people who commit atrocity to further evil ends FEEL that they are right matters not one iota.
Furthermore it matters not one iota that you FEEL that the hackneyed pablum that passes for wisdom among those who are as pretentious as they are lazy is valid. It doesn’t matter no matter how many times that you assert that it does or that your ridiculous counterfactual speculation is actually more important that what is actually contained in the historical record.
You see, the doctrine that those things are the most important consideration has a name. That name is moral relativism. That, along with fantasy, is what your arguments are based on.
There is right and wrong. It is incumbent on us as moral human beings to, insofar as we are able, not only do right and avoid wrong, but to encourage right and obstruct wrong.
By memorializing a military unit that was engaged in evil actions for the furtherance of evil ends, these men are doing something that deserves condemnation.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
Cleo,
In your last post you have come very close to achieving high comedy, managing to pull off the difficult feat of not only contradicting an assertion that you made earlier but to actually be wrong in both of them.
Allow me to elaborate.
In an earlier post you wrote: “No one ever goes to war in a pernicious cause. Each side thinks they're in the right, God is on their side and the other side is heading to Hell.”
Now you assert that: “In the past, there were no niceties of 'just war' and 'nefarious war'. Kings attacked their neighbours in order to expand their own power, influence and wealth, and had no need to explain themselves to voters.”
Which is it, does everyone always assert that they were right or did no war worry about the “niceties” of justice in their cause? Don’t bother to answer for it matters little which of your contradicting assertions you attempt to support. They are both wrong and in order to see this one would have to look no further than the Melian Dialog from Thucydides, who, I remind you was not only the first true historian, but was also a disgraced loser.
Alcibades, a prominent leader of democratic Athens and a man who most certainly did have to answer to the voters, led a delegation of his countrymen to the isle Melos, whose surrender to Athens they demanded. Melos had made no aggressive move. Its only crime was to be in Athens’s self-defined sphere of influence without submitting to Athenian hegemony. Addressing the Melian emissary, Alcibiades spoke for his state’s cause:
“For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences- either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us- and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
To which the Melians responded:
“As we think, at any rate, it is expedient- we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest- that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current. And you are as much interested in this as any, as your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon.”
So here, we see two things. First both sides, way back “in the past” were indeed acquainted with the idea of a just war. Moreover we see that even understanding such, men, men leading democracies, men who had to answer to the voters, would indeed knowingly go to war without even a pretense of being in the right. Thucydides, the disgraced loser from defeated Athens, has laid Athenian cause laid bare in all its cynicism.
This, I remind you, is in the very first work of history.
Ah, yes, but I suppose that you will now fall back on your groundless assertion that I am speaking “of reports that have come down to us from long ago, when the world as a different place and war far removed from what it is today.”
Because obviously this sort of things cannot happen in modern times. I mean, after all, who has ever seen a book on Vietnam written by an American? Who among those who lived in Japan ever saw a book on the Second World War, written by a Japanese? Oh, that’s right. Everyone.
You know the most absurd thing about your contention is that this discussion in its concrete form stems from Japan’s participation in World War II. The fact is that not only have Japanese written endless volumes on the subject, but Japanese military officers -- many of them war criminals -- were hired BY THE US ARMY to write their side of the story.
Still, in spite of the overwhelming weight of evidence to the contrary, you still feel rather strongly that you are correct here. The problem is that your feelings do not constitute an cogent argument. Nor are they particularly well served by groundless speculation and still less by assertions that are demonstrably false.
I repeat: History is written by the writers. Victory has nothing to do with it.
Now, as to your assertion that I am reading too much into what the men are commemorating, I can only respond that you must be joking.
There is a photo of two men holding the banner of a military unit that fought to further an evil cause and I have said that I find that reprehensible.
You, on the other hand, without any evidence whatsoever have argued that “More likely they are remembering the young lads who were brainwashed/coerced into climbing into the kaiten.”
Then you speculated that “maybe they're just remembering their fallen comrades. And thanking their lucky stars the war ended before it was their turn.”
What we know for certain about these men is this: They are at a right-wing site, on a day laden with meaning for right-wingers, carrying the banner of a military unit whose mission was to kill people in the furtherance of an evil cause.
Everything else, is mere speculation, and all of that speculation is on your part alone.
Next we come to your assertion that “when you do those profoundly evil things and still fail to prevent the even more evil things from coming to pass, you're still stuck with having done profoundly evil things.”
That is so obvious I don’t see why you felt the need to state it. The problem is that you feel that this somehow makes the refusal to do evil things morally superior to the commission of evil acts in all cases. That is not obvious. If you fail to commit an evil act and thus allow an even more evil act to transpire then you are complicit in that greater evil. One is responsible for sins of omission as well as those of commission. It is not always possible to remain pure and unblemished by evil. The task of a moral being is to weigh one’s options and to become compromised by as little evil as possible.
The studied negligence of moral narcissism is not superior to the ugliness of compromise.
Now at last we come to the final and total bankruptcy of your position.
You assert that right and wrong have no place in judgment because what is right and wrong differs according to perception and belief. You have in short based your argument on moral relativism and the rejection of moral absolutes.
The problem with that is that you have on numerous occasions already employed or allowed moral absolutes in your arguments.
To wit: you have agreed with my assertion that waging war requires the commission of “profoundly evil” acts. You have condemned warfare.
Finally, you have tried to establish your own position as superior to mine. However, if the only thing that matters is our subjective understanding of right and wrong then you are in no position to judge my argument for I would not be making it if it were not right to me. As you implicitly deny the validity of a universal truth, you negate the possibility of disputing my argument. That is to say that the premise of argument is inherently contradictory and negates the very validity of making an argument at all.
Posted in: Yasukuni
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BrightEyes
Sailwind,
Apology accepted.
Posted in: Yasukuni