Wednesday February 15, 2012

MASSWIPE's past comments

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    MASSWIPE

    Before the bursting of the bubble, wage earners were able to supplement their “kozukai” with generous outlays from their employers. But due to cost cuts, entertainment budgets and other perks enjoyed by these “shayo-zoku” have gone the way of the Brontosaurus.

    This is the key passage in the above article, and the key to understanding what kozukai was and was not during Japan's halcyon Cold War days. The system worked fine so long as companies provided de facto social welfare benefits and other assorted goodies to their male breadwinner employees. In other words, the breadwinners were never supposed to be totally dependent on allowances doled out to them by their wives. But that's become the case for a lot of them over the last 10-15 years. Hence the increasing recognition that the kozukai system may no longer be viable, because it's evolved into something it was never really meant to be.

    Posted in: The shrinking state of Japanese salarymen's pocket money

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    MASSWIPE

    Ah, this topic yet again. Strong feelings about this issue can be summed up in two words: Charisma Man. Like most things in life, it comes down to issues of sex and power. Thus, the more accurate question here should be "Why is there so much resentment of white males teaching English at any level in Japan?" Because white males are the target, of course. Females and non-whites who teach English in Japan are, generally speaking, assumed to be there for reasons beyond sexual satisfaction. Plus, it's assumed they have to put up with more unpleasant stuff, like sexism, loneliness, and negative racial profiling/discrimination.

    Also, this resentment of white male English teachers in Japan results from the belief that a human being's value is derived from what he/she can do, skill-wise. The white male English teacher's blissful, care-free, well-sexed existence in Japan is a violation of the idea (among those who don't consider language teaching to be a skill) that there should be negative consequences to living life as a professionally unskilled, unmotivated person.

    Posted in: Why is teaching at English conversation schools in Japan such a maligned profession by some people?

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    MASSWIPE

    It's a bit surprising that there are so many out there who believe that the US needs to maintain bases in Okinawa to prevent China from trying to "settle scores" with Japan in relation to events that occurred more than 65 years ago. I guess views have changed since US President Nixon told the Chinese premier in the 1970s that the American military presence in Okinawa, Iwakuni, Yokosuka, etc. functioned like a cap on the bottle of latent Japanese militarism.

    But the Chinese Communists aren't stupid. They've ruled over the world's most populous nation for more than 60 years, and it's hard to understand how it would serve their interests to launch a campaign of "revenge" against Japan, a nation that was judged the loser and aggressor in World War II.

    Posted in: Anti-base ad

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    MASSWIPE

    Thank you for this article. The information it contains is true: the number of murders committed in Japan reached its annual postwar peak in the middle of the 1950s, when the country had 40 million fewer people than it does today. Thus, Japan was actually a much more dangerous country back then, if per capita murder rates are anything to go by. So much for the glory of mid-Showa Japan.

    Posted in: Murder in Japan

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    MASSWIPE

    Cleo, I wasn't referring to the propensity of young Japanese to throw away their food in greater quantities than their elders. I was responding to the ridiculous assertion by "bdiego" that malnourished people in developing countries "aren't half as hard working as the average Japanese" The younger people of Japan, like all citizens of wealthy, developed, unitary countries, have largely lost the "deprivation motive" to do the kind of work that means the difference between malnourishment and starvation in a lot of other places.

    Posted in: NPO seeks to teach Japan virtues of 'waste not, want not'

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    MASSWIPE

    "At least Japan produces this food in the first place"

    I seriously doubt Japan produces all of it, given the country's low rate of food self-sufficiency. And if you think the many mollycoddled Japanese born in the last forty years work harder than malnourished people who do back-breaking manual labor in developing countries, please explain how.

    Posted in: NPO seeks to teach Japan virtues of 'waste not, want not'

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    MASSWIPE

    "It was the Japanese PEOPLE that brought Japan out of the hole they were in in the 50's. Government had nothing to do with it."

    nisegaijin, you're confusing economic growth with social welfare policy. Moore was referring to the latter (which I know you don't care for, given your rabid anti-government rantings). It's ridiculous to claim that the Japanese government had nothing to do with the creation of National Health Insurance or an employment system that prioritized job security over the demands of shareholders for higher returns on their investments. To claim that the Japanese government was irrelevant in these areas is to claim that the Japanese are a naturally communalistic people who share the pie by instinct. They don't. The Japanese government had to intervene to create the kind of society where the CEO of a major carmaker makes "only" a few million US dollars per year.

    Posted in: Moore urges Japan to recover caring social security system

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    MASSWIPE

    "Thousands who died in the Pacific War must be spinning in their graves."

    The bow is excessive on President Obama's part, but please spare us the above histrionics. Dead US soldiers probably started spinning in their graves in late 1945, when they realized that MacArthur & Co. weren't going to drag Akihito's father out of the Imperial Palace and do to him what Italian partisans had done to Mussolini earlier that year.

    Article Unavailable

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    MASSWIPE

    I'm a bit skeptical about Adelstein because he sometimes comes across as a non-stop self-promoter who can't remind you often enough that he was the first/only American/white person/foreigner to do this/that in Japan. But there are indications that his book may actually be worth buying: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/randoEMS/Jake_Adelstein.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Vice-American-Reporter-Police/dp/0307378799&usg=__1jLA-hFTUaXQkc69jN0QI4rkyCU=&h=154&w=200&sz=5&hl=ja&start=14&tbnid=e_X1JAvMC2iPdM:&tbnh=80&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djake%2Badelstein%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Dja%26sa%3DGth

    Posted in: Reporter's look at yakuza gets personal

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    MASSWIPE

    Lisa, so your friend tells you that teaching English is the "McJob of Asia" before you even go there, but you do it anyway, and after a FEW YEARS you're still in "the game", as you call it. Why? And what game are you talking about? Spending several years of your life doing a job that is the college graduate's equivalent of scanning groceries is definitely NOT a game.

    Except maybe for university jobs, anyone with outside interests and motivation should approach English teaching the way US policymakers perhaps should have approached the war in Iraq--go in with a timetable and an exit strategy, and stick to them.

    Posted in: The McJob of Asia

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    MASSWIPE

    Nigelboy, don't prattle on about places you don't know. If you're taking Noriko Savoie's side here because she is Japanese and nothing else (which I suspect), just admit it. You're basically no different from Japanophobes siding with the father because his ex-wife IS Japanese.

    Some posters have gotten it right: taking sides in this case is foolish.

    Posted in: American father arrested in Japan had asked Tennessee court for help

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    MASSWIPE

    I meant "ethnic" in that last comment

    Posted in: American father arrested in Japan had asked Tennessee court for help

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    MASSWIPE

    "If you think the two kids are better off with them than living in Japan with their mother and the support of her family, then we have nothing to discuss"

    Why not, Nigelboy? What makes you think Noriko Savoie and her family members will be any better at raising those children? Is it simply because they're Japanese? If so, why? If that's your only reason for taking the mother's side (Noriko and her family's ethic background), and if you don't know the two parties personally, then you have no case.

    And if you're going to expose your own ignorance and bigotry by referring to a place in Tennessee that you probably know NOTHING about as "Hicktown", then (as Whitehawk nicely showed) a lot of people have nothing to discuss with you, either.

    Posted in: American father arrested in Japan had asked Tennessee court for help

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    MASSWIPE

    Razor's point about Debito's passport is correct. Just as many Japanese are paper drivers, Debito is a paper Japanese. I can't think of a better argument against naturalization in Japan.

    And I hate to write this, but I think it's true: if Debito weren't white, he'd be taken more seriously by more people. Whites in Japan enjoy far too high a level of material and financial comfort in Japan to be seen as a vulnerable minority under attack. And this Mr. James advertisement is, I think, a part of the universal and basically accepted tendency of non-whites to poke fun at the mannerisms and speech patterns of whites. The ad has more in common with the black comedians of Def Comedy Jam than with any expression of Japanese xenophobia and arrogance.

    Posted in: Mr James

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    MASSWIPE

    "Yeah, and now they're useless. What's your point exactly?"

    That we shouldn't forget how effective the LDP was before it became "useless". Voters in a lot of countries (especially the US&UK) tend to be ingrates who "throw the bums out" the moment they stop delivering the goods. Japanese voters, to the immense frustration of a lot of people, were willing to stick with the LDP way past the expiration date. Why? I don't know. Perhaps because they remembered the incredibly good times in Japan from 1960-90 and believed that ONLY the LDP could return Japan to that kind of glory.

    Posted in: Voting under way in general election with DPJ favored to end LDP rule

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    MASSWIPE

    "proof that it wouldn't have happened anyway, no matter who was in power."

    cow76, I almost never find myself on the same side of an argument as the Japan-worshipping nigelboy (see above), but you have to give the LDP some credit. From the introduction of PM Ikeda's income-doubling plan in 1960 until the oil shock of 1973, the LDP was in power the whole time and the Japanese economy took off like a rocket. The LDP provided Japan with stability in a time of tremendous upheaval elsewhere.

    Would this have happened under Socialist or Communist rule? Maybe, but those two parties almost certainly would've ended the US-Japan Alliance in 1960. The US in turn, perhaps, would've told the Japanese to kiss goodbye preferential trade treatment, an artificially low yen fixed at 360/$, and massive technology transfers. All that would've strangled the development of Japan's postwar manufacturing sector in its infancy. Then again, maybe not. Nothing can be proven in counterfactual historial debates.

    Posted in: Voting under way in general election with DPJ favored to end LDP rule

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    MASSWIPE

    Before we all join in on the anti-LDP pile-on, let us remember: The LDP ranks right up there with the military dictators of South Korea, the KMT of Taiwan, the British colonial government of Hong Kong, Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore, and yes, the Chinese Communist Party, as one of the architects of (maybe even the leader of) the so-called East Asian economic miracle that transformed the global economy in the 2nd half of the 20th century.

    If you had told the average American in 1955 (the year the LDP was formed) that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan would be among the world's leading manufacturers of automobiles, televisions, and other electronic appliances by the first decade of the 21st century, he probably would have laughed at you. Not anymore.

    Maybe it's premature to write, but thanks LDP for helping make Japan into the very appealing country that it is today, despite the flaws.

    Posted in: Voting under way in general election with DPJ favored to end LDP rule

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    MASSWIPE

    This is the second time in the last month that a public figure in Japan has "joked" about buying foreign territory (Ichiro Ozawa said the same about Jeju Island, given the strength of the Japanese yen vis-a-vis the Korean won). Do elitist Japanese think this is funny? Or is it a sign of an emasculated nation that can only express power projection in terms of yen?

    I seriously doubt Mino Monta would've said something like this last year, when Russia was flying high with oil at nearly $150 a barrel. Yet another example of a public figure in Japan turning arrogant and presumptuous when a perceived rival looks weak. I guess you could call it "selective modesty."

    Posted in: TBS clarifies Mino Monta’s remark that Japan should buy back Northern Territories

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    MASSWIPE

    "You can call it Japan model."

    Many people would prefer to call it "howling with the wolves", which is why so many people consider the actions of Japan from 1868-1945 to be so deplorable rather than heroic or justifiable in any way.

    Posted in: Why I’m bullish on Japan

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    MASSWIPE

    Mr. Koll has an almost religious faith in Japan, and he is entitled to his opinion. But again, one can't help thinking that he is talking up Japan to at least partially serve his own interests as a Tokyo-based investor.

    Posted in: Why I’m bullish on Japan

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