JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- Core Developer - コアディベロッパー
- Midokura Japan K.K. - ミドクラジャパン株式会社, Tokyo
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
- RCS (RCSコーポレーション), Kanto
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Seiharinokaze
OssanAmerica,
Territorial rights to the Spratly Islands are claimed by each nation around there. I think it's a bit strained logic to take it mostly as China's expansionism. If the Senkaku incident was really nothing more than a maritime police incident, they should release the entire 80 or so minutes footage to the public instead of reprimanding the officer who released a part of it on the internet so that we may know what really happened.
America's attempt to exert control of the South and East China Seas may escape China who has vast inland resourceful nations bordering it to the west. A plan to contain China among South and East Asian nations is like water off a peking duck's back, when SCO (the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) may even take those nations under its wing someday. If one party undemocratic totalitarian dictatorship can become a truly capitalistic country even challenging the position of No.1 economy, how can it not become a "truly great country" too? The shrewd bottom-liner may be just calculating the right moment to shed what they will have optimized.
Posted in: China's spats call into question 'peaceful rise'
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Seiharinokaze
Sorry for my poor writing, jasperandy, what I meant to say is: Don't be fooled by the strained logic by the U.S. that China oppresses South‐East Asian Nations over the Spratly islands. The attempt to contain China by rallying so called "oceanic nations" will not make much sense seeing as the vast inland nations to the west of China are not interested in the attempt. Besides China seems to have broken with Israel. So, instead of taking sides with anybody Japan should urge China to sort out her problems so as to keep her promise of "peaceful rise" and let her challenge the U.S. leadership if she really aspires to by becoming a truly great country. The point is Japan should get along well with China at any cost keeping in mind that a feud with China is just what somebody welcomes even historically. Did I make myself understood?
Posted in: China's spats call into question 'peaceful rise'
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Seiharinokaze
The dispute over Spratly islands is China vs Taiwan vs Vietnam vs Philippine vs Malaysia vs Brunei. Not between China vs others all in one. Japan should not buy into unmindfully such a stained logic in Hillary's assertion that the U.S. has a stake in the Southeast Asian nations’ territorial spats with Beijing. Arc to contain China from the seaside nations has actually not much sense seeing as the vast inland states to the Caspian Sea such as Kazakhstan and other central Asian countries seem uninterested in containing China. Even Saudi Arabia didn't send its delegation to the Nobel prize award ceremony this year.
So, Japan better not take anyone's side especially but rather pat on China's back and urge her to give a good account of her problems for her promise of a “peaceful rise" and let her challenge the U.S. leadership if she aspires at all by being convincingly great.
Posted in: China's spats call into question 'peaceful rise'
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Seiharinokaze
Rather than joining the largest-ever military drills with the U.S. which is against our Constitution and will only increase tension in the northeast Asia, Japan should urge the U.S. to keep the agreement of 1994 which the U.S. and North Korea concluded in Geneve so that they can find their ways to denuclearization and eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula through a peaceful process.
Posted in: Military maneuvers
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Seiharinokaze
Not sure how "Sukiyaki" and "Каникулы любви" (VACANCE DE L'AMOUR) end as Americans and Russians expect, making them feel that a promise to speak their musical language has not been betrayed. (Russians seem to have something more akin to Japanese taste than Americans though.) But music is no accounting for tastes, still less a promise, so who cares if I enjoy listening to the covered version of Wakareuta or the Parting Song by Nakajima Miyuki sung by Hirai Ken and Kusano Masamune?
Posted in: Does J-pop really suck?
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Seiharinokaze
If these people urge China to democratize itself, they better not align themselves with anti-China stance. How about using the Five-Colored Flag if not the Blue Sky with a White Sun flag?
Posted in: Hear this
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Seiharinokaze
Don't know much about the conservative groups that hosted the event, but are they related or sympathetic to those who put the dropped case of Ozawa to the judgment of the prosecution inquest panels? Anyway people in general do not buy their anachronism that "We should not want made-in-China things until we win."
Posted in: Anti-China protest
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Seiharinokaze
I can almost see America smirking.
Posted in: China says Japan distorted facts in island dispute; no meeting between Kan, Wen
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Seiharinokaze
Ms Clinton just laughed at the words of the America's lap dog who assured her that he has no intension to sort out or do "shiwake" on the sympathy budget for the U.S. bases in Japan.
Posted in: Laugh-in
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Seiharinokaze
We have almost no other ways to say it in one word other than by, for example, "defure" or "infure". And they don't kill any understanding of the original words though they may look stupid to foreigners. As for the extra vowels, unless you put them to consonants, I'm sorry you kill the sound system of Japanese. You are not supposed to disturb the system (it's called "kototama" 言霊) when speaking Japanese. So you cannot say "trio" but you always have to say "torio". As for "howaito" for white, the aspirated sound (often pronounced by the phonetic sign "h") at the beginning of the word also has to go with a vowel. You may say it "huwait", but somehow aspirated sounds came to be expressed by "ho ホ" in this language. Anyway it's a matter of how to let them function safely in the Japanese language, however stupid they may sound to the outsiders. So don't bother, it's a Japanese business pure and simple.
Posted in: Too much katakana contributing to Japan's malaise
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Seiharinokaze
Japan's economic turning point was the Plaza Accord in 1985 and the easy-money policy that followed gave birth to a bubble economy that had to burst in time. Then the financial Big Bang ushered in global standard. Produce at the most efficient (cheapest) place and enter the most affluent (richest or resilient) market and invest the profit with leverage in the most proficient place. It's a system that lets world money inflow into America by making the handful of people still richer (kachigumi or winners) and the majority of people including Americans poorer (makegumi or losers). And its fallout is the disappearance of the middle class and increase of haken-shain or dispatched workers. As well he may call it malaise.
Posted in: Too much katakana contributing to Japan's malaise
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Seiharinokaze
Chinese did not become the official language of Japan for the last 2000 years however heavily adopted from the language of the central glorious super power in East Asia. How will it become so in 40 years? People have to be agitated so that anger and anxiety may mount. China threat and anti-Japan sentiment have to be built one way or another. The reason why the Senkaku where nobody lives and which has never been a source of friction between the two countries historically has now to be an east end of Megiddo comes of course from greed for seabed gas and oil but at the same time it's also in line with some sort of scheme. Let land avarice be hammered out on the table or even under the table with charming Chinese people while let warmongers and affiliated profiteers do it somewhere else like up in the moon.
Posted in: Thousands in Japan, China rally over island claims
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Seiharinokaze
Kanji words pronounced in a Chinese-derived way (on-yomi) are similar to katakana words into which foreign words are transliterated. They are not foreign words but "Japanized" foreign words. Igirisu, for example, comes from Portuguese Inglez which must have sounded as "inguresu" to our ancestors' ear. And it became a Japanese word. (It has scarcely anything to do with the word England.) So basically katakana words are not pernicious to the Japanese language. They are sort of interface by which we can adopt foreignness (new words, new ideas) safely within the framework of the native tongue. So don't worry, it does not mean a loss of self pride whatsoever. Rather a heritage if anything.
What the writer to Shukan Post wanted to say is the stupidity that Japan piles up trade surplus, much part of which was invested back in the U.S. and vanished with the spendthrift habit of Americans beguiled by financial engineering that imploded with the American “subprime” crisis. And yet Japanese (the bureaucrats of the Finance Ministry) cannot stop investing in America to finance their huge federal deficit. And while we are at it, the worth of the paper we buy is rapidly dwindling. He calls it malaise.
Posted in: Too much katakana contributing to Japan's malaise
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Seiharinokaze
Too bad that the translated titles are not half so tasty as the original ones.
movies:
Floating Couds 浮雲 by Naruse Mikio
Record of a Tenement Gentleman 長屋紳士録 by Ozu Yasujiro
novels:
The Setting Sun 斜陽 by Dazai Osamu
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea 午後の曳航 by Mishima Yukio
A Strange Tale from East of the River 濹東綺譚 by Nagai Kafu
Night on the Galactic Railroad 銀河鉄道の夜 by Miyazawa Kenji
Posted in: What books or movies would you recommend to anyone wanting to gain an understanding of Japanese people's way of thinking and culture?
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Seiharinokaze
Anti-China and anti-Japan campaign start again and again on both sides. And it's always a plausible-faced fisher in troubled waters who instigates from behind and waits to see if he can let them do a proxy war for his ultimate end. Reject such nonsense.
Posted in: Japan, China test each other's diplomatic resolve
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Seiharinokaze
Too late to have it out now after he was sent back to China. Shallow-witted Maehara as hawkish Foreign Minister dared to capture the Chinese fishing boat in borrowed plumes or perhaps at the instigation of Big America without expecting how Assistant Secretary of State would later comment on it and how furiously China would retaliate. As a result poor Kan administration was blown away. We should note however that China has been all the while aware of how the U.S. and the new government in Japan are aiming to utilize the confrontation between Japan and China and strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance by emphasizing China threat and the necessity of deterrence by the U.S. Forces and thereby hopefully solve the Futenma relocation issue. China knows what she does and outfoxes Kan and the like. And simpleminded animosity would do more harm than good with clever China.
Posted in: Japan asks China to pay for damage to patrol boats
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Seiharinokaze
tian4670, I think Ryukyu islands territorially means Okinawa. That's why the U.S. occupied them including the Senkaku islands. But at least it is clear that at the point of 1953 the China's Daily didn't dispute the islands. But what's more important is there are people perhaps on both sides and even somewhere else who want a strife and actual collision around Senkaku. They are speciously creating tensions and letting them get out of control.
Posted in: Japan asks China not to escalate fishing boat spat
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Seiharinokaze
tian4670, The article described the islands not as Diaoyutai in the Chinese name but Senkaku Shoto in Japanese as part of the Ryukyu islands. It means the islands are part of Okinawa right? Do you mean Japan should talk about it?
Posted in: Japan asks China not to escalate fishing boat spat
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Seiharinokaze
tian4670, I appreciate your views on Mr. Armitage. He may want to create such a strained environment but I don't think he will be successful. We have to strive to prevent it. But do you really think it helps that Japan acknowledge the dispute and sit down to talk? Doesn't it rather escalate the tension on the Chines side, particularly among the people? Will they accept any result from the dialog?
As for your question on maps, if you read Japanese, please refer to http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/尖閣諸島領有権問題 and see the section 年表 under which you can read that in 1958 a publisher in Beijing published such a map. And on January 8th, 1953 the People's Daily described the islands not as Diaoyutai but as the Senkaku Shoto as part of Okinawa.
Posted in: Japan asks China not to escalate fishing boat spat
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Seiharinokaze
Unlike the case of Takeshima/Dokdo whose ownership Korea claims based on misreading of historical records, China has surely their records of their own that verify their recognition of the islands going back to the 15th century? But it does not mean that China recognized their ownership of the islands. The rulership started with Japan. As a supporting evidence of which, China regarded the islands as a Japanese territory in their official documents/maps before 1971 and didn't dispute it until then. These are matter-of-facts Beijing knows well and perhaps she also expects that in response to China's stance Japan will increase its defense spending as advised by someone like Mr. Armitage. If you don't feel any dejavu, reversed one, here, you may still find it interesting to see how we can keep tensions for such a long time. Are you really going to dispute and take the Senkaku?
Posted in: Japan asks China not to escalate fishing boat spat