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
- Salary: ¥4.0M ~ ¥10.0M / Year Negotiable
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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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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Seiharinokaze
GW,
You say "no one or any country has asked Japan to sit on the sideline". And then you wrote "Japan wonders why her neighbours don't trust her to become more militarily active." Don't you think your logic is rather self-contradictory? As for coming to terms with WW2, you are kindly requested to realize what San Francisco Peace Treaty and the following bilateral treaties were concluded for. The war as well as the cold war were long since over. It's you who must be living in some dimension.
Japan should basically defend herself on her own and try to keep security in the Far East through peaceful measures. Japan should not follow without check what the U.S. may pursue. That should be the gist of her diplomacy. What are you so dissatisfied with it for?
Posted in: Japan says talks on U.S. base issue suspended
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Seiharinokaze
Japan's problem? Then what about the return agreement of Okinawa in early 1970s that stipulated the U.S. government pay 4 million dollars as the cost to restore the land appropriated for military use to its original state? The U.S. didn't respect it and Japan paid it instead. And by a secret deal, Japan assured the U.S. of free use of Okinawa as the base not only for the defense of Japan but for the Korean peninsula, Taiwan, Vietnam and others. Nukes were also allowed to be brought in and 2 hundred million dollars were paid to the U.S. as a secret fund to help return Okinawa that touched off what would become the "sympathy budget". The US-Japan alliance was originally to protect Japan during the cold war and for Japan to provide the base. But it was transformed into something that requires Japan to serve as the rear base for the U.S. military agendas beyond East Asia.
It's as if Japan is not expected to act on her own initiative in foreign/security affairs but just to follow policies dictated to her. For this country just to follow in the footsteps of the U.S. forever is getting to be out of place in this region. We better shake off mind control and decide the future of this country on our own. Wall Street that milked Japan of money might be the alter ego of those who think it pays to deploy troops from Okinawa and spread war in Asia.
Posted in: Japan says talks on U.S. base issue suspended
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Seiharinokaze
OK, it may be a good reading anyway. This kind of narrative always gratifies my historic curiosity: why the priests of Suwa shrine at the foot of Mt. Moria at their Onto-sai festival bind up a boy aged around 8 years and whip out a sword and then after hearing the men say "So-so (mazu mazu)" unbind him. The severed heads of deers are offered instead to the deity. This festival rite has been practiced from ancient times far before 1500's.
If Judaism or Nestorian Christianity came to Japan, they may have been morphed into something harmless that allows its believers to pray for other gods too. Being Japanized may be a hint for reintroducing Christendom here.
Posted in: Rediscovering Japan, Reintroducing Christendom
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Seiharinokaze
Beelzebub,
Rather, Japan welshing.
Posted in: Obama's bow to emperor causes outrage in Washington
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Seiharinokaze
Japan's debtors are almost 100% Japanese whilst those of the U.S. are mostly foreigners. The U.S. economy can only survive as long as Japan and China help make up for the huge U.S. budget deficit. Japan's example offers very little guidance in that respect. The magic of the U.S. economy is already lost and the world are actually beginning to flounder to square up to the doomsday/big bang or the end of the Bretton Woods system.
Posted in: U.S. risks following Japan's example of stagnancy
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Seiharinokaze
Something unheard-of and extraordinary seems to be happening.
Posted in: U.S. urges Japan to decide on base issue before Obama's visit
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Seiharinokaze
Kyotoites don't trust French sense of taste, perhaps. See what Rosanjin did at La Tour d'Argent.
Posted in: Prominent Kyoto restaurants say no to Michelin
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Seiharinokaze
She looks clever. Her taste for sumo and her favor for a baseball player who is generally not so popular but plays in an austere style may tell her intelligence. BTW I haven't seen such a long braided hair for long.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/news/20091017-OYT1T00920.htm?from=y10
Article Unavailable
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Seiharinokaze
Best policy is the stance of never killing. And then help construct irrigation canals to make their land which was once quite fertile arable again and if necessary instruct farming technology.
Posted in: How can Japan best help in Afghanistan?
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Seiharinokaze
Rather subtle timing of being awarded when the president is now considering whether or not to approve to send more troops to Afghanistan and attack Taliban's training camps in Pakistan and even Iran. Prodding at the heartland has actually destabilized the region. Sending troops to cut off supply line has been a turning point in some of the past wars to be bogged down into a morass.
For the peace prize not to sound too hollow, will the president ever also persuade Israel to abandon nukes while trying to check Iran's pursuit of nukes?
Posted in: Do you think U.S. President Barack Obama is a good choice for the Nobel Peace Prize?
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Seiharinokaze
Tokyo’s alternative way to help stabilize Afghanistan should be based on the recognition, even if not shared by America, that stationing foreign troops for long for whatever reasons in the heart of darkness of the continent gives rise to anti-American sentiments and violence among the natives.
Al-Qaeda's self-proclaimed reason for 9.11 was because America stationed its troops in Saudi Arabia and supports Israel which occupies Palestine. Though America already pulled troops out of Saudi Arabia, they still keep some troops in Iraq for preventing terrorism and shifted its main front to Afghanistan where they actually see no signs of major Al-Qaida presence. In this operation of enduring freedom for Afghanistan, Al-Qaida seemed to be confused somehow or other with the Taliban. The cause of violence by Al-Qaida as described above is different from that of the Taliban. The Taliban, as supercub wrote, is not a group that aims at terrorism and slaughter. They originally stood up to bring peace to and rule Afghanistan based on Islamic fundamentalism where order had been lost in its civil war and regional warlords got away with whatever they liked. They were not anti-American and had no intention to attack America either. It's just after the U.S. opened an attack on them for sheltering Al-Qaida and stationed troops that they began attacking the foreign troops.
There is a concern that if the U.S. withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, the Islamic fundamentalists will rule the two countries and spread their influence to Pakistan thereby attacking the Western countries. But Mr. Magosaki Ukeru, a professor at National Defense Academy of Japan and the former ambassador to Iran, argues in his book "Nichibei Domei no Shotai (True colors of US-Japan Alliance) that such inference is not valid according to the tenet of Islam. The Quran teaches:
Therefore if they withdraw from you but fight you not, and instead send you guarantees of peace, then God hath opened no way for you to war against them. (WOMEN Chapter 90)
It does not tell you to pursue war against those who withdraw from you. But stationing the western troops in Afghanistan and Iraq will shake up their defensive battle. As long as they keep stationing troops, the battle will continue, stirring anti-western sentiments and making for more offensives. Japan’s alternative way to help stabilize Afghanistan might as well be based on this perception.
Posted in: Should Japan continue the SDF refueling mission in the Indian Ocean, which has been in place since 2001 in support of U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in and around Afghanistan?
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Seiharinokaze
grafton,
The U.S. maybe has its own national interests to pursue.
SDF's Defense Outlines prepared a few years ago shifted weight of its activity from UN-oriented to international-oriented, and SDF now shares the military strategy with the US forces while stating clearly that China is Japan's potential enemy. Though the recent dispatch of SDF to Iraq and the Japanese navy to the Indian Ocean may be a small step, many people began to sense that these steps are designed to have Japan gradually prepared to use its military might. In this sense the DPJ government can be any counteractive against paving the way for Japan having to fight with its potential enemy again.
Posted in: Do you expect changes in the U.S.-Japan alliance following the change of government in Japan?
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Seiharinokaze
USNinJapan2,
The word naval reminds me of the Imperial Japanese Navy that did also aircraft and air strike operation. Sorry, the U.S. built an air force base in Kandahar. No offense, but the war on terror also reminds me of a slogan Japan used to spread the endless war in China by rejecting to deal with the KMT government. A vague morassy war.
Posted in: Do you expect changes in the U.S.-Japan alliance following the change of government in Japan?
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Seiharinokaze
I am not sure if Japan is no more a "Sit, stand, bark!" tame dog. But it may be time for Japan to humbly ask to gain the ear of her partner if not master that no western powers have succeeded in subjugating Afghanistan and that they were all put to rout in the end. And since most Afghans killed so far by the U.S. army had no actual relation with terrorism, the people of this country may begin to question if the U.S. constructing its naval base in Kandahar as part of the war is really for nurturing freedom and democracy but rather procuring pipelines to secure oil and natural gas from the central Asia through Afghanistan. Then they may or may not approve continue refueling. But they will put everything to light and have discussions held on how we want our country to behave. That's what is happing now.
Posted in: Do you expect changes in the U.S.-Japan alliance following the change of government in Japan?
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Seiharinokaze
The U.S. has been letting Japan make fine industrial products to be exported to the American market in exchange for dollars which they can roll out endlessly by running the printing machines. And then the dollars or trade surplus Japan diligently accumulates have been retuned again to the U.S. by way of another magic wand or the U.S. government bonds. It's called the dollar hegemony system fortified by the U.S. forces stationed in the seemingly dangerous environment of the Far East. The LDP has come down to being the local magistrate office with its cunning self-serving bureaucrats as permanent vice ministers virtually making policies by secret or open order from the suzerain. And now the DPJ is being regarded as the opposing power to all that.
The DPJ derives from the former Tanaka faction of the LDP. Though Tanaka Faction has a dark image of money politics, they were the ones who tried to be less dependent on America. Tanaka Kakuei, the founder of his name sake faction, lost his position because he explored for a new route for securing energy other than the international oil capital. The Tanaka faction was not anti-America but within the framework of the present U.S.-Japan alliance they tried to precede as much of the national interests over others as possible. The DPJ has such heritage in itself, and they are seizing powers at last, something unnerving to America. Beginning of the end of the postbellum system.
Posted in: U.S. closely watching pivotal Japanese elections
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Seiharinokaze
The reason why FRB has decided to suspend purchasing of the U.S. government bonds and buy 2.5 trillion dollars worth of RMBS（Residential mortgage-backed securities）and corporate bonds by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is not because they are in a different place than before with substantial return to normalcy within sight but because investors are beginning to sell them at a sacrifice. They realized the Ponzi scheme the U.S. has been doing to collect money from all over the world. No signs to verify a return to normalcy, but rather desperate stopgap measures for what has to break down substantially on the world level.
Posted in: World emerging from deep slump but can it last?
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Seiharinokaze
Jesse Veverka san,
I don't object to your idea of featuring Yasukuni shrine as a symbolic focal point to look at China’s re-emergence as a great world power in the 21st century. But the relationship between the two countries has a history of more than 1500 years, even almost 2000.
For a change of approach, how about taking up Koyasan the head temple of Shingon-Shu set up by the priest Kukai, for example, or Eiheiji Temple by Zen priest Dogen? The two temples are good instances of the great world power China giving influence on small uncivilized Japan. Esoteric Buddhism was introduced from Tang at the beginning of 9th century and Zen Buddhism from Sung in earnest from 12th century. But both dynasties as well as esoteric and Zen Buddhism perished in China. The offspring of the emperor who sent a greeting to the emperor of the dynasty before Tang still survives over here and the people often ask the priests to invoke divine help for their happiness and there are even those who sit in meditation for themselves in Zen temples too, just in the way as introduced originally. Isn't that any suggestion for re-emergence of China in the whole span of vicissitudes, a familiar theme in the Far East?
Posted in: Don't try filming at Yasukuni Shrine
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Seiharinokaze
Beelzebub,
I see your point. But Edo was actually furnished with running water. Tamagawa Josui (waterworks) was finished in 1653. Water was taken from the Tama river at Hamura and came to Yotsuya through the Nogata canal and from there flowed underground through wooden gutters to the Edo castle and Toranomon. In later days water was supplied to Aoyama, Mita and even Nobidome, Saitama.
Back on the topic. Please don't forget the night soil. It was traded as fertilizer at a high price. Ultimate recycling.
Posted in: What we can learn from Edo Period about recycling
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Seiharinokaze
VoXman,
No, sir. The first reply of Aug. 10 by the Japanese leadership to Potsdam even though it was something reached after the cabinet was deadlocked at their tether's end and the Emperor was asked to decide on their behalf was that Japan would accept it with the condition of assurance of the emperor's position.
And to it, the Allied response on Aug. 12 was: From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms.
And then again the Japanese leadership came to a standstill over the interpretation of "be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers". They split by 3 to 3 on whether or not to accept the Allied reply. And again the Emperor was requested to decide (聖断). When did the Emperor or anyone else held out in any tangible and explicit way to the Allied side for a negotiated peace that would have allowed the IJA and JGOV of 1945 to escape any responsibility?
Posted in: Poll in U.S. finds support for World War II atom bombings
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Seiharinokaze
onibaku,
Sorry I haven't read the book by De Mente yet. But he seems to base his theory on the book by Dr. Tsunoda which I read several years ago. The right half brain of humans irrespective of races and nationalities is called a "music brain" which mainly processes music, mechanical sounds and noises in general. Whereas the left half brain is called a "language brain" that processes intellectual and linguistic information such as human voices and speaking. But Dr. Tsunoda found out by his auditory experiments that the westerners or peoples other than Japanese and Polynesians hear insects chirring with their right half or music brains, whereas Japanese and Polynesians hear them with their left half or language brains. So Japanese may hear insects not as sounds but voices. Everything started from here. But I cannot say yes or no yet to De Mente's argument since I'm not sure how Dr. Tsunoda's theory leads to the conclusion that Japanese are a superior people.
As for the Japanese possible advantage to dialogue with nature, Dr.Tsunoda's theory may be one proof. And Basho's haiku another I should say. At least I don't feel Mother Nature in a Christian church, but I can feel something embedded in nature in the woods behind the front shrine or haiden 拝殿 in some old Shinto precincts. A tree hewn down from the mountain once in a while becomes a god too. If the Japanese are behaving in as pathetic a way toward nature as other peoples, then at least I may say we are still remembering that our ancestors lived and talked with nature. And the brain processing of natural sounds we discussed here may be a vestige of those times and a not so harmful narrative at that, from which I hope we can take some hint for our future.
Posted in: Why the Japanese Are a Superior People