|
Wibbleman posted:More interesting is the concept that a country is not responsible for what it does when it's not a democracy. Which would pretty much apply to Japan in this case as well for pretty much everything done until 1946 or whenever the first elections after the war were (which is why it is a stupid position to adopt). Would apply if the country didn't continually elect descendants and sympathisers of the people who were responsible.
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2016 10:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 17:13 |
|
|
So it wouldn't apply in Korea either then.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2016 12:03
|
|
|
Mr. Fix It posted:Is there any legal basis for overturning a treaty because the ruler was a dictator? The 1965 aggreement is a legal and in-force treaty as far as I know. Would the RoK be willing to give back that money if it really is illegitimate? I understand the moral argument that Japan should do more, but there is no legal grounds for it. There's no legal basis for or against it. International treaties are for the most part, voluntary agreements between states. There are some treaties that are parts of larger international frameworks which aren't this way, but as far as I'm aware theres no international convention that binds a state to a treaty surrendering its right to demand formal reparations. Which makes the Japanese right-wing's claim seem weak. The moral issue on the other hand, is pretty clear, and what you should focus on if you actually care about the victims of Japanese war crimes. The Kono statement was good, but it has, sadly, been significantly undermined by the statements and actions of Japan's politicians and governing bodies. Even if that wasn't the case, the Kono statement is still not an acceptance of legal responsibility, and if anything has been made clear by the groups representing the surviving comfort women, it's that legal responsibility is key. Wibbleman posted:More interesting is the concept that a country is not responsible for what it does when it's not a democracy. Which would pretty much apply to Japan in this case as well for pretty much everything done until 1946 or whenever the first elections after the war were (which is why it is a stupid position to adopt). Obviously average Japanese people shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of the Imperial Government, but the Japanese government itself should be held responsible for its actions. You're probably going to argue something like "well the Japanese people will still be on the hook because they pay taxes" but this isn't necessarily the case. You could raise the money for reparations by taking it from the estates of deceased war criminals for example. Red and Black fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jan 23, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2016 01:06
|
|
|
How exactly would the Japanese government accept legal responsibility? Pass a special law saying that individual comfort women can sue the Japanese government in Japanese courts and automatically win (assuming this wouldn't actually require a constitutional amendment), which would be totally different from just paying them money directly?
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2016 01:24
|
|
|
mystes posted:How exactly would the Japanese government accept legal responsibility? Pass a special law saying that individual comfort women can sue the Japanese government in Japanese courts and automatically win (assuming this wouldn't actually require a constitutional amendment), which would be totally different from just paying them money directly? Here you go. The Japanese government would probably have to set up a process for determining who receives reparations. It could be within Japan's court system. I think ideally though, you would use the ICC and the Rome Statute, which both Japan and Korea are party to.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2016 01:38
|
|
|
A lot of the entries on that page seem pretty similar to what Japan has already done; why do those count as accepting legal responsibility when what Japan has done doesn't?
mystes fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Jan 23, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2016 02:06
|
|
|
mystes posted:A lot of the entries on that page seem pretty similar to what Japan has already done; why do those count as accepting legal responsibility when what Japan has done doesn't? Not the same as Japan because the treaty that concluded WW2 legally bound Germany to pay reparations. Japans statements and payments so far have been presented as voluntary offerings to ease tensions. It's not the same thing. The survivors of Japans war crimes want a legally binding agreement similar to what Germany faced.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2016 02:15
|
|
|
If the issue is ultimately a moral and not a legal one how would a stronger legal setup for reparations change anything? The Japanese right would still be revisionist, even as it paid out the legally mandated sums. The basic issues is that the Japanese right are revisionists, and the German right is not. Legally binding agreements will not change that, the whole issue is a distraction. If South Korea decides they don't want to deal with Japan so long as the Japanese right are revisionist that's entirely their right, but they should just come out and say that instead of playing this neverending game where they demand and Japan accedes to legalities and formalities that both of them know aren't going to change anything
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jan 23, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2016 02:23
|
|
|
It isn't exactly a bilateral thing though. South Korea isn't the only country that was a victim of Japan's atrocities during WWII. Japan is worried that if they formally give in on this it will be used as precedent by other countries, who will want their own repirations.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2016 03:37
|
|
|
Wait, you mean Japan would be accountable to all of its victims equally? Horror among horrors. Also, how interesting that supposedly nobody supports Japan's war crime denialists, yet so many posters in this thread will carry water for them with concern trolling.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2016 03:51
|
|
|
Chomskyan posted:Wait, you mean Japan would be accountable to all of its victims equally? Horror among horrors. You don't have a good read on this thread unfortunately, stick with Japan.
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2016 08:02
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 02:25
|
|
|
I can't see how that could possibly be abused in any way shape or form.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 05:56
|
|
|
Looks to me like the government is going for a chilling effect to keep the media in line, can't imagine them actually shutting down a broadcaster without massive international attention.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 06:17
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 00:52
|
|
|
This forum needs a Putin version of  I have a feeling we'll be needing it in the future. vvvv:  what kind of logic is that?
Truga fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Feb 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 01:22
|
|
|
It's been a great week for Japanese politics, with LDP representative Kazuya Maruyama also saying "アメリカは黒人が大統領になっている。これは奴隷ですよ."
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 01:40
|
|
|
I hope they're having a good time now rolling around in the poo poo of their one party state. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 01:53
|
|
|
Truga posted:vvvv: I'm having trouble digging up the entire context, but it appears as though he was talking about dynamic shifts in American society. The most complete quote I can find of what he said is like, "A black person is president in America. A slave! When the United States was founded it would have been unthinkable for a black person, a slave, to become president. That's a country with dynamism." The point he's making makes sense, but he articulated it in a really dumb racist way that shows he wasn't thinking much about it beyond wanting to shorthand the American civil rights movement into a political talking point. Ran Mad Dog posted:I hope they're having a good time now rolling around in the poo poo of their one party state. Japan being a one party state isn't really new. LDP factions have basically functioned as political parties for all but a few years of Japan's post-war history. Japanese leaders being cozy with the large media companies also isn't new, and the press club system has perpetuated a chilling effect for years. The thing that seems new is that Abe has done a really bad job of keeping his fingerprints off the micromanagement of it. ErIog fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Feb 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 02:52
|
|
|
ErIog posted:I'm having trouble digging up the entire context, but it appears as though he was talking about dynamic shifts in American society. The most complete quote I can find of what he said is like, "A black person is president in America. A slave! When the United States was founded it would have been unthinkable for a black person, a slave, to become president. That's a country with dynamism." Still, even in a country not known for racial sensitivity, you'd think he'd know better than to equate all black people, and especially the President of the US with slaves. That said, it's not really any dumber than what we get from right wingers here in the US.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 03:05
|
|
|
Geostomp posted:Still, even in a country not known for racial sensitivity, you'd think he'd know better than to equate all black people, and especially the President of the US with slaves. That said, it's not really any dumber than what we get from right wingers here in the US. It's a similar to gaffe to when Trump said, "they're rapists," when he announced his candidacy. Politicians want to be able to talk in broad strokes and assume that introducing caveats like, "some" or "may be" makes their talking point less solid. So they remove the caveats without realizing that they've now said something really racist. They know what they meant, and they assume everyone else should have known that what they meant was not precisely what they said. In this case the missing caveat was, "If this were 200 years ago then he would have been..." This kind of thing happens in political discourse all the time, and yes, politicians whose job it is to communicate with people should be much better than they are at saying what they mean to say. The racial insensitivity piece stems from where and when the caveats I'm talking about get removed. In the US, for example, white politicians almost never talk about "white people" without introducing some kind of caveat to explain exactly which people they're talking about. They do this kind of thing way more often when talking about non-whites and it exposes their stereotype-based thinking. ErIog fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Feb 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 03:27
|
|
|
Ran Mad Dog posted:I hope they're having a good time now rolling around in the poo poo of their one party state. They have been, for the last 70 years Speaking of which, how much of the JSP never getting into power in the postwar period had to do with their political positions? From what I am reading they basically refused to moderate from full demilitarization/geopolitical neutrality and full socialism. Wiki says they recognized NK as the legitimate Korean government until 1990. Compare to say the German SPD post-Schuhmacher, which more or less dropped those planks and accepted alliance with the US and welfare liberalism. Why did the JSP not do that? Seems like an unwise choice to me, as the result was single-party LDP government. Of course, the CDU was pretty dominant in postwar Germany as well, so who knows icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Feb 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 03:34
|
|
|
ErIog posted:I'm having trouble digging up the entire context, but it appears as though he was talking about dynamic shifts in American society. The most complete quote I can find of what he said is like, "A black person is president in America. A slave! When the United States was founded it would have been unthinkable for a black person, a slave, to become president. That's a country with dynamism." quote:例えば今、アメリカは黒人が大統領になっているんですよ。黒人の血を引く、ね。これは奴隷ですよ、はっきり言って。で、リンカーンが奴隷解放をやったと。でも公民権も何もない。マーティン・ルーサー・キングが出てですね、公民権運動のなかで公民権が与えられた。 quote:The point he's making makes sense, but he articulated it in a really dumb racist way that shows he wasn't thinking much about it beyond wanting to shorthand the American civil rights movement into a political talking point. mystes fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Feb 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 05:40
|
|
|
Yeah, he pretty much hosed up the tense there.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 06:40
|
|
|
I don't know about specifics of linguistics but as soon as I saw the Japanese mystes posted ( "アメリカは黒人が大統領になっている。これは奴隷ですよ.") I understood exactly what he meant. I don't think it's that he messed up the tense so much as tense can be highly contextual in Japanese. I read it as more or less "this is (a man who a short time ago would have been) a slave"
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 09:14
|
|
|
The guy's statement is entirely accurate. Imagine how shocking it would be for Japan to have a zai-nichi Korean as their Prime Minister.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 09:18
|
|
|
EasternBronze posted:The guy's statement is entirely accurate. Imagine how shocking it would be for Japan to have a zai-nichi Korean as their Prime Minister. Or burakumin as mayor of Osaka.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 12:10
|
|
|
That kind of reads to me as something that's only offensive when translated into the American context where there's a stricter etiquette for talking about the subject, rather than in itself in the original Japanese context. But I don't know much about that context. It's inaccurate in the sense that there were always free black people in the US, but still.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 12:11
|
|
|
I find his other remarks about Japan becoming America's first state much more laughable. The slave thing is just poorly worded and then comes off as worse in the translation.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 12:34
|
|
|
Peel posted:That kind of reads to me as something that's only offensive when translated into the American context where there's a stricter etiquette for talking about the subject, rather than in itself in the original Japanese context. But I don't know much about that context. Nah, it's pretty racist. It's not like nihonjinron KKK racist, but it shows a lack of cultural sensitivity on his part for not adding the few words it would have taken to not sound real racist. It does feel like there's probably someone who didn't like him who decided to quote him without full context to try to make this an issue, but he hosed up on his phrasing real hard. Translations can make it sound better or worse, but it being in Japanese doesn't give him a pass. He made a leap from black man -> slave that wouldn't be possible unless you were thinking in terms of tokens, stereotypes, and talking points. ErIog fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Feb 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 13:20
|
|
|
But Barack Obama is descended from a slave, possibly the first one. Even if he wasn't, surely you aren't going to imply that the effects of slavery don't linger on to the present day?
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 13:35
|
|
|
Vagabundo posted:Yeah, he pretty much hosed up the tense there. It is entirely possible to refer to historical events in the present tense in Japanese.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 14:12
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Or burakumin as mayor of Osaka. not like that!
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2016 19:01
|
|
|
 lol right after the new agreement
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2016 01:54
|
|
|
Chomskyan posted:
Who's mouthing off? It's really not surprising at this point when the government says one thing while figures in the LDP say something else. Little bit of two-facedness, little bit of the LDP being a fractious pile of poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2016 03:00
|
|
|
Shinsuke Sugiyama, Japan’s "deputy foreign minister". In this case he was Japan's envoy to the UN. It's worth noting that his statements don't strictly contradict the apology made during the recent agreement, which was pretty vague. They do however contradict the Kono statement (which Abe previously said he'd uphold) and the government investigation that preceded it. Red and Black fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Feb 25, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2016 03:13
|
|
|
hum it's almost as if the ldp want this to stay an issue to distract from all the terrible poo poo they're doing/the japanese economy being loving dead
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2016 03:39
|
|
|
Chomskyan posted:Shinsuke Sugiyama, Japan’s "deputy foreign minister". In this case he was Japan's envoy to the UN. Lol, is it just me or is everyone in the government with "deputy" in their title a complete asshat? I think Abe's been careful this time around at not putting his friends and loyalists into top cabinet positions and is sticking them all in deputy rolls instead. Probably not that uncommon a move regardless of a leader's political bent, but the upside is that when ever one of these deputies opens their mouths I think we're getting an unfiltered view of what Abe-chan believes and thinks.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2016 03:41
|
|
|
Chomskyan posted:Shinsuke Sugiyama, Japan’s "deputy foreign minister". In this case he was Japan's envoy to the UN. It really depends on how you parse the sentence, "The issue of comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities at that time, was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women, and the Government of Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities from this perspective." The larger issue here is that the only thing we have to go off of in terms of this new agreement is the text of the very brief joint statement. As far as I know the actual agreement text hasn't been released, and since the above sentence is so vague there's no way to definitively say whether or not Sugiyama's statement contradicts the details of what Abe agreed to. Forums Terrorist posted:hum it's almost as if the ldp want this to stay an issue to distract from all the terrible poo poo they're doing/the japanese economy being loving dead I really don't think Sugiyama's statement was meant to rile up the base ahead of an election that's, at the earliest, four and a half months away. In America with the longer time scales for campaigning maybe you'd be right, but not in Japan. I think the actual agreement text not being released was a purposeful move by Abe to try to have it both ways. He spends a lot of time outside Japan talking with other world leaders, and he probably wanted to do something so that he doesn't have to keep talking about the comfort women issue while in his role of representing Japan to the world. However, he also knows that the nationalists in his party and in his base would be real angry with him if he ceded too many of the "disputed" facts to South Korea. He wants the international credit for solving the comfort women issue while trying to pretend, domestically, that the agreement doesn't offend his party's notions of Japan's national honor. I'm betting that if we ever see the real text of the agreement it will be quietly dumped out on some government website with a very questionable English translation directly following Abe's re-election. Mr. Fix It posted:when ever one of these deputies opens their mouths I think we're getting an unfiltered view of what Abe-chan believes and thinks. Sugiyama basically repeated what Abe, himself, said in 2007. It's also not a controversial opinion among most Japanese politicians who can trace their lineage back to people in positions of power during the war. For many of them this is a personal issue. ErIog fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Feb 25, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2016 03:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 17:13 |
|
|
Off topic, but can anyone explain why the yen is getting stronger? I'm tempted to send some cash home but not sure exactly when to do it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2016 04:31
|
|
