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sincx posted:Is there anything intrinsically wrong with the helicopter money idea? I mean, not really. Frankly speaking what Japan should have been doing for decades now is instead of printing money to build infrastructure and make-work projects they should have just given that money to the public in cash transfers and social spending. They didn't for a lot of reasons, not least of all that 25 years ago was the high water mark of Larry Summers style austerity in the econ field and it would have run directly counter to everything the academic profession taught and believed, plus porkbarrel spending is much easier to do politically Part of the problem with Japan and inflation is the way Japan's banking system is structured, or at least was in the bad old days but I'm pretty sure it's still mostly the same. Normally the way inflation and money-printing works is that the Central Bank prints money and loans it to commercial banks, which loan it to smaller banks, which loan it to smaller banks and so on and eventually to companies and people, but every time it passes through a set of banks the money supply gets multiplied because there is money on the balance sheet of the bank but that same money is being used by other people, potentially lent again and multiplied again. Japan on the other hand basically did not have an independent banking system, high-level banks were controlled by the government and would loan directly to enterprises which meant the money supply would not be multiplied, and printing money has much less of an effect on the final value of goods and services icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Jul 30, 2016 |
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Jul 30, 2016 01:55
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sincx posted:Is there anything intrinsically wrong with the helicopter money idea?
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Jul 31, 2016 09:20
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Well, seems like Heisei era is coming to an end. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37007106
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Aug 8, 2016 07:16
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Negrostrike posted:Well, seems like Heisei era is coming to an end. I suppose there's literally no way they'll change the law so Aiko can take the throne while they change the laws to allow for the abdication?
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Aug 8, 2016 16:14
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CottonWolf posted:I suppose there's literally no way they'll change the law so Aiko can take the throne while they change the laws to allow for the abdication? Wouldn't the classic solution be the prince as regent after the emperor was found unfit? That would neatly sidestep all the issues.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:08
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ArchangeI posted:Wouldn't the classic solution be the prince as regent after the emperor was found unfit? That would neatly sidestep all the issues. Unfit? The emperor? GUARDS!
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Aug 8, 2016 22:45
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CottonWolf posted:I suppose there's literally no way they'll change the law so Aiko can take the throne while they change the laws to allow for the abdication? ...Is Naruhito dying of something and I missed the memo? Edit: oh, I assume you mean "gently caress it, may as well change two rules at once". On the plus this got me to google Naruhito.  Water nerd, road nerd, AND viola player?
Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 23:05
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GreyjoyBastard posted:...Is Naruhito dying of something and I missed the memo?
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Aug 10, 2016 07:02
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It's a me, Shinzo
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Aug 22, 2016 14:49
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So why is no one talking about how obviously Abe and the LDP are going to keep extending term limits forever? Isn't this one of the first steps to dictatorship? I swear Mussolini, Hitler, et all did the same thing.
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Oct 31, 2016 05:53
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Teikanmi posted:So why is no one talking about how obviously Abe and the LDP are going to keep extending term limits forever? Isn't this one of the first steps to dictatorship? I swear Mussolini, Hitler, et all did the same thing. There are no term limits in the constitution. The LDP is just changing its rules. If the only barrier to Japan becoming a dictatorship was a party's rules, then poo poo was hosed to begin with. Abe is an authoritarian and enough of the populace is okay with that so he stays in power. It's possible that he's seeking dictatorial power and just slowing turning up the heat so he can boil the frog without it noticing, but I just think he's a boring rear end in a top hat politician that just wants enough time to push re-militarization and maybe some weakening of personal protections in the constitution. I do believe that if the electorate decides it doesn't like part of that, he'll be out. It's also possible that enough of the electorate is okay with all that. I'm not going to accuse him of anything more than being a regressive rear end in a top hat until he actually starts loving with elections (fraud, ignoring results, cancelling them).
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Oct 31, 2016 06:06
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Yeah. I'm no Abe apologist, but it seems melodramatic to declare dictatorship. The party is revising the rules to allow for three terms, and explicitly not unlimited terms. Off the top of my head Satō also got three terms in the 60s, and I think there was another PM who did a similar amount of time. TBH I think Abe's just such an egomaniac he wants to be the face of Japan for the Olympics in 2020, as well as going out in a blaze of constitutional revision glory in the next few years. I just hope Renho can pull a decent opposition together and pose a legitimate challenge eventually.
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Oct 31, 2016 09:28
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germany has had three conservative chancellors/PMs who have served almost four full terms/16 years, Adenauer, Kohl and now Merkel. japan's not a dictatorship because a guy might be allowed to serve more than 6 years and i have serious doubts that Abe will make it to 2020. japan's economy is about to drop dead, and the japanese public has supported him thus far on an economic platform, the revisionist stuff is not popular enough to win elections on its own. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Oct 31, 2016 |
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Oct 31, 2016 15:11
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Hey do you guys have a good round-up of the Japanese reaction to the Abe-Trump meeting?
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Nov 18, 2016 19:40
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Lawman 0 posted:Hey do you guys have a good round-up of the Japanese reaction to the Abe-Trump meeting?
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Nov 19, 2016 14:40
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Kilroy posted:The newscasters and guests and food-tasters keep getting confused if they're supposed to be talking about politics or card games. A whole lot of "へーーー！" and "すごい！" For real though all my friends who don't straight up say "gently caress that guy" are just worried about how he might gently caress up relations with Japan.
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Nov 20, 2016 12:43
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Is anyone still reading this thread? I just watched this NHK NEXT documentary on the "Technical Intern Training Program" and it was amazing because the gist of it was like, "Sure, the foreign laborers were promised money that the companies weren't paying, and sure the laborers came because they were trying to earn money. But hey, the system was never supposed to be about them earning money in the first place, and aren't the real victims the poor Japanese companies that had to shut down after the government made them actually pay wages?"
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Jan 31, 2017 22:22
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Has anyone here read Karel Wolferen's Enigma of Japanese Power? I'd been meaning to for a while and finally did, and, uh, wow. It's basically a 450-page long angry screed that's a fully articulated version of the kind of liberal critique of Japan that usually takes the form of incomplete anecdotes, memes, and vaguely held beliefs, AKA a Serious Person book version of that Japanyes usenet text file thing posted a long time ago ITT, AKA a grotesque, incredibly hostile caricature of the country circa 1985. The basic thesis is that the Japanese nation-state fundamentally lacks any kind of universalistic, animating ideology and exists solely as a bunch of power relations and power hierarchies, with a continuity going back to the shogunates. He basically thinks that Japan is a nightmarish oppressive shithole and that this is the reason why. It's 30 years old at this point and it seems to have been pretty influential in its day and seems to have created a tenor of discourse that continues to this day, so what do people here think of it if they've read it? More of the same stuff that at this point has been repeated for 30 years? Anything particularly unique about it? At the very least it is refreshing in a way to have the critique laid out in such a complete and meticulously documented way. It's very hard to argue or engage with what is essentially a vague feeling that the country is bad, backed up by very little in the way of specifics beyond an incriminating anecdote or two, which seems to be about 90% of discourse on the place edit: Also apparently the author never learned how to read, write or speak Japanese despite living there for 25 years icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Feb 5, 2017 |
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Feb 5, 2017 01:14
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icantfindaname posted:edit: Also apparently the author never learned how to read, write or speak Japanese despite living there for 25 years Sheep fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Feb 5, 2017 |
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Feb 5, 2017 15:56
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How accurate is this?
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Mar 29, 2017 02:51
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Seems accurate to me. The Japanese far right is very terrible. One thing I would point out is that it's not really clear that Abe himself actually has the will to go through with constitutional revision. It would be hugely controversial and burn 100% of his political capital, and they might not even be able to do it despite nominally having the seats necessary, because you need a popular referendum after 2/3 of the legislature approves it and his own party might not even be willing to pull the trigger. He's been in power for over 4 years now and people have been screaming pretty much nonstop since then that Japan's going fascist any day now, and ... nothing. Despite his links to the far right and his stated goals Abe seems like he kindof just wants to sit back and enjoy the status and prestige of being a senior statesman. Aside from a big monetary stimulus and some half-hearted domestic economic reforms Abe has actually put most of his political effort into foreign diplomacy, shaking hands with Obama, Trump, Modi, etc, for the camera, and has gotten a lot of praise from foreign policy people here in the US for this. The neo-nazi stuff seems more like a family obligation to an extent, his daddy was a Nazi and the Nazis vote for him so he has to throw them some meat every once in a while, but he'd rather be doing other things The basic problem with Japanese politics is that the center and left, despite being a popular majority, are absolutely incompetent at politics and can't get elected. For most of the postwar era the LDP was basically an amorphous, heavily decentralized centrist party, almost a loose federation of independent MPs, dominated by people interested solely in graft and patronage, that basically let the bureaucracy and civil service run the country and just funneled patronage and corruption money to themselves and their constituents. They occupied all the political space to the right of the Socialist Party, which unlike Socialist parties in Europe refused to moderate any of its positions to more pragmatic social democratic ones, remaining hardline Marxists until the early 90s, and becoming basically an anti-nuclear and anti-NATO protest party by the 1980s. In the crisis of the early 1990s the main leaders of the centrist half of the LDP split from the party and joined the Socialists to form the DPJ, the current center-left party in the early 90s. Unfortunately the DPJ has been an abject failure at actually doing politics, leaving the LDP, now run by the neonazis, who were always there but were relatively marginalized in the 60s and 70s, as the only vital political force in the country. The last poll I saw had the LDP polling around 35% and the DPJ around 8% This is basically the exact same thing that happened in Italy BTW, except the new center-left party formed from a graft from the old center-center-right blob party has been more successful and the far-right tarnished by weird regional politics and the disaster of Berlusconi icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 05:39
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icantfindaname posted:the disaster of Berlusconi That's a funny way to spell Overwhelming* Success**.
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Mar 29, 2017 06:22
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Japanese politics seemed odd to me from a distance. The same party has held the highest offices for decades in a dictatorship style and every party seems centrist. Is the right wing thing a problem that will improve with time? Or will it only grow?
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Mar 29, 2017 06:51
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punk rebel ecks posted:Japanese politics seemed odd to me from a distance. The same party has held the highest offices for decades in a dictatorship style and every party seems centrist. Is the right wing thing a problem that will improve with time? Or will it only grow? Did you even read the thing I just posted? I don't think the chance of the far-right gaining substantial(ly more) power is very large, IMO not larger than the chance of the left getting its act together. The Japanese public isn't getting more right-wing, any more than the public in the US or Europe icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 07:06
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icantfindaname posted:Did you even read the thing I just posted? I don't think the chance of the far-right gaining substantial(ly more) power is very large, IMO not larger than the chance of the left getting its act together. The Japanese public isn't getting more right-wing, Yeah I read it. That is relieving. icantfindaname posted:any more than the public in the US or Europe
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Mar 29, 2017 07:40
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punk rebel ecks posted:This makes things worrisome. Well, the narrative of pessimism re:Japan's civil society and left-liberalism is always implicitly in comparison with Western countries. We're all hosed, the question is just how much more hosed is Japan. IMO not that much more icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 07:59
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icantfindaname posted:Unfortunately the DPJ has been an abject failure at actually doing politics, leaving the LDP, now run by the neonazis, who were always there but were relatively marginalized in the 60s and 70s, as the only vital political force in the country. The last poll I saw had the LDP polling around 35% and the DPJ around 8% edogawa rando fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 08:28
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Re: Abe's right wing connections, here's an article that kind of summarizes a current scandal: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...e/#.WNtkpTuGPIU
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Mar 29, 2017 08:40
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Vagabundo posted:Didn't the DPJ (Were they still called that? I remember reading that they merged again with someone else) pretty much burn away any chance of returning to office being being utterly useless shitcunts while they were in power? I vaguely remember them getting caught up in the controversy surrounding pork barrel projects like the Yanba Dam, while Ozawa just wouldn't gently caress off like everyone wanted him to. Pretty much. Unfortunately voting for the crook, not the facsist, is an important civic duty around the world, as we learned here in Trumpreich icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 14:02
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The Japanese voting public is hugely apathetic as well, which limits the potential for the anticipated fascist ground swell. The right wing may get voted in, and they do have the support of people that march through the streets calling for the murder of Koreans, but to call them popular, or having popular support, is way off the mark. As long as they fly their policies under the apathy threshold, they will remain in power.
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Mar 29, 2017 18:04
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Lawman 0 posted:Hey do you guys have a good round-up of the Japanese reaction to the Abe-Trump meeting? This post was a while ago but the Langly Esquire youtube channel (who i've really been enjoying ever since someone linked it in this thread awhile back) did a episode on the Trump-Abe meeting where they do spend some time talking about the Japanese reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVlHcG05dW4 There are some really smart people on this show so its kind of a shame that they only get a couple hundred views on each of their videos.
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Mar 29, 2017 20:21
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How has Abenomics worked out? Has Japan really been in a recession since the early '90s
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Mar 30, 2017 00:45
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punk rebel ecks posted:How has Abenomics worked out? Has Japan really been in a recession since the early '90s http://andolfatto.blogspot.com/2016/12/some-recent-economic-developments-in.html quote:Some recent economic developments in Japan
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Mar 30, 2017 07:16
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Amazing write-up, thanks.
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Mar 31, 2017 07:16
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Ya know I've been browsing D&D for a few months now and I was wondering why there was no Japan thread. Yet it turns out there was one, it was just dead for a while and seems relatively inactive. Is there any particular reason for why this is unpopular compared to some of the other national politics threads?
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Mar 31, 2017 10:04
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NikkolasKing posted:Ya know I've been browsing D&D for a few months now and I was wondering why there was no Japan thread. Yet it turns out there was one, it was just dead for a while and seems relatively inactive. Japanese politics is too depressing to discuss in real time, also no native speakers/residents are in the conversation, only expats This youtube series is a good weekly discussion of real-time Japanese politics hosted by some guy who does legal consulting for foreign companies and a political science academic, and I also follow a bunch of people on twitter associated with the political science guy in the video https://www.youtube.com/user/langleyesquire https://twitter.com/MichaelTCucek https://twitter.com/ShingetsuNews https://twitter.com/observingjapan https://twitter.com/PaulJNadeau https://twitter.com/CoreyJWallace https://twitter.com/robfahey https://twitter.com/misssaxbys https://twitter.com/wataruen https://twitter.com/devintstewart https://twitter.com/Okumura_Jun icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Mar 31, 2017 11:17
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Everyone who is worried that the Japanese government is trying to go back to WWII will be relieved to know that the new middle school curriculum guidelines now include bayonet fencing (jukendo) in martial arts for gym class. Advocates say that it's just a martial art like kendo or judo, and there's nothing particularly militaristic about it, but nobody seems to know why the felt the need for it. Also, it seems like this this sport is really popular with the JSDF. mystes fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Mar 31, 2017 14:57
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icantfindaname posted:Japanese politics is too depressing to discuss in real time, also no native speakers/residents are in the conversation, only expats Thank you for the helpful links, the LGBT video for the YT channel was interesting. One thing I've always been attracted to with regards to Japanese history (and this seems to be true for Chinese history as well but I know less about that) is the lack of stigma towards homosexuality. I read a book about homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (which started my love affair with the Edo period) and it looks like a lot of the stuff I took for granted in terms of how gay people were treated in history is all thanks to show lovely the Abrahamic faiths were towards gay people and thus you see less of that in at leas some parts of Asia. Of course this is about male homosexuality, women didn't have it any easier be it in terms of their sex lives or anything else than they did in"the West."
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Mar 31, 2017 17:50
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NikkolasKing posted:Thank you for the helpful links, the LGBT video for the YT channel was interesting. hate to break it to you but the Meiji period but a bit of a damper on that
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Mar 31, 2017 18:06
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NikkolasKing posted:Thank you for the helpful links, the LGBT video for the YT channel was interesting. Pretty much every premodern culture was fine with being gay if you were an elite man. Modern sexual morality is just that, a product of the modern period, as I understand it. I read somewhere that in renaissance Italy the prevailing idea was that gay sex was actually strictly superior to hetero sex, because the female body was an inferior derivation of the male one
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Mar 31, 2017 18:18
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