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Squalid posted:How exactly is the commoner/royal/other? Distinction defined in Japanese law and custom? Like are there noble families a princess can marry into to retain her royal status or is becoming a commoner inevitable for all female members of the Imperial family? According to this http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/japans-royal-family quote:While stripping him of his demi-god status, that law also cut the number of Japanese royals as a cost-cutting step for the then-impoverished country. In doing so, it removed 11 out of the 12 branches of the Imperial family, hence there are no royal males for princesses to wed today. Looks like they are kinda SOL. That was a pretty big oversight in the initial law.
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May 22, 2017 16:40
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Pretty sure it's defined by the Imperial Household Law. Japan post-1868 created a European style legal nobility but it was abolished after the war, so legally speaking the emperor and imperial family are just listed by name in a single piece of legislation from 1947, more or less. I'm not sure how it worked pre-Meiji
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May 22, 2017 17:22
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The Japanese emperor has always been a national mascot sort of thing. lovely rear end Bahrain royalty in a tiny city state has more power.
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May 22, 2017 18:37
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icantfindaname posted:Pretty sure it's defined by the Imperial Household Law. It's defined by this. I believe they did it to breed the imperial family out of existence because most Japanese people in 1947 didn't really care that much about the royal family. They were a drain on resources in a country where starvation was an everyday thing and they got them into that mess in the first place. I think I read it in Embracing Defeat that by 1947 the majority of the Japanese people were indifferent to the royal family or saw no point to them anymore. They only kept them around because the right wing elements convinced MacArthur that without the Emperor there would be an insurgency at best and a communist take over at worst. After Hirohito learned how to speak to common people, something he was incapable of for most of his life, he started making the rounds and playing British-style monarch to ensure his continued career as Emperor. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 23:41 on May 22, 2017 |
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May 22, 2017 23:34
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:It's defined by this. I read Embracing Defeat too. Great book. I seem to recall the beginning was about how people were reacting to the Emperor's surrender though and some were clearly very distraught. I'm new to modern Japanese Imperial stuff but I was told the latest Emperor wasn't a touring celebrity and was largely kept out of the public eye. Everything he does is supposed to be approved, right? Apparently his address to earthquake victims in 2011 was the first time he was ever "allowed" to do such a thing? That's what I was told anyway.
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May 22, 2017 23:48
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NikkolasKing posted:I'm new to modern Japanese Imperial stuff but I was told the latest Emperor wasn't a touring celebrity and was largely kept out of the public eye. Everything he does is supposed to be approved, right? Apparently his address to earthquake victims in 2011 was the first time he was ever "allowed" to do such a thing? That's what I was told anyway. The Imperial Household Agency keeps the imperial family under virtual house arrest most of the time. Hirohito used to get out and about but the Imperial Household Agency has changed things a bit in recent years, though I'm not really sure why other than keeping power and Akihito being more reclusive.
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May 22, 2017 23:56
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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/23/national/politics-diplomacy/u-n-rapporteur-takes-tokyo-task-conspiracy-bill/#.WSQ7wLhBDgwquote:A heated war of words has broken out between Tokyo and a United Nations expert over a contentious bill that would criminalize conspiracies. That legislation was rammed through the Lower House on Tuesday despite raucous protests. Somewhat relevant, I found the YT channel Langley Esquire thanks to this thread and I was just watching this somewhat lengthy video from a couple years ago where it is claimed Japan is "an extremely liberal society with an extremely conservative majority party" That lines up with all I've ever read on the news. People don't really support these right wing ideas, and the LDP have to brute force everything through, but they stay in power because... I dunno why. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 15:00 on May 23, 2017 |
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May 23, 2017 14:58
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NikkolasKing posted:because... boomers
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May 23, 2017 15:12
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NikkolasKing posted:http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/23/national/politics-diplomacy/u-n-rapporteur-takes-tokyo-task-conspiracy-bill/#.WSQ7wLhBDgw Doesn't every other country on earth have a law against criminal conspiracy? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal) I've read Japan doesn't because it did in the 1930s and that was used as a legal pretext for much of the political suppression in that period, and so the left parties have had it as a bugbear and refused to allow it postwar It's entirely fine to not trust or like Abe or the LDP but like, sometimes I feel like people are a little bit too quick to screech fascist at Japan. At least wait until the guy starts actually doing stuff like suspending elections or having opposition parties arrested. At this point Abe's administration hasn't been much worse or different than Theresa May in Britain The last point also applies to the politics in general. At this point in time I think you could actually make an argument Japan's political system has come to resemble that of Western Europe, just at a cyclical point where illiberal, one-nation conservatism is electorally ascendent, and the parties of the liberal left are a burning trainwreck. That describes the UK in 2017 as well as Japan icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:49 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 23, 2017 17:36
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icantfindaname posted:At this point Abe's administration hasn't been much worse or different than Theresa May in Britain Holy poo poo! That bad?
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May 23, 2017 17:41
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icantfindaname posted:Doesn't every other country on earth have a law against criminal conspiracy? Given that May ran cover for a literal corporate rape camp as Home Secretary, I'm not sure that's the most comforting analogy.
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May 23, 2017 17:43
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I didn't say things were good, just that they're probably not worse than some other places
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May 23, 2017 17:45
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icantfindaname posted:I didn't say things were good, just that they're probably not worse than some other places Doesn't really mean you should't strive for better or be afraid to criticise when needed.
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May 23, 2017 18:01
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Truga posted:Holy poo poo! That bad? I can TOTALLY see Japan launching a massive defensive campaign to keep secret fishpeople from encroaching on their shores.
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May 24, 2017 01:35
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If there were criminal conspiracy laws they'd probably have to do something about the yakuza, maybe roll up to their clearly-labeled public offices and ask them nicely to stop being criminals?
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May 24, 2017 02:09
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Maybe they'll use it to go after the govt agencies that colluded with the preschool in Osakahahahaha
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May 24, 2017 02:12
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quote:http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/02/17/national/osaka-preschool-scrutinized-passing-slurs-koreans-chinese/ lol what? Look out kids the culture police are on to you!
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May 24, 2017 02:48
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Grand Fromage posted:If there were criminal conspiracy laws they'd probably have to do something about the yakuza, maybe roll up to their clearly-labeled public offices and ask them nicely to stop being criminals? Uhh excuse me, they are a group who deeply cares about traditional Japanese values and frequently work with disenfranchised youth.
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May 24, 2017 07:09
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Why is Shinzo Abe still the Prime Minister after 5 years straight?
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May 24, 2017 07:24
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Grouchio posted:Why is Shinzo Abe still the Prime Minister after 5 years straight? because Ozawa was just that lovely
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May 24, 2017 07:40
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Ekster posted:Uhh excuse me, they are a group who deeply cares about traditional Japanese values and frequently work with disenfranchised youth. They provide jobs for otherwise discriminated against ethnic Koreans.
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May 24, 2017 07:44
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Are the Korean pachinko parlors well integrated into the Yakuza, or do they have their own miniature crime ring?Grouchio posted:Why is Shinzo Abe still the Prime Minister after 5 years straight? Because that's how elections work? 5 years is a standard parliamentary term of office. Angela Merkel has been in office for 12 years and will probably serve another 4, for example. Japan's revolving door PM-ship in the postwar period was a weird anomaly by world standards. It was caused by the civilian governments being weak and a quasi-authoritarian bureacratic deep state being strong, and that is much less true today than it was in say the 1970s or 80s. Abe is probably the strongest prime minister modern Japan has ever had, and the first one to be really comparable to the same position in a 'normal' parliamentary system like Britain or Germany. Unfortunately he's a Nazi, but baby steps Also because Ozawa was a giant train wreck like other poster said and the DPJ has still not gotten its poo poo back together icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 09:43 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 09:36
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There isn't any pachinko in Korea if that's what you mean. My understanding is most if not all pachinko is yakuza owned and a chunk of the money goes to North Korea. The modern yakuza is largely made up of ethnic Koreans and has business connections in both Koreas.
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May 24, 2017 09:41
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Grand Fromage posted:There isn't any pachinko in Korea if that's what you mean. My understanding is most if not all pachinko is yakuza owned and a chunk of the money goes to North Korea. The modern yakuza is largely made up of ethnic Koreans and has business connections in both Koreas. Yeah I meant the ones in Japan owned by Koreans. I didn't know the Yakuza was largely Korean, is that true? I thought the Yakuza had deep ties to the fascist far right? What do they think of their ranks being filled with untermenschen?
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May 24, 2017 09:44
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I'm not sure if it's the majority now that I'm thinking about it but they're at least a huge proportion. I don't know how they justify with all the ideology. E: Casual googling is saying the yakuza is ~30% ethnic Korean, also lots of burakumin for the same marginalized-group-turns-to-crime thing that happens everywhere. E2: Also since the yakuza isn't a single thing, there are apparently some yakuza groups that have Korean leadership and mostly Korean members. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 10:00 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 09:54
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icantfindaname posted:Are the Korean pachinko parlors well integrated into the Yakuza, or do they have their own miniature crime ring? I was reading this article covering how a woman took over leadership of the DPJ. (which is apparently just the Democratic Party, not the Democratic Party of Japan, which is the name of other now defunct parties. I love learning about non-US political party systems) It has a couple quotes of relevance here: quote:“Of the three candidates, she was the only one who has any chance of turning around the party’s fortunes,” said Gill Steel, an associate professor of politics at Doshisha University in Kyoto. So, are the Democratic Party an actual alternative to the LDP? Is it at all comparable to our situation in the US where are options are the Centrists-pretending-to-be-Left Wing vs. the Crazies? NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 10:15 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 10:13
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The DP/DPJ/Minshinto is basically a merger of the old JSP and the liberal half of the LDP from before 1993. The way Japan worked before 1993 was that you had 3 hardline, doctrinaire Marxist parties in the JSP, the DSP and the JCP that between them got like 40% of the vote consistently but not more, and were thus unable to enter national government ever, and a huge-tent party containing everyone to the right of them, probably equal to the US Republican and Democratic parties combined, in the LDP. The LDP could only barely be described as a coherent political party and was more like a loose federation of independent MPs After 1993 the more center/liberal-leaning half of the LDP split under the leadership of a guy Ichiro Ozawa and refashioned itself as the current DP/DPJ/Minshinto, and ate all of the JSP's vote and absorbed many of their MPs. Their policies were pretty hardline Third Way center though, and have remained so Ozawa was supposed to be the Japanese Bill Clinton/Tony Blair but the sheer weight of the corruption scandals that followed him tanked him. The old liberal half of the LDP had it's electoral basis in basically third world style transactional corruption/patronage politics among the small farmers who were a substantial part of the population before the country became fully industrialized in the 1970s, and Ozawa was the personal protege of basically the most corrupt man to lead a nominally first-world country in world history, Kakuei Tanaka The party, or its antecedents before it was actually a coherent party were in power from 1993-1996 through splits and parliamentary maneuvers, and then from 2009-2012 through winning in a landslide on a moderately more left-leaning platform, but in both cases failed to hold on to power, partly because of infighting and partly because in both cases a huge earthquake disaster happened. So whatever fascist Shinto god rules Japan's natural environment really doesn't like the DPJ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanshin_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_earthquake_and_tsunami Meanwhile with all the liberals gone the rump of the LDP turned into a coherent, illiberal right-wing party led by the son of a fascist war criminal Shinzo Abe by the time of their return in 2012. In the late 90s and early 2000s transition period you had Ryutaro Hashimoto, a remaining LDP liberal who actually reformed a lot of stuff and was probably the best PM Japan had in the last 20 years, and Junichiro Koizumi, a sort of conservative-libertarian fusion who was a racist nationalist but also deregulated and privatized stuff mostly for the better. So basically the Japanese left was too radical to get elected before the 1990s, then sprinted so far to the center the public sees no reason to vote for them instead of the fascists. Renho seems like a party apparatchik Tom Perez style who is totally unfit for the task of winning an election. Latest polls have the DP/J at less than 10% support, compared to mid to low 30s for the LDP https://twitter.com/ShingetsuNews/status/864314353549328384 https://twitter.com/ShingetsuNews/status/865890418164027392 Here's a good book on the structure and history of the LDP http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100734570 icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 11:35 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 11:12
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icantfindaname posted:The DP/DPJ/Minshinto is basically a merger of the old JSP and the liberal half of the LDP from before 1993. Thanks! Looks like I can get it on Kindle which works better for me. Also quote:So whatever fascist Shinto god rules Japan's natural environment really doesn't like the DPJ "America's identity is freedom. France's identity is freedom, equality and fraternity. Japan has no sense of that. Only greed. Materiality greed, monetary greed.[50] This greed bounds with populism. These things need to be washed away with the Tsunami. For many years the heart of Japanese always bounded with devil.[51] Japanese's identity is greed. We should avail of this tsunami to wash away this greed. I think this is a divine punishment" Shintaro Ishihara I was watching and reading a lot of Japanese politics stuff today which dropped several names I didn't recognize so I had to head over to Wikipedia. He was one of them. His Wiki article is...something.
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May 24, 2017 11:34
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NikkolasKing posted:I was watching and reading a lot of Japanese politics stuff today which dropped several names I didn't recognize. He was one of them. His Wiki article is...something. Discovering Ishihara for the first time is magical.  He's quite the guy.
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May 24, 2017 11:36
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At least Taiwan is still the best country in Asia https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/world/asia/taiwan-same-sex-marriage-court.html
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May 24, 2017 12:01
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Grand Fromage posted:Discovering Ishihara for the first time is magical. Wasn't he also very very gay with Yukio Mishima?
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May 24, 2017 12:25
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caberham posted:Wasn't he also very very gay with Yukio Mishima? He was very with Mishima and Mishima was gay, but I don't think it's ever been said they had any kind of thing. Ishihara's definitely spoken out against homosexuality, not that that necessarily means anything.
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May 24, 2017 12:50
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icantfindaname posted:basically the most corrupt man to lead a nominally first-world country in world history, Kakuei Tanaka I remember a couple of years ago there was a book called TENSAI (Genius) about Tanaka written by Ishihara Shintaro. I couldn't bring myself to read it, but the title combined with the author told me enough.
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May 24, 2017 14:25
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A big flaming stink posted:because Ozawa was just that lovely
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May 24, 2017 15:56
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Grouchio posted:Worse than Mori? Let's just say that the DPJ PMs pretty much destroyed any possibility that they'll be back in power for quite some time.
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May 24, 2017 18:18
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So Icantfindaname did a good job of explaining the history of the LDP, and I'll be reading the linked book as soon as I have money, but what exactly did the Democratic Party do that ruined their chances for coming to power again in the near future?
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May 26, 2017 10:52
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NikkolasKing posted:So Icantfindaname did a good job of explaining the history of the LDP, and I'll be reading the linked book as soon as I have money, but what exactly did the Democratic Party do that ruined their chances for coming to power again in the near future? When it really boils down to it? They raised the consumption tax. The seeds were sown in 2010. This article gives a good summary about the situation. If Kan had kept his mouth shut, they wouldn't have lost the upper chamber. This became crucial in 2012 when Noda was PM. He staked his political life on pushing through the consumption tax increase to the point where he had to weather a no-confidence vote from his own party. However, the voting public was pissed off enough that they threw the DPJ right back out of power after a scant 3+ years - and as people struggle with even 8% (from 5%) now, when it's supposed to go to 10% soonish, nobody is forgetting who did this to them.
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May 27, 2017 00:10
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Yeah I remember when just before the tax was set to go up to 8% and people were always like "Welp better go buy a ton of stuff before the tax goes up!" And they'd be referring to like, groceries and poo poo.
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May 28, 2017 06:45
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To be fair Europe manages fine with ~20% VAT, even if it's a lovely somewhat regressive tax.
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May 28, 2017 22:13
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I also remember Hatoyama staking his political career on the Okinawa base issues, it was a stupid play that had no chance of success and it really hurt the party's credibility.
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May 30, 2017 11:08
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