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menino
Jul 27, 2006

Pon De Floor

zmcnulty posted:

Not really. When is the last time you heard Japanese politicians arguing about Japanese culture? I guess you could argue that geopolitical tensions (Korea etc.) are caused by race/culture. But you guys are discussing your own experiences about being a Western living person in Japan, it's completely unrelated.

I do remember Ishihara making some remarks to the Economist about how men are increasingly being cowed by their womenfolk into peeing sitting down. Whether or not he specifically used the phrase "Japanese culture", that seems to be a pretty pointed remark about it, even if it was to a foreign reporter, especially in light of how closely nationalism and gender are linked in Japan and Korea (and really in most countries).

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Farmer Crack-Ass
Jan 2, 2001

this is me posting irl

MaterialConceptual posted:

Nuclear power has a lot of positive points to it, but there is so much public opposition to it that the development of alternative energy sources should be supported (So that anti-nuclear doesn't just equal pro-coal or pro-natural gas).

Yeah, I honestly don't care all that much if they stick with nuclear or not, so long as they aren't replacing it with coal or gas.

Mercury_Storm posted:

Whenever a Japanese person says something like "isn't Japanese difficult?" I assume it to mean they actually think their language is difficult because the number of Kanji they have had to memorize is insane. Not that they think "oh this pathetic foreigner can never possibly understand our superior language."

That makes sense to me, I remember meeting an middle-aged woman from Japan who had been in the US for a few years, and in that short span of time she had already forgotten enough kanji to have difficulty reading a Japanese newspaper.

z0331
Oct 2, 2003

Holtby thy name

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

Yeah, I honestly don't care all that much if they stick with nuclear or not, so long as they aren't replacing it with coal or gas.


Like I mentioned, my hope is actually that they, as a nation, can reduce their need for energy to the point where clean power becomes viable. If any country can do it, Japan is probably it.

A sexy submarine
Jun 12, 2011

Samurai Sanders posted:

edit: this thread really isn't about politics (or old men loving each other) anymore is it...

Alright, let's try and get back on topic a bit.

Apparently Toru Hashimoto had an affair with a hostess that got uncovered a few days ago by the 'Shukan Bunshun' weekly tabloid.

http://shukan.bunshun.jp/articles/-/1586 (Japanese)

The Japan Times also ran a piece on it (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120720a2.html), but I noticed a few details (specifically stuff about Hashimoto having a fondness for Sadism and Cosplay) that I couldn't find in the web edition of the Bunshun article. Does anyone read the print edition, and if so do they reveal those deatils there or is the Japan Times just straight-up making stuff up?

In other, non-tabloidy news, this happened:



That's Ozawa on the right and Sadakazu Tanizaki (LDP chief) on the left.

Roadside_Picnic
Jun 7, 2012

by Fistgrrl

z0331 posted:

Like I mentioned, my hope is actually that they, as a nation, can reduce their need for energy to the point where clean power becomes viable. If any country can do it, Japan is probably it.

Supposedly Germany's already running about fifty percent off of solar. It makes a lot of sense for Japan to pursue it because a lot of the costs are in R&D and Japan is very strong in high-tech engineering.

And since, as we all know, the real backbone of the Japanese voting population is sixty-something NHK viewers in fisherman's vests, it's political gold.

dilbertschalter
Jan 12, 2010

Roadside_Picnic posted:

Supposedly Germany's already running about fifty percent off of solar. It makes a lot of sense for Japan to pursue it because a lot of the costs are in R&D and Japan is very strong in high-tech engineering.

And since, as we all know, the real backbone of the Japanese voting population is sixty-something NHK viewers in fisherman's vests, it's political gold.

Germany gets 3% of its electricity from solar.

Munin
Nov 14, 2004


Roadside_Picnic posted:

Supposedly Germany's already running about fifty percent off of solar. It makes a lot of sense for Japan to pursue it because a lot of the costs are in R&D and Japan is very strong in high-tech engineering.

And since, as we all know, the real backbone of the Japanese voting population is sixty-something NHK viewers in fisherman's vests, it's political gold.

There is also a real potential for geothermal power, but "our onsen :argh:".

Is that overplayed in the foreign media btw? I can see why it would be a genuine concern should people be poking around and boring holes in a stupid manner but it is stillan important clean source of energy which should be exploited.

Ganguro King
Jul 26, 2007

Munin posted:

There is also a real potential for geothermal power, but "our onsen :argh:".

Is that overplayed in the foreign media btw? I can see why it would be a genuine concern should people be poking around and boring holes in a stupid manner but it is stillan important clean source of energy which should be exploited.

There are lots of towns that are almost solely dependent on tourism money that the onsen brings in, so I'd say its a real concern. Also, a lot of the best places for geothermal wells are inside national parks and therefor blocked from development.

Roadside_Picnic
Jun 7, 2012

by Fistgrrl

dilbertschalter posted:

Germany gets 3% of its electricity from solar.

Am I totally misreading this, then?

" Even in rich countries, small reductions in emissions offer no sign of the real break with the status quo we'd need to upend the iron logic of these three numbers. Germany is one of the only big countries that has actually tried hard to change its energy mix; on one sunny Saturday in late May, that northern-latitude nation generated nearly half its power from solar panels within its borders."

via

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719#ixzz21B3kWWzd

menino
Jul 27, 2006

Pon De Floor
Could just be it was only that one days' power production was from solar. 50% one day, 0% for the next 15.

hadji murad
Apr 18, 2006
Brown shirt Hashimoto made his mistress dress up as a flight attendant in sadistic cosplay because thats a loving surprise.

He will continue to have a wonderful political career in this loving system.

Spice World War II
Jul 12, 2004

Roadside_Picnic posted:

Am I totally misreading this, then?

" Even in rich countries, small reductions in emissions offer no sign of the real break with the status quo we'd need to upend the iron logic of these three numbers. Germany is one of the only big countries that has actually tried hard to change its energy mix; on one sunny Saturday in late May, that northern-latitude nation generated nearly half its power from solar panels within its borders."

via

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719#ixzz21B3kWWzd

The unsolved problem with solar power (and other renewable energy forms, like windcraft) is that there is currently no efficient way to store it. So on a sunny day in may the numbers might be correct, but on the next day it won't be, and over the year it's still miniscule

MaterialConceptual
Jan 18, 2011

"It is rather that precisely in that which is newest the face of the world never alters, that this newest remains, in every aspect, the same. - This constitutes the eternity of hell."

-Walter Benjamin, "The Arcades Project"

hadji murad posted:

Brown shirt Hashimoto made his mistress dress up as a flight attendant in sadistic cosplay because thats a loving surprise.

He will continue to have a wonderful political career in this loving system.

Honestly I can only see this increasing his popularity.

drkhrs2020
Jul 22, 2007

MaterialConceptual posted:

Honestly I can only see this increasing his popularity.

If only he'd gone for a gothic maid look he would have locked down the otaku vote.

Samurai Sanders
Nov 4, 2003

Pillbug

drkhrs2020 posted:

If only he'd gone for a gothic maid look he would have locked down the otaku vote.
This got me thinking, what's the age/gender breakdown of voting in Japan? I assume old men vote more than old women and old people vote more than young people, but I don't know for sure. I sure couldn't get a discussion about politics started with anyone my age while I was there...

hadji murad
Apr 18, 2006
I can't prove it, but old men who feel obligated to vote as that's a duty.

Farmers who are encouraged to vote by a local leader for the people giving them the most subsidies (LDP)

I think thats the entire political system accounted for.

PrezCamachoo
Jan 21, 2012

by Y Kant Ozma Post
Voter turnout in Japan has avereged 66.5% over the last 25 years. I don't have any specifics by age or sex though.

Big Blood Bovine
Apr 24, 2010

Финское качество!

hadji murad posted:

Farmers who are encouraged to vote by a local leader for the people giving them the most subsidies (LDP)

I remember reading it somewhere that in Japanese politics farmers, and the countryside in general, are overrepresented because of some quirks of the voting system and good ol' lobbying & corruption. Is this true? Would seem kind of odd with Japan being one of the most urbanised countries in the world and all.

Samurai Sanders
Nov 4, 2003

Pillbug

Big Blood Bovine posted:

I remember reading it somewhere that in Japanese politics farmers, and the countryside in general, are overrepresented because of some quirks of the voting system and good ol' lobbying & corruption. Is this true? Would seem kind of odd with Japan being one of the most urbanised countries in the world and all.
I believe that rural or otherwise low density people are overrepresented in voting in the US too, or any other place with a two-house representative system. it's not a quirk in the voting system, it's a result of the compromise between population-based representation and land-based representation.

hadji murad
Apr 18, 2006

quote:

OHN: The official English name of the new Ozawa party is "People's Life First" and the official English abbreviation is LF.

Peak LF

Samurai Sanders
Nov 4, 2003

Pillbug
Say, has anyone in here ever seen Japanese political cartoons from newspapers or whatever? Do they exist?

Apraxin
Feb 22, 2006

General-Admiral

Samurai Sanders posted:

Say, has anyone in here ever seen Japanese political cartoons from newspapers or whatever? Do they exist?
Yes, although I have no idea where to find them online, so the only one I can show you is the one in this Shisaku entry: http://shisaku.blogspot.com/2012/05/sky-tree-down-averted.html. For the most part, they're incredibly banal, even by the standards of political cartoons, though nowhere near as hateful as their American counterparts.

Weirdly enough, some of the TV networks seem to have an in-house cartoonists, whose work is blown up, mounted on card, and displayed during news discussion programs.

Samurai Sanders
Nov 4, 2003

Pillbug
Looks like a lot more fun has started over those disputed islands. The Korean president went over, Japan said something about bringing it before the international court, and now a player on the Korean Olympic soccer team held up a sign saying it was theirs after their victory. It's so hard not to look at it as a couple of five year olds in a sandbox, but I guess that's always how land disputes look from the outside. Or maybe it's just because I'm an American and we haven't had any (that I know of) in so long?

hadji murad
Apr 18, 2006
The important thing to remember is that President Lee is deeply unpopular, maybe even more so than usual leaders in the two countries.

Lee is trying to do some nationalist garbage to boost his popularity, the Japanese are doing the same but from their more common reflexive position, as no Japanese politician has any ideas.

The diplomat will be back after Obon, like the other times they recalled the ambassador (at tax payer expense) for a couple days.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


It seems super petty here too. But I've never met anyone in Korea who likes him and the party is worried about the next election. making GBS threads on Japan always goes over well here so it makes sense.

Samurai Sanders
Nov 4, 2003

Pillbug
Ah, I didn't know Lee was unpopular, shoulda known. No one starts disputes like this for actually international reasons anyway, always domestic.

edit: vvv old people voted for him I presume?

Samurai Sanders fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Aug 11, 2012

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


He's viewed similarly to W. His standard nickname is 2MB (initials, Lee is just I which also means two) since that's all his mental computer can run. Big business over the people, puppet of the chaebols, the standard conservative poo poo.

It's one of the few things that literally every Korean I've ever met agrees on. I have no idea how he got elected.

Just Winging It
Jan 19, 2012

The buck stops at my ass
According to Wikipedia, he used to be the CEO of Hyundai Construction, so there's your big business connection. As to his election, I'd guess his opponent was even more lackluster and coming after an unpopular president of the same party.

I'd wonder though whether stirring up a shitstorm about some rocks in the middle of the ocean is going to give him an edge in an election as I'd guess that none of his competitors are going to side with the Japanese on this.

LngBolt
Sep 2, 2009
A lot of the best anime is actually political commentary. Akira and Ghost in the Shell are two examples.

whatever7
Jul 26, 2001

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

LngBolt posted:

A lot of the best anime is actually political commentary. Akira and Ghost in the Shell are two examples.

GitS the OTA has good enough political comment. GitS manga is just completely saturated with political gibberish. Akira the manga too. As for Akira the movie, I can't bring myself to compliment it. Apocalyptic ending is way too typical in anime endings.

I feel Japanese popular media have to navigate too many tabooed subjects so while there are many of them there aren't many great ones. The best is probably....Kachō Kōsaku Shima.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012
If anything, I'd say anime and other Japanese media tends to avoid overt political commentary. Whenever there's some sort of political message, it's always very general and "safe" (either vague environmentalism or hypocritical quasi-pacifism). Even with shows that can be interpreted as political, everyone involved will deny that that was the intent (Code Geass comes to mind). The opposite is the case with the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime, which is actually supposed to be a commentary on the Iraq War, but that interpretation didn't occur to me at all when I actually watched it.

Roadside_Picnic
Jun 7, 2012

by Fistgrrl

Silver2195 posted:

If anything, I'd say anime and other Japanese media tends to avoid overt political commentary. Whenever there's some sort of political message, it's always very general and "safe" (either vague environmentalism or hypocritical quasi-pacifism). Even with shows that can be interpreted as political, everyone involved will deny that that was the intent (Code Geass comes to mind). The opposite is the case with the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime, which is actually supposed to be a commentary on the Iraq War, but that interpretation didn't occur to me at all when I actually watched it.

Japanese political culture is pretty different from American political culture and it takes a while to get. If you're looking for subtext in things like anime, a lot of it is going to be about society, the generation gap and feeling misused by the system. Evangelion had a social subtext for a lot of people in my generation (now early 30's) who watched it, especially because it aired right around the time of the Aum stuff. A big part of getting something like NANA is knowing the conventions of shojo manga, but also that NANA is a sort of social-realistic character and there's a whole history of writing about working women with cultural aspirations in left-wing fiction in Japan.

If you're looking for anime that's intellectually ambitious, Ergo Proxy is pretty solid science fiction.

Heran Bago
Aug 18, 2006



Team Ninja of Metroid: MOM and Dead or Alive fame is not ever changing how they depict women and you are culturally ignorant for suggesting otherwise:

"Yosuke Hayashi posted:

"With the representation of female characters in the Dead or Alive franchise, we've always wanted to make the girls look as attractive as possible, and that's something that's not going to change for us at all," Hayashi says. "We are a Japanese developer, and we're making the female characters with our common sense and our creative sense. When you take that to countries outside of Japan, it tends to be very misinterpreted in some cases, people considering it sexist or derogatory, etc."
.....
"For us, within our culture, we're showing women like that, and we're trying to make them look attractive," he says. "We can't help if other cultures in other countries around the globe think that it's a bad representation. Within our nationality and within our national borders, we obviously have morals that we create our female characters from, but within our Japanese sensibilities, we've made those characters the way they are and we're not going to stop doing that."
I stopped bringing this up around people because I get weird looks and its not seen as a big deal. It is just not what Japanese girls or guys I've met are interested in.

Samurai Sanders posted:

This got me thinking, what's the age/gender breakdown of voting in Japan? I assume old men vote more than old women and old people vote more than young people, but I don't know for sure. I sure couldn't get a discussion about politics started with anyone my age while I was there...

I've also never met a Japanese person under 30 who is interested in voting. Among friends I've seen no interest in policies that does not some way relate to TEPCO and even then it's less than avid.

All anecdotal of course. I would love to see any numbers on the youth vote.

VVVVV Thanks so much. It's much better than I expected.

Heran Bago fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Aug 30, 2012

ozza
Oct 23, 2008

Heran Bago posted:


All anecdotal of course. I would love to see any numbers on the youth vote.

A quick search reveals: http://diamond.jp/articles/-/7508?page=3

I'm not sure how that compares globally, but it looks like there has been a pretty steep decline since the bubble burst.

Gabriel Grub
Dec 18, 2004

"We Japanese...": The first refuge of creeps and scoundrels.

zmcnulty
Jul 26, 2003

Heran Bago posted:

I stopped bringing this up around people because I get weird looks and its not seen as a big deal.

You get weird looks because you are talking about Metroid and Dead or Alive with people in real life, not on the internet

Heran Bago
Aug 18, 2006



zmcnulty posted:

You get weird looks because you are talking about Metroid and Dead or Alive with people in real life, not on the internet

I meant talking to Japanese people about how they view their culture's treatment and depiction of women. It's not seen as a 'problem' and it's a strange thing to talk about in general since it's bad for group cohesion. I've known girls who really think women should strive to be childishly cute and find a cute guys to walk a few paces behind. The weird looks are for suggesting that women should not feel like they have to.

Again, this is all anecdotal. I've had some good friends who could speak openly and criticize their own culture and it's an issue that would only come up with non-foreigners if forced to by foreigners.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


That's interesting. I was just in Japan for the first time and was struck how individual everyone seems compared with Korea, but that kind of sexism is different. Korea is sexist as hell too, but all my Korean friends (women) think it's terrible and needs to change. The conformism keeps them from doing anything active about it, though. And some of them end up just going with what Korean society expects even though they hate every bit of it. Others have stopped associating with Korean men entirely and only hang out with western guys since they get treated so much better.

Asia badly needs feminism.

ErIog
Jul 11, 2001

:nsacloud:

Heran Bago posted:

I meant talking to Japanese people about how they view their culture's treatment and depiction of women. It's not seen as a 'problem' and it's a strange thing to talk about in general since it's bad for group cohesion. I've known girls who really think women should strive to be childishly cute and find a cute guys to walk a few paces behind. The weird looks are for suggesting that women should not feel like they have to.

Again, this is all anecdotal. I've had some good friends who could speak openly and criticize their own culture and it's an issue that would only come up with non-foreigners if forced to by foreigners.

I've had conversations with Japanese people about this, and the thing you need to understand is that the forces that keep this imbalance of power in place are somewhat mutual. I've been very struck at times by how willing Japanese women I've met are very content to play a role, and reject me quite harshly for not acting in kind. Japan is a country built on people acting how others expect them to act, and this goes both ways. Japan has a serious case of rape culture, and you're just not going to crack that. Most average Japanese women would be very confused to hear about a sexual encounter that wasn't what we in the west would consider rape.

Gender relations in Japan are staggeringly bad. People manage to kind of get on with one another when they finally manage to find someone, but lots of people are just kind of giving up on the entire prospect. They'll masturbate or read their romance manga. They'll be fulfilled that way. Japanese society is very much built upon the idea that you are a very different person in your own head than the person you are out in society. They are okay with this, and they have accepted it.

I think the entire situation is extremely damaging, but that's the way it is. This is why in the cross-cultural marriage statistics I believe you see represented a bunch of western MRA douchebags, and not so many western women. Japan does need feminism for sure. I just don't know by what kind of vector it can make it over. They interpret every depiction of a more equally-split modern western-style relationship as being high fantasy.

ErIog fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Aug 31, 2012

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Gabriel Grub
Dec 18, 2004

ErIog posted:

Most average Japanese women would be very confused to hear about a sexual encounter that wasn't what we in the west would consider rape.

What?

And what does this have to do with politics? I thought we already had a thread for bullshit conjecture about Japanese society.

Gabriel Grub fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Aug 31, 2012

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