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Heran Bago posted:
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.
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Aug 30, 2012 07:22
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Kenishi posted:
Good question. I'm not sure I know the answer. On the first page of that same article (http://diamond.jp/articles/-/7508) there's another graph showing voter turnout for post-war Lower House elections. There's no real clue in the author's analysis, who just notes that it was a period of 'voter disinterest'. After reading a little more elsewhere it looks like a new electoral system took effect in 1996 that, most significantly, disallowed parties from running more than one candidate in a district. District boundaries were redrawn and people may have been reticent to vote for a set of candidates they weren't familiar with. I'd guess that that was one factor, combined with a general post-bubble malaise. The rate has gone back up to 67% (2005) and 69% (2009) since, though.
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Sep 7, 2012 16:44
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The majority of news coverage and concern has been to do with the safety of Japanese in China. In fact in a lot of the 反日デモ stories I have seen there has been only a passing mention of the terrirorial dispute itself. As mentioned above though it's really just one of many ongoing news items - certainly one focus, but there's not exactly a frenzy of concern. Noda's been very low key, calling for cool heads and asking for China to show self restraint. Anecdotally, none of my friends (late 20s) seem too interested by the whole thing.
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Sep 17, 2012 15:56
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Interesting discussion. For those of you in the United States, how would you compare the arguments of pro-death penalty Americans you've encountered versus pro-death penalty Japanese? Also on the topic of sexual assaults and the Japanese justice system, if you haven't checked out a film called 'I Just Didn't Do It' ('それでもボクはやってない'), get on it. It's about a man (falsely) accused of groping a school girl on a train, and the nightmare that ensues once he is arrested. Although fictional, it's a real eye-opener. http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%9D%E3%82%8C%E3%81%A7%E3%82%82%E3%83%9C%E3%82%AF%E3%81%AF%E3%82%84%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A6%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84
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Feb 25, 2013 01:50
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mcpike posted:... A bit of a tangent, but I've seen this connection made quite a lot by people whose kids are abducted back to Japan, and I think it's an extremely poor and insensitive analogy. In the abductions by North Korea, you had young people abducted on orders of another state who were held in secret for 24+ years. Many of them died in North Korea, with their families never knowing for certain where they were. This is a state crime that has severely crippled Japan's relations with the DPRK and the Japanese public's opinions of North Korea. Even today, over ten years since the Pyongyang Summit, it remains a prominent sticking point - Abe has been wearing the blue ribbon (http://www.rachi.go.jp/en/minkan/index.html) in all of his media appearances, and made detailed reference to the abductions in his recent CSIS speech in the US (http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/96_abe/statement/201302/22speech_e.html). How the abduction of a child by one parent, in which both parties know the location of the child and the child is always with a parent, is an any way analogous to this (besides the word "abduction") is extremely unclear to me. It's also a comparison not likely to endear the speaker to Japanese people. (/tangent)
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Feb 26, 2013 10:12
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(This post is not supposed to be here, sorry.)
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Feb 26, 2013 10:13
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On the topic of awful Japanese stereotypes abroad, there was that lovely British TV show "Banzai" that was wildly popular (in Australia at least) a few years ago. It featured the awful accents, nonsensical mystery Oriental language with cool symbols, and wacky inscrutible Japanese salarymen that you'd expect from a show called "Banzai". It was like something out of the 1930s, but managed to win a bunch of awards if I recall correctly.
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Mar 9, 2013 07:09
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In my experience, a lot of the propagation of Nihonjinron thinking comes from everyday laziness, rather than being a well thought-out world view. What I mean by that is people just hear stuff like "Japanese body temperature is two degrees lower than Westerners'" at some point when they're young, and then just never really think about it again. It's usually not some closely held belief, it's just something people have taken for granted for a long time. And of course being surrounded mostly by other Japanese means the views are not often challenged. The Japanese being descended from a different line of primates is a new one on me, though. I have read that same thing in Chinese theories on 'race' origin.
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Mar 12, 2013 07:40
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Bloodnose posted:I do think official visits to Yasukuni are lame, but it's a completely different scenario from a visit to Rudolf Hess. It's more like if Rudolf Hess was entombed in a church crypt that also housed lots of respected figures from German history, maybe like also Charlemagne and some saints or something, and they paid an official visit to that church. Also important to remember is that Yasukuni doesn't actually have remains on the premises; worshippers are paying homage to the single "glob" of 2.5 million souls of those that are 'enshrined' there. These are the souls of people who died for the Emperor between the beginning of the Meiji period and the end of WWII. Once a soul is added to the glob, the owners have said that it is impossible to remove it - so the war criminals apparently cannot possibly be extinguished. This differs from how Shinto shrines usually work. From here http://www.zcommunications.org/enshrinement-politics-war-dead-and-war-criminals-at-yasukuni-shrine-by-akiko-takenaka: quote:The shrine, too, has vehemently opposed the removal, explaining that, unlike an ordinary shrine, where each god has its own seat (za), Yasukuni gods all occupy a single seat. Therefore, it is impossible to separate one from another once enshrined. My suggestion for South Korea and China would be get a bunch of priests to perform their own rituals (in their respective countries) that they say extinguish the souls they find offensive from Yasukuni. Why not? It's all made up, anyway, and it would allow them to reclaim a sense of ownership while at the same time sticking it up the right-wingers. I guess it would almost certainly add fuel to the right-wingers' fires, though.
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Apr 24, 2013 02:55
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While we're on the topic of comparisons between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, here's a slight diversion that I've always found very interesting: the "Fugu plan". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_settlement_in_the_Japanese_Empire Essentially, after being duped by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, some high-ups in the Japanese government and army decide to try to curry favour with the international Jewry by helping them resettle in Manchuria after fleeing Europe. The plan is shut down after the signing of the Tripartite Pact, though there is continued unofficial assistance for Jews - notably from Sugihara Chiune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara), a Japanese consular official in Lithuania who issued around transit visas for around 6,000 Polish and Lithuanian Jews, enabling them to escape. He's revered as a hero in Israel today.
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Apr 24, 2013 03:59
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mystes posted:
It's just an alternate kanji for 祭る. As usual, chiebukuro is the number one stop for answers: http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1472035434 /boring language chat
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Apr 25, 2013 03:19
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mystes posted:Actually I meant the fact that it said "お祀るりする". Yikes, I missed that sorry. An obscure kanji with a spelling error, truly the spirit of the Japanese right wing.
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Apr 25, 2013 03:51
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Cameron posted:
Apart from other potential abductees, there are a couple of other major groups of Japanese in North Korea. The first are the wives of zainichi Koreans who "returned" to North Korea after the Korean War. (I say "returned" because many were actually originally from the South, but became ideologically tied to the North while in Japan, and so decided to live there when the chance arose.) Around 2,000 Japanese wives went with their husbands to North Korea, many under the impression that a socialist paradise awaited. I'm not sure how many are still alive today, but a few have been allowed to return home for a few weeks to visit their families. The second group is the much smaller group of surviving Red Army members and their wives, who defected to the DPRK in the 1970s. I remember reading somewhere that they were extremely keen to return to Japan, even if it meant immediate imprisonment. As for other abductees - who knows. The secretive nature of the abductions events combined with the inability to investigate in North Korea means that it's extremely difficult to confirm a given case as abduction. The major citizens' group that investigates the abductions, 特定失踪者問題調査会 (Chosakai), has a list of around 800 names of people who may be abductees. Of course, every parent whose child mysteriously vanishes is going to want to believe that they were abducted, rather than went off to commit suicide or disappear for some reason. It's an issue that's doomed to eternal ambiguity, unfortunately.
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Apr 27, 2013 16:32
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There was a decent article in Foreign Affairs recently about the diabolical cycle that is occurring, in which politicians are pandering to pensioners because pensioners are the ones who vote (and of course because they are disproportionately represented), which leads to very pensioner-friendly policies. The upshot is that there is no immediate benefit for those in power to push strongly for the kind of structural reform that will help the country in the long-term at the expense of pensioner interests (ie, revising the pension system). So you have a system in which it is difficult for younger people to become interested in politics, because politics is literally for the elderly. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139589/alexandra-harney/japans-silver-democracy
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Jul 22, 2013 02:31
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Geothermal power plants in onsens that were once tourist meccas seems like a great idea to me. Beside the power generation, it would give local economies at least a minor shot in the arm. God knows there are enough shuttered up Bubble-era getaways in the boondocks to choose from. I can't imagine there are enough residents left in a lot of them to object. 65% of Iceland's power generation is geothermal - what's stopping Japan?
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Sep 15, 2013 16:40
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dilbertschalter posted:Providing power for 300k people isn't the same as providing power for 125 million. True enough, that wasn't a great comparison. There's no denying that it's a hugely underutilised energy source in Japan at present, though - just 0.2% of electricity produced is geothermal, and capability has been basically unchanged since 1999. After a bit of reading today it looks like, in addition to gaining consent from onsen managers, another hurdle for geothermal power is the huge cost involved in locating and drilling sites for power plants. The fact that the majority of the locations are in difficult-to-access, mountainous regions pushes this cost up even further. The good news is that post-3/11 the government has upped subsidies for exploration and construction costs. But yeah - certainly the few academic articles that I was able to find all suggested that the biggest issue for geothermal power in Japan was understanding / acceptance by local stakeholders.
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Sep 16, 2013 09:57
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jigokuman posted:Um, no, because the Japanese totally evolved from breed of ape different from the ones that became other humans, making them totally unique. Obviously; that's why their body temperature is 2 degrees lower than the rest of the human species.
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Dec 10, 2013 03:54
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Samurai Sanders posted:A long time ago I watched an anime where a character matter-of-factly said that Japanese have less saliva than other people. Is that a widespread belief? Unlike some of these, I have never heard it elsewhere. Never heard the saliva one before. Of the above-mentioned beliefs, I've def heard the 'long intestines' one the most.
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Dec 10, 2013 06:16
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You're talking about the change to refer to Senkaku and Dokdo as Japan's 'indigenous territories'? The former I can understand the logic for, but I was for some reason under the impression that the Japanese government was basically conceding Dokdo at this point.
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Jan 18, 2014 03:14
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Moving along, with Hosokawa running on an overwhelmingly anti-nuclear ticket for the Toyko governorship, I'm wondering about what he's capable of doing should he be voted in. I understand that the Tokyo Governor is a relatively powerful role, but what specifically would he be able to do anti-nuclearwise? Turn down planning applications?
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Jan 23, 2014 07:05
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Stringent posted:Nothing, it's just the first issue that anyone under 60's shown an interest in for a couple of decades so everyone's trying to milk it. Well that (and the link in the previous post) is pretty depressing. Koizumi at least seems genuine about the cause.
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Jan 23, 2014 10:17
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ookiimarukochan posted:
Right you are, it's hard to tell. But if he's stage managing the anti-nuclear push, I think he's doing a good job at it.
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Jan 23, 2014 14:43
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quote:Japan not electing the prime minister directly also contributes to these feelings. In America there's a sense of, "I voted for Obama so Obama is my president." or "I voted against Romney, and so all those Obama voters are to blame for his policies." In Japan, the feeling is, "I guess Abe is prime minister now... again." You made some solid points, but I have to disagree with this one. Coming from a country where we don't directly elect our Prime Minister (or head of state) either, it does not contribute at all to a disconnection from politics. There are many interrelated reasons for political apathy in Japan, but I don't think this is one of them.
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Jan 29, 2014 08:07
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Vagabundo posted:When you look at other countries that have a system where the voters elect a party into power, they nevertheless have a very definite leader in charge so you know that when you vote for, say the Canadian Tories, you're voting for Harper and if you voted for, say, Aussie Labor in their most recent elections, you'd have been voting for Kevin Rudd. The lack of an actual definite leader combined with the constant merry-go-round at the top can not be dismissed as factors contributing greatly to the disconnect that many Japanese feel with politics. I mean, look at the Prime Ministers and how long they've generally lasted during the Heisei-era. Bar a few exceptions, they've generally struggled to stay in office for more than 18 months, particularly the bunch post-Koizumi. poo poo, Koizumi was in office for what seems like a lifetime, but it was actually only 5 years. I don't disagree that a cast of revolving leaders fosters an atmosphere of political disengagement, I was arguing that a system of non-directly elected of leaders in itself does not result in political apathy.
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Jan 29, 2014 23:21
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Here's a good article by John Dower where he discusses the various lingering issues affecting US-Japan-China relations. Interesting to me was his point that the present-day Japanese conservatives are motivated by the same sentiments as Chinese nationalists: a toxic mixture of humiliation and pride. http://www.japanfocus.org/-John_W_-Dower/4079
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Feb 26, 2014 12:08
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Zo posted:The expansionary fiscal policy poo poo has been tried like every other year by every sitting prime minister and it has never worked. Things look better on paper for a bit then reality inevitably comes crashing down because there is no rise in worker wages. So yes, it's all just for show. The real problem with Abe's third arrow is that the changes necessary for meaningful structural reform (including but by no means limited to the above-mentioned gender equality) simply cannot be achieved by government mandate alone. These are profound social shifts that are required, and in some cases reimaginings of what constitutes 'Japan' itself (I'm thinking here specifically of drastically increased immigration to supplement the dwindling working population). So the third arrow was always doomed to be a dud.
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Mar 1, 2014 13:42
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Madd0g11 posted:THEY ARE COMING BACK TO PEARL HARBOR. Exactly what I thought too! Seems like those conditions could be used to justify just about any military deployment the government wishes.
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Mar 4, 2014 04:10
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Wibbleman posted:This is pretty cool. A good response. Why was the banner erected in the first place? I assume it must have been an international exhibition game? An attempt to keep those dirty foreign supporters out of the pure Japanese seating?
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Mar 18, 2014 07:13
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Wittgen posted:Japan almost universally displaying post tax prices that almost always ended in zero or five was one of the great little things about it as a country. The loss makes me sad. What's next? They institute America style tipping? Fear not, post-tax prices will end with a zero again from October 1 next year, when the consumption tax rises to 10%.
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Apr 6, 2014 09:08
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icantfindaname posted:On another topic, is there any political will in Japan at all to make immigration easier? Is the demographic situation sustainable politically or will they be forced to do something about it? There was a program a few years back (possibly still ongoing) to get a bunch of Indonesian and Filipino women in to work as aged care nurses. The idea was that they would undergo intensive training for a year, and then take the nursing exam at the end of that year. Most flunked out due to language issues. quote:Indonesian and Filipino workers who come to care for a vast and growing elderly population cannot stay for good without passing a certification test. And that test's reliance on high-level Japanese -- whose characters these nurses cram to memorize -- has turned the test into a de facto language exam. That's from a 2010 article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/27/AR2010072706053.html?wprss=rss_print
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May 2, 2014 07:33
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Grand Fromage posted:The Japanese government was in for a shock when it turned out that people from Brazil are Brazilian, not Japanese. There's a great article by Takeyuki Tsuda about the thinking behind encouraging migration of Japanese-Brazilians. Because I have it handy, here are a few quotes: quote:Japanese government officials were able to justify this side door policy [of allowing nikkeijin into Japan] by claiming that the nikkeijin were not unskilled immigrant workers per se, but ancestral returneees who were being invited back to their ethnic homeland to explore their Japanese heritage. In addition, because of an essentialized racial ideology in which those of Japanese decent are expected to be culturally Japanese to a certain extent, even if they were born and raised abroad, government policymakers assumed that the nikkeijin would be culturally similar and would assimilate smoothly to Japanese society - in contrast to racially and culturally different foreigners. Even though the Brazilian-Japanese were ultimately regarded by Japanese society as 'foreigners', they are still regarded as 'more Japanese' than Zainichi Koreans - who are born in Japan, often speak only Japanese and are probably indistinguishable from 'Japanese Japanese' by most people. From the same article: quote:One local city official in Oizumi expressed a common sentiment among my Japanese informants when he said: Guess the Zainichi just need some of that precious Japanese blood. What if they got transfusions?
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May 11, 2014 05:15
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ErIog posted:
I was pleasantly surprised to reach the end of this story without seeing a tenuous reference to "rising right-wing nationalism" in Japan, or "hawkish Prime Minister Abe". If we're generally discussing pet peeves when it comes to non-Japanese reportage of Japanese news, my ichi-ban is the tendency to ascribe one-off incidences of racism / discrimination to (fictional) transitions in broader social phenomena. By this I don't mean that there aren't racist groups in Japan, only that I can't see any evidence of a trend towards this racism becoming any more popular than it has been in the past.
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May 12, 2014 08:02
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Wow. I just read the Kunai-cho's Wiki too, and came across this:quote:The Agency has been portrayed as controlling every aspect of the lives of the members of the Imperial Family, both public and private, and exerting near-total control over them, from staff appointments to wardrobe selection. As with the imperial family itself, positions in the 1300-year-old Agency are hereditary. Nine out of ten requests from the imperial family, even the Emperor himself, are rejected. Masako, for instance, was denied browsing a bookstore, visiting her family, or calling her old college friends around the world or even going out for a cup of coffee. They certainly seem like a delightful organisation. Considering that the Hirohito book has been in the works for 24 years, I think we can lay the blame for its blandness squarely on the Kunai-cho, rather than on the current administration specifically. Edit: Went to the Japanese Wiki page on the Kunai-cho, and it's shorter than the English one and contains no criticism. ozza fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Oct 2, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 14:06
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Reverend Cheddar posted:Pretty much. I couldn't give a source to quote just because this was purely my interaction with them but you get the very strong sense that the crown family is taken quite literally as symbols by Kunaicho and not, like, actual people. Part of that I think is chalked up to the fact that they are fully taxpayer-funded and very aware of the fact they can't do anything appearing remotely frivolous, but it is pretty disturbing to think about. As for the family themselves, I've also met Princess Takamado and she was nothing but wonderful (a pretty cool lady in her own right actually), so I think Kunaicho must have a particular issue with the main branch or something. Thanks for your insights. Are you able to say what kind of work it is you do that puts you into contact with the Kunai-cho and royals?
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Oct 3, 2014 07:45
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Kenishi posted:This is amazing. But what is こっかいぎんうえ(what it sounded like to me), Hashimoto said it a few times. I'm assuming it relates to the Diet. Not 100% on context, but it's 国会議員に言え - 'tell it to a member of the Diet'. I think he's telling the Zaitokukai guy to complain to parliament if he believes there is abuse of privileges by Zainichi Koreans with special permanent residency, instead of spouting hateful rhetoric to the public.
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Oct 23, 2014 00:45
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ErIog posted:Mayor stands in opposition to air conditioning/heat in his city's elementary schools. Usually the thread title is accurate for Japanese news, but in this case I think "each other" should be replaced with "children." While we're on the topic, has anyone ever heard a plausible explanation for why all the school ovals (and most parks) in Japan are dirt? It's always baffled me, because grass is clearly a safer option for kids, and even in dry dry Australia we use trillions of litres to keep our school ovals and parks grassy. Is the explanation just one of those tautological "this is how we've done it in Japan, so this is how we do it" type things?
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Feb 17, 2015 01:22
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mystes posted:NHK is now reporting that the votes against the Osaka Metropolis plan are confirmed to have the majority. Hashimoto had said that he would quit politics if this happened, so it will be interesting to see what happens. His term as mayor ends in December, so if he sticks to his guns he'll flee back to TV land then.
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May 18, 2015 06:08
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Interesting, thanks for that. There's also quite a pronounced difference between men and women - many more younger women were opposed to the merger. I wonder why?
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May 19, 2015 01:48
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He was deemed no longer a risk to others and released into the care of his father, who was instructed to contact the hospital if his condition appeared to change. Doesn't look like there is much more detail aside from that at the moment.
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Jul 27, 2016 05:49
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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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