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Munin posted:I think what ErIog is saying is that "Lie back and think of As far as I can tell, the Island (really just rocks in the sea) have been private property of a Japanese family for decades. China has claimed them because, apparently, they do show up on ancient maps. Now the hard-right wing mayor of Tokyo prefecture has announced that he intends to buy the islands from the family, which would make the Japanese state the owner of these islands. Since the central government can't really allow a provincial governor to dictate foreign policy with a nuclear power, they pretty much have to top his offer. Here is a good article of foreignpolicy.com: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/14/tokyo_s_hawkish_governor_stirs_the_pot
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Aug 31, 2012 14:43
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ocrumsprug posted:I suspect that it would take something like North Korea lobbing more missiles over the country, before the public would be particularly supportive of removing the pacifist clauses. Alternatively, Kim was a loving looney.
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Nov 15, 2012 22:24
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Gleri posted:To be fair to the Japanese, you're just describing the civil law system. I think at least some of the issue that Americans (and other Anglophones) have when assessing the Japanese legal system is not that it is uniquely Japanese but that, like everywhere else that wasn't run by the British at some point, it is heavily civilian. Under the Meiji reforms the Japanese legal system was directly modeled on the German and French legal systems, in particular the German system. The Japanese Civil Code, for instance, is in large part, I've been told, a translation of a draft of the German Code. Even after the Occupation, the Japanese courts are very, very German in style. That is to say that judges are indeed recruited straight out of law school, as are prosecutors, and being a judge is, as far as I can tell from my Japanese colleagues, not seen as being as prestigious as in the common law system. I assume judges serve some kind of extended apprenticeship and training program--I happen to know a Dutch judge and that's how their system works--but I'm really not certain about the details. It would perhaps be better to say "Japanese courts are very much like German courts were at the turn of the twentieth century". German judges all go through law school and are usually recruited from the top few percent of a given class. That means they had internships at both a lawyer's and at the prosecutor's office so I guess the whole judge+prosecutor vs. the defense lawyer doesn't happen as much (it is an open secret that judges lean towards prosecution, not least because most prosecutors try to build a watertight case including forensic evidence). I'm no expert on how courts in Germany (read: Prussia) were run when Japan modernized, but going by the rest of society, they were probably very conscious of their rank in society and hilariously racist. But Germany has reformed in a way I guess Japan has not. And, of course, there is nothing I have read in this thread that suggest that Trial By Jury would have any major impact. What kind of jury member would rock the boat by "not being convinced enough"?
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Feb 26, 2013 00:11
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What i do not understand about the way Japan treats women in the workforce is that, as far as I can tell, girls are encouraged every bit as much as boys to do well in school and go to college, where they get an excellent education, only to leave the workforce a few years later or work menial jobs. That can't be good from an economic point of view, when half the education budget shows no increase in skilled workers because the people trained sit at home and wait for the kids to finish school.
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Feb 27, 2013 18:04
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Kenishi posted:
That is actually very surprising to hear, because I read an article just a few weeks ago that credited Germany's currently decent economic position on a radical restructuring of the workflow in German factories, the concepts of which being imported from Japan. But that apparently started in the 80ies, so what the hell happened in between?
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Mar 4, 2013 03:01
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Cliff Racer posted:But, correct me if I'm wrong, thats not how radiation works. Have an expert come in and certify that they are are officially back to pre-disaster level, problem solved.
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Mar 11, 2013 13:47
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Protocol 5 posted:That kind of stuff is really funny because genetic analysis has shown that people in Japan today share a shitload of characteristics with the Chinese, Koreans, Ainu, Ryukyuans, and everyone else in the region. It's a surprisingly diverse profile for a country that was considered an isolated backwater for much of its recorded history. They're about as unique and special in a genetic sense as say the English. Wasn't there an incident at the Bejing Olympics where the Emperor Himself said something like "Yeah my family is originally from Korea (like immigrated from there in 800 BC or so)" and Japanese TV went THIS NEVER HAPPENED? What surprises me is that this kind of Japanese exceptionalism can survive in the age of the Internet. At least the more ridiculous claims (4 seasons) could be cleared up with 30 seconds on Google. Hell, even in the process of just watching international news you should pick up that sometimes the EU ministers meet in the snow and sometimes the US president has a press conference in the sunshine, and vice versa about 6 months apart! Do Japanese news only show domestic news or something?
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Mar 12, 2013 06:52
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Samurai Sanders posted:You know it's political because when they visit it's an official visit as a politician, not as a private citizen. They are very clear about that. Koizumi sometimes waffled on that back in the day but as far as I know that's not the way it is anymore. I have yet to hear from a conservative German politician who visited the grave of Rudolf Hess, though.
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Apr 23, 2013 13:26
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Deceitful Penguin posted:
Denazification in East Germany was more about nationalizing factories (because they were used in the war effort, you see) than it was about finding Nazis. Those had all fled to the west, as far as the East German government was concerned, and in any event were only a small minority who misled the majority of the German people. The never really worked through Germany's past, which is precisely why the east has become such a stronghold for neonazi movements. That said, I'd love to see pictures from Yasukuni shrine, if only for the rise in blood pressure.
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Apr 24, 2013 17:21
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What do they say? "WWII 1941-1945 runner-ups"?
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Apr 24, 2013 23:32
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Gleri posted:
Well, I know literally nothing about the Japanese Supreme Court, but I would guess that parliament would have to make a "LAW for establishing an Army/Navy/Air Force/Mecha Squadron". That law could then be put before the Supreme Court, which should strike it down as a violation of Article 9. That it hasn't done so about the SDF does not mean that it couldn't. The article that forbids Germany from waging wars of aggression has no provision for its enforcement either, but the Government is required by oath and law to uphold the constitution, and can be sued if they fail to do so. I would assume that similar constructs exist in Japan.
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May 2, 2013 16:34
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I think a key point is that there is no such thing as "China says". They aren't a hive mind, and their bureaucracy has grown large enough that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there are a bunch of people in the Foreign Ministry going  because they were literally never informed that the People's daily would be running this kind of article.So basically don't make this out to be Chinese policy just yet.
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May 9, 2013 17:16
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Reverend Cheddar posted:If you can stand to read the guy's Twitter -- all two hundred or whatever tweets he vomited out about this (and keep in mind you can say a lot more in Japanese with 140 characters than you can in English) -- he actually did say that this was his reasoning. Other countries used prostitutes, don't just harp on Japan!!1 I was mistranslated! They didn't listen to me in context! Foreign media rrrarrblaattghhrhrhffffff. Wouldn't the concept of Guilt vs. Shame play into it? Bascially the idea that in the west people are taught that they have an internal set of morals and if they violate it, they did wrong even if no one ever knows about it. In Japan/Asia people are taught that they have to behave as others expect it from them. So if others (the US in this case) apparently don't care about sex slaves (because they use them themselves) then it isn't wrong. That said, I recently learned that the Wehrmacht used forced prostitution in the East and had its own share of massrapes, and there is literally nothing being taught about it. So much for being the shining example of dealing with our past, I guess...
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May 18, 2013 06:21
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So, I assume everyone responsible made a really heartfelt apology and that was the end of it?
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Aug 22, 2013 14:15
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Reverend Cheddar posted:Consider there is also like no jingoism whatsoever about WWII on TV (which is still a major force over here -- things like Hulu haven't really picked up here, something which I'm sure is similar to the RIAJ years back and selling music online), it's almost always sad memoirs about young boys going off to war who never came back or how getting atomic bombed sucks. They might not know everything they did in the war, but they're well aware that war is terrible and they want none of it. Do those things mention the fact that japan, you know, started the war? Because painting yourself the victim when you are the aggressor is still whitewashing.
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Sep 10, 2013 16:38
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Kenishi posted:Creating a larger standing army and building a stronger defense industry are all things Abe/the LDP would like to see happen with the rewriting of the constitution. But he has no supermajority now so he won't be able to pull it off. One would assume that the procedures to change the constitution would be put down in the constitution itself, no?
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Sep 11, 2013 15:49
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ozza posted: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. Well, Iceland is on the other end of the world and the price of undersea powercables is enormous.
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Sep 15, 2013 16:43
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Samurai Sanders posted:I forgot, there's definitely one area that they oppose the West on: the UN's position on universal human rights. We're for it, they're against it, since it would mean they would have to treat women and Koreans like human beings. Freep always treats everything from the UN as an attempt to impose the homosexual muslim agenda 21 on are country. And they are very sceptical of the idea of universal human rights for anyone they don't like (Muslims, gays, and gay Muslims in particular).
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Oct 14, 2013 09:22
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:
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Oct 23, 2013 08:48
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Lucy Heartfilia posted:
That is the core issue. Having a well-paying job means nothing if the company doesn't exist anymore after a year. Germans are pretty risk averse, not least because our great- and great-grandparents lost everything twice, and they raised their children based on that perception. It would be interesting to know if WWII had a similar effect on the Japanese society, or if keeping the status quo has been a long standing tradition there (the Meji restauration says no).
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Oct 23, 2013 14:09
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ocrumsprug posted:She did reject it twice. My wife made it sound like the royal family pressured the government, who quietly told her to accept the proposal as she no longer had any career prospects. And since she was barred from government service by law after she married, she really didn't. After she married a prince or after she married, period? Because if its the latter... 
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Oct 24, 2013 18:20
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Samurai Sanders posted:A new study puts Japan (and Korea) basically at the bottom of the developed world for women's equality in economics opportunity, and have been going steadily downward. Because I hate myself I went over to 2ch to see what they were saying and one of the first posts was "well women don't WANT to work more so what can we do?" Its the strangest thing, you give these women who have university degrees very simple tasks like making tea and filing documents and they don't want to work hard. Completely inexplicable.
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Oct 25, 2013 18:58
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Grand Fromage posted:Burberry men are flashers specifically, but it's the same idea. My middle school girls say they hate summer because of the burberry men that show up and show them their dicks regularly throughout the season. Jesus Christ what
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Nov 5, 2013 15:37
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Samurai Sanders posted:Wow, their supreme court is some weak sauce. What do you propose? To declare the results invalid means to topple the government and to dissolve the parliament, which is a pretty big deal and goes a little beyond just "Checks and Balances". In an ideal world, declaring a result unconstitutional spurs parliament to change the election laws. Except in this situation they didn't, because what are you going to do, drag us from the chamber  ?
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Nov 21, 2013 12:59
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Grand Fromage posted:The Stalin thing is bizarre. I wonder how many of those people are aware of things like the Holodomor though. Actually I don't want to know, I'd rather just assume they don't instead of the idea of huge numbers of Russians being totally cool with that. Denazification was a bit of a joke, to be perfectly honest. It took until the 60ies before the not-quite-worst of the Nazis were purged from office, and even then some remained. i think what mattered more is that Germany always considered itself a western nation and desperately wanted to be acknowledged as an equal by the "older" nation states (France and Britain first among them). Becoming, for the lack of a better term, "barbaric" between 1933 and 1945 forced a brutal shift in thinking in Germany. You can't claim to be a civilized, well cultured western nation and herd people into gas chambers. Yes, other nation states have done horrible, horrible things (France and Britain probably first among them), but most German historians would still argue that the Holocaust has a special quality all of its own. It wasn't "a" genocide, it was "the" Genocide. The only way to possibly be considered civilized after that is to make amends where you can, get on your knees and beg for mercy. I think one thing the Japanese atrocities lack is the premeditation of the Holocaust. At least to some degree, there is some truth to the claim that any atrocity was the work of junior officers or enlisted soldiers, not government policy (government policy was "We don't give a poo poo about you, you lost and should be grateful that we even acknowledge your existence"). Come to think of it, Bismarck is still relatively popular in Germany, even though he started three wars and ordered brutal crackdowns on Poles and Socialists. I guess at least he won the wars he started.
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Dec 27, 2013 18:06
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Sheep posted:No. There is still a difference between how the Japanese Army acted in China and the Einsatzgruppen of the SS in Russia.
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Dec 27, 2013 18:26
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Sheep posted:No one is disputing that, but what you said - that the atrocities were "the work of junior officers or enlisted soldiers, not government policy" is patently false in a great number of cases ranging from sexual slavery to forced labor to execution of POWs, the list goes on and on. Read what I wrote, I never claimed that all Japanese atrocities were the product of rogue soldiers.
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Dec 27, 2013 19:26
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dilbertschalter posted:Pretty much every other regime (maybe not the Khmer Rouge) comes off favorably by comparison to Nazi Germany, so saying that Japan's crimes weren't as bad doesn't seem like a fruitful angle of attack. Its not about how bad it was, it is about how their atrocities relate to the political culture of the country. Germany made a predetermined effort to murder entire ethnic groups. It is at least debatable whether the Japanese did the same, or if they just didn't care in any way, shape, or form if entire ethnic groups died because of their policies. this is especially important since the original question was why Germany handled the aftermath of its war crimes relatively well while Japan did not.
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Dec 27, 2013 20:05
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Wibbleman posted:Well to be honest TEPCO wanted to decommission the plant 15 years ago now, but weren't allowed to build the replacement so they had to keep it running (this is pretty much the main effect of anti-nuke movements). I'm sure the TEPCO executives lost a lot of sleep over their paid off powerplant that kept making them money.
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Jan 8, 2014 13:40
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Lemmi Caution posted:Politicians hold on to the issue of Dokdo because the prefecture that it supposedly belongs to cares intensely about it and Japanese politics are intensely local. You can apply this to just about every issue that makes you wonder why Japan holds on when even its own people don't seem to feel strongly about the issue: whaling, the dolphin hunt, territorial disputes, etc. There is a tiny, improportionately powerful rural community that cares deeply about it and will vote based on that one thing. So basically all of Japan is Florida.
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Jan 29, 2014 03:29
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Zo posted:The right wing fanatics are not satisfied with just quietly whitewashing history at home anymore apparently, and have leveled up to obnoxiously aggressive whitewashing. When the japanese government pulls moves like this it really makes all their apologies seem like big jokes. "Yes we are very sorry about this thing that never happened". "And even if it did happen we shouldn't talk about it because it might make people feel bad."
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Feb 26, 2014 10:17
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Ernie Muppari posted:I can't see how anyone who has need of them can fail to notice that that sort of bullshit actually makes the people you're supposedly apologizing to more angry. That's the point. Now they can go "well we apologized, I guess there is just no pleasing
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Mar 18, 2014 11:22
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computer parts posted:I liked that Phoenix Wright was apparently based slightly on actual Japanese courtrooms, especially the whole "we're trying this innovative system where the Judge doesn't literally convict someone whenever they want, it's called a jury". There are a bunch of countries that don't have the jury system without becoming police states like Japan. I think there was a case a while ago where the police forced a confession out of someone they grabbed, and he was only released when the real criminal contacted the police and said "you got the wrong guy, but keep looking!" Seriously, the Japanese police is inept on a level that is almost unimaginable. They have low murder rates because apparently they treat a dead body found in a ditch as "unlawful dumping of a corpse" instead of murder.
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Mar 27, 2014 17:26
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Sheep posted:I'll be damned if I can find it again, but someone in the LAN thread found an ad on like Yahoo! Jobs or something back in 2011 looking for people to work for a subcontractor doing cleanup at Fukushima Daiichi. No experience required, 1000 yen an hour, sign me ... up? No doubt they were pocketing all the extra government handouts to workers as well since that was apparently a thing that was (is?) quite common. Wait, what? I know I heard the same thing back when Fukushima was still going on, that they were sending homeless and schoolchildren there to try and save the reactor. I called bullshit immediately because no one, not even the most corrupt company on the planet, would do that when the eyes of the world were on them. Nevermind that untrained personal would likely make it worse, so there is no incentive whatsoever to do it. You're telling me that it was actually right?
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Apr 2, 2014 10:59
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Reverend Cheddar posted:Personally I like the campaign reminding people not to use firearms in public, as if Japan somehow had a problem with that in the first place. Why do you think it's not a problem, baka gaijin? ArchangeI fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Apr 8, 2014 |
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Apr 8, 2014 09:20
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Pretty sure the US doesn't export stealth technology as such. Interestingly enough, the Japanese are also buying the F-35. Either the Japanese government wants to hedge its bets (a wise decision where the F-35 is concerned) or it is just a make work scheme for their military-industrial complex.
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Aug 21, 2014 09:20
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ookiimarukochan posted:Probably because all the pachinko places that aren't owned by the Yakuza are owned by retired cops, and so the Diet don't want to antagonise them. Japanese politicians unwilling to antagonize the elderly? How novel.
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Aug 26, 2014 13:12
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I'm fairly sure it will show that he was just completely powerless to stop anything done by the Imperial government, if he was even aware of it. For most of the time he worked tirelessly to end the war but was hampered at every turn by dastardly politicians who are now thankfully dead and can no longer tell their side of the story.7c Nickel posted:I do not expect Japan to make it to the 2020 Olympics without some serious poo poo going down. Japan keeps dumping money into the economy to keep it going, but it does so in a really lovely inefficient way due to vested interests. This might be tolerable if Japan's economy was still growing, but due to a lovely women/family unfriendly business culture and a xenophobic populace that prevent much immigration, the population is declining and with it any chance of growth. Combine this with the fact that the populace is aging and it gets even worse. In 20 years, the main export of Japan might be horrifying news stories about the impoverished elderly being eaten by wild dogs while scavenging for food. The really mindboggling thing is how the entire country just seems to collectively shrug their shoulders like there is nothing they can do. Everyone can see that there are massive problems, but apparently you just have to keep doing business as usual and things will work out.
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Aug 27, 2014 23:51
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Mr. Fix It posted:There are no term limits for the position of prime minister. None for President of the LDP either, afaik. Do I just remember wrong or was there a time in the 2000s when Japan replaced their prime minister every year, almost to the day? What happened there?
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Nov 13, 2015 10:51
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Chomskyan posted:So today the cabinet approved a new plan in which the 6-month remarriage wait time for women will be reduced to 100 days. Also if a woman can get proof from a doctor saying she's not pregnant then she can remarry before the 100 days are over. Also the only reason even this much has been done is because it was literally forced on the current administration by a supreme court ruling. So is there a remarriage waiting time for men in Japan? No, no, let me guess...
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Mar 8, 2016 12:09
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