|
OP, thanks for making this thread. I've lived in Japan for a while, and making sense of the stuff that goes on is difficult sometimes. The write-ups definitely helped me make sense of it. I'm going to try to be better about reading the newspaper and keeping up with current events in Japan. It gets kind of tiring, though, when every second story is something to do with Tepco, wreckage from the disaster, or nuclear plants in general. A suggestion I have for the OP is that it would be great if you put in the proper Japanese names of things like people, places, and political parties. It'll make it easier for people who are introduced to Japanese politics by way of this thread to branch out into reading news from native sources. MaterialConceptual posted:I'm going to try to translate an article about Hashimoto and neoliberalism I read in this month's edition of the Communist-affiliated economics monthly Keizai. I'll post the translation here if I get it done. Where is that sold in Japan or do you get it online? I've been looking for good magazines to read, and everything I see at the conbini looks like such garbage. I'd probably have better luck going to a rack at a proper bookstore. Essentially I'm trying to find something akin to a Japanese version of the Economist or the Atlantic that's mostly focused on domestic journalism in Japan rather than foreign news. FatherD posted:Wow I really learned alot from that OP. I didn't even realize that Japanese politics were so complicated that you could make some sort of crazy faction based board game about the parties. Only a few of us live in Japan, and there's kind of a language barrier for the native Japanese people to converse with us here. So it's easy to be objective when a lot of us don't really have a dog in the fight. I also doubt anyone in this thread is actually registered to vote in Japan, either. A lot of foreigners have some pretty crazy apathy when it comes to this stuff because they feel like they have zero control over any of it so they shouldn't bother. ErIog fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Jun 27, 2012 |
#
¿
Jun 27, 2012 05:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:21 |
|
|
Medieval Medic posted:On an actual serious question, is there any prescence of a green party in Japan? It seems wierd to me that you wouldn't mention one, given pretty much every non starving country has one, even my third world country. Japan is much richer, and more able to act on it, it seems to me, which would foster a social-enviromental party. There's not a lot of actual room for a green party in Japanese politics because most green issues that would be fringe green issues in other countries are mainstream political issues dealt with in the some fashion by the main political parties. In other countries this isn't the case, but Japan's a fairly small an island nation that's pretty concerned with not loving itself over. You can see this in policy with regard to recycling, energy conservation, pollution, etc.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2012 00:08
|
|
|
The thing I don't really understand are the yahoos that decided to throw in with Ozawa. Even if there's some positive political points to be scored by being against the tax hike it seems like Ozawa's toxic enough to not really make it worth it. Are these just people who were long-time Ozawa supporters that are joining him out of a sense of obligation?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2012 00:52
|
|
|
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. 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 |
|
#
¿
Aug 31, 2012 09:00
|
|
|
Now, I understand that this thread is supposed to be about the Diet or the mayor of Osaka or something. So maybe there should actually be another thread for discussing the lack of a feminist movement in Japan + female rights. However, these are actually important political issues so I don't see that they're off-topic for this thread (which is also a thread that's been pretty much dead for weeks.)Lemmi Caution posted:What? Yes, because gender equality within a society along with sexual attitudes are totally not political matters. This is actually a thing that you are saying? I'm just not sure there's a  emote big enough.There's a lot of false equivalence going on in response to my post. Japan is not alone in having a well-developed rape culture, but the extent to which it persists in 2012 I think would still surprise a lot of people. Take this news story from not that long ago. The parade of horrible things in that story that are completely normal in Japan is pretty shocking. Let's not be crazy. Any US politician saying most of the horrible things quoted in that story would immediately be out on their rear end. Todd Akin says, "legitimate rape" and he's completely hosed whereas in Japan you have people making actual jokes about a rape case on the public record. People may point out that Japan is not alone in having a patriarchy, but the thing people aren't understanding is that feminism is not a thing that happened in Japan. There are very very very few voices speaking out against it in the ways that you see outside Japan. Here's an article that very quickly gives the rundown of how rape is treated and what the rape culture in Japan is like. The reason Japan has a tough time seeing rape as legitimate is because lots of ordinary sexual relations are basically rape role-playing. Japanese dudes get off on hearing a woman say "No." So women learn to say "No." even in cases that are consensual. This creates a huge smoke screen for rapists to perpetrate their crimes, and I think that's the key reason Japan just doesn't take rape seriously as described in that article. "No," is still cute, and the "No means no," movement basically never happened. Japan really is the land that feminism forgot, and I think the people saying "well all countries have their problems with the patriarchy..." don't actually understand how regressive Japanese society and laws are on these matters in the modern day. ErIog fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Aug 31, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Aug 31, 2012 23:19
|
|
|
Lemmi Caution posted:I was very specifically talking about the quote where you said most Japanese women can't even conceive of non-rape sex. You're misunderstanding what I said. In your head you're imagining Paul Ryan's version of "forcible rape." I'm talking about sex where a woman keeps saying "no." while making noises like she's in pain because she's been raised steeped in the rape culture that tells her that's what gets dudes off. That looks like rape to me. I have no problem if that's a thing both parties are into, but in Japan that being the normative picture of what a sexual encounter is like is frequently used as a smoke screen by rapists to get away with their crimes. It also has the very creepy side effect of women internalizing that view of sex, not believing it could be any different, and in the end deciding to settle for it in fear that they might spend the rest of their life completely alone if they don't. There's a lot of biotruths thrown around commonly like, "Well...men do behave that way don't they..I guess it just can't be helped!" when the behavior they're referring to involves women saying "no," while guys have intercourse with them. Every reaction in the courts that ends up blaming the victim happens because the victim has trouble proving just why that sexual encounter was any different than what your average Japanese guy in a suit thinks is a normal sexual encounter. It's not surprising the cases happen the way they do when the picture of what sex is looks a hell of a lot like rape to most westerners that are informed on the subject of rape. ErIog fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Sep 1, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2012 14:12
|
|
|
I agree with Roadside_Picnic on this. Japan does have a lot of unfortunate problems that shouldn't happen, but most of the hand-wringing I see over it comes from business people or economists that, in my opinion, have a very warped view that economic growth should be infinite. You see it phrased as "Japan's economy is stagnating." It seems like every criticism like that has packed with it a tacit assumption that if Japan is not performing as it did during then bubble, then it's failing greatly. It reads to me like a bunch of rich assholes whining that they've lost one of their favorite places to dump lots of money for a quick payout. I'm not really sure what people are envisioning for Japan. It's the 3rd or 4th largest economy in the world, has very little in the way of natural resources to exploit, doesn't really have that much land, and had a GDP very close to China's despite having 1/10th population. I don't see how anyone can argue in a reasonable way that the aggregate economic numbers out of Japan should be "better" than they are right now. The idea that Japan's economy is somehow weak or doing poorly right now is also ridiculous. There's a reason the yen is so high. With the dollar doing poorly and American institutions having lots of exposure to the meltdown in Europe the yen has become a very safe place to park money. The yen is strong right now for reasons that are completely outside the control of Japan. It's not a wonder more quantitative easing hasn't worked. Unless Japan has enough money to bail out Euro-zone then the yen will stay strong. A person can belly-ache all day about the macroeconomics of Japan, but Japan's mostly doing fine. Quality, price, and access to healthcare are very good. Japan is self-sufficient in terms of producing most of the staple foods that feed most of its citizens. Transportation and infrastructure are extremely good. Japanese citizens as a group are very conscious of recycling, energy conservation, and sustainability. Japan also does well in terms of income inequality, though I suspect probably less well in terms of social mobility due to discrimination. This isn't to say Japan is some magical place where everything is aces. There's problems and dumb poo poo does happen too often, but it's not the dumb poo poo that I hear about in the foreign press a lot.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2012 07:36
|
|
|
The yen appreciating against the USD is also the fault of the dollar weakening over time. It's hard to untangle exchange rates sometimes, but I suspect significant parts of have more to do with the dollar losing strength as opposed to the yen gaining that much strength.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2012 17:10
|
|
|
The thing that's ridiculous is that there isn't anything the Japanese government can do. They have two really dumb options: A) Bankroll the bailout of the Eurozone in order to stop the financial markets from throwing tons of money into yen as their last safe place. B) Peg the yen to the USD and lose all monetary sovereignty. Neither of these options are viable or make sense. The high yen has nothing to do with any policies in Japan. It's all global factors, but yet we have financial ministers stepping down over it. Ain't nothing the G7 or Diet can do about it. I understand they're frustrated by it, but it frustrates the poo poo out of me that these politicians and liaisons can be so dumb about something that seems quite obvious to me. I guess they're paid to try to act like they can fix poo poo, though.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2012 12:35
|
|
|
PrezCamachoo posted:But isn't the "hollowing out" of manufacturing - fewer jobs - a necessary counterpart to the increase in personal services (healthcare) that are the largest component of consumption in the developed world? All those manufacturing line workers are going to go back to school to become nurses and doctors? Those skills and workers aren't that fluid. You're talking about a thing that may happen in the aggregate from an economic standpoint while completely discounting any of the individual actors in that economy. The answers to your questions here don't really have anything to do with Japan, and have more to do with basic economic concepts. You're doing a kind of surface application of neoliberal economics, and then just leaving it at that. The questions you're asking have been answered in economic literature already. They also apply to almost every developed nation right now. Efficiency going up is generally an alright thing, but the problem right now is that governments are not equipped to and were not built for the real redistribution that needs to happen in a post-jobs economy. Developed nations, as long as there is oil, are going to continue to find themselves in this situation where they are so efficient that they do not need every single worker to work in order to meet aggregate demand. The question is what you do with the remaining people that can work but there's no place in the economy for. It's not fair to let anyone starve ever, and it's also unfair to create an underclass of unemployed poor people who mostly do want jobs but are unable to find them. Japan has an alright safety net, and that's a good start. However, what's really needed is a lot more than a safety net. The remaining people in the economy shouldn't be kept forcibly at the bottom rung by having to rely on that safety net. Ideally they should be able to have the equivalent of what they would get from a job because they would be hired in proper jobs were there a place for them in the economy. What needs to happen is either true redistribution where the government hands money to people or massive government jobs programs. There's zero political will to do the former and little political will to do the latter since the capitalists' half century propaganda effort to demonize government as an institution after they plowed socialism under. I will admit there is a third option where the government does a little bit more redistribution in order to try to stimulate aggregate demand, but I find that option less than ideal with regard to manufacturing specifically. I'd rather we not use up oil on makework bullshit and further entrench rampant wasteful consumerism just so we can see a bunch of aggregate economic numbers shooting up for the benefit of the investor class. Ideally we would start to have governments built around economic realities rather than free market fantasies. Japan's better than the US in that regard, but I suspect it has to do with the homogeneity of Japan. If diversity in Japan was more of a thing we might see more otherization of recipients and pushback against the welfare state like we do in the US. ErIog fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Sep 29, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2012 00:48
|
|
|
PrezCamachoo posted:Yes, people will get new jobs in new fields. Just as they've already been doing for decades. Employment declining in the graph you posted would point to the fact that things aren't actually that pat and dry. Those people don't all find jobs in new fields. The employment data you posted makes that clear. A certain percentage of them did, and the rest left the work force. What do you propose be done about that? It's an inherent problem of capitalism that if you force people to work in order to be able to eat that people have trouble eating when there's not enough work to go around. Japan has a social safety net so it's not about literal eating in this case, but as I said before: Is it not unfair to doom people to a lower quality of life simply because they lost a die roll on receiving one of the increasingly scarce jobs available in the economy? ErIog fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Sep 29, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2012 01:09
|
|
|
PrezCamachoo posted:The graph is manufacturing employment only. I should read better. Sorry for the derail.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2012 01:18
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:I knew who it was before I even clicked the link. "Scrap and scrap! Destroy everything!" It's not really that crazy. He's always basically been a performance artist.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2012 05:06
|
|
|
Weatherman posted:I thought it was something really amazing like 666% or 777%? I haven't heard any Japanese people really articulate both view points at the same time. There's also not as much reconciled there as it first seems. The argument I've heard from Japanese people is that Japanese rice is higher quality, but they worry people may end up deciding with their wallet in the end. They usually say that they themselves will continue to buy Japanese rice, but that they worry others will give into the cheap prices. There's also more to the issue than protectionist policies to benefit farmers. Japan, as an island nation, is more concerned with self-sufficiency and sustainability than most other countries. The thing a lot of people who are critical of TPP are concerned about is not the first impact on Japanese farmers, but the effects down the road of Japan becoming over-reliant on cheap imports of staple foods. They don't want staples to be up to the whim of foreign markets and currency fluctuations. Had Japan become dependent on cheap overseas rice prior to 2008 things could have gotten real bad when the rice shortage happened across the rest of Asia. There are reasons beyond jingoism to advocate for the protection of the domestic rice market.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 26, 2012 03:02
|
|
|
That's still speculation, but they'll easily cruise past 240 according to all the actually solid returns I'm seeing on TV/online. LDP/Komeito is anywhere between 230-260 right now depending on where you look.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2012 13:16
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:edit: wait I'm confused, according to this, Naoto Kan lost his seat but then...didn't? Frankly I don't understand why, that proportional representation part of their election system is something I haven't fully grasped. Yeah, he lost the election in his local single seat district, but was placed on the party lists for proportional representation. He was beaten in his personal election against another candidate, but is enough of a big-wig in the party to be given a seat from the pool of seats that were won by the party. So his approval ratings really don't matter. The party can put whoever they want in the proportional representation seats as long as they pay the registration fees. The only real rules governing it have to do with the ability of parties to prioritize who gets assigned to which districts, and also that these lists are of course submitted before the election as part of registering as a candidate. There's a good run-down of it here: http://www.mutantfrog.com/2009/08/29/how-japans-proportional-representation-voting-system-works-from-nikkei/ I'll see if I can dig up the party list to see how close Kan came to being thrown out on his rear end. That article says he didn't find out until 3AM. They already knew about like 300 of the seats at midnight, but I don't know how they were calling proportional representation seats. ErIog fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Dec 17, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2012 01:03
|
|
|
Okay, here's the deal on the Naoto Kan thing. This page gives pretty good information about what happened: http://senkyo.mainichi.jp/46shu/kaihyo_hirei_seitou.html?bid=05&sid=002 The DPJ ran 25 candidates on their list for proportional representation in the Tokyo block. The Tokyo block has 25 single-seat districts and 17 proportional representation seats. The DPJ put 24 candidates going for single-seat districts on the list, all with the maximum priority of #1. There was 1 extra, running for proportional representation only and that was listed with a priority of #25, named Koichi Yoshida. The DPJ ran no one in Tokyo's 12th district. On election day DPJ won only 2 of 24 of the single-seat districts they were competing for and 3 seats for proportional representation in the Tokyo block. So instantly Koichi Yoshida is out because you have a 22 way tie for #1 on the party's proportional representation registration list to fill only 3 seats. At that point I believe it's just up to the party to divvy them up, and DPJ decided to give one to Kan. It's not very surprising considering he had enough power at one point to become prime minister. His personal connections within the DPJ don't go away just because he lost a few elections and had an abysmal approval rating. From digging through the election stats from yesterday, it looks like the proportional representation seats were used as an insurance policy in the case party big-wigs lost their elections for single-seat districts. I think this is kind of how it's gone since the system was put in place. An interesting wrinkle about the system is that if a party does not register enough candidates to fill all of the proportional seats they've won then those seats get passed on to the next party. ErIog fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Dec 17, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2012 01:47
|
|
|
Cliff Racer posted:Well I know that a lot of the concrete pillars they love sticking on their beaches actually are a little bit bad for the ecosystem while having only negligible impact on beach erosion or typhoon protection or whatever their stated goal was. Maybe now with the LDP in power they'll make a lot of those make-work jobs into actual work jobs by turning them towards the recovery effort? There's still rubble to be cleared and processed, communities to rebuild, etc. Tons of people are still basically living in the same temporary housing they've been in for the last 2 years. That would be the logical solution to this problem, but I don't really have any faith the LDP will get it done. I mean they have the perfect opportunity to fix a bunch of poo poo. They're at risk of considerable deflation and have the opportunity for a giant recovery project they can pour a bunch of printed yen into. They have chocolate. They have peanut butter. Is it just incompetence that prevents them from being put together? It seems like a lot of what happened in this election is that the DPJ couldn't respond to public needs or public opinion properly. It feels like the disaster happened, and then they just were caught out not knowing what the hell should be done. Then they started talking about raising taxes, and were kind of wishy-washy on things that look very pro-economy, like TPP, during a recession. It's not really surprising the DPJ lost out since the LDP has decades of experience in policy creation and responding to public opinion that the DPJ just doesn't have. They are shockingly effective at maintaining the status quo. ErIog fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Dec 17, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2012 02:16
|
|
|
Mercury_Storm posted:So to be sure.. a candidate can get voted out for being overwhelmingly unpopular and That kind of situation could happen, but that's not really what happened here. Kan lost to his challenger by only 4%(~10,000 votes): 32% vs 28% vs 17% vs 11% vs 6% vs 5%. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/election/shugiin/2012/kaihyou/ya13.htm#k018 In comparison to his performance in 2009 where he got 60% of the vote it's quite a precipitous drop, but it's not like they really hate his guts or anything. Also, have a bonus picture of Shigeru Ishiba looking like death on election night:  This isn't just a screencap from a fleeting moment either. He literally sat there covered in sweat and looking like that all night. ErIog fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Dec 17, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2012 02:46
|
|
|
The disparity in the value of votes between districts ended up being worse this election than it was during the '09 election that was deemed unconstitutional by the Japanese supreme court. It grew from 2.30x to 2.425x. This also happened despite measures taken last month to try to remedy the system to shrink the disparity below 2x, which the supreme court said was their benchmark for constitutionality. http://mainichi.jp/select/news/20121217k0000e010343000c.html So, do politicians just not give a poo poo at all about the Japanese supreme court? Is it really that powerless to stop unconstitutionally-elected politicians?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2012 05:47
|
|
|
pentyne posted:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-11/japan-s-abe-unveils-10-3-trillion-yen-fiscal-boost-to-growth.html I'm confused by this as well. The markets have really loosened up in terms of the exchange rates, and I can't really see any rational reason why. They announced before the election that would be another round of substantial monetary easing, and it didn't budge then. It looks to me like a bunch of business types feeling more comfortable with the return of their LDP "pro-business" security blanket. Is there a better explanation? Do we expect exchange rates to rebound in a few months when the markets realize that nothing substantial has actually changed? I will add that I'm a few weeks behind on Japanese news since I was in the US over the holidays. So it could really be that something has changed, but I'm suspicious. Sheep posted:The problem is that the employment generated is going to be the same as usual: temporary contract workers, probably listed as independent contractors (working for subcontractors hired by whoever is running cleanup) so they won't even have help paying health insurance or anything. I should have figured as much with the current labor market being quite flush in terms of available workers. It's really sad because the power and capital were actually there to make those decent jobs. I didn't have a lot of faith in the Japanese government before, but seeing the stuff post-election has left me kind of bewildered. That said, the worker safety stuff you posted doesn't strike me as being out of the ordinary for Japan at the best of times. Japan treats workers like poo poo. The only difference now is that the pay and benefits aren't there anymore. I guess that could lead to some sort of popular movement, but it's unlikely to since so many people are so disillusioned with the entire process. ErIog fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Jan 11, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2013 14:57
|
|
|
Sheep posted:Japanese consumers are basically paying VAT prices on stuff, except there's no VAT... Japan has a 5% consumption tax that is required by law to be factored into all displayed prices. I do understand your point, though.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2013 04:09
|
|
|
Sheep posted:The better my Japanese got, the more I noticed the rude comments and slights that so often occur when Japanese people interact with non-Japanese, and became more aware of a lot of the problems with society here since my access to information no longer had to go through (an often ethnically Japanese) filter. When you're only seeing the gaiken and the tatemae, it's quite hard to even fathom some of the stuff that exists underneath because so much of it will never be spoken of in anything but Japanese. While you could say that of many countries, it really seems to extend to a whole different level in Japan. To add to this, it's a lot harder to truly offend people with things they might find objectionable if you're unable to articulate those things in the first place. Becoming better at the language means giving Japanese people many more opportunities to dislike you based on disagreements with things you're clearly stating. Westerners also tend to state their opinions a lot more clearly and with a lot more conviction than most Japanese people tend to. This can come off as overbearing. The issue that applies here that's larger than just the language thing is that Japan loves stereotypes, and everyone is expected to play along with their role. If they don't then they're dealt with harshly or admonished for it. It's tightly controlled and extremely granular. It takes into consideration age, gender, social status, yearly income, marital status, and on and on. It is expected that you act a certain way, have certain interests, etc. based on the categories that Japanese society has slotted you into. In the foreigner, young, male category it's expected your speaking is garbage, you can't read more than about 25-30 kanji, you're rich, you can use chopsticks(but only very poorly), and you can't help but try to bang every Japanese girl you lay eyes on. Not conforming to the stereotypes makes Japanese people uncomfortable the same way football players would be uncomfortable if the quarterback tried to call a play that wasn't in the playbook. It can be kind of a clusterfuck. They're not sure how to react, and a lot of times they end up lashing out at you for being different. I don't mean to say that all Japanese people are like this, but even with my best Japanese friends there's been at least one bullshit stereotype I've had to disabuse them of. Also, after meeting a bunch of foreigners that are basically human garbage, I do kind of understand where they're coming from sometimes. There was a really interesting example of this that one of my friends explained to me when I was arguing with her trying to correct my use of chopsticks. I was telling her that the way I used them was fine, and that I'd actually been taught that way by a Japanese friend a long time ago. She ended up saying something like, "The way you're using them isn't truly wrong, but it is kind of a lower-class way to use chopsticks. Japanese people can get away with it because it's understood they do actually know the right way. As a foreigner, people are just going to assume you don't know how to use chopsticks the right way." Before she taught me that I used to get lots of backhanded compliments all the time about being able to use chopsticks. Since I changed how I used them I haven't ever had a single comment on it except maybe from real small children that also ask other crazy questions like, "How come you can speak English?" and "Do you fly back to the US every night?" Going along with that, people also started assuming I'd lived in Japan a lot longer than I actually have. ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:59 on Mar 8, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2013 07:55
|
|
|
ReindeerF posted:I'm curious, when you guys get mad about this stuff are you angry more from a personally offended standpoint or from a public morality & ethics standpoint? Like, does it hurt your feelings personally or are you angry at Japanese society in the broader sense for perpetuating its famous ethnic nationalism? Obviously it could be both or something more, but I'm just trying to figure out what, in particular, actually causes an emotional reaction of hurt feelings or disgust. It makes me kind of angry and sad for a short period of time. Unlike some other people in this thread, I don't have any real roots in Japan. There's nothing that explicitly ties me here right now. So when I see something like that it makes me feel like I should just give up, move back to the US, and get some job translating technical documents. I try really hard every single day to do what's expected of me, speak Japanese as best I can, be as tolerant as possible, and improve my Japanese as much as I can. Seeing those kinds of portrayals of foreigners makes me feel like it's all useless because it will always be assumed that I'm just like all those stereotypes. It makes me feel like there's nothing I'll ever be able to do that will validate my existence in Japanese society beyond being the foreigner novelty sideshow. I know that this isn't a problem unique to Japan, and I know I'm not the only person to have ever experienced racism. When I see those things though, feelings like that come up in a very direct way. It's one thing to understand those feelings exist, and it's another to actually feel them. The thing that usually pulls me back from that ledge is that I do have a bunch of Japanese people around me that have gotten to know me well enough that I know they don't see me in that stereotypical way. On a micro level, with the friends and acquaintances I have, it is actually easy to forget in my daily life that Japan can be like that. Those kinds of attitudes that people are talking about being on full display in media is a constant reminder of what the average Japanese person probably thinks when they see me on the train or at the supermarket. It's disheartening. It's not like I lose sleep over it or worry about it a ton, though. The feeling tends to pass pretty quickly. Overall, I really do enjoy my life in Japan. So to answer your question, the thing that bothers me when those sorts of things pop up is that it makes me regret the work I've put toward being fluent in Japanese and living in Japan. It's like, after all I've accomplished, this is the kind of bullshit it comes down to.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2013 16:30
|
|
|
I don't put that much stock in it which is why I said the feeling tends to pass pretty quickly, and that it's easy for me to ignore this kind of stuff day to day. Also, your reply there sounds like it could have been written by any random xenophobic Japanese person. "Why did this dumb foreigner ever expect to be treated like a human being in Japan? What a rube!" Please explain more to me about how these minor knee-jerk feelings I have about how foreigners are treated in Japan are my own fault. If you were trying to give me some advice I never asked for then you should know this is pretty low on my list of stressors in Japan. ReindeerF asked how it made people feel. I answered. I wasn't seeking advice about it. ErIog fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Mar 9, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2013 06:07
|
|
|
NewtGoongrich posted:"Rice is the national staple" seems like a great reason not to impose a 778% tariff on rice imports. Rice in Asia recently going through a ridiculous supply shock due to speculation, and not an actual lack of supply, seems like a great reason to keep tariffs on rice in order to protect the self-sufficiency of a nation that already relies on imports more than it probably should. For as much talk about how Japanese people won't ever stand for anything but Japanese rice, in practice they know that people respond to cheap prices. Thus, they keep the tariffs in place to prevent the hollowing out of their domestic food supply. Mr. Fix It posted:The only people that benefit from this protectionist agricultural policy are olds out in the boonies. Which is why it won't change People benefit from this policy, and so therefore we should do away with it? Yeah, gently caress those old rural people that feed the country, right? ErIog fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Mar 15, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2013 08:33
|
|
|
Mr. Fix It posted:It's simple: the Japanese are wasting money on food in a misguided, inefficient, market distorting exercise in de facto welfare by protecting inefficient farming. What's wrong with welfare? You say that like it's supposed to trigger some sort of boogeyman response in me where I go, "Oh noes! Welfare! The horror!" If you're so against welfare then you should probably keep the farming infrastructure as it is in Japan. A lot of the farming is done by rural and old people who aren't going to be on the lookout for jobs or won't really be able to get new jobs very easily when GloboRiceCorp puts them forcibly out of business. So after they're put out of business they would probably need explicit welfare instead of the de facto welfare you're saying this policy is. Mr. Fix It posted:Buy up all the loving olds' farm land, put them to work nursing the super-olds, and sell the land to farming conglomerates that can actually turn a profit without ridiculous protections. Why does it have to turn a profit? Again, like the welfare thing, you're stating this like I'm supposed to have some sort of strong negative reaction. You're not backing up anything, and just come off like an unhinged libertarian. Also, it was kind of cute the first time you denigrated old people/rural people, but it's starting to get really tiring. I don't understand how you expect people to take your argument seriously when you show clear contempt for the actual people involved in the situation you're discussing. On the one hand you claim to care about competition, but then on the other hand you admit yourself that absent market protections, it would just be taken over by conglomerates. That would most certainly lead to collusion and price-fixing as it has in every situation. So at the end of your plan you're advocating: 1) Hollowing out domestic food production in favor of importing. 2) Vastly increasing unemployment. 3) Increasing the amount of money being siphoned out of the Japanese economy by multinationals. Do you by any chance work for a multinational that produces cheap rice? That's the only way I can make sense of your arguments. There's a lot of poo poo wrong with Japanese markets, economics, and politics. Tariffs on rice that provide a livelihood for a lot of people and protect the core of the food supply strikes me as one of the least offensive practices Japan engages in. If you're worried about long term efficiency then I can kind of see a point. Japan could do more with the land it has if used more efficiently. This is a problem that doesn't really need an explicit policy solution, though, because Japan is going to be forced to become more efficient in these areas as the population decreases. Also, removing tariffs would not lead to more efficient use of Japanese land for farming. It would lead to that land being paved over after all those people were put out of business with cheap imported rice.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2013 01:08
|
|
|
With an added dose of sexism in that even if they thought the woman was sincere, they might then wonder if she didn't have some sort of brain tumor/parasite/emotional disturbance because all women SHOULD want to get married and quit. Therefore she is clearly unstable, and probably should not be hired. There are disciplines that behave outside these rules, but they're the stereotypical things like nursing or teaching. On the topic of Christmas cake, I think it's kind of overblown a bit in the modern day. In my few years of talking to Japanese people I've not heard it mentioned outside of it being a custom a few decades ago. The average age for marriage is creeping up toward 30 for both sexes. I have no doubt that it really used to be a thing, but it isn't so much anymore. Most people are working and waiting. A lot of people don't have a lot of time for dating because of the absurdly long hours required of most professions. It's a wonder anyone is able to find a partner here. ErIog fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Mar 22, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2013 09:15
|
|
|
Samurai Sanders posted:Japanese business, you dumbasses. Among many many other things, lifetime employment is a thing of the past so don't hold that up as a reason for not hiring people with awesome international educations. The really sad thing, that Japanese business is really not complicit in, is that bias against people with overseas experience also happens in admissions down to the high school level. I teach at a low level school, but a new student that transferred in last year had spent a year at a high school in France. I know for a fact she was fluent in French. She should have been able to get into any of the top schools in the prefecture, but instead was relegated to my school since she didn't fit the template for the students of those higher level schools that had been on that track since junior high. It was a tremendously depressing realization. So much of who's going to get which jobs is essentially frozen after middle school. The students are tracked very aggressively, and it's pretty much impossible to break free from it. In English, the area I'm most familiar with, the level of English you need to get into the highest level universities in Japan is only taught at the high level high schools. The level of English you need to have to get into a high level high school is only taught at the high level middle schools. The people who get into those middle schools are the people who pay shitloads to send their kids to cram schools. None of the tests these kids are taking actually evaluate real English ability anyway, and so it just becomes this bullshit enshrined excuse to gently caress over undesirables. So the gatekeepers at every level are basically saying, "nothing we can do!" while enforcing these kind of extremely impersonal check-box-style templates on everyone. They get to cover their rear end against any criticism by saying, "We're just going by test scores, what's not fair about that?" then denying the existence of severe structural biases. Nobody at any of these levels wants to take any responsibility for evaluating anything or having an opinion on their own. It's buck-passing all the way down. Nobody ever got fired for buying Dell or IBM. Nobody gets fired for hiring someone privileged and sheltered out of Toudai. Anecdotally, I have a friend that did a year in Canada on a working holiday visa. She was conflicted about how she should broach this subject with her co-workers since she knew they were going to assume that she had tried to escape to Canada or something because she must have been a failure at life before. She also had trouble finding a job after coming back despite a college education and 5 years in her field. Her English isn't perfect for sure, but it's better by miles than a lot of actual English teachers I know. Like the person in your anecdote, Sanders, she wants to gtfo of Japan. I know you probably don't think it's just a problem with Japanese business, but I'd like to emphasize here that this is a problem with Japanese society in general. You see evidence of it in study abroad students, but it's part of a larger, immensely damaging, cultural norms. ErIog fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Mar 28, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2013 08:44
|
|
|
While it's nice to see the younger generations having that realization, I don't have a lot of faith that the situation is going to get better in the near future. There was a good series on this podcast, about ブラック企業, that talked about the current state of Japanese business. The framing of the issue was very interesting. They kind of took it as read that the business structure in the past few decades has been beneficial to workers, and then framed the current trends as being business responding poorly to increased competition due to a down economy. Within that framing, though, they were quite brutal in calling out the current problems. The main theme was businesses taking advantage of recent graduates and essentially using them until they died of overwork, quit due to depression, or just killed themselves. They mentioned an interesting generational gap with this issue. On paper, the kinds of things being asked of recent hires are similar to the things that used to be asked of workers. Workers in Japan have traditionally been asked to work long hours, have unpaid overtime, and sometimes receive low wages. It used to be that people put up with this because the lifetime employment system meant they would eventually advance in their company and have a better situation later. They would put up with these things even if they knew they were technically illegal. This has created a cultural gap that they touched on briefly in the show. Japanese people that are 50+ don't understand what the younger generations are complaining about, and see them as being lazy, over-pampered, whiners. This exacerbates some of the social toll because the pressure to work like this comes from the businesses as well as parents. Parents are saying, "Just work hard. Stop complaining. I had to work hard too, you know. I had to do unpaid overtime too." while their child is being ground into a fine paste at a dead-end job that isn't even providing them training in skills they might be able to transfer to a new job in the future. The problem this creates is the lack of political support for reforming the system or increasing enforcement of existing labor laws. The younger generation has no political clout, and the older generations are, for the most part, unsympathetic to or aggressively ignorant of their concerns. So the younger generation can be as vocal about it as they want, but they still have to contend with the political problems of the population shift that's happening in the background. The one ray of hope I see is that Japan having a somewhat okay social safety net gives people fairly decent support for starting small businesses. So the disenchantment with being employed at existing entrenched Japanese companies could spur a lot of interesting economic growth in terms of small business. I'll admit I am reaching here to find a silver lining. What would be nice is if, as I said, they just actually enforced existing labor laws.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2013 01:14
|
|
|
Do you have statistics to back up your assertion that the rate of small business starts is different between Japan and the US? I don't doubt that it is different, but anecdotally, I was assuming that the rate of small businesses in Japan was larger than the US. It feels to me like there's a lot more tiny mom and pop operations that might not be doing spectacularly, but haven't completely disappeared due to conglomeration and the car culture like they have in the US.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2013 01:50
|
|
|
I don't really think it's lobbyists. It's just one of those conservative axes to grind that people don't actually care that much about, but is politicized into a right-wing issue that's much larger than it should be. There are similar things among the American right wing. It stems from the kneejerk "We ain't gonna let those foreigner fuckbags tell us what to do," reaction. This same mindset is what led to the GOP voting down that most recent UN agreement on disability, in front of an elder GOP statesman, that was actually just international recognition of the already existing and popular/politically neutral Americans with Disabilities Act.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2013 13:12
|
|
|
Sheep posted:Does that really surprise you in a country where ATMs are often closed from 8pm to 9am, and also on holidays? I'm not going to deny that this is crazy, but some people might not know a key part to this. Abacus is actually one of the de facto officially-sanctioned Japanese hobbies for children. It's common for kids to go to abacus lessons the way some go to piano lessons. So it is, indeed, real crazy that she would need that for her job. However, the fact that she can use or was practicing the abacus is less of an insane thing in Japan where it's a lot more common. Stringent posted:This is basically why depopulation isn't really an issue. A WHOLE lot of slack could be taken up by proper computerization. This is basically the key, but the problem is that vast swathes of the population are actually actively disinterested in anything related to efficiency. They treat it almost like a slippery-slope of productivity. Suggestions for better ways to do things will be met with, "Well why would we want it to take less time? What would we do with that extra time? What do you mean go home earlier? If I go home before my boss does they'll think I'm lazy." It's a weird thing because I do sympathize with some of the logic. It would be nice if productivity increases didn't lead to layoffs. It just sucks to see everyone's lives being absolutely ruined in the same style as that planet in Hitchhiker's Guide that was nothing but middle-managers. ErIog fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Jun 13, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2013 04:25
|
|
|
Pompous Rhombus posted:The real mindfuck for me is that as antediluvian as Japan's policies towards women seem, they're still (on paper) better than that of the US. Japan has a lot of really nice things on paper that are never actually implemented properly or enforced. The Japanese political system is a lot better than the US system at paying lip service in order to say, "See! We did what you said. Now please stop complaining. Why are you still complaining? You're just a troublemaker." On paper Japan has pretty decent labor laws. These are never enforced. The fact that men do not take paternity leave is not an accident. It's made very clear to men that by taking paternity leave they will be cratering their career advancement by doing so because they will be seen as not being dedicated enough to their employer.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2013 01:47
|
|
|
Protocol 5 posted:It's pretty ironic considering the huge amount of unacknowledged homoeroticism going on in pretty much any exclusively male social group in Japan. I've always gotten the sense that homosexual activity in of itself is not frowned upon so long as it's discrete, but identifying exclusively as homosexual and rejecting traditional gender roles is viewed as self indulgent and shirking one's societal responsibility. The tension between familial and societal duty and romantic love is a hugely important theme throughout the history of Japanese literature, but with the class system being replaced with egalitarian democracy, forbidden love between a man and woman comes off really contrived in a modern setting without breaking one of the major taboos like having one of them be non-Japanese or burakumin. The homoeroticism extends both ways, but you probably don't notice it as much since homoerotic behavior among women is perceived to be more normative in many cultures. I'm not sure where you're from, but I would assume you come from a western culture based on your characterization of it. Most of what you posted is, I think, the most accurate way to think about it. Being gay is seen as a kind of self-indulgence on par with other things that are seen as indulgent in society. I mean with the way straight Japanese people are made to put up with bullshit from society in general, it seems like acting like a straight person is tossed on the pile of gimu the same way unpaid overtime and changing your mother-in-law's diapers are. I admit that it's not directly comparable, but the chains of society in Japan are definitely tighter and far more numerous. It also starts from like middle school age when they start going to cram schools heavily in order to get into a good high school. I think that's probably how Japanese people see it, though. Being gay is just another selfish vice to be given up just like other selfish vices like "not working yourself to death." There's also a heavy dose of pretending that gay people don't actually exist because it would culturally be very traumatizing to reevaluate all the behaviors in Japanese society that might come off as homoerotic if they weren't thought of as innocent traditions. ErIog fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Nov 7, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2013 14:37
|
|
|
Kenishi posted:I've always felt the two have always gone overboard in whatever they emulate as well. What is it, some attempt to show they can actually do more than the US? Part of the rationale for this legislation had to do with being able to be kept in the informational loop on things in the future. The thinking is that if Japan doesn't have similar kinds of protection of state secrets to the US then the US won't be comfortable giving Japan information because there wouldn't be as many assurances that it wouldn't be leaked. It's kind of dumb logic considering we still get leaks in the US even with similar laws, but the mechanics of it seem less important than the message-sending aspect of it. Since the message-sending aspect is actually more important then it makes sense in a kind of, "well now nobody would ever be able to complain about X again!" kind of way. This is the common justification I've heard for it in Japanese media every time the issue is brought up. It'll be interesting to see if the law is ever actually enforced. I have a feeling it might actually be since this one involves giving the government more power to screw people over rather than taking that power away.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2013 06:22
|
|
|
CronoGamer posted:This part I certainly agree with, and I understand why the governments continue to act the way they do, as distasteful as it may be. I was just more surprised I guess at how wholeheartedly the populace seems to get in line with the government stance on things, at least from what I've read about Korea and Dokdo day and those sort of things (although in their defense the whole Takeshima thing is laughable and I can only hope the reason Japan is still holding to their claims is to one day magnanimously relinquish those claims in order to earn good will from Korea... a man can dream, can't he?). Although "the whole populace" is coming from a pretty biased sample set of the loudest and most obnoxious who complain on the internet, so maybe the average Korean gives as little a poo poo about it as I'd hope they would. Japan isn't filled to the brim with right-wingers or anything. Most people aren't frothing at the mouth about the Korean menace. One of the unfortunate privileges of doing what Japan did is the ability to throw it down the memory hole a scant few generations later. Most of the populace is quite uneducated about the issues, and much of the populace will readily admit it. Some of the nastier right wingers have all sorts of opinions on it, and politicians want to make diplomatic issues of it. Most other people have the attitude of "I don't really have time for this bickering." Which can sound good on its face, but makes them lean a bit toward the inherent bias of "Korea and China are just trying to make trouble, and Japan's probably right." The disputed islands thing is kind of a Rorschach test of an issue, and basically just mirrors existing bias across the board. A lot of Japanese people are deeply uninterested in politics, and so their approach tends to be, "I don't really understand why we care about these tiny islands." and "These are memes that exist to be thrown around by politicians during election time that nobody really cares about." Compared to America, I find Japanese people to be extremely disinterested in politics, and that isn't surprising considering that the current state of Japanese national elections is one of mass disenfranchisement. People feel like they don't understand the issues, are uninterested in learning about the issues, and feel like their opinion on these things wouldn't really matter in an election anyway. 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."
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2014 01:11
|
|
|
Vagabundo posted:ErIog never said it was the definitive factor in the first place, but a contributing one, and by inference, one of several though. I'll admit that it was kind of a spurious claim that I can't really support. It also doesn't really make sense now that I think about it, and also about some of the stuff other people have posted.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2014 10:27
|
|
|
Shinobo posted:On the one hand this system is incredibly efficient and has resulted in a ridiculously safe country. On the other, police power abuses. We don't actually know that Japan is safer. Those numbers all come via the police who have a vested interest in making it seem like Japan is "safe." It's a pretty commonly-heard piece of propaganda that Japan is safer than all those dumb countries run by foreigners. Japan also has a huge problem with tacit acceptance of organized crime activities like human trafficking, predatory lending, and child pornography. Japan is like an entire country built on the Just World Fallacy. If a crime happens to an out-group member or someone perceived to have made a mistake then it's not considered to have counted and probably will not show up in an official tally. This goes double for anything involving sexual assault. "What do you mean 11 year old photo book girls are often abused?!? Well, did you see all the evidence of that girl wearing bikinis..." It seems like the one saving grace for foreigners is that it seems to me that if you haven't actually murdered someone then you'll probably be able to get away with paying about $10,000 and being deported. I don't have numbers on that, though. Maybe someone here knows more about it than I do. ErIog fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Mar 28, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2014 03:11
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:21 |
|
|
Mr. Fix It posted:Speculating, but I'd have to presume that the barrier keeping Netflix out is licensing. The actual value of licensing something for streaming is known now, so the cost will be much higher than when Netflix started out. Couple that with whatever influence Tsutaya et al have on the content producers, and, bam, no Netflix. I think they're going to have to team up with a Tsutaya or a Rakuten or maybe a Sony to get a foothold. It's a real shame too, since the internet infrastructure is so nice and there's actual competition between providers so the potential for Comcast-style rent-seeking BS seems low. There's no need to speculate. The information is out there. There's no Netflix, but streaming services exist. DMM.com is a thing that exists. Hulu exists. PSN movie store exists. iTunes exists. This entire thing just sounds like somebody looked into it about 5 years ago, discovered Netflix wasn't available in the Japanese market, and then concluded that Japan was some sort of anti-streaming hellscape. The other thing that nobody has mentioned is that Japan has some really weird copyright laws that make using those hosed up illegal streaming sites legal for the end users. They cracked down on downloading in the most recent legislation, but left streaming alone. I think if you took those copyright infringing streaming services into account you would get a different picture of whether or not Japan "likes" streaming. There's a lot of backward poo poo in Japan. Streaming services and access to online video and digital content is not one of those things. Somebody mentioned the lack of digital game downloads based on Steam not being so popular. That is a bunch of horse poo poo as well. PSN has day 1 digital for pretty much all games on PS3/PS4/Vita. Nintendo has a similar policy for Wii U/3DS. DMM.com offers PC game downloads. The prepaid cards for all this poo poo are also available at nearly every convenience store you can find, and that's primarily how a lot of users, especially minors, access these services. ErIog fucked around with this message at 02:01 on May 12, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 12, 2014 01:53
|
|