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There's a really huge disconnect between how far-right weirdos and the typical middle-class Japanese person views the world that mirrors the situation in the US and Europe in a lot of ways. Compare with "Obama is a communist who wants to impose sharia and ban country music" loons and fascist European soccer fans.
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Apr 11, 2013 23:53
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I didn't notice anyone saying it wasn't hosed up.
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Apr 12, 2013 01:26
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The main problem is that the family that runs Yasukuni (it is not state-owned or operated) are a bunch of right wing shitbags that backdoored in the war criminals because they thought their trials were illegitimate. This also makes a lot of the arguments about "Why don't they just remove the war criminals?" pointless, since the government has no authority over a privately-owned religious monument, and the owners like it just the way it is.
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Apr 23, 2013 09:34
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Yeah, like I said, the people who run Yasukuni are scum, and they use the fact that they are constitutionally protected from legal interference as a religious institution to do all kinds of morally repugnant poo poo.
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Apr 24, 2013 03:32
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The LDP/DPJ split was more over internal LDP politicking than any kind of conscious reform movement. The main difference between the two parties is policy priorities rather than any major ideological or doctrinal differences. The LDP is also still hilariously corrupt at the prefectural and local levels. My take on it is that the LDP is very invested in the idea of Japan as a major player in world affairs and wants the prestige that comes with that. The DPJ, on the other hand, is more interested in improving relations in the region to bolster trade and hence line their own pockets.
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Apr 26, 2013 02:10
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It passed, but it won't start to kick in until next year. 8% in 2014, then 10% in 2015. It was a pretty hilariously dirty. The DPJ promised not to raise sales tax for 4 years and got elected, then pass a tax increase less than 3 years later, but that wouldn't technically kick in until after the 4 year period of the promise had kicked in, which predictably didn't fool anyone. LDP seems pretty opposed to austerity measures, since they are already having problems with unemployment and underemployment and don't buy into neo-liberal economic policy that much. As a matter of fact, they recently passed a huge stimulus bill to devalue the yen as a means to boost export-led manufacturing that had the usual suspects howling about misguided Keynesian boondoggles. If it pisses off the Cato Institute, it's worth giving the benefit of the doubt in my book.
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Apr 26, 2013 04:37
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MaterialConceptual posted:The DPJ also contains some remnants of the Socialist Party, but they have been pretty much wiped out. They were never really an important faction to begin with, to be honest. The Hatoyama faction had enough clout to become de facto kingmakers despite not being the largest faction, and the DSP and SPJ guys who joined up were the most centrist ones in the first place, so they never had a chance to influence policy in any meaningful way. They're still kicking around, though. Anyway, a really common misconception is that LDP vs. DPJ is right wing vs. left wing, when in fact both parties are right leaning populists, essentially. Leftist groups have generally fared poorly in Japan due to a historical willingness of ultra-right wingers to harass or just straight up murder leftists when it suits them, so it never had a chance to get a serious foothold.
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Apr 26, 2013 13:21
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hobbesmaster posted:The Yen was between 100-130 to the dollar for at least a decade. After the financial crisis it hit 70 yen/dollar. Thats the complete opposite of Zimbabwe dollars. I do translation work in automotive journalism, and let me tell you, the Big Three have been going loving nuts. Keep in mind that the yen was hitting record highs while their manufacturing sector was reeling from flooding in Thailand that shut down a ton of component suppliers, the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, and sluggish demand in every major developed market. The yen was strong, but a ton of companies were hemorrhaging cash from spiking supply chain costs and energy prices while sales revenues were down, so many of them were unable to take advantage of it to invest in foreign assets. What you saw instead was a ton of joint ventures in Asia, particularly India, China, and Thailand. By keeping everything local to the target market, the Big Three could ameliorate the impact of the strong yen, while getting a foothold in emerging markets by supplying the technical know-how and letting their partners handle marketing and distribution. Anyway, FY 2012 reports hit this week, and demand appears to be recovering based on positive growth in sales volume in North America and Europe for the first time since FY 2007 for some automakers. A bunch of shoptalk about the auto industry is kind of outside the scope of this thread, so I'll leave it at that.
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Apr 27, 2013 12:40
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Cameron posted:Yeah, I should have added "now that China is a thing" in there. What I mean to say is that I can't believe anyone would try to fight China for a share of export markets right now. Cars I could see being possible, because people still see Japanese cars as "the best" mass market cars in the world, but for anything else I can't see where Japan has the edge, besides anime. Japan prior to 1895 was 30 years ago, and a lot has changed in manufacturing and global markets since then. I used to contract for a commercial vehicles manufacturer that sourced a lot parts from China (mainly sheet metal, axles, etc.) so I can speak to this. See, the main attraction of sourcing from Chinese suppliers and Chinese exports in general is their ability to deliver large volume at low cost. Quality, however, leaves a great deal to be desired, with double digit defect and failure rates not being uncommon. These issues are driven by labor and safety regulations that are inconsistently enforced, so you end up with poor maintenance of equipment and line workers pulling double shifts to meet production quotas in poor working conditions. Quality could be improved, but it would raise costs and reduce output, so there isn't much motivation for it right now. At the moment, Japan and South Korea still kick the poo poo out of China in any kind of machinery that requires precision machining with narrow tolerances and specific material properties, and Japan is also a major player in pharmaceuticals, medical research, software, electronics, and chemical and materials engineering. The media tends to focus on cars and consumer electronics, but there are a variety of lower profile sectors that Japan excels in on a global level. China is certainly an economic force to reckoned with, but still have a long way to go to catch up with South Korea and Japan in terms of economic diversity and technological sophistication. Your disbelief that anyone would try to compete with China for market share is frankly baffling. Why does anyone compete with the US for market share in global markets? Because there are a range of market segments that you can target, and you may be better equipped to target and exploit some market segments more effectively than your competitors. Trying to compete with Chinese exports within the same low-end price range would be unprofitable due to cost issues, but the mid-range and high-end segments are a different story.
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Apr 27, 2013 16:31
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This poo poo is comically evil. Did they get Ishihara to write it?
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May 2, 2013 08:43
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People with a weird royalty fetish tend to use it more often. Arguably it's no more offensive than saying "God save the Queen," but since the war there has been a trend to deemphasize the imperial family except for ceremonial occasions and ditch stuff like Kimigayo. The previous and current emperors were and are totally fine with this, and have tried to avoid politics and even media appearances. Right wing nationalist dickheads are particularly enamored with the concept of the emperor despite the actual individual's opposition to being thrust into a position he has gone great lengths to avoid.
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May 2, 2013 11:42
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The JSDF already has participated in UN peacekeeping missions, dude. I'm not trying to be a dick about it or anything, but you could at least check the wikipedia page. Because of Article 9, they're forbidden to actively participate in combat unless fired upon first, and are only permitted to carry small arms for personal defense. The various branches of the JSDF have been active in UN peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts in several countries, including Iraq during the war, and Indonesia after the tsunami. Public opinion has been split, obviously, though most people don't seem to mind the purely humanitarian stuff that isn't taking place in war zones.
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May 3, 2013 10:06
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It was pretty stable around 125-130 ten years ago before everything went into free fall, so expecting it to hang around there is a fairly reasonable position to take. Who knows though, right?
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May 4, 2013 11:24
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This kind of stuff is really funny as an outside observer. Riling up Japanese nationalists is never a bad idea for Chinese nationalists, since they can just point to whatever idiotic stuff the ultra-right wingers say and go, "See, see, we told you they were evil fuckers." Two groups of whackjobs pissing on each other's legs while their respective governments are rolling their eyes and getting on with business as usual.
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May 9, 2013 14:45
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It's pretty easy to forget that China has a lot of problems with the diverse ethnic groups within its territory that are dissatisfied with the status quo, as well as a laundry list of environmental and economic issues that people are disgruntled about. Whipping up nationalism and focusing that discontent on Japan is a good way to channel all that anger away from the government. Conversely, in Japan nationalism tends to focus on right wingers overcompensating for their deeply wounded masculinity from the aftermath of the war and scapegoating immigrants for all of society's ills. Neither government actually wants to do anything that would seriously impact the extremely lucrative trade between the two, moronic statements by politicians aside.
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May 9, 2013 18:07
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That article is basically saying that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is using the Okinawa thing as a new tack to get leverage on the Diaoyu/Senkaku issue. I'm not privy to the inner workings of the current negotiations between the two countries (much though I would like to be), but I would hypothesize that China wants to wring some trade concessions out of Japan, and are using the territorial disputes to apply diplomatic pressure. Governments do this kind of thing all the time, and Japan has had a similar history of this kind of thing with Russia over the Sakhalin islands. Rhetoric is going to have to ramp up a lot higher than this for me to actually get worried about it.
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May 10, 2013 15:45
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The weird obsession old racist Japanese dudes have about the sexual habits of European and American men (of any ethnicity) is incredibly creepy. The whole leering, "You like Japanese girls?" thing makes my skin crawl.
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May 13, 2013 20:30
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Well, the weeklies are the only ones who actually do hardcore (snicker) investigative journalism anymore, so while they may focus their attention on filth and scandal, they cover poo poo the dailies won't touch for fear of losing access. The major papers are all huge corporations, so they don't want to go alienating people, which lets the tabloids carve out a niche doing hatchet jobs on people who don't cover their tracks well enough.
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May 14, 2013 11:05
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Those kinds of stats are pretty normal for Japan, really. Whenever a new guy gets in he'll have lukewarm approval ratings closely rivaled by "Who the gently caress cares?" responses, eventually tapering off to somewhere in the teens/low twenties until he gets turfed out and the cycle starts over again. There are anomalous cases, but dudes who crater spectacularly before they can even get their business cards back from the printer are more common than guys who consistently stayed above 50%.
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May 30, 2013 02:01
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It'll happen regardless. People weren't terribly fond of him the first time around, they're just pissed about the DPJ sneaking in the (horribly regressive) sales tax hike after promising they wouldn't.
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May 30, 2013 02:11
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I'm skeptical of any model that requires essentially infinite population growth to work. The demographic issues are a serious problem, but when you look at energy and food independence, just throwing more people at the problem is not a silver bullet. The lack of capacity for domestic energy and food production to sustain the population at its current level leaves them extremely vulnerable to disruption of trade, and if the Strait of Hormuz is ever closed to maritime trade for any reason, they're totally hosed for oil. There's no realistic way to counter the issue of an aging population with more population growth without further exacerbating dependence on energy imports barring major advances in renewable energy technologies, and food imports are always going to be an issue. There was a huge spike in birthrates just after the war, and they have declined ever since throughout the developed world, so jettisoning sustainability in an effort to make sure that people can retire at 65 when the average life expectancy in Japan is 81 seems misguided. Pension systems were never designed to support people for an average of 16 years. Yeah, I wouldn't like to work past 65 if I was expecting to retire then either, but under the current economic system people over 65 either need to remain productive or start dying in droves. More equitable distribution of wealth would help, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
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Jun 12, 2013 04:37
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Frankly, this is a pointless argument to embark on, since population growth as the most important driver of economic growth is so ingrained as a concept. Honestly, just forget I brought it up, since we'd just be wasting our time, and nobody would enjoy it. Bad idea on my part; I shouldn't have posted in the first place.
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Jun 12, 2013 05:04
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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.
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Nov 7, 2013 06:36
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I'm a translator, and I had a dude pull me up for using the preposition "in" in three consecutive sentences, saying that it "sounded unnatural". Nothing I said could convince him that literally nobody would notice or give a gently caress, and anyway it was grammatically correct, so changing it would mean introducing errors. Never mind that this guy was paying me to translate it for him because of my superior English writing skills as a native speaker, I am obviously lying to him and trying to pass off shoddy work.
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Nov 10, 2013 19:25
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Japan is generally really good at building poo poo that doesn't get totally ruined by earthquakes. Getting all dramatical over an old reactor that was supposed have been decommissioned 10 years previously getting damaged when it was hit by an earthquake stronger than what it was built to withstand isn't particularly useful to anybody. The take away from Fukushima Daiichi is not that Japanese nuclear technology is poor quality, but rather that TEPCO are bunch of fuckers and the government oversight and response was utterly inept. There have been zero fatalities resulting from radiation exposure, and there is pretty much universal agreement in scientific and public health circles worldwide that there is no statistically significant increase in risk for negative health effects as a result of exposure in the Fukushima Daiichi incident.
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Jan 7, 2014 20:36
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Zo posted:And that's far out at sea. I'm sure there are a ton of domestic cases but TEPCO loves covering poo poo up and the goverment loves helping them - oh look a convenient new secrecy bill too. As I said, TEPCO are fuckers and the government is inept. In spite of that, it appears that the long term impact will be minimal. The focus should be on the incompetence and complacency that lead to the reactor continuing operation a decade after it was supposed to have been decommissioned and the horribly mishandled response that is currently ongoing. A bunch of alarmist bullshit that exaggerates the impact of the incident helps precisely no one and only serves to distract from the humanitarian issue of the evacuees who have still not found permanent housing or employment and regulatory issues involving safety and response to incidents.
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Jan 10, 2014 00:06
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I'd like to be a fly on the wall for that part of the interview. Makes you wonder if anyone would just straight up answer bribery.
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Jul 4, 2014 08:56
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They already do. Most of what gets brought in by the research boats ends up staying in deep freeze, since there's not much of a market for it. Something like 15-25% of the annual tonnage gets dumped unsold.
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Jul 5, 2014 06:55
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The ubiquity of far-right shitheads among the moneymen and kingmakers muddies the waters somewhat, I feel. I'd imagine it's pretty hard to find a Japanese politician over say 35 or so who hasn't appeared in a photograph with someone who has awful political views at some point in their career. Anyway, the influence of far-right weirdos is hardly news to anyone even vaguely paying attention.
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Sep 30, 2014 12:01
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I can't really say authoritatively what the situation was like prior to the Heian Period, but by the 11th century, the Emperor was at the mercy of his courtiers for the most part. Read up on Fujiwara no Michinaga if you want to see just how much power an influential courtier could have over an Emperor in those days. The Gempei War broke out because the Minamoto got sick of the Taira (Imperial cousins) monopolizing lucrative and prestigious appointments. When the Kamakura Bakufu seized de facto control of government, they ostensibly served at the Emperor's pleasure, but in reality, there was no way of ousting a sitting shogun without an army. Emperor Go-Toba was forced to abdicate by Yoritomo in his teens, but 20 some years later decided to stage a rebellion to try to reclaim throne and failed miserably. That pretty much set the tone until the Meiji Restoration, which established a constitutional monarchy in which the Emperor was head of state but not head of government. It might look like I'm glossing over a huge period, but there weren't any credible threats to the status quo vis a vis Imperial authority during that time.
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Oct 3, 2014 15:46
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Opinion is divided on that, obviously, and I doubt either of us is interested in arguing the point in depth in a thread about current Japanese politics on a comedy website, so I'll leave it at that. I also missed out the Kemmu Restoration in my overview, since I ascribe to the school of thought that it was pretty much an Ashikaga power play from the moment they turned, but again, opinion is divided, and it only lasted 3 years anyhow. To be fair to Go-Daigo, he did actually get de facto power for awhile, but Takauji was moving on him from day one, more or less.
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Oct 3, 2014 17:11
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Just wait til someone perfects lifelike fuckable robots. It'll be pandemonium, I assure you.
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Oct 8, 2014 11:01
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I don't know if it's funnier that you think I don't know about the sex industry or that you honestly believe there aren't any dudes who would rather gently caress a totally compliant sexbot than a human.
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Oct 8, 2014 11:38
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adhuin posted:Blue led creators original compensation for revolutionizing light industry: ~$200. He managed to litigate it up to 8.1 million. Which makes the stated goal of "reducing litigation" shamefully transparent in its intent.
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Oct 10, 2014 03:57
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It's apples and oranges really. I'm not any kind of software/hardware guy, but the difference between programming game engines for smartphones/consoles/PCs and programming bespoke inventory/logistics/fulfillment management systems, assembly line control systems, or CAD tools for widely varying platforms that need to be compatible with ancient legacy systems due to bureaucratic inertia seems pretty self evident. The design requirements are not even remotely comparable.
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Oct 13, 2014 23:10
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Yeah, if you're talking about ECUs and whatnot, that's all done in house. I've never heard of any automotive engine manufacturer farming out the firmware, since it's an integral and critical part of the design, as Toyota's woes with the Prius illustrate. Telematics for commercial vehicles is also done in house, because after sales service and support on it is a pretty decent revenue stream.
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Oct 15, 2014 12:11
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boom boom boom posted:That had nothing to do with technical issues, you ignorant fool. They dropped KojiPro's MGS:R because they couldn't figure out how to make the gameplay work with the original concept of being able to cut everything in the environment. lol, better think twice before you spit some ignorant poo poo about kojima when boom boom boom is in town bubba
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Oct 16, 2014 00:50
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^^^^^ Yeah, Yuko is the daughter of Keizo, predecessor of Mori, who I mention below. I doubt either of them has enough personal clout to make it worthwhile for leadership to try and quash the scandals, so don't let the door hit you on the way out. Remember Yoshiro Mori? Dude couldn't hardly complete a sentence without pissing someone off, but he was so well connected that it took his approval rating dropping to single digits to get rid of him.
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Oct 20, 2014 17:27
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They're not being protected, but there could be any number of reasons for that. Matsushima's case in particular looks like there could be a lot of angles involved, what with her being Justice Minister. The fact that her own subordinates couldn't be bothered to talk someone out of making a big stink over some cheapo folding fans suggests she may have run afoul of internal ministry politics. As an interested bystander, it seems likely with the amount of heat the Abe administration is taking for various heinous poo poo in the press, these two were sacrificed to avoid giving the media yet another stick to beat them with by trying to fight it.
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Oct 21, 2014 04:32
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From what I can gather having read discussions by actual medical professionals, a lot of the resistance is from Japanese nurses who don't want the competition which will bring down wages. There are a lot of incentives being offered right now for going through nursing training (educational subsidies, etc.), and they aren't going to give those up without a fight.
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Oct 22, 2014 05:38
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