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Abe is a for real nationalist/revisionist and the totalitarian Chinese government exploits history to shore up their own power. They were made for each other. Neither the Japanese nor the Chinese public has any rational point of view on east asia, at least as us Westerners might view it. In my personal experience, Japanese and Chinese people have a lot of differences that are completely surmountable as long as no one jumps in to remind them that they are supposed to hate each other. Abe is pretty deft as a politician, but if you ask why he visits Yasukuni, it's because he wants to go there. He is a bone fide Japanese right winger, to the right of the Emperor. He does not run the whole country and he was not reelected because Japanese people in general are like him, though the Western narrative is that Japanese are suddenly becoming warlike. He stumbled back into office on the back of a national disaster and a particularly ineffectual opposition government that squandered every opportunity to take leadership. Japanese people are pretty much exactly the same now as they were five years ago. They are not becoming more warlike, and they are not becoming more nationalistic than they were before. I am from an extremely nationalistic country, and I know what that bullshit looks like. Gabriel Grub fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Dec 26, 2013 |
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Dec 26, 2013 14:48
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LimburgLimbo posted:There have been a lot of articles about the conservatives trying to push through constitutional amendments and the recent confirmation of a small increase in Japan's defense budget saw a lot of press, a fair amount of it somewhat hyperbolic. The Japanese electorate has been pretty distressed by the states secrets law, at least relative to their normal state of indifference. Abe is pushing the limits of his power and if he pushes a little bit more we all might see some surprising things from Japanese politics. The thing to remember is that while the Japanese electorate is not very liberal or conservative, it likes to punish. Therefore, Abe is on thin ice all the time. There is a stereotype that the Japanese will go along with anything. This is untrue; they have a higher tolerance for the status quo before they demand everything suddenly changes.
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Dec 26, 2013 15:51
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The following people can swallow my dick wholly: Shinzo Abe,Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi,Japanese Ambassador to China Kitera Masato,Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Edit: Also any nationalistic piece of garbage who tries to erect a monument to unending Asian hatred in my peaceful boring neighborhood. Gabriel Grub fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Dec 26, 2013 |
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Dec 26, 2013 16:23
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Kenishi posted:Your list somehow missed Hashimoto and Ishihara. I would not want to give the impression that Tokyo was particularly important or representative of Japan, because it is not.
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Dec 26, 2013 17:03
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Yet they cannot wrest political control from the inaka, and the vast majority of the country has never even been to Tokyo. Tokyo is great; may the great nation of Japan never be defined nor contolled by it.
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Dec 26, 2013 17:26
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LimburgLimbo posted:Keep on dreaming, kid. If you continue to try to understand Japanese politics and culture based on Tokyo, it is you who will always be dreaming. JPop all comes from there though.
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Dec 26, 2013 17:51
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CronoGamer posted: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 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.
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Jan 29, 2014 03:26
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Mar 28, 2014 09:12
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Public smoking (major streets, trains, public spaces) went from pervasive to almost gone during my half decade in Japan when they were running lots of ads and gradually tightening rules. You can still smoke if you go waaay to the end of the train platform, but I assume that will be gone eventually. When I first arrived you could actually smoke on the train.
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Apr 8, 2014 03:07
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You guys are forgetting that although office workers spend most of their life at the office, young people are massively underemployed and company jobs get less common every year. Think about the 900 tiny restaurants and bars in your neighborhood, staffed by thousands of young people doing 40 hours a week only if they're lucky. In addition, blue collar workers don't generally work huge amounts of unpaid overtime. Not everyone is a salaryman, so shock at that number is mostly a reflection of the white-collar Tokyo-centric nature of the Japan expats. Gabriel Grub fucked around with this message at 03:41 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 03:38
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Samurai Sanders posted:Yeah, I guess I gotta admit, I am indeed going off info from Japan from five years ago or so and not realizing it. They were behind then, but I guess they are caught up now. Five years ago I had a service very similar to NetFlix, called Hikari TV, bundled with my internet service.
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May 12, 2014 06:26
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