Donald Seekins comments

With Takaichi as prime minister, Japan's period of "fun politics" will begin. Right in time for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II! Look forward to insensitive comments about China and other victims of Japanese aggression during 1931-1945.

The LDP should keep Ishiba in the top position. Okay, he isn't the snappiest dresser but he seems to be a sincere person, concerned with the welfare of Japan's people. Takaichi will just increase anti-Japan hostility in other parts of Asia at a time when Trump seems to be thinking of removing the US nuclear umbrella from Japan.

China: “Thank you, Tibetans, for allowing us to destroy your environment.”

Makes my day! Paul Watson shouldn't be subjected to the brutal "Carlos Ghosn treatment" in Japan.

Is this a sign that Abe's widow wants to muddy up the waters of US-Japan relations? If Akie-san and Donald-san have a close, informal relationship, how will this make things more difficult for politicians who wish to cleanse the Japanese body politic of Abe's malign influence?

Like Ishiba?

While I respect the work of Hidankyo in working for the abolition of nuclear weapons, there is a small, nasty bit of Us-versus-Them in the Japanese media's narrative about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It can be summarized in the comment I made on another online site, shown below:

"A number of historians after 1945 have described how energetic and determined the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy both were in trying to develop nuclear bombs. Our knowledge of their equivalent(s) to the Manhattan Project is limited because much of their experimentation took place in North Korea, which soon after the war was closed to the outside world. But some writers speculate that at the war’s end, they had a functioning nuclear weapon. When you realize that Japan had far less natural resources and capital at its disposal than the US, their efforts were impressive.

Would the Japanese have used an atomic bomb or bombs against its enemies? Most certainly. I can’t believe that the perpetrators of the Rape of Nanjing and Unit 731 would have had any more reservations about using them than Truman had when he sanctioned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

See especially: Robert K. Wilcox, Japan’s Secret War (New York: 2019)."

What I can't understand is Japan's obsession with "world heritage sites." How many gold mines are there in the world? The mines in South Africa, Russia and the Yukon must be bigger and more spectacular than the one at Sado. Gold has always been a part of human history, but for thousands of years people have been digging for it all over the world.

The next "world heritage sites" could be the Tokyo subways, or traditional Japanese drop toilets!

I have always been impressed by the high English proficiency of people I've met in Myanmar. True, I have been mostly in urban areas, but Burmese people have been pretty good at mastering English.

It is surprising that Myanmar is one slot below Japan - both countries being in the very low proficiency category (Japan 92, Myanmar 93). Then I remembered: Myanmar is in the middle of a civil war. The education system has pretty much collapsed because of the fighting, and most people are focused on just staying alive.

Japanese teachers and students don't have that excuse.

This is just another horrible example of how "Japanese values" of exclusion victimize Japanese people themselves. It is not just foreign residents who suffer discrimination.

"Violent crime is rare in Japan, which has strict gun control laws."

Recently, I have seen ads in Japanese (and thus for a Japanese audience) on YouTube selling a small, gun-like gadget which fires what looks like real bullets. There is a video showing the damage it does to cans and pet bottles, and it is explicitly designed to be sold to people who worry about personal security (not shooting squirrels).

I wonder if the government know about this? Recently, I've seen this ad several times. The item is "made in USA."

In Burma (Myanmar) neither local people nor foreign visitors can enter the compound of a Buddhist temple, pagoda or monastery without taking off their shoes and socks. Only barefoot visitors are allowed. This is the case even when the areas outside the buildings are hot stones, gravel or other uncomfortable things to put bare feet on top of. Since Burma is a hot country, stepping on a stone pagoda platform can be like putting your feet into a frying pan.

Buddhist temples in Kyoto could enforce a NO FOOTWEAR policy and the number of foreign and Japanese visitors would probably plummet. Of course, they wouldn't get money from admission, or sale of souvenirs. But then, Buddhism is supposed to be a world renouncing religion, isn't it?

Japan came within a cat's whisker of having its very own version of Sarah Palin run the country!

"When the Constitution is revised, the LDP also wants to state that the government can get greater authority and issue emergency orders without parliamentary approval to respond to natural disasters and other crises."

The revision of the Constitution which mentions the SDF doesn't scare me, but the above does. Giving the LDP oligarchy the power to issue "emergency orders" without approval by the Diet is one big step in the direction of the LDP's decades-old goal: getting rid of Japan's democracy and rule of law.

This could be similar to the passing of the Peace Preservation Law of 1925, which assisted the Japanese military cliques in their imposition of wartime totalitarianism.

"Those who don't learn from history are forced to relive it." - George Santayana

Nikki Haley wants America to fight wars with absolute every country it doesn't like, while supporting the genocidal Netanyahu regime in Israel. It would be a tragedy if China shut down Taiwan, which is the only viable democracy in East Asia (along, possibly, with South Korea but not Japan). But America can't get involved in World War III over the Taiwan issue. It would have a terrible (probably radioactive) impact on the whole world.

Yes! This sad little story is SO JAPANESE! Poor, naive Nihonjin - such kind, trusting people - are cheated by nasty, evil gaijin. No doubt the mass media imbeciles will be talking about this over the next few days.

I have stayed in a lot of hotels, both in Japan and outside. Without exception, the front desk people want to take a look at my passport, and get an imprint of my credit card. No problem. If I decide to ghost them, they can do all sorts of nasty things to my credit rating and alert the police as well.

This was the fault of the ryokan staff. Before letting anyone stay, they should demand proper documentation.

First, it was America which dropped the atomic bomb, killing (at least) 70,000 people in Nagasaki. It seems incumbent on the American ambassador to attend the memorial. But super-Zionist Emanuel refuses to attend because the country he really cares about (Israel, not America) has been slighted by the Nagasaki city government because it wasn't invited. Other G-7 ambassadors have servilely followed his lead.

Russia also has not been invited, although Russia has killed less civilians in Ukraine than Israel has killed in Gaza and the West Bank.

Secondly, in total violation of Nagasaki's (and Hiroshima's) message to the world about the spread of nuclear weapons, Israel possesses a large nuclear arsenal and the means of delivering these weapons (missiles, submarines) to its regional enemies.

It is quite likely that in a wider Mideast war, Israel would use them. Israel doesn't care about the lives of Palestinians, other Arabs or Iranians.

So, look forward to it: Hiroshima, August 6, 1945; Nagasaki, August 9, 1945.

Tehran, ? Beirut, ?

Three cheers for Singapore! The guy should have gotten 40 strokes.

"U.S. billionaire Elon Musk told CNN in March that he regularly uses a small amount of prescribed ketamine because it is 'helpful for getting one out of the negative frame of mind'."

Just a helpful little reminder that money won't solve all your problems.

As any non-Japanese resident in Japan knows, this country has a problem with xenophobia. About China, India and Russia, I don't know. Biden routinely makes dumb comments about China because he's stoking up a second Cold War with the Middle Kingdom, and we know that he and his cronies dislike Russia (and would dislike Russia even if Moscow didn't invade Ukraine). If you asked Biden why he thinks China and Russia are so bad, he couldn't give you a coherent answer.

But why does he have to publicly criticize India and Japan for xenophobia when they, especially Japan, are much-needed allies of the US? As the leader of a sovereign state, he has NO business criticizing the internal affairs of other sovereign states. If Japan is afflicted with xenophobia, this is a matter Japan's leaders and public should address, not the old guy in the White House.

The answer: he's too old. His mind is fuzzy and he should NOT be running for a second term as President in November of this year.

The Buddha says: "nothing is permanent. Everything changes."

Then, he added: "there is one exception - the Liberal Democratic Party's control of Japanese politics."

So, don't look for basic change despite all the noise about "political ethics." The apathetic voters will just forget about the scandals and vote the LDP back into power in the next general election.

Kishida will be out: will he be replaced by Sanae Takaichi, who could become Japan's first female prime minister? (Ugh!).

Ah, Japan. The Land of Culture and Refinement!

But stuffing yen banknotes (¥10,000?) into the "scantily clad females'" mouths sounds like something that - oh, my! - would happen in one of those "underdeveloped" countries.

The least the aspiring young political geniuses of the LDP could do is stuff those banknotes down their brassieres.

"There is no evidence that Japanese would ever have used an atomic bomb on her fellow Asians in WW2. The Nazis and Russians if they'd had the chance, definitely. 

Modern Japan leads the way in pushing strongly to get these evil weapons banned from the world. All of humanity hopes they succeed."

Hogwash! Look at my latest post, above. If the IJA had nuclear bombs, they would have been happy to drop them on China, Russia or even the US. There might have been a nuclear version of Pearl Harbor, with the population of Oahu wiped out.

Fight-o! Your comment sounds like a puff-piece from the Japanese government!

For those people - almost entirely Japanese - who think that World War II began on August 6, 1945 and ended on August 15, 1945, I suggest they read Japan's Secret War by Robert K. Wilcox (Permuted Press, 3rd ed. 2019). It is a densely researched and highly detailed examination of the extreme lengths the Japanese Imperial Army, the Japanese Imperial Navy and physics researchers went to develop a nuclear bomb. Given the lack of resources and the fact that Japan was losing the war, their persistence was perversely admirable. It seems they got closer than the Germans to actually making a bomb.

If they had an atomic bomb in their arsenal, would the Japanese military have used it? Undoubtedly yes. They had already through Unit 731 developed a deadly arsenal of biological weapons which were tested on populations in northern China.

My conclusion: people in Hiroshima and elsewhere who believe they alone were war victims should look at the historical context. And it should be taught in Japanese schools.

"Is this really a movie that people in Hiroshima can bear to watch?" said Kyoko Heya, president of the Japanese city's international film festival, on Monday after the blockbuster won seven Academy Awards including best picture.'

Well, then people in Hiroshima don't have to watch it. Nobody is forcing them to. Lots of non-Hiroshima people must be looking forward to seeing "Oppenheimer."

"The US government thought Japanese were subhuman and were worthy of eradicating, that the thought of most White people in America government."

This was true. Wartime US propaganda depicted Japanese people as monkeys, insects or rats. But it wasn't only racism against Japanese. Tens of millions of Asians died at Japanese hands during the war. While the Holocaust stirred horror and indignation in western countries - and still does - the horrible deaths of Chinese, Koreans, Southeast Asians and others were, to leaders in Washington, just more evidence that "life is cheap in Asia." They didn't care about the Asian victims, and Hirohito was allowed to sit on the throne in post-war Japan.

Even today, we talk endlessly about the Holocaust perpetrated by Hitler. But there was another Holocaust in East and Southeast Asia for which the Japanese were responsible. This second Holocaust is largely forgotten.

Saturation bombing - especially in places where ordinary people live - is a war crime. It's clear and simple, no matter which country is doing it.

It was the Axis powers which began saturation bombing before and during World War II. First, the fascists bombed the Spanish town of Guernica during that country's civil war. When the Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, Chongqing and other Chinese cities had the distinction of being the "most bombed places on earth" by Japanese air raids. Most of the victims were civilians. The Luftwaffe mercilessly bombed London and other cities in Britain and other parts of Europe.

Then, the Allied powers stepped in. RAF "Bomber" Harris' raids on German cities, and Curtis LeMays intensive bombing of both German and Japanese cities before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More people died in total from conventional bombing than from the nuclear blasts - horrible as they were.

But remember. It was the Japanese who invaded and massacred their way through China and then Southeast Asia. And there is very credible evidence that the Japanese Army and Navy were working on developing a-bombs. Would the militarists have refrained from using them - or biological weapons - out of feelings of humanity? I doubt it.

If the Japanese hadn't invaded China, there would never have been an American March 10 bombing of Tokyo.

Priced at ¥33,000, you can buy it directly from the official Kimit website. 

For that amount of ¥¥¥¥, you could buy a pretty nice real cat. Sure, it would need a litter box and might scratch your furniture, but it would be a living thing, not a robot.

In both human and animal companions, Japanese seem to prefer robots.

Really competent, those TEPCO guys!

"Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews because the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews," the post said.

"How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?" it concluded, with a graphic photo of a Jewish woman being beaten in Nazi Germany.

In what way is Gina Carano's comment, above, antisemitic? She's not denying that Nazi soldiers rounded up Jews, or that Hitler's regime made people hate Jews. Maybe her statement that the discomfort of US conservatives in liberal media is much the same as Nazi persecution of Jews is an exaggeration, but that doesn't mean she's antisemitic.

People ought to learn to use words more precisely, and responsibly. One of the words we ought to use more responsibly is "antisemitic."

I for one hope Gina gets all the money she's suing Disney for.

Recycling garbage (gomi) is something like a religion in Japan: people (mostly housewives) have to separate it into separate categories, wash plastic and other garbage, and tie up paper garbage (subdivided into various categories) into neat, tidy packages.

But this article tells us that 58% of plastic garbage is burned, and 14% is exported to foreign countries. I happen to know that Burma (Myanmar) is one of the largest recipients of such "gifts" from Japan, and much of it is just dumped in places where poor people live, like the slums of Yangon. So, it's recycled neither in Japan nor Burma.

So, all this recycling doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything. But I would disagree: the central and local governments use it as a form of social discipline. Woe to the unfortunate housewife who mis-categorizes gomi. She is likely to get a tongue-lashing or worse from this country's armies of nosey parkers, including the petty apparatchiks who serve as apartment/condo managers.

Oh, my! Another magic kingdom. How about if Disney made a movie about a brave, 17 year-old girl who resists the rigid conventions of her (Japanese) high school? Complete with a stuffy, bureaucratic principal and lots of nasty bullies?