Thursday, December 01, 2005
Japan ponders war and women
Should the Japanese write warmaking power back into their constitution -- or should that idea be nipped in the bud?
TOKYO - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Wednesday that Japan‘s pacifist constitution should be changed so the country can legally maintain an armed military force and beef up its national security.
Read all about it from Leading the Charge in New Brisbane.
Should we be alarmed that a country still so leery of women in positions of power, even ceremonial "power," wants to make it easier to go to war? How do you say "Pass the testosterone" in Japanese?
Prince Tomohito, a cousin of Emperor Akihito and fifth in the line of succession, caused a stir when he wrote an essay in September saying Japan should exhaust all other options, including bringing back concubines, before allowing a woman to ascend its imperial throne.
Read all about it from Sign On San Diego.
--ER
TOKYO - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Wednesday that Japan‘s pacifist constitution should be changed so the country can legally maintain an armed military force and beef up its national security.
Read all about it from Leading the Charge in New Brisbane.
Should we be alarmed that a country still so leery of women in positions of power, even ceremonial "power," wants to make it easier to go to war? How do you say "Pass the testosterone" in Japanese?
Prince Tomohito, a cousin of Emperor Akihito and fifth in the line of succession, caused a stir when he wrote an essay in September saying Japan should exhaust all other options, including bringing back concubines, before allowing a woman to ascend its imperial throne.
Read all about it from Sign On San Diego.
--ER
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An unrestrained Japan military led by an Female God on Earth, that sounds like a good plot for a science fiction story, but not a good developement in world history. Empress Aiko, The Scourge of Asia, has a certain ring to it. I can visualize a small thin anime character dressed in golden robes with coal black hair and dark round eyes holding the severed almond eyed head of The Hun in one hand and her bloody Samurai Katana raised high in the other. Go for it Japan!
# posted by 
: 5:38 PM
: 5:38 PM
Japan is a sovereign nation. If they want to field a 'real' military, then let them. From the stand point of the US, it is a win-win situation. No longer will be the sole entity responsible for their security, but we should also be able to capitalize through defense contracting. Where's the problem?
Call me a patriarch (or a sexist, or a chauvenist (sp?), or whatever). A woman's place is to follow, not lead.
Call me a patriarch (or a sexist, or a chauvenist (sp?), or whatever). A woman's place is to follow, not lead.
I am so blinded by the baldness of the phrase "a woman's place" that I can't even think about what you said about Japan.
Jesus.
Jesus.
You implied that we should disdain the fact that they choose not to elevate women to positions of power. In the politically correct world that the left has created, I guess that is a bad thing. In the world that God created, this is how it should be.
Does that mean that women cannot be used as leaders? No. Deborah (found in the book of Judges) was a woman used by God to lead. In more recent times, Margaret Thatcher was a very good leader. There are probably countless others. Still, equality between man and woman is a worldly idea, not a Godly one. If men would rise up and assume their place, women leaders would not be needed.
I didn't (and don't) want to fight on this point, but I couldn't let your statement go unchecked. Had I only replied to the first part of your post, I feel that it would have implied that I agreed with the second part as well.
Does that mean that women cannot be used as leaders? No. Deborah (found in the book of Judges) was a woman used by God to lead. In more recent times, Margaret Thatcher was a very good leader. There are probably countless others. Still, equality between man and woman is a worldly idea, not a Godly one. If men would rise up and assume their place, women leaders would not be needed.
I didn't (and don't) want to fight on this point, but I couldn't let your statement go unchecked. Had I only replied to the first part of your post, I feel that it would have implied that I agreed with the second part as well.
I personally have no problem with Women in leadership positions, as long as it is the RIGHT woman...
But then again, I am not Japanese, either.
And Iraq has their own Military, getting stronger every day (According to Joe Leiberman, Democrat, Connecticut, Former Democrat Vice Presidential Candidate...), and Japan has proven themselves to be a loyal Ally for 50 or so years.
I don't see any problem with them having an Army.
They might come in handy the next time we Warmongering Republicans decide to mislead the whole world into an unjust War for Oil, to enrich the Haliburton Corporation...
But then again, I am not Japanese, either.
And Iraq has their own Military, getting stronger every day (According to Joe Leiberman, Democrat, Connecticut, Former Democrat Vice Presidential Candidate...), and Japan has proven themselves to be a loyal Ally for 50 or so years.
I don't see any problem with them having an Army.
They might come in handy the next time we Warmongering Republicans decide to mislead the whole world into an unjust War for Oil, to enrich the Haliburton Corporation...
"Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the Church."
Christian husbands lead their wives by serving, by sacrificing themselves, to the point of death if need be, or that verse is hogwash.
Rem, all that other crap is just that, in my opinion, and yer right, we don't need to fight about it. Pick a testament, though.
Christian husbands lead their wives by serving, by sacrificing themselves, to the point of death if need be, or that verse is hogwash.
Rem, all that other crap is just that, in my opinion, and yer right, we don't need to fight about it. Pick a testament, though.
ER, I began a long post. I deleted it. I'm too tired to debate this. Please accept my apology for taking this thread in a direction you probably didn't want it to go. I spent an hour or so at Dr. B's reading a 'manifesto' and the comments that followed. It got me fired up and I spouted off.
"Nothing has changed since 1885..."
Before you simply dismiss the Japanese, look at where they are going today. Think about where they may be going tomarrow. We have been holding their leash for 60 years. Want to let go now?
The following are excerpts from a recent NYT article.
By Norimitsu Onishi The New York Times
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2005
TOKYO A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!"
In another passage, the text says, "There is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of."
Another comic book, "Introduction to China," portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism. In it, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today - its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive."
The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the past four months.
In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books display some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia.
They also point to Japan's longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity........... Today, the rise of China and South Korea to challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them in Japan.
Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is the honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.
Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbors, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan's most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said that Japan should emulate the advanced nations of the West.
Fukuzawa also said Japan should leave Asia by dissociating itself from its backward neighbors, especially China and Korea.
Nishio, who wrote a chapter in the comic book about South Korea, said Japan should try to cut itself off from China and South Korea, as Fukuzawa advocated.
"Currently we cannot ignore South Korea and China," Nishio said.
"Economically it's difficult. But in our hearts, psychologically, we should remain composed and keep that attitude."
The emergence of South Korea as a rival became apparent to many Japanese in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer's World Cup and South Korea advanced further in the tournament than Japan............
"The 'Hate Korea' feelings have spread explosively since the World Cup," said Akihide Tange, an editor at Shinyusha, the publisher of the comic book. Still, the number of sales, 360,000 so far, surprised the book's editors, suggesting that the Hate Korea movement was far larger than they had believed.
"We weren't expecting there'd be so many," said Susumu Yamanaka, another editor at Shinyusha. "But when the lid was actually taken off, we found a tremendous number of people feeling this way."
So far the two books, each running about 300 pages and costing the equivalent of about $10, have drawn little criticism from public officials, intellectuals or the mainstream media.
Yutaka Yoshida, a historian at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo said that as nationalists and revisionists have come to dominate the public debate in Japan, figures advocating an honest view of history are being silenced. Yoshida said a growing movement to deny history, including incidents like the Rape of Nanjing, in which historians say 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers in the late 1930s, was a sort of "religion" for an increasingly insecure nation.
"Lacking confidence, they need a story of healing," Yoshida said. "Even if we say that story is different from facts, it doesn't mean anything to them. Many historians feel exhausted in trying to fill the gap between facts and what people want to believe."
The Korea book's cartoonist, who is working on a sequel, has turned down interview requests. The book centers on a Japanese teenager, Kaname, who comes to have a "correct" understanding of Korea. It begins with a chapter that says South Korea's soccer team cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup;............
But the comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan's own conflicts on its identity and its longstanding feelings of superiority toward Asia and inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features.
That peculiar aesthetic, so entrenched in pop culture that most Japanese nowadays are unaware of it, has its roots in the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century, when Japanese leaders decided the best way to stop Western imperialists from reaching Japan was to emulate them.
As those sentiments took root, the Japanese in popular drawings began acquiring Caucasian features.............
Many of the same influences are at work in the other new comic book, "An Introduction to China," which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution. It has sold 180,000 copies.
The book describes China as the "world's prostitution superpower" and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, "I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China."
The book waves away Japan's worst wartime atrocities in China. It dismisses the Rape of Nanjing as a fabrication of the Chinese government devised to spread anti-Japanese sentiment - "postwar China's biggest hit."
The book also says the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731, which reportedly researched biological warfare and conducted vivisections, amputations and other experiments on thousands of Chinese and other prisoners, was actually formed to defend Japanese soldiers against the Chinese............
If German government officially took the holocaust out of their text books, started describing the SS as self defense unit, and started an Adolph Hitler memorial library, what the hell do you think we would do?
This is the kind of thing that gets out of hand when we have single purpose dumb asses in charge of our government. Shall we let Japan have their Military. shall they have ballistic missles? Shall they have nuclear weapons?
stop them now or be looking at these questions within the decade.
Before you simply dismiss the Japanese, look at where they are going today. Think about where they may be going tomarrow. We have been holding their leash for 60 years. Want to let go now?
The following are excerpts from a recent NYT article.
By Norimitsu Onishi The New York Times
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2005
TOKYO A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!"
In another passage, the text says, "There is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of."
Another comic book, "Introduction to China," portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism. In it, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today - its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive."
The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the past four months.
In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books display some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia.
They also point to Japan's longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity........... Today, the rise of China and South Korea to challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them in Japan.
Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is the honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.
Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbors, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan's most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said that Japan should emulate the advanced nations of the West.
Fukuzawa also said Japan should leave Asia by dissociating itself from its backward neighbors, especially China and Korea.
Nishio, who wrote a chapter in the comic book about South Korea, said Japan should try to cut itself off from China and South Korea, as Fukuzawa advocated.
"Currently we cannot ignore South Korea and China," Nishio said.
"Economically it's difficult. But in our hearts, psychologically, we should remain composed and keep that attitude."
The emergence of South Korea as a rival became apparent to many Japanese in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer's World Cup and South Korea advanced further in the tournament than Japan............
"The 'Hate Korea' feelings have spread explosively since the World Cup," said Akihide Tange, an editor at Shinyusha, the publisher of the comic book. Still, the number of sales, 360,000 so far, surprised the book's editors, suggesting that the Hate Korea movement was far larger than they had believed.
"We weren't expecting there'd be so many," said Susumu Yamanaka, another editor at Shinyusha. "But when the lid was actually taken off, we found a tremendous number of people feeling this way."
So far the two books, each running about 300 pages and costing the equivalent of about $10, have drawn little criticism from public officials, intellectuals or the mainstream media.
Yutaka Yoshida, a historian at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo said that as nationalists and revisionists have come to dominate the public debate in Japan, figures advocating an honest view of history are being silenced. Yoshida said a growing movement to deny history, including incidents like the Rape of Nanjing, in which historians say 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers in the late 1930s, was a sort of "religion" for an increasingly insecure nation.
"Lacking confidence, they need a story of healing," Yoshida said. "Even if we say that story is different from facts, it doesn't mean anything to them. Many historians feel exhausted in trying to fill the gap between facts and what people want to believe."
The Korea book's cartoonist, who is working on a sequel, has turned down interview requests. The book centers on a Japanese teenager, Kaname, who comes to have a "correct" understanding of Korea. It begins with a chapter that says South Korea's soccer team cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup;............
But the comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan's own conflicts on its identity and its longstanding feelings of superiority toward Asia and inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features.
That peculiar aesthetic, so entrenched in pop culture that most Japanese nowadays are unaware of it, has its roots in the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century, when Japanese leaders decided the best way to stop Western imperialists from reaching Japan was to emulate them.
As those sentiments took root, the Japanese in popular drawings began acquiring Caucasian features.............
Many of the same influences are at work in the other new comic book, "An Introduction to China," which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution. It has sold 180,000 copies.
The book describes China as the "world's prostitution superpower" and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, "I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China."
The book waves away Japan's worst wartime atrocities in China. It dismisses the Rape of Nanjing as a fabrication of the Chinese government devised to spread anti-Japanese sentiment - "postwar China's biggest hit."
The book also says the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731, which reportedly researched biological warfare and conducted vivisections, amputations and other experiments on thousands of Chinese and other prisoners, was actually formed to defend Japanese soldiers against the Chinese............
If German government officially took the holocaust out of their text books, started describing the SS as self defense unit, and started an Adolph Hitler memorial library, what the hell do you think we would do?
This is the kind of thing that gets out of hand when we have single purpose dumb asses in charge of our government. Shall we let Japan have their Military. shall they have ballistic missles? Shall they have nuclear weapons?
stop them now or be looking at these questions within the decade.
# posted by : 9:39 PM
: 9:39 PM
Does anyone have the power to keep Japan from changing it's constitution? Yes, its been 60 years, but memories are long. Elderly Chinese still tell about Nanking, and Korea will NEVER embrace Japan completely. But who's to say what a sovereign nation should do with it's constitution? Would the world be safer if the USA or the UN had the power to disarm ALL nations, or just the nations who hold grudges against their neighbors (and that would be all of them)?
Re female ascention to the throne: there are none so chauvinistic as those who take royalty seriously. I don't.
Re female ascention to the throne: there are none so chauvinistic as those who take royalty seriously. I don't.
It is interesting to note that the ultra-conservative Japanese do not consider the Emperors as royalty alone. As royalty they are the head of state. As the decendants of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, they are the divine head of the entire Japanese Family, that is every single Japanese. Whether we take royalty seriously matters not at all, what matters is that the Japanese do. Their little future Empress, Aiko, will be a divine being, and the head of state.
# posted by : 8:24 AM
: 8:24 AM
THen, by all means, I;'m for less testosterone at the top over there. Otherwise, somebody will have to whup their asses again. And I think this country is about whupped out.
We need another military ally in Asia. China will be a problem in the future. North Korea will be a wild card as long as crazies are in charge.
The problem that I see is the same problem that Japan had in the early 20th century. They have limited natural resources. I don't mean that I think they would try to expand (again) in order to gather those resources. A Japanese military would cause another huge upsurge in oil demand and oil access. There's only a finite supply, as we all know. Japan and China are already fighting (albeit diplomaticly) over rights to the oil in between the two countries (the body of water escapes me at the moment - Sea of Japan?).
On the other hand, the US does not need/want to be the buffer between Japan and China (or Japan and N Korea). If Japan could defend herself, we would have more flexibility in how we handle our Asian-based troops.
The problem that I see is the same problem that Japan had in the early 20th century. They have limited natural resources. I don't mean that I think they would try to expand (again) in order to gather those resources. A Japanese military would cause another huge upsurge in oil demand and oil access. There's only a finite supply, as we all know. Japan and China are already fighting (albeit diplomaticly) over rights to the oil in between the two countries (the body of water escapes me at the moment - Sea of Japan?).
On the other hand, the US does not need/want to be the buffer between Japan and China (or Japan and N Korea). If Japan could defend herself, we would have more flexibility in how we handle our Asian-based troops.
It's not Japan defending itself that gives me pause. It's the notion of those Christless racists going aggressive on somebody else again.
Ojn the other hand, it's supposedly Christful (low-grade) racists, or at least jingoists, who are causing so much trouble here right now.
Ojn the other hand, it's supposedly Christful (low-grade) racists, or at least jingoists, who are causing so much trouble here right now.
Praise the Lord
At least the CHRISTMAS tree lighting ceremony last night in DC was still called a “CHRISTMAS TREE”!
At least the CHRISTMAS tree lighting ceremony last night in DC was still called a “CHRISTMAS TREE”!
# posted by : 11:13 AM
: 11:13 AM
ER,
But who will they get aggressive with? The world is a much different place than it was in 1930. The Koreans are well armed and have some military experience. They won't be invading China anytime soon. Russia - I think not. They would be foolish to challenge the presence of the US and the Aussies in the Pacific. Remember, they will be starting from almost scratch. Based on their geography, they will need to focus on building a Navy and amphibious forces, combined with a good air force. An army will be needed to take and hold territory. Land is precious in Japan - training armies in full field exercises will be a logistical challenge - not an impossibility, but a challenge, none-the-less. It would be decades before they could launch a war of aggression. I suppose they could go nuclear, but to what avail?
I don't think there is a problem.
But who will they get aggressive with? The world is a much different place than it was in 1930. The Koreans are well armed and have some military experience. They won't be invading China anytime soon. Russia - I think not. They would be foolish to challenge the presence of the US and the Aussies in the Pacific. Remember, they will be starting from almost scratch. Based on their geography, they will need to focus on building a Navy and amphibious forces, combined with a good air force. An army will be needed to take and hold territory. Land is precious in Japan - training armies in full field exercises will be a logistical challenge - not an impossibility, but a challenge, none-the-less. It would be decades before they could launch a war of aggression. I suppose they could go nuclear, but to what avail?
I don't think there is a problem.
Don't forget that Japan and Russia hate each other with a long involved passion and have current conflicts over the Khurial (sp) Islands North of Japan today.
I know this post has run its course, but can anyone remeber which 20th century war it was that Japan and the U.S. were military Allies?
I know this post has run its course, but can anyone remeber which 20th century war it was that Japan and the U.S. were military Allies?
# posted by : 3:37 PM
: 3:37 PM
Noone ever sems to know that we once invaded the "Soviet Union".
It was The Siberian Expedition, where France, England, U.S.A., and Japan invaded Russia in April 1918 and remained there fighting with the White Army against the Red Army until 1920. America and Japan took the Eastern sections of Siberia. England and France took the West. Wilson wanted to spread Democracy to Russia. We sent 8000 troops, Japan sent 72,000 troops. We pulled back in 1920. Japan didn't pull out until 1922.
Look for articles in the 2002 National Archives Publication.
It was The Siberian Expedition, where France, England, U.S.A., and Japan invaded Russia in April 1918 and remained there fighting with the White Army against the Red Army until 1920. America and Japan took the Eastern sections of Siberia. England and France took the West. Wilson wanted to spread Democracy to Russia. We sent 8000 troops, Japan sent 72,000 troops. We pulled back in 1920. Japan didn't pull out until 1922.
Look for articles in the 2002 National Archives Publication.
# posted by : 10:28 PM
: 10:28 PM
Whoa! Vuja De! I had NEVER heard about this until my boss explained it at a Christmas party just a few hours ago. And here I come home and read your comment about the SAME THING.
Forget me losin' my R. I should turn in my M.A.
Never heard this -- on the other hand I'm a 19th-century-and-before snob.
Never heard this -- on the other hand I'm a 19th-century-and-before snob.
Nobody should ever feel bad about not hearing about this. Try Googleing for it and see if you can find it very easily. I know about it because I have haunted thrift stores and old book stores for half a century and ran a across a 1930's book written by a former U.S. soldier about the Japanese atrocities committed while they both were there. I bought the book, read it, and passed it on to an ASA Army buddy and it never made it back to me. All of the 8000 U.S. soldiers were from units comprised of people from Wisconsin, Minnisota, and North Dakota. In these states it is part of many family histories.
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# posted by : 3:37 PM
: 3:37 PM << Home
