A little while since the last post here.
Work has begun again full swing, but my Uni classes have gone into their exam period so I get to play World of Warcraft instead. Tauren druids are fun.
Last weekend I made Mochi with Mizuki and a bunch of her friends from the mountain climbing club of her college. Event organised by the always supergenki Emiko. It was fun beating little rice grains to a pasty death on a clearblue icy day.
Damn it's cold.
OK - Rant Mode On
I am reading Herbert Bix's Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan and it's fascinating. The complexities of what the Americans did here during the occupation astounds me. The way they 'set up' the Emperor as a British-style powerless figurehead as a way of manipulating the hearts and minds of the Japanese people...I am constantly reminded how 'set up' this entire country is.
But things are really changing. Everything from Koizumi's Yasukuni visits to the SDF's forays into Iraq...this year is the 60th anniversary of the end of WW2 and the demilitarization of Japan, and it seems the country is on the verge of some kind of major seachange. I was talking to an old lady today who had seen Michael Moore's film Farenheit 911 and I guess wanted to talk to a foreigner about it. She said with a pained expression on her face "It seems old men like to make wars for young men to die in." The phrase really stuck with me all day.
Just today a minor scandal broke in the papers about a government minister interfering with a national broadcaster and attempting to censor a documentary on the war crimes of the Showa Emperor. Everywhere I go I hear stuff about how Japan must "regain it's sense of national pride" or "reassert itself as a major international power" and this kind of rhetoric. To me this kind of talk is disturbing and a little saddening. But people will deny that any kind of right-wing shift is taking place, despite the clear warning signs. This shift I think is occurring at a global level.
As a teacher who sometimes works in public schools, I have to deal with another hot topic: the Tokyo state governments introduction of compulsory singing of the National Anthem and bowing to the Rising Sun flag at the beginning of each school day. Large numbers of teachers protested this and even striked last year, leading to retributive punishment from the Ministry of Education in the form of pay cuts and even terminations. The big twist came near the end of the year when a conservative politician asked the current Emperor at a press conference what he thought about it and the Emperor said he thought it was a bad idea to force students to be patriotic. This kind of threw the right-wingers (who continue to worship the Emperor as a divine being) for a spin.
Whatever...Rant Mode Off
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1 comment:
I was looking for a translation of Paul Verlaine's poetry and found your blog. Glad I found it. So true: this shift is occurring at a global level. I'll keep an eye on your blog.
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