The Japanese Myth

Does TOYOTA Spell a Turning Point For Japan? (Part 2)

There’s a strong discourse [formalized way of thinking] in Japan that Japanese, the elite at any rate, are superior to any other races in the world.

And it doesn’t matter how many times they have been proven wrong, the belief still stands out like a cold sore. But that’s hardly the issue.

In a historical context, the fallout from this way of thinking has proven catastrophic. We all know that. But the Japanese ruling class  are at a denial. [Hence interfering with the history books, etc.]

On a day-to-day practical level, there are three disturbing consequences to the discourse: Xenophobia, extreme hubris and unacceptable performance.

Added to Japan’s ills, is the fact that Japanese use China as a benchmark. Perhaps, the line of reasoning goes something like this:

If China can get away with flooding the world markets with their products [low-quality junk]
And since we are superior to the Chinese
Therefore, our products must have a better chance
Consequently, we shall have no problem staying ahead of the Chinese.

That works, of course, but only so long as the accelerators don’t jam, and the brakes operate properly to prevent fatal accidents.

Up to 98 percent of everything we buy in Japan is  made in China.  The kids plimsolls, about $50 a pair last up to three weeks, if we are lucky. But they look terrible well before they meet the bin. Manufacturers glue on thin pieces of plastic to the sole of the shoes, so that they hang from the shoe after just a few hours of walking, looking completely worn-out and ready to throw away during the first day.

Most toys last from about a few minutes to more than a day. This ¥1,200 [$13] ball lasted more than 30 seconds and 6 gentle throws before bursting! Luckily, I had had an encounter with the Toys R Us manager about another toy the previous month, and she refunded me without any squabble this time.

Related Links:

• Does TOYOTA Spell a Turning Point For Japan?
• Do you speak Japanese in America?
• The height of irresponsibility
• Japan Syndrome II
• Japan Syndrome

Does TOYOTA Spell a Turning Point For Japan?

Are Toyota Problems Unique and Due to Quality Control?

How extensive are the problems within the Japanese manufacturing sector?

Cars, washing machines, shoes and sushi bars … 

Japan needs a major rethink because money alone won’t cure her ills, or help it to bail out from self-destruction.

You can understand why the Chinese goods sold in Japan don’t last more than about 15 minutes or two “throws,” but Japan will pay a dear price for its quality-control indiscretions.

There’s an up-market sushi restaurant in town, which the kids like to go to with their grandma once a week, but it’s boycotted by the moderator.

I stopped going there, or eating the sushi bought there 3 and a half years ago, after a piece of packaging foam mixed with the topping on the sushi lodged in my throat and made me to almost throw up.  I sent back the sushi with a strongly worded message.

The restaurant apologized and made a refunded. It was their excuse that made me boycott their sushi. The manager said it was difficult to mix the particular topping and not have pieces of foam accidentally buried in it every now and then.

Imagine if Toyoto told its customers it would be difficult to manufacture cars whose accelerator pedals didn’t stick.

I vowed never to eat their sushi again, and haven’t since. The average cost of a meal for  three adults and two kids previously came to about ¥7,500 ($85).

continued …

Born in the USA?

And Obowma didn’t disappoint...

Does President Obowma have a superiority complex. Photo: AP. Image may be a copyright.

While showing courtesy to the head of a state is an appropriate thing to do,  bowing like a club doorman is NOT. Whichever way you look at it, the President’s demeanor is un-American and unfitting for a person of his position.

Related Links:

• Will He, Or Won’t He?

Will He, Or Won’t He?

The world would be watching President Obowma, when he meets Japan Emperor!

President Obama (back to camera) bows to the king of Saudi Arabia.

Aso Out, Ahso In!

The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) seems set for a landslide victory:  Exit polls

The DPJ appears to have won 300 seats in Japan’s 480-seat Diet (lower house,) pulling the curtain on the Liberal Democratic Party  [political “mafia

 Mr Yukio Hatoyama. Will he last more than 8 months as PM of Japan? (Photo: AFP, may be subject to copyright).

“The opposition Democratic Party of Japan appears to have trounced Prime Minister Taro Aso’s Liberal Democratic Party in Sunday’s lower house election, knocking it out of power for only the second time in the LDP’s 54-year history.” Nikkei said.

DPJ leader Yukio Hatoyama is about to become prime minister of only the second  ever non-LDP government (first since 1993) during the almost unbroken 55-year LDP record.

But what could he possibly change?

Hatoyama, or better still Hatoy-ob-ama, will probably stir the same level of change in Japan’s political scene as did Obama in the US: A Big, Fat Zero!

The DPJ has promised to ”shift the focus of government from supporting corporations to helping consumers and workers.” BBC said.

But how could that happen, especially at a time when the corporations need all the support they can get. The survival of Japan economy seems to be directly proportional to the number of cars  sold overseas. Japan is suffering record unemployment and its economy will probably never fully recover  from recession.

Who is this Hatoyama, any way? How will he be different from his predecessors?

Here’s how different the two are from one another, according to a BBC report:

Both he and Prime Minister Taro Aso come from the political and industrial elite.

Both had a prime minister for a grandfather.

Mr Hatoyama’s family founded tyre giant Bridgestone, Mr Aso’s owned a leading mining company.

Both men graduated from an elite university and spent time studying in the US, before joining the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

But there their paths diverged. While Mr Aso climbed the LDP ranks, Mr Hatoyama left to form a new party.

What was it a political commentator once said about the differences between the Republicans and Democrats in the US?

He compared them to the Gambinos and Genovese crime families, who shared the same common interests, despite shooting at each other, once in a while.

Related Links:

• A Haiku for Taro Aso: Yottsu
• Japan Politics of Shame: Corruption, Bribery and Sex
• Good riddance! NO one will ever miss a bad PM!
• A Haiku for Fukuda
• People Mean Nothing to Japanese Govt

On the 64th Anniversary of Nuking Japan

A haiku dedicated to the forced upon compulsory victims of all imperialist wars

Crimes against humnanity
flounce 
like timeless kamikaze

For the victims of serial wars, the world is as deadly a place now as it was 64 years ago.

More “war crimes” and crimes against humanity are being committed today by the security-military-industrial complex, through the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and NATO forces, than ever before…

Related Links:

• Nuking of Hiroshima: 63 Years On
• Japan Quake and The Duplicity of Baptist Church
• Canada, Racism, Genocide, and the Bomb
• Blame It On Tojo
•  A Mass Murderer Dies
• War Crimes, USA
• Top 10 Reasons Why Japanese Loathe Gaijin (Foreigners )

Japanifik Definitely NOT Civilized!

The Link Between Civilization, Human Dignity, Moral Courage and Sociopolitical Will

It’s difficult to believe anyone could live in Japanifik for any length of time feeling they live in the “civilized” world.

Here, we have roads, albeit narrow single lanes where traffic is allowed in both directions, and stoplights, of course;  there are cars and people to drive them, though most of them they have no idea how to drive.

There are police Koban (small police stations) on the main roads, staffed by policemen and women, who carry guns. But there’re no circumstances under which Japanifik could be thought of as a  “first-world” city. No way!

Japanifik is a spoof of a “civilized” town. It’s like a Hollywood movie set, an old dilapidated 1920s type for that. The genre is a mix of horror, petty crimes, blunder, slapstick comedy and a tragedy.

My worst nightmare almost came true last month, when my son’e classmate and friend was hit by a speeding car outside their school. Kintaro was lucky to be alive, though he received a long list of injuries.

I have been looking around since to see if the police were doing their job, monitoring the road speed and stopping the lawbreakers. I saw none.

Here’s where the link between civilization, human dignity, moral courage and sociopolitical will becomes a tenuous one, if not perverted. Civilization comes to mean driving bigger cars faster, regardless of injuries to other people; human dignity transforms to biting the bullet, rather than complaining to the authorities [perhaps because the authorities take no notice]; moral courage becomes accepting your fate, rather than demanding value for your taxdollar (yen) by way of having the aggressor punished; and sociopolitical will, if you’re in the government or the policeforce, translates to preserving the status quo, allowing the moral stagnation to take its full course, until the next war.

In Japanifik three “types of life” don’t mean much: people who insist on being [sic] victims, at least in the eyes of the aggressors, children and foreigners.

Unfortunately, Kintaro falls into all three categories. Apart from being a perpetual victim because of the circumstances, he is a child and a foreigner. His father is a Japan-born Chinese, his mother just Chinese.  

Perhaps, the collective attitude of Japan toward aggression, children and the Chinese has changed since the last century; however, no one said anything about that to the Japanifik. 

Related Links:

• First Day at School
• Aggressive Drivers
• People Mean Nothing to Japanese Govt
• Violating the Speed Limit (visiting the 10-rule-90 principle, again!)
• Suckers Paradox

The Destructive Klingons!

One of the things that Japanese schools don’t teach their students is respect for other people and their property!

It takes Mr Ando’s students up to 30 minutes everyday to vacate a small area near the school where I live.

It’s interesting to see residents in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward have a similar problem.

Ward wants youths to ‘buzz off’

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

Hoping to discourage noisy young people from hanging out at a park here, Tokyo’s Adachi Ward tonight will begin broadcasting annoying “mosquito-like” buzzing sounds.

The Mosquito, a device developed by a British scientist, will be turned on from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily at Kita-Shikahama Park, where youths loiter and make noise at night.

Nearby residents complained they couldn’t sleep because of the noise.

The high-frequency sounds of about 18 kilohertz are inaudible to older people, officials said. Human hearing abilities typically peak at around age 20.

In fiscal 2008, vandals caused about 700,000 yen in damage at the park, including broken windows at a park office and broken toilets.

About 30 Mosquito devices have been sold in Japan since the device was introduced in December, according to sales agent Melc Co. (IHT/Asahi: May 21,2009). http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200905210070.html

Related links

• Japan School Violence Hits Record High
• The Disneyfication of Japan Continues
• Oh, How Sick!
• The Deliberate Dumbing Down of Japan!
• Prefectural Boards of Education – Part 3
• Japan’s Boards of Education – Part 2
• Money for nothin’ and chicks for free!

First Day at School

Kids Who Didn’t Get Killed Yesterday Can Go Back to School Today

My son “T” was very excited yesterday because it was his first day at school. If he is lucky, perhaps he could finish the academic year without getting run over by a car.

Two schoolkids in Hiroshima weren’t so lucky. They were killed by a bus, yesterday.

About 60 or so kids with at least one parent attended the new academic year’s opening ceremony and sang the national anthem. There were speeches after speeches, but the one that should have alarmed most every parent was the accident statistics.

A 75-year-old volunteer who heads a team of local parents and grandparents advising on road safety told us that 3 people had been killed on the roads near the school last year.

Most drivers in Japanifik lack the brain capacity for driving safely [this is a fact, not an insult,] and are not conditioned to respect the traffic laws.  However, the government can easily prevent most of these tragic deaths. But both they and the police force lack the  moral courage, professionalism and political will to do anything about it.

• Aggressive Drivers
• People Mean Nothing to Japanese Govt
• What’s Up at the Expensive Private High School on the Hill?
• Violating the Speed Limit (visiting the 10-rule-90 principle, again!)
• Suckers Paradox

Seppuku: Cowardly, ugly, selfish, unintelligent

Expelling the myth of “Zen Buddhism influence among the warrior class of Japan”

Responding to:

Let’s Stop the sad times from returning to Japan! 

Gomendesai wrote:

I beg to disagree. Hara-kiri was a tradition among the bravest of all soldiers earth has ever seen. The ideal of self-immolation – death before dishonor – come from the Zen Buddhist influence among the warrior class of Japan. It had high ideals of honor until death, frugality, loyalty, etc etc….. these are what some of the WWII soldiers had followed. They were the modern warriors of Japan with an older set of ideals/values/beliefs.

By cutting of his head he was giving him the honor he deserved as a defeated enemy. There was no more barbarism in that than killing your enemy with a “shotgun to the face”.

What about the Atomic bombings? They were war-crimes against all of humanity…. We cannot forget that.

My reply:

First let me clarify this point: Yasuno Chikao, the executioner in the above photograph, committed a cold-blooded murder when he beheaded the Australian soldier.

Human life is sacred, regardless of how “Zen Buddhism” may or may not have influenced “the warrior class of Japan.”

The “high ideals of honor until death, frugality, loyalty…” mean nothing if they didn’t follow “avoidance of war,” first and foremost.

What is so honorable about raping and killing other human beings, torching their homes, and then, when you can no longer fight, committing suicide, leaving your mother, wife, daughter, sister… at the mercy of your enemy to rape and murder… your home and possessions torched and ransacked…

You call this brand of ultra cowardice bravery? Honor? Ideals? Values? Beliefs?  Superiority of “modern warriors of Japan with an older set of ideals” over all others? Zen Buddhism?

What about the fate of your family, your wife and children, after you go to battle, lose the war and commit seppuku? Don’t they have a right? Don’t they matter? Of course NOT! Zen Buddhism is a men’s thing; women and children have no place in it—they don’t have a soul!

The words cowardly, bad, ugly, selfish, among many other adjectives, come to mind when you speak about the “Zen Buddhist influence.”

Do you speak for the “slave-class,” which is imbued with these phony ideals and falsities, or the “master-class,” trying to “protect” your kind by keeping these predatory, antisocial “codes of conduct” alive?

Suicide is cowardly. “Hara-kiri” or “seppuku” is a “slave-class” tradition, designed to protect the master class. How else would you prevent “samurai” from refusing to fight each other, or stop them from changing masters?

“Hara-kiri” served the master class even in wartime Okinawa—committing suicide wasn’t an option. Not only soldiers, but ordinary people were ordered to kill themselves, when the Imperial Army felt they may give away sensitive information to the “enemy.” You may recall that 171 people on Zamami Island and 329 people on Tokashiki Island committed suicide towards the end of World War II. The grenades were supplied by the army. See below for reference links

- http://japanifik.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/japanese-army-deeply-involved/
- http://japanifik.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/jumping-in-junity/
- http://japanifik.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/a-word-for-ryukyuans/

You also said: “What about the Atomic bombings? They were war-crimes against all of humanity…. We cannot forget that.”

The atomic bombing, regardless of any excuses offered by the apologists after the war, were “crimes against all of humanity.”

However, I detect a note of inconsistency in your comment. You cannot sincerely condemn “the Atomic bombings” as “crimes against all of humanity,” without equally condemning “war,” “Hara-kiri,” “seppuku,” the “master-slave,” class distinction … and “Zen Buddhism,” if in fact the latter influenced everything else. See also:

- http://japanifik.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/apa-goblin-japans-asdf-and-the-crazy-general/
- http://japanifik.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/tamogamis-history-lies/