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How oligarchic Japan disguised as a democracy conspires against the majority
“Masters in this country will always settle the problem at the sacrifice of their servants. The principle is to have no principle.” Toshihiko Abe
All for a few, and the few for no one!
I was prompted to write this brief 2-part essay [heavily influenced by Toshihiko Abe] last month when a university-affiliated school in our prefecture, which is maintained by taxpayer money, failed my 6-year-old son at the entry exam.
My son ‘T’ is not as smart as Einstein. However, he is, I suspect, one of the very few 6-yer-old bilingual children in the prefecture (state).
‘T’ doesn’t know anything about special relativity, but he knows more about the force of gravity than the average junior high school student in Japan. He can read, add and subtract. He can also apply Occam’s razor to ’shave’ his way out of most confusing situations.
Why did the nitwits at school ‘Z’ fail my son?
The short answer is discrimination. But there’s a lot more to that!
Toshhiko Abe defines Japan as “tripartite oligarchy” a vertical society ruled by a handful of politicians, government officials and business leaders, who “have fully enjoyed the fruits of success” Japanese workers have brought.
“Japan’s system to restrict occupation by race,” Abe says, has not changed since the Meiji reforms. Admittedly, he maintains, “the custom of slaves following masters to the grave” has since been abolished.
“Everyone in the Klan followed occupations predetermined by the master; all were resigned to accepting their destinies. No one was allowed to show originality in creativity. An partisan painted the same designs and patterns throughout his lifetime. He became absorbed in the work of drawing a line, in the use of color… .” As a result, to this date, Japanese learn arts and artistic performances “by studying the style and pattern.” The restrictions thus imposed, prohibiting the artists to show creativity, and the resignation to accept one’s destiny, created the idea of do (way of living) in Japanese culture.
“We have do in everything: gado ( the way painters should live); shodo (the way calligraphers should live); shonin do ( the way businessmen should live); sumo do (the way sumo wrestlers should live); kendo, judo, bushido, etc.,” Abe says.
Abe cites the example of Akebono, the first American yokozuna, Grand Champion of sumo wrestling in Japan, who told Western journalists at a press conference in the American Club: “ I wrestle. The Association takes care of the rest.” This is indeed the philosophy of do, Abe says, “I, the slave, concentrate on the work given by the master. The okami (master) takes care of the rest.” Abe elaborates on the master-slave relationship: “A similar idea is seen in the relationship between Japan and the US. Japan is used to concentrating on efforts to win international economic competition under the rules of the American okami.”
Unfortunately the philosophy of do doesn’t allow freedom and independence, he says. In the Japanese system you are not allowed to freely express your opinions or exert your “own creative power and participate in political fights to change the system without fear of suppression.”
Your life is fully and completely controlled, Abe says. The restrictions imposed on you allow “no privacy, independence, individual success or originality.” He says. “Write a stroke of a Chinese character with a brush on a sheet of paper with great concentration as though one’s life depended on it was a way to reach spiritual perfection.”
[Maximum extent of permissible creativity: Pathetic exercise misrepresented as an art (!)] Participants show off their writing at a New Year calligraphy contest in Tokyo January 5, 2009. About 3,000 calligraphers, who qualified in regional competitions throughout Japan, took part in the contest to celebrate New Year. The words read: “Joy of living.” Source and copyright: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon.
Japanese people had no choice. Everyone was controlled by a ruler. “Our ancestors had no choice but to surrender to conquerors if they wanted to survive. All were put under close watch by the local man who was wholeheartedly loyal to the master.” Abe says. “Speaking up was dangerous.” Japanese slave classes even developed a non-verbal methods for communication called hara gei and aun no kokyo.
What if you chose not to surrender to your masters? You would be exiled to ghettos named bessho, sansho, kaige etc., Abe says. These were small enclaves surrounded by rivers without bridges, where defiant slaves died of starvation. “If they came out of the ghettos, they were immediately killed by farmers, which caused no legal problem, since they were subhuman.” Naturally, the government has obliterated most traces of the history of these “subhuman peoples” since it deviates from Japan’s standard history, KiKi (KiKi is Kojiki and Nihon Shoki). Abs says: “Only a few of these traditions remain today. Yet if we read the remaining materials carefully with insight, we can discover enough clues to reconstruct the truth. The study of local history is most important, yet government scholars have neglected it, since if they advocated a different view, criticizing their predecessors, it might endanger their future position in academia.”
“Indeed ignorance creates a tragic comedy.” Abe says. Even today people are still silent. “In spite of events that occurred in the war, the Japanese people stick to the doctrine that they are essentially good and have always been an agricultural, mono-racial, mono-ethnic people believing in peace, in harmony with nature and the rest of the world.” Japanese people are “taught to believe that their history is unique and they should be proud of it.”
The ruling LDP portrays Japan as a rich and clean “paradise” inhabited by “intelligent and peace-loving” people. And there is a reason why it must remain that way: The power structure behind Japan’s vertical society would collapse—a price the ruling class can ill afford!
How Japan’s vertical society operates
The main rule is that okami sets the rules and you must kowtow to his authority. Under the okami ’s rules you follow what Abe describes as “an escalator system,” which automatically takes you up.
The first escalator starts from about the age of four. “It starts as early as education in kindergarten. I must go to a good school if I want to be successful, and it is best to enter a famous school with a complete course—kindergarten, primarily, junior high, high school and university, all of which belong to the same management. Then I can graduate university on the escalator without much effort, provided my records are average.”
“In order to pass examinations, I need to memorize hundreds of thousands of ‘right answers.’ I’m not in a position to question the board about the answers. By the time I graduate university I will be a standard Japanese; I will have the same view of emperor and empress institution as others. I believe the Japanese creed. I will be admitted to the vertical society and can have a good job in government or in a large business corporation, where I will spend most of my life until I retire. This is another escalator and it will take me to the top if I keep riding it. The escalator for government officials will take me to the office of administrative vice-minister, the highest position in the ministry. Then I can choose my second line, a may run in an election as an LDP candidate to become a Diet member and take care of the businesses I formerly controlled, or I could be employed by a large private business as a board director to help gain permits and licenses from the ministry for which I served.” Abe says.
My son didn’t go to a special kindergarten because his existing pre-school offered better values in personal and social skill. In the case of 90 percent of all Japanese children, however, going to one of those special kindergartens is all but impossible for two reasons. First, the cost may be prohibitive; second, as both parents work during the day they cannot adjust to the half-day kindergarten hours.
But the private schools be allowed to do their business? Surely, if the parents can’t afford to send … . In a system where the taxpayer is forced to bail out private companies, no one should be allowed to operate above the people.
That said, school “Z” that refused my son and most of the ‘good’ schools like it aren’t private schools; they are national schools fully financed by the government.
Here’s the irony: In order to enter ‘good’ national schools, your children must first go to private kindergartens, which more than 90 percent of Japanese cannot afford!
That’s how Japan’s oligarchic government conspires against 90 percent of its own population, the shomin*, by making it impossible for their children to study at “good” schools that they, the slaves, have paid for!
[*shomin is defind by Abe as: "Illegitimate people. Japanese of mixed racial origins, never legitimized by their T'ang Chinese and Korean masters."]
Okami protects the top of the herd and bestows them with good jobs despite any shortcoming that they might have, Abe says. “Management of the big company does not require special talents or entrepreneurial guts, because the company itself is on the escalator system provided by the government. Take Japanese banks, for example. The Ministry of Finance protects them from bankruptcy with heavy regulation barriers. … the fees banks charge for various services are set by the ministry at that level where the weakest bank can be profitable. For the management of a top rated bank to show a huge profit for the shareholders requires little effort. On the other hand, it was reported that each of the ten top Japanese banks at the end of march, 1993, had more than $10 billion in bad debts as a result of careless loans made to businesses during the booming economy of the 80’s,” which was due to the government’s poor economic policy. The end result was that the shareholders lost their investment. However, not a single manager or government official ever accepted any responsibility toward the victims, Abe says.” The interests of the people have been ignored, as usual.”
What happens to these high-ranking officials and top managers who play god with people’s livelihood? Abe says the would be “honored as good citizens who have made significant contributions to the nation. Medals will be solemnly given in ceremonies attended by the emperor, and the decorated will be invited to the imperial garden party.”
And what about the Japanese employees who dedicate the best years of their lives working selflessly for a company? what do they get out of all this? Not much, Abe says. “Although Japanese companies have become extremely rich, employees remain in a rather poor environment. What happens to the children of the ‘family’ after they have been so loyal to their father?” Employee in their late 50’s the “gray-haired warriors who fought at the front in the economic war as ‘human shields,’” reach the end of their usefulness and “are disposed of one by one,” Abe says. “After 40 years of faithful service, they must work for their family in a new company, still under the strain of loyalty. Their income is not enough to retire. They face the high cost of living. It was expensive to educate their children. Their taxes are high, their pensions low. Many still have a mortgage to pay. This is a new style of slavery, born of the same tradition of the vertical society. Employees dedicate their lives and the company responds with a “throwaway” tradition at the end. Though we live in a modern industrial world, employees in Japanese companies today are much like our ancestors who were hunted down from the mountains and made slave-soldiers to be used as human shields in battle. Today they fight in economic wars, but the outcome is much the same. They must use, like a slave soldiers, two swords, one in each hand, to fend off enemy arrows.”
Why are the ordinary Japanese always left high and dry? Why are they treated so ruthlessly? Because the okami does not believe shomin (the people) have any rights or interests,” Abe says. “Japan is the same as one thousand years ago!”
I find the staff at school “Z” and the university to which it’s affiliated, as well the local government employees who are responsible for discriminating against my son guilty of conspiracy against the majority of Japanese people.
On behalf of this majority who are shafted by the conspiratorial system, I demand the permanent closure of school “Z,” dismissal of its staff and the managers at the affiliated university, immediately.
Related Links:
Part I - Japan: New Challenges, NO Fresh Ideas!
