A Haiku for Taro Aso: Yottsu

Japan Politics of Shame: Act 2, Incompetence

Support for Taro Aso down to ‘5.5 percent’ as Nakagawa claims ‘alcoholic immunity’

As support for Taro Aso tumbles to just 9.7 percent (if  the 4.2 percent margin of error works favorably, it sinks to only 5.5 percent), and his close sidekick, the alcoholic Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa who was seen plastered out of his tiny mind at a press conference following the G-7 finance ministers meeting in Rome last week, becomes a major liability, it seems the time has come for Aso to say good bye to the nation.

So here’s a parting haiku for Aso [and his protege, Nakagawa]

yottsu [the four-legged]

Despite age-old infamy,
yottsu harms no one!

Source of the image: NiteOwl

Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa is seen during a meeting of the fiscal and financial committee at the lower house of parliament in Tokyo February 16, 2009. Nakagawa denied on Monday that he was drunk at a news conference in Rome and said his political fate was up to the prime minister after the opposition called for him to be fired. Reuters photo. The image may be subject to copyright.

Related Links:

• 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

Another Criminal Resigns from Fukuda’s Rotten Cabinet

Farm minister Ota Resigns

Vice agriculture minister Toshiro Shirasu also steps down

Less than 48 hours after the Moderator posted the Endemic Corruption: Hallmark of Japanese Politics about the ex-ministry official implicated in the Chinese tainted rice scandal, two more “Politicketeers,” [political racketeers,] the dishonest Farm Minister and the corrupt Vice Agriculture Minister, resign from their lucrative posts.

They are wined and dined, showered with expensive gifts, sent on free holidays … and they don’t think there’s anything wrong with “returning a favor!”

Farm minister Ota steps down

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN – http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200809200050.html

Farm minister Seiichi Ota on Friday resigned to take responsibility for the tons of contaminated rice illicitly diverted for use in food served at restaurants, hospitals, stores and other places.

Ota only took over his portfolio in August this year, after Takehiko Endo stepped down as agriculture minister over a scandal involving ministry subsidies illicitly gained by an agricultural organization previously headed by Endo. Get the picture?

“As the tainted rice became a big social problem, I decided to take responsibility,” Ota said in a news conference held after a Cabinet meeting. “I thought that it was time (to resign) since measures to prevent a recurrence have been mostly worked out.”

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura, who will concurrently serve as the minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, told reporters Friday that Ota conveyed his intention to resign to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

Vice agriculture minister Toshiro Shirasu also resigned Friday to take responsibility for the ministry’s inspections at a factory of rice wholesaler Mikasa Foods Co. that failed to detect the diversion of the rice contaminated with pesticides and mold.

It is extremely rare for a minister and a vice minister, the top bureaucrat, to resign simultaneously.

Ota would have to leave anyway when the Fukuda government resigns en masse Wednesday. Fukuda announced his resignation earlier this month, before the rice scandal surfaced.

Ota and Shirasu have apparently been under pressure from the prime minister’s office as the extent of the spread of the contaminated rice, which was meant for industrial use, became clearer.

In addition, a former ministry official was found to have been wined and dined by Mikasa Foods when he was in a supervisory position over the company.

In a news conference Sept. 11, Shirasu said: “Primary responsibility lies with the companies that diverted (tainted) rice for food use. At this stage, I do not think that we are responsible.”

On Sept. 12, Ota said on a televised program: “I can say with confidence that the contaminated rice has not had a negative influence on human health. That’s the reason (the ministry) is not making much fuss about it.”

The comments sparked sharp criticism from both ruling and opposition parties.

“If they continue to make such remarks, the people will not stand for it,” Yukio Hatoyama, secretary-general of opposition Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan), had earlier said. “They should resign immediately or the prime minister should fire them.”

The prime minister’s office apparently thought that drastic measures were needed to stem the fallout ahead of the Lower House election expected next month.

Machimura said the government will get to the bottom of the issue of who was responsible for diverting the tainted rice for human consumption.

“As a result (of the diversion), the rice entered the mouths of many people,” he said. “We are reflecting on the fact that the diversion caused public anxiety over food. We have not yet clarified the entire picture of the scandal.”

Earlier Friday, Ota said that Forestry Agency Director-General Michio Ide, 58, would succeed Shirasu.

Shirasu took over the vice minister’s post in September last year following the resignation of Yoshio Kobayashi.

Kobayashi resigned only a few days after Takehiko Endo stepped down as agriculture minister over a scandal involving ministry subsidies illicitly gained by an agricultural organization once headed by Endo. (IHT/Asahi: September 20,2008) - Copyright the authors or the respective news agency.

Tainted rice was used in 102,000 rice balls, said Asahi Shimbun. On April 16, 4,528 students and 726 teachers at 47 public junior high schools ate sekihan red bean rice containing the bad rice.

Related Links:

• Endemic Corruption: Hallmark of Japanese Politics
• Finally, Fukuda makes a good decision!
• Since when breaking the law is a crime in Japan?

• People Mean Nothing to Japanese Govt
• A Haiku for Fukuda (Shortly before he resigned!)
• Japanese Politicketeers

• Japan’s Corporacketeers
• Japanese Banks Commit Crimes Against Humanity

The Samurai Swords and the Bike Tire

Update #1: Paying the price . . .

See Main Entry: http://japanifik.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/you-do-this-to-the-japanese/
Follow up: http://japanifik.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/words-mightier-than-myth-of-samurai-swords/

When the author’s and his spouse’s bikes were vandalized in December 2007, the police said they wanted to see the damage before the bikes were fixed. They asked us to contact them before we repaired the bikes the next time (!) This time being the next time, we obliged.

After some huffing and puffing, coming and going, they said the type of damage was “unusual!!” [The rear tire was slashed. See Photo.] Now, they want to see a professional “damage report.” They want to know why the bike tire was slashed, if the author understood the message correctly, with the knurled ring that holds the inner tube valve core in place still tightly screwed. Let’s hope the bike shop mechanics are more up-to-date on forensic science than the police is. More on this story later.

Related Links:

• The words are mightier than even the myth of Samurai swords
• Paying the price for free speech in Japan!

• More Criminal Damage
• Foreigners Can Drive in Japan?
• Do Not Speak English in Japan!
  

• War Crimes, USA
• A Culture of Bullying, Sex, Suicide, Murder
• Fruits of a Repressed Culture

• A Culture of Bullying

Safety at School

Supreme Court: Japanese Schools NOT responsible for Kids safety!

Gacuette says: The Supreme Court’s Political Ruling is Unsafe and the overpaid, underqualified judges ought to be ashamed of themselves for caving into the whims of a despotic regime. The facts are:

• Youngsters can and do act foolishly [they have done so since time immemorial.]

• Unsupervised, they are likely to cause injury to themselves or others at ant time and without premeditation. Those imbeciles in the supreme court should be expected to know better.

• Teachers are ought to be trained professionals [that may not be the case in most Japanese schools] and must assume responsibility for the safety of the young while they are at school under their charge.

• There’s an implied responsibility for the safety of our youngsters while they are at school and therefore the schools are liable for any injury that might occur. Otherwise, the schools MUST allow parents or their representatives to stay in the classrooms to protect their children.

Conclusion: Youngsters’ safety at school is the primary and incommutable responsibility of the school. Children can and do harm themselves or others and they do so without any prior warning, if left unsupervised. The schools must act proactively, therefore, to prevent accidents from occurring. They must provide constant supervision and be unwaveringly vigilant to protect the youngsters who are trusted in their care.

The Tokyo High Court’s earlier ruling that ordered the city to pay compensation as the operator of the school where the incident occurred was a sound decision. Perhaps, the judges in the Tokyo High Court would do a better job in the supreme court than the incompetent incumbents who have composed this farcical travesty.

Related Link:

• Chief justice met U.S. ambassador before declaring bases in Japan constitutional

See below for the report:

Supreme Court rejects lawsuit over city’s responsibility for accident in school

(Mainichi Japan) April 19, 2008

CHIBA — The Supreme Court has rejected a damages lawsuit filed against the Chiba Municipal Government by the family of an elementary school girl whose right eye was injured by a classmate at school.

The ruling overturns an earlier decision by the Tokyo High Court, which ordered the city to pay about 860,000 yen in compensation as the operator of the school where the incident occurred.

The girl was injured in May 2002, when a vest that the male classmate was swinging around hit her right eye. At the time, the teacher in charge of the class was talking to another pupil. In the lawsuit, the girl and her parents had argued that the teacher had neglected his responsibility to oversee the boy who injured her.

The top court rejected the claim, however, saying the teacher could not have predicted that accident would happen and had no responsibility in the matter. The court pointed out that the boy who injured the female student usually caused no problems, and until he swung the vest around he had not been behaving unnaturally.

An initial district court ruling in the case dismissed the lawsuit filed by the girl and her parents. However, a high court later ruled that the teacher had been negligent in failing to oversee the whole classroom. The Chiba Municipal Government had filed an appeal against the high court ruling.

The girl and her parents also sought damages directly from the parents of the boy, and a ruling that ordered the parents to pay about 860,000 yen in compensation has already become fixed. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/archive/news/2008/04/19/20080419p2a00m0na007000c.html

Japan Loses the War!

The Whaling War

Once again Japan has lost the war, the Whaling War! And she has lost it in the traditional Sun Tzu style to a single photograph!

Photo: Australian Customs

The credit must surely go to the carnivorous political dinosaurs that warp the Japanese national psyche for “safekeeping” in the 19th century time dungeons. Without the aid of the old gatekeepers Japan’s defeat is never guaranteed!

Once again they started a saga that Japan couldn’t have finished, thus confirming her position as the bête noire of the league of nations sitting right at the top of the white man’s hate list. The ridicule that permeates the global arena comes as a free extra!

Racism

Most everyone’s image of Japan is the ubiquitous stereotypical Japanese female “student” who leads a promiscuous lifestyle overseas, or “fucks like a rabbit,” in local parlance. [Heaven knows the average promiscuous Japanese girl couldn’t reach anywhere even close to the height of sexual promiscuity claimed by the average promiscuous North American, North, West and Eastern European, Australian, or even the fuzzy Moroccan female!]

When a Fijian thug urinates on a couple of Japanese girls instead of targeting, say, the French passengers sitting across the isle, he is not just insulting two defenseless women flying abroad, he is insulting an entire nation by confirming the racist, anti-Japanese discourse.

Unsurprisingly, Japan’s defeat in the Whaling War must also conform to that image: A naive high school girl in her puberty with her pants around her ankles caught “fornicating” outside the school gates by the local “gendarmes” – the pissant countries of New Zealand and Australia, both with diabolic human rights records and appalling environmental policies to match.

And, of course, they’d want their beer money [or shall we call it carcelage, bakshish, perquisite, douceur, bribe, hush money, blackmail, extortion …] to keep things under wraps!

Japan’s Mortal Sin

Japan’s mortal “sin”results from her people’s fear-induced mental and moral paralysis that prevents them from creating an intelligent, functioning and benevolent political system that could command respect from other nations without having to resort to aggression or militarism.

Continued …

• Japan’s research whaling now facing problems at home
• Political folly
• Carrying the can while other countries whale with impunity [as morally repugnant as whaling is!]
• Moral vacuum
• A ruling class unfit to rule