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Untimely protests against state funerals - Media incitement that is getting worse - The media is not representative of the people.
The size of the opposition that makes you laugh
What is the argument that divided the nation into two?
What is the content of the poll?
I don't understand the difference from sports newspapers
Mass media turning into sports newspaper due to slump in sales
The process of dividing national opinion into two
The media does not represent the people
Report only the facts, not opinions
On the day of the demonstration by opponents of former Prime Minister Abe's state funeral, it is said that there were around 100 to 200 people, based on a partial count. Police said there were 500 people. It is said that 4,183 people attended the state funeral, and approximately 23,000 people donated flowers (as announced on the 27th).
What exactly was the debate that reportedly divided the nation into two? Kudanshita, where the state funeral was held, is close to Meiji University's Surugadai campus. The university has traditionally had a strong left-wing student movement. Of course, ordinary students have nothing to do with it, but even if left-wing activists in Tokyo gathered together, it gives the impression that there were too few of them.
What is the content of public opinion polls conducted by the media? The problem is the questions. Depending on how the question is asked, it is possible to lead the data to the result intended by the questioner. I would like all public opinion poll data to be disclosed.
It seems like all mass media are now doing what sports newspapers and other media were doing before the decline of major mass media due to the spread of SNS.
In order to sell articles with headlines, sports newspapers publish speculative information in the headlines that have not been fact-checked, and sell them at station kiosks even though they say that the information is unconfirmed by adding a question mark at the end. It will be done. The "?" part is hidden from view due to the way it is displayed.
Many people were surprised and tolerated it, saying, ``It can't be helped because it's a sports newspaper,'' but no one believed it and it was just a form of entertainment. That's what all the media are doing now.
The underlying issue is sales. Sports newspapers used to take desperate measures to increase circulation, but I wonder if many media outlets now think of this as the right way to go. What is more troubling than sports newspapers is that the major media barely have the power to stir up public opinion.
Using the current issue of state funerals as an example, when the opposition party first objects to a state funeral, the media immediately jumps in and reports on it. At this stage, the ruling party and the opposition party are in conflict, so in that sense they are theoretically divided into two parties. However, this does not mean that national opinion is divided into two.
Then, the media outlets loudly convey the opinions of the opposition parties, and the process of dividing national opinion into two begins. It is incitement. First of all, there is a process in which the media themselves agitate and increase the number of opposition parties, and then they cultivate them as if it were a big problem divided into two.
They increase sales by raising the grade of articles based on irrelevant opinions and information by several levels. The more confrontational the structure, the more sensational it is. This is a common method that the media has used in the past on various issues.
The media sometimes uses expressions such as ``representing the people,'' but it feels very strange and even unpleasant. They are just office workers, not representatives of the people. When did they receive the mandate of the people? When did he run for election and when was he elected to the Diet?
If you're an average office worker, you might go to a yakitori restaurant for a drink with your colleagues on the way home from work and talk about politics. The media are just office workers, so that should be fine. You should not express your opinion to the people as if you were a representative of the people. We need to stop privatizing public airwaves and simply collect and report the facts.
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[Masochistic view of history] Postwar Japan, which became an invading country, and the Western view of history | Recover Japan's view of history
Recently, there has been public criticism of Japan's GHQ view of history. There used to be an expression called the Tokyo Trial Historical View, but it was not widely used due to the strong left-wing tendencies in the Japanese media and educational institutions. The historical view of the Tokyo Trials is essentially a counterargument against the international label of an aggressor country as stipulated by a unilateral international military tribunal, but the current movement is not only based on the unfairness of the Tokyo Trials, but also in recent years, A major reason may be that records related to the Pacific War, whose period of classified information has expired, have been made public, and various things have come to light. The GHQ historical perspective is a perspective that covers various aspects of Japan's education, systems, and laws during the subsequent trusteeship era, including the Tokyo Trials.
There is a uniquely American compositional feature here. The United States was probably the first country to value the concept of a just war to this extent. Even today, the United States uses the word "justice" a lot when fighting or supporting wars. In other words, this value system started the postwar era with the premise that America was just and Japan was unjust. Can there be a concept of justice in war? War is not about good or bad; rather, the two countries have become unable to come to terms with justice. Otherwise, a war will break out when there is a fatal collapse, so there is no point in trying to say justice at this stage. Let's say the war ends and one of the countries wins. If we do so, will we be able to reach a compromise between the two countries? There are only victorious countries and defeated countries, so there is no point in calling it justice. But Japan received that education.
Japanese people are learning the history of Western values, not just modern history, but world history in general, but this is rarely questioned. In the first place, when you think about what Europe really is, Motomoto is a land where indigenous people called Celts lived, and Jews and Romans are also indigenous peoples. Today's Britain, Germany, France, and various other European countries are lands that were conquered and assimilated by Germanic peoples. The Germanic peoples were an ethnic group that lived in what is now Central Asia, and came under pressure from the expansion of the Huns and occupied Europe. The Anglo-Saxons, Franks, and many other modern European countries are countries of these Germanic tribes.
Broadly speaking, as an indigenous people, the Jews had already lost their country to the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire was destroyed by the Germanic peoples. Slavic peoples are said to be indigenous peoples, and later Eastern European countries centered on Russia corresponded to them.
In other words, Germanic peoples invaded Europe from Central Asia, and for some reason this is described as the Great Migration of Germanic Peoples. It just means you moved. As a result, the Celts lost almost all of their territory, and now Ireland and Scotland are inhabited by Celts. Halloween is a Celtic festival that is famous for its harvest festival.
■English subtitles
Have you ever heard of the Age of Exploration? This started in the mid-16th century when the European maritime nations set out on ships and swept the world, and when we think of the Age of Discovery, we dream about it. However, from the perspective of us people of color, this would be the beginning of a colonial era that would last hundreds of years. Or for Africans, it has become an era of dark slave trade. The discovery of the American continent is said to be a spectacular discovery during this age of discovery. Didn't you learn the story of Columbus' egg in school? It is because he was a man with such a great change of thinking that it is as if he came to discover the American continent. Nowadays, various ideas are uploaded on Youtube every day, such as scattering salt on a table and making an egg stand up, which is not even a magic trick. The discovery of the Americas marked the beginning of an era of genocide for the indigenous Indians, and it is said that by the end of the 19th century, approximately 90% of the indigenous people had disappeared. It is estimated that there were once approximately 100 million indigenous people.
But now there is America, the land of freedom, which is the leader of the world. Not only did most of the Indians disappear, but blacks were imported from Africa as slaves, and it seems that we still have issues with racial discrimination, but America is a free country where many ethnic groups live. We will not neglect promoting our country as a democratic country that banishes ethnic discrimination from the world.
In fact, it is true that they have a lot of knowledge through research on various ethnic groups and cultures and the history of coexisting with many ethnic groups in the United States, and they want to eliminate discrimination. Although it is true that they are highly conscious, they used to do pretty dangerous things according to their wishes and desires, and even though they reflect on their cruel history, they suddenly claim to be messengers of justice. However, there is.
It is desirable that the Japanese people begin to become aware of the GHQ historical perspective, that the momentum for constitutional revision increases, and that Japan moves toward an autonomous nation, but in the first place, this European expansion policy and world division policy are important. From a broader perspective, Japan was the only Asian country that resisted hundreds of years of global colonial policy.
However, if we say that Japan's war was also a just war, it would be the same as America's, so we need to consider that it was a war that was fought in conjunction with Japan's national interests. However, at that time in the West, there was no sense that racial discrimination was wrong, and people of color thought it was okay to enslave or kill people. It can be said that they were considerably more advanced than them. In fact, Japan has already advocated the elimination of racial discrimination to the international community, and this is clearly stated in the Greater East Asia Joint Declaration. This becomes clear when we compare the management reality of Western colonial policies with Japan's annexation and colonial policies. This may be history that Westerners would never want to acknowledge.
If you look at it from the perspective of the GHQ view of history or the Western view of history, it becomes surprisingly easy to understand, but what makes Japan so complicated is that on top of this, it is naturally eroded by communist, Chinese, and peninsular views of history. After the war, the Japan Teachers Union was dominated by communists, who taught as educators, and left-wingers talked about the Chinese and Peninsular views of history, as if there was any need to listen to the fictional history they claimed. The media has been pouring it out to the people. There is still no sign that the comfort women issue will be resolved.
The problem is that Japan has abandoned its own historical perspective, and as a result has become a country that sways from side to side, wondering whether the past was just as it is told. The Japanese people need to regain their historical perspective. However, this is strictly an academic approach to history, and Japan is different from neighboring countries, which aim to turn history into a political and diplomatic issue rather than an academic approach.
In fact, the history of the West and the history of Japan are clearly different, and from Japan's perspective, the West is the aggressor. , Japan's closest neighbors are Western countries. How many democracies are there in Asia? There is no answer to these questions if we consider the past in terms of values of good and evil, but we should focus on the justice that can be shared by liberal countries in the present.
Regarding the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the war between Israel and Hamas, there are doubts about the tone of the discussion that excessively develops arguments about right and wrong. Since the war has already started, there is no point at all. In the history of the world, there is no example of a war ending based on the theory of good and evil.
As a TV show, it would be easier for viewers to understand and get excited if the show was broken down into an easy-to-understand picture of good and evil. We empathize with wars between other countries and want to believe that we are on the right side. However, during a war, information is also cut off, making it difficult to assess what is actually true.
Economic sanctions were imposed on Russia, and there was initially talk that the Russian economy would soon collapse, but what happened? The Russian economy's main industry is the export of natural resources, and its customers are EU countries, so if it continues to import oil and natural gas, its main industries will remain protected. For example, if an industry, such as industrial products, competes to be at the cutting edge of global technological competition, if it suffers from economic sanctions and suffers from financial difficulties, goes bankrupt, and is no longer able to manufacture products, even 10 years may pass. If you try to enter again, you won't be able to catch up. This may be the case with Japan's semiconductor industry. But natural resources are not like that; they do not degrade, recede, or diminish. Whether you dig in 10 years or now, you will be able to extract the same quality natural resources. In other words, Russia's main industries will not disappear. Furthermore, the area of Ukraine currently occupied by Russia is said to be 7.2% of Ukraine's territory. And when reporting on economic sanctions against Russia, there is absolutely no mention of Russia's profits from this vast occupied territory.
What would happen if the war ended with the country still under occupation? This region will still be Russia in 100 or 200 years. So will economic sanctions still be in place 100 years from now? In other words, the occupation policy ultimately has economic benefits when considered over a 100-year span. There is a person who is currently a member of the Diet who once said that it would be a good idea to give Takeshima to South Korea, but he doesn't seem to understand the meaning at all. If one fish is landed in South Korea in those nearby waters, Japan will lose the amount equivalent to that one fish. This is a loss that occurs every day, but how much profit will it provide over 100 or 200 years based on the amount of fish caught?
Whether you look at Ukraine or Takeshima, there is actually no justice at all, and the only way to protect territory is through military force. Is it possible to get these things back through diplomacy? Japan only has a track record of not being able to do so.
In this way, the idea that wars and conflicts can be ended by developing a theory of good and evil is nothing more than a delusion, and the idea that war can be avoided in any case through diplomacy is also a delusion. Since war occurs after diplomacy fails, the very idea of resolving it through diplomacy is bankrupt.
In other words, it is the responsibility of a normal country to strengthen both its diplomacy and military. In the case of Japan, we always develop an either/or argument. The choice is diplomatic or military. It would be nice to do both, but that kind of thinking won't become mainstream. Diplomacy no longer works in the military phase, and when diplomatic relations are working, it is no longer in the military phase. It is mainly the opposition forces in Japan who are forcing us to choose one or the other. The Japanese government only needs to do diplomacy, and has simply asked the United States to take on the responsibility of protecting the country.Takeshima and the Northern Territories, which the United States did not protect, were taken and are within the scope of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. We are barely maintaining the Senkaku Islands with words alone.
This is a country where candidates who say they should give up defending the country with their own strength are elected to the Diet. Isn't it strange?
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National debt is not the people's debt - The country is not a company - Breakdown of government bond holdings that still do not penetrate public opinion.
The image at the beginning shows the breakdown of Japanese government bond holdings. I sometimes see people say that national debt is the nation's debt or that it is the same as corporate debt, but national debt is the government's debt, not the people's debt. Even if a country is compared to a company, companies do not borrow money from their employees. Debt comes from outside the company, and in this case, it involves purchasing Japanese government bonds from overseas. If most of the debt is overseas, it is natural that the company will default if it cannot be repaid. Purchases of Japanese government bonds from overseas account for 7.3%.
If you really want to say that it is the same as a company, would you say that purchases in Japan are borrowed and borrowed within the company or within the group company? Yoichi Takahashi considers the Bank of Japan to be the same as a subsidiary of the government, and explains that it is the same in terms of consolidation, regardless of whether interest is charged. The Bank of Japan holds 53.2% of Japanese government bonds. He is well known for introducing BS to show that the country holds government assets equivalent to the government's debts (excluding the holdings of the Bank of Japan). The total amount of government assets ranks first in the world, exceeding both the United States and China. Below is the balance sheet (BS) of Japan.
Furthermore, Japanese government bonds are mainly traded in yen, which means that there is no change in value based on foreign currencies. In the case of foreign currency transactions, if the value of your home currency plummets, the face value of your debt will rise accordingly. Suppose your country's currency drops to half its value. Alternatively, if the foreign currency used when trading government bonds doubles, the debt will also double, but since the transaction is in Japanese yen, there will be no effect at all. In an extreme case, former Prime Minister Aso said that repayment would be possible by increasing the number of yen bids. In this case, there will be inflation and the value of the yen will fall, but the theory is that the debt can be repaid because it is the face value of the yen. This was actually said by Taro Aso, a former Prime Minister and former Minister of Finance.
Secondly, the Japanese government is also the world's No. 1 creditor country. In other words, they have foreign bonds and foreign assets. The fact that we are currently talking about national debt as a problem is actually making a fuss about only the debt part, and in fact, Japan has the most foreign assets in the world. This assumes that the government bonds are denominated in yen as mentioned earlier, and if more yen is printed, the value of the yen will fall and the yen will become weaker. If you do this, overseas assets purchased in dollars or euros will increase in value when converted to yen, so the difference will be a large income. Even with the current depreciation of the yen, a large profit margin was generated due to the increase in the valuation of overseas assets.
Representative Sanae Takaichi has advocated the ``Japanese Economic Resilience Plan,'' which calls for a temporary freeze on primary balance (PB) regulations and calls for industrial investment through the issuance of government bonds. She says that even if inflation were caused by printing more yen, it would not have a big impact if the inflation rate was less than 2%. Currently, the yen is depreciating due to the difference in interest rates due to the Fed's interest rate hikes, but the original goal is to induce a depreciation of the yen through the issuance of government bonds and increase the number of bonds, strengthen international competitiveness, and increase wages and tax revenues through rising prices. If the manufacturing industry returns to Japan due to the weak yen, GDP and tax revenue will increase, and government debt can be reduced. For now, this is just the effect of a weaker yen due to interest rate differences, but we are already seeing significant results.
In other words, those who claim that government debt is bad have the completely opposite idea. What ruined Japan after the bursting of the bubble was rather the primary balance discipline, the inability to focus on single-year income and expenditures and to make long-term investments. Japan tightened its finances in the most critical economic situation. If it is the same as a company, when the company is in crisis, the company's safe is closed like a shell, and for the past 30 years, the company has been operating in a state of poverty and not being able to make long-term investments. This is the so-called curse of PB by the Ministry of Finance.
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Continuing attacks on the Gaza Strip - What is the definition of a civilian? | The atomic bomb was dropped without any warning.
Regarding the conflict in the Gaza Strip and the invasion of Ukraine, I understand that the concept of war criminals under international law is extremely weak, but I would like to ask about the definitions of civilians, civilian facilities, military personnel, and military facilities. After these wars are over, the international community will need to be redefined.
According to the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Americans are members of the National Guard and are allowed to own firearms according to the Constitution's interpretation. Are they civilians or soldiers? For example, in South Korea, where a conscription system is in place, those who have completed their conscription period are registered as reservists. Are they civilians or soldiers?
In the Nanjing Incident, the commander of the Kuomintang army fled, and the Kuomintang army changed into civilian clothes and fled into a private house, where they fought using civilians as shields, but were they civilians or soldiers? I wonder if the private house they barricaded themselves in had become a military facility at that point. Or will it still be a private house?
At the Tokyo Trials, Rabe testified that the Japanese military did not fire on the Nanjing Safety Zone, calling the Japanese invasion a massacre. Civilians in Nanjing were able to escape to the Nanjing Safety Zone, which was demarcated by international law. The Gaza Strip is approximately 50km from north to south, and evacuation to the south would take up to 25km, making it possible to evacuate in one day.
Is the human shield a civilian or a soldier? At the very least, are they risking their lives to protect their homes? Are they civilians or soldiers?
In other words, the international law that judged Japan in the past is weak to this extent, and even today it criticizes the killing of civilians based on this idea, but does not deny wars based on the exercise of the right of self-defense. I'm watching this battle in it. What should be answered is a clear division between civilians and soldiers.
It is said that there were 122 air raids on Tokyo, but each time did the US military notify Japanese civilians that they were about to carry out an air raid? Or, before the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a bomb of another dimension will be dropped that will cause damage over a wide area. Did Truman tell them that it would be difficult to survive there? If it had been done, would Japanese civilians at the time have been evacuated or would they have remained to fight?
Such international laws only have a deterrent effect and have no meaning in actual war.
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