The treatment of the returned hostages has a simpler, more direct political explanation: these sort of focused "hate" campaigns are part of the standard repertoire of the Japanese Far Right. They have every reason to hate the hostages, not only because they appear to be liberal pacifists, but because their hostage crisis has embarrassed the vigorous efforts of the Koizumi government to revive a remilitarized Japanese imperialism, a goal surely shared by the Far Right which overlaps with the LDP. The Koizumi government is the most right-wing government in Japan since 1960, in neat ideological alignment with the likes of Aznar and Berlusconi, and their own negative comments concerning the hostages gave every encouragement to the hate campaign "from below".
In fact the only thing of interest in the NYT article was the Japanese name of the reporter ( NORIMITSU ONISHI ). Since surely Onishi-san knows the reality of his own country, one can only conclude that the reporter, knowing the ignorance and preference for stereotype on the part of his "educated" American audience, sought to deliberately purvey this stereotype to give the reassuring impression of a Japan "monolithically" supportive of the Koizumi government's part in Americas' Coalition of the Willing. Onishi therefore effectively works for the LDP political line, is really in effect a LDP plant in the NYT, pushing its project to make Nagatacho into Sam's Alternate Banker-Poodle, in a matched pair with Britain.
And speaking of "totalitarianism", Yoshie noted a feature of Japanese political culture now almost completely absent from not only the English-speaking countries, but even from all of Western Europe: an INDEPENDENT, ORGANIZED left party with fairly extensive influence, not implicated in maintenance of the ruling regime (I'd agree with Perelman's characterization of the JCP as 'left social-democratic', but that is beside the point being made here). Compare that to virtually all the Social Democratic parties of Spain, Italy, France, Germany, etc. - all implicated with the right wing in maintenance of the existing capitalist political regime. Or with Britain, whose Blairized "ex-Labor" Party is no longer even a left-wing party.
Not to mention that antipode of "totalitarianism", the USA which, thanks to the undying efforts of the Nathan Newmans, never had and still does not have a left party that could even compromise itself with the regime, much less stand in opposition to it.
The USA has the most monolithically right wing political culture of all these countries.
An anecdote: In the industry where I work I encounter a lot of educated foreigners, and the one thing that always surprises them about America is this: why don't Americans discuss politics among themselves?
It's an absence of political culture.
From: joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net>
8:20 PM
Subject:
[lbo-talk] Redeeming features of Japanese culture
To:
Bill Bartlet writes:
"Are there any redeeming features whatsoever of Japanese culture? Nothing comes to mind."
I feel as heartsick as you about the welcome given to the Japanese hostages. I am also actually surprised that no one has said anything to commend the Iraqis for releasing them. But to answer your question off the top of my head and from relative ignorance about Japanese culture: Hokusai, Zen, and an extraordinary aesthetic sense do come to mind.
Brad Mayer may be able to contribute more as he has been studying Japanese, Japanese history, and Japanese culture for the last few years.
Yoshie?
Joanna