> 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.
This alliance between top-flight US news media and the Japanese right has been going on for a long time; it's not just this particular reporter. I think it goes back to the days of the occupation, when (after writing a left-leaning new constitution) the US authorities decided to build up the right and supercharge the recovery of Japanese capitalism as a bulwark against the USSR in Asia, but I'm not too clear about the history. In any case, it has always been difficult to get a more realistic view of Japan into the US media. It seems that the post-war image of Japan as the reliable Asian little brother of US capitalism has gotten stuck in the US mind (except perhaps for that short episode a while back when Americans feared that Japan would crush their economy by being a little too strong a little brother).
> 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).
The JCP does do some good things, but it hasn't won the confidence of much of the Japanese people. I will get excited about Japanese politics when the LDP actually gets voted out and gets a stake driven into its heart so it won't come back, but I'm not holding my breath.
> 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?
What industry is that? I hear Americans discuss politics among themselves all the time. But then, I'm not an educated foreigner, I'm an educated American.
Perhaps they just didn't hear the kind of discussion they wanted to hear.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ After the Buddha died, people still kept pointing to his shadow in a cave for centuries—an enormous, dreadful shadow. God is dead: but the way people are, there may be, for millennia, caves in which his shadow is still pointed to. — And we — we must still overcome his shadow! —Friedrich Nietzsche