>>>Bill Bartlet writes:
>>>
>>>"Are there any redeeming features whatsoever of Japanese culture?
>>>Nothing comes to mind."
>
>Izzat so? Well at the very least I commend the Japanese for not
>being two things my fellow Americans are: (1) armed and (2)
>dangerous.
They are armed. According to the CDI <http://www.cdi.org/budget/2004/world-military-spending.cfm>, Japan has the world's fourth-largest military budget, higher than Britain's, not much behind China's, and on a par with the combined military budgets of its former Axis partners, Germany and Italy. And there's a very aggressive rightist tendency in Japan that wants to be more assertive; the deployment to Iraq is part of that. Listen to my interview with Chalmers Johnson, which I'm about to post.
But you might enjoy this old quote from the largely forgotten Wall Street economist Albert Wojnilower (who along with Henry Kaufmann were the Dr Doom and Dr Death of the 1980s) which I recently rediscovered:
><http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20834>
>
>I am 56 years old. If I were a Japanese nearing retirement, and
>enjoyed a life expectancy which in that longevitous country, I am
>told, would be about 85, I would not look with equanimity on my
>generations converting, year after year $50 billion of current
>output into financial claims on a foriegn nation on which my
>government seems to exert relatively little influence. I would
>rather see some of that output sold at home in a way that enabled me
>to accumulate financial claims on my neighbors. Our social bond and
>my vote will enable me to collect these claims in times of stress.
>Americans are and show every sign of remaining, in contrast with
>Japan, a short-term oriented, mercurial, polyglot, multiethnic,
>mobile,and heavily armed people. Claims on such a people need to be
>accumulated and excerised with care.
>
>Albert M.Wojnilower,
>Japan and the United States: Observations on Economic Policy
>