The Japanese on the Right, who are in power, like it that way; the Japanese on the Left don't but are too hopelessly pacifist to realize they need (at least a little bit of) left nationalism, military power, and (maybe also) nuclear weapons to chart a different course than staying under America's nuclear umbrella (and even if they realized that, they would be unable to win the military); the Japanese at the "radical center" (for lack of a better term), even a smaller minority than the Left, think that it may be about time to begin to prepare Japan for post-US hegemony but can't even win the Left to such a notion, let alone the Right; the rest, a great majority, have no particular political thoughts -- they don't have to think for they are being relatively well taken care of by the world's most capable right-wing power elite.
> All in all, Japan gets a
> good deal from imperialism.
Not if America disrupts, or create conditions that disrupt, oil supplies from the Persian Gulf, for instance. America's Iraq war and Iran campaign have a potential to do so. Bellum Americanum, in contrast to Pax Americana, is doubleplus ungood for most classes of the perennially energy-challenged Japanese, it seems to me, especially since its main theater is the Middle East.
But Japan's power elite, capable bureaucrats as they are, alas, are not as bright or ambitious or interesting as China's. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>