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May 04, 2006



I'm not raising this point to dispute your larger point about Japan, but the survey method seems unusually prone to self-report bias. Looks like it was conducted in public, which would prime people to be more conscious of how their responses would be perceived, at least compared to, say, a phone interview, or if people were asked to put their vote in a sealed box. Of course, if the bias is such that people would be embarrassed to be seen as militarists, then that itself is good...


A subtle take on Japanese militarism:


There's nothing "subtle" about anyone stupid enough to say something as ludicrously untrue as the following:

["As I’ve mentioned before, the Japanese do not consider themselves to be Asian and by extension, they do not consider Japan to be an Asian country."]

or this nonsense

["The Japanese dislike Koreans and Chinese especially"]

which goes against what repeated polls have said - that it is the Koreans and Chinese who hate the Japanese intensely, not the other way around.

Your "subtle" commenter seems profoundly ignorant of the society in which she lives in, filtering all her experiences through the biases she brought with her from America. It's a safe bet that despite her pretensions to sociological critic status, she probably doesn't even know any Japanese beyond badly mangled ejaculations of "hajimemashite" and "sumimasen".


What do think about the Yasukuni shrine's glorification of suicide bombers?


What could you possibly think I think? Go ahead, look through my archives and tell me the answer yourself - oh, and while you're at it, tell me what you think I ought to believe about, say, the British War Museum, and the many other monuments in London which celebrate colonial slaughterers; tell me what I ought to think about American celebrations of the bloody conquest of an already inhabited continent. Talk about a red herring ...


It was a simple question. Perhaps you could answer it.


It's a damned silly, loaded question, and I'll answer it when you tell me if you've stopped beating your wife. Go ahead, just answer yes or no please, it's a simple question after all.


i haven't got a wife.

I asked "What do think about the Yasukuni shrine's glorification of suicide bombers?"

Nothing loaded there. Just a simple question.


[...i haven't got a wife...]

How is this a "Yes" or "No" answer to such a "simple" question?


Chuckles: I can't answer yes or no if I haven't got a wife. Do I need to explain why?

Abiola: What do think about the Yasukuni shrine's glorification of suicide bombers?


[...Do I need to explain why...]

Yes. Because it is a simple question. And it isnt loaded. And questioners have the right to make a priori determinations about certain detials of your life and then demand that you answer entirely irrelavant simple questions so they can confirm their suspicions: Never mind that these questioners have full access to intimate details about your life; (read "Archives"). Go ahead and answer the question: "Yes" or "No".


Chuckles: No




Exactly. Perhaps what "blue" wants to hear is the following:

"I've long adored suicide bombers of every variety, and think they're the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'm also a great fan of British imperialists who slaughter impudent Indians and Zulus, Belgians who chop off the arms of lazy Congo n*gg*rs, and brave white Americans redeeming their promised land from shifty Injuns hundreds of scalps and smallpox blankets at a time."

There, are you happy "blue", or would you care to explain why visiting Yasukuni is any more ominous than paying homage to the humble servants of Andrew Jackson, Queen Victoria and King Leopold? Do your doubts about Japan similarly extend to the respect accorded slaveholders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? Somehow I imagine I won't get any straight answers out of you to these questions of mine.


Is that what you really think? "lazy Congo n*gg*rs". I'm a little surprised.


I, on the other hand, am not surprised by your inane response. Still evading my questions, I see; how typical.


By "my questions" do you refer to "why visiting Yasukuni is any more ominous than paying homage to the humble servants of Andrew Jackson, Queen Victoria and King Leopold?"

It's not a position I have ever taken. Could you point out how you came to the conclusion that you thought it was part of my world view? Thanks.

Your response to my question was rather strange, as it didn't answer the question itself, which was: "What do think about the Yasukuni shrine's glorification of suicide bombers?"


"It's not a position I have ever taken."

So what *is* your position, then? What do you think of the glorification of slaveholders, killers of Native Americans, murderers of rebellious Indians, slaughterers of insubordinate Zulus, amputators of independent-minded Congolese, etc.? Do you believe the glorification of these men is evidence of unrepentant American and European militarism? You've done your questioning, so it's time you answered mine.


I've questioned, but received no real answer. When you address my question, which I asked first, with seriousness - then I will answer yours.

The question, in case you have forgotten, was:
What do think about the Yasukuni shrine's glorification of suicide bombers?


Don't say you "received no answer" just because you didn't like the answer you got.

You know what? I'm wasting my time answering a troll like you. Repeat your inane question one more time and you'll be banned forthwith.


I'll be banned for asking a question which is relevant to the subject of your post, simply because you refuse to answer it?

So brave.


Don't get high on yourself. You'll be banned for spamming my blog with idiocies and wasting my time. As for the imagined "relevance" of your stupid question - care to tell me again what Yasukuni's exhibits have to do with an opinion poll on Article 9?

Troll ...


Another blogroach bites the dust： 気持ち良い！


People like this Blue fella / fellete are a little weird. A leap from "subtle takes on militarism" to asking questions about Yasukuni: And then demands that such questions be treated seriously: When the context obviously is that Yasukuni represents some vestige of Japanese Militarism - which, if were the case, then Abiola's response would be apropos: If Yasukuni is in fact a vestige of Japanese militarism: So is Columbus Day, venerations of Lugard, the Rhodes Scholarship and a host of other stuff: Which Yasukuni bashers never manage to bring themselves to highlighting as evidence of British, American or French recidivism in the militaristic department.

The real attitude here, on the part of many Westerners who bash Yasukuni visits is: "Oh why cant those little kids in Asia get along" - "Oh! Japan is the bully! Visiting military shrines as though it were an adult (like us)" - "Well, we'll just go down there and restore order on the playground and make those Asians know they are all equals". This is completely idiotic and harps upon Orientalism at its most insidious, masquerading as Pacifism, or Peace Loving or Pro Human rights attitudes: Imagine the cheek of asking Japan to stop visiting the shrine simply because it insults the "feelings" of its Neighbors! I dare say none of these fellows have ever spoke out against Columbus Day or Musuems to the perpetrators of African genocide in the colonial period. Yet, they seem to think that they can just "call Japan out" because, well "its not playing nice with the rest of the kids". How incredibly moronic.

My personal opinion is that it is nobody's business if Koizumi visits Yasukuni in a plane, on foot, in a bubble or via hang glider. It is nobody's business if he lives, eats and shits in Yasukuni: And lest I be accused of Tu Quoque here, the reality is that Japan is simply behaving according to International Norms and Customs and the real outrage is those people like the South Korean leader who insinuate that Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni somehow taint Japan's standing internationally - when Japan is acting in perfect accordance with global norms.

As for Yasukuni glorifying Suicide Bombers, this is a load of crock. How exactly does a shrine established to remember and honor those who died in service and maintain records so that a pension might be provided to their relatives who survive them morph into a glorifier of suicide bombers? And since when did the Kamikaze pilots who died *defending* Japan in a declared war become equivalent to terrorists who died on the path of aggression against civilians? In so far as Japan's colonial atrocities were entirely atrocious; to refer to soldiers as "suicide bombers" is a tad stupid: All soldiers are on suicide missions - more so when the context is an epochal one such as World War 2. These idiots who talk "Japan suicide bomber this" and "suicide bomber that" might as well extend their criticism of "glorification" all the way to Samurai of centuries earlier who were no doubt suicidal also. I mean, should we overlook suicidal defense simply because conflict is internecine?

One of these days, one of these days, these retards might just get what they are asking for. The more they bash Japan, the more fuel they give to ideologues like Ishihara and Aso and all kinds of revisionist societies. I mean, Japan is probably the most praise worthy State of the latter 20th century - indeed, of the entire 20th century. From stone age to industrial power, a colonial force which actually paid for its iniquity and humbled itself so thoroughly, a self deprecating economic power that prefers reservation to the blustering do nothing wordiness of folks like the French, a generous contributor to the purse of organizations such as the UN unlike the United States, a comparatively tame population (here, skinheads arent killing blacks, people arent making monkey noises on the streets, foreigners are actually treated like human beings), an eclectic modern culture and perhaps the most significant contributor after the United States - to world culture in the 20th century. Yes, this is militaristic Japan! Big, bad, slanty eyed and evil. Devious and cunning. Planning for world domination through nefarious organizations like Sukyo Mahikari, with a language not worth learning at all since the Japanese are so closeted anyway - and right next door: African Christians are being murdered incessantly in China, blacks generally denigrated in Korea and everywhere else in the whole rim, from Island to Archipelago: Colonial Mentality reigns. Japan has had its doctrines of racialism so thoroughly challenged while the rest of East Asia still holds to color gradients in their understanding of humanity - even more so than the Japanese.

All these do gooders - many of them nanny Westerners need to get lost and get off Japan's back. It aint perfect - but the day I see these same folks applying the same standards to the Brits, and the French and the Americans and the Russians etc that they apply to Japan, then maybe I'd start taking them more seriously. The more people like this continue to poison sociocultural narratives, the more Yoshinori Kobayashi clones we will witness - which will only further serve to wedge Japanese society into radical segments on both the left and the right.

With all the intra-regional engagement going on now, the last thing we need is for some particularly savvy Japanese scholar to come out with Datsu-A Ron, redux and updated for the 21st century: Which is exactly what we'll get if people continue to insist on seeing militarism where none, as yet, exists.



This has been a recurrent stance for the last 100 years, ever since Japan's defeat of Russia conjured up images of the "Yellow Peril"; Japan was supposedly bad for wanting to conquer China (despite the existence of American, British, French and German concessions in the country), but that didn't stop the (Philippines-ruling) Americans from later backing France's effort to hold on to Vietnam, or from assenting to similar efforts by the Dutch in Indonesia, let alone Britain's recovery of Malaysia and Singapore; Japan was said to be on a mission to "conquer" America when it began emulating more than 200 years of British practice by investing in the USA, as if trade were a form of economic warfare; now Japan is said to be uniquely unrepentant and unapologetic about its past despite the fact it has in fact done so going on 18 times, even as America refuses to apologize for slavery, or the Europeans for anything they did in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

It's almost as if there's an inbuilt assumption in most Western minds - especially in Western "liberal" media coverage - that a thing is singularly bad when others of unlike appearance engage in it, but otherwise praiseworthy when carried out by themselves, hence the hyperventilation over issues which would muster little to no interest back home (just look at how black and Native Americans asking for an official apology are portrayed in America, or African critics of the British Empire in the UK). The "Sneaky Japs just can't be trusted" image is still alive and well in the hearts of those who are obsessively critical of the country.


How annoying! How incredibly annoying! How blood chilling stark raving mad.

Have a look at this:

1 - [...The Pentagon's vision of China as a dangerous hegemon diminishes the farther one gets from the Beltway Biosphere...]

2 - [...In the Middle East and Africa, the Chinese model for economic development--autocracy that mutes political freedoms in exchange for commercial expression--is embraced far more eagerly than Bush's prodemocracy crusade...]

3 - [...In Asia, US allies like the Philippines, South Korea and even Australia are aligning themselves closer to Beijing, or at least hedging their bets...]

4 - [...Only Japan has remained in lockstep with Washington--boosting its own military budget, adjusting its laws to allow the US forces it hosts greater autonomy and whipping its population generally into a Sinophobic frenzy that sits just fine with hawks in Washington...]

Is Stephen Glain mad?
Japan whipping its citizens into a sinophobic frenzy?
Chinese autocracy more preferred in Africa to democracy (Yeah - to the likes to Obasanjo and other sit-tighters, but not to Soyinka,the late Beko, Enahoro, Fawehinmi or others)...Its not even the case in Iran, or other Middle Eastern States where a popular groundswell of support for Islamic Republics and/or democracies are creating movements with some hope of success.
China not a threat because of its disaffected, hungry, alienated youth....excuse me?
China not a threat because of its heavily weighed down state sector...excuse me?

He *is* mad. Why the perpetual hatred for and fear of Japan? Why? Why are liberals such idiots? Why do people clench their jaws so tightly and brazenly LIE through their teeth?

Sinophobic frenzy?

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