Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Sakurai Yoshiko's think tank

Smiles everyone! This one's going in the newspaper!


Hanoi-born hellion and heroine of the Japanese far right Sakurai Yoshiko and a crowd of her cheerful fellow travelers announced on Monday the opening of a new think tank, the Kokka kihon mondai kenkyūjo (interim Eng. translation: Center for Research on the Fundamental Problems of the Nation).

Sora the Metablogger provides a helpful list of the officers of the new organization and a snappy little concluding line about yours truly.

Yes, Sora, you are right--with Ishihara the Elder, Inada, Nakanishi, Hiranuma, Yayama and Matsubara on board and snow coming down outside--it is like Christmas in January for me.

When I have a moment, I might try my hand at a translation of the think tank's founding principles. In the interim, however, please enjoy the image the editors of yesterday's Sankei Shimbun chose to accompany their article (on-line in an abbreviated form) on the announcement.

"You mortals, you will learn the meaning of fear..."

4 comments:

Jun Okumura said...

Hey, is that gaijin press favorite Akihisa Nagashima pushing the nationalist agenda, or is he just happy to see Yoshiko Sakurai?

Speaking of whom, give her some credit, willya? At least she didn't call it Shin no Kokka Kihon Mondai Kenkyūjo!

MTC said...

Okumura-san -

What is really strange is that the leaders announced the establishment of the think tank at a press conference held at the Foreign Correspondent's Club...and not a single story seems to have resulted from the announcement.

By the way, did you catch the nice shot of the back of Sam's head in Sankei's photo #3?

Jun Okumura said...

These are the people (well, some of them) who placed that ad in the NYT.

Kidding. Actually, the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals has been around since November. This was an appeal concerning the abductees, so the venue is not that odd.

Julián Ortega Martínez said...

Well, at least they don't look as creepy as their Colombian counterparts: Fernando Londoño Hoyos (former minister involved in a scandal for buying illegally stocks in a state company), José Obdulio Gaviria (Pablo Escobar's cousin and Colombian president's main adviser), Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza (a former Castrista and anti-statist who has been ambassador for years), and several other obscure right-wingers...