Japan and the United States: A Reversal of Roles Seven Years Later
Sankei Shimbun
WASHINGTON - Prime Minister Asō Tarō is showing the forceful self-assuredness of Japan's position at the emergency meeting of the heads of state (The Finance Summit) which opened on November 14th. It is not just because the financial system of Japan is being pushed back and forth less than others by the tsunami spreading out from the United States, the epicenter of the international financial crisis. For the Prime Minister, who has believed in and has never doubted the Japan that some have derided as "low-powered," it is possible that he is now on stage, after the passage of eight years, for "revenge" against the United States...
Well gosh, now that would be a really helpful attitude to have right now, would it not?
How serious are the editors of the Sankei Shimbun in channeling their revenge fantasies out of resentment for slights past?
Oh, gee, let us look at the Kyōdō Tsūshin photo they chose to accompany this article.
For the pharisees amongst us, this could be nothing more than a picture of Asō Tarō deplaning in an impractical, photogenic way...just like important folks do all the time.
Yet somehow, I think it is supposed evoke this photograph.
Let me be clear. I am in no way insinuating that the right wing in Japan has a corrosive, anachronistic obsession with the American Occupation.
I am stating outright that they do.
Later - Here is the on-line version of the article.
5 comments:
Like in, they want to "occupy" Japan and mold political and popular culture around their ideas in the same way that the American occupation did? So they unconsciously try to mimic the US occupation in whatever way they can as a political cargo cult?
Am I crazy, or is all this "Japan is assuming the leadership role" only appearing in the Japanese media?
Ah yes, revenge is so sweet...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7732733.stm
OMG The Japanese are coming to America's shores to impose their "mind control" on us! I need to find the aluminum foil...it must be somewhere in the house...
Is it not a bit exagerated? One could compare that pix to any other one of a leader coming out of a plane, whether it is Lula, Obama or Brown. It is good to be a non-American those days, for you can come to DC and sing "I told you so, my sick man". Although the Japanese people have a strong tendency to believe that the rest of the world is always observing what they do, the truth is, speaking from DC, I'm almost sure I could not find a single man on the street able to name Japan's PM's name - except one or two experts here and there. (And yes, I am talking about Washington, DC). Like in any other country, the Japanese right-wing lives in its own bubble full of conspiracies, passion and noble crimes. Those days, they are just hurting themselves. Sankei's journalists should just stop smoking pots when they write their articles.
Post a Comment