If Only I Were Alone

I do not want to be a naked East African Plains ape, waving his digits frantically, hooting in desperation that Abe Shinzo and his fellow travelers are a bunch of bad seeds kiting several hundred billion yen's worth of bad checks (Link) in order to buy July's House of Councillors election, at which point full-blown Abezania will be loosed upon this sadly scarred, dear little blue-green planet.

Seriously, who wants to be just like everybody else?

Top panel: [sound of an internal combustion engine - Abe Shinzo, in hard hat, driving an open cab vehicle, passing a construction worker operating a jackhammer]
Inscription inside a shining sun reads, "Making our way toward the revival of Japan."

Bottom panel: [wide view of Abe in road paving vehicle, flattening a path up a mountain topped with a flag reading, "House of Councillors election"]
"Or so they say..."

Sidebar: "Headed where?" (Doko ni mukete)

From the same printing of my local dead trees news service, a poem by a reader:

美しい
日本にお金
撒くと言う

Utsukushii
Nihon ni okane
Maku to iu

They say they'll sprinkle
money all over
beautiful Japan

"Toward a Beautiful Country" (Utsukushii kuni e) made not a jot of sense when Abe-san first foisted the idea upon us back in 2006-7 (Link) -- as what was on offer was not beautiful, save for those of an atavistic aesthetic.

From the looks of it, Abe's conceptualization of Beauty is still a source of sardonic amusement.

Of course, Beautiful Country Japan is not alone now. Abe 2.0 has found its disputable twin: "Japan's Beautiful Seas." (Link)

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Image and senryu courtesy the Tokyo Shimbun, morning edition of 12 January 2013.