February 27, 2007

On Japan

Japan posts have been few lately, but I've come across a few cool and not-so-cool things today:

First, the weirdness that is Japanese politics. After the 'baby making' comment of Minister of Health Yanigasawa, here are two more politicians who don't quite know their way with words.

Minister of Education Ibuki did not only make a (fairly common) statement on Japan being a homogenous society, but he also compared having too much human rights (huh?) as eating too much butter and as a result being affected with metabolic syndrome. Right...

And then there's LDP policy chief Shin Nakagawa who said:
"If something goes awry in Taiwan in the next 15 years, then within 20 years Japan might become just another one of China's provinces,"

How can senior politicians get away with making stupid comments like that?

Of course, we have our fair share here too, trying to deal with Geert Wilders...

But on to better information - I found Monocle in a kiosk this morning and now regret not buying it... Supposedly this is a new concept "with a keen focus, strong reporting, sharp wit and more classic approach to design". Well, it looks interesting enough so far and the first issue has a surprising amount of Japan related stories.

One huge article on the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces and another piece on the upcoming movie of Haruki Murakami's short story All God's Children Can Dance. I'm a big Murakami fan so am very curious about this!

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