In winter, I'm a Buddhist,
And in summer, I'm a nudist.
- Joe Gould
"My Religion"
In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.
- Oscar Wilde, aware in 1889 that popular conceptions about the country and its people are mostly fiction.
Not even 10% of what Japanese people are thinking is communicated overseas.
- Watanabe Tsuneo of CSIS
All foreign correspondents, whenever they desert statistics for judgments of opinion...become models of self-deception. They may call themselves, with proper gravity, ‘reporters’. But...they are nothing but quack psychiatrists who do not even know that this is the field they practise.
- Alistair Cooke
Where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses.
- Walter Lippmann
We want...a revolution - a turning of the wheel, so that the state becomes once again the servant of the people, and not the other way around. We are the progressives now, comrades, (and) you the reactionaries.
- Daniel Hannan
If the textbook says, "It is well known that...", you can be sure that is a very good place to begin a research inquiry.
- Isaiah Bowman, geographer and former president of Johns Hopkins University
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
- Cicero (55 BC)
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. It is not we who silence the press. It is the press that silences us. It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editors shall say; it is a case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know. If we attack the press, we shall be rebelling, not repressing.
- G.K. Chesterton
You can see a lot by looking.
- Yogi Berra
All text copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 by William Sakovich
E-mail:
ampontan
- at -
gol
- dot -
com
yankdownunder said
actually been made to get down on their knees and apologize.
Why do Japanese stand for this kind of treatment?
At the least they should stop making trips to SK. And not start again until apologies are made by SK and SK(and China) close the hate-Japan museums.
Also I would want the person in charge of the students to be dismissed or punished if such a thing happened to my child. Teachers should protect the students.
Tony said
It’s education alright, although not the type the Koreans are ultimately striving for.
Going to such one sided museums is not bad in itself as a large part of the education can occur both before students go and when they come back by providing them with the true information or alternative interpretations where there is a discrepancy of facts or viewpoints on facts. This can also lead to deeper understandings of Korea and why there are still standing issues with Korea (at least outstanding from the Korean side).
As for the bowing to apologize, shitty thing to ask high school kids to do but teachers can mitigate this by warning the students before going this may happen and then tell suggest that until they have all the facts should not do so unless they think it is the right thing to do.
I say this remembering an NHK show here where NHK brought back the bombardier of the Enola Gay for the 60th anniversary of the bomb. He was introduced to several hibakusha (bombs survivors) and one asked him to apologize for he bombing. He refused. Clearly he wasn’t expecting this (not sure if NHK was either) but he handled it well. Because of the way the issue is thought of and taught in Japan, it was clear that the lady who asked for the apology was surprised she didn’t get one.