Ram jam city

EVERY ONE of the following statements that appeared in recent news articles is incorrect.

Reuters, 2 May

In a poll carried out after the government rammed a bill through parliament reinstating the gasoline tax from May 1…

Bloomberg, 2 May

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s ruling coalition pushed through revenue bills that will reinstate a gasoline tax…

AFP 2 May

Fukuda, concerned about a budget shortfall, rammed through parliament bills to reimpose a petrol tax that had expired, under pressure from the opposition.

Radio Australia 2 May

The bill which was rammed through parliament reinstates the 24 US cent tax. (sic)

The only way anyone can state that the bills were “rammed through” the Diet is if one is under the impression that minority parties in a parliamentary chamber should be encouraged to sign off on any legislation they oppose before it can be passed.

It’s as if these news outlets think the democratic deal is for all legislators to hold up their identification badges and vote in a display of unity for whatever idea the Great Man happens to be peddling at the time. That’s standard operating procedure in North Korea, and was in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Soviet Politburo. But some in the news media seem not to have noticed that’s not how it works in a modern democracy.

American Presidents can veto legislation they don’t care for, but if the Congress insists, it can override that veto with a two-thirds vote, and the bill becomes law. When a veto is overridden there, however, no one talks about how Congress “rammed the bill through”. The New York Times, an unrelenting opponent of the President, dealt with an override of a Bush veto this way.

Here’s the deal: If Japan’s upper house rejects a bill passed by the lower house, or ignores it for 60 days (which is what happened in this instance), the lower house can pass the bill a second time with a two-thirds majority of the members present, and it becomes law.

It’s all right there in the Constitution.

So what the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party did was simply follow Constitutional procedures. They reintroduced the bill into the lower house and passed it on a straight up-or-down vote.

No one in the opposition was locked out of the chamber, stripped of their credentials, had the safety of their family threatened, had their genitals taped to electrodes, or was taken outside and shot.

Of course they got all hot and bothered, but it’s a bit rich to complain about constitutionally correct behavior–particularly if the legislator who would complain is one who supports the policy of “defending the Constitution” to prevent the amendment of Article 9, the so-called Peace Clause.

Perhaps for some folks constitutional law is like a restaurant menu.

Now, this does not mean that anyone has to like the legislation or the fact that the tax was restored in this manner (and most Japanese voters don’t). And you can be sure the opposition will try to win votes in the next election by reminding the voters of LDP behavior (and they are sure to win some.)

But it was a simple legislative procedure. No one was strong-armed and no one is torching Toyotas in the streets.

What is does mean, however, is that the print and broadcast media would rather titillate their consumers rather than stick to reporting the facts and nothing but the facts in a news report, and leaving their Hemingway imitations for the op-ed page.

Here it is again: If your knowledge of Japan is derived from what you see, read, or hear in the Western media, then everything you know is wrong.

And now for the news from North Korea

WHO’S THE MOST FAMOUS foreign news reader in Japan? You might be surprised—it’s none of the glorified magazine models who appear on the BBC, CNN, or Fox (though a few middle-aged women were fans of the late Peter Jennings due to the ABC news excerpts NHK broadcast on their satellite channel).

Take a look at the accompanying photo to see the overseas announcer instantly recognizable to anyone in the country who watches television news. And here’s the best part—almost no one knows her name!

Thanks to this report in the English-language version of South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo, we find out that her name is Ri Chun-hi, a 65-year-old grandmother and 1971 graduate of the Pyeongyang University of Dramatic and Cinematic Arts. Ms. Ri is surely even better known in South Korea—her responsibility is to deliver news reports for an overseas audience. The photo here shows her announcing North Korea’s nuclear test on 9 October 2006.

What’s the reason for her celebrity? A recent profile in the North Korean magazine Naenara put it this way:

“She grasps the hearts of viewers with her strong and appealing voice…She strikes the enemies so severely that they have become dumbfounded when she announces statements and talks.”

Some people describe her grasp on the hearts of viewers in a different way, however. A few years ago, one of my Korean language tutors, a university student in Japan, said that the standard North Korean broadcasting style “gives me the creeps”. (Well, that’s not what she said in Japanese, but that’s what she meant.)

That’s probably one reason excerpts of her reports are broadcast so frequently here without a Japanese voice-over: her intonation and tone are so artificial, and so quickly shift from exaggerated bellicosity to patriotic fervor, one could easily imagine her as a state broadcaster in George Orwell’s 1984. It was not for nothing that she was recruited from drama school rather than journalism school. (That’s also probably better training for television news, but I digress.)

The unadulterated taste of the Pyeongyang propaganda technique likely does creep out most Japanese and Korean viewers. The contrast between the brisk but understated broadcasting style in Japan provides a perfect implied contrast with just how different daily life in North Korea must be. Pictures with voice inflections are worth a thousand words in the broadcast medium.

And really, let’s be honest–these broadcasts also have plenty of cheap entertainment value.

Ms. Ri may not get the multi-million dollar contracts awarded to the “anchors” on American network television, but the article does say that she is well-remunerated by her country’s standards:

“She lives…in a house in a beautiful place in Pyeongyang, the capital,” the magazine said. “The modern dwelling house and car were given to her as gifts by the state.”

Then there are the other perks:

North Korea’s female news announcers enjoy the privilege of getting their hair styled at the country’s best beauty salon, Changgwangwon in Pyeongyang. They are also allowed opportunities to try on clothes made by the national clothing institute before anybody else.

Judging from her picture and considering the universality of the feminine psychology, it wouldn’t surprise me if the thought of going on a diet has crossed her mind from time to time. Other North Korean women should be so lucky.

Here’s another unintentional glimpse of life behind the kimchee curtain in North Korea, courtesy of Naenara:

Their hairstyles and clothes lead the country’s fashions.

Lucky for us, there’s a YouTube clip of Ms. Ri delivering this very announcement on DPRK TV. It’s only about 1:15, which is enough to get the flavor if you don’t know Korean.

You’ll get the idea, but I’ve seen her in better form. She’s much more emotive when she’s delivering the propaganda ministry’s florid invective.

Postscript: The Chosun’s report says that TV news reports in North Korea often begin with the phrase, “Our Korean People’s Army supreme commander Kim Jong-il.” I’m pretty sure that “supreme commander” here is the same word as shogun in Japanese, though the Koreans are not about to use that expression. The two languages have a lot of words in common, but the pronunciation is of course different. Another is the word that first appeared on screen in the YouTube clip: podo. It’s identical to hodo in Japanese, and means “news report”.

Wired magazine short circuits on Japan article

A FASCINATING ASPECT of learning a foreign language is the encounter with proverbs and colorful expressions that open a window into a culture and offer insights into the character of the people. That these phrases are either untranslatable into one’s own language, or have an enigmatic strangeness, adds to the appeal.

This is particularly true of the Japanese language. The Japanese love proverbs, and estimates of the number of proverbs in the language run as high as 20,000 to 30,000. The ability to employ one appropriately in everyday speech and writing is a sign of the culture and erudition of the user. I have a proverb dictionary published in Japan that is more than 500 pages long, and each page contains an average of 10 proverbs with explanations of their origin and meaning.

One example of a proverb that wouldn’t make much sense in English was brought up in the Comments section here the other day. A few posts down is a story about a Hiroshima festival conducted in a Shinto shrine in which sardine heads are roasted to create an unpleasant odor and drive away evil spirits. Frequent posters Overthinker and Camphortree discussed a proverb related to this practice, which is “Even the head of a sardine can become holy”. Understanding that proverb would be impossible without being aware of the custom.

Here’s another interesting expression: Jibun no koto wo tana ni ageru. Literally translated, that means, “To put one’s ‘thing’ (oneself, one’s attributes, behavior, etc.) on a shelf.” But that doesn’t make much sense without context, does it? Here’s an illustration that might make it clearer.

Today’s issue of Wired magazine has an article in the Culture and Lifestyle section called Inside the Bizarre World of Japanese Pickup Schools.

It is a brief feature on Fujita Satoshi, who operates a school for teaching backward men how to be successful with women. Mr. Fujita has also written three self-help books. Attending one of his classes costs 30,000 yen, which the author, one Lisa Katayama, says is worth about $280.

Here’s how Ms. Katayama describes him:

Satoshi Fujita is not a good-looking man. He has oily skin, beady eyes, short legs and a boy-band wig to cover his balding head.

But since a picture is worth a thousand words, it would be easier to show a photo of him. Here’s what he looks like:

Mr. Fujita admits that he used to be an introverted geek until he bought a wig and learned some magic tricks. He also made a study of the science of seduction. Here’s what happened next:

Women like laughter, compliments and magic tricks. Using these concepts, he devised a proprietary “science” for picking up women that takes into consideration things like reading signals and timing. After 10 years and 10 new wigs, he’d become so successful with women, he says, that he decided to quit his job and make dating his profession. Among other tricks, Fujita’s method involves a deck of “psychoanalytic” cards that help him determine what kind of girl he has picked up. He’s also got a bag of tricks — literally — that includes flaming wallets, talking ferrets and animated algae balls. “This may seem ridiculous, but if you follow a specific equation, it really works,” he says.

The article also suggests that bizarre pickup schools are becoming a trend in Japan, because there are six schools for seduction in the Tokyo area alone.

How, you may be wondering, is this an illustration of the proverb of “putting your ‘thing’ on a shelf”? And if it is, how does it apply to the Wired article?

Stick with me a little longer. I’m coming to that.

Ms. Katayama and Wired magazine put Mr. Fujita on parade for their readers to symbolize this “bizarre world”. They describe this world by focusing on a geek with a wig and “beady eyes” who teaches men how to be successful with women—for a fee–by carrying flaming wallets and animated algae balls on the street.

We all understand the intent of this article. It is yet another installment in the never-ending stream of stories from the Western media that portray Japan as the Goofball Kingdom of East Asia. The 24/7 media machine needs a constant supply of infotainment for the breakfast table.

Now if Wired thinks this is bizarre, we should assume they believe guys like Mr. Fujita just don’t exist in the United States, where the magazine is published. Bizarre people live in smelly rabbit hutches in Tokyo, not New York or Los Angeles, where all the men are straight-up studly guys who know how to handle the ladies and make them love it.

Presumably, here’s what Ms. Katayama and Wired think is perfectly normal: in the U.S., there is now something called the “seduction community”. It has become a profitable business, with Internet forums, mailing lists, more than 100 clubs nationwide, and its own Wikipedia page. It has been the subject of a best-selling book called The Game by Neil Strauss, who calls himself a pickup artist (PUA) and cruises under the nickname “Style”.

When the San Francisco Chronicle reviewed his book, it said:

“…if women in the book are sometimes treated as a commodity, they come out looking better than the men, who can be downright loathsome — and show themselves eventually to be pretty sad, dysfunctional characters.”

There are quite a few so-called “seduction gurus” in the United States these days, many of whom choose to be known by colorful names. In addition to Style, there is Mystery, Juggler, Zan Perrion, Steve P/Piccus, Carlos Xuma, Hypnotica, Gunwitch, Tenmagnet, Savoy, and Gambler, among others.

Others use their real names. One of them is Ross Jeffries. He is a former insurance claims adjuster and failed comedian who discovered a practice initiated by Richard Bandler called Neuro Linguistic Programming ©.

Many books have been written about NLP, and there is no space here for a full description, but briefly, it is based on the theory that people are moved by the emotions expressed in the language patterns used by other people, and that the speaker can therefore covertly influence the behavior of the listener. Mr. Jeffries applies this theory to seduction by claiming it is possible to sexually arouse women with preconceived word patterns, sometimes with phonetic ambiguity.

For example, one might say to a woman, “I’d like to explore your mine.” The woman will hear this as “mind”, but it will subconsciously register as “mine”, as in “mine shaft”. Wink wink nudge nudge. One of his more well-known verbal techniques is the use of “below me” as a substitute for “blow me”. His term for hunting for women is “sarging”, which he named after his pet cat Sarge.

He also uses the technique of “anchoring”, in which the man begins by creating a pleasant emotional state in the woman through the use of language and suggestion. When he has successfully created that state, he touches her in an innocuous location, such as her wrist. The theory holds that when he touches her wrist in that same location again, he will recreate that state in her mind, which he can then utilize to influence her behavior; i.e., seduce her.

Mr. Jeffries holds seminars and has a home study course with 13 CDs and a 107 page book. He charges $1,500 for an hour of his personal time. He calls this Speed Seduction ® and claims that a man can use these techniques to get a woman in bed in about 20 minutes from the time he meets her.

What does he look like? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, they say:

Another seduction guru with a colorful name, one R. Don Steele, claims that once upon a time Mr. Jeffries was a sweaty-palmed nervous virgin that came to him begging for help. He doesn’t seem to need help now. Here’s the Ross Jeffries home page, where you can sign up to master the art “as seen by millions on TV worldwide”.

If Mr. Jeffries’s techniques do not suit your fancy, perhaps you might prefer those of the man called Mystery. He is the main character of Mr. Strauss’s book. He teaches the Mystery Method of seduction, which he now refers to as the Venusian Arts. Mystery also charges thousands of dollars for seminars, and has introduced new techniques into “the game”. One of these is called “negging”, in which the man indirectly insults the woman and makes her want to please the PUA.

Here’s an example of negging: The man says to the woman, “You have beautiful nails. Are they real?”

Like both Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Fujita, Mystery was a backwards boy who was a flop with chicks. And like Mr. Fujita, he also became skillful at magic, though he probably doesn’t use flaming wallets. He also has lost some of his mystery, now that he has allowed his photograph to be used. It too is worth a thousand words:

He has beautiful nails. I wonder if they’re real.

One thing that is definitely real is the money he makes. He had a falling out with his business partner—nicknamed Savoy—and this led to a costly legal battle. This page is worth reading to discover the various financial and personal spats that can arise between pickup artists. It concludes this way:

After hanging out with Mystery, Lovedrop, and Matador this past weekend, it seemed none of them are too concerned with the legal stuff. Apparently they’re making good money from their workshops and the VH1 show, and there’s talk of a season 2 and possibly a spin off show, so money is the least of their worries. Lovedrop even told me that he doesn’t mind dropping loads of cash on lawyers and legal fees to fight this - possibly $15,000 - $20,000 a month, so who knows how long this feud will go on.

Speaking of Savoy, he’s still in “the game” himself, using the Mystery Method that Mystery developed. That method requires an investment of a few hours, which is longer than Ross Jeffries’s 20 minutes.

Savoy sells a book called Magic Bullets. He says he’s developed a new aspect to the Mystery Method called Transitioning, which he describes in his book:

MAGIC BULLETS contains the most complete explanation of Transitioning available ANYWHERE. In MAGIC BULLETS I explain - in detail - how to use a Transition to bridge the gap between Opening and Attraction. I also explain different types of transitions like Content Transitions, Observational Transitions and making a Transition without using a transition at all.

If he can make a transition without using a transition, he must be using magic bullets!

Here’s what else Savoy promises:

• An in-depth discussion of the opener “risk-reward continuum” that allows you to use the best opener for ANY situation you find yourself in. And the best way to transition from each type of opener to the next phase of the model.

• How to create your own material and bypass “lines” and generic routines. NEVER AGAIN get caught running something she’s heard before!

• How you can effectively approach a woman with NO OPENER at all.

• The situations where you should never “neg” a woman.

• A completely new phase that you NEED to install in your game RIGHT NOW. Adding this phase will make your sets go 100% smoother. THE VERY FIRST TIME YOU USE IT!

• An in-depth chapter on Seduction that will allow you to evolve your game beyond Last Minute Resistance and freeze-outs. Through an understanding of state-breaks, how they work - and how to avoid or minimize them - you’ll virtually eliminate Last Minute Resistance. AND WATCH YOUR CLOSE RATE GO THROUGH THE ROOF!

• A chapter on Day Game written by Sinn - THE UNDISPUTED MASTER OF DAY GAME.

• Sinn’s ten rules for MEETING AND DATING STRIPPERS.

I’m sure it would be instructive to see a picture of Savoy, but I couldn’t find one.

Instead of Savoy’s picture, however, here’s a page on the Love System’s 2008 Super Conference, which promises to be the commercial event of the year in the seduction biz. Aspiring Casanovas will have the chance to meet and study at the feet of Savoy, Sinn, Tenmagnet, and Carlos Xuma all at the same place. Fortunately, the price of attending one of the big presentations has been discounted from $1,700.

Read that page, and then ask yourself this question:

Where is the Bizarre World of Pickup Schools really located–Japan or the United States?

I’m sorry for going the long way around, but I thought that was the best way to describe the meaning of the Japanese expression, “to put one’s ‘thing’ on a shelf”.

Unfortunately, Wired didn’t put their thing on a shelf high enough out of sight.

Hatoyama Yukio at large: Guffaw or gaffe?

A FAVORITE GAME OF NEWSPAPERS the world over is to play gotcha with politicians, and the Japanese press is no exception. Prime hunting season for them opens just after a new Cabinet is sworn in. All the new ministers give press conferences after their appointments, and at least one of them can be counted on to say something controversial, idiotic, or downright goofy.

The Japanese press bagged its biggest trophy in recent years when it helped bring down former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro. Granted, Mr. Mori’s tendency to say things better left unsaid was tantamount to painting a target on his own forehead, but the press also didn’t care for him very much as a person. Therefore, they made sure to turn on the klieg lights and turn up the amplifier whenever they caught him in what they considered to be a gaffe.

Many of these comments might have been ignored or overlooked had they been made by someone more to the liking of the press (or to the liking of the public—reporters can be shameless toadies), but they made sure that everyone got to hear everything Mr. Mori had to say while he was busy digging his own political grave.

Overlooking DPJ clunkers

In contrast, the mainstream press in Japan usually gives a free pass to politicians not in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, whose orientation is to the right of center. For example, people on the left consider current Justice Minister Hatoyama Kunio of the LDP a buffoon who is liable to say something silly at any given moment.

Yet seldom will you see the same intense scrutiny applied to the public utterances of his elder brother Hatoyama Yukio, Secretary-General of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. It’s possible that no one takes him very seriously either, but he was one of the founding members of the primary opposition party, and during his term as party president could have become prime minister had the DPJ won a majority in a lower house election.

One of his quirkier comments was almost overlooked entirely at the end of last year, and was reported only by the Sankei Shimbun. On 13 November, after the turmoil of current party president Ozawa Ichiro’s resignation and reentry into the DPJ had subsided, the party officers met for drinks and dinner at a fugu restaurant. Joining Mr. Ozawa and Hatoyama Yukio were DPJ bigwigs Kan Naoto and Koshi’ishi Azuma.

Those who follow Japanese politics will remember that Mr. Ozawa tried to cut a deal with the ruling LDP to create a grand coalition and install himself as deputy prime minister. The other leaders of his own party don’t trust Mr. Ozawa much, and the resultant uproar caused existing cracks in the party structure to grow wider.

According to Mr. Hatoyama, the men got together to repair the cracks, and they thought the best way to go about that was to let their hair down by having a few drinks and eating some potentially poisonous fish.
　
They seem to have enjoyed themselves. The quartet was a little tipsy when they left the restaurant and were intercepted by some reporters waiting outside. One asked what they talked about during their dinner, and Mr. Hatoyama replied that they had discussed whether it would be possible to travel to outer space on a magnetic levitation vehicle.

The reporters were nonplussed and wondered if he was being evasive, flippant, or actually telling the truth.

People do talk about the strangest things after they’ve had a few flagons of heated sake, so it’s possible that subject was batted around the table. Also, while politicians everywhere regard reporters as a necessary evil at best and a royal pain in the backside at worst, Japanese politicians can more easily get away with being abrupt and dismissive with the media. That’s partly because the media can often be more obnoxious here than in other countries, and also because the politicians can more easily prevent them from gaining access through the certification required in the reporters’ club system.

It’s also possible that Mr. Hatoyama was under the impression that he was being funny. Like former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, he is what the Japanese call a bon-bon, or a boy born into a family of means that did not have to struggle to get started in life and who turns out soft and socially tone deaf as a result. (Both men had grandfathers who were prime ministers.) And Mr. Hatoyama seems to have even less of the common touch than does Mr. Abe—during one campaign speech he tried to convince his listeners that he was a regular guy by claiming that he sometimes liked to eat cold pizza for breakfast.

Telling reporters that he wondered about traveling to outer space on a maglev vehicle? Most people would consider that a guffaw, though they would be more likely to laugh at him than with him.

Another of his recent statements was in an entirely different category, however.

Turning his back on free markets?

The DPJ held its annual party conference last month, and Mr. Hatoyama delivered a report on the party’s policies for the year ahead. During his address, he said:

「当たり前のように考えていたこの資本主義が、本当に国民を幸せにしつづけていけるのか」

“Can this capitalism, which people thought was the normal order of things, truly make people happy in the future?”

Is that not a newsworthy statement by one of the leading political figures of one of the world’s most important liberal democracies? But the only newspaper to report it was Akahata, or Red Flag, the newspaper of Japan’s Communist Party. (The Japanese-language only article is here.)

Akahata also reported he said:

「果たして、このような行き過ぎた金融資本主義が、これからの世界で多くの人々を幸せに導いていけるのか。（七月の洞爺湖サミットでは）こんな根本的な経済の議論もおこなってもらいたい」

“Can this extreme form of financial capitalism eventually lead most of the world’s people to happiness? I hope this basic economic debate is conducted (at the July summit).

For the JCP, of course, this was a chance to shoot some fish in a barrel.

They quickly referred their readers to some of Mr. Hatoyama’s other statements. In 2000, when he served as the party’s representative, he was a strong supporter of financial liberalization and backed reform of the tax and financial systems to facilitate new business start-ups. During a debate in the Diet the following year, he said he would have no hesitation to compete with the LDP to see who could more quickly implement reform.

Finally, they quoted Mr. Hatoyama calling for a relaxation of the Labor Standards Act to make it easier for companies to hire and terminate workers under short-term contracts.

Now we all know that any group that still insists on calling itself communist doesn’t have much credibility in a discussion of economic policy or theory (or much of anything else). But the JCP plays an important role in Japanese politics because they are the only party that can be counted on to tell the truth in situations such as these. That’s because they have so little to lose.

And no one seriously believes that Mr. Hatoyama has converted in late middle age to socialist principles—he started singing from a different political hymnal because labor unions provide his party with organizational muscle. Mr. Hatoyama himself is little more than a political wind sock.

Yet none of the mainstream newspapers saw fit to quote this part of Mr. Hatoyama’s speech. They, like everyone else in the country, want to see serious two-party democracy in Japan, but they often take it upon themselves to overlook the DPJ’s glaring flaws until the day comes when the majority of the electorate accepts them as a serious party.

If the electorate at large, however, found out that Mr. Hatoyama publicly questioned the free market system, regardless of whether he actually believed what he was saying, it might cause people to question whether the party was ever going to get serious.

After all, wondering aloud if free markets are not the best available way to provide the greatest happiness to the largest number of people is the equivalent of wondering whether it is possible to take a maglev vehicle to outer space.

And that’s not a guffaw. That’s a gaffe.

UPDATE: Frequent commenter Overthinker was thinking more than me when he pointed out that scientists are in fact discussing the use of magnetic levitation for space travel. That means the guffaw (and the gaffe) in the first part of the post is on me, and not on Mr. Hatoyama, who is also more aware of scientific developments than I am. Those are the perils of a one-man operation and a reminder of the need to retain the spark of wit to keep digging one more layer in my research!

Australian media priorities

COLUMNIST ANDREW BOLT of the Herald Sun, an Australian newspaper, blogs about the priorities of the Australian news media here.

He also explains to a young’un the meaning of “a hero’s welcome” here.

Yes, both are Japan-related!

Logos, pathos, and Japanese politics

IT’S STILL TOO EARLY for a major retrospective of the Koizumi Jun’ichiro administration, which ended only 17 months ago, so I almost turned the newspaper page without reading the review of the book, Koizumi Seiken—Patosu no Shusho wa Nani wo Kaeta no ka?, or The Koizumi Administration: What Did the Prime Minister of Pathos Change? by University of Tokyo professor Uchiyama Yu.

But I’m glad I didn’t turn the page, because one passage in particular was key to understanding an important aspect of Japanese politics. The newspaper reviewer recapped the events of the Koizumi Administration—the third longest in the postwar period, the privatization of the postal system and the public road corporation, the dispatch of Self-Defense forces to Iraq, the visits to North Korea and Yasukuni Shrine, and his efforts to effectively dismantle his own party.

Then this section followed (my translation):

(Professor Uchiyama) discusses the advantages and disadvantages of a strong prime minister who frequently resorted to pathos (passions, sentiment) and top-down methods of governing. Even today, (Koizumi) still tops the list in some public opinion surveys when people are asked, “Who would you like to see as the next prime minister?” Many young LDP Diet members beseeched him to run in the most recent election for party president. But the author points out the dangers of Koizumi’s incorporation of pathos into politics, which was symbolic of his approach of stripping logos (reason and language) from politics, thereby weakening the logic of responsibility.

Not only does that quote describe one of the characteristics that set Mr. Koizumi apart from the other politicians in this country, it also goes a long way toward elucidating what many Japanese believe is the political ideal. There is a palpable sense of distrust of those politicians who appeal to the emotions of the people to enlist popular support.

This might explain why many foreign observers find Japanese politicians to be bland and colorless. Those same observers sometimes make the mistake of thinking those politicians are just as bland at home as at work–or perhaps they just choose to present them that way. But anyone who lives in Japanese society for any length of time realizes that most politicians across the political spectrum do have personalities; it’s just that people here are expected to behave in a certain way when they have serious jobs.

Obviously this aversion to pathos has not always predominated in Japan. It would be impossible to conduct a war and build an empire over several decades without resorting to pathos to arouse and involve the people.

But that has not been the case in the postwar period. After their defeat in the war, perhaps the Japanese developed an antipathy to the use of emotional political appeals as they applied themselves to studying and incorporating the principles of liberal democracy.

That would be in very sharp contrast to the people who tutored them in democracy during the Allied occupation. Americans are almost shameless in their preference for pathos over logos in their own political system, despite the lip service they give the latter. That’s why it’s instructive to read this paper, The Sentimentalization of American Political Rhetoric, written by Bruce E. Gronbeck in 2005.

The Director of the University of Iowa’s Center for Media Studies and Political Culture, Prof. Gronbeck argues that pathos is just as important to political discourse as logos, though he does briefly review the arguments against pathos in the West starting with the ancient Greeks. The professor states his objective as follows:

The goal is to suggest how imaged sentimentalization can contribute to citizen engagement.

He asserts that:

(S)entimentalization can be essential for creating and maintaining political identity and can provide motivational grounds for political action.

And:

To try to excise the emotional in the name of political sanity and moral sanitation is to attempt the impossible while turning away from the humanizing capacities of sentiment, sympathy, empathy, or sheer feeling.

He concludes:

We can profit more politically from vision-sensitive knowing and feeling-driven action than we must lose to them.

As the last quote indicates, Prof. Gronbeck focuses on the use of pathos as projected through the medium of television. Here are some examples he cites from American political conventions:

1. “Aretha Franklin’s performance of the national anthem for the Democratic National Convention in 1992. She opened up the text by turning The Star Spangled Banner into soul music.”
2. “In 1992, the Republicans used Louis Armstrong’s It’s a Wonderful World with a film of sentimental images. It is heavy on happy children of varied ethnic backgrounds; it includes the young and middle-aged along with elderly adults living the good life. It shows diverse families hugging, praying and worshipping, playing sports and family games, and greeting each other warmly.”
3. “Four years earlier, the Republicans had aired an ad late in the campaign that began and ended with candidate Bush holding a granddaughter. It intercut shots of mass adoration for Bush…with the Bush family barbequing together and Bush pledges to foster a kinder, gentler nation by listening to the voices of the quiet people who loved him.”
4. “In 1996, the Democratic National Convention rolled out Christopher Reeve on American Hero Night. This was his first major public appearance following his paralysis. He spoke of family values and the political family that would join him to fight not only for research on spinal-chord (sic) injuries but also for helping all citizens without support. His appeal for party dedication to all in need was empowered emotionally by sights of his sheer, if awkward, physical presence: laid back in a head-locking, body-cradling power chair.”
5. “Perhaps even more dramatic and equally sentimental was AIDS activist Mary Fisher’s appearance on the GOP stage that year with a twelve-year-old African American girl. Heideia had been an AIDS baby, and she read a poem about her ambition to be anything she wanted. Fisher added that, when AIDS has its way with me, her children will belong to the community.”
6. “(T)he highlight of appeals to personalized sympathy at the 1996 conventions was the seven-minute, breath-by-breath description from Vice President Al Gore of his sister Nancy’s death from lung cancer. On the big screen, the Democratic Party and nationwide television audiences saw Gore narrate a story of regret, sorrow, then anger at the tobacco companies. The party audience was stunned into silence as Gore gulped for air, fought off emotional breakups, and allowed Nancy’s death to turn him into an instrument of political wrath. The cutaway shots of delegates paralleled the shots of Gore, as television viewers saw concern evolve into tears then an outpouring of support for the David ready to take on the Goliaths of corporate tobaccodom.”

Compared to these examples, what the Japanese press criticized as Koizumi Theater seems very tame indeed.

It’s clear that Prof. Gronbeck found Al Gore’s use of pathos to be the most impressive. As it turned out, however, Mr. Gore’s performance, rather than exemplifying the positive uses of pathos in politics, underscored the negative aspects of its use. Mark Steyn explains why in this 11 January 1997 article in The Spectator:

Many a tear has been jerked, but it’s all in the grand game of ensuring that, in three years, Albert Gore Jnr meets his rendezvous with destiny. To that end, everything must be pressed into service, including his routinely touted stricken relatives: in his speech to the 1992 Democratic convention, it was his son, who was nearly killed in a car crash; at the 1996 convention, it was his sister, who died of lung cancer. Gore `loved her more than life itself’, he told America in a hushed voice, and paused. `Tomorrow morning, a 13-year- old girl will start smoking. I love her, too.’ By this time, the gaps between his words were big enough to smoke half a pack of Marlboros in, `And that is why until I draw my last breath I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking.’

No network news anchor saw fit to mention a speech Gore made in 1988, four years after his sister’s death: `Throughout most of my life, I’ve raised tobacco,’ he told a North Carolina audience. `I’ve hoed it, I’ve chopped it, I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn, stripped it and sold it.’ No television correspondent pointed out that in 1990, six years after the `nearly unbearable pain’ of his sister’s death, Gore was still taking campaign contributions from the tobacco industry.

Eventually, the Washington Post caught up with him and asked him why, if he was that devastated, he’d carried on hoeing, chopping, shredding, spiking, stripping and selling the stuff. His answer was ingenious: ‘I felt the numbness that prevented me from integrating into all aspects of my life the implications of what that tragedy really meant,’ he said. `We are in the midst of a profound shift in the way we approach issues. I really do believe that in our politics and in our personal lives, we are seeing an effort to integrate our emotional lives in a more balanced fashion.’

Now you see why the mere mention of Al Gore’s name induces eye-rolling in vast swaths of continental America.

It is apparent from the behavior of both parties in the current presidential campaign that pathos-based appeals still predominate in the American political process, and even their ostensibly logos-based appeals come wrapped in pathos. Indeed, it would be interesting to calculate how often today’s American Democratic candidates use the word “change” and compare that with the frequency of Mr. Koizumi’s use of the word “reform”.

But to return to the original point, it is difficult to imagine the Japanese indulging in spectacles such as those cited by Prof. Gronbeck to create political excitement and encourage popular participation. That is not to say that Japanese are not susceptible to pathos; the public were enthusiastic patrons of the Koizumi Theater. It’s just that pathos does not always mix well with politics here.

It should be noted that the American political examples cited as pathos are really examples of the degeneration of that concept into bathos, or trivial sentimentality—a fate that has befallen the texture of American culture as a whole. This might have escaped Prof. Gronbeck’s notice because he lives in that culture, and he is unaware of it in the same way a fish is unaware of the water. But Japan has not yet reached that point.

Also, the Japanese do not hold political conventions, and the sort of hoopla that both American parties still revel in every four years is unlikely to go over well here (if it would go over anywhere else, for that matter).

All of this might serve to put the administration of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in a different perspective. In retrospect, Mr. Abe’s idea of Japan as a beautiful country was an attempt to incorporate pathos in his own political approach, albeit nothing as heavy-handed as that used routinely by both parties in the U.S. The Japanese, he asserted, no longer have to be ashamed of themselves and apologize for being Japanese, because the bad old days are gone. We’ve paid our penance, so it is time to leave the post-war order behind. There’s nothing wrong with honoring our national anthem and flag, even though they were temporarily used as symbols for unsavory ends.

The amount of opposition he stirred up in some quarters is worthy of note. His opponents in Japan and overseas rolled out the heavy artillery to brand him as a nationalist, but a careful examination of his words and deeds would reveal that in other countries—such as the United States—his political stands would be considered an unremarkable display of patriotism, with a lower-case p.

To be sure, many of the people who labeled him a nationalist were those for whom patriotism is either an unfamiliar concept or a dirty word. Those in the press who applied the glue to the back of the label either shared the world view of the labelers or parroted them because their knowledge of him came second hand.

While people everywhere are susceptible to the use of pathos and respond positively to it, it might be the case that the Japanese remain more cautious about how and when it is used. Mr. Koizumi used emotional appeals to sway the electorate, but he was an adroit, skillful politician with an engaging personality. In contrast, Mr. Abe lacked political skills, and his personality, while not unpleasant, tended toward the bland businesslike demeanor Japanese expect from men at work.

It is interesting to speculate what might have happened had Mr. Koizumi applied his skills and personality to propagating Mr. Abe’s themes as well as his own. His popularity in Japan certainly didn’t suffer because of his Yasukuni visits. I suspect Mr. Koizumi would have been more successful in promoting Mr. Abe’s agenda than some critics might want us to believe, but that is of course unknowable.

Another unknowable element is what will happen to the political process in Japan in the future. As memories of the past fade and a competitive two-party system becomes firmly established, a greater incorporation of pathos in politics is likely.

Both the expression of the Japanese political ideal and the reality of political discourse today might be gleaned from comments in Sangi-in Nanka Iranai (which I’m tempted to translate as We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Upper House), a book-length roundtable discussion featuring the participation of former upper house members Murakami Masakuni of the Liberal Democratic Party, Hirano Sadao of the Democratic Party of Japan, and Fudesaka Hideyo of the Communist Party.

Mr. Murakami expresses the ideal for politicians in Japan with logos-based principles that aren’t often heard in the United States these days:

Politics must be more sober and serious. Politicians need to be popular, but the pursuit of popularity must not be the objective of politics. To do so is to mistake the means for the end. There also must be a standard of morality, in which the minimum condition is that the politician must not lie.

It is important to remember that Mr. Murakami means what he says.

Ideals as these, however, must confront the reality that people consume politics through television, and that the demands of television are intrinsically pathos-based and seek the dramatic rather than the sober and the serious. Politicians become the servants of television, rather than the other way around. Mr. Hirano told a story about a television appearance he made last year:

When I recently appeared on a television program, the subjects of conversation were all about political crises involving the upper house election. I blurted out that we should discuss the reform of the upper house and its role in politics. All the other people on the program agreed with me. But that part was cut out of the broadcast.

I don’t expect to see a Japanese politician follow the lead of Al Gore and use the techniques of daytime soap opera in an election campaign, but it’s also likely that Prof. Uchiyama is fighting a losing battle if he wants to keep pathos out of Japanese politics.

Let’s hope that Japan is more successful than the Americans at resisting the temptation to indulge in bathos.

Endnotes:

1. Both Mr. Murakami and Mr. Fudesaka resigned from the upper house under a cloud—Mr. Murakami because of a financial scandal (he protests his innocence) and Mr. Fudesaka because of sexual harassment charges (which he admitted were true).

2. People may find Prof. Gronbeck’s paper difficult to read, particularly non-native speakers of English. He is an academic in the social sciences writing for other academics in the same discipline, which means clarity is not essential, and he is not a particularly good writer to begin with. He also tends to use words that few people will understand, such as “psycho-epistemological” (assuming that word means something in the real world). It took me three tries before I could get through the essay from start to finish without stopping and without my eyes glazing over.

The WaPo’s cure for Japan’s demographic ills

BLAINE HARDEN OF THE WASHINGTON POST offers another textbook example of two-dimensional journalism about Japan in an article titled Demographic Crisis, Robotic Cure?

Ostensibly, the article has two major points:

1. The Japanese face the most serious demographic crisis of any nation in the world today. The country’s population could shrink to 42 million by this time next century.
2. Japan chooses to deal with the looming labor shortage through the development of robots, not through immigration.

But even a casual reading of the article makes it apparent that the two points Mr. Harden really wishes to present are these:

1. The Japanese face the most serious demographic crisis of any nation in the world today. The country’s population could shrink to 42 million by this time next century.
2. Japan is still too racist, xenophobic, and ethnocentric to allow the problem to be solved by immigrants, and working women don’t want to have children because the country’s men are still too sexist to help with child-rearing and the housework. The Japanese are such dweebs they’d rather develop robots instead.

Pay attention and you’ll have no trouble spotting the standard techniques: Mr. Harden finds some people who support the idea he wishes to present and inserts their quotes at points chosen for maximum effect. Knowing that newspaper readers often will not finish an entire article, he places the mitigating information toward the rear. He then rebuts the mitigating information himself with more tailor-made quotes, and gives the rebuttal substantially more space than the counterargument.

And most typical of all, Mr. Harden unobtrusively inserts the real point of the article at other carefully chosen points. He finds a Japanese to propose immigration as the only “rational” solution to the problem—without a rational examination of its ramifications—and then slips the knife into the Japanese in the last clause by claiming they won’t consider it (emphasis mine):

What ails this prosperous nation could be treated with babies and immigrants. Yet many young women here do not want children, and the Japanese will not tolerate a lot of immigrants.

He does it again here:

Highly restrictive and aggressively enforced immigration laws have broad support from the Japanese public, which blames immigrants for crime, impolite behavior and untidiness.

He gets this quote out of a foreign observer:

“(Robots) are a nice excuse not to address the issue of immigration. They do not cause crime. They are not foreign people.”

Does he make a solid case that immigration would work? If he does, it certainly eludes me. Japan has a serious demographic problem, but the author has not made the effort to consider the real-world implications of the solution he clearly supports. Perhaps he is too enamored of the multicultural fantasy to recognize its inherent flaws. Or perhaps, as we’ve seen before, a negative view of Japan is the default position of the Washington Post.

Foreign residents in Japan

But consider this: Japan has no problem admitting educated foreigners with job skills and permitting the long-term residence of those foreigners who have demonstrated a willingness to acclimate themselves to life here. In fact, I am a de facto “immigrant”—I’ve lived in the country nearly 24 years, I own a home, my business is in Japan, and I have a permanent resident visa. No one in Japan placed any obstacles in my way for any of this, and most of it was achieved with Japanese encouragement and support. All it took was a willingness to stay employed, obey the law, and learn the Japanese language.

And I’m not alone–there are plenty of non-Japanese of all nationalities here doing exactly what I’m doing.

But Mr. Harden is using a proxy to make the case for the admission of “at least” 10 million immigrant workers. (Elsewhere, that proxy has suggested 20 million immigrants.) It is unlikely that he, or anyone else who advocates that solution, has given serious thought to what that would entail.

An ill-considered solution

The work for which robots are being considered is the simplest of manual labor. If three- or four-generation households were still common in Japan, the task of feeding an enfeebled older person, for example, might be handled by any child older than 10. A sophisticated set of job skills is not a requirement.

Therefore, the people the proponents of massive immigration insist Japan should admit would largely be unskilled and uneducated labor.

Where would they come from? Well, some would come from China—ambitious Chinese have emigrated all over the globe for years. The next most likely source in East Asia would be The Philippines. But ten million people is roughly 8% of Japan’s current population. Where would Japan find the rest of the hired help?

I’ve worked in three municipal jurisdictions as an interpreter for prosecutors interviewing overseas manual laborers caught while being smuggled into the country by Korean fishermen, so I know from experience where many of them would come from: countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

In essence, what the immigration proponents and their cheering section in the Western media are proposing is that Japan should embark on the biggest planned immigration program in history by importing and assimilating 10 million unskilled, and by definition uneducated, workers ill-equipped to handle the tsunami of culture shock awaiting them. Here’s what Mr. Harden’s Japanese proxy suggested:

“Robots can be useful, but they cannot come close to overcoming the problem of population decline,” said Hidenori Sakanaka, former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau and now director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute, a research group in Tokyo.
“The government would do much better spending its money to recruit, educate and nurture immigrants,” he said.

Ten million of them? To plan and build the infrastructure for recruiting that many unskilled laborers to perform menial tasks, educating them to become self-sufficient in one of the most difficult foreign languages to learn—an effort that would require the better part of a decade, assuming they studied in earnest—and “nurturing” them to enable them to survive comfortably in a country with a distinctive culture vastly different from their countries of origin, demands a massive, prioritized effort by the national government that would render it incapable of devoting its attention to the real matters of state.

And there is no guarantee that such an effort would even succeed. The only countries that have successfully accepted and integrated large numbers of immigrants are those countries founded by immigrants to begin with.

Post-immigration Japan

But as we’ve seen in Europe, the progressive multiculturalists would respond to these difficulties by demanding that Japan itself change to accommodate the immigrants and allow them to retain their own languages and culture. Indeed, a hallmark of European multiculturalists is that they do not want the immigrants to assimilate. That would be much too judgmental and nationalist. (For additional reading on this subject try the articles under the category of Islam and the West on the website of Bruce Bawer, author of the book While Europe Slept.)

I have some experience with this too: I give informal cultural advice and English information to a local primary school teacher charged with handling a child who can speak only English. The boy’s Japanese mother gave birth to him overseas in an English-speaking country, got divorced, and returned to Japan. She refuses to speak Japanese to the child and insists that he be taught in English. For some reason, the local school system has acceded to the mother’s demands.

Multiply that by ten million. Then, in addition to English, which many educated Japanese can handle to an extent, factor in the complications of teaching children in Tagalog and Urdu.

Sayonara, Nihon

There is, of course, one other aspect to this issue. Many of the immigrants would come from Muslim countries in central and southern Asia, and they would demand the provision of Islamic education and religious institutions. Japan today has very few mosques. But the Saudis would surely be happy to lend their financial support, infecting Japan with the same Wahhabist bacillus that has gained a foothold in Europe.

Shall we ask the Europeans how well their plan to allow Muslim immigration to augment the labor pool is working out for them?

What the immigration proponents are suggesting is nothing short of Japanese national suicide. Yes, Hidenori Sakenaka and some other Japanese favor the immigration scheme, but every country has its harebrained schemers. For an idea of what the likely result of massive immigration would be, try this description by Mark Steyn in the New Criterion:

Much of what we loosely call the western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands— probably—just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate.

Substitute Japan for Italy and the Netherlands, and the Ise Shrine for St. Sophia’s Cathedral, and you get the idea.

To be sure, the Japanese may yet commit national suicide without anyone’s help if current demographic trends continue.

But here’s the choice: invest a substantial portion of the national assets and energy into an unrealistic proposal to “recruit, educate, and nurture” 10 million immigrants, or to put the money, technical skills, and intelligence to work to develop robots. The Japanese already utilize 40% of the world’s industrial robots, so their success is not out of the question.

If I’m in a position of authority in Japan, I know which scheme I pick.

This should be obvious for anyone who bothers to think it through, instead of indulging in self-congratulation by demonstrating one’s moral superiority at the expense of a falsely assumed Japanese backwardness.

Endnote: The Mark Steyn article requires registration. I urge Japanese visitors in particular to register and read the entire article. This is a critical international issue, but I have seen very little discussion of it yet in Japan.

The media’s anti-Japan bias: Nothing new under the sun

AS THE TWIG IS BENT, so grows the tree, goes the old saying, which might explain some of the recent hostility shown toward Japan from those in Britain regarding the whaling controversy.

Reports have emerged that the late Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, father of the current prime minister, was livid over the 1970s Granada TV documentary Eastern Promise in its World in Action series produced when Hitachi wanted to open a plant in England to manufacture television sets. Mr. Fukuda even summoned the British charge d’affaires for an old-fashioned diplomatic dressing down.

Some of the problems with the program included:

• The opening scene with an animated graphic showing a Trojan horse cut open with a samurai sword to reveal the names of Japanese companies competing with European businesses
• An excerpt from a wartime movie showing a POW with Japanese guards (For a documentary about a factory?)
• A scene with Americans wearing anti-Japanese T-shirts protesting at a Japanese factory. Granada TV admitted it staged the scene for the program.
• Alleged “punishment rooms” in Japanese factories to shame workers, including a scene with a room that had distorting mirrors and dummies of the boss
• The ending scene, in which a Japanese businessman swinging a golf club morphed into a samurai swinging a sword

Granada later said it made errors in judgement, and specifically mentioned the punishment room scene and the American demonstration scene.

Considering the ongoing failure of the world’s media to produce anything resembling an accurate picture of Japan, the negative images of this country held by the public at large elsewhere should be no surprise.

And considering the nature of the news media itself–which presents little more than entertainment for people with an interest in current events–this state of affairs is unlikely to ever improve.

BBC: Inciting racial hatred of the Japanese?

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent.
- Epictetus

THE UNITED KINGDOM HAS A LAW known as the Public Order Act of 1986. This website describes the intent of the law as follows:

The law covering criminally racist material makes it an offence to stir up racial hatred against a group of persons in Great Britain defined by reference to colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins.
This act makes it an offence for a person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if -
(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

The website notes that the government has not put the text of the law online, though it does sell hard copies.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as the BBC, is based in the United Kingdom and is the largest broadcast organization in the world. The BBC motto is, “Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation”.

They operate BBC News, which is the world’s largest broadcast news organization. They present news stories on television and radio, and place the text and audio of some of these stories on their website.

One such story is “Can Whaling Be Justified”. For this story, BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher—an appropriate name for a journalist covering a whaling story–will report on the Japanese whaling expedition from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza.

The BBC allows its audience to comment on the stories it places on the website in a feature called Have Your Say. This feature has been activated for Jonah Fisher’s reports on whaling.

Posters must follow certain rules when commenting in the Have Your Say area. Some of them are as follows:

No defamatory comments. A defamatory comment is one that is capable of damaging the reputation of a person or organisation.
Do not incite people to commit any crime, including incitement of racial hatred.
Do not post messages that are unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive.

When they refer to the crime of racial hatred, they are referring in part to the activities prohibited by the Public Order Act of 1986, as explained above.

To make sure that posters abide by the rules, the BBC moderates this message board. There are two types of moderation. The type of moderation in force for the whaling story is “Fully Moderated”.

Here the BBC defines Fully Moderated:

This is also known as pre-moderation. Every comment submitted to a fully moderated discussion has to be checked by a BBC moderator before it is published on the site.

The readers of the website can complain about comments the moderators have allowed. The BBC explains the purpose of this option as follows:

It is only for serious complaints about comments, namely that they are obscene, abusive, threatening, unlawful, harassing, defamatory, harmful, profane, racially offensive, or otherwise strongly objectionable.
The Have Your Say moderators will decide whether the comment breaks the House Rules. If it does, they will remove it. If it doesn’t, it will be allowed to remain on the site.

The following comments were posted on the Have Your Say area of the BBC website in regard to the whaling story. Because this is a Fully Moderated topic, the BBC moderators read each one first and thought that racial hatred is not “likely to be stirred up thereby”. Also, if any of the posters complained, their complaints were rejected.

I leave it to the readers’ judgment to determine whether the following comments comply with the law of the United Kingdom and BBC standards.

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING:

1. The names and countries of origin of the posters have been removed. However, the posts here were sent not only from Great Britain, but also continental Europe, North America, and Asia.
2. The posts are copied exactly as they appeared, including punctuation and spelling.
3. They are displayed here in alternating italicized and bolded text. This is only to facilitate reading and is not intended to imply a special emphasis on my part.

START QUOTED TEXT

two words….. Enola Gay. Worked last time.

How about we harpoon a few Jap Whalers to let them know how it feels to have an exploding warhead tearing through them.

Are we allowed to hunt Japanese? Seems only fair.

Would anyone shed a tear if the whaling boat had an accident and sank it? Not me.<