These days, there are only two kinds of people.

There are the good guys. They support democracy.

Then, there are the bad guys. We call them terrorists.

Now which are you?

Fukuda plans to remove suicide Web sites
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda indicated Friday his intention to shut down suicide assistance Web sites, responding to the recent murder case in which the operator of such a site allegedly killed a suicidal woman by contract. “What do you say to the fact that there has been nothing done to regulate [suicide assistance Web sites]?” Fukuda said to reporters. “As it’s true that [government action] will be effective [in controlling such Web sites], it’s time to consider the matter from various perspectives.” Fukuda also mentioned the issue at an unofficial Cabinet meeting the same day and instructed ministers to work together to prevent suicides.
“It’s not good that a way of thinking that belittles other people’s lives has spread,” Fukuda said at the meeting. “As it’s an issue that must be addressed by the entire community as a whole, we’ll embark on a comprehensive policy to deal with it.”

Fact: A suicde assistant web site can be hosted outside of Japan in a foreign country.

Conclusion: There is nothing Fukuda can really do to shut such sites down.

Guess: Fukuda will enact some obtrusive and wasteful legislation that will not solve the problem.

I regard assisted suicide as murder. I regard suicide as tragic, but as something that only harms the individual and therefore not something the government should concern itself with.

A mechanism should be in place so that such sites in Japan can be shut down once discovered. (Is there really no law now that would allow for this?)

Providers should not have to inspect every site to determine its content. This would hamper them so severely that a lot of Internet business would move outside of Japan. Pray the Japanese government is not really that stupid.

I quote from a recent Yomiuri editorial and make comments.

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Documents show evidence of N-deal
The fresh discovery of U.S. government documents mentioning a secret deal reached during Japan-U.S. talks over the reversion of Okinawa Prefecture to Japanese rule has served as another convincing piece of evidence for the long-held suspicion that the two governments agreed to allow nuclear weapons to be brought into the post-reversion prefecture. … Though the government still flatly denies the existence of the secret deals, testimonies and documents have proved them to be historic facts.

Ponta, a really good commentator, recently remarked on this blog, I think most Japanese object to having nuclear weapon.

This is exactly right. I hear this all the time. But how many Japanese object to being under America’s nuclear umbrella?

What is this like? Imagine a person constantly followed around by a machine-gun toting bodyguard say, “I object to guns and will never carry one around with me.”

Here’s an interesting article:
Children’s fitness at ‘critical’ level, survey finds

According to this article general heath is decreasing for elementary schools students. Your average 6th grade boy used to be able to run 50 meters in about 8.60 seconds, but now it takes 8.89 seconds.

Now before you start asking things like, is it video games, too much TV and so on, ask yourself this, is this something the central government really needs to be concerned about?

I guess to the degree we have centralized education in Japan, one would have to say, yes. But let me ask you this, is the decline consistent throughout Japan? Have boys in Tokyo declined as much as those in Okinawa? Have high income families’ children declined as much as low income families’ children?

Hm. I feel like shouting. I think I will –

We all must be healthy in order to serve the state better!

There that feels better. By the way, should the parents have any input into this?

What’s the obvious conclusion that can be drawn from the following?

43 Kyoto officials made false bereavement claims
The Kyoto municipal government announced Tuesday that 43 municipal government officials took bereavement leave after falsely claiming that relatives had died. The number of paid days off taken illegally as bereavement leave totaled 142 between April 2002 and June 2007, the municipal government said. The municipal government took disciplinary measures against 53 officials, including those who supervised the officials involved in the falsifications. Of these, 29 were suspended from work for three days to six months.

Is it that Japanese don’t have a penchant for the truth? No. (Despite what some might claim.)

Is it that you can’t trust government workers? No.

It’s this. Don’t qualify what days people can take off from work. Just give people a limited number of free days, and then dock their pay when they exceed this. Anything else forces the employer to pry into the personal life of the employee. Prying into anyone’s personal life is likely to produce lies. It should be avoided.

I bring this up because I know many who will leap at an article like this and use it as proof for their favorite nihonjinron theory, whatever it may be.

This is a long rambling post about Japan’s Indian Ocean operation. I also discuss the situation in Afghanistan as well.

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From a Yomiuri opinion piece:
.

… it was natural for Fukuda and Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Bunmei Ibuki, in his interpellation of the prime minister, to call for policy discussions between the ruling and opposition blocs on such issues as pension system reform, reform of the taxation system, including the consumption tax, and the extension of the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s refueling mission in the Indian Ocean.
 
But Hatoyama refused to accept the LDP’s olive branch, saying, “We don’t want to have closed-door talks like bid-rigging negotiations.” Instead, Hatoyama urged Fukuda to “organize Diet debates between the prime minister and opposition party leaders before seeking talks with opposition party leaders [in forums other than the Diet]” in order to “realize full-fledged discussions at the Diet.”

If I am reading this correctly, then I agree with the DPJ’s stance here. If there’s going to be cooperation or compromise, it shouldn’t be over sake in some izakaya, but instead as a result of open debates that the public can follow. Sounds too good to be true …

The Yomiuri opines:

It should be noted, however, that the ministry’s suggested revisions were not intended to deny the army’s “involvement” in the mass suicide.
 
For example, the draft of one textbook stated, “The Japanese Army drove local residents out of trenches, murdered some on suspicion of spying and forced others to commit mass suicide and kill each other, using hand grenades that the army distributed to them.” In the screening process, the first half of the description was kept intact, while the latter part was rewritten to read that “mass suicide and mutual killing took place, using hand grenades distributed to local people by the Japanese Army.”
 
The ministry’s decision to suggest revisions to the descriptions in question reflected its belief that it was not necessarily evident whether the mass suicide had occurred as a result of coercion by the army …
 
… history textbooks must be written entirely based on historical facts. Their contents should not be rewritten just to avoid hurting people’s feelings and smooth out Diet proceedings.
 
The foundation of textbook screening–a system that must be neutral and fair–could be shaken if descriptions in textbooks are subject to any changes in the political situation.

Indeed, if facts are so easily determined why even bother with something as cumbersome as democracy.

Surely the dear editors are joking. I stand by my pervious views on this.

The Japan Business Federation is looking for ways to extend the foreign trainee programs to the extent that a foreigner could stay in Japan a total of eight years so long as they were taking part in a training program. (link). Once this time period is up, then presumably they would have to return to their home countries.

Of course, as we know that this is only a response to Japan’s impending labor shortage, we also know that this is not an attempt to train people, but to alleviate the future labor shortage by allowing so called “temporary” workers. The idea being that “temporary” workers will alleviate the labor shortage, but not do damage to Japan’s cultural institutions.

Let’s ask a few questions.

Is the Japanese constitution based on the idea of universal human rights? Like the American constitution, is the force driving the constitution the notion that people have inalienable rights?

Is citizenship or nationalization (the process of becoming a national) something that is based on universal human rights? Or instead is it based on showing commitment to your new home? Or instead is it based on being something (like Japanese or American) in an essentialist sense?

For example, even if a foreigner hates Japan, from the perspective of universal human rights, would this foreigner accrue the right to be in Japan after having been in Japan a certain number of years?

In short, what I am saying is this: eight years is a heck of a long time to allow someone to stay in Japan and live, only to say at the end of that period, “all right, times up, head home.”