A Return to Political Theater? Immediately after the recent Cabinet reshuffle, the Abe administration has suddenly become plagued by a series of scandals. Usually these scandals are intentionally made by the Japanese politicians themselves. Rather than simply refuse to do what America asks Japan to do, typically Japanese politicians start saying and doing stupid things. Then, when America asks Japan to do something, Japan tells America that it is consumed by the recent scandals and has no time to do anything else. “Usually when a new administration comes in--and I mean back to when (Richard) Nixon came in--Japanese officials show up and they tell the president and secretary of state what they can’t do,” said Richard Armitage. “We cannot do that because of political constipation.” In general, whenever America asks Japan to do something, Japan declares its willingness to implement those requests, forms a new Cabinet, and apparently tries to implement the changes. “It is an old routine that goes back half a century: a sudden show of resolve in Tokyo to do whatever it takes to fix whatever problem worries the United States -- complete with ‘reformist’ ministers and bold policy pronouncements,” said Akio Mikuni and R. Taggart Murphy. “In time, both the policy and the minister are forgotten, and Japan returns to business and politics as usual.” What “prevents” Japan from doing what America wants are the never ending scandals, the slips of tongue, etc. The “scandals” themselves are typically created by the Japanese politicians intentionally. Once the scandals begin, the politicians, the media, and everyone else focuses on the scandals and not on implementing the requests made by America. When it comes to the recent scandals, however, things may be different. If it were simply a matter of a bunch of Japanese politicians suddenly saying a bunch of stupid things, I would say that the scandals were intentionally created by the Japanese politicians themselves to avoid having to do what America wants. However, these recent scandals have to do with the use of political funds. All politicians are corrupt. Japanese politicians are no exception. Politicians are selected because they are corrupt. This allows the people who hold real power to take down any politician they want at any time by simply exposing a politician’s corruption to the public. That may be what is happening here. The recent scandals seem to revolve around the fate of Abenomics and the restart of the nuclear reactors. There are two possibilities here. If Abe is serious about implementing Abenomics, if Abe is serious about restarting the nuclear reactors in Japan, then the scandals have suddenly erupted probably because of the actions of the U.S. government, who has instigated their stooges in Japan to take Abe down. On the other hand, if Abe does not like Abenomics, if Abe does not want to restart the nuclear reactors, then the scandals were probably created by Abe to avoid having to do what America wants him to do. I mention these two possibilities because I do not know whether either Japan or America likes Abenomics or wants Japan to restart their nuclear reactors. I can think of several reasons why both sides would want Japan to implement those policies. And I can think of several reasons why both sides would not want Japan to implement those policies. My ignorance about Abenomics and the restart of the nuclear reactors is, in part, due to the fact that I have not followed the debate on these issues closely. In the case of the reactor restarts, I have sort of recused myself from the debate due to my personal history (my father was involved in the design of the cooling system for the Fukushima 1 reactor).
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 03:40:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015