Japan Trivia 1: Secret Pacts
Thursday, March 11 2010 @ 03:52 AM CST
Contributed by: Y.Yamamoto
Totally disenchanted with the way things have unfolded around me in recent years, I've quit blogging on a regular basis. Only every once in a while
I'll upload an extra post, like this one, to take an oblique look at my former
fellow countrymen.
The Japanese are a funny species. They can metamorphose themselves into
anything that meets a description given by Westerners. In other words,
they say what they are supposed to say and they do what they are told to
do. Given this unique trait of the world's most suggestible and predictable people, it doesn't make sense to analyze their deeds and words as self-proclaimed Japan experts in the West are enthusiastically doing because you always end up digging out something you have implanted in them beforehand.
In short they are your mirrors.
The only valid way to really understand the creepy animals, therefore, is to
take a sneak peek at their behaviors when they are completely off guard. That is why in the future I will devote my leisure time to providing my audience with insider's views of trivial matters, in a more laid-back fashion, as they crop up.
The first instalment is about what they call secret pacts. I have no intention to argue for or against these taboos.
1974 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Eisaku Sato started advocating the Three
Nonnuclear Principles in 1967. Although he reiterated, over and over, his
hogwash about not producing, not possessing, and not letting in nuclear
weapons, everybody has been aware that the national mantra is at least
one-third false. And yet, policymakers and the media as their mouthpieces
have made it taboo to openly discuss the apparent existence of "secret
deals" with the U.S. in which Japan expressly allows its ally to bring
in the nukes, temporarily or not.
Now that the Democratic Party of Japan has taken over power from the other
twin, the Liberal Democratic Party, these bastards thought it was the right
time to cough up the truth.
Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada officially confirmed,
for the first time, that there were three secret pacts that would have
outraged the nuke-allergic people had they come out decades earlier. He put all the blame on the LDP administrations, which virtually monopolized power for more than half a century, as if he wasn't from the LDP that inked
all these accords.
Without doubt Okada had asked Robert Gates or Hillary Clinton for permission to disclose
the information. He or she must have answered: "Why not? Go ahead
if you feel like it. After all these years we have strenuously vaccinating the Japanese against reality, that wouldn't upset them at all. Neither would that jeopardize our defense strategy against communists in any way because in fact we see very few of them around these days." When the Foreign Minister got the green light from his boss in the U.S., he understood that he was the right person to say, "Let bygones be bygones."
Needless to say, Okada asked his U.S. counterpart, "What should I do to reciprocate your generosity?" The answer: "Of course, we want you to hold back the secret about Futenma until it becomes harmless."
 | So, that is that.
As I wrote in my previous post, the gut issue underlying the ongoing fuss over the so-called relocation of the U.S. Marine
Corps' Air Station lies with the fact that there are no identified enemies against whom the U.S. Marines need to protect the Japanese. But now it's DPJ's turn to cover up an important secret about the realignment of U.S. military forces in Japan. It won't slip out from the government or press until the plan is actually implemented. |
 | There is an expert exceptionally well-versed in international politics
and national security. His name is Satoshi Morimoto.
A couple of months ago, in TV Asahi's all-night debate program, Morimoto casually hinted at that new secret. He said: "To the best of my knowledge, it's not just a
relocation of gunships currently deployed in the air station. Pentagon
has been covertly planning to deploy what it calls 'Ospreys' in place of conventional
helicopters in a new location." |
He added that the Bell-Boeing V-22
Osprey is dubbed "the widow-making machine" because it is
still extremely prone to crashes upon vertical takeoff and landing.
In the wee hours of that morning, he revealed this much to the viewers of the TV Asahi, which certainly indicated that he had been chosen as an immunizing agent. That Morimoto is so well-informed about the secret should mean that he is not an independent pundit as he claims to be. His role this time around was to alleviate the jolt the Okinawans will eventually feel when they find out exactly what has been planned between Wahington and Tokyo since the onset of the project some thirteen years ago.
The same tactic was used, time and again, when a secret deal was struck between the two governments. The important thing for them is to leak critical information only little by little.
Needless to say, not a single media organization has since followed up
Morimoto's revelation. Stupid people are still talking about where to relocate
"helicopters" from the Futenma Air Station.
No matter which twin party takes power within the system in place here, this won't change. Even in America, things won't change until American widows, who have lost their loved ones in the Far East and Middle East, rise up against Washington
which has long been dominated by those who are dubbed "brain-dead conservatives" by Steven F. Hayward, or the black Carter and other liberals who are all out of their minds.
I don't know what to say in the face of the messy situation where the American people still can't snap out of the delusion from the Cold War era while the Japanese are determined to go with the downward flow originated upstream by American paranoids.
More than two decades have passed since Ronald Reagan brought down the Iron Curtain with his literally disarming charms and unwavering conviction. But now it looks as though the Gipper brought an end to the Cold War virtually for nothing. Most probably the Americans will see the "bright dawn" Reagan promised them only when they lose Cold War II.
I'm neither pro- nor con-relocation. I don't care a bit whether the air
station stays there in Okinawa, Japan's last colony, or the U.S. agrees to relocate it to another colony of its own such as Guam. Yet this used to make me cry. I was still expecting something from my former compatriots or their American friends - but not anymore.
To me the secret about Ospreys is yet another Japan trivia which is nothing but a worn-out joke. Some of you may find it laughable. That's a sound response. But remember, the Japanese are your mirrors. Actually you are laughing at yourself.
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