Friday, June 21, 2013

”it shall be for food for thee” - FRB vs BOJ


Mt. Fuji and Tokyo Tower


FRB vs BOJ

The fund balance of FRB has reached $2.5 trillion, three times larger than it was before the Lehman Shock.

However, as the nominal GDP of the US is $15 trillion, the balance accounts for just 15%.

On the other hand the Bank of Japan recorded 156 trillion yen of the balance in 2012, while Japan's GDP was a little less than 500 trillion yen ($5.5 trillion).  

So, the US seems to have twice more room than Japan for the limit of financial manipulation to cope with the current financial crisis.  Nonetheless the US dollar is the major key currency in the world.  FRB supply of money to the market must be more strictly controlled.



 Trend of Fund Balance of FRB (unit: billion dollar)


Trend of Gov. Bonds Held by Bank of Japan (unit: 100 million yen)
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/yatutade/GALLERY/show_image.html?id=37013178&no=2



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Gen 6:20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
Gen 6:21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
Gen 6:22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

"forsake not the law of thy mother" - Shogun and Emperor


Tokyo Bay


Shogun and Emperor

The first ruler of Japan is historically believed to have presided over half of Japan from Yamato, a region now called Nara Prefecture, in the fourth century, though a queen of Yamato, named Himiko, was recorded as one of major rulers of Wa (presently Japan) in the third century in the Chinese historical book called the Records of the Three Kingdoms written at the end of the fourth century by a Chinese historian/bureaucrat called Chen Shou.

Till the late 12th century, the imperial court had sole political power over the Japanese archipelago except Hokkaido and Okinawa.  Emperors, one after another, and noblemen lived in Kyoto after having moved the capital from Nara to Kyoto in the late 8th century.

As time went by, the samurai class (a kind of warriors with administrative and cultural ability or feudal lords and their officials with the sword) gradually won power and finally set their capital in Kamakura, 500 km east of Kyoto and near Tokyo Bay, around 1200.  The top of the samurai class, or virtually the king of samurais, however was nominally appointed to the position of shogun by the emperor living in Kyoto.   In a sense, since then, a reigning shogun (or his delegate) and an emperor coexisted in Japan.  A shogun had actual political, administrative, and military power while an emperor kept authority in the traditional social regime, the class system of the elites, and religions and culture.

This balance started to end when the Tokugawa shogun government, established in Edo (presently Tokyo), started to open the nation and modernize Japan in the middle of the 19th century after the closure of the nation that had continued for about 250 years.

When the Tokugawa clan succeeded in taking over power all over Japan in the early 17th century, they had no strong enemies in Japan except Christians.  As missionary priests sent by the Vatican to East Asia could freely preach in Japan from the middle of the 15th century, there were comparatively many Catholics at the time.  But they were critically against the rule by sword.  The shogun took great pains to put them under control.  So, finally Tokugawa samurai leaders decided to close the nation to prevent a Vatican influence from coming into Japan.

But with arrival of an American naval fleet led by Commodore Perry at Tokyo Bay in 1853, the Tokugawa shogun government decided to open the nation, since they found superior arms and technology in American ships, including some steamships.  But it invoked great commotions in the Japanese society.  First, other samurai lords who were against making a diplomatic tie with the US and other Western nations started to fight the Tokugawa regime.  Those anti-Tokugawa samurais took the emperor in Kyoto on their side, thus justifying their act of rebellion against the samurai government in Edo.

After years of bloody strife, a decisive civil war eventually broke out in 1868.  But luckily it ended within a year with an overwhelming victory of the anti-shogun samurai camp.  They changed the name of the city Edo to Tokyo and founded a new government with the emperor at its center.  So, it was a kind of restoration of the political power of the emperor 700 years after it had lost it, though it was almost nominal power the emperor could win at this time.  Anyway history calls it Meiji Restoration as the new era was called Meiji by the imperial court.

In the Meiji era, samurais abolished their old fashion of looking and behaving and adopted western-style clothing and manners.  They didn't wear the topknot and swords anymore.

Nonetheless most of the new elites of Meiji Japan and the subsequent Empire of Japan were actually ex-samurais or children and grand children of ex-samurais.  That is why the Empire of Japan easily and rapidly trended toward militarism when the Great Depression began in 1929 and the diplomatic relationships with the US and China went wrong.

So, you cannot judge what the Imperial Army and Navy did during WWII without understanding spirits and philosophy of samurais, since the core of the Japanese society before the end of WWII was ruled by sword rather than classical imperial traditions.




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Pro 6:20 My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother:
Pro 6:21 Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

"treasures upon earth" - Afghan Children


Prime Minister Office of Japan, Tokyo


Afghan Children

I have conviction that the God is watching poor people in Afghanistan, especially children.
Afghanistan War: Children Casualties Spike 
By KAY JOHNSON 06/13/13 10:08 AM 
At least 414 children were killed or injured in the first four months of this year, up 27 percent over the same period the previous year, UNICEF said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/afghanistan-war-children-casualties_n_3435285.html

Afghan refugee children, swim in muddy water created from a broken water pipe, on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Monday, June 17, 2013. 
Pakistan hosts over 1.6 million registered Afghans, the largest and most protracted refugee population in the world, according to the U.N. refugee agency. 
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/afghan-refugee-children-swim-muddy-water-created-broken-photo-061723689.html


June 13, 2013, 10:42 AM 
Number of kids killed in Afghanistan jumps, U.N. says

At least 414 children were killed or injured in the first four months of this year, up 27 percent over the same period the previous year, UNICEF said.
Of those, 121 children were killed and 293 were injured through April 30, UNICEF said in figures released Thursday.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57589130/number-of-kids-killed-in-afghanistan-jumps-u.n-says/


Afghan schools to reopen--to girls too 
March 20, 2002|By Patrick Kampert, Tribune staff reporter. 
Teachers are simply opening up the classrooms and inviting the children to come. And home schools that had been secret are now throwing open their doors to give kids a head start." 
The goal for Saturday's turnout is 1.5 million of the 10 million Afghan children under the age of 18. The curriculum, Ironside said, was developed by displaced Afghan educators over the last several years. (About 70 percent of teachers before the Taliban took control were women.)  
Under the Taliban, which controlled much of the country from 1996 to 2001, only 3 percent of girls had any kind of education, usually in home schools or in remote areas where the local commander was willing to look the other way. Sometimes, girls say, their brothers would teach them what they learned when they got home from school.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-03-20/features/0203190339_1_afghan-children-afghanistan-home-schools

Afghan children killed in 'NATO airstrike' 
President Hamid Karzai denounces reported death of 11 children by NATO forces in Kunar province and orders inquiry. 
Last Modified: 08 Apr 2013 07:42 
At least 11 children have reportedly been killed in a NATO airstrike in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan. 
The children were killed during a joint Afghan-NATO operation against Taliban fighters in the Shigal district of restive Kunar province bordering Pakistan late on Saturday, according to Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2013/04/20134712422926374.html
While Afghan children are suffering so much, rich Americans are enjoying their happy and rotten lives.  So, the God will punish rich Americans only for this reason.




http://schoolsuppliesforafghanchildren.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/using-my-pencil-for-more/





http://esterdad.zymichost.com/Album-Afghan-War-Children/slides/Afghan%20War%20Children%20(80).html



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Mat 6:19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

"thy Father, which seeth in secret" - One Alarmed at Pearl Harbor Attack


Streets behind Prime Minister's Office, Tokyo


One Alarmed at Pearl Harbor Attack

Almost all the citizens of the Empire of Japan were excited in great delight when they heard news that the Imperial Navy successfully attacked US naval bases in the Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in the early morning of  December 8, 1941, Japan Time.

But one noble-class woman got shocked and depressed.  Motoko Tokugawa thought the Empire could not win this war against the US.

She was born in 1907 in a family of the Japanese noble class.  Then she married a son of one of Tokugawa families who were once close relatives of the family of Tokugawa shogun, the ruler of Japan from the early 17th century to the middle of the 19th century.

Before WWII, she traveled Europe and the US to watch industrial development of Western society.  So, she could not believe that the Empire of Japan could compete with the US in terms of industrial output in making weapons.

Her husband also did not feel easy when he heard the news of the Pearl Harbor as he was then officer of the Imperial Navy.  He worried that if the US had taken Saipan the Empire would be fatally troubled.

But more interestingly the father of Motoko Tokugawa was a chamberlain for the crown prince of Taisho Emperor.  The crown prince later became Showa Emperor (Emperor Hirohito) who reigned the Empire from 1926 to 1989.  They once swam together in the sea around Tokyo.  The crown prince was proud that he could swim well than his guard, the father of Motoko Tokugawa.    

Anyway, it is very rare to find a record that somebody in Japan felt so alarmed when he or she heard the news of the Pearl Harbor attack, since most of the Japanese people had not been so well informed of the industrial potential of the United States in 1941.

Maybe the Emperor himself did not well comprehend the gap in industrial and scientific potential between the Empire of Japan and the US before WWII, since it was 1971 that the Emperor touched at Alaska and 1975 that he visited the White House.




The book Motoko Tkugawa (1907-1989) wrote

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E9%81%A0%E3%81%84%E3%81%86%E3%81%9F%E2%80%95%E5%BE%B3%E5%B7%9D%E4%BC%AF%E7%88%B5%E5%A4%AB%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%83%E5%8D%81%E4%BA%94%E5%B9%B4-%E6%96%87%E6%98%A5%E6%96%87%E5%BA%AB-%E5%BE%B3%E5%B7%9D-%E5%85%83%E5%AD%90/dp/4167679299

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Mat 6:16 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
Mat 6:17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;
Mat 6:18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

Monday, June 17, 2013

"and laid hold upon John" - Showa Emperor's Daughter



Shinbashi, Tokyo, in the Rain


Showa Emperor's Daughter

Showa Emperor (Emperor Hirohito) had seven children.

The eldest child was Princess Teru (Shigeko) who was born in 1925.

The Princess married other member of the imperial noble clan in 1943 while the Empire of Japan was engaged in the war against the United States after the Pearl Harbor attack.

The father of her husband, Prince Morihiro Higashikuni, became the first and only member of the imperial family that became prime minister of Japan after the Empire of Japan surrendered to the US on August 15, 1945.

But as the headquarters of the the US military led by General MacArthur stationed in Tokyo instructed the Japanese Government to deprive most of members of the imperial family of their official titles and privileges, the Higashikuni family lost their imperial title.

So, in 1947, the eldest daughter of Showa Emperor became wife of a private citizen Morihiro Higashikuni.  They were also imposed heavy tax on.  So, they lost their big assets.  Shigeko Higashikuni started to earn money by selling eggs and handling some plastic goods.

But she died in 1961 due to cancer.  It is said that this tragedy gave a great shock to her parents, the emperor who later awfully demised in 1989 and the empress in 2000.    

So, incumbent Emperor of Japan has lived 52 years longer than his elder sister.

Incidentally, the imperial family of Japan has no surname or family name, since it is not expected that other family takes over the incumbent imperial family.  There has been only one imperial family in Japan since foundation of the nation.  And there must be the only one.

In China, it was a usual practice that one dynasty was defeated by other strong family who became the next imperial family in its history over 3000 years.  So, Chinese imperial families had family names.

Finally reigning Emperor is the fifth children and also the eldest son between Showa Emperor and Empress.

And of course a daughter of the emperor becomes a private citizen when she marries a private man by law today.


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Mar 6:17 For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison for Herodias' sake, his brother Philip's wife: for he had married her.