(A Tokyo subway line leaving National Stadium Sta.)Truth of Japanese Ladies
(La vérité de japonais chers)
1. A Japanese Madame Curie
Last night NHK's reporting program moderated by Ms. Hiroko Kuniya presented a Japanese female scientist who died this September.
The scientist, the late Ms. Katsuko Saruhashi, conducted in late 1950's "the first research showing how the effects of fallout can spread across the entire world, and not just affect the immediate area."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsuko_Saruhasi
It was when the US Government launched "more than 20 nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1958, including the first test of a practical dry fuel hydrogen bomb in 1952" at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, which harmed some Japanese fishing ships.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll
It was somehow very moving to see a Japanese lady who had been educated only in schools and higher education institutes in Japan but could achieve the result leading the world.
But, if we look back to the Japanese history and know that 50% of Japanese people (men 79%; women 21%; and samurai 100%) could read and write even before Japan's Westernization in the late 19th century and the literacy rates in Europe and North America in the 19th and 18th century were lower than Japan's (even farmers 20%), it may be not a big surprise.
2. Three-Year Blog by a Japanese Working Lady
In her blog, a Japanese woman reported on a report issued by the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva.
Rates of Those Who Possess Small Weapons per 100 Citizens:
USA.........90
Yemen.....61
Finland....56
Swiss.......46
Iraq.........39
Serbia......38
France.....32
Canada.....31
Austria.....31
Germany....30
There are 270 million small weapons possessed by citizens in the U.S., 46 million in India, and 40 million in China.
Roughly speaking, no Japanese citizens possess any fire arms, such as a handgun, which is one of big differences between Japanese and Americans or Europeans.
It also tells simply how less barbarous Japanese or the Japanese society is when compared with Americans and Europeans.
But, what took my attention on her blog was not such statistics.
She works in a security company; she loves works of literature created by Albert Camus; and she is interested in thoughts of John Maynard Keynes.
But, she also wrote that after three years of her writing blog she is now losing a confidence in continuing it.
http://triceratops.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/
However, I am faraid if Japanese politicians wrongly adopt and push globalization in Japan, the Japanese society will probably be full of handguns, and no ordinary working-class ladies will write about Albert Camus and John Maynard Keynes just like in the U.S. and Europe.
3. A Japanese Girl in a Reformatory
A Japan's Nippon Television news program presented last night a Japanese teenager who is now forced to spend her time in a public correction facility.
Her parents got divorced, and she lived with her mother who got mentally sick to stop working, which forced the girl to work immediately after graduating from the junior high school.
The girl did not like her job and had a severe quarrel with her mother. She got associated with a bad man who left her later; and she got involved in illegal act to be eventually arrested by police.
But, now her mind and heart are being cured in the reformatory where her mother sometimes visits for reconciliation.
* * *
The above may be a routine sequence of my checking news and trends of the day through TV and the Internet.
Ms. Hiroko Kuniya is still on active service on TV; the Internet is serving me for good cause; even Nippon Television, an affiliate company of the controversially-managed Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, is shifting its focus to social problems among ordinary or poor people.
But, it is a news program of the (once controversially-M&A-targeted) Fuji TV that has continued its focus on victims of a certain medication scandal who conducted a strike in front of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan, a moth ago.
Indeed, when other media neglected those victims sitting in a rainy night before the Ministry in Tokyo, they reported it even in the late night news program which usually completes my monitoring of the day.
Truly, this medication scandal aggravated by negligence by the Ministry is going to decide the fate of the incumbent ruling parties in the next general election, just like the movie "Sicko" directed by Mr. Michael Moore might have a decisive influence on the US Presidential Election, since even some Japanese politicians have praised in their blogs the film on hugely biased US health and medical systems.
(Now, Ms. Agnes Chan is reporting on poor people in India on an NHK satellite TV channel.
She, born in Hong Kong, has been popular in Japan as a celebrity in these 30 years.
That is why I am expecting a Japanese female reporter to report on poor people in Europe, the Islamic world, and the U.S.
By the way, today, Friday, is a public holiday in Japan. How I wish I could be lazy and relax for these three days ahead!)
"Jesus Warns against the Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees"
(Warnung vor Pharisaern und Gesetzeslehren)