(Japan, August 31, 2008; Click to enlarge, since I like this picture for myself as it shows a rather rare scene around Tokyo.)The Basics of Contemporary Japan
It was a big surprise that Mr. Colin Powell and Ms. Condoleezza Rice did not take a major part in the Republican Convention for officially endorsing Mr. McCain for U.S. Presidency.
We might have to review the basics of the contemporary U.S. society and mind sets later.
( http://www.redcruise.com/nakaoka/?p=258 )
PART 1. The U.S. Market
The most important thing for Japan is still the U.S. market even 63 years after the end of WWII.
Free and direct access of Japanese businesses to American consumers has been the most valuable thing for Japanese industries.
To secure the free and direct access to the U.S. market is the most important political issue in Japan, though it has not been so loudly discussed, since the U.S. Government has seldom acted against the Japan’s interests in this context.
Yet, the business world and the economic community of Japan always request the Japanese Government, Japanese bureaucrats, and Japanese politicians to give the highest priority to securing the free and direct access of Japanese businesses to the U.S. market.
In order to secure it, all the influential people in the business world and the economic community of Japan think that the Japanese Government should accept any political requests from the U.S. Government.
That is why Japan has allowed so many U.S. military bases to be maintained on the Japanese territory; Japan cooperates with the U.S. in the War on Terror; Japan has purchased so many U.S. Treasury bonds; and Japan mostly overlooks even greedy activities of U.S. financial institutes in the Japanese market.
It is all for securing the free and direct access of Japanese businesses to American consumers.
It is because the free and direct access to the American market is the wealth base of Japanese businesses.
However, today, China has become the largest export and import partner for Japan; the U.S. is now accordingly ranked as No.2.
The emergence of the huge market in China is not a matter of happening. It is a fruit of Japanese long and tireless efforts to open and expand the Chinese market.
Until several years ago Japan continued to provide various financial, technological, and other economic aid and support for China for decades (while China was illegally obtaining Japan’s industrial properties, offering strategic economic aid to African countries, and financially helping American politicians in a dubious manner).
That is also why non-nonsense Japanese businessmen never trust Japanese liberal politicians who blindly attack and blame Japanese conservative politicians for their policies toward the U.S. which are all intended to secure the free and direct access of Japanese businesses to the U.S. market.
(In my definition, Japanese liberal politicians mean those who have received money from North-Korea associated businesses and individuals living in Japan. And, Japanese liberal journalists mean those who are associated with Japanese liberal politicians.)
And, it is not Japanese liberal politicians and journalists that have cultivated the Chinese market as well as the U.S. market; but it is the Japanese Government, LDP, and Japanese businesses and ordinary Japanese workers producing and providing high-quality goods.
However, when the U.S. Government took a hostile policy against Japan by mistake, like in the case of the Clinton Administration due to its shallow understanding of relationships between the two major global powers, a strong sense of crisis would arise in the Japanese economic community.
As a matter of fact, Japan truly needed a Prime Minister like Mr. Jyunichiro Koizumi and the U.S. really needed a President like Mr. George W. Bush at the beginning of 2001, regardless of their lack in genuine love to poor citizens.
If you simply laugh at Mr. Jyunichiro Koizumi for his unconditional respect for Mr. Bush’s policies and think that then Prime Minister Mr. Koizumi is just a person of frivolous disposition, you are proving that you will fail and be disqualified in the board of directors of any non-nonsense Japanese company being engaged in the U.S. market. In short, I just meant that you cannot govern neither Japan nor any Japanese company such as Sony and Panasonic.
That is why I am telling you that the U.S. market has been the largest asset for Japan since the end of WWII to this day; and Japan has paid as much as possible to secure and keep it while no liberal journalists made an effort to cultivate and maintain it for the benefits of Japanese workers.
From a historical point of view, Japan is regarded as being very smart or smarter than American elites in this context, since American elites would not essentially pay a penny to make Japan the second largest economy after WWII.
PART 2. Comparison with Germany, Britain, and France
Some Japanese economists and journalists sometimes say that Japan is not smart at all in comparison with Germany, Britain, and France, since those three European countries often show reasonable independence from the U.S.
Comparison of Japan with these European powers is not so meaningful if you forget that they have a sense of superiority to the U.S. as the birth place of the material and spiritual civilizations to which the U.S. fully belongs.
First of all, German industries have had two big markets: the European market and the American market.
The German Government has not needed to make such great efforts as Japan has made to grow the Chinese market.
For German businesses, the European market was assured them of form the beginning as the safeguard for their profit making.
France is not an excellent country at all, though millions of Japanese regard France as the most advanced country in terms of culture.
It is said that those who cannot write reasonable French sentences account for 30% or 50% among residents in Paris.
French colonization in Asia led to brutal deaths of three millions under the Pol Pot regimes in Cambodia after WWII, though specifically in the wake of the end of the Vietnam War.
French colonization in Africa led to brutal deaths of one millions in Rwanda a decade ago.
Britain is out of question. Their royal family is one example. They do not respect moral.
British colonization generated today’s terror in the Middle East and South Asia
That is why I am telling you that you must not blindly learn from, or respect anything in, Germany, France, and Britain.
Yet, if you love European culture, start your study from the emergence of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, since everything valuable in today’s Europe is rooted in Jesus Christ.
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That is all for today.
I agree that the weather in Japan in this summer is a little strange.
In my theory, the whole earth is now shifting from a little warming and a little instability to a state of global cooling.
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Causes of ice ages
The causes of ice ages remain controversial for both the large-scale ice age periods and the smaller ebb and flow of glacial–interglacial periods within an ice age. The consensus is that several factors are important: atmospheric composition (the concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane); changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun known as Milankovitch cycles (and possibly the Sun's orbit around the galaxy); the motion of tectonic plates resulting in changes in the relative location and amount of continental and oceanic crust on the Earth's surface, which could affect wind and ocean currents; variations in solar output; the orbital dynamics of the Earth-Moon system; and the impact of relatively large meteorites, and volcanism including eruptions of supervolcanoes.
Some of these factors are causally related to each other. For example, changes in Earth's atmospheric composition (especially the concentrations of greenhouse gases) may alter the climate, while climate change itself can change the atmospheric composition (for example by changing the rate at which weathering removes CO2).
William Ruddiman, Maureen Raymo, and others propose that the Tibetan and Colorado Plateaus are immense CO2 "scrubbers" with a capacity to remove enough CO2 from the global atmosphere to be a significant causal factor of the 40 million year Cenozoic Cooling trend. They further claim that approximately half of their uplift (and CO2 "scrubbing" capacity) occurred in the past 10 million years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
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Indeed, in Japan, if you shout, “Another Ice Age is coming!” you will not be taken as a mad man.
Deplorably, in Japan, if you shout, “Jesus Christ will come again riding on the cloud!” you will be taken as an agent of some cult if not a mad man.
On the contrary, they are all crazy to love money and position so much while they will die even before the next ice age comes.
That is all for today, again, since tonight we have no late-night TV news program offering a humble weather forecast in a fine style.
(For those who love Jerusalm and Tokyo alike, frankly if not Paris, my dear:
http://www.menziesera.com/midi/telstar.mid
Source: http://www.menziesera.com/media/music_jukebox.htm)
Psa 9:6 O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end: and thou hast destroyed cities; their memorial is perished with them.
Psa 9:7 But the LORD shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment.
Psa 9:8 And he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness.
Psa 9:9 The LORD also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.
Psa 9:10 And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.
Psa 9:11 Sing praises to the LORD, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among the people his doings.