Ishihara on Nanikore

Ishihara vs. France ... then the world!!

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 14:46:32 +0000

It’s been a while since I observed any news from this man, which is more a reflection of me being busy as I’m sure not a day passes that Shintaro Ishihara, liberal governor of Tokyo, doesn’t come out with some stunning quip. Here’s another which has got him slapped with a lawsuit by several French speakers here in Tokyo. Here’s a sample:

Ishihara said [on] Oct 19, “I have to say that it should be no surprise that French is disqualified as an international language because French is a language which cannot count numbers.”

There’s a better article at the BBC here.

In context, Ishihara has had some misfortune of late when his right hand enforcer resigned, and recent local elections in Tokyo have cut into his support. That said, he’s a right winger who tells people the kind of things they want to hear, as the UN pointed out in a recent brief, that Japanese politicians are eager to use nationalism and rhetoric to get the vote, and right now, it seems to be what many Japanese like to hear.

Indeed he said that if PM Koizumi stopped his visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine, the country would fall to pieces! Powerful stuff. However, it was his assertion:

“women living after losing their ability to give birth is a waste and a crime.”

here that shows that he knows how to keep the country together.

As a summary to this post, take a look at this article over at issho.org.

Yup, the man is a loon, yet strangely, morbidly entertaining. Also, there’s more where he came from.

Is anyone paying the pensions?

Sun, 16 May 2004 14:27:23 +0000

Japan is currently being rocked by pension scandals involving politicians from all over the place.

I was watching TV this morning, where it was showing hundreds of people turning up at City Halls to pay their pension, which begs the question - is anyone in Japan paying their pension?

We always heard stories of how in an aging society Japan wouldn’t be able to pay old people, and yet it turns out that the main reason for this is because no-one seems to be paying!

OK, that’s a little extreme. Most workers have the money deducted at source, and only self employed and some other groups (students strangely enough, self employed and many public employees for example) have to sort it out themselves. Kan-san, the leader of Japan’s opposition party quit over 10 months of non-payment, another LDP politician - Fukuda-san - went after not paying for (possibly) 8 years. Even my good friend Tokyo Mayor Ishihara didn’t pay some - though he blames his wife, and/or his accountant.

Some people are blaming the sheer complexity of the system, and it must be said, many of these systems are incredibly complex. However, when I worked at a city hall, and asked why these things were so complex, they answered that it was because they had to give so many council employees something to do - to aid employment. It sounds plausible.

Whatever the reason though, I feel sorry for those people who have been paying, month in, month out, knowing that they’re unlikely to see much of that money in their old age.

The foreign press also seem to have latched onto it - here.

There is some light in this though - the press really does seem more willing now to follow political scandal than they used to, and there’s a bit more investigation work going on, rather than just trying to find out which idol is dating which sumo rikishi.

Ishihara's Hanabi

Mon, 01 Dec 2003 00:15:39 +0000

Just a couple of weeks after Tokyo Mayor Ishihara - one of my favourite people - condemned the Chinese rocket programme as using old technology, Japan launched two spy satellites onboard one if it’s home-grown H-2A rockets…and then had to self-destruct the vehicle minutes after takeoff for unspecified reasons, thus creating the largest, most expensive hanabi (firework) of the year. Congratulationas Ishihara-san. [ China View] [ News24] .