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10-10-2008, 08:43 AM
try not to shoot the messenger, and that is not the messenger of truth but the messenger of what wiki says
Yasuhiro Nakasone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia only in japanese though but more on what nakasone presumingly said 知的水準発言 - Wikipedia 蒼天（そうてん）翔（か）ける日輪（にちりん）の 青春の覇気 美（うるわ）しく 輝く我が名ぞ 阪神タイガース ※オウ オウ オウオウ 阪神タイガース フレ フレ フレフレ 
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10-10-2008, 12:38 PM
Nakasone was more than a mere politician. Even if his comments were his personal opinion, as prime minister, his voice, by and large, was that of his country.
If George Bush said something similarly unwise (a good probability), people outside America would be of the opinion that he spoke for America.
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10-10-2008, 01:43 PM
That may very well be true... But you don`t see everyone digging out remarks made by, say, Reagan as an example of how the people of the US feel today.
The comment was a poorly made comment, caused outrage in (and out of) Japan - that was made over 20 years ago. If people want to hunt for fodder, I`m sure you could dig up some pretty unpleasant comments made by some leader of every country in the past 20 to 30 years. Does that reflect the feelings of the current population? Likely not - particularly if it was something that caused outrage in the country the comment was made in.
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10-14-2008, 03:24 PM
How about something less than a month ago?
Tourism minister apologizes for gaffes | The Japan Times Online Nice foot mouth Nakayama! But just cos some conservative politician spouts something I wouldn't take it as a consensus on the issue...
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10-14-2008, 07:24 PM
It was juast a few years ago when there was the controversy about posters put up around Tokyo warning people to watch for foreigners committing crime. A student once said to me, when discussing crime rates, that Japan now has "american" crime. Typical attitude. I educated her that those are Japanese committing crime, so it is "Japanese" crime. Much of the crime gerts swept under the rug.
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10-15-2008, 10:07 AM
Crime happens in Japan, just as it happens everywhere else. But no one can deny that Japan has less crime than most other developed countries. One also can't deny that Japan has very little diversity racially or culturally. Only 1% of the population is foreign. It's not hard to put 2 and 2 together and either blame foreigners for crime, or the lack of diversity as one of the reasons for how little crime there is.
One of the reasons Japan has a low crime rate is it's criminal justice system. There are no juries here. If you are charged with a crime, it will be heard in front of a judge who will decide the case on the evidence and the law. Your lawyer will not bring up your troubled childhood or how society failed you during your teenage years. More than likely he'll tell you to plead guilty and take whatever punishment is handed out. Is it any wonder that the vast majority of defendants in Japan plead guilty? In America, people routinely get away with murder or other crimes. That is not so in Japan. There are no Barry Schecks, Alan Dershowitzs, or Melvin Bellis here who can plant doubt in the heads of jurors in the most airtight of criminal cases. There is no "American" style crime here. Crimes of passion are fairly common, as are corruption cases, and garden variety theft. There is extremely little random violence (though it still happens on occasion). Many of you probably think that one of the reasons that the crime rate in Japan is so low is because there are no guns in Japan. But this isn't true either. About 250,000 private citizens in Japan are licensed to own firearms. These licenses have to be renewed annually, but they are not all that difficult to get. And those are the legally owned guns. In Japan, like anywhere else in the world, if you want a gun, and you have the money, you'll be able to find one.
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