and get an idea of the mish-mash of policies they put foward and their 'we're not racists we just like Japanese people more than foreigners' kind of rhetoric
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT4vY_SJimE
If you have to preface most of your speech and repeatedly say "we are not racists" then you know what the issue is. Blaming the other instead of looking at your own issues.
I've lived in Japan a long time; working in IT, I pay all my taxes, speak fluent Japanese and follow the rules like everyone else.
From what I can gather this is the issues she lays out:
1. The rice shortage is due to shipping Japanese rice overseas plus the foreigners eating too much of it... This in fact is due to government protectionism and they should be fighting against the LDP not some tourists in the country for a week.
2. Foreigners are buying up lots of apartment buildings and raising the rent. There have been some high-profile cases of Chinese nationals buying apartment buildings and doing this. I agree with taking some action on this - I think it's an easy fix to have a non-resident tax similar to what Singapore does (I believe theirs is %60)
3. Socioeconomic forces have made it impossible for women to stay at home with a child. Not sure kicking out all the foreigners would help this at all, seems like an issue with the stagnant wages and high taxes in Japan more than anything.
4. Foreign students are going to university in Japan and getting large scholarships / room and board paid by the government. Don't have much of an opinion on this one.
The main issue I have with their party is rolling all residents, tourists and the like into a single group and othering them. I agree the government needs to take action on a lot of these issues but just blaming all non-Japanese doesn't help either party.
If by "people" they mean "the people residing there" then maybe ok. If they mean "this particular ethnicity", like it's the case here, then it's fucked up and leads to an encore of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.
I'd have imagined that the first thing that "Japan First" would imply would be to kick out the US-bases, defend against the feudatory-lord like shake-down measures by the US.
It's so strange - the "Japan First" gang infact appears to be pro-occupation (let's not pretend this is not what this is), and have even been raising funds for the likes of imperialists like Kirk.
Almost seems like it's meant to keep Japan artificially glued to the US and out of Asia, and not let geography work. Reminds me of what Brezhinsky feared about Germany / Russia getting together (and is now playing out in Europe).
Really sad though, since JICA and the prev. generations really gave Japan a very good name across Asia.
This is a disingenuous strawman. "Japan First" doesn't have to mean your naïve interpretation of some maximally xenophobic isolationism. If the US bases are good for Japan, then it's perfectly "Japan First".
Some people might disagree—certainly plenty of right-wing Japanese do disagree—but many also believe that the US alliance and the bases are critical to Japan's greater sovereignty and prosperity. Without the security treaty and cooperation, Japan would on their own against China, diverting far more funds to defense and accepting much higher security risk.
>Japan First" doesn't have to mean your naïve interpretation of some maximally xenophobic isolationism.
It doesn't. But it probably will, especially with Japan's history. How many times does history have to repeat before we stop dismissing it as a slippery slope?
>many also believe that the US alliance and the bases are critical to Japan's greater sovereignty and prosperity.
America stripped their standing army for decades, so that damage is inflicted by the very ones that claim to protect them. And the US isn't exactly a reliable ally as of late.
Not wanting huge numbers of foreign army base in your country is Xenophobic Isolationism ? I'm sorry; I guess I'm all hopped up on the the anti-colonial struggles of Asia (ironically, many of them, supported by Japan).
The China issue is orthogonal to all this. US-Japan relations were atleast beneficial till now (unlike say Europe's colonial possessions in Asia), but it looks like the country will first suck all its vassals dry before going down.
It’s fine, but she’s saying I only want to support people I love so I don’t want to support foreigners. The implication being she cannot love anyone if they are a foreigner. Which is kind of a racist position.. but even if we give that the benefit of the doubt. Okay we can’t say who anyone should or shouldn’t love.. but then maybe we can think of some cases of people we couldn’t love, but still deserve to receive support of the society they live in. (Like we might be disgusted by the thought of two very fat ugly people having sex, but our reaction to that doesn’t make it morally wrong) We might have no interest in sports or traditional music, but even if we don’t love it we can support it, or I might not personally have any people close to me in wheel chairs but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t support accessibility policies. This is what I mean that it’s racism pretending not to be. It’s a politics of exclusion basses on racial prejudice, just with one more node on the causation graph.
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and get an idea of the mish-mash of policies they put foward and their 'we're not racists we just like Japanese people more than foreigners' kind of rhetoric https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT4vY_SJimE