Jump to content

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 384
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Even if they don't raise it, I think I'll pay it anyway. Perhaps stuff the extra 2% in an envelope and send to Shinzo himself.

 

:thumbsup:

 

I suppose I would have to do it monthly though, there'd be too much fannying about if I did it for every single thing I bought.

Link to post
Share on other sites

It sounds like ol' Shinzo's got his man in as top dog at NHK. He's not been in the job a day, but has already dug up the comfort women issue and said there is no point in the press questioning anything the government has passed into law.

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/01/25/national/new-nhk-chief-comfort-women-only-wrong-per-todays-morality-programming-must-push-japans-territorial-stances/#.UuXnYhCmqUl

 

Something to remember anyway if you get people coming round asking you to pay. :D

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

Naoki Hyakuta says Japan was lured into the Second World War by America while liberating Asia from white colonialism.

 

He denies war crimes such as the 1937 Nanjing massacre, when Japanese troops killed thousands of Chinese civilians. Such views are common among revisionists in Japan. Mr Hyakuta, however, sits on the board of the nation’s public service broadcaster.

 

NHK has annual revenue of more than $6bn (£3.7bn), putting it close to the BBC. Like the British broadcaster, it is obliged to be impartial and aloof from the political fray, so the company is under intense fire for the extraordinary views of four its governors, all reportedly handpicked by the right-wing Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. The 12-member board controls programming policy and budgets.

 

The furore began two weeks ago in a press conference by NHK’s new chairman, Katsuto Momii, who stunned journalists by saying it was “only natural” that NHK should follow the government line on Japan’s territorial disputes with its neighbours. “When the government says ‘left’ we can’t say ‘right’,” he said. He then defended Japan’s wartime system of sex slaves, saying such a system was “commonplace” in war.

 

Next up it was the turn of board member Michiko Hasegawa. In an essay written a month before her appointment, she eulogised an ultra-nationalist who committed ritual suicide a decade ago in protest outside Japan’s liberal-left Asahi newspaper. “There could be no better offering,” said Ms Hasegawa.

 

Mr Hyakuta is a vocal supporter of Toshio Tamogami, the candidate for Tokyo governor who was sacked as air-force general in 2007 for denying the accepted narrative of the war. In a speech last week campaigning for Mr Tamogami, he called the Nanking Massacre a “fabrication”.

 

The appointments have crystallised lingering fears about Mr Abe’s agenda. He wants to radically overhaul three of Japan’s basic modern charters: the 1946 pacifist constitution, the education law and the security treaty with the United States.

 

Critics say such a far-reaching project would have profound consequences for Japan, but the NHK controversy seems to show that Mr Abe intends to shut debate down. “Momii is perfectly willing to, in effect, turn NHK into a propaganda mouthpiece of the current administration,” thundered an unusually fierce editorial in The Japan Times.

 

The battle lines around Mr Abe’s agenda are set to harden. His ruling Liberal Democratic Party is preparing to challenge the constitutional ban on collective self-defence, a pillar of Japan’s post-war pacifist stance. Opinion polls suggest that more than half of the public oppose Mr Abe’s pet project.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The neo-nazis were out at the snow festival today but they were out numbered by the counter protesters handing out leaflets against the ultra nationalists......I thought it quite funny

Link to post
Share on other sites

I couldn't really hear them......they were mouthing mainly about Koreans and Chinese from the little I heard......they'd set up shop across from the live stage at the snow festival......they were drowned out by elementary school kids playing some music on the electronic piano!! :lol:

Link to post
Share on other sites

These ultranationalists aer mainly throw aways from the yakuza as far as I can work out their views are just strongly aligned with the notion of the emperor as a demi god - interesting to hear that they gather at places like snow festivals as well

Link to post
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...