Japan is a country that I love for their food, their people, and many other things, but unfortunately, their culture and way of thinking has led them to slowly, but surely, make sure that they will shrink as a nation, and become less and less relevant, to the point of disappearing from the map...
- Their politicians — elected by the people! — and central bankers have created a long term depression that has been going on since 1990 and still no end in sight.
- Their birth rate doesn't renew generations, and the natality rate is directly related to the fact that most youngsters have been living their entire life in a depression economy and that social mood is very low.
- They have amassed a public debt of more than 200% their GDP and are on the verge of a currency crisis.
- The Fukushima incident, 100% caused by negligence, has made of Japan a nuclear waste zone — who knows what kinds of diseases will affect the people in the next 20 to 200 years?
- And now, I read that a modern-day Adolf Hitler is running Osaka, and with the rise of the extremes, who knows where this is going to end? While the Bloomberg report below doesn't say much, and it seems like a big exaggeration, I've found another link with much more (I'm still doubtful he's a Hitler-like type of person though).
(Bloomberg) May 30, 2012 — Who knew a modern-day Adolf Hitler was running Osaka?
Certainly not the majority of the 2.7 million people in the western
Japanese city. Toru Hashimoto boasts an approval rating more than twice
that of the prime minister. Osakans love their mayor’s crusade against
Tokyo’s dysfunction and absolute power over the country. It has Japan’s
old guard running scared and comparing Hashimoto to Europe’s most
notorious genocidal fascist.
If the world needs anything, it’s a moratorium on Hitler analogies.
As much as one may dislike Barack Obama or George W. Bush, neither bears
even the most fleeting resemblance to the maniacal German leader.
Suggestions to the contrary are beyond ignorance and vandalize history.
Yet for Japanese to turn to a man in this rarefied company speaks
volumes about where Japan finds itself in a volatile global environment.
The desire for change reached a fever pitch after last year’s
earthquake and tsunami. Even before the earth shook, the waters rose and
radiation leaked on March 11, 2011, Japanese sensed Tokyo had lost its
way. Many just hadn’t realized how much. Hence the Tea Party-like
dynamic inherent to Hashimoto’s popularity. His drive for greater
accountability, decentralized decision making and fresh ideas is as
well-timed as it is frightening to the establishment.
The words “a future prime
minister” routinely accompany discussions of Hashimoto’s rapid rise. At
42, he’s young and telegenic in a nation where the other best-known
regional leader, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, is 79. Hashimoto is
unusually blunt in his criticism of national leaders, and his vision is
at odds with the prevailing wisdom in Tokyo.
[...]
Yet at a time when Japanese are grasping for change, Hashimoto is
what passes for a breath of fresh air. Take his stance against relying
on nuclear power, one that enraged the national government. Hashimoto is
doing what any elected leader should: heeding the will of the people.
The large majority of Japan’s 126 million people no longer trust power
companies and bureaucrats to protect them from another Chernobyl.
All Yoshihiko Noda has done since becoming prime minister in
September is remind voters that the nuclear industry holds the puppet
strings even after the Fukushima disaster. Hashimoto is fighting for
people, not companies, and good for him. This gives you a sense of how
dangerous divergent views are to vested interests in Tokyo -- and why
Japan needs more of them.
Hashimoto’s calls for greater accountability and competition are
particularly welcome. His party favors direct elections for prime
minister, which would be a genuine revolution in Japan. It wants to
scrap one of the two chambers of the Diet to hasten decision making and
reduce the gridlock that stops virtually all change in Japan.
The dark side of this would be a
charismatic leader becoming too powerful -- even dictatorial. That has
opponents calling the movement “Hashism,” a play on fascism. This is a
minor risk in a nation with so many checks and balances embedded in its
postwar system of government. What really worries the establishment is
new ideas that leave its carefully built fiefdoms out of the loop.
This really is the point. Japan is a prosperous, safe and
politically stable place. Yet it may be a little too stable and, in
turn, change-averse. Public debt is more than twice the size of Japan’s
$5.5 trillion economy, the population is aging rapidly and its global
competitiveness is waning. How is the government responding? All it
seems capable of doing is naming a new prime minister every nine months
and plotting tax increases.
[...]
Japan, it has long been said, needs a new generation of leaders to
step forward and engineer a major course correction. Hashimoto, love him
or hate him, personifies it, and the extent to which he makes the
establishment squirm, and play the Hitler card, suggests this political
upstart is on to something.
(William Pesek is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
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