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Japan’s Zombie Politics

Naomi

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26 Aug 2006
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Japan's Zombie Politics

-A Tragedy in Four Parts- by Hajime Fujiwara

I want to introduce this book to those who haven't heard about it yet. Hajime Fujiwara wrote Japan's Zombie Politics.

In Dogs and Demons, Alex Kerr made a point in examining everything that has gone wrong with Japan, from corrupted bureaucracy to rigid education, to ecological destruction and sterilization of the Japanese culture.
Yet, it's still quite difficult to understand why it must go so bad & wrong and what Japanese people should do to solve those meta-problems
they are confronting for long years.
But Hajime Fujiwara did a splendid job in this Japan's Zombie Politics.

I believe it's a must-read for anyone interested in Japanese politics, economic problems, society and mentality in general. It's both enlightening and shocking indeed.

Spotlight Reviews
Though Japan still has the world's number-two economy, the Rising Sun is setting because of political incompetence and corruption. Japanese politics today is controlled by zombies.

The Liberal Democratic Party, which did whatever it wanted in its fifty-year monopoly on Japanese politics, was in its last throes at the end of the twentieth century. But with the inauguration of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and his zombie cohorts in 2001, this party has come back from the dead. Since then, darkness reminiscent of Walpurgis Night has crept over Japan. Japan's national debt has reached nearly a trillion dollars while zombies have simultaneously protected vested interests and failed to make necessary reforms. Zombies have also misled the Japanese people about their shady pasts.

It would be bad enough if Koizumi were an isolated case. Unfortunately, he is just one of modern Japan's many zombie politicians. Koizumi, whose own family parallels the rise and fall of modern Japan, is a copycat of the ultra-nationalistic Kishi administration (1957-1960). Under Koizumi and his likely zombie successors, Japan is showing ominous signs of neo-fascism.

This book reads like a novel. But it is far more interesting. It is a true documentary and the first full behind-the-scenes story of modern Japan's political circles. No journalist to date has written this hidden story of Japan's political secrets.

It is difficult to understand and diagnose modern Japan's maladies. We need a broad viewpoint of civilization from a bystander's vantage point along with Dr Fujiwara's psychological, pathological, and historical insights.

About the author
Born in Tokyo, Hajime (Jim) Fujiwara received a Doctorate in Structural Geology from France's University of Grenoble. After multinational oil corporation experiences around the world, he founded several U.S. oil companies. He now resides in Palm Springs, California.

Dr Fujiwara is an internationally renowned political commentator with expertise interpreting the power of economy and civilization. He is also a frequent contributor to many important journals in Japan. He is the author of more than forty books on subjects, including international oil politics, global political economy, the structure of the universe, and civilization history. Many of his books were awarded best sellers in the politics category.

About the book
Introduction - A Nation of Zombies, Contents and Afterthoughts;


"Japan's Zombie Politics" is first published in Japan in Oct.2005 and became one of the best sellers in Japan, and now it is going beyond 5th printing.

Owing to its deep insight & astonishing information on the real problems behindツ the political framework of Japan today, JZP is also translated & published into the Korean language in this year, and the long-awaited English edition has publishedツ by Creation Culture Co ltd. in Taiwan, Aug. 2006.

But, this is also the case that most small English book publishers in Asia countries have great faculties in promoting their books in the US, EU,and Japan. And in most cases, you can not find this the sort of publisher's books on Amazon.com, nor you can find them on the shelves of prominent bookstores.
 
In Japan book is available here also

Japan's Zombie Politics is available at Tower Records (Shibuya), can be ordered from any Kinokuniya store, probably Maruzen, and copies are available from a stockist in Iriya (near Ueno).

See

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~tc9w-ball/KI/FujiwaraH/JZombieP.htm or through a link at http://www.imcbook.net. This book is a good read that provides helpful background, and it makes one wonder about the future.

Cheers
 
I've never heard of Hajime Fujiwara before. But as far as I read your post, it seems to that he describes Koizumi as the old-fashioned LDP member. If so, he is totally wrong. As most Japanese see him as an unusual liberal mutant in the LDP, he's been exceptionally popular.

Kishi was a well-known politician who revised the Japan-US security treaty under the harsh anti-US student movement, maybe for some, he must be evil. But without the revision, the treaty had been much unfair one.
I forgot who said, but maybe Kishi said something like, "there're bunch of anti-US demonstraions now, but look at the Korakuen baseball park, there are also bunch of people enjoying baseball there". Some liberal post-war baby boomers are still proud how liberal they are without saying the rest of them had been working as a salaryman just hard like my father.

I'm not sure if I will buy the book or not, but I do hope you will keep posting in the politics section here.
 
Koizumi is not so much of a liberal, more like a soft right-winger. He certainly is for changes, but generally ones that benefit the newer LDP he envisions. Whether it would be less of a zombie LDP or not is hard to say. The reforms he has been pushing through have been taking a long time to go through, if at all.
 
Koizumi's policy is traitor's one.
A lot of people are taken in by the matter of Yasukuni.
Privatization of postal services, Succession problem of emperor and economics...
I think everything is for Bush.
he is not a right winger at all
he is a traitor
However , I admit he is one of the greatest pm in japanese history.
 
Nobody except naomi or imcbook seems to read the book, so it'd be nice if they will post more than one here.
 
So is this book not worth reading? People seem to be voiding it's validity with their comments. I wouldn't mind picking it up for a read, I am really interested to know what's going on in Japan's politics, though I'm not too fond of them here in the US. If not this book, what other books?
 
Can the English version of the book be bought from tower records too, or is it only fully Japanese version ?
 
Koizumi is not so much of a liberal, more like a soft right-winger.

Kind of like most US Democrats, including Hillary Clinton (who voted for Iraq war and is still quite pro-war).


caster51 said:
Koizumi's policy is traitor's one...
I think everything is for Bush.
he is not a right winger at all
he is a traitor

My mind reaches back to something I read by Chomsky a long time ago (mid-90s) on the "Trilateral Commission", if I may...

A 1975 study on "governability of democracies" by the Trilateral Commission concluded that the media have become a "notable new source of national power," one aspect of an "excess of democracy" that contributes to "the reduction of governmental authority" at home and a consequent "decline in the influence of democracy abroad." This general "crisis of democracy," the commission held, resulted from the efforts of previously marginalized sectors of the population to organize and press their demands, thereby creating an overload that prevents the democratic process from functioning properly. In earlier times, "Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers," so the American rapporteur, Samuel Huntington of Harvard University, reflected. In that period there was no crisis of democracy, but in the 1960s, the crisis developed and reached serious proportions. The study therefore urged more "moderation in democracy" to mitigate the excess of democracy and overcome the crisis.4

Putting it in plain terms, the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and driven from the arena of political debate and action, if democracy is to survive.

The Trilateral Commission study reflects the perceptions and values of liberal elites from the United States, Europe, and Japan, including the leading figures of the Carter administration. On the right, the perception is that democracy is threatened by the organizing efforts of those called the "special interests," a concept of contemporary political rhetoric that refers to workers, farmers, women, youth, the elderly, the handicapped, ethnic minorities, and so on -- in short, the general population. In the U.S. presidential campaigns of the 1980s, the Democrats were accused of being the instrument of these special interests and thus undermining "the national interest," tacitly assumed to be represented by the one sector notably omitted from the list of special interests: corporations, financial institutions, and other business elites.

4 M. P. Crozier, S. J. Huntington, and J. Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission (New York University, 1975).
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni/ni-c01-s01.html#FN4
italics and bold my emphasis

Perhaps Koizumi represents the corporate, financial institutions, and other business elites?
As both the Democrats and Republicans in the US do.
Perhaps they all represent the interests of trans-national or multi-national corporations at the expense of the interests of ordinary people?
Just a guess.
 
Japan's Zombie Politics.

Members of the U.S. Senate grilled Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday on whether the next gruesome episode in the U.S. economic horror show could include an appearance of ツ"zombieツ" banks.
During Japan's economic stagnation in the 1990s, the government propped up failing banks and firms that came to be known as zombies. The failure to let such institutions expire prolonged Japan's agony, many analysts believe.

Now that the U.S. government is struggling to keep the banking system alive, Senator Bob Corker worried aloud that the government is propping up banks that deserve to die.
ツ"It seems to me that ツ― that this has been creating this sort of dead man walking sort of zombie-like banking scenario,ツ" Corker said at a hearing with Bernanke. ツ"It seems to me that what you have explained is a creeping ツ― a creeping nationalism of our banks. I mean in essence, many of them don't have appropriate capital.ツ"
 
What exactly does the word "zombie" mean in Japanese? Can we get an English version of the book or is it purely a Japanese one?
 
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