Two quick points.
1) What do you think are 'deep, underlying causes of all this'?
2) I take your point about the prurient circuses and the manufactured outrage (among the genuine outrage) used to sell papers, generate clicks, and fill airtime. I don't like it either. However, my desire for as much exposure of this problem as possible goes beyond the sexual abuse aspect in this particular story. Whether it is decades of inspectors of atomic power stations turning a blind eye to shoddy safety standards contributing to the Fukushima disaster, the years of bullying at JR West leading to a driver taking a 60 km/h bend at 100 km/h because he was scared of the repercussions of being late, or lowlifes molesting women on trains, these abuses of power rely on the silence of others. Japan is a shame-based culture, and sometimes the only way for progress to be made is to shame people into doing the right thing, or at least stopping doing the wrong thing. That requires publicity.
I have seen some ridiculous moral crusades on Japanese TV news, against Japanese students carving their name in a bridge in Florence, against people who met up for drinks in the park during the pandemic (with menacing close ups of empty cans of beer!). Yet when something like this breaks, where real harm has been done, there is an eerie silence. I think I'd prefer the circus.
1) That's a quick question all right. But after decades of trying to answer it for people I feel like Ignaz Semmelweis trying to tell you all to wash your hands before delivering a baby. Its a long story, nobody really listens, most people brand me as a crank and I won't go there because...and there is enough honesty left in me to tell you this....at this point I would burn the world if I could. I won't go nearly that deep. I been through the rabbit hole enough times and most people are too chicken to actually plumb those depths.
2) I don't know any human society that does not leverage the hell out of shame, and that is part of the problem more than its part of the solution. Shame can backfire biggly. For all of the utterly false belief that Japan is some active den of debauchery (or rather a xenophobic, house proud need to believe the west isn't), the west is far worse in a more general sense...and that is why there is this need to focus on Japan's more or seemingly more unique problems.
The thing about the circus is, its not remotely isolated to a few sex abuse cases, but also school shootings, drug crime, riots, domestic violence, sexual dysfunction, rape, transgenderism, hopelessness, heart disease, and I could go on.
Japan's got problems. But the American way can stay in America, and so can its little brother's, Britain.
I don't know if Johnny Kitagawa was born that way or if it was environment, but in a different time and place, such as Ancient Rome or Sparta or even Japan of probably just 200 years ago I don't think he would have been such a monster or caused so much damage. I also don't think there are so many guys remotely like him to even make it worth our while to do something about any possible "next one".
I am far more worried about what I see as everyday, widespread psychological abuse that has led to despair, social ineptitude and sexlessness in this society than some dead guy who felt he had to create an empire to get his personal kink satisfied.
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