Sunday, August 05, 2007

Has Japan changed?

Today I bought two books on Second Sino-Japanese War: From
Mukden Incident to the second sino-Japanese war満州事変から日中戦争へ
Sino-Japanese war.日中戦争. I have just finished reading them.The former is an orthodox book on Second sino-Japanese war. I've found the latter more interesting.

The author points out;


・Chinese nationalist was much better with regard to the soft power:Japan lacked the concept of it.
・Chinese nationalist was superb at a war of attrition;Japan had only a short decisive war in mind.
・Most Japanese military leaders were stupid, lacking in strategy, while subordinates on-the-spot were efficient.
・Many Japanese soldiers and citizens were already disgusted by the war: the expression was censored .(The letters censored were publicized after the war)
・Some soldires were numbed to atrocities of war, dead to conscience.


And the author wonders if some of these might hold true even today.

I think many points still holds true.

For instance,
Keeping His Head Just Above Water

12. Economy's self-construction
The prospects for farm liberalisation in the near run have gone from slight to nil. New bilateral free-trade negotiations will be pulled from the table. A debate about a hike in the consumption tax as a way to tackle the budget deficit will also be postponed, as, perhaps, will be an expected interest-rate rise by the Bank of Japan. On the other hand, growth is likely to chug along at about 2% a year or so, providing jobs and record profits at companies, as well as paying higher revenues into the exchequer. Politicians may be amazed to find that things can carry along without them.Economist via 米流時評


Hey the Japanese leaders, no joking!! People are sweating their guts out

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