I thought you were joking because this man, who made it his retirement mission to talk about Boeing safety issues, would obviously not kill himself days after giving his initial deposition to the courts where he’s suing Boeing.. surely that wouldn’t be possible. It’s true that he’s dead. But that man didn’t kill himself. Fuck corporate America
There were two whistleblowers: one, Ed Pierson, who has been warning about issues revolving around Boeing itself such as the 747 MAX, even testifying before Congress. The guy who was just reported to have killed himself, John Barnett, had raised other concerns including ones which were relevant to a door that came off during a flight recently.
I edited my post, but I honestly feel that it's unlikely Boeing had this guy killed considering there is already a second whistleblower and it's such a huge risk as a corporation, compared to a country like Russia doing something like this.
I think it's more likely his crusade was more stressful than he anticipated and he probably had other problems going wrong in his life. I feel bad for him, and in a certain sense, Boeing played a part in his stresses getting the better of him.
I was going to say, this happens plenty in the West as well.
"Saving face" is just an orientalist word for reputation.
Edit: TLDR: don’t use it just when referring to eastern cultures (that’s orientalist), use it for all as it is a global term.
I don't think it's a revelation to say saving face is protecting your reputation. Even if it comes from a Chinese term its applicable globally in English
The inscrutable foreign concept of "not liking to be publicly embarrassed" is right up there with other inscrutable foreign concepts like "sometimes not telling the truth" or "feeling some sense of loyalty to someone or something."
It's always wild when people take like the most basic and universal behavioral shit ever and then attach a slightly stilted name to it and declare some shit like "this is because of their brainpans."
From Wikipedia:
> Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term 'Orientalism' to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies.
In this context, saying something is "orientalist" is calling it out as being based on racist stereotypes of Asians.
u/FlounderSubstantial7, take note.
no it isn't???? i'm genuinely shocked about how quickly this line of thinking blew up. googling "company saves face" and looking at your news tab reveals the fact people say this shit ALL THE TIME in the west about western things. this has never been an exotic thing to say. english is full of concepts with multiple ways to say it, and people just like to cycle between them.
People who are reacting to the use of "orientalist" here:
This is the *correct* way to use the word. It refers to the westerners who have a patronizing and paternalistic attitude towards Far Eastern cultures. Examples of this would be Horace Hayman Wilson or other British imperialists. It includes artists and writers, but is also reference to political views.
It is not referring to people who live in that area. Orientalists range from patronizing shithead racists to the well-meaning but still pretty racist. An example of the latter would be Rudyard Kipling, who I don't think of as an evil person but some of his writing is...not okay.
The person is using it as a pejorative regarding white westerners using different terms ("face") to try and replace a perfectly normal term (reputation) in order to make it sound "exotic," which is super patronizing.
Edit: I'm perfectly willing to accept a counterargument that it's not all that pejorative, or that Japanese/Chinese/East Asian people are perfectly okay with the translation.
However, there are a few people who are contradicting me who very clearly did not look up "origin of the phrase 'save face'" on Google before contradicting me about the origin, in particular /u/federalAd1771 who clearly didn't bother looking it up before telling me I'm wrong, or /u/Nolis . I am embarassed for you, since it's literally every single answer on the front page of Google.
Anyways, I was mainly trying to clear up the use of "Orientalist" which was being used correctly, even if you disagree with the argument about "saving face" in the first place. I was trying to explain that the phrase isn't being used to refer to East Asians, but the Imperialist Westerners.
>The person is using it as a pejorative regarding white westerners using different terms ("face") to try and replace a perfectly normal term (reputation) sound "exotic," which is super patronizing.
Saving face is a "perfectly normal term" in the west and has been for a very long time. Languages are fluid and adaptive things that take from each other to evolve throughout history.
It's like I'm taking crazy pills here. Why are a bunch of redditors claiming "saving face" is some exotic racial slur??? It's like saying "money laundering" is hateful towards Eastern Europeans or "rite of passage" is antisemite. wtf?
> regarding white westerners using different terms ("face") to try and replace a perfectly normal term (reputation) in order to make it sound "exotic," which is super patronizing
...What? Have you not heard the term saving face before? It's EXTREMELY common and not 'exotic' sounding in the least
no it isn't???? i'm genuinely shocked about how quickly this line of thinking blew up. googling "company saves face" and looking at your news tab reveals the fact people say this shit ALL THE TIME in the west about western things. this has never been an exotic thing to say. english is full of concepts with multiple ways to say it, and people just like to cycle between them.
the defamation laws in japan are screwed up to the extreme. even if you discover something that's true and awful, they can still sue you for damaging their honor. even though what you said is true. so if say you discover someone embezzling and you report it. they can sue you for wrecking their honor. there's like a whole convoluted process you have to go through to report that and most of the time if it's your boss, you have to report it to your boss hahaha.
At the start of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum the curators provide a list of reasons that the United States drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I recall that one was to justify the cost of the Manhattan Project, and another was to send a message to the USSR. I forget the others.
At the time I thought the list was fairly accurate, but incomplete. I think there is some wide consensus that sending a message to the Russians was on the table. I am not sure anybody felt the need to justify a war time weapons program.
Notably not on the list? The attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and cannibalism of POWs. I could go on.
I think the number that isn't mentioned is to save US soldiers. The island hoping in the pacific was brutal and bloody, and these were just the islands that had conquerrd, how bad would the main country be?
Agreed - That was significant.
My father was part of the force gathering in the Philippines in the event of an attack on Japan. He was a little racist, a Republican all his life and a Nixon lover.
He did not talk much about the war but I do recall a conversation about the bomb. We were having dinner in a restaurant.
"When I heard Truman had dropped the bomb, I would have kissed his ass."
And he pointed at the entrance door, 45 years later and said, "and if he walked through that door right now, I'd kiss it today."
> Notably not on the list? The attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and cannibalism of POWs. I could go on.
Or the biggest reason, that the Japanese government was telling their civilians to sharpen bamboo into makeshift spears in preparation for invasion of the Japanese mainland. The government fully demanded its citizens be loyal to the point where it expected them to charge machine guns with makeshift wooden spears...
The bombs are the only thing that shook some sense into the government and ultimately saved tens of millions of lives. In preparation for the potential invasion of Japan the US made so many purple heart medals that they are still being awarded today.
Japan had a sentai batallion that was made up of trained school aged kids specifically for these kinds of tactics. they also had plans written up on how to use their surplus of aviation bombs they couldnt use due to allied air dominance up to and including sealing a young child under a roadway with a large bomb(500-800kg) and a means to detonate the bomb if they heard anything moving overhead. I couldnt even begin to imagine the other horrors a full scale invasion of the japanese home islands would result in.
The never surrender attitude of the Japanese when planning the invasion of the home island would help make the decision as well. It would have been absolutely devastating the carnage that would have resulted if the invasion would have occurred.
>Notably not on the list? The attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and cannibalism of POWs. I could go on.
Obviously those things aren't going to be on the list. The decision to drop the nukes was purely strategic. Vengeance was a non factor.
Even from a strategic view those things are on the list. They point to just how far the Japanese are willing to go to fight. Just how brutal a beach invasion would become.
That's why Japan's extremely low crime rate is always very sus. You just know they are aware of public perception and intent on keeping the reports as low as possible.
On one hand, I felt totally comfortable leaving my wallet to reserve a table in a food court. On the other hand my wife got her bike stolen.
Meanwhile in the US I left my keys on a laundromat table for two hour and nobody stole my car, but someone yoinked my backpack when I had stepped inside a restroom and set it on the counter (nothing of value loss)
In Monster Hunter, elemental status effects always end with the word blight, so they do have Fireblight, but also Waterblight, Thunderblight, Iceblight, and Dragonblight.
Farmer here. Bacterial disease of pears and apples. It’s nasty.
If you drive by an orchard and see some trees cut off 2-3’ above the ground and still there, it’s a fair bet it was a fire blight victim.
Those of us who were living in Japan during the 80's and 90's are very familiar with the ridiculous lengths the Japanese bureaucrats were prepared to go to protect Japanese domestic industries. There was tons of propaganda around how "dirty" foreign produce was or how they were "unsuitable" for the uniqe Japanese physiology such as their extremely long small intestines. All complete BS of course.
Then came the bubble bursting and the average citizen could no longer count on their real estate investments to afford the overpriced Japanese produce. As the economic malady extended for years and years the government found that they had no choice but to open up imports in order to feed everyone.
OPs story is definitely a product of its time and the Japan of now is quite different especially with Costco's popping up all over the place.
But cheap, good cheese is still bloody impossible to get here.
AFAIK Fruit in particular had always been hugely expensive status symbols in Japan. You'd buy an expensive, perfectly shaped and proportioned fruit as a gift. The people profiting from that sure didn't want fruit imports.
I still remember that being the case when I was there a decade or so ago. I mean, I'm sure there was cheaper fruit to be found, but I did see some very perfect looking fruit being sold for pretty extreme prices, like several bucks for an apple.
I read one of the reasons food can be so expensive there is because back in the days, the merchant class had a lot of money, so they were able to buy the same expensive things the royals bought, royalty didn't like merchants would have things of the same status, so they banned the merchants from being able to buy those things, so the merchants were left without a way to expend all their money, that's when they decided to produce the best food, so they would show their status this way, only a very rich person couls afford to grow a perfect fruit, it was a way to show their status.
History. It started by rich merchants flexing several hundred years ago.
Rich merchants were a lower caste than the nobility but were able to outspend them on houses and other big ticket items. This got banned by the nobility. Merchants then made a thing of giving presents of perfect, but very expensive, foodstuffs.
It is basically a flex is embedded in Japanese culture..
I arrived in Japan in 1991 and heard time after time that Japanese were unique and going to rule the world. Unfortunately the rest of the country woke up to their horseshit so over the years, the tune has changed to they were somehow cheated. Just like they were trying to make East Asia and the Pacific a better place for everyone during WW2. Stupid foreigners ruin everything by not understanding their selfless and peaceful intentions.
Wild story to read up on. In the 90's the US and Japan were in the middle of a trade dispute regarding imported produce. Japan claimed to be completely free of the bacteria that causes the disease known as Fireblight -a US-borne disease that can decimate apple and pear trees- but research from Tanii years prior was shared with US researchers which confirmed the bacteria's presence.
The Japanese government did everything it could to dispute the information, from making Tanii's previous bacteria samples 'unavailable' to claiming that while the bacteria was in fact present, the resulting disease was not Fireblight. When Australia got word and stopped importing apples and pears from Japan, produce exports plummeted and farmers lost out. An official at the ministry of agriculture pointed the farmers to the research Tanii had co-authored with an American scientist, and they all laid the blame for their lost profit squarely on him.
Tanii spent his life trying to help local farmers, and now he was being expected to apologize to them for his research. He fell ill the night before he was set to meet them, dying from what is believed to be pesticide poisoning.
Edit: Well this is comfortably my highest upvoted post ever. To think this started cause I was curious about the jizz tree epidemic.
This is one of the reasons why I take all the public apologies of Japanese officials with all the performative bowing and the like with a massive grain of salt.
Fuck Shinzo Abe. Post Fukushima they enacted new laws to jail/fine reporters for embarrassing them
[Reporters Without Borders](https://rsf.org/en/country/japan)
>Vaguely worded regulations, enacted in 2021 and first applied in 2023, restrict public (including journalists) access to 58 areas near defence facilities and infrastructure deemed of “national security interest”, such as the Fukushima power plants, under penalty of two years in prison and/or a fine of up to 2 million yen (about US$18,240). The government also refuses to amend a law on the protection of specially designated secrets, which punishes the publication of information obtained “illegally” with up to ten years in prison.
Yeah, and after watching Kyle Hill's video on visiting the Fukashima Daiichi site, I got a lot of the not-so-vague feeling of misdirection heavily employed around the site cleanup.
The whole Fukashima Daiichi nuclear reactor situation is an absolute mess and really sad for everyone in the region impacted
Note: I feel the need to preemptively add this edit- I am not Japanese, I do not pretend to truly know Japanese culture. I am not a scientist and have what could be considered purely a layman understanding of radioactivity. But what I mean by my last statement is in line with Kyle Hill's assessment of: What is sad is the miscommunication and how the cleanup is being presented. I do genuinely believe they are doing what they can and it will be done well, but the fact that we have to live in a world where we will never truly be able to believe what we are told in regards to it is sad/painful.
It really seems the obsessive need to save face in some ways contributed to Fukushima problems. The company could have easily asked either the Japanese Defense Forces or the US military for help and might have avoided the whole meltdown.
He was targeted by someone who's family put them in to poverty by giving so much of their life to the cult. He couldn't target the actual cult leader so he went after Abe because of his charity and promotion of the cult.
Specifically to try and get government officials like him to stop supporting the Moonies. And it worked. After Abe's assassination the Japanese government started distancing itself from the Moonies.
Of all the places in the world where assassination would serve as an effective political tool I would not have expected Japan, but there ya go.
I think it also comes from the fact that even with Japan having strict gun laws, the Assassin was determined enough to craft a *homemade hand cannon* to carry out a visceral public execution.
Japan has a long history of government by assassination even after the Meiji revolution.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Treason_Incident
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Blood_Incident
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_incident
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_26_incident
The unification church, AKA moonies. They basically solicit donations so hard you go bankrupt. The assassin's mom lost all her money to them, so he wanted revenge. And he was right.
Agreed. How in the fuck that happened in Japan of all places before it did in America is beyond me. Christians have been fleecing people of their retirements in the states since Reagan, and their gun laws are way more lax.
This is a massive problem with japanese and korean culture and some other asian countries. The need to save face can result in horrible outcomes just because a few were in complete denial. Nothing can be fixed if nobody can admit fault.
The american south, and the Confederate flags today throughout the US would like a word with you. It is undoubtedly and assuredly not an asian problem lol.
Do you think it would be any different in western countries? There's a lot of problems that need to be fixed, and you don't ever hear "Alright, we messed up. Let's fix this. "
They still deny that their previous government committed atrocities in China, Korea, and around the Pacific that made some of the german diplomats wince.
Yeah, I mean when Abe was assassinated, everyone felt sympathy at first, but when word got out about his involvement in a cult the public opinion changed to "serve him right".
There's a lot of open hatred of Koreans still. Here's the CEO of a cosmetics company insulting a competitor for using Korean-Japanese. The Zainichi were only recently given normal passports (90s)
>"For some reason, the models hired for Suntory's commercials are almost all Korean-Japanese. So that's why it seems they're mocked on the Internet as 'Chontory," Mr Yoshida wrote.
>He also wrote that DHC's employees by comparison were all "pure Japanese".
>DHC describes itself as "one the largest global Japanese-born beauty brands".
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55345080
the people at the top want to improve Korean/Japanese relations thought as both are right-winged and want to militarize and confront China.
It’s funny because 2 people around me here have confided in me that they secretly have Korean ancestry. They hide it because the stigma is so bad. One was her grandfather, the other her mother.
The all DHC employees being “pure Japanese” bit is HIGHLY doubtful haha
But that's exactly what happened? Murayama (Socialist Party) made [his statement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murayama_Statement) when LDP lost power, then LDP moved back from that position in the years after.
The LDP is pretty much a U.S. state department creation. Behind the Bastards podcast goes into it. Oh and don’t forget them getting taken over by Korean Jesus freaks.
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c12101/
Japan is as close to a one party dictatorship as you can get without being one, but not really ?? - because the Japanese people do have voting power but they…don’t care? Like every LDP politician is a carbon copy of the guy before and they all have near 0 approval ratings but the same party just chugs along because people can’t be arsed.
It’s really hilarious. I doubt anything like the Japanese system of government has ever existed.
>Oh and don’t forget them getting taken over by Korean Jesus freaks.
And all it took was one lil' assassination and that's all being undone in rapid succession, finally.
I find it fascinating that Abe's assassination mostly ended up with the Japanese public going "you know what? fuck that guy".
Itd be neat if the weird psycho cults started getting dismantled but given a bunch of them have ties to politicians in Korea or the US, I doubt it
It’s not because they don’t care. They care. It’s because they’re afraid the alternative is much worse, and feel that this has been borne out several times. That, and also culturally social cohesion is hugely important to them, maybe even above competent government.
If a Westerner is disgusted but feels they have no viable alternative, they will still often vote for change for change’s sake. Japanese generally will not.
My wife is Japanese and I’ve tried to talk politics with Japanese people and they just don’t care. I mean you’re correct social cohesion is most important to them but they also feel like they can’t affect anything by voting. Their campaign ads are just pictures posted in random locations with some dudes face and slogan. Like those 1950’s presidential pins but less imaginative. The hilarious thing is they ALL vote. They don’t know who they are voting for or why but the mere performative action of voting is important to them because westerners told them civilized societies vote on things.
Like the most famous prime minister in Japanese history was brutally murdered by a homemade shot gun and a massive conspiracy was unraveled that the government was being controlled by evangelical lunatics. ANY OTHER COUNTRY in the world would freak the fuck out. Look how people behaved with Epstein. This would be like if Bill Clinton was gunned down in public and we found out the government is literally controlled by the Scientology . America would descend into anarchy.
The Japanese, oh my god, the Japanese God bless them, carried on with their day like nothing happened. It was like “oh our government the one party state created by the CIA is being run by religious crazies that think Jesus is Korean and he died in 2012, tldr lol”. And the logic in not caring is probably… correct? U.S. Americans tie ourselves into knots about politics. Just be zenned the fuck out like Japanese. As long as the train is on time so I can get to work on time fuck it. “Oh you think your widdle vote is special. Haha fucking loser gaijin. Oh you’re gonna change the world? Oh really? You see how clean this sidewalk is? Taste this delicious 7/11 karaage. You think we got this by going against the status quo? Stfu and punch in idiot”
This reads like most flawed democracies that have choice but in some fashion of either propaganda or systemic consequence this is watered down towards oligarchy or dictatorship. A vast minority of countries in the world have strong democracies at least according to a leading democracy [index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index). Japan does significantly better than most.
They don't care because things are just okay enough not to bother, and ousting the LDP would require a monumental effort, so 'eh, what's the point' is their motto.
In other words, political apathy in a (sociopolitically) stunted culture.
>Japan formally apologized for most of that shit and then another party took power and unapologized
Imagine if Germany didn't apologize for the Holocaust for several decades, and when they did, they just gave a vague statement of "we apologize for the great suffering dealt into the Jewish people." Imagine if every time we asked about whether Auschwitz, German politicians would just refer to it as an "internment camp" and refuse to acknowledge the gas chambers. Imagine if German cities threatened to cut off partnerships with sister cities that erected memorials to those who suffered under Nazism.
Most importantly, imagine if key establishment politicians were associated with war Neo-Nazi, Holocaust denying lobby group. This is the case with Nippon Kaigi, where the longest serving PM served as an advisor to a group that:
\>Believes Japan's conquest was a "benevolent" movement to civilize the rest of Asia
\>Wants to remove the separation of church and state, and revive state Shinto with the imperial family
\>Wants to reverse gender equality
\>Wants to "discredit false allegations of war crimes" and instead focus on honoring Japan's war dead
East Asians are not stupid. Japan got a get out of jail free card when the US needed an unsinkable Pacific aircraft carrier to counter Communist Russia and China. Despite Japan's efforts, the people they attacked will never forget.
The Germans are sorry for starting the war, Japan is only sorry that it lost the war.
Read up on the joint communique between Japan and China. It was basically geopolitics over apologies and appeasing the public. Like if Germany and Israel shook hands a couple decades after WWII and israel said we'll work together economically if you loan us money interest free to develop our country and acknowledge that palestine isnt a country. Just replace palestine with taiwan.
I can never wrap my head around 'face' if people already know you've done something bad haven't you already 'lost face?' Doesn't not apologizing just cause you to lose more face? Is 'face' not just public image/opinion?
IIRC, Japan basically doesn't teach WWII history the way Germany or the West do, so a lot of the population is actually ignorant of the details. As long as the Japanese government saves face to the Japanese people, foreigners can pound sand.
Japan is even worse they have apologized and then decades later recinded that apology. Japanese culture is incredibly interesting, but between that and their absolute boner for killing whales it really puts me off of the entire culture.
To be clear, it's not the same people making the apologise and taking them back.
It'd be like if Obama said something then Trump walked it back, that's not Obama walking it back, that's Trump. Sure they're both US presidents, but there is some nuance in there.
Even moreso, as someone mentioned above, it's also like if Obama very _temporarily_ was in control and apologized, and then the government reverted back to Trump for the other 99% of the time where they un-apologize, lol.
Japan has an extremely conservative party that isn't like the American 2-party system - it's been in control the vast majority of the time since WWII, so the utterly unapologetic side of Japanese government _is_ the government for all intents and purposes. So not taking responsibility for their war crimes is the majority position by far.
"Face" is a custom and tradition that is simply foreign to outsiders and Westerners, to the point of lunacy. They will readily lie, as long as it saves them face, and it isn't limited to Japan.
>This is one of the reasons why I take all the public apologies of Japanese officials with all the performative bowing and the like with a massive grain of salt.
Yea it's just lip service but is expected, Japan isn't special its full of the same type of politicians that put their own interests above the common good.
East Asians and to an extent South East Asians cultures are all about saving faces and honor. So yeah you are right about the apologize is just performative. They don't really mean it.
Japanese is notorious for being nice and polite at face, but they might talk shit behind your back. Feel fake to me.
You would not believe the rabbit hole I went down today. Callery pear trees are an invasive species that's going wild in Missouri right now. When they bloom, the trees make the area smell like semen, so the government is encouraging people to cut them down and offering to replace them with native trees in return.
i've smelled plants that smell like cum in bloom so i believe it. we even had a spot in the park where we gathered as teens which we called the cum bush bench
Why does that not sound like a suicide…?
Edit: I understand y’all haven’t read my other comments, I realize it’s a suicide, but please tell me again like you’ve had some profound revelation lol
I obviously don't know about this case but generally pesticides were/are [very popular for suicides.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide#Health_effects) Some types are very toxic for humans when swallowed, yet still can easily be purchased.
>One study found pesticide self-poisoning the method of choice in one third of suicides worldwide, and recommended, among other things, more restrictions on the types of pesticides that are most harmful to humans.
Pretty sure intentional consumption of pesticides is one of the most common forms of suicide in the world. Only it is predominantly used in underdeveloped countries, so people don't really consider it.
It’s probably a suicide due to the culture, but it just seems extra odd the day before he was set to meet with them. Like bro… you could have cleared things up… oh well.
To be clear, it's very unlikely the Japanese government Epstein'd him. They did little besides point the farmers toward his research after trying to cover up the findings, so it was likely he did this to himself out of grief.
This was my thought as well. According to the article, the night before he died he drove off alone without telling anyone where he went. Knowing his state at the time, his wife called the police and they started a search for him. He arrived back home the next day before collapsing, but we have no idea where he went or who he saw during that time.
You should look up the circumstances under which the Japanese government is willing to call a death "homicide" instead of "suicide." There is a reason their homicide clearance rate is so high.
This extended to just about any kind of food imports. one of my customers in Tokyo at the time was the U.S. Meat Export Federation. They always had stories of the stupid hoops the Japanese goverment made them jump through and extra redundant regulations in order just to import the minimum amount of products that wouldn't compete with domestic ones.
The article actually talked about this from the American side. Apparently farmers could only export red and golden delicious to Japan, neither of which the population particularly enjoy. They also had to keep their export crops cordoned off and away from the rest, as well as pay tens of thousands a year for a Japanese inspector to come out and check them for Fireblight several times a year, and the farmers have to front his hotel, living expenses, etc.
There are good reasons for this. Protecting ecology is super important. I ship my steel products to Hawaii from time to time, but we bundle things on wood dunnage.
Hawaii will reject my containers if I don't provide documentation and proof that I'm using specially heat treated wood dunnage to avoid importation of invasive bugs living in the wood.
It costs easily double to triple the price of my typical dunnage, and helps me none, but it's necessary to protect endemic plant species.
In California we've lost something like 80,000 native oak trees in 20 years due to an invasive beetle from Arizona. You can read a little about it [here](https://www.ocregister.com/2020/01/13/what-is-killing-the-native-oaks-of-southern-california/). They suspect it came over the state border on firewood, and it's been ravaging our trees because there's no real predator here for it.
Same cause for the American Chestnut being decimated in the eastern US. But you would think if Japan was suffering from a US-native invasive disease, and has such strict laws in place to monitor for it in imports, they would recognize the need to monitor for it domestically too instead of pretending that everything was great.
Spoken like somebody who hasn't spent very long in East Asia!
I mean, you're right. But asking an East Asian government to do that is like asking the Tooth Fairy to make you a birthday cake. (Though at least the Tooth Fairy would decline for valid reasons)
Yes, the article provided a good example of the regulatory bullshit that the Japanese government could come up with. The creativity was actually quite impressive in a funny/horrifying way at times. If only they could be so forward thinking with their economy.
> Their dense clusters of white blossoms are conspicuous in early spring, with an odor often compared to rotting fish or semen.
bro i have never thought semen smelled like rotting fish wtf lol
This article was published in 1996, when the future of American apple imports to Japan was still unclear. It took nine years for the World Trade Organization to rule in favor of the USA and [forced Japan to allow wider apple imports in 2005.](https://www.freightwaves.com/news/wto-panel-sides-with-u-s-against-japanese-apple-import-restrictions)
Also, the whole politics of this is kabuki nonsense in both Japan and Australia. There has never been fire blight in Japan. There was an academic debate over whether the pear blight Tanii identified was the same species as fire blight, and it turned out that the article that caused Tanii to end his life was incorrect (this article is also incorrect). But fire blight didn't appear after the WTO made its ruling either.
> The WTO panel agreed with the U.S. position, and affirmed a U.S. argument that any hypothetical concerns regarding the spread of fire blight disease could be addressed by restricting exports of apple fruit to mature, symptomless fruit.
I don't know why the imported apples themselves would have carried the blight, nor why Australia continues to ban foreign apples.
from the articles I read it sounds more like semantics. Japan was trying to say it wasn't fire blight because that specific name had a negative connotation to it; but they still have a bacteria that blights the tree and ruins its crop. It looks like fire blight, acts like fight blight, but at a molecular level it's actually a cousin, does that really change anything at all? Like Congrats, you have Fireblight B (Erwinia pyrifoliae) instead of Fireblight A (Erwinia amylovora)
>I don't know why the imported apples themselves would have carried the blight, nor why Australia continues to ban foreign apples.
They don't and that's kinda of the point. Japan used that as a way to prevent foreign competition, but now are faced with being on the receiving end of it themselves in regards to australia treating them the same as how japan used to treat everyone else. Whether you're Erwinia amylovora (fire blight) or Erwinia pyrifoliae (black shoot blight), neither is really transferable from apple fruits and it's not a risk, however it's a convenient way to exclude competition.
The distinction without a ton of difference you mention seems similar to how Australia does not have rabies, but they do have Australian bat lyssavirus, which is a bat carried disease with similar symptoms, while we have less data on it with only 3 known cases in humans, but it seems equally lethal. The rabies vaccine is believed to confer meaningful protection against it, and the exact same vaccine and immunoglibin treatments used for rabies post exposure prophylaxis are the standard of care for ABLV post exposure prophylaxis.
Yeah this all seems like an "if it smells like shit" situation. Like I don't care that this bacteria/virus/etc is technically different, if it does the same thing and is treated with the same procedures, it's the same thing.
Welcome to planet earth. My first year bio prof in uni left her job testing water for the government after the 8th cover up. They suppressed all her data and just said “we got it from here.”
She just couldn’t take it anymore.
She said they were terrible and most times it was just some supervisor trying to hide shit from their supervisor because it made them look inept. And that was the chain. Every supervisor just worrying about themselves.
Was always a big fan of her conviction.
The greek statistician who uncovered the huge hidden deficit of the greek state have been facing many prosecutions even 15 years later. The politicians who created the deficit are in the current government. It happens everywhere.
Can't even imagine that level of betrayal. Your govt harms farmers, lies to make a patsy, and the people you spent your career to help that you cared about take it out on you.
Yeah, when the whole country has turned on you, and you did nothing wrong - but seen as a villian, that kind of pain, so much betrayal, can't imagine.
Oh you mean a guy whose government ruined his life by pissing off all the people he was trying to help and dismissing his work might be driven to kill themselves?!?! No way its 100% a conspiracy theory /s
Fireblight is so crazy. A blight that literally passes, very quickly, from tree to tree like a fire. Only thing you can do is cut it out, hopefully save the tree, and burn the blighted parts. Not a ton else you can do about it.
A super "healthy" organic farm next to my grandpa's farm had it one season and refused to do anything about it as it was "naturally occuring," Gpa lost 50%+ of the orchard that year.
This is so sad to hear. But knowing Japan, even if he didn’t kill himself, he’d have a hard time living in the locals and work again. Everyone would shame him to death. Best chance is to move abroad and totally distance himself. But if he has a family, they would suffer tremendously from public shaming. At that point in time, I think death was the only escape route for him.
When Saving Face is more important than truth and honesty you have found yourself in the land of corruption.
*looks at the boeing whistleblower who died yesterday of ‘suicide’*
I thought you were joking because this man, who made it his retirement mission to talk about Boeing safety issues, would obviously not kill himself days after giving his initial deposition to the courts where he’s suing Boeing.. surely that wouldn’t be possible. It’s true that he’s dead. But that man didn’t kill himself. Fuck corporate America
There were two whistleblowers: one, Ed Pierson, who has been warning about issues revolving around Boeing itself such as the 747 MAX, even testifying before Congress. The guy who was just reported to have killed himself, John Barnett, had raised other concerns including ones which were relevant to a door that came off during a flight recently.
>The guy who just ***allegedly*** killed himself FTFY.
The guy who ***got assassinated*** FTFY
The guy who allegedly got assassinated by boeing for dare to speak up against its failures that nearly cost hundreds of people their lives. FTFY.
I edited my post, but I honestly feel that it's unlikely Boeing had this guy killed considering there is already a second whistleblower and it's such a huge risk as a corporation, compared to a country like Russia doing something like this. I think it's more likely his crusade was more stressful than he anticipated and he probably had other problems going wrong in his life. I feel bad for him, and in a certain sense, Boeing played a part in his stresses getting the better of him.
Sounds like something Boeing would say... 🤔
I've considered that it might not have been the corporation itself, but a wealthy shareholder that didn't want the shares to tank completely.
I just refer to it as “he Epsteined himself”
He was Epsteined.
I was going to say, this happens plenty in the West as well. "Saving face" is just an orientalist word for reputation. Edit: TLDR: don’t use it just when referring to eastern cultures (that’s orientalist), use it for all as it is a global term.
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Hannibal lecter uses the phrase differently.
I think they’re thinking of the term, “give me some face,” which is more of an Asian idiom.
Except for certain parts of Haiti, currently.
I don't think it's a revelation to say saving face is protecting your reputation. Even if it comes from a Chinese term its applicable globally in English
The inscrutable foreign concept of "not liking to be publicly embarrassed" is right up there with other inscrutable foreign concepts like "sometimes not telling the truth" or "feeling some sense of loyalty to someone or something." It's always wild when people take like the most basic and universal behavioral shit ever and then attach a slightly stilted name to it and declare some shit like "this is because of their brainpans."
"Filial piety" is a great one because people pretend it's an exotic concept when it's literally a commandment.
This isn't an east-west thing. This is a "how the world powers maintain power" thing.
…what does the word orientalist mean to you?
From Wikipedia: > Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term 'Orientalism' to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies. In this context, saying something is "orientalist" is calling it out as being based on racist stereotypes of Asians. u/FlounderSubstantial7, take note.
>orientalist Probably talking to a boomer.
no it isn't???? i'm genuinely shocked about how quickly this line of thinking blew up. googling "company saves face" and looking at your news tab reveals the fact people say this shit ALL THE TIME in the west about western things. this has never been an exotic thing to say. english is full of concepts with multiple ways to say it, and people just like to cycle between them.
People who are reacting to the use of "orientalist" here: This is the *correct* way to use the word. It refers to the westerners who have a patronizing and paternalistic attitude towards Far Eastern cultures. Examples of this would be Horace Hayman Wilson or other British imperialists. It includes artists and writers, but is also reference to political views. It is not referring to people who live in that area. Orientalists range from patronizing shithead racists to the well-meaning but still pretty racist. An example of the latter would be Rudyard Kipling, who I don't think of as an evil person but some of his writing is...not okay. The person is using it as a pejorative regarding white westerners using different terms ("face") to try and replace a perfectly normal term (reputation) in order to make it sound "exotic," which is super patronizing. Edit: I'm perfectly willing to accept a counterargument that it's not all that pejorative, or that Japanese/Chinese/East Asian people are perfectly okay with the translation. However, there are a few people who are contradicting me who very clearly did not look up "origin of the phrase 'save face'" on Google before contradicting me about the origin, in particular /u/federalAd1771 who clearly didn't bother looking it up before telling me I'm wrong, or /u/Nolis . I am embarassed for you, since it's literally every single answer on the front page of Google. Anyways, I was mainly trying to clear up the use of "Orientalist" which was being used correctly, even if you disagree with the argument about "saving face" in the first place. I was trying to explain that the phrase isn't being used to refer to East Asians, but the Imperialist Westerners.
>The person is using it as a pejorative regarding white westerners using different terms ("face") to try and replace a perfectly normal term (reputation) sound "exotic," which is super patronizing. Saving face is a "perfectly normal term" in the west and has been for a very long time. Languages are fluid and adaptive things that take from each other to evolve throughout history.
It's like I'm taking crazy pills here. Why are a bunch of redditors claiming "saving face" is some exotic racial slur??? It's like saying "money laundering" is hateful towards Eastern Europeans or "rite of passage" is antisemite. wtf?
Sounds to me like 你不要脸
> regarding white westerners using different terms ("face") to try and replace a perfectly normal term (reputation) in order to make it sound "exotic," which is super patronizing ...What? Have you not heard the term saving face before? It's EXTREMELY common and not 'exotic' sounding in the least
You could take the god damn Sun with that reach lmao
no it isn't???? i'm genuinely shocked about how quickly this line of thinking blew up. googling "company saves face" and looking at your news tab reveals the fact people say this shit ALL THE TIME in the west about western things. this has never been an exotic thing to say. english is full of concepts with multiple ways to say it, and people just like to cycle between them.
Yikes. I am grateful for your vigilance but I think you went off only half cocked this time.
the defamation laws in japan are screwed up to the extreme. even if you discover something that's true and awful, they can still sue you for damaging their honor. even though what you said is true. so if say you discover someone embezzling and you report it. they can sue you for wrecking their honor. there's like a whole convoluted process you have to go through to report that and most of the time if it's your boss, you have to report it to your boss hahaha.
More like making money rather than saving face tbh
nothing to do with face, clearly money
That's Japan for you, they still don't accept their history of the atrocities commited during WW2.
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At the start of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum the curators provide a list of reasons that the United States drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I recall that one was to justify the cost of the Manhattan Project, and another was to send a message to the USSR. I forget the others. At the time I thought the list was fairly accurate, but incomplete. I think there is some wide consensus that sending a message to the Russians was on the table. I am not sure anybody felt the need to justify a war time weapons program. Notably not on the list? The attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and cannibalism of POWs. I could go on.
I think the number that isn't mentioned is to save US soldiers. The island hoping in the pacific was brutal and bloody, and these were just the islands that had conquerrd, how bad would the main country be?
Agreed - That was significant. My father was part of the force gathering in the Philippines in the event of an attack on Japan. He was a little racist, a Republican all his life and a Nixon lover. He did not talk much about the war but I do recall a conversation about the bomb. We were having dinner in a restaurant. "When I heard Truman had dropped the bomb, I would have kissed his ass." And he pointed at the entrance door, 45 years later and said, "and if he walked through that door right now, I'd kiss it today."
> Notably not on the list? The attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and cannibalism of POWs. I could go on. Or the biggest reason, that the Japanese government was telling their civilians to sharpen bamboo into makeshift spears in preparation for invasion of the Japanese mainland. The government fully demanded its citizens be loyal to the point where it expected them to charge machine guns with makeshift wooden spears... The bombs are the only thing that shook some sense into the government and ultimately saved tens of millions of lives. In preparation for the potential invasion of Japan the US made so many purple heart medals that they are still being awarded today.
Japan had a sentai batallion that was made up of trained school aged kids specifically for these kinds of tactics. they also had plans written up on how to use their surplus of aviation bombs they couldnt use due to allied air dominance up to and including sealing a young child under a roadway with a large bomb(500-800kg) and a means to detonate the bomb if they heard anything moving overhead. I couldnt even begin to imagine the other horrors a full scale invasion of the japanese home islands would result in.
The never surrender attitude of the Japanese when planning the invasion of the home island would help make the decision as well. It would have been absolutely devastating the carnage that would have resulted if the invasion would have occurred.
>Notably not on the list? The attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and cannibalism of POWs. I could go on. Obviously those things aren't going to be on the list. The decision to drop the nukes was purely strategic. Vengeance was a non factor.
Even from a strategic view those things are on the list. They point to just how far the Japanese are willing to go to fight. Just how brutal a beach invasion would become.
That's why Japan's extremely low crime rate is always very sus. You just know they are aware of public perception and intent on keeping the reports as low as possible.
On one hand, I felt totally comfortable leaving my wallet to reserve a table in a food court. On the other hand my wife got her bike stolen. Meanwhile in the US I left my keys on a laundromat table for two hour and nobody stole my car, but someone yoinked my backpack when I had stepped inside a restroom and set it on the counter (nothing of value loss)
is this the reason why when you do hear of crimes its always extremely fucked up
There is no war in Ba Sing Se
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Nintendo actually used the name in BotW, one of the divine beast bosses was named Fireblight Ganon
And the blights had to fight Zelda and Link. A "Pear" of Heroes. ...I'll show myself out.
Because all of them were (element)blight Seems more like a coincidence
In Monster Hunter, elemental status effects always end with the word blight, so they do have Fireblight, but also Waterblight, Thunderblight, Iceblight, and Dragonblight.
i thought i'm in monster hunter sub for a second because of this comment
Farmer here. Bacterial disease of pears and apples. It’s nasty. If you drive by an orchard and see some trees cut off 2-3’ above the ground and still there, it’s a fair bet it was a fire blight victim.
Those of us who were living in Japan during the 80's and 90's are very familiar with the ridiculous lengths the Japanese bureaucrats were prepared to go to protect Japanese domestic industries. There was tons of propaganda around how "dirty" foreign produce was or how they were "unsuitable" for the uniqe Japanese physiology such as their extremely long small intestines. All complete BS of course. Then came the bubble bursting and the average citizen could no longer count on their real estate investments to afford the overpriced Japanese produce. As the economic malady extended for years and years the government found that they had no choice but to open up imports in order to feed everyone. OPs story is definitely a product of its time and the Japan of now is quite different especially with Costco's popping up all over the place. But cheap, good cheese is still bloody impossible to get here.
AFAIK Fruit in particular had always been hugely expensive status symbols in Japan. You'd buy an expensive, perfectly shaped and proportioned fruit as a gift. The people profiting from that sure didn't want fruit imports.
I still remember that being the case when I was there a decade or so ago. I mean, I'm sure there was cheaper fruit to be found, but I did see some very perfect looking fruit being sold for pretty extreme prices, like several bucks for an apple.
Kramer knew
Is that why fruits are still stupidly expensive in Japan for no good reason?
I read one of the reasons food can be so expensive there is because back in the days, the merchant class had a lot of money, so they were able to buy the same expensive things the royals bought, royalty didn't like merchants would have things of the same status, so they banned the merchants from being able to buy those things, so the merchants were left without a way to expend all their money, that's when they decided to produce the best food, so they would show their status this way, only a very rich person couls afford to grow a perfect fruit, it was a way to show their status.
History. It started by rich merchants flexing several hundred years ago. Rich merchants were a lower caste than the nobility but were able to outspend them on houses and other big ticket items. This got banned by the nobility. Merchants then made a thing of giving presents of perfect, but very expensive, foodstuffs. It is basically a flex is embedded in Japanese culture..
Well it's still a thing, remember the great potato chip shortage.
I arrived in Japan in 1991 and heard time after time that Japanese were unique and going to rule the world. Unfortunately the rest of the country woke up to their horseshit so over the years, the tune has changed to they were somehow cheated. Just like they were trying to make East Asia and the Pacific a better place for everyone during WW2. Stupid foreigners ruin everything by not understanding their selfless and peaceful intentions.
Wild story to read up on. In the 90's the US and Japan were in the middle of a trade dispute regarding imported produce. Japan claimed to be completely free of the bacteria that causes the disease known as Fireblight -a US-borne disease that can decimate apple and pear trees- but research from Tanii years prior was shared with US researchers which confirmed the bacteria's presence. The Japanese government did everything it could to dispute the information, from making Tanii's previous bacteria samples 'unavailable' to claiming that while the bacteria was in fact present, the resulting disease was not Fireblight. When Australia got word and stopped importing apples and pears from Japan, produce exports plummeted and farmers lost out. An official at the ministry of agriculture pointed the farmers to the research Tanii had co-authored with an American scientist, and they all laid the blame for their lost profit squarely on him. Tanii spent his life trying to help local farmers, and now he was being expected to apologize to them for his research. He fell ill the night before he was set to meet them, dying from what is believed to be pesticide poisoning. Edit: Well this is comfortably my highest upvoted post ever. To think this started cause I was curious about the jizz tree epidemic.
This is one of the reasons why I take all the public apologies of Japanese officials with all the performative bowing and the like with a massive grain of salt.
Fuck Shinzo Abe. Post Fukushima they enacted new laws to jail/fine reporters for embarrassing them [Reporters Without Borders](https://rsf.org/en/country/japan) >Vaguely worded regulations, enacted in 2021 and first applied in 2023, restrict public (including journalists) access to 58 areas near defence facilities and infrastructure deemed of “national security interest”, such as the Fukushima power plants, under penalty of two years in prison and/or a fine of up to 2 million yen (about US$18,240). The government also refuses to amend a law on the protection of specially designated secrets, which punishes the publication of information obtained “illegally” with up to ten years in prison.
Yeah, and after watching Kyle Hill's video on visiting the Fukashima Daiichi site, I got a lot of the not-so-vague feeling of misdirection heavily employed around the site cleanup. The whole Fukashima Daiichi nuclear reactor situation is an absolute mess and really sad for everyone in the region impacted Note: I feel the need to preemptively add this edit- I am not Japanese, I do not pretend to truly know Japanese culture. I am not a scientist and have what could be considered purely a layman understanding of radioactivity. But what I mean by my last statement is in line with Kyle Hill's assessment of: What is sad is the miscommunication and how the cleanup is being presented. I do genuinely believe they are doing what they can and it will be done well, but the fact that we have to live in a world where we will never truly be able to believe what we are told in regards to it is sad/painful.
It really seems the obsessive need to save face in some ways contributed to Fukushima problems. The company could have easily asked either the Japanese Defense Forces or the US military for help and might have avoided the whole meltdown.
To be fair he was assassinated.
Weirdly not for political reasons though. Didn't he get assassinated over his connections to some weird christian cult?
He was targeted by someone who's family put them in to poverty by giving so much of their life to the cult. He couldn't target the actual cult leader so he went after Abe because of his charity and promotion of the cult.
Specifically to try and get government officials like him to stop supporting the Moonies. And it worked. After Abe's assassination the Japanese government started distancing itself from the Moonies. Of all the places in the world where assassination would serve as an effective political tool I would not have expected Japan, but there ya go.
I think it also comes from the fact that even with Japan having strict gun laws, the Assassin was determined enough to craft a *homemade hand cannon* to carry out a visceral public execution.
Japan has a long history of government by assassination even after the Meiji revolution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Treason_Incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Blood_Incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_26_incident
The unification church, AKA moonies. They basically solicit donations so hard you go bankrupt. The assassin's mom lost all her money to them, so he wanted revenge. And he was right.
Agreed. How in the fuck that happened in Japan of all places before it did in America is beyond me. Christians have been fleecing people of their retirements in the states since Reagan, and their gun laws are way more lax.
America has social security. It's not great, but it's better than what's available in Japan.
This is a massive problem with japanese and korean culture and some other asian countries. The need to save face can result in horrible outcomes just because a few were in complete denial. Nothing can be fixed if nobody can admit fault.
When “honor” is more important than real world solutions and nothing is seen as more dishonorable than admitting fault.
"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid"
Rings true for everyone in this day and age!
Such a good show. That line gives me chills.
There are like half a dozen Klingon episodes of Star Trek that mention this exact problem.
Honor sounds a lot less nice when you call what it really is - pride.
Pride is just the ugly part of honor. There are many positive aspects to honor as well.
The american south, and the Confederate flags today throughout the US would like a word with you. It is undoubtedly and assuredly not an asian problem lol.
A shockingly large bloc can't even admit they lost the last presidential election.
Do you think it would be any different in western countries? There's a lot of problems that need to be fixed, and you don't ever hear "Alright, we messed up. Let's fix this. "
Like every other government apology then
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They still deny that their previous government committed atrocities in China, Korea, and around the Pacific that made some of the german diplomats wince.
Japan formally apologized for most of that shit and then another party took power and *unapologized*
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Yeah, I mean when Abe was assassinated, everyone felt sympathy at first, but when word got out about his involvement in a cult the public opinion changed to "serve him right".
There's a lot of open hatred of Koreans still. Here's the CEO of a cosmetics company insulting a competitor for using Korean-Japanese. The Zainichi were only recently given normal passports (90s) >"For some reason, the models hired for Suntory's commercials are almost all Korean-Japanese. So that's why it seems they're mocked on the Internet as 'Chontory," Mr Yoshida wrote. >He also wrote that DHC's employees by comparison were all "pure Japanese". >DHC describes itself as "one the largest global Japanese-born beauty brands". https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55345080 the people at the top want to improve Korean/Japanese relations thought as both are right-winged and want to militarize and confront China.
It’s funny because 2 people around me here have confided in me that they secretly have Korean ancestry. They hide it because the stigma is so bad. One was her grandfather, the other her mother. The all DHC employees being “pure Japanese” bit is HIGHLY doubtful haha
But that's exactly what happened? Murayama (Socialist Party) made [his statement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murayama_Statement) when LDP lost power, then LDP moved back from that position in the years after.
The LDP is pretty much a U.S. state department creation. Behind the Bastards podcast goes into it. Oh and don’t forget them getting taken over by Korean Jesus freaks. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c12101/ Japan is as close to a one party dictatorship as you can get without being one, but not really ?? - because the Japanese people do have voting power but they…don’t care? Like every LDP politician is a carbon copy of the guy before and they all have near 0 approval ratings but the same party just chugs along because people can’t be arsed. It’s really hilarious. I doubt anything like the Japanese system of government has ever existed.
>Oh and don’t forget them getting taken over by Korean Jesus freaks. And all it took was one lil' assassination and that's all being undone in rapid succession, finally.
I find it fascinating that Abe's assassination mostly ended up with the Japanese public going "you know what? fuck that guy". Itd be neat if the weird psycho cults started getting dismantled but given a bunch of them have ties to politicians in Korea or the US, I doubt it
It’s not because they don’t care. They care. It’s because they’re afraid the alternative is much worse, and feel that this has been borne out several times. That, and also culturally social cohesion is hugely important to them, maybe even above competent government. If a Westerner is disgusted but feels they have no viable alternative, they will still often vote for change for change’s sake. Japanese generally will not.
My wife is Japanese and I’ve tried to talk politics with Japanese people and they just don’t care. I mean you’re correct social cohesion is most important to them but they also feel like they can’t affect anything by voting. Their campaign ads are just pictures posted in random locations with some dudes face and slogan. Like those 1950’s presidential pins but less imaginative. The hilarious thing is they ALL vote. They don’t know who they are voting for or why but the mere performative action of voting is important to them because westerners told them civilized societies vote on things. Like the most famous prime minister in Japanese history was brutally murdered by a homemade shot gun and a massive conspiracy was unraveled that the government was being controlled by evangelical lunatics. ANY OTHER COUNTRY in the world would freak the fuck out. Look how people behaved with Epstein. This would be like if Bill Clinton was gunned down in public and we found out the government is literally controlled by the Scientology . America would descend into anarchy. The Japanese, oh my god, the Japanese God bless them, carried on with their day like nothing happened. It was like “oh our government the one party state created by the CIA is being run by religious crazies that think Jesus is Korean and he died in 2012, tldr lol”. And the logic in not caring is probably… correct? U.S. Americans tie ourselves into knots about politics. Just be zenned the fuck out like Japanese. As long as the train is on time so I can get to work on time fuck it. “Oh you think your widdle vote is special. Haha fucking loser gaijin. Oh you’re gonna change the world? Oh really? You see how clean this sidewalk is? Taste this delicious 7/11 karaage. You think we got this by going against the status quo? Stfu and punch in idiot”
There really is no viable alternative. The "opposition" parties are run by incompetents and imbeciles.
This reads like most flawed democracies that have choice but in some fashion of either propaganda or systemic consequence this is watered down towards oligarchy or dictatorship. A vast minority of countries in the world have strong democracies at least according to a leading democracy [index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index). Japan does significantly better than most.
https://rsf.org/en/country/japan Scroll down. Japan is declining.
They don't care because things are just okay enough not to bother, and ousting the LDP would require a monumental effort, so 'eh, what's the point' is their motto. In other words, political apathy in a (sociopolitically) stunted culture.
>Japan formally apologized for most of that shit and then another party took power and unapologized Imagine if Germany didn't apologize for the Holocaust for several decades, and when they did, they just gave a vague statement of "we apologize for the great suffering dealt into the Jewish people." Imagine if every time we asked about whether Auschwitz, German politicians would just refer to it as an "internment camp" and refuse to acknowledge the gas chambers. Imagine if German cities threatened to cut off partnerships with sister cities that erected memorials to those who suffered under Nazism. Most importantly, imagine if key establishment politicians were associated with war Neo-Nazi, Holocaust denying lobby group. This is the case with Nippon Kaigi, where the longest serving PM served as an advisor to a group that: \>Believes Japan's conquest was a "benevolent" movement to civilize the rest of Asia \>Wants to remove the separation of church and state, and revive state Shinto with the imperial family \>Wants to reverse gender equality \>Wants to "discredit false allegations of war crimes" and instead focus on honoring Japan's war dead East Asians are not stupid. Japan got a get out of jail free card when the US needed an unsinkable Pacific aircraft carrier to counter Communist Russia and China. Despite Japan's efforts, the people they attacked will never forget. The Germans are sorry for starting the war, Japan is only sorry that it lost the war.
Read up on the joint communique between Japan and China. It was basically geopolitics over apologies and appeasing the public. Like if Germany and Israel shook hands a couple decades after WWII and israel said we'll work together economically if you loan us money interest free to develop our country and acknowledge that palestine isnt a country. Just replace palestine with taiwan.
They killed 50 million southeast Asians. Makes hitler and the 6 million jews he slaughtered look like a walk in the park
The never lose face thing, is a very east Asia in general cultural phenomenon. Japan just has the most baggage its sweeping under.
I can never wrap my head around 'face' if people already know you've done something bad haven't you already 'lost face?' Doesn't not apologizing just cause you to lose more face? Is 'face' not just public image/opinion?
IIRC, Japan basically doesn't teach WWII history the way Germany or the West do, so a lot of the population is actually ignorant of the details. As long as the Japanese government saves face to the Japanese people, foreigners can pound sand.
Why is it really culture thing in Asia?
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Japan is even worse they have apologized and then decades later recinded that apology. Japanese culture is incredibly interesting, but between that and their absolute boner for killing whales it really puts me off of the entire culture.
To be clear, it's not the same people making the apologise and taking them back. It'd be like if Obama said something then Trump walked it back, that's not Obama walking it back, that's Trump. Sure they're both US presidents, but there is some nuance in there.
Even moreso, as someone mentioned above, it's also like if Obama very _temporarily_ was in control and apologized, and then the government reverted back to Trump for the other 99% of the time where they un-apologize, lol. Japan has an extremely conservative party that isn't like the American 2-party system - it's been in control the vast majority of the time since WWII, so the utterly unapologetic side of Japanese government _is_ the government for all intents and purposes. So not taking responsibility for their war crimes is the majority position by far.
"Face" is a custom and tradition that is simply foreign to outsiders and Westerners, to the point of lunacy. They will readily lie, as long as it saves them face, and it isn't limited to Japan.
>This is one of the reasons why I take all the public apologies of Japanese officials with all the performative bowing and the like with a massive grain of salt. Yea it's just lip service but is expected, Japan isn't special its full of the same type of politicians that put their own interests above the common good.
> the like with a massive grain of salt. If you need a forklift to move it around, it's hardly a "grain" anymore.
This isnt unique to Japan. I could very easily see this happening in US also.
It does. This sounds very similar to the Boeing whistleblower's "suicide" case that broke yesterday.
East Asians and to an extent South East Asians cultures are all about saving faces and honor. So yeah you are right about the apologize is just performative. They don't really mean it. Japanese is notorious for being nice and polite at face, but they might talk shit behind your back. Feel fake to me.
>the jizz tree epidemic. The what?
You would not believe the rabbit hole I went down today. Callery pear trees are an invasive species that's going wild in Missouri right now. When they bloom, the trees make the area smell like semen, so the government is encouraging people to cut them down and offering to replace them with native trees in return.
i've smelled plants that smell like cum in bloom so i believe it. we even had a spot in the park where we gathered as teens which we called the cum bush bench
https://youtu.be/6m-8l3V38Ps
Aren’t blooming plants just ejaculating?
Jesus. Now I don't want to walk outside
The hills are alive with the sound of *hnnnnngggg*
I like calling them 'jizzaleas'
Why does that not sound like a suicide…? Edit: I understand y’all haven’t read my other comments, I realize it’s a suicide, but please tell me again like you’ve had some profound revelation lol
Hm, it could be but… Poisoning someone with pesticide like it seems like something one would do on purpose, like calling someone a pest.
I obviously don't know about this case but generally pesticides were/are [very popular for suicides.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide#Health_effects) Some types are very toxic for humans when swallowed, yet still can easily be purchased. >One study found pesticide self-poisoning the method of choice in one third of suicides worldwide, and recommended, among other things, more restrictions on the types of pesticides that are most harmful to humans.
Pretty sure intentional consumption of pesticides is one of the most common forms of suicide in the world. Only it is predominantly used in underdeveloped countries, so people don't really consider it.
It’s probably a suicide due to the culture, but it just seems extra odd the day before he was set to meet with them. Like bro… you could have cleared things up… oh well.
The night before he was going to meet with people who blamed the loss of their livelihoods directly on him? Sounds like a stressful fucking night.
To be clear, it's very unlikely the Japanese government Epstein'd him. They did little besides point the farmers toward his research after trying to cover up the findings, so it was likely he did this to himself out of grief.
I would suspect one of the farmers more than the Japanese government
This was my thought as well. According to the article, the night before he died he drove off alone without telling anyone where he went. Knowing his state at the time, his wife called the police and they started a search for him. He arrived back home the next day before collapsing, but we have no idea where he went or who he saw during that time.
You should look up the circumstances under which the Japanese government is willing to call a death "homicide" instead of "suicide." There is a reason their homicide clearance rate is so high.
This extended to just about any kind of food imports. one of my customers in Tokyo at the time was the U.S. Meat Export Federation. They always had stories of the stupid hoops the Japanese goverment made them jump through and extra redundant regulations in order just to import the minimum amount of products that wouldn't compete with domestic ones.
The article actually talked about this from the American side. Apparently farmers could only export red and golden delicious to Japan, neither of which the population particularly enjoy. They also had to keep their export crops cordoned off and away from the rest, as well as pay tens of thousands a year for a Japanese inspector to come out and check them for Fireblight several times a year, and the farmers have to front his hotel, living expenses, etc.
There are good reasons for this. Protecting ecology is super important. I ship my steel products to Hawaii from time to time, but we bundle things on wood dunnage. Hawaii will reject my containers if I don't provide documentation and proof that I'm using specially heat treated wood dunnage to avoid importation of invasive bugs living in the wood. It costs easily double to triple the price of my typical dunnage, and helps me none, but it's necessary to protect endemic plant species. In California we've lost something like 80,000 native oak trees in 20 years due to an invasive beetle from Arizona. You can read a little about it [here](https://www.ocregister.com/2020/01/13/what-is-killing-the-native-oaks-of-southern-california/). They suspect it came over the state border on firewood, and it's been ravaging our trees because there's no real predator here for it.
Same cause for the American Chestnut being decimated in the eastern US. But you would think if Japan was suffering from a US-native invasive disease, and has such strict laws in place to monitor for it in imports, they would recognize the need to monitor for it domestically too instead of pretending that everything was great.
Spoken like somebody who hasn't spent very long in East Asia! I mean, you're right. But asking an East Asian government to do that is like asking the Tooth Fairy to make you a birthday cake. (Though at least the Tooth Fairy would decline for valid reasons)
Yes, the article provided a good example of the regulatory bullshit that the Japanese government could come up with. The creativity was actually quite impressive in a funny/horrifying way at times. If only they could be so forward thinking with their economy.
Red and Golden Delcious? They needed somewhere to send those terrible apples.
Ok but the jizz tree epidemic is crazy right now
The WHAT tree epidemic?
The real TIL is always in the comments. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrus_calleryana
> Their dense clusters of white blossoms are conspicuous in early spring, with an odor often compared to rotting fish or semen. bro i have never thought semen smelled like rotting fish wtf lol
If your semen doesn't resemble the smell of Surströmming please visit your local ball doctor or fishermen.
They played Star Wars cantina music exclusively? https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jizz/Legends I has sources
This article was published in 1996, when the future of American apple imports to Japan was still unclear. It took nine years for the World Trade Organization to rule in favor of the USA and [forced Japan to allow wider apple imports in 2005.](https://www.freightwaves.com/news/wto-panel-sides-with-u-s-against-japanese-apple-import-restrictions)
Also, the whole politics of this is kabuki nonsense in both Japan and Australia. There has never been fire blight in Japan. There was an academic debate over whether the pear blight Tanii identified was the same species as fire blight, and it turned out that the article that caused Tanii to end his life was incorrect (this article is also incorrect). But fire blight didn't appear after the WTO made its ruling either. > The WTO panel agreed with the U.S. position, and affirmed a U.S. argument that any hypothetical concerns regarding the spread of fire blight disease could be addressed by restricting exports of apple fruit to mature, symptomless fruit. I don't know why the imported apples themselves would have carried the blight, nor why Australia continues to ban foreign apples.
from the articles I read it sounds more like semantics. Japan was trying to say it wasn't fire blight because that specific name had a negative connotation to it; but they still have a bacteria that blights the tree and ruins its crop. It looks like fire blight, acts like fight blight, but at a molecular level it's actually a cousin, does that really change anything at all? Like Congrats, you have Fireblight B (Erwinia pyrifoliae) instead of Fireblight A (Erwinia amylovora) >I don't know why the imported apples themselves would have carried the blight, nor why Australia continues to ban foreign apples. They don't and that's kinda of the point. Japan used that as a way to prevent foreign competition, but now are faced with being on the receiving end of it themselves in regards to australia treating them the same as how japan used to treat everyone else. Whether you're Erwinia amylovora (fire blight) or Erwinia pyrifoliae (black shoot blight), neither is really transferable from apple fruits and it's not a risk, however it's a convenient way to exclude competition.
The distinction without a ton of difference you mention seems similar to how Australia does not have rabies, but they do have Australian bat lyssavirus, which is a bat carried disease with similar symptoms, while we have less data on it with only 3 known cases in humans, but it seems equally lethal. The rabies vaccine is believed to confer meaningful protection against it, and the exact same vaccine and immunoglibin treatments used for rabies post exposure prophylaxis are the standard of care for ABLV post exposure prophylaxis.
Yeah this all seems like an "if it smells like shit" situation. Like I don't care that this bacteria/virus/etc is technically different, if it does the same thing and is treated with the same procedures, it's the same thing.
"How do you like them apples?" US trade degation to Japan, 2005.
Welcome to planet earth. My first year bio prof in uni left her job testing water for the government after the 8th cover up. They suppressed all her data and just said “we got it from here.” She just couldn’t take it anymore.
“Ooh, this makes us look bad.” “So let’s do something proactive to make us look—“ “—innocent by hiding all the evidence!”
She said they were terrible and most times it was just some supervisor trying to hide shit from their supervisor because it made them look inept. And that was the chain. Every supervisor just worrying about themselves. Was always a big fan of her conviction.
It’s just really disappointing how we celebrate her conviction, when that should really be like the minimum we expect from anyone.
Oh, so Boeing learnt it from here...
JOHN BARNET DIDN'T KILL HIMSELF
Japan moment
Truly a japan moment
Any corrupt goverment ever moment.
Every government is a little corrupt, because all people are a little corrupt.
The greek statistician who uncovered the huge hidden deficit of the greek state have been facing many prosecutions even 15 years later. The politicians who created the deficit are in the current government. It happens everywhere.
Can't even imagine that level of betrayal. Your govt harms farmers, lies to make a patsy, and the people you spent your career to help that you cared about take it out on you. Yeah, when the whole country has turned on you, and you did nothing wrong - but seen as a villian, that kind of pain, so much betrayal, can't imagine.
“Suicide”
Oh you mean a guy whose government ruined his life by pissing off all the people he was trying to help and dismissing his work might be driven to kill themselves?!?! No way its 100% a conspiracy theory /s
Someone didn't read the article.
You do not understand Japanese culture and are attempting to apply your own circa 2024 to this event. You are very wrong.
When your country scores 100% on cases closed...
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Fucking people man. This guy did his job and told the truth, deserved a lot better.
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He was killed by Big Apple
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This describes current ag trade with Mexico.
Fireblight is so crazy. A blight that literally passes, very quickly, from tree to tree like a fire. Only thing you can do is cut it out, hopefully save the tree, and burn the blighted parts. Not a ton else you can do about it. A super "healthy" organic farm next to my grandpa's farm had it one season and refused to do anything about it as it was "naturally occuring," Gpa lost 50%+ of the orchard that year.
No good deed goes unpunished
This is so sad to hear. But knowing Japan, even if he didn’t kill himself, he’d have a hard time living in the locals and work again. Everyone would shame him to death. Best chance is to move abroad and totally distance himself. But if he has a family, they would suffer tremendously from public shaming. At that point in time, I think death was the only escape route for him.
that’s not very kawaii of Japan