Goodreads Doesn't Have It, Data Migration: The State and Politics in Japan
This is a really good book. Why does an OECD country that is recognized as an equivalent to Europe in terms of industry (mainly only because of its car manufacturing which received requests from the US to artificially lower productivity to avoid resentment of production disparities) still struggle to validate human rights, especially women's rights?
Women were viewed as animals and mentally deficient up to the 20th century in Japan. They couldn't sign their own contracts, could be divorced at a whim, and the arguments that women should be educated only worked when it became clear educated women made better wives and carers. To this day, Japan really struggles to see women as ends, not means, and shows no signs of being able to any time soon. This is anomalous for an OECD country, and it was one of the latest to ratify anti-torture and anti-discrimination laws. It also is largely responsible for "don't talk about race" ignorance when it comes to Korean and Filipino minorities, and is also notorious for having "look pretty" policy that have absolutely no enforceability to keep them seeming like their European neighbors in the OECD. That this is tied to anti-Christian rhetoric going back to the initial shutting down of ports is not an accident. Christianity empowered women and anti-torture policies are largely spearheaded by many women who are often the first victims of it (in the same way volunteers for the elderly are often volunteers themselves). That isn't to say Christianity is the answer; at the same time, Japanese finance is seen as more stable due to its reliance on cash over credit, these are not accidents or coincidences of culture. They are deeply connected.
They also talk about Abe and how he was one of the first genuinely supported Prime Ministers, and interestingly he supported Womenomics (getting more money to women). During the writing of this book, he clearly hadn't been assassinated. But later he was.
Other interesting things to note is Japan has a history of only doing the right thing when the emperor is threatened with death. In 1910s, there was a plot to murder the emperor by anarchists. The anarchist movement was destroyed but quickly afterwards a whole wave of labor and welfare reforms hit. To me, this is disgusting. You shouldn't have to be threatened with death to pay. I believe that Abe's assassination is a reaction against that effective and popular prevention through Womenomics; simply taking the tradition of the Japanese woman over what worked, mainly so as to keep in place respect of tradition itself and how bad he was making the emperor look. Keeping tradition respected meant keeping the emperor in place. The inability to enforce and adopt anti-torture and anti-discrimination policy from Europe expediently has become very, very clear as a decision on Japan's end that is no longer defensible as an OECD country and may be holding back fellow members. The insistence on this "tradition" is similar to the economic devastation the UK is wreaking on Europe for similar reasons in being unwilling to take a coherent look at what their monarchy has been doing.
But what is strange is at the same time this is true, Japan encourages its individuals to not be too reliant on government. This is something I agree with. I am seeing in my own nonprofit that my NGO is seeing entitlement, rage and ingratitude in ways that show many people here are used to getting everything given to them from the government without any of the responsibility it takes to get it to them. That's the issue with centralizations that are more Russian in style that attempt to remain centralized by creating false and unnecessary dependencies. Japan, however, does have similar issues but they are more to do with the patriarchy...years and years of torture and dehumanization of women (women were considered animals and/or mentally incompetent; they may be discriminated and given excessive competency tests etc. which is really disgusting) for many years has led to an excess on the structure of what it means to be a Japanese man, and much of it means "the emperor".
In also ties into issues with self-defense in Japan. Japan's self-defense is viewed as unpopular because it is a) a victim of those who didn't allow it to not join the world, while at the same time it needed an intervention against sexism and torture despite its excellent productivity and b) it is raised by women who are taught standing up for themselves is unwomanly. Thus, the very complaints that Japan has about the world could be resolved by ended its own misogyny. I guess that's its karma.
This was a really good book and I have more to add so I'll come back later.