Obama in South Korea
BBC.com
Obama arrives in South Korea for nuclear summitBy the CNN Wire Staff
updated 5:54 PM EDT, Sat March 24, 2012
CNN.com
Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- President Barack Obama arrived in South Korea on Sunday for a three-day trip centered on an international nuclear security summit in Seoul.
He flew into Seoul, where he is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak.
Top officials from 54 countries, including China and Russia, will attend the summit meeting on Monday and Tuesday.
But its message of international cooperation has been overshadowed by North Korea's announcement last week that it is planning to carry out a rocket-powered satellite launch in April.
South Korea has said it considers the satellite launch an attempt to develop a nuclear-armed missile, while the United States has warned the move would jeopardize a food-aid agreement reached with Pyongyang in early March.
President Lee has already said he will use the summit to drum up international support against the actions of his northern neighbor.
North Korea says it has a right to a peaceful space program and has invited international space experts and journalists to witness the launch.
North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) cited a spokesman from the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea as denouncing the South for working to turn the summit "into a platform for (an) international smear campaign" against the North.
The North has a right to a nuclear deterrent and to conduct a "satellite launch for peaceful purposes," the committee's statement said, and will take "counter-measures" if the South stirs up international criticism of its actions.
Against that tense backdrop, Obama is scheduled on Sunday to visit for the first time the demilitarized zone that splits the Korean Peninsula in two.
He will also meet with some of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, two of his top national security advisers said Tuesday during a conference call.
Although Obama himself has not been to the demilitarized zone during his two previous trips to South Korea as president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid a visit to the area in 2010.
And Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, used binoculars to peer into North Korea from a sandbagged bunker on the southern side of the border in 2002.
The date of Obama's visit " is virtually two years to the day" since the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, which left 46 Southern sailors dead, said Daniel Russel, director for Japan, South Korea, and North Korea at the U.S. National Security Council.
South Korea says a North Korean torpedo attack was to blame for the ship's sinking. The North has denied the accusation.
In a dramatic reminder of the U.S. military presence in South Korea, an American F-16 fighter jet crashed Wednesday near Kunsan airbase on the western coast of South Korea.
The jet's pilot safely ejected before the crash, and no casualties were reported, said Maj. Eric Badger, public affairs officer of the 7th Air Force.
Seoul's nuclear summit will be the second after Obama hosted the first meeting in Washington in 2010. He initiated the biennial summit after presenting his vision of a nuclear-free world in Prague in April 2009.
The official agenda will deal with nuclear terrorism and how to secure the world's nuclear material.
Although North Korea is not on the agenda, it is likely to be discussed on the sidelines.
Pyongyang announced this month it would carry out a "satellite launch" in mid-April to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the country's founder.
Using ballistic missile technology, however, is in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 and against a deal struck with the United States earlier this month that it would not carry out nuclear or missile tests in return for food aid.
Pyongyang has said it will see any critical statement of its nuclear program as "a declaration of war."
Concerns about Iran's nuclear program, again not on the official agenda, will also be discussed in bilateral meetings between leaders.
CNN's Paula Hancocks, Shruti Pant, Jethro Mullen and Bob Kovach contributed to this report.
Source-University of Texas at Austin/Chinese Military Maps
Japanese Yakuza
US freezes assets of Japan's number one criminal "godfather"
The "godfather" leader of Japan's biggest organised crime group has been blacklisted in the United States as part of a major crackdown on the world's most powerful gangs.
UK Telegraph
By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo
1:33PM GMT 24 Feb 2012
Kenichi Shinoda, the number one boss at the helm of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s most prominent “yakuza” family, and his number two Kiyoshi Takayama, have had their assets frozen in the US and have been banned from financial transactions.
The clampdown follows a series of attempts by Japanese authorities to limit the illegal activities of “yakuza” organisations, which have operated openly in Japan for decades.
Shinoda operates the Yamaguchi-gumi, which is headquartered in Kobe city and is the largest of Japan’s yakuza organisations, with an estimated 34,900 members, according to National Police Agency figures.
The organisation is estimated to generate billions of pounds every year from international operations including trafficking in weapons, humans and drugs as well prostitution, market manipulation, extortion and money laundering.
Shinoda, the current godfather — known as “kumicho” in Japanese — has a colourful record of criminal activity, most recently emerging from jail in April last year, wearing a red leather hat and sunglasses, after serving six years for illegal gun possession.
The 70-year-old leader, who is believed to have masterminded an aggressive expansion of the organisation since taking over seven years ago, previously spent time in prison after he killed a rival with a samurai sword.
The yakuza have long operated openly in Japan as the organisations are not illegal, enabling them to conducting illicit activities behind front companies which have infiltrated almost every industry, from entertainment and sports to financial.
The organisations are famously governed by customs such as colourful full-body tattoos and a ritual known as “yubitsume”, which involves a member cutting off their little finger as a form of apology.
However, the yakuza also operate increasingly in a less visible way, having discretely infiltrated the financial markets in the guise of seemingly reputable organisations more commonly associated with traditional salaryman suits than tattooed gangsters.
The new US move to limit the powers of the Yamaguchi-gumi and its top tier leaders reflects the extent of the international activities of Japan’s yakuza organisations.
The US authorities also imposed economic sanctions on key members of the Brothers’ Circle, a criminal group operating across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
“Today’s action casts a spotlight on key members of criminal organisations that have engaged in a wide range of serious crimes across the globe,” said David Cohen, the treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
“We will continue to work with our international partners to target those who deal in violence, narcotics, money laundering, and the exploitation of women and children.”
Kenichi Shinoda, the number one boss at the helm of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's most prominent "yakuza" family, and his number two Kiyoshi Takayama, have had their assets seized in the US and have been banned from financial transactions.
The clampdown follows a series of attempts by Japanese authorities to limit the illegal activities of "yakuza" organisations, which have operated openly in Japan for decades.
Shinoda operates the Yamaguchi-gumi, which is headquartered in Kobe city and is the largest of Japan's yakuza organisations, with an estimated 34,900 members, according to National Police Agency figures.
The organisation is estimated to generate billions of pounds every year from international operations including trafficking in weapons, humans and drugs as well prostitution, market manipulation, extortion and money laundering.
Shinoda, the current godfather – known as "kumicho" in Japanese – has a colourful record of criminal activity, most recently emerging from jail in April last year, wearing a red leather hat and sunglasses, after serving six years for illegal gun possession.
The 70-year-old leader, who is believed to have masterminded an aggressive expansion of the organisation since taking over seven years ago, previously spent time in prison after he killed a rival with a samurai sword.
The yakuza have long operated openly in Japan as the organisations are not illegal, enabling them to conducting illicit activities behind front companies which have infiltrated almost every industry, from entertainment and sports to financial.
The organisations are famously governed by customs such as colourful full-body tattoos and a ritual known as "yubitsume", which involves a member cutting off their little finger as a form of apology.
However, the yakuza also operate increasingly in a less visible way, having discretely infiltrated the financial markets in the guise of seemingly reputable organisations more commonly associated with traditional salaryman suits than tattooed gangsters.
The new US move to limit the powers of the Yamaguchi-gumi and its top tier leaders reflects the extent of the international activities of Japan's yakuza organisations.
The US authorities also imposed economic sanctions on key members of the Brothers' Circle, a criminal group operating across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
"Today's action casts a spotlight on key members of criminal organisations that have engaged in a wide range of serious crimes across the globe," said David Cohen, the treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
"We will continue to work with our international partners to target those who deal in violence, narcotics, money laundering, and the exploitation of women and children."
______
Source- Girls tattoo gallery.com
Many years ago in the era of the Shogun, the Japanese authorities would tattoo criminals to distinguish them from the rest of the population. They could in the form of black rings on the arms. If the sentence and convictions increased, so would the rings on the arms.
These tattooed men would stick together and form gangs and eventually would be known as Yakuza. These tattoos where worn proudly as symbols of status and Yakuza tattoos developed into magnificent, ornate tattoos that covers the entire body. These Yakuza tattoos are known to take two years to complete.
The Yakuza are believed to be one of the largest organized crime factions in the world and have been around longer than the mafia and their history can be traced back to the year 1612. For the Yakuza it does not matter what country you come from or what class of society you belong to, Yakuza members must be willing to die for their boss.
Today many Yakuza gang factions are patriarchal in nature, but women are an integral part of Gangland Japan society. Wives, mistresses and girlfriends of top Yakuza figures often undergo extensive tattooing. These women sometimes use tattoos to demonstrate their affiliations with the gang lifestyle. In some cases it is done to show loyalty and obedience to the Yakuza member they are involved.
Irezumi is the art of tattooing in Japan. This word means the insertion of ink. This can be referred to a tattoo artist, the person gets the tattoo, or tattoo themselves. The Japanese samurai, who would tattoo themselves so if they died in battle would also use tattoos and their clothes and armor looted after, there would still be a way for them to be recognized.
In modern Japan, it is now widely thought that if you do a tattoo in the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia are. Many companies, especially hot springs and baths, do not get to enter their establishment as a form of tattoo.
The Secret History Of The
Freemasons In Japan
By Benjamin Fulford
Exclusive to Rense.com
7-2-7
Japanese Freemasons claim their links with Western Freemasons go back to ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian times but, I have not been able to verify this.
The earliest verifiable links go back to when the Khazar empire was destroyed by the Mongols and the Russians about 1,000 years ago. At the time their elite class fled with their treasure into Europe and China. The group that fled to China then fled to Japan as Kublai Khan's armies conquered China. That is why the Star of David can be seen in 1,000 year-old shrines in Japan. The original Khazars were fully assimilated by the Japanese elite over the ensuing centuries but certain Freemason/Khazar influences became a permanent part of Japanese culture.
After Admiral Perry arrived and forced the Japanese to open up their economy, the Rothschild's man in Asia, Jardine Matheson, sent an agent to Japan. His name was Thomas Blake Glover and his mission was to create a new arms market by starting a civil war in Japan. The ultimate aim of this war was to prepare Japan for colonization. He managed to sell some battleships and weapons but in the end, Glover's plot was uncovered and he was driven into bankruptcy.
By this time, learning of the association with their long lost cousins, the Freemasons decided on a different approach. A different Rothschild Freemason agent, Guido H.F. Verbeck, started a very successful Japanese franchise. He is the man in the center of this photograph.
http://www.asyura2.com/0406/idletalk10/msg/503.html
The people around him are the founding fathers of modern Japan and the senior members of the original modern Freemason lodge. They set up the Meiji emperor as their symbol and modernized Japan.
The Japanese masons were given full assistance by their English and European counterparts and were thus able to defeat the old Khazar nemesis, Imperial Russia, in the Russo-Japanese war.
In later years, confronted by Western racism, the Japanese Freemasons decided they needed to conquer and modernize all of Asia. Their ultimate aim was to prepare for a final show-down with the West and make Tokyo the capital of a world empire.
They allied themselves with the Baron Rothschild (known to us as Adolph Hitler) and were badly defeated by the Rockefellers.
After the war, the victorious Rockefellers arrived in Japan to survey their new possession. Negotiations on the new post-war order took place mainly inside the Japanese Grand Lodge (it is a hidden underground facility next to Tokyo Tower). Every Japanese Prime Minister since the war has been a Freemason. To the Japanese it is common knowledge that their secret rulers are David Rockefeller and his nephew Jay Rockefeller.
The old Rothschild connection still exists but, since the Rockefellers were victorious in WW2, it is the upstart Rockefellers who exert the greatest control.
To this day Japan remains a vassal state, making huge annual payments to their new masters. In theory, they can cash in on the $35 trillion in worthless paper (official data put the number at close to $5 trillion, secret data at over $35 trillion) they have been given in exchange for 60 years of supplying Americans with radios, TVs, cars etc. In reality, any Japanese Prime Minister who tried to do this was killed or deposed. More recently the Japanese have been threatened into submission with powerful secret weapons. Using former Prime Minister Koizumi and Finance Minister Heizo Takenaka (a Henry Kissinger prot'g') they also engineered a semi-secret take-over of the Japanese commercial banking system. For example, Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ bank's new logo is a Masonic eye.
http://www.bk.mufg.jp/english/
Last year the Japanese government provided the Illuminati with close to $800 billion which they have used to finance U.S. wars and to go around the world buying up stocks and real estate.
With the arrival of the Chinese secret society into the power equation, the Japanese secret government is now considering how to renegotiate its status.
The plan I have suggested to them is to make an alliance with Russia, China, India, the free Muslim countries (e.g. Malaysia, Indonesia), South America and Africa etc. before announcing to the world they will no longer finance the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and their Illuminati ilk.
Instead, they will call for a global meeting to discuss a new way of running the planet. They will also offer to finance a battle to end all poverty, environmental destruction and disease within 3 years.
Because the U.S. military/industrial socialist system would collapse without Japanese financing, the U.S. would continue to receive generous funding in exchange for a promise to use the Pentagon to lead the new war against poverty, environmental destruction and disease. The U.S.-Japan alliance would thus become a foundation block of the new international system.
This plan is under serious consideration and wheels are in motion.
BBC.com
Obama arrives in South Korea for nuclear summitBy the CNN Wire Staff
updated 5:54 PM EDT, Sat March 24, 2012
CNN.com
Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- President Barack Obama arrived in South Korea on Sunday for a three-day trip centered on an international nuclear security summit in Seoul.
He flew into Seoul, where he is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak.
Top officials from 54 countries, including China and Russia, will attend the summit meeting on Monday and Tuesday.
But its message of international cooperation has been overshadowed by North Korea's announcement last week that it is planning to carry out a rocket-powered satellite launch in April.
South Korea has said it considers the satellite launch an attempt to develop a nuclear-armed missile, while the United States has warned the move would jeopardize a food-aid agreement reached with Pyongyang in early March.
President Lee has already said he will use the summit to drum up international support against the actions of his northern neighbor.
North Korea says it has a right to a peaceful space program and has invited international space experts and journalists to witness the launch.
North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) cited a spokesman from the Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea as denouncing the South for working to turn the summit "into a platform for (an) international smear campaign" against the North.
The North has a right to a nuclear deterrent and to conduct a "satellite launch for peaceful purposes," the committee's statement said, and will take "counter-measures" if the South stirs up international criticism of its actions.
Against that tense backdrop, Obama is scheduled on Sunday to visit for the first time the demilitarized zone that splits the Korean Peninsula in two.
He will also meet with some of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, two of his top national security advisers said Tuesday during a conference call.
Although Obama himself has not been to the demilitarized zone during his two previous trips to South Korea as president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid a visit to the area in 2010.
And Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, used binoculars to peer into North Korea from a sandbagged bunker on the southern side of the border in 2002.
The date of Obama's visit " is virtually two years to the day" since the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, which left 46 Southern sailors dead, said Daniel Russel, director for Japan, South Korea, and North Korea at the U.S. National Security Council.
South Korea says a North Korean torpedo attack was to blame for the ship's sinking. The North has denied the accusation.
In a dramatic reminder of the U.S. military presence in South Korea, an American F-16 fighter jet crashed Wednesday near Kunsan airbase on the western coast of South Korea.
The jet's pilot safely ejected before the crash, and no casualties were reported, said Maj. Eric Badger, public affairs officer of the 7th Air Force.
Seoul's nuclear summit will be the second after Obama hosted the first meeting in Washington in 2010. He initiated the biennial summit after presenting his vision of a nuclear-free world in Prague in April 2009.
The official agenda will deal with nuclear terrorism and how to secure the world's nuclear material.
Although North Korea is not on the agenda, it is likely to be discussed on the sidelines.
Pyongyang announced this month it would carry out a "satellite launch" in mid-April to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the country's founder.
Using ballistic missile technology, however, is in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 and against a deal struck with the United States earlier this month that it would not carry out nuclear or missile tests in return for food aid.
Pyongyang has said it will see any critical statement of its nuclear program as "a declaration of war."
Concerns about Iran's nuclear program, again not on the official agenda, will also be discussed in bilateral meetings between leaders.
CNN's Paula Hancocks, Shruti Pant, Jethro Mullen and Bob Kovach contributed to this report.
Source-University of Texas at Austin/Chinese Military Maps
Chinese Short/Medium/Long Range Missle Strategy-(Take out Japan, Australia) Primary Targets!
Diagram: Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile attacking aircraft carrier
"Official reports from the search for our treasure!" This is a U.S. think tank "2049 Scheme" Institute chief expert Makesituo Brooks used to say, he was awarded the CIA had "the best of the Chinese human intelligence gathering Prize "veteran Recently, a new discovery, he said in a report, through the interpretation of the official report, he reached the building of Guangdong Province, east China is a land-based anti-aircraft missile-21D base conclusions. The rapid rise to a U.S. media report on China's anti-aircraft missiles, a new round of speculation. More U.S. military analysts are beginning to discuss ways to deal with Dongfeng-21D.
New base for the South China Sea, mainly?
According to "Defense News" reported on August 5, "2049 Scheme" Research on China's official media has a military base in the new report was "in-depth analysis." Chinese media reported that a short, local leaders in the August 1 Army Day in Guangdong Province before the sympathy of the officers and men of a new military base. Stokes speculated that this is a Second Artillery missile forces, the Second Artillery building a new base in a province only where the purpose of the deployment of new weapons. He speculated that the force will be equipped with wind-21C medium-range ballistic missiles, and may deploy more advanced anti-ship ballistic missile Dongfeng-21D, which will be China's first anti-aircraft missile base.
Ballistic missiles are generally used against fixed land targets, but the U.S. media that the east-21D is tailored specifically for the U.S. aircraft carrier missile against moving targets at sea, to prevent U.S. aircraft carrier involved in the Taiwan Strait. "Defense News" will have a further interpretation of the report, that the new base in the South China Sea is mainly used for deterrence. Reported in Meizhou, Guangdong has a short-range ballistic missile base, a new base in the South China Sea that China should use the "anti-intervention" strategy, the South China Sea "strategic calculus equation" more complex.
Articles guess, Dongfeng-21C of the range of 1,700 kilometers, can easily hit targets in Vietnam, and most of the land, including Subic Bay, Philippines, including the northern part of the east-21D anti-aircraft missile's range was about 1500-2000 km, If you can reach 1,800 kilometers, can fully cover the Spratly Islands, such as a range of 2,000 km, can cover 70% of the South China Sea waters. In addition, the new base from Taiwan, 800 kilometers east coast, however, may take into account the Taiwan Strait. The article said that the anti-aircraft missiles deployed in Shaoguan also increased the U.S. military reconnaissance and combat difficulty, because this is located in Nanling Mountains, "2049," the report said, early in 2008, the Corps of Engineers began construction of underground tunnels in Shaoguan.
United States Naval Base Sasebo, Japan
FDNF Ships
COMPHIBRON ELEVEN
USS Essex(LHD-2)
USS Denver(LPD-9)
USS Tortuga(LSD-46)
USS Germantown (LSD 42)
USS Guardian(MCM-5)
USS Patriot(MCM-7)
USS Avenger(MCM-1)
USS Defender(MCM-2)
FISC Yokosuka
Assault Craft Unit One (ACU-1)
Welcome to Commander Fleet Activities Sasebo
The important bilateral relationship between Japan and the United States that exists today is very much in evidence at U.S. Fleet Activities Sasebo, where ships of the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force and the United States Seventh Fleet share this excellent port.
The important bilateral relationship between Japan and the United States that exists today is very much in evidence at U.S. Fleet Activities Sasebo, where ships of the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force and the United States Seventh Fleet share this excellent port.
CFAS is located on Kyushu island, about 45 miles (1.5 hour drive) from the prefecture's capital of Nagasaki and 78 miles (2 hour drive) from Fukuoka, largest city on the island. Sasebo is about 600 miles by air from Tokyo. The installation is composed of 12 separate areas on 1,285 acres bordering or near Sasebo Harbor. CFAS includes a main base area, three off-base housing areas, three fuel facilities, two ordnance facilities and a Landing Craft Air Cushion laydown site. For over 120 years two great navies, first the former Imperial Navy and now the U.S. Navy, have called Sasebo home. The city and nearby area are generally rural in comparison to other fleet concentration areas and features stunning natural beauty, including nearby 99 Islands National Park.
CFAS is the home of the Navy's only forward-deployed Amphibious Ready Group, anchored by USS Essex (LHD 2). Supporting Essex, our seven other forward-deployed ships and all U.S. Seventh Fleet ships is the mission of this installation. The base is strategically important in carrying out our defense treaty with Japan in ensuring peace and stability throughout the region. Proud of how we perform, CFAS is Commander Naval Region Japan's installation of the year in 2005, 2007 and 2009.
23 March 2012 Last updated at 06:12 ET
Japan readies anti-missile defence for N Korea
Japan readies anti-missile defence for N Korea
Japan has ordered missile defence systems to be prepared in response to the planned launch of a North Korean long-range rocket next month, Japanese Defence Minister Naoki Tanaka has said.
Reports said the defence systems would be deployed near the island of Okinawa to shoot down the rocket should it threaten Japanese territory.
North Korea says the rocket will put a satellite into orbit.
But the US and its allies believe the launch is a pretext for a missile test.
'Grave provocation'
Pyongyang said last week it was to mark the 100th birthday of its late Great Leader Kim Il-sung with the launch.
The announcement drew widespread criticism that the launch would violate UN Security Council resolutions.
Continued Here
Territorial Conflicts in the East China Sea – From Missed Opportunities to Negotiation Stalemate (1)
Reinhard Drifte
Abstract
This paper analyses the political, legal, military and economic issues involved in the territorial and maritime border issues in the East China Sea (ECS) between mainly Japan and China but also with special reference to the Korean interests in the northern part of the Sea. The issues revolve around the dispute over the sovereignty of the Senkaku Islands/Diaoyudao, as well as the delimitation of the Japan-China and the China-Korea maritime borders. It concludes that in the 1970s and 1980s some opportunities to achieve joint exploitation of the hydrocarbon resources in the ECS were missed, and Japan later sent misleading signals to China about the commitment to its economic interests in the Sea. A critical evaluation of the 18 June 2008 Japan-China agreement foresees many obstacles to implement it, which also does not augur well for a speedy delimitation of the China-Korea maritime border.
Introduction
The Japanese and Chinese governments agreed in 2006 to turn the East China Sea from a “Sea of Confrontation” to a “Sea of Peace, Cooperation and Friendship”. On 18 June 2008 the two governments achieved an agreement, following lengthy negotiations, on joint approaches to the exploitation of hydrocarbons in the East China Sea through the conclusion of a bilateral treaty (2). As of now no round of negotiation has yet begun which gives an indication of the magnitude of problems.
Continued Reading Here
Japanese/Chinese fishing waters???
Tokyo (CNN) -- The Japanese coast guard said Tuesday that it had chased down and arrested a Chinese fisherman it found in waters near southern Japanese islands, taking his boat into custody.
Encounters between Chinese fishermen and the Japanese authorities have exacerbated tensions between Japan and China in the past over territorial boundaries in the East China Sea.
The Japanese coast guard said it had chased the Chinese boat for seven hours after finding it trying to collect corals near islands off the coast of Nagasaki. The coast guard arrested the boat's captain, adding that nobody was harmed in the process.
The coast guard has beefed up its patrols since November after it arrested another Chinese boat it said was illegally fishing in the same area.
Last year, Japan arrested the crew of a Chinese sailing vessel, prompting nationalist demonstrations in both countries and a war of words at the highest levels between Tokyo and Beijing.
And in a sign of the broader maritime tensions in the region, a South Korean coast guard commando was stabbed to death and another injured last week after they boarded a Chinese fishing vessel they suspected of fishing illegally in the Yellow Sea.
Japanese/Chinese Military Conflicts from the Past-(Five part article series by author Robert Whiston)
Part 1.
China's Sunken Warships/Japanese Imperialism
Gunboats and the China of the “Inter-War” Years (Part 1)
Introduction
1.Definition of a ‘gunboat’
2.China’s Cauldron
3.Tracing China’s War Fleet
4.China’s Gunboats
5.China’s Warship Fleet (listing)
Introduction
1.Definition of a ‘gunboat’
2.China’s Cauldron
3.Tracing China’s War Fleet
4.China’s Gunboats
5.China’s Warship Fleet (listing)
 |
| Chinese Gunboats Circa 1930 |
Introduction
China in the inter-war period, conjures up many stereotypical images. It is evocative of sultry afternoons; of coolie labour; of colonial types whiling away the hours on some shady verandah, or sipping tea under the tropical awning of a ship’s deck
However, this apparent leisured lifestyle with its overtones of Noel Coward is an illusion. It is a world away from the realities of the 1920s and 1930s in China which saw slaughter on a scale hitherto unprecedented.
Left: the gunboat HMS Falcon (or Gannet) 1938. The city of Chungking is visible upper left.
What is not disputed is the iconic image of the gunboat. We have only to turn to the memoirs of those posted to ‘the China Station’ to summon up the atmospherics of that era. Typical is that by G.H. Thomas, “An American in China: 1936-39 A Memoir.” He recalls how he “would frequently have “tiffin” or curry lunch on board with the British officers.” [1] But what is a ‘gun boat’ and why did so many nations have them patrolling up and down China’s coast and along her huge rivers ?
The history of China at first intersects and then collides with that of the 20th century Western world with the impact point being the “gunboat”. Therefore, an understanding of gunboats is essential before moving on to China’s warships of the inter war years.
China’s 20th century history was wracked by decades of internal conflict between War Lords and external warfare with Japan followed by more political tumult and in-fighting. Only now, in the 21st century, a period of calm, growing prosperity and tranquility is its people finding time to explore their cultural heritage and re-examine the roots of the conflicts that shaped the lives of their forefathers.
Symbolic of this resurgence is the salvaging of the Chinese gunboat, Yong Feng. in 1997, from the bottom of the Changjiang River. It was in October 1938 that it was sunk by Japanese fighter planes during what China calls its “War of Resistance against Japan” and which is known in the west as the “Second Sino- Japanese War.”
According to the China ‘People’s Daily’ (May 26, 2008), a specially built berth for the fully restored gunboat has been provided by the town of Jinkou, near Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei Province. (Xinhua/Zhou, Guoqiang). [2] At 836 tons it is a far cry from the European experience of a gunboat, modelled as that is on the British MTB, the German E-Boat and the US PT boats.
Definition of a ‘gunboat’
The lineage of gunboats can be traced back to the Napoleonic war. Originally they were sailing ships. They were shallow draft sloops (if of the larger variety), but could be as small as today’s life boats found on liners. What made them ‘gunboats’ was that they were armed with cannon.[3]
The gunboat, as popular consciousness would today recall them, emerged out of the 19th century and colonial expansion – and in the case of the US, out of their Civil War. They were coal fired and later oil/turbine driven. The film African Queen centres around a German gun boat set in German East Africa at the time of World War I.
A more recent film depicting China in the inter-war years is “The Sand Pebbles” (1966) starring Steve McQueen. Set during the Boxer Rebellion of 1926, it captures the immense rivers, the sheer remoteness of China for repair and re-supply when machinery breaks down and it exemplifies the mood of the time, ie Chinese versus foreigners.
A gunboat is, therefore, any armed vessel, i.e. a small warship regardless of calibre of guns fitted, with a shallow draft, designed for use on rivers and along coasts. Their value lay not only in their comparative cheapness and simplicity of construction but in permitting nation states to project power in places inaccessible to vessels of larger displacement. In that they were the forerunner of the aircraft carrier.
Gunboats were widely employed by all the European powers with colonial ambitions not only in Africa, but in the Far East and Middle East well into the 20th century. The advent of the gunboat was the genesis of gunboat diplomacy in the 19th century; a form of confrontational diplomacy between unequal’s where potential unrest among “the locals” was rapidly quelled by a display of force and fire power along the tribal coastline or inland if large rivers were navigable.
During the Vietnam War (circa 1973), the US Navy used turbine propulsion plants in their Swift and coastal patrol boats along the Mekong Delta. These boats were not heavily armed.
They carried only two.50” calibre machine gun sets and one mortar. Prior to the Vietnam war, the French Indo-China war of the 1960s, saw extensive use of Riverines, brown water craft. There is extensive literature for those interested in French Indo-China wars.
 |
| Ancient Chinese warship |
Similar measures were used by the British against Indonesian sponsored insurgency against Brunei, Borneo and Sarawak during the Indonesian-Malaysian confrontation, circa 1963. This was countered by SAS units and the Royal Marines. Unlike the French Indo-China conflict a tight lid was kept on publicity surrounding these events.
China’s Cauldron
China’s destiny in the 20th century has been dictated by its neighbours in the eastern quadrant – that geographical landmass bordering on Korea, the Sea of Japan, Manchuria and Vladivostok.
The politics in play in this area involved the greed and envy of the Japanese, the gauche ambitions and presumptive Russians, and the rivalry from the Great Powers of Europe, e.g. Britain, France, Germany. Any fleet it might have had has been ravaged by one war after another.
The political realities and potential pressure points are best displayed pictorially by this map (below). The view from Peking would be one of menaces in one form or another Northwards from Russia and Manchuria, and from the east Korea and Japan with the ultimate prize to the victors of Port Arthur and the deep water harbours of the German and British enclaves on the Shantung Peninsula .
Manchuria -was rich in basic minerals – the very things that Japan lacked. The local minerals included substantial deposits of iron ore, coal, dolomite and magnesite, aluminous shale and oil shale (petroleum). The oil shale processing operation opened in 1929 and is still (2010) producing an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil per day.
Agriculturally, the Manchurian Plain offered what Japan’s topography could not – a vast expanse of highly productive arable land.
Vladivostok – although strategically located for the Pacific and though the port has been well fortified, its latitude meant it is only open to shipping from April to October of every year. In the winter months ice made it inoperable for the Russian fleet. Russia’s other fleet, facing the Atlantic, suffered the same handicap. Based in the Baltic Sea (and technically Kaliningrad, is in Poland / Prussia), it too was frozen in for several months each year. The hunt for a ‘warm water’ port for its Navy and merchant shipping was therefore a high priority. Russia’s only other option was the Black Sea fleet but it has strategic drawback of being easily bottled up in the Black Sea and reliant on permission to use the Suez Canal and Straits of Gibraltar.
Korea – has figured strongly in both china’s and Japan’s history. In the 16th century it became a unified state (the Joseon era) when Japan was still divided up between warlords. As a result I t was occasionally invaded by various Japanese warlords. By the 1890s Japan had eased Korea out of china’s sphere of influence. Japan increased its control over Korea until in 1910 it annexed Korea after forcing it to sign the Eulsa Treaty of 1905 which made Korea a protectorate of Japan.
It was the friction over Korea that lead to the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) between Qing China perhaps more commonly known as the Manchu Dynasty and Japan. Much of this war was fought on the Korean peninsula and the war gave Japan control of Korea. Japan had by this time acquired Western military technology and forced Joseon to sign an ignominious one-sided treaty.
A process of nation bully learnt first, one suspects, from the American approach to opening up a ‘closed’ Japanese market for trade by gunboat diplomacy in Tokyo Bay (1853), befell Korea and then China. Had the Americans not adopted this posture there would arguably have been no First or Second Sino-Japanese War.
Japan – as we have seen above, Japan had no raw materials, e.g. coal, iron, manganese, nickel, gold, oil, diamonds etc, of its own. In order to start its Industrial Revolution (post 1853) it had to survive by trading. It was entirely reliant upon exports to fund imports and sustain growth. Its military decisions where highly influenced by this economic necessity and mineral availability (the US oil embargo triggered Pearl Harbour 1941).
Port Arthur – as mentioned above, Russia didn’t have a ‘warm water’ port. Vladivostok, St Petersburg, the Baltic and the Barent Sea naval bases all shared the same meteorological conditions – they froze over in the winter. The prospect of acquiring Port Arthur, a warm water port open 12 months a year, was therefore a goal worth striving for and worth the risk of having to pay a high price.
Peking (aka Beijing) – is, like Berlin, a capital city very close (perhaps dangerously so), to inherently belligerent neighbours.
Shantung Peninsula – also spelt Shandong, following the leasing of Port Arthur to the Russians a geographically small part of a Peninsula located opposite Port Arthur was ceded to Germany (on the southern coast) and a second small enclave of Wei Hai Wei to Britain (the most easterly tip) in 1898. Both countries turned fishing villages into major naval stations.
Wei Hai Wei was to become second in importance only to Hong Kong.
It was inevitable that great power rivalry among Europeans states would be played out in this quarter of the world and that the aspirations of nations yet to be acknowledged as world powers would only add the explosive mixture that was the cauldron simmering east of Beijing (Peking).
Tracing China’s War Fleet
Over the many decades the various Chinese dynasties have had a variety of fleets from wooden hulled sail boats without canon, to sailing boats with cannon, followed by metal hulled steam powered craft with fitted cannons.
The following ship information has been gleaned from many web sources including translations from modern Chinese sites. However, Battleships-Cruisers.co.uk is a very comprehensive listing of naval craft from around the world and painstakingly put together. The Chinese subsection can be found at (http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/chinese_navy.htm). [4] In an attempt to secure the best possible data base even the sites of model makers have been examined for any relevant details specific to any models that they might produce.
Part 1 continued below @ Link
Part 2.
The Second Sino- Japanese War, which this, the inter-war years covers, would see engagements on rivers where the vessels might only be 1, 000 or 4,000 yards apart. The size of rivers are not of a European scale (save for something like the lower Rhine) but on a scale seen in North America e.g. the Mississippi, or the Amazon.
Gunboats patrolling a river in China.
The Yellow River, for instance, which is China’s second largest, is approx. 3,900 miles long and 30 miles across – even at the 500 mile long flood plain region of its middle reaches.
Naval exchanges could equally be close up and personal or up to a distance of 10 miles apart. Often the broad expanse of water was uninterrupted by mountains meaning aircraft would have an unimpeded flight approach to strafe shipping. This would limited their ability to manoeuvre due to the possibility of shoals, submerged rocks and sand banks.
At other times the terrain would shelter shipping from aerial attack (see photo right). The hazards of navigating poorly charted rivers are shown below as seasonal rains cease and a gun boat is left ‘beached’.
Only if naval engagements were in coastal waters would the range more approximate European and American perceptions of distance. However, as exchanges in the English Channel between frigates, MTBs and E-Boats testify, coastal engagements can also be in the 100 to 4,000 yards category (approx. 100 to 4,000 metres).
It is not appreciated widely enough in “the West” just how epic was the scale of forces locked in mortal combat during this decade. For instance, for the 4 month defence of Wuhan in Sept 1938 (after the fall of Xuzhou, in May 1938). China marshalled more than one million troops to oppose the Japanese.
The photos above and below shows both the scale of Chinese rivers and the huge variation in available manoeuvring room.
Fighting on China’s rivers – the view from the bridge.
Wuhan was a hugely important communications hub and trading centre. It is where the Yangtze River meets the Han River and it had extensive road and rail links for the wider province.
In addition to the 1 million troops, China was able to assemble an array of around 200 planes and 30 naval ships. [1] It was this four month engagement that resulted in the destruction of the Chinese Navy and its Air Force.
Beginning of The End
Japans defeat did not begin with its military engagement with America, or even the dropping of the atomic bombs, but in China. In the West we tend to forget that it was not just the attrition of US forces in the pacific theatre that led to Japan’s defeat but the hemorrhaging of money, men and material in their war with China, which had begun in 1931, that spelt the end in 1945.[2]
Most western historians see July 7th 1937 as the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. They cite the ‘Marco Polo Bridge Incident’ (Battle of Lugou Bridge) as the trigger but Chinese historians place the starting point at the Mukden Incident of Sept 18th 1931.
The reason for this is that following the Mukden Incident, the Japanese Guandong Army (also spelt ‘Kwantung’ and ‘Kantōgun’ army’), occupied Manchuria. [3] Part 1 indicated how critical Manchuria was to Japan’s military expansion. After securing Manchuria (Feb 1932), Japan set up the ‘puppet state’ of Manchukuo. Japan then pressured China into recognising the ‘independent’ province of Manchukuo.
Japan’s had 20 years earlier, in 1915, tried to intimidate China by its “Listy of Twenty-One Demands” on pain of suffering dire consequences. These demands would give Japan control over the Shandong Peninsula, its railways, coasts and major cities in the Shandong province (the South Manchuria Railway Zone). Japan also demanded rights of settlement, priority for Japanese investments and the right to appoint financial and administrative officials. It also allowed for Japanese control of the Manchurian railway (right into the 21st century) and mining rights in Manchuria and Mongolia. China had to accede to most of these demands. [4]
But 1915 was a very different world with different allies. Japan’s status then had been high I those years but as it dealt more harshly with hian the cup of human kindness among the world’s leading nations began to evaporate.
The demands made in 1931 were never agreed and China and Japan never formally declared war against each other until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour (Dec 7th 1941).
In its 1915 ambitions, Japan no doubt felt safe having as allies both Britain and the US. However, by 1931 both states were expressing reservations about Japan’s policy towards China. From a Japanese perspective it can be imagined the letter of March 13th 1915, from US Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, affirming Japan’s “special interests” in Manchuria, Mongolia and Shandong, legitimated claims to expand its territorial holdings (even though the same letter expresses concern at Japan’s ‘further encroachments to Chinese sovereignty’), in much the same way that the informal Balfour note of 1917 has been used unmercifully by Zionist interests.
In Fighting
The Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek as outlined in Part 1 struggled to maintain a semblance of government while striving to fend off would-be successors, i.e. the Japanese, the puppet state of Manchukuo, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Soviet backed NRA (National Revolutionary Army – see also Kuomintang [KMT]), People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Many of them were set up in the early 1920s.
Realising he faced threats from all of them, especially the growing Communist forces, and that
Militarily, his lines of re-supply passed through regions held by or hostile or unsympathetic
forces, Chiang Kai-shek decided to avoid heavy battles to preserve the strength of his army and navy.
Chiang Kai-shek’s strategy was to retain his grip on his provisional capital at Chongqing City, [5]out wait the Japanese who, on other fronts, were being pressed ever more homeward, and then be in a position to decisively take on the Communists of Mao Tse-tung (aka Mao Zedong). Chiang Kai-shek did not risk an all-out internecine campaign because he did not underestimate the well trained, well equipped and organised alternative Chinese armies and opposition against his leadership within and outside the Kuomintang.
There are uncanny parallels with the Spanish Republican forces. Its Navy too appears to have remained unproductively in port – even though it appears to have had a larger fleet than Franco. It too appears to have not captured or suck any opponent ships in meaningful numbers. Nor did they seriously harass or handicap any joint Sea and Army operations of their opponent. The Spanish Republican army and the internatioanl brigade threw themsleves into battle wbut with few suceses to show for their sacrifice.
The Soviets backed the rebel side opposing Chiang Kai-shek while Germany supported his regime. In Spain positions were reversed; the Soviets backed the legitimate Republican governement side with Germany backing the rebel side.
If anything the political in-fighting between factions within the Spanish Republican movement appears to be mirrored in the destructive rivalry between Chinese War Lords – much to the advantage of Franco and Imperial Japan respectively.
A measure of these formidable aspects of the war in China can be gauged by appreciating that:
The Kuomintang Army fought in 22 major engagements, including Wuhan, each of which involved at least one hundred thousand troops from both sides, and was involved in just over 40,000 skirmishes.
The CCP fought in 111,500 engagements of various sizes.
The Japanese recorded around 1.1 million military casualties, dead, wounded and missing.
The Chinese suffered much worse – they lost approximately 3.22 million soldiers.
China was the first to experience racial genocide as the definition is accepted today. Over 9.13 million civilians died in crossfire, and another 8.4 million were non-military casualties.
The Rape of Nanking (just one Chinese city), saw, in a six week period, the gratuitous slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the sexual rape of up to 80,000 women by Japanese soldiers beginning Dec 13th 1937. [6]
According to the currency exchange rate of July 1937, Chinese property and asset losses totalled over US 383,000 million dollars (i.e. 383,301,300,000,000). This is roughly 50 times the GDP of Japan (i.e. US 770 million dollars).
The practice of Japanese soldiers using live captured Allied solders hung up from trees as bayonet practice in Burma. Malaya and Indonesia sweeps away Japanese claims that the Rape of Nanking is a fabrication or at best an exaggeration. The beheading of captured Allied solders will forever put Japan in the same category as the vile excesses perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalist.
For those connected to such events the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs are not quite justice enough.
Fighting with Rivers
If measured by the West’s yardstick, i.e. from 1937 to 1945, the conflict lasted for over 8 years (97 months and 3 days). The 20th century is fast becoming known as The Century of Total War, and the war in China is now rated one of the most massive military conflicts of the 20th century. Nearly a whole generation of Chinese knew the country only to be in a perpetual state of war.
On a geographic scale its fronts would have engulfed the entire Eastern United States and were comparable to those of the Eastern Front between the USSR and Germany. Spread across more than 2,000 miles and embracing vastly differing terrain and environments, millions of soldiers and sailors were mobilized to fight it.
Millions of people were displaced in its wake; few Chinese did not become refugees at some point during the war or feel the imprint of an influx of desperate people from the areas under Japanese or collaborationist “control.”
The one common denominator were the rivers. They influenced battle tactics and the viability of fallback positions.
The map shown below lists the main rivers and the region most hotly contested, e.g. the Han, the Pearl River (the Guangdong), and the Yangtze.
Nanking (aka Nanjing) is a small distance westwards from Shanghai. The Pearl River and a dozen more flow south wards into the South China Sea near Hong Kong and Macau.
Starting at the Shantung Peninsular near Peiking (Beijing), one can visualize Japanese forces utilising the water network; first of the Grand Canal in the Shantung Peninsular (Yellow Sea), then southwards linking up to Shanghai (East China Sea), and then turning westwards taking Wuhun.
Even if there were no internal waterways, the Japanese could have nimbly leap-frogged down China’s sea border until Hong Kong was reached.
The Yangtze River gives access to the Mekong which facilitates penetration into Indo-China. The Yangtze River also comes perilously close to the border regions of Burma and India.
continued @ link below
Japan as of March, 1st 2012
Japanese Yakuza
US freezes assets of Japan's number one criminal "godfather"
The "godfather" leader of Japan's biggest organised crime group has been blacklisted in the United States as part of a major crackdown on the world's most powerful gangs.
UK Telegraph
By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo
1:33PM GMT 24 Feb 2012
Kenichi Shinoda, the number one boss at the helm of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s most prominent “yakuza” family, and his number two Kiyoshi Takayama, have had their assets frozen in the US and have been banned from financial transactions.
The clampdown follows a series of attempts by Japanese authorities to limit the illegal activities of “yakuza” organisations, which have operated openly in Japan for decades.
Shinoda operates the Yamaguchi-gumi, which is headquartered in Kobe city and is the largest of Japan’s yakuza organisations, with an estimated 34,900 members, according to National Police Agency figures.
The organisation is estimated to generate billions of pounds every year from international operations including trafficking in weapons, humans and drugs as well prostitution, market manipulation, extortion and money laundering.
Shinoda, the current godfather — known as “kumicho” in Japanese — has a colourful record of criminal activity, most recently emerging from jail in April last year, wearing a red leather hat and sunglasses, after serving six years for illegal gun possession.
The 70-year-old leader, who is believed to have masterminded an aggressive expansion of the organisation since taking over seven years ago, previously spent time in prison after he killed a rival with a samurai sword.
The yakuza have long operated openly in Japan as the organisations are not illegal, enabling them to conducting illicit activities behind front companies which have infiltrated almost every industry, from entertainment and sports to financial.
The organisations are famously governed by customs such as colourful full-body tattoos and a ritual known as “yubitsume”, which involves a member cutting off their little finger as a form of apology.
However, the yakuza also operate increasingly in a less visible way, having discretely infiltrated the financial markets in the guise of seemingly reputable organisations more commonly associated with traditional salaryman suits than tattooed gangsters.
The new US move to limit the powers of the Yamaguchi-gumi and its top tier leaders reflects the extent of the international activities of Japan’s yakuza organisations.
The US authorities also imposed economic sanctions on key members of the Brothers’ Circle, a criminal group operating across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
“Today’s action casts a spotlight on key members of criminal organisations that have engaged in a wide range of serious crimes across the globe,” said David Cohen, the treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
“We will continue to work with our international partners to target those who deal in violence, narcotics, money laundering, and the exploitation of women and children.”
Kenichi Shinoda, the number one boss at the helm of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's most prominent "yakuza" family, and his number two Kiyoshi Takayama, have had their assets seized in the US and have been banned from financial transactions.
The clampdown follows a series of attempts by Japanese authorities to limit the illegal activities of "yakuza" organisations, which have operated openly in Japan for decades.
Shinoda operates the Yamaguchi-gumi, which is headquartered in Kobe city and is the largest of Japan's yakuza organisations, with an estimated 34,900 members, according to National Police Agency figures.
The organisation is estimated to generate billions of pounds every year from international operations including trafficking in weapons, humans and drugs as well prostitution, market manipulation, extortion and money laundering.
Shinoda, the current godfather – known as "kumicho" in Japanese – has a colourful record of criminal activity, most recently emerging from jail in April last year, wearing a red leather hat and sunglasses, after serving six years for illegal gun possession.
The 70-year-old leader, who is believed to have masterminded an aggressive expansion of the organisation since taking over seven years ago, previously spent time in prison after he killed a rival with a samurai sword.
The yakuza have long operated openly in Japan as the organisations are not illegal, enabling them to conducting illicit activities behind front companies which have infiltrated almost every industry, from entertainment and sports to financial.
The organisations are famously governed by customs such as colourful full-body tattoos and a ritual known as "yubitsume", which involves a member cutting off their little finger as a form of apology.
However, the yakuza also operate increasingly in a less visible way, having discretely infiltrated the financial markets in the guise of seemingly reputable organisations more commonly associated with traditional salaryman suits than tattooed gangsters.
The new US move to limit the powers of the Yamaguchi-gumi and its top tier leaders reflects the extent of the international activities of Japan's yakuza organisations.
The US authorities also imposed economic sanctions on key members of the Brothers' Circle, a criminal group operating across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
"Today's action casts a spotlight on key members of criminal organisations that have engaged in a wide range of serious crimes across the globe," said David Cohen, the treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
"We will continue to work with our international partners to target those who deal in violence, narcotics, money laundering, and the exploitation of women and children."
______
Source- Girls tattoo gallery.com
Many years ago in the era of the Shogun, the Japanese authorities would tattoo criminals to distinguish them from the rest of the population. They could in the form of black rings on the arms. If the sentence and convictions increased, so would the rings on the arms.
These tattooed men would stick together and form gangs and eventually would be known as Yakuza. These tattoos where worn proudly as symbols of status and Yakuza tattoos developed into magnificent, ornate tattoos that covers the entire body. These Yakuza tattoos are known to take two years to complete.
The Yakuza are believed to be one of the largest organized crime factions in the world and have been around longer than the mafia and their history can be traced back to the year 1612. For the Yakuza it does not matter what country you come from or what class of society you belong to, Yakuza members must be willing to die for their boss.
Today many Yakuza gang factions are patriarchal in nature, but women are an integral part of Gangland Japan society. Wives, mistresses and girlfriends of top Yakuza figures often undergo extensive tattooing. These women sometimes use tattoos to demonstrate their affiliations with the gang lifestyle. In some cases it is done to show loyalty and obedience to the Yakuza member they are involved.
Irezumi is the art of tattooing in Japan. This word means the insertion of ink. This can be referred to a tattoo artist, the person gets the tattoo, or tattoo themselves. The Japanese samurai, who would tattoo themselves so if they died in battle would also use tattoos and their clothes and armor looted after, there would still be a way for them to be recognized.
In modern Japan, it is now widely thought that if you do a tattoo in the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia are. Many companies, especially hot springs and baths, do not get to enter their establishment as a form of tattoo.
Massive Tokyo City
Japan builds Tokyo Sky Tree, world's tallest tower
by Tim Hornyak March 1, 2012 11:01 AM PST
Source-CNET.com
Standing 2,080 feet tall, the Tokyo Sky Tree is a new digital broadcast tower built on reclaimed land in the Japanese capital. Engineers are confident it won't topple in an earthquake.
TOKYO--Nearly a year after the magnitude-9.0 quake that pummeled Japan, construction of the world's tallest tower, the Tokyo Sky Tree, is now complete.
Builder Obayashi, which recently announced plans for a space elevator to start services by 2050, declared the Sky Tree complete ahead of a ceremony Friday. While the world's tallest man-made structure remains the Burj Khalifa in Dubai at 829 meters (2,720 feet), the Sky Tree tops the list of the tallest free-standing towers at 634 meters (2,080 feet).
It's 34 meters taller than the Canton Tower in Guangzhou, China, and nearly twice the height of its predecessor, Tokyo Tower (333 meters). Operated by Tobu Railways and a consortium of media companies, the Sky Tree will serve as a digital terrestrial broadcasting center for Tokyo and the surrounding Kanto region.
The achievement came amid snowy weather in Tokyo. Falling ice from the structure has been a problem for nearby companies and residences in Sumida Ward, a heretofore quiet district on the eastern bank of the Sumida River.
The land is known to be relatively unstable and much of the area was reclaimed from Tokyo Bay long ago. But engineers say the Sky Tree will be able to withstand even the strongest of earthquakes. They point to a traditional building technique that was incorporated in the structure.
The Sky Tree makes use of a shinbashira, a central column that features in the architecture of Japanese pagodas. The column acts as a stationary pendulum to counterbalance seismic waves, greatly reducing the sway in the surounding structure.
Indeed, there are virtually no records of pagodas being toppled in quakes in Japanese history. The tallest wooden tower in the country, the 55-meter (180-foot) pagoda of Toji temple in Kyoto, has been standing firm since 1644.
The Sky Tree's shinbashira is a hollow concrete tube housing elevators and stairs. It's structurally separate from the exterior truss but is joined by oil dampers, which help reduce quake shaking.
"The anti-quake measures in this structure can reduce quake vibrations by 50 percent," Hirotake Takanishi, PR manager for Tobu Tower Sky Tree, told me. "We've run simulations showing the Sky Tree will withstand an 8.0-magnitude earthquake, and can withstand even stronger ones, but we can't say definitely what its upper limit is."
The building suffered virtually no damage in the March 2011 quake, though supply interruptions delayed its completion.
Opening in May, the Sky Tree will have several cutting-edge attractions, including a special observation deck at 450 meters (1,476 feet) that will have an "air corridor" that snakes around the exterior for vertiginous thrills.
Stunning panoramic views
When I visited the Sky Tree on a press preview late last year, I rode the high-speed elevator to the first observation deck at 350 meters (1,148 feet) above ground. I couldn't feel the car's acceleration because it's engineered for a very smooth ride, but I was whisked up in less than a minute.
The view that greeted me was a stunning panorama of Tokyo spreading out in all directions over the Kanto plain. The world's largest metropolitan area, home to some 30 million people, seemed infinite.
Though Tokyo suffers from haze, on clear days in winter Mt. Fuji, Japan's iconic volcano, is visible to the southwest. The 360-degree deck also has a reproduction of a folding screen painting from Japan's feudal period that bears a remarkable resemblance to the panorama. It's a bird's eye view of Edo, the shogun's capital that was the precursor to Tokyo.
Indeed, the past is never far away at the Sky Tree. In Japanese, its height of 634 (meters) can be pronounced "mu-sa-shi," which refers to Musashi, the ancient province that was home to Edo.
Check out more pics in our gallery above, as well as the time-lapse video below of the Tokyo Sky Tree being built.
Japan vs. China in a WW3 Scenario
Welcome to China vs. Japan Military Match-Ups. Relations between the two economic and military giants of East Asia are far from sanguine. Chinese attitudes towards Japan can only be described as antagonistic, and in 2010 Japan finally started reacting to that hostility and China's rising power with a defense reorganization. The future of East Asia will certainly include more ugly incidents between China and Japan akin to the 2010 Senkaku Islands fishing boat row or the 2001 US Navy spy plane incident, and may even lead to a full-fledged East Asian arms race.
China vs. Japan Military Match-Ups offers a concise, comparative index to the fighter aircraft, tanks, warships, missiles and other weapons systems that would figure in any international incident or military build-up in East Asia. This website uses open source data, expert analysis and public domain imagery to provide unbiased, accurate comparisons of military equipment used by China's People's Liberation Army and Japan's Self-Defense Forces. China vs. Japan Military Match-Ups does not make any judgements as to who fields the best military equipment, nor does it engage in any speculation regarding which country would win in a skirmish or armed conflict.
Japan Chooses F-35 Fighter, China Eliminates J-7s
Source- Yahoo news.com
On December 21, the Japanese government plans to purchase 42 American F-35 Lightning II to replace the aging F-4 Phantoms of the Air Self-Defense Force. The first F-35s are slated for delivery in April 2012, and the defense deal specifies that Japan will make 40 percent of the parts used in assembling their F-35s.
Japan's air force has been in the market for a new fighter for several years, and for much of that time lobbied to receive the American F-22 Raptor. The F-22 and F-35 represent two very different fifth-generation fighter aircraft. While both incorporate cutting-edge stealth technology and are highly advanced multirole aircraft, the F-22 is an air superiority jet, meant primarily to shoot down enemy aircraft. The F-35 is primarily a strike aircraft, meant to attack ground targets with bombs and missiles.
Japan's air force is largely oriented around air defense, explaining their interest in the F-22. However, the US government has flatly refused to sell the F-22 to any foreign customer, leaving the F-35 as the only stealth fighter on the market. The F-35 is intended to replace Japan's F-4EJs, a 1960s era aircraft with 1980s upgrades and optimized for air defense. The Japanese are therefore replacing a venerable air superiority fighter with a super-modern strike aircraft, representing both an upgrade and a shift in capability.
The F-35 is one of only a few ultra-modern, fifth generation fighter aircraft currently in service. In addition to its stealth capability, the Japanese version of this fighter will also have the most advanced electronics and control features of any fighter in East Asia. Even though it is not an air superiority air craft per se, its air combat capability is considered second only to the F-22. It comes armed with a 25mm gatling cannon (departing from 20mm, the American standard for six decades), and the capability to carry nine tons of ordinance in two internal bays and on six external pylons. Using the external pylons negates any stealth value.
This development was influenced by the Chinese demonstration of their own stealth fighter design, the J-20, in January 2011. More recently, the Chinese also announced they were phasing out the last examples of their counterpart to the F-4, the J-7. A copy of the Soviet-designed MiG-21, the J-7 was manufactured in China as recently as 2008 for the export market.
Source- CIA World Factbook
Background
In 1603, after decades of civil warfare, the Tokugawa shogunate (a military-led, dynastic government) ushered in a long period of relative political stability and isolation from foreign influence. For more than two centuries this policy enabled Japan to enjoy a flowering of its indigenous culture. Japan opened its ports after signing the Treaty of Kanagawa with the US in 1854 and began to intensively modernize and industrialize. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan became a regional power that was able to defeat the forces of both China and Russia. It occupied Korea, Formosa (Taiwan), and southern Sakhalin Island. In 1931-32 Japan occupied Manchuria, and in 1937 it launched a full-scale invasion of China. Japan attacked US forces in 1941 - triggering America's entry into World War II - and soon occupied much of East and Southeast Asia. After its defeat in World War II, Japan recovered to become an economic power and an ally of the US. While the emperor retains his throne as a symbol of national unity, elected politicians hold actual decision-making power. Following three decades of unprecedented growth, Japan's economy experienced a major slowdown starting in the 1990s, but the country remains a major economic power. In March 2011, Japan's strongest-ever earthquake, and an accompanying tsunami, devastated the northeast part of Honshu island, killing thousands and damaging several nuclear power plants. The catastrophe hobbled the country's economy and its energy infrastructure, and tested its ability to deal with humanitarian disasters.
People and Society
People and Society ::Japan
Nationality:
noun: Japanese (singular and plural)
adjective: Japanese
Ethnic groups:
Japanese 98.5%, Koreans 0.5%, Chinese 0.4%, other 0.6%
note: up to 230,000 Brazilians of Japanese origin migrated to Japan in the 1990s to work in industries; some have returned to Brazil (2004)
Languages:
Japanese
Religions:
Shintoism 83.9%, Buddhism 71.4%, Christianity 2%, other 7.8%
note: total adherents exceeds 100% because many people belong to both Shintoism and Buddhism (2005)
Population:
127,368,088 (July 2012 est.)
country comparison to the world: 10
Age structure:
0-14 years: 13.1% (male 8,521,571/female 8,076,173)
15-64 years: 64% (male 40,815,840/female 40,128,235)
65 years and over: 22.9% (male 12,275,829/female 16,658,016) (2011 est.)
Median age:
total: 44.8 years
male: 43.2 years
female: 46.7 years (2011 est.)
Population growth rate:
-0.077% (2012 est.)
country comparison to the world: 199
Birth rate:
8.39 births/1,000 population (2012 est.)
country comparison to the world: 216
Death rate:
9.15 deaths/1,000 population (July 2012 est.)
country comparison to the world: 63
Net migration rate:
0 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2012 est.)
country comparison to the world: 91
Urbanization:
urban population: 67% of total population (2010)
rate of urbanization: 0.2% annual rate of change (2010-15 est.)
Major cities - population:
TOKYO (capital) 36.507 million; Osaka-Kobe 11.325 million; Nagoya 3.257 million; Fukuoka-Kitakyushu 2.809 million; Sapporo 2.673 million (2009)
Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.06 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.08 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.76 male(s)/female
total population: 0.94 male(s)/female (2012 est.)
Maternal mortality rate:
6 deaths/100,000 live births (2008)
country comparison to the world: 161
Infant mortality rate:
total: 2.21 deaths/1,000 live births
country comparison to the world: 221
male: 2.44 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 1.97 deaths/1,000 live births (2012 est.)
Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 83.91 years
country comparison to the world: 3
male: 80.57 years
female: 87.43 years (2012 est.)
Total fertility rate:
1.39 children born/woman (2012 est.)
country comparison to the world: 202
Health expenditures:
9.3% of GDP (2009)
country comparison to the world: 40
Physicians density:
2.063 physicians/1,000 population (2006)
country comparison to the world: 61
Hospital bed density:
13.75 beds/1,000 population (2008)
country comparison to the world: 1
Drinking water source:
improved:
urban: 100% of population
rural: 100% of population
total: 100% of population (2008)
Sanitation facility access:
improved:
urban: 100% of population
rural: 100% of population
total: 100% of population (2008)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate:
less than 0.1% (2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 132
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS:
8,100 (2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 108
HIV/AIDS - deaths:
fewer than 100 (2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 117
Obesity - adult prevalence rate:
3.1% (2000)
country comparison to the world: 65
Education expenditures:
3.5% of GDP (2007)
country comparison to the world: 117
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 99%
male: 99%
female: 99% (2002)
School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education):
total: 15 years
male: 15 years
female: 15 years (2008)
Unemployment, youth ages 15-24:
total: 9.1%
country comparison to the world: 109
male: 10.1%
female: 8% (2009)
Economy
Economy - overview:
In the years following World War II, government-industry cooperation, a strong work ethic, mastery of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation (1% of GDP) helped Japan develop a technologically advanced economy. Two notable characteristics of the post-war economy were the close interlocking structures of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors, known as keiretsu, and the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features are now eroding under the dual pressures of global competition and domestic demographic change. Japan's industrial sector is heavily dependent on imported raw materials and fuels. A tiny agricultural sector is highly subsidized and protected, with crop yields among the highest in the world. Usually self sufficient in rice, Japan imports about 60% of its food on a caloric basis. Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch. For three decades, overall real economic growth had been spectacular - a 10% average in the 1960s, a 5% average in the 1970s, and a 4% average in the 1980s. Growth slowed markedly in the 1990s, averaging just 1.7%, largely because of the after effects of inefficient investment and an asset price bubble in the late 1980s that required a protracted period of time for firms to reduce excess debt, capital, and labor. Measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis that adjusts for price differences, Japan in 2011 stood as the third-largest economy in the world after China, which surpassed Japan in 2001. A sharp downturn in business investment and global demand for Japan's exports in late 2008 pushed Japan further into recession. Government stimulus spending helped the economy recover in late 2009 and 2010, but the economy contracted again in 2011 as the massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake in March disrupted manufacturing. Electricity supplies remain tight because Japan has temporarily shut down most of its nuclear power plants after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors were crippled by the earthquake and resulting tsunami. Estimates of the direct costs of the damage - rebuilding homes, factories, and infrastructure - range from $235 billion to $310 billion, and GDP declined almost 1% in 2011. Prime Minister Yoshihiko NODA has proposed opening the agricultural and services sectors to greater foreign competition and boosting exports through membership in the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks and by pursuing free-trade agreements with the EU and others, but debate continues on restructuring the economy and reining in Japan's huge government debt, which exceeds 200% of GDP. Persistent deflation, reliance on exports to drive growth, and an aging and shrinking population are other major long-term challenges for the economy.
GDP (purchasing power parity):
$4.389 trillion (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 5
$4.41 trillion (2010 est.)
$4.242 trillion (2009 est.)
note: data are in 2011 US dollars
GDP (official exchange rate):
$5.855 trillion (2011 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:
-0.5% (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 202
4% (2010 est.)
-6.3% (2009 est.)
GDP - per capita (PPP):
$34,300 (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 37
$34,600 (2010 est.)
$33,300 (2009 est.)
note: data are in 2011 US dollars
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 1.4%
industry: 24%
services: 74.6% (2011 est.)
Labor force:
62.74 million (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 9
Labor force - by occupation:
agriculture: 3.9%
industry: 26.2%
services: 69.8% (2010 est.)
Unemployment rate:
4.8% (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 44
5% (2010 est.)
Population below poverty line:
15.7% (2007)
note: Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) press release, 20 October 2009
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 1.9%
highest 10%: 27.5% (2008)
Distribution of family income - Gini index:
37.6 (2008)
country comparison to the world: 77
24.9 (1993)
Investment (gross fixed):
20.9% of GDP (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 105
Budget:
revenues: $1.984 trillion
expenditures: $2.483 trillion (2011 est.)
Taxes and other revenues:
33.9% of GDP (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 71
Budget surplus (+) or deficit (-):
-8.5% of GDP (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 188
Public debt:
208.2% of GDP (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 2
199.7% of GDP (2010 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices):
0.4% (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 5
-0.7% (2010 est.)
Central bank discount rate:
0.3% (31 December 2009)
country comparison to the world: 141
0.3% (31 December 2008)
Commercial bank prime lending rate:
1.4% (31 December 2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 188
1.475% (31 December 2010 est.)
Stock of narrow money:
$6.696 trillion (31 December 2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 1
$6.047 trillion (31 December 2010 est.)
Stock of broad money:
$16.46 trillion (31 December 2010)
country comparison to the world: 1
$15.43 trillion (31 December 2009)
Stock of domestic credit:
$16.39 trillion (31 December 2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 3
$13.32 trillion (31 December 2007 est.)
Market value of publicly traded shares:
$4.1 trillion (31 December 2010)
country comparison to the world: 4
$3.378 trillion (31 December 2009)
$3.22 trillion (31 December 2008)
Agriculture - products:
rice, sugar beets, vegetables, fruit; pork, poultry, dairy products, eggs; fish
Industries:
among world's largest and technologically advanced producers of motor vehicles, electronic equipment, machine tools, steel and nonferrous metals, ships, chemicals, textiles, processed foods
Industrial production growth rate:
-1.5% (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 155
Electricity - production:
982.3 billion kWh (2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 4
Electricity - consumption:
963.9 billion kWh (2008 est.)
country comparison to the world: 4
Electricity - exports:
0 kWh (2009 est.)
Electricity - imports:
0 kWh (2009 est.)
Oil - production:
131,800 bbl/day (2010 est.)
country comparison to the world: 48
Oil - consumption:
4.452 million bbl/day (2010 est.)
country comparison to the world: 4
Oil - exports:
366,800 bbl/day (2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 37
Oil - imports:
4.394 million bbl/day (2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 4
Natural gas - production:
3.397 billion cu m (2010 est.)
country comparison to the world: 53
Natural gas - consumption:
100.3 billion cu m (2010 est.)
country comparison to the world: 6
Natural gas - exports:
0 cu m (2010 est.)
country comparison to the world: 120
Natural gas - imports:
98.01 billion cu m (2010 est.)
country comparison to the world: 4
Natural gas - proved reserves:
20.9 billion cu m (1 January 2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 76
Current account balance:
$122.8 billion (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 4
$195.8 billion (2010 est.)
Exports:
$800.8 billion (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 5
$730.1 billion (2010 est.)
Exports - commodities:
transport equipment, motor vehicles, semiconductors, electrical machinery, chemicals
Exports - partners:
China 19.4%, US 15.7%, South Korea 8.1%, Hong Kong 5.5%, Thailand 4.4% (2010)
Imports:
$794.7 billion (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 5
$639.1 billion (2010 est.)
Imports - commodities:
machinery and equipment, fuels, foodstuffs, chemicals, textiles, raw materials
Imports - partners:
China 22.1%, US 9.9%, Australia 6.5%, Saudi Arabia 5.2%, UAE 4.2%, South Korea 4.1%, Indonesia 4.1% (2010)
Reserves of foreign exchange and gold:
$1.063 trillion (31 December 2010 est.)
country comparison to the world: 2
$1.024 trillion (31 December 2009 est.)
Debt - external:
$2.719 trillion (30 June 2011)
country comparison to the world: 6
$2.441 trillion (30 September 2010)
Stock of direct foreign investment - at home:
$146.7 billion (31 December 2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 27
$199.4 billion (31 December 2010 est.)
Stock of direct foreign investment - abroad:
$880 billion (31 December 2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 8
$795.7 billion (31 December 2010 est.)
Exchange rates:
yen (JPY) per US dollar -
79.67 (2011 est.)
87.78 (2010 est.)
93.57 (2009)
103.58 (2008)
117.99 (2007)
Military
Military branches:
Japanese Ministry of Defense (MOD): Ground Self-Defense Force (Rikujou Jietai, GSDF), Maritime Self-Defense Force (Kaijou Jietai, MSDF), Air Self-Defense Force (Koukuu Jieitai, ASDF) (2011)
Military service age and obligation:
18 years of age for voluntary military service; Maritime Self-Defense Force mandatory retirement at age 54 (2011)
Manpower available for military service:
males age 16-49: 27,301,443
females age 16-49: 26,307,003 (2010 est.)
Manpower fit for military service:
males age 16-49: 22,390,431
females age 16-49: 21,540,322 (2010 est.)
Manpower reaching militarily significant age annually:
male: 623,365
female: 591,253 (2010 est.)
Military expenditures:
0.8% of GDP (2006)
country comparison to the world: 149
Japanese Ministry of Defence
Source-Wikipedia
The Ministry of Defense (防衛省, Bōei-shō?) is a cabinet-level ministry of the Government of Japan. It is headquartered in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and is the largest organ of the Japanese government: in 2009, fixed personnel numbered 271,094, including 248,303 military perssonel. The Ministry of Defense, as cabinet-level ministry, is required by Article 66 of the constitution to be completely subordinate to civilian authority. Its head is the Minister of Defense.
Source-Wikipedia
Japanese Ground Self Defence Force
The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (陸上自衛隊, Rikujō Jieitai?), or JGSDF, is the Armed Force of Japan. The largest of the three services of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, the Ground Self-Defense Force operates under the command of the chief of the ground staff, based in the city of Ichigaya, Tokyo. The present chief of ground staff is General Eiji Kimizuka(君塚 栄治). The JGSDF numbers around 148,000[1] soldiers.
The JGSDF was formed from July 1, 1954. For decades its primary concern was internal security in Japan and the opposition of any Soviet invasion of Hokkaido, but with the end of the Cold War, this focus is changing.
Organizational Structure
Regionally the JGSDF is organised into five armies, the Northern Army, North Eastern Army, Eastern Army, Central Army, and Western Army.
[edit] Tactical organizationThe GSDF consists of the following tactical units:
one armored division (7th),
eight infantry divisions, each with three or four battalion-sized infantry regiments,
five infantry brigades (11th Brigade, 12th Brigade, 13th Brigade, 14th Brigade, and 15th Brigade)
one airborne brigade (1st Airborne Brigade),
four combined (training) brigades,
one training brigade,
one artillery brigade,
two air defense brigades,
four engineer brigades,
one helicopter brigade with twenty-four squadrons and two anti-tank helicopter platoons.
JGSDF divisions and brigades are combined arms units with infantry, armored, and artillery units, combat support units and logistical support units. They are a regionally independent and permanent entities. The divisions strength varies between 7,000 to 9,000 personnel, the brigades are smaller with 3,000 to 4,000 personnel.
[edit] Special ForcesSpecial Forces units consist of the following:
CRF: Central Readiness Force (中央即応集団 Chūō Sokuō Shūdan): Nerima, Tokyo
Japanese Special Forces Group
1st Airborne Brigade
1st Helicopter Brigade
Central Readiness Regiment
Western Army Infantry Regiment (西部方面普通科連隊 Seibu Hōmen Futsū-ka Rentai)
Rangers
Beautiful Japanese Women
Big in Japan? Fat chance for nation's young women, obsessed with being skinny
Source- Washington Post
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 7, 2010
TOKYO -- As women in the United States and across the industrialized world get fatter, most Japanese women are getting skinnier.
Still, many view themselves as overweight.
"I am quite fat, actually," said Michie Takagi, a 70-year-old grandmother and retired clothing store executive. She has a body mass index (BMI) of 19.9, which is at the thin end of normal. While the average American woman has gained about 25 pounds over the past 30 years, Takagi has gained 4.5 pounds, typical for her age cohort in Japan, according to U.S. and Japanese government figures.
Skinnier still are Japanese women younger than 60, who were thin by international standards three decades ago and who, taken as a group, have since been steadily losing weight.
The trend is most pronounced among women in their 20s. A quarter-century ago, they were twice as likely to be thin as overweight; now they are four times more likely to be thin. For U.S. women of all ages, obesity rates have about doubled since 1980, rising from 17 percent to 35 percent.
Social pressure -- women looking critically at other women -- is the most important reason female skinniness is ascendant in Japan, according to Hisako Watanabe, a child psychiatrist and assistant professor of pediatrics at the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo.
"Japanese women are outstandingly tense and critical of each other," said Watanabe, who has spent 34 years treating women with eating disorders. "There is a pervasive habit among women to monitor each other with a serious sharp eye to see what kind of slimness they have."
Public health experts say that younger Japanese women, as a group, have probably become too skinny for their own good. Restricted calorie consumption is slowing down their metabolisms, the average birth weight of their babies is declining, and their risk of death in case of serious illness is rising.
"I would advise these women to eat when they are hungry," said Satoshi Sasaki, a professor of preventive epidemiology at the University of Tokyo School of Public Health. "They should be satisfied with a normal body."
Fatter men and children
Japan has long been the slimmest industrialized nation, thanks, in part, to a diet that emphasizes fish, vegetables and small servings. But what makes people fat around the world -- sedentary workplaces, processed food and lack of exercise -- is also making many Japanese fat.
Adult men and children of both sexes are gaining weight at a pace that worries the government. A quarter-century ago, 20 percent of men in their 50s were overweight; now, 32 percent are.
Attempting to head off heart disease and other obesity-related illnesses, the government imposed waistline standards in 2007, requiring girth measurements at work-funded physical examinations and encouraging the rotund to diet and exercise.
Doctors say that for men, who are gaining weight in all age groups, the program makes considerable sense but that for adult women, it sends exactly the wrong signals. "The issue of skinny ladies is being overshadowed," said Sasaki. "Middle-aged women have the mistaken view that they are all getting fat."
Sakiko Ohno, a cosmetics wholesaler in Tokyo, is one of those worried women. She is 40 and has a BMI of 19.5 -- low, but still in the normal range.
"I think I am very fat," Ohno said repeatedly during an interview. "If I have a Starbucks muffin, that night I will skip rice and have vegetables."
'The critical eye'
Ohno, who is single, said women pay attention to their weight because Japanese men prefer petite women and because fashionable clothes are sized for thin women. "But the real reason why women want to be thin is so they can look at themselves in the mirror and compare themselves to other women," she said.
Researchers have found that Japanese women in urban areas are significantly thinner than those in rural areas. In their first year of college, the weight of young Japanese women falls, unlike that of American women, which increases.
"When population density is high, women are busy checking out body weight," Watanabe said. "They want other people to be fatter than themselves. It is complicated, competitive and so subtle. The critical eye is ubiquitous."
Japanese government data show that since 1984, all age categories of women from 20 to 59 have become more thin (BMI of less than 18.5). The percentage of those women who are overweight (BMI over 25) has declined, as well. Women in their 60s have neither gained nor lost weight. The only group of women that has become slightly more overweight is those 70 and older, and that increase is about 2 percent.
Studies in Japan have found little evidence that rates of serious eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia, are higher in Japan than in the United States or Europe. But government-funded research studies have shown that many women of child-bearing age have a misconception of what it means to be overweight, with up to 40 percent saying that a normal BMI measurement of 20 or 21 looked fat to them.
Those studies have also found that daily calorie consumption among young women was often two-thirds of the average adult's actual energy intake. Smoking rates among women in their 20s nearly doubled in the 1990s, jumping from 10 to 20 percent.
As in the United States and elsewhere, Japanese women are bombarded by media images of gorgeous, very thin women -- and public health experts say they believe those images have played a substantial role in increasing pressure on Japanese women to be skinny.
The American response to such media images puzzles many people in Japan.
"In the United States, you see all these beautiful skinny people on television, and yet Americans keep getting fatter anyway," said Sasaki, the public health expert at Tokyo University. "Why is that?"
Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.
Asian Women
Asian demography
The flight from marriage
Asians are marrying later, and less, than in the past. This has profound implications for women, traditional family life and Asian politics
Aug 20th 2011 | SEOUL AND TAIPEI | from the print edition
WITH her filmy polka-dot dress, huge sunglasses and career as a psychologist, Yi Zoe Hou of Taiwan might seem likely to be besieged by suitors. Yet, at 35, she is well past Taiwan’s unspoken marriage deadline. “It’s a global village,” she shrugs. “If I can’t find a Taiwanese guy that accepts my age, I can find another man somewhere else.” Maybe—but since she still wants children, Ms Hou is also wondering whether to use a sperm bank or ask a male friend to be a sperm donor. She represents a new world of family life for Asians.
Conservatives in the West are fond of saying that the traditional family is the bedrock of society. That view is held even more widely in Asia. The family is the focus of Confucian ethics, which holds that a basic moral principle, xiushen (self-improvement), can be pursued only within the confines of the family. In an interview in 1994 Lee Kuan Yew, a former prime minister of Singapore, argued that after thousands of years of dynastic upheaval, the family is the only institution left to sustain Chinese culture. It embodies a set of virtues—“learning and scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain”—which, he said, underpins Asia’s economic success. He feared that the collapse of the family, if it ever happened, would be the main threat to Singapore’s success.
His Malaysian contemporary, Mahathir Mohamad, went further. In a book written in 1995 with a Japanese politician, Shintaro Ishihara, Dr Mahathir contrasted Asians’ respect for marriage with “the breakdown of established institutions and diminished respect for marriage, family values, elders, and important customs” in the West. “Western societies”, Dr Mahathir claimed, “are riddled with single-parent families… with homosexuality, with cohabitation.” He might well have concluded that the absence of traditional family virtues from the streets of London recently showed the continued superiority of Asia.
Asians, in fact, have several distinct family systems. To simplify: in South Asia it is traditional to have arranged, early marriages, in which men are dominant and the extended family is important. East Asia also has a male-dominated system, but one that stresses the nuclear family more; nowadays it has abandoned arranged marriages. In South-East Asia, women have somewhat more autonomy. But all three systems have escaped many of the social changes that have buffeted family life in the West since the 1960s.
In South Asia and China marriage remains near-universal, with 98% of men and women tying the knot. In contrast, in some Western countries, a quarter of people in their 30s are cohabiting or have never been married, while half of new marriages end in divorce. Marriage continues to be the almost universal setting for child-bearing in Asia: only about 2% of births took place outside wedlock in Japan in 2007. Contrast that with Europe: in Sweden in 2008 55% of births were to unmarried women, while in Iceland the share was 66%.
Most East and South-East Asian countries report little or no cohabitation. The exception is Japan where, among women born in the 1970s, about 20% say they have cohabited with a sexual partner. For Japan, that is a big change. In surveys between 1987 and 2002, just 1-7% of single women said they had lived with a partner. But it is not much compared with America where, according to a 2002 Gallup poll, over half of married Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 lived together before their wedding day. In many Western societies, more cohabitation has offset a trend towards later marriage or higher rates of divorce. That has not happened in Asia.
Traditional attitudes live on in other ways. Compared with Westerners, Asians are more likely to agree that “women’s happiness lies in marriage”. They are more likely to say women should give up work when they get married or have children, and more likely to disapprove of pre-marital sex. Surveys by Pew Global Research, a social-research outfit in Washington, DC, show that Muslims in South and South-East Asia are more likely than Muslims elsewhere to say that families should choose a woman’s husband for her.
Over the hill
Yet, as Ms Hou shows, Asia is changing. Although attitudes to sex and marriage are different from those in the West, the pressures of wealth and modernisation upon family life have been just as relentless. They have simply manifested themselves in different ways. In the West the upshot has been divorce and illegitimacy. In Asia the results include later marriage, less marriage and (to some extent) more divorce. The changes in the West may be more dramatic. But both East and West are seeing big changes in the role of women and traditional family life.
The first change is that people are getting married later, often much later. In the richest parts—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—the mean age of wedlock is now 29-30 for women, 31-33 for men (see chart right). That is past the point at which women were traditionally required to marry in many Asian societies. It is also older than in the West. In America, women marry at about 26, men at 28. If you take account of the cohabitation that routinely precedes Western marriage (but not Asian), the gap between East and West is even larger. The mean age of marriage has risen by five years in some East Asian countries in three decades, which is a lot.
The second change is that, among certain groups, people are not merely marrying later. They are not getting married at all. In 2010 a third of Japanese women entering their 30s were single. Perhaps half or more of those will never marry. In 2010 37% of all women in Taiwan aged 30-34 were single, as were 21% of 35-39-year-olds. This, too, is more than in Britain and America, where only 13-15% of those in their late 30s are single. If women are unmarried entering their 40s, they will almost certainly neither marry nor have a child.
The Asian avoidance of marriage is new, and striking. Only 30 years ago, just 2% of women were single in most Asian countries. The share of unmarried women in their 30s in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong has risen 20 points or more (see chart below), “a very sharp change in a relatively short period”, says Gavin Jones of the National University of Singapore. In Thailand, the number of women entering their 40s without being married increased from 7% in 1980 to 12% in 2000. In some cities, rates of non-marriage are higher: 20% among women aged 40-44 in Bangkok; 27% among 30-34-year-olds in Hong Kong. In South Korea, young men complain that women are on “marriage strike”.
What is remarkable about the Asian experience is not that women are unmarried in their 30s—that happens in the West, too—but that they have never been married and have rarely cohabited. In Sweden, the proportion of women in their late 30s who are single is higher than in Asia, at 41%. But that is because marriage is disappearing as a norm. Swedish women are still setting up homes and having children, just outside wedlock. Not in Asia. Avoiding both illegitimacy and cohabitation, Asian women appear to be living a more celibate life than their Western sisters (admittedly, they could also be under-reporting rates of cohabitation and pre-marital sex). The conclusion is that East Asia’s growing cohorts of unmarried women reflect less the breakdown of marriage than the fact that they are avoiding it.
But marriages are breaking down, too. In Hong Kong and Japan, the general divorce rate—the number of divorces per 1,000 people aged 15 or more—was about 2.5 in the mid-2000s, according to Mr Jones’s calculations. In Asia as a whole, the rate is about 2 per 1,000. That compares with 3.7 in America, 3.4 in Britain, 3.1 in France and 2.8 in Germany. Only in one or two Asian countries is divorce as widespread as in the West. The South Korean rate, for example, is 3.5. Because divorce has been common in the West for decades, more couples there have split up. The rise in Asia has been recent: China’s divorce rate took off in the early 2000s. In the 1980s the Asian rate was 1 per 1,000 people; now it is 2. If that rise continues, Asian divorce could one day be as common as in Europe.
An educated choice
The main function of marriage in most traditional societies is to bring up children (romantic love rarely has much to do with it). Not surprisingly, changes in child-bearing have gone along with changes in marriage. The number of children the average East Asian woman can expect to have during her lifetime—the fertility rate—has fallen from 5.3 in the late 1960s to below 1.6 now, an enormous drop. But old-fashioned attitudes persist, and these require couples to start having children soon after marriage. In these circumstances, women choose to reduce child-bearing by delaying it—and that means delaying marriage, too.
Changing marriage patterns are also the result of improvements in women’s education and income, and the failure of women’s status to keep pace. The salient characteristic of many traditional marriage systems is that women—especially young women—have little independence. In South Asia, brides are taken into the groom’s family almost as soon as they move into puberty. They are tied to their husband’s family. Sometimes women may not inherit property or perform funeral rites (this is especially important in China). In parts of South Asia, wives may not even take their children to hospital without getting their husband’s permission.
Two forces are giving women more autonomy: education and jobs. Women’s education in East Asia has improved dramatically over the past 30 years, and has almost erased the literacy gap with men. Girls stay at school for as many years as boys, and illiteracy rates for 15-24-year-olds are the same for the two sexes (this is not true of South Asia). In South Korea now, women earn half of all master’s degrees.
Education changes women’s expectations. Among Thai women who left school at 18, one-eighth were still single in their 40s; but among university graduates, the share was a fifth. A survey in Beijing in 2003 found that half of women with a monthly income of 5,000-15,000 yuan (roughly $600-1,800, an indicator of university education) were not married. Half said they did not need to be, because they were financially independent. South Koreans call such people “golden misses”. “Why should I have to settle down to a life of preparing tofu soup, like my mother?” asks one.
Rates of non-marriage rise at every stage of education. Women with less than secondary education are the most likely to marry, followed by those with secondary education, with university graduates least likely. This pattern is the opposite of the one in America and Europe, where marriage is more common among college graduates than among those with just a secondary education.
There are two reasons why education’s spread reduces women’s propensity to marry. First, non-marriage has always been more prevalent among women with more education. Now that there are more women in these higher-education groups, there are fewer marriages. Marriage rates are also lower in cities. Since education is likely to go on improving, and urbanisation to go on rising, more women will join the ranks of graduates or city folk who are least likely to marry.
Marrying up
Second, more education leaves the best-educated women with fewer potential partners. In most Asian countries, women have always been permitted—even encouraged—to “marry up”, ie, marry a man of higher income or education. Marrying up was necessary in the past when women could not get an education and female literacy was low. But now that many women are doing as well or better than men at school, those at the top—like the “golden misses”—find the marriage market unwelcoming. Either there are fewer men of higher education for them to marry, or lower-income men feel intimidated by their earning power (as well as their brain power). As Singapore’s Mr Lee once said: “The Asian man…preferred to have a wife with less education than himself.” In Singapore, non-marriage rates among female university graduates are stratospheric: a third of 30-34-year-old university graduates are single.
Better education also makes possible the other main trend changing marriage: female employment. Asia’s economic miracle has caused—and been caused by—a surge of women into the formal workforce. In East Asia two-thirds of women have jobs, an unusually high rate. In South-East Asia the figure is 59%. In South Korea the employment rate of women in their 20s (59.2%) recently overtook that of twenty-something men (58.5%). This surge has been accompanied by the collapse of the lifetime-employment systems in Japanese and South Korean firms, which used to ensure that a single (male) worker’s income could support a middle-class family. Now the wife’s earnings are needed, too.
All things being equal, having a job increases a woman’s autonomy. She has more options, and these options include not having a husband. But it is clear from Western societies that women will not necessarily choose a job over marriage. Rather, they will struggle to balance the conflicting demands of work and family.
What is unusual about Asia is that women seem to bear an unusually large share of the burden of marriage, reducing the attractiveness of family life compared with work. Certainly, this is what Asian women themselves think. Surveys about attitudes to marriage are patchy and subject to a lot of reservations. But for what it is worth, in a survey from 2011 of Japan’s three largest cities, only two-thirds of wives said they felt positive about their marriage, much less than their husbands; in America, both husbands and wives usually report higher and similar levels of satisfaction. In a survey from 2000, satisfaction levels in Japan were only half those in America. This may be because the readier availability of divorce in America has left fewer people trapped in loveless marriages. Or there may be something in the Japanese caricature of the salaryman husband working long hours and socialising all night and at weekends, while his neglected, fretful wife struggles to bring up the children at home.
Whatever the problem, it is not confined to Japan. Illyqueen, a popular Taiwanese blogger, recently ranted about “Mama’s boys” in their 30s who have had “no hardships, no housework, [and who] …have lost the ability to keep promises (like marriage).” If some Asian women do indeed have an unusually negative view of marriage, it might make them more likely to choose a job over a husband, or to put off marriage while they pursue a career.
Moreover, public attitudes and expectations are lagging far behind changes in women’s lives in Asia, making it even harder to strike a balance between life and work. Despite higher incomes and education, “women have lower socioeconomic status than men,” argues Heeran Chun, a South Korean sociologist. “Their lives are markedly restricted by the cultural values associated with Confucianism.” They are expected to give up work—sometimes on marriage, often after childbirth—and many do not return to the job market until their children are grown. This forces upon women an unwelcome choice between career and family. It may also help to explain the unusually low marriage rates among the best-educated and best-paid women, for whom the opportunity cost of giving up a career to have children is greatest.
As in most traditional societies, women in Asia have long been the sole caregivers for children, elderly parents or parents-in-law. People generally assume they will continue to be so, even though many women have paid jobs outside the home. The result is that expectations placed on wives have become unusually onerous. Surveys in Japan have suggested that women who work full-time then go home and spend another 30 hours a week doing the housework. Their husbands contribute an unprincely three hours of effort. In America and Europe the disparity is less extreme, and has narrowed considerably since the 1960s.
On top of this, many Asian couples face enormous pressure to ensure their children succeed in schools with cut-throat competition for places—pressure that falls mostly on the mother. Private child care is exorbitantly expensive. There are few state-subsidised crèches (324,000 children are on waiting lists in Seoul alone). And setting up a home is expensive because of high house prices. All this means it is harder to strike a satisfying balance between job and family in Asia than in the West.
The lost brides
Not every Asian country is affected by these trends equally. South Korea, for example, has lower rates of non-marriage, and a lower age of marriage, than its neighbours. But the big exceptions are Asia’s giants. At the moment, marriage is still the norm in China and arranged marriage the norm in India. As long as that continues to be true, a majority of Asians will live in traditional families. But how long will it continue? Signs of change are everywhere.
The mean age of marriage is rising in both countries. Divorce is increasing, especially among younger people. In India, traditional arranged marriages are being challenged by online dating (shaadi.com claims to be the world’s largest matrimonial service) and by “self-arranged marriages”, hybrids in which the couple meet, fall in love and agree to marry—but then let the two families fix everything up, as in traditional arranged marriages.
In China, the migration of millions of young men and women from the countryside to cities is changing family life profoundly. It has pushed up the divorce rate because migrant workers return home to find that they and their partners have grown apart. When the husband and wife go to the city together, either they choose not to bring their children with them (since both work full time) or they may not do so, since the hukou household-registration system prevents dependants from joining them. According to a survey in 2008 by the All-China Women’s Federation, 58m children of migrant workers were being brought up hundreds of miles away, in their parents’ village, usually by grandparents. The immediate family is no longer the universal setting for child-rearing in China.
More important, the marriage systems of both giants risk being torn apart in future by their practice of sex-selective abortion. Tens of millions of female fetuses have been aborted over the past generation, as parents use pre-natal screening to identify the sex of the fetus and then rid themselves of daughters. In China in 2010 more than 118 boys were born for every 100 girls. In India the ratio was 109 to 100. By 2030, according to Avraham Ebenstein of Harvard University and Ethan Sharygin of the University of Pennsylvania, about 8% of Chinese men aged 25 and older will be unable to marry because of the country’s distorted sex ratio. By 2050 the unmarried share will be 10-15%. In 2030, in the two giants, there will be 660m men between the ages of 20 and 50, but only 597m women. Over 60m men therefore face the prospect of not finding a bride. That is almost as many men of 20-50 as will be living in America in that year. This alone will wreck Asia’s tradition of universal marriage.
Parasites and bare branches
The big question remains: how much is this a problem? And if it is, why? Arguably, the most important thing is that women who do not want to marry are no longer being forced to. And that must be a benefit: to them, to men spared an unhappy marriage; perhaps to society as a whole.
Against that, there are several reasons for worry, some of them extremely disturbing. Social attitudes in Asia change slowly, and many people think it wrong to remain unmarried. “Parasite singles” is the unflattering term in Japan. The reluctance to marry seems to have unleashed spiteful hostility, an attitude that makes the decision not to wed a tough one.
Contraception is a particular problem. Several Asian countries restrict state-provided family planning to married couples. A few even demand to see the wedding certificate before dispensing condoms (that has happened in Europe, too). This is not a sensible policy when so many men and women will remain unmarried throughout their 20s and 30s.
Then there are the educational and social aspects of changing marriage patterns. Because women tend to marry up—that is, marry men in an income or educational group above them—any problems of non-marriage are not dispersed throughout society but concentrated in two groups with dim wedding prospects: men with no education and women with a lot.
Almost every East Asian country is worried about the decline of marriage among its best-educated daughters. In Singapore the government even set up an online-dating service, lovebyte.org.sg, to boost marriage rates among graduates. The problem is no less acute among poor or ill-educated men. South Korean women seem to be no longer interested in marrying peasant farmers, for instance.
China has coined new terms to describe the two groups: sheng-nu (left-over women) and guang gun (bare branches, or men who will not add to the family tree). “Bare branches” is most commonly used in China to refer to men who will be unable to marry because of sex-selective abortion. And that encapsulates the biggest worry about Asia’s flight from marriage. If (when?) it spreads to China and India, it will combine with the surplus of bachelors to cause unheard-of strains. Prostitution could rise; brides could be traded like commodities, or women forced to “marry” several men; wives could be kept in purdah by jealous, fearful husbands.
This may sound alarmist. But the reluctance of women to marry, together with men’s continuing desire for a wife, is already producing a surge of cross-border brides. According to “Asian Cross Border Marriage Migration”, a book edited by Melody Lu and Wen-Shan Yang (Amsterdam University Press), 27% of Taiwanese marriages in 2002 involved foreign women; one in eight births that year was to a “mixed” family. Many girls are illiterate teenagers sold (in practice) by their families to older, richer foreigners. Back in their home villages, therefore, young men’s marriage chances are lower. Arranged marriages with foreigners fell in Taiwan after the government cracked down on them, but they continue to rise elsewhere. In South Korea, one-seventh of marriages in 2005 were to “Kosians” (Korean-Asians). In rural areas, the share is higher: 44% of farmers in South Jeolla province who married in 2009 took a foreign bride. If China or India were ever to import brides on this scale, it would spread sexual catastrophe throughout Asia. As it is, that catastrophe may be hard to avoid.
There is an historical precedent for falling and low marriage rates. It happened in Ireland in the late 19th century and in America and much of Europe in the 1930s. American and European marriage rates bounced back between 1945 and 1970. But Europe and America were different: marriage rates fell during an economic crisis and recovered as the economy did. The Asian peculiarity is that marriage rates have been eroding during a long boom. And as Asia gets richer, traditional marriage patterns are only likely to unravel further.
Source- The Economist
Old Photos of Japanese Women
Source- Old Photos of Japan.com
Secret{Jewish} History of Japan
The Secret History Of The
Freemasons In Japan
By Benjamin Fulford
Exclusive to Rense.com
7-2-7
Japanese Freemasons claim their links with Western Freemasons go back to ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian times but, I have not been able to verify this.
The earliest verifiable links go back to when the Khazar empire was destroyed by the Mongols and the Russians about 1,000 years ago. At the time their elite class fled with their treasure into Europe and China. The group that fled to China then fled to Japan as Kublai Khan's armies conquered China. That is why the Star of David can be seen in 1,000 year-old shrines in Japan. The original Khazars were fully assimilated by the Japanese elite over the ensuing centuries but certain Freemason/Khazar influences became a permanent part of Japanese culture.
After Admiral Perry arrived and forced the Japanese to open up their economy, the Rothschild's man in Asia, Jardine Matheson, sent an agent to Japan. His name was Thomas Blake Glover and his mission was to create a new arms market by starting a civil war in Japan. The ultimate aim of this war was to prepare Japan for colonization. He managed to sell some battleships and weapons but in the end, Glover's plot was uncovered and he was driven into bankruptcy.
By this time, learning of the association with their long lost cousins, the Freemasons decided on a different approach. A different Rothschild Freemason agent, Guido H.F. Verbeck, started a very successful Japanese franchise. He is the man in the center of this photograph.
http://www.asyura2.com/0406/idletalk10/msg/503.html
The people around him are the founding fathers of modern Japan and the senior members of the original modern Freemason lodge. They set up the Meiji emperor as their symbol and modernized Japan.
The Japanese masons were given full assistance by their English and European counterparts and were thus able to defeat the old Khazar nemesis, Imperial Russia, in the Russo-Japanese war.
In later years, confronted by Western racism, the Japanese Freemasons decided they needed to conquer and modernize all of Asia. Their ultimate aim was to prepare for a final show-down with the West and make Tokyo the capital of a world empire.
They allied themselves with the Baron Rothschild (known to us as Adolph Hitler) and were badly defeated by the Rockefellers.
After the war, the victorious Rockefellers arrived in Japan to survey their new possession. Negotiations on the new post-war order took place mainly inside the Japanese Grand Lodge (it is a hidden underground facility next to Tokyo Tower). Every Japanese Prime Minister since the war has been a Freemason. To the Japanese it is common knowledge that their secret rulers are David Rockefeller and his nephew Jay Rockefeller.
The old Rothschild connection still exists but, since the Rockefellers were victorious in WW2, it is the upstart Rockefellers who exert the greatest control.
To this day Japan remains a vassal state, making huge annual payments to their new masters. In theory, they can cash in on the $35 trillion in worthless paper (official data put the number at close to $5 trillion, secret data at over $35 trillion) they have been given in exchange for 60 years of supplying Americans with radios, TVs, cars etc. In reality, any Japanese Prime Minister who tried to do this was killed or deposed. More recently the Japanese have been threatened into submission with powerful secret weapons. Using former Prime Minister Koizumi and Finance Minister Heizo Takenaka (a Henry Kissinger prot'g') they also engineered a semi-secret take-over of the Japanese commercial banking system. For example, Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ bank's new logo is a Masonic eye.
http://www.bk.mufg.jp/english/
Last year the Japanese government provided the Illuminati with close to $800 billion which they have used to finance U.S. wars and to go around the world buying up stocks and real estate.
With the arrival of the Chinese secret society into the power equation, the Japanese secret government is now considering how to renegotiate its status.
The plan I have suggested to them is to make an alliance with Russia, China, India, the free Muslim countries (e.g. Malaysia, Indonesia), South America and Africa etc. before announcing to the world they will no longer finance the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and their Illuminati ilk.
Instead, they will call for a global meeting to discuss a new way of running the planet. They will also offer to finance a battle to end all poverty, environmental destruction and disease within 3 years.
Because the U.S. military/industrial socialist system would collapse without Japanese financing, the U.S. would continue to receive generous funding in exchange for a promise to use the Pentagon to lead the new war against poverty, environmental destruction and disease. The U.S.-Japan alliance would thus become a foundation block of the new international system.
This plan is under serious consideration and wheels are in motion.
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