ambitious uppity japan

I like what I'm seeing out of japan lately; I like it a lot. Last night, Koizumi told the sloppy american beef exporters to fuck off after they slipped an explicitly forbidden cow spine in with the "good" stuff. This week, when the market went bananas, the foreign press moaned and grumbled, and then the japanese market had huge up day, completely out of pace with the grumbly global media. The demographic problem is more and more often phrased as an opportunity for Japan to show the world how it's done, rather than a crisis because we can't keep up with denmark (likewise fossil fuel prices). Hell or high water, Japan wants a permanent seat on the UN security council.

All around, Japanese culture has always resisted completely assimilating, but this year she's going well beyond that. Japan is acting like the world's second biggest economy, and not playing ball with global consensus. The BSE stuff is a small but symbolic effort to step out of the shadow of America... to turn America back into a customer instead of a boss. So long as America can politically wedge open the door and force in it's inferior, infected beef, Japan is a vassal state.

I think a whole bunch of economic and cultural flowers could bloom if Japan were to assert itself more in global politics and economics.

("ambitious japan" was a weird, largely contentless, ad campaign over the last few years, celebrating japan's ambition)