New Japanese Right Wing Foreign Minister, Aso Riles Asia

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The new foreign minister, Taro Aso, was picked because he is a poke in the eye to all of Japan's victims during WWII. His family worked Korean as well as other nationalities, to death in their slave mining industries during that war. This goes hand in glove with Japanese courts refusing to hear the just cases of victims of these slave camps. Japan remains unrepentant.

From the Korea Times:

The government was mulling over how to deal with Japan’s continuing ``reckless remarks’’ on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to a controversial shrine in Tokyo, an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Monday.

``We are considering how to address Japan’s continuing tongue slips,’’ the official told The Korea Times. ``I think our stance will soon be clarified.’’

The latest controversy was triggered by Taro Aso, Japan’s foreign minister, who reportedly said at a forum in Tokyo on Saturday that South Korea and China are the only two countries that take issue with the prime minister’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

It was a reaction of Japan to warnings that repeated visits of Koizumi to the shrine could ``isolate’’ Japan from its neighbors.

Mr. Aso has a long record of saying fascist and racist things. The fact that he has been selected and is being wined and dined by the losers of WWII, America, never ceases to amaze me as I am an American citizen and family members fought in Okinawa and other places to take down the Aso family and their ilk!

From the BBC:

A family firm linked to Japan's new Foreign Minister Taro Aso is under scrutiny over allegations it used Korean labour during colonial rule.
South Korea asked Japan about more than 100 such firms, an official said.

The list includes Aso Mining, which was owned by relatives of Mr Aso, and is suspected of using thousands of Koreans as forced labourers.

Koizumi and Aso are refusing to hand over any data or even apologize. Indeed, this is their program to alienate and enrage trading partners so they give up on doing business WITHIN Japan. This is a very dangerous game to play. It has hit Japanese business in Asia but evidently they think it is worth it if it discourages or prevents any real trade from happening. As typical of Japan, they are closing their doors, bang.

"The only countries in the world that talk about Yasukuni are China and South Korea," Japan's Nihon Keizai newspaper quoted Mr Aso as saying.

It is time for that to change! Time for America to begin discussing WWII with the Japanese. Like, making them pay reparations!

The Japanese are cutting funds to the UN, too, now. They want to be on the Security Council or no more money. Like the USA, they view the UN only as a cover for colonialization.

From the Japan Times:

Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Taro Aso has called Japan a "one race" nation, an expression similar to a controversial statement in 1986 by then Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, sources close to the minister said Monday.
In a speech during a ceremony at the new Kyushu National Museum in Dazaifu, Fukuoka Prefecture, on Saturday, the sources said Aso described Japan as having "one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture and one race. There is no other nation (that has such characteristics)."

Two decades ago, Nakasone stirred controversy by publicly calling Japan a "homogenous nation," drawing criticism particularly from the indigenous Ainu people who live mainly in Hokkaido.

Following Aso's remarks, Mitsunori Keira, head of the citizens' group Yaiyukara-no-Mori, which works to preserve Ainu culture, criticized the minister.

"The fact that top government officials have repeatedly made similar remarks shows the government has never sincerely listened to our protest," Keira said.

This was said just before being elevated by Koizumi. Obviously, the plan is to make things as nasty as possible. The fact that the USA chose to lecture China while in Japan while ignoring this obvious scion of a war criminal baffles me.

Actually, we are in hock to Japan. So we kow tow to war criminals. Bonzai!

Here is a Korean cartoon where Aso is laughing with a memorial picture of his father, mocking a protesting Korean who is demanding justice and reparations for the enslavement of Koreans during WWII.

I am not the only one who has noticed that Japan has a necklock on high value/high profit trade with the US. Here is a typical example. Remember those Boeing jets we keep crowing about? Think they are total profit for America and create jobs here? From MSNBC:

Take Boeing as an example. Long America's leading exporter, it symbolizes the kind of high-tech leadership on which the future of the U.S. economy is widely said to depend. After

losing market share to the European Airbus in recent years, Boeing responded by developing the new 787 Dreamliner, which is gathering record orders. Yet these sales may not add a lot to the U.S. economy behttp://culturelifenewsii.blogspot.com/cause much of the work—including production of the critical carbon-fiber wings that Boeing always insisted would be kept at home—will be done in Japan.

As I have pointed out in the past, China will soon be demanding their jets from Boeing be assembled in China and Boeing will comply since they need the Chinese market share. And the net benefit to America will be zero. The Japanese excell in this activity and the Chinese watched them closely and are intent on imitating them.

Japan isn't a cheap labor market. Labor costs are high. Land costs, higher. Overhead, hugely expensive. Tokyo is one of the world's most expensive cities. Yet they manage to keep most of their industry at home.

We should dump free trade. Heck, we need Admiral Perry. Hell, Admiral Halsey!