Soul Warfare

Welcome to this Golden Week edition of the Excalibur blog. What outrages and shows of national stupidity have incensed Winston Saint this week?

How about this?

Abe

Almost half a year into the new government, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is revealing his real plan: to drag Japan back into the early Showa period (i.e., the 1930s) under the guide of national pride. The Yasukuni Shrine, where the spririts of Japan’s war criminals are enshrined as kami-sama, received an official visit from a record-breaking number of politicians who wanted to formally ‘pay their respects to their honorable military predecessors’.

Yasukuni

NOTE: Abe's grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, Prime Minister from 1957-1960, was a Class A war crimes suspect who was finally hounded out of office by popular demonstrations.  

Abe has also been busy preparing the Ministry of Education to release a new series of history textbooks that distort the facts regarding Japan’s role regarding World War II. It’s a simple plan; indoctrinate the nation’s youth in a closed, hothouse, exam-based school system, where the most important thing is respect for your elders, and discussion is not encouraged. Abe wants the nation’s young men to be baseball-bat-wielding salarymen and the nation’s young women to be baby-making dinner-preparing machines. Back to Meiji basics. Good old Edo family values.

But before you stop to condemn, WAIT! READ THIS!

What the heck is going on? In his book “3/11: The Fallout,” Patrick Fox alleges that what happens in Japan happens in the rest of the world tomorrow. What we are seeing – in both Japan and the UK – is a reaction against the ‘fake Globalization’ forced upon us by the prevailing global capitalist philosophy. Humanity, it seems, is unwilling to have this ideology shoved down its throat, hence the growing movement away from centralism and towards smaller, independent, networked communities.

So before you start writing letters of complaint to the Japan Times about ‘how Japan really needs to reform its political/educational/delete as applicable system’, read this  …

And this. 

On the subject of Revolutionary Art; here are more examples of how Japanese literary culture has been influenced by the aftermath of 3/11. The global literary establishment’s darling, Haruki Murakami, has released another doorstopper of a book, which millions of people will buy but few will actually read.

Link

Plus, the number of films (both fiction and documentary)  dealing with 3/11 just keep on growing.

Link 1

Link 2

But then, what the heck do I know? Who am I and why should you care about what I think? Put your own opinion in the box below, and please, please help the homeless families of Tohoku by investing in a copy of "3/11: The Fallout." You can buy it here.