＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
１．Akashi Mayor resigns over verbal abuse of subordinates.
In January 2019, then Akashi Mayor Fusaho Izumi resigned due to a “verbal abuse of subordinates” issue.
Angry at the lack of progress in negotiations with landowners over land acquisition, he asked, “What have you been doing for seven years? Don’t be silly. You didn’t do anything, did you? Government officials have an easy business if they don’t even have to offer a buyout price.
When his subordinates apologized, he told them, “It’s not enough to apologize.
The “audiotape” was revealed, in which he became furious and spat inappropriately, saying, “It’s not enough to apologize, you guys have to evict the landowners…” He was forced to resign from his post.
There is no doubt that it was an Akashi City employee who recorded this “verbal abuse tape” and released it to the media, but it is likely that one of his subordinates, who has learned to scold his subordinates with verbal abuse on a regular basis, secretly recorded it and leaked it to the media as evidence of a power-harassing mayor.
２．When the full extent of the tape recording of the outburst was discovered, the mayor’s reputation went the other way and he was elected to a third term.
As a result, the mayor’s reputation was criticized intensely, but then, strangely enough, a tape recording of the entire rant was revealed, and the mayor’s reputation changed drastically, as if to say that although there were some extreme statements, judging from the overall content, the mayor was right and his subordinates were to be blamed for their negligence.
As a result, while a third election was thought to be impossible when the “audiotape” first came to light, the March 17 mayoral election was a complete turnaround and an “overwhelming victory” over the other candidates, as Mayor Izumi’s municipal administration up to his second term was correctly evaluated.
３．The fear of news that cuts out a part of the story.
（1）Danger of the article “U.S. [Japan, Increased Discrimination] Concerned by Human Rights Report.
This is an article from the front page of the evening edition of the Mainichi Newspaper on March 14, 2019. It was an unexpected article, so I read it and found the following.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. State Department released its 2018 Human Rights Report covering more than 200 countries, noting that hate speech is on the rise in Japan. The report also noted that there is discrimination against foreigners living in Japan and citizens with foreign parents in employment, education, and other areas, raising concerns.
The report noted that prosecutors are applying defamation charges because Japan’s anti-hate speech law has no penalties, and that local governments such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Kawasaki City, Kyoto Prefecture, and Osaka City have established ordinances and guidelines to deal with this issue.
He pointed out the existence of “deep-seated social discrimination,” noting that restaurants and other establishments sometimes refuse entry to foreigners or citizens who “look like foreigners” and display “Japanese only” signs.
I was stunned to read this article. It reminds me of “apartheid” in South Africa and persistent discrimination against blacks in the US, which is not true at all.
I was left wondering why the Mainichi Shimbun carried such an article, and why the U.S. State Department’s human rights report as a whole is also written in such a tone toward Japan.
An article in Sankei Digital reports the following about the State Department’s human rights report.
The Chinese government has placed more than 800,000 to 2 million ethnic Uighurs and Muslims in camps that deprive them of their religious and ethnic identity,” the report points out, and criticizes ‘the abuse, torture, and killing of some inmates by the authorities in the camps,’ according to information from human rights groups and other sources.
Secretary of State Pompeo said at a press conference the same day, “China is trying to erase religious and ethnic identity; detention against ethnic minorities intensified in 2018 and reached record levels. China’s human rights abuses are off the charts,” he condemned.
Another online article reported on the State Department’s human rights report, “South Korea’s Moon Jae-in Administration Pressures North Korean Defector Groups Not to Criticize North Korea.”
He noted that the South Korean government has been putting pressure on North Korean defectors and North Korean human rights groups, including preventing them from criticizing North Korea before the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics held last February.
Secretary of State Pompeo said at a press conference the same day that “our friends, allies, and partner countries also commit human rights violations, and we have documented this on par with [other countries].”
I understand the articles in the report that sharply point out and condemn the current human rights violations in China and South Korea, but I feel that the report on Japan is “off the mark”. In particular, I have never heard of “refusing entry to foreigners” in restaurants or “Japanese-only” restaurants, and I would like to know where such restaurants are located. I would like to know where such restaurants are located. I am tempted to think that the person who wrote this report on Japan has never been to Japan and wrote this report based only on hearsay information from unreliable human rights organizations.
However, what is scary is that such “reports” can “walk alone”. A very similar example can be found in the “UN Report on the Military Comfort Women. This is because the UN’s 1996 “Coomaraswamy Report” and 1998 “McDougall Report” are “false reports based on fabricated articles by the Asahi Shimbun.
＜The “wartime laborer ruling” and the “comfort women issue.”＞
Thus, while the State Department’s human rights report falsely accusing Japan is strange when looking at the Mainichi Shimbun article alone, the whole picture becomes clearer when reading the various news sources together.
Another thing I was curious about was the key question, “How did they report the situation of racism in the U.S.?” I could not find this anywhere in the news sources I looked. Recently, Asian ethnic groups such as Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc. have been remarkably active in the U.S., and I have heard that along with this, discrimination against Asian ethnic groups has been occurring in addition to the traditional discrimination against blacks.
If Secretary of State Pompeo is so “fair” as to say that “our friends, allies, and partners also commit human rights violations, and we have documented them equally (with other countries),” I hope that he will also document and announce the state of racial discrimination in his own country, the United States.
（2）Danger of criticism that cuts out parts of what politicians say at lectures and other events.
Often, politicians of the Liberal Democratic Party make “gaffes” at the rallies and lectures of their own factions and supporters’ associations. If you look at the entire content of the speech, there is nothing particularly wrong with it, but taking only that part of the speech and criticizing it by “labeling” it is similar to the rant by the Akashi Mayor mentioned in the first paragraph.