Headlines for Reference

I was cleaning out my desk and found an old newspaper I had clipped. Here are some headlines from it.

IMPORTANT NOTE:I'm not trying to "bash" Japan. These are just to illustrate that there is a lot of bad news here, day after day. And yet despite that bad news, there persists the perception that everything in Japan works flawlessly while the US is falling apart.

Here are the headlines:

"Ex-Takefuji exec hid 160 billion yen" (over $1 billion, a huge sum that usually only sovereign states deal with.) Major tax evasion scandal at large company.

"Tsutumi was briefed on the faking of data" the former executive knew that a major company, Seibu, falsified accounting Enron style, leading the the company going bust. Just down the road from where I write this is a vacant Seibu department store at the city's most important intersection.

"Marubeni to lead rebuilding of Daiei" somewhat good news. A consortium has been chosen to rebuild another bloated and defunct corporate giant.

"Millionaire pilot breaks nonstop solo flight record" American Steve Fosset, 60, flew solo around the world, nonstop 67 hours. Big article, half the page with big full color photo.

FROM p.2

"Tsutumi hid truth from buyers" same guy as above unloaded a bunch of shares after learning of the false accounting. Huge case of insider trading.

"Power Cut on train line in Osaka affects 64,000" sure trains are good but nobody's perfect. A month later an Osaka train derailed due to driver error, crashed into an apartment and killed dozens of people.

"Kanto hit by heavy snow" This is March and there's a big picture of commuters stuck in a blizzard in Tokyo. See blog on "But New York is Cold!" Plane flights also cancelled. New York has been 35C (95F?) for the past month but people think it's Siberia.

"Isuzu cancelled test runs to conceal illegal changes to truck" self-explanatory.

"Defense agency plans to upgrade fighter jets at Naha base in 2008" Older f4s to be replace by F15s. Article mentions that this is because F15 is better able to match Su30s in china and that Japan has about 200 F15s already. Most Japanese when asked will say "Huh? Japan has no Army."

"Hiroshima University professor arrested over Bribe"

"Ex-school principal gets life for double murder"

"KEPCO criticized over report on fatal accident" a **nuclear**power company had a ruptured pipe, covered it up, people got killed, then they tried to whitewash the incident.

"Satoya allegedly caused Roppongi club brawl" a 28 year old gold medal skier from Nagano Olympics got drunk, maybe took drugs, fought with customers and staff at a bar when they tried to prevent her from having sex with someone right there in the bar.

Ok, enough of that.

These are all headlines from the March 5, 2005 Yomiuri Shimbum newspaper which actually leans to the right so might be expected to gloss over national shortcomings. Just from pages 1 and 2! And again, my intention here is not to say "Japan is bad" but simply to point out that people in and out of Japan have this misty-eyed fantastic vision of this country and its people that is way out of step with reality. It's kinda like a movie star falling from grace and developing a substance abuse problem but everyone around chooses not to see. How is it going to get any better?

meanwhile the United States is generally perceived as a slightly better version of a stereotypical Russia: a big belligerent country that is poorly run but thanks to natural resources, large population and location carries a lot of weight anyway. Oh and produces some nice athletes sometimes.