I have to say that I feel a little ambiguous about this whole thing. I think it is certainly a good thing for people to know more about what is going on in North Korea - and by that I mean everything that goes on there, the ‘ordinary life’ of normal people trying to get by as well as the horrific things that happen in prison camps and so on.

So in principle I don’t have any problem with this being shown in the US and informing more people about North Korea. However, I also think it can’t be separated entirely from the US government strategy of attempting to weaken and ultimately bring down the North Korean regime using non-governmental (primarily Christian) organisations. Now, I’m not going to say that these organisations are bad or that some of the work they are doing isn’t actually good, I just think that they are mixed up in the shady world of CIA money, proxy imperialism and regime change crazies. It’s been clear for a while that due to its weak position at the moment (due mainly to Iraq) the US has had to adopt a more subtle strategy on North Korea - funding Christian refugee organisations and human rights groups to weaken the legitimacy of the DPRK regime and encourage a flood of North Koreans to leave the country. Personally I find this cynical use of the all too real problems of the North Korean people to be very unpleasant and that makes me feel more than a little uneasy about this kind of play being lauded by the US right.

I am not sure if you (Mr. Kotaji?) are an American or not but if you are, what do you think about such performances being shown in the U.S?

Yes, this is true. The leader of the Democratic party (largest opposition party) Ozawa Ichiro, was a rightist himself but seems to have changed his position since he joined the Democratic Party.Anyway he was in the hospital for these few days and I am more worried about his health than his political actions.

To add a little more information on Abe’s biography, after graduating from university, Abe went to the U.S for two years. His mother has written in her book that he learned at the University of California and the University of South California. He was at the University of South California from Spring of 1978 to fall of the same year as a “special admit” (specially admitted student?) and took a course in political science but no one knows whether he got any credits for that.

The thing that seems so depressing to me about Japan at the moment is that there appears to be no effective force to counteract the right. It seems as if they can do what they like now. At least in Korea, if a new rightwing government comes into power next year (as seems likely), the social movements, civil society groups, unions, the left etc will be there to stand up to them.

Hisane Masaki’s piece is well written but I wish he had commented on Abe’s empty slogan “Beautiful Nation Japan” ( His book which became a bestseller is published with the same title).
Here is a quote from Kyodo news.
>In his speech, he repeated the catchphrase “beautiful >country” eight times and used terms such as “new >Japan,” “new era,” “new nation-building,” and “the 21st >century” a total of 12 times.
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/385789

Abe seems to be proud of his background but he should be ashamed of being hereditary politicians(seshu giin) and a grand son of a war criminal. Mind you the only entrance exam he ever took in life was when he entered Seikei Primary School,which is ofcourse a school that only rich kids can go to, and after that he didn’t need to worry about his studies. I think he is just a rich kid who is trying to exclude anything that seems to him “unbeautiful”(e.g. homeless people, handicapped people, “bad bad” North Koreans etc)