Word: japanism
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...news out of Japan is likely to compound the nation's failures in dealing with its wartime abuses against China: The Japanese company responsible for removing chemical weapons abandoned by Japanese forces in China at the end of World War II will not be able to complete its work, with a corruption scandal forcing its closure. That leaves Tokyo with no immediate replacement to complete the complicated cleanup, which Japan is obliged to finish by 2012 under an international treaty...
...ruling Liberal Democratic Party draws important support from organizations that downplay or deny Japanese use of chemical and biological weapons in China during the war. And there are deniers in the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, too: Jin Matsubara, a Democratic parliamentarian known for denying the killing of Chinese civilians by the Japanese Imperial Army in Nanjing in 1937-1938, recently used his speaking time at a Diet session dedicated to discussing the weapons to question their very existence...
...same time, NPB teams lack what might be called the "trade advantages" of their North American counterparts, namely, stadium subsidies, salary depreciation allowances and the anti-trust exemption which helps free up millions upon millions of dollars for MLB teams to spend on raiding Japan's top stars. Most MLB teams use stadiums for little or nothing, having strenuously convinced the cities they play in to build new facilities for them. By contrast The Tokyo Giants pay $250,000 a game to use the Tokyo Dome, while the Softbank Hawks pay $40 million dollars a year to use a similar...
...ratings for the Tokyo Giants, in particular, have fallen several percentage points since live MLB casts became a regular morning affair in Japan (the Giants' biggest star, Hideki Matsui, defected to the New York Yankees in 2003). But Japanese baseball is far from dead. Seasonal attendance has actually increased in the past three years (by 5%), thanks to the establishment of interleague play. The NPB has also managed to hold on to a core fan base (though some would argue that it is the core fans who have stuck by the NPB). In 2007, the Japan Series drew over twice...
...what's next for the American invaders? Might the MLB be contemplating a Japan division to field teams against its National League and American League in the U.S.? The rumors to that effect exist because the Yomiuri Shimbun, the huge newspaper that also owns its own baseball team, was a major sponsor of the Boston-Oakland series and was responsible for the timing of the games to coincide with the local leagues' opening week - which the NPB found so obnoxious. Could Japan be further drawn into the American baseball empire? Well, maybe not. Says Masaki Nagino, planning director...