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发表于 2011-10-26 10:54:42
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VOX POPULI: '99 to 1' also seen in Okinawa
The Japanese phrase "kyushi-ni-issho" (literally one life to nine deaths) means narrowly escaping death. These days, we often hear the term "99 percent and 1 percent" in the news from the United States. It refers to the movement to condemn greed-driven capitalism and the claim that a tiny percentage of people control the wealth while everybody else remains poor.
How do people who identify with this slogan feel about Okinawa? The prefecture makes up less than 1 percent of the entire nation in terms of land area and is home to slightly more than 1 percent of the nation's population. And yet, it is crammed with 74 percent of all U.S. military facilities in Japan. It does not stand to reason that 99 percent of the nation is forcing that 1 percent to shoulder a heavy burden on their behalf. Okinawa has been asking: "Isn't the pain of a little finger the pain of the entire body?"
The administration of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is getting ready to rub salt into the wound. The plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, to the Henoko district in Nago within the prefecture had been stalled. But prompted by the United States, the administration hastily started to advance the plan. The move makes me think of a small-fry mid-level manager who makes unreasonable demands on his subordinates to meet an order from the company president.
It has become extremely difficult to realize the plan. Does the prime minister and his ministers have the guts to explain the reality facing Okinawa in their own words to visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta? Or will they end up using bureaucratic jargon to appease Washington?
In the serial column "CM Tenkizu" (CM weather chart) that runs in the vernacular Asahi Shimbun, Yukichi Amano states that the perception of what is "normal" has gone haywire. There is something very wrong with the way we are made to think that a society where 1 percent of the population is ultra-rich and the remaining 99 percent are poor is normal, he argues.
The same thing can be said of U.S. military bases in Okinawa. The island prefecture has experienced a postwar era that is quite different from that of the Japanese mainland. Most Japanese people have accepted this state of affairs as "normal." To put it differently, they have been "indifferent." The indolence of thinking that an abnormal situation is normal is all the more scary in the case of politicians.
--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 25 |
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