I LOVE JAPAN. Kazuhiro Arai

Christianity Cannot Be a Religion for Modern Society               Being a Christian may be beneficial to an individual because he can talk to God, his life becomes easier, he can die with more ease, etc. We need to note that these benefits accrue to an individual. Game theory teaches that individual benefits are not necessarily consistent with social benefits. In other words, pursuit of individual benefits can make all people worse off. This mechanism is called the prisoner’s dilemma. Individual rationality does not necessarily mean social rationality, contrary to the individualistic philosophy of Western society.               Religious wars are an example of the prisoner’s dilemma here. People involved think that they are right and that their enemy is wrong. They may even think that their enemy must be eliminated because of wrong belief. Religious wa...

Wars and Religion               I would like to claim that religion is closely related to wars. There have been many religious wars in history. Even wars that are not directly related to religion are sometimes indirectly related to it in the sense that strategies are chosen by religious criteria as in the case of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition, inhuman acts in wars are often overlooked because churchmen or other moral leaders are silent about them for religious reasons as in the case of Nazi’s Holocaust.               Take here an example of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East opened after WWII. It was actually a ‘cultural war’ between Japan and victorious or Christian countries. It was obviously illegal because it applied ex-post facto law, but there were virtually no Western churchmen or jurists who opposed ...

Why USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2)               USA is unique in the sense that it is the only religious developed nation in the world. Christianity is so deeply rooted in Americans’ daily life and politics. The wars it has had are no exceptions.               It dropped atomic bombs over Japan because Americans believed that Christianity allows killing non-Christians such as Japanese. There was a Catholic chaplain who lent moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.* Furthermore, no American cardinals or bishops opposed the mass slaughter of Japanese people, which is similar to the cases of massacring Native Americans and enslaving black people. Christianity teaches love of one's neighbors but Christians carried out massacres of Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, Jews, and Japanese. So did Marx...

Why USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1)               USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to kill hundreds thousands of Japanese people and tortured many survivors for a long time. An a-bomb is so massively destructive that it cannot be used without insanity. The acts of having dropped a-bombs can be rightly compared to Nazi’s Holocaust. Indeed, the method of killing by a-bombs was much more inhuman than by a poison gas.               American people have been taught in school and broadcast that the bombing was necessary to end the war and save a million American lives. However, this is a completely fabricated story to justify the mass destruction and to reduce the consciousness of sin of American people. Well before the bombing the Japanese had already lost ability to fight the war and been trying to surrender. The f...

Protectionism (1) President Trump’s trade policy is likely to exert a dangerous influence on international trade. Although I disagree with his protectionism, I do not think the principle of free trade is desirable to humankind. It has two serious defects. The first is that it assumes all production plans can be adjusted without costs. It claims that if country A’s wine production has become competitively weaker than country B’s, country A should produce something else. Such a change of production plan incurs enormous costs which are ignored by that principle.               The second defect is that it ignores national security. International trade can be and actually has been used to threaten foreign countries or put them in a subordinate position by suggesting restriction of export of indispensable products. USA invoked oil and iron embargoes against Japan to induce the ‘Pacific War.’ It has used trade quite strat...

The fundamental and implicit principle of US policy toward Japan has been to weaken her military and economic power in order to maintain its supremacy. Against international law USA established after WWII the new Japanese constitution that renounces the right of belligerency. USA enforced strict censorship over Japanese media for several years after WWII. It tried to build up an image that Japan’s militarism caused the ‘Pacific War’ and prohibited criticizing its occupation policy. Censorship obviously contradicts the fundamental principle of free society, which USA was going to build for Japan after WWII. What USA does often contradicts what it says. For example, it criticized Japan for not declaring war before attacking Pearl Harbor by naming it a sneaky attack. How many times did it declare war? USA is always obsessed with the idea that it needs to get rid of obstacles to maintaining the position of number one. Japan has long been such an obstacle. Ezra Vogel’s Japan as Numb...