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So farewell, then, Lionheart
Here's how I saluted the arrival of Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister of Japan five years ago.
Wow, was his hair really that black? Forgive me mentioning the hair so soon, but it's important in the Koizumi story. His elegant Victorian lion's mane was crucial to his rise. It, along with a courageous determination to push through "painful reforms", gave Koizumi the nickname "Lionheart", a name he embraced happily and titled his regular email bulletins after. Just as he was the first post-war Japanese prime minister with good hair, so he was the first post-war Japanese prime minister with charisma: Koizumi is a ladies' man, a snappy dresser with a dry sense of humour and a whispery-cool Clint Eastwood-style voice.
Personally, although I like Koizumi's manner and style, I don't at all like what he's done. As a fan of nationalization and grands projets -- the kind of big non-military public spending projects that French presidents are so good at, but that the running-dog lackeys of the bourgeois Anglo-press love to describe as "pork barrelling" -- I'm pretty disgusted at Koizumi's record of cuts and privatizations. I hate the way he parachuted celebrity "assassins" (including subsequently-disgraced internet mogul Takafumi Horie) in to glitz his way to postal privatization, despite the fact that the bill was legitimately rejected by the Japanese chamber.
I'm also disgusted that Koizumi went back on Japan's constitutional renunciation of military involvement and sent Japanese troops to George Bush's disastrous war in Iraq. It seems to me that, in all these actions, Koizumi resembles no-one so much as Tony Blair, another politician who uses charisma and glitz to mask a pretty cynical bling-agenda consisting mostly of handing over public resources to a tiny band of corpora-crats. This craven renunciation of all the duties of what I understand by "politics" has, alas, come to be called "liberalization" and "reform". It's far from those things, because there can be no reform which fails to resist the vested interest of the truly powerful.
Much has been made of Koizumi's friendship with George Bush; his trips to Graceland to hang with the ghost of Elvis Presley, his waltz with Richard Gere. I agree with the BBC when they say that he would have been wiser to nurture better relations with Chinese ghosts, Chinese actors and Chinese politicians. But something I do appreciate is the limit on Koizumi's American friendship. It's been largely tokenesque. The troops in Iraq were few. And there's been no sign of Japanese TV being flooded with cheap American imports, or Rupert Murdoch being given a major foothold in Japan.
As for Japan's next prime minister, due to be elected tomorrow, well, he's massively likely to be Koizumi's hair, sorry, heir apparent, Shinzo Abe, a man I've already dubbed "the world's first robot prime minister". No, he won't stop visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. Yes, he does use a Mac. And yes, his basic agenda is spelled out in Unix code on the wall behind him:
"./configure --with-passion=/home/abe/blood... make proud_japan".
Wow, was his hair really that black? Forgive me mentioning the hair so soon, but it's important in the Koizumi story. His elegant Victorian lion's mane was crucial to his rise. It, along with a courageous determination to push through "painful reforms", gave Koizumi the nickname "Lionheart", a name he embraced happily and titled his regular email bulletins after. Just as he was the first post-war Japanese prime minister with good hair, so he was the first post-war Japanese prime minister with charisma: Koizumi is a ladies' man, a snappy dresser with a dry sense of humour and a whispery-cool Clint Eastwood-style voice.Personally, although I like Koizumi's manner and style, I don't at all like what he's done. As a fan of nationalization and grands projets -- the kind of big non-military public spending projects that French presidents are so good at, but that the running-dog lackeys of the bourgeois Anglo-press love to describe as "pork barrelling" -- I'm pretty disgusted at Koizumi's record of cuts and privatizations. I hate the way he parachuted celebrity "assassins" (including subsequently-disgraced internet mogul Takafumi Horie) in to glitz his way to postal privatization, despite the fact that the bill was legitimately rejected by the Japanese chamber.
I'm also disgusted that Koizumi went back on Japan's constitutional renunciation of military involvement and sent Japanese troops to George Bush's disastrous war in Iraq. It seems to me that, in all these actions, Koizumi resembles no-one so much as Tony Blair, another politician who uses charisma and glitz to mask a pretty cynical bling-agenda consisting mostly of handing over public resources to a tiny band of corpora-crats. This craven renunciation of all the duties of what I understand by "politics" has, alas, come to be called "liberalization" and "reform". It's far from those things, because there can be no reform which fails to resist the vested interest of the truly powerful.
Much has been made of Koizumi's friendship with George Bush; his trips to Graceland to hang with the ghost of Elvis Presley, his waltz with Richard Gere. I agree with the BBC when they say that he would have been wiser to nurture better relations with Chinese ghosts, Chinese actors and Chinese politicians. But something I do appreciate is the limit on Koizumi's American friendship. It's been largely tokenesque. The troops in Iraq were few. And there's been no sign of Japanese TV being flooded with cheap American imports, or Rupert Murdoch being given a major foothold in Japan.
As for Japan's next prime minister, due to be elected tomorrow, well, he's massively likely to be Koizumi's hair, sorry, heir apparent, Shinzo Abe, a man I've already dubbed "the world's first robot prime minister". No, he won't stop visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. Yes, he does use a Mac. And yes, his basic agenda is spelled out in Unix code on the wall behind him:
"./configure --with-passion=/home/abe/blood... make proud_japan".
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Koizumi singing Elvis tunes in Graceland with a band--The Dempseys--who took their name from my uncle, their favorite junior high schoolteacher.
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-19 01:37 pm (UTC)(link)Weaver
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Nevertheless, socialism is just sleeping. It will rise again sometime this century, mark my words.
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-19 03:55 pm (UTC)(link)-henryperri
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I am quite sure that the reason for the rightwing turn in Sweden is because people have turned cynical and they have forgotten what the politics of the rightwings did to Sweden last time they ruled.
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- "corpora-crats"
- using "'politics'" "'liberalization'" and "'reform'" in quotations
I hope you're writing tounge-in-cheek. Otherwise you sound like a poor charicature of a "liberal bleeding-heart pinko".
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-19 01:22 pm (UTC)(link)Marxy
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They work so hard and they try to be free
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people who are working for me
Talking Heads
"Don't Worry About the Government"
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or else. no more nicepimmelkarl. help me, mate.
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karl, i don't think this is your finest work. too self-indulgent perhaps? why not ease off for a while? we miss your more finely nuanced gifs.
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one meter/one meter. a grand and it's yours. geldzahler !!! funk the golden boy the anti-matter. i'm skint.
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-19 04:43 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-19 09:22 pm (UTC)(link)we're grumpy here too.
<3
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age & respect
I suspect Koizumi of spending Cherie Blair's haircare budget
on judicious grey. He's not really the sort to hang out in
his bathroom with a toothbrush and some peroxide.
That _Talking Heads_ song goes on to iconify buildings.
At least your home city built that fun war memorial so
that freerunners could have a blast (architecture rather
than "Arbeitsschutz, aber sicher" building, but hey).
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Metaphysical Masochism of the Capitalist Creative (http://imomus.com/thought110100.html) puts it better.
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Would you say that artistic endeavors are hindered or prevented entirely by freer-market societies, or do you think art will emerge no matter how capitalism-centric its surrounding culture?
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-19 10:16 pm (UTC)(link)-henryperri
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It just feels like hyper-capitalism has jaded us to the point where once sincerity was laughed at - now, I'm thinking it'll be rebellion.
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-20 03:12 am (UTC)(link)And if you were disgusted by Koizumi, I should think Mr. Abe should give us all more than a little pause. I agree that a little pride in being Japanese wouldn't hurt anyone, but not through government control of schools and a bigger military. Those are key points for Mr. Abe, and without Koizumi's international charisma I think that Abe's brand of brinksmanship will prove more dangerous for Japan in the long run.
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