Fraud is rampant everywhere, it seems:

In 2010, welfare officials in Tokyo tried to visit Sogen Kato, a local man living in the city’s Adachi district, to congratulate him on his 111th birthday. Their records identified him as the oldest man in the city, but his family kept turning them away, saying he didn’t want visitors or had taken a trip somewhere five hours away.

When police finally entered the house, they found Kato’s mummified remains lying in bed, dressed in pajamas and covered with a blanket. He’d been dead for at least 30 years, although his family claimed he’d shut himself away to become a living Buddha.

His pension kept paying, and someone withdrew 2.7 million yen, about $31,000 at the time, after officials started asking questions. …

“This prompted the Japanese Ministry of Justice to check in on other centenarians: not just in Tokyo but across all Japan,” writes scientist Saul Justin Newman in his new book, “Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science” …

Across Japan, the audit identified 234,354 people still on family registers whose whereabouts couldn’t be confirmed. All would have been at least 100 if alive. Newman describes them as dead or missing and puts their share at more than 82% of the recorded centenarian population.

His findings have been disputed, however, and some researchers say there were only 600 such “missing” centenarians. That’s 600 too many, I’d say.

The whole thing reminds me of a bit of the Faulkner story “A Rose for Emily.”

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Once again it’s the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Nagasaki followed three days later, and Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.

To date these two bombs remain—astoundingly enough, considering the nature of our oft-troubled and troubling species—the only nuclear warheads ever detonated over populated areas. (I’ve written at length on the subject of those bombs: see this, this, and this.)

Oliver Kamm wrote a while back:

Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave labourers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire – and for Japan itself. One of Japan’s highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties.

This context always needs to be kept in mind when evaluating any “terrible thing” – and there is no question that the dropping of these bombs was a terrible thing.

But critics who are bound and determined to portray the West as evil, marauding, bloodthirsty – whatever the dreadful adjective du jour might be – are bound and determined to either avoid all context, or to change the true context and replace it with fanciful myth. As Kamm writes, those who want to portray Hiroshima and Nagasaki as American crimes cite evidence of an imminent Japanese surrender that would have happened anyway.

Trouble is, available information points strongly to the contrary. It’s difficult to know whether those who argue that the bombs were unnecessary and the deaths that ensued gratuitous are guilty of poor scholarship, wishful thinking, or willful lying – but most likely it’s some combination of these elements.

Truth in history is not easy to determine (see this), although it helps greatly if conventions of scholarship (sources, citations) are properly followed. Oh, the main events themselves are often not disputed – except for fringe groups – although the details are often the subject of disagreement. But it’s the motivations behind the acts, the hearts and minds of the movers and shakers, the “what-might-have-been’s” and the “but-fors” that are so open to both partisan interpretation and willful distortion, and so deeply meaningful.

It’s hard enough to determine what happened. How many died in Dresden, for example? Do we believe Goebbels’s propaganda as promulgated by David Irving, or do we believe this work of recent exhaustive scholarship? The former “facts” have reigned now in popular opinion for quite a while, and although the latter mounts a far more convincing case, how many have read it or are familiar with the facts in it, compared to those who have been heavily exposed to the former?

There’s what happened, and then there’s why it happened – the meaning and intent behind the policy. It takes a lot of time and effort to wade through facts, make judgments about the veracity of sources, and be willing to keep an open mind.

Much easier to stand in a public square (as a bunch of nodding, smiling, waving, elderly peace-love Boomers regularly used to do in a town where I lived) holding huge banners declaring “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.” Repeat it often enough, and the hope is it will become Truth in people’s eyes.

Especially in the eyes of the young, and of future generations, who don’t have their own memories to go on. It’s much harder to convince a WWII vet that Hiroshima was an unnecessary war crime than it is to convince a young person of same; the former not only has the context, he has own personal memories of the context. World War II veterans are scarce these days and getting scarcer by the minute. And propagandists from the left are more numerous, with larger platforms from which to distribute their products. They are not just interested in changing opinions in the present, they’re interested in changing history to change the future.

[NOTE: The definitive essay on the dropping of the atomic bomb by a contemporary and a fine writer is Paul Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb.” (That link no longer works, and I’m having trouble finding another that links to the actual text of the essay. If anyone can come up with one, please post the link in the comments.) For a discussion of the idea that Russia’s entry into the war against Japan rather than the atomic bomb was the cause of Japan’s surrender, see this.]

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U.S. President Donald Trump struck a trade deal with Japan that lowers tariffs on auto imports and spares Tokyo from punishing new levies on other goods in exchange for a $550 billion package of U.S.-bound investment and loans.

It is the most significant of a clutch of agreements that Trump has bagged since unveiling sweeping global levies in April though, like other deals, exact details remained unclear. …

“I just signed the largest TRADE DEAL in history with Japan,” Trump said in announcing the deal on social media.

On Wednesday he said Japan and Indonesia were opening their markets to the U.S. “I will only lower tariffs if a country agrees to open its market,” Trump wrote.

The article mentions that US automakers are criticizing the deal because the tariff on Japan’s autos will be 15%, whereas US autos made in Mexico and Canada have tariffs of 25%. More here:

“American Automakers still need to review the details of the U.S.-Japan agreement, but any deal that charges a lower tariff for Japanese imports with virtually no U.S. content than it does North American-built vehicles with high U.S. content is a bad deal for the U.S. industry and U.S. auto workers,” said Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents the American companies Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.

“High US content” means, I assume, that some parts are made in the US but the vehicles are assembled in Mexico and Canada? Clearly, Trump wants them to bring the entire operation back to the US:

Though the White House has argued the tariffs will help the U.S. build more cars at home, domestic automakers have also taken a hit from the duties, due to the integrated nature of North American auto supply chains. U.S. companies rely on Mexico and Canada to help build cars and supply parts, particularly after Trump renegotiated a North American trade deal lowering duties between the countries. To ease some of the pain, the White House has offered a complicated rebate scheme for portions of certain North American-made cars’ sales value over the next two years, but automakers are still struggling.

I don’t think Trump is interested in harming the US auto industry, but I don’t know the details of what this really means, or how easy or difficult it would be to bring the manufacture of US cars wholly back to the US.

Commerce Secretary Lutnick said the following:

“Come on, there’s no tariff if you build it in America,” he said. “American manufacturers are going to do extremely well in America — as long as they build it in America. You build it in America, you’re good,” he said.

Easier said than done, but perhaps necessary.

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Japan is a society with a low murder rate and also what are perhaps the strictest gun laws in the world. And yet this happened. There was security there for Abe, but it’s hard to understand what it involved:

Witnesses saw a man carrying what they described as a large gun fire twice at the former PM from behind. Abe fell to the ground as bystanders screamed in shock and disbelief.

Abe had a security team with him, but it appears the gunman was still able to get within a few metres of Mr Abe without any sort of checks or barrier.

Photos circulating in the aftermath of the shooting showed the suspect standing just behind Mr Abe as he gave his speech.

How on earth did the assassin get that close with a weapon that seems to have been relatively large? In a photo at the link, you can see him standing just behind Abe, dressed in gray, and he is carrying a large black bag slung over his shoulder and across his body.

If you scroll down further, you can see a photo of a police officer confronting the assailant afterwards; he was taken into custody. I’m no weapons expert, but the assassin’s weapon has been described as “homemade,” and I’m not sure what that is on the officer’s right hip. Is he armed, or not? It seems pretty clear to me that, had the perp so desired, he could have blasted quite a few other people there away. That didn’t happen.

It is also ironic, although quite irrelevant, that every single person in that photo of the officer and the perp is wearing a COVID mask, even though it’s outside.

More:

Gun violence is extremely rare in Japan, where handguns are banned – and incidents of political violence are almost unheard of.

I’m not sure what the BBC means by “unheard of.” Japan has a low murder rate and very very little gun violence, but it is no stranger to political violence. This article discusses that history, and you can see that it certainly exists.

The motive for Abe’s assassination is unclear:

The suspect, named as Tetsuya Yamagami…told officers he had a grudge against a specific group he believed Abe was connected to, police said, adding that they were investigating why the former PM was targeted out of other people related to the group.

The gun is being described as both “handmade” and “homemade,” and several other weapons of that type plus explosives were found in the perp’s home. Not only that, but in addition:

The weapon used in the attack on Abe was probably a “craft-made” firearm, according to N.R. Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, a specialist arms investigations firm.

He compared the weapon to a musket in which the gunpowder is loaded separately from the bullet.

“Firearms legislation in Japan is very restrictive, so I think what we’re seeing here, with what’s probably a muzzle-loading weapon, is not just an attempt to circumvent the control of firearms, but also the strict control of ammunition in Japan,” he said.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Japanese police do carry guns when on duty, but they are rarely used.

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And Pocket’s got my number, all right, because indeed I am interested.

When I was young, I remember seeing film of how the Japanese handled the crush of rush hour in its subways. It was somewhat terrifying—they had white-gloved attendants shoving people into already overstuffed trains, and even watching it could give a person both claustrophobia and enochlophobia.

Apparently they still do it:

But the article indicates there’s a lot, lot more:

In 2016, for instance, London Underground operator Transport for London partnered with the behavioral science department at the London School of Economics to develop ways of encouraging riders to queue on both sides of station escalators as a means of increasing their capacity in the capital’s Holborn Station. Among other measures, simple hand and footprints were also painted on each side of the “up” escalators. In Australia, researchers conducted an experiment with lighted directional arrows on signposts to improve flows of departing passengers. Using a camera system designed to recognize and distinguish brisk-walking businesspeople from dawdling tourists, for example—green arrows would flash to direct commuters in an efficient route towards the exit.

When it come to passenger manipulation, what sets the stations of Japan apart from their counterparts is both the ingenuity behind their nudges and the imperceptible manner in which they are implemented. Japan’s nudges reflect a higher order of thinking…

Standing at either end of a platform in Tokyo’s labyrinthine Shinjuku Station, one might detect a small square LED panel emitting a pleasant, deep-blue glow. Nestled among vending machines and safety posters, the panel might be dismissed as a bug zapper. But these simple blue panels are designed to save lives…

It is an approach that has proven to be surprisingly effective…

To address the Japanese fear of loitering and vandalism by young riders, some train stations deploy ultrasonic deterrents—small, unobtrusive devices that emit a high-frequency tone. The particular frequency used—17 kilohertz*—can generally only be heard by those under the age of 25. (Older people can’t detect such frequencies, thanks to the age-related hearing loss known as presbycusis.) These devices—the brainchild of a Welsh inventor and also used to fend off loitering teens in the U.S. and Europe—have been enthusiastically adopted in Japan.

Standing outside one of Tokyo Station’s numerous exits on a recent summer day, it was easy to see the effectiveness of this deterrent in action. Weary salarymen and aged obaachan passed under the sonic deterrent without changing pace. Among uniform-clad students, however, the reactions were evident—a suddenly quickened pace, a look of confusion or discomfort, and often a cry of urusai! (Loud!) None appeared to connect the noise to the deterrents placed almost flush in the ceiling panels above.

Much more at the link.

It reminds me a bit of Temple Grandin’s brilliant designs for cattle handling:

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