CHINA IS COMING! CHINA IS COMING!

Newspaper rumor has it that Japan's Ground Self-Defense force is preparing for attack by China, but nobody's come to my door to say anything. No posters around the neighborhood warning us of the Asiatic foe at our doorstep, no local signs of anti-invasion preparations, nobody handing out old rifles and pitchforks at the village hall or recruiting volunteer labor to dig defense works...

None of my neighbors have mentioned that the Chinese might be coming, like Russia was coming to the States back when that country was working hard to keep the cold war cold, keep us in a state of perpetual readiness and manipulability. Everybody who's been paying attention knows by now, though, that Koizumi, chronic visitor to Yasukuni Shrine, repeat offender of Japan's WWII Asian victims and apparently poor student of history, wants to get the constitution changed so that Japan can have its own army, an army it can send abroad offensively if it wants to, just like all the other edgy countries.

I suspect that the threats of Chinese and other invasion will only get louder as the old pattern is followed, until and forever after the new LDP gets its wish: its very own Japanese army, and termination of the only remaining major national example of what should have been the future of the world.

Newspaper rumor