I JUST HAD AN ILLEGAL THOUGHT AND YOU ARE NOW MY CONSPIRATOR

Thought crimes are about to make a comeback in Japan. Not that there are so many crimes being thought of here, but with all that citizen-spying going on in the US, certain bottom-feeding elements in the Japanese government are beginning to feel like they're missing out on a great chance to ramp up the general nefariousness. (If we could just have the kempeitai back again, or even the tokkou keisatsu [thought police]!)

Now they appear to be getting closer to their wish. A new and generally unheralded thought-crime statute is about to become law in Japan that "defines 'conspiracy' as an agreement, whether overt or tacit, fanciful or earnest, between two or more people that might be construed as planning to violate any statute..."

Somehow that doesn't sound like a law to me, since logically (if not legally) speaking, a law has to exclude something, whereas "overt or tacit agreement" pretty much locks up every you and I in the country, and "might be construed as planning to violate" neatly stockades the entire universe of thought, so the next few years should be interesting in the proverbial Chinese sense.

Oops... I just had an illegal thought... and there's another tacit one... maybe if I turn myself in... Now that I've gone overt and told you, you should come too...

*****

Then there's the other key factor...