{"id":9784,"date":"2015-07-07T07:43:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T12:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9784"},"modified":"2015-07-07T07:43:29","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T12:43:29","slug":"the-popes-letter-neoliberalism-and-fukushima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9784","title":{"rendered":"The Pope\u2019s Letter: Neoliberalism and Fukushima"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/07\/07\/the-popes-letter-neoliberalism-and-fukushima\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">The Pope\u2019s Letter: Neoliberalism and Fukushima<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"post_meta\"><strong>Japan\u2019s Social Disintegration<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>Japanese sociologist and Tokyo Metropolitan University professor, Shinji Miyadai argues that European nations progressed from the communal self-governance of food to the communal self-governance of energy after World War II. Miyadai compares Europe\u2019s post-war developments with those of post-war Japan in his article entitled \u2018Pitfalls of the Nuclear Power Reduction Movement\u2019. His contention is simple: As opposed to Europe, Japan had actually \u201caccelerated its dependence on the market through trade liberalization and deregulation\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Post-war economic indenture was exactly what the United States wanted from Japan. Moreover, the US was able to procure Japanese market dependence through discussions on the trade liberalization of agricultural goods (and later, the US-Japan Structural Impediments Initiative talks). Miyadai claims that the hollowing effects of these US-sponsored neoliberal adjustments would exact their toll on Japanese communities in the 1980s and 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>Neoliberalism\u2019s averse effects climaxed when the 1997 recession \u2013 induced by the Asian currency crisis \u2013 washed over Japan. Miyadai recalls the serious outcomes of a barely functioning Japanese economy, which then finally ceased to function. Among the consequences were: Japan\u2019s heightened rate of suicide (four times that of the UK and twice that of the US); the scandal of the missing or long-dead elderly; ubiquitous infant and child abuse or neglect; and a third of Japan\u2019s dead, cremated without funeral.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, as Miyadai laments, \u201cWell before the Great East Japan Earthquake, Japanese society had already begun to disintegrate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Distorting Japan\u2019s Foreign Policy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After WWII, the US meddled in Japan\u2019s foreign policy. Miyadai offers the Kuril Islands dispute as evidence of this. The dispute actually begins with something Miyadai labels as Japan\u2019s \u201ccastration experience.\u201d This \u201ccastration\u201d entails America\u2019s dropping of atomic bombs, Japan\u2019s US-written post-war constitution, and the US-Japan Security Treaty signed under Washington\u2019s persistence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pope\u2019s Letter: Neoliberalism and Fukushima Japan\u2019s Social Disintegration Japanese sociologist and Tokyo Metropolitan University professor, Shinji Miyadai argues that European nations progressed from the communal self-governance of food to the communal self-governance of energy after World War II. Miyadai compares Europe\u2019s post-war developments with those of post-war Japan in his article entitled \u2018Pitfalls of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,6],"tags":[5374,281,340,452,6996,6471,7043,827,862,865,3097,3941],"class_list":["post-9784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-deregulation","tag-europe","tag-fukushima","tag-japan","tag-neoliberalism","tag-pope-francis","tag-trade-liberalization","tag-united-states","tag-war","tag-washington","tag-world-war-ii","tag-ww-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9785,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9784\/revisions\/9785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}