Birds of a feather flock together

Doctor of Philosophy,  T. Shiobara

Let us remind a proverb that birds of a feather flock together. On 16 March, 2018, a member of the House of Representatives, belonging to the Liberal Democratic Party, Kosuke Yoshiie asked to the Director of the Financial Bureau of the Ministry of Finance whether or not the former Director of the Financial Bureau, Nobuhisa Sagawa, had known the rewriting of the official documents. I cannot understand why Yoshiie asked such a foolish question, because the Minister of Finance had already recognized that Sagawa played a leading role on rewriting the official documents.

In spite of such meaningless question and answer, Jiji Press made a report as news. NHK informed this news that made the headlines. I have to describe that there are a number of dishonest journalists in Japan. Not only politicians but also journalists seem to be dishonest like Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister.

Of course I know that a lot of American politicians are dishonest as well. Nonetheless, the number of Japanese dishonest politicians seems to be much larger than the US. Comparing between BBC and NHK, most of the staff of NHK are similar to flatfishes, which always look upward. I would like indicate that all information from NHK should be detestable.

Shameful Japanese status quo

Can you explain the reason why there are no Japanese politicians who were referred to in the Panama documents and the Paradise documents? Because there are tax havens in Japan. They are political organizations, in which politicians can evade taxes on their assets in reality. For example, Shinzo Abe avoided paying more than 300 million yen as an inheritance tax (Syukan Gendai, Sep. 29^th, 2007). Therefore, I must insist that there are many kleptocrats, who are dishonest as well.

The appearance of “infortainment,” which means that information connected with entertainment, has occurred. Entertainers or performers inform news, and they appear in commercials. This means that news which are harmful to them are not informed to Japanese viewers.

Dishonest Abe flock together not only politicians but also journalists and scholars. This is shameful Japanese status quo.