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Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

nytimes.com

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Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#151

Post by pastProlog »

Camillo wrote: post #97
pastProlog wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All this complicated dance of indirect elections (that the current parties would like to remove) has been put in place after the WW2 to avoid too much power being in the hands of these high-profile figures or of a single party. All of this was put in place after World War II to centralize power in the hands of the Christian Democrats, and force non-communist parties to go into coalition with them. As all prime mini…

> you have the 1948 elections which the communist/socialist coalition won but which was fixed the other way The left-wing coalition (which was actually missing a piece of the socialists) didn't even get close to winning. It got 31% of the vote.

In East Germany in 1949, you had a left coalition like in the 1948 Italian election. It gained 66% of the vote to the 34% of the opposition. In the 1947 Hungarian election, the communists got the most votes.

So how come we never hear that Eastern Europe became communist democratically? After all, they can point to election numbers as you do. Well, the Red Army occupied them some say. But the US armed forces occupied Italy - they still do. Well, the USSR, a foreign power meddled in the elections. The US and CIA admit how massively they meddled in Italy's 1948 (and subsequent) elections.

I can easily say that the non-communist and non-communist aligned parties in Eastern Europe "didn't even come close to winning" after World War II and the people of those countries democratically decided to become communist. After all, Hungary became communist after World War I without Russian intervention, a fact few in the West remember.

It's odd to see the US and CIA admitting after decades they interfered in and fixed the Italian 1948 elections, yet you still hold up the phony results, yet everyone can easily discount the elections in eastern Europe after World War II, where Russia simply did the same thing the US did.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#152

Post by afandian »

OtterCoder wrote: post #130
afandian wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like state decisions are direct but limited. But decisions like the Roman Catholic Church's policy on contraception has only devastated as many lives as it has because those people choose to believe in the symbol.

But, all power is, at its root, symbolic. Stalin only slaughtered as many as he did because people believed in the symbolic power of the state and in him as having some right to lead such an abstract entity with total authority.

Not all power. The Pope, Stalin and the Emperor have the symbolic power to a greater or lesser extent.

The soldier aiming a gun at you or healthcare professional denying you access to contraception on the say-so of one of the above does have real power.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#153

Post by Rayearth »

neximo64 wrote: post #104
Houshalter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They keep them in symbolic roles only. They have no real power. And even then there are movements to abolish them for consuming public tax dollars. Not every country had a violent or sudden change to democracy. But supporters of democracy still won in the West. Despite massive resistance at first. I mean that the monarchs themselves favor the upper class. They are, after all, members of it, and exposed mainly to thei…

Regarding 'no real power', This is often said but its not true. There have been occasions the monarchy have used their power but it goes largely unreported. One such occasion is 1975 in Australia where the government was thrown out using the monarch's power. The monarch hardly uses this power but it does if things go awry. Also the 'consuming public tax dollars' argument is incorrect. The monarchy of the UK pays net…

To add to this, Canada in 2008 went through a "parliamentary dispute" that Canada's Governor General played a large part in the resolution of. While the Governor General is pretty much chosen by Canadian ministers in a democratic fashion, on paper the officer is appointed by the Queen and ideally represents her in Canada.

So I do agree that the monarchy has some influence on the Commonwealth, more than just having "the right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn".

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#154

Post by mikeash »

pastProlog wrote: post #151
Camillo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have the 1948 elections which the communist/socialist coalition won but which was fixed the other way The left-wing coalition (which was actually missing a piece of the socialists) didn't even get close to winning. It got 31% of the vote.

In East Germany in 1949, you had a left coalition like in the 1948 Italian election. It gained 66% of the vote to the 34% of the opposition. In the 1947 Hungarian election, the communists got the most votes. So how come we never hear that Eastern Europe became communist democratically? After all, they can point to election numbers as you do. Well, the Red Army occupied them some say. But the US armed forces occupied…

The main difference is that the US backed governments mostly didn't end up being horribly repressive, requiring military intervention to keep in power, and eventually overthrown.

In any case, an argument that Eastern Europe's Communist governments were illegitimate cannot be countered by saying that Western Europe's governments were illegitimate, no matter how true that may be.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#155

Post by SerLava »

77pt77 wrote: post #138
ezoe wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emperor was forbidden to perform any political activities by constitution. Simply stating his wish to abdicate is considered a political activities, so the emperor cannot even say that. This time, he implies he wish to abdicate by saying "When the emperor dies, Japanese economy will face a serious shock, which I want to prevent it", which implies in the time of his death(I don't know the polite way of saying die…

> I don't know the polite way of saying die in English, in Japanese, we have a special polite word for the emperor's death In Osaka I saw the expression, "emperor Hirohito succumbed". I found the euphemism quite entertaining at the time.

That's extremely interesting.

But to the author of the parent comment, it would probably be best to say 'pass away'

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#156

Post by sbmassey »

bluejekyll wrote: post #142
cheiVia0 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that's the factoid. According to Wikipedia [1]: > The term was coined originally in 1973 as a neologism by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a "piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it’s not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." Since its creation in 1973 the term has evolved from its original meaning, in common usage, and has ass…

Perhaps we should disambiguate the two: factoid, brief fact. Infactoid, brief seemingly true fact that is not due to repeated use. It's not literally as bad as the figuritive misuse of literally, where literally has come to mean figuratively and literally... This one I fight all day long.

Well it is just a fairly recently invented word, sure, but it is rather telling that it was apparently CNN that jumped on the word and used it to mean 'trivial fact'

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#157

Post by oldmanjay »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #108
moogly wrote: post #4

I propose a deal: Let the man rest in exchange for the abolishment of the constitutional monarchy. Symbolic or not, it's outmoded and incongruent with modern egalitarian society. The list of constitutional monarchies is rather embarrassingly long (37 countries).

I was in strict opposition to a concept of Monarchy, but not anymore. In many countries constitutional monarchs are replaced by de-facto for-life Despots (think Putin and his partner Erdogan), for whom nobody could explain who they are (parents, relatives, children?), where we got them from and what happens when they expire. At least for a Monarch we knew all that with high amount of detail. Who have no legitimacy wh…

Can you explain what would be better if Putin called himself a czar?

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#158

Post by toyg »

pastProlog wrote: post #45
gioele wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In some countries, like Germany and Italy, the head of state is an elected president, usually an fairly elderly politician. In Italy the only people elected by the citizens are the members of the Parliament. The head of the state is elected by the members of the parliament every 7 years. The head of the government is chosen ("invested") by the head of the state after a round of consultations with representatives of…

> All this complicated dance of indirect elections (that the current parties would like to remove) has been put in place after the WW2 to avoid too much power being in the hands of these high-profile figures or of a single party. All of this was put in place after World War II to centralize power in the hands of the Christian Democrats, and force non-communist parties to go into coalition with them. As all prime mini…

As much as I share the overall reading of XX century Italian history you propose, it does not support a causal theory between the Constitution and what followed. The Italian Communist Party was one of three dominant forces shaping the Constitution (the other two being Socialists and Christian-Democrats); they were as interested in avoiding centralization as anyone else, in order to keep Fascist nostalgia at bay. Most Communists in the Assembly had been freedom fighters, some of them for decades, at huge personal cost; their priority was to avoid a new Mussolini ever appearing.

Once the Constitution was in place, overall political debate was indeed shaped by Cold War events and influences; but the document itself is arguably a pinnacle achievement of political theory, pushing representative democracy and collective responsibility to their limits.

Re: Emperor Akihito of Japan Raises Possibility of Leaving Throne

#160

Post by abandonliberty »

kogepathic wrote: post #37
gfodor wrote: post #21

I find it bizarre that Japan is having an contentious debate about if it's appropriate for a woman to ascend to a completely powerless role while the US just nominated its first (viable) female candidate for president. edit: Wow, apparently this is an offensive comment. I'm having a hard time twisting my brain to see how, but my point was simply that the it seems odd that there would be contention over a powerless ro…

> while the US just nominated its first (viable) female candidate for president. And as someone who isn't from the US, I find it incredibly bizarre that you haven't had a female leader yet. The UK has had 2 female Prime Ministers (1979-1990, 2016-), Canada has had 1 (1993), and Germany (2005-) to name a few. > I find it bizarre that Japan is having an contentious debate about if it's appropriate for a woman to ascend…

In fairness, Canada's female PM wasn't democratically elected, was only in power for 2.5 months, and came to power after the current PM stepped down due to unpopularity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Mulroney#Retirement

This has parallels to the current UK situation.

I understand the response to perceived American ethnocentrism, but I wouldn't minimize the significance of Hillary/Trump.

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