[Criminal Number 18F]

Domo Arigato, AmericanInTokyo-san.

How do you think this will play in Japan? Japanese antipathy to nuclear weapons is legendary (and understandable). To be told that they are potential targets of the Kim Jong-Il regime (not exactly a stable government) has to be chilling. But... will the public think that the US is trying to play off that well-known Japanese nuclear policy?

You could certainly make a case that the NKs don't really want their nukes to blast Japan. I believe they want to prevent another Inchon when the Dear Leader decides to unify the nation under tank-treads. A sensible military strategist might do that by attacking Japan, but as I have indicated I don't think the NKs are sensible. The North Koreans are very ethnocentric, and I don't know if they worry too much about anything but Korea.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[AmericanInTokyo]

It may well create the rise of a strong, nationalistic, "Japan First" ("Nippon Dai Ichi") Prime Minister, such as a renegade like Ishihara "Just Say No" Shintaro, current governor of Tokyo. With the mood of the voters to not be shy about sticking it to the LDP and even other parties at the polls and go independent, Ishihara could well start an independent party (Perhaps name it the Japan Patriotric Party: (Nippon Aikokuto) and then win strong at the polls on an anti-North Korea, rearm-Japan platform. Unemployment, lack of direction, shattered hopes in the youth, sexual impotence of Japanese men (a deeper psycho-sociological theory on my part), increasing crime in Japan by foreigners and low-class Japanese, and other disturbing social phenomenon in Japan that are prevalent, could contribute to it, and a circling of the rickshaws.

Japan can and will swing from one extremity of the pendulum of rampant pacifism, to one of belligerent pro-Japan anti-North Korea vigilence. Often, there is little ground in between two polar extremes in Japan in public policy.

The nation could well forget their recent history, particularly on the part of younger voters who know nothing of what led to the Great East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, and rearm and renationalize all in favor of keeping a wall of protection between themselves and a new, violent and uncontrollable neighbor on the Asian peninsula just a sea away to the west.