See, earlier (2003): The New York Times Says Japan Needs Immigrants. The Japanese Politely Disagree by Jared Taylor
The British Broadcasting System (BBC) has struck again in its ongoing War On Japan. Thoroughly modern Englishman Rupert Wingfield-Hayes [Tweet him], BBC’s man in Tokyo, ungraciously attacked his long-time hosts and the Japanese people, all because, we are to believe, he loves Japan. What a strange love it is that makes him want to remake Japan into an urban hell-hole, overrun with illegal aliens, perhaps like some cities back home in England. Globohomo hates the U.K., Germany, and U.S. for what they once were but hate Japan for what it still is. So Wingfield-Hayes unloaded on his gracious hosts for home prices, their decorative manhole covers, and even better, their low traffic fatality rate. And even worse, the evil Alt-Right likes Japan because of its immigration policy (essentially: none). So of course the country must change [Japan Was The Future But It’s Stuck In The Past, January 21, 2023].
Similarly, last year I reviewed the work of the U.K. Daily Telegraph’s Julian Ryall, who is obsessed with the “racism” of the Japanese people—meaning those who want Japan to stay Japanese. Now we have a similar attack.
Wingfield-Hayes, the great-nephew of WWII Major General Eric Hayes, is a 24-year veteran of the BBC with a career in Ruling Class journalism that has bestowed upon all the right attitudes about his hosts. His wife is Japanese, yet his plaintive cry is that Japan is, well, too Japanese.
As soon as you move in, your new home is worth less than what you paid for it and after you’ve finished paying off your mortgage in 40 years, it is worth almost nothing.
It bewildered me when I first moved here as a correspondent for the BBC—10 years on, as I prepared to leave, it was still the same.
Yes, the Japanese don’t like buying used houses. Consequently, homes are generally not built substantially or with insulation. Call it a Japanese thing. They also don’t like renting an apartment in which someone has died. That’s bad for realtors and landlords, but good for developers and demolition companies.
So, after living 10 years in one of the world’s best-run countries, which features low crime, social cohesion, material prosperity, and low level of income disparity, this is his complaint: No one wants to buy my house.
Boo-hoo. Maybe if he had learned something about Japan when he majored in Far Eastern Studies at the University of London, he would have expected that.
And real estate troubles aren’t Wingfield-Hayes’s only complaint. While England and the United States are infamous for graffiti and vandalism, he attacked Japan for its habit of public beautification, specifically for simple things. Japan just doesn’t slap ugly, utilitarian manhole covers over sewer holes. The covers are designed to be aesthetically pleasing, even beautiful or whimsical, and perhaps a tourist attraction:
Last year, I discovered the story behind the stunning manhole covers in a little town in the Japanese Alps. In 1924, the fossilized bones of an ancient elephant species were found in the nearby lake. It became a symbol of the town — and a few years ago, someone decided to have all the manhole covers replaced with new ones that would have an image of the famous elephant cast in the top.
This has been happening all over Japan. There is now a Japan Society for Manhole Covers that claims there are 6,000 different designs. I understand why people love the covers. They are works of art. But each one costs up to $900.
It’s a clue to how Japan has ended up with the world’s largest mountain of public debt. And the ballooning bill isn’t helped by an ageing population that cannot retire because of the pressure on healthcare and pensions.
Not mentioned was if such manhole covers were in the U.K. or United States, they would be stolen by blacks or drug users and people would die after falling through open manholes. But no, making a quotidian object beautiful is an unnecessary public expense. Better to import Mexican drug dealers or African street thugs to show that Diversity is Japan’s Strength.
Offensive About Japan: Beauty In Everyday Things
As if decorative manhole covers aren’t bad enough, Japan doesn’t have enough traffic fatalities. The government takes traffic infractions seriously:
When I renewed my Japanese driving license, the exquisitely polite staff shuttled me from eye test to photo booth to fee payment and then asked me to report to “lecture room 28”. These “safety” lectures are compulsory for anyone who’s had a traffic infraction in the previous five years.
Inside I found a group of disconsolate-looking souls waiting for our punishment to begin. A smartly-dressed man walked in and told us our “lecture” would begin in 10 minutes and last two hours!
You are not required to even understand the lecture. Much of it was lost on me. As it droned into its second hour several of my classmates fell asleep. The man next to me completed a rather fine sketch of Tokyo tower. I sat bored and resentful, the clock on the wall mocking me.
“What’s the point of it?” I asked my Japanese colleague when I got back to the office. “It’s punishment, right?”
“No,” she said laughing. “It’s a job creation scheme for retired traffic cops.”
Wingfield-Hayes didn’t tell us what infraction, if any, he received in the previous five years. And apparently, he forgot that a remedial driving course is required in England for speeding motorists to avoid a 3-point penalty. Drunk drivers take a course too.
As well, we can call B.S. on this one. He provides no evidence that the course is a jobs-for-retired-cops scheme.
And so, about half-way through, we get the real reason Wingfield-Hayes’s hit piece: Alt-Right admiration for Japan. Has he been reading your humble correspondent? Could be:
The geeks and oddballs love it for its wonderful weirdness. But it also has alt-right admirers for refusing immigration and maintaining the patriarchy. It is often described as a country that has successfully become modern without abandoning the ancient. There is some truth to this, but I’d argue the modern is more a veneer.
A hundred and fifty years after it was forced to open its doors, Japan is still skeptical, even fearful of the outside world.
Yes, Japan needs more immigrants to make it less Japanese. Being unique in the world is cute when it is limited to anime, but having a real culture and nation, well, Globohomo can’t allow that.
Thus, Wingfield-Hayes defames the aged residents of a declining village:
“This is such a beautiful place,” I said to them. “I’m sure lots of people would love to live here. How would you feel if I brought my family to live here?”
The air in the room went still. The men looked at each other in silent embarrassment. Then one cleared his throat and spoke, with a worried look on his face: “Well, you would need to learn our way of life. It wouldn’t be easy.”
The village was on the path to extinction, yet the thought of it being invaded by “outsiders” was somehow worse.
The Japanese like their homogeneity; they like being Japanese and keeping Japan Japanese. Maybe the villagers saw Wingfield-Hayes for what he is, a globalist interloper with an agenda: the destruction of Japan. But they might have said the same thing to a Japanese outsider from Tokyo, or just thought that gaijin reporters did not have their village or Japan’s best interest at heart. And they would have been correct. Or maybe, on some instinctive level, they are just concerned about the survival of the Historic Japanese Nation.
This response from the oji-sans was likely just a polite way of telling Wingfield-Hayes to get lost.
The Japanese Response To Foreign Meddling In Years Past
After all, the Norks did [BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and team expelled from North Korea, BBC, May 9, 2016].
A disrespectful Wingfield-Hayes Getting The Boot From The Land Of Juche
Maybe Japan should as well.
Federale’s opinions do not represent those of the Department of Homeland Security or the federal government, and are an exercise of rights protected by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
