Summer is well and truly here in Okinawa, with the temperatures rising and the sun shining. Checked the weather report at 9am this morning and was told that it was 31°C but that it felt “like 36°C”. Thankfully the humidity was only 70% and a sea breeze coming through my apartment managed to keep me [...]
Another world news story involving Japan hit the streets in the past 24 hours and made me smile. As soon as I read the headline “Japan confirms secret pact on US nuclear transit“, I knew that somewhere in the story would be the word “regrettable”, in quotation marks and offered by a Japanese government member. The only surprise was that I ad to get halfway through the article before I saw it.
Now the fact that there have been nukes in the air & oceans around Japan is no secret at all, and possibly some have touched Japanese soil, despite what their “non-nuclear principles” declare. These nukes have always been linked to the US military presence here in Japan, which many anti-US protesters will use as ammunition. But the fact is that the Japanese government has agreed to these things, and have just kept it hidden from public view until now. The protesters may use this to attack the incumbent Democratic Party of Japan, as most of them have alliances to the Liberal Democratic Party, which held power almost constantly for half a century.
I’ve said it before, but the use of “regrettable” is a favourite of Japanese government officials. It is used to say something is bad but without actually apologising for anything. For example, I could say “It is extremely regrettable that I was caught speeding” (which I haven’t been, by the way!). So the incident is a bad one, but I’m not actually sorry I did it. And that latter part is the key with the common Japanese way of using it. It could be a little different here as the DPJ actually started this nuclear investigation, but is also saying that they as the current ruling party have no intentions at all of apologising for this.
Encouraging to see a little more transparency in Japan, although I feel it’s more to do with the fact that the previous political party was involved in it, rather than some national movement.
Tags: features, japan news, nuclear weapons, nukes, politics, regrettable, us military, world news
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June 1st, 2010 at 20:26
the famous “regrettable” rears its ugly head again in this recent news update concerning japan’s whaling: (the crux of it is that the legal action is regrattable, not the slaughtering of 1,000 whales annually, presumbaly because it means japan will exude more economic bullying to gain favor of countries that have an equal vote in the whaling process…like Namibia)
Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hidenobu Sobashima said Tuesday that Japan’s whaling, which has killed up to 1,000 whales in Antarctic waters annually, is authorized.
“Japan’s research whaling is a legal activity,” he said, noting that the country would continue to explain its perspective in international court.
The move toward legal action is “regrettable,” Sobashima said, when international whale-hunting rules are still being negotiated.
The International Whaling Commission is scheduled to evaluate existing whaling rules at its annual meeting in June.