Chapter One: My Wife, the Constitution, and Morning Coffee
"Article 9 keeps Japan peaceful," my wife said over breakfast, clinging to the morning news like it was gospel. Not five minutes later, she was worried about missiles from the north. I nearly choked on my toast. Contradiction is the house special around here.
After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, Japan's national psyche shifted. Earthquake kits, emergency drills, disaster awareness — they became part of the daily ritual. My wife hoards bottled water like it's wartime. But I can't help wondering: what if we're stocking up for the wrong emergency?
See, earthquakes rumble. But there's another tremor — silent, steady, and political. And we aren't even listening.
Chapter Two: The Quiet Remodel of Our Streets
Foreign scripts are overtaking our signboards. In Tokyo, Japanese is sometimes the second language in convenience stores. My wife used to call it “cosmopolitan.” That changed when a plot of land nearby got snapped up by some foreign investor. "Doesn't feel like our neighborhood anymore," she said.
Universities fill with foreign students. Small towns fill with foreign labor. Entire wards begin to resemble outposts. Now, I’m no xenophobe, but when cultural dilution begins replacing common ground, it’s not diversity — it’s erasure.
And yet, no alarm from the national helm. No questions. No boundaries. No policy. Just applause from the media and shrugs from citizens. This isn’t immigration. It’s quiet transformation — a new face for a reluctant host.
Chapter Three: A History of Knowing When to Panic
When the Mongols came, the samurai rallied. When the Black Ships arrived, even a corrupt shogunate stirred from slumber. Say what you will about the old regimes, they at least recognized the scent of a threat.
Today? We sell off our mountains and islands to foreign capital. We let the labor market absorb without filter. Our ports, tech, media — all touched by hands we don’t even know the names of. And what does the public do? Watches Netflix and calls it globalization.
Maybe this is the success story of postwar education — teach a nation to forget what sovereignty smells like.
Chapter Four: Burned Books and Forgotten Nations
GHQ didn’t just hand us a new constitution. They incinerated around 7,000 books from prewar Japan. Real story. That’s not peace-building; that’s intellectual sterilization. And by 1907’s Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War on Land, such acts could breach Article 43 — the one about respecting local laws and institutions during occupation.
Yet here we are, decades later, still living in that ash. You defend Japan’s right to its military, and you’re called a warmonger. Suggest constitutional revision, and they ask what army you plan to start.
Even my wife — bless her — praises the Self-Defense Forces after a typhoon, then turns around and says, "but a real army is scary."
We’ve become a contradiction nation. Worse, we've outsourced our critical thinking. School history is gospel. Internet research is suspect. But information is out there — and the moment we decide to look, we may just realize what we’ve been taught to forget.
If you feel like something’s off in today’s Japan, try studying what they made you unlearn. Because silent invasions don’t knock. They seep.
We don’t need hysteria. We need historical literacy. We need to raise a generation that knows defending your home isn’t extremism — it’s common sense.
But hey, what do I know? I just pour the coffee and grumble.
※eyecatch：TOKIMUNE HOJO English: Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
