Japan’s military, among the world’s strongest, looks to build
MariYamaguchi, JAPAN TODAY, December 7, 2021 Eniwa, Hokkaido — Dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers fired explosives and machine guns in drills Monday on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, a main stronghold for a nation that is perhaps the world’s least-known military powerhouse. . . . The exercises illuminate a fascinating and easy-to-miss point. Japan, despite an officially pacifist constitution written when memories of its WWII rampage were still fresh–and painful–boasts a military that puts all but a few nations to shame. And, with a host of threats lurking in Northeast Asia, its hawkish leaders are eager for more. As it is, tens of billions of dollars each year have built an arsenal of nearly 1,000 warplanes and dozens of destroyers and submarines. Japan’s forces rival those of Britain and France, and show no signs of slowing-down in a pursuit of the best equipment and weapons money can buy.
________________________________________
‘xtra’
bill bissett
2021
●
writtn with joy masuhara
________________________________________
” … TATA … [There Are Thousands Of Alternatives] …” Photo: M. Cynog-Evans. ________________________________________
THEMINDISSTILL
Ursula K. Le Guin
(1977)
The mind is still. The gallant books of lies
are never quite enough.
Ideas are a whirl of mazy flies
over the pigs’ trough.
Words are my matter. I have chipped one stone
for thirty years and still it is not done,
that image of the thing that I cannot see.
I cannot finish it and set it free,
transformed to energy.
I chip and stutter, but I do not sing
the truth, like any bird.
Daily I come to Judgment stammering
the same half-truth.
So what’s the matter? I can understand
that stone is heavy in the hand.
Ideas flit like flies above the swill.
I crowd with other pigs to get my fill.
The mind is still.
________________________________________
________________________________________
“Diuturnalinfirmityofhope”…
JuanadeAsbaje
(d. 1695)
Diuturnal infirmity of hope,
thou that sustainest thus my fainting years,
and on the equal edge of weal and woe
holdest in equilibrium the scales
forever in suspense, forever loath
to tilt, thy wiles obeying that forbid
the coming ever to excess of measure
either of confidence or despair.
Who rid thee of the name of homicide?
For thou art crueler still, if well we mark
that thou suspendest the deluded soul
between a wretched and a happy lot,
not to the end that life may be preserved,
but to inflict a more protracted death.
[ Translated—from the Spanish–by Samuel Beckett, 1958. ]
________________________________________
Reality is always changing and it is always unpredictable.
— HidekiYukawa,theoretical physicist/ the first Japanese Nobel laureate (1949)
CAUSA CONNECTIVITY 