Ichiro Ozawa: Americans Are “Simple-Minded”
Ichiro Ozawa, the shady “Shadow Shogun” who controls a significant part of Japan’s ruling party, has said some not-so-kind things about Japan’s ally:
“I like Americans, but they tend to be simple-minded,” he said during a speech in the capital, using a Japanese idiom that literally means ‘monocellular’. He also offered some back-handed praise for U.S. democracy: ”I don’t think (Americans) are very wise,” he said, “but I highly rate their ability to put their choices into practice.”
Mr. Ozawa, who may stand for the DPJ presidency (and hence the job of prime minister) in elections next month, also said the election of Barack Obama as the first black U.S. president was something he previously thought “impossible” as he thought a black president “would have been assassinated”.
The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo declined to comment on the remarks.
This isn’t the first time the party heavyweight has put his foot in it. In November last year, he called Christianity “exclusive and self-righteous” and said that U.S. and European societies were at a “dead end”.
He also said he doesn’t like British People:
Mr Ozawa, the former secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Democratic party said the way prisoners of war marched in orderly ranks in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” demonstrated the best qualities of the British.
But he added that he had an aversion to the British. He said: “I don’t like British people”
Joshua Keating wrote the following response over at Foreign Policy Passport:
“Bridge on the River Kwai,” if you’re not familiar with it, is the story of a group of British POWs trying to maintain their dignity while subjected to forced labor and occasional torture by their Japanese captors. Not quite sure Ozawa got the message of that film.
It might also be fair to say that Ozawa has a low opinion of the Japanese people. Polls consistently show that Japanese voters do not want Ozawa to become Prime Minister, yet the man appears to be going ahead with plans to challenge Naoto Kan in the DPJ’s September 14th presidential election. If he wins, he would become Japan’s third Prime Minister in a 1-year period. [Winning would also apparently protect Ozawa from prosecutors who are trying to indict him for corruption.]
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