How can Japan be so rich? wtf.

Because Japan is awesome in every way?

Ok, so i've recently started self teaching some economics to myself in my spare time when i'm not working in my gap year. I have just found that Japan is the country with the 2nd largest economy in the world by GDP, even larger than Britain, China, Germany , France , Russia etc? How the hell can this be? A nation of technogeeks and ex war criminals can be 2nd richest in the world??? (pardon the bias and facetiousness, my family has personal reasons to dislike them, much like families of serviceman killed in WW2 by the Nazis, except there are still Nazi sympathizers in the Japanese government)

The state of Japan's economy is not quite as rosy as people are making out on here. Their levels of national debt are extreme, their debt is around 200% of their GDP which is far, far higher than other Western countries, usually the only countries with that level of debt are struggling African countries. When you consider it is a major economy, that mounts up to A LOT of debt and it has been hanging around their necks for a while.

To put this in perspective, the doomsday predictions about UK debt are that with current levels of public spending, our debt could rise up to 93% of GDP by 2015. This is why David Cameron and the Tories are saying the country is bust and unsustainable and we need serious austerity measures to get our debt under control. We are at around 55% at the moment, a couple of years ago we were around the 40% level before we had to bail the banks out.

Japans economy is doing well - on the back of borrowed money. Around 90% of Japans government debt is owed to the Japanese private sector, which is better than owing to foreign investors, but still it's not a healthy situation.

I wonder how well it would be accepted politically if the UK government announced it was going to massively increase borrowing, to go on a big spending drive to stimulate the economy out of recession, and planned on pushing our debt up to 200% of GDP...??

Because Japan is awesome in every way?

I like Japan but I don't like how they bypass whaling laws by using the 'medical research' excuse for killing thousands of majestic whales, then blatantly selling off the meat as food.

If they didn't do this they would be mega awesome.

Whats wrong with killing whales? They're just food, no more majestic than a cod or a tuna.

Oh yeah, war crimes, they still haven't said sorry for this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

Vivisection

* Prisoners of war were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia.[13][11]
* Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Scientists performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the results.[14][11] The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.[15]
* Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the fetus removed.[16]
* Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.[11]
* Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body.[11]
* Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.
* Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines.[11]
* Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.[17][13][11]

In 2007, Doctor Ken Yuasa testified to the Japan Times that, "I was afraid during my first vivisection, but the second time around, it was much easier. By the third time, I was willing to do it." He believes at least 1,000 persons, including surgeons, were involved in vivisections over mainland China.[18]
[edit] Weapons testing

* Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions.[11]
* Flame throwers were tested on humans.[11]
* Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons and explosive bombs.[11]

[edit] Germ warfare attacks

* Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects.[11]
* To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied[11].
* Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare[citation needed].
* Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 400,000 Chinese civilians.[11]
* Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians.[19]
* Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100, et cetera) were actively involved not only in research and development, but also in experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.[20]

[edit] Other experiments

Prisoners were subjected to other experiments such as:

* being hung upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death.[11]
* having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism.[11]
* having horse urine injected into their kidneys.[11]
* being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death.
* being placed into high-pressure chambers until death.
* being exposed to extreme temperatures and developing frostbite to determine how long humans could survive with such an affliction, and to determine the effects of rotting and gangrene on human flesh.[11]
* having experiments performed upon prisoners to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival.
* being placed into centrifuges and spun until dead.
* having animal blood injected and the effects studied.
* being exposed to lethal doses of x-ray radiation.
* having various chemical weapons tested on prisoners inside gas chambers.
* being injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline.
* being buried alive. (Victims included infants.)

[edit] Biological warfare

Japanese scientists performed tests on prisoners with plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism and other diseases.[21] This research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread the bubonic plague.[22] Some of these bombs were designed with ceramic (porcelain) shells, an idea proposed by Ishii in 1938.

These bombs enabled Japanese soldiers to launch biological attacks, infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells, and other areas with anthrax, plague-carrier fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, and other deadly pathogens. During biological bomb experiments, scientists dressed in protective suits would examine the dying victims. Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by airplane into areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces. In addition, poisoned food and candies were given out to unsuspecting victims and children, and the results examined.

What's wrong with killing whales?? Not a lot, apart from you can't really compare killing a blue whale, the world's largest creature which is an endangered species to killing off a cow for some meat.

I'll just go off an kill off the last few pandas for a stew and maybe follow up with a lion......you can't just lump any creature on this planet as fair game for the dinner plate.

Because Japan is awesome in every way?

Ok, so i've recently started self teaching some economics to myself in my spare time when i'm not working in my gap year. I have just found that Japan is the country with the 2nd largest economy in the world by GDP, even larger than Britain, China, Germany , France , Russia etc? How the hell can this be? A nation of technogeeks and ex war criminals can be 2nd richest in the world??? (pardon the bias and facetiousness, my family has personal reasons to dislike them, much like families of serviceman killed in WW2 by the Nazis, except there are still Nazi sympathizers in the Japanese government)

Cod aren't exactly in abundance anymore, no one has a problem with them, and so what if its the worlds largest creature it'll have more meat on it. Animals go extinct on their own, what does it matter if we speed up/slow down the process?

There's still more cod than blue whale's, and there are strict fishing sanctions for cod now.

You can't compare cod to whale's or silver back gorillas it has more priority over more common, less interesting species.

Human's will become extinct eventually, shall we just get it over and done with now and nuke ourselves?