Thursday, October 25, 2007

天才 じゃない

Well I now have another day in Osaka thanks to my being disorganised and Miki unsurprisingly being just as hard to contact when I'm in Japan as when I'm not in Japan.
Yesterday I went to Osaka castle despite feeling all castled out. They had an exhibition on of the chief advisors to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi is Japans Abe Lincoln, despite not being particularly renowned for freeing slaves nor his honesty. But he is the rags to riches unifier of Japan. In his latter years he simply went crazy, crazy with power.
But the castle is impressive, one could imagine it being almost impregnable certainly to any forces japan could muster but maybe not to western artillary of the time.
An interesting study in the nature of power. The pains the old rulers of japan took just to go to bed at night and wake up in the morning created a nightmare security task for the staff. also just a pain in the arse, and thats just precautions such as passwords, gaurd rosters, body doubles, rotating sleeping rooms, nightingale floors etc.
Then add on top of that a castle as big as Osaka castle and you have one insecure leader. I always liked the more secure, emperors new clothes anecdote were the emperor strolls down naked in his special material that even he wont admit to not being able to see. I'd certainly want to be that free and easy as a leader, not having a security patrol and such.
But how to achieve this? I think security measures indicate that ones power is derived from depriving anothewr of it. Even democratically I imagine that 'you can't please everyone all the time' anecdote of Abe makes some security detail necessary, but at G20 the precautions there for Economic advisors would indicate that people aren't very happy with the job your doing.

1 comment:

AnnaC said...

make sure you go to universal studios while you're in oosaka. it's pretty much the greatest experience of my life... i got to have photos with popeye and maralyn monroe... peanuts... the opportunities are endless. nothing interesting happening here. dad made bess' kennel four inches shorter so now she has to crawl into it. Oh and i'll probably live in a share house in spain which makes free accomodation even likelier for you.