The Japanese Economic Invasion and Conquest of America!

(While written some years ago, this article still holds true and warns us of the serious repercussions that will occur due to our profligate financial habits and lack of understanding of our country's role in the world today -- Editor).

In 1986 President-elect George Bush announced that his administration was going to make a major overhaul of the United States Third World debt strategy, and make it a top priority of his administration. Bush declared, "We've got enormous problems, particularly in our own hemisphere, on Third World debt"

Of course, Bush was right, with Mexico owing other nations over $100 billion, and Brazil also owing over $120 billion, with Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and other nations also on the ropes, financially.

But Bush's statement brings to mind the greater question -- who will bail out the United States, currently the world's NUMBER ONE debtor? Presently, the U.S. foreign debt is greater than that of every other nation in the western hemisphere COMBINED! In actual fact, every year the United States adds to its towering debt burden the EQUIVALENT of another Mexico and Brazil combined!

Who's going to bail out Uncle Sam? Whose going to come riding to the rescue on a white horse to save our country from its fiscal folly and financial FOOLISHNESS? A television news special, entitled "Losing the Future," painted the picture bleakly. After reviewing the depressing and alarming decline of US business competitiveness, and the growing export of high-tech jobs overseas, primarily to Asian countries, the commentator summarized the entire situation, saying, "We're not in a crisis; we're in a disaster."

The United States has already "lost" its future, but hasn't yet awakened to that fact and what it signifies!

But the next few years, an increasingly grim situation will present itself as a fair accompli to the American public. Within a few years, the American dollar will no longer be the world's currency of exchange. Americans will sense that they are no longer in control over their own destiny, and more and more of them find themselves working for Asian or European companies and branch offices within the United States. More and more, they will find themselves losing out on jobs. More and more will either go on unemployment, or find themselves settling for low paying service industry jobs, no longer able to afford new cars, televisions, videos, vacations, and the things they currently take for granted all too often.

America's standard of living, once the pride of the world, is due for a precipitous drop, as the rest of the world passes us by and leaves us in the dust

Does this picture sound too grim, too ghastly to contemplate? Just what are the facts?

It sounds like a medieval fairytale. A Horatio Alger "rags to riches" story, only in reverse. The United States has for as long as most of us can remember looked upon itself as the "Envy of the World," "Number One," the "Strongest Nation on Earth."

But, as a writer in the Los Angeles Times noted, "Now it's transition time, a fleeting period when harmony rules the land and truth can be told. Even the most cursory look at world statistics challenges our No. 1 status. The picture is decidedly mixed... "

The writer declares, "We have recently become the world's biggest debtor; our foreign debt is greater than those of all Third World nations combined"

Meanwhile, business is booming in Japan. Japan's current trade surplus, which amounted to 594 billion in fiscal 1987, has become so large that it destabilizes the world economy! Japan's exports have resumed double digit growth, while Japanese markets are notoriously closed to foreign products. Thus the Japanese get richer and richer while rest of the world, especially the United States, "buys Japanese."

The United States, on the other hand, continues to run a trade deficit with the rest of the world on the order of $136 billion in 1988. Although the export picture has improved with the cheapening of the dollar, the gap between imports and exports is still gargantuan by any standards of measurement This frustrating picture creates massive ill will between nations, and eventually will lead to the heating up of that diabolical curse of old -- "Trade War."

The beginning salvos have already been fired, between the growing union of nations in Europe, and the United States, over Europe's decision not to import American beef which has been fattened by using chemical growth hormones. United States retaliation has put enormous surcharges on a broad spectrum of European products coming to this country. Resentment and frustration are bound to increase, as the two groups square off, each insisting they are in the right.

But in the past few years and today, the U.S.'s biggest problem has been and is posed by Japan.

In May, 1987, Japanese investors decided they would teach the United States a lesson. To show the U.S. how much muscle they had gained over American financial markers, Japan's powerful Ministry of international Trade and Industry declared, "We should let the U.S. know what would happen if Japan refused to buy U.S. government bonds."

As word was whispered that Japan might stay out of the auction of Treasury bonds to finance the U.S. deficit, U.S. mortgage rates shot up two full percentage points. In the end, Japan relented, and bought bonds, but their action was enough to trigger an emergency meeting of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and his policy makers, and it quieted U.S. protectionist noises, and President Reagan's only trade action for the rest of the year was to rescind the tariffs he slapped on a few Japanese products in April.

As Douglas Frantz writes in the Los Angeles Times, the Japanese bond action "can be seen as a clear signal that Japan will not hesitate to use its financial leverage to impose its will on the United States."

The Japanese influence over the U.S. economy has become a threat to America This truth is vividly pointed out in Daniel Burstein's eye-opening book Yen! In this astonishing book, Burstein shows that while the U.S. has become the world's biggest debtor, it is the Japanese who have picked up the tab and extended credit They have become the lender, while the U.S., hat in hand, has become the world's biggest borrower.

In the book of Proverbs we read, "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender" (22:7). Thus since the end of World War II, when the United States was supreme in the world, and had the world's strongest economy, it has now become economically devastated by a history of borrowing, fueled largely by the actions of the Reagan administration during the past seven years. Never in all history has a nation gone down so far so fast From a positive foreign investment of over $150 billion in 1982, the U.S. sunk to a negative foreign investment of over half a trillion dollars by 1989!

Increasingly, it is the Japanese who are the landlords, and the Americans who are the "tenants" who must pay the rent!

Burstein describes a real meeting which took place in Tokyo where the chairman of Nomura Securities suggested that Japan would help the U.S. with its trade debt by increasing the yen's value to 100 to the dollar, thus pricing Japan out of the export market (supposedly). Then a single currency for both countries would be created, allowing Japanese free investment in the U.S. In exchange for this gesture of magnanimity? The U.S. would cede to Japan the state of Hawaii, and California would be administered as a joint U.S.-Japan economic community shared by both countries!

Few Americans realize it yet, but Japan has suddenly sprung from swaddling clothes and infancy status to the world's premier economic giant -- a towering financial shogun whose shadow is seen around the world.

In his book Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and its Threat to America, Daniel Burstein points out these salient facts of modem life:

2). Nomura, Japan's leading securities firm, is 20 times bigger than Merrill Lynch.

3). Nippon Telephone and Telegraph is worth more than IBM, General Motors, AT & T and General Electric -- combined!

4). Washington now depends on Japanese investors to finance nearly of the U.S. budget deficit!

5). At least one million Americans will be working for Japanese owned companies in the U.S. by the early 1990s.

Burnstein's book reveals the staggering story of how eight years of Reaganomics has hastened the erosion of American economic strength. The decision to strengthen the dollar, during the first part of Reagan's term in office. led to staggering trade deficits, as U.S. companies found themselves increasingly unable to compete in foreign markets due to circumstances beyond their control. Then, when the Reagan administration halved the value of the dollar, thereby doubling the value of the Japanese yen, it vastly enriched Japan while providing only short-term relief to American companies, and meanwhile virtually "put America up for sale --- cheap."

With their new super-strong yen, Japanese have been buying up American real estate, companies, and building Japanese companies right inside the United States, which will be able to out-compete native U.S. firms, right on American soil.

Burstein writes, as if viewing the scene from a future standpoint, "How tragically short-sighted it now seems that the Reagan administration halved the value of the U.S. dollar in the vain hope of restoring 'competiveness' to American manufacturing and reducing the massive trade deficit Didn't they realize how much less competitive American business would become over time against Japanese rivals whose yen-based financial resources doubled when the dollar fell? Apparently not. They believed American wealth and power were God-given birthrights" (p.14).

Burstein continues this theme, "The story of how America became so dependent has its roots in the 1980s when the Reagan administration turned the United States into the biggest debtor nation in history. 'Spend, consume and borrow' was the order of the day -- an agenda made possible by the ready availability of foreign investors. Foremost among America's foreign bankers were the Japanese, who were then just learning to use their massive capital surplus to sow the seeds of empire" (p.15).

The present situation has all the makings of a disaster. John Zysman, a Berkeley political scientist, warns that a U.S.-Japan "divorce" could come in the early 1990s. A Princeton political economist, Roger Gilpin, believes that world stability cannot rest much longer on "Japanese-financed American hegemony."

George Packard of The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies predicts that if current policies don't change, the U.S.-Japan relationship will descend to protectionism, retaliation, recrimination, and a search for different partnerships. When the U.S.-Japanese marriage ends in a bitter, frustrated "divorce," will Japan nun to the growing powerhouse of a United European market as its alternative partner and suitor?

Burstein points out that if the U.S.-Japanese relationship is severed, and the two sides are thrown into conflict, "Therein lies the recipe not only for panic, but for global economic meltdown."

The bad news, he says, is that forces of national self-interest are likely to prove more powerful determinants of the future than the wishes or intentions of today's policy makers. To continue present policies, Burstein declares, is to leave the gates open for a "one-sided and highly destabilizing U.S. on foreigners whose agenda is different from our own" (p. 23). On the other hand, he says, "Any blanket policy of protectionism is fraught with dangers, not the least of which is history's well-documented lesson that trade wars have a way of turning rapidly into global depressions and even shooting wars" (p. 24).

As Paul Kennedy in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers shows, America has fallen victim of that classic syndrome of "imperial overstretch." Too long we have tried to have our cake and eat it, too. Politicians talk about "rebuilding America's greatness," but behind the glittery promises lies the palpable truth that the United States has already lost control over its own future, many of the central features of its own economy, and has placed itself squarely in the middle of a dilemma with no easy solutions in sight!

The editors of Business Week in the November 16, 1987 issue, under the above headline, wrote, "We have spent too much, borrowed too much, and imported too much. We have lived beyond our means, relying on foreigners to finance our massive budget and trade deficits. The bill is now coming due."

When America wakes up, will it already be too late? Will it already be "the morning after"?

Burnstein scores the U.S. with this blistering indictment: "No evil cabal in Tokyo planned things this way. Rather, it is a case of Americans willingly, if not always knowingly, surrendering our own destiny. It is an epic tale with a theme worthy of the Bible: the American Esau -- a strong, prideful hunter -- has sold his birthright to the Japanese Jacob -- a quiet, clever strategist -- in return for a mess of consumption and debt" (pps. 25-26).

One does not have to engage in "Japan-bashing," as some term it to recognize the serious peril the United States has put itself in. The facts are self-evident. Japan's great wealth has been accompanied by a dramatic change in the Japanese attitude. They no longer abase themselves as the abject pupil, the lowly servant, the humble child. Now they behave with the characteristic swagger of old, the imperial manner, a brutish disdain of those they consider "inferior," a new nationalism, an ugly arrogance, a lordly pride.

There are signs aplenty that the new Japan, feeling a need to protect itself from America's folly and illogical madness, will convert its surplus wealth into an economic empire protected by its own political and military empire.

As New York Congressman Charles Schumer said, "We lost automobiles to the Japanese, we lost steel, and now we're losing financial services -- what else is left?"

New York Senator Patrick Moynihan observed that the Reagan administration, rather than address the serious problems of the economy, just "borrowed a trillion dollars from the Japanese and threw a party."

What is it like to be a nation head over heels in debt? What is it like to owe foreigners over half a trillion dollars, already? Can your mind conceive of just what a trillion dollars is? It is a thousand billion; or a million million; a 1 followed by 12 zeroes. It is 10 million $100,000 homes. If a trillion dollars were lined up end to end, the line would stretch 100,000,000 miles -- all the way from the earth to the sun, with another 10,000,000 miles left over! The line of greenbacks would stretch around the world 4,000 times, or pave a roadway around the equator about 700 feet in width. This ocean of greenbacks is scarcely conceivable to the human brain. Yet this is the staggering amount the United States will owe foreign creditors within another two-three years!

Obviously, unless a miracle happens, the world is headed rapidly for a global economic "meltdown" of gargantuan proportions. Confrontations will heat up; national rivalries will intensify; jealousies and enmities will grow; hostilities and hatred will thicken like bees buzzing around their own protected hive.

Burnstein entitles one of his chapters, "Avoiding the Apocalypse," but in truth I see no way human beings and nations will avoid the utmost catastrophe. An economic Armageddon is coming -- it is only a few years off. The repercussions will be cataclysmic to all nations on the face of the globe.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know (understand, fathom, comprehend) it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). The heart of man simply is greedy and selfish. Unless there is sudden spiritual enlightenment of nations and leaders around the world, present trends will exacerbate world frictions, and nations will ravine like howling, competing hyenas fighting over the spoils of a kill.

Speaking of normal people, the broad majority of humanity, the apostle Paul writes, "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all (Jew and Gentile) gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no. not one....Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Romans 3:l0-l8).

Unregenerate, carnal human nature, which is enmity against the laws of God (Romans 8:7), will not find a solution to the world's trade problems, Third World debt or America's burgeoning deficit and trade imbalance. Great suffering lies ahead, as each nation tries to protect itself from the fall-out of growing trade war, friction, and eventual financial calamity.

For years I have been writing that America's economy, and that of the whole world, are headed for a colossal collapse. For years I have been predicting the decline and fall of the United States, and the economic system. For years I have been predicting a global Depression which will make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like kindergarten stuff by comparison.

In the coming years, Americans are going to have a lot to ponder, and think back about. They will lament and cry, and rue the day they allowed the Japanese and other foreign nations to dominate their economy. Many of them will feel like exploited "third world labor" -- virtual economic slaves -- right inside their own country.

The total value of U.S. stocks today is $2.5 trillion, a smaller share of the world's total ($7.9 trillion), than the Japanese stock market ($3.3 trillion).

Today, Japanese savings finance the bulk of American budget and trade deficits. This fact does not make the Japanese particularly happy; they have better things to do with their wealth than to prop up "Uncle Pauper." Japan and other foreign investors have already threatened to alter or pull out their investments, if the U.S. doesn't correct its economic policies, and do something about the deficit!

Masaru Yoshitomi, an official in Japan's Economic Planning Agency, said angrily, "Japan's capital movements are now in a position to influence the value of the dollar and hence interest rates and stock prices in Wall Street" What he meant is that the Japanese now virtually have the United States by the economic jugular vein. They have the power to depress the U.S. economy and shoot up interest rates overnight And there is nothing the U.S. can do about it, because of its insane addiction to Japanese capital. Like any dope addict, the U.S. worries only about its next "shot" or "infusion" of capital from abroad, to keep from feeling the pain and anguish. But each new injection accomplishes less and less good; and every year, large injections are needed merely to maintain the status quo.

The United States has become the world's number one "capital addict" a fate just as bad as cocaine, heroin, or "crack."

Burstein warns, "While Washington engages in the backward-looking policy of trying to use its weak dollar to regain marginal competitiveness in heavy industries, Tokyo is using its strong yen to diversify, expand abroad and invest in future-oriented technologies, services and global businesses." Says Burstein, "Indeed, a financial war could supersede today's trade war. Early warnings are already visible..."

America's downfall began over twenty years ago when the U.S. consumer electronic industry moved offshore, primarily to the Pacific Rim nations, including Japan. This was the beginning of "America's technological apostasy," as Rep. George E. Brown, Jr., a member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, put it.

Since that time America has almost totally lost this very basic industry. America is presently losing the race to develop high-definition TV, and the resulting change in technological leadership will negatively impact not only America's standard of living, but its political and economic leadership as well.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has allowed the Japanese and others to destroy its steel industry, devastate the automobile industry, annihilate the machine tools industry, monopolize the television and video industry, and in recent years seriously undermine the semi-conductor industry which makes computer chips.

The United States, squealing over the lack of Japanese support for its own national defense, is meanwhile encouraging the Japanese to increase their own defense spending, invited the Japanese to participate in the "Star Wars" defense research and development and is now prepared to assist the Japanese to develop their own multibillion dollar high-tech, state-of-the-art jet fighter plane.

One can only wonder where and how and against whom these new fighter planes will eventually be used!

Meanwhile, the Japanese continue buying up American real estate wholesale. In the first eight months of 1988 Japanese investors bought $9 billion worth of U.S. real estate. California led the nation in sales to the Japanese ($2.48 billion), with New York second, Illinois third, and Hawaii trailing in fourth place. Most of this investment went for office buildings. In 1987 Japanese investors bought over $12 billion in U.S. real estate.

"Foreign money is changing the face of America, the lives of Americans and the nature of our political processes," write Martin and Susan Tolchin. Foreign corporations are now buying up the U.S. are bargain basement prices, since the devaluation of the dollar. As of the end of 1987, foreign investment in the United States totaled $1.534 trillion, according to the Commerce Department.

Foreigners are buying American factories, land, office buildings, and other businesses as never before. According to Mergersand Acquisitions Magazine, foreign companies spent $41.9 billion in acquiring U.S. firms in 1987, up from $25.2 billion in 1986, and $2.2 billion in 1985. The Japanese have increased their stale in America six-fold since 1980. Japan in 1988 had $28 billion in industrial investment in the U.S., in third place behind the British and Dutch.

Five of the ten top banks in California are now Japanese owned. Sixteen of the 25 biggest banks in the world are now Japanese. In fact, several of Japan's largest banks would be able to buy one of California's "big four" banks, such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Security Pacific or First Interstate. The only reason they haven't done so is fear of an anti-Japanese backlash.

Robert Kuttner, economics correspondent for the New Republic, wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "I don't mean to be an alarmist but I get the feeling that America is history."

In his article he pointed out that seven years ago the New York Stock Exchange was worth nearly four times its Tokyo equivalent; but today stocks listed on the Tokyo stock exchange are worth $1.2 trillion more than those on the New York Exchange.

"Japan," he wrote, "has half the population, but greater total capital than the United States., which means that on a per capita basis Japan is now nearly three times as wealthy as the United States."

According to Kuttner, three aspects of the Japanese new prosperity are alarming -- the imbalance, the rate of change, and the trend. He asserted, "The flow of capital from Japan to the United States is increasingly a one-way street. The rate at which Japan is displacing the United States as the world's financial behemoth is UNPRECEDENTED in its abruptness. And by every indication, Japan is widening its industrial and financial lead."

Kuttner points out that it was Japanese investors pulling out of the New York Stock Market in 1987 which indirectly triggered the massive stock market crash in October of that year. As long as the dollar-yen relationship is stable, he says, Japanese officials are confident they can continue recycling dollars back to the U.S. to buy up bonds, stocks, and real estate. Says Kuttner, "We can become a client nation, and hardly feel the sting."

Oddly, Kuttner adds, one finds that Japanese electronic products sold in Tokyo are 50% more expensive than in New York.

Although Japan is now rich enough to buy up much of the world, it still operates as if it were a small, struggling nation. On the other hand, the United States seems to behave as if it were still the worlds premier economy. Says Kuttner, "The United States still has the illusion that it is the cock-of-the-walk, is still consuming its way to oblivion and shouldering the burden of an alliance it no longer dominates."

As Clyde Restowitz writes in his new book Trading Places, "This is surely the first time in history that a territory in the process of being colonized has actually paid for the right to defend the colonizer. "

Increasingly, as Japan begins to realize its economic weight and super strength, it will begin to dictate to other nations, including the United States. As Scripture says, "The rich rule over the poor," and Japanese investors are already beginning to rule over American employees. Further, since "the borrower is servant to the lender," it follows that the United States, which has borrowed its way into the international poor house, will wind up serving the interests of the Japanese!

Truly, the United States has like Esau of old, sold its birthright for a bowl of pottage -- consumer goods! Once again the Japanese are beginning to strut, and swagger, and insolently throw their weight around the world stage. In 1988 a member of the Japanese cabinet remarked that Japan was not the aggressor in World War II, but was fighting Asian colonization by the "white race." Although his comments embarrassed the Japanese government, there was never any retraction of his words or apology. He was pressured to resign his office, however.

In September, 1986, another Japanese official, Masayuki Fujio, minister of education, was forced to resign after saying that Korea had willingly accepted colonization by Japan in 1910 and for claiming that the 1937 "Rape of Nanking" in which Japanese troops slaughtered thousands of Chinese civilians was just "a part of war."

Seisuke Okuno, serving as land agency chief in Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita's cabinet, declared, "There was no intention of aggression. The white race had made Asia in to a colony, but only Japan has been blamed. Who was the aggressor country? It was the white race. I don't see why Japanese are called militarists and aggressors."

His comments infuriated officials in mainland China. But they went largely unnoticed in the United States, which along with the French and British was really being accused of starting World War II.

Strange, isn't it? If some German official today said some equivalent remark, the Western world would have been up in arms. The outcry would have been furious. As it was, however, Okuno's remarks have stirred up no real flap, and the whole issue seems to be ignored by Americans. It seems almost as if American officials are thinking, "We mustn't annoy the ones who feed us -- we mustn't upset the Japanese in any way, since they are footing the bills for our deficit!"

Strange, also, it is how the world so quickly forgets the lessons of history. How soon we forget that it was Japan's setting out to establish a "Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" with its military forces in the years that led up to World War II that finally led to the outbreak of the war.

In 1988 Tsutomo Kawara, the director general of the Japan Defense Agency, stopped off to visit Jakarta, Indonesia. At the time the Indonesian press noted that it was the first time in 45 years since a Japanese defense official had visited Jakarta. The last visit, actually, was by Japanese Prime Minister Tojo during World War II.

The visit was significant. It was a reflection on the fact that increasingly the United States finds itself relying on Japan to buttress the American role in Asia and is pressuring Japan to share the mantle of defense for the area. This causes much concern, however, among those nations which were victims of Japanese tyranny and aggression during the Second World War. To many Asian countries, which still vividly remember the suffering of World War II, the prospect of a re-armed and ever more powerful Japan is as unsettling as ever.

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping last year told the Dutch Prime Minister that it was all right for Japan to become an economic power, but not a military or political one. The Dutch Prime Minister replied that historically it was unrealistic to hope a nation's aspirations for power would stop at matters of finance.

Today, with the connivance of the United States, Japan is planning its most assertive role since World War II in political and diplomatic affairs. A senior state department official who traveled with Secretary of State Shultz to Asia in 1988 said Japan had recently been undertaking "things you wouldn't have expected before." Examples cited were Japan's willingness to provide money to protect shipping in the Persian Gulf; its support for multinational forces in the Sinai; its pledge to Iraq and Iran of financial aid if they stopped their war; its willingness to provide aid for Jordan. Declared one Asian diplomat, "What we've seen in the last couple of years is a tremendous psychological change on the part of the Japanese. It's in the way they look at the world. The inhibitions, the timidity, have gone."

One Asian official based in Tokyo argued that both the Soviet Union and the United States have entered a period of "relative decline." He added, "There is some relative decline for the United States, but most people in Asia are concerned about the pace of that decline and about what will take America's place as its role diminishes."

A wise Tokyo professor recently warned of the danger of leaping "from self-pity to arrogance" on the part of Japanese. Many Asian countries are rightly concerned, especially when they see America calling on Japan to shoulder a greater military spending burden.

The London Times quoted Professor Takeshi Sasaki of Tokyo University. "We're very concerned about our identity. We can't find a direction in which to lead our people. In this situation, it's easy to understand that people want to go back to the old style."

Just what is this "old style"? Is there any reason the world should be afraid of a new Japanese militarism?

Japan has always been a nation that worshipped the warrior spirit -- the spirit of its famed samurai.

During General MacArthur's occupation of Japan after World War II, one of the most intriguing changes he made was the banning of the great Kabuki play Chushingura. Known in English as "The Tale of the 47 Ronin," this play is adapted from an 18th century history in which a Lord Asano plotted the death of a rival nobleman, Lord Kira. When Asano's attack an Kira failed, the Shogun ruling Japan ordered Asano to commit seppuku,or ritual suicide.

Asano's suicide meant his loyal samurai soldiers became wanderers without a master for many years, or "ronin." As the years went by, they plotted their revenge. Finally, in a bold mission they broke into Lord Kira's house on a snowy wintry night, and murdered him.

Impressed by the Ronin's unswerving loyalty and fealty to their master Asano, even long after his death, the Shogun allowed them the honor of also committing seppuku.

The Ronin became instant folk heroes, and were immortalized in Japanese myth and drama. The play was banned by MacArthur because the Allies did not want the Japanese to be entertaining ideas of vengeance for their total defeat in World War II. But today, the occupation is over; and the play Chushingura is back. It is celebrated in puppet theaters, comic books, movies and ballets. It
has captured the imagination of an entire nation.

Chushingura is a story about the virtue of finishing a master's interrupted mission, regardless of how ignoble the mission itself might have been. Says Daniel Burstein, "It is, in short, about the GLORY TO BE OBTAINED IN SEEKING AND OBTAINING REVENGE. "

Burstein continues: "In a country where Chushingura is the quintessential cultural work, the idea of Japan's imperial destiny cannot be assumed to have vanished simply because the war was lost. A great and proud society that endured not only the humiliation of military defeat and foreign occupation four decades ago, but continues in 1988 to be forced to listen to American admonishments as if the United States still occupied Japan, will not go on practicing the alien method of 'turning the other cheek' forever" ( Yen!, p.271).

Will the Japanese and others be so reluctant to fill the vacuum left by the retreating Americans, as the United States begins to pull its soldiers out of nations around the world in order to reduce its expenditures? Burstein notes, "Perhaps even more important, superpower disarmament lowers the threshold Japan will need to match to become a major military power itself" (p. 273).

Yes, even as the United States and Soviet Union begin to disarm, the way opens up for other nations -- such as Germany and Japan, the two richest countries on the face of the earth, today -- to begin to become major military powers once again.

The wheel turns; what goes around comes around. History repeats itself. We are witnessing history in the making! And we will be a part of it!

Today the Japanese people are being inundated with the concept of kokusaika (internationalization). Says Burstein, "In the West, it is assumed that this talk is a healthy trend, making the Japanese more open-minded, open-hearted, and open-marketed. In reality it is a double-edged sword. By breaking down the last vestiges of the postwar Yoshida Doctrine, under which Japan deliberately shunned global polities and deliberately forswore ambitions beyond its borders, the climate for revival of an IMPERIAL THRUST is fostered" (p. 273).

Burstein concludes, "To assume that because Japan doesn't yet articulate or manifest a clear vision of global empire implies such a trend won't emerge in the future would be a DANGEROUS MISCALCULATION! Today, the Ronin are still wandering. Their moment is yet to come" (p. 274).

Japan is already more militarized than most Americans think. Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore, says that his number one fear for Asia is of Japanese rearmament. Asserts Yew, "The most terrifying thought for me is a fundamental shift in the belief of the Japanese that the world that they have known since 1945 is at an end and that they have to either depend on themselves or come to some understanding with China or the Soviet Union"

There is a widespread fear among Asian leaders that the United States is about to abdicate its world policeman role, and will turn it over to the Japanese. Japan's military arm today numbers 300,000 troops, with some of the world's best tanks, state-of-the-art fighter aircraft and antisubmarine equipment. Although Japan spends only one percent of its GNP on rearmament, considering the fact they have the world's second largest GNP, that amounts to $30 billion per year -- making Japan the world's third largest military spender after the United States and Soviet Union.

With $30 billion this year Japan has bought 14 new naval vessels, including destroyers, submarines, and minesweepers; surface-to-air missiles; 108 new aircraft including fighters, antitank and anti-submarine helicopters, and tanks, howitzers, armored personnel carriers, and anti-chemical weapons vehicles.

According to Burstein, a high-tech shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile developed by Japan's Defense Agency is reportedly more accurate than the U.S. made Stinger.

All these things should be cause for the world to worry. As Burstein writes, "As Japan moves toward a trillion dollars' worth of external assets in the next decade, the arguments in favor of developing a basic projection-of-power mechanism will grow more fervent. The generation with painful memories of how militarism nearly destroyed the nation is moving aside. Many of those coming into power have lived in a world characterized by Japanese success, pride, and even arrogance" (p. 288).

According to Henry Scott Stokes, a veteran Tokyo correspondent, the younger Japanese regard the world as their blank tablet on which they will write a large design "That design is the Japanese flag." He adds, "They say, 'Hurray, the world is ours!"' Says Stokes, these young Japanese are very international in their thinking, but they are also very nationalistic.

Burstein concludes, "A Japan decoupled from the U.S. military umbrella implies a Japan free to redesign its own relationships with the Soviet Union, China, and Europe in a way that suits its own interests first. Since those interests are increasingly divergent from American interests, a redrawing of the world's alliances and power relationships is a likely concomitant of Japan's remilitarization " (p. 292).

Says Burstein, "The world is unstable enough. It surely does not need yet another military superpower. The United States, which has lost virtually every competitive conflict with Japan in recent years, certainly does not need to set in motion the twenty-first century possibility of an ULTIMATE, FINAL SHOWDOWN WITH JAPAN" (p. 292).

Such a nightmarish future is a very real possibility. Has America rearmed its former enemies, Germany and Japan, only to sow the seeds for its own future destruction in a renewed round for world domination?

At this point, world observers leave off, and speculate what may or may not happen.

However, we have a "sure word of prophecy" which tells us precisely what is going to occur during the very next decade, and beyond!

Few realize it, but as I explain in my book LAST DAYS OF PLANET EARTH, the Anglo-Saxon peoples are descended from ancient Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, through his son Joseph. They are the inheritors of the Biblical "birthright" promises (I Chronicles 5:3). They were prophesied in the "time of the end" to become a great UNION of states -- the United States -- and a great single nation -- Great Britain (Genesis 48:16-22). The younger brother -- Manasseh -- of the two sons of Joseph, the son of Jacob, was the be the greater, compared to the older brother Ephraim -- modern Great Britain! Our combined great wealth and power were prophesied in the Holy Scriptures (see Genesis 49:22- 26; Deuteronomy 33:15-17).

However, our nations have forgotten YEHOVAH God. We have kicked Him out of our public schools; we have trampled all over His holy law and commandments; we have forsaken His way. Therefore, YEHOVAH God says, great national curses are soon to befall us -- the curses of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.

Notice! YEHOVAH says to the modern descendants of Joseph and Israel, "And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be SLAIN before your enemies: they that HATE you shall reign over you; and ye shall FLEE when none pursueth you" (Leviticus 26:17).

YEHOVAH God continues, "And I will BREAK THE PRIDE OF YOUR POWER; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass" (v. 19).

If we would not repent of our sins, YEHOVAH says, "And I will SCATTER YOU among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste" (Leviticus 26:33).

This dire prediction of national calamity is beginning to be fulfilled. In the book of Deuteronomy, YEHOVAH God is even more specific in His punishments for our disobedience and waywardness. He declares: "The LORD shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be DESTROYED, and until thou PERISH QUICKLY; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me...

One of the strange curses which YEHOVAH God would bring upon us is foreigners lording it over us in our own land. Notice! YEHOVAH said, "The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail" (Deuteronomy 28:43).

Why will YEHOVAH God bring our nation, the proud United States of America, and the British nations, into the dust, and punish our peoples?

Look about you. Look at the sin, the lawlessness, the covetousness and greed, the colossal self-indulgence, the massive indebtedness, the lust for pleasure and the "good things" of life, so-called.

YEHOVAH says, "Moreover, all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be DESTROYED" -- till our nations are utterly ruined, and prostrate before our enemies -- "BECAUSE THOU HEARKENEDST NOT unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS and his statutes which he commanded thee...BECAUSE THOU SERVEDST NOT the LORD thy God with JOYFULNESS, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

Japan is surely at the "end of the earth" from the United Stares. Its language very few Americans understand. It is a fierce, warrior-like, samurai people. During World War II most Japanese soldiers chose death rather than surrender. To them surrender was dishonorable. They had the spirit of the kamikaze -- the spirit of suicidal death in attacking the enemy.

The Japanese were infamous for their cruelty, inhuman treatment of prisoners, just as the Germans were. They, like the Germans, performed horrible medical experiments on prisoners of war. They forced thousands of Americans to endure the brutality of the Bataan Death March.

No one today seems to know the origins of the Japanese people. Their origins have been traced back no further than the Korean peninsula. However, just as there is an eastern Cush (India) and a western Cush (Africa); I believe there is an eastern and a western branch of the ancient Assyrian Empire. I would not be the least surprised to learn, someday, that the Japanese with their fierce war-like spirit are actually related, anciently, to the ancestors of the Prussians, the war-like Germans! The national similarities and characteristics are virtually identical. Both peoples are probably descended from the ancient Assyrians of history, who were a notoriously bloody and cruel and oppressive tribe.

Regardless of their national identity, however, YEHOVAH's Word is plain that He will bring a nation "FROM AFAR," from the ends of the earth, to punish His erring, straying people!

What could be more appropriate? What could be more just? The enemies we defeated in World War II, whom we built up to be our allies during the Cold War, come back to haunt us and wreak their vengeance on us in World War III!

Japan is a pagan nation. The national religion of most Japanese is Shintoism, in which the emperor is deified and worshipped as "god." In addition to the emperor, the Japanese have eight million "kami" or demon gods.

When Emperor Hirohito died, his son Akihito went through a secret ancient ritual called Dai jo sai. He retreated behind a screen, where the spirit of the sun goddess was to invite him to enter her womb. According to Shinto belief, when he emerged he was no longer human, but the living embodiment of the god of the ripened rice plant -- the newly deified emperor of Japan.

Japanese militarism revolves around the cult of the emperor-god. With a new emperor-god, Japan will begin matching in a new direction; it will be the dawning of a "New Age" in Japan.

Will it be an age of militaristic adventurism? Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, the world has become an ever-increasingly frightful and dangerous place. The threat of a nuclear arms race between North Korea and Japan remains a very powerful and distinct possibility. The government of Japan plans to import hundreds of tons of re-processed plutonium from Europe -- and has already begun. Only 7 kilos (14 pounds) of plutonium are needed to manufacture a nuclear bomb as powerful as the one which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945!

Could Trade War between Japan and the United States, which feels direly threatened by Japanese imports already, lead to a new surprise, "sneak attack" upon America in the future, similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941?

Could Japan become tempted to "strike again"? Could they be tempted, by a sinister satanic influence, to once again launch an attack on the United States, this time with nuclear-tipped missiles?

Let's face it. America's enormous international DEBT, now approaching a TRILLION DOLLARS, is not just bad for the economy, and bad business -- it is SIN in YEHOVAH God's sight -- lawlessness (I John 3:4). It is irresponsible covetousness. YEHOVAH's Word says, "Owe no man anything" (Romans 13:8), and, "Thou shalt not covet" (Exodus 20:17). According to the principles of YEHOVAH's Word, a nation as well as a person should "pay as it goes" and avoid contracting irresponsible debt obligations which it may find itself UNABLE TO REPAY!

What would Japan do if the United States someday decides to "welch" on its enormous debt?

The Japanese are hard-nosed businessmen. They do not take kindly to cheats, defrauders, chislers, and swindlers! Those nations who go head over heels into debt will wake up one day having to pay the piper. Inflicting the pain of having to work harder to pay off debts on Americans, says Burstein, "is already a conscious goal of an increasingly influential section of the Japanese business community" (Yen!, p.57). Says Takashi Hosomi, former chairman of the Japanese Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund, "The basic rule for debtor nations is to pay back their borrowings in real terms and feel the PAIN of accumulating debts irresponsibly" (ibid.).

As prosperity has come to Japan with a vengeance, the attitude of the Japanese has begun to undergo a profound change. Their mind-set has changed to one of swashbuckling self-confidence, and swaggering internationalism. Humility has turned into arrogance, almost overnight.

Japanese capital now threatens to flood the world, like a dam burst. A popular game show on Japanese television is titled HOW MUCH FOR THE WHOLE WORLD? In New York, where Japanese are the most numerous tourist groups, bus tours take them to see Manhattan skyscrapers now owned by the Japanese. "Welcome to the next Japanese city," the tour guide says as he begins the tour. Meanwhile, Tokyo tour operators promote tours of the beaches of Australia and New Zealand as "the Japanese Coast. "

Los Angeles is now known as the "24th ward" of Tokyo. One Japanese advisor to Nakasone suggested buying Hawaii from the U.S. in order to balance the American trade deficits. Another Japanese businessman seriously boasted on television how Japan would turn Australia into its mining concession and the United Stares into its grain silo in the next century.

Meanwhile, Japanese intellectuals no longer conceal their contempt for the United States, and the number of Japanese who said they felt "friendly" toward the U.S. sank to a postwar low, according to opinion polls. Blatant "America-bashing" has become commonplace in Japan, and the Japanese commentators condemn the U.S. for always blaming Japan for its trade troubles.

The Japanese are a people of extremes. After World War II they were extremely subservient in their attitude. But with their newfound wealth and power, they are beginning to feel superior and cocky, with a return of their historic arrogance and pride. The "ugly Japanese" is replacing the "ugly American" around the world A disquieting joke which made the rounds of Tokyo bars went like this:

Like the German "Aryan racial supremacy" theory of Hitlerite Germany, the Japanese have always been a very ethnocentric people. A best-seller in Japan was titled The Japanese Brain. Another best-seller there helped create a wave of anti-Semitism. It was titled The Secret of Jewish Power to Control the World. In 1986-87 nearly one hundred titles of books about Jews inundated Japanese bookstores, all of than negative and accusatory.

The Japanese, as they are overwhelmed by their success, become believers that they are a "Master Race" of supermen, and boast of their "mono-racial" society.

With this in mind, the Japanese have already begun to play "hardball" in the U.S. economic markets. At one 1986 auction the Japanese bought 80 percent of Washington's Treasury bond issue. They had become America's lead banker. Says Burstein, "To put it in street language, Washington had grown addicted to foreign capital. America had become a desperate junkie, and Japan was its pusher" (p .78).

In May of 1986, however, the Japanese hoarded their bonds, causing a big squeeze in the market, and much of Wall Street was caught in an economic vise. Stormed one trader, "The Japanese did to us on the long bond what they did to us at Pearl Harbor." Although the Japanese finally relented, and saved the day by making $500 million of their hoarded bonds available, their "power play" was intended to teach Americans a lesson, that they were too powerful to be denied their rightful place as primary dealers.

Says Burstein of this scary panic, "An evil-intentioned Tokyo trying a carry out a 'Pearl Harbor'-style attack on American markets presents a straightforward, alarming challenge. An investment community that doesn't yet understand the degree in which America's finances are now subject to foreign controls -- and therefore continues to rely one-sidedly on American thinking -- is capable of SLEEPING THROUGH THE APOCALYPSE and waking only after it's TOO LATE" ( Yen!, p.82).

In the Scriptures, God Almighty characterizes His people of these last days as a "wanton whore" dishing out her services and assets to her international "lovers," Gentile countries around the world. He compares modern "Israel," the United States and British Commonwealth, as well as the Jews, as a profligate prostitute.

YEHOVAH God says, "Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother: And they committed whoredom in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth...And the names of them were Aholah the elder, and Aholibah her sister and they were mine, and they bare me sons and daughters...And Aholah played the harlot when she was mine; and she DOTED ON HER LOVERS, on the Assyrians her neighbors...Thus she committed whoredom with them, with all them that were the chosen men of Assyria, and with all on whom she doted: with all their idols (televisions, videos, Toyotas, etc.) she defiled herself...Wherefore I have delivered ha into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians. upon whom she doted

This is a parable for the United States today! YEHOVAH God does not change! We, like ancient Israel, have been playing the international prostitute!

A day of punishment and judgment is coming soon upon our nations! The modern Aholah and Aholibah will be judged, and punished by the modern "Assyrians," and all our international "lovers"!

YEHOVAH God says, "For thus saith the LORD; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are tuned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of JACOB'S TROUBLE; but he shall be saved out of it" (Jeremiah 30:5-7).

Yes, great suffering -- Tribulation -- lies ahead for our modern nations. The Messiah himself said, foretelling this very same time of calamity and catastrophe internationally, "For then shall be GREAT TRIBULATION, SUCH AS WAS NOT SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD, TO THIS TIME, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should NO FLESH be saved [alive, Moffatt translation]: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened" (Matthew 24:21-22).

After going through horrendous suffering, after we finally learn our lessons, and after we finally repent as a nation, those left alive will be saved by the intervention of Almighty God, and the return of YEHOVAH God and Yeshua the Messiah, himself!

The time has come to shout the warning, to urge our peoples to repent, and to return to their God, before they perish, and suffer all the calamities written in the prophesied punishments of YEHOVAH's Word.

YEHOVAH God Almighty THUNDERS to this generation, "REPENT, AND TURN YOURSELVES from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.

What about you? Will you ignore YEHOVAH's warning? Will you insist an dying? Will you reject the loving warning of your Holy Creator, the Almighty God?

YEHOVAH says, "Son of man, I have made thee a WATCHMAN to the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and GIVE THEM WARNING FROM ME" (Ezekiel 3:17).

Ezekiel, who was a TYPE of YEHOVAH's latter-day "watchmen" of this present generation, was told: "When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet IF THOU WARN THE WICKED, and he turn not from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.

"Again, when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall DIE: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless if thou WARN the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely LIVE, because he is WARNED; also thou hast delivered thy soul" (Ezekiel 3:18-21).

YEHOVAH God thunders, in the book of Amos the prophet, "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be EVIL in the city, and the LORD hath not done it? SURELY THE LORD GOD WILL DO NOTHING, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:6-7).

Says the New International Version, here: "Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing WITHOUT REVEALING HIS PLAN to his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7).

The prophet Amos was inspired to give this message from YEHOVAH God, saying: "I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD, O ISRAEL" (Amos 4:11-12).

Time is running out. Turn to YEHOVAH God now, with all your heart and soul and might, that He may even yet save you from the horrible holocaust and destruction to come shortly. As Paul said to the Athenians of his day: "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; BUT NOW COMMANDETH ALL MEN EVERYWHERE TO REPENT: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness..." (Acts 17:30-31).

Hope of Israel Ministries -- Preparing the Way for the Return of YEHOVAH God and His Messiah!

Hope of Israel Ministries
P.O. Box 853
Azusa, CA 91702, U.S.A.
www.hope-of-israel.org

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