There is an interesting phrase in Japanese: kaze ga fukeba, okeya ga mougaru ("When the wind blows, carpenters get rich"). What on earth, you might ask, could be the connection between a gusty day and a hacksaw? Back in the Edo Period, when the phrase was coined, this is how the logic went:
...When the wind picks up, sand and grit gets flung into the eyes of people foolish enough to be wandering about in dust-storms. The number of blind increase and so too do the number of Japanese lute (biwa) players, who were - in Edo folklore - almost always staffed from the ranks of the blind. As leather made from cat's skin was used to construct the lutes, cats become scarcer as they are dragged off to make musical instruments, and mice therefore multiply. Mice run amok inside wooden houses with no cats to stop them, and they gradually gnaw away at the supports holding up the buildings. With their pillars eroded, houses become unstable and crash down on their inhabitants with increasing regularity. Deaths sky-rocket. To be a carpenter - a coffin-maker - suddenly becomes an ideal money-making profession...
Yes, the link is indeed tendentious. Yet, like the 'Butterfly Effect', where the wings of a tiny butterfly supposedly create hurricanes 6000 miles away, the point is that seemingly unrelated things are often closely connected.
In the same way, for the young Japanese politicians who are struggling to promote internationalism and global change such as Motohisa Furukawa, it can often be difficult to persuade local constituents that world issues are indeed world-wide; that they are not merely about other countries and distant international institutions.
Take global warming or poverty in the developing world, for example. Although these may not seem relevant, and immediately visible parochial issues will of course appear to be more important, they affect every single citizen on the planet and alter the flow of our individual daily lives. If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is correct, without urgent action the effects of global warming could be far-reaching indeed.
...When the wind picks up, sand and grit gets flung into the eyes of people foolish enough to be wandering about in dust-storms. The number of blind increase and so too do the number of Japanese lute (biwa) players, who were - in Edo folklore - almost always staffed from the ranks of the blind. As leather made from cat's skin was used to construct the lutes, cats become scarcer as they are dragged off to make musical instruments, and mice therefore multiply. Mice run amok inside wooden houses with no cats to stop them, and they gradually gnaw away at the supports holding up the buildings. With their pillars eroded, houses become unstable and crash down on their inhabitants with increasing regularity. Deaths sky-rocket. To be a carpenter - a coffin-maker - suddenly becomes an ideal money-making profession...
Yes, the link is indeed tendentious. Yet, like the 'Butterfly Effect', where the wings of a tiny butterfly supposedly create hurricanes 6000 miles away, the point is that seemingly unrelated things are often closely connected.
In the same way, for the young Japanese politicians who are struggling to promote internationalism and global change such as Motohisa Furukawa, it can often be difficult to persuade local constituents that world issues are indeed world-wide; that they are not merely about other countries and distant international institutions.
Take global warming or poverty in the developing world, for example. Although these may not seem relevant, and immediately visible parochial issues will of course appear to be more important, they affect every single citizen on the planet and alter the flow of our individual daily lives. If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is correct, without urgent action the effects of global warming could be far-reaching indeed.
'Foreign' Policy is just as much about domestic issues as it is about global ones. Mistakes in Iraq policy, for example, have created a backlash of anti-Americanism that now haunts the domestic security of the United States.
Local interests are not enough. If a politician is really working for the benefit of his constituents, he or she will realise that the small picture is actually part of a much bigger one.
R J F Villar
Local interests are not enough. If a politician is really working for the benefit of his constituents, he or she will realise that the small picture is actually part of a much bigger one.
R J F Villar
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