I loved the beginning of a recent article on Japan on the London Review of Books: "One can fly to Japan from anywhere, but from Japan one can only fly to the T

I loved the beginning of a recent article on Japan on the London Review of Books: "One can fly to Japan from anywhere, but from Japan one can only fly to the Third World, and it hardly matters whether one lands in Kinshasa, London, New York or Zurich: they are all places where one must be constantly watchful and distrustful, where one cannot leave a suitcase unattended even for ten minutes, where women strolling home through town at 3 a.m. are deemed imprudent, where the universal business model is not to underpromise and overdeliver but if anything the other way round, where city streets are clogged at rush hour because municipal authorities mysteriously fail to provide ubiquitous, fast and comfortable public transport, where shops need watchful staff or cameras against thieving customers, and where one cannot even get beer and liquor from vending machines that require no protection from vandalism." https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n07/edward-luttwak/friendly-relations https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n07/edward-luttwak/friendly-relati... If it's true, it sounds like there are a lot of "political choices" going in on in Japan that are completely unknown to the rest of the world.