皆さん、コメントはありがとうございました。

最近だけ気がづいたけど：－）　現代に起きてる現実を理解したいならば、新聞だけを読のだら無理です。経済の先生は経済についてこう書いた：

新聞やテレビを見れば、今の不況に対してどうすれば良いか分かりません。ある評論家によってこれからインフレの恐れがあるが、違う評論家によってデフレの恐れがある。どちらが正しいでしょうか、分からなくて、対策を決められないのです。経済の本を読まなくては。経済を勉強しなくては。裁判員はなぜ導入されたか。新聞やテレビを見るだけでは理解できません。歴史を勉強したらいろいろ分かるようになりますね。

同じように、最近戦況が行った。私がよく読むブログにはこう書いてありました： “introducing political leadership into the budgeting process” and “budget is the key to regime change”. しかし、なぜ予算はそんなに大事かは分かりませんでした。当然大事だけど、政権交代と予算の関係はなにか、よくわかりません。そして昨日そのブログに次のを読みました：

For more on the possibilities of genuine administrative reform, I recommend this essay by Karel van Wolferen, who is aware of the obstacles facing the DPJ without dismissing the possibility that the DPJ will succeed. I particularly like this sentence: “But my impression is that the individuals of the inner core of the party are deadly serious about what must be done to turn their country into what one of them, the most senior and most experienced Ozawa Ichiro, has in his writing called a ‘normal country’.” Exactly so. The DPJ means what it said during the campaign, and is taking the first steps towards a new system of governance.

Karel van Wolferen って誰？えええ！知らないのか？知らない人はWikipedia 又はウイキペディアまで。９０年代にかれが書いた本 The Enigma of Japanese Power 日本 権力構造の謎 が結構有名になりました。

Karel van Wolferen が書いたessay はどういう内容か？What Can the DPJ’s Overwhelming Victory Mean for Japan? 気になった部分は次です：

The significance of yesterday’s Japanese election results goes beyond a relatively new and untried political party ending half a century of rule by a competing party; if the new leaders turn out to be true leaders and are allowed to carry out their declared intentions, this will fundamentally change the Japanese power system… with few exceptions the elected officials …  have played a mostly marginal role, as powerbrokers at best. We can actually single out an architect who set it up this way just before the turn of the century before last: Yamagata Aritomo. … this remarkable man … created Japan’s modern bureaucracy along with its early 20th-century military establishment.

そして２００１年にカレル・ヴァン・ウォルフレンが書いた論文は？Yamagata Aritomo 　山縣有朋　についてです。

What better opportunity than the election of aspirant supervisors of Japanese bureaucratic power to bring to the attention of the world a neglected Japanese figure who established that power and ought to be remembered, along with Bismarck, Lenin, Mao, and the two Roosevelts, as one of the creators of twentieth century political reality.
His name, Yamagata Aritomo, may only register with those who have read Japanese history. Even in Japanese minds he may not be more than a shadow, dwarfed by Ito Hirobumi among the Meiji Period architects of Japanese modernization. But he deserves to be known as the creator of what in essence has remained Japan’s political system. In the end, what the world has been learning to think of as Japan’s lack of political will, should be blamed on Yamagata. His legacy endures in a more immediate sense today than, say, Bismarck’s legacy does in Germany.

今まではあまり政治に興味がなくて、日本の政権と政治家はイギリスのと大きな違いがないだろう、と単純に思ってた。しかし、ヴァン・ウォルフレンによってそれは大間違いだそうです。やはり歴史勉強しないと現在は分かりません。新聞だけを読んだらこういうことについて詳しくなるけど。いかがでしょうか？

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