So there was some discussion about writing a potential conspiracy thriller inspired by the ascension of Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako last year in this thread.
Well I did some small writing and I'm expanding further.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=15856747220A66158600&page=1#1
Found this:
Full text for those who can't access it:
Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture government in the Kansai region passed a law that strives to limit the amount of gaming children under 18 years old can enjoy in a day. It is the first law of this sort in Japan. It’s supposedly meant to stop kids from becoming addicted to the internet and video games, echoing moves that China has put into place via Tencent and Bilibili. [Thanks, NHK!]
While the bill was proposed several months before, imposing stricter measures, it was rebuked and returned earlier this month revised so that it was less strict. Effectively, minors are only allowed to play 60 minutes of video games per weekday (90 mins on weekends) and they should only be allowed to use their smartphones until 10pm, under this new law.
But just how is this new law going to be enforced? It turns out that the onus of enforcement will be left to parents to figure out themselves. Some of the detractors during the Prefecture council meeting pointed this out, saying that this law is only going to isolate families who actually do need help with their child being addicted to games.
Meanwhile, the pro-limitation side cited that they had collected public comments, which mostly comprised of support for the bill. However, only a general summary of the public comments was presented, and the opinions themselves were not presented. (It was only shown after the general council meeting, only to those involved) As such, some councilmen left as they determined they couldn’t support or oppose the bill, which swayed the balance towards the side supporting the bill, thereby passing the bill into law.
According to a professor from Kagawa University’s Faculty of Law, the implementation of the law might be troublesome, as the process wasn’t transparent, which may cause the citizens of Kagawa to become distrustful of it. Additionally, the public comments were presented in a ‘summary’ format as if it was a simple ‘for or against’ vote, which betrays the purpose of collecting public comments in order to improve the bills.
The new Kagawa law goes into effect on April 1, 2020.
This is a question to anyone here who is relatively well-versed in Japanese culture: Does the term 悪霊 (akuryou, literally translates to "evil spirit") have any consistent, non-vague meanings beyond "a spirit that is evil"? How old is the term, anyway? Could it be Newer Than They Think, as with shinigami?
Edited by MarqFJA on Apr 17th 2021 at 1:01:43 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.It has no more specific meaning. In fact it's even more generic than you might think, since the "spirit" (霊) in this case doesn't just mean "spirit of a dead human" but any supernatural entity.
I'm pretty sure the word is very old. After looking around a lot I was able to find evidence of it being used as far back as the Heian period at least.
Edited by KuroBaraHime on May 3rd 2020 at 4:21:42 AM
Well, I ask because I often see it applied in pop culture to refer to spirits (usually of dead people) that are not so much "evil" as they are "mentally very unstable" (and often with a grudge against someone alive, thus crossing over with 怨霊 onryou, or "vengeful spirits")... if even that.
There's also the fact that the 悪 kanji can translate to "fierce; vicious" rather than "evil; bad", according to some online dictionaries. And at least one such dictionary gave "unclean spirit" (maybe a reference to this
?) as a possible translation of 悪霊.
Taken completely on its own, 悪 pretty much encompasses "bad" in any sense of the word you can think of. Evil, malicious, hateful, immoral, harmful, unclean, lesser, inferior, degraded...
A supernatural entity could be called 悪霊 so long as it's harmful to people or acting on negative emotions/energy, even if it's not sentient or mentally capable enough to be called immoral in the same way you would morally judge a regular person.
Tokyo Game Show canceled because of coronavirus; online event planned.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/callhome/?type=tvEpisode&
NHK World has episodes made regarding foreigners who're living long term in Japan.
A few questions, I'm not saying one culture is better than other I'm just curious why the cultures are so different:
1-Why do creator's rights have a different history in Japan than in the USA? 2-Why do Japanese seem to respect the vision of a popular manga author, he owns his characters and says when he starts and finishes his story. Meanwhile, in the USA a publisher owns the characters and he can even fire the creator and continue with the show(at least in animation, in comics is similar). 3-Why does it seem that in America creator's had to fight for their rights to independent comics. 4-Why is there a stronger tradition of serialization in Japanese culture were more serialized stories where the norm meanwhile American culture seems to have more interest in larger crowds and bigger viewership at the expense of art.
Short answer: money.
Long answer: you continuously going out of your way to reassure us you're "just asking" is making me wonder.
Do not spare the feelings of those who would not spare yours.

In certain areas it will cascade, so you don’t have enough young working age people returning from urban education to sustain some local businesses, they go bust and their workers decide to move to an urban area, that hits the cash flow of a couple other struggling local businesses, who then also go bust and their staff decide to move. Sidedly you’ve got barely any working age people left in the area and the few who come of age in the area leave as soon as they can because they have no economic prospects.
Also there’s the other factor, if an area has a large elderly population then a single wave of illness can have a large impact, that may also cause people who have stayed in the area to be near said elderly person to leave, as their reason for staying is now gone.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran