Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2011

Size matters

Regarding “Little Tools” (The Small Print, Apr 7): I know Metropolis loves to denigrate mommy-boy herbivore Japanese men with Lolita complexes, but starting your last issue with bogus stats about inferior Japanese penis size is the most outright racist thing I have ever seen in this magazine.

Some of your readers are Japanese, or Asian, or lovers of Asian men, and it’s just mind-boggling that you continue to propagate this crap. Why are you trying so hard to make Asian men seem undesirable?—Lauren Kocher

Marxist, xenophobic and just plain sic

Regarding “Listening To Nature” (The Last Word, Apr 7): Amazing. So the Black Death was a good thing because it raised the value of labor? That really tells me all I need to know about the author’s priorities. And then there’s the small matter of statistics that claim to predict the proportion of under-25 year-olds in 2050. That demographic group will not even begin to be conceived for another 14 years, so any such projection is mere guesswork. And then all the old-school Marxist talk of the “ruling class.” But the crux of this article is that death and destruction on a mass scale is a “healthy” thing. Why not just have another big world war, nukes and all, and expedite the process? There is not a shred of humanity in this article.—commanteer*

I second that. Marxist rhetoric mixed with anti-immigrant exceptionalism [sic] and xenophobia. How can one be so wrong in such a short text?—Piglet*

I just wasted a minute of my life reading that fluff.—cleo*

This is quite possibly the most ill thought-out piece of commentary I’ve seen on this site. There is no internal logic at all, and as commanteer says, no humanity either. Ugh.—Smorkian*

Truth will out

In relation to nuclear power stations, writes Alfonso Luigi Marra, the terrible truth that is covered up is that both the ones which have been damaged (and the ones they are not telling us about), and nuclear power stations in general, when they stop working, require an infinite cooling of the radioactive materials, which, especially in the event of disasters, becomes very difficult to achieve, and which, for example, they are not managing to carry out in Japan.

It is essentially an unequal struggle against heat. Heat which, if it sooner or later prevails against the emergency systems adopted to halt it, causes fusion, or, as at Chernobyl, explosion, but in the meantime—until the final and perhaps unlikely cooling—causes the release of radiation.

A struggle it will hopefully be possible to win, but which requires extraordinary means, which is why the media, governments and those working in the field must stop lying, because it can be won, maybe, only if the entire world community is alerted.—Raffaele Ferrante

And finally… Salvation

Japan has rejected the true God, creator of heaven and earth. They have trusted in gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, clay and other substances, the work of men’s hands. The true God is now jealously punishing the country and will make a full end thereof. (HE HAS ROUSED HIMSELF TO PUNISH ALL HUMANITY FOR THEIR SINS AND WRONGFUL CONDUCT). Your money and economic prosperity will not save you now. You are doomed. Your only hope is to turn to the living God through His son Jesus Christ whom you have ignored this long. Woe unto you AND THE ENTIRE WORLD FOR THE CALAMITIES WHICH ARE COMING!!!!!
GOD’S END-TIME PROPHET.—Charles Gachichio

*via Japan Today