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to prof;Makiko Tanaka (r)



To: Burmanet subscribers

    I met Prof. KANEKO KAZUSHIGE, author of the article which is very
critical of Daw Suu Kyi and the democracy movement, at a conference in
Okinawa a couple of months ago. He seems to be a a very peripheral and
rather eccentric figure who has made a career out of "exoticizing" the
"pure soul" of Asia while remaining out of touch with what is actually
going on there. Doubt that he has much influence with the movers and
shakers of Japanese society; yet such intellectual mediocrities were
important in the construction of the Japanese military's Greater East
Asia CoProsperity Sphere ideology during the war.

     On an entirely different topic, I notice that SLORC has started
calling Daw Suu Kyi a "female cobra" again. This reminds me of my own
experience as a visiting professor at the University of Malaya in Kuala
Lumpur. My family and I lived in a large, old house adjacent to the
campus, and we began receiving reports from our neighbors that cobras
had taken up residence in some of the backyards. Someone even took a
video of them. A long-term resident told me, "don't worry about the
cobras. They usually mind their own business. And the good thing is they
eat the rats. Rats are the real problem here."

     In India, the cobra is called the "good snake" because it preys on
disease-causing vermin. And I recall a cobra protected the Buddha when
he was meditating under the Bo tree. So SLORC, in labelling their
adversary as a cobra, may not only be paying Daw Suu Kyi an indirect
compliment, but subconsciously admitting something about themselves.

     Zeno
     August 6, 1997