Human Rights?

An interesting article on the recent Japanese Supreme Court ruling on children born to non-Japanese mothers.

I agree with a lot of his points here. Lots of large issues, whether it is human rights or the environment, get cutesied up and littleified as to be digestable by Japanese society. An overall, ecological criticism of rampant consumer culture would be changed to "Why don't you take an eco bag to the grocery store." Or, as Pro. Jones observes here, the right to a fair trial is usurped by, "Don't be mean to people."

I think eco bags and not being mean to people are important, but I worry that simplifying things so much makes the larger issues irrelevent to the larger population. I believe that is the general viewpoint in Japan anyway. Human rights are something big that is dealt with by the government, which is boring and no one is interested in. It's really none of our business.