Karel van Wolferen

Karel van Wolferen (Journalist, Professor)
Nationality	Dutch
Interests	Japan
Dutch journalist and retired professor at the University of Amsterdam

Karel van Wolferen is a Dutch journalist and retired professor at the University of Amsterdam.

Career

He was a panelist for the discussion about Japan: Political Changes at the 1990 Bilderberg.

His book The Enigma of Japanese Power - ISBN 978-0394577968 - first published in 1989, has sold well over 650,000 copies in eleven languages, and he has authored fifteen subsequent books on Japanese politics and society. As a foreign correspondent for NRC Handelsblad he received the highest Dutch award for journalism, and over the years his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The National Interest, Le Monde and numerous other newspapers and magazines.

 

A Document by Karel van Wolferen

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:Japan as an American Client State	article	28 September 2014	The Great Game Japan	How the US secured "Regime-Change" in response to the September 2009 DPJ upset to post WWII Japanese subservience.

 

Quotes by Karel van Wolferen

Page	Quote	Date	Source
Accountability	“Accountability remains something that is assumed in the United States as well as the nations of the European Union. In Japan it is not. Accountability, everyone will agree, is good and necessary for democratic transparency and related platitudes. But there is a less immediately obvious but an actual primary reason why you want structures enforcing it in a political system. Its less visible function is that it protects powerholders against madness. When officials and politicians are held to account they are not only kept on their toes, but they themselves are forcefully reminded of what precisely it is that they are doing. If they do not accustom themselves to making a convincing case for their policies to outsiders, they tend to lose the habit of explaining it all to themselves.”	4 April 2017
Deep state/2017 Popularisation	“The term ‘Deep State’ has entered established parrot journalism, where it joins ‘the one percent’, the other notion ascended from the internet ‘underground’. You can tell by the way it is now mocked in mainstream publications. I first noticed when one of those informed its readers that it lurked somewhere in the remote internet corners given over to conspiracy theory. And now, quite suddenly, there is a mini avalanche of pieces explaining for example why such a thing may exist in Turkey (where the term was first used) or Egypt, but not the United States where all manner of protections guard against it. David Remnick’s article in the New Yorker reflects considerable confusion in parrot journalism ranks about what to do with this concept that has forced itself on America’s consciousness through the combined maneuvers of state and non-state institutions intending to get rid of the new president.”	4 April 2017
US/Deep state	“The apparatus of the American deep state is a vast system of institutions in which the proverbial right arm does not know what the left one is doing. The CIA, FBI, NSA and the military services are compartmentalized to a point where very few of the bureaucrats in their employ can put their finger precisely on what is going on. Best known examples of that kind of entity are the resistance movements in German occupied Europe of World War II, and the cell system of an expansionist communist movement in the early stages of its development. Movie goers are familiar with the ‘need to know’ limitations on the information given to participants in an operation. The numerous levels of ‘security clearance’ make that clear. They have created labyrinths of hidden policy making over which no effective political control can exist. This applies to internal control as well. The institutions of the American deep state are riven by turf battles, schisms, something quite noticeable in their conflict with President Trump and, indeed, eruptions from officials with a conscience. This produces leaks and whistleblowing. These may be seen as emergency actions in the absence of functioning accountability structures.”	4 April 2017
Yakuza	“Parts of the Japanese system have long relied on Japan’s peculiar form of organized crime – known internationally as the Yakuza. Yakuza syndicates may actually help to maintain a low crime rate, with gangsters keeping an eye on unorganized crime in return for governmental blind eye. But the Japanese case does not come close to the level of criminality of the American variety.”		Karelvanwolferen.com

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1990	10 May 1990	13 May 1990	New York US Glen Cove	38th Bilderberg meeting, 119 guests

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