Canem Malum,

You wrote above:

"Mr Opinion seems to have a better than average intuition on things even not of his own culture probably because of his wide reading."

It's nothing magical. I happen to be a sociologist holding several Arts degrees in anthropology, sociology and history.

My knowledge has been gained from years of formal study and I don't make things up like shadyminister, Foul-Master, Hasbeen, etc do.

Mr Opinion said-

"You wrote above: "Mr Opinion seems to have a better than average intuition on things even not of his own culture probably because of his wide reading." It's nothing magical. I happen to be a sociologist holding several Arts degrees in anthropology, sociology and history."

Answer-

Yes- I apologize for the word intuition because it implies ethereal magic.

Most of my understanding of things of The Arts is because of extra reading- perhaps I was projecting- and because I consider actually attending University (especially Arts schools) in contemporary times as a fate worse than death.

You seem to have survived not sure how you managed to remain sane. Kudos.

Just the thought of walking onto a university campus these days makes me cringe.

At some stage one needs to look at the cost of a degree and decide if it is worth it- one can still use books and the internet "to gain knowledge"- I'm at "a stage" where I prefer to set my own hoops to jump through- but I do attempt to cover topics in a broad way from multiple perspectives similar to that traditionally embodied in university syllabus.

Michi seems to have some interesting material there- I have read some Reischauer- very dense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_O._Reischauer

Canem Malum,

You are spot on with the high cost of doing a degree.

I was thinking of doing another MA (2 years research) but now that the country is broke there won't be too many postgrad scholarships going around and the thought of having to pay $90,000 to compete with international students for a postgrad place makes it out of the question.

So with a BA and 2 MAs I'll just have to be happy with being my own teacher if I want to extend my knowledge into other areas of interest.

I'm amazed Mr Opinion that you have funded your studies up to this point. Not sure how you have done it.

Canem Malum,

I was lucky because my degrees were either free or HECS or part fees and I reckon I probably didn't spend more than about $20K total to cover all of my four degrees.

If I had to do them today I reckon I would be looking at half a million dollars to cover the four degrees.

Kijuro Shidehar was a foreign minister in the three cabinets for the total of about six years. He was plenipotentiary at the Washington Conference. The Anglo-Japanese alliance came to an end. Shidehara's policy was least imperialistic and most lenient and friendly toward China of all imperialistic powers. China saw weakening Japanese international status in the non-renewal of the alliance and adopted an increasingly aggressive attitude toward Japan instead of thankful friendliness.
I said ancient China throws illuminating light on present China. Kojiro Yoshikawa of Kyoto Universitity a distinguished student of ancient Chinese literature. He wrote, perhaps a little before October, 1949, when Mao Zedong entered Beijing as a new emperor, "Chinese communists are leaving the countryside and entering urban areas. What will they do?" Every Chinese dynasty had a political and social basis in cities, and city dwellers and intellectuals, who usually lived in cities, were supporters of dynasties.

Japan fought two wars, the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese, to keep national independence. The two wars were in defense of the fatherland or motherland.
The second Sino-Japanese war, 1937-45, which led to the Pacific War, was different. Hitler invaded Poland in September, 1939. It was not an accident. He invaded Russia in June, 1941. It was not an accident. The second Sino-Japanese started from an accident.
Fires were shot from the Chinese army into the exercising Japanese unit on the night of July 7, 1937, near the Marco Polo Bridge in the suburb of Beijing. Both Japan and China wanted to contain it, they did not want to escalate it into a big war, but it did.

Japan was bogged down in the quagmire of a prolonged, extended and exhausting war. The Japanese army had not expected anything like that. Having expected they could knock down China in one or two blows, they were embarrassed, perplexed and confounded. Japan had not intended at all to take China first and then expel Great Britain and the United States and establish hegemony in East Asia.

To be continued.