Following are some readers' responses to David McNeill's June 9 Zeit Gist article "Rumpus on campus":
The outrageous police-state tactics of Hosei University and the Japanese government lay bare the claim that Japan is anything like an enlightened democracy. Indeed, the old adage that "the nail that sticks up is hammered down" is reinforced by the reactionary behavior of the government to quell democratic freedom of thought, speech and expression.
This comes at a time when Japan has already paid billions of dollars since 2001 to support America's "war on terror" and the war in Iraq. At the same time, there has been a social-engineering campaign to wean the public off the peacekeeping provision of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and reintroduce a more pronounced militaristic capability for Japan, moving away from a half-century of abstention from war.