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The story
Akihiro Nishino of the comedy duo King Kong updated his X account on September 18, addressing comments telling him “you should support Japanese children instead” in response to his activities supporting children in Philippine slums and donating an elementary school to Laos. He explained that he has continued supporting causes within Japan and disaster-hit areas just as before. He then added pointedly, “If someone needs help, I help them. There’s no need to narrow that down by national borders.” The post drew over 40 replies on the 5ch board Geinou/Sports News Plus, splitting opinion between defenders arguing “it’s his own money, so it’s his call” and more cautious voices insisting “people struggling at home should come first” and “that’s a separate issue from how tax money is spent.”
Sat, Sep 19, 10:46 AM
Akihiro Nishino (46), of the comedy duo King Kong, updated his X account on the night of the 18th, taking issue with a certain trend in Japan.
Nishino opened with: “When I support children in Philippine slums or donate elementary schools to Laos, I sometimes get comments saying, ‘You should support Japanese children instead.’ First and foremost, let me be clear: we continue to support children in Japan and disaster-hit areas in Japan just as we always have.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
I'm struggling too, so send me about 600,000 yen. I want a new computer.
Re: #27
What does this have to do with taxes?
Exactly that. Well, it's always been said that with overseas aid, the same amount of money — even the same million yen — goes an order of magnitude further, so the 'I did it!' sense of accomplishment probably just hits different.
It's his own money.
It's not tax money, it's his own money. And it clearly says he's still continuing to support Japan too.
This guy doesn't understand what a nation is for. Protecting citizens' lives and property comes first; helping other countries is secondary.
If he wants to help them, he can go do it himself.
Background and key points of this debate
As posts #35, #38, and #41 in the thread point out, the support Nishino mentioned is funded by his own money, not by government or municipal budgets. Even so, criticism telling him to “stop using tax money” (as in post #17) tends to come up first, likely because people conflate personal charitable acts with state-level foreign aid (such as ODA). The demand to put “Japan First” is really an argument about government budget allocation, so aiming it at an individual’s private donations feels somewhat off the mark. At the same time, it seems that how people line up for or against him has less to do with the merits of the aid itself than with personal feelings toward Nishino and lingering distrust from his past conduct (comments referencing his online salon business, for instance). The defense that “it’s his own money, so it’s his choice” and the priority argument that “those close to home should come first” aren’t inherently at odds, but because they got tangled up with people’s opinions of Nishino himself in the thread, the disagreement comes across as more emotional than it needs to be.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News Plus) thread “King Kong’s Nishino claps back at calls to ‘prioritize Japan over overseas aid’: ‘I help whoever needs it — no reason to narrow that by national borders’“.
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