The 'Fucking Idiot' Statement

That is the real name of a real incident in the Japanese Diet, though it's also often rendered as the "You Idiot Statement."

I get weird notifications from Coffee Meets Bagel, and today I got one about something called バカヤローの日 (baka yarō no hi, "fucking idiot day"). I thought it was a dumb joke, but it turns out it's real, or at least as real as neko no hi is. It's based on an exchange between Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru of the Liberal Democratic Party and Nishimura Eiichi of the Social Democratic Party of Japan in 1953, where the prime minister was asked a question and responded by calling Nishimura a fucking idiot.

drydem asked exactly what the question was, and I looked up further context. It turns out that there's a page on Japanese Wikipedia about it, whose name translates to "The 'Fucking Idiot' Parliamentary Dissolution." Isn't politics great?

Here's the exchange, in the original and translation.

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The dissolution came two weeks later on March 14th after the Social Democratic Party of Japan introduced a censure motion and most of the Liberal Democratic Party didn't show up to the vote.

Sometimes, politics is fun!

Edit: On reflection, "fucking idiot" might be too strong, but "you idiot" is too weak. Japanese isn't as good for swearing as English is--there's a blog I read that has a whole blog post [link in Japanese] about how she doesn't really understand the visceral impact of the way English-speakers use "fucking" as an insult--but maybe something like "dumbass"? Translation is hard.