Japanese Nationalism

So the people at Microsoft have made themselves a bit of an enemy of Japan. It turns out that when you register for Xbox live on the 360 and try to register as being from Takashima, it doesn't recognize it as a part of Japan. (Which is impossible now anyway because as far as I know, there isn't much in the ways of Internet on the islet. Currently only a old couple from Korea stay there seasonally, the Kotaku article is a bit off on their facts.)

This is really interesting news being that I've also be recently accepted as a presenter at the Eastern Sociological Society meeting to talk about the islet dispute between Korea and Japan. One of the things that I wanted to talk about is how it's quite surprising how the younger generation are engaging in this controversy. For the most part, the Japanese avoid conflicts and debate to a irritating degree. Hardly anyone ever talks about politics or even keeps themselves tuned in on what's going on. (I remember one time the Vice Principle of the junior highschool I was working for was quite impressed on how much I knew about Japanese/US currency exchange rates. He thought only economist would worry about such things.) But from the flame wars on various message boards and such, it seems that people are quite fired up about this. This isn't something that the Neo-conservatives are pushing either, these are young 20 somethings in Japan that are usually apathetic to being a part of anything in their world. One of the things I'm interested about is why would this incite the Japanese so much? The news story report makes it seem as if it's some attack on the Japanese as a nation to make such a mistake.