Russia's foreign minister called Japan and Germany militarist and opposed their Security Council bids. I read all 3,831 comments. The 1,236 that ran past eighty characters took 97.1% of the vote; the 1,452 one-liners took 1.7%

At 7.24am on 27 September 2026, Kyodo News published a report on Yahoo! News.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly on 26 September, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that Japan and Germany, both seeking permanent seats on the Security Council, were "walking the path of militarism", and stated his opposition to their bids.

The report carries one more thing. Brazil and India, which are pursuing permanent seats alongside them, he said he supports.

He also said that Western countries are supplying Ukraine with large quantities of weapons, and that Europe is doing everything it can to derail peace talks.

3,831 people wrote in the Yahoo! News comment section under it.

Context for readers outside Japan

Yahoo! News is where a very large share of Japan reads the news, and its comment sections are the closest thing this country has to a national argument held in public. Readers press one of three buttons on each comment - agree, that explains it, hmm - and those presses are what this site counts.

Two pieces of background may help. The Northern Territories are four islands off Hokkaido, held by Russia since 1945 and never settled between the two countries; there is no peace treaty. And the UN Charter still contains what are known as the enemy state clauses, written against the defeated powers of the Second World War, Japan among them. Both come up constantly below.

What I expected to find

This was my reading of the report.

Communist states really are a cancer on the earth. Self-serving. Money, the past, force. Nothing to say about the future, they look away from the facts, and they please themselves.

That was my reading.

So I turned it into something countable. Is this thread using my four words? Self-serving, money, the past, force. And how often does this thread write the word communist at all?

What came back was not what I expected.

96 to 4 - 3,831 comments, about twenty-four hours in

I read all 3,831 top-level comments. The article shows 4,747 comments in total, and 649 replies are displayed.

The buttons: 80,117 agree, 1,993 that explains it, 3,725 hmm. That is 96 to 4.

Of the 57 threads I have counted, this is the third largest.

The vote sits extremely near the top. The first-placed comment alone holds 25,743 agree presses - 32.1% of the total. The top five hold 68.9%, the top ten 83.2%, the top twenty 91.7%, the top thirty 94.0%.

Lower down it is very quiet. Of 3,831 comments, 1,752 - 45.7% - drew no agree press at all. Another 1,529, 39.9%, drew no button of any kind.

The average comment runs 75.9 characters; 252 run past 200.

The most-pressed comment says: give the islands back first

Here is what this thread read hardest.

25,743 agree presses - 32.1% of everything this thread pressed. It drew 238 replies.

Look at what it does. It does not call Russia anything. It puts three things on the table. The islands. The invasion of a neighbour. The mobilisation, and the foreign help that keeps the war going.

Only then does it say: which is why the criticism carries no weight.

97.1% of the vote went to the long comments

The sharpest division in this thread turned out not to be about vocabulary.

It was length.

There are 1,452 comments shorter than forty characters - 37.9% of the thread, more than one in three. Between them they drew 1,337 agree presses. 1.7% of the vote.

There are 1,236 comments longer than eighty characters - 32.3% of the thread. Between them they drew 77,794 agree presses. 97.1% of the vote.

Same thread, same day, same anger. The vote went to one side of it and not the other.

The 342 "look who's talking" comments hold 0.8%

I narrowed it further.

Comments built on the phrase - look who's talking, you of all people, the pot calling the kettle black, coming from you that's rich - number 342, 8.9% of the thread.

They drew 631 agree presses. 0.8% of the vote.

Here is one.

22 agree presses, 59th by vote. Of the 1,452 comments under forty characters, that is the single most-pressed one in the thread.

It is saying almost exactly what the first-placed comment says. You are the militarist, not us.

The only difference is whether it names what it is answering with.

Comments that name something specific - the Northern Territories, Ukraine, the 1941 neutrality pact, the veto, the enemy state clauses, the UN dues - number 902, 23.5% of the thread, and hold 80.5% of the vote. The 2,929 that answer back without naming anything, 76.5% of the thread, hold 19.5%.

This thread was not pressing for the angriest person. It was pressing for the one who brought something.

My four words, counted one at a time

Now the vocabulary.

Force - invasion, aggression, war, force, military, nuclear, missiles, attack, occupation: 1,461 comments, 38.1%, with 65,528 agree presses, 81.8% of the vote. The largest block in the thread. The word Ukraine alone appears in 434, 11.3%, holding 21.4%.

The past - history, the war, the postwar years, the Northern Territories, the neutrality pact, Siberia: 566 comments, 14.8%, with 44,266 agree presses, 55.3% of the vote. The 120 that name the Northern Territories, 3.1% of the thread, hold 33.1% on their own.

Money - UN contributions and assessed dues: 198 comments, 5.2%, with 17,165 agree presses, 21.4%. Widen it to money and budgets generally and you reach 332, 8.7%, holding 23.8%.

Self-serving - selfish, self-centred, out for themselves: 26 comments, 0.7%, holding 5.4%. Add the look-who's-talking form above and it is 0.8%.

Of my four words, the two this thread used most were force and the past.

The most-pressed of the money comments is this one.

13,825 agree presses, 2nd by vote. It opens on money and closes on force.

The word "communist" appears in 63 comments - 6.7% of the vote

This was the word I leaned on hardest.

Comments mentioning communism, socialism, the Soviet Union or the Soviets number 211, 5.5% of the thread, with 7,951 agree presses, 9.9% of the vote. The word communism on its own appears in 63 comments, 1.6%, holding 6.7%.

Against force at 81.8% and the past at 55.3%, that is small.

This thread is not looking at Russia as a communist state. It is looking at Russia as a country currently invading another one.

And where the word does appear, it is used differently from the way I used it. The 13th-placed comment (868 agree presses) writes that China and Russia spent the Cold War opposing the West on communist principles, that both have since been lowering that banner and becoming, in practice, authoritarian state-capitalist systems - and then sets out figures: Japan's defence spending at roughly 1.4% to 1.9% of GDP, Russia's estimated above 7.5%, the world average around 2.5%.

The 9th-placed comment (1,939 agree presses) writes that it was never logical for Russia to remain in the Soviet Union's permanent seat after the Soviet Union dissolved.

In this thread, the word communism belongs to the past tense. It is almost never used as a description of Russia now.

Brazil and India, whom the report says he supports, appear in 58 comments

Kyodo reports that Lavrov said he backs Brazil's and India's bids.

Comments mentioning Brazil or India number 58, 1.5% of the thread, with 287 agree presses - 0.4% of the vote.

The second half of the report went almost unread.

One of the few (26th by vote, 164 agree presses) walks through it properly: that in 2005 Japan joined Germany, Brazil and India as the "G4" and put a resolution to the General Assembly to expand the permanent membership; that it never came to a vote; and that amending the UN Charter requires two-thirds of the membership plus ratification by all five current permanent members. It drew 80 that-explains-it presses - unusually many for its size.

What the thread turned to was not Russia but the UN

The other large movement in this thread was aimed at the institution.

Comments saying the UN does not work, should be dismantled, should be left, or replaced with something new number 286, 7.5%, holding 7.3% of the vote. Comments pointing out that the UN was built by the victors, or that the enemy state clauses are still in the Charter, number 308, 8.0%, holding 11.4%.

5th by vote, 3,549 agree presses.

And 97 comments, 2.5%, holding 2.5%, say Japan should not be seeking a permanent seat at all. Another 122, 3.2%, holding 1.7%, say Japan should cut its contributions.

The side that was objected to answered that it did not want the thing anyway.

The two comments that drew the most hmm

This thread pressed hmm 3,725 times. 694 of those, 18.6%, went to the first-placed comment, and 478, 12.8%, to the seventh.

The seventh (2,591 agree presses, 169 that-explains-it) writes that Russia says this of Japan while the United States and China have just been affirming their history as wartime allies, asks how Japanese diplomacy intends to handle those differing views of the same country, and wonders aloud whether the current government is capable of thinking that far ahead.

It does not answer back. It asks. In this thread, that was one of the forms pushed back against hardest.

Comments naming a Japanese politician and criticising them number 118, 3.1%, with 366 agree presses - 0.5% of the vote - and 366 hmm presses, 9.8%. Far more pushback than their number suggests.

98.6% of the comments drew no reply

There are 649 replies in this thread. Of those, 238 - 36.7% - sit under the first-placed comment, and 404, 62.2%, under the top five.

Of 3,831 comments, 3,777 - 98.6% - drew no reply at all.

3,831 people wrote. Fifty-four of them were answered.

For readers outside Japan - what this thread was doing

When Russia comes up in a Japanese comment section, most people outside Japan would picture a shouting match.

There was abuse in it. 172 comments, 4.5% of the thread.

But the largest thing that happened here was not the abuse. It was that the abuse drew no vote.

Of 3,831 comments, 1,452 were shorter than forty characters - more than one in three. All of them together drew 1,337 agree presses. The 1,236 that ran past eighty characters and set out reasons drew 77,794.

Almost everyone here is on the same side. And yet, among people on the same side, this thread chose sharply between them.

What it chose was not the one who said it hardest. It was the one who listed the most.

One more thing worth saying to readers abroad. The single most-named specific thing in this thread is the Northern Territories - the islands unsettled between Japan and Russia since 1945. 120 comments, 3.1% of the thread, name them, and they hold 33.1% of the vote.

Asked what to answer Russia with, this thread reached first for those islands.

Things I have not verified

I called Russia a communist state. The Russia in this article does not have communism as its system of government; the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, and the word communism does not appear in the report once.

So this note does not claim that Russia today is a communist state. Calling it a cancer on the earth is my own phrasing, and not a description of fact.

I have not read Lavrov's speech in full either. I read the Kyodo report and the 3,831 comments underneath it. About anything the report does not carry, this note says nothing.

One more note on the numbers. Yahoo! News displayed 4,095 top-level comments on this article. I was able to read 3,831 of them. Every proportion in this note is against those 3,831.

What I counted but will not quote

Comments containing abusive language: 172, 4.5% of the thread, with 4,512 agree presses, 5.6% of the vote.

Comments mocking someone's appearance: 2, 0.1%, with no agree presses.

Comments giving ancestry, blood or race as the reason: 1, 0.0%, with no agree presses.

One comment in 3,831. This site counts those and keeps them out of the body.

My reading against the count

Force - 81.8% of the vote. The largest of my four words by a wide margin.

The past - 55.3%. The Northern Territories alone hold 33.1%.

Money - 23.8%. This is exactly where the comment my lady shared sits.

Self-serving - 5.4% by vocabulary, 0.8% if you count the look-who's-talking form. The thread plainly feels it. It just does not vote for it.

Communism - 9.9%. The smallest of the five.

Nothing to say about the future - that was my reading of Russia. But comments in this thread that mention the future, the next generation or children number 50, 1.3%, holding 10.2%. This thread did not have much to say about the future either.

The comment my lady shared stands 2nd in this thread: 13,825 agree presses, 180 that-explains-it presses, 214 hmm presses, 82 replies. The highest-placed comment she has shared so far.

What this thread was actually saying

I talked about what the other side is. Communist, therefore self-serving.

This thread barely talked about what anyone is.

It listed what it could bring. Islands not returned. An invasion still running. A pact broken. Children in military drill. The ranking of UN dues. A framework built eighty years ago, and the enemy state clauses still sitting in it.

And the longer the list, the more the vote came.

What this thread was rewarding was not the force of the anger. It was the number of things you could put behind it.