Correspondent SG reminded me yesterday that Ozawa Ichiro's case is not the only criminal case that has been or is the process of being brought to the courts via a Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution -- the Orwellian-sounding citizens councils seeking indictments in incidents where the local prosecutors claim there is no case. Indeed a number of infamous incidents are in the process of being picked over by private lawyers hired by the courts, including:
- The Akashi Pedestrian Bridge Incident - where a crush of people, on there way to view a waterside fireworks display, lurched forward and fell down in a mass on the staircase of a pedestrian overpass, leading to the asphyxiation deaths of 11 persons, mostly children. On trial is the Deputy Chief of Police of Akashi, as the police were providing security for the event. A judgment in the case is expected in November.
- The Amagasaki JR Derailment - the most serious and idiotic rail accident of the last 40 years, resulting in the deaths of 106 persons and the maimings of many, many more. While the obvious culprit was the incompetent train engineer, who had a record of poor performance and sent his train hurtling off the tracks by taking a curve at excessive speed, this in order to make up for time he had lost in overshooting the platform at a previous stop, families of the dead and injured have been trying for a decade to pin the blame on senior JR West executives. The trial of the three past presidents of JR West for dereliction of duty leading to death begins in July.
- The Chinese Fishing Trawler Collision Incident - when a Chinese fishing boat rammed two Japanese Coast Guard vessels in the waters off the Senkaku Islands in September, 2010, the JCG detained the crew of the Chinese vessel, arresting the captain on charges of interfering with the activities of government personnel carrying out their duties. Other than the captain, the crew of the ship were returned to China. The case of the captain, hwoever,was remanded to the Nago District Court. After the Chinese government, both directly and indirectly, ratched the pressure on Japan, the Nago Court released the captain, on the bizarre grounds of his arrest being a matter of foreign policy, not law. Since the case had been remanded to the prosecutors, however, it left open the door for interested parties to pursue the original arrest through a Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution, which interested parties did. Without much of a fuss, an Okinawa Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution issued an indictment of the Chinese captain in March, with no trial date set.
It is difficult to approve of the actions taken by the Committees in the first two cases. These should be civil suits for damages, not criminal indictments for negligence and dereliction of duty. The persons being tried have only distant connections to the accidents, heinous as they were.
However, it is hard not give three cheers for Committee in Okinawa. The grotesque intrusion of politics into a legal proceeding, which the government promised it would not to do, no matter what the Chinese did, then reversed itself and did, then denied that it had done -- demolished the credibility of Prime Minister Kan Naoto and the Democratic Party of Japan. That the Svengali pressuring the Nago Prosecutors Office to release the captain was Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito was an open secret. His machinations earned him a well-deserved censuring by the House of Councillors, with Mabuchi Sumio, the minister in charge of the Coast Guard, getting censured in what amounted to collateral damage from the chastisement of Sengoku.
It is possible to read too much into the effect the indictment of the Chinese captain will have on Sino-Japanese relations. It will certainly be an irritant to the Chinese. The Japanese government will not pursue the captain, except perhaps by putting his name on a list of international fugitives at Interpol. Even if the courts allow the captain's being convicted in absentia, which he would be, given the video evidence of the collisions, neither government has any incentive to bring the matter up in bilateral negotiations -- so they will not.
Whether Japanese right wingers will transform the captain's indictment into one of their cause célèbres remains an open question. They have already so many different items on their plates...
Friday, May 11, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Extended And Revised Thoughts On The Decision To Retry Ozawa Ichiro
Yesterday, the three lawyers appointed by the court to prosecute Ichiro Ozawa under Japan's Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system announced they would be appealing the not guilty verdict the Tokyo District Court handed down on April 26. The decision to appeal comes less than 24 hours after the DPJ's Standing Officers Council voted to end the suspension of Ozawa's party privileges and 24 hours before the deadline for the three lawyers had to file an appeal.
Given that the lawyers had two weeks to make this decision, their choice to do so within the same news cycle as the DPJ executive's having made its move on reinstating Ozawa indicates that it is politics, not the law, that is driving this case.
Three major cases come to mind of countries with democratic elections where the courts have been used to prevent a challenger of the system from seizing upon his chance to take power: Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia and Ichiro Ozawa in Japan.
Elevating Ozawa to the level of the other two may seem perverse. After all, he has never spent a day in jail while the other two have languished in prison for years.
However, the cases are comparable in the use of pliant prosecutors and flimsy charges to effectively short-circuit the democratic process, to the benefit of politicians and corporate managements grown fat and lazy on crony, state-assisted capitalism and patronage.
While the cases of Anwar and Khodhorkovsky have served as reminders of just what kind of states Malaysia and Russia were and are, the judicial houndings of Ozawa and his aides have raised few warning bells worldwide. Indeed, the persecution of Ozawa has some in Washington dancing in the aisles. The 2009 arrest of Okubo Takanori, the beginning of the process that has led to yesterday's decision to retry, not only prevented the installation of a prime minister wishing to redefine the Japan-U.S. relationship as a more equal partnership but one seeking to meet the challenge of a rising China with an extended open hand rather than a closed fist.
The continued court cases against Ozawa and his subordinates also eat away at the support for the DPJ, which many in Washington see as a party too spiky and independent for the smooth operation of the Japan-U.S. military alliance.
However, those craving to see the return to power of a seemingly more U.S.-friendly and purportedly more competent LDP are either ignorant of history or in the pay of the wrong sorts of people. The LDP, as an illegitimate ruling party – which means its continued hold on power was dependent upon the suppression of votes – was a terrible interlocutor for the United States and the world. It was the party of delay, always whining about its inability to make good on its promises until “after the next election” – a plaint that tested the listener’s capacity to reason out, “But wait, after the next election, there will be another election, and after that, yet another…” Given their electoral lock on the country, LDP governments cared little that policy makers, journalists and scholars saw through this “wait until after the next election" canard – and that under its thrall Japan would always underperform and punch below its weight. Under the"serious" and "seasoned" LDP, trade and IPR talks would drag out for decades, the Futenma-to-Henoko move went nowhere and the Self Defense Forces remained marginalized and internationally insignificant.
Some might argue that there are immediate benefits to this decision to retry Ozawa, that hobbling him will smooth the passage of important legislation tackling the national debt emboldening the Noda government to be more aggressive in pushing Japan into negotiations on joining the TPP. Unfortunately, opposition to the government's plans to raise the consumption tax, cut spending and join the TPP negotiations runs across the political spectrum. It is not just Ozawa.
There is the further problem that turmoil in Tokyo has promoted the rise of regional challengers to the main national triumvirate of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito. The most successful and obvious of these is the Ishin no kai of Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto. These new regional movements are the wild cards now in Japan’s national politics. The old boys and the rare old girls of the bureaucracy and the non-profit foundations probably assuring their counterparts in the world's capitals that these new political forces can be tutored in the ways of behaving themselves on the international stage. However, there are no guarantees of that Hashimoto, Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya or other regionalists will listen to what their tutors tell them.
The legal persecution of Ozawa has had a corrosive effect on the development of a two-party system, where two legitimate, centrist, responsible parties with largely equal access to national office slug it out over differences in policy. Those who wave off what is happening with a dismissive “Ah, this is just the law finally catching up a grubby old time party hack, nothing new” have agendas of their own, obsfucating the truth being one of them.
Given that the lawyers had two weeks to make this decision, their choice to do so within the same news cycle as the DPJ executive's having made its move on reinstating Ozawa indicates that it is politics, not the law, that is driving this case.
Three major cases come to mind of countries with democratic elections where the courts have been used to prevent a challenger of the system from seizing upon his chance to take power: Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia and Ichiro Ozawa in Japan.
Elevating Ozawa to the level of the other two may seem perverse. After all, he has never spent a day in jail while the other two have languished in prison for years.
However, the cases are comparable in the use of pliant prosecutors and flimsy charges to effectively short-circuit the democratic process, to the benefit of politicians and corporate managements grown fat and lazy on crony, state-assisted capitalism and patronage.
While the cases of Anwar and Khodhorkovsky have served as reminders of just what kind of states Malaysia and Russia were and are, the judicial houndings of Ozawa and his aides have raised few warning bells worldwide. Indeed, the persecution of Ozawa has some in Washington dancing in the aisles. The 2009 arrest of Okubo Takanori, the beginning of the process that has led to yesterday's decision to retry, not only prevented the installation of a prime minister wishing to redefine the Japan-U.S. relationship as a more equal partnership but one seeking to meet the challenge of a rising China with an extended open hand rather than a closed fist.
The continued court cases against Ozawa and his subordinates also eat away at the support for the DPJ, which many in Washington see as a party too spiky and independent for the smooth operation of the Japan-U.S. military alliance.
However, those craving to see the return to power of a seemingly more U.S.-friendly and purportedly more competent LDP are either ignorant of history or in the pay of the wrong sorts of people. The LDP, as an illegitimate ruling party – which means its continued hold on power was dependent upon the suppression of votes – was a terrible interlocutor for the United States and the world. It was the party of delay, always whining about its inability to make good on its promises until “after the next election” – a plaint that tested the listener’s capacity to reason out, “But wait, after the next election, there will be another election, and after that, yet another…” Given their electoral lock on the country, LDP governments cared little that policy makers, journalists and scholars saw through this “wait until after the next election" canard – and that under its thrall Japan would always underperform and punch below its weight. Under the"serious" and "seasoned" LDP, trade and IPR talks would drag out for decades, the Futenma-to-Henoko move went nowhere and the Self Defense Forces remained marginalized and internationally insignificant.
Some might argue that there are immediate benefits to this decision to retry Ozawa, that hobbling him will smooth the passage of important legislation tackling the national debt emboldening the Noda government to be more aggressive in pushing Japan into negotiations on joining the TPP. Unfortunately, opposition to the government's plans to raise the consumption tax, cut spending and join the TPP negotiations runs across the political spectrum. It is not just Ozawa.
There is the further problem that turmoil in Tokyo has promoted the rise of regional challengers to the main national triumvirate of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito. The most successful and obvious of these is the Ishin no kai of Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto. These new regional movements are the wild cards now in Japan’s national politics. The old boys and the rare old girls of the bureaucracy and the non-profit foundations probably assuring their counterparts in the world's capitals that these new political forces can be tutored in the ways of behaving themselves on the international stage. However, there are no guarantees of that Hashimoto, Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya or other regionalists will listen to what their tutors tell them.
The legal persecution of Ozawa has had a corrosive effect on the development of a two-party system, where two legitimate, centrist, responsible parties with largely equal access to national office slug it out over differences in policy. Those who wave off what is happening with a dismissive “Ah, this is just the law finally catching up a grubby old time party hack, nothing new” have agendas of their own, obsfucating the truth being one of them.
The Masked Man Returns
For those defenders and friends of Ozawa Ichiro -- and I know you are out there -- will you please tell him, beg him if you have to, to reconsider the wearing of a surgical mask on days when he is hot water?
I know that this all could be coincidence. After all, the above photo was taken at around noon and the press conference announcing the appeal of his case was not until the afternoon.
However, the instances of Ozawa's sudden comings down with colds at awkward moments have been painful to observe.
As for the prosecuting private attorneys, if they really wish anyone to believe that they are under no political pressure at all to appeal the not-guilty verdict of April 26, then sweating rivulets during their press conference on a mild May day is not the way to do it. While cool cucumber Yamamoto Ken'ichi (J - far right) managed not even a glow, Omuro Shinzo and Muramoto Michio were spurting like the fountains of Trevi.
Later - To be fair, Ozawa's lawyers were sweating even worse than the prosecuting attorneys.
Ozawa Ichiro, leaving his home on May 9, 2012.
I know that this all could be coincidence. After all, the above photo was taken at around noon and the press conference announcing the appeal of his case was not until the afternoon.
However, the instances of Ozawa's sudden comings down with colds at awkward moments have been painful to observe.
As for the prosecuting private attorneys, if they really wish anyone to believe that they are under no political pressure at all to appeal the not-guilty verdict of April 26, then sweating rivulets during their press conference on a mild May day is not the way to do it. While cool cucumber Yamamoto Ken'ichi (J - far right) managed not even a glow, Omuro Shinzo and Muramoto Michio were spurting like the fountains of Trevi.
Later - To be fair, Ozawa's lawyers were sweating even worse than the prosecuting attorneys.
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Ozawa Ichiro As Potential Troublemaker
[Flash - the three lawyers who failed to win a conviction of Ozawa Ichiro with violations of the Political Funds Control Act have decided to appeal the not guilty verdict (J).
It is not too surprising a decision. The trio have an incentive to prove that they were not the fools losing the case made them out to be. They surely received an extra jolt of energy from the trial judge's statements casting doubts on parts of Ozawa's testimony. While the judge's asides did not find Ozawa, as Ishihara Nobuteru put it yesterday, "99% jet black" (J) they did not allow Ozawa to proclaim hiself pure as the driven snow either.
Later - Guessing as to whether or not the prosecuting lawyers have sought to humiliate the Democratic Party of Japan by announcing their decision to retry Ozawa after the DPJ executive voted to reinstate his party privileges is something the reader should not take two seconds to ponder over. Of course, they did. Such abusive behavior is in line with the conduct of this trial and the trials against Ozawa's secretaries, which from the outset have been politics by the most thuggish of means.]
Now, where was I?
I am on the record as believing Ozawa Ichiro faces constraints on his behavior preventing him from becoming the ogre the mainstream and scandal press predict he will be, now that his shackles are being loosed. (E)
However, my assertions have been predicated on Ozawa's understanding that the Democratic Party of Japan is different from the Liberal Democratic Party. Underpinning such a vision is a belief that after winning the control of the Diet through emulating the pork-barrel promises that made the LDP such an unshakable part of the post-Occupation reality, the DPJ would then shift gears and return the decentralized authority, anti-subsidy, anti-protectionist, anti-pork barrel program that made the pary the darlings of the urban white collar consumer vote.
Intrinsic to such vision was a completely overhaul the disenfranchising House of Representatives single-member districts system. At present, 91 of the single-member districts have population greater than twice the population of the smallest district, Kochi #3. The disparity shook even the somnolent Supreme Court to rule last year that the current system is unconstitutional, violating the right of all citizens to equal protection of the law.
However, when Ozawa effectively came to power through the puppet regime of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, revising the electoral system was not the first item on his agenda -- which it should have been if the DPJ were to have any chance at retaining power in the next House of Representatives election. Instead, what Ozawa did, to the horror of many in the media, was to order all of the first-termers, many of whom had specialist knowledge and had entered politics in order to affect and implement policy, out of the government positions to which Prime Minister Hatoyama had appointed (nakedly and brazenly showing who was calling the shots inside the DPJ). Instead, he ordered those stripped of their government positions and all other first-termers to forget policy and concentrate instead on politicking inside their home districts -- which, when you think about it, only makes sense if the borders of the districts were not set to change.
It is true that at the time Ozawa was not under the gun of the Supreme Court, which was not to deliver its ruling for another year, long after Ozawa had been toppled from power over the Futenma climb-down and the revolt of the middle-ranking lifers of the DPJ. However, numerous lower-ranking decisions had found the existing House of Representatives districts unconstitutional. Also, while the DPJ had won control of the House of Representatives with a mixture of disgust for the LDP and borrowing some of the LDP's vote-buying strategies (an Ozawa innovation that transformed the DPJ from a losing urban-surburban party to a winning national party) -- it was clear that the DPJ could not pull those same two rabbits out the hat twice.
For the DPJ, the choice was either reform the system or die.
So as Ozawa is given his freedom, the question is whether during his time in suspension, did he learn what it means to be a member of the DPJ? Or has he remained adamant in his thinking that the way to run Japan is to accept the country as it is and work around the margins, even though that approach has brought him grief time and time again, whether it was in the LDP, the New Frontier Party, the Liberal Party and his time as the power behind Hatoyama's throne?
In terms of policy, the signs are not encouraging. His opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, given the disparate interests of its negotiating members, may just as well end up crashing of its own accord, reveals an unfortunate attachment to the rural vote as it is currently super-empowered.
Ozawa's unwillingness to play ball with the current party leadership over the imposition of a rise in the consumption tax, which is represents a tough, and yes, contractionary solution to a debt mountain not of the DPJ's making, paints a picture of him as a factional bully, throwing around the weight of the 100 or so members of the DPJ beholden to him, rather than as a party man.
Ozawa's defenders insist that whatever the methods employed, Ozawa's primary interest has been the seizing of policy from the bureaucracy and making it answerable to the voters. To be sure, on the surface, the government of Noda Yoshihiko seems to have relinquished whatever gains not only his party made but much of what the LDP's Koizumi Jun'ichiro wrenched from out of the hands of the bureaucrats. For this reason, an unleashed Ozawa immediately challenging the legitimacy of the current leadership group is not only inevitable but salutatory.
It would be a grave mistake, however, for Ozawa to take on the leadership of DPJ. He must meet with Noda, one-to-one, and see what Noda's real goals and strategies are.
I do not refer to Noda as The Impenetrable One out of laziness. Noda is almost perversely parsimonious with his actual thinking on any given issue, no matter how beautifully he may talk about every issue. You can read Noda's words in the newspaper or on the Web, or hearing speaking him out loud on television or in person. However, as to what he thinks, one draws a blank. He may have a silver tongue but he does not appear to be speaking his mind.
Does Ozawa have the humility to go to the Kantei for a meeting of minds? The outlook is admittedly not promising.
Note - this post has been edited for greater clarity and precision.
It is not too surprising a decision. The trio have an incentive to prove that they were not the fools losing the case made them out to be. They surely received an extra jolt of energy from the trial judge's statements casting doubts on parts of Ozawa's testimony. While the judge's asides did not find Ozawa, as Ishihara Nobuteru put it yesterday, "99% jet black" (J) they did not allow Ozawa to proclaim hiself pure as the driven snow either.
Later - Guessing as to whether or not the prosecuting lawyers have sought to humiliate the Democratic Party of Japan by announcing their decision to retry Ozawa after the DPJ executive voted to reinstate his party privileges is something the reader should not take two seconds to ponder over. Of course, they did. Such abusive behavior is in line with the conduct of this trial and the trials against Ozawa's secretaries, which from the outset have been politics by the most thuggish of means.]
Now, where was I?
I am on the record as believing Ozawa Ichiro faces constraints on his behavior preventing him from becoming the ogre the mainstream and scandal press predict he will be, now that his shackles are being loosed. (E)
However, my assertions have been predicated on Ozawa's understanding that the Democratic Party of Japan is different from the Liberal Democratic Party. Underpinning such a vision is a belief that after winning the control of the Diet through emulating the pork-barrel promises that made the LDP such an unshakable part of the post-Occupation reality, the DPJ would then shift gears and return the decentralized authority, anti-subsidy, anti-protectionist, anti-pork barrel program that made the pary the darlings of the urban white collar consumer vote.
Intrinsic to such vision was a completely overhaul the disenfranchising House of Representatives single-member districts system. At present, 91 of the single-member districts have population greater than twice the population of the smallest district, Kochi #3. The disparity shook even the somnolent Supreme Court to rule last year that the current system is unconstitutional, violating the right of all citizens to equal protection of the law.
However, when Ozawa effectively came to power through the puppet regime of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, revising the electoral system was not the first item on his agenda -- which it should have been if the DPJ were to have any chance at retaining power in the next House of Representatives election. Instead, what Ozawa did, to the horror of many in the media, was to order all of the first-termers, many of whom had specialist knowledge and had entered politics in order to affect and implement policy, out of the government positions to which Prime Minister Hatoyama had appointed (nakedly and brazenly showing who was calling the shots inside the DPJ). Instead, he ordered those stripped of their government positions and all other first-termers to forget policy and concentrate instead on politicking inside their home districts -- which, when you think about it, only makes sense if the borders of the districts were not set to change.
It is true that at the time Ozawa was not under the gun of the Supreme Court, which was not to deliver its ruling for another year, long after Ozawa had been toppled from power over the Futenma climb-down and the revolt of the middle-ranking lifers of the DPJ. However, numerous lower-ranking decisions had found the existing House of Representatives districts unconstitutional. Also, while the DPJ had won control of the House of Representatives with a mixture of disgust for the LDP and borrowing some of the LDP's vote-buying strategies (an Ozawa innovation that transformed the DPJ from a losing urban-surburban party to a winning national party) -- it was clear that the DPJ could not pull those same two rabbits out the hat twice.
For the DPJ, the choice was either reform the system or die.
So as Ozawa is given his freedom, the question is whether during his time in suspension, did he learn what it means to be a member of the DPJ? Or has he remained adamant in his thinking that the way to run Japan is to accept the country as it is and work around the margins, even though that approach has brought him grief time and time again, whether it was in the LDP, the New Frontier Party, the Liberal Party and his time as the power behind Hatoyama's throne?
In terms of policy, the signs are not encouraging. His opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, given the disparate interests of its negotiating members, may just as well end up crashing of its own accord, reveals an unfortunate attachment to the rural vote as it is currently super-empowered.
Ozawa's unwillingness to play ball with the current party leadership over the imposition of a rise in the consumption tax, which is represents a tough, and yes, contractionary solution to a debt mountain not of the DPJ's making, paints a picture of him as a factional bully, throwing around the weight of the 100 or so members of the DPJ beholden to him, rather than as a party man.
Ozawa's defenders insist that whatever the methods employed, Ozawa's primary interest has been the seizing of policy from the bureaucracy and making it answerable to the voters. To be sure, on the surface, the government of Noda Yoshihiko seems to have relinquished whatever gains not only his party made but much of what the LDP's Koizumi Jun'ichiro wrenched from out of the hands of the bureaucrats. For this reason, an unleashed Ozawa immediately challenging the legitimacy of the current leadership group is not only inevitable but salutatory.
It would be a grave mistake, however, for Ozawa to take on the leadership of DPJ. He must meet with Noda, one-to-one, and see what Noda's real goals and strategies are.
I do not refer to Noda as The Impenetrable One out of laziness. Noda is almost perversely parsimonious with his actual thinking on any given issue, no matter how beautifully he may talk about every issue. You can read Noda's words in the newspaper or on the Web, or hearing speaking him out loud on television or in person. However, as to what he thinks, one draws a blank. He may have a silver tongue but he does not appear to be speaking his mind.
Does Ozawa have the humility to go to the Kantei for a meeting of minds? The outlook is admittedly not promising.
Note - this post has been edited for greater clarity and precision.
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
The World's Most Skeptical Police Officers
A man in his thirties was found dead on a street in Shinagawa yesterday morning in front of a ten storey building. Given the presence of broken branches in the shrubbery about him and a witness reporting to have heard a "whomp" sound, police are assuming the man fell from out of the building. From the seventh floor to be precise, where there is an office of a sexual services establishment, of which the man was an employee. A search inside the office found bloodstains.
And "fell" possibly misrepresents the action. It seems the man was aided in his falling by five or six men, one of whom is the proprietor of the sexual services establishment.
Police are investigating, and I am not making this up, "the possibility that there might have been some kind of trouble in between those with ties to the sexual service establishment." (J)
If this were not a high-class establishment, I might be tempted to make a crack about the police not jumping to conclusions.
Seriously, these are the same folks who made Kono Yoshiyuki's life a living hell after he told them what to look for in the Matsumoto Sarin case?
Trying to keep your conviction rates up, are you?
Later - I guess I should not rail overmuch. I did, after all, proclaim this The Age of Innocence.
And "fell" possibly misrepresents the action. It seems the man was aided in his falling by five or six men, one of whom is the proprietor of the sexual services establishment.
Police are investigating, and I am not making this up, "the possibility that there might have been some kind of trouble in between those with ties to the sexual service establishment." (J)
If this were not a high-class establishment, I might be tempted to make a crack about the police not jumping to conclusions.
Seriously, these are the same folks who made Kono Yoshiyuki's life a living hell after he told them what to look for in the Matsumoto Sarin case?
Trying to keep your conviction rates up, are you?
Later - I guess I should not rail overmuch. I did, after all, proclaim this The Age of Innocence.
Monday, May 07, 2012
We're Not Gonna Take It
The Tokyo Shimbun has some of the most easy-to-parse editorial cartoons in the mediasphere of this blessed land.
However, May 5th's cartoon deserves a special exercise in exegesis.
The manga is the recreation of the teary retirement scenes from girls groups covered by the wide shows and sometimes even make the serious newscasts. The most prominent of these recent retirements was the "graduation" of Maeda Atsuko from the mega-group AKB48.
Here the girl's group name GNP54 -- the GNP standing for GeNPatsu, the contraction for genshiryokuhatsuden = nuclear power station (the cartoonist, after a suggestion from perhaps an exasperated editor, has an aside that GNP here does not mean "Gross National Product" as it normally would) and the 54 the number of nuclear power plants in this blessed land.
The ceremony here is the retirement of the GNP54's final member, Tomari Harako (there is a pun involving her personal name but I will try to keep this simple). Tomari notes the irony of her family name, which is a homophone of "where it stops." With a smile, however, she declares, "But I can be back!" -- which is met by rustling, scattered boos and expressions of surprise. Through her tears she shouts, "But, but with all your support, I can, all the other members can..." -- which rather than being greeted with cheering is met with silence. "Oh, so that's it..." she concludes, allowing the microphone to drop from her hand, the spotlight leaving her face and contracting into a fadeout.
What sets this editorial cartoon apart from any other we may have recently seen?
The Tokyo Shimbun put it dead center on its front page.
We're not gonna take it...
We're not gonna take it...*
Image courtesies: Tokyo Shimbun
However, May 5th's cartoon deserves a special exercise in exegesis.
The manga is the recreation of the teary retirement scenes from girls groups covered by the wide shows and sometimes even make the serious newscasts. The most prominent of these recent retirements was the "graduation" of Maeda Atsuko from the mega-group AKB48.
Here the girl's group name GNP54 -- the GNP standing for GeNPatsu, the contraction for genshiryokuhatsuden = nuclear power station (the cartoonist, after a suggestion from perhaps an exasperated editor, has an aside that GNP here does not mean "Gross National Product" as it normally would) and the 54 the number of nuclear power plants in this blessed land.
The ceremony here is the retirement of the GNP54's final member, Tomari Harako (there is a pun involving her personal name but I will try to keep this simple). Tomari notes the irony of her family name, which is a homophone of "where it stops." With a smile, however, she declares, "But I can be back!" -- which is met by rustling, scattered boos and expressions of surprise. Through her tears she shouts, "But, but with all your support, I can, all the other members can..." -- which rather than being greeted with cheering is met with silence. "Oh, so that's it..." she concludes, allowing the microphone to drop from her hand, the spotlight leaving her face and contracting into a fadeout.
What sets this editorial cartoon apart from any other we may have recently seen?
The Tokyo Shimbun put it dead center on its front page.
We're not gonna take it...
We're not gonna take it...*
Image courtesies: Tokyo Shimbun
There Is A Reason They Call It Rocket Science
One can have ideological blinders on and keep warning all and sundry about death raining down from above and drumming up fears about the silly mockups of ICBMs the DPRK government put on parade on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung...or one can read Markus Schiller and Robert H. Schmucker.
Regarding the mockups:
"A Dog and Pony Show" (Link 1)
Regarding the internal structure and the engineering limits of purported ICBMs, if someone ever tried to build an actual missile looking like the ones paraded:
"The Assumed KN-08 Technology" (Link 2)
That "woof" sound you just hear after you finish reading the two papers is the editorial offices of the Sankei Shimbun undergoing spontaneous diurnal combustion.
Both papers come via the good graces of Dr. Jeffrey Lewis and Arms Control Wonk.
Regarding the mockups:
"A Dog and Pony Show" (Link 1)
Regarding the internal structure and the engineering limits of purported ICBMs, if someone ever tried to build an actual missile looking like the ones paraded:
"The Assumed KN-08 Technology" (Link 2)
That "woof" sound you just hear after you finish reading the two papers is the editorial offices of the Sankei Shimbun undergoing spontaneous diurnal combustion.
Both papers come via the good graces of Dr. Jeffrey Lewis and Arms Control Wonk.
Because I'm Bad
There is all kinds of bad writing about this blessed land.
There is put up a straw man and knock it down bad, mated with the ethically questionable reworking of what should have been an interview into an op-ed bad. (Link)
There is I-am-a-world-renowned-social-scientist-who-has-previously-written-about-Japan-from-a-scientific-angle-but-for-this-article-I-just-do-not-have-the-time-to-do-the-research bad. (Link)
The article's redeeming feature? Brutal honesty about its own shortcomings:
And then there is fishing for grants and fellowships bad, piggybacked on promoting a new book with a new paradigm bad. (Link)
As for the above, the first thing for the authors to do is research what a weathervane does. They might find that a weathervane follows the wind; it does not point out the direction in which the wind will be blowing.
Having learned about weathervanes, they perhaps can get their historical progressions going in their proper directions.
As for their prognostications about this blessed land's steps to joining a New West, mixing the culinary with the architectural is poor form. A tossed salad should be presented as a tossed salad: it is not the outlines and suggestions of a building.
There is put up a straw man and knock it down bad, mated with the ethically questionable reworking of what should have been an interview into an op-ed bad. (Link)
There is I-am-a-world-renowned-social-scientist-who-has-previously-written-about-Japan-from-a-scientific-angle-but-for-this-article-I-just-do-not-have-the-time-to-do-the-research bad. (Link)
The article's redeeming feature? Brutal honesty about its own shortcomings:
"In the absence of rigorous sociological polling, I’ll summarize interviews that Japanese friends have conducted for me."Wow! Call such a methodology what you will...but duplicitous it ain't.
And then there is fishing for grants and fellowships bad, piggybacked on promoting a new book with a new paradigm bad. (Link)
As for the above, the first thing for the authors to do is research what a weathervane does. They might find that a weathervane follows the wind; it does not point out the direction in which the wind will be blowing.
Having learned about weathervanes, they perhaps can get their historical progressions going in their proper directions.
As for their prognostications about this blessed land's steps to joining a New West, mixing the culinary with the architectural is poor form. A tossed salad should be presented as a tossed salad: it is not the outlines and suggestions of a building.
Sunday, May 06, 2012
The Night The Lights Stayed On
Shingetsu News has a tongue-in-cheek report on the shutdown of the Tomari #3 reactor for routine maintenance, as seen from Shinjuku's Kabuki-cho.
(Link)
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
(Link)
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
Missed Something Here
Those in the know, whoever you are, could you explain when koi became, in the words of Yuri Kageyama of AP:
Furthermore, is it not a wee bit misleading to refer to a crowd of 5,500 in Tokyo as "thousands of Japanese"? A crowd of 5,500 is less than five Odakyu express trains pulling into Shinjuku.
By the way, this week's heavy rains wiped out the display of Japan's largest koi nobori (J), trimmed parades and eliminated numerous scheduled outdoor celebrations of spring (J) -- as well as a hacking out an unhealthy chunk of the seasonal revenues of major tourist sites.
Later - Here are some anti-nuclear protest/celebration crowd figures from other major cities:
Sapporo: 450
Nagoya: 250
Osaka: 600
Fukuoka: 50
Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nation's 50 nuclear reactors Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol.Except for the coincidental occurrence of the shutdown of the Tomari #3 reactor on the Tango no Sekku holiday, is there some other reason heretofore not widely stated for carp streamers or the giant images of any other fish being "potent anti-nuclear" symbols? Please let me know in comments.
(Link)
Furthermore, is it not a wee bit misleading to refer to a crowd of 5,500 in Tokyo as "thousands of Japanese"? A crowd of 5,500 is less than five Odakyu express trains pulling into Shinjuku.
By the way, this week's heavy rains wiped out the display of Japan's largest koi nobori (J), trimmed parades and eliminated numerous scheduled outdoor celebrations of spring (J) -- as well as a hacking out an unhealthy chunk of the seasonal revenues of major tourist sites.
Later - Here are some anti-nuclear protest/celebration crowd figures from other major cities:
Sapporo: 450
Nagoya: 250
Osaka: 600
Fukuoka: 50
Update On Nobody Pays Retail
In order to check the figures in my post of the other day, I took a detour to the rice section of my local supermarket. I found that I had been too generous in my quoted figures. Uonuma Koshi Hikari, the most prized rice, was 3480 yen for the 5 kilo bag, not 3850 as I had remembered it. As for the low price substitute, the supermarket had 5 kilo bags of Koshi Hikari from other parts of Niigata Prefecture, the prefecture reputed to grow the best rice, for 2180 yen, well below the 2850 figure I quoted for what are less popular strains of rice from less-well-regarded growing areas.
All this fact-checking was possibly for naught, however. The comments section of my earlier post offers a revelation of spicy duplicity, which, upon reflection, is an obvious bit of cheatin' in order to stick it to the The Man Back At HQ.
All this fact-checking was possibly for naught, however. The comments section of my earlier post offers a revelation of spicy duplicity, which, upon reflection, is an obvious bit of cheatin' in order to stick it to the The Man Back At HQ.
Friday, May 04, 2012
Chaos Awaits
Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko managed to slip out of town over the weekend, leaving to Deputy Prime Minister Okada Tatsuya, Loose Cannon Sengoku Yoshito, Environment Minister Hosono Goshi and State Minister for Reconstruction Hirano Tatsuo the unpleasant and somewhat Sisyphean job of trying to convince regional governors and city officials that restarting the Oi Power Plants #3 and #4 reactors is a simply smashing idea. During his absence from Tokyo, the PM managed to slip in and out of the United States without creating much of a fuss or an impression (E - yes, I am aware of the shortcomings of the source). Luckily the summit, which normally would face the probing questions of what the government of this blessed land actually will do to press forward with the move of Marine Corps elements from Futenma to a replacement facility to be built at Henoko in Nago City, got completely lost in the strategic and human rights nightmare of the Chen Guangcheng Affair, which has so far managed, in remarkable thoroughness, to make everyone including Chen looking bereft of any sort of long-range thinking.
After these two immaculate escapes, the PM will be returning to Tokyo, leaving behind only the impression of his heretofore unremarked upon bulk: "For a Japanese PM, this guy has some weight to throw around."
The Impenetrable One returns to an ambiguous situation in the Diet. The business in the House of Councillors should be grinding to a halt due to the Liberal Democratic Party's boycott of all Diet official business, including committee meetings. Unfortunately for the LDP, however, its electoral and Diet business partner the New Komeito has elected to continue participating in House of Councillors affairs, straining the strong relationship between the LDP and the New Komeito and putting immense pressure on the easily exasperated and not particularly creative LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu to craft a bridge to his erstwhile allies.
Meanwhile, withing the DPJ, the question of Ozawa Ichiro's reinstatement to full party membership awaits. It is not really much of a question: with his trial over, a not-guilty verdict and no chance of the prosecutors refiling charges -- double jeopardy being one of the "Suprise, I Still Got Ya" deviations of the this blessed land from the practices of the Greater Mentor the United States -- nothing stands in the way of his reinstatement.
[As regards double jeopardy, I can still remember the look of open-mouthed disbelief on Liberal Democratic Party bigwig Muraoka Kanezo's face when he was told he had been reindicted for his part in the Hashimoto Dental Association Affair. "How is that possible?" he asked, incredulous, his certitude collapsing. He was found guilty in the prosecutors office's second attempt to put him away.]
What Ozawa will do once he is reinstated is the big question. The news media, having the incentive to make politics seem far more exciting than it is, have been predicting that Ozawa, with his allies clustered closely about him rather than loosely as they were in his days of exile, will run rampant through party politics, threatening to withhold their votes on marquee policies such as the enabling legislation for the imposition of a doubling of the consumption tax and for the framework allowing Japan to begin preliminary talks on joining the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.
Truth is, that even despite the suspension, Ozawa and his allies were running pretty rampant before Ozawa's acquittal was handed down on April 26 (one with an implicit warning to Ozawa that the case against him was not proven, that he was not necessarily not guilty of violations of law, only not guilty of the charges under which he had been tried). That they were unable to derail the prime minister's program of imposing the tax, when solid economic arguments against its imposition were available, shows that the Ozawa team is not quite the machine it is purported to be.
As for Ozawa leading his team of intra-party commandos in a torpedoing the Noda Program (and if anyone can tell me what that might be, please leave a comment below), the man in the surgical mask has always done most of his work at home, where no one can see him or out in the countryside. His attendance record at the Diet and at DPJ functions is abysmal. Getting his suspension lifted will likely as not have much effect on his activities, especially with 77% of the voters (Kyodo news poll of April 28 and29) thinking that despite his acquittal, Ozawa still has an obligation to go before the Diet and explain the creative accounting practices of his aides and what, if anything, was going on in his name.
Noda himself must face the wrath of the voters, seemingly dismayed by the government's eagerness to restart the Oi reactors, despite a majority of the voters in the cities and prefectures surrounding the plant opposing the restart as premature. The voters of surrounding communities, ones who have not been bought off over the decades by jobs at the plants, top-class public facilities and services and direct subsidies, find that restarting reactors that are guaranteed safe to operate for the most part (omune ni) is an unacceptably qualified state of affairs. Voters around the nation seem to share these feelings. While the Oi restart cannot be directly linked to the loss of public confidence in the government and the DPJ in April (bloody uninquisitive pollsters...) the restart was the only of two significant rows to break out during the month in question.
That the popularity numbers for the Cabinet are poor is a matter of opinion. I have have argued before that the best an active prime minister can hope for is around 30%, after the initial burst of post-election popularity has dissipated. The Noda Cabinet's current reading of 29%, down two points from the March reading of 31% is relatively good in light of the extremely controversial policies (the consumption tax, the reactor restarts) the government is pursuing.
What is in inescapable is that the popularity numbers for the Democratic Party of Japan are dire and that April was a catastrophic month for the party. To the all important question, "What party will you cast your vote for on the proportion ballot in the next House of Councillors election?" the party-by-party numbers for April 28-29 were as below, with the previous month's figures are in [ ].
DPJ 13.2% [20.0]
LDP 22.7% [23.3]
Your Party 6.0% [7.3]
New Komeito 3.6% [4.2]
Japan Communist Party 3.4% [2.7]
Sunrise Party 1.3% [0.8]
Democratic Socialist Party 0.9% [0.3%]
Japan New Party 0.8% [0.6]
Other 2.3% [3.0]
None Of The Above 46.1% [37.4]
In addition to the pell-mell efforts to restart the Oi reactors, the DPJ's ugly and very public internal battles over the consumption tax likely did little to foster confidence in the party's leadership abilities. Internal debate is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when real compromises are weighed and consequences of decisions considered. Just saying "No" to what the other side is suggesting, however, is a sure way to make your assembly look like an overgrown and overpaid PTA.
The real winner in the month of acrimony was, as is seemingly the case with increasing frequency "None of these b___ds" - which pulled in 46% of the vote, up a whopping 9% from the readings a month earlier.
The goals for the Noda Cabinet and the DPJ, if it can hold together as a party, are clear:
- articulate the reasons why the Cabinet sees raising taxes as a necessity
- continue to find ways of driving wedges in between the New Komeito and the LDP
- hope that after exerting every possible effort to restart the Oi reactors and other reactors feeding into Kansai Electric Power (KEPCO)'s grid, their efforts fail.
The last is a cynical but seemingly necessary failure of the imposition of national will over local governmental authorities. Any responsible national government, looking at the predicted shortfalls of generating power in the Kansai, would be proceeding as the Noda government has proceeded. The politicians and the citizens of the Kansai region, particularly the voters of Osaka City and their mayor, Hashimoto Toru, have perversely been those most opposed to the restart of the reactors, despite KEPCO's assertions that it faces a crushing lack of generating capacity of nearly 20% this summer. (J)
Hashimoto and the voters of Osaka have a deep mistrust of KEPCO, extending back to last year. KEPCO's management has been far from transparent about its power capacity and rate calculations. However, this blessed land dodged a bullet last year, the summer being rather mild and the nation's tolerance for energy saving being exceptionally high. This year may be very different, and will almost certainly be most different not in the capital region or the region hardest hit by the earthquakes and tsunami but in the Kansai and Hokkaido, where the power companies were most deeply committed to nuclear power.
Should Hashimoto and other local leaders persist in hampering the restarts of reactors, and the resulting lack of power generating capacity lead to blackouts, either planned or unplanned, the Kansai's current regionalist challenge to Tokyo control will be severely damaged. Hashimoto's political ambitions may indeed be seriously set back, if the government can pin the blame for the power cuts on him, saying, "We told you so, we told you so, we told you so...and you just would't listen."
A brutal political calculus, perhaps. One that even could lead to some persons actually dying for lack of electricity. However, the blame squarely lies on the ambition and blindness of Hashimoto and his ilk, willing to ride a populist wave, even if it leads to disaster.
After these two immaculate escapes, the PM will be returning to Tokyo, leaving behind only the impression of his heretofore unremarked upon bulk: "For a Japanese PM, this guy has some weight to throw around."
The Impenetrable One returns to an ambiguous situation in the Diet. The business in the House of Councillors should be grinding to a halt due to the Liberal Democratic Party's boycott of all Diet official business, including committee meetings. Unfortunately for the LDP, however, its electoral and Diet business partner the New Komeito has elected to continue participating in House of Councillors affairs, straining the strong relationship between the LDP and the New Komeito and putting immense pressure on the easily exasperated and not particularly creative LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu to craft a bridge to his erstwhile allies.
Meanwhile, withing the DPJ, the question of Ozawa Ichiro's reinstatement to full party membership awaits. It is not really much of a question: with his trial over, a not-guilty verdict and no chance of the prosecutors refiling charges -- double jeopardy being one of the "Suprise, I Still Got Ya" deviations of the this blessed land from the practices of the Greater Mentor the United States -- nothing stands in the way of his reinstatement.
[As regards double jeopardy, I can still remember the look of open-mouthed disbelief on Liberal Democratic Party bigwig Muraoka Kanezo's face when he was told he had been reindicted for his part in the Hashimoto Dental Association Affair. "How is that possible?" he asked, incredulous, his certitude collapsing. He was found guilty in the prosecutors office's second attempt to put him away.]
What Ozawa will do once he is reinstated is the big question. The news media, having the incentive to make politics seem far more exciting than it is, have been predicting that Ozawa, with his allies clustered closely about him rather than loosely as they were in his days of exile, will run rampant through party politics, threatening to withhold their votes on marquee policies such as the enabling legislation for the imposition of a doubling of the consumption tax and for the framework allowing Japan to begin preliminary talks on joining the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.
Truth is, that even despite the suspension, Ozawa and his allies were running pretty rampant before Ozawa's acquittal was handed down on April 26 (one with an implicit warning to Ozawa that the case against him was not proven, that he was not necessarily not guilty of violations of law, only not guilty of the charges under which he had been tried). That they were unable to derail the prime minister's program of imposing the tax, when solid economic arguments against its imposition were available, shows that the Ozawa team is not quite the machine it is purported to be.
As for Ozawa leading his team of intra-party commandos in a torpedoing the Noda Program (and if anyone can tell me what that might be, please leave a comment below), the man in the surgical mask has always done most of his work at home, where no one can see him or out in the countryside. His attendance record at the Diet and at DPJ functions is abysmal. Getting his suspension lifted will likely as not have much effect on his activities, especially with 77% of the voters (Kyodo news poll of April 28 and29) thinking that despite his acquittal, Ozawa still has an obligation to go before the Diet and explain the creative accounting practices of his aides and what, if anything, was going on in his name.
Noda himself must face the wrath of the voters, seemingly dismayed by the government's eagerness to restart the Oi reactors, despite a majority of the voters in the cities and prefectures surrounding the plant opposing the restart as premature. The voters of surrounding communities, ones who have not been bought off over the decades by jobs at the plants, top-class public facilities and services and direct subsidies, find that restarting reactors that are guaranteed safe to operate for the most part (omune ni) is an unacceptably qualified state of affairs. Voters around the nation seem to share these feelings. While the Oi restart cannot be directly linked to the loss of public confidence in the government and the DPJ in April (bloody uninquisitive pollsters...) the restart was the only of two significant rows to break out during the month in question.
That the popularity numbers for the Cabinet are poor is a matter of opinion. I have have argued before that the best an active prime minister can hope for is around 30%, after the initial burst of post-election popularity has dissipated. The Noda Cabinet's current reading of 29%, down two points from the March reading of 31% is relatively good in light of the extremely controversial policies (the consumption tax, the reactor restarts) the government is pursuing.
What is in inescapable is that the popularity numbers for the Democratic Party of Japan are dire and that April was a catastrophic month for the party. To the all important question, "What party will you cast your vote for on the proportion ballot in the next House of Councillors election?" the party-by-party numbers for April 28-29 were as below, with the previous month's figures are in [ ].
DPJ 13.2% [20.0]
LDP 22.7% [23.3]
Your Party 6.0% [7.3]
New Komeito 3.6% [4.2]
Japan Communist Party 3.4% [2.7]
Sunrise Party 1.3% [0.8]
Democratic Socialist Party 0.9% [0.3%]
Japan New Party 0.8% [0.6]
Other 2.3% [3.0]
None Of The Above 46.1% [37.4]
In addition to the pell-mell efforts to restart the Oi reactors, the DPJ's ugly and very public internal battles over the consumption tax likely did little to foster confidence in the party's leadership abilities. Internal debate is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when real compromises are weighed and consequences of decisions considered. Just saying "No" to what the other side is suggesting, however, is a sure way to make your assembly look like an overgrown and overpaid PTA.
The real winner in the month of acrimony was, as is seemingly the case with increasing frequency "None of these b___ds" - which pulled in 46% of the vote, up a whopping 9% from the readings a month earlier.
The goals for the Noda Cabinet and the DPJ, if it can hold together as a party, are clear:
- articulate the reasons why the Cabinet sees raising taxes as a necessity
- continue to find ways of driving wedges in between the New Komeito and the LDP
- hope that after exerting every possible effort to restart the Oi reactors and other reactors feeding into Kansai Electric Power (KEPCO)'s grid, their efforts fail.
The last is a cynical but seemingly necessary failure of the imposition of national will over local governmental authorities. Any responsible national government, looking at the predicted shortfalls of generating power in the Kansai, would be proceeding as the Noda government has proceeded. The politicians and the citizens of the Kansai region, particularly the voters of Osaka City and their mayor, Hashimoto Toru, have perversely been those most opposed to the restart of the reactors, despite KEPCO's assertions that it faces a crushing lack of generating capacity of nearly 20% this summer. (J)
Hashimoto and the voters of Osaka have a deep mistrust of KEPCO, extending back to last year. KEPCO's management has been far from transparent about its power capacity and rate calculations. However, this blessed land dodged a bullet last year, the summer being rather mild and the nation's tolerance for energy saving being exceptionally high. This year may be very different, and will almost certainly be most different not in the capital region or the region hardest hit by the earthquakes and tsunami but in the Kansai and Hokkaido, where the power companies were most deeply committed to nuclear power.
Should Hashimoto and other local leaders persist in hampering the restarts of reactors, and the resulting lack of power generating capacity lead to blackouts, either planned or unplanned, the Kansai's current regionalist challenge to Tokyo control will be severely damaged. Hashimoto's political ambitions may indeed be seriously set back, if the government can pin the blame for the power cuts on him, saying, "We told you so, we told you so, we told you so...and you just would't listen."
A brutal political calculus, perhaps. One that even could lead to some persons actually dying for lack of electricity. However, the blame squarely lies on the ambition and blindness of Hashimoto and his ilk, willing to ride a populist wave, even if it leads to disaster.
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Constitution Day Readings
It is Constitution Day. The front page stories are about specific Articles of the Constitution. It is otherwise a slow news day, aside from the complete bordel of the Chen Guangcheng affair. On television, the revisionists and the anti-revisionists are slugging it out (on NHK it's Morimoto Satoshi versus Egawa Shoko in a no-holds barred death match. As she is the crusader who took on Aum Shinrikyo and survived, my money is on Egawa).
Michael Auslin has a new essay up at Foreign Policy riffing on the Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's semi-summit (no dinner?) with President Barack Obama, the face-saving agreement signed at the last minute regarding redeployment of U.S. forces currently on Okinawa, the changes in Japan's positions on arms exports and the U.S.-drafted Constitution. (Link). It is a reality-based piece, noting what are real changes in the way this blessed land has interpreted the limits set by Article 9.
I am afraid though, that Auslin goes too far by mentioning two subjects one should not bring up in polite company: the F-35 and Abe Shinzo. The F-35 program is imploding under its own weight (E) and one observer even declares the plane a threat to the Japan-U.S. alliance . It would be unseemly of me to say I told you so... but I told you so.
As for former prime minister Abe Shinzo, the wiser course remains to pretend he never happened. Even his good ideas are not being copied.
To every Auslin, who knows something about the Constitution and how difficult it would be to alter it, there are a passel commentators blessedly ignorant of it.
The winner of this year's I Don't Know Me No Constitution Award goes to the milbloggers at TIME magazine, who are making this something of a bad habit.
Where to begin when a post begins with this humdinger of an assertion?
Yes, I have noticed that the motto of the milblogs of TIME magazine is "Where military intelligence is not a contradiction in terms."
Michael Auslin has a new essay up at Foreign Policy riffing on the Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's semi-summit (no dinner?) with President Barack Obama, the face-saving agreement signed at the last minute regarding redeployment of U.S. forces currently on Okinawa, the changes in Japan's positions on arms exports and the U.S.-drafted Constitution. (Link). It is a reality-based piece, noting what are real changes in the way this blessed land has interpreted the limits set by Article 9.
I am afraid though, that Auslin goes too far by mentioning two subjects one should not bring up in polite company: the F-35 and Abe Shinzo. The F-35 program is imploding under its own weight (E) and one observer even declares the plane a threat to the Japan-U.S. alliance . It would be unseemly of me to say I told you so... but I told you so.
As for former prime minister Abe Shinzo, the wiser course remains to pretend he never happened. Even his good ideas are not being copied.
To every Auslin, who knows something about the Constitution and how difficult it would be to alter it, there are a passel commentators blessedly ignorant of it.
The winner of this year's I Don't Know Me No Constitution Award goes to the milbloggers at TIME magazine, who are making this something of a bad habit.
Where to begin when a post begins with this humdinger of an assertion?
The prospect of U.S. and Japanese troops fighting side by side in the next land war in Asia — and heaven forbid the need for either — comes a step closer with a little-noted provision in U.S. realignment plans announced last week."Fighting side by side in the next land war in Asia" - takes the breath away, does it not?
(Link)
Yes, I have noticed that the motto of the milblogs of TIME magazine is "Where military intelligence is not a contradiction in terms."
That Southern Sort Of Sanity
Usually the thought of a National Bureau of Asian Research interview of a director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy would send me running for the hills.
However, the NBR interview with Rory Metcalf is a worthwhile read, realist in the most positive sense of that loaded word. (Link)
I must confess a particular affinity for one of Metcalf's propositions, though my heart knows it to be little more than a vain wish:
Having the world's second largest economy and a significant capacity to carry out soft power initiatives should have given this blessed land enough leverage to stand its ground and talk sense to the United States, when the United States, for its own internal domestic political reasons could not make sense of a situation. However, strategic confusion within this blessed land as regards its neighborhood, with the right wing ramping up the DPRK abductees issue and fears of strategic abandonment over Futenma to the point where intelligent debate over Japan's own position in the world was driven to the fringes, quashed the development of an intellectual alternative to whatever-the-United-States-says-as-long-as-we-do-not-have-to-provide-troops bureaucratic default response to any of the world's crises.
Of course, internal strategic confusion was only half of the problem. The U.S. prides itself as the defender of democratic values. However, the sheer size of the U.S. security apparatus means those values do not necessarily extend to the U.S. listening to what any of its friends and allies say. The size of Japan's population and economy could have made this blessed land a worthwhile sounding board for the saner minds in Washington, However, the relationship between Japan and the U.S. was and is radically asymmetric, with the U.S. committed to the defense of Japan while Japan is not committed to the defense of the United States. Japanese expressions of caution would have fallen on deaf ears.
A similar asymmetry exists in the Australia-U.S. relationship. Given Australia's intense economic integration with the People's Republic of China and its diplomatic relations with the DPRK, Canberra should and does have a different and useful take on the politico-economic development of East Asia, one the U.S. could profit from if its government and non-government players choose to listen. Unfortunately, because the U.S. is such a disproportionately huge presence not just in the region but around the globe, it will likely refuse to listen to advice, no matter how sound. "Shut up and take our Marines," will be the response from the Washington echo chamber, where flexibility and patience are not considered the worthwhile counsels of serious thinkers.
However, the NBR interview with Rory Metcalf is a worthwhile read, realist in the most positive sense of that loaded word. (Link)
I must confess a particular affinity for one of Metcalf's propositions, though my heart knows it to be little more than a vain wish:
And certainly the closer the Australia-U.S. alliance becomes, the more confident Canberra should feel in offering candid counsel to Washington about Asia policy.I had always hoped that the government of this blessed land might play a such a role in its dealings with the United States, that of the friend who grabs the other friend's shoulder and says, "Will you please just calm down and consider the repercussions, for just one second, before you react?"
Having the world's second largest economy and a significant capacity to carry out soft power initiatives should have given this blessed land enough leverage to stand its ground and talk sense to the United States, when the United States, for its own internal domestic political reasons could not make sense of a situation. However, strategic confusion within this blessed land as regards its neighborhood, with the right wing ramping up the DPRK abductees issue and fears of strategic abandonment over Futenma to the point where intelligent debate over Japan's own position in the world was driven to the fringes, quashed the development of an intellectual alternative to whatever-the-United-States-says-as-long-as-we-do-not-have-to-provide-troops bureaucratic default response to any of the world's crises.
Of course, internal strategic confusion was only half of the problem. The U.S. prides itself as the defender of democratic values. However, the sheer size of the U.S. security apparatus means those values do not necessarily extend to the U.S. listening to what any of its friends and allies say. The size of Japan's population and economy could have made this blessed land a worthwhile sounding board for the saner minds in Washington, However, the relationship between Japan and the U.S. was and is radically asymmetric, with the U.S. committed to the defense of Japan while Japan is not committed to the defense of the United States. Japanese expressions of caution would have fallen on deaf ears.
A similar asymmetry exists in the Australia-U.S. relationship. Given Australia's intense economic integration with the People's Republic of China and its diplomatic relations with the DPRK, Canberra should and does have a different and useful take on the politico-economic development of East Asia, one the U.S. could profit from if its government and non-government players choose to listen. Unfortunately, because the U.S. is such a disproportionately huge presence not just in the region but around the globe, it will likely refuse to listen to advice, no matter how sound. "Shut up and take our Marines," will be the response from the Washington echo chamber, where flexibility and patience are not considered the worthwhile counsels of serious thinkers.
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Can Someone Else Write This Post, Please?
There is a blog post that probably should be written about a micro-abomination committed by the Asia Society against the reputation of this blessed land.
You have to start with this bit of text on the Asia Society's blog (Link) by Shreeya Sinha. Her bio is displayed to the right of the text.
The text tries to justify the Asia Society awarding a grant to videographer Okahara Kosuke, who has produced a documentary following the lives of six women who cut themselves. The text claims that self-injury is a major social problem among women in Japan, which unfortunately for Ms. Sinha, is untrue. We know this is so because an article in the journal Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences finds:
Getting back to the text by Ms. Sinha, she makes a real go of proving the unprovable by offering a citation (Link). Unfortunately for Ms. Sinha (I repeat myself) the citation is a secondhand report from a self-published sex memoir of a Jamaican-American former English teacher entitled -- and here would be an excellent place to toss in an "and I am not making this up" -- Black Passenger Yellow Cabs: Of Exile and Excess in Japan. That the citation misspells the name of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and offers no clue as to where one can find the study cited is hardly noticeable in a paragraph where the first sentence has the former teacher claiming to have had sexual relations with 40 women in his first three years in Japan and 20 more after his retirement from playing the field (his italics, not yours or mine).
Having navigated through this jaw-dropping passage, you might want to work in the Abe Shinzo quote the Society is so proud to display on its website:
So, whoever you are, please write this post -- because, frankly typing, I just cannot bring myself to do it.
You have to start with this bit of text on the Asia Society's blog (Link) by Shreeya Sinha. Her bio is displayed to the right of the text.
The text tries to justify the Asia Society awarding a grant to videographer Okahara Kosuke, who has produced a documentary following the lives of six women who cut themselves. The text claims that self-injury is a major social problem among women in Japan, which unfortunately for Ms. Sinha, is untrue. We know this is so because an article in the journal Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences finds:
The present study clarified that 9.9% of junior and senior high-school students (male, 7.5%; female, 12.1%) reported a lifetime experience of deliberate self-injury at least once. These findings confirm our previous studies using a small sample, which reported that the prevalence of self-injury in male and female junior high-school students was 8.0% and 9.3%5 and that 14.3% of female senior high-school students reported self-cutting at least once. The present results also appear to be approximately consistent to the prevalence of self-injury in other countries: 11.2% of female high-school students in the UK, 12%of female university students in the USA, 13.9% of Canadian adolescents, although only Turkish high-school students had a higher prevalence of self-injury (21.4%).A hat tip has to be given to Mark McDonald, a writer from The New York Times Rendezvous blogs, whose post on the Asia Society's display of Okahara's work links to the journal Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences article, even though the findings therein undermine the assertion that Japanese young women engage in self-injury at rates that are somehow aberrant.
Getting back to the text by Ms. Sinha, she makes a real go of proving the unprovable by offering a citation (Link). Unfortunately for Ms. Sinha (I repeat myself) the citation is a secondhand report from a self-published sex memoir of a Jamaican-American former English teacher entitled -- and here would be an excellent place to toss in an "and I am not making this up" -- Black Passenger Yellow Cabs: Of Exile and Excess in Japan. That the citation misspells the name of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and offers no clue as to where one can find the study cited is hardly noticeable in a paragraph where the first sentence has the former teacher claiming to have had sexual relations with 40 women in his first three years in Japan and 20 more after his retirement from playing the field (his italics, not yours or mine).
Having navigated through this jaw-dropping passage, you might want to work in the Abe Shinzo quote the Society is so proud to display on its website:
"The Asia Society has been playing an important role in deepening ties and understanding among the peoples of Asia-Pacific and the United States. I truly expect the Asia Society will enhance this role for furthering the region's stability and prosperity."Those with some stamina might want to double back to work on the second half of the McDonald Rendezvous post, where he visits with the hikikomori phenomenon, this in order to rekindle the debate on whether or not the hikikomori exist as a statistical or clinical entity.
So, whoever you are, please write this post -- because, frankly typing, I just cannot bring myself to do it.
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