Still the Sea of Japan

THE JOINT LOBBYING EFFORT OF BOTH KOREAS to change the name of the Sea of Japan to the East Sea ran aground–again–when the ninth conference on the standardization of geographical names announced that the status quo will be maintained.

Conference Chair F.J. Ormeling encouraged the three countries to find a compromise (Ha!) or to agree to differ and to report by the next conference, which will be held in five years.

The two Koreas claimed that the Sea of Japan name came into wide use during the Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula. The Japanese counter that the name was used long before that.

The Koreans also note that a quarter of commercial maps worldwide use both names. That this argument was rejected suggests international bodies might now be aware that the table-pounding tactics Choson uber-nationalists use to promote their fantasies can be intimidating (or can generate a desire to avoid any hassle).

The Koreans also complained that their efforts to reach a “mutually agreeable solution” have been stymied because the Japanese have agreed to only one bilateral meeting since 2002. This also suggests that international bodies have wised up about what Korean activists really mean by the expression “mutually agreeable solutions”.

Perhaps if the Koreans were interested in bilateral meetings for mutually agreeable solutions, they could promote the spirit of bilateralism by pulling up a chair and discussing the status of Takeshima.

Jiro Kodera, the Japanese representative, said:

“My delegation believes it is high time for this issue to be put to rest and for us to turn our attention to the true aims of this conference.”

Amen.

The new Abe Cabinet: Round two

FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND MASTER POLITICAL MANIPULATOR Lyndon Baines Johnson once remarked about then-F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, “It’s better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.”

That maxim came to mind when scanning the appointments of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to his second Cabinet. Mr. Abe’s previous Cabinet was battered by financial scandals and repercussions from its misstatements, and his government was rocked by revelations of the Social Insurance Agency’s improper handling of pension records. He was walloped by critics on the left at home and abroad for implementing policies to move beyond the “postwar regime” and assert Japan’s presence internationally, to proceed with Constitutional reform, and to rework the educational system. Finally, he was jabbed by many in his own party for failing to take responsibility for the defeat of the Liberal Democrats in the July upper house elections by stepping down.

Rather than change course to assuage his critics, the embattled Mr. Abe seems to have chosen a different tack. He has forged a united front by bringing all the LDP pissers inside the tent and take on the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

These are some of his appointees:

Foreign Minister: Nobutaka Machimura

This is Mr. Machimura’s second term as foreign minister, and just as important, he is the head of the largest LDP faction (i.e., party-within-a-party)–and the faction that Mr. Abe was once a member of. He shares the prime minister’s goal of a more assertive Japan. He will lead the fight in the Diet to continue Japan’s mission of assisting the American effort in Afghanistan by refueling ships. The legislation expires this year, and the DPJ strongly opposes an extension.

Finance Minister: Fukushiro Nukaga

Mr. Nukaga considered running against Mr. Abe last year for the party presidency (and therefore prime minister), but decided against it. He is a member of the Tsushima faction, once headed by former prime ministers Hashimoto and Takeshita.

Defense Minister: Masahiko Komura

The new defense minister formerly held the post of foreign minister. His hardline approach to North Korea is compatible with that of the prime minister’s. He also heads his own party faction.

Education Minister: Bunmei Ibuki

Mr. Ibuki was retained from the first Abe cabinet. And yes, he is also a faction leader.

And, the most interesting of all:

Health Minister: Yoichi Masuzoe

Mr. Masuzoe (first photo) is a member of the upper house and is unaffiliated with any faction. The University of Tokyo political science professor won a reputation for outspokenness and candid criticism as a guest on television programs. He parlayed this into a Diet seat by a route often chosen by celebrities—winning election to the upper house instead of the politically more important lower house.

The media focus is on Mr. Masuzoe’s sharp criticism of both Mr. Abe and his Cabinet over the past year. He called for Fumio Kyuma (ill-advised statements) and Norihiko Akagi (political funds scandal) to resign from the previous Cabinet, which they eventually did. He took the prime minister to task for extending the previous Diet session past the June deadline, and for failing to resign after the upper house election defeat. Mr. Masuzoe also said Prime Minister Abe was beginning to resemble the main character in the fable of the emperor’s new clothes.

He will now be the man responsible for overseeing and explaining to the public the party’s efforts to clean up the pension system mess. This is a critical job because this issue has now become the third rail of Japanese politics.

What the media is overlooking is his former position as the deputy director of the Drafting Committee on the new Constitution. In that role, he was the point man in explaining to the pubic the LDP’s draft Constitution, including their proposed revision of Article 9, the so-called peace clause.

Therefore, rather than soft-pedaling his agenda in the wake of the election defeat, Prime Minister Abe has instead looked for ways to continue its implementation.

• He traveled to India to discuss with the Indians an alliance with Australia and the U.S., an idea he floated in his book two years ago. During the visit, he stopped off in Calcutta to meet Prasanta Pal, the son of Radhabinod Pal (second photo), the only member of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal to vote for acquittal of the defendants. He was also the only member of the panel with a background in international law. (We might well count this as a surrogate Yasukuni visit.)
• He brought in for a second term as foreign minister the man who controls the largest bloc of LDP Diet members to prepare for a fight to keep Japan involved in military operations abroad.
• He chose as his new defense minister a man in synch with him on North Korean policy.
• He retained his education minister, almost certainly with the intention of continuing his educational reforms.
• And he brought one of his harshest critics in the party into the tent to deal with, and hopefully resolve, the explosive pension issue—a man who shares with the prime minister the goal of rewriting the Constitution.

In other words, it could get very wet and smelly indeed for the people standing outside the LDP tent.

The upcoming parliamentary maneuvering promises to be fascinating. Though the opposition controls the upper house, the LDP can still pass all of its legislation with a two-thirds vote in the lower house—and it has the numbers to do it. Thus, the flow of legislation could easily wind up looking like this: Passage by the lower house - Rejection by the upper house - Passage by a two-thirds majority in the lower house.

The trick for the LDP will be to make it appear as if they are sensitive to the wishes of the opposition and are not steamrolling them–while they are in the process of steamrolling them. Meanwhile, it will be up to the DPJ to advance a positive agenda in the upper house without seeming to be the usual gang of obstructionists–while trying to obstruct everything they do.

How this match will turn out is still anyone’s guess, but from here it looks as if the LDP has gotten up off the canvas and is back in its fighting stance.

UPDATE:The lead story in this morning’s Japan Times concerns the new Cabinet. The headline reads, “Abe taps faction veterans for Cabinet”. So far, so good. Above the headline, however, is the caption, “No Surprises”.

This is ridiculous even for the integrity-challenged Japan Times. Considering Mr. Masuzoe’s criticism of the prime minister and his relative lack of experience, his inclusion is most definitely a surprise. Also qualifying as a surprise is the selection of Iwate Gov. Hiroya Masuda as the internal affairs minister. Mr. Masuda’s reputation is that of a reformer.

It is a curious phenomenon. For decades, the media insisted it was unbiased. Now that no one believes them anymore–indeed, with employees of the BBC and American television networks even admitting it–one might have thought they’d clean up their act. Instead, being outed seems to have liberated them. They’ve gotten even worse, and among them, the Japan Times has become downright amateurish.

UPDATE #2: Last year, Prime Minister Abe used the phrase “A beautiful country” as the slogan for his administration. It was also the title of his 2005 bestseller. He stopped using it before the upper house election to prevent the opposition from using it as a weapon in the campaign. When speaking to the media yesterday, however, Mr. Abe intentionally used the phrase three times.

As I argued a couple of days ago, and the new Cabinet line-up seems to suggest, Mr. Abe might think that his core philosophy and policies are not to blame for the problems of his administration.

This is an additional hint that he will continue to pursue his agenda while trying to clean up the pension mess, this time without any blundering from the Cabinet.

A snap poll from Kyodo shows a Cabinet support rate of 40%, with a 45% disapproval rating. Still not ideal from the LDP perspective, but much better than it was last month.

Are Japanese leftists playing with matches?

A FIRE STARTED among some shelving material placed in front of a discount store on the first floor of a five-story commercial building in Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward at about 9:00 p.m. on Sunday. The blaze completely destroyed about 100 square meters on the first floor. The shop proprietor and an employee of an Internet café on the second floor suffered light injuries before it was extinguished.

Police are investigating whether this incident is related to another fire of suspicious origin that occurred at the same location on the 15th. At that time, boxes made of cardboard and wood were discovered on fire in front of the building.

The third floor of the same building is the location of the office of former Agriculture Minister Yoshinobu Shimamura of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. He represents Tokyo’s 16th district in the lower house, and is also the chairman of a non-partisan group of legislators who encourage people to visit Yasukuni Shrine. Mr. Shimamura last visited the shrine on the 15th, the date of Japan’s surrender in the war and the date of the first suspicious fire.

In August last year, one ultranationalist burnt down the family home of LDP lower house member Koichi Kato, who had criticized then-Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine. This isolated incident was given wide exposure in the mass media overseas, which claimed to see it as emblematic of a troubling resurgence of right-wing nationalism in the country.

In their coverage of the two Tokyo fires at Mr. Shimamura’s office, the Japanese media are speculating that it was not a direct attack on the politician’s office, based on the specific location of the second fire. Mr. Shimamura seems to be of the same opinion, but then no one has an explanation for two fires of suspicious origin at this site less than two weeks apart.

The first fire merited a brief report from Kyodo, who will probably file a report about this one too. One wonders if this will prompt any breathless speculation overseas about the rise of left-wing threats on free speech.

I think we already know the answer to that.

Why didn’t Abe resign?

Though group consciousness is a much stronger force in Japan than in the West, it does not absolve anyone from personal responsibility, particularly the leader of the group. When the group suffers a defeat or a serious setback, the leader with direct responsibility is expected to atone for that failure. This has taken many different forms over the centuries, ranging from ritual suicide and finger amputation to resignation from executive positions.

The political world is no exception, and politicians are expected to take responsibility for particularly serious defeats. For example, former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto resigned after the 1998 upper house election when the ruling Liberal Democratic Party managed to win only 44 seats.

When it became apparent early this summer that the party would again be thrashed in the latest upper house election at the end of July, speculation began to mount as to what number of LDP losses would force Prime Minister Shinzo Abe out of office. It was widely assumed that Mr. Abe would step down—or the party would force him out—if they won fewer than 45 seats. Yet, less than a week before the election, those close to the prime minister revealed that he had no intention of resigning regardless of the results.

Those results were even worse than the party had feared. They managed to win only 37 of the 121 seats at stake. Three party elders gathered early on the night of the election and agreed among themselves that Mr. Abe would have to go if the party failed to win 40 seats. These three men were former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori (first photo), then-LDP upper house caucus chairman Mikio Aoki (second photo), and LDP Secretary General Hidenao Nakagawa (third photo).

When the extent of the debacle became clear, Mr. Nakagawa visited the prime minister at his official residence and gave him the word. But Mr. Abe was having none of it. He replied that he was staying in office regardless of the election’s outcome. When informed of this, Mr. Mori is reported to have said, “There’s nothing to do about it.”

As it turned out, both Mr. Aoki and Mr. Nakagawa were the ones who accepted responsibility and resigned their posts within the party, though Mr. Aoki is staying on until a replacement can be found.

Prime Minster Abe is of course fully aware of the practice of Japanese political leaders to assume responsibility and step down. Why did he refuse? After all, Prime Minister Hashimoto resigned the day after that humiliating defeat.

Could it be that Mr. Abe thinks he isn’t responsible?

Matsuri da! (47): Fighting over flowers

FLOWER POWER was one of the slogans the hippies used a few centuries ago now, and some of them were serious about it. There was a song about wearing flowers in the hair when visiting San Francisco, and during one anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon, the protestors actually walked up to the security personnel and stuck flowers into their rifle barrels.

It’s nice symbolism, but few were aware in those days that the symbolism had already been turned on its head years before in Japan at an annual festival in which people whack each other with bamboo sticks to grab artificial flowers that are said to bring the bearer good luck and drive away evil. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

But that’s what happens at the Gion festival of the Otori Shinto Shrine in Koka, Shiga Prefecture. Known in Japan as a fighting festival, it’s a popular event locally, and the participants once again enjoyed smacking each other in a Japanese version of the War of the Roses when it was held on the 23rd and 24th last month.

The festival consists of two separate events. The first is a lantern festival held on the 23rd (first photo), in which the participants wear lanterns decorated with pictures of paper flowers on their heads. They enter the shrine grounds chanting, “Inyo Isora”, and then collide roughly with each other until they smash their floral headgear.

Of course it attracts a lot of spectators. That’s even better than professional wrestling!

That was followed the next day with the flower-snatching event (second photo). (Flower snatching is not a phrase I made up–that’s what it’s actually called.) The people in each local district collect staffs (called umbrellas) decorated with flowers. These are about 2.5 meters high, and the people participating carry them into the shrine dancing and singing the same “Inyo Isora” chant. It almost sounds like something the hippies would have done.

The similarity ends there, however. Some of the other people attending try to knock over the staffs with bamboo sticks. (Remember, this is occurring on the grounds of a religious institution with the blessing of the Shinto priests.) At least some of these people are wearing bamboo hats festooned with flowers. Once the decorated staffs are brought down to earth, they scramble to snatch those flowers as a charm to ward off bad luck.

I’ve mentioned before that in events such as these in Japan, it is best not to get involved in a scrum unless you’ve got the mindset of a linebacker. Old ladies will think nothing of giving you an elbow in the ribs. That goes double at this floral show, because one might get whacked with one of those bamboos sticks I mentioned earlier while reaching for an artificial flower.

The folks in Koka train the kids early. When the main events are finished, there is a traditional dance performance by girls of primary school age. Somehow they have collisions with the taiko drums during the performance—the reports are not more specific on this point—and a few of them wind up on the ground.

There isn’t a lot of information on this particular festival available in Japanese. I couldn’t discover when it started or the reasons people fight over flowers. But I did find out that the festival is held in supplication of a bountiful harvest and has been designated an intangible cultural asset of the prefecture.

If I were one of those coming home with a few bruises after getting clobbered with a bamboo stick while trying to pick up a flower off the ground, I don’t think I’d use the word intangible to describe the experience!

Abe: The most interesting leader in the free world

GORDON CHANG of Commentary’s Contentions blog has been criticized in this space before, but his latest post about Japan shows that he deserves credit for the ability to think outside the envelope and recognize a good idea when he sees one.

This post refers to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as “the most interesting leader in the free world” for his latest initiative to form a partnership of democracies in Asia. These would include India, Australia, and the United States. He suggests that the idea is so good, Washington should have proposed it. (In fact, the idea is so good Washington doesn’t even have to be a part of it.)

Mr. Chang also praises the Japanese prime minister for his firm stance against North Korea and stiffening Washington’s backbone last year.

The alliance is not really a new idea for Mr. Abe; he floated it in his book two years ago. It demonstrates one possibility for including innovative Japanese ideas in an alliance of proactive democracies.

Some might object that this alliance could make China nervous, but that misses the point. China has nothing to be nervous about if it behaves as a responsible member of the international community.

I’m excited about Mr. Chang’s post because it shows that someone at last is finally paying attention to some of the fascinating developments in Japan and going beyond the tired cliches that predominate in journalism about this country.

I’ve had a post on the back burner about some of the creativity bubbling up in Japan regarding domestic issues, but I’ve been delayed by one thing and another. This should give me the impetus to finish it!

Japan News Review

LOOKS LIKE I TOOK an unscheduled semi-vacation this week, but that should end this weekend because I have several items in the pipeline.

Until they are finished, you might want to check out a new site called Japan News Review, which is a portal site for news about Japan in English. The site was just launched last month, and it looks quite promising.

Pile driving mochi

ONE OF THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS of traditional Japanese religious observances is mochi, a highly glutinous variety of rice that is steamed, pounded into a gummy mass that resembles dough, and then either cut into squares or shaped into round cakes.

It would be difficult to find someone in Japan who hasn’t eaten mochi, which is invariably made at New Year’s. The rounded cakes are used as holiday decorations in the home and eaten as a New Year’s treat. One of the events associated with that holiday is the mochitsuki, or mochi pounding, held a few days before.

The freshly steamed rice is placed into a mortar and whacked with a large mallet. I took part in a mochitsuki once, and that was enough–it’s hard work, which is not my idea of a something fun to do during the holidays. Also, mochi is one of those foods that I’ll eat if someone puts out for me, but won’t go out of my way to find. It tastes fine, but it’s gummy and sticky; generally speaking, the Japanese seem to enjoy foods with this consistency more than Westerners do. It also has to be carefully chewed and swallowed. Every New Year’s, there are always newspaper reports of someone choking on mochi.

Mochi pounding is not exclusively a New Year’s event, however. Just last week, on the 15th, parishioners at the Iwatowake Shinto Shrine in Shioya-machi, Tochigi Prefecture, took a lot of the sweat out of the process by using the largest mortar in Japan for a mochitsuki. The mortar is three meters in diameter and weighs 12 tons. The upper section has an eight-meter high wooden frame and a 400-kilogram pestle lifted with a rope. The folks in Shioya-machi admit they conduct the mochitsuki for the PR, but they also timed it to correspond with the date of the war’s end to incorporate their wishes for peace.

The shrine itself is just three years shy of its 1,200th anniversary and has a rebuilding project in the works. This is the last time the mochitsuki, which you can see in the photo, will be held at the present site.

The rice pounding attracted a crowd of 1,000, who made it easy on themselves by pulling the rope instead of actually pounding the rice with a mallet. This year, they wound up pounding 180 kilograms worth of mochi.

Fortunately, there were no reports of any gustatory mishaps among the citizens of Shioya-machi, so apparently they were able to swallow it all safely!

Under the radar in Japan-Korean relations

IT’S IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER that regardless of the impression one may get from the media, the relationship between Japan and South Korea is quite mature in most areas except for the political sector. Here’s another example: the recent announcement that Kyushu University in Fukuoka City and Busan National University in Busan, South Korea, will conduct a joint lecture course in the fall semester to be taught by the same group of professors using the same textbooks. The Japanese education ministry says this will probably be the first time one of the country’s national universities (as opposed to a private school) conducts a joint course with an overseas university.

The course will be called “Future-Oriented Perspectives on the Japan-South Korean Relationship”. (In Japan, anyway; I’m sure they’ll turn that last bit around in Busan.) Both schools will contribute seven professors, who will deliver their lectures at both campuses. (The plane trip between the cities takes just under an hour, and a high-speed jetfoil makes the trip by sea in three hours.)

The students will examine bilateral ties from several angles, including politics, economics, and law. Specific topics to be covered include “Japanese-South Korean Popular Culture and the Mass Media”, “East Asian Regionalism and Japan from the Korean Perspective”, and “Marriage and the Family in Japan and South Korea”. The content of the lectures will be the same at both universities, and they will be delivered in English.

Kyushu University plans to offer the course to third- and fourth-year students and graduate students, while Busan University will place no restrictions on enrollment. The two universities signed an academic exchange agreement in 1986, but have done little together until now. The impetus for the joint lectures came when prominent private-sector citizens from the two cities inaugurated the Fukuoka-Busan Forum last September, to which both universities sent representatives. They agreed during the forum to expand academic ties, and preparations for the course began then.

An official with Busan National University was quoted as saying he hoped students would be able to compare their reactions and their thinking in regard to all the subjects discussed, as well as exchange opinions, at least indirectly. Meanwhile, a Kyushu University official said he hoped the course would help foster a new generation in both countries that could create a bilateral relationship based on interdependence.

Ordinarily, most studies of popular culture at a university are good for little more than killing time, but that particular lecture has the potential to be educational if conducted honestly, with a frank examination of how the South Koreans borrowed from the Japanese during the years when Japanese pop culture was banned in the country. The ban was lifted in 1998 on magazines, comic books, non-age-restricted movies, award-winning animated films, TV documentaries, computer games, and non-Japanese language music recordings. The country later lifted the prohibition on live musical performances and music sales, though pirated versions and Internet MP3 files had been available.

From the opposite direction, of course, was the recent wave of Korean TV dramas and such singers as BoA. In fact, NHK radio subjected its audience to a BoA song just this morning.

As this BBC article noted in 2004:

Some say the ban on Japanese culture had degenerated over the decades into little more than trade protectionism.
“Unfortunately in the past Korean artists would rip off Japanese music because they thought no-one would notice,” says Bernie Cho of MTV.

That quibble aside, doesn’t this all go to show yet again that politicians are always the last to get it?

N.B.: This is taken from a Japanese-language report in the Nishinippon Shimbun written by their Korean correspondent. Links in Japanese newspapers disappear as quickly as ice cubes in August, so I haven’t provided one. This is a quick summary.

N.B. #2: The South Koreans have expended considerable energy over the years in banning Japanese culture, and recently there was a national debate over their FTA with the U.S. that required the liberalization of restrictions on screening Hollywood films. But that view is not only narrow-minded, it is also self-defeating. Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has argued for some time now that the globalization of culture is a very old phenomenon, it has resulted in the creation of art forms that we mistakenly think are pure and indigenous, and it in fact encourages rather than hinders local creativity.

He has also noted that French cuisine hasn’t died out in France, despite the highest per capita rate of McDonald’s outlets in Europe, nor has Hong Kong’s many outlets kept it from being the world’s capital for Chinese cuisine. Here is one of his articles, in .pdf, that summarizes his position. Of interest to those who would protect Korean cinema is this article, in which he uses a similar French quota on overseas films to argue that “Protection actually decreases an industry’s chance of competing successfully in world markets.”

Matsuri da! (47): Almost as good as hurling thunderbolts!

THERE’S NOTHING THE JAPANESE LIKE BETTER than a blazing fire festival. It makes no difference whether the event is a small one, such as the ceremony in which a 200-kilogram homemade torch is physically hauled up a small mountain and ignited at the summit, or a large one, such as the Daimonji in Kyoto in which five larger-than-life images are burned on the hillsides surrounding the city.

But there’s no limit to the Japanese imagination when it comes to creating festival activities, and if you don’t believe me, look no further than the Hifuri Festival held in Hino-cho, Shiga Prefecture, on the 14th and 15th last week.

Hifuri literally means “fire-flinging”, and no, that’s not the rock-n-roll fantasy of teenage boys, that’s exactly what happens. At 7:30 in the evening, about 200 local residents gather at one Shinto shrine in the town, bringing with them an equal number of bamboo torches measuring roughly 2.5 meters in length. They set out together and slowly parade through the town to the Kuchinomiya Shrine, which has several old pine trees about 10 meters high. The townsfolk surround the trees, light the torches, and at a signal from the taiko drums, hurl them all at once at the trees. The reports say everyone is riveted by the sight of the arcs of fire sailing through the night sky.

As we noted with the Daimonji in Kyoto earlier this week, the spirits of a family’s ancestors are said to return to the family home during the O-bon period (which just ended). Traditionally, they were sometimes greeted with mukaebi, literally “welcoming fire”, and sent back to the spirit word with okuribi, or “seeing off fire”. The Hifuri Festival is part of that tradition.

Legend has it that the more burning torches stick in the pine boughs, the better that year’s harvest will be.

Not mentioned in any of the reports I investigated was what happens to the flaming torches once they’re lodged in the trees. Do they burn out without igniting the pines?

It must not be a serious problem. The pine trees are still there, and the townspeople come back every year to do it again!

Note: The shrine’s name is 口之宮, and I had to make a guess at the reading because I couldn’t confirm it.