Just deserts

Upon a pillory – that al the world may see / A just desert for such impiety.

- Warning Faire Women (1599)

IF it were possible to bestow a person with a medal for services rendered to society, pin the medal to his chest, cover his eyes with a blindfold, stick a final cigarette in his mouth, and stand him against a wall to be executed by firing squad, Public Enemy/Hero #1 would be Julian “Wikileaks” Assange. While his behavior is undoubtedly execrable by any standard, we are also undoubtedly better off for knowing some of the information he was responsible for revealing. Much that information demonstrates the contempt the international political oligarchy has for the people they rule. Some of that information involves the Japan-U.S. security alliance.

Recall that in the summer of 2009, Hatoyama Yukio and the Democratic Party of Japan made the specific promise during their lower house election campaign to tear up the agreement with the Americans and move the Marine air base at Futenma in Okinawa outside of the prefecture “at a minimum”, and ideally outside the country altogether. Negotiations for dealing with the base began after Marines raped a schoolgirl near there in 1995.

To briefly recapitulate: The United States governed Okinawa from 1945 to 1972, even though the Allied occupation ended in 1952. It took 20 more years for the Americans to give Okinawa back.

Cross my heart and hope to die!

It would be entertaining to hear someone deny the argument that they still occupy it. The Ryukyus account for 0.6% of Japan’s land area, but host 75% of American military facilities in the country. Those bases occupy 18% of Okinawa’s land area. Roughly 70% of the people on the country’s four main islands support the military alliance with the United States, compared to only 10% of the Okinawans. (A higher percentage is willing to put up with it for the economic benefits.) More than 50% of Okinawans think the unwillingness of the rest of the country to either reduce their burden or accept American military facilities themselves is a form of discrimination. That makes it the ultimate manifestation in Japan of the Not In My Back Yard phenomenon.

The American military is stationed in the country for Japan’s “defense”, but Futenma is a Marine air base. Marines attack; they don’t defend.

When negotiations began with the Clinton Administration, there was an American promise to return Futenma to Japan (who built the first air base there during the war) in five to seven years. That somehow morphed into a project to build a new airbase in northern Okinawa.

There are four directly elected lower house seats in Okinawa Prefecture. Before the election, two seats were held by the then-ruling LDP, one by the Social Democrats, and one by the People’s New Party. Buoyed by the anti-LDP sentiment nationwide, the Aso government’s use of the Koizumian two-thirds lower house majority to push through the Guam Transfer Agreement, and the DPJ promise to move Futenma, the DPJ snatched those two LDP seats in the 2009 election. They didn’t run any candidates in the other two districts; the incumbents were members of parties that were part of their alliance and which joined the ruling coalition.

Several things became apparent within days after Mr. Hatoyama took office. Among them were that he had no idea what he was doing, neither he nor his party could be trusted to keep any of their campaign promises, and he had no business holding any executive position whatsoever, much less the prime minister of Japan at a turning point in the country’s political and governmental history.

To telescope a long story, two months after he opened the fall session of the Diet with a speech at the end of October 2009, he couldn’t keep his own story straight about his government’s plans for the Futenma base or their negotiations with the Americans. Statements made in the morning became inoperative before the end of the day. He would decide before the end of the year and then he put it off until May. He famously asked Barack Obama to trust him, and people wondered what it was he could be trusted to do. By early January, the Japanese media already assumed that his days as prime minister were numbered. His support numbers were in free fall after he had squandered both his honeymoon period and one of the most golden of opportunities ever available to a new government and its leader.

By May 2010, Mr. Hatoyama confirmed what had been obvious since the beginning of the year when he announced that Futenma would stay in Okinawa as originally planned. He traveled to Okinawa himself to apologize to the governor:

“I tried to do different things, but I came face to face with the difficulty of the actual problem of (moving) everything outside the prefecture.”

Mr. Hatoyama resigned at the end of the month after one of the shortest terms and with one of the lowest support ratings in postwar Japanese history.

The Beans are Spilled

One year ago this month, Wikileaks released American governmental cables sent from Japan to the U.S. about the Futenma discussions. They didn’t generate much comment, even in the English-language media, because the focus of Japan-related news was still the Tohoku disaster of two months before.

That information made Mr. Hatoyama and his government look even worse, as difficult as it is to imagine. Try this account from the Economist:

LESS than a month after a new government took office in Japan in September 2009, American officials talked their Japanese counterparts through a longstanding frustration: stalled plans to build a new airbase for American marines on the southern island of Okinawa. According to confidential minutes of the meeting sent to Washington, DC by the American embassy in Tokyo, leaked by WikiLeaks, Kurt Campbell, an assistant secretary of state, said a new airstrip was necessary because of China’s growing military strength. But that could not be discussed publicly, “for obvious reasons”.

A few months later Mr Campbell went further, according to another cable. Because of potential threats from North Korea, China and elsewhere, America and Japan faced “the most challenging security environment” in 50 years. However, he said the messages to the public often glossed over that reality. Presumably that too was to avoid offending China, even though it would have helped Okinawans to understand why the new facility is deemed so important.

And:

The WikiLeaks cables show that the number of marines and their dependents slated for removal to Guam has been inflated in order to soften opposition. (The 2009) agreement mentions the removal of about 8,000 marines and 9,000 dependents. But an American embassy cable in 2009 says that when the plan was formulated in 2006, “both the 8,000 and 9,000 numbers were deliberately maximised to optimise political value in Japan.” Okinawa officials suspect that the number of Guam-bound marines may be as few as 3,000—if they go at all.

When it came to power in 2009, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which had opposed the relocation plan in opposition, came under intense pressure from Washington to push ahead with it. American officials urged the new government not to discuss alternatives in public, warning of a strong American reaction if it did, according to WikiLeaks.

The Eurasia Review Newsletter provided more details in an article by Rajaram Panda. ERN deserves a milder form of the treatment appropriate for Assange: They should be commended for presenting additional information and then kicked in their backsides for entrusting the article to Mr. Panda, who combines a tendency to exaggerate with an ignorance of Japanese politics remarkable even for non-Japanese who write about the country.

The article begins:

In a startling revelation, the US cables posted on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks said that, in 2009, the US had warned the then Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio about Japan’s wavering policies on bilateral ties.

It doesn’t take them long to screw it up:

When Hatoyama took office in September 2009, Japanese people believed that he was a sincere but helpless politician who was unable to fight the influence of the US.

Not one word after the comma in that sentence is true. No one knew how he would deal with American influence, and he gave every indication beforehand that he intended to create some distance in bilateral relations. While it is true that some view him as sincere, it is also true that they view as childishly naive the few policies he’s sincere about.

The revealed documents now show that Hatoyama and the DPJ had lied to the Japanese people during the 2009 election campaign. The DPJ and the Japanese government officials were never committed to relocating the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawa Prefecture, as the revealed documents indicate.

That’s true, but only in an interpretative sense. The American arm twisting of the DPJ does not seem to have begun until after the election.

Between 2009 and early 2010, Hatoyama and his officials conveyed to their US counterparts that Japan would seek alternatives to the 2006 Agreement to relocate Futenma to the Henoko district of Nago in Okinawa Prefecture. However, in a secret pact, they said that Japan will honour the 2006 Agreement if the US rejected the proposed alternative.

The Obama administration knew early on that the Hatoyama administration would go along with the 2006 Agreement as long as the US continued to reject any alternative. Hatoyama had secretly said this to the US six months before he decided to break his promise to the people to relocate the base outside Okinawa.

Six months before he announced that he broke his promise was in December 2009, post-election and post-arm twisting.

The US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific affairs, Kurt Campbell, complained in October 2009 that Hatoyama told his Chinese and South Korean counterparts in Beijing that Japan depended on the US too much. Campbell told Japanese Parliamentary Defence Secretary Akihisa Nagashima that such remarks “would create a crisis in US-Japan relations… Imagine the Japanese response if the US government were to say publicly that it wished to devote more attention to China than Japan.”

We don’t have to imagine the Japanese response, because we know what it is — official sycophancy. The U.S. government has been devoting more attention to China than Japan without saying it publicly for the past two decades.

Now they don’t bother to hide it. This week the U.S. government allowed China the exclusive privilege of purchasing U.S. debt directly from the Treasury, without having to buy the bonds through Wall Street brokers and pay their commissions. The Chinese are now the leading American debt underwriters. Japan formerly starred in the role of Number One Sponge and still buys nearly the same amount as China, but they’ve never gotten the star treatment.

As Mark Steyn frequently points out, the Americans will be paying enough interest on the debt held by China to finance the annual outlays for the People’s Liberation Army by 2016. Meanwhile, Japan pays far and away the highest vigorish of any overseas country to support American troops stationed on its territory. This is justified in part by the need to defend Japan from China.

Finally, a contemporary use of the word “bizarre” that isn’t hyperbole.

But that’s unless the Chinese are actually unloading on the secondary market what they buy from the Treasury to satisfy their desire to get out of US debt and into gold while satisfying US demands to buy more of its debt. (There’s another interesting Wikileak in there, too.)

The Japanese people now feel that Hatoyama’s US policy was fraught with duplicity and backroom deals. Being the Land Minister, Maehara was dabbling with foreign affairs and was playing a crucial role in handling Japan’s US policy.

He’s speaking here of Maehara Seiji, who was involved with the discussions. Mr. Panda thinks that Mr. Maehara’s participation was due to his connections with the American government, and were improper because he was the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport. He is not aware that Maehara Seiji held another Cabinet portfolio at the time — Minister of State for Okinawa and the Northern Territories. It was his business to be involved.

In other words, Mr. Panda doesn’t know the A of the ABCs of Japanese politics/government.

The Obama administration was aware that there was a section of politicians in Japan who sought distance from Washington. Even many Japanese people started to view Japan’s policies as being dictated by the US and described their own country as “America’s baby”. In particular, right-wing nationalists vouched for reducing reliance on the US and argued that Japan must not be afraid to take a confrontational position in foreign policy.

“Started to view”? That view started among many Japanese people on 16 August 1945. And if there is a certified demonstration of lazy thinking/no thinking/no real experience among people writing about Japan, it is their wishful thinking about the effect on modern politics of “right-wing nationalists”, whatever either of those debased terms mean nowadays. The psychopundits either overlook or never saw that the same arguments attributed to those unenlightened and unintelligent dregs of society have been made even more stridently by the left-wing internationalists in Japan. The leading figures of the Democratic Party government are among the country’s most well-known left-wing internationalists.

The Obama administration is believed to be instrumental in Hatoyama’s ouster from office because of the latter’s inept handling of the Futenma base relocation issue.

Not in the US and Japan of Planet Earth. Last rites were already being prepared for Hatoyama Yukio a few months after he took office, for a galaxy of reasons. Futenma was the coup de grace. People are not without their suspicions about American string-pulling in the Japanese government, but the Democratic Party did not want to go into the July 2010 upper house elections led by a man whose support ratings were maxing out at 19% in the polls.

The inept handling of the Futenma base relocation issue? Mr. Hatoyama broke his pre-election promises — which of course the U.S. knew about — to do what the United States wanted to do. This doesn’t make much sense.

Besides, Campbell complained in October 2009 about Hatoyama’s policy towards China and South Korea. At the Nuclear Summit in April 2010 held at Washington, Obama snubbed Hatoyama and weeks later Hatoyama resigned and was replaced by the more US acceptable Kan Naoto. Kan immediately confirmed that the Futenma base issue would proceed according to the US desire. No wonder, when the leaks surfaced, he declined to comment and said that the announcement of information was “not legitimate”.

Kan Naoto is one of the leading left-wing internationalists of the DPJ, though he is also known as a trimmer most interested in power. Japanese arms were almost certainly twisted to cause the DPJ to cry uncle, but the crying had already happened before Mr. Kan’s turn arrived. As deputy prime minister, he had a ringside seat.

It is too soon to assess how the public will digest the dishonesty of the DPJ and how the Japanese government succumbed to the US pressure to follow its line of thinking. The opposition is likely to mount a campaign again calling for Kan’s resignation. Maehara was seen as an agent of the US and the Japanese people are unlikely to forgive him.

It will always be too soon for Mr. Panda to offer analysis about Japan. None of this happened. The opposition mounted a campaign calling for Kan’s resignation, but none of the many compelling reasons had anything to do with the United States. Mr. Maehara has been relegated to the sidelines, not because he was seen as an “agent of the US”, but because he’s viewed as an opportunistic lightweight with an unexplained affinity for North Korea.

Japan-US ties are too complex and its real value cannot be evaluated from this single incident.

Nor can they be evaluated by a drive-by observer lacking field-specific knowledge. The only solution for dealing with people such as Mr. Panda is to persecute them to the fullest extent of the Internet Law of the Jungle.

Finally, here’s how the Ryukyu Shimpo, an Okinawan newspaper, handled with the revelations:

According to U.S. official telegrams disclosed by WikiLeaks, while the DPJ administration was seeking the relocation outside of Okinawa Prefecture of the U.S. Marine Corps now based at Futenma, a staff member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan suggested to United States government officials that they should not compromise on the Futenma relocation plan. The cable indicates that both governments inflated the numbers involved in U.S. Marine Forces Transfer Plan from Okinawa to Guam. The Roadmap for Realignment Implementation agreed to by both governments in the spring of 2006 states that 8000 Marine Corps personnel and 9000 dependents would move to Guam, but leaked telegrams indicate that these numbers were inflated to optimize their political value.

And:

The cables also include an example of a Japanese career bureaucrat recommending to United States officials that they stay on course with the Roadmap for Futenma relocation after the regime change to the Democratic Party of Japan. At an unofficial lunch meeting October 12, 2009, Director General of Bureau of Defense Policy Shigenobu Takamizawa is reported as warning the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt M. Campbell “against premature demonstration of flexibility in adjusting the realignment package.” The cables also reported that a counselor in charge of political affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan made the basically the same remark to his counterpart of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. The cables therefore indicate that career bureaucrats moved to prevent the Hatoyama administration from seeking the relocation of the facilities at Futenma outside of Okinawa.

This is more evidence, by the way, that the Japanese bureaucracy considers itself to be the permanent ruling class of Japan. That exonerates neither Mr. Hatoyama nor the DPJ, however. Another of their campaign promises was to bring the bureaucracy under control, and they have the authority to do so if they choose to use it. But enjoying the perquisites of political status is more attractive than exercising that authority and touching off a de facto civil war that few of them have the ability to contest.

Diplomatic cables from this period show that despite the DPJ’s formal efforts to find a new candidate site for Futenma, the United States from an early stage thought the Hatoyama administration would go along with the 2006 agreement as long as the United States continued to reject any alternatives.

On Dec. 10, the U.S. Embassy inTokyo dispatched a cable that was classified “secret” and for American eyes only.

The cable said, “Five DPJ Cabinet members (Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa and Maehara) met on the evening of December 8 and agreed that they could not accept moving forward with the Futenma Relocation Facility (FRF) because of opposition from the DPJ’s coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party.”

According to the document, Maehara explained to Roos that Japan would seek a number of alternatives that might be acceptable to both the United States and the Okinawa people.

But the cable shows that Maehara also said, “If the U.S. does not agree to any alternative to the existing FRF plan, the DPJ would be prepared to go ahead with the current relocation plan and let the coalition break up if necessary after Golden Week (April 29 to May 5 in 2010).”

Thank you, Julian Assange.

But there’s more:

On Dec. 21, 2009, then Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka had a lunch meeting with (US Ambassador) Roos. Their discussion was included in a cable classified as “secret.”

Yabunaka referred to the Dec. 17 meeting in Copenhagen between Hatoyama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The cable has Yabunaka saying, “Prime Minister Hatoyama confirmed to the secretary in Copenhagen that if the (Japan) review of the FRF alternatives to Henoko did not yield viable proposals, (Japan) would return to the 2006 FRF agreement.”

Immediately after his meeting with Clinton, Hatoyama told reporters accompanying him: “It would be very dangerous to force through (the 2006 agreement). We have begun efforts to think about new alternatives.”

However, the cable has Yabunaka referring to those media reports as “inaccurate.”

And:

On Jan. 26, then Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yorihisa Matsuno met with embassy officials. A cable classified as “confidential” and titled, “Hatoyama confidante on Futenma, Nago election,” described Matsuno as “Hinting at current Kantei (Prime Minister’s Office) thinking.”

Matsuno is further quoted as saying, “Hatoyama and the Okinawa Working Group will have to consider ‘for form’s sake’ Futenma options outside of Okinawa, but the only realistic options are to move Futenma to Camp Schwab or another ‘existing facility.’”

The cable also has Matsuno saying, “The Camp Schwab landfill option was ‘dead.’”

Turning over a New Loop

A flood of media features timed for the 40th anniversary of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan and the related events washed over news media consumers last week. Hatoyama Yukio went back to Okinawa for the first time since he dined on crow with the Okinawa governor in May 2010, and delivered a speech at a Ginowan hotel.

Here’s how he started the speech:

“I love all Okinawans.”

You’re such a lovely audience!

He continued by whining:

“I wanted to let some air into the (base) issue. I wanted to make some progress during my time in office, somehow.”

Before he appalled the nation:

“I have not been able now to satisfy the emotion of “outside the prefecture, at a minimum”. I can clearly state that one who has not satisfied that emotion does not fully understand the emotions of everyone in Okinawa. I intend to have that belief always.”

Everyone in Japan knew what he meant despite the vacuum-packed circumlocution and euphemism. All the headlines in the print media trumpeted the Hatoyama claim that he still supported moving the base outside the prefecture.

There was remarkably little anger, incidentally. People long ago realized he’s an eternal adolescent (most closely resembling a junior high school girl) with too little sense and too much money who had no business becoming prime minister. They intend to have that belief always.

One of his excuses was that he wasn’t able to do devote all his attention to the issue because he was too busy putting together a budget, despite having thousands of subordinates at his disposal. Nobody believed that, either, coming as it did from a man who preferred to attend galas with his trophy wife, the royalty of showbiz, and the Imperial household rather than attend to the business of government.

There was also the usual externalization of the internal fog:

“My thinking got too far ahead of itself, and I wasn’t able to fully convince many people.

“When I think about it, I wonder if it was an unreasonable course. When I think about it now, that’s what I think.”

Nonaka Hiromu, the chief cabinet secretary under LDP Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo in 2000, attended the same event as Mr. Hatoyama. When it was his turn to speak, he looked directly at the former prime minister and said:

“Men are supposed to have a sense of shame. Did you come so casually to Okinawa to dishonor (literally, hurl mud at) the Okinawans?”

Later interviewed by the Ryukyu Shimpo, he added:

“A person who stands on the dais and dishonors the Okinawans makes my blood boil (literally, steams my guts).”

Mr. Hatoyama was his oblivious self when he too was interviewed by the Ryukyu Shimpo the next day:

“It was natural to raise the issue of moving the base outside the prefecture.”

By this time he had found a new excuse:

“The Defense and Foreign Ministry bureaucracy struggled to decide how to return the base to Henoko (in line with the pre-existing agreement). They introduced the logic through the Americans that it would be inappropriate to take the base outside the prefecture, and only Henoko was acceptable.”

He’s confirming the Wikileaks revelations about Messrs. Takamizawa and Yabunaka above, and indirectly contradicting Mr. Kan’s denial. All he had to do to end the malarkey was put his foot down, but there wasn’t enough time to put him through a series of testosterone injections.

*****

After His Majesty’s Firing Squad in the Kingdom of Just Deserts dispatches Assange, it will be the turn of Hatoyama Yukio to stand blindfolded against the wall for his high political crimes and misdemeanors. Pinned to his lapel will be a medal for the service he rendered his country by using his mother’s money to buy the party that ended single-party rule in Japan.

*****

Meanwhile:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe the United States should remove all its troops from Western Europe and let the Europeans defend themselves. Only 29% disagree, but another 20% are undecided.

That number will probably continue to grow and extend to Asia, if it already doesn’t.

*****

Mr. Hatoyama isn’t the only one who wanted to go back to Okinawa. I’ll bet the other guys had more fun, though.

Questionable

HERE are a few questions about the responses of some people who have objected to recent actions by the Japanese government.

Questions #1

Early last week, anti-capital punishment activists praised Japan for what Kyodo termed its “apparent de facto moratorium” — whatever that word sequence is supposed to mean — on killing convicted killers.

What really happened, rather than what apparently de facto happened, is this: The last time anyone walked the long green Japanese mile was July 2010. Rather than being a moratorium, it was an unannounced decision by the new prime minister, Kan Naoto, to stop executions. He was abetted in that decision by his second justice minister, Eda Satsuki, long an opponent of capital punishment. Mr. Eda always dodged the question when asked whether he had declared a moratorium on executions, as well on as signing the papers authorizing them. Last year was the first year there were no executions in Japan in 19 years.

Both men are now gone from the Cabinet for good, which means that affairs have reverted to normal. Three men were hung by the neck until dead on 29 March. In keeping with the Japanese practice to reserve the death penalty for multiple murders, one of the three rammed a car into a train station in 1999 and killed five people with a knife.

Capital!

Every survey I’ve ever seen has the Japanese public approving capital punishment with roughly 70% support. A December 2009 Cabinet Office poll found that 85.6% of respondents said capital punishment is “unavoidable in some cases”.

The English-language media says the issue is “hotly debated” in Japan. What they mean is that they want it to become hotly debated in the real Japan instead of the Japan of their imaginations. Most Japanese think capital punishment is a natural response to certain circumstances, in the same way that others think abortion is a natural response to different circumstances. A look at the poll results shows that only a sliver of the population is likely to get hot about it, and then only those who know how to write press releases.

The executions were followed by Justice Minister Ogawa Toshio’s announcement that plans for a discussion panel on the pros and cons of executing cons will not be put into execution after all.

Said the Kyodo English-language article, with typically emotive language:

“The panel would have invited input from experts on all sides of the emotive issue, and Ogawa’s decision to curtail the opportunity for debate, including on the suspension of executions, immediately drew fire from death penalty critics.

“’It is left up to the personal creed of a justice minister whether to debate capital punishment. The DPJ cannot avoid blame for its irresponsibility as a ruling party,’ said Hideki Wakabayashi, an official at Amnesty International Japan.”

Amplified bologna. Mr. Wakabayashi thought it was fine that the personal creed of a different justice minister led him to apparently de facto suspend executions. Further, the only “experts” on capital punishment are those who research the frequency, the means, the standards, the distribution, and the background of the practice. Everyone else is trafficking in moral suasion, regardless of the title on their name card.

Nor did Mr. Ogawa curtail the opportunity for debate. Mr. Wakabayashi is at liberty to debate the subject until he’s gassed. He can write op-eds, magazine articles, or books, give speeches at rented halls or standing on top of upturned beer crates in the park, or wheedle interviews in the broadcast media. The absence of government sponsorship does not mean a thing does not exist.

And since Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko has no problem with capital punishment, it certainly wasn’t left up to the personal creed of this justice minister.

The EU is floating in the same boat. Here’s Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, the European Union’s High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, UK Labor Party pol, and a Life Peer who was born into a coal-mining family (i.e., she’s leftist aristocracy):

“The EU deeply regrets the execution of Yasuaki Uwabe, Tomoyuki Furusawa and Yasutoshi Matsuda on 29 March 2012, and the fact that this marks the resumption of executions in Japan after twenty months during which none took place.”

Why does Lady Ashton not mind her own business? Or are her official EU duties as insubstantial as her peerage?

The opponents of capital punishment say it is cruel and inhuman, but that’s looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope. Cruel and inhuman is deliberately stabbing five innocent people to death at a train station.

There were lamentations that the three condemned men were given only a few hours’ advance notice, and that their families were not notified until after the executions. There were no apparent de facto lamentations for the victims, who received no advance notice of their deaths at all. Their families weren’t notified until after they died either.

It is not unreasonable to assume that Lady Ashton and Mr. Wakabayashi are concerned about “social” justice, “social” democracy, and “social” welfare, and therefore about the well-being of society itself.

Why then do they deny society the means for self-defense?

Questions #2

Most Okinawans are getting really tired of having to make room for all those American service personnel. The entire Okinawa island chain is 877 square miles in all, and it is the location of 70-75% of the 47,000 American warfighters in Japan. American military installations occupy slightly more than 10% of all Okinawan territory, which is just over half that of the 1,545 square miles of Rhode Island, the smallest of the 50 American states.

In December 2010, Kan Naoto’s government agreed to pay the U.S. JPY 188 billion a year (about US$2.25 billion then) every year through 2015 to help defray the American military expenses. That’s significantly more than either Germany or South Korea pay.

The Japanese finally convinced the Americans in 2009 to move some Marines from Okinawa to Guam, but they had to accept a bill for $2.8 billion to get it done. That money will be allocated to the construction costs for new facilities in Guam.

But the U.S. reopened the deal in February when Congress wanted to cut expenditures and thought Japan should pay even more to transport American soldiers and build facilities for those American soldiers on American-governed territory. They wanted US$3.5 billion instead.

Why did Japan agree?

The Kyodo report had the answer:

“Japan, which initially resisted the move, has since relented to preserve the harmony of the bilateral alliance, the sources said.”

Ah, so. To keep the Americans from pouting and behaving unpleasantly. But you don’t always gotta have wa.

Why is Japan helping the U.S. out of their budgetary mess by exacerbating their own?

I have an answer for that:

The Japanese government is paying vigorish to the United States of America for a protection scheme.

Now here’s the question no one has an answer for.

Why don’t the Japanese apply the same attitude to the U.S. as they do to Amnesty International or the EU?

It would be salubrious for both parties if the Japanese were to tell the Americans to depart from Futenma in one year and to pay their own way home. The lower American lip would protrude; the neo-cons and many on both sides of the aisle in Congress would raise their voices, but they’d get over it. They’d still have plenty of military firepower here.

The Japanese might even figure out that the Americans need them just as much, if not more, than they need the Americans.

Afterwords:

Here’s another question: Why does Amnesty International and the EU pester Japan — or even Mr. Natural himself, Abdallah Al-Bishi? Those organizations are full of the type of people who think multiculturalism is the contemporary apostles’ creed, can’t bring themselves to hold responsible the European Islamist youth for their actions when they rampage — or even admit their identity — but yet insist the uncivilized un-continentals on either end of Asia conform to their moral code instead of allowing them their own.

Al-Bishi’s implicit comparison of men and women at about the eight-minute mark is most interesting, by the way.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Ichigen koji (95)

一言居士
- A person who has something to say about everything

Why are there so many people here? Important matters are decided by five or six people. Quit screwing around! Get a smaller room ready!

- Former Prime Minister Kan Naoto on 15 March 2011 at Tokyo Electric Power headquarters, as quoted by the Tokyo Shimbun. He was in the Operations Room, where more than 200 people had stayed up all night the night before dealing with the Fukushima nuclear accident. He thought he was in the Conference Room.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

21st century Class A war criminals

It’s been one year since the Tohoku earthquake. What we need now is not words, but actions. Not repeated words, but repeated actions — actions in which everyone shares a bit of the burden. There is nothing else.
- Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Toru

If Australia is to get the government it needs (and deserves) it must first experience the full horror of the government it doesn’t deserve.
- James Delingpole, who could just as well have been speaking of Japan

LAST Sunday was the first anniversary of the Tohoku triple disaster — the fourth-largest recorded earthquake in history, a monster tsunami, and the nuclear accident at Fukushima. The Nishinippon Shimbun presented the numbers in a small box on the front page of its Monday edition:

Dead: 15,854
Missing: 3,155
In shelters or temporarily in other areas: 343,935

Also in the Monday newspapers were the results of a recent poll:

* How would you evaluate the government’s response to date for recovery efforts in the stricken area?
Good: 25%
Bad: 67%
No answer: 8%

* How would you evaluate the government’s response to date for the nuclear accident at Fukushima?
Good: 12%
Bad: 80%
No answer: 8%

There are no excuses when four out of five people think you stink. It’s time to reach for the soap.

Fortunately, the public is doing it for them. Among the noise and distortion and useless pallid confetti of media discourse, a low but distinct signal is emerging. Long before 11 March, people understood the crimes of commission and omission of the so-called Iron Triangle: the political establishment in Nagata-cho, the governmental establishment at Kasumigaseki, and the business establishment everywhere else. The voters have persistently expressed the wish to destroy that triangle. But the national disaster seems to have focused their attention and made vivid the futility of relying on the long-running disaster that is the triple establishment. Another poll released this week revealed that pre-existing political trends are accelerating. The question asked was about the contours of the government they’d like to see. The answers:

A government centered on the Democratic Party (the current ruling party): 7%
A government centered on the Liberal-Democratic Party (the largest opposition party, and the ruling party for more than half a century): 10%
A DPJ – LDP coalition government: 26%
A government with a new framework after a political reorganization: 50%
No answer: 7%

Note that the current DPJ government could manage only a rating equal to that of the stragglers in any poll who can’t be bothered to form an opinion. It was lower than the No Answer response to the previous two questions. The LDP is not viewed as an acceptable option.

The people have thus disqualified the major political brands from serious consideration. While their enthusiasm for alternatives was evident before, it’s so strong now that even the Three Disasters in Tokyo have noticed. They see that the tsunami of popular will is surging in their direction. No one knows when it will break, but when it does, there is no levee big enough to stop it.

Kusaka Kimindo, born in 1930, a former director of the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, and a commentator on business and governmental affairs, recently released a book called The Collapse of the Japanese Establishment. He welcomes that prospect. The blurb on the front cover reads:

The government-patron academics, the Western-worshipping intellectuals, and Big Mass Media have lost their authority.
A new wind has begun to blow.

The next few posts, and others from time to time in the future, will focus on aspects of the speed and direction of that wind. Perhaps it might blow as strong as a third kamikaze, the divine wind, combining the salvation of the first with the internal origins of the second.

First, however, we must look at what is collapsing, and why.

The Kan Cabinet: Class A War Criminals?

That’s the question asked in the lead article of the 18 March weekly Sunday Mainichi, issued to coincide with the anniversary of the disaster. The tone of Japanese weekly magazines is often wild and woolly, but this time they’re quoting someone else: political commentator Kinoshita Atsushi, a former lower house member from the Democratic Party — the same party as Kan Naoto.

It’s the job of a leader to create a more comfortable working environment, but Mr. Kan did the opposite. You could say he was a Class A war criminal.

Mizote Kensei is the secretary-general for the LDP bloc in the upper house, and a former Minister for Disaster Management. He expressed the same sentiments in a different way:

If this were a backward country, they’d be taken to court, and might even be executed.

The Sunday Mainichi thought that was extreme, but they did spend an entire page discussing the possibility of court action against several former Cabinet members, including whether it would be a criminal or civil proceeding, the precedents for such action, and what might happen. (They conclude it would be possible in theory, but difficult to pursue in practice.)

Lower house LDP member Kajiyama Hiroshi doesn’t have Mr. Kan to kick around any more, but he called for the immediate resignation of Madarame Haruki, the chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission:

The LDP certainly has responsibility for promoting nuclear power. But beyond that, Tokyo Electric and the government, particularly Prime Minister Kan, bear a heavy responsibility. After the Fukushima accident, Mr. Kan spoke only to Madarame Haruki, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission, about technical matters. That’s because no one else capable of expressing a different opinion was there.

That only Mr. Kan would listen to Mr. Madarame’s personal views on technical matters was decisive. Also, there are no records of their discussions. There is no choice but to assume that the information we’ve received has been doctored, and there are even doubts he didn’t want to hear the views of other technicians….The other members of the commission should have met together to create a consensus, and that should have been the advice given to Mr. Kan.

In addition to allowing other people to use the term Cabinet Class A war criminals, the magazine referred to Kan Naoto as a “self-righteous hothead” and said that Mr. Madarame was “unconnected to the real world”.

Then again, it’s not as if Mr. Kan listened to Mr. Madarame even when he was listening to Mr. Madarame. During the prime minister’s universally lambasted helicopter trip to Fukushima on the morning of the 12 March 2011 to view the facility from the air, the NSC chair tried to communicate several of his concerns en route. Mr. Kan issued an order: “Just answer my questions.” (It sounds even worse in Japanese.)

One of his questions was whether there would be a hydrogen explosion. Mr. Madarame thought not. There was an explosion, however, about eight hours later. When the prime minister saw it on television, he exploded himself:

Isn’t that white smoke rising? It’s exploding, isn’t it? Didn’t you say it wouldn’t explode?

See what they mean about “self-righteous hothead”?

The technicians thought a meltdown was possible at Fukushima the night of the accident, and detected evidence that it had started early the next morning. They informed the government, but Kan Naoto lied about it, not only the next day, but for several months thereafter — including on the floor of the Diet.

He also says he failed to receive information from SPEEDI, the system that generates projections on the dispersion of radioactive material. There are even claims that he didn’t know the system existed. Had the information from SPEEDI been employed, it could have limited the region’s exposure to radiation.

Itabashi Isao, a senior analyst for the Council for Public Study, explains that Ibaraki Prefecture publishes a book for high school students to explain nuclear energy, and that the book contains a description of the SPEEDI system.

They say the data reached the crisis management center and stopped there without going to Mr. Kan or the others. When politicians say they didn’t know something that’s being taught to high school students, it should not be the end of the discussion.

To continue the discussion, in October 2010, five months before the earthquake, a disaster prevention drill and simulation were conducted based on the premise of failure in the cooling function of Chubu Electric’s Hamaoka nuclear plant. The drill used data generated by SPEEDI. The government formed a group to oversee and monitor the drill and simulation. The head of the group was Kan Naoto, the man who supposedly didn’t know about SPEEDI.

But of course he did. Hosono Goshi was then an aide to Mr. Kan. He was later appointed as the minister in charge of dealing with the nuclear disaster, and added the Environmental Ministry portfolio with the inauguration of the Noda Cabinet. Last May, two months after the accident, Mr. Hosono said that SPEEDI information was not made public because of worries the people would panic. (There are also suspicions in some quarters that he held on it to it to enhance his career prospects.)

The Sunday Mainichi quoted a journalist:

They hid information because they thought if they told the truth, the ignorant people would panic. It is an indication of their viewpoint based on the premise of stupid people, stupid thinking (gumin guso).

We already know that’s the way they think — it was clear in the fall of 2010 during the incident in the Senkakus with the Chinese “fishing boat” captain. The government wouldn’t release their video of the incident because they thought it would inflame both the Chinese government and the Japanese people, but someone in the Japanese Coast Guard solved that problem by uploading it to YouTube. The government also claimed that the Naha prosecutors were in charge of the disposition of the case. More than 80% of the public thought they were lying.

Now the phenomenon of the circular firing squad is emerging as the Fukushima investigation continues. Mr. Madarame has been testifying to the Diet committee looking into the nuclear accident, and said the following about then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio:

From the perspective of those of us who work with nuclear power, saying (as Mr. Edano did) ‘there will be no immediate effect’, sounds as if he is saying the effect would be late-developing cancer. We would not say anything like that. Therefore, I did not make any suggestion of that sort to the chief cabinet secretary.

Not everyone in the Cabinet was complicit in the war crimes. One of those was Katayama Yoshihiro, then the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. A former governor of Tottori Prefecture, he has an idea about the way government executives are supposed to conduct themselves. He’s on the record about Mr. Kan:

Who was the leader of the operations? It was impossible to understand the intent of too many of the various demands and requests (from the government command center). They were fragmentary and childish. There was no leadership at all.

Mr. Katayama also cited the breakdown in communications between the underground command center for the crisis in the basement of the Kantei, and Mr. Kan’s fifth floor office. He said that the prime minister never took the elevator downstairs, but communicated with the center only by cell phone. Mr. Kan, meanwhile, complained that 90% of the raw data came through Tokyo Electric, and that “the gears of communication did not move”, even when he put Mr. Hosono and then-METI Minister Kaieda Banri on the job. Shifting the blame to someone else is a Kan hallmark.

It will be difficult to find out exactly what happened in the Kantei because no record was kept of governmental discussions immediately after the disaster. It is widely assumed that Kan Naoto didn’t want people to know.

There are no records of the first 18 of the 23 meetings of the main group tasked with dealing with the Fukushima problem. An official with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency took records of the 19th meeting on his own initiative, but there is no organizational record.

One of the unindicted co-conspirators is then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio, who as the government spokesman said a meltdown had not occurred, and repeatedly insisted there would be no harmful effects from the nuclear accident. Mr. Edano is now the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, the body overseeing nuclear power operations in Japan. He has reportedly aligned himself with the METI bureaucrats promoting the continued use of nuclear power. He’s interested in becoming prime minister, and thinks this will help him win the support of Big Business. (A former attorney who defended radical labor unionistas, he could use the credibility.)

Mr. Edano is also backing the METI position in the ministry’s dispute with Tokyo Electric Power. Remember how the Democratic Party was going to take political control of the bureaucracy?

Showdown at the hypotenuse

METI and the past two DPJ governments want to temporarily nationalize TEPCO. Their plan is to inject JPY one trillion of public funds into the company to help offset what could be tens of trillions of yen in eventual liabilities. They would receive a two-thirds ownership stake in return, replace all the top executives, and sell off the generating division. (That last one’s a good idea, and should be applied to all the power companies as part of the implementation of a national smart grid, but that’s yet another one beyond the capabilities of this government.)

Tokyo Electric objects. They think the government is incapable of operating a utility — can’t argue with that — and charge the government has no clear plan for divesting itself of ownership in the future.

So in classic Old Japan fashion, Tokyo Electric Chairman Katsumata Tsunehisa is getting chummy with the Finance Ministry to head off nationalization. The Finance Ministry is sympathetic to the utility, if only because they don’t want to put the government on the hook for paying off the liabilities. Katsu Eijiro of the ministry, serving as an aide to Prime Minister Noda (and dubbed his puppeteer by the press), told his subordinates they should not permit government control of the utility in negotiations, and to draw the line at 49% ownership, no matter how much they have to compromise before reaching that point. With that capital stake, the government could only reject major proposals, and the Tokyo Electric leadership would stay.

Prime Minister Noda, however, has left the responsibility for negotiations with Mr. Edano, as he is said to be too involved with a consumption tax increase to handle anything else. Mr. Noda wants to unify social welfare programs using the consumption tax as funding. The people backing this idea are calling it a “reform”, a term the Western media echoes. Yet the reform so far consists of allocating just one-fifth of the assumed revenues from the tax increase to social welfare programs (JPY 2.7 trillion) while earmarking JPY four trillion to public works projects. Remember how the Democratic Party was going to shift the emphasis from concrete to people? Nor has the Noda Cabinet come up with a specific proposal for the future form of the social welfare system. They just want the taxes first.

What they don’t want is to remind everyone that the last time the consumption tax was raised, during the Hashimoto administration, it had a negative impact on the economy that further decreased tax revenue.

Edano Yukio, however, says there will be no government support without a two-thirds stake. For negotiations, he has enlisted his political patron, Sengoku Yoshito, who became a Class A war criminal as chief cabinet secretary in the first Kan Cabinet during the Senkakus incident.

The METI bureaucrats are said to like Mr. Sengoku, including those with greater political ambitions, as well as banking industry veterans now in subordinate Cabinet positions. They think he’s a genius at lobbying and working behind the scenes. (Yes, they said “lobbying”; in Japan, the politicians in government are the lobbyists.) Mr. Sengoku is thought to be interested in shifting the power industry’s votes and money from the Liberal Democratic Party to the DPJ.

Another aspect of the stalemate is another Old Japan struggle for the authority over the nuclear power industry itself, with METI, the Ministry of Education (which includes science affairs), Defense, the National Police Agency, and the Cabinet Office duking it out.

While the servants of the people have been attending to what they perceive as national affairs, others have offered many good ideas for recovery programs. These included making the Tohoku region a special economic development zone as a trial for a move to a state/province system, giving tax breaks to donations (there are donation boxes nowadays in most public places and commercial establishments), and issuing long-term bonds bought by the Bank of Japan.

Neither the Kan nor the Noda governments could manage any of that.

Shiva’s second coming

Talk of dinosaurs brings up the subject of Ozawa Ichiro, the former president and secretary-general of several political parties, and now suspended as a member of the ruling DPJ, though he was their secretary-general until May 2010 and president until a year before that.

He’s back in the news because the government he wants to topple this time is the one led by Mr. Noda — ostensibly for failing to uphold the party’s 2009 election manifesto, but really for not paying attention to him.

One of the weekly magazines conducted an interview with him on 14 December 2011 and published it in their 31 January edition.

Ultimately, I look at Japan with doubt, wondering whether it is a democratic state…In Japan, the power of the citizenry is not linked to changing politics.

No one has to doubt who’s ignoring the democratically expressed desire for change. The Japanese say hansei, or reflecting on one’s past conduct, is a national trait, but that’s one mirror Mr. Ozawa passes by without looking in.

The interview contained the good, the bad, and the ugly. Here’s the good (or at least the accurate) part:

If Japan had the ability to negotiate with the US as equals, there would be no worry about TPP. But the present government isn’t capable of doing anything like that. The people are concerned that in the end, it will turn out the way America wants it.

It isn’t just TPP. It’s everything, including the security issue, starting with the Futenma base. It’s the same with economic issues. What has to happen is that the Japanese become independent. But the government has to be able to stand up for the Japanese national interest….I agree in principle with free trade, and we should negotiate based on that. If the government had any ability to negotiate, there’d be nothing to worry about.

Now for the bad:

To prepare for the market opening, the DPJ put in the manifesto a domestic policy of income supplements for agricultural households. If we (upheld) that, agriculture would survive.

The legal vote-buying schemes of power politicians might buy a few votes, but that wouldn’t ensure the survival of agriculture. The romantic vision of the family farm is no longer enough to put food on the nation’s table, especially considering that most farmers in Japan are not exclusively engaged in farming. Policies that promote agribusiness are the means for survival, but few politicians want to campaign on that.

Now for the ugly:

People who criticize my assertions don’t understand anything at all.

He also sat for an interview with the Asahi Shimbun earlier this month, which they thoughtfully translated into English:

Question: It has been two and a half years since the change of government, but the political sector does not appear to be functioning. Why?

Ozawa: That means that democracy has not matured to a point of taking hold in Japan. It is often said that politicians are only as good as the people who elect them.

Remember what the journalist said about stupid people and stupid ideas?

Ozawa: The change in government with the Lower House election of August 2009 was a major decision by the Japanese public, which dislikes change. I believe they held a dream.

The Japanese public likes change a lot in politics. They keep voting for it. They don’t get to realize the dream they hold because Mr. Ozawa and his party keep stepping on it.

Ozawa: However, the DPJ did not have the qualifications necessary to respond to those expectations. It was unable to fulfill its role because the responsibility may have been just too large.

Either that or their capacity to fulfill their role was too small.

Noda Yoshihiko: a chip off the old blocks

Noda Yoshihiko isn’t as appalling as the vaporous Hatoyama Yukio or the repellent Kan Naoto, but the performance of those two has jaundiced the media’s view of anyone who would lead the DPJ government. Here’s the 16 March edition of the Shukan Post:

It is usual for prime ministers to make frantic efforts to get the people on their side when managing the affairs of state becomes difficult, but this man, who has little experience or few accomplishments at the upper levels of government, does not understand the meaning of authority. He increasingly curries favor with the bureaucrats, the Americans, and his powerless supporters, while showing his fat ass (肥えた尻) to the people.

What has been appalling are his Cabinet appointments, despite his trite claim that he was putting the right people in the right places. A career bureaucrat was quoted on his opinion of Finance Minister Azumi Jun, a former NHK broadcaster:

He’s pretty good. Like Kan, he doesn’t pretend that he knows anything. He admits that he doesn’t understand fiscal policy. He stands up for (Finance Ministry policy positions) in the Cabinet. He’s also cute, and has a cute personality.

Yes, he said kawaii.

With public sentiment running against his plan to increase taxes, Mr. Noda is trying to trim expenditures to convince the public that he actually is the fiscal hawk in the portrait the spin doctor present.

He’s announced a plan to reduce public sector hiring 40% from 2009 levels in 2013, to about 5,100 people. The figures are likely to be similar in 2014. Hiring was already down in 2011 and 2012, however.

Another plan to cut civil servant salaries by 7.8% passed the Diet rather quickly. Japan’s industrial media played up the legislation, but one of the jobs of kisha club reporters is to circulate the PR handouts for the Finance Ministry.

The Shukan Post points out that’s officially only JPY 300 billion a year for two years, and probably closer to 270 billion. The politicos said the savings would be spent on Tohoku recovery, but the bill contains no specific mention of that, nor has a framework been created for that expenditure. It hasn’t even been allocated to the special recovery account.

Meanwhile, Mr. Noda not only rescinded the freeze on civil servant salary increases in place since 2006 this spring, he gave them a double bump. That increase will also be reflected in overtime allowances. The bureaucrats still get overtime while attending to Diet members, i.e., sitting and watching the Diet in session or going out drinking with MPs after the session is over. They also get taxi vouchers for the trip home.

He’s also retained the special allowances public employees receive in addition to their salary — JPY 26.4 billion a year in residential allowances, apartments in Tokyo at roughly 20% the rent of commercial properties, and JPY 7.1 billion for cold weather assignments. There’s even a special allowance for those assigned to work at a ministry or agency’s main office, which eats another JPY 10.2 billion a year.

Former bureaucrat and current freelance journalist Wakabayashi Aki asked them why they needed a special allowance to work at headquarters. She was told assignments there had the unique and difficult responsibility of formulating legislation and policies.

In other words, they get a bonus on top of their salaries to do the jobs they were hired to do.

But the generosity of the Japanese public sector doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. They’re also giving the money away overseas.

International exchange

This week the Foreign Ministry released its 2011 white paper on ODA, which offered their explanation of the reasons for foreign aid. They emphasized the importance of international cooperation and pointed out that the feelings of trust and thanks toward Japan from overseas were fostered by lavish ODA. To support their assertion, they cited the assistance received from 163 countries, including developing countries, after the Tohoku disaster.

You might have thought money can’t buy you love, but the Foreign Ministry has other ideas.

Some of it read as if it were a script for the TV commercials of the kind that oil companies produce to convince viewers of their environmental awareness: Students in Sierra Leone sold their meals and collected US$ 500 for donations, and all the national civil servants of Mongolia donated one day’s salary to Tohoku relief. While Japan’s ODA has declined for 13 straight years, the Foreign Ministry touts it as a great success, saying “active donations to the international community are connected to Japan’s own benefit.”

The prime minister thinks so too. Mr. Noda met Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on 7 March in Tokyo and promised to help rebuild her country’s infrastructure, including expressways, railroads, and IT, after last year’s floods.

Said Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osama at a news conference:

A friend in need is a friend indeed. We will never forget the goodwill of the Thai people, who offered us support as a country during the Tohoku disaster. There are many Japanese in Thailand working for companies in the Japanese manufacturing industry, and the expectations toward Japan are great. We want to formulate solid measures that will not betray those expectations.

The folks at the Seetell website are on the case again. They quote this from the Nikkei:

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has decided to provide Japanese companies with subsidies for their 18 infrastructure-related projects in China and other Asian countries, The Nikkei learned Saturday. The subsidy program mainly targets projects for building smart communities in China and Vietnam. It covers not only exports of infrastructure facilities and systems but also smart community projects involving land development in China, Thailand and Vietnam, sources said.

After providing some details about the programs, the paper added:

The ministry will extend subsidies of tens of millions of yen to these projects, sources said.

Seetell asks several excellent questions:

So, the bureaucrats at METI can allocate funds to build cities in China, Thailand, and Vietnam, but no one in the government can seem to rally any focused effort to rebuild cities in Japan? What could possibly cause such a mismanagement of resources and priorities? Are not the Japanese people of greater concern than the Vietnamese, Thais, and Chinese?

And how does it fit that Japan is building cities in China when the US occupation of Okinawa continues for its 67th year because China is seen as a threat to Japan?

Here’s one Seetell missed:

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria today welcomed a $340 million contribution by Japan, the highest amount that Japan has ever made in 10 years of vigorous support for the Global Fund. Japan is now making its first payment of US$ 216 million for its 2012 contribution.

“Japan has always been a leader in the fight against disease, but this is a great vote of confidence in our commitment to saving lives,” said Gabriel Jaramillo, General Manager of the Global Fund. “We recognize Japan’s determination to see real advances in global health, and we are equally determined to deliver.”

This new contribution represents a significant increase over Japan’s previous highest contribution of US$ 246 million in 2010. In 2011, Japan’s contribution was reduced to US $114 million following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeast Japan in March of last year, but this new contribution demonstrates that Japan’s commitment to the Global Fund remains steadfast.

The Boy Finance Minister Azumi the Cute is warning of a Greek-like catastrophe, people in the cold Tohoku region spent the winter in prehabs, but Japan had to almost triple the amount of money it gives to this group? The Global Fund couldn’t get by with just 100 million again this year? Japan was the only country they could tap for cash?

Here’s another from the Shukan Post. The IMF wanted $US 100 billion (about JPY 8 trillion) from Japan to help bail out the Europeans. Japan said it could only contribute about half of that, but the IMF insisted. The Finance Ministry finally told Mr. Azumi to cave again, so now Japan will help bail out the unbailable Greeks. The magazine points out that this amount of money, if kept in Japan, would remove the necessity to raise taxes for the Tohoku recovery, and the necessity to float bonds to cover national pension outlays.

To be fair, returning favors and gifts for favors and gifts received is an important element of Japanese culture. Nonetheless, one has to suspect that part of the motivation is the fear of government ministries and agencies that they’ll lose the budget money they don’t use. Besides, the government has been selectively generous about which favors it returns. Taiwan, which contributed JPY 20 billion to the Tohoku recovery, sent a representative to the memorial service in Tokyo last Sunday. They were left off the list of donor acknowledgments, and the representative was shunted to the general seating area on the second floor while the other foreign delegates sat downstairs in a VIP section.

Prime Minister Noda later said he was sorry if he offended anyone, but his lack of sincerity was offensive in itself. Chief Cabinet Minister Fujimura admitted the seating arrangements were settled at the Foreign Ministry and the Cabinet Office.

Na Nu Na Nu

Former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio enjoys his nickname of The Alien, but one has to wonder if the entire DPJ that he once led is just the Martian Space Party morphed into human form.

Last week, the DPJ announced the appointment of Mr. Hatoyama as their supreme advisor on foreign policy and Kan Naoto as their supremo for new energy policies.

How fitting. One screwed up relations with the U.S., and the other screwed up Fukushima.

Mr. Kan also gave a speech to a DPJ study group on the 5th, attended by mid-tier and younger party members. The topic: Achieving real governance by the political class. “Japan should give serious thought,” he said, “to its approach toward state governance organs.”

Considering his accomplishments in office, that speech was over before his listeners could settle in for a nap.

If this were a backwards country, as the man said, Ozawa Ichiro might wind up being hung. But civilized Japan instead hung his portrait in a room in the Diet chambers last week.

A rule allows those MPs with 25 years of service to put their picture on a wall as long as the governmnent doesn’t pay for it. One of his political protégées did the painting, so he didn’t have to dip into his well-stocked safe at home for the petty cash.

If this were a backwards country, he might also be in the dock along with the other war criminals. But then again, he already is in the dock for political fund problems.

The party that insisted every day from 2007 to 2009 that elections be held immediately is none to excited about holding one themselves now that the executioner is motioning for them to stick their head into the hole of the guillotine. During a TV interview on the morning of the 10th, Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya said:

If we dissolve the lower house now, the anger of the people will be directed at the existing political parties.

It already is, but then Mr. Okada is not known for his insight into popular sentiment.

They would complain that we were only holding elections without accomplishing anything.

Instead, they’re complaining that the DPJ has done little, what little they did was bad, and what they want to do now is what they promised they wouldn’t do.

Anachronisms

It is clear to everyone that these are men whose time has gone. They are living relics of a now irrelevant age. Their approach and viewpoint, while stemming in part from the self-interest endemic to politicians everywhere, is as obsolete as the Cold War. Adding their evident contempt for their own citizens to the list of charges means they’ll have a dread judge to face in the next election.

Disturbed as much by the failure of the Iron Triangle to deal with the triple disaster as they were by the disasters themselves, the people — wiser than their leaders — have moved on. Former Koizumi privatization guru Takenaka Heizo recently published a book-length dialog with former Yokohama Mayor Nakata Hiroshi, who is working as an advisor to Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Toru. Mr. Takenaka observed:

The people now have high hopes for new regional parties, and I think there’s a good reason for that. The era of putting government administration in the hands of the bureaucracy and somehow achieving consistent growth is over. This is now an era for solving our problems. In society’s terms, people are looking for new CEOs. In fact, the best CEOs are the heads of local governments.

The next posts will examine Mr. Hashimoto, the most prominent of those local government heads.

Afterwords:

Try this for a refresher of what democracy means in Ozawa World.

Worried about the potential unpleasantness of Kusaka Kimindo’s comment about “Western-worshipping intellectuals”? Don’t be. Nothing bad will happen, and a renewed appreciation for Japanese values might be salubrious. Besides, even a cursory glance at current social, political, and economic conditions in the United States and Europe is enough to know how well contemporary Western values are working out.

*****
Here’s Takeuchi Mari singing Genki wo Dashite (Cheer Up!).

There’s a good reason this is an evergreen song in Japan, and it’s not just the melody. The premise of the song is that a woman is singing to a friend who’s down in the dumps because she’s been dumped by a man.

But the lyrics have other applications as well:

All you have to do is start again at the beginning…

If you feel like you want to be happy,
Tomorrow will be easy to find.

Life isn’t as bad as you think
So cheer up and show me that smile.

More on the savior of Japan

DETAILS continue to emerge about how Kan Naoto, AKA The Savior of Japan, and his government conducted the recovery effort for the Tohoku disaster. It’s unlikely that Mr. Kan’s hagiographers at the Asahi Shimbun and the New York Times will offer those details to their readers, however. It would spoil the narrative.

For example, the Sankei Shimbun conducted a questionnaire survey of the chief municipal officers of local governments designated by the government as of 1 January as having been affected by the disaster, extending from Hokkaido to Nagano. The newspaper sent the survey to all 167 of those leaders, and received returns from 140, or 83.8%.

One of the questions asked was whether the mayors could give high marks to the national government for its recovery efforts.

Only five, or 3.5%, said yes.

Nearly half, or 68 of the respondents, said no. Another 65 thought they couldn’t say one way or another.

Another question asked whether the national government’s efforts were more or less than expected. A majority —- 81 of the executives, or 57.8% — said they were less than expected. Another 52 said the efforts were about what they expected.

Only one said they were better than they expected.

This will not surprise most Japanese, least of all the people of the Tohoku region. It was revealed last month that only 5% of the disaster’s debris has been disposed of, and we’re now just a week away from the first anniversary of the event. One reason for the delay is that the government of Kan Naoto TSOJ insisted for several months that clearing away the wreckage was the responsibility of local authorities.

Is that not a peculiar attitude for a left-of-center government? Assuming responsibility for the recovery from a large national disaster is one of the few instances in which it would be appropriate for the central government to assume a powerful role. Then again, one of the nicknames bestowed on The Savior of Japan was Nige-Kan, nigeru being the verb to flee or run away — as in, from responsibility.

The problem most frequently cited by those surveyed was the lack of a sense of urgency in Tokyo. That in turn has caused delays in construction work and cleaning up after the nuclear accident at Fukushima.

Said the mayor of Shiroishi, Miyagi:

Even when we submit orders, construction work doesn’t proceed.

The CMO of Rifu-cho, Miyagi, noted the Kantei had little understanding of the problems created by their decisions:

When they waived the expressway tolls in the area for those affected by the disaster, we were swamped with complicated work by people applying for damage certification.

That was on top of being swamped with complicated work to deal with the impact of the disaster in their municipality.

The survey also asked the executives for their opinion of the help received from Diet legislators. They came off better than the DPJ governments, to a certain extent: A total of 23 of the respondents, or 16%, gave them high marks. One of those who disagreed was the mayor of Rikuzentakata, Iwate:

I can only think that most of the MPs came to the area just to be able to say they came to the area.

Those interested in learning further details about the government’s behavior might be frustrated in their search, however: The Savior of Japan made sure it would be difficult to find out how he and his government took care of business.

A committee affiliated with the Cabinet Office for the management of public documents has been conducting hearings to examine the bureaucracy’s irresponsibility in their handling of those documents. That hearing revealed other irresponsibilities as well.

After the Tohoku disaster, the TSOJ government created more than 20 councils to deal with the recovery. We’ve noted before that these councils lacked a clear differentiation of their duties or a specified chain of command. That resulted in a substantial overlap in their roles and delays in taking action. Among those government bodies was a unit responsible for implementing measures to deal with the damage from the nuclear accident.

One of the bureaucrats testified that it was “difficult” (a Japanese euphemism for impossible) to obtain permission to record the proceedings of that unit from its director. He didn’t specify the director by name, but the media quickly identified him as Kan Naoto TSOJ. The testimony revealed that he and other Cabinet members had so intimidated the bureaucracy they didn’t ask for permission to record the meetings. Two people made nearly identical statements to the effect that the installation of microphones with recording capabilities is essential for meetings of this type. Said another:

People in the office took notes, but no official summary of proceedings was made on the approval of the unit members (Cabinet members).

The inevitable conclusion is that they didn’t want an official summary of the proceedings because they didn’t want people to know what they were — or weren’t — doing.

That would seem to vindicate another frequent charge leveled against TSOJ and his government: They wanted to take the credit when things went well, and dump the blame on the bureaucrats for any failures.

His successor Noda Yoshihiko likes to play a variation of the same game, incidentally. Last week he said the government shared the blame for the Fukushima disaster…because they took the word of the experts that nuclear power was safe. “Rather than blaming any individual person,” went the codswollop, “I believe everyone has to share the pain of responsibility and learn this lesson.”

Blame is pointless when discussing the effects of the fourth-strongest earthquake in recorded history and the resulting tsunami, but that didn’t come up in the conversation. Then again, Mr. Noda had to tread carefully. The journos wanted to know if they would get the chance to taste Tokyo Electric blood in a criminal trial. Not anti-nuke, the prime minister didn’t want to serve up that particular goblet. On the other hand, he also didn’t want to expose the culpable members of his own party who took charge of disaster control: TSOJ and his Cabinet.

The speed of modern telecommunications and information transmission means that people quickly forget yesterday’s events, both good and bad. Here’s an example: Last May, Nishioka Takeo, then the upper house president and now deceased, wrote an open letter demanding that fellow DPJ member Kan Naoto TSOJ resign his position as prime minister immediately. Many arrows in his missive landed smack in the middle of the bullseye, and this was one of the deadliest:

I believe you are not aware of your duties as prime minister concerning state affairs.

B-b-but he saved Japan!

Loaves and Fishes Update (Courtesy Seetell):

Mr. Noda seems to share his predecessor’s difficulty in understanding how to allocate funds for disaster relief, much less which people his job it is to serve.

(T)he government has not been slow about sending Japan’s dwindling wealth overseas for “humanitarian needs“.

The Japanese government granted Yemen on Saturday $22.6 million (¥1.8 billion) aiming to alleviate the humanitarian repercussions and living conditions caused by the last year political crisis…

In the last few months – all under the Noda regime – Japan has sent billions of Yen overseas to fund a highway in India, to Egypt’s new government which is already in debt to Japan, untold amounts to Europe to bail out the banks and bondholders of Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, and JPY 67 billion to Iraq to help it rebuild following the decade-long US occupation. This is not, by any means, an exhaustive list (schools in Pakistan, ports in Indonesia, etc).

Perhaps the Japanese people should appeal to the UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, and the WHO for help so that Japanese funds will reach the Tohoku area’s Japanese people at a faster pace.

Giving money to Egypt now is the very definition of throwing it down the crapper.

B-b-but the Tohoku recovery will require tax increases!

*****
Maybe I’m just confused.

Corrupt

Corrupt: 1. orig., changed from a sound condition to an unsound one; spoiled; contaminated, rotten 2. deteriorated from the normal or standard; specif., a) morally unsound or debased; perverted; evil; depraved…c) containing alterations, errors, or admixtures of foreignisms; said of texts, languages, etc.
- Webster’s New World Dictionary

THE Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, a panel consisting of 30 “university professors, lawyers, and journalists”, released its report this week on the response of the Japanese government and industry to the Fukushima nuclear disaster last March.

The coverage of that report by some elements of the mass media, both in the Anglosphere and Japan, can only be described as corrupt.

The foundation’s founder, Funabashi Yoichi, is the former editor in chief of the Asahi Shimbun. The New York Times’ Martin Fackler writes the following in his article on the release of the report:

“(Mr. Funabashi) said his group’s findings conflicted with those of the government’s own investigation into the accident, which were released in an interim report in December. A big difference involved one of the most crucial moments of the nuclear crisis, when the prime minister, Mr. Kan, marched into Tepco’s headquarters early on the morning of March 15 upon hearing that the company wanted to withdraw its employees from the wrecked nuclear plant.

“The government’s investigation sided with Tepco by saying that Mr. Kan, a former social activist who often clashed with Japan’s establishment, had simply misunderstood the company, which wanted to withdraw only a portion of its staff. Mr. Funabashi said his foundation’s investigators had interviewed most of the people involved — except executives at Tepco, which refused to cooperate — and found that the company had in fact said it wanted a total pullout.

“He credited Mr. Kan with making the right decision in forcing Tepco not to abandon the plant.

“‘Prime Minister Kan had his minuses and he had his lapses,’ Mr. Funabashi said, ‘but his decision to storm into Tepco and demand that it not give up saved Japan.’”

Ah, so. Kan Naoto is the savior of Japan.

The AFP news agency report identifies Kitazawa Koichi as “the panel head” and contains the following passage:

“The panel said as the situation on Japan’s tsunami-wrecked coast worsened, Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) had wanted to abandon the plant and evacuate its workers.

“But the utility, which refused to co-operate with the study, was ordered to keep men on site by then prime minister Naoto Kan.

“Experts concluded that if the premier had not stuck to his guns, Fukushima would have spiralled further out of control, with catastrophic consequences.

“‘When the prime minister’s office was aware of the risk the country may not survive (the crisis)…TEPCO’s president (Masataka) Shimizu….frantically called’ to tell the premier he wanted his staff to leave the crippled nuclear reactor, panel head Koichi Kitazawa told a news conference.

“Kitazawa said Kan threatened to break up the powerful utility if the company insisted on pulling its men out.

“He said Kan’s refusal to bow to TEPCO’s demand had averted a worse crisis.

“Kan told Shimizu: ‘It’s impossible. If you withdraw staff, TEPCO will be demolished,’ according to Kitazawa.”

That last sentence is a mistranslation, perhaps deliberate, but we’ll get to that later.

“‘Consequently, it’s Mr Kan’s biggest contribution that the Fukushima 50 remained at the site,’ added Kitazawa, referring to dozens of operatives who worked to contain the accident and were feted as heroes.”

In their haste to set the agenda and disseminate their narrative, both the New York Times and AFP omitted some details.

For example, here is what Mr. Kitazawa actually said, from the original Japanese:

“(Mr. Kan) himself rushed into Tokyo Electric’s headquarters, which had requested that they be allowed to leave the site. In the end, 50 workers remained on the site. It is thought by some that this ultimately averted the worst-case scenario and was a great achievement. However, most of the excessive intervention on the site by the Kantei (i.e., Japan’s equivalent of the White House or 10 Downing St.), including the former prime minister’s involvement — down to the size of one of the batteries at the site — cannot be praised. In addition, the prime minister’s information disclosure was a failure and caused a sense of mistrust to spread among the people. We have no choice other than to say that overall, their response was a failure.”

(N.B.: The second use of the word failure was fugokaku, which has the sense of failing a school examination.)

Of the English-language reports that I read, only Reuters conveyed the panel’s conclusion that Mr. Kan was a failure, and then only on the second page of the website report I saw (The Chicago Tribune).

Fackler and the New York Times quotes Mr. Funabashi as saying that Kan Naoto saved Japan. No Japanese media report I’ve seen — and I’ve read several — has quoted that statement. Of course they quote extensively from the report on the behavior of Mr. Kan and the Kantei, but the tone is quite different.

Some direct quotes from the report follow. In regard to the intervention of Mr. Kan and the Kantei:

“It is not clear that it was useful in preventing the spread of the damage, and it undeniably increased the risk of needless confusion and the further development of the accident.”

And:

“The prime minister and the Kantei command center fell into an abnormal state of tension and confusion.”

That allows you to put into context the breathless “reporting” in the West, such as this from AFP:

“A worst-case scenario sketched out by the Japanese government foresaw the end of Tokyo in a chain of nuclear explosions as the Fukushima crisis erupted, an independent panel said.

“Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told investigators: ‘I had this demonic scenario in my head’ that nuclear reactors could break down one after another. If that happens Tokyo will be finished’.

“Plans were drawn up for the mass evacuation of the capital as Edano — the government’s point man on the nuclear crisis — fretted that reactors all along the coast could go into meltdown and engulf the city of 13 million people.”

No excerpt of the official report I read contained the conclusion that Tokyo was in danger of being “finished”. They did say that Mr. Kan and Mr. Edano had lost their heads, however. Though the AFP calls Edano Yukio the government’s “point man”, it does not mention that Mr. Edano’s sole professional experience before becoming a politician was that of a lawyer specializing in the defense of labor union radicals.

The portions of the report the Anglosphere media omitted present a rather different picture of events. Such as this in regard to the venting of Reactor #1 on the night of 11 March and the morning of 12 March:

“At a minimum, it cannot be recognized that the decision of the Kantei, the order of the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, and the prime minister’s demand were useful in promptly achieving the venting.”

In regard to the decision to insert seawater into the reactor on the evening of the 12th:

“The debate at the Kantei had no effect in the end, but if the Kantei’s (Kan’s) order to stop the insertion had been obeyed, it would have resulted in a dangerous situation with the possibility that the work would have been delayed.”

In regard to the insertion of seawater in Reactor #3 on the 13th:

“The Kantei expressed the opinion that fresh water should be preferred to seawater, and that opinion was conveyed from Tokyo Electric to (Fukushima plant manager) Yoshida….the switch to fresh water in the end brought about little or no improvement in conditions. The change in course had the possibility of needlessly exposing the workers to radiation. Not only did the Kantei’s instructions delay the work, there are suspicions that it increased the danger of failure of the water insertion into the reactor.”

There’s more:

“There are few examples in which the Kantei’s intervention into accident management on-site were an effective response to the accident. In most cases, it had absolutely no effect, or it increased the risk of worsening the situation due to needless confusion and stress.”

And:

“The risk involved in the leader of government intervening on-site in the response to the nuclear disaster should be an important lesson from the Fukushima accident to be shared by all.”

And:

“The Kantei’s initial response after the Fukushima accident was a series of crises. During the systemically unexpected developments, the core (of those responding) consisted of a handful of politicians without specialized knowledge or experience. Their grandstanding response continued as the crisis unfolded. It cannot be said that (this response) was at all sophisticated. Rather, this was immature and slapdash crisis management.”

Remember, these are direct quotes from the report.

On Mr. Kan specifically:

“The excessive involvement and intervention under Kantei leadership was criticized for its micromanagement. The Prime Minister was deeply involved in accident management, and it is undeniable that he was negligent in providing sufficient attention to overall crisis management.”

But wait: Martin Fackler and the New York Times quoted Funabashi Yoichi as saying that Kan Naoto saved Japan. In fact, Fackler also wrote:

“Yoichi Funabashi, a former editor in chief of the daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun, is one of Japan’s most respected public intellectuals.”

Keep in mind which newspaper that respected public intellectual edited as you read the following website commentary by Abiru Rui of the Sankei Shimbun. Mr. Abiru begins by noting that every major Japanese newspaper extensively quoted the report’s criticisms of Mr. Kan and used that criticism for their headlines.

Except one.

He explains the reason for that:

“Though all of the newspapers accurately reported the private sector panel’s severe criticism of Mr. Kan and the Kantei, the Asahi did not include any of these problems in its headlines. The text of the articles does not refer to them at all. The newspaper ignored them completely. This can only be said to be abnormal.

“The Asahi (previously) ran a series of articles titled The Trap of Prometheus. They praised Mr. Kan to an unbelievable degree, and continued to beautify his behavior to the extent it sets one’s teeth on edge…Of course, the Sankei will insist on its own viewpoint, and it can be understood that the Asahi will do the same. But to go to this extent to avoid writing about Mr. Kan’s problems, and not informing its readers of the facts, is to betray its subscribers.

“The articles in The Trap of Prometheus are written as if Mr. Kan’s behavior was calm and collected from start to finish, but the panel’s report says that he panicked. Were the circumstances inconvenient for them? In any event, (the articles in) The Trap of Prometheus had the appearance of thoroughness — they even captioned a photograph of a sandal of Terada Manabu, one of the prime minister’s aides.

“The chairman of the group that conducted this investigation was the Asahi’s former editor in chief, Funabashi Yoichi. It seems as if they didn’t care what anyone unconnected with the company had to say. Rather, it was a case of “We will convey the Asahi’s strong determination and resolve to protect Mr. Kan.”

Do I need to mention that the New York Times, the Asahi Shimbun, and Kan Naoto share the same political philosophy?

The sober and steady hand on the tiller of the ship of state

You also won’t read that when Kan Naoto “ordered” the Tokyo Electric Power officials to keep personnel on the site, he had no authority to issue an order to them, as a private-sector company, to do anything at all. There are only glancing references to his threat to dismantle the company if they didn’t listen to him (which he also has no authority to do). His threat to break up the utility was the mistranslated part of the AFP piece.

In fact, there’s quite a lot of information that you won’t read in these accounts — That Mr. Kan did order the Self-Defense Forces to leave the site when he thought it was too dangerous. (Government employees should be saved, but private-sector employees should be sacrificed?)…That Mr. Kan told Tokyo Electric that employees “60 years old or older” could be sent to the site (Younger employees should be saved, but older employees should be sacrificed?)…That it is widely suspected Mr. Kan promised to save Tokyo Electric if the utility started contributing to his Democratic Party instead of the opposition LDP.

The Japanese mass media — other than the Asahi — didn’t miss any of that.

It is curious. Many news media consumers in the Anglosphere would never take at face value anything the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox News, or the BBC had to say about Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, or the EU, to cite a few of many examples.

Yet they think that turning the cyberpage somehow waves a magic wand of objectivity and credibility over the cesspool. For some reason, the readers swallow it whole and start “retweeting” and “liking” and getting all social media about everything. You know — “having their say”.

More than 60 years ago, former U.S. President Harry Truman said that he felt sorry for the average citizen who wakes up in the morning, reads the newspaper, and thereby thinks he knows something of what is happening in the world.

Sixty years and many revelations later, however, I am not inclined to be so generous.

It is no longer possible to be sympathetic to people who accept without reservation the work of those who are so clearly corrupt.

Afterwords:

Tokyo Electric Power officials chose not to be interviewed by the panel. The panel thinks there is insufficient evidence for the utility’s claim that it did not intend to fully withdraw from Fukushima. While agreeing that the panel could very well be correct, some people in Japan are now wondering if that conclusion was influenced by the statements of Mr. Kan and other government officials, who might have gotten carried away by their panic and mistrust of the utility. They are even finding some evidence to suggest that might have been the case. But this post is long enough already…

As always, links are only for the legit. Certainly not for the corrupt.

UPDATE: The Asahi English edition finally has an article on line that is critical of Mr. Kan and his government’s response. Some of the Japanese to English translation is amusing. For example:

“He cannot be given a passing grade from the overall perspective of his handling of the crisis,” Kitazawa said.

As I noted above, Mr. Kitazawa clearly said “He failed”.

Also:

The report quotes Kan as saying: “How large is the battery that you need? What are the dimensions? Weight? Can it be transported by helicopter?”

One participant who overheard the exchange told the investigative committee: “I became somewhat frightened when I thought about whether it was good for the nation to have the prime minister looking into such details.”

“Somewhat frightened”, eh? The original was zotto shita. That means “I shuddered to think that…” It can even be rendered in more intense language, such as “It made my flesh crawl”, “I was horrified to hear”, or “It made my blood run cold”.

But in Asahiworld, that’s “somewhat frightened”.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Termites

RECENT opinion polls show that support for Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko’s Cabinet is now below 30%, generally regarded as the danger zone. The non-support figures in those polls are north of 50%. More alarming for the prime minister is that the combined Cabinet support rate and the generic support rate for the ruling party is less than 50%. That means it’s time to start taking the empty glasses to the sink and dumping the ashtrays. This party’s just about over.

The terrible swift slide in support for Mr. Noda’s two Democratic Party predecessors should not have been surprising to people who pay attention. Neither Hatoyama Yukio nor Kan Naoto had ever demonstrated executive ability, an appealing political persona, or the political skills and character traits required of a successful national leader. Both were clumsy and transparent when lying, a fatal flaw for any politician.

Different factors are behind the accelerating decline for Mr. Noda, however. While not charismatic, he is not as obnoxious as either Mr. Hatoyama or Mr. Kan were in their own way. One reason he seems to have been chosen by party powers is that he is personally unobjectionable. Also, because he comes from a wing of the party unaffiliated with his predecessors, he was untainted by either of their disasters.

In some ways, however, his offense is greater than their incompetence and off-putting personalities. He’s perceived as having betrayed the electorate’s wishes — clearly expressed for more than a decade of elections — regarding what they think is the most important domestic issue: Reform of the government, political process, and the bureaucracy.

Exacerbating the problem for Mr. Noda is that he’s now been caught with his political pants down. A video of the prime minister giving a street corner speech during the August 2009 lower house election campaign (when Hatoyama Yukio was party president and the prime minister-to-be) has been circulating on YouTube for about a month. Here’s the text in English. Note that he’s explaining his party’s manifesto (platform in the U.S.) because having a manifesto at all was one of the major selling points for the DPJ when they were in the opposition.

Manifestoes began in Great Britain. There is a rule. (The party) will implement what’s written as if its life depended on it. They won’t do anything that isn’t written. That’s the rule. (The LDP government) hasn’t done anything that was written for four years, and nonchalantly did what wasn’t written. Don’t you think that’s strange? I hope all of you realize they aren’t qualified to talk about manifestoes.

The starting point is to not allow the wasteful use of tax money…JPY 2.5 trillion is equal to one of the five percentage points of the consumption tax, and JPY 12.6 trillion is the equivalent of the 5% consumption tax. Therefore, the 5% consumption tax, of the taxes you pay, goes to amakudari corporations. They are a swarm of termites. But are we to raise the consumption tax without eradicating the termites? If the consumption tax revenue were JPY 20 trillion, the termites might still be swarming. That’s why Mr. Hatoyama won’t raise the consumption tax for four years. He will exterminate the termites, eliminate the amakudari corporations, and end amakudari. It would be improper to raise the consumption tax without starting from there…

During his indoor speech in the Diet, he says:

We’ve talked about raising the consumption tax to 10% from time to time. I talked about it during the DPJ presidential election (last year).

He then offers some reasons for raising the tax.

Very few, if any, sentient adults in Japan think the party has made even a half-hearted attempt to exterminate the termites or end amakudari, the term for former bureaucrats landing cushy, well-paid jobs in public or semi-public corporations in sectors they once were responsible for regulating. Indeed, many suspect that any such efforts were presented only as political theater.

The DPJ manifesto called for maintaining the consumption tax for four years; now the party wants to raise it without taking it to the people first. Even Kan Naoto said that taxes shouldn’t be raised until the budget was held upside down and no more money fell out — and then he blew his party’s chance at ruling without coalition partners by changing his mind on taxes before the 2010 upper house election.

In short, the dissemination of Mr. Noda’s street corner speech has made him look like an ass in public.

The text of a speech he gave in the lower house in support of the no-confidence motion against then-Prime Minister Aso Taro in 2009 has also turned up. (The opposition knew the motion wouldn’t pass; the idea was to prevent the LDP from selecting a new candidate to lead the party in the election everyone knew was coming.) Here it is in English:

The people see amakudari and watari (jumping from amakudari job to job) as the biggest problem. (The Aso government) has no enthusiasm at all for eliminating them with a workable method. We conducted a survey this May and discovered how the money was used in FY 2007. Twenty-five thousand veterans of the civil service were given amakudari jobs in 4,500 companies. We discovered that JPY 12.1 trillion of your hard-earned tax money went to those 4,500 companies. We discovered that JPY 12.6 trillion of your hard-earned money went to those companies the year before. That is equivalent to the 5% consumption tax. The combined general and special accounts of the Tokyo Metro District budget amounted to JPY 12.8 trillion.

In short, this is a structure in which the termites are swarming to the tax money. The termites must be exterminated, and the worker ants must handle politics. Regrettably, I am forced to say that the LDP – New Komeito government is not willing to do this at all.

It’s the same with watari. The head of the Social Insurance Agency, an organization where pension funds disappear or are mislaid, will receive a large pension on retirement. Perhaps JPY 60 or 70 million. After that, he will be hired by a special corporation or an independent government corporation that has been established for amakudari purposes. He’ll get a large salary and another large pension from them. Then, after a certain amount of time, the same thing will happen again — and again after that. After six of these changes, some people receive more than JPY 3 trillion in retirement funds.

The Aso government, which ignores the people’s call to eliminate amakudari and watari, is well deserving of a vote of no-confidence.

The reason the people have no confidence in this government is that it forgot all about bringing in the exterminators and fed the termites instead. Mr. Noda’s use of the word termites on several occasions has boomeranged into his face. That word will now be one of the shorthand definitions for his political career, in the same way that George H.W. Bush is identified in the United States with “Read my lips, no new taxes.”

Last month, the Noda Cabinet announced that it planned to reduce amakudari corporations from 102 to 65 (why not all of them?), but it was sketchy on the details for the final disposition of the funding they receive. Critics charge the government is only cutting the numbers without cutting the funds. Some of the largest amakudari companies will survive. The Nippon Export and Investment Insurance Co. is to be fully funded by the government when it could be privatized instead. (Two of the four officers listed on their website are former METI bureaucrats.) The National Research Institute of Brewing will be eliminated, but all of its functions will be assumed by the government (even though none of its functions need to be performed by the government). The people understand they’ve been betrayed, and their understanding of the identity of the termites’ allies is apparent in Mr. Noda’s poor poll numbers.

Some people insist that the consumption tax, raised from 3% to 5% in 1997, should be boosted much further because it is the lowest national sales tax rate among the OECD countries that have one, while the central government’s expenditures rose by more than 33% in the same time. The budget for the next fiscal year is the fourth in a row in which the government plans to obtain more revenue from floating deficit bonds than through taxes. That includes all three DPJ administrations and the last LDP administration of Aso Taro, which combined the myopia of a government stimulus after the global financial crisis of 2008 with the stupidity of pork barrel spending to forestall an electoral defeat.

That none of the politicos now clamoring for a tax increase couldn’t be bothered to slash the budget when they had the chance (or, in the case of overseas observers, to suggest budget cuts) demonstrates, as it does in other countries, their political ideology, their lack of qualifications for holding public office, and the futility of taking seriously whatever they suggest as solutions, much less allowing them to participate in the debate. That explains the reason for the evaporation of the slight majority once in favor of increasing the consumption tax, especially after last year’s Tohoku disaster.

Here’s Mr. Noda caught in the act during his street corner speech. It also includes his peculiar pledge in English to “never never never give up” on his and his party’s retrograde course:

Afterwords:
The self-congratulatory left in the foreign community amuses itself by snarking superior about the ultra-rightist groups’ sound trucks that blare speeches and music in Tokyo. They don’t seem to have any problem with the members of the party they support blaring speeches from a stationary position, however. At least the Imperial diehards say what they really think. And they’re never going to be in the position of power now held by the immobile ones.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Rankings first to worst

THE results of two recent public opinion polls tell us more about the Japanese perceptions of their political leaders than anything you’ll read in the English-language media.

The first is from Nikoniko News, which sponsored an online poll for two weeks in October asking people to rank their selections for the best prime ministers since Mori Yoshiro in 2000. They broke down the responses by sex, which reveals some eyebrow-raising differences. The caveats: It was an Internet questionnaire survey and it had a small sample size, as the baseball statheads like to say.

* Name your favorite prime ministers since 2000. Multiple answers are accepted.

Males

1. Koizumi Jun’ichiro: 55.3%
2. There weren’t any good prime ministers: 24.9%
3. Aso Taro: 15.7%
4. Abe Shinzo: 5.4%
5. Fukuda Yasuo: 2.2%

They liked Mr. Koizumi when he took over, they liked him throughout his term, and they’d vote for him tomorrow. Funny how some people like to pretend he never existed.

The respondents who chose him said they liked his guts, charisma, ability to act, and leadership.

Those men who didn’t like anybody typically said that Diet members act only to look after themselves.

The totals for Mr. Aso are higher than one might expect. His supporters liked him because he “worked for Japan”.

One respondent said about Mr. Abe: I can’t see any problems with him. He was just crushed by the media.

The guys don’t seem to care much for the three Democratic Party prime ministers, do they?

Females

1. Koizumi: 51.8%
2. Nobody: 36.4%
3. Aso: 6.0%
4. Noda Yoshihiko: 2.9%
5. Kan Naoto: 2.5%

That Kan Naoto slipped in, albeit with just 2.5%, is surprising, if only because most media reports said he was particularly unpopular among women. Their comments:

Koizumi: Leadership / Brought the abductees back home / Stayed true to his beliefs despite what others said or thought

None: They’re all half-baked / It’s hard to tell with the media criticism / If Japan had a good prime minister, we wouldn’t have all this debt. (Can’t fault that one)

Aso: Sound foreign policy / Did a good job despite media bashing

Noda: Sincere / Tranquil

Kan: Didn’t run away from the Tohoku disaster / Didn’t give up in the face of criticism

Worthy of note: Most of the commentariat criticized Mr. Kan for running away from taking responsibility for any of the serious issues. (One of his nicknames was Nige-Kan; nige(ru) means to flee or run away.) Yet the women who liked him thought he was a stout-hearted man.

Meanwhile, the Sankei Shimbun announced on 1 January the results of a poll on leadership conducted in cooperation with Macromill, an online market research company. Here are the questions:

* Regardless of the time period in which they were active, name one person you would not want to have as a leader, and your reasons.

1. Hatoyama Yukio
2. Kan Naoto
3. Ozawa Ichiro

It’s a hat trick for the DPJ!

4. Watanabe Tsuneo, chairman of the company that publishes the Yomiuri Shimbun. Guess which newspaper is unlikely to run these results.
5. Noda Yoshihiko

* Of Japan’s 33 postwar prime ministers, select the person you thought was the worst leader.

1. Hatoyama
2. Kan
3. Uno Sosuke (Prime minister for three months in 1989, was in charge when the first consumption tax was instituted, was outed by a mistress (expensive nightclub hostess mistakenly identified as a geisha) who said he treated her rough and didn’t give her enough money.

The reasons:

Hatoyama: Wishy-washy / Ignorant waffler / How could anyone get any work done under a leader like that? / Changed his mind day to day (literally: Spoke, slept, woke up, said something different) / Spaceman / Never could understand what he was talking about / Weird / Casual liar

Kan: An unexpectedly ridiculous politician / Dreck / Thought only of himself / Untrustworthy / Never seen such an idiot / First time I’ve ever seen anyone so half-assed (ii kagen na yatsu) / Unaware of his own (lack of) ability / Slapdash from first to last

Ozawa: Out only for himself / Dishonest / Unmanly (N.B.: That never occurred to me before, but they have a point.) / Dirty / Sloughs his crimes off on his underlings / Shady

Apart from Kan Naoto’s name popping up in the Niconico women’s poll and the relatively good showing of Aso Taro, little of this is surprising, and most of the attributes of the prime ministers were already apparent before they took office.

Maybe people just enjoy fooling themselves.

*****
All they brought was love in their khaki suits and things, but it was enough to win the top ranking in the UK.

What goes around

Bullets are flying from all directions. Recently they’ve been coming from behind, from my allies.
- Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko

THE Japanese prime minister announces that he wants Japan to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement to “open the country”. A large group in his party immediately declares their opposition. The prime minister also insists on a consumption tax increase as part of a “fiscal reform” program to tie consumption tax receipts to social welfare expenses. A larger segment of his party declares their opposition, remembering how the mere mention of discussing a consumption tax increase turned a potential upper house election victory to defeat in 2010. The legit opposition parties refuse to discuss the bills for the upcoming fiscal year budget if they are premised on a consumption tax increase. The poll numbers for the unpopular prime minister are dropping, and the opposition sees a chance to force an election.

The prime minister has half a mind to do just that, and hints he’ll dissolve the Diet. He knows an election will inflict one of the largest electoral slaughters in Japanese history on his party, but a commanding officer has to ignore his emotions to send his troops into battle. His strategy is based on the belief that the Liberal Democratic Party, the primary opposition, won’t win enough seats to form a government without his party’s help. Even if his party loses and he is ousted as prime minister, he will die a happy man because history will remember him as the man who did what had to be done.

No, that’s not a rehash of the news from the past two weeks, but the summary of the lead article that appeared in the 10 February 2011 edition of the weekly Shukan Bunshun. The prime minister was not Noda Yoshihiko, but Kan Naoto.

Yet today circumstances are much the same; only the date is different. Last year, New Komeito head Yamaguchi Natsuo’s opposition to budget negotiations was the factor pushing Mr. Kan into thoughts of an election. He had hoped to convert New Komeito into an ally, if not coalition partner. Mr. Yamaguchi is said to be sympathetic to the DPJ, but the women’s group in the party, a critical element of their election campaigns, actively disliked Kan Naoto.

Prime Minister Kan was also obsessed with his place in history. (He wanted a large bust of himself placed in the prime ministerial pantheon, but all anyone has to do to see one of the largest busts in Japanese history is to look at his photograph. Funny how it works out that way.) Mr. Noda, in contrast, does not seem to share that obsession. Other than that, everyone’s back where they were last winter, just before the Tohoku earthquake.

If our political leaders were accountable the way business leaders are for keeping the books straight, they would all be in jail.
- Phillip K. Howard

When last we saw Noda Yoshihiko, he was promoting Japanese participation in the TPP talks and the doubling — at a minimum — of the consumption tax rate. A large group in his party immediately declared their opposition to both ideas, many of them reprising last winter’s discontent. Former party president and secretary-general Ozawa Ichiro is the most closely watched of those opponents. Though Mr. Ozawa has lost some of his political heft, shown by his failure to unseat Kan Naoto in a party election and in a no-confidence motion in the lower house, he retains the loyalty of many party members.

Late last month, Mr. Ozawa said he opposed the tax increase. The party, he maintained, should first emphasize the reduction of unnecessary expenses and government reform.

Former Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito, and now one of the party leaders, said, Bah, Humbug! on national TV:

No matter how many reforms we carry out now, we’d still get only about two or three trillion yen.

That’s one of the leaders of a party that two years ago claimed during their successful election campaign they could conjure up JPY 16.8 trillion through reform and budget revisions alone. Mr. Sengoku used on Mr. Ozawa the charge that others used on the DPJ: all that hooey was just political pie in the sky fed to the voters:

It’s (his) experience that simplification and sloganeering wins elections.

During the same broadcast, he also suggested the country would fall apart in five years unless the consumption tax was raised to 15%. Such are the threats of those for whom a reduction in the size of government would be a denial of their life’s work.

For now, the Noda government chose the moderate, prudent, let’s-not-scare-anybody approach by adopting a plan to increase the consumption tax to 10% in 2014, while promising to attach a clause to the tax bills stating that the government is preparing for “the next reform”. Translation: We’re planning to raise the tax still further to 15% or 20%. For some reason, the media falls for the Newspeak that higher taxes = “reforms”.

They’re not likely to stop there, either. Takenaka Heizo, former Prime Minister Koizumi’s privatization guru and man of many Cabinet portfolios, thinks they’ll have to up the bidding to 25% or higher.

And not a bit of this will do any good. From university professor/author/blogger Ikeda Nobuo:

The government has finally settled on a draft of legislation to combine the tax systems and social security, and increase the consumption tax to 10% by October 2015. There was strong opposition within the party, and the plan was finally approved after a lot of slapstick, including a kerfuffle about members bolting the party. Can this result in the reconstruction of the nation’s finances?

The answer is no. The reform to unify taxes and social security is expected to increase income by 13.5 trillion yen, while simultaneously increasing social security expenditures by 15 trillion yen. Thus the budget deficit will only increase. Taking so much trouble to create this reform that isn’t a reform means it is just a matter of time before the financial debacle occurs.

Speaking of slapstick, the Finance Ministry floated a plan on the 26th last month to return a portion of the consumption tax increase on food to those who make JPY 5.5 million or less a year. They project a revenue increase of JPY 13.5 trillion from the tax increase, less JPY one trillion for the refunds.

Now for the punch lines: The ministry made no distinctions for a person’s marital status or number of children, which means 60% of the nation’s households qualify for rebates. After realizing they resembled the kid in the joke who smacks the ice cream cone into his forehead, they announced they were rethinking the problem to lower the income level of those eligible and insert family size into the equation.

They still refused to consider exemptions in the tax increase for food items of the type applied in other countries. Nope, that just won’t do. The people have to understand they’re entitled to receiving payments of other people’s money from the government. How else can they make the country safe for social democracy?

Government spending does not ‘spur growth’. If it did, Japan would have been the world’s growth engine for the past two decades.
- Peter Tenebrarum

Mr. Noda’s Cabinet has also finalized a budget for 2012 that increases the national debt, though it supposedly reduced outlays by JPY two trillion from the previous year. This was achieved by the magical political technique of book cooking and the idea that saying it makes it so. For the third straight year, the government will issue more debt than it will recoup in tax revenues. The upcoming year’s spending for rebuilding the Tohoku region (JPY 3.7 trillion) is tucked away in a different account over there somewhere. In other words, they’re saying it doesn’t really count because they put it in a different pile.

The government will also make another pretend pile and offset half of next year’s pension benefit expenditures by issuing JPY 2.6 trillion in so-called special bonds that aren’t going to be counted as expenditures. They’re going to wait until the consumption tax increase brings in more money before they start pretending to count it. This invisible shell game to bring in a budget lower than the previous year will fool those who limit their intake of information on current events to reading the Headline News. Kiuchi Takahide, chief economist at Nomura Securities, can see the pea under the shell:

The government is trying to maintain surface appearances by playing with the numbers…This budget clearly shows Japan’s fiscal situation is worsening.

More comical than the attempt to hide fiscal baldness with a comb-over was this comment from The Japan Times:

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, a fiscal hawk and former finance minister, said earlier this month that it was imperative to get the country’s public finances back on track.

That’s some more of what Prof. Ikeda termed slapstick. Most Japanese “finance ministers” know nothing about financial affairs; their job is to be the media spokesmen for the Finance Ministry. In addition to Mr. Noda in the DPJ governments, that includes ex-political agitator Kan Naoto and ex-newscaster Azumi Jun.

Whenever any media source uncritcally parrots the the ministry line that these people are “fiscal hawks”, it is a signal for the reader to find new information sources.

That phrase was never part of the public discourse until it became necessary to convince the gullible that a left-of-center party really and Honest to God truly was serious about reducing government expenditures. The truly serious, however, did the math. The average annual government expenditures from 2001 to 2008 under the Koizumi, Abe, and Fukuda (LDP) administrations were JPY 83.6 trillion. The budget deficits fell. So did the bond issues, for all but the Fukuda administration. The similar figures from 2010 to 2012 for the Hatoyama, Kan, and Noda (DPJ) administrations was/will be JPY 94.3 trillion. The budget deficits rose. So did the bond issues.

(That omits the outlier, Aso Taro (LDP) for the FY 2009 budget, whose government boosted government outlays in the name of stimulus when the United States and other countries were doing the same.)

This tax and social security “reform” misses the point, as securities analyst Kondo Shunsuke points out:

The government plan positions the social security system as “the shared asset of the people”. They say that a consumption tax increase will be necessary to offset the continuing rise in expenditures. They say they have hammered out a policy to secure a stable revenue source for the social security system and achieve fiscal soundness at the same time. The plan also responds to changes in society, such as the globalization of the economy and the widening income gaps.

The view that the social security system is “the shared asset of society” is only one aspect of the thing. The problem with the social security system begins with the aspect that it is a liability of the state. This perspective is essential. As long as the public is brainwashed that the problem of the social security system is a problem of “the shared asset of society”, the problem that it is a liability of the state will continue to be hidden, and there should be no hope a real discussion will be conducted for the benefit of the nation and the people.

The sooner we recognize the 20th century entitlement state is over, the sooner we can ring in something new. The longer we delay ringing out the old, the worse it will be.
- Mark Steyn

In addition to the consumption tax, which is inherently flat and therefore considered “regressive” in some quarters, the DPJ plans on doing what governments of it type always do. They will take proportionally more money from the people who have proportionally more of it. Starting next fiscal year, they will reduce income tax deductions for those making more than JPY 15 million in salary, raising the income tax on those making JPY 50 million from 40% to 45%, and boosting the maximum inheritance tax rate from 50% to 55%. How effective that last measure will be after they get done cutting the gift tax to children and grandchildren — another DPJ plan — is not apparent.

Yet another bright idea is raising the tax on the new ersatz beers to the same level as regular beer. This will be successful — in killing off the market, because the only reason those beers were created was to beat the higher tax rates on real beer.

What can be said about a government that thinks the solution to the governmental failure to fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities is to confiscate 45% of anyone’s income, 55% (or even 50%) of anyone’s assets on death, and eliminating profitable business sectors? Here’s one thing that can be said: Those are not ideas from a government interested in the well-being of its citizens or the economic growth of the nation as a whole.

The real opposition?

Some people realize there are better ways to address the problem. As usual in the post-Koizumi era, the ideas are coming from sub-national governments, where voters have better luck installing politicians willing to walk the walk. Osaka Mayor Hashimoto Toru, elected at the end of November, is showing signs that he might be a real fiscal raptor rather than a media throwaway line. He’s already announced that he will scrutinize municipal subsidies with the intent of eliminating as many of them as he can. These outlays total JPY 32.124 billion, and it’s not entirely clear yet who gets what. What is known is that JPY 110 million goes to the Osaka Philharmonic Association, which operates the local symphony, and JPY 139 million is handed out to the group that operates the Kids Plaza Osaka museum, which seems to be a glorified playground. Says Mr. Hashimoto:

I don’t understand the meaning of a lot of these subsidies.

Oh, it’s not that hard to understand. What politicians can resist playing Sugar Daddy Warbucks, or the temptation to spend public funds as a way to justify their jobs?

Japan’s second- and third-largest cities (Osaka and Nagoya) are now being run by mayors with an approach diametrically opposite to that of the national parties. They claim to be interested in reducing the size of government. (Nagoya’s Mayor Kawamura Takashi just announced plans to introduce a bill to cut municipal taxes by 10%.) Both trounced their opponents last year, indicating where popular sentiment lies.

A few at the national level are finally seeing the light. Ten DPJ Diet members recently quit the party, and nine of them cited the Noda government’s tax increases as their reason. They’ve formed a new party called Kizuna. The name means “ties”, as in ties of friendship or blood, and it became the buzzword for 2010 in the aftermath of the Tohoku disaster. (Some politicians criticized the name selection as a cheap ploy, but what would politics be without cheap ploys?)

Their slogan is “autonomy and self-reliance”, a capital idea if they’re interested in seeing it through to the end. In addition to opposing the tax increases, they’re also part of the anti-TPP crowd.

How interested they are in real autonomy and self-reliance remains to be seen. Some view them merely as a receptacle for Ozawa-Hatoyama allies. They’re also positioning themselves to stay viable for a lower house election widely expected this year.

Snap goes the Diet

Prime Minister Noda said that if his tax increase and budget-related bills don’t pass the Diet, he will dissolve the lower house and call for an election.

He has therefore guaranteed that the bills won’t pass the Diet, forcing his hand on an election. It might be difficult to get them through the lower house, where the Ozawa-Hatoyama allies could try to derail the train, but it will be even more difficult to get them through the opposition-controlled upper house.

Thus, into the Valley of Death marches the DPJ. The current issue of the weekly Shukan Post features a simulation of the election results. The authors are the first to admit their projections could vary widely depending on a number of factors, but every projection assumes there will be bucketfuls of DPJ blood in the water. As a mid-line forecast, the Shukan Post calls for the DPJ strength to plummet from its current total of 301 seats to roughly 160. In contrast, the magazine looks for the LDP to climb from 118 to 195 and their New Komeito allies to move from 21 to 31. That will not be enough to form a government on their own, however. Recall that last year, Kan Naoto planned on both a DPJ defeat and an opposition whose lack of seats required DPJ cooperation to rule. Then again, this time last year Mr. Kan was unconcerned about Mr. Ozawa starting a new party. A report this weekend says he’ll do just that by March or April and take 70 people with him.

Another factor has changed since then. The magazine also projects the seats for the reform Your Party to climb from five to 38. They also expect the local parties of Osaka Mayor Hashimoto and Nagoya Mayor Kawamura Takashi to run candidates, and think the former might win as many as 18 seats and the latter as many as 12. That would an aggregate of 68 seats for the three reformers, which could enable them to exert real influence on the direction of national affairs.

That would suit the public just fine. Public opinion polls show that from 60% to 70% of the voters prefer a complete political realignment rather than a government centered either on the DPJ or the LDP. In many ways, the Japanese public has been years ahead of their counterparts in the West in consistently choosing to cast their votes for real change.

Meanwhile, Mr. Noda chose to demonstrate his determination by quoting Winston Churchill in English in his first speech of the New Year. He said he would “never, never, never give up”. (There might have been more nevers, but I lost count.)

That would usually be an admirable approach for a political leader guiding his nation in difficult circumstances, albeit self-imposed, but one wonders just whom Mr. Noda thought he would impress with a backbone fashioned from hot air. He wants to rally the nation by demonstrating his resolve to gun the engine of government and drive the nation off the cliff?

For years, people both in Japan and the West have criticized Japan’s politicians as being inferior to those paragons of wisdom and practicality in the United States and Europe. I most strongly disagree, however. I maintain that Japanese politicians are truly world-class.

They are just as myopic, stupid, and absorbed by self–interest as any group of the bunkum peddlers anywhere.

Consider: It’s been 11 months since the political situation was as described in the first paragraph. After all the sound, fury, earth quaking, big wave crashing, and the subsequent aftermath, they’re finally back where they were in February 2011.

Afterwords:

The tenth DPJ refugee said he left the party for personal reasons, but he wound up in a new vanity party of ex-LDP mini-baron and jailbird Suzuki Muneo with a few other DPJ bolters close to Ozawa. That allowed them to reach the minimum number of members for political parties to receive public funds for their operations.

*****
Will Mr. Noda and his government be successful in getting what they want? Maybe not at all.

Kan Naoto’s northern exposure

The DPJ has an inseparable relationship with the extreme left.
- Isozaki Yosuke, LDP member of the upper house

Prime Minister Kan was originally a citizen-activist, so in some ways he is likely sympathetic to North Korea.
- Suganuma Mitsuhiro, former member of the Public Security Intelligence Agency

RECENT events in North Korea reminded me of a post I had planned to write earlier but didn’t find the time for. Then again, it’s about former Prime Minister Kan Naoto, whom most people in Japan would prefer to never be reminded of again. But the information it contains demands the stiffening of the upper lip and the blocking of the nostrils to finish the job. It involves the reason he decided to quit jerking the nation around after spending the summer doubling down on his jerkdom after escaping a no-confidence motion in the lower house.

Recall that Mr. Kan insisted he never gave his predecessor as prime minister, Hatoyama Yukio, a firm promise that he would resign in their early June meeting Mr. Hatoyama requested for just that purpose. He stayed vague and hazy about his plans throughout the summer, when he wasn’t hinting he would continue indefinitely in office as the National Torturer in Chief. He even indulged his inner Koizumi by examining the possibility of dissolving the Diet, calling a snap election, and running on the single issue of nuclear power. He finally threw in the spoon on 26 August, though earlier that week an interview with him appeared in one of the Asahi publications in which he again suggested he was in it for the long haul.

What made him change his mind? Here’s a possibility: The exposure of his murky ties with North Korea and other radical leftists was about to get him in trouble beyond his capabilities to ignore.

It isn’t unusual for politicians of the left in Western democracies to have questionable ties with unpleasant elements. For example, it’s well-known in the United States that Edward “Lion of the Senate” Kennedy thought Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov was more approachable and had more peaceful intentions than then-President Ronald Reagan.

The same mindset among Japanese politicians of the left has often become manifest in attitudes ranging from deference to cordiality or even stout defense of North Korea, particularly when Kim Il-sung was in charge. The delusion also infects people not ostensibly of the left; we’ve seen before the suspicions surrounding then-Foreign Minister Maehara Seiji of the DPJ, who quit while the quitting was good, and even Kato Koichi of the LDP, who nearly became prime minister.

The dirty Kan laundry was put through the wash in July, and it stained the water a muddy red. Most of the Japanese news media pretended it didn’t exist at first, but the story grew too big to ignore, and finally some Americans started sniffing around.

But Mr. Kan showed his colors long before that.

Shin Gwang-su

In 1980, North Korean agent Shin Gwang-su organized the abduction of Osaka cook Hara Tadaaki, in part to use Hara’s passport to enter Japan while working as a North Korean agent. He was a foot soldier in a six-year Pyeongyang program of clandestine warfare in which at least 17 Japanese were abducted, though the real total could have been as high as 70 or 80 people. Shin, a zainichi and native of Shizuoka, was also identified by Chimura Yasushi and Hasuike Kaoru as one of the two men who abducted them. The two Japanese and their families were repatriated in 2002.

Shin Gwang-su

North Korea denied the abductions for years, and the useful idiots and politicians of the left in Japan claimed it was all a conspiracy theory cooked up by whacked-out right wingers. Japan’s Socialist Party got along quite well with the North Koreans in friendly solidarity and sponsored a Peace Boat cruise to the country every summer. JSP leader Doi Takako visited Pyeongyang in 1987 for Kim Il-sung’s birthday party and said:

We JSP members respect the glorious success of DPRK under the great leader Kim Il Sung.

She was also shown on television telling the families of the abductees to “get over it”.

Shin was finally apprehended by South Korean authorities when in that country on another secret mission in 1985, and sentenced to death. Their interrogation revealed information about the abductions, his use of Hara’s passport, and his statement that he was instructed to conduct the operations by Kim Jong-il in person.

The plight of political prisoners in South Korea under the military dictatorship became a cause célèbre among the Japanese. (Westerners are familiar with the phenomenon with such cases as that of Mumia Abu-Jamal in the United States.) A petition circulated for their release was signed by 129 Japanese Diet members. In addition to members of the Socialist Party and Komeito, the forerunner of today’s New Komeito (many zainichi are members of the affiliated Soka Gakkai), two MPs from the small Democratic Socialist Federation also signed: Kan Naoto and Eda Satsuki. Mr. Eda would later become the second Justice Minister in the Kan Cabinet, replacing Chiba Keiko, who lost her upper house seat in the 2010 election. A Socialist Party member in those pre-DPJ days, she also signed the petition.

The South Koreans later commuted Shin’s sentence to life imprisonment. Then-President Kim Dae-jung sent him back to North Korea in 2000 as part of the Sunshine Policy, where he was hailed as a hero of the state. The Japanese police have an outstanding warrant for his arrest, but that would require the North Koreans to pinch their hero first and hand him over.

Kan and Eda claimed they had no idea that Shin had been involved in the abduction of Japanese nationals. Mr. Kan said he signed it only because someone asked him to, and he hadn’t paid much attention to the content of the document. The flippancy of that answer is typical of the profound disrespect he has displayed toward his countrymen and the political process throughout his career.

Chiba Keiko was grilled in the Diet on the same question in 2009 (by the Japanese Communist Party). She admitted that she had investigated Shin’s background at the time and discovered that he “probably” was involved in the abductions, but that problem was superseded by the greater human rights issue, which she did not specify. She allowed that signing the petition was a careless thing to do, which is more than Kan Naoto has ever done.

Just for you!

For me?

In late July, a previously unknown photo came to light that showed Kan Naoto during his visit to North Korea in March 1995 as part of a Japanese delegation that included Watanabe Michio and Aso Taro of the Liberal Democratic Party. (Watanabe had been foreign minister two years before and was to die that September.) Mr. Kan was in the Cabinet at that time as a member of the New Frontier Party, and fellow party member Hatoyama Yukio was also along for the trip.

The photo, seen here, was taken by a Japanese freelancer and shows Mr. Kan receiving a present from Kim Yong-sun, then head of the international division of the Workers’ Party of North Korea. In that role, Kim was responsible for directing North Korean spying and other undercover operations abroad.

It’s fascinating how often information potentially damaging to Japanese politicians seems to surface at certain times, even though the physical evidence had been around for a while. The freelancer’s other photographs taken at the time have also been made public. The only other person to have been photographed receiving a gift from Kim during the visit was Mr. Hatoyama.

It is also worthy of note that the New York Times considered Kim Yong-sun important enough to rate a brief obituary when he died following an automobile accident. Alas, they lacked the space to mention his work in the international division.

Campaign Cash

After Mr. Kan deflected the no-confidence motion in early June, the nation was livid at both his weaselly maneuvering and his refusal to specify a date for stepping down. That and the effect it would have on the Tohoku recovery occupied the public’s attention for the rest of the month.

The Kan-Sakai handshake

When it appeared that that the prime minister was digging in, some new information just happened to come to light in the first week of July. It was revealed that Mr. Kan’s political fund management committee donated JPY 62.5 million yen (more than $US 800,000) from 2007-2009 to a small political group linked to suspects in the North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens. Further, JPY 50 million of that amount was donated to the group in 2008. That is the maximum allowable amount, and it accounted for 60% of the group’s funding for the year.

The group benefiting from the Kan largesse was the Citizens’ Council for a Change of Government (shortened to Mezasu-kai in Japanese). It originated in and was created by the Shimin no To (Citizens’ Party).

CP head Sakai Takeru, who also travels under the name of Saito Masashi, has known Kan Naoto for 30 years. (photo). In fact, Mr. Sakai worked in the first Kan campaign for a Diet seat. He is a self-identified Leninist who has expressed solidarity with and support for the Red Army Faction of the Communist League, which hijacked a JAL flight to North Korea in 1970. In 2004, he wrote in the quarterly Risen (short for the Japanese “Theoretical Battle Line”):

I am (involved with) elections for the sake of revolution…my objective is revolution, so we must eventually change the central authority. But it is important to create a central territory where the revolutionaries are strong.

The Citizens’ Party walks the walk as well as talks the talk. Two members, Inoue Sakura and Yonahara Hiroko, managed to get themselves elected to the municipal assembly of Yokohama. On 29 May, 2002, they tried to pull down the Japanese flag displayed in the assembly’s main conference hall, and duked it out with the assembly staff before they were subdued. One week later, on 5 June, they took control of the seats of the assembly chairman and the secretary-general and blocked the session by refusing to move for six hours. The city of Yokohama finally expelled them as delegates.

The CP publishes a newspaper that openly supports North Korea and promoted the views of the Red Army Faction. It has also given space to Kan Naoto to promote his own views. He wrote for the paper:

I most definitely want to seek the ideal approach for a movement that combines both the labor movement and the citizens’ movement.

Under the direction of Mr. Sakai, the group created the Mezasu-kai in 2006 to back the then-opposition Democratic Party’s effort to win control of the government. One member of the new group was Mori Taishi, the son of the late leader of the Japanese Red Army, Tamiya Takamaro, and his wife, Mori Junko. Father was the leader of the JAL airliner hijacking group. Mother is on Interpol’s wanted list for abducting Ishioka Toru and Matsuki Kaoru from Europe to North Korea in 1980.

Their son Taishi was born in Pyeongyang and first came to Japan in 2004.

Said LDP Diet member Kawai Katsuyuki:

(He) was in North Korea until the age of 20. It is easy to imagine what sort of education he received.

It isn’t necessary to imagine his education at all, because the facts have been reported. He grew up in the “Japan Revolution Village” created on a site about an hour from Pyeongyang for eight Japanese families, including those of the hijackers. Mori received what has been described as a “revolutionary education” to convert Japan to Kim Il-sung-ism. In addition to textbooks, the village also had rifle ranges and boxing rings, and the training was conducted as a family. Every morning the village turned out to sing “The 10 Pledges”, which included promises to conduct the unconditional and thorough implementation of the Two Kims’ teachings, to protect the organization’s secrets with their lives, and to create revolution in Japan. The families had 20 children altogether, and all of them came to Japan.

Citizens’ Party head Sakai Takeru, Kan’s pal of 30 years, visited them in North Korea 10 years ago and met the villagers.

In April, Mori Taishi ran for the municipal assembly of Mitaka, a municipality in the Tokyo Metro District, but lost. He was officially endorsed by the Citizens’ Party.

As you might imagine, the opposition parties thought Mr. Kan had some explaining to do. Kan Naoto was his usual charming self:

I made the donation to provide solidarity and support to a local party to fulfill my job as an officer (acting president) of the party (DPJ) at the time…It was my decision to make the donation, so I have no intention of asking them to return it.

And:

The flow of my political funds has been properly submitted in its entirety.

Well, that wasn’t the issue, was it? He continued:

I thought it would be a positive to become allied with them.

He added that he saw no reason to apologize to the abductees’ families, and that he didn’t know of the Mezasu-kai membership links to the abductions. Incidentally, as prime minister, he was the head of the special government group for dealing with the abduction issue.

His lack of knowledge about the group didn’t stop him from personally funneling the maximum donation to them in 2008. People wondered why he spent that much money on a group he knew so little about — unless his knowledge was limited to their affiliation with the political party of his Leninist friend. In any event, no one believed him any more this time than they did when he cavalierly dismissed his signature on the petition to free Shin Gwang-su.

For another perspective, here’s Prof. Iwai Tomoaki of Nihon University:

It is commonplace for politicians in Japan to make donations within the framework of one political family – usually through the parent organization to several sub-organizations as a means of helping them financially. I have seldom seen a case like Mr. Kan’s, in which political funds have been channeled into an outside political organization that seemingly is not directly linked with his body. In view of the prevailing accepted practices in Japanese politics, it certainly is a puzzling flow of funds.

It gets more puzzling: Tokyo prosecutors agreed to a request to investigate the donation for possible criminal prosecution. They checked the books of the Kan political fund committee and found a negative balance of funds on the date one of the donations was made. That meant it should have been impossible to give them any money. There is also no evidence of a loan. How can a donation be made with invisible funds?

Mr. Kan finally apologized in the Diet on 21 August, though he made sure to attach qualifiers to it first. He was unable to look his questioner in the eye.

In addition to their election activities, Mezasu-kai was also discovered to have spent money lavishly in Ginza nightclubs, Tokyo-area restaurants, and a Naha, Okinawa steakhouse. Lavish in this case is the equivalent of thousands of dollars at a time.

There’s more. Isn’t there always?

The political fund group of former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio also donated JPY 10 million yen to Mezasu-kai, and groups affiliated with six DPJ MPs gave money to the Citizens’ Party. But turnabout is fair play: Mezasu-kai donated JPY 16.9 million to groups affiliated with three Democratic Party members.

The group received JPY 249.6 million yen in all from several DPJ Diet members. One of them was Washio Eiichiro, who served on a special lower house committee for the abduction issue. You guessed it: he claimed his group didn’t know the Mezasu-kai back story, either. Mr. Washio was seen as a “conservative” (whatever that means in the DPJ universe), but Citizens’ Party head Sakai served as his aide for four years. Mr. Washio explained that he was a friend of his father, was introduced to him as a reliable person, and helped with his election campaigns. He said that he felt somewhat betrayed.

What an incurious lot, these Japanese politicians.

It was then revealed in August that the Citizens’ Party had dispatched six people to work as aides for four DPJ diet members to help in election campaigns. They were paid with public funds, which were divvied up into equal shares and distributed to all the party members. Spreading the wealth!

Finally, the Citizens’ Party is registered as a political group that is affiliated with Diet members, in this case four DPJ members.

South Korean money

Kan Naoto was also discovered to have received substantial donations twice from a South Korean national — quite against the law — once in 2006 and once in 2009. These donations came to light on 11 March, the same day as the Tohoku earthquake, so the news was lost to the public consciousness. But prosecutors in Tokyo were sufficiently curious to begin an investigation in May. Mr. Kan later returned the money, but the opposition boycotted an upper house Budget Committee session when he refused to hand over documents on the illegal donations.

The Kan government and North Korea

How did the prime minister’s feelings of solidarity for socialism Korean style translate into actual policy? The record is mixed. In April, still spending most of its time dealing with the Tohoku disaster, the Kan government extended the existing Japanese sanctions on North Korea. Those include the prohibition of imports, luxury exports, and Japanese port calls by North Korean ships. Mr. Kan instructed officials to study the possibility of tougher sanctions if Pyeongyang continued to stonewall the proposal for talks to discuss Japan’s doubts that all the abductees have been returned.

This does not necessarily mean he favored additional penalties or even the ones already in place. He may not know much about the recipients of his political donations, but he knows as well as any other politician the emotional resonance of the issue in Japan.

More in accord with his inner compass was his government’s granting of visas to five members of the North Korean Olympic Committee for meetings of the Olympic Council of Asia in Tokyo in mid-July. It was the first time in five years anyone with a North Korean passport had been allowed to enter Japan. The government explained that the constitution of the OCA, the governing body for sports in the region, calls for the separation of sports and politics.

Apparently the Olympic authorities do not consider North Korean concentration camps to be as reprehensible as the behavior of apartheid-era South Africa, which was prevented from participating in the 1964 Summer Olympics and was expelled from the IOC in 1970.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said they hoped this would lead to improved relations with Japan.

But if any act of the Kan government encapsulates the Kan approach to politics, it was the prime minister’s request of the education ministry to resume its consideration of permitting free schooling for the Chongryon-operated high schools in the country — on the morning of the day the DPJ was to caucus to select his successor. (Chongryon is the General Association of North Korean Residents in Japan.) In other words, one of Kan Naoto’s last acts in office was a political middle finger. One plank of the DPJ election platform was to make high school attendance free for all students. (The Japanese once took seriously the concept of compulsory education ending at age 15 and required tuition for high school.)

This would seem to be in violation of Article 89 of the Japanese constitution that prohibits public expenditures for any educational enterprise not under the control of public authority. The Chongryon schools have their own curriculum, teach the juche philosophy/religion, and have pictures of Kim I and II on the walls. It has not been reported whether they sing the Ten Pledges to start the day, as Mori Taishi did in the Japan Revolutionary Village.

The DPJ was working to implement this part of their manifesto when the North Koreans conducted a rocket attack on a South Korean island in November 2010, so public opinion would not allow them to move further. Mr. Kan said the resumption of the effort was justified because conditions on the peninsula had reverted to those prevailing before the attack. He also said it would be possible to provide the students with money retroactively to April, when the school year starts.

Waking up

Most of the information on the donation to the Mezasu-kai and the connections of the principals was reported by the Sankei Shimbun starting in July. The rest of the print and broadcast media looked the other way in public, even though the revelations caused some sharp questioning in the Diet. That ended on 28 July, when the Yomiuri Shimbun published its first report on the matter.

One day later, a project team was formed in the Diet with members from several parties to investigate the donations. Attending the first meeting was Azuma Shozo — a DPJ Cabinet member who was the deputy minister for handling the abduction issue. Talk began of an intra-party DPJ coup organized by four senior members of the party.

More ominous was that the controversy had started to attract attention in the U.S. and generated concerns about Kan Naoto’s trustworthiness. Better late than never, eh? The American ambassador John Roos even traveled to Niigata at this time to visit the site where the 13-year-old Yokota Megumi was kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1977.

These revelations and the reaction to them seem to have finally budged the intractable Kan. Everyone knows he announced his resignation on 26 August, but few know the exposure of his political associations is the factor that seems to have pushed him into it.

People will be singing Auld Lang Syne at midnight on New Year’s Eve throughout the English-speaking world. The song begins: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?

Ask that question in Japan about Kan Naoto, and the answer will be yes. Many people will be taking a cup of kindness, but no one will be toasting him.

Afterwords:

* The Cabinet of Noda Yoshihiko, Mr. Kan’s successor, declined to strengthen economic sanctions against North Korea. For some reason, they think there are prospects for new talks about denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

After taking office, Mr. Noda said he would carefully examine the Kan order to re-examine the benefits for Chongyron schools. That means he isn’t going to quash it and is buying time until emotions subside.

He also appointed Hiraoka Hideo as justice minister. Mr. Hiraoka is a pacifist who attended the 50th anniversary party for Chongyron schools. He supports diplomatic recognition for North Korea, opposed the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces to deal with the Somalian pirates, and thinks the law is too strict on political donations from foreign countries.

One criticism of Noda Yoshihiko’s behavior as prime minister is that he gives precedence to the party over the national interest. His personal attitude toward the countries on the Korean Peninsula would be at home in the LDP, but his party is populated with so many people who share the ideas of Kan Naoto, Eda Satsuki, Chiba Keiko, and Hiraoka Hideo that he has to take them into account. The perpetual eggshell walk of DPJ leaders to prevent party dissolution is one of the many reasons they are not fit to govern.

* Some of the conversation between Kim Jong-il and the late South Korean President Ro Mu-hyeon at their Pyeongyang summit on 3 October 2007 was revealed by South Korean government sources on the 30th. Ro pressed Kim to take a forward-looking approach to returning South Korean abductees — the North Koreans have plenty of them, too — but Kim rebuffed him. He said:

Even though we went so far as to apologize, Japan attacked us.

In other words, Kim viewed his return of the Japanese abductees as a diplomatic failure, and he wasn’t about to let that happen again. He also alluded to criticism he received from the military when he added:

There are people around me who are known as hardliners.

So the abductions have blown up in everyone’s face, including that of Kim, thought to be the man responsible for them. That alone might say more about the state of governance in North Korea than the opinions of all the pundits put together.

*****
British rocker Peter Frampton saw a documentary on Yokota Megumi and the abductions and was moved to dedicate two songs to her.

Who’d a thunk it?

The press is so powerful in its image-making role that it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal.
– Eldridge Cleaver

THE late Black Panther and codpiece trouser purveyor was speaking the truth, but he was also speaking before the Internet, personal computers, and social networking changed the topography forever. As Glenn Reynolds, a law professor and proprietor of the Instapundit website, put it 10 years ago:

We’ve got computers…21st Century warfare turns out to be marked, as much as anything, by the inability of people to spread outrageous lies undetected. This is a major loss of comparative advantage for the Fisks of the world.

By Fisks, he’s referring to the British journalist Robert Fisk, whose name has become a verb denoting the dismantling of a piece of journalism or op-ed of greater-than-usual stupidity, nonsense, or prevarication from the industrial mass media. Fisk himself was the original target of Fisking, and that target was as easy to hit as the proverbial broad side of a barn. Nowadays, however, people have bigger Fisks to fry and have moved on. Fire has more recently been focused on economist Paul Krugman, who shut down the comment function of his New York Times blog after so many people so easily and so frequently made sport of him. One can understand the Krugmanian dilemma — rare is the Nobel Prize laureate who will sit still for being exposed as a third-rate hypocrite.

After all these years — well, about 15 or so, starting with the launch of Windows 95 — even the lesser lights among them should have gotten a glimmer. They’re still groping in the dark, however, in part because they still manage the odd success, as those who paid attention to their treatment of candidates from both parties in the 2008 American presidential election will remember. Further, one aim of most of those working in the smokestack industry of the 21st century, young and old alike, is to push a narrative and specific political objectives. (As one of them explained to me, that is “to fight for social justice”.) The True Believers never give up, no matter how often they get their noses rubbed in their own fun, like puppies that have ruined a carpet.

They’re still marching resolutely into the 20th century at the Foreign Policy website operated by the Washington Post, one of the most porculent of the remaining Pterodactylus Americani. The parent company should have known the jig was up after the meltdown of Newsweek, the weekly newsmagazine they once owned. It was sold last year for the princely sum of one US dollar. The price was right, considering how many people still read it.

In this case, the gang at Foreign Policy offers a feature profiling the 100 Top Global Thinkers 2011. This exercise in mid-20th century journalistic self-importance has nothing to recommend it apart from the brief and unintentional comedy that results from wondering what FP thinks is thought after seeing their selections for the Hot One Hundred. One of the funniest choices is their token Japan representative: Fukushima Mizuho, head of the Social Democratic Party, and her “partner”, Kaido Yuichi. They were deemed global thinkers because they are anti-nuclear activists.

The Japanese are understandably thrilled when one of their countrymen wins international recognition. Nobel Prizes, Olympic medals, Academy Awards, and astronauts are usually front page news, but not this time — one could almost sense the puzzled looks on the faces and unspoken WTFs in the minds of the reporters who were assigned to write up the story for the print media. Ms. Fukushima’s honor rated two short paragraphs at the bottom of page two in my local newspaper. It was as if they were embarrassed to even bring it up. I read three accounts (from that newspaper, the Asahi, and the Sankei), and none of them had much to say about it, other than a brief recitation of the facts. That even the Asahi, which shares the WaPo/NYT political philosophy, couldn’t get excited, tells the casual observer all he needs to know.

This isn’t a case of the prophet without honor in her own country, either. The only reason anyone knows about Fukushima Mizuho is that she has a Diet seat. The only reason she has a Diet seat is the proportional representation system, as she is incapable of winning a popular vote in an election district. (In fact, only one of the party’s handful of Diet members sits there because of an outright election victory.)

As for her “partner” (i.e., common-law husband) Kaido Yuichi, I’d bet cash money that I could stop 100 people at random on the street and no one will have heard of him…unless, perhaps, we were standing across the street from the Social Democratic Party headquarters.

What Foreign Policy didn’t tell their readers about Japan’s Foremost Global Thinker says a lot about Foreign Policy:

* The party she heads, the Social Democrats, was just the plain old Socialists until the fall of the Berlin Wall forced them into rebranding. Their charter included kind words for Karl Marx. They developed close ties with North Korea, and sponsored an annual “Peace Cruise” to Pyeongyang. (They disliked South Korea because it was a dictatorship rather than a People’s Republic.) As an attorney, Ms. Fukushima has been associated with the defense of radical terrorists of the left.

* She believes that Japan should adopt Costa Rica’s stance of unarmed neutrality. (Even the famously neutral Swiss are armed to the teeth with private weapons.) This is for a country whose immediate neighbors include China, Russia, and North Korea. Perhaps that position is not as suicidal as it seems: After all, the Social Democrats do share a philosophy with China, the old Soviet Union, and North Korea.

* When Japan sent troops to the Middle East in a UN peacekeeping operation, she objected because they were to be given sidearms for self-protection.

* She opposes Japan’s use of the anti-ballistic missile system. One of her arguments against the system in the Diet was that the successful interception of a missile over Japanese territory could create debris that might injure people on the ground. This caused audible laughter in the chamber.

* Not only is she opposed to nuclear power, she is opposed to all but the greenest power. If she has ever come forward with a credible plan for economic growth (she’s a party leader, remember), it’s escaped everyone’s notice.

* She managed to hoodwink the Wall Street Journal’s reporters last year into believing that her opposition to American military bases was limited to the Futenma installation in Okinawa. To be sure, there is some truth to that. The Japanese left has admitted that the American presence allows them to have their cake and eat it too. They get to bash the Americans in public while tacitly accepting their presence. They know the Japanese public would demand a robust domestic defense establishment if the Americans weren’t there to pretend to do it for them.

Stand up for the defense of one’s own country? Perish the thought!

There’s more, but you get the idea. Connect the dots and you get the same sort of blame-yourself-first leftist common in the West. The two paragraphs the Foreign Affairs website allots to her global-level thought are so thin, they’re almost not worth fisking. Here’s a sample:

Fukushima, the lawmaker who leads Japan’s Social Democratic Party, and her partner, Kaido, a public-interest lawyer, have spent three decades resisting Japan’s nuclear rise in their respective arenas: parliament and court. But the cozy nuclear plant operators and government officials who make up Japan’s so-called “nuclear village” largely ignored their efforts — that is, until this year.

The so-called “nuclear village” residents, as well as the rest of the country, are still ignoring their efforts, and will continue to do so. (Note, by the way, that “cozy” works in this sentence only if it modifies an invisible noun.)

The Fukushima Daiichi disaster has now forced the island country to re-examine the safety of its nuclear facilities.

Duh!

And isn’t it interesting that Foreign Affairs thinks it needs to remind its presumably adult readers that Japan is an “island country”?

Naoto Kan, Japan’s prime minister until he resigned in August, called in July for Japan to wind down its nuclear program, and his successor, Yoshihiko Noda, agrees.

As soon as Mr. Kan called for the nuclear program to wind down, his chief cabinet secretary, Edano Yukio, explained that the prime minister really meant “one of these days in the future”. Mr. Noda has offered lip service of his own, but he’s unlikely to offer more than that.

Kan also requested the closure and upgrade of a power plant in the earthquake-prone coastal city of Hamaoka, a facility whose safety Kaido had called into question nearly a decade earlier.

Since no one at Foreign Affairs seems capable of reading a Japanese newspaper, here’s what actually happened: Work on upgrading the safety measures at Hamaoka had already begun before the problem with the Fukushima plant. Kaieda Banri, then Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry, which is responsible for the oversight of nuclear power in Japan, had quietly negotiated with the plant operators and reached agreement with them for a voluntary suspension of operations. When Mr. Kaieda was about to make the announcement, Kan Naoto instructed him to stand down and went before the public with a demand for the shutdown himself.

And people wonder why Japanese prime ministers don’t last long in office.

Today, Fukushima and Kaido see a changed political horizon. As Fukushima told the New York Times in August, “Although I won’t be able to change the past, I think I can change the future.”

The national political horizon is still as occluded as ever, and she can’t change the future, no matter how much her fellow travelers in the West would wish it to be so. She doesn’t have what it takes to make a difference, either in the Diet or the greater marketplace of public ideas. Indeed, just this week the lower house of the Diet authorized the export of Japanese nuclear power technology to Vietnam, Jordan, Russia, and South Korea.

But to fully understand the pointlessness of this Foreign Affairs space filler, we can put aside Fukushima Mizuho and look at the other people cited as Global Thinkers. One of them was His Adolescency himself, the recipient of an equally irrelevant trinket — the Nobel Peace Prize — that renowned public intellectual and thinker of deep thoughts, Barack Obama.

Stiffen your stomach muscles — they actually praise him for his foreign policy vision of “leading from behind”. (This qualifies as comic relief too.) The FP also shows some diversity in their choice of “intellectual heavyweights”, as they put it. On the one hand, they hail the pacifist Fukushima, and on the other give Obama credit for greasing Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, Ben Bernanke and Dick Cheney also make the list.

To conclude, here’s some credit where credit is due. The illustration of Fukushima Mizuho on the Foreign Affairs website, crude though it is, does capture her personality well. Still, it is curious they didn’t use a photo of her, yet managed to come up with one for the other 99, including an obscure Egyptian novelist.

*****
Bonus bogus journalism postscript from Forbes!

Here’s the headline:

Japan to adopt Bhutan’s principles of Gross National Happiness

This will come as news to the Japanese. With the DPJ government, adopting a fairy tale as public policy is a real possibility, but no one’s agreed to adopt anything yet.

Here’s the facepalm lede:

After a visit from the young King of Bhutan and his beautiful new pride (sic), Japan got “Gross National Happiness” fever, it seems…

Either Lisa Napoli needs to use a different thermometer, or should use the one she has on herself.

A minimally competent journalist aware of events in Japan would have known that then-Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio was scheming with Kan Naoto and Sengoku Yoshito in January 2010 to hold meetings on GNH that summer. The fever caused by the pride of Bhutan had nothing to do with it. Since Mr. Hatoyama didn’t make it to the summer himself, I thought this idea had been relegated to the back of the closet, but it seems not. Leave it to the DPJ to ignore the real for the mochi in the picture.

It’s hard to tell what’s going on from the Forbes article, because the link they provide is a kissing cousin of gibberish. The article concludes:

Lots of other governments are investigating these principles, like France, Great Britain, Brazil, the state of Maryland and the city of Seattle….as it becomes apparent that numbers only aren’t enough.

Yes, lots and lots of other governments, and numbers aren’t nearly enough. Other “principles” need to be factored in, such as this one from the Bhutanese GNH pioneers:

Concerns about safety were high in Bhutan’s rural areas, for example, not because of crime, but because of fears of wood spirits and wild animals.

While it’s true that GDP is an inaccurate metric, as China’s potempkin cities demonstrate, there’s nothing to be gained from moving from the inaccurate to the invisible. Well, other than excuses for creating new, air-based and public money-funded social programs. How like the left to ignore the activities that provide the most people with the most well-being, security, and health in favor of taking the national temperature and worrying about passing clouds of emotional ephemera. How unlike Forbes to fall for it.

*****
The last word on honors should go to the late Richard Feynman, a man who won the Nobel Prize for doing something real.

Kidz Я the Cabinet

IGNORANCE of the law is no excuse, say the authorities, in their perpetual search for new handholds by which to seize us by the scruff of the neck and keep us docile and lowing.

If the authorities have it right, there’s no excuse for the presence in the Cabinet of Azumi Jun, the Boy Finance Minister who’s extended to three the DPJ string of finance ministers that know squat about finance and even less of the law. Then again, Kan Naoto and Noda Yoshihiko, numbers one and two in the sequence, used the position as a steppingstone to the premiership despite their comradeship in the blind mice brotherhood. There might be hope for Master Azumi yet. After all, his only job experience before becoming a national legislator was as an NHK newscaster, and he’s never held a major Cabinet post until now. Thus, his one marketable skill is the ability to read without stumbling over someone else’s script on camera or in public. What other qualification is there for serving as a politician these days?

It was Mr. Azumi’s turn to flunk the test during Question Time in the upper house of the Diet on the 15th. Kawakami Yoshihiro, a fellow traveler in the Democratic Party, was ragging on the Bank of Japan and their monetary policy due to the presence in that chamber of the bank’s Deputy Gov. Yamaguchi Hirohide. Pressing Mr. Yamaguchi on what he considered to be an insufficient money supply, Mr. Kawakami fumed, “The Bank of Japan is hindering the Democratic Party.”

Azumi the Lad quickly stepped up to their defense and explained:

Under the Bank of Japan Law, we cannot disregard (the objectives) of price stabilization and increasing the value of the currency. It is an important requirement to conduct monetary easing to the extent possible in that context.

It would seem that he is under the impression monetary easing is something central bankers are supposed to be in the habit of. He’s also confused about the provisions of the law regarding the Bank of Japan’s activities.

Article 1.1: The objectives of the Bank of Japan…are to issue banknotes and carry out currency and monetary adjustments.

Article 1.2: In addition to the provisions of the foregoing item, the Bank of Japan shall contribute to the maintenance of trust and order.

Article 2: When conducting currency and monetary adjustments, the Bank of Japan shall contribute to the sound development of the national currency through price stability.

There’s no mention anywhere in the law of “increasing the currency’s value”, so his answer raises the question of where he came up with that idea.

There’s only one possibility. His knowledge of fiscal and monetary matters before Mr. Noda thought he was just the man to be finance minister was no greater than the average convenience store clerk, and that means he requires tutoring by Finance Ministry bureaucrats. They’re only too glad to help. That allows them another handhold to seize fiscal policy by the scruff of the neck. Besides, how could he convincingly read his script without special instruction? (Kan Naoto made a point of getting up earlier than usual to make his 8:00 a.m. briefings.)

Thus, Mr. Azumi’s only source of information is his ministry minders. QED, they have convinced him a strong yen is a Good Thing. Japan’s major exporting companies are groaning from their yoga contortions to deal with the havoc the high yen has caused, but the Finance Ministry seems to think it’s copacetic. The limited monetary easing during the Koizumi administration was a factor in helping the economy recover, according to some observers, and the average rate then was 116 to the dollar. Yes, so much better for the nation at the mid-70 level, isn’t it?

But more to the point is that the two elements of the Azumi Definition of the BOJ role —- price stabilization and increasing the value of the yen — are incompatible. Under the purchasing power parity theory, if there is price stability in all the advanced industrialized countries with, for example, a 2% annual rate of increase, the currency would also stabilize and could not increase in value relative to the others.

While we’re on the topic of what Mr. Azumi doesn’t know, it was apparent from his response to an Eda Kenji question in the lower house on the 9th that his education hadn’t progressed to an explanation of credit default swaps yet.

That would be ever so helpful for a finance minister to understand. If any of the European sovereign debt falls, the American financial institutions that issued swaps against the debt —- you know, like Goldman Sachs — will be liable for gadzillions of dollars they don’t have, even after Mr. Obama bailed out his campaign financiers. That would put the U.S. financial system at risk of default.

The swaps are also important in Europe, too. Or at least they used to be.

But perhaps the biggest sin of the lot was effectively to render all credit default swaps (a form of insurance against default) on sovereign debt essentially worthless, or void, by making the Greek default “voluntary”.

This has made it impossible to hedge against eurozone sovereign debt purchases, and thereby destroyed the market. Worse, it’s made investors believe that the euro cannot be trusted, that it’ll repeatedly find ways of reneging on contract. That’s the point of no return. This is no longer a serious currency.

So, we’ve got the combination of people openly talking about the extinction of the Euro as a currency, other people openly talking about a global economic crisis worse than that of 2008, still others who think the collapse of the massive Chinese real estate bubble is underway, and Japan’s finances under the nominal stewardship of Azumi Jun.

Isn’t that just ducky?

*****
An interesting theory was floated recently about all the pratfalls Japan’s “finance ministers” take on the Diet floor during Question Time. When Kan Naoto appeared before the Diet after his appointment as finance minister, it was obvious that knowledge of the multiplier effect was not part of his résumé. (Meanwhile, it was just at this time the English language media of the West was touting him as a “fiscal hawk”.)

Mr. Kan too was given daily instruction by the Finance Ministry bureaucrats. The story goes that he had trouble grasping the concept of the multiplier effect during his briefings. (That’s understandable; a lot of concepts can be slippery that early in morning if you’re nursing a hangover.) The LDP Diet member who asked the question that tripped Mr. Kan up is said to have close ties with ministry bureaucrats. Some people suspect that the ministry deliberately tipped off the questioner about the lacuna in Mr. Kan’s knowledge to make him look bad.

But why would they so blatantly humiliate a politician with whom they were working? The answer is that it was an object lesson to Kan Naoto in particular and all politicians in general. He had to have known the ministry deliberately handed a weapon to the political opposition to knife him in public. Unless he was forever after their humble and obedient servant, the ministry would find other ways to make life even more unpleasant for him…

Recall that the ministry has jurisdiction over the National Tax Agency. Was it coincidental that the tax problems of Hatoyama Yukio and Ozawa Ichiro came to light just two or three months after the DPJ formed a government in 2009 which promised to keep the bureaucrats from meddling in national governance? (Let’s assume for the moment they were serious about that promise, dodgy though the assumption may be.) Mr. Hatoyama had to pay the equivalent of $US six million in back taxes and penalties. The case against Ozawa the Real Estate Tycoon, who pulled the equivalent of roughly $US four million out of his safe at home in cash to give an aide so his political funds committee could buy some property, is still to be resolved.

*****
And we can’t end without a mention of Kawakami Yoshihiro, yet another rare bird in the DPJ aviary. Did you notice from his question that he thinks the Bank of Japan is supposed to conduct itself as an arm of the Democratic Party government?

His background makes for entertaining reading. Originally an LDP lower house member, he was one of the MPs that Koizumi Jun’ichiro tossed from the party for opposing the Japan Post privatization. He later joined the opposition DPJ and won election to the upper house in 2007, two years later.

One of his pet causes is the integration of the residents of Chinese and Korean nationality into Japanese society. In fact, according to a 2010 interview with China’s Global Times newspaper, he favors the common administration (共同統治) of Japan with the Chinese and Korean permanent residents, who should be given full political rights. He also advocates closer ties to North Korea and thinks Mr. Koizumi’s two visits while prime minister should have resolved all the problems with that country. He’s been quoted as saying that it’s strange Japan doesn’t support (支援) North Korea.

Strange is in the eye of the beholder, it would seem. That a man with his background and incongruous combination of beliefs actually sits in the Diet, sponsored by the ruling party, is strange in itself.

****
Ben and Jun got them Young Boy Blues.

Wrong question, Mr. Noda

FOR those who suspect that I exaggerate about Financial Ministry manipulation of Japanese politicians and the unsuitability of those Japanese politicians for either higher office or important government posts, here’s an anecdote from the 7 October edition of the weekly Shukan Post.

*****
After the Tohoku disaster this March, the Kan government discussed issuing more than JPY 10 trillion in bonds as a funding source for reconstruction and having the Bank of Japan accept the tranche. This was unacceptable to the Finance Ministry bureaucrats, who were intent on using the disaster as an excuse to raise taxes. They conveyed their position to then-Finance Minister Noda Yoshihiko, now the prime minister.

Mr. Noda declared at a news conference that it was against the law for the Bank of Japan to purchase Japanese government bonds, so he wouldn’t even consider it.

During Question Time in the lower house Financial Affairs Committee on 25 March, he was asked the following by LDP member Yamamoto Kozo, a former Finance Ministry official:

“Did you know that the Bank of Japan directly purchases a substantial amount of government bonds every year?”

According to the record, Mr. Noda replied:

“Directly? Uh, well…what the BOJ does is monetary policy, er…”

Asked again whether he knew that or not, the finance minister answered:

“No, I didn’t know that.”

Another LDP member then explained to Mr. Noda that while the law does prohibit BOJ purchases of government bonds, Article 5 of the law permits those purchases for specified reasons, within a specific monetary range, on the approval of the Diet. He also explained that the BOJ already purchases at least JPY 10 trillion worth of government debt issues every year, and this was well known by all government authorities involved with financial matters.

After the committee meeting, Mr. Noda complained to an aide, “Why didn’t they tell me about that?” He was referring to his tutors in the ministry.

*****
More to the point is why Mr. Noda didn’t do his basic homework when the Finance Ministry’s puppeteering skills are so well known in Japanese political circles.

The DPJ government has had four finance ministers in the two years since they assumed power. The last three — Kan Naoto, Noda Yoshihiko, and Azumi Jun — knew less about economic and financial matters when they were appointed than my mailman. They were tutored by the Finance Ministry after they were given the job. (In Mr. Noda’s case, when he was appointed deputy finance minister in the Hatoyama Cabinet.)

The first was Fujii Hirohisa, who lasted all of three months at the post. He resigned, reportedly because he found it too difficult to keep up with the job at his age. There were also stories, however, of friction with Ozawa Ichiro (as well as a taste for liquor in the daytime).

Mr. Fujii was the exception, because he is an ex-Finance Ministry bureaucrat — from the Budget Bureau, no less, which is the locus of power in the ministry. He might have been one of the tutors for the other three. Indeed, it was reported that he told Mr. Noda that true political leadership meant listening to the experts in the Finance Ministry.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, Mr. Noda believed him.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

South, west…over there somewhere

ABOUT a century ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote that “Journalism largely consists of saying ‘Lord Jones is Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.” If Chesterton were writing today, he’d have to amend his observation to read “Journalism largely consists of saying ‘Lord Jones is Dead’ when the deceased was actually Lord Smith”, and then botching the pertinent facts about both of them.

That would be followed by a codicil to the effect that English-language journalism about Japan is even worse.

Here’s an article — for lack of a better word — in The Independent of Great Britain written — for lack of another better word — by Enjoli Liston. We’re off!

Japan to build new city as back-up to quake risk Tokyo
New metropolis south of the capital will house 50,000 people and boast world’s tallest structure
Developers in Japan have unveiled plans to build a “back-up” capital city in case Tokyo is hit by a devastating natural disaster.

A prosecuting attorney could rest his case right there. The first sentence declares the city will be built. But later we find out:

The proposed city remains in the planning stages, though the developers behind it already claim to have the support of more than 100 politicians.

And:

In addition to government buildings and sprawling office complexes, it would boast hotel resorts, urban parkland, casinos and a 652-metre-high skyscraper, which would become the tallest building in the world.

In other words, what we really have is a big money infrastructure/pork barrel wet dream floated by some construction companies, developers, and the politicians to whom they financially contribute, rather than a concrete plan passed by the Diet.

Two pols are prominently cited as backers of the scheme:

…the developers behind it already claim to have the support of more than 100 politicians, including former Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Shizuka Kamei, a leading member of Japan’s opposition People’s New Party.

Kan Naoto, he of the teen-level approval rating, the nightmarish hangover from which the nation has recovered, will have as much influence in getting this project approved as Lindsay Lohan.

Note also the description of Kamei Shizuka. It’s accurate to say he’s a leading member of the PNP. It would be even more accurate to say he’s the head of the PNP. But it’s not at all accurate to say that the PNP is an opposition party. They’re still part of the governing coalition. Easy to forget, I know, but a fact is a fact.

Then again, it’s not as if anyone outside the PNP takes seriously their position as junior coalition partner. The only reason they even exist as a political party was to roll back the Koizumi privatization of Japan Post. More than two years and three prime ministers later, the DPJ still hasn’t gotten around to submitting that legislation.

As for the party’s influence, its backing in national surveys of party support is always in the single digits, assuming “0.X%” (and sometimes too low to register) is a single digit. Let’s go with “fractional” instead.

Where’s New Town going to be?

The city, which has been given the functional name IRTBBC (Integrated Resort, Tourism, Business and Backup City), would span approximately five square kilometres and would potentially replace Japan’s Itami International Airport located near Osaka, around 300 miles west of Tokyo.

Hold on…just a few paragraphs ago they were saying it was “south”. Now it’s “west”. Yes, technically, both are true, but Japanese consider Osaka to be more west of Tokyo than south. So do all the maps.

South…west…you know, over there somewhere.

That gives us some insight into the reason the paper’s called The Independent. Their reporting is independent of the facts, the sentences in a given article are factually independent of each other…

Then there’s the idea that IRTBBC would replace Itami Airport. As you can see from its website, Itami still has hundreds of takeoffs and landings a day. To build the New City on that site would first require that Itami be shut down after another new airport for mostly domestic flights was built in Osaka (which, to be sure, some Osakans want).

Calling this a new city, by the way, would only be of administrative significance. The Osaka metro district is huge, and Itami is well within it. (You can see how close it is to the city from the photos at the website.) What they’re really talking about is just urban redevelopment with special branding created by somebody’s PR department. As was the “Integrated Resort, Tourism, Business and Backup City” name.

Far from being a ghost city during less turbulent times, the developers behind the plans have proposed that the city would have a resident population of around 50,000 people. They also expect the state-of-the-art offices to attract around 200,000 workers from nearby Osaka.

Meanwhile, the percentage of vacant offices in Osaka at the end of March was 8.9%, the highest ever recorded. This plan sounds like something a politician could get behind.

Here’s my favorite part:

Tokyo escaped the disaster relatively unscathed, as most of the city’s buildings were constructed to withstand tremors, unlike more traditional buildings in rural areas.

Yes, out in the inaka, especially down here in Kyushu (south of Tokyo, west of Tokyo?), all the government buildings and downtown commercial structures are built of wood with thatched roofs and have sliding paper doors.

The reason roughly 20,000 people died in the Tohoku region was not the earthquake, as intense as it was. It was the once-in-a-millennium tsunami.

Finally:

Planners have asked the government for 14 million yen (£115,000) to research the feasibility of the proposed developments. It is thought the full cost of building the city would mostly be met by private investors.

Does that mean all the facilities to be part of the “back-up capital city” and “the stand-by base for parliament” will be donated to the government out of a sense of civic virtue?

And see what I mean about the need to update Chesterton? The first sentence of the piece says it’s a done deal. Four sentences from the bottom, Enjoli Liston is telling us they’re asking the government to fund a feasibility study.

One more time!

If your knowledge of Japan is derived from the English-language media, then everything you know about Japan is wrong.

*****
Who knows? Maybe Dreams Come True for Osaka Lovers.

I always liked Yoshida Miwa.

Ichigen koji (64)

一言居士
- A person who has something to say about everything

* Though a supplementary budget using government bonds must be formulated immediately, the idea that the people will positively respond to a tax increase as long as it’s for (Tohoku) reconstruction is tantamount to holding reconstruction hostage.

* Some people say the reason Mr. Kan announced his intention to resign on 2 June was the delay in (Tohoku) reconstruction, but that (assessment) is off the mark. The real reason is lies in the fact that Mr. Kan did not challenge the strange logic of the Finance Ministry. In that sense, it could be said Mr. Kan’s judgment was in error

* With the Noda administration, there’s been an almost complete return to the era of the Liberal Democratic Party. I worked with Mr. Noda during my year in the Kan Cabinet, and he never went beyond the framework established by the financial bureaucracy.

* When the Democratic Party of Japan was in the opposition, one of the policies in the party manifesto had the sense of expanding the mechanism that would prevent the intervention of bureaucratic organizations, and (for the party to) act as the locus of opposition to the Liberal Democratic Party governments that had become integrated with the bureaucracy. That was the “new public commons”, and that was the reform of regional sovereignty. There really are people who seek that sort of society, but there are also people who think that isn’t necessary once they’ve assumed control of government. They think it’s better to play it safe by getting along with the bureaucracy. Mr. Noda is typical of the latter.

- Katayama Yoshihiro, Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications in both Kan Cabinets, in an article in the 25 October Asahi Shimbun. He is a political independent who served two terms as Tottori governor, and has never been a Diet member.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine