Live Shinzo, Defending

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Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has just finished a national televised address and press conference. He offered a long explanation and spirited defense of the Special Secrets Protection Act, the law that has threatened to swallow his broader agenda*. The reasons he provided for the new law were superficially convincing, which may be sufficient to halt the skid in his Cabinet's popularity ratings (the public poll TBS was flogging prior to the broadcast showed only a minor 5 point month-on-month fall in the Cabinet support numbers but an enormous 14.5 point rise over the same span in the negative "Do Not Support" rating, devouring the "Don't know" ambivalent voters. Polarizing indeed has this Cabinet become). Anyone who spending any time examining his explanations would find the holes, such as when he used the Algeria massacre of January this year as a reason for a need for smoothed paths of communications in between intelligence services. That such communications would have had zero effect on the outcome at the natural gas plant is, of course, not something the PM is willing to concede.

In response to a question regarding the Cabinet's having lost the plot as regards economic policy, the PM gave a hearty response, listing the various spending and industrial policy initiatives passed during the brief extraordinary session. The PM indicated he appreciates that it is hard to call the just concluded session "The Diet Session For The Realization Of The Economic Growth Stategy" -- which is what he predicted in October would become the shorthand used to characterize this particularly Diet term.

All in all it was a pretty good performance. However, the PM's focusing on the votes taken, rather than on how the legislation enacted will result in the satisfaction of particular policy goals, is reminiscent of the paralytic execution disease that gripped him in 2006-07. Execution is important but it is not an end in and of itself. It should not ever be construed as a substitute for achievement.

It is hard for the PM resist the cult of execution, perhaps even harder now than in 2006-07. During this stint in office he has been spending a lot of private time with go-getter corporate executives, many of whom have only a weak grasp of politics and little appreciation of the softer arts of persuasion.

Later - NHK News has a new public opinion poll out. Support for the Cabinet fell 10 points, from 60% to 50%, over the last month, with the "Do Not Support" number rising 10 points to 35%. In terms of the parties, support for the Liberal Democratic Party fell 5.2 points from month to month, with the Democratic Party of Japan siphoning off the largest portion (+2.6% since last month) of the lost support.

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* Bad as the fight for as the passage of the Special Secrets Protection Act has been for the LDP, it has been much worse for the parties -- the New Komeito, the Japan Restoration Party and the Your Party -- that submitted the bill alongside the LDP. The stresses from having supported the Act precipitated today's fission of the Your Party, with former secretary-general Eda Kenji leading 14 fed up Diet members out in search of more strongly anti-LDP pastures. (Link)

Eyes Not On Prize

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The zing in this morning's cup of tea:

Japan third-quarter GDP revised down to +0.3 percent quarter/quarter
Reuters

Japan's economy expanded 0.3 percent in July-September from the previous quarter, government data showed on Monday, revised down from a preliminary 0.5 percent increase.

The downward revision underscores the fragile state of Japan's economic recovery, now enjoying a temporary boost from pent-up demand ahead of an increase in the sales tax next April...

(Link)

So dear Prime Minister Abe, it seems while you and your fellow legislators were expending all your energies promoting explosive growth in the number of the country's secrets and stiffening the penalties for revealing any of them, your signature economic program, the one with your name on it, has been underperforming. If after all that has been done to devalue the yen, buck up the construction sector and deliver better days for shareholders, larded atop a foundation of front-loaded consumer and corporate spending in advance of a looming consumption tax increase, the country ends up with 1.1% annualized growth in GDP, then you have a wee bit of a problem.

Unless, of course, you insist that the hiccup on the road to high growth not your fault...

Later - The New York Times is not thrilled at the quality of whatever growth is going on. (Link)

Later still - From Bloomberg, a way too hopeful headline on what are promises of progress on what has become the most important Abe so-far-undeliverable, bar none: a rise in median wages. (Link)

The Lady Is Not Amused

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This is still your honeymoon interval, Madame Ambassador. Hope you had a cheering and heartwarming Christmas.

What? You have some statement?

Please go ahead. It's a free country

Statement on Prime Minister Abe's December 26 Visit to Yasukuni Shrine

December 26, 2013

Japan is a valued ally and friend. Nevertheless, the United States is disappointed that Japan's leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan's neighbors.

The United States hopes that both Japan and its neighbors will find constructive ways to deal with sensitive issues from the past, to improve their relations, and to promote cooperation in advancing our shared goals of regional peace and stability.

We take note of the Prime Minister’s expression of remorse for the past and his reaffirmation of Japan's commitment to peace.

(Link)

The Japanese text is here.

Ambassador Kennedy should not be too upset. Prime Minister Abe did not seek to humiliate her in particular. What he has done is show his fundamental indifference toward the advice given him by every U.S. government official who has met either him or Foreign Minister Kishida over the last year. He certainly has humiliated all the Track 2 emissaries he sent to Washington or those who spoke on his behalf in Washington, with the exception of course of Yasukuni rationalizer Professor Kevin Doak.

Then again, the Washington visitors and denizens know darn well that the oldest rule in politics is "You gotta dance with them what brung ya."

Today all Abe done is done danced with them that brung 'im.

Tip of the hat to Robert Dujarric for the links.

Size Matters

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Infine, un articolo sulla stampa vernacolare che spiega, almeno in parte, come mercati di veicolo del Giappone possono essere così resistenti alle importazioni.

Sono Minicars Giappone una barriera commerciale?
Preferenza della nazione per Autos ultracorte pone ostacolo per i produttori di Auto straniere

TOKYO — mercato auto del Giappone, una volta un global trend setter, è diventato uno dei più disconnessa dai mercati altrove, mettendolo a rischio di diventare irrilevante, dice i dirigenti qui.

Oltre il 90% delle vetture vendute in Giappone sono marchi giapponesi. Un terzo di loro — ultraleggero minicars — sono venduti in nessun luogo. Originariamente sviluppato per soddisfare necessità automobili economici del Giappone dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, essi sono troppo piccoli o troppo costosi per altri mercati.

Appetito singolarmente forti del paese per mezzo di consumo di carburante auto automobilistiche hanno sviluppato una serie di tecnologie avanzate, quali auto ibride, che non necessario tradurre facilmente altrove.

Il Giappone ha delle tariffe sulle importazioni di auto. Dirigenti di auto giapponesi dire che sapori unici del paese sono un grande motivo di fallimento responsabili di auto globale a prosperare nel paese del mondo terzo più grande acquisto di auto, dopo la Cina e i dirigenti di auto straniere Stati Uniti dicono trattamento fiscale preferenziale del paese minicars e sua unica sicurezza e normative ambientali sono barriere nontariff che proteggono il paese dalla concorrenza straniera...

(Link)

Era l'autore aggiunto fedeltà alla marca base regionale e keiretsu legami a sue ragioni perché i consumatori giapponesi e clienti business comprare ciò che compra, lui avrebbe coperto tutte le basi.

La coalizione di governo è impostata per cercare di livellare il terreno di gioco in termini di vantaggi fiscali di minicars. Comitato fiscale di partito Liberal democratico ha raccomandato abbassamento dell'imposta acquisizione per veicoli e alzando le tasse annuali minicar proprietari pay 50%. (Link). Produttori di minicar e i loro fornitori urlato in segno di protesta, quando le proposte è venuto prima il comitato.

Produttori di minicar, particolarmente i produttori di minicar-moto come Suzuki e Yamaha, sembrano avere poca trazione o connessione con Abe Shinzo e i suoi alleati, tuttavia. Daihatsu in teoria potrebbe essere stato in grado di piegare l'orecchio del Comitato fiscale LDP, casa madre Toyota Motors, essendo visto come membro vitale della squadra Abe grazie lode ossequioso di Toyoda Akio presidente Abenomics.

Daihatsu, è, tuttavia, il bambino problema reietto della famiglia Toyota. Toyota Motors vorrebbe davvero avere clienti Daihatsu acquisto auto di grandezza più redditizia del gruppo. Che Daihatsu non ha preso un vantaggio nella lotta contro i cambiamenti fiscali, sfruttando il rapporto Abe-Toyoda in influenza sulle delibere del comitato, non è sorprendente.

Alzando le tasse su minicars va portadisco in rispondendo le accuse di case automobilistiche statunitensi che regolamenti un ruolo in chiusura dei mercati di auto del Giappone a produttori stranieri. I cambiamenti fiscali possono pertanto essere visto come una sfaccettatura dello spettacolo politico che Giappone ha messo al fine di consolidare la sua posizione all'interno di Trans Pacific Partnership negoziati sulle tariffe del veicolo - dove si nasconde la balena bianca della politica commerciale giapponese, la tariffa del 25% degli Stati Uniti su autocarri leggeri (a.k.a., minivan).

L'aumento fiscale ancora lontano (le modifiche fiscali influirebbe solo veicoli acquistati dopo il marzo 2015) su minicars trasportare un prezzo politico. Minicars sono visti come "auto del popolo" (Ja, ist Japonishes Volkswagen!) e veicoli di vita quotidiana (seikatsu no ashi - letteralmente, "gambe di sostentamento"). Essi sono particolarmente importanti per le famiglie rurali, che hanno generalmente inferiore a reddito medio nazionale ma che necessitano di un veicolo per ogni membro della famiglia degli adulti sia per trasporto personale e traghettare merci. Aumentando i costi di possedere una minicar, o due o tre o quattro, come spesso accade, è un maleducato schiaffo in faccia agli elettori rurali. Accoppiato con il recentemente annunciato piano di eliminare gradualmente il programma di sovvenzione gentan riso nei prossimi cinque anni (Link), sembra come se il LDP è tradendo gli elettori rurali che rimasero fedeli al LDP anche durante anni del partito di declino e di esilio nel deserto politico.

Pensando che l'andamento demografico nell'agricoltura e zone rurali fanno la tassa minicar salire una scommessa per il LDP - sicura una "Così a lungo e grazie per i voti, voi perdenti"-- ignora la realtà che i consumatori più giovani sono anche grandi appassionati di minicars. Ticking off giovanili, gente che saranno voto per lungo tempo a venire, sembra stupidi, strategicamente. Il giovane, tuttavia, sono numericamente piccola proporzione di s dell'elettorato attuale che non fare di se stessi favori di inoltre non presentandosi alle urne nel giorno delle elezioni. (Link - J)

Così minicars andare ad esso, nonostante la loro estrema popolarità.

Caduta di Inose e dopo

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Tokyo Governor Inose Naoki today announced that he has informed the head of the municipal assembly of his intention to resign his office. Inose's move comes at the end of weeks of nearly incessant calls for his resignation. Inose accepted and never declared a personal no-interest, no-expiration-date loan of 50 million yen from the family owners of the Tokushukai medical empire, currently under investigation for massive violations of the nation's voting laws in last December's House of Representatives election. (Link)

Inose has, as yet, not been charged with any impropriety in accepting the private loan -- or for having returned the money in haste after the executives of the Tokushukai were rounded up and arrested. A citizens group has filed an official complaint with the Tokyo Prosecutors' Office asking for an investigation into Inose's possibly failing to declare the loan as a political donation. The prosecutors are obliged to look into the case but are unlikely to file charges. With Inose no longer in office it is possible the matter will end there. However, the citizens group can continue to hound Inose for years via the out-of-control Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system of citizens' indictments.

We have seen this movie too many times. An individual bubbles up from out of the murk, offering a chance to shake up the way the country operates. He then makes a mistake, or pushes too hard in trying overturn the Establishment -- and the investigators suddenly arrive. A credulous and craven media complex rushes in, broadcasting or publishing every rumor as fact, as though it were damning evidence of a criminal enterprise -- camouflaging all the while the sources whose assertions would not pass the smell test if their identities were known. The public, confused by the reporting and by inculcated and reinforced biases against rabble rousers, or desiring only that everything in life be quiet and unthreatening, abandons the previous crowd darling. Horie Takafumi, Murakami Yoshiaki, Ozawa Ichiro -- all toppled by nonsense accusations or perjured testimony. Now Inose Naoki, the most assiduous administrator the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has ever had and likely will ever have, joins the list.

That Inose's political position had become untenable became crystal clear when the Democratic Party of Japan came out against him. If there were any party or group that had a philosophical or ethical reason to call a timeout on the scrum against governor, it would be the party whose own term in power was hobbled and then cut short by the obscenely thin charges filed against the secretaries of its leader Ozawa and against Ozawa himself in 2009-11. In what is evidence of the DPJ's total lack of sense of what it stands for, the party jumped into the fray with both feet, with Assembly Member for Fuchu City Koyama Kunihiko turning in an almost hysterical performance at Tuesday's committee meeting. Party Leader Kaieda Banri, who as a protégé of Ozawa should know better, responded to news of Inose's plan to resign by saying, "Those voters who supported Inose are now forced to grasping at huge disappointment. Given that he came under a cloud of doubt, he should have resigned sooner." (Link - J)

The monumental stupidity of Kaeda's statement -- repudiating due process of law and the presumption of innocence -- reinforces the belief that the DPJ is doomed failure as long as he is the head of it.

As to why the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito, which supported Inose's candidature in 2012, should so suddenly turn against him, the answer is two-fold. First, by going after Inose for accepting Tokushukai money the LDP is making a bold bid to have the public forget that the money men in this affair, Tokuda Torao and Tokuda Takeshi -- were both LDP members of the House of Representatives. It is insane to believe that skewering Inose would cover up the LDP's fingerprints on the 50 million yen -- but goodness, it seems to have worked.

The other reason why the LDP wanted Inose gone is, unsurprisingly, money. Not paltry 50 million sums from the Tokudas -- real money. The hundreds of billions of yen that will be spent on Olympics-related construction and events preparations over the next six years. Inose rose to influence though penning books on the horrible waste inflicted by government budgets and the countryside by the construction industry, working at that time hand-in-glove with the LDP. If there is an eminence grise or noire in this drama, it is the members and supporters of the LDP's Road Tribe, who have long sought a means of wreaking vengeance on Inose for having turned the country against them.

With Inose the skeptic and critic out of the way, replaced with a more pliant successor, the Olympics can become the cover story for a thousand sins and abuses.

As for who will run in the by-election to elect a new governor, several names are being bandied about. Media types and Nagata-cho hallways rats have been flogging former Health Minister Masuzoe Yo'ichi as one likely to toss his hat in the ring. The resignation of Higashikokubaru Hideo from the Diet a week ago already initiated a burst of predictions he would be in the race.

The Sankei Shimbun, which has few scruples as to accuracy or plausability, has floated the names of LDP communications director Koike Yuriko (a Shisaku favorite legislator), Abe Shinzo's body double Hagiuda Ko'ichi and dark lord Minister of Education Shimomura Hakubun as potential candidates. (Link - J)

The hapless DPJ, which has a real opportunity to score points against the LDP in the aftermath of the publicly scorned passage of the Special Secrets Protection bill, has no idea whom it might nominate (Why am I not surprised?). Some in the DPJ are reportedly thinking the party should nominate Ren Ho, the House of Councillors member who heretofore has always been the bridesmaid in all big time political post guessing games.

Having the half-Taiwanese, sharp-tongued, whippet smart, media savvy, gorgeous and still youthful Ren Ho as the governor of Tokyo would send a plethora of positive messages to the world. Domestically, however, it would be a recipe for disaster. Prime Minister Abe's most consistently applause line when in conservative circles is an sarcastic echo of Ren Ho's famous question to government-supported supercomputer scientists who worked for 10 years without building an actual machine because they could never guarantee the machine would be #1 in the world. Incredulous that the geeks had consumed hundreds of millions of yen in government subsidies without producing anything, Ren Ho asked the project administrators, "What was wrong with being #2?" [So whenever Abe talks rouses the faithful with a "Let us pledge to be #1 in the world!" he is not riffing on Ezra Vogel; he is mocking Ren Ho.]

If the DPJ was smart, which it is not, it would nominate former Tottori governor and former Minister of Internal Affairs Katayama Yoshiro. The good professor actually knows and cares about administration and has a decent respect for the people's intelligence. Admirable qualities, those.

Why the race for governor matters, of course, is not that Tokyo is the most populous city in the country, that it is host of the national government or even that it will host the Olympics in 2020. It is that Tokyo Metropolitan Government is a fabulously wealthy local government, second only in economic/political significance to the U.S. states of California and Texas.

To sit behind the governor's desk inside the Tocho is a hell of responsibility. It needs a hell of a person.

Molto bene, il cavaliere Chen

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Cavaliere dell'ordine al merito e addetto stampa ex per la Yo-jun Chen Ambasciata di Pechino ha un saggio lucido fino a The Diplomat il peculiare mix di deft e goffo che è diplomazia asiatica della Cina. (Link)

L'unico errore o errata interpretazione che vedo è nel brano:

Il fatto che la nuova zona copre le isole di Senkaku/Diaoyu disputate ha solo aggiunto al senso di crisi e Sinophobia già spumeggiante in Giappone. Alcuni osservatori suggeriscono che Cina ha infatti fatto Abe un favore. Per mesi, il leader giapponese ha cercato di convincere una nazione riluttante a dargli quasi un blank check (ad esempio una legge di segretezza di stato controverso) a drasticamente manzo sia il controllo di sicurezza interna (un incubo per i sostenitori della democrazia) e le capacità militari del Giappone. Grazie a Pechino, Abe ha ora un Parlamento molto più acquiescente. [il mio accento]

Tale ultima riga è fuorviante. L'acquiescenza della dieta ai desideri di Abe ha poco a che fare con Pechino e molto a che fare con l'enorme numero di mozziconi di partito Liberal democratico, seduti nei sedili.

Inoltre, l'implicazione che la dieta ha posto un problema per il programma di sicurezza di Abe non è preciso. Membri di dieta sono stati Johnny-come-latelies alla lotta contro la legge di segretezza. Protesta contro quel po ' eclatanti della legislazione è venuto dalla società civile: avvocati, esecuzione di artisti, giornalisti, ONG, educatori e cittadini comuni interessati. Membri dell'opposizione della dieta si alzò sul carro, solo dopo che i cittadini preso a rotazione. È stato il popolo, non di loro rappresentanti, che baulked al travolgente competenza e severità unJapanese della legge.

Che il saggio di Chevalier Chen sarebbe instabile la situazione politica all'interno del Giappone è sorprendente. Il diplomatico francese ex carriera, che oltre a Beijing aveva stint nel consolato di San Francisco e come direttore del dipartimento di fotografia del ministero (!), vive in pensione in Tateshina.

Hors de ces deux interpretazioni erronées, très bien fait, Chen Chevalier!

You Would Not Want To Be One Of His Allies

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The Yomiuri Shimbun has published an account of the events leading up Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's visit to Yasukuni Shrine two days ago (Link). If the timeline and the quotations in the story are accurate -- and there is no reason to doubt that they are -- a picture emerges of a ruthless Abe, unbound by courtesy or caution in his dealings with his most prominent political allies.

Here is the snippet on Abe's call to Yamaguchi Natsuo, the leader of the party whose House of Councillors votes Abe relies upon to guarantee the passage of legislation:

"I'll visit the shrine at my own discretion," Abe told Natsuo Yamaguchi, leader of New Komeito, the junior coalition partner of his Liberal Democratic Party, over the phone at about 11 a.m. on Thursday, about 30 minutes before he headed to the shrine.

"I cannot support that," Yamaguchi told Abe.

"I didn't think you'd agree with me," Abe said before hanging up the phone.

Abe also informed LDP Secretary General Shigeru Ishiba of his intention to visit the shrine in the same morning.

What the Yomiuri narrative fails to clarify is that Yamaguchi and Ishiba already knew Abe was on his way to Yasukuni before the PM made his courtesy calls. Major news outlets began publishing and airing alerts regarding the Abe visit 30 minutes prior to Abe's 11 a.m. call to Yamaguchi (like this story that appeared on the MSN Sankei News site at 10:26 am). Ishiba found out about the visit from the reporters covering him, when they all started shouting at him, "What is your opinion of the prime minister visiting Yasukuni?" An exasperated Ishiba replied, "Why are you all asking me my opinion of a Yasukuni visit?" The reporters shouted back, "Because it has been announced!" Ishiba, trying to appear nonchalant, turned and walked away, repeating the news to himself, "Oh, it's been announced. Hmmmm."

As for the Yomiuri's account of how Abe handled his chief cabinet secretary Suga Yoshihide -- the man charged not only with making policies happen but devising the cover stories -- that too is eye-opening. Suga's extraordinarily deft management of the policy agenda and the daily message have left many wondering whether he, Suga, is not indeed the de facto prime minister. The Yomiuri's account clearly puts Suga in a subservient role, left to devise a desperate strategy of damage control after failing to change the prime minister's mind on whether or not to visit Yasukuni. The revelation that the Abe statement on why he visited Yasukuni (Link) was devised by Suga after Abe had made his decision goes a long way to explaining the raging insincerity of Abe's post-visit address.

[An aside: I know that the theory that speakers look up and to the right when they are trying to retrieve concocted versions of events from memory has been tested and found wanting -- but gosh, it sure looked like Abe was doing just that during the NHK live broadcast.]

Running roughshod over the leader of the LDP's ruling coalition partner, the secretary-general of the LDP and his own chief cabinet secretary tells all three men Abe's thinking as to who is in charge and who walks three feet behind in this government. The rock hard treatment of Yamaguchi indicates further that the dinners Abe has had in the last month with the heads of the Your Party and the Japan Restoration Party (the latest being a three hour affair with Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru on the Emperor's birthday - Link - J) were not mere social get-togethers. Even after the fission of the Your Party in response to Abe's dinner with party leader Watanabe Yoshimi (Link - J), the number of seats held by the Your Party and the JRP in the House of Councillors are more than enough for Abe to tell Yamaguchi and the New Komeito, "You know, you can be replaced..."

Which is what "I didn't think you would agree with me" means, ultimately.

The Mirror Has No Face Or Shame

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Warning: the preposterous hypocrisy of the below can lead to the spouting of hot liquids from your mouth, damaging the device upon which you are viewing the text:

Politicians need to trust people

December 11, 2013 --

[snip]

The issues we are facing today are things that should have been resolved by the Liberal Democratic Party 10, 15 or 20 years ago. They are, for instance, energy policy, tax system [reform], restructuring the economic structure, agriculture, changing security policy, and so on. But weren't solutions to these issues put off because such measures would cause the party to lose votes, would bring down support rates, or cause defeat in elections if they were mentioned to voters?

I believe the current state of affairs in Japan is that almost nobody trusts politicians. But do politicians trust the people? If you don't speak the truth for fear of losing votes, that may be self-preservation. People who act in such a way should give up politics.

Does the LDP have the narrative skill, sincerity and honesty to persuade people?

The speaker here -- the person asking whether Liberal Democratic Party has "the narrative skill, sincerity and honesty" to persuade the public?

The guy who wrote this and more recently said this.

If a lack of self-reflection were a virtue, Ishiba Shigeru would be a living saint.

As it is, he is just a buffoon. A evil-looking, evil-sounding, patronizing buffoon who happens to run the day-to-day affairs of the only party that matters in this blessed land.

The full translated Ishiba comment, including further evidence of the LDP leadership's adolescent wide-eyed staring infatuation with decisiveness, can be accessed here.

He's Pro-Shinto, But Not That Pro-Shinto

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Shisaku posts normally contain at least two or three typos, due to my own unfortunate haste and the reality that this is a private sharing of information and opinion.

The Huffington Post, by contrast, is a commercial venture, where an urge to preserve a modicum of decorum would predicate a second set of eyes perusing a piece prior to its publication on the website:

Which is what makes today's featured Huffington Post post on Japan so very special.

Click on image to open in a new, larger window.

The author of the blog post, Dr. Peter Navarro, is a professor at the University of California, Irvine (I am not making this up). His personal website directs you to to his documentary site, deathbychina.com, where, among other things, one can download a free copy of the "Death by China" theme song (I am not making this up, either).

Of special note is the author's having the prime minister visiting the "Yasukuni Shin" -- which, one must assume, is somewhere in between the Yasukuni Foot and the Yasukuni Knee.

For the record, Abe Shinzo is a Shinto chauvinist, meaning that he not only publicly participates in Shinto rituals whilst in the dress of a public official, but he is leader or significant member of a number of political organizations aiming to promote a politico-social role for Shinto. Abe is the chairman of the Shinto Political Alliance Diet Member's Roundtable (Shinto seiji renmei kokkai giin kondankai), the Diet arm of the Shinto Political Alliance (Shinto seiji renmei, or Shinseiren - Link - J), an organization established in 1966 to combat, according to the organization's website, the spirit postwar materialism and the accelerating loss of memory of what is Japanese and what it means to be a Japanese.

Abe is also the chairman of Japan's Rebirth (Sosei Nippon), an organization recently featured here. Japan's Rebirth seeks a reawakening of the pride of the Japanese people in their history and culture, with a special focus of the Imperial House. Given the prominence of the thought of Yoshida Shoin in the organization's literature (Yoshida's spirit being, in Prime Minister Abe's life, a focus of special reverence) and given the special mention in the group's guiding principles to a fight against permanent residents receiving the right to vote in local elections (Abe and I, a holder of permanent residence, are in complete agreement as regards the idiocy of such proposals) Sosei Nippon should be seen as a rinsed and limp version of the 19th century's sonno joi ("Revere the Emperor/Expel the Barbarian") movement. As such, Shinto, particularly a version of State Shinto, is definitely in the Japan's Rebirth tool set.

Abe has always been a prominent member, of course, of the Association of Diet Members for Worshiping at Yasukuni Shrine Together (Minna de Yasukuni jinja ni sanpai suru giin no kai) which organizes the Yasukuni mass visits of Diet members and advocates a a normalization of Yasukuni to the point where Cabinet members and the Emperor pay regular official visits to the shrine.

[For more on the traditionalist/revisionist organizations boasting Abe Shinzo as a member, see "The Abe Cabinet - An Ideological Breakdown" by the Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, translated by Matthew Penney.]

So yes, Professor Navarro, there is a "Shinto Abe" -- but only in spirit, not name.

Party At Watanabe Yoshimi's: An Early Post-Mortem

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The steady if unspectacular rise of the Your Party (Minna no to - "Everyone's Party") Japan's answer to Germany's Free Democrats, the most liberal (in the classical, Edmund Burke sense of the word) party ever in postwar Japanese politics, is history. (Link)

The rupture in between party leader Watanabe Yoshimi and his former secretary-general Eda Kenji occurred months ago, leading to a peculiar situation of an authoritarian leader and his rebel former second-in-command cohabiting in utter contempt of each other. However it took the passage of the Special Secrets Protection Act, and the public role the Your Party played in transforming the Liberal Democratic Party's bill into law, to convince a decent number of Your Party members of the Diet to join Eda in defecting.

On the surface, Your Party did no worse in its attempt to modify the LDP draft secrets bill than the other two parties -- the New Komeito and the Japan Restoration Party -- who co-sponsored the bill. All three failed to demand from the LDP the severe changes the bill needed to serve its ostensible purpose of protecting Japanese citizens from possible harm. Fooled and/or perhaps tempted by the prospect of influencing an overwhelmingly powerful LDP, the three parties asked for only the weakest of amendments -- which a bemused LDP leadership, in a false show of magnanimity, gleefully accepted. In the case of the JRP's proposals, the LDP took the liberty of accepting the JRP ideas that made a bad bill even worse while ignoring the proposals suggesting a setting of limits on bureaucratic power. The JRP's humiliation at this cherry-picking -- which, to be fair, was inherent in the JRP's ridiculous mix of ideas -- led the JRP to boycott the final vote in the House of Representatives, leaving the New Komeito and the Your Party (minus some defectors led by Eda) to swallow their pride and vote for the monstrosity.

Classing the Your Party as a party in opposition has always been problematic. Your Party, despite its reformist creed, sat on the sidelines and cast stones during the brief three years a Democratic Party of Japan-led coalition was in power. Effectively if not openly Your Party was a cat's paw of the disgraced LDP, scratching and often wounding the upstart Democrats.

Once the change in power reversed itself last December, the Your Party has a right to take a seat at the table. It did not, however, leaving Eda and others in the party wondering what the party's role was. If all that the Your Party could glean from having been an agent of the LDP was a few more seats in the Diet, then the quid pro quo, such as it was, was unfulfilling. Collaboration with the LDP to tear down the Democrats should have resulted in significant influence on policy if the silent bargain was to be seen as worthwhile.

Your Party's survival as an entity entered a critical phase when it entered into negotiations with the LDP on the secrecy bill. No one could ignore the glaring contradiction in between the party's stated goals of trimming the powers of the bureaucracy and the secrecy bill's stunning bequest of power to the bureaucrats to wall off information from the public eye.

What doomed Your Party solidarity was what should have been the party's ace-in-the-hole: party leader Watanabe's close personal friendship with Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Watanabe was one of a trio -- who with Abe formed a quartet jokingly called the "Abe Road Group" -- that pushed Abe in August of 2012 to run for the presidency of the LDP. Watanabe and Abe dined together and have kept in constant contact, even as the Your Party was in supposed opposition to the LDP.

That Watanabe could not capitalize on his friendship with the head of the ruling party, by getting more from the LDP in terms of concessions on issues supposedly vital to the Your Party, begged the question as to what, if anything, membership in the Your Party meant, as an electoral platform and in terms of influence on policy and governance.

The answer, according to yesterday's 14 defectors, is that it meant nothing -- which left them no recourse but to follow their instincts for self-preservation.

The fission of the Your Party poses a question to all the smaller parties in the Diet, including the come-hell-or-high-water LDP ally the New Komeito. With the LDP in such a dominant position, and given fates of the smaller parties that have taken part in ruling coalitions or coalitions of convenience over the past 15 years, what can a party do to retain relevance on the policy front while remaining viable as a political entity?

Later - Many thanks to the anonymous commenter who noted the error in the title.

Togo Kazuhiko At ICAS

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AppId is over the quota
I do not always agree with the ideas of Togo Kazuhiko, the former rising star at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and current the Director of the Institute of World Affairs at Kyoto Sangyo University. I thought and still do think disastrous his proposal that the government of Japan accede to Chinese demands for a recognition of the existence of a dispute over the sovereignty of the Senkakus in return for reopened high-level dialogue. Togo's proposal insufficiently appreciates the window of opportunity such a concession provides for Chinese to claim the Senkakus are one of the "stolen" territories whose return is promised to China under the Cairo Declaration. Perhaps Chinese escalation of the crisis since he first made the proposal has changed Togo's thinking.

Despite my differences with some of Togo's ideas, he is a towering figure in the analysis of the diplomatic issues facing Japan. Well worth watching is the video of his recent talk at Temple University Japan on the background to the current state of Japan-Russia relations and the chances for the Abe Cabinet to resolve the Northern Territories issue and sign a peace treaty.

I very much agree with Togo's assessment in the video that if one wishes to understand the strategic thinking of Abe Shinzo, one needs to read Toward a Beautiful Country, the book Abe published this year. Unfortunately, when one reads the book one finds that the strategic ideas are 1) few in number and 2) arise from a rather bonkers view of the world (Most folks have to be cautioned that correlation does not imply causation. Prime Minister Abe has to be further cautioned that juxtaposition does not imply correlation).

Temple University Japan's Institute for Contemporary Asian Studies is open minded in its invitations. In addition to heavyweights like Togo, they offer a microphone to lesser talents like this odd individual, who will be offering his take on the Abe Cabinet on January 9.

From The Nonsense Party, More Nonsense

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Fast on the heels of Pyongyang frequent flyer and professional wrestler Inoki Antonio's trip to the DPRK in defiance of a Diet ruling (Link), an act that led to a punishment of historic proportions (Link), a star Japan Restoration Party Diet member has further burnished the JRP's reputation as the party of not-ready-for-kindergarten dilettantes. Higashikokubaru Hideo, the former Miyazaki Governor (a post he served in without getting arrested, which, given the history of the Miyazaki governor’s chair, is amazing) and professional comedian yesterday told JRP co-leader and fellow television personality Hashimoto Toru he is resigning his House of Representatives seat.

The reason Higashikokubaru offered for giving up his Kinki Bloc proportional seat, after less than a year in office? "There are limits as to what I can do as a member of the Diet." (Link - J)

The Sankei Shimbun, which occasionally gets a story right, has Higashikokubaru resigning from the Diet in order to run for the post of governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan District (Link - J). This explanation gibes both with Higashikokubaru's elliptical reason for resigning and the fact that he was a candidate for Tokyo governor in 2011, running against and losing to the JRP's other co-leader, then incumbent governor Ishihara Shintaro, who himself resigned his governorship after only a year and a halfway into a four year term in order to run once again for a Diet seat.

Higashikokubaru's plan to win public office in yet a third major region of the country (Kyushu, done; Kansai, done. Why the heck not see if the Kanto is game as well?) is complicated by the grim tenacity of Inose Naoki, Ishihara's former Passepartout who took over after Ishihara's departure. Inose is hanging on to his desk at the Tocho despite everybody's trying to pressure him to resign for accepting an interest-free, no repayment-schedule loan of 50 million yen* from the Tokushukai hospital empire, whose family owners/directors were all arrested this fall for massive voting laws violations in pursuit of a House of Representatives seat for the family dauphin Tokuda Takeshi in the same election that sent Ishihara and Higashikokubaru to the Diet. (Link)

Yes, it is a complicated, intertwined cobweb of mutual back rubbing, raging narcissism, hypocrisy and yes, lots and lots of money.

Anyway, until a member of the Japan Restoration Party does or even says something remotely respectable, the JRP remains the nonsense party -- which, given the absurdities pouring out of late from the Your Party and the Liberal Democratic Party (which, by mercilessly hounding Governor Inose, is trying to make everyone forget that Tokuda, the cash dispenser, is one of its princelings) is saying something.

------

* Inose took his loan in the form of cash. I had a chance yesterday to find out the mass and dimensions of the loan, if it were handed over in its most likely form of bundles of just-off-the presses 10,000 yen bills. The stack of bills would be 38 centimeters wide, 16 centimeters deep, 10 centimeters high and weigh 5 kilograms.

A Chinese Nightmare, Post-Sochi

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AppId is over the quota
VLADIVOSTOK - When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan sat down last Thursday with President Geun-hye Park at the finals of women's figure skating in Sochi, Russia, the physical and emotional distance between the two leaders seemed an illustration of the freeze in relations between the two countries. Mr. Abe and President Park sat apart, acknowledging each other's presence only once at the start of the evening. Japan First Lady Akie Abe, a fan of Korean culture and a speaker of the Korean language, sat in between the two leaders, eagerly and energetically chatting with the South Korean leader in a manner that made the frostiness between President Park and Prime Minister Abe all the more glaring.

The lack of interaction between President Park and Mr. Abe last week made yesterday's announcement of a broad-based, multilateral agreement on East Asian territorial issues all the more unexpected. Foreign ministers of Japan, South Korea, Russia and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, meeting in this frigid Pacific port, held a news conference outlining an intricate plan for countries in the region to settle longstanding territorial disputes in a wave of mutual recognitions of each other’s territorial claims.

"President Park and Mr. Abe put on an incredible show on Thursday night, better perhaps than the two young ladies," quipped one of President Park's advisers, who asked to remain anonymous. "The two governments had already cut the deal on Dokdo recognition, ending the feud. The two leaders showed no warmth at all toward each in order to keep the whole deal under wraps."

Though the details are not fully hammered out regarding Japanese rights on the northernmost of the two islands the Russians call the Southern Kuriles and the Japanese call their Northern Territories, the basic outlines of yesterday's agreements are:

- Russia will return to Japan of the islands of Shikotan and Habomai, seized by Soviet forces in 1945. Russia will gain sovereignty over the two remaining islands currently under dispute, with former Japanese residents of the islands and their descendants winning special extraterritorial rights of residency and self-rule on the islands.

- Japan and Russia will sign a peace treaty, officially ending World War II.

- Japan will recognize of South Korean sovereignty over islets known as Dokdo, which the Japanese call Takeshima. In return, the South Korea government promises to suspend all official efforts to change the name of the sea in which Dokdo is located from "Sea of Japan" to "East Sea."

- Russia, South Korea and the United States will recognize Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, which China and the government of Taiwan both claim.

The responses of the Chinese government to the declaration on the Senkakus, which Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands, have been confusion, disbelief and anger. Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin, China's senior representative at the Vladivostok talks after the departure of Foreign Minister Wang Yi two days ago, had no prepared statement, leaving the conference hall in a rush with reporters trailing in his wake. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, in a hastily arranged news conference in Beijing, declared, "Japan does not have sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands and no agreement among outsider nations can change this reality. The perfidy of today's illegitimate acts will reverberate through history but will never break China's bond to its sovereign territories."

"China overplayed its hand and absented itself from efforts to find a solution," explained a senior U.S. official, speaking on background. "The declaration of the East China Sea air defense zone in November got everyone's attention, making it clear that just leaving sovereignty issues in limbo was just going to continue to generate threats to everyone's security. Once the ball started rolling on the need for mutual recognitions and mutual sacrifices, the negotiations gained unstoppable momentum, bringing us to the agreement we have today."

The broad-based agreement, which the ministers and Secretary Kerry will be taking back to their capitals for approval...

Short And Sweet And Sour

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If I were Abe Shinzo, with a secure party leadership position, the opposition parties in disarray, an economic revolution winning applause and the leaders of my two most powerful neighbors disrespecting me and my country, and I received a urging from the U.S. Embassy, Tokyo to:

"...find constructive ways to deal with sensitive issues from the past, to improve their relations, and to promote cooperation in advancing our shared goals of regional peace and stability."

My response would be:

"What about your approach to...Iran?"

"Cuba?"

"Oh, and any time the North Koreans offer you anything as regards missiles and nuclear weapons development program, you take it. OK? Put your pride in a hamper, just for once, OK? Because North Koreans are never going to offer us anything. OK?"

I am no admirer of the Prime Minister, his allies or their political and economic programs. However, the U.S. is out of line in criticizing Abe for demonstrating a lack of strategic vision and an inability to confront unresolved historical animosities.

In the the unhelpful pandering to venal domestic voting blocs and interest groups, we are all guilty.

Ave Imperator Mobilis!

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Il controllo più grazioso oggetto da pletora di oggi di articoli speciali alla ricerca presso l'imperatore Heisei in occasione del suo ottantesimo compleanno? Non è che ha la patente di che egli ha da rinnovare ogni tre anni, proprio come qualsiasi altro driver anziano della sua età avanzata. Non è che ha una macchina che ama che lui usa per ferry se stesso e l'imperatrice alla Corte di tennis di Palazzo imperiale (dove egli scatena un medio cross-Corte dritto).

È che l'automobile dell'imperatore è un grigio 1991 Honda Integra.

Parlare di un giro senza pretese.

Non una Nissan. Nemmeno una Toyota. Una Honda!

E un tredici venti - tre anni Honda a quel. (Guarda il video)

Si può immaginare la sua altezza reale il Principe Akishino cercando di convincere il padre che è il momento di aggiornare la sua modalità di trasporto:

S.A.R. P.A. - papà, hai bisogno di una macchina nuova.

HME - perché?

HRH P.A. - papà, quella macchina tua è tre cicli di tecnologia antiquata. Come su una Prius o un veicolo elettrico? Mai hai intenzione di guidare più veloce di 30 chilometri all'ora, comunque. Diamine, l'annuale scosso su quell'auto probabilmente doppia cosa costa un siberiano è disposto a pagare per esso.

HME - come posso liberarmi della mia auto? Ha meno di 3000 chilometri su di esso!

Che porta in su domanda non ho mai considerato prima: come i membri della famiglia reale indirizzo uno altro, quando sono rigorosamente en famille?

Più tardi- Lettore Karayama (?) risponde alla domanda di cui sopra nei commenti.

Più tardi ancora- Sembra che il frammento di legata a quanto sopra è la prima release mai Imperial Household Agency del video dell'imperatore al volante della sua auto.

Three Disquieting Items On The Sideboard

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AppId is over the quota
Today is a no newspaper day in Japan, the result of the one day a month the country's newspaper reporters and editors ostensibly are allowed off the merry-go-round.

In the absence of a morning paper one can hold in one's hands, a trio of depressing news stories you may have missed from the past two weeks:

1) Somehow I Don't Think That That's The Lesson

From Center for a New American Security expert Patrick Cronin, in a post for the War on the Rocks blog, an anecdote in relation to China’s recently declared air defense identification zone. It slaps a question mark on the judgment of Koike Yuriko, the Liberal Democratic Party's multilingual and multifaceted main communications officer:

...The logic of where this air superiority contest is heading can be illustrated by a chilling anecdote related last week at the Center for a New American Security by Japanese Parliamentarian Yuriko Koike. Representative Koike, who was national security advisor to Shinzo Abe during his previous stint as Prime Minister, recounted how she missed her Libyan Airlines flight from Tripoli to Cairo on 21 February 1973. That flight strayed into Israeli-controlled airspace and was shot down by Israeli F-4 Phantom II fighters, killing 108 people.

Reflecting on her near-miss with death, Representative Koike said the incident taught her what it means to protect one's airspace, implying that any country serious about air sovereignty must be willing to act as decisively as the Israelis did 40 years ago over the Sinai Peninsula. But whereas former Minister Koike was recalling a personal vignette, the Chinese government was enunciating official policy…

(Link)

One hopes that Dr. Cronin misunderstood Ms. Koike's point. A normal person, having missed a commercial passenger flight that ended up being shot down by fighter jets, would probably not come away from that brush with death with increased admiration for the fighter pilots and their political masters. A normal person indeed would ask, "How we fix the world so as to prevent such a tragedy ever happening again?"

Then again, Dr. Cronin is quoting Koike "The Iron Butterfly" Yuriko. Maybe she really did come out of a near death experience with increased appreciation for those who have killed innocent civilians by mistake. Or on purpose, I don't know.

2) These Are The Alternatives? Really?

Catherine Traywick has a report out for Foreign Policy on America's role as a supporter of the new Special Secrets Protection Act. The piece, checking in with folks who know, offers a fairly decent rundown on the positive reasons why the Abe government and the Liberal Democratic Party felt compelled to put passage of the new law on the front burner. It underplays the level to which the new Act is a simple aping of American statutes and practices as regards secrecy, ignoring the qualitative and cultural differences in between the two country's bureaucracies and jurisprudence.

What is really disturbing about the piece, however, is the concluding comment from Denny Roy of the East West Center in Honolulu. Trying to put the Act into perspective, where it is a vital element in the aggrandizing of the Japan-U.S. military alliance, Mr. Roy offers this choice:

"Would you rather have Japan as a friendly dictator able to go to war with you -- even if it doesn't live up to your democratic values -- or would you rather have a pacifistic Japan that has limitations in terms of military ability?"

(Link)

The answer to this question of course is, "The latter! The latter! The latter! Or, possibly, neither of these two! Pray that we may never be offered this choice!"

Given the vagaries of journalism, Mr. Roy may have been quoted improperly or out of context. If the above Hobson's Choice ever even enters into the minds of U.S. policy makers, though, then everyone should pretty much forget about the U.S. being a benign power that learns from its mistakes.

3) It's An End of the World As We Know It Party

The extraordinary session of the Diet has ended in confusion and rushed action, with items on the legislative calendar left undone, a last minute extension and an unsightly near midnight vote on the most sweeping and regressive piece of civil liberties legislation in decades.

At a point in the legislative calendar when the attention of Diet members was worth, in Mark Twain's words, "four dollars a minute" one would hardly expect that the prime minister and 400 of his closest friends, including 200 member of the Diet, would take the afternoon off to throw a party celebrating the coming of a new, more patriotic and traditionalist Japan.

Well, they did. On November 26. In the middle of the afternoon.

Don't bother looking for a description of the party on the Prime Minister's Residence web page. Or on Prime Minister's Facebook page. Or on the home page or Facebook page of Minister of State for Regulatory Reform (and Administrative Reform and Civil Service Reform and "Cool Japan" Strategy and the "Challenge Again" Initiative) Inada Tomomi -- though she most certainly was there.

One has to go to the home page of Abe/Kishi family retainer and Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission Furuya Keiji to find mention of the conservative pow-wow (Link - J). Furuya, who has a habit of documenting his most Sisyphean endeavors in great detail, posts a pair of photos from the shindig, including a quartet shot of him with Hyakuta Naoki, the author Prime Minister Abe recently appointed to the board of governors of NHK in what is the crawling coup d’etat against that entity's independence and balance.

To be fair, Prime Minister Abe spent only 12 minutes at the Sosei Nippon study reunion (kenshukai) -- a really a short span of time when one considers that he is the chairman of Sosei Nippon.

What is Sosei Nippon? There is a home page (Link) but oddly, in this supposed new era of openness and internationalization, the group's home page is only in Japanese.

For a description of the organization in English there is Matthew Penney's guide to the revisionist organizations boasting Cabinet ministers as members. Therein Sosei Nippon ("Japan's Rebirth") is described as:

A Diet group formed in 2007. Members pledge to "protect Japanese traditions and culture", "rethink the postwar order", and "protect Japan's national interests and make Japan a country respected by international society". They have hosted lectures by rightist pundits and authors such as Sakurai Yoshiko and Fujiwara Masahiko. After the ouster of the LDP from power, the group publically accused the Democratic Party of manifesting "socialistic and totalitarian tendencies". They pledged to stand against DPJ proposals to allow husbands and wives to have different surnames – something that the group argued would undermine "family togetherness" – and moves to allow permanent residents to vote in local elections, part of a larger pattern of assertions by conservative lawmakers that foreigners in Japan are neither loyal nor committed to the Japanese state and undermine the social order. The group has a limited web presence and seems to have had difficulty establishing a clear identity as many of its assertions on history, culture, and contemporary society are already covered by more focused Diet member groups.
(Link)

The November 26 event did not go entirely unnoticed by the news media conglomerates. The Sankei Shimbun published the following account (translation by MTC):

At Sosei Nippon Gathering, Prime Minister Says, "I Will Take Us Back To A Japan of Glory"

Sosei Nippon, the cross-party league of Diet members which has Prime Minister Abe Shinzo as its chairman, held, on November 26, its study reunion inside the Diet Members #1 Office Building. By declaring, "This is only the start of our taking Japan back to glory," the PM demonstrated his desire to press forward with a politics deeply rooted in conservatism.

At the reunion there about 400 persons, including members of the Diet and local assembly lawmakers. Journalist Sakurai Yoshiko and novelist Hyakuta Naoki gave speeches. Chairman of the National Safety Commission Furuya Keiji called out to the group, "The role of [this league] is to enracinate real conservatism deep in the earth." State Minister for Administrative Reform Inada Tomomi put forth the appeal, "What I want to realize is the casting off of the postwar regime."

(Link- J)

Nothing terribly weird that we have never heard before from the featured speakers in the above, of course. But why hold the reunion in the midst of the hectic last days of the Diet session? Furthermore, whenever I see the word "glory" (hokori) rear its ugly head -- I start looking for the exit.

Quello che voglio per Natale è un insieme di treno, tra l'altro

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Il governo prefettizio Okinawa (OPG), in quello che è alla ricerca di come un gioco fine sposta nella lunga battaglia su approvazione del piano per cominciare a distruggere l'habitat per la discarica di dugongo in pericolo critico sul sito di Futenma ricambio Facility (FRF) a Henoko, ha rilasciato una lista dei desideri martedì di progetti e programmi che vorrebbe che il governo centrale per pagare prima dell'autorizzazione del governatore Nakaima Hirokazu della discarica permettono.

L'elenco delle richieste è lungo e presuntuoso:

1) La cessazione delle operazioni e il rapido rimpatrio del Marine Corps Air Station Futenma entro 5 anni;

2) Ritorno totale dell'accampamento Kinser entro 7 anni;

3) La revisione dell'accordo Status delle forze tra Stati Uniti e Giappone compresi

-Le indagini sul posto dal punto di vista dei beni culturali ambiente e lo scavo di Okinawa, dentro le strutture militari, tre anni prima di loro rendimenti,

-Le indagini in loco da esperti nel governo prefettizio Okinawa all'interno di strutture esistenti e nuove, nei casi in cui si sospetti che l'inquinamento ambientale,

-Applicazione delle più severe normative ambientali, quelli di Stati Uniti o in Giappone, alle strutture militari degli Stati Uniti;

4) Distribuzione di circa una dozzina degli Ospreys attualmente distribuiti in Okinawa dalla prefettura

-Lo spostamento della maggior parte delle esercitazioni di addestramento del falco pescatore

-Rimozione di Ospreys da Okinawa dopo la cessazione delle operazioni di Futenma MCAS.

Inoltre:

1) uno stanziamento di bilancio per FY 2014 di circa 340,8 miliardi di yen per essere usato per accrescere la Okinawa Istituto di scienza e tecnologia (OIST) [il veloce sviluppo technology center dove l'onorevole Janne di Janne a Osaka appende il cappello], ecc.;)

2) 300 miliardi di yen entro il 2021 per la seconda pista dell'aeroporto di Naha, ecc.;

3) finanziamento per l'un sistema ferroviario e per il recupero per uso commerciale del territorio ha restituito la terra dagli Stati Uniti basi militari;

4) attuare riforma tributaria (trattamenti fiscali preferenziali per gli investimenti di Okinawa) nel 2014 FY.

Fonte: Okinawa Prefectural governo

Esigenti cambiamenti radicali, tra cui rapide alternanze di accordo lo Status delle forze (Oh, così non vuoi andarci!) potrebbe essere governatore Nakaima modo respingere pressioni governative Abe a OK i permessi necessari. Più probabile, benchè Nakaima è semplicemente seguendo la regola di negoziazione dove se si sta solo per ottenere il 70% di quello che chiediamo, si dovrebbe chiedere di 140% di quello che volete.

L'elenco di Okinawa non include una licenza di casinò, nonostante le voci che tale licenza è alta nell'elenco prefettizio delle priorità di sviluppo economico. Poiché tale licenza non esiste ancora, visto che il gioco d'azzardo casinò è ancora illegale, il governo prefettizio difficilmente può esigere uno dal governo nazionale.

Secondo lo Yomiuri Shimbun, il governo degli Stati Uniti ha risposto alle richieste Nakaima dichiarando che sarà non acconsentire a eventuali modifiche nel divano (Link), dimostrando che quando si tratta di faccia di Okinawa, non c'è proprio nessun arresto USG calpestando su di esso.

Governot Nakaima e suoi consiglieri sanno che le opzioni di Okinawa sono molto più limitati di quanto lo fossero quando Nakaima ha vinto la rielezione nel 2010. Attività cinesi in Senkakus, che sono in jurisidiction di OPG, sono saliti alle stelle. Coalizione di governo di primo Ministro Abe Shinzo possiede enorme maggioranze in sia casa di dieta. Se Nakaima non firma i permessi entro la fine dell'anno..--suo limite di tempo su una decisione per quanto riguarda la prima fase di costruzione per il FRF Henoko - il governo Abe semplicemente presenterà una legge per la dieta che autorizza il lavoro, ignorando le obiezioni di prefettura. Se voto A dieta avviene, capacità di Nakaima di richiedere azione compensativa e dotazioni di bilancio per la presenza di basi americane su Okinawa evaporerà.

La pressione sulla Nakaima ospedalizzato (le atmosfere dell'ospedalizzazione sono grandi: Nakaima è a Tokyo, ma il primo ministro e il segretario capo di gabinetto può solo fargli visita a suo piacimento, non loro) e l'OPG è immenso. Per chiedere la costruzione di una linea ferroviaria (Uh, dove sono le precedenze per una ferrovia che arriverà da su un'isola con tali terreni grave utilizzare i vincoli che il FRF deve essere costruita fuori sull'oceano?) dimostra che le abitanti di Okinawa, per tutti loro spensierate, diciamo ballare libidinoso reputazioni, rimangono fino alla sfida continentale.

World Order - "Last Dance"

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The work of electronica dance group World Order is intensely political. The group's very name is a blackly ironic take on George H. W. Bush's New World Order, as was made crystal clear in their June video, "Imperialism."

"Imperialism" is an outlier in terms of its sledgehammer message. Much of the time the group is infuriatingly and charmingly oblique in its judgments, inscrutable as their blank facial expressions.

World Order's latest video "Last Dance" is clearly a commentary on where the country is under the Abe Administration and more broadly in the aftermath of the triple disaster of 3/11 -- but seems unfinished, probably intentionally so. The Ministry of Finance, METI, the anti-nuclear protestors outside METI, the Supreme Court all make cameo appearances. Mt. Fuji is one prominent backdrop, playing on the mountain's UNESCO World Heritage Site listing this year. Sequences shot in front of nuclear power plants and the archival footage of one of the Fukushima Daiichi plant buildings exploding are juxtaposed with footage shot in front of a hydroelectric dam, a solar farm and a wind farm fronting an oil tank farm. The group is saying something about Japan's energy policy but what, exactly? Are the members offering an idealized anti-high velocity, anti-mass production Arcadian vision a la Godfrey Reggio -- which may be the only place one can end up when one starts using cameras and slow motion to reveal the pace and patterns of contemporary human life?

The inclusion of seasonal references -- the famous drive of gingko trees in Jingu in their full golden exuberance, the susuki in the Mt. Fuji sequence -- seem to hammer two messages. First, that this is a Japanese video for designed for Japanese to interpret (which begs the question what the heck I think I am doing here). Second, that even though the video of this performance has been archived in the vast global library of the Internet, it remains no more than a bit of emphemera, with a hard chronological locus ("This is the autumn of 2013 - and no other time"). The nature scenes also offer a sharp alternative to the unnatural but not unpleasantly angular and clean human-crafted environments of Shiodome and Shinjuku Station.

And oh yes, the suits. They are not, as the Huffington Post has it, "classy." They are off-the-rack from low-cost mass formal wear retailer Yofuku no Aoyama (more irony here) which features the group in its ads. This is sarariman uncool and conformist ideology, stretched to the point where they become their opposites.

There is a sincere, unquiet core to the work...but with all the style and ambiguity, the conclusion is left up to viewer to draw. For whom is this a "Last Dance" -- the country, the iron triangle of Big Business-Bureacracy-Politicians, humanity? The identification of a last dance dovetails with the rhetoric of those portraying Abenomics being a "last chance" for economic and socio-political revival (just search "Japan" "last" "chance" to see what I mean). As with World Order's last work -- the Olympics-inspired paen to the TMD "Welcome to Tokyo" -- the above video is best viewed in Full Screen mode. Later - From the standpoint of a business model, World Order is in a class by itself. Not only only does the group produce highly political work -- it gets corporations to pay for it. Aoyama has funded their work; so has Sumitomo Corporation. Asiana Airlines probably asked for a gawky and sweet "All of Asia is One" message in the video it bankrolled. What Asiana Airlines got was "Permanent Revolution" -- with its extraordinary postscript questioning the role of the United States in East Asian affairs (with the secret message written in English).

Live From Yasukuni Shrine - The "Well, Now We Are Really In For It" Edition

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AppId is over the quota
Take away: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is visiting has visited Yasukuni Shrine this morning.

So much for my point nade in the wee hours of this morning about his having stiffed until now his longtime core support group of historical revisionists...

Did the government of South Korea's refusal to admit it asked the government of Japan to violate Japan's principles against arms exports by supplying South Korean troops in South Sudan with ammunition (Link) tip the balance on whether or not to proceed with a Yasukuni visit? Was it the last straw?

Later - Credit where credit is due: Abe's delivery man Hagiuda Ko'ichi was not kidding us.

Later still - The hawk has flown: NHK has just shown him leaving the main shrine building (honden).

Even later - The prime minister is explaining his action in a live NHK interview from inside an auxilliary building of the shrine.

Wild...

"Tomorrow was supposed to be the last working day of the year!" I can hear a lot of folks crying...

Way later - By visiting Yasukuni, Abe has hit all his targets for his first year in office. He managed the last one only minutes before the deadline -- but gosh darn it, he did it.

A catastrophe for East Asian relations? A costly waste of goodwill based upon misplaced priorities? Perhaps. But a tip of the hat to the prime minister for doing what he said he would.

Way, way later - It is the evening of Christmas Day in Washington. Late in the evening on Christmas Day.

I can imagine that the Japan-U.S. alliance managers are besides themselves with anger at Abe & Company.

Niseko legato e non legato

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Mia New York style maven pseudo-cugino (vengo dal nord della California, dove gli alberi di famiglia sono... complicata) A.K. arriva a Tokyo oggi, anni dopo che lei aveva promesso a goccia. Come è l'abitudine di vivere uno sul bordo sanguinamento della moda e del design, lei sarà essere traina Tokyo per un paio di giorni, incontro con gente troppo lontano fuori anche per Harajuku o Shibuya.

Dopo solo brevissimo di stint nella capitale, tuttavia, A.K. sarà essere sorprendente per sua reale destinazione: Niseko. (Link)

Che Agostino, che ovunque va in cerca di ciò che è più rarefatta e audace, dovrebbero lasciare New York per documentare la scena di Natale-in-capo anni in Niseko significa che la città di villeggiatura sciistica Hokkaido è arrivato. Ciò non è novità per le decine di migliaia di australiani, i residenti di Hong Kong e Singapore, che hanno viaggiato là ogni anno alla libbra via alla montagna con gli sci e snowboard - e decine di migliaia di più gente da dappertutto che visitano la borgata in estate. (Link - J)

Il successo di Niseko e il modo ha raggiunto il suo successo attraverso attirare non solo i visitatori stranieri, ma gli investimenti esteri su piccola scala (Link) dovrebbe rendere il villaggio il fulcro di ogni sforzo del governo nazionale e locale per promuovere la crescita economica delle comunità rurali e turismo.

Tuttavia, da nessuna parte uno troverà qualcuno nel governo fustigazione di uno slogan "Imparare da Niseko!". Non è sorprendente che il governo nazionale burocrati non vorrebbe farlo. Ma perché non i politici, quando è lo sviluppo economico di qualsiasi tipo che fa le popolazioni meglio e Giappone casse del governo più ampia?

Mancanza lampante dell'amministrazione Abe di interesse in ascesa di settore supportati mercato - e -privato-investitore straniero di Niseko (non ho mai sentito dell'economia legata Cabinet membri parlare il luogo) sembra un forte indicatore che l'amministrazione di libero mercati e impresa privata retorica è proprio questo: retorica. Infatti dal modo Abe e la sua manovra di gente, occhi ingenerose vedrebbe un'amministrazione interessata solo a trasformazione economica che può controllare. Se è gratificante multinazionali con bilancio gonfiare gli attacchi sul valore dello yen, cooptazione nuovo cambiamento normativo però industrie e sovvenzioni (redazione Mikitani Hiroshi di Rakuten e il coccolare del vincitore del premio Nobel Yamanaka Shinya e suo pluripotenti staminali Vanessa) o le promesse di enclavi regolamento-lite, tutti mentre partner di lunga data sul versante verso il basso della storia economica, come l'agricoltura Giappone e l'ufficio postale di dumping, l'obiettivo di Abe e il Partito Liberal democratico non sembra essere un ambiente economico internazionale aperto..--nonostante la realtà che questo approccio alla trasformazione economica sembra funzionare..--ma nuove, affidabile, dipendente da blocchi di voto.

Che è quasi l'obiettivo peggiore per una politica di economia che si possa immaginare.

Okumura Jun On The Yasukuni Visit

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AppId is over the quota
With his customary verve and expeditiousness, Okumura Jun has produced a series of points as regards Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's visit to Yasukuni Shrine. (Link)

I agree with points #1, #4 and #6. I vehemently disagree with points #2 and #5 -- Okumura-san is underestimating how many folks are going to have a problem with Japan. As for #3, I think those who think that provoking China is dumb and those who like the spectacle of a good joust will cancel each other out, in statistical terms, leaving the Abe government right where it is now in terms of public support.

Magia fuori di Okayama

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La terza delle leggi del tardo autore di fantascienza grande che Clarke afferma:

"Qualunque tecnologia sufficientemente avanzata è indistinguibile dalla magia".

Arthur vecchio scommessa sarebbe piaciuto avere visto questo.

Un po ' di magia fuori Okayama da tenere a mente quando uno è esaurito le linee di tendenza demografiche e debito o quando forma televisiva di stato Ministro Inada Tomomi presiedere sopra ancora un'altra innovazione fasulla o Cool Giappone forum invia uno alla ricerca di una scarpa a gettare.

In Theory, Yes

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AppId is over the quota
From the comments section to "Japan Passes Draconian Secrecy Bill Into Law: Journalists, Whistleblowers are now 'terrorists'" over at Jake Adelstein's Japan Subculture Research Center:

Now, if someone says Abe is an idiot, they can be arrested and jailed for revealing state secrets.

(Link)

The Special Secrets Protection Act does not come into effect for a while yet. So if you want to say anything resembling the above, feel free (and cherish that feeling) to say it now.