23rd February
Shocks, reliefs, and baffling bewilderment are the themes of the day, as the new normal is remarkably similar to the old crisis.
The first shock came over breakfast, when I read that Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin was killed in Syria by government artillery while covering the bombardment of the city of Homs. A colleague, Remi Ochlik, also died with her, and other reporters were badly injured, and they are not the first to be killed in the violence of Syria. The shock was that I had watched and listened as Colvin, one of the most distinctive band of adventurous foreign reporters who are always in the midst of the danger while reporting from war zones, gave a live report over a phone line to Peter Dobbie on BBC World News (TV) on Tuesday 21st February. She was emotional, rational, calm, involved, eloquent, and one of the most compelling journalists one could hope to hear. She was in the league of the best of them, such as Brian Barron, Jeremy Bowen, James Cameron, and was seen as a British correspondent, despite being from New York. She was talking from a besieged city, having given up the opportunity to leave, as her and Ochlik were the last foreign reporters there, and as in Sri Lanka, East Timor, and Chechnya, she refused to leave when the others left a place that was ‘too dangerous’. Now the UK, US, and France (Ochlik was French) have sat up a little more, are looking a little more closely as the Syrian government fights a war against its own people. This may not stop the war, but perhaps it has led to a new view of the war. It isn’t nice to think the thought, but it seems that the death of the few white middle-class, educated people we admire has a great deal more power to impress than the deaths of many thousands of Syrians of whom we know nothing, except that they are not part of ‘us’. As in Libya, maybe, soon, in Syria, the international community will begin to see the victims of this war as part of their community. One imagines that there will be a significant wait, however, particularly for China and Russia.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/22/sunday-times-marie-colvin-killed-syria
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/22/marie-colvin
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17136037
A very different shock in hearing the news that at least 50 had died when a train in Buenos Aires had hit the buffers and at least 600 had been injured. Again, this news would sadly not receive the same degree of prominence if it involved a train in India, but BA is much more like the cities we live in, or so we believe. The odd thing for me was that I saw this news story while travelling on a train on the Negishi Line in Japan, going into Yokohama for my Yellow Fever vaccination. The carriages, being Japan, have rolling news bulletins, weather, ads, and financial data, with subtitles, no sound. Te BA news story was the last one, followed by the cheery title in English “That is the end of the railway news.” Hmmm. Yes. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120223_07.html
And a rather nice shock. The NHK world service in English have a video showing the JSDF trying to begin the PKO-support measures in South Sudan, and who is centre-stage? My friend Major Urakami. I hope his family have seen it. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120223_06.html
Relief comes in small doses. One is that the yen is finally falling a little against most currencies, and none too soon for most companies. However, the effect of this will be to increase energy costs due to the massive imports of carbon fuels to offset the offline nuclear plants. Relief also that the Nikkei stock index has finally risen, not that this indicates anything other than confidence, but that alone is important. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/business/news/20120223p2g00m0bu150000c.html
Relief also that the opposition and government have finally managed to strike the beginning of a deal to move forward on cuts, rebuilding budgets for Tohoku, and structural reforms. Which is good news. However, the first step is a cut of civil servants’ salaries by an average of 7.8% over two years, which is a bit tough if you are a civil servant or a member of their family, and rather demoralising if you are one of the people who have been working hard on Tohoku-related issues. Also, somehow, the politicians didn’t seem to include their own salaries within that cut. An oversight, no doubt, that will soon be rectified. The relief though is that this means that moves can perhaps be made towards making the cuts in the numbers of lawmakers, to save money, and to begin the painful process of re-distributing seats so that Japan can actually conform to its own Supreme Court judgement that the democracy is undemocratic and needs to be rebalanced. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120223x1.html
Relief also that the number of crimes carried out by foreigners (a dubious category) dropped in 2011 by 12.7%. It is not stated how the drop in crime was affected by the drop in foreign visitors, but permanent residents are not included in the figures. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120223p2g00m0dm011000c.html
The odd thing is that the numbers of foreigners in Japan has been dropping since 2008, mirroring that of the Japanese population. Logic would seem to suggest an increase, to fill the gap, take up the slack, but even before the 3.11 crises that wasn’t the case. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120223_13.html
Baffling and bewildering what politicians do and say. Having bad relations with an increasingly powerful and bellicose China? Having a fine sister-city relationship with Nanjing (Nanking)? Just approaching the anniversary of the massacre of ‘a certain number of Chinese’ in said city by Japanese Imperial Army troops in 1937? Best not mention it eh? Or, how about adopting the ‘Nagoya Plan’? Mention it as a ‘mistake’ in history, something that wasn’t really as bad as it may seem, even see the jolly side of it by recalling how your Dad was treated very well by Nanjing locals during the war, and if they were so friendly, how could the Japanese have been as nasty as the Chinese government say they were? What a winner of a plan! What a trooper of a man, is Nagoya mayor Kawamura Takashi! But, not being a weak soul, he even went one better. He then not only did he do all of the above, but has now defended his position and refused to retract one iota of it. He told a prominent visiting member of the Chinese Communist Party of Nanjing that only “conventional acts of combat” took place between Japanese troops and Chinese. Now, this is an old story of denying war atrocities, in which older Japanese politicians are dab hands. They are the least sympathetic and least sensitive people one could ever meet, unless anything is mentioned about Japanese as war victims. Somehow I doubt if Kawamura would make light of the bombing of Nagoya in 1945, let alone Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He has even not understood that neutrals, including German Nazi Party Members, were present in Nanjing in 1937 and documented the most appalling atrocities, which some of them risked their lives to limit. He seems not only a bewildered man, but also one of the world’s many baffled about Japan and its pasts and present. It is one of the world’s least bellicose nations, one of the most genuinely peace-appreciating nations, and a far better repository for protecting human rights than China, but it can be baffling to accommodate that present with its sometimes appalling recent-past. Britain manages this by ignoring some bad parts, apologising for others, and simply trying to rub along with everyone as well as they can. It would be hard to find anyone in Birmingham who would deny the massacre at Amritsar, or the work of the Black and Tans in Ireland, and it shows when Irish and Indians meet Britons: they have more in common than separating them. Or at least they can imagine they do. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120223a5.html
What do female premiers do with their husbands? Baffling isn’t it. Leave them at home, if they have any sense, but it seems in Finland they have other ideas. The ‘first man’ of the Finns has been caught catching a good look at the suitably impressive royal bosom of Denmark, which could be the start of a typical 1970s Danish ‘art film’ but is actually even more embarrassing than that. One cannot imagine the Duke of Edinburgh doing such a thing, or at least if he did he’d have the decency to strike up a conversation about the Copenhagen cleavage, or at least make a flattering comparison with a member of the House of Windsor. Mind, Philip is part Danish, so he’d probably be deeply disinterested in his cousin’s chest. Unless it had a row of medals on it. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/finland/9097513/First-Man-of-Finland-caught-gawping-at-Danish-princesss-breasts.html
And in much welcome news, the British Royal Television Society has granted an award to NHK for its 3.11 crisis coverage. Many people complain about NHK, but they thoroughly deserve that award, and are the first Japanese media concern to receive it. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120223_17.html

Recent Comments