Garren's blog

23rd February: Shocks, Reliefs, and Baffling Bewilderment

 23^rd 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 21^st 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　

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9099325/Marie-Colvin-Syria-regime-accused-of-murder-in-besieged-Homs.html

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

21st February: Amidst the death, some signs of life

21^st February 

An odd week in many ways. There have been deaths, a death sentence, a search for those who died almost a year ago, and signs that some companies are struggling to stay alive as well. And it comes as I experienced a personal anniversary of bereavement. Over-interest in death is often considered a sign of depression, but for me it is rather more an affirmation of the value of life. It simply cannot be replaced or displaced by anything else, and thus it has the ultimate value, something which some less interested in death often fail to understand.

The odd deaths, rather than regular deaths of traffic accidents and illness, were of three people in a small flat in Saitama City, about 25km north of Tokyo. Parents in their early 60s and a son in his late 30s died at home. The flat was clean and orderly, there had been no intruder, no violence, and there was no disease present. The three had lived there, it seems, for 11 years, but several months earlier had stopped paying the rent and had the electricity cut off in November. They had moved to Saitama from Akita, in northern Japan, and the father it seemed had worked in construction, but had been unable to work due to some ailment, and, very oddly, they had failed to register at the local City Hall, a requirement under law. The great oddity is that the three died of starvation, with neither food nor money in the house, and yet they never sought out public assistance, nor were approached by any public body. Even odder is tha fact the police have no idea who they are. This seems extraordinary, but the government estimates that since 2000, more than 700 Japanese have had starvation as their primary cause of death, with many others having been certified of having died of complications of starvation, such as pneumonia, without being thus designated. Most have not been homeless, but simply died, such as the old man who wasn’t found for six years, despite dying at home, as he had told the local authorities that he didn’t need any more welfare. He probably didn’t know how accurate that was. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120221p2a00m0na007000c.html

That such things can happen in Japan isn’t as shocking as the mundane nature of such deaths, and how society cannot seem to find a way to prevent their causes. But then death is not always something we can prevent, or even wish to do so. Which brings us to the case of a man, now 30, when he was a newly graduated High School student of 18 when he broke into a flat, raped a young mother, and murdered her and her 11 month old baby. He admitted his crime, but said he hadn’t intended murder, or rape, when he broke in, but things escalated out of his control. This is bad enough, but the really hard part is that he has been sentenced to death for his crime, much encouraged by the 35 year old widower and father of the victims, despite the fact that he was a minor under Japanese law at the time of the crime. The age of adulthood in Japan is 20, and usually such cases result in long custodial sentences as the young are seen as capable of rehabilitation. However, there is a suggestion that the legal reforms instituted, partly as the result of the activism of the bereaved husband, have resulted in a hardening of attitudes in such cases on the part of the judiciary, and in cases where juries are present (a relatively new phenomenon in Japan). This is important, for the case was unusual in several aspects. It was the first in which a minor (at the time of the offence) has been given the death sentence for the murder of less than three people, and one of the presiding justices expressed a dissenting view (uncommon, and highly unusual in a murder case where the client admitted guilt) that the perpetrator was immature and possibly not fully cognisant of his actions. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120221_03.html http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/02/20/20120220p2g00m0dm141000c.html

Whatever the views on this case, it highlights the fact that in Japan people spend a very long time in prison, and death row can last for decades, even after the final sentence has been handed down.

In what might seem at first to be a very odd story, a search was conducted yesterday in Fukushima and Miyagi for the victims of the tsunami almost a year ago. The search was another attempt to find answers and a degree of bereavement closure for families who lost members, especially for the families that lost primary school children near the coasts on 3.11. No news has been released of any results, but the fact that the search is going on illustrates the degree of suffering the people affected are still going through, mirroring in some ways what people in Christchurch have been going through, one year on from their most devastating quake, and with equally little sign of recovery and rebuilding. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120221a5.html

The economy of Japan is still in serious trouble, despite the best efforts of the government to sound positive. The national trading deficit reached 1.5tn yen ($19bn or GBP12bn) as exports dipped 9.3% while imports rose 9.8% compared to a year earlier. And some companies are suffering a great deal. Car maker Mazda is one of them, which is not only restructuring, but is also caught amidst that process and its current situation, resulting in a cash shortfall, resulting in a 100bn yen capital raising appeal which is 12% less than its loss in the final quarter of 2011. Mazda has the problem of investing in building new plants in Russia and Mexico, to offset the high yen, while that high yen is eating into its core business. While Toyota produces 40% of its vehicles in Japan, and Nissan and Honda approximately 23%, Mazda is a true Yamato patriot, with 80% domestic production. And the lesson for all Japanese makers is, lay off your Japanese staff and move overseas, which will certainly have an effect on the yen, although long after that effect is felt upon Japanese workers. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120221x1.html

But if you feel the need for some uplifting story affirming life...read another blog.

No, the story that proves that life goes on, with the oddest consequences, even amidst death. Police found a 1.5 meter long shark in Yoyogi Park, Tokyo. Yes, a park, with no salt-water lake, and about 15 km from the sea. The Shinjuku police were a tad baffled, but then a shushi-shop owner revealed that he had bought it, but couldn’t get it into his kitchen, so had it on display for his customers for a couple of days (it is winter!), after disembowelling the fish. Then, when, presumably it was getting a bit long in the tooth (boom, boom), and less appealing than it had initially seemed, a self-proclaimed artist asked for it for his art project, and took it away on his hand-cart (artists in Tokyo and London always seem to have a handy ‘Carl’s Cart’). Police suspect the man then found the aquatic corpse a bit too much to handle, and may be in breach of bylaws on dumping rubbish, rather than abandoning a body, which is a serious crime. They have put out a call for anyone seeing a bearded artist, with a cart, being followed by a gang of hungry cats to contact them (the police, not the cats). http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120221p2a00m0na003000c.html

13th February: What to do about issues where you can see both sides

 13^th February 

The cabinet popularity makes for interesting reading, as does the subtext to TEPCO’s finances, and defence is once more a thorny issue. The trouble is, you can see both sides of many of the thorniest issues. 

US Marines from Okinawa practiced with their artillery pieces in Oita Prefecture, Western Japan. This is at this moment deemed to be a news story, even though such practices were moved from Okinawa in the 1990s, mainly to the Fuji training ground in Shizuoka Prefecture. The news is news now as the placement of USMC personnel is a major issue that simply will not move away. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/movie/feature201202102205.html

The Governor of Yamaguchi Prefecture and the mayor of Iwakuni City in Yamaguchi which hosts USMC aircraft both announced in discussions with the Foreign Minister Genba that they could not accept any more USMC personnel. In particular, they don’t want USMC ground forces, given their reputation for civil disturbances in Okinawa. It is interesting that the foreign minister was given the job of negotiating with Japanese municipal leaders. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120207006322.htm

Even more interesting when considering the results of the latest NHK public opinion poll. The headline shows a 1% increase in support for the cabinet, and a 1% drop in the disapproval rate. Which in statistical terms is meaningless. And thank you for watching the NHK news. However, there is news there to be had, as supporters are far outnumbered by the actively disgruntled by a ratio of more than 4:3. Also, there were two interesting results on individual politicians. Okada, now Deputy Prime Minister, and former Foreign Minister, has received an overwhelmingly positive reaction, despite the fact he is in charge of cross-party talks on taxation and welfare and pension reform, the poisoned chalice of modern Japanese politics, akin to Secretary of State for Northern Ireland between 1972 and 1996. He received a very or rather positive response from more than two-thirds of those polled. This is in contrast to the new Defense Minister, Tanaka, who has been ‘featured’ in this blog more than once. His combined positive rating was 11%, while 36% considered him rather unsuitable for his position, with 46% considering him highly unsuitable. Not the man to lead negotiations on national defence related issues of great delicacy then. We can often see both sides of many issues, but on the cabinet’s composition, these two men show the two sides, but only one of them appears to be acceptable. One wonders why the unacceptable side is allowed to persist. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120213_25.html

This issues has been made even more delicate by the US asking Japan to pay for the move of the USMC to Guam (If you want us out, you’ll have to pay to get us out!) after the President withdrew funding, that had already been cut and delayed by Congress. This has resulted in the USMC move being cut in half to 4,000. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120206005049.htm

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120205003835.htm

The Japanese government seems to want to move the Futenma Air Station in Ginowan City to Nago City, in southern Okinawa, despite previously having opposed such a move, and to follow the previous LDP pan and the 2006 J-US agreement on the transfer, but with deep reservations, and several caveats. They seem to want to add several sugar pills to sweeten local and national opinion in order to convince people that having a DPJ government really does ‘make a difference’. Easy to scoff, but if we were in their shoes we’d probably be shuffling our feet in embarrassment more than we would like to admit. The US position is the easiest to understand. They want something to happen, but if it doesn’t, then they are basically fine where they are, and can blame Tokyo. Win-Win, as they say in Washington. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120209006912.htm

The oddest part is the local element, as many oppose US bases in principle, while appreciating them for investment and employment issues in practice. This leads to some unusual political phenomena, such as an LDP backed candidate, Sakima, winning Ginowan City’s mayoral election, and promising to press for a move of Futenma to Nago, and a reclaiming of base land (for what, we aren’t sure). The defeated Mayor, Iha, had pressed to move the base, but outside of Okinawa, a move that seemed likely under former DPJ PM Hatoyama, somewhat less likely under his successor Kan, and about as likely as a resurgence in nuclear fission investment under PM Noda. The real problem in Okinawa is the very genuine push-me, pull-me feeling of locals that with US bases their lives are pretty poor, but without US bases many of them will be very poor. It comes down to being the poor and usually ignored cousins of the rich-suits in Tokyo.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120213a2.html

This isn’t any easier to face when the national GDP declined in the final quarter of 2011, and the high yen and various calamities have driven manufacturers and other exporters to the edge of giving up on Japanese bases. Negotiations on the TPP Trans Pacific Partnership are simmering on, with US car makers opposing extending it to cover motor trade (meaningless without it one thinks), but perhaps the US unions should consider the rational result of such a TPP deal. With the present level of the yen, the most sensible thing would be to produce in the US and export to Japan, as Nissan has done in from its UK plant on Sunderland. More car production jobs in the US, and great for the US balance of payments, but not too great for the (US taxpayer subsidised) Big Three car makers. Or for Japanese workers. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120213_11.html

Producers are facing a further problem, as TEPCO has stated it wishes to raise commercial power rates by 17% to cover post-3.11 losses. Not wonderful news for companies, nor for the government, and today Trade and Industry Minister Edano, the former Chief Cabinet Secretary who did as much as anyone to manage the 3.11 disaster, and who was at university in Sendai, did as much as possible within Japanese manners to ravage the TEPCO leadership. He met with three TEPCO leaders, in front of cameras, and stated he wasn’t at all happy with their plans, that they needed to re-think, and that if they were really wanting so much state money (about $9 billion) they will need to make the Japanese government a major or even majority share holder. That was the equivalent of slapping their faces with a black leather glove and demanding a duel at dawn. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120213_29.html Edano isn’t really the sort of person you would want to make angry, but TEPCO, hate them or just resent them, are in a tricky position too, as they are bleeding cash to pay for oil and gas imports while carrying the costs of their nuclear plants that are offline, the Dai-ichi crisis, and the ongoing compensation payments to affected people and businesses. Their business is no longer viable, but declaring bankruptcy in Japan is much more severe than most other countries, and there would still need to be some form of public intervention to maintain services.

So, the problems of most issues seem to come down to public confidence in leadership. Perhaps in view of business and politics across the world Japan is just another normal country.

12th February: What is first in the news, and slow in coming

12th February

In the news this evening, the death of Whitney Houston has assumed the centre stage in most countries, but in Japan prior to that news breaking the main article online and on telly was the news that the Emperor, Akihito, has been diagnosed with a further constriction of the cardiac arteries and will undergo an operation on Saturday 18^th February. Since he is now 78 and has a recent history of heart trouble, this is an obvious cause for concern. However, it will provide an opportunity for his son, Naruhito, to assume some official duties, as something of a dry-run for the day when his father is no longer able to perform his duties.

Akihito seems to strike most people as a sincere and diligent man, and the perfect contrast with his father, Hirohito, who greatly divided domestic and international opinion after 1945, with some lauding his role in bringing and fostering peace, and his marine-biological research interests, while others condemned him as a war criminal. The son is very much a product of the post-war era, probably aided by having seen so much destruction in Japan as a boy. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/02/11/20120211p2g00m0dm008000c.html

The other news has struggled to gain much impact, but is nonetheless important for that. 11 months after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami the Japanese government has now finally managed to establish a Reconstruction Agency for the affected areas. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120211a2.html The lethargy, leaden-footed tardiness, or dilly-dallying over such a move might surprise those who witnessed the rapid rescue and immediate recovery operations from afar, but it was really to be expected.

Japanese institutions tend towards great efficiency in certain set tasks, primarily those which can be easily seen and assessed from outside, those which demand great skill, technical proficiency, and diligence from workers, and which require little or no negotiation or mediation. Thus repairing roads and railways, re-establishing ‘lifelines’ and postal and telephone services, and the re-start of the (deservedly) famed Japanese Takyubin courier-delivery services (yes, you can send strawberries or rice to your auntie at the other end of the country and they’ll be picked up from your home and arrive in great shape the next day, for a relatively small fee. British people, sit down, put your head between your knees and breath deeply but slowly: the dizziness and nausea will soon pass.) were rapidly achieved, with minimal fuss. But planning real reconstruction, involving public and private land, commercial concerns, possible unification of community bodies and municipalities, as well as actually forbidding some people from re-building in areas deemed ‘at risk’? That is when the Japanese (rather nice) desire to accommodate all opinions, find some degree of consensus, or at least reduce open conflict to a minimum results in stasis. And for 11 months we have had an awful lot of mediation between competing desires and interests. Local versus national, immediate recovery versus long-term planning, safety versus prosperity: these are just some of the competing interests.

Another slight shock, little perceived from afar concerns the Dai-ichi nuclear reactors in Fukushima. They were declared safe, in ‘cold shutdown’ two months ago, when TEPCO declared the temperature had been maintained below 100C. The new safety measure for cold shutdown was later revised to 80C, and over the past week the No.2 reactor temperature appears to have been rising, exceeding 82C on the weekend, before TEPCO pumped in more water and reduced it to 80C.

This illustrates two important points. The first is the fragile nature of the reactors, and how dependent they are upon external cooling mechanisms, which is a worry considering the frequency of further quakes. The second is about TEPCO’s safety management. The company has stated that the temperature probably is lower than 80C, so there is nothing to worry about. Their reasoning is that the thermometer may be malfunctioning. Now, they haven’t drawn the logical conclusion from that statement, that if it is malfunctioning the temperature could be almost anything, from well-below to well-over 80C. The lack of information and accurate monitoring that seems to be available almost 11 months since the reactors exploded seems rather surprising, but when dealing with ‘TEPCO safety management’ perhaps surprise is not warranted.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120212_24.html

Oh, and another slight revelation about 3.11. TEPCO provided a radiation map to the US before it do so for the Japanese population. Yes, that is the taxpaying providers of the TEPCO bailout funds. Warms the cockles eh.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120212p2g00m0dm019000c.html

And TEPCO have announced the taking off-line of their last operational nuclear reactor, at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, in Niigata, the world’s largest nuclear plant. In a part of Japan that is prone to very large earthquakes. So, from now, the entire TEPCO area is ‘nuclear free’ in terms of generation, so that we get the best of both worlds: the cost and the enduring dangers of nuclear facilities, with none of the power, and the added bonus of carbon-based pollution. Cools the cockles eh. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120212p2g00m0dm019000c.html

Three men have been arrested at the weekend for car theft and burglary in April. Not a big news story in itself, but this is the tip of an iceberg. The three went to commit the crime in an evacuated town in Fukushima near the Dai-ichi plant. Theft is one of the major concerns for evacuees, and is also an obvious safety concern, not only for irradiated property, but also for the ability of people to enter restricted areas.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/02/11/20120211p2a00m0na009000c.html This is related to proposal to introduce background checks for nuclear workers, in light of recent news that criminal groups were arranging work-gangs among the homeless and other poor groups, and ‘selling them’ to TEPCO’s major personnel contractors. Checks are hoped to prevent criminal connections, and bolster counter-terrorism measures, but it seems ironic that fears of nuclear proliferation are forcing Japan into banning imports of (much needed) Iranian oil when Japan’s nuclear industry seems so (relatively) loosely policed.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/02/11/20120211p2a00m0na002000c.html It

Oh, and in a highly surprising move, the Chinese President, Hu JinTao, has called off a meeting with Japanese ‘friendship’ groups in protest at the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s naming of a number of rocky isles off the Senkaku islands, an area that China claims as its own. Who would have thought a minor and almost completely meaningless legalistic move by Japan would result in a political huff-and-puff by China? Whatever next? Empty gestures by politicians and notes of protest from diplomats? Heaven forefend.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120212a1.html

2nd February: Chronic Heartache

2^nd February 

The subject of this blog is heartache in its various forms. 

My previous visit to Utsunomiya was detailed for the mixed feelings it engendered, but one aspect of Utsunomiya that I left out was that it is the gyoza capital of Japan. Yes, since the end of the Second World War and the returning soldiers from northern China sought to scratch a living by selling the little Chinese dumplings that they had grown accustomed to there, Utsunomiya has been a gyoza city. There is a singing statue to gyoza by the station. There are gyoza maps, trails, pamphlets and guide books. Gyoza are small-ish dumplings, generally contain garlic, nira (a thin green, leek or onion style vegetable, apparently called ‘Garlic chives’, which is new to me), and pork, but Utsunomiya has produced many variants, including liver, prawns, vegetarian versions, and even a sweet dumpling. So, all is well. Except it isn’t.

The heartache is that Utsunomiya is, officially, no longer Japan’s gyoza capital. Not many governments would collect such figures to be able to designate such a status, but Japan’s bureaucracy knows no bounds in its quest for dumpling supremacy. Hamamatsu City in Shizuoka, a fine place famous for the Yamaha music company and being shelled by the US Navy in 1945, has overtaken Utsunomiya by the amount of money spent per resident on gyoza. The reasons seem to be related to the March quake and tsunami, as power-cuts and limited supplies in northern and eastern Japan prevented eating-out and production on previous scales. Shizuoka was largely unaffected.

However, the comparison may be unfair, as I used to eat at the Masashi chain of gyoza restaurants which sold nothing but dumplings: no rice, accompaniments, or anything. Straight gyoza, boiled or fried. A single plateful cost about 160yen (or about $2 today, more like $1.25 then), the price being so low due to the massive competition in the crowded Utsunomiya market, and due to the volume of turnover. I can’t imagine Hamamatsu having such a shop, where even the poorest could eat until full. So, the heartache of Utsunomiya is double: losing the crown, and knowing that it should still be theirs. A Shakespearean plot if ever there was one. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120202a4.html

 

The heartache of leaving Japan, and trying not to die.

I shall go overseas this year, and to places requiring various immunizations, vaccinations, and associated shots, jabs, and pills. They will probably make me sick, but hopefully help keep me alive. I have only ever been sick once while travelling, but such was the effect of India upon my body that I am erring on the side of caution this year. Trying to find a medical institution that provides such services isn’t altogether easy, but they do exist, and for this I am indebted to friend Jennifer, who is acting as my nurse, with assistant nurse Judit. For the millions of people who live between Shizuoka and Tokyo there are only two places which provide the yellow fever vaccine, and they are both in Yokohama, about 200 meters from each other. One provides that vaccine and no others, only gives it on a Wednesday afternoon, and it must be booked at least two weeks in advance. The other place provides other vaccinations, but not typhoid. It also hands out malaria tablets, but tells most people they don’t need them, even when the WHO says they do. Oh yes, and the names of these organisations are almost the same: the Yokohama Quarantine Station, and the Yokohama Japanese Quarantine Association (http://www.kenekieisei.or.jp/about.html) respectively.

I took two days to try and make sense of it all, on the phone, reading homepages, and working out who was who and what was what. Today, I went for my first two shots. I spoke with the same kindly gentleman whom I had encountered on the phone, who speaks in such a rushed, gnarled form of Japanese that when he asked my age I thought he was asking me how long I would be overseas, and he was even more impressive in the flesh. Sitting behind a mass and mess of paper, he wrote on my document, then scribbled out what he had written, then stamped it with something, then crossed it out, and stabbed again with another stamp. He then said ‘Is that alright?’ about changes he had made that I couldn’t see. The ladies of the staff smiled knowingly, with a degree of sympathy and pity, and the nursing sister told me about her travels to Britain, which included Stratford upon Avon, as she harpooned my left arm, and Sunderland, as she snagged my right. I was somewhat taken aback by her comment that the latter city had been ‘beautiful and quiet’, which made me grateful that she hadn’t injected my skull and buttocks, such being the obvious state of her eyesight, and she wouldn’t have been able to hear my screams if she had. Sunderland has many points to commend it, but not beauty and silence.

For my pains, I paid 21,300yen (175 Pounds, $275). I will have another seven injections over the next few weeks. It is not only my heart that is aching.

 

The heartache of returning to Japan, your home, and being beaten, robbed, and expelled.

A Canadian freelance journalist has made the (minor media) headlines, and a story in The Economist, due to his having lived here for more than 20 years, and yet been detained, mistreated, and kicked out of the country by immigration staff and private contractors, claiming that he was beaten, robbed, and threatened with a pistol. Now, Japan’s Immigration Service is no stranger to controversy, as the death of a Ghana citizen in 2010, detailed on this blog, revealed. However, this case is unusual in some ways. Not to avoid a key point, the subject was white, middle-class, and seemingly fairly respectable.

As The Economist details, “Still the case of Christopher Johnson beggars belief. Returning to Tokyo after a short trip on December 23rd he was ushered into an examination room, where his nightmare began. Over the next 24 hours he was imprisoned and harassed. Most of his requests to call a lawyer, the embassy or friends were denied, he says.” He was forced to buy a ticket and leave Japan within a few hours. http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2012/01/japans-immigration-control　

Now, Japan’s Immigration Service is no stranger to controversy, as the death of a Ghana citizen in 2010, detailed on this blog, revealed. However, this case is unusual in some ways. In short, he was ‘people like us’, rather than a ‘third world visa-overstayer’, as the Immigration Service likes to depict those it turfs-out of the country. Johnson claims he was being stigmatized for having written critical comments about Japan after the 3.11 crises, but he is scarcely alone in that respect. The case of Johnson is not quite as simple as it initially seems, with some issues regarding his visa status and therefore legality being unclear, and the subject of some flux in the retelling, according to at least one, seemingly well-informed, blogger. http://www.japanprobe.com/2012/01/23/christopher-johnson-discloses-visa-information-work-visa-application-paperwork-but-no-approval/　

However, even if he were a visa overstayer, and even if he arrived at a Japanese airport wearing nothing but a ‘Down with Japan!’ T-shirt, his treatment, if accurately portrayed, would not have been warranted. The problem with parts of the Immigration Service seems to be that if someone is designated a ‘criminal’ (anyone with a visa problem) they seem all to ready to go into ‘Guantanamo mode’, rather than treating the person as someone with a problem, to be resolved by either administrative, or, failing that, judicial means. Therefore, the heartache for Johnson, and for every fair-minded reader, foreign or otherwise.

 

The heartache of the lonely islands without even names.

There is a group of islands called the Senkaku in Japan, Diaoyu Islands in Chinese, which have in recent years become a bone of contention between the Japanese and Chinese governments, or rather between Japan and both Chinese governments, for Taiwan also claims the islands. As ever, the devil is in the historical detail, with Japan having ‘discovered’ them in 1885, and incorporated them in 1895. There were no objections to this situation until 1970, when the People’s Republic (PRC) raised its objections, but possibly driven more by the prospect of Japan-Taiwan (RoC) cooperation than the specific Japanese claim. The disputes escalated somewhat but faded away until the early 1990s when the economic and military growth of the PRC was accompanied by an expansion of its ambitions and diplomatic efforts, further affected by the newly assertive approach adopted towards potential Taiwanese independence.

The Senkaku issue is complicated by the failure of Japan and the PRC to mediate their respective East China Sea (ECS) Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), and the accompanying efforts to manage natural resources, whether fisheries or oil and gas. As usual, the PRC has proved adept in many ways at frustrating Japan and getting what it wants, while Japan has so often been left flat-footed, and appearing ditheringly indecisive. This is widely seen among observers as evidence of the supremacy (or strength) of Chinese strategy, and the inferiority, weakness, poverty, or even complete absence of strategy in Japan. It is also, however, evidence of how increasingly sure-footed the PRC feels, and how unsure is the foothold of Japan. This is due not only to the relative imbalance of scale, and, increasingly, of economic power, but also to a broader lack of unity and confidence in Japan’s role, methods, and what might be referred to as ‘strategic vision’. This blog has noted how Japan has faltered in dealings with Korea and China on any issue whereby the other country is able to pick-up the handy club of ‘war legacy’ and beat the Tokyo brain whenever it seems most apt. Japan’s unwillingness to solve many of those legacy issues provides the club with which it is beaten. Since neither the Senkaku or ECS EEZ issues are war legacy issues there should be no such problem, but naturally such a useful weapon is easily and expertly wielded by Beijing.

Which long-winded background brings us to the issue of nameless islands. The Senkaku have little or no population, only some visiting government missions, and fishermen passing through, but in order to maximize the Japanese claim for the ECS EEZ the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) felt the need to have every part of the chain named, even the smallest rock outcrops, as proper islands, thus expanding Japan’s EEZ line. They asked the local government, but after checking records the council simply didn’t know. Then MoFA itself decided the names of the seven islands/islets based upon their relative position to the main island: north-east island, east island etc. Quite a simple matter. Until the PRC and RoC found out, and then the objections streamed in thick and fast. Taiwan made three objections in three months, and the PRC insisted that the islands were Chinese, and that they formed a central part of Chinese policy.

For the most cogent exposition of this issue, and what needs to be overcome (and possibly how this may be achieved) see the excellent article by Reinhard Drifte for Japan Aktuell, March 2008: http://www.giga-hamburg.de/dl/download.php?d=/content/publikationen/archiv/ja_aktuell/jaa_0803_fokus_drifte.pdf As Reinhard has noted, the Legal Affairs Bureau of MoFA is very strong, and anything to boost Japan’s EEZ claim becomes important, particularly at the moment when all three littoral states of the ECS have submitted their (mutually exclusive) demands for extended continental shelves to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. In short, they will use any means at their disposal to press their case at the UN, and mainly due to the prospects for exploiting oil and gas, but the MoFA Legal Affairs Bureau seemed to press the legal case regardless of the effects elsewhere. It could be said that this illustrates how MoFA resembles Somalia: a defined area full of largely independent, occasionally warring, tribes, that share many common aspects of culture, which fail to unify them. Luckily MoFA is unarmed, and many of their staff are very bright.

Now, the odd case of the Chinese gas rig in the ECS was raised just as the Chinese objections to Japan’s island-naming were in the news. NHK sent out an aircraft to report the ‘breaking news’ that black smoke and flame was coming from the rig on the median line, in breach of previous cooperative agreements between the two countries. The facts as laid out were indeed correct, but with one small caveat: it wasn’t really news. The rig in question, Tianwaitian, began some degree of production sometime in 2005. We know this as that was when the Japanese government protested about the matter. So, NHK is providing the Japanese government with the platform to say that they are protesting about ‘new production’ on a rig, which they have known was in production for the past six years. And this came out in the same news bulletin which featured the island renaming issue. And we criticise China for using any handy weapon with which to beat their opponents. It is enough to give any fair-minded observer a fair degree of heartache.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120131_01.html

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120131_h22.html　

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2012/02/01/330281/Taiwan-lodges.htm　

http://www.chinadailyapac.com/article/china-makes-representation-japan-over-island-naming　

 

The heartache of life and death.

And so we come to real heartache, with matters of life and death.

How has life in Japan changed? Has it improved as it has changed, or just changed? These questions can be applied to any country, but living in Japan results in a local focus. Working life has certainly changed, with the working balance between sectors in the period 1960-2000 illustrating a massive move away from agriculture, as found in most developed countries. However, unlike the UK, the recent speed of the shift is remarkable, with 1960 seeing almost the same number of Japanese employed in farming and fishing as manufacturing and transport, while the figures for 2000 reveal little change in the latter industries but a drop in the agricultural sector percentage to less than a fifth of that previously found.

Also notable is the rise of those working in clerical and administrative capacities, constituting the largest single group for employment by 2000. Perhaps driven by technology, or welfare, or the scale of government, but it isn’t naturally a phenomenon regarded as constituting progress.

By working sector,

agriculture, fisheries etc:               1960     32.5%   2000     5.2%

manufacturing, transport etc:                     32.9%                  31.9%

sales, services etc.                                            17.1%                  25.2%

clerical, admin etc.                                            17.4%                  37.5%

http://www.ipss.go.jp/p-info/e/S_D_I/Indip.html#t_15

Table 20

The good news is naturally that Japanese live longer than pretty much anyone else, especially women. However, even here there are oddities. The greatest longevity in Japan is among women in Okinawa, possibly due to sunshine, frost-free winters, and fresh fruit. The shortest life spans among Japanese? Men in Okinawa. Why? Well, it must be the Awamori (fierce hooch, up to 60%), the popularity of SPAM, and the hard working conditions found on the islands.

And not only how long, and how, people live has changed, but also how they die. The big killer 20 years ago was of cerebral seizures, often associated with diet, especially salt intake. Today it is cancer (if all varieties are taken together) but closely followed by heart disease, as Japanese succumb to such western maladies, with pneumonia taking 8% of the population, usually the oldest and weakest, who are seen to have simply died of old age, but have that as the specific cause on their death certificate.

How people die isn’t a subject most of us would choose to examine too carefully, but sometimes there is a need to try and understand even when we finally can’t. Statistics can tell us a great deal in this respect, even though they can’t tell us why. In 2000, more than 4% of Japanese men who died committed suicide, twice the rate of women, and twice the rates experienced immediately prior to and following the Pacific War. With an increasingly old, healthy, and small population one wonders why there is seen as being such a great imperative to end one’s own life? Japan’s government has launched panels on the issue, sent research groups overseas to see how Finland and other countries have reduced their suicide rates, but still there is no clear answer. Maybe the answer is one we care not to consider, for it defies science and governance. Maybe it is overwhelming heartache.

Table 15

http://www.ipss.go.jp/p-info/e/S_D_I/Indip.html#t_15

31st January: Old haunts, heritage, and haunted presents

31^st January 

A busy time of year for university types, as we struggle to grade, sort out admin, and plan research trips in the spring. That explains almost a fortnight’s blog-silence.

One thing that has kept me busy has been a local history project examining the memorialisation of war in my home area of Britain, the north-east coast of England, and the Shonan coastline of Kanagawa where I presently live. This has been ticking over for more than a year, but has reached the point where I am making discoveries (at least to myself). These include the only Imperial Japanese Navy interrogation camp in Japan, in Kamakura, but far off the well-beaten tourist path, a 500 year old fort site near-by the camp, and a series of defensive gun positions designed to repel the expected US invasion of the Sagami Bay area that have been turned into parks, including one naval gun-turret position converted into a monkey house. And who said that Japanese don’t appreciate irony?

A visit to two cities in Tochigi last weekend brought out another aspect of history that has rarely troubled historical publishers: confronting personal historical impressions. A stroll through the main thoroughfares and back lanes of Utsunomiya was most revealing. It showed not only how much the capital city of Tochigi Prefecture had changed but also how I had changed over the 18 and a half years since I first wandered there. The station, public buildings, and roads don’t seem that different, but a closer look revealed a worrying trend. I visited the Shinohara Former Residence, a preserved old house of a Shoyu (soy sauce) merchant built in 1895, and the only such example in the city, almost everything else having been destroyed in air raids in 1945, the largest of them being on 12^th July. The house was wonderfully preserved, and with two fine ladies chatting away to me about it I was as happy as could be. http://www.city.utsunomiya.tochigi.jp/bunka/geijyutsu/002266.html I mentioned I was returning to see how the city had changed over the years, and their comment was ‘not much, except that Orion Dori (Orion Street) is now Shutter Dori’. Walking down the once crowded arcade shopping area in the centre of the city, leading up to the Tobu Department store, it was clear how correct they had been, with half the shops shuttered, and many others looking glum. It was a far cry from the once thriving and crowded arcade where everyone went to be seen on a weekend. http://www.opentopia.com/webcam/8939?viewmode=animated

When I first visited Utsunomiya from my home in the mountains of Nikko I thought it was an incredibly sophisticated and exciting big city. This is what Japan, the economic leviathan, the number two power, the hive of efficiency was all about. Even in this city, which locals considered to be inaka (countryside), was a plethora of lights, shops, and bustle. Utsunomiya then had half a dozen city centre department stores, and land on Odori, the main high street, was probably the most expensive stretch of real estate between southern Saitama and Sendai. Now there are shuttered shops and offices, and the worst indictment of all: where there were buildings are now gravel spaces for parking cars. The car has won in Utsunomiya, and the city community has lost. Not only has local industry faltered, with large companies such as Honda, Nissan, Toshiba, Sharp, and Canon employing less people, and far less as ‘regular employees’ with permanent contracts, but the city planners in order to make the city more motor friendly precipitated a dash for the ring road. Now, to buy a TV, to visit a cinema, and to keep the young ones entertained there are far more options on the fringes of the city than in its centre. Even further out, beyond Utsunomiya’s city limits, shopping malls have sprung up where there once were rice fields, and as sure as night follows day these malls lead to the modern pilgrimage of the weekend: sitting inside metal containers, looking at the back of another container, waiting to enter a resting area for containers, so that you can walk around and look at things before returning to your container.

Places like Utsunomiya, in Tochigi, are ‘middle Japan’, and more ‘authentic’ in many ways than Tokyo and Osaka. It is in places like this that most Japanese live, not massive cities nor tiny villages, but the middle-range. The problems of the city and prefecture are the problems of middle Japan. GDP fell in 2011, and the profits of companies fell with them. Toshiba announced today that its profits were down over 70%, and Honda announced expectations of a drop of over 60%, and the same is true for Fujitsu and Canon (both in Tochigi), and most manufacturers are moving production, and in some cases even product development, overseas to counter-act the effect of the strong yen. No-one sees drastic improvement coming soon, and the fact that Hyundai, ARM, and the other competitors in the technology and manufacturing sectors are generally booming does not provide any comfort. The best the country can look forward to is a collapse in the yen and a slightly slower drop in population than anticipated. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nb20120131n2.html

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/biz/inside.asp?xfile=/data/marketing/2012/January/marketing_January21.xml&section=marketing

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-31/toshiba-cuts-profit-forecast-on-stronger-yen-thai-floods.html

My wanderings in the backstreets showed me what had always been there: a mixed bag. Small shops, some empty, old houses and a few new ones, and lots of tired buildings that hadn’t seen a lick of paint in decades, and some that appeared close to collapse, with only the rust and washing lines keeping them up. In short, the sort of place I used to call home when residing in Utsunomiya. Now, with perspective, it seems the city wasn’t such a gilded lily after all, and even before the economy began to sag the place had its less attractive underbelly. In fact, there were quite a few parts of the cityscape that had far more in common with a developing country than with an economic powerhouse. In that sense, perhaps those locals were right: this was inaka after all. But what do we find attractive and what do we find squalid? I was rather charmed to hear the ringing of an old telephone on one such backstreet, and presumed it was one the ‘chime options’ of a mobile phone. Passing by an old builders’ office I noticed an old man scurrying along and then picking up an old black Bakelite phone with a rotary dial face. It was older than the one we had in our house in 1972. The office looked of a vintage that was similar to its occupant, and the whole scene was one of enchantment for a passing visitor. For a resident it may have been a further indictment of how poor and run down the place seems. And old. The average age of prefectures outside of the major metropolitan areas is increasing, and Japan’s ageing society, not a massive problem in itself, is being combined with severe population decline and a dash for the bright lights of the big cities. Tohoku, post-3.11, has experienced a loss of people since the disaster, with almost 20,000 killed or missing, and a net movement of 40,000 out of Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate since March 2011. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120131_03.html However, these Tohoku prefectures had been experiencing population ageing and decline for several years before the tsunami, and the same has been true in many cities and towns in Tochigi Prefecture.

In Britain, people often associate ‘old’ with ‘heritage’, which has become a password for any number of policies, activities, and events. It has an almost completely positive connotation, denoting that old is good and worth preserving, even when the ‘old’ reality in question was pretty bloody awful. Thus, there are ‘heritage’ coal mines, where the emphasis is on hard, honest graft, rather than oppressive work and early death, and even ‘heritage’ Prisoner of War camps, where the war years and all of their fun can be recreated and enjoyed, rather than be treated as a traumatic syndrome episode to be freed from. The first recreation of the past, complete with a ‘community’ of staff and volunteers who dress-up and behave as period people, was founded in north-east England at Beamish, County Durham, and it has developed, since my rain-soaked, egg sandwich-belaboured visit there in 1977, into the leading ‘living museum’ in Britain. http://www.beamish.org.uk/ It trades upon not only interest in the past, but also on the obsession with nostalgia, although the industrial and particularly the mining heritage of Durham is both a source of local pride and misery, for its economic benefits and environmental and mortal damage.

Japan treats heritage far more suspiciously, with old buildings ripped down without ceremony, vestiges of the past cast-off with scarcely a thought, much to the chagrin of heritage-obsessed foreigners (such as I). However, it is hard to imagine many Japanese regarding heritage as something to be savoured when considering a PoW camp, or a copper mine where many, including PoWs, died. One such mine exists in Tochigi, up in the mountains of Ashio, now part of Nikko City, and it runs a small museum tour, but it is about backbreaking labour, environmental pollution, and (a very minor reference to) Chinese and Korean slave labourers who died there. Not much in the way of dressing up as Victorian or Meiji period miners and singing jolly songs while off to work they go.

I also visited Nikko last weekend, my first home in Japan, and this brought back memories of my first weeks in the country. Coming after a week in which I had attended the wake of a former boss and friend, bringing with it the attendant re-visitation of memories and emotions that such events engender, it was interesting to see how I felt about the old place. Utsunomiya was cold, but snow-free, while Nikko was freezing cold and snow-covered. That helped place everything in context, reminding me of falling off my bicycle on the snow and ice, slipping and sliding my way between work and home, and the wonderful sight and sound of the local postman delivering the mail in a blizzard on his Honda 90 with a snow chain on his rear tyre.

Nikko had changed, a little, but for the better perhaps. But some things seemed timeless. The row of dozens of jizo, or small statues of Buddhist deity which are believed to relieve the sufferings of people, particularly children, still stood much the same as ever in the Ganmangafuchi gorge, with red bibs, and with small piles of snow on their heads. The river flowed, the icicles hung onto the waterfalls, and all seemed as it ever had. The biggest differences were within the people looking at the scenes. I was seeing this for the first time in some years, not for the first time. I was able to look at the beautiful scene of the Kanaya Hotel building by the river and the Shinkyo sacred bridge, not as a fresh faced visitor, but as a veteran resident, and a former hotel guest. While Nikko had changed a little, it was obvious that I had changed more. Still recognisable, but with a history that was shaping me into different forms than those previously seen. The past is often regarded as though a foreign country, but not all foreign countries are all that foreign. Perhaps the past is really a second home, where some of us feel rather too comfortable for our own good, while others feel discomforted by the eerily familiar surroundings. Heritage and ghosts as house guests. Some we invite in and others we try to keep out.

18th January: amatuers, veterans, and capitalists



 18^th January

 

A relatively swift follow-up to the previous blog. There were some comments (well, a couple anyway, as I’m not exactly The New York Times), and there have also been a couple of developments.

The first development was involving the new Defense Minister, Tanaka Naoki, who, as previously stated, is a bit of an amateur in security terms. Well, since his predecessor Ichikawa, was also a bit of a defence amateur, and made remarks, and was seen (somewhat unfairly) to have been lax in his supervision of the ministry, this led to his censure by the upper-house of the Diet, and his loss of cabinet status. On a roll, and not believing their luck, the opposition have been circling over Tanaka since he walked into the ministry building. He seemed quite confident in declaring that he wanted the Futenma Base relocation in Okinawa to get going by the end of the year, echoing the feelings of the MoD, US, and several others, including most of the LDP opposition. However, since this is the single most contentious issue in the entire defence and security realm of government in Japan, his comments were seen as riding roughshod over a sensitive and thoroughly displeased Okinawa public, which has been messed about good and proper by both parties for the past two decades. The result has been Tanaka backtracking, Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura whipping out his trowel to cover the cracks, and the LDP as happy as pigs in their own mess, which is a far more accurate metaphor than anyone in the mainstream media seems to have noticed.

Tanaka has also muddled up the limitations on use of JSDF weapons during operations, and the limits on Japanese arms exports. Poor lamb, he’s only been in politics 30 years.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120117a3.html

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/01/17/20120117p2g00m0dm031000c.html

He has, however, announced a trip within 10 days of assuming his position to Okinawa to bow and scrape and say he’s sorry, and will listen to the will of the local people, before he does what he’s told by the PM and basically ignores Okinawa opinions. This is the regular process that people such as Tanaka go through, and it can’t be much fun for either side. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/01/17/20120117p2g00m0dm097000c.html

 

On the issue of Japan’s nuclear reactors, there have also been developments, as the minister responsible for nuclear issues, Hosoda, stated on 6^th January that the operational lifespan of Japan’s nuclear reactors would be capped at 40 years, while it was later announced that the government would provide extensions, if operators were deemed fit and able to maintain safety. Presumably TEPCO would have qualified before 3.11. The extensions would be one time only, but would be for 20 years, leading to most commentators saying that the new limits of 40 years are meaningless, as prior limitations were set at 60 years. So, a controversy, and policy, all about nothing. How novel. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120118p2g00m0dm046000c.html

In other news, a farce broke out in Tokyo today, and it was all captured on television. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency safety panel on stress-tests, the standard tests to be applied to all reactors to measure their safety, met at 4pm, but without an audience. The previous meeting had been briefly interrupted by protestors, so the Agency decided the meeting would be closed, with live video footage provided in a room next door. Many disliked this, such as protestors, and also the representatives of prefectures such as Fukui and Niigata which host plants and are unhappy with the stress test progress thus far. This led to a delay of three and a half hours, while Agency officials were on the phone to their bosses, and resulted in six of the members decamping to an alternative room for a closed door meeting, which began with the minister for trade and industry, Edano, bowing and offering his apologies for the events. The remaining two members of the meeting refused to join a closed session, and so remained in the original room dishing the dirt on the entire farcical procedure. This was not only a wonderful demonstration of democracy in action, but also great telly! It should be a series.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120118_39.html (english)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20120118/k10015372031000.html (Japanese)

And Japan’s electricity output dropped in December 2011 for the 10^th month in a row.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/01/17/20120117p2g00m0dm100000c.html

And if that wasn’t good enough, TEPCO want increases in power charges of 10% for domestic users, and 17% for corporate users. I’m sure we’ll all be very happy indeed to pay them and keep the company solvent. Yes, it is our Dunkirk spirit. But right now, most of us feel like Stuka pilots. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nb20120118a1.html

 

Friend Julian commented on my previous writing and noted that in another (very good) blog (Yen for living, Philip Brasor & Masako Tsubuku), there had been comment on the fact that despite the rise in the yen against the euro, that imported car prices hadn’t dropped, and that the gaisha people were making a killing.

http://blog.japantimes.co.jp/yen-for-living/foreign-carmakers-dont-need-a-strong-yen-but-theyre-happy-to-have-it/

Friend Alan wondered whether there wasn’t any way out of the situation of different car prices in different places?

The truth of course, is a little more complex. Not that I think I’ve ever met it, or would even recognise it at a party. However, some light can be shed.

The first thing regards hard facts, such as the numbers of cars imported, which as a percentage of the Japanese market is rather low, at 95,452 for 2011. However, that low number increased 7% due to the massive drop in production in Japanese factories here and overseas due to the effects upon production caused by 3.11, and then by the Thai floods in the autumn of 2011. 3.11 resulted in a massive drop in car registrations. In the previous six months, car registrations in Japan had varied between 172,000 and 278,000 per month, but in April 2011 that plummeted to 97,000. For comparison, France, with approximately half the population of Japan had six month averages between 172,000 and 210,000 in the same period, and Japan’s car demand had been in general decline for six years. This data comes from the fascinating Japan Statistics Bureau  (for those with no love or social lives: form an orderly queue behind me): http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/getujidb/index.htm#f

Yen for Living had noted VW sales were down 3.2%, but were by far the biggest sellers of imported cars in Japan. An article in a newspaper puts the VW figure for 2011 at just over 50,000 cars sold here, an increase of 8.4%. So, there is a little confusion over the figures, but what is clear is that importers of foreign vehicles didn’t drop prices when the euro, dollar, and pound dropped. So, why? (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nb20120117a5.html )

Well, the simple reason is greed. Yes, the basis of capitalism is sell high, buy cheap, and both manufacturers and dealers are capitalists. If the market wants something, it has to pay more to get it, and therefore prices were buoyant for imported cars despite the dipping long-term sales trend. Another reason for the increase in sales is the improved marketing of cars, with greater emphasis upon smaller models in addition to the large panzer-esque models from Bavaria and Detroit, and often with far more Japanese content, as domestic and foreign firms tie themselves closer together. There will come the day when the distinction between Renault and Nissan will be meaningless, and the same could be true for other manufacturers. The largest car maker in Britain? Nissan. The largest car maker in Kentucky? Toyota.

Another reason prices haven’t dropped much for cars, when they have for wine and other things, is the system of annual price fixing, whereby importers and exporters, with banks and brokers, agree fixed prices and exchange rates for goods, including a premium (or spread) paid to the middlemen to ensure stability. Wine price is more flexible as there is a constant change in product and availability, but cars have a year badge (this year’s model), generally set once a year. The same is true for bicycles. The currency rate the importer achieves in negotiations is less to do with the rate right now, but the stability of that rate. In early 2011 the euro had dropped a bit, but not very far or very fast. With 3.11, it seemed likely the high yen could drop, but it didn’t. 2012 would seem to indicate that the euro could drop further, or rise, as certain weaker countries fall by the wayside, leaving the stronger core (fill in the blanks regarding the relevant countries, but I think it safe to say that the prices of olives and ouzo/raki could drop, while lederhosen and Porsches probably won’t).

As for why are the different prices for the same product in different places, well, capitalism again. This is why the EU introduced rules banning dealers and producers from prohibiting ‘grey’ imports of cars and other goods, by individuals or companies. Thus, my friend went and bought his Japanese car (Nissan) in Ireland, and drove it back to Northumberland and saved a couple of thousand Euro. Bit trickier to do that in Japan, and the Japanese government, oddly, protects importers of foreign goods by (sometimes) impounding grey import, such as Prada bags and other luxury items. But many governments act likewise, and EU rules only apply within the union, not to imports from without. The Japan situation is a bit odd though, as Japan has also acted to limit the export of old Japanese cars overseas, for fear that it will damage Japan’s image. It seems bizarre that Japan’s image would be damaged by showing how its cars still work well after 20 years of abuse, but that is the ageist view here. Thinking of which...

 

Who says Japan’s population is ageing? Ogata Sadako, the head of Japan’s international aid agency JICA, has announced that she has requested to be replaced. Her successor will be Tanaka Akihiko, professor, expert on international security issues, and now Vice-President, of Tokyo University, which shows how far he has risen since getting drunk with me on Chilean red wine in Hokkaido.

Ogata, The former academic, UNHCR, special envoy to Afghanistan, and probably one of the most respected living Japanese, is a mere 84 and has been working as hard as anyone in her position possibly could. I have had the opportunity to speak, briefly, with her twice at conferences, and have found her a little intimidating, as she is very direct, clear, and as unlike your granny as any trade union representative or statesperson. She is a shining example for Japan, for all of those people who see the ‘ageing society’ as a terrible problem, whereas in fact the problem isn’t that some people are old, rather that some people, regardless of age are just poor at their jobs and never seem to realise it, or be forced to realise it. Ogata is one of those people that just keep being brilliant regardless of age, like the Japanese mountain climbers, runners, and skiers in the 80s and 90s. She reminds me of the British Army reservist doctor who volunteered for service in the Gulf War but was rejected for being too old (he was in his ‘mid-50s’, so my guess is 59). His comment to The Guardian was an indignant “Bloody fools! They’ve known about my age for years!” I’d have taken him. He would have done wonders for morale, or just frightened people a great deal.

Mrs Ogata, Otskaresama deshita, and thanks for those decades of work when some of your contemporaries were trying to perfect their gate-ball swing or flower-arranging ensemble. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120118a6.html

 

Finally, yesterday, 17^th January, marked the 17^th anniversary of the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, that destroyed parts of Kobe and surrounding areas. The devastation and losses were far less than in Tohoku, but the city and area were devastated and haven’t recovered. Things seem alright, but many old people still feel isolated, many young moved away not to return, and the city has been badly ‘hollowed out’. Despite all that, they held the commemoration service this year, but dedicated it to people in Tohoku, and personal and community links have flourished between these two areas united by dire adversity. Let us hope they can both prosper.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/01/17/20120117p2g00m0dm040000c.html

14th January: criminals, cabinets, and currencies

14^th January 

Well, a fortnight into the New Year and the first blog. Just too much happening and too little understanding of what it all means. There have been criminals turning themselves in, criminals jumping over prison walls and running through the streets in their knickers, a cabinet reshuffle in Japan, a pause in the crises over the Euro, followed by another crisis, some nice noises between Japan and both Korea and China despite ongoing troubles, and today the JSDF flew out of Narita bound, eventually, for South Sudan. There is increasing tension around Iran, its nuclear programme, and the Straits of Hormuz, and increasing civil conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, assuring that 2012 will not be remembered as a moment when peace broke out.

In this continuing conflict as in many other ways 2012 has seen much that became familiar in 2011: the Euro plunging, EU leaders saying that all was well, the matter was in hand, and there was no need to worry, and yet everyone was worrying. This worry seemed to have been momentarily stemmed by yet another summit of EU leaders, where there seemed to be what passes for harmony, and a certain degree of unanimity on what would be required to stabilise things. This happy ship received a torpedo hit below the water line when the ratings agency, Standard and Poor’s, downgraded a number of Euro-zone nations’ debt bonds, most importantly including France, downgraded from the premium AAA to AAplus, with another eight economies also downgraded, with Cyprus and Portugal being next to junk status, just above Greece, which is real junk status. There will probably be additional costs to raise debt-covering bonds for all the affected countries, especially Italy and Spain, but France also has problems as its last two bond issues were not fully taken up. The downgrading, to the same status as US debt-bonds, will undoubtedly be met with a wave of anti-US capitalist sentiment, as S&P is one of the leading US rating agencies, but responses on the streets of France by NHK and the BBC revealed a mixed pattern of views. Some were dismissive of S&P, some angry, but more were saying it was the natural response to French government inaction to take concrete measures on debt.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16558465

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120114_13.html

And the Euro sinks further, now standing at low levels against the yen not seen for a decade. Indeed, only a year ago the Euro managed to keep its level in the 150-165yen range, but now is trading at approximately 98yen. This exceeds the earlier drops in the US dollar that prompted the huge intervention of the Bank of Japan in markets last autumn, and yet in this case the BoJ has been almost silent and inactive. The reason why seems to be more China than Europe based, as the Chinese currency is pegged to the dollar, and is Japan’s biggest single trading partner. Indeed, all of the markets pegged to the US dollar constitute a huge single mass of economic importance for Japan, and which explains the seeming apathy towards the massive rise of the yen against the Euro, which is so disastrous for Japanese exporters to the EU, and so wonderful for Japanese lovers of French wine and German cars. And the yen is trading only slightly below the levels of last year that prompted the massive BoJ intervention, prompting many to wonder if or when the next intervention will come, with most money on the last two weeks in March when companies repatriate overseas funds for end of year accounts. And while all of this is going on, everyone is coughing politely and staring out of the window in an attempt not to notice the elephant in the living room, defecating upon the carpet and smashing the furniture, as Japan has the world’s largest public debt, aided by a population of frugal, and increasingly poor, zero-interest savers.

Hirata Makoto, a former high-level member of Aum Shinrikyo and confidant of its leader Shoko Asahara (nee Matsumoto Chizuo), handed himself into police just before midnight on 31^st December, in a scene that could have come from a Hollywood movie. Possibly a Cohen brothers movie, as Hirata attempted to hand himself in at two police stations only to be told to move along and find another one, as the officers concerned believed he was ‘joking’, which possibly goes some way to explaining how one of Japan’s most wanted was able to hold down a regular job for many years in Osaka. Japan does not have an equivalent of the FBI or MI5. Or Sherlock Holmes.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120109003785.htm

Hirata has been detailing how he was involved in the workings of Aum, but how he didn’t murder as he is accused of, but how Asahara controlled many members, and was probably faking his current mental illness. Aum, the deadliest terror group in Japanese history still exists in altered form, and is still under official observation, although one imagines from the experience of Hirata that this is somewhat looser than could be expected in other countries, a sign perhaps that it is a tolerant democracy.

In other law and order news, Li Guo Lin, a Chinese prisoner convicted for attempted murder and given the exceptionally harsh (for Japan) sentence of 23 years went ‘over the wall’ this week, in white underwear, while exercising in the Hiroshima Prison yard. A chain of incompetent events seems to have aided the agile streaker, such as guards looking the other way, scaffolding against the outer wall, alarms and electrified wire deactivated, and the exceptional difficulty of authorities to find a near-naked man running through city streets. He was apprehended after a couple of days, two kilometres from the prison, clothed, with money, and suspected of having committed 10 crimes, including breaking into a house and making many phone calls to Tokyo and China.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120114p2a00m0na009000c.html

He should count himself lucky, as there are some worse off than Li in Japan’s prisons, such as those on death row, who now have a new justice minister on the job following PM Noda’s cabinet reshuffle, designed to remove two ministers censured by the opposition, and to ease tensions in the Diet to possibly enable Noda to implement a sales tax incease process. The new prisons boss, Ogawa Toshio, has announced that he won’t mind wringing a few murderers by the neck until they are dead, unlike his predecessor who failed to hang anyone in 2011, an errant drop in productivity. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120114x1.html

The other changes in the cabinet are a little odd. The defence and consumer affairs ministers were replaced after being censured by the opposition controlled upper-house, but their replacements do not inspire much confidence. Matsubara Jin is consumer affairs and North Korean abduction issue minister, and is seen as a conservative not a natural ally for Noda’s reform policies, while Tanaka Naoki at defence is a 71 year old, non-security expert, with a mediocre political and administrative record. He is primarily famous for being the husband of Tanaka Makiko, the fire-brand daughter of former PM Tanaka Kakuei, and for both of them being suspended from, and later defecting from the LDP to the DPJ, and both Tanakas are generally seen as being somewhat allied to Ozawa Ichiro, the man most likely to split the DPJ and cripple the government. Ozawa is on trial for yet another corruption issue, that has prompted the usual ‘don’t remember/can’t recall/I never knew’ responses that every defence lawyer dreams of, and 10 of his apostles walked out of the DPJ last year when PM Noda announced his tax plan. This fissure could be worsened by the tax plans, and by the appointment of the highly capable Okada Katsuya, one of the most prominent and able DPJ members as Deputy PM, who is well-known as an old antagonist of Ozawa. Okada will be in charge of finding a plan for funding social security and other programmes, as well as a ‘fixer’ in discussions with the opposition, particularly on tax increase matters. This makes the choice of Ozawa sympathiser and not terribly impressive former minister and chief cabinet secretary Hirano Hirofumi as education minister, when the incumbent seemed quite capable, as also puzzling. Noda has added one cabinet member seen as anti-Ozawa, while also adding at least three pro-Ozawa, just at a moment when he feels the need to pass a tax increase bill opposed by Ozawa. At least 2012 will be an interesting one in Nagatacho.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cabinet/cabinet.html?formed=20110902_01&date=&member=21

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2012/01/13/20120113p2g00m0dm144000c.html

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120114a2.html

 

2012 also sees Japan imposing stricter sanctions upon Iran, as an attempt to demonstrate unity with the US, but it comes at a time when Iran is threatening to block the Straits of Hormuz by force, and when Japan is ever more dependent upon Gulf Oil, especially with nuclear plants running at approximately 10.3% of capacity. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120114n1.html

And this month will probably see at least 4000 people in Miyagi and Fukushima made unemployed by the tsunami lose their unemployment benefits, as the extensions implemented by the government run out. As with most issues related to the 3.11 crises, the unemployed are largely being expected to get on and ‘recover’ themselves, which for the self-employed, farmers, fishermen, and others with skills and resources not easily transferrable will be a major task. Those mobile and skilled will move, and this will be a further loss for the region.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120114a8.html

31st December: Japan in 2012 - Recovery, Stabilization, Maturing, and a Long Journey Home

31^st December 

Well, the end of the year, and as usual there are many media reviews of the year. The deaths and births, marriages and divorces, and the exciting, tragic, and bizarre events of the year. While in Britain it will probably be remembered for the marriage of a prince, the outburst of riots, and the death of a pop singer, here in Japan the obvious remembrance is of events following the 11^th March earthquake and tsunami. Other things happened, with the annual change of Prime Minister, collection of political scandals, murder and adultery events, rise of the national debt, stalling of the economy, and all sorts of other minor incidents and major news stories, but nothing to compare with the natural and man-made disasters of March and their continuing effects.

Scenes from Tohoku are still appalling even if somewhat less shocking than they were nine months ago. The list of more than 19,000 killed is huge, but the list of the walking wounded is far greater. Like animals hit by cars that walk away and seem fine, people are walking around, seemingly recovered and normal, and yet they can never recover and normality is a foreign land. The parents whose daughter died at the age of 24 while making the public announcements for everyone in her town to evacuate to high ground, and who now have only the recording on video of the scene of the town flooding and their child’s voice telling everyone to get to safety. The elderly parents of a young Post Office worker who wandered around trying to find the site of his work place, and after finally locating it amidst the rubble then wandered around screaming his name until they dissolved in tears and couldn’t go on. The fisherman who lost his wife and kids, and his boat and most of his neighbours and colleagues. For these people, the cases who have been featured on television programmes, there is no recovery or normality, only awful, hollow grief. Not much more. One wonders what support they are receiving and how they can be expected to resume their lives, and how such afflicted communities can recover.

That issue is compounded by the lack of rebuilding. This is complicated by the desire to move communities to higher, more defensible ground, possibly with mergers of municipalities, but while the regulations and plans are formulated the people who are the community are left in limbo, eking out their lives in temporary housing, mainly small, cheap, prefabs which are hardly the ideal shelters from which to escape the harshness of the Tohoku winter.

For some such communities, the situation is even worse, for those immediate to the Dai-ichi nuclear power station in Fukushima there are a mixture of activities and plans. Some communities, such as Namie Town, are having the Town Hall decontaminated with a view to allowing people to resume their lives, and the government has pinned hopes and expectations on these efforts. However, as a farming and fishing community with other jobs from the nuclear industry, what form of recovery can be expected for this town (that includes the family of one of my students), particularly the prospects of the youth of Namie?

The bleakest futures of all would seem to be for the collection of towns to the north and west of the Dai-ichi plant, for the latest plan, which seemed like an obvious choice even way back in the spring, has been to propose the use of the already contaminated areas close to Dai-ichi for the dumping of low-level radioactive waste. This waste, such as topsoil, grass, and other debris that is being cleared away as part of the decontamination process from all over Fukushima, Iwate, and even in Chiba, Tokyo and elsewhere, but with no final disposal site having been designated is part of a flawed process: it has/had no end point for disposal. Hence the appeal of the Fukushima site, on the lines of ‘it is already so bad, a bit more won’t matter’, rather like the idea of building a similar site in Billingham, north-east England 30 years ago was sustained with the rationale of ‘well, it’s already bleak and polluted, so who’ll notice or care?’ The responsible minister, Hosono, however did at least show some contrition in making the request, telling local officials “I can't find words of apology to ask for the construction of the facility in Futaba County. But we'll make all possible efforts to obtain understanding.” Translated, this means the government are in a tight spot, it makes rational, national sense, but it will probably end local hopes of returning home. No doubt the government will throw money at good people and hope for the best. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T111228003939.htm

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2011/12/29/20111229p2a00m0na004000c.html

Naturally, when/if the plan is approved, then the idea will ‘emerge’ that since the area is contaminated, and uninhabitable, and being used as a (low-level) radioactive material storage facility, well, it would make perfect sense to locate the main spent-fuel storage facility there as well. Indeed, it really does make sense, and Japan, like every other nuclear country, has no designated disposal site for their waste, so for 2012, there may well be a drip-drip suggestion of such a notion. And still the locals sit and wonder what is to become of them.

In Fukushima, the hospital ‘system’ has been badly hit, with losses of staff and patients and the evacuation of many facilities due to radiation fears, as well as tsunami and earthquake damage. The complexity of hospital and all health care provision in Japan is the nature of the system for funding. This is conducted mainly by the central government, but there are also locally funded hospitals, while most are actually private, either run by a family, or as a chain deriving from a family base, or as corporate entities, but they receive public funding to varying degrees. Tohoku, unlike Tokyo, has a shortage of medical staff, with a higher average age than the areas closer to the capital, mainly due to the relatively harsh conditions and poor pay compared to the Kanto area (near Tokyo). The disaster-related losses of the past year have been estimated within Fukushima hospitals alone at over 12 billion yen (or $154 million), and the exodus of valuable staff is feared to be a long-term problem. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T111229004020.htm

 As Japan approaches the end of the year, certain records are being noted. The Nikkei index finished at its lowest level today since 1982, and things are not exactly looking positive for the economy in the New Year. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/business/news/20111230p2g00m0bu060000c.html This year will almost certainly see Japan experiencing a trade deficit, although what that will mean for the real economy is anyone’s guess. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20111230p2a00m0na001000c.html

The government will also attempt to raise the sales tax from 5% to 8% by April 2014, and 10% by October 2015, in a measure designed to cover the increased costs of pensions and welfare, but will almost certainly be swallowed up in servicing the general national debt. Most politicians seem to accept that the increase is required, but politically flawed, so a long process of horse-trading, insult-trading, and other political rough and tumble can only be expected from January.   http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111230p2g00m0dm110000c.html

Also, the shocking news that, as of this morning, Japan had not executed any inmates in 2011. While some, such as I, see this as a sign of civilization, the Yomiuri naturally sees this as an irresponsible betrayal of the rights of victims’ families. Seems that the Yomiuri will not be satisfied until lots of prisoners and lots of whales are slaughtered on a regular basis. And as for those Japanese liberals and whining foreigners who complain, they simply don’t understand Japan, Japanese culture, and Japanese ways. So, with DPJ power waning, one can presumably look forward to a much bloodier year of the dragon in 2012. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2011/12/29/20111229p2g00m0dm007000c.html

One hopes that the ‘2012 Blood Fest’ does not include any conflicts, but one can never tell. Japanese forces are being sent to South Sudan, and with a somewhat vague notion of self-defence based upon two decades experience of overseas deployment, and a legal framework that is not exactly helpful. In short, JSDF personnel on UN PKO duty may only defend themselves, and ‘other UN personnel designated as coming under the local control of Japanese units’. So, if a (non-Japanese) infantry battalion, or a local civil community, were attacked, the JSDF couldn’t help. However, they would expect to be helped by the infantry if they themselves were attacked, and this has been a cause of grumbling among the JSDF (especially the GSDF) with some realistic souls proposing changes: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111230p2g00m0dm014000c.html .

This hesitant reluctance is due to the Japanese restrictive interpretation of Article 9 of the constitution, and the rejection of a right to collective security, unless it is with the US. That ‘unless the US agrees’ interpretation is something of a problem for logic and jurisprudence, and colours most aspects of foreign and security policy, including arms exports. Since 1967, these have been banned by the government, initially due to anti-Communist policies, but later as embodiments of Japan’s ‘peace constitution’, which the LDP government put forward in 1976 at the same time as a massive build-up of the JSDF, in yet another example of idealism and realism in perfect harmony. Now, of course, the rules on export of arms are set to be relaxed, or revised. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/editorial/news/20111228p2a00m0na004000c.html

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T111227003855.htm

The reasons are similar to previous relaxations: the US, costs, and capabilities. While the government has stated it wishes to retain the spirit of the original policy, limiting sales of weapons to states not in conflict, and for PKO and humanitarian purposes, such definitions are extremely hard to interpret and enforce, and if applied rigorously can lead to loss of arms sales, as the Swedes have discovered (they handed the sale of the Saab Grippen fighter to the ‘clean hands’ of BAe in order to compete and win contracts that the Swedish government might well find unpalatable). In 1983, Star Wars and Aegis technology, and later the FS-X aircraft project, led to a relaxation of the defence-technology ban. Today, the main drivers are the F-35 programme, which Japan hopes to join as a very late-arriving partner, the amazing cost of purely domestic weapon development, and the potential sales accruing from some Japanese systems that could have wide applications in a number of markets and are at the ‘softer and nicer’ end of the military spectrum. Hence the Japanese C-X/C-2 transporter and P-X/P-1 maritime patrol aircraft could have wide appeal (if they ever enter full service), as could the excellent LAV light armoured vehicle (like a small Humvee) well-suited to PKO and such ‘light’ operations. The problem is that Japan does not have an operational draw (unlike Israel/UK/US makers that can show their ‘combat use’ records), and cannot claim to be a strategic partner as France has done via combined arms sales and security alliances.

Japan has hoped to use its technological prowess as a draw factor, and also to join international development projects as a way to reduce future defence costs and to spread risks, but neither of these are certainties. With such countries as Turkey, Singapore, and Korea now significant arms exporters there are doubts as to what, where, and how Japan could actually play a role, and which countries would be suitable partners? If a weapon system was developed with France and the UK, for example, they would no doubt be keen to sell it to long-standing defence-sales clients in the Middle East, South and South-East Asia, as well as Africa. But what if the purchaser were less than pure, or even engaged in ongoing or occasional conflicts? And what of the fitness for partnership of such countries as Britain and France, with their recent history of combative diplomacies? These issues are, naturally, all for the future, so there will be more to see and hear in 2012. As ever, the US relationship has been seen as driving such revisions, but the unspoken factor is always China.

As previously reported in the blog, PM Noda was in China last week, making progress, warming relations, and being seen to be doing something positive. This provoked some comments from friends that I was painting his efforts in too positive a light. This may be so. The intention was to illustrate that the effort was being made, and was largely well-received, but that it was symbolic, and therefore lacking in substance, while the Japan-China relationship has many issues of great substance as major problems. The East China Sea, Senkaku Islands, and the demarcation of the EEZ, maritime borders, and attendant issues of resource exploitation, such as fishing and gas fields, is the major stumbling block.

Japan has been very slow to appreciate the nature and importance of the problems, but has begun to catch up and on. It has attempted to develop relations with India, Australia and other Asia-Pacific nations in order to attempt to offset the China factor. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T111229005248.htm China also sees the major importance of (Japanese) history issues, with every statement about sovereignty, comfort women, imperial legacies, and every anniversary utilized in the service of state policy as a very effective hammer with which to bash the Japanese seemingly peaceful edifice. Of course, the Chinese will never accept that there are any Chinese history problems, and they are right. Chinese history is decided by the party, and reworked by the party to suit present needs. Japan, with no actual ‘official history’ version, only Min of Education interpretations and other vague concepts (quite normal in a democracy), appears flat-footed by comparison, and rather disappointed that the war-issues controversy hasn’t died with most of its veterans. Indeed, feeling about the Japanese disinclination to revisit and face up to its own history appears to have only grown in China, partly directly aided by the PRC government, and partly indirectly aided by a freeing of restrictions on history researchers (researchers of foreign-related, not Chinese, history, of course, for the events of Chinese in Beijing in 1989 are far less researched than the events of Japanese in Nanking in 1937). China’s failures towards its own people find so little space for coverage when the government has such an easily accentuated distraction by waving the flag and denouncing Japan. The Economist has an interesting article on how failures in Chinese football (soccer) mirror and are caused by the failures in the political system, including the inability of the PRC to deal with real criticism: http://www.economist.com/node/21541716?fsrc=nlw%7Cnewe%7C12-30-2011%7Cnew_on_the_economist

Without a clear coming-out by Japan, the PRC government has a constant weapon and policy tool that it can and does use, and which is an easy way of winning over Korean and Russian sentiment. Japan has become a prisoner of its own failings, and without that Willy Brandt moment, without a clearing out of the skeletons from the cupboard, and without a real sense of atonement, free from the past liberal-left-wing yelps of revisionism and peace and the right-wing recourse to the context of the wrongs of other imperialists, the country and its policies will always be bound to a troubled past. Japan should, like Korea, be a model for democracy, and a model for liberal reformers in China, but it cannot fulfill its own potential due to its failure to understand the significance of its own legacies. Not that Japan is alone in that regard, but there are few countries where the problems of legacies have such a vital impact upon the present.

So, for the New Year, Japan’s economy recovering, politics stabilizing, relations with China maturing, and the folks of Fukushima being able to return home and live happily ever after. One can but hope.

26th December: Boxing, Budgets, and Bilateral Bonhommie

 26^th December 

Merry Boxing Day, the day when, traditionally, the rich and privileged would have enjoyed their Christmas Day so much that they feel able to do without most of their servants for a portion of the following day, and pack them off with a box of small presents, mainly the left-overs of the previous day’s dinner. A fine tradition, but one which might seem rather finer from the position of the lord than from that of the lorded-over.

Which brings us to the issues facing Japan at the end of this tumultuous year. The government is in a spin for all manner of reasons. It stated that within this year the Dai-ichi nuclear power plant crisis will have been ‘stabilised’ and ‘cold-shutdown’ achieved, and it has declared itself successful in all of that. Not everyone is convinced, and the achievement of success might well have been considered the more important factor compared to hard scientific data on safety and stability. The government has also stated that it will have a plan for the complete integration of the taxation, pension, and social welfare systems by the end of the year, which presumably means that there are a number of civil servants burning the midnight oil in the Kasumigaseki district of Tokyo (Japan’s capitol, or Whitehall). Again, a declaration of successfully preparing a plan is probably more likely than an actually fully-working plan. And as if all that wasn’t enough, Japan now has only six operating nuclear power reactors on-line at the end of the year, compared with 18 sites at the start of 2011, most with multiple reactors, such as the six at the Dai-ichi site, for a total of 54 reactors. In contrast to the period following the March tsunami, it is the areas in western Japan, Kansai, Kyushu, and Kinki, that are experiencing severe power shortages and ‘setsuden’ power-saving campaigns. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111226p2g00m0dm038000c.html

This week saw the publication of the interim report on the Dai-ichi crisis by a government panel of experts. The report states that both TEPCO and the government failed to institute emergency safety procedures, with the situation of the Prime Minister’s residence and office having different staff on different floors receiving different information and making different decisions with little coordination between them. It is damning in its view of contingency planning as being completely inadequate in both institutions. However, critics have been swift to also find fault with the report. Experts on nuclear issues have noted its lack of detail on exactly how the reactor control was lost, and the timing and process of events, especially the highly controversial issue of whether the primary cause of the meltdowns was the earthquake or the tsunami? If it were the tsunami, then the solutions are relatively simple, if costly: the building of walls, and improvement in pump and generator provisions. If it was actually the quake that caused the damage, then there is less that could be done in terms of re-engineering the existing infrastructure to make it resilient to a magnitude 9 quake elsewhere. This is only an interim report, but it seems to have left many deeply dissatisfied. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111226x1.html

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111226p2g00m0dm113000c.html

There is an interesting piece in the Mainichi Shimbun on Assoc. Prof Koide of Kyoto University, featured months ago in this blog. It details his views, but more so the changing perceptions of him, within the tight Japan ‘nuclear village’, in the media, and in official circles, from crank, to visionary, to curmudgeon. He, though, has remained constant. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/news/20111226p2a00m0na002000c.html

Also, an excellent piece in The Japan Times by the always interesting Philip Brasor on the Japanese media avoidance of extensive coverage of anti-nuclear campaigns, views, and related issues, and overwhelming pressure exerted by utility companies, nuclear plant producers, and government pro-nuclear sentiment. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fd20111225pb.html

There is also a new report out this week on the situation on 3.11, and how people’s evacuation attempts affected their survival rate. The startling fact is that a large number of people, estimated at 40% of survivors and who knows how many of those that perished, had not bothered to evacuate their homes after 30 mins of the quake. The worst survival rates among children were found to be those that were taken from schools by their parents immediately after the quake. No student who remained in school is known to have been lost in the tsunami, and that is a vindication of the constant drills and planning that teachers and others involved in school administration have undertaken over the years. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111225a8.html  Among those that fared worst were those in cars, as power cuts led to traffic light failures, traffic jams, and also many railway level crossings automatically closed as a safety measure and thus blocked roads. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111226p2a00m0na018000c.html  NHK also reported this evening that the average tsunami evacuation distance was approximately 430 meters, a very short distance when considering the fatal consequences of not evacuating. It was also clear, however, that the average time required for that evacuation was not the usual five minutes’ walk, but more than 11 minutes, indicating that not only did the distance take longer to cover, especially for the old, infirm, and very young, but also that many people did not have evacuation packs and the other emergency preparations at hand for such an eventuality. Many people ran about their homes looking for warm coats, bank books, torches etc. with consequent delays for their evacuations. The fatal casualty figure for the moment is 19,313. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20111226/k10014919361000.html (in Japanese).

The good news is that Haneda Airport, right on Tokyo Bay, has worked out a customer/passenger evacuation plan. How that would fare during a power cut is anyone’s guess.

However, there are also signs of moderate progress in other areas, including foreign policy. Prime Minister Noda has been in China to build relations (repair, and re-build no longer being appropriate terms considering the battering inter-governmental relations have taken over the past decade), and some progress has been made, even if it seems symbolic. Progress is usually measured in diplomacy by symbolic means, so the visit of an MSDF warship to a Chinese port was important, as was the series of meetings Noda had, and the agreement reached on direct currency exchanges between the countries, ending a ridiculously archaic process whereby companies doing business between Japan and China had first to transfer funds via dollars. This added to time and expense and was simply another unnecessary barrier to a massive trading relationship. Japan will also, thereby, begin purchasing Chinese government bonds, and presumably hope that the Chinese government will reciprocate. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/business/news/20111226p2g00m0bu096000c.html Both countries have invested heavily in dollar bonds and other investments, and presumably feel torn between the desire to broaden their investments and reduce their exposure to dollar fluctuations (and de facto devaluations), while also wishing to prop up dollar values due to the fears that investments thus far will otherwise depreciate. It seems the dollar is unlikely to rise in the short-medium term, and that Japanese exporters are selling some dollar investments, and repatriating funds for the ‘traditional’ end of year accounting practice. This is not as large as the one that prompted a massive market intervention by the government in the autumn, but it is nonetheless significant.

Japan agreed a new budget this week, and also despite Noda’s promises upon cutting debt the national debt burden is set to hit a new level of 937 trillion yen in 2012, if all goes well! http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111225a4.html That is $12 trillion, or 7.6 trillion pounds. This is despite sharp cuts in various budget items, such as the USMC Guam relocation budget and the overseas aid budget. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2011/12/24/20111224p2g00m0dm006000c.html and http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2011/12/24/20111224p2g00m0dm005000c.html However, the government has, somehow, found money and the political resolve to restart the Yamba Dam project, halted by PM Hatoyama’s government, and his responsible minister Maehara, in 2009 as one of their first manifesto pledges. The noises around the land are that the Ministry, meaning the officials, have pushed very hard for the project to restart and the government has weakly acquiesced, although apart from a love of big budgets, concrete, and the largesse of the construction industry the Ministry’s own agenda isn’t altogether clear. Maybe setting a precedent to show who is really in charge of policy in Japan’s democracy. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/archive/news/2011/12/24/20111224p2a00m0na008000c.html

Both Japan and China have also made polite noises about cooperating over North Korea, although that is highly unlikely. China is the de facto guardian of the DPRK and sees it as a kindred spirit of the PRC’s heritage, if not of its actual present, and like South Korea is deeply concerned at any signs of instability leading to regime and social collapse triggering a refugee crisis. China is already host to a North Korean community of the ‘fled’ estimated in the hundreds of thousands, and there is significant legal and illegal traffic of people and goods across the river border, and China worries about the effects upon its ability to control the area. This is quite apart from the concerns about weapons, with the state being highly militarized with conventional weapons posing an additional hazard to any social disorder, as occurred in the early 1990s in Albania, and the constant background issue of nuclear arms. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111226a1.html

And on the subjects of Japan’s budget, arms, and security, the F-35 decision by Japan has received some attention, but probably not as much as it deserves. A feature piece by a US defence consultant stated the decision was win-win for Japan and the US, providing the very best aircraft, in a multilateral framework, and tying Japanese and US defence with that of other allies such as Australia and the UK. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20111222a2.html However, the counter to that was provided by another JT piece, an editorial that indicated that the F-35 decision was not intended, ostensibly, to replace the F-15, but the old F-4s of Vietnam vintage. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ed20111223a1.html The F-4s cannot, apparently be flown much beyond 2016, and the (very expensive and limited) Japanese F-2 is out of production and at least 10 were written off after the March tsunami, but the F-35 is due, at the moment, to enter US, not foreign, service, from 2018, and that is if the cracks in the fuselage and wings, and the excess weight issues can be solved. The price is also a ‘catalogue’ price of 2011, not the actual, eventual price. Faced with a cost and service-gap risk it would seem to have been wiser to consider the F-35 for the longer term, and another aircraft for the shorter term to fill the gap. The UK has chosen both the Eurofighter Typhoon and F-35 for different but complimentary roles, and with all the confusion and cost escalation for which British defence procurement is famed. Not that Typhoon was the only option. What it does indicate is that the black box of Japanese defence procurement is rarely pre-occupied with operational issues within budget limitations. For more extensive detail on the F-35, in Japanese: http://sankei.jp.msn.com/politics/news/111220/plc11122022230026-n1.htm　

http://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/politics/news/CK2011122402000036.html　

http://www.jiji.com/jc/v4?id=20111113jasdf_fx_f-35_lightning0001　

In more uplifting news, the JSDF relief and recovery efforts in the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear-affected areas of north-eastern Japan have ended today, after more than nine months of sterling work. This coincides with the impending 14th January  dispatch of JSDF personnel to South Sudan to prepare the Japanese operational area for the UN PKO mission expected to last for five years from March 2012. Good luck to Major Uragami and all of the other Force members.