You Gotta Get In To Get Out

Via the Prime Minister's Residence, evidence that Abe and Company are in so preoccupied with fostering the image of engagement that they are failing to pay close attention to what they are saying.

Consider, if you will, the announcement on the Residence website of yet another gathering of worthies, this time tackling the relationship between the central government and the regions:

Headquarters for Promoting Decentralization Reform
Tuesday, May 28, 2013


Photograph of the Prime Minister delivering an address at the meeting of the Headquarters for Promoting Decentralization Reform 

(Source)

You caught that?

The government has, inside the Prime Minister's Office, a headquarters for decentralization.

A Headquarters for Promoting Decentralization inside the Prime Minister's Office.

A Headquarters...for Promoting Decentralization.

Call it a Task Force on Decentralization. Call it a Study Group on Decentralization.

But please never become so completely inured to the everyday meaning of words as to be blind to the glaring oxymoron of a Headquarters (honbu) for Promoting Decentralization (chiho bunken) located inside the Prime Minister's Office.

Trivial? Perhaps.　

But indicative of a preference for a semi-manic force feeding of change initiatives over governing.