Consider My Mind Blown

Just in case anyone is missing the significance of Abe Shinzo's sudden rush to meet with Donald Trump, try recalling who Abe is, or at least who is supposed to be according to his domestic critics and elements of the international news media and non-Japanese academia.

Come with me on a short walk-through what seems to be Ultimate Irony Town:

Abe Shinzo

Is traveling to the United States

To plead with the incipient leader of the United States

To foster and preserve a liberal, rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific

And ask him to not indulge himself in facile, nationalist posturing,

Lashing out based on a dated and embarrassing worldview.

Do you need to hear that again?

Abe Shinzo

Is traveling to the United States

To plead with the incipient leader of the United States

To foster and preserve a liberal, rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific

And ask him to not indulge himself in facile, nationalist posturing,

Lashing out based on a dated and embarrassing worldview.

Now some links to commentary by folks I admire:

On the Trump victory’s implication for American leadership in East Asia, Daniel Sneider

http://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/144829

On the importance of TPP, Mireya Solis

https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-trans-pacific-partnership-the-politics-of-openness-and-leadership-in-the-asia-pacific-2/

James D. J. Brown on the implications of the Trump victory for Japan-Russia relations

http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Viewpoints/James-D.J.-Brown-Japan-s-Abe-eyes-Trump-factor-in-Russia-policy

On the Abe visit with Trump, Robert Dujarric

http://thediplomat.com/2016/11/what-should-shinzo-abe-say-to-donald-trump/

As I have been saying for a long while, though hardly believing it myself:

Abe Shinzo = liberal icon


Later -

I would endorse Funabashi Yoichi's op-ed for The New York Times but the judgmental "should" appears too often for my tastes. Perhaps others would benefit from reading it, nonetheless:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/opinion/the-trump-effect-on-tokyo.html?_r=1

First Read - 7 March 2015

Screenshot of 6 March 2015 NHK morning news caricature of U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and East Asian leaders unable to sit down and talk because of discord over history in this year, the 70th anniversary of the final year of World War II.

- There is a huge amount to like in Professor Jennifer Lind's essay for the Council on Foreign Relations on the prospects for warming Japan-Republic of Korea ties (Link). However, the essay does not emphasize strongly enough how the current frozen state of ties, the government of South Korea having, or pretending to have, concerns in common with the government of China as regards Japan, furthers the ROK's best interests. One would only has to consider the hypothetical of an East Asia without a Japan to realize there is nothing fundamental to the current Sino-ROK warmth, that the ROK would be in a perilous position indeed if not for the focus Japan's presence provides.

Rather than offer hints about Japan-ROK spring, Professor Lind should have hammered away at the likelihood of a long frost.

The knife attack this week on U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert (Link) and the government of Japan's revision of its description of the ROK on the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs website from "a neighboring country with whom we share common values of liberty, democracy and free markets" to "most important neighbors to each other" (sic) - Link J - video) may be harbingers of change in the ROK's heretofore rather cushy position in East Asian politics. The U.S. government has been fairly tolerant toward the ROK government's and civil society's anti-Japanese radicalism, allowing South Korean activists to push past the envelope of what are normally acceptable expressions of historical anger. The government of Japan has also been mild in its responses to violence against its diplomats and citizens. The GOJ clearly has had enough of the ROK's special status. The US Gov may be less automatic in its support as well.

- The big story in the news today is the general positive noises coming out of the bilateral talks in between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito on the legal framework for an exercise of the right of self-defense (Link). The Komeito is purportedly signaling an understanding of the LDP position in the aggregate. The LDP's coalition partner needs more specifics about the levels of response to distant attacks that might threaten the safety of Japan. (Link - J)

The LDP has to be feeling pretty good about the Komeito's mild distress at this point. With the Unified Local Elections coming up on April 12 and April 26, the Komeito should be in the position to arm wrestle the LDP into moderating or even abandoning its more ambitious security proposals. That the Komeito is merely reticent at this point bodes well for major Komeito retreats in May.

- The really big story on security on Friday was the Cabinet Decision on changing the structure of the Defense Ministry giving uniformed, active-duty officers of the Self Defense Forces direct access to the Ministery of Defense (Link). Arguments for the change are feeble: there is no evidence the requirement that the requirement to work with the "suits gang" (sebiro gumi) prevented the "uniform gang" (seifuku gumi) from acting or offering their views to the minister or director-general. Arguments against the change are the results of memory, both in terms of the nation in general and the Self Defense Forces in particular. The current structure has been supported, like the determination of the unconstitutionality of the exercise of collective self-defense, by generations of prime ministers. That the minister leading the change, Nakatani Gen, is a former member of the Ground Self Defense Forces, makes the change look less like a reform and more like a rejection of the reality of history.

In a broader sense, I am beginning to think that "escape from the postwar regime" means "in our future, there will be no history."

The change is still only a proposition. Like the 1 July 2014 Cabinet Decision on collective self-defense, it is not enshrined in legislation. Like the July 1 Decision, it is the subject of withering criticism from the opposition parties.

However, like the July 1 Decision, any delay or modification in the implementation of the plan depends upon the Komeito's intestinal fortitude.

A True Friend Of Japan

For over a decade and a half Mindy Kotler has been fighting a largely lonely battle, stepping on a lot of toes, arguing, sometimes inadroitly, points that were once derided as sensationalist and disruptive but now are seen as conventional wisdom: that if Japan wishes to regain the status of a normal nation in East Asia then the Government of Japan has to stop pretending

1) that the comfort women system is not an issue, and

2) that the issue can be handled by non-government forces handing out money and deceptively worded unofficial apologies.

Ms. Kotler has just published a crackling op-ed, "The Comfort Women and Japan's War on Truth," in The New York Times. Please take a moment read it. (Link)

The Japan establishment has focused on the messenger (Link -J) and ignored the message. In so doing it has failed the most basic tests of human life: the ability to tell friend from foe.

A friend, a true friend, does not tell you what you want to hear. A true friend tells you what you do not want to hear: that what you are doing is stupid and that you need to deal with reality, not keep pretending that you can live in a reality of your own.

What I Wish I Had Told Al-Jazeera

I appeared on Al-Jazeera yesterday, offering two minutes worth of thoughts, such as they may be, on the new Defense White Paper. (Link - and Link J)

What I managed to blurt out was, well, solid, moderate, perhaps even far-seeing -- but definitely not great television.

When asked out how the White Paper defines Chinese actions in the East China Sea, what I should have said was:

"This year's White Paper declares that certain Chinese actions, such as the unilateral declaration without consultation of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) to be 'profoundly dangerous acts.' Non-Japanese media organizations like the Financial Times have flagged the operative adjective here, calling it a condemnation. (Link)

All apologies to the editors of the Financial Times but calling what the Chinese government has been doing 'dangerous' is not a condemnation: it is a simple statement of fact. Indeed 'dangerous' all by its lonesome is an understatement. The authors of the report should have been more prolix, describing China's moves as 'profoundly dangerous, provocative acts, the kind of stupid crap that leads to the therts of wars and stuff' -- and even that would have only been a simple statement of fact."

Oh well, better luck next time...


Later - Writing in The Diplomat, Clint Richards sees the language of the Defense White Paper as unhelpfully incendiary (Link). Richards seems to be arguing that in order to secure of a face-to-face meeting between Abe Shinzo and Xi Jinping the Japanese government should suppress a public accounting of national policies and official interpretations of current events.

Dancing Toward A Better Japan-South Korea Relationship

On the occasion of Tokyo Governor Masuzoe Yo'ichi's 40 minute summit meeting with President Park Ge-Hyun (keep in mind that until the Abe-Kuroda devaluation, Tokyo's economy was assessed to be bigger than Indonesia's - Link) a gratuitous embed of World Order's "Permanent Revolution" - where Sudo Genki and the boys posit their Japanese Ultra Everymen as the agents of an East Asian concord in such sharp contrast with the current, discouraging discord.

(In HD - so do click on the Full Screen button)

It has been a lousy several weeks and months for the human species - where we seem hellbent on spinning out ever farther from Sudo's definitely quirky (and deeply skeptical of the role and motives of the United States) appeal for hitotsu no sekai e.

Later - The concantenation of ironies of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's having to rely on freshly minted Governor Masuzoe, who had been Abe's nemesis during Abe's annus horribilis of 2007, in order to get the president of South Korea, a fellow U.S. ally, to talk to him, is not lost upon me.

Later still -For those who catch it -- in the scene shot in front of Seven & I Holdings's world headquarters, Sudo demonstrates he has issues with the Masons too.

It Takes My Breath Away: Fairbank and Reischauer on East Asia (1967)

Forty six years ago...(Link - video)

Yes, it does belong in the "holy cow" file.


Later - For some sense of the incredible vision of Fairbank in particular, listen to what he says about the United States use of aerial bombing in 1967 and compare it to comedian/commentator's Bill Maher's rant of 13 September 2013.

Make Friends And Influence People

Kunihiko Miyake, a retired Arabist member of the Japan diplomatic service, who served at the embassies in Baghdad, Washington and Beijing (yes, fluent in Arabic, English and Chinese), who served during Abe I (2006-7) as the special assistant on diplomacy to Abe Shinzo's wife Akie, is the director of research at the Canon Institute of Global Affairs (Link). Undaunted by the big issues (Link) Miyake-san is a go-to person for Japanese and non-Japanese news organizations alike for commentary on the international scene.

So the post-July 21 interview of him published on the English language site The Asahi Shimbun is really worth reading (Link), especially alongside his short report on his visit to Washington published by the Sankei Shimbun (Link - J) a day earlier.

An Acid Aside On East Asian Culture Clashes

I sometimes take part in personal or email conversations where very knowledgeable participants write, "The Korean view is that..." or "The consensus view in China on Japanese attitudes is..."

I find the categorizations irritating. Not, as the usual critical view would have it, because the use of these broad national descriptions masks heterogeneity within the respective societies, with minority views running counter to the main narrative being ignored. That societies are heterogeneous I can live with, for in every society there is a power structure determining which views are important and which ones are important to persons looking for a place to apply French critical theory. In between winners, would-be-winners and perennial losers, one can talk about nation states and attitudes to associate with them.

No, what I find annoying is the whole concept of national identities in East Asia. There is not a single place in the region where anyone can start to say anything definite about national identity without blundering into a word, thought, turn of phrase, religious conception or symbol system borrowed from another country in East Asia. Japanese cannot think about being Japanese without using a language made up of Chinese ideograms expressing concepts received from Korea. No Chinese can write about anything more modern than a waterwheel without falling into universe of technical terms taken from Japanese. As for Korea, aside from hangul (a brilliant innovation) and kimchi, what the heck is there that is not a variation on some Chinese or Japanese theme?

[Lovers of things Korean, feel free to castigate me. I am being unnecessarily provocative out of the purest of intentions. Furthermore, given what my surname means in Korean, what else could be expected?]

It is all right for elites and their apologists to argue over this being that and whose is what, with culture becoming just one more item to be fenced in and exploited (Link). But academics, reporters and everyone else not in power should sit the fight out, keeping an eye on their self-proclaimed betters and their nationalist poses.

A watchful, wary eye, not a sympathetic one.

Every nationality in the region is a concatenation of elements consciously or unconsciously borrowed from other nations in the region...meaning that every nationalism in the region is an inadequately treated fit of delusions.

Pan-Asianism All Over Again

For the academic with tenure: the long essay comparing the tone of 1920s and 1930s Japanese Pan-Asianist writings with very kind, well-meaning predictions like this:

Asia will develop a greater sense of regional awareness and cohesion. The region is still compartmentalised into Northeast, Southeast, South, Central and West Asia. But the region’s current collaborative efforts — such as the ASEAN-Plus formula, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation — will gradually lead it towards a greater level of pan-Asian cooperation.

(Link)

Eeek! I certainly hope not. I have seen this movie before and the ending is a downer.

Dr. Yang must be negotiating complex  intellectual mine fields. It must be exhausting to try to at once offer a positive message and stay within the boundaries of what is acceptable to the Beijing regime and its self-proclaimed defenders. The essay must be understood in those terms, as a chip tossed into an ocean of loaded code words and approvable poses, rather that just a justification for Chinese disruption of international institutions and norms behind a false front of making the global commons more fair and reflective of cultural difference.

Perhaps forgiveness can be extended in two directions: to Chinese intellectuals in this era of expansion who labor under the thumb of capricious, self-serving authoritarianism and to Japanese intellectuals of the pre-defeat era who faced a parallel situation.

Thank You, Aurelia George Mulgan

With clarity, erudition and thoroughness, Aurelia George Mulgan attacks the thicket of nonsense flung about by the forces both within and without Japan in support/defense of constitutional revision:

Abe rocks Japan’s constitutional boat

For those whose inquiry begins and end at "Japan has proven itself capable of self-control. What could be wrong with normalization?" -- the essay's crucial paragraph:

The price of formally amending Article 9 will be high, particularly in terms of Japan's foreign relations. China and South Korea will 'over-interpret' the move as signifying a dramatic change in the status quo and the rise of a potential Japanese military threat. Moreover, Japan will no longer be able to lay a strong claim to being a 'peace state', which has been an important source of its soft power. The proposal to revise Article 9 could, therefore, have a destabilising effect in the region and come at the cost of Japan's international standing and soft power.

Due to the absence of regional economic and security structures, due to Japan's being in a bad geo-political neighborhood (think of when Japan exited from the Occupation: no other industrialized states nearby, no other democracy in the region except the chaotic Philippines) -- and due the halt in the program of purging the government of totalitarianism, post-Occupation Japan faced unleapable hurdles to integration (some China-sodden commentators might say "re-integration") into East Asia. The latter half of the 20th century would then most likely have been much like the first half: constant warfare, with an armed Japan in contestation with the Soviet Union and a fragmented China, the dogs of war unleashed by a breakdown, after a decade or so, of Japan's alliance with the world's premier maritime power.

[As to the implications of a martial post-1945 Japan on the process of decolonization in this alternate universe East Asia, the mind boggles.]

Article 9 had a purpose and effect of breaking the chain of inevitability. Japan could integrate into East Asia at minimal cost, both in terms of its own sovereignty and social structure. A de jure shackled Japan had a chance of living at peace with the military dictatorships and expansionist communist states of the region. A demilitarized Japan could be given free rein to permit the rehabilitation of its pre-war elites.

Someone needs to look the PM in the eye and tell him, "Look, your enthusiasm for constitutional revisionism is misguided. The Meiji State was a miserable one for the common people. But forget about them. The only reason your grandfather could walk out of Sugamo Prison alive and hearty to take up where he left off, becoming Prime Minister less than eight years later -- was Article 9. Article 9 made it possible for your grandfather's younger brother to, eventually, succeed him, your great uncle Eisaku becoming the longest serving post-war prime minister. It has allowed you, who have been steeped in a culture of unscientific, ahistorical, backward-looking authoritarian fantabulism, to become Prime Minister not once but twice.

Forget about what Article 9 has done for the average citizen; think about the tremendous service it has done for your family."

The attempt to encourage a reconsideration of a commitment to constitution revision out of simple self-interest would likely fail. However, that does not mean it would be wrong to at least try it.

A Maritime Balkans

Former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd either writes astonishingly well or has astonishingly capable writers working for him. (Link)

A good read, once one get past the unfortunate "tinderbox on water" metaphor ("A tinderbox? On water? What's the problem then?").

What I Am Reading And Why

- Dr. Adam Posen, one of the merry band of Neo-Keynesians who spent the latter half of the 1990s and the early 00's slapping around the degraded intellectual descendants of Milton Friedman, suggests that Dr. Paul Krugman's recent much linked-to praise of Abenomics (Link) is off base. While the Abe government's monetary program may be fathomable (Nota bene: Posen was a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee from 2009 to 2012) the fiscal stimulus package is at best pointless. (Link)

Dr. Posen does not mention his more famous comrade-in-arms. Nevertheless he is offering Dr. Krugman a friendly hand that the Nobel laureate might pull himself up out of the swamp of Yglesianism (interim definition: "the act of writing about a largely imaginary Japan in an attempt to influence U.S. policy discussions").

Meanwhile, having dug himself into a hole in earlier praise for Abenomics, Matthew Yglesias just keeps on digging. (Link)

- Robert Manning of the Atlantic Council writes a brief background essay (ostensibly as a frame for the emergency visit of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Kurt Cambpell to Seoul and Tokyo -- Link) highlighting one of the factors driving the Chinese government toward more militant behavior in the East and South China Seas: radical overestimation of exploitable hydrocarbon resources. (Link)

Manning's essay showcases the mismatch in between Chinese and non-Chinese estimates of recoverable petroleum in the seas under dispute. Difference in the estimates of recoverable of natural gas are even starker, with Chinese estimates running 125 to 250 times as high as U.S. Geological Service estimates. (Link - tip of the hat to reader JLK)

Anyone think that a fine little bureaucratic quid-pro-quo -- worked out between the Ministry of Land and Resources and the People's Liberation Army against, let us say, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- could be a cause of this extraordinary difference of opinion among geologists?

The Aristocrats - Reprise

A key point if not the key point of yesterday's post on an effective East Asian aristocracy (Link) is that it has not mattered what the system was -- Stalinist cult of personality, collective leadership Leninism, authoritarian democracy, conservative democracy, rollicking democracy -- all have been captured by wealthy lineages.

Blame my upbringing, by which I have a problem with a world where the highest aspiration a person of modest means can have is "courtier."

Worthwhile Reads for October 28, 2012

Philip Brasor is a professional writer...and it shows. He has been writing for the print edition of The Japan Times for what seems an eternity, which makes him eligible for some kind of "bravely facing adversity" award. A while back he and I both contributed essays to a book produced by the tireless Our Man from Abiko. The difference in the quality of the essays left me feeling a deep sense of shame.

Brasor and his partner Tsukuba Masako have published a cracking essay for anyone who has ever wondered, "Given the parade of turkeys the major parties foist upon the electorate, why is it that individuals possessing talent, charm and a modicum of sense fail to throw their hats in the ring? This blessed land boasts an educated and informed electorate, half of whom have no allegiance to any party. A bright and competent person, clearly able to walk and eat a rice cake at the same time, should be able to waltz in and crush the party offerings."

One answer, and it is a big one, is the kyotakukin. Brasor and Tsukuba explain it -- and pay tribute in passing to the Japan Communist Party's almost insane commitment to electoral democracy. For those in need of a comparative figure, 3 million yen is one third of the annual salary of a managerial class employee with 10 years service in a company.

Brasor and Tsukuba - "Candidate deposit requirement guarantees same faces on the ballot"

The essay is the latest post to the pair's economics blog Yen for Living, hosted on The Japan Times' website.

Brasor and Tsukuba also produce a fascinating personal blog on what would seem an unpromising subject: looking for housing in the Kanto area: Cat Foreheads & Rabbit Hutches.

In the "Could it be that simple?" department, The Diplomat published an essay a few weeks back offering possible relief for Japanese exporters exhausted by the hoops one must leap through to do business in China. According James Parker, to finance consultant and lecturer, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA), which the PRK government has promoted as a way of increasing Chinese influence over the economic life of ASEAN countries mutual prosperity, opens a back door, through the law of unintended consequences, for Japanese companies to sell their wares and services in China without the hassle of being in China,. That these companies will also likely end up paying lower wages is a bonus.

Parker - "The Coming Economic Shift?"

It sounds all to good to be true -- and Parker admits, given the gap in between the logistics web and the transport infrastructure China offers and and the capacities of ASEAN countries (pax Singapore and pockets of Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines) -- making the "ASEAN workaround" pay off will be difficult, in the short run.

However, with the government of China making only cosmetic efforts at lessening the risks and aggravations Japanese companies face in China, and with the government of Japan, probably at the initiative of pro-active bureaucrats, quietly ramping up economic diplomacy in the parts of ASEAN where the China has enjoyed undue influence for the last few decades (Link), predictions of an inevitable decline in Japan's engagement with ASEAN (Link) may turn out to have been premature.

Parsing Okada On The Senkakus - Oh Neo Where Art Thou?

Until yesterday, I lived as so many of you, in an intellectual landscape of great green trees, wide, clear rivers, and in the distance, peaks with their first dustings of autumn snow.

Now my mind wanders in a battered and bruised land, a sere landscape of ghostly shapes appearing and dissappearing, enshrouded in mist hanging above a gray crumble of burnt soil and blackened rocks.

If only I had not stumbled over this:

Japan's deputy PM admits Diaoyus dispute, opening path to China talks
Deputy PM acknowledges dispute with China over islands, potentially paving way for talks
South China Morning Post

Teddy Ng teddy.ng@scmp.com -- The top deputy to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has acknowledged that a dispute with China exists over the East China Sea - a key concession and potential olive branch to Beijing.

Speaking at a meeting of the ruling Democratic Party, Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada said Tokyo's control of the Diaoyu Islands - known in Japan as the Senkakus - could not be questioned, even as he admitted Beijing took issue with its claim.

"The Senkaku issue is not a territorial problem, but, as a matter of fact, there is a dispute between China and Japan," Okada was quoted by Kyodo News as saying. "Both sides must fix the current situation through dialogue."

Tokyo has long refused to acknowledge even the existence of a disagreement, a key roadblock to Beijing's efforts to draw it into negotiations. Noda's government has maintained the position even as coastguards from mainland China, Japan and Taiwan conduct competing patrols in the surrounding waters.

The dispute has resulted in widespread anti-Japanese protests and boycotts in mainland China, which have begun to take a toll on the Japanese economy. Japanese exports fell 10.3 per cent year on year in September.

Okada blamed nationalist Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara's bid to buy the islands from their private Japanese owner for triggering the row. Noda announced his own purchase plan in a bid to defuse the situation, but it only further angered Beijing.

"We need to tell China that it is safer for the islands to be controlled by the central government than by the Tokyo metropolitan government," Okada said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing had always wanted to resolve the row through negotiations.

Luo Zhaohui, the ministry's Asian affairs director, went to Tokyo to meet his Japanese counterparts earlier this month, paving the way for bilateral talks.

(Link)

What? What? What?

Okada breaks with the official position in a significant way -- and the Sankei Shimbun does not go bananas, issuing a spate of editorials and op-eds battering Okada for his perfidious utterance?

How did a shift in Japan's stance, or Japan's stance as explained by Okada, fly completely under the radar?

I put out an all-points-bulletin for the original Japanese statement, which Mure Dickie of the Financial Times graciously provided:

尖閣諸島「都の購入計画間違い」　岡田副総理

2012/10/21 20:17

　岡田克也副総理は21日、和歌山市で講演し、沖縄県・尖閣諸島の国有化の背景に石原慎太郎東京都知事による購入計画があったことに触れ 「都が尖閣問題に乗り出したのは間違いだった。都は外交問題の責任を取れない。結果的に中国から非常に厳しい反応が返ってきた」と批判した。

　同時に「『都よりは政府が持った方が安定的』と中国側に伝えている。尖閣は領土問題ではないが議論があることは事実で、対話を通じ今の状況を鎮めないといけない」と指摘した。

(Link - J)

In what constitutes a glaring case of burying the lede, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun chose to emphasize in its headline Okada's stating that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's plan to purchase the Senkakus was an error. A precedent-shattering shift in the government's stance on the status of the Senkakus is left to swing in the breeze in the last line.

For the benefit of those who do not read Japanese, or whose computers do not accept kanji, here is the last line, in romaji and in my translation.

"Senkaku wa ryodo mondai de wa nai ga giron ga aru koto wa jijitsu de, taiwa wo tsujiru ima no jokyo o shizumeru to ikenai."

"The Senkakus are not a territorial issue. However, that a debate exists is a fact. Given this, we must calm/quiet the present situation through dialogue."

The words that Okada puts in opposition are mondai (問題) and giron (議論). Mondai in the phrase ryodo mondai is "issue" – no question about that. However, what does giron mean? According to the Kojien dictionary, giron is:

a) The coming together for the purpose of transmitting of one’s own theories
b) To argue with another on a theoretical level
c) To set opinions to fighting against one another

So calling giron a "debate" is not a bad shorthand.

Now here is where we part with reality.

One might believe that "Let's debate the issues" is an uncomplicated and banal phrase. However, this is not so in the world Okada would have us inhabit.

In this new world one can still debate issues. One can also debate non-issues, such as whether curry with rice tastes better when one puts the curry on top of the rice or when one puts it next to the rice (that I have to ask guests, out of courtesy, which way they want their curry served indicates that the human race is marked for extinction). Non-issues are differences between two states of being that are so trivial as to be not worth one’s time discussing – but we do so anyway.

However, to the polar opposites issues and non-issues we are now supposed to accept a third pole: the not issues.

When the first ideas were being floated on how Japan could hold to its official stance on sovereignty over the Senkakus whilst giving the other side, whether it be Chinese or Taiwanese, some place to stand upon, I joked one had to resort to quantum mechanics to understand the proposals. (Link)

Quantum mechanical explanations, however, will do one no good here. There is no assumption of Japanese sovereignty both existing and not existing, the state of matter called “superposition.” Here, Okada has stated that there is no territorial issue involving the Senkakus. In physics terms, the wave function has collapsed: the territorial issue does not exist.

However, according to Okada, while an issue does not exist, a debate does.

Presumably, Mr. Luo and his counterpart Sugiyama Shinsuke, the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau chief at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, have been meeting in order to discuss everything except the sovereignty issue.

Why? Because the sovereignty issue does not exist.

If the issue of sovereighty does not exist, you cannot have a debate about it. If you cannot have a debate about it, you cannot have a debate about anything related to it. All substantive debate about who can and will do what where depends upon who has sovereignty at that "where."

So from the moment you start debating anything peripheral to the Senkakus, you are immediately thrown back to debating about something that does not exist.

So how are Mssrs. Luo and Sugiyama occupying their time?

They could ostensibly be discussing phenomenology: debating whether or not they are really there debating or, as it were, not debating about something that does not exist.

They could be discussing baseball, both in Japan and the United States. Or the U.S. elections. Or the Chinese leadership transition. Or Japan’s constipated legislative process.

They could be amusing themselves and their staffs with role-switching, saying, “OK, for this session I’ll be you and you’ll be me. Let’s see what happens.”

However, they cannot be talking about the issue that has brought them together because that, as we know, does not exist.

At which point I begin to regret not having chosen the blue pill.

Worthwhile Reads for October 3

Two essays worth reading...

1) While I find the stated positions of Abe Shinzo regarding the sexual slaves of the Imperial Forces, love of the national government nation and the options as regards the Senkakus so disturbing I cannot think dispassionately about a potential Abe premiership, others are not so hobbled by their emotions. Andrew Levidis of Kyoto University has produced a level-headed essay on Abe's foreign and security policy:

Shinzo Abe and the dream of a conservative Asia

Do not be turned off, as I initially was, by the Ivan Morris reference in the introduction. Bull through it, ignoring the glaring contradiction between the Morris thesis and the political resuscitation of Abe's career.

2) As is his wont, Okumura Jun has offered an interesting exegesis on the most recent public opinion polls and speculates why the Kyodo News poll is probably the most reliable indicator of the popularity of particular parties.

Some Thoughts around the New Noda Cabinet Polls… on the Japan Restoration Party

Okumura's theory that the voters in the less-populous prefectures are getting their news from the prefectural paper, where national political news comes from the Kyodo News wire service, has significant electoral implications, especially since the less populous prefectures are over-represented in the Diet.

The most recent polls from Kyodo, The Asahi Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun repeat the truly peculiar phenomena of the polls of last week and the weekend:

i) a rise in the popularity of the Noda Cabinet,

ii) a majority of those polled having no positive expectations from Abe Shinzo and his lieutenants,

iii) the popularity of Liberal Democratic Party soaring, often to their highest levels since the August 2009 election defeat, with the percentage of those polled supporting the LDP now double the percentage supporting the Democratic Party of Japan,

iV) support levels of the DPJ remaining flat.

The results in the aggregate seem senseless. How can the LDP become so much more popular when it elects a leader the majority of those polled find unimpressive. How can the popularity of the Noda Cabinet rise while the popularity of the DPJ declines -- in every single poll?

I see two major forces as likely pushing up the LDP party support figures:

I) The "Anyone But Tanigaki Sadakazu" effect -- The fall of Tanigaki from power has brought back into the fold traditional LDP supporters among the patriotic fantabulist crowd, the social conservatives and the strong leadership worshippers. These voters, finding Hashimoto Toru a distasteful parvenu, had been hiding out among the voters on the record as supporting no party. With Tanigaki gone, these traditional LDP voters are standing up and being counted.

II) The "Let's Slap China Around" effect -- All of the LDP's candidates in the LDP presidential election, not just the winner Abe, spent weeks making loud and extravagant promises that if put in charge of the nation, they would protect Japan's territories and territorial waters from the Chinese threat, showing the Chinese that Japan cannot be pushed around.

Given that Chinese government has been ratcheting up the war of words with Japan over the Senkakus, and now sends its constabulary ships on daily violations of the territorial waters about those islands, the LDP's fantasy tough guy rhetoric has been stirring and falsely reassuring.

The key question is whether with its popularity in the 30% range and the DPJ's in the 10-15% range, does the LDP have the ability to lure disaffected members of the DPJ to vote against the Noda Cabinet in a no-confidence motion, toppling the Noda government?

The snap answer would seemingly be "Yes."

Worth One's Time #1

Since the Facebook page of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS) at Temple University, Japan tells the visitor absolutely nothing about upcoming events, I will step in and reprint the announcement of an must-see presentation:

'Battle stations?' Sea Power and Sino-Japanese Security Relations in the East China Sea
Date: Thursday, September 13, 2012
Time: 7:00p.m. (Talk will start at 7:30p.m.)
Venue:
Temple University, Japan Campus, Mita 5F
(access: http://www.tuj.ac.jp/maps/tokyo.html)
Speaker:
Alessio Patalano
Moderator:
Robert Dujarric
Admission: Free (Open to general public)
Language: English
RSVP:
icas@tuj.temple.edu
*If you RSVP you are automatically registered. If possible, we ask you to RSVP but we always welcome participants even you do not RSVP.
*RSVPなしでも参加できますので、直接会場へお越しください。

Dr. Patalano knows more about Japan's maritime power than anyone else, at least among those publishing works for the general reader. Where others speak of generalities, he speaks in specifics and whether others speak of elements deracinated from time, he embeds everything in the now.

Now ICAS, fix your darn Facebook page!

Tien An Men...Or Should I Say "Ten An Mon?"

Retired officials and think tankers...they really are not just allowed to have their own opinions...but their own facts.

What Roosevelt would do in the South China Sea
The Financial Times

James Clad and Robert Manning

Planting flags on islets, declaring cities where there are too few residents to fill a restaurant, and huffing and puffing over uninhabited rocks are acts more suited to a Gilbert and Sullivan farce than to nations in the 21st century.

Absurdities aside, the tensions in the South China Sea could shape the balance of power in Asia and put at risk the $18tn east Asian economy. However, a century-old diplomatic idea used by a former US president offers a solution to the crisis.

[snip]

To find something new, we might try looking backwards - to a type of split-the-difference US diplomacy last deployed after Russia and Japan had fought a war in 1905. The next year, Theodore Roosevelt brokered a peace that lasted three decades, allowing China, Europe and the US to adjust to Japan's rise as a major power.

(Link)

Mr. Clad and Mr. Manning, please elaborate, in written form, precisely which three decades of peace, starting when and ending when, you are talking about. Please send the results to the following addresses (since these are local addresses, you will be saving on postage):

2450 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008

and

3505 International Place NW
Washington, DC 20008

I am sure the recipients will be surprised...though I cannot guarantee it will be pleasantly so.

The Great Peace of Portsmouth: we all remember it so well.

Redefining Normal For Japan

Thwack!

That is the sound that this essay by Soeya Yoshihide, Director of Keio University's Institute of East Asian Studies, makes. It delivers a punishing blow to the arguments of a raft of U.S. and U.K. monographs and op-eds published over the last two decades on the significance of Japan's normalization in military affairs.

Given the number of targets it hits, it is the whack-a-mole of blog posts.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!