Looking at the So-Called Comfort Women Agreement

First, read the announcement of the agreement on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. (Link)

Second, read what Tatsumi Yuki of the Stimson Center has dashed out (she is a wonderworker). She nails down the implications of the main points of the agreement like no one else can. (Link)

A few additional thoughts:

- Over the weekend the Japanese news media reported a blizzard of leaked details about the agreement. Many of these reported details turned out to have been wrong.

a) the reported size of the fund was 100 million yen. The actual fund will be TEN TIMES that amount

(Hey, it is Japanese taxpayer money, so who cares, right? It is not as if those who poured oil on the fire of the comfort women issue all these years had to personally pony up.)

b) South Korea is not contributing to the fund. Instead, all it is doing is opening the account in its name.

c) The comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul is not being removed or moved. The South Korean government has merely agreed to talk to the private interests who built it, keeping in mind Japanese government concerns about the statue.

A forensic look at the reporting over the weekend would determine which news organization reported which false assertion when. However, in general, by Monday morning, all the major news outlets, ideological cant notwithstanding, had at least a couple details about the agreement wrong. As a result, on Monday morning, the agreement being described in the news media was unbelievable.

Now just how it was that so many false leads were planted, and by whom for what purpose, is largely an academic exercise. However, a cavalier treatment of reporters, burning them with fake leaks, may have more serious consequences down the road for the perpetrators. The reporters will simply not trust their sources anymore, making the news media less likely to play along with whatever mischief or agenda shaping the leaker may wish to perpetrate in the future.

- Now we have a very good reason for why Inada Tomomi was passed over for a Cabinet post in the October Cabinet reshuffle. A Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) by the full Cabinet is necessary for the agreement to become official government policy. In light of Inada's longtime, vehement assertions that the South Korean position on the comfort women is "all too many lies" (Link - J) her vote on the Seoul agreement would have been uncertain. Most likely than not, she would have had to resign rather than vote in favor of what was announced yesterday, damaging both her career and any image of sincere Japanese government remorse.

So Abe kept her out of the Cabinet, avoiding a certain clash. Smart.

- Aside from the limp ROK promise to talk to private parties on the statue issue, most of the wording of the announcement favors the Japanese side.

Take the first line of yesterday's agreement, with the seemingly missing "its" after the conjunction:

(i) The issue of comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities at that time, was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women, and the Government of Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities from this perspective.

The Japanese military gets off the hook here, with the procurement of women for its officers and enlisted men downgraded to "an involvement" in the trafficking. The Japanese text is actually a bit more forceful, saying that activities took place "under the umbrella of" (kanyo no shita ni) of the Imperial Army. However, the Japanese is also more legalistic, quarantining the military as being not the Imperial Army but "the army of that time" (toji no gun).

As for what might be called "the missing 'its" as in "the Government of Japan is painfully aware of its responsibilities" it is also missing in the Japanese text. When I was reading the first reports of the agreement in Japanese, I wondered whether the lack of a clear recognition of the government's being responsible was the result of a stylistic or an intentional vagueness. The awkward English translation seems to confirm an intentional fudging, again very much to the benefit of the GOJ, of just whose responsibilities are being discussed.

- Is it just me, or does the announcement seem a lot like an agreement struck between children? Both sides agree to fulfill their part of the bargain as long as the other side fulfills theirs first. Adults do not demand these kind of chronologically impossible guarantees, do they?

- Trying to make sense of what was being reported in the news, I came to an incorrect conclusion in my post of yesterday. However, I wrote to a friend:

"I find Abe's diplomacy refreshingly amoral -- never seeking to do what is right, only that which incrementally increases leverage, knocks opponents off balance and fulfills the minimum requirement."

A few days back I also tweeted:

@Giappugliese Abe foreign policy specializes in mediocre results. It forces diplomatic partners to be complicit in their own dissatisfaction

— Michael Thomas Cucek (@MichaelTCucek) December 25, 2015

I believe yesterday's announcement not inconsistent with these statements.

As a result of yesterday Abe Shinzo is being hailed as "Japan's Nixon," cutting the deal only he can cut as in "only Nixon can go China."

Uhmmm...please tell me something I did not already know...a year ago.

After careers as arsonists on the comfort women issue, Prime Minister Abe and President Park had their surrogates show up on the scene with fire extinguishers. We will see if the current geopolitical environment allows the pair of hereditary rulers of their respective countries to simply waltz away from their suddenly unfriended extremists.

Very Kind Of Him #53 - The 70th Anniversaries

In a video talk from two weeks ago, Timothy Langley and I visit the various low points for the human species in this year's commemorative calendar, at least until September rolls around:

Link: Tokyo on Fire!: Episode 6 - Pacific War Anniversary

For the record the Abe Cabinet on Friday declared in a Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) responding to a question from Party of Future Generations member Wada Masamune that the words "invasion" (shinryaku) and "colonial domination" (shokuminchi shihai) found in the Murayama Statement are "difficult" to define -- and that the Cabinet will not try to do so. (Link - J)

Yes, a Cabinet Decision of "Sorry, we can't help you. Yes, it is a government statement. No, we do not know what it means."

To put a positive gloss on this Cabinet Decision, should Abe break down, listen to advisors like Kitaoka Shin'ichi (Link) and put those words in the 70th anniversary Abe Statement (Abe danwa) he will not have to defend a particular meaning for them. So the contested terms can be there -- pleasing the governments of China, South Korea and the U.S. -- without Abe having to explain them to anyone -- mollifying his movement's core supporters.

Of course, the lack of a willingness to explain the Murayama Statement -- which the Abe government has been saying it classes it alongside other apologetic postwar statements, accepting them all "as a body" (zentai to shite) -- can only be defended as pure opportunism. In terms of condemnation, the avenues of attack (ex: simple logic - how can can a government accept concepts it cannot define?) seem endless.

How Prime Minister Abe Shinzo Lost On Sunday

I brought this on myself...


Yesterday we all got a chance to see something we have not seen for a long time: a sober, somber and scared Abe Shinzo. He stumbled through his press conference, repeating himself, at one point launching his favorite overly poetic crutch phrase tsu-tsu-ura-ura ("in every harbor; in every inlet" -- the Japanese equivalent of "from sea to shining sea") twice in the space of 70 seconds. When a reporter from the Abe-hostile Tokyo Shimbun started out the Q&A with two simple questions about voter turnout and the schedule for the compilation of next year's budget (the latter being delayed due to the dissolution of the Diet and the election), Abe first feigned being flustered at being asked "so many questions" (Two is "so many"?) ignored them both, repeated the contents of his opening statement, and stared blankly, pretending he had answered either one.

Had Abe been facing a room of real reporters rather than the powder puff tossers of the Sankei Shinbun, Fuji Television and NHK, we might today be talking about Abe Shinzo's press conference meltdown. As it is, the video, available on the LDP's YouTube channel, features a far-from-impressive performance by the PM. (Link - YouTube video J)

This is the guy whose party won 291 out of 475 seats in Sunday's election, with his ruling coalition retained its supermajority in the House of Representatives at 326 seats? Whose main opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan only gained 11 seats during the middle of a terrible recession, and whose leader lost his district race so badly he could not return to the Diet via the proportional list zombie route?

Yes.

The LDP won on Sunday. The Komeito won on Sunday.

Abe Shinzo lost.

How is this possible?

Missed Expectations -

When a corporation fails to hit the consensus earnings-per-share, its stock price tumbles. The company might post really great numbers. Nevertheless, by not meeting expectations, its performance is deemed a failure.

Advance polling by both the major news organizations and the political parties projected the LDP would win over 300 seats. However, the party finished election night with 291, fewer seats even than the party held in the last Diet.

Early on Abe and the leaders of the coalition had tried to talk down the victory line in this election. However, by the beginning of last week 300 seats became the new normal (the initial high Kyodo projections so depressed the editors of the Tokyo Shimbun, one of Kyodo's owners, that the paper did not print the results on its front page).

As the party leader who called the election, then failed to lead his party to its projected victory, Abe Shinzo lost.

Beating Kaieda Banri -

Abe Shinzo and the rest of the Cabinet conducted themselves with utter gracelessness in the last days of the campaign, traveling to the home districts of the leaders of the opposition, as if they were seeking to not just beat the opposition but decapitate and humiliate it. Abe and Finance Minister Aso Taro indeed finished their campaigns in a boisterous rally in Akihabara for Tokyo District #1 candidate Yamada Miki.

District #1 is of course DPJ leader Kaieda Banri's district.

These "grind their faces into the dirt" tactics have boomeranged. Not only did Kaieda again lose in his district, Yamada beat him by such a large margin that he could not be resurrected on the proportional list. Out of the Diet, Kaieda is out as leader.

Unfortunately for Abe Shinzo, Kaieda Banri was the number one reason why voters would not vote and candidates would not run for the DPJ. In driving him out of the leadership position, which he would have clung to in loud desperation had he been revived as a PR zombie, Abe has kicked out of office his best ally in terms of keeping the DPJ down and the LDP in power.

So Abe lost.

Voter Turnout -

Abe Shinzo won the premiership a second time in what had been up that point the most dispiriting election in a generation, with voter turnout at its lowest ever.

After two years of Abe Shinzo's leadership, the public is even more demoralized, with turnout falling by 7% over 2012's historic low. The first victory was deemed shabby at 59% turnout. Victory at 52% is shabbier still.

Sure, the LDP finished with a million more votes nationwide in the proportional balloting than in 2012. However that gain of 1 million was out of nearly 5.8 million liberated by the breakups of the Japan Restoration Party and the Your Party.

When you pick up only 15% of what was available, you are not a winner.

So Abe lost.

Destruction of the Right Wing -

The hard right Party for the Next Generations, led by Abe Shinzo Best Friend Forever Hiranuma Takeo and Ishihara Shintaro, evaporated, going from 20 to 2 seats. The Your Party, a libertarian, pro-business, anti-bureaucracy party that won 5 million votes in 2012 (just TWO YEARS AGO) did not even survive to contest the election, its founder and Abe Shinzo Best Friend Forever Watanabe Yoshimi going down to defeat in a seat his family had held continuously for 50 years.

In this final agony of his friends to the right, Abe has lost the ability to threaten the Komeito with a new hawk-hawk (or hawk-hawk-hawk) coalition replacing the current hawk-dove, LDP-Komeito coalition. He has also lost useful militants who could ask revisionist history and war responsibility questions, with Abe and his government being able further their own revisionist agendas without taking any responsibility for events ("Look, it's not us. We were just answering questions coming from the opposition!")

So Abe lost.

Empowerment of the Pacifists -

Three parties could walk away from Sunday's elections with their heads held high. The first was the Japan Innovation Party, which clawed and scratched its way to a respectable loss of single seat when the party had been projected to lose over 10.

The two parties who gained seats, and in a big way, were the Komeito and the Communists.

The Komeito, by picking up seats when the LDP lost them, has increased its marginal leverage in negotiations with its coalition partner. The Komeito already made it presence felt in the confused, cramped and unpopular July 1 Cabinet Decision reversing the government's stance as to the unconstitutionality of the exercise of collective self-defense. It is certain that as the focus of the nation's attention shifts to the 15 or so Basic Laws that have to be revised to implement the July 1 Cabinet Decision, the Komeito will make use of this increased leverage so that the policy choices more closely reflect the concerns of the Komeito base.

As for the performance of the JCP, it was off the charts. The JCP not only managed to land a district seat -- an outcome supposedly rendered impossible by the 1993 adoption of single member districts -- but the JCP now has more than the 20 seat minimum necessary for a party's being able to introduce bills to the Diet.

The pacifist Left has been empowered, both in and out of government.

So Abe lost.

Anyone thinks that with the Komeito murmuring louder and the JCP screaming, figuratively, Mr. Abe is going to take his party's victory in Sunday's election to go on and do anything more than pay lip service to more patriotic education, greater Self Defense Forces activity abroad and revision of the Constitution's Article 9 -- as he does in the above linked video -- then that person is in need of a seriousness transplant.

Because, on Sunday, Abe lost.

And he knows it.


Later - Notice I did not say anything about the LDP's getting wiped out in Okinawa...

Later still- This post has been edited to remove typographical and style errors.

Even later still - Tobias Harris, looking at the same facts and coming to the same conclusions, checks in with a brilliant, comprehensive essay for Foreign Policy. (Link)

I heartily agree with his contention that Abe has taken his biggest blunderbuss and shot it, leaving him little with which to discipline his allies and cow his enemies.


Screenshot courtesy: LDP YouTube Channel

Very Kind Of Them #30

Steve Miller and I had a conversation the other day about the Autumn Festival Yasukuni sampai. Here is the podcast. (Link)

Since Secretary-General of the National Security Secretariat Yachi Shotaro managed to eke out a handshake and 25 minute meeting for Prime Minister Abe Shinzo with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing, surrendering not a thing in the process (Link) including even a vague pledge not to visit Yasukuni, my thinking is that the odds are now 50-50, rather than 100%, that Mr. Miller and I will be doing a follow-up podcast in late December.

Why only 50-50? Because after indulging his hot-blooded youthfulness (Link) in calling a snap election, Abe will have no late December doldrums to roust either himself or the revisionist partisans out of. And because Abe Shinzo probably appreciates one can tease and cheat the leaders of China only so much -- that there comes a point where their self-control will break and they will do something rash and most likely exceedlingly unpleasant.

Now That's Revisionism!

Chief Liberal Democratic Party propagandist Koike Yuriko, who somehow managed to be at once female, an LDP Diet member, a noted hard liner, ally of Abe Shinzo and NOT PICKED for a cabinet or party top leadership position on Wednesday, quietly and without much of a fuss published an opinion piece with Project Syndicate that if is at all possible is even more outré than her shivving of Angela Merkel and Park Geun-hye (Link) of a month and half ago.

Ending East Asia's History Wars

TOKYO – Georges Clemenceau, who, as France's prime minister, led his country to victory in World War I, famously said that "war is too important to be left to the generals." Japan is now discovering that history is too important to be left to newspaper editors.
In the 1990s, the newspaper Asahi Shimbun caused a firestorm at home and in South Korea by publishing a series of articles, based upon testimony by the former Japanese soldier Seiji Yoshida, on "comfort women" – Koreans forced to provide sexual services to the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Asahi has now admitted that the soldier's confessions were unfounded, and has disavowed the core supporting evidence for the articles.

That retraction appears to be causing as much embarrassment – and diplomatic vitriol – in Japan and South Korea today as the original series did. But, at a time when both countries cannot afford to permit partisan or sloppy abuses of history to roil their bilateral relations, Asahi's careless work has turned out to be more than abysmal journalism; it has introduced a dangerous element into regional diplomacy.

[snip]

Japan and South Korea need to take responsibility for the future, not obsess about the past. A recent Japanese government white paper called South Korea the country "that shares the closest relationship with Japan historically and in areas such as economy and culture." No doubt, many, if not most, South Korean foreign-policy experts and strategists share that sentiment. But it will take committed leadership to transcend the history wars and tap the full potential of Japanese-Korean cooperation, something that both countries' key ally, the United States, strongly desires, as it seeks to draw China into a lasting and peaceful Asian order.

For too long, intemperate historical debates – often driven by biased newspaper accounts – have poisoned bilateral relations. Now, as another war of words heats up, Japanese and South Korean leaders need to step back, recognize where the real interests of their people lie, both today and in the future, and calmly begin to take the measures required to ensure durable reconciliation.

(Link)

Bravo, Koike-sensei, bravo. I have not seen such breath-taking leaps -- albeit from non-sequitur to false congruence to unsupported assumption to evasion of responsibility, and not from the flying trapeze -- since I went and saw the Bolshoi Circus this summer at Jingu.

My favorite, favorite, favorite line in the whole piece, however, is this one:

Of course, given that Japan and Korea have not fought a series of wars against each other, their relationship is not the same as that between Germany and France.

Lety us put aside the fact that there are hundreds of years of military conflicts between Korean and Japanese, including some full scale invasions, occupations and colonial rule. It is the "Of course" that gets me, like I am supposed to be able to agree with her a priori.

Chutzpah Redefined, Or Just Money To Burn?

My morning dead tree news delivery device, the Tokyo Shimbun, the alpha dog of the prefectural newspapers, is left wing. It holds court, in most analyses, in the space between left-leaning The Asahi Shimbun and the Communist Party's house organ Akahata ("Red Flag").

For me, the TS is an easy-to-read, localized Asahi with its head screwed on straight and blood in its veins -- the latter two qualities earning the paper the admiration of even my more the-time-to-return-Japan-to-normal-nation-status-was-yesterday-leaning friends. (Link)

Hence my amazement at this morning's front page.



See it? It is hard to miss.

But, just in case, here it is, the bottom-right hand corner, enlarged.



Yes, c'mon all you lefties. Here is what you need: Tamogami Senso Daigaku ("Tamogami"s University Studies of War"). Yes, the very latest tome from your very best friend, forcibly retired Air Self Defense Forces general and Tokyo gubernatorial candidate Tamogami Toshio. (Archive)

[Long pause for fulmination]

I know that advertising can be scattershot, sometimes lacking in aim at a target audience.

But having an ad for a Tamogami book on war, photo of the man lecturing the reader included, on the front page of the Tokyo Shimbun is beyond mere incompetence or laziness.

This is pure provocation.

Hell Freezes Over: Tamogami Toshio At Asahi Shimbun Event

Tomorrow, on Constitution Day, at a conference organized by The Asahi Shimbun's employees union on war and the Constitution, General Tamogami Toshio will be one of the featured speakers.

Let me say that again.

Tomorrow,

on Constitution Day,

at a conference organized by The Asahi Shimbun's employees union

on war and the Constitution,

General Tamogami Toshio (Retired)

will be one of the featured speakers.

You don't believe me? Look at the image above. Click on it if you want to see it in a larger size.

I called the number on the poster. It is the number of the employees's union. The event will take place tomorrow.

This is so wrong in so many ways one can only think that Hell hath truly frozen over.

An Absence Of Celebration

On Monday, the 62nd anniversary of the end of Allied Occupation of the Japan main islands, State Minister for Administrative Reform Inada Tomomi paid her first visit of the year to Yasukuni Shrine, accompanied by eight members of her Tradition and Innovation Association (pictured).

Nothing really significant or surprising, really. Inada pays a visit to Yasukuni every year on Sovereignty Day. (Link - J)

What is amazing?

After their visit, Inada and her associates had nothing else to do.

Somehow, the government of Abe Shinzo, purported fervent nationalist and diehard enemy of the Occupation's reforms of Japanese society, did not have a Sovereignty Day celebration this year, after putting on the Ritz last year. (Link)

There seems to have not even been a repeat of the private loony fest (Link) in the afternoon either.

Somehow, somewhere the national day of remembrance worthy of not just a speech but indeed an oration (Link) was not worthy of even a hip, hip hurrah.

This absence of overt celebration would not have anything to do with imperial unhappiness with the impromptu, fervid banzais last year, would it? (Link - J video)

Because I cannot think the the lack of pageantry is only because celebrating the 1952 return of sovereignty to the main islands ticks off the Okinawans, who were under occupation until 1972. (Link - J)


Photo courtesy: Inada Tomomi Facebook page.

Very Kind Of Them #17

Lesley Clark of McClatchy News has done a terrible thing: she has reported my views accurately and succintly.

"World War II Complicates Obama's Trip to Asia"

Talk about a tiny basket of ideas that manages to offend just about everybody.

Yasukuni This Morning

It is not even 9 a.m. and already the semi-annual herd of members of the Diet have stomped through Yasukuni Shrine. The 146 strong (Link -J) phalanx of fantabulism seems to have been led, as in the last two iterations of this event, by sleepy-eyed Otsuji Hidehisa (Link - J) and cat-who-ate-the-canary-faced Liberal Democratic Party Policy Chair Takaichi Sanae (Link). MPs from the LDP, the Japan Restoration Party, the Democratic Party of Japan, the Your Party and the Unity Party participated in the group paying of respects. (Link - J)

Bewildering and ominous is the report that Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Shindo Yoshitaka made a repeat visit this morning as well (Link - J). Shindo visited the shrine on April 12, before the start of the Spring Festival, just as he had done last year. Just why he thought it wise or necessary to visit the Yasukuni again and so close to the visit by President Barack Obama.

Cabinet Minister Shindo's visit this morn is just the sort of upping of the ante which could upset summit atmospherics warned about in my post of yesterday (Link). Is Shindo's double take a sign that he knows he is not one of the elect, those who will carry on as ministers after the much anticipated reshuffle of the Cabinet and LDP posts after the end of the present Ordinary Diet Session? (Link - J)

Original image courtesy: IRIB World Service

Abe Shinzo's Prospect Of Unwilling Political Fidelity

Watanabe Yoshimi explains himself.

On Twitter, Corey Wallace makes an excellend point about the potential for Abe Shinzo and his allies to go on a revisionist breakout after the summit with President Barack Obama: with the Japan Restoration Party's Hashimoto Toru navel gazing about his Osaka Metropolitan District Plan (Link) and the revelations regarding the Your Party's Watanabe Yoshimi's astonishing 800 milllion yen in personal loans from the CEO of DHC (Link), Abe who was entertaining (literally, it was discussed over a pair of dinners) the idea of dumping the cautious New Komeito in favor of the militant and revolutionary JRP and YP and his Liberal Democratic Party find themselves in the unenviable poisition of no longer being able to threaten their long-time alliance partners with replacement.

Sticking with the New Komeito means attempting crazy policy fiddles like a "we will say this but cannot possibly mean it" promise to reinterpret the Constitution, making unconstitutional collective self-defense (CSD) constitutional, but only in the immediate geographical neighborhood of Japan and on the high seas (Link)

Note to Japan's present and potential security partners: stay close to Japan and away from land.

With Abenomics, the great legitimizer of this second coming of The Abe Cabinet, about to enter a very very rough patch indeed (Link) Abe will have a much reduced capacity to simply bludgeon the New Komeito into submission. Having to make concessions to NK conservatism, particularly in security affairs, complicates if not complete negates the Abe strategy of countering opposition to and criticism of his revisionist political program by the giving to the U.S. Pentagon everything it desires, whether it be in terms of bases or a more activist and proactive Japanese military posture.

Rather than the well-discussed shibboleths (Yasukuni, comfort women) of Abe Shinzo and Friends, what seems set to trip up the Abe Revolution are the sources of its heretofore terrible strength: a jazzed-up economy and clingy allies in the Diet.

Where The Wind Blows

Michael Penn thinks out loud and clearly about the right of this spring. (Link)

As for the drop-dead fantastic photo image at the head of the piece, what matters Hitler to them, or them to Hitler?

Oh, in case you did not catch it, the donor of the 137 books on The Diary of Anne Frank to the Tokyo Central Library, to be distributed to the libraries which lost books to vandals, is one Sugihara Chiune. He lives, evidently -- staff at the Central Library got to speak with "Mr. Sugihara" on the telephone. Reports of his death in 1986 appear to have been exaggerated. (Link - J)

Unsurprsingly, there are now reports that among the 300+ copies of "Anne Frank's 'Diary' and related works" with pages ripped out are books primarily on Sugihara. Upsetting this is to folks in Gifu. (Link - J video)

Being In The Right State Of Mind

I have been willing to suspend judgment. I have been willing to view Eien no Zero's box office appeal (Link) as merely being just another iteration of a once-in-decade phenomena, seen last with Otokotachi no Yamato (Link - video). I was willing to accept the 610,000 votes retired general Tamogami Toshio received in the Tokyo Metropolitan governor's race as the by-product of the Liberal Democratic Party's continuing inability to field a candidate for the post, a base level contempt for politics and a somnolent and therefore complicit press.

However, even I have to admit "This time it may be different" when the magazine display area at the entrance of the Book Express outlet at Ueno Station has literaｌｌｙ front and center multiple stacked copies of paranoid revisionist drivel publication WiLL (Link) with cheerful handwritten signs extolling its virtues.

In Ueno Station, alongside all the panda junk!

A small plea: if anyone is passing by or through Ueno today, please grab photo imaages of the whole storefront and the display, as I was not in a position yesterday to stop and take the shots.

We Don't Report The News, We Just Guess What It Might Be

Yamada Hiroshi asking his questions on the comfort women in House of Representatives Budget Committee session on 20 February 2014. Screen capture courtesy Shuugiin TV.

For those of us who are formalists - who tend to believe that Abe Shinzo, Suga Yoshihide and the rest of the Abe Cabinet should be judged on what they say and do, not what we think what their words and actions mean -- last week was a pretty good week. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide successfully deflected the demands of Japan Restoration Party member Yamada Hiroshi for an immediate investigation and moves toward repudiation of the Kono Statement -- this after Yamada's distasteful badgering of 87 year-old retired Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Ishihara Nobuo over how the Kono Statement came to be.

Suga, when pressed by Yamada for some kind of action on the Kono Statement, promised that the government would study whether or not it was appropriate to continue protecting of the identities of the 16 Korean women interviewed as a part of the drafting process of the Kono Statement -- this since the use of these anonymous and thus uncheckable interviews is proof, in revisionist circles, that the Kono Statement is not based in fact.

Later, when Yamada could not get the credit for pushing the government where it did not want to go, Suga also thought out loud about whether or not the government should study an investigation of the interview process.

Considering the pressures Abe and Suga are under from their own rank and file to put some meat on the program of "casting off the postwar regime" (Link) these vague promises seemed to indicate a general Cabinet consensus that hate it though they might there is no alternative to the Kono Statement -- not if Government of Japan wants to have a relationship of any kind with the Government of the Republic of Korea.

Then on Monday, after the end of the day's session in the Budget Committee, Abe Shinzo may have thrown everything into doubt.

Having caught wind of a Fuji Sankei Group public opinion poll showing 59%% of voters desiring a revision of the Kono Statement and 66% wanting at least an investigation of the process that produced it, Abe approached Yamada and said, well...something to Yamada seemingly indicating that he, Abe, personally shared Yamada's desire to get on with the work of dismantling the Kono Statement. (Link)

Unfortunately for anyone wishing to say "Aha! I told you so!" no one seems to know what it was that Abe said to Yamada.

If you ask the newspapers, literally each and every one of them has a different answer.

According to the august Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the PM said to Yamada:

「（一部報道機関の）世論調査で河野談話の（検証への）賛成が６割を超えている。先生の質問のおかげだ」

"From the public opinion polls (of one part of the news media), those in favour (of an investigation) of the Kono Statement exceeded 60%. It is all thanks your questions, Sensei."

To which Yamada replied:

「政府と国会で役割を分担しましょう」

"In the government and the Diet, let us divide up the workload according to our roles."

The Mainichi Shimbun quotes the PM as telling Yamada.

「（一部報道機関の）世論調査で高い支持率を得ているのは、山田さんが質問してくれたおかげだ」

"High levels of public support for this in the public opinion polls (of one part of the news media) are achieved thanks to the questions you, Yamada-san, asked us."

The Mainichi's version of the cooperation pledge is also different:

「政府だけではできないこともあるので協力していきましょう」

"Let us cooperate because there are some things the government cannot do alone."

Akahata ("Red Flag"), the Japan Communist Party's House organ, has Abe saying:

「世論調査で河野談話（見直し）賛成が約６割だった。山田さんのおかげだ」。

"In the public opinion poll, those in favour (of revision) are around 60%. Thanks to you, Yamada-san."

In The Asahi Shimbun the prime minister says:

「（一部メディアの）世論調査で、河野談話の検証に対する賛成が60%を超えた。山田さんのおかげだ」

“In public opinion polls (of one part of the media) agreement has topped 60% regarding the investigation of the Kono Statement. Thanks to you, Yamada-san."

(My underlining in the above - MTC)

As for the Sankei Shimbun, the paper whose public opinion poll (I have seen one journalist refer to the poll as a poll of Sankei Shimbun readers. This is incorrect. The poll was conducted via telephone calls placed to voters through RDD - random digit dialing) started this whole business, its version of the encounter does not have any of the above. Instead, according to Sankei, Abe told Yamada:

「時機を逸せずに、議論を真剣にやる必要がある]

"It is necessary for seriously discuss of this matter, without any dilly-dallying."

Now as far as I have been led to understand, the kisha clubs are a cabal where the news organizations get together and decide as a group what the news is, leaving the framing to the editors of each organization.

If so, why does each outlet report the Abe-Yamada conversation differently?

One answer is, of course, is that the source of the story is Yamada himself, at least according the Sankei Shimbun. This would set the bar of veracity at very low level. Yamada could very likely have given a different version of the conversation to each media company.

I do not know.

What I do know is that on the same day as the Abe-Yamada tête–à–tête, Foreign Minister Kishida Fumio told the Secial Committee on Okinawa and the Northern Territories Issues:

「私としても、政府としても、談話の見直しを一度も申し上げたことはない」

"For myself or for this government, I have never ever said anything about a revision of the Kono Statement."

(Link)

As long as the members of the Cabinet keep denying that a revision is what is being discussed, I will hold my breath -- in hope.

At least until Abe Shinzo personally tells me otherwise.


Later - The main message is, whatever you read, don't panic. Whoever it was who said, "You are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts," clearly was not a reader of Japanese newspapers.

What Gives Abe Shinzo The Right To Re-Interpret The Constitution?

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo anxwering questions in Diet Budget Committee session on 20 Febraury 2014. Original image courtesy The Prime Minister's Residence website.

During the foreign policy and security interpellations in the House Budget Committee session last week Liberal Democratic Party member Iwaya Takeshi asked, amid his questions to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense and other government officials, for the Cabinet Legislation Bureau's opinion on who has the right to interpret the Constitution.

Since Richard Samuels has written What Everybody Needs To know About The Cabinet Legislation Bureau (not the actual title) I will eschew further explanation of the significance of Iwaya asking for the CLB's view.

Deputy CLB Director Yokobatake Yusuke, who was filling in for CLB Director General Komatsu Ichiro during Komatsu's hospitalization, responded that three articles of the Constitution are paramount in determing who can interpret the Constitution.

First, according to Yokobatake, is Article Eighty-One (just why I am writing the number this way becomes clearer later). This article shows the American origins of the revised Japanese Constitution, inserting into the body of the Japanese Constitution what was was missing from the U.S. Constitution and which was only later established in case law by Marbury vs. Madison (1804):

The Supreme Court is the court of last resort with power to determine the constitutionality of any law, order, regulation or official act.

The second article regulating interpretation, according to the CLB, is Article Ninety-Nine. This is a rather surprising choice, as Article Ninety-Nine seems like a bulwark against reinterpretation, not the foundation underneath it:

"The Emperor or the Regent as well as Ministers of State, members of the Diet, judges, and all other public officials have the obligation to respect and uphold this Constitution."

Reinterpretation might be a way of showing respect for the Constitution, maybe.

Finally, Yokobatake concluded, there is Article Argle-Bargle, which establishes that the prime minister, via the Cabinet, has ultimate responsibility.

Now one needs to know that I have tinnitus. My life is a constant series of cuppings of my hand to my ear and saying, "Eh?"

In this case, my saying "Eh?" to the live video broadcast from the Budget Committee chamber did not provoke Yokobatake to return to the microphone and repeat himself.

When I cannot importune the speaker to repeat himself or herself, I have to guess what it was that he or she must have said.

Being less than an expert in the Japanese Constitution but generally knowing my way around, I had to reason out which article would be granting the PM power to interpret the Constitution. Because that which sounds like "Article Argle-Bargle" and the articles in that neighborhood have nothing to do with that right.

I figured Yokobatake must have said, "Article Forty-One" as that article is the traditional cited source of confusion as to who, if anyone, has the ultimate right to interpret the Constitution:

"The Diet shall be the highest organ of state power, and shall be the sole law-making organ of the State."

I plunked out a series of messages saying that the CLB had spoken and by its ordering, had put the Supreme Court on the front lines of constitutional interpretation, with the Diet, the Cabinet and the PM coming after.

It was not until the next day that I could review the archived video on the House of Representatives TV website. To my surprise and not inconsiderable delight I found out that my ears had not failed me. Deputy CLB Director Yokobatake had indeed said, "Article Argle-Bargle." More precisely he said that the Cabinet's and the Prime Minister's power to interpret the Constitution came from "Article Ninety-Five" (Kyuju go jo).

There is a problem with that assertion:

Article 95: A special law, applicable only to one local public entity, cannot be enacted by the Diet without the consent of the majority of the voters of the local public entity concerned, obtained in accordance with law.

Reading the above, one can understand my original reaction of thinking that I had not heard Yokobatake correctly.

It took only a second or two for me to grasp how the Todai Law-trained Yokobatake could be saying that an obscure part of the Constitution on holding referendums on local administrative issues gives the PM the power to interpret the Constitution:

He was reading the article number upside down.

Or at least part of it.

If one flips the first digit of the Arabic numeral notation for Ninety-Five -- 95 -- one gets 65 (rokuju go jo).

Citing Article 65 makes a heck of a lot more sense:

Article 65 - Executive power shall be vested in the Cabinet.

Now one can pat oneself on the back and say, "Isn't that grand. The highest ranking active official in the bureau of the government known as 'The Guardian of The Constitution' (Kenpo no bannin) cites a completely irrelevant article of the Constitution in Budget Committee session before full house of national specialists in the law including the prime minister, Representatives, high ranking bureaucrats and legal experts, and no one flinches or even gets a confused look on his or her face."

Great, fine, but that is not the interesting part of Yokobatake's error.

Yokobatake did not, as I assumed he must, cite Article 41 (I will use the usual format from now on). When one compares the two articles, 41 and 65, "the highest organ of state power" and "sole law-making organ of the state" sure sound more like ultimate authority than simple "executive power."

Reviewing what Abe Shinzo has said regarding his plans to reinterpret the Constitution (which has been the subject of intense and bombastic debate in the newspapers, on blogs and on Twitter), he never says that he has the authority to do so. He declares instead that he has the ultimate responsibility for the Constitution -- which seems to be a different issue.

In terms of the nitty-gritty, when in the process of reinterpreting the Constitution does Abe has to let the Diet ("the highest organ of state power") debate the proposed reinterpretations? Can the Cabinet can issue a Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) approving the interpretatiion allowing for collective security before the passage of the new laws enabling the new interpretations? By citing Article 65 and not citing Article 41, the CLB seems to be taking the rather provocative position that the Cabinet can by itself declare the new interpretations government policy, with the Diet brought in ex post facto.

If the Abe Cabinet tries this approach with collective security legistlation, the resulting firestorm could make last autumn's fight over the Special Designated Secrets Act seem like a match flame in comparison.

Which begs the question: did Yokobatake, the constitutional expert, cite an irrelevant but visually related part of the Constitution on purpose?

Abe Shinzo's World, Framed

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo chairing a meeting of the Ministerial Council on Monthly Economic Report and Other Relative Issues on 19 February 2014. Image courtesy the Prime Minister's Residence website.

It is a good day when one article helps illuminate the substrate of reality beneath the facade of events.

If so, yesterday was an amazing day.

- In refutation of Abe Shinzo's remarks in Davos on the severity of the threat posed by China's rise (Link), Robert Dujarric takes apart the idea that China is this century's Wilhelmine Germany. (Link)

Dujarric's arguments notwithstanding, Abe was not wrong to at least try an association of 2014 with 1914 (Link). He seems to have a sense, and it is not an unreasonable one, that the rest of the world has caught up with where he and his friends were on China during the first Abe Administration. Abe and Company's Sinophobia made them freaks in 2006. In 2014, their paranoia is mainstream. (Link)

An acid "We told you so!" from Abe and his supporters would not be out of place.

- Illustrating the extent to which a desperate desire for autonomy (What I have identified as the revisionist right's fervent and quixotic hope that Japan can become the Turkey of East Asia) drives even the Abe Administration's macroeconomic policies is Andrew Browne's interview of Abe economics guru Honda Etsuro (Link). There is nothing in Honda's righteous and occasionally maudlin performance that should come as a surprise to anyone who has listened to Japanese business executives, politicians and academics -- men and women -- talk these past two decades. The huge audience for the the books of Hyakuta Naoki (Link) and the big turnout for General Tamogami Toshio in the Tokyo gubernatorial election show that a sizable fraction of the general population is sympathetic to the revisionist project as well -- far more than Japan explainers have been willing to admit. What is interesting is Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide reached into to his rapidly depleting store of credibility to deny in the Diet that Abenomics has a military objective. (Link)

The inescapable problem with the Japanese revisionist quest for autonomy (the right, for example, for Japanese school curricula to be as crammed with nationalist claptrap as the school curricula of China and South Korea) is, beyond all else, where to get the money for it. The governments national and local are in debt up to their eyeballs, the national government relying on ridiculous levels of deficit financing to keep the economy from cratering. Demographics is hammering down Japan's potential rate of growth. Raising Japan's defense spending to meet the challenge of China's rise would require either heftier taxation or nonsensical cuts in current government spending on non-security programs.

Abenomics, if a full program of easing, stimulus and restructuring were carried out, would go part way toward funding a more autonomous Japan -- but only part way. What the revisionists would never admit is they have no answers for how to pay for the whole journey.

Takahashi Kosuke On Abe Shinzo's Nationalist Plan

Rare it is that I find myself reading an essay where I am in total concord with the views expressed.

That is why I am a bit taken aback by Takahashi Kosuke's essay for The Diplomat entitled "Shinzo Abe’s Nationalist Strategy" (Link). The opening sentence is shaky but the rest of the piece is solid.

It is clear that what underlies Abe Shinzo's attempt to escape from the postwar regime is the faith that the United States will sign off on on pretty much any plan changing Japan's position in the world order as long as interoperability of Japanese Self Defense Forces and U.S. military arms is increased. What is unclear is whether the Abe team is aware that keeping the Pentagon happy is only one facet of a program of increased national resilience -- that the ideological self-indulgences of the escape from the postwar regime can interfere with the hard work of restructuring the economy for growth.

Tip of the hat for the link to Neojaponisme.

Robert Dujarric On Abe Shinzo's Confusing Priorities

In a chatty, laid-back piece for The Diplomat Robert Dujarric wonders why Prime Minister Abe Shinzo seems to have so little commitment to concrete action strengthening Japan's self-defense capacities. (Link)

The snap, smarty-pants answer?

"Transforming Japan into a country both at peace with its neighbors and capable of defending itself and its core interests would involve real sacrifice."

Put another way,  beneath all revisionism and nationalist posturing is a desperate attempt to avoid doing actual work.

Abe Shinzo And The Right, Rightly

Trending: "Japan tilting/turning/sliding to the right in an alarming way"

Example #1

Example #2

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Hmmm...

Japan is probably not shifting, tilting, sliding, skipping, turning cartwheels or anything else to the right. If that were so, we would see hatred of "foreigners" irrespective of origins. Try as one might, one will find little evidence of generalized increased hatred toward non-Japanese. Antipathy and empathy fatigue are focused on two national groups, Chinese and South Koreans, and is it not even an ethnic disdain: Chinese and South Korean tourists are portrayed as a huge and vital business opportunity. (Link - J)

As for remilitarization, Japan presently spends around 1% of GDP on defense. After the Abe military build up, Japan will be spending...approximately 1% of GDP on defense. Do not even get me started on where in an Aging Japan the government is going to find enough youngsters to meet its force recruitment goals.

As for Abe's Yasukuni visit on December 26, he put off his annual visit until the morning of the one year anniversary of his election as prime minister. He was and is going to make visits on an annual basis. Let us take some solace in his having waited until the very last moment.

So what about the secrecy law, the appointment of mediocrity Momii Katsuto as the head of NHK, wannabe fixer Watanabe Tsuneo as the head of the commission on the secrecy law, Education Minister Shimomura Hakubun's new suggestions on what language teachers should use when talking about the Senkakus and Dokdo -- is it not all of a pattern?

Yes.

But the pattern is not one of a shift to the right.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's cronies are getting greedy, grabbing for stuff the public is not quite ready to cede to them, and which the public may never be willing to cede to them. These cronies are rightists, if by rightist you mean skeptical of/loathing China, tired of Japan's having World War II hung around its neck forever (and no, these cronies do not understand why persons hanging World War II around Japan's neck is possible) and pugnaciously defensive of a Japaneseness they alone can define.

It would be foolish for Abe, his sycophants and puppeteers to think the public is not aware of this piggishness and is not marking down in a ledger all the reasons it should not trust Abe and Friends.

The public has been exceedingly and aberrantly supportive of the Abe Cabinet and the Liberal Democratic Party. This support, however, does not evolve out of love for Abe policies, other than for the extremely activist and liberal (and contrary to longtime LDP theories on the national debt) macroeconomic program. According to the polls, the second most popular reason for supporting the Abe Cabinet, after the economic program, is "Because there is no appropriate alternative ready to step in."

Look around the political landscape of Japan today: to say that "there is no other appropriate person" ready to take Abe's place is really not that bizarre.

So "greedy Friends of Abe" + "liberal economics" + "little hope for anyone better" is supposed to equal "a shift to the right"?

I hope that that is not the math.

Tamogami Toshio Live, Live (And Freaking Me Out)

Working journalist MP is tweeting from inside the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan Tamogami Toshio press conference. Sitting down in a random spot, he finds that his table companions are:

Nishiyama Yujiro - a former candidate for governor, whose proposals included disaster drills with all 13 million residents of Tokyo participating simultaneously -- stopping their cars, blocking all access to the Internet. See him try to explain this idea in what was to be his free NHK broadcast gubernatorial election video. (Link - J video)

Motegi Hiromichi - arch-conservative commentator, author of such works as Do Not Be Afraid Of Radiation! and Elementary Schools Do Not Need English!. Watch him explain how the U.S. caused World War II (Link - J) at an event where current FCCJ member and former the Times, FT and NYT bureau chief Henry Stokes was also a featured speaker.

Nishimura Koyu - Advertising writer turned polemicist. Most recent work an article appearing on the website of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Truth entitled, "The Truth of the 'Comfort Women' Intelligence Warfare." (Link)

Oh, MP was also surprised to see Dewi Sukarno in the Tamogami entourage

Why do the things that I predict have to come true?


Later - Also as predicted, MP reports that Tamogami supporter Nishiyama, claiming to be a journalist, grabs microphone to ask The General a question.