I grit my teeth

As all and sundry await the verdict with bated breath (the announcers on Fuji Television are practically slobbering over themselves) I am perusing the news reports.

That is how I find total drek like this:

Verdict due for Livedoor tycoon
BBC

(...)

Legal experts said Mr Horie's repeated protestations of innocence and his unwillingness to show any remorse could prove determining factors in the outcome of the trial.

"In the Japanese court system, expressing remorse and paying penance can be a key factor to mitigate punishment," said Yoji Ochiai, an attorney not involved in the trial.

"In Japan there is a culture that those who admit to a crime and reflect on their act should be readmitted to the community, which is reflected in criminal trials."

Actually, Japanese culture has nothing to do with it.

Defense attorneys are paid a huge lump fee at the outset. Convincing their clients to confess thereafter makes it possible for attorneys to make a comfortable living without doing any real work.

A nice racket to be in, if you can pass the exam.

A Sign?

Forgot to mention, did I, that my neighborhood in Tokyo saw its first snow of the year this morning?

On March 16.

Perhaps the three hashibirogamo (Anas clypetea) pairs living in the moat at Ichigaya will stay with us a little longer now.

Waitin' on the Horiemon

Well, in just over an hour, we'll get to find out what the judge thinks of the case presented by the prosecutors in the Livedoor case.

My guess is that Horie Takafumi walks for lack of evidence, while Miyauchi and company are convicted on their confessions of wrongdoing.

Horie's ability to sue the government for a host of civil crimes (defamation, destruction of property, false arrest, et cetera) is kept on hold through the threat by prosecutors to appeal their criminal case against Horie to the District Court. The criminal convictions of Miyauchi & Co. serve as a firebreak against Livedoor stockholders suing the government for destroying the company.

The targeting and killing of Livedoor has been a sordid, disheartening bit of business (as I type, the air is filled with the sound of news helicopters hovering over Roppongi Hills). If the laws on accounting violations had been applied to the nation's banks with the same fervor, tens of thousands of executives would be behind bars.

As I said at the beginning, this was a set up--more properly, a takedown . Pour l'example.

We'll see if (let's hope that) the judge agrees.

Oh Snap! Take That JMSDF!

From the English language page of the Chosun Ilbo, with a head's up from The Marmot's Hole:

Navy to Build up Strategic Fleet with Six Aegis Warships

The South Korean Navy has begun the task of building up its mobile fleet by 2020. The strategic fleet will consist of six 7,000-ton Aegis-class warships, twelve 5,000 ton KDX-II destroyers and two Landing Platform Experimentals (LPX), which are similar to light aircraft carriers. South Korea will be the third after the U.S. and Japan in terms of the number of the Aegis-class warships, considered one of the world's most powerful naval vessels.

A military insider on Tuesday said that as part of its plan to build up the strategic fleet, the Navy will double the number it originally planned to build of Aegis-class warships and 5,000-ton KDX-II destroyers. Specific steps to do that will be proposed to higher-ups including the Joint Chiefs of Staff by as early as the end of this month, the source said.

Of course, the fact that Japan's Marine Self-Defense Forces will have, when at full strength, a fleet of...hmmm, let's see here..oh here it is...six 7,250 ton Kongō-class Aegis destroyers and...looking it up right now...seventeen conventional destroyers in between 4,550 and 5,050 tons and...searching, searching ...three Ōsumi-class platforms has nothing to do with the heretofore litoral warfare-focused South Korean Navy's sudden decision to double up its deep blue water force.

Nothing at all.


Later - I cannot help but wonder about the significance of the word "mobile" in the sentence, "The South Korean Navy has begun the task of building up its mobile fleet by 2020."

The sentence seems to indicate that a significant portion of the South Korean Navy's current fleet, possibly all of it, is sadly, perhaps permanently, immobile.

And if this is the case, what does one do with an immobile fleet, except, of course, look at it? Or perhaps play blackjack or Texas Hold'em on it?

Ouch! Please Don't Hurt Me Anymore!

The domino-like tumbles of the sub-prime lenders in the United States are hitting market sentiment in Tokyo today.

Better hope that your retirement kitty is not heavily weighted in shares of companies dependant on exports to the U.S. of A.

Me? Retirement? Diversification? Planning?

How stupid an investor am I? I co-own a piece of Tama Area real estate.

For an educated opinion, go visit Cassandra.

Fair and Impartial....Bwahahahaha!

I am so angry at Nishimuro Taizō I could spit.

Can TSE still secure investors' trust?
The Yomiuri Shimbun

The Tokyo Stock Exchange decided Monday to keep Nikko Cordial Corp. listed on the Tokyo bourse. However, it is a questionable decision. Could this not shake investors' trust in the fairness of market operations?

The securities company included inflated profits in its financial statements for the business year ended in March 2005 and thereafter by manipulating financial statements of a special-purpose company under the Nikko group and through other means.

One of the TSE's criteria for removing listed companies from the bourse is if the "effects of false reports on financial statements and other documents are serious."

The TSE concluded that Nikko Cordial's wrongdoing did not justify delisting, saying, "We could not obtain solid evidence that the false accounting was carried out by the company systematically," adding that the amount of inflated earnings was relatively small.

Oh, that and the little business detail that the reversal in the decision to delist will force Citibank to raise its offer, oh, a little bit (as of this morning, 26% more), earning current stockholders of the disgraced brokerage a windfall profit they do not deserve.

Under Nishimuro, an exceedingly tall, gracious and dignified individual, the Tokyo Stock Exchange has reeled from disaster to embarrassment to disaster again. I have until now defended him as having been the inheritor of a decrepit organization incapable of handling modern finance.

With this capricious decision, however, Nishimuro has demonstrated that the TSE is not an exchange, it is a protection racket. If I were an outsider, I would go elsewhere.

Raingawa o Miru

Having crossed over to the reclaimed islands of Tokyo on these bridges more than a few times (one can see the bridges also in the rear windows of "inside the car moving through Tokyo" scenes of movies filmed the late 30s, 40s and 50s) I am charmed to come across this account of their Teutonic design antecedents .

The story demonstrates the weird capacity of Japan to hang on to bits and pieces of culture that have crumbled into dust in their land of origin.

I also like the "originals lost in the battles of World War II angle"--especially since these bridges are almost the only physical structures that managed to survive the March 10, 1945 firebombing (except, of course, for this neighborhood).

Ode to a defunct lender

Though Cassandra and I do not get along at all in the comments sections we both frequent, I commend his/her posted poetic salve for the wounded wallets of forelorn investors.

I needed the laugh.

Now for the Japan economy mavens the question is whether or not the collapse of a U.S. prime lender at the same time the GOJ is announcing smashing ("real" but not that real) growth figures will trigger the long-awaited risk adjustment against dollar asset holdings, setting off a rally in the value of the yen and in the stockmarkets, giving the BOJ enough leeway to raise rates yet again a few weeks from now despite the looming shadow of deflation.

That would have Cassandra feeling frabjous indeed.

Mt. Ōtake (1266 m)

Winged tengu figure on Mt. Nokogiri
Okutama Township, Tokyo Metropolitan District
March 10, 2007

Area represented in the Diet by Inoue Shinji, a 36 year-old former Construction Ministry bureaucrat. LDP, 2 elections to the Diet, Kōno Group.

The second son of a wealthy Tokyo optometrist, Inoue boasts a sterling academic record, including a BA from the Faculty of Law of Tokyo University and a Masters in Land Economics from Cambridge University. Spent a year seconded to the Foreign Ministry's Eurasian Bureau, Eastern Europe Division.

With all his training in land management, I am sure Inoue will figure out a way to accommodate Governor Ishihara Shintarō's brutal but necessary plan to cut down a million pollen spewing cedars and false cypresses in Inoue's district without leaving behind denuded and eroded hillsides like the miserable and depressing clearcut just completed below the tramway to Mitake-san.

Or perhaps not.

It seems that Representative Inoue's vision for his district is:

1) the completion of the unneeded Ken'ō Expressway -yes, the nightmare that has already ruined the view north from Takaozan,

2) a crackdown on visa overstayers,

3) strong measures discouragine shoplifting and crimes by young people,

4) flood control projects (I guess that is why workers are paving the hillside beneath the Mitake historical district)

--all of which will produce a district where "everyone from the children to the elderly can live with peace of mind".

Oh, and try to entice foreign tourists (obviously not those suspected of #2) to come and see the historical and natural sites (such as may survive #1 and #4 above).

Sigh.

Better go and see it while you still can...or hope the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's budget craters sometime soon.

Spring snow on Mt. Nokogiri
Okutama Township, Tokyo Metropolitan District
March 10, 2007

View southward from the summit of Mt. Ōtake
Hinohara Township, Tokyo Metropolitan District
March 10, 2007

Ayahiro Falls in The Rock Garden (Gansekien)
Ōme City, Tokyo Metropolitan District
March 10, 2007

Nanayo Falls
Ōme City, Tokyo Metropolitan District
March 10, 2007

Twelve kilometers; rugged, rocky, narrow and very steep at the beginning but path widens after descent from Mt. Nokogiri. Six hours with a lunch break. Holiday Kaisoku trains leave Shinjuku at 7:44 am and 8:19 am. 1110 yen to Okutama Station; 570 yen for tram down from Mitakezan; 950 yen from Mitake Station back to Shinjuku.

Neo Neo Marxiste

For those with a taste for a lashing of consumer culture, try clicking on the link for the new blog clast in the bloglist on the right.

From the first four entries it seems that David "Marxy" Marx, the author of the distressingly variable blog NéoMarxisme, has buckled down to doing what he does best: ripping away at the flouncy flesh of Japanese consumer imagery to reveal the bones underneath--all without tying up the reader in the chains of post-modernist critical theory.