Last week, the Democratic Party of Japan's fluent English speaking, Stanford MA-holding, Adjunct Professor at Shanghai University House of Councillors member Ishii Hajime had to resign his post as chairman of the Budget Committee, the most powerful post in the House of Councillors after President. Ishii had to tender his resignation after having violated the House rule requiring members to alert the chamber if he or she intends to be outside the country for more than 8 consecutive days. Ishii failed to do this prior to paying a visit to the Philippines from April 27 to May 7.
Ishii had originally planned to be in the Philippines on a vacation lasting from May 3 to May 6. However, Ishii, the president of the Japan-Philippines Friendship League, received an invitation to a party on the 27th, so he pushed forward his departure to that date.
Why is this news, aside from the DPJ and Ishii losing face and the opening up in mid-Diet session of a scramble for the incredibly important position Ishii held? Because this resignation marks the second time in a year that Ishii has had to resign an important position because of a May vacation in the Philippines. Last year, when he was the Deputy Chairman of the DPJ Committee on Measures Regarding Earthquakes, he used the Golden Week break to go on a golf vacation in the Republika ng Pilipinas -- when he really should have spent the time visiting somewhere else (Need it be said where that somewhere is?)...or at least staying home. (J)
Once is misfortune; twice looks like carelessness...
Later - On the positive side, Ishii will now be available for interviews and questions from the foreign press, one of his former major roles inside the DPJ.
Just do not mention the p-word.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Japan As A Normal Nation - Bic and Kojima
A profitable competitor in an overcrowded market swallows up an unprofitable rival. The merged company will become #2 in the market, even after closing 40 to 50 underperforming units of the merger target. The founding family of the merger target is told to go stuff it. (E and J)
Which country is this happening in?
Which country is this happening in?
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Of The DPJ And Children - Special Mother's Day Edition
In my post of yesterday, I remarked that "(t)ackling the birth dearth has been of tertiary interest for the DPJ leadership -- which has been expending far more of its political capital on solving the budget and pension gaps through raising the level of taxation or goosing economic growth rather than raising the number of taxpayers." (Link)
While this is true, one small caveat is in order. While the proposed rise in the consumption tax to 10% (part of the bill dump the Democratic Party of Japan unloaded on upon the Diet this week) is slated to be used primarily to put the fiscal houses of the pension, medical and eldercare systems in some sort of order, a slice will be reserved for programs to increase the birthrate. According to the May 11 print edition of the Tokyo Shimbun, if the raising of the tax rate to 10% nets the predicted 13.5 trillion extra yen for the government, then 700 billion -- 5.2% of the total -- will be set aside for programs supporting the birth and raising of children.
It is to be presumed that the extra revenues set aside for measures to raise the birthrate (shoshika taisaku) will in part restore cutbacks in aid for families with children (kodomo teate) the DPJ promised in its 2009 election manifesto -- aid that the DPJ first had to halve because of budgetary constraints, then cut further and reduced to a needs-based system (jido teate) largely indistinguishable from the jido teate system in place under LDP rule (in an fit of pettiness, the LDP and the New Komeito made their votes for the new truncated system contingent on the revival of the jido teate name).
However, no one knows for certain what the DPJ intends to do with the 700 billion, if that amount can even be raised. No bill is in the works. No plan has been announced. All we have to go on is Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's response to a question posed to him on Thursday by DPJ member Izumi Kenta:
"Througth the Comprehensive Reform, investment in the future will be strengthened. [The Comprehensive Reform] has a goal of bringing into being a social safety net responding to the needs of all generations. As for the revenues raised through the consumption tax to be devoted to children and childrearing, I believe this means that social safety for life's first half will be strengthened." (Link - J)
Did you get that? Do not be alarmed: it was designed to baffle. Luckily for Noda, he was being questioned by a member of his own party. An opposition member would have snapped, "Excuse me, but what the blazes does your answer mean?"
The setting aside of a portion of the revenues raised by the elevated consumption tax for children and childrearing -- whatever the plan for those revenues might be -- is not the only fundamental reform the DPJ has proposed for government programs for children. In order to implement a reform I am not sure anyone asked for and I do not think anyone can explain, the government on Thursday presented to the Diet three bills that together will unify Japan's bifurcated pre-school childcare systems.
That Japan has two systems of childcare run by two different ministries may look odd but is eminently rational. The day care system (hoikuen) is run by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. It is focused on the "Labour" part of the ministry's mandate -- that is providing childcare for mothers who work. It takes in children as young as two months of age, looks after them from around 7:30 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. (actual operation hours vary according to the center and extended hours are available, for an extra fee).
The kindergarten system (yochien) is run by the Ministry of Education. It is a pre-school, primarily the children of mothers who do not work or who work only part-time. The hours are limited, with the children being taken in at around 9:00 am and let out in the middle of the afternoon. It takes in children once they are three years of age. Its nominal focus is on education, unsurprising given the ministry that runs it, which means preparing the children for the habitudes of elementary school.
Aside from the cost aspect of having two seperate bureaucracies running parallel systems, there is little if any impetus for having the two systems merge. There is a hope that having yochien keeping hoikuen hours will cut down on the backlog of children on waiting lists to get into hoikuen. However, since the staff backgrounds and physical layouts of hoikuen are very different from those of yochien, the unification will lead to a period of confusion as new staff are trained or old staff retrained and centers have to be retrofitted or rebuilt.
Besides, as page 9 of the most recent Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare report on day care centers shows, the problems of insufficient day care center spaces is a relatively small and extremely localized phenomenon. Only 25,556 children are on waiting lists to get into day care centers, a miniscule number compared the national population and to to the hundreds of thousands on the waiting lists in the 1990s, before the government went on a day care center opening binge. Furthermore, as the red dot shows, the problem of insufficient spaces is concentrated inside the Tokyo Metropolitan District, where 31% of the children on waiting lists live. Twenty-six of the 47 prefectures have fewer than 100 children on waiting lists.
Overturning the apple cart because the TMD is a hard place to build day care centers (here is one area where Richard Katz's great bugaboo, the imposition of the tax rate for on bare land on agricultural land located inside urban areas, would result in a net social good. Otherwise, the imposition of taxes would be an ecological and psychological disaster, the urban farms providing the only green spaces and open sky in many neighborhoods) seems, on the face of it, reckless beyond reckoning.
The systems, bifurcated as they are, largely work. There is a possibility, but no one has the statistics to back it up, that the conversion of the abbreviated day yochien to full-day hoikuen will encourage more women to take full time jobs. There is also a possibility -- but again without any statistical evidence -- that the education focus of the yochien will somehow improve the atmosphere of hoikuen, making them better at preparing children for school. Whether hoikuen children perform less well in school, all other factors being equal, than yochien children, remains unproven. Indeed, given that hoikuen children have been living much of their first six years of life in group settings with strict schedules and egalitarian values, they would just as likely to do better in school environments than children raised primarily by their mothers.
With that, a Happy Mother's Day to you all.
Later - Credit where credit is due: the Liberal Democratic Party, for all its faults and whatever its reasons, is opposed to the DPJ plan for a merger of the two public childcare systems -- which has all the appearances of a reform for reform's sake.
While this is true, one small caveat is in order. While the proposed rise in the consumption tax to 10% (part of the bill dump the Democratic Party of Japan unloaded on upon the Diet this week) is slated to be used primarily to put the fiscal houses of the pension, medical and eldercare systems in some sort of order, a slice will be reserved for programs to increase the birthrate. According to the May 11 print edition of the Tokyo Shimbun, if the raising of the tax rate to 10% nets the predicted 13.5 trillion extra yen for the government, then 700 billion -- 5.2% of the total -- will be set aside for programs supporting the birth and raising of children.
It is to be presumed that the extra revenues set aside for measures to raise the birthrate (shoshika taisaku) will in part restore cutbacks in aid for families with children (kodomo teate) the DPJ promised in its 2009 election manifesto -- aid that the DPJ first had to halve because of budgetary constraints, then cut further and reduced to a needs-based system (jido teate) largely indistinguishable from the jido teate system in place under LDP rule (in an fit of pettiness, the LDP and the New Komeito made their votes for the new truncated system contingent on the revival of the jido teate name).
However, no one knows for certain what the DPJ intends to do with the 700 billion, if that amount can even be raised. No bill is in the works. No plan has been announced. All we have to go on is Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's response to a question posed to him on Thursday by DPJ member Izumi Kenta:
"Througth the Comprehensive Reform, investment in the future will be strengthened. [The Comprehensive Reform] has a goal of bringing into being a social safety net responding to the needs of all generations. As for the revenues raised through the consumption tax to be devoted to children and childrearing, I believe this means that social safety for life's first half will be strengthened." (Link - J)
Did you get that? Do not be alarmed: it was designed to baffle. Luckily for Noda, he was being questioned by a member of his own party. An opposition member would have snapped, "Excuse me, but what the blazes does your answer mean?"
The setting aside of a portion of the revenues raised by the elevated consumption tax for children and childrearing -- whatever the plan for those revenues might be -- is not the only fundamental reform the DPJ has proposed for government programs for children. In order to implement a reform I am not sure anyone asked for and I do not think anyone can explain, the government on Thursday presented to the Diet three bills that together will unify Japan's bifurcated pre-school childcare systems.
That Japan has two systems of childcare run by two different ministries may look odd but is eminently rational. The day care system (hoikuen) is run by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. It is focused on the "Labour" part of the ministry's mandate -- that is providing childcare for mothers who work. It takes in children as young as two months of age, looks after them from around 7:30 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. (actual operation hours vary according to the center and extended hours are available, for an extra fee).
The kindergarten system (yochien) is run by the Ministry of Education. It is a pre-school, primarily the children of mothers who do not work or who work only part-time. The hours are limited, with the children being taken in at around 9:00 am and let out in the middle of the afternoon. It takes in children once they are three years of age. Its nominal focus is on education, unsurprising given the ministry that runs it, which means preparing the children for the habitudes of elementary school.
Aside from the cost aspect of having two seperate bureaucracies running parallel systems, there is little if any impetus for having the two systems merge. There is a hope that having yochien keeping hoikuen hours will cut down on the backlog of children on waiting lists to get into hoikuen. However, since the staff backgrounds and physical layouts of hoikuen are very different from those of yochien, the unification will lead to a period of confusion as new staff are trained or old staff retrained and centers have to be retrofitted or rebuilt.
Besides, as page 9 of the most recent Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare report on day care centers shows, the problems of insufficient day care center spaces is a relatively small and extremely localized phenomenon. Only 25,556 children are on waiting lists to get into day care centers, a miniscule number compared the national population and to to the hundreds of thousands on the waiting lists in the 1990s, before the government went on a day care center opening binge. Furthermore, as the red dot shows, the problem of insufficient spaces is concentrated inside the Tokyo Metropolitan District, where 31% of the children on waiting lists live. Twenty-six of the 47 prefectures have fewer than 100 children on waiting lists.
Overturning the apple cart because the TMD is a hard place to build day care centers (here is one area where Richard Katz's great bugaboo, the imposition of the tax rate for on bare land on agricultural land located inside urban areas, would result in a net social good. Otherwise, the imposition of taxes would be an ecological and psychological disaster, the urban farms providing the only green spaces and open sky in many neighborhoods) seems, on the face of it, reckless beyond reckoning.
The systems, bifurcated as they are, largely work. There is a possibility, but no one has the statistics to back it up, that the conversion of the abbreviated day yochien to full-day hoikuen will encourage more women to take full time jobs. There is also a possibility -- but again without any statistical evidence -- that the education focus of the yochien will somehow improve the atmosphere of hoikuen, making them better at preparing children for school. Whether hoikuen children perform less well in school, all other factors being equal, than yochien children, remains unproven. Indeed, given that hoikuen children have been living much of their first six years of life in group settings with strict schedules and egalitarian values, they would just as likely to do better in school environments than children raised primarily by their mothers.
With that, a Happy Mother's Day to you all.
Later - Credit where credit is due: the Liberal Democratic Party, for all its faults and whatever its reasons, is opposed to the DPJ plan for a merger of the two public childcare systems -- which has all the appearances of a reform for reform's sake.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
The X-Y Axes of Stupid: Children and Childcare
There days one wonders, "Oh, why fight it? Why not just sit back and be stupid, like seemingly nearly all those in positions of wealth, power and influence?"
Today is one of those days.
In a Children's Day (May 5) bit of thought-provoking whimsy, researchers at Tohoku University posted a Zero Hour time clock (J). Based upon the rate of decline in the number of children in between April of 2011 and April of 2012 -- the researchers provide the URLs of the relevant government populations statistics pages -- the clocks tick off both the number of children in Japan and the number of days until, if the decline in between April 2011 and April 2012 were extended indefinitely, there would be but a single child left in Japan.
The press release on the workings of the time clock (J) by team leader and Graduate School of Economics and Management Professor Yoshida Hiroshi explains that he copied his idea from the famous U.S. debt clock. He also makes clear that the purpose of the clock is to stimulate discussion of 1) what the current state of the decline in the number of children means, and 2) what are the consequences if declines continue in the future.
That the whole exercise is not an academic but a polemic exercise is apparent from the press release. It is a rush job, with typos. For instance, in the paragraph explaining the goals of the clock, the text should say "apiiru" not "piiru." There is no such word as "piiru."
Of course, the writers and editors news organizations would never, ever take this bit of fun and blow it up into an an actual scientific enterprise. Oh no, they would never do that:
Of course, this version of the story has gone both viral and mainstream, at least among the publications assuming their readership have sub-bonobo IQ (and if any of readers out there are 100% bonobos, please accept my apologies for associating you with these organizations).
(Search results)
Now this is not to say that the decline of the birthrate has not been one of the social policy areas where the government, both under Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan leadership, has run up against a brick wall. The LDP in the 1990s went on a day care center-building binge that continues to this day -- the green line in Figure 1 of this 2011 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare report.
[By the way, check out the map on page 9 of the report. It shows that of all the children awaiting placement in day care centers, 31% live in the Tokyo Metropolitan District. Add in Kanagawa Prefecture, and percentage rises to 43%. And nine prefectures have zero children on waiting lists.
Can we please now decently bury the "Japan lacks sufficient childcare for working mothers" canard?]
As for the DPJ, it promised, though it in the end has not been able to deliver, direct financial support to all families with children. The child allowance (kodomo teate) was potentially good social policy, as it certainly would have made it possible for lower and middle income couples to have children earlier and in greater numbers. However, the DPJ simultaneously sold the child allowance as an economic stimulus measure, which was dumb, as families, even though receiving only half of the monthly payments promised, still managed to save half the amount dispensed. Of course, financial planners writing in women's magazines advised readers to put all the child allowance into savings.
[If we are to take Shakespeare as our guide (E), the agenda for the DPJ should have been: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the financial planners."]
Tackling the birth dearth has been of tertiary interest for the DPJ leadership -- which has been expending far more of its political capital on solving the budget and pension gaps through raising the level of taxation or goosing economic growth rather than raising the number of taxpayers. Indeed, the "measures for for the declining birthrate" portfolio has become the hot potato of cabinet jobs. A humiliating nine different ministers have held the portfolio since a DPJ-led coalition took power in September 2009 (J) -- a rate of turnover neared only by the hard right dream portfolio of Minister for the DPRK Abductees Issue (six different ministers since the takeover).
Despite failure of the government to find a game plan for reversing the decline in the birthrate, the Japanese people -- whatever that means in genotype terms -- is not going extinct. The Japanese language might go extinct* -- look at at the state of Manchu one century after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. However, writing about the Japanese people going extinct based on the extrapolation of the rate of decline between April 2011 and April 2012 -- not a particular cheerful and hope-filled year, if one may say so -- that deserves a spanking.
-------------------------------
* Mori Arinori (E) thought it a potentially worthwhile goal -- just one of the brainstorms that got folks angry enough to kill him on the morning of Constitution Day in 1889.
Today is one of those days.
In a Children's Day (May 5) bit of thought-provoking whimsy, researchers at Tohoku University posted a Zero Hour time clock (J). Based upon the rate of decline in the number of children in between April of 2011 and April of 2012 -- the researchers provide the URLs of the relevant government populations statistics pages -- the clocks tick off both the number of children in Japan and the number of days until, if the decline in between April 2011 and April 2012 were extended indefinitely, there would be but a single child left in Japan.
The press release on the workings of the time clock (J) by team leader and Graduate School of Economics and Management Professor Yoshida Hiroshi explains that he copied his idea from the famous U.S. debt clock. He also makes clear that the purpose of the clock is to stimulate discussion of 1) what the current state of the decline in the number of children means, and 2) what are the consequences if declines continue in the future.
That the whole exercise is not an academic but a polemic exercise is apparent from the press release. It is a rush job, with typos. For instance, in the paragraph explaining the goals of the clock, the text should say "apiiru" not "piiru." There is no such word as "piiru."
Of course, the writers and editors news organizations would never, ever take this bit of fun and blow it up into an an actual scientific enterprise. Oh no, they would never do that:
3011 to see last child in Japan: population clockAAAaaaaarggghhhhh!
Jiji, Kyodo
SENDAI — Japan will no longer have children under the age of 15 in 999 years, a group of researchers at Tohoku University Graduate School has estimated.
The team, led by professor Hiroshi Yoshida, developed a child population clock that displays an estimated number of children at any moment based on past percentages of decline. The clock was made available on the university's website Thursday.
The team used a 2011-2012 percentage change in the number of children that was released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on April 1. The number of children aged under 15 fell to 16.6 million in 2012 from 16.9 million in 2011.
The clock calculates the estimated number of children at present and counts down to the last child, based on the assumption that the number of children is expected to continue falling.
Japan's child population drops by one every 100 seconds, according to the clock. As a result, there will be no kids on May 18, 3011...
(Link)
Of course, this version of the story has gone both viral and mainstream, at least among the publications assuming their readership have sub-bonobo IQ (and if any of readers out there are 100% bonobos, please accept my apologies for associating you with these organizations).
(Search results)
Now this is not to say that the decline of the birthrate has not been one of the social policy areas where the government, both under Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan leadership, has run up against a brick wall. The LDP in the 1990s went on a day care center-building binge that continues to this day -- the green line in Figure 1 of this 2011 Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare report.
[By the way, check out the map on page 9 of the report. It shows that of all the children awaiting placement in day care centers, 31% live in the Tokyo Metropolitan District. Add in Kanagawa Prefecture, and percentage rises to 43%. And nine prefectures have zero children on waiting lists.
Can we please now decently bury the "Japan lacks sufficient childcare for working mothers" canard?]
As for the DPJ, it promised, though it in the end has not been able to deliver, direct financial support to all families with children. The child allowance (kodomo teate) was potentially good social policy, as it certainly would have made it possible for lower and middle income couples to have children earlier and in greater numbers. However, the DPJ simultaneously sold the child allowance as an economic stimulus measure, which was dumb, as families, even though receiving only half of the monthly payments promised, still managed to save half the amount dispensed. Of course, financial planners writing in women's magazines advised readers to put all the child allowance into savings.
[If we are to take Shakespeare as our guide (E), the agenda for the DPJ should have been: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the financial planners."]
Tackling the birth dearth has been of tertiary interest for the DPJ leadership -- which has been expending far more of its political capital on solving the budget and pension gaps through raising the level of taxation or goosing economic growth rather than raising the number of taxpayers. Indeed, the "measures for for the declining birthrate" portfolio has become the hot potato of cabinet jobs. A humiliating nine different ministers have held the portfolio since a DPJ-led coalition took power in September 2009 (J) -- a rate of turnover neared only by the hard right dream portfolio of Minister for the DPRK Abductees Issue (six different ministers since the takeover).
Despite failure of the government to find a game plan for reversing the decline in the birthrate, the Japanese people -- whatever that means in genotype terms -- is not going extinct. The Japanese language might go extinct* -- look at at the state of Manchu one century after the fall of the Qing Dynasty. However, writing about the Japanese people going extinct based on the extrapolation of the rate of decline between April 2011 and April 2012 -- not a particular cheerful and hope-filled year, if one may say so -- that deserves a spanking.
-------------------------------
* Mori Arinori (E) thought it a potentially worthwhile goal -- just one of the brainstorms that got folks angry enough to kill him on the morning of Constitution Day in 1889.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Committees For The Inquest Of The Prosecution - In Other News
Correspondent SG reminded me yesterday that Ozawa Ichiro's case is not the only criminal case that has been or is the process of being brought to the courts via a Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution -- the Orwellian-sounding citizens councils seeking indictments in incidents where the local prosecutors claim there is no case. Indeed a number of infamous incidents are in the process of being picked over by private lawyers hired by the courts, including:
- The Akashi Pedestrian Bridge Incident - where a crush of people, on there way to view a waterside fireworks display, lurched forward and fell down in a mass on the staircase of a pedestrian overpass, leading to the asphyxiation deaths of 11 persons, mostly children. On trial is the Deputy Chief of Police of Akashi, as the police were providing security for the event. A judgment in the case is expected in November.
- The Amagasaki JR Derailment - the most serious and idiotic rail accident of the last 40 years, resulting in the deaths of 106 persons and the maimings of many, many more. While the obvious culprit was the incompetent train engineer, who had a record of poor performance and sent his train hurtling off the tracks by taking a curve at excessive speed, this in order to make up for time he had lost in overshooting the platform at a previous stop, families of the dead and injured have been trying for a decade to pin the blame on senior JR West executives. The trial of the three past presidents of JR West for dereliction of duty leading to death begins in July.
- The Chinese Fishing Trawler Collision Incident - when a Chinese fishing boat rammed two Japanese Coast Guard vessels in the waters off the Senkaku Islands in September, 2010, the JCG detained the crew of the Chinese vessel, arresting the captain on charges of interfering with the activities of government personnel carrying out their duties. Other than the captain, the crew of the ship were returned to China. The case of the captain, hwoever,was remanded to the Nago District Court. After the Chinese government, both directly and indirectly, ratched the pressure on Japan, the Nago Court released the captain, on the bizarre grounds of his arrest being a matter of foreign policy, not law. Since the case had been remanded to the prosecutors, however, it left open the door for interested parties to pursue the original arrest through a Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution, which interested parties did. Without much of a fuss, an Okinawa Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution issued an indictment of the Chinese captain in March, with no trial date set.
It is difficult to approve of the actions taken by the Committees in the first two cases. These should be civil suits for damages, not criminal indictments for negligence and dereliction of duty. The persons being tried have only distant connections to the accidents, heinous as they were.
However, it is hard not give three cheers for Committee in Okinawa. The grotesque intrusion of politics into a legal proceeding, which the government promised it would not to do, no matter what the Chinese did, then reversed itself and did, then denied that it had done -- demolished the credibility of Prime Minister Kan Naoto and the Democratic Party of Japan. That the Svengali pressuring the Nago Prosecutors Office to release the captain was Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito was an open secret. His machinations earned him a well-deserved censuring by the House of Councillors, with Mabuchi Sumio, the minister in charge of the Coast Guard, getting censured in what amounted to collateral damage from the chastisement of Sengoku.
It is possible to read too much into the effect the indictment of the Chinese captain will have on Sino-Japanese relations. It will certainly be an irritant to the Chinese. The Japanese government will not pursue the captain, except perhaps by putting his name on a list of international fugitives at Interpol. Even if the courts allow the captain's being convicted in absentia, which he would be, given the video evidence of the collisions, neither government has any incentive to bring the matter up in bilateral negotiations -- so they will not.
Whether Japanese right wingers will transform the captain's indictment into one of their cause célèbres remains an open question. They have already so many different items on their plates...
- The Akashi Pedestrian Bridge Incident - where a crush of people, on there way to view a waterside fireworks display, lurched forward and fell down in a mass on the staircase of a pedestrian overpass, leading to the asphyxiation deaths of 11 persons, mostly children. On trial is the Deputy Chief of Police of Akashi, as the police were providing security for the event. A judgment in the case is expected in November.
- The Amagasaki JR Derailment - the most serious and idiotic rail accident of the last 40 years, resulting in the deaths of 106 persons and the maimings of many, many more. While the obvious culprit was the incompetent train engineer, who had a record of poor performance and sent his train hurtling off the tracks by taking a curve at excessive speed, this in order to make up for time he had lost in overshooting the platform at a previous stop, families of the dead and injured have been trying for a decade to pin the blame on senior JR West executives. The trial of the three past presidents of JR West for dereliction of duty leading to death begins in July.
- The Chinese Fishing Trawler Collision Incident - when a Chinese fishing boat rammed two Japanese Coast Guard vessels in the waters off the Senkaku Islands in September, 2010, the JCG detained the crew of the Chinese vessel, arresting the captain on charges of interfering with the activities of government personnel carrying out their duties. Other than the captain, the crew of the ship were returned to China. The case of the captain, hwoever,was remanded to the Nago District Court. After the Chinese government, both directly and indirectly, ratched the pressure on Japan, the Nago Court released the captain, on the bizarre grounds of his arrest being a matter of foreign policy, not law. Since the case had been remanded to the prosecutors, however, it left open the door for interested parties to pursue the original arrest through a Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution, which interested parties did. Without much of a fuss, an Okinawa Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution issued an indictment of the Chinese captain in March, with no trial date set.
It is difficult to approve of the actions taken by the Committees in the first two cases. These should be civil suits for damages, not criminal indictments for negligence and dereliction of duty. The persons being tried have only distant connections to the accidents, heinous as they were.
However, it is hard not give three cheers for Committee in Okinawa. The grotesque intrusion of politics into a legal proceeding, which the government promised it would not to do, no matter what the Chinese did, then reversed itself and did, then denied that it had done -- demolished the credibility of Prime Minister Kan Naoto and the Democratic Party of Japan. That the Svengali pressuring the Nago Prosecutors Office to release the captain was Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito was an open secret. His machinations earned him a well-deserved censuring by the House of Councillors, with Mabuchi Sumio, the minister in charge of the Coast Guard, getting censured in what amounted to collateral damage from the chastisement of Sengoku.
It is possible to read too much into the effect the indictment of the Chinese captain will have on Sino-Japanese relations. It will certainly be an irritant to the Chinese. The Japanese government will not pursue the captain, except perhaps by putting his name on a list of international fugitives at Interpol. Even if the courts allow the captain's being convicted in absentia, which he would be, given the video evidence of the collisions, neither government has any incentive to bring the matter up in bilateral negotiations -- so they will not.
Whether Japanese right wingers will transform the captain's indictment into one of their cause célèbres remains an open question. They have already so many different items on their plates...
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Extended And Revised Thoughts On The Decision To Retry Ozawa Ichiro
Yesterday, the three lawyers appointed by the court to prosecute Ichiro Ozawa under Japan's Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system announced they would be appealing the not guilty verdict the Tokyo District Court handed down on April 26. The decision to appeal comes less than 24 hours after the DPJ's Standing Officers Council voted to end the suspension of Ozawa's party privileges and 24 hours before the deadline for the three lawyers had to file an appeal.
Given that the lawyers had two weeks to make this decision, their choice to do so within the same news cycle as the DPJ executive's having made its move on reinstating Ozawa indicates that it is politics, not the law, that is driving this case.
Three major cases come to mind of countries with democratic elections where the courts have been used to prevent a challenger of the system from seizing upon his chance to take power: Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia and Ichiro Ozawa in Japan.
Elevating Ozawa to the level of the other two may seem perverse. After all, he has never spent a day in jail while the other two have languished in prison for years.
However, the cases are comparable in the use of pliant prosecutors and flimsy charges to effectively short-circuit the democratic process, to the benefit of politicians and corporate managements grown fat and lazy on crony, state-assisted capitalism and patronage.
While the cases of Anwar and Khodhorkovsky have served as reminders of just what kind of states Malaysia and Russia were and are, the judicial houndings of Ozawa and his aides have raised few warning bells worldwide. Indeed, the persecution of Ozawa has some in Washington dancing in the aisles. The 2009 arrest of Okubo Takanori, the beginning of the process that has led to yesterday's decision to retry, not only prevented the installation of a prime minister wishing to redefine the Japan-U.S. relationship as a more equal partnership but one seeking to meet the challenge of a rising China with an extended open hand rather than a closed fist.
The continued court cases against Ozawa and his subordinates also eat away at the support for the DPJ, which many in Washington see as a party too spiky and independent for the smooth operation of the Japan-U.S. military alliance.
However, those craving to see the return to power of a seemingly more U.S.-friendly and purportedly more competent LDP are either ignorant of history or in the pay of the wrong sorts of people. The LDP, as an illegitimate ruling party – which means its continued hold on power was dependent upon the suppression of votes – was a terrible interlocutor for the United States and the world. It was the party of delay, always whining about its inability to make good on its promises until “after the next election” – a plaint that tested the listener’s capacity to reason out, “But wait, after the next election, there will be another election, and after that, yet another…” Given their electoral lock on the country, LDP governments cared little that policy makers, journalists and scholars saw through this “wait until after the next election" canard – and that under its thrall Japan would always underperform and punch below its weight. Under the"serious" and "seasoned" LDP, trade and IPR talks would drag out for decades, the Futenma-to-Henoko move went nowhere and the Self Defense Forces remained marginalized and internationally insignificant.
Some might argue that there are immediate benefits to this decision to retry Ozawa, that hobbling him will smooth the passage of important legislation tackling the national debt emboldening the Noda government to be more aggressive in pushing Japan into negotiations on joining the TPP. Unfortunately, opposition to the government's plans to raise the consumption tax, cut spending and join the TPP negotiations runs across the political spectrum. It is not just Ozawa.
There is the further problem that turmoil in Tokyo has promoted the rise of regional challengers to the main national triumvirate of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito. The most successful and obvious of these is the Ishin no kai of Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto. These new regional movements are the wild cards now in Japan’s national politics. The old boys and the rare old girls of the bureaucracy and the non-profit foundations probably assuring their counterparts in the world's capitals that these new political forces can be tutored in the ways of behaving themselves on the international stage. However, there are no guarantees of that Hashimoto, Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya or other regionalists will listen to what their tutors tell them.
The legal persecution of Ozawa has had a corrosive effect on the development of a two-party system, where two legitimate, centrist, responsible parties with largely equal access to national office slug it out over differences in policy. Those who wave off what is happening with a dismissive “Ah, this is just the law finally catching up a grubby old time party hack, nothing new” have agendas of their own, obsfucating the truth being one of them.
Given that the lawyers had two weeks to make this decision, their choice to do so within the same news cycle as the DPJ executive's having made its move on reinstating Ozawa indicates that it is politics, not the law, that is driving this case.
Three major cases come to mind of countries with democratic elections where the courts have been used to prevent a challenger of the system from seizing upon his chance to take power: Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia and Ichiro Ozawa in Japan.
Elevating Ozawa to the level of the other two may seem perverse. After all, he has never spent a day in jail while the other two have languished in prison for years.
However, the cases are comparable in the use of pliant prosecutors and flimsy charges to effectively short-circuit the democratic process, to the benefit of politicians and corporate managements grown fat and lazy on crony, state-assisted capitalism and patronage.
While the cases of Anwar and Khodhorkovsky have served as reminders of just what kind of states Malaysia and Russia were and are, the judicial houndings of Ozawa and his aides have raised few warning bells worldwide. Indeed, the persecution of Ozawa has some in Washington dancing in the aisles. The 2009 arrest of Okubo Takanori, the beginning of the process that has led to yesterday's decision to retry, not only prevented the installation of a prime minister wishing to redefine the Japan-U.S. relationship as a more equal partnership but one seeking to meet the challenge of a rising China with an extended open hand rather than a closed fist.
The continued court cases against Ozawa and his subordinates also eat away at the support for the DPJ, which many in Washington see as a party too spiky and independent for the smooth operation of the Japan-U.S. military alliance.
However, those craving to see the return to power of a seemingly more U.S.-friendly and purportedly more competent LDP are either ignorant of history or in the pay of the wrong sorts of people. The LDP, as an illegitimate ruling party – which means its continued hold on power was dependent upon the suppression of votes – was a terrible interlocutor for the United States and the world. It was the party of delay, always whining about its inability to make good on its promises until “after the next election” – a plaint that tested the listener’s capacity to reason out, “But wait, after the next election, there will be another election, and after that, yet another…” Given their electoral lock on the country, LDP governments cared little that policy makers, journalists and scholars saw through this “wait until after the next election" canard – and that under its thrall Japan would always underperform and punch below its weight. Under the"serious" and "seasoned" LDP, trade and IPR talks would drag out for decades, the Futenma-to-Henoko move went nowhere and the Self Defense Forces remained marginalized and internationally insignificant.
Some might argue that there are immediate benefits to this decision to retry Ozawa, that hobbling him will smooth the passage of important legislation tackling the national debt emboldening the Noda government to be more aggressive in pushing Japan into negotiations on joining the TPP. Unfortunately, opposition to the government's plans to raise the consumption tax, cut spending and join the TPP negotiations runs across the political spectrum. It is not just Ozawa.
There is the further problem that turmoil in Tokyo has promoted the rise of regional challengers to the main national triumvirate of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito. The most successful and obvious of these is the Ishin no kai of Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto. These new regional movements are the wild cards now in Japan’s national politics. The old boys and the rare old girls of the bureaucracy and the non-profit foundations probably assuring their counterparts in the world's capitals that these new political forces can be tutored in the ways of behaving themselves on the international stage. However, there are no guarantees of that Hashimoto, Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya or other regionalists will listen to what their tutors tell them.
The legal persecution of Ozawa has had a corrosive effect on the development of a two-party system, where two legitimate, centrist, responsible parties with largely equal access to national office slug it out over differences in policy. Those who wave off what is happening with a dismissive “Ah, this is just the law finally catching up a grubby old time party hack, nothing new” have agendas of their own, obsfucating the truth being one of them.
The Masked Man Returns
For those defenders and friends of Ozawa Ichiro -- and I know you are out there -- will you please tell him, beg him if you have to, to reconsider the wearing of a surgical mask on days when he is hot water?
I know that this all could be coincidence. After all, the above photo was taken at around noon and the press conference announcing the appeal of his case was not until the afternoon.
However, the instances of Ozawa's sudden comings down with colds at awkward moments have been painful to observe.
As for the prosecuting private attorneys, if they really wish anyone to believe that they are under no political pressure at all to appeal the not-guilty verdict of April 26, then sweating rivulets during their press conference on a mild May day is not the way to do it. While cool cucumber Yamamoto Ken'ichi (J - far right) managed not even a glow, Omuro Shinzo and Muramoto Michio were spurting like the fountains of Trevi.
Later - To be fair, Ozawa's lawyers were sweating even worse than the prosecuting attorneys.
Ozawa Ichiro, leaving his home on May 9, 2012.
I know that this all could be coincidence. After all, the above photo was taken at around noon and the press conference announcing the appeal of his case was not until the afternoon.
However, the instances of Ozawa's sudden comings down with colds at awkward moments have been painful to observe.
As for the prosecuting private attorneys, if they really wish anyone to believe that they are under no political pressure at all to appeal the not-guilty verdict of April 26, then sweating rivulets during their press conference on a mild May day is not the way to do it. While cool cucumber Yamamoto Ken'ichi (J - far right) managed not even a glow, Omuro Shinzo and Muramoto Michio were spurting like the fountains of Trevi.
Later - To be fair, Ozawa's lawyers were sweating even worse than the prosecuting attorneys.
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Ozawa Ichiro As Potential Troublemaker
[Flash - the three lawyers who failed to win a conviction of Ozawa Ichiro with violations of the Political Funds Control Act have decided to appeal the not guilty verdict (J).
It is not too surprising a decision. The trio have an incentive to prove that they were not the fools losing the case made them out to be. They surely received an extra jolt of energy from the trial judge's statements casting doubts on parts of Ozawa's testimony. While the judge's asides did not find Ozawa, as Ishihara Nobuteru put it yesterday, "99% jet black" (J) they did not allow Ozawa to proclaim hiself pure as the driven snow either.
Later - Guessing as to whether or not the prosecuting lawyers have sought to humiliate the Democratic Party of Japan by announcing their decision to retry Ozawa after the DPJ executive voted to reinstate his party privileges is something the reader should not take two seconds to ponder over. Of course, they did. Such abusive behavior is in line with the conduct of this trial and the trials against Ozawa's secretaries, which from the outset have been politics by the most thuggish of means.]
Now, where was I?
I am on the record as believing Ozawa Ichiro faces constraints on his behavior preventing him from becoming the ogre the mainstream and scandal press predict he will be, now that his shackles are being loosed. (E)
However, my assertions have been predicated on Ozawa's understanding that the Democratic Party of Japan is different from the Liberal Democratic Party. Underpinning such a vision is a belief that after winning the control of the Diet through emulating the pork-barrel promises that made the LDP such an unshakable part of the post-Occupation reality, the DPJ would then shift gears and return the decentralized authority, anti-subsidy, anti-protectionist, anti-pork barrel program that made the pary the darlings of the urban white collar consumer vote.
Intrinsic to such vision was a completely overhaul the disenfranchising House of Representatives single-member districts system. At present, 91 of the single-member districts have population greater than twice the population of the smallest district, Kochi #3. The disparity shook even the somnolent Supreme Court to rule last year that the current system is unconstitutional, violating the right of all citizens to equal protection of the law.
However, when Ozawa effectively came to power through the puppet regime of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, revising the electoral system was not the first item on his agenda -- which it should have been if the DPJ were to have any chance at retaining power in the next House of Representatives election. Instead, what Ozawa did, to the horror of many in the media, was to order all of the first-termers, many of whom had specialist knowledge and had entered politics in order to affect and implement policy, out of the government positions to which Prime Minister Hatoyama had appointed (nakedly and brazenly showing who was calling the shots inside the DPJ). Instead, he ordered those stripped of their government positions and all other first-termers to forget policy and concentrate instead on politicking inside their home districts -- which, when you think about it, only makes sense if the borders of the districts were not set to change.
It is true that at the time Ozawa was not under the gun of the Supreme Court, which was not to deliver its ruling for another year, long after Ozawa had been toppled from power over the Futenma climb-down and the revolt of the middle-ranking lifers of the DPJ. However, numerous lower-ranking decisions had found the existing House of Representatives districts unconstitutional. Also, while the DPJ had won control of the House of Representatives with a mixture of disgust for the LDP and borrowing some of the LDP's vote-buying strategies (an Ozawa innovation that transformed the DPJ from a losing urban-surburban party to a winning national party) -- it was clear that the DPJ could not pull those same two rabbits out the hat twice.
For the DPJ, the choice was either reform the system or die.
So as Ozawa is given his freedom, the question is whether during his time in suspension, did he learn what it means to be a member of the DPJ? Or has he remained adamant in his thinking that the way to run Japan is to accept the country as it is and work around the margins, even though that approach has brought him grief time and time again, whether it was in the LDP, the New Frontier Party, the Liberal Party and his time as the power behind Hatoyama's throne?
In terms of policy, the signs are not encouraging. His opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, given the disparate interests of its negotiating members, may just as well end up crashing of its own accord, reveals an unfortunate attachment to the rural vote as it is currently super-empowered.
Ozawa's unwillingness to play ball with the current party leadership over the imposition of a rise in the consumption tax, which is represents a tough, and yes, contractionary solution to a debt mountain not of the DPJ's making, paints a picture of him as a factional bully, throwing around the weight of the 100 or so members of the DPJ beholden to him, rather than as a party man.
Ozawa's defenders insist that whatever the methods employed, Ozawa's primary interest has been the seizing of policy from the bureaucracy and making it answerable to the voters. To be sure, on the surface, the government of Noda Yoshihiko seems to have relinquished whatever gains not only his party made but much of what the LDP's Koizumi Jun'ichiro wrenched from out of the hands of the bureaucrats. For this reason, an unleashed Ozawa immediately challenging the legitimacy of the current leadership group is not only inevitable but salutatory.
It would be a grave mistake, however, for Ozawa to take on the leadership of DPJ. He must meet with Noda, one-to-one, and see what Noda's real goals and strategies are.
I do not refer to Noda as The Impenetrable One out of laziness. Noda is almost perversely parsimonious with his actual thinking on any given issue, no matter how beautifully he may talk about every issue. You can read Noda's words in the newspaper or on the Web, or hearing speaking him out loud on television or in person. However, as to what he thinks, one draws a blank. He may have a silver tongue but he does not appear to be speaking his mind.
Does Ozawa have the humility to go to the Kantei for a meeting of minds? The outlook is admittedly not promising.
Note - this post has been edited for greater clarity and precision.
It is not too surprising a decision. The trio have an incentive to prove that they were not the fools losing the case made them out to be. They surely received an extra jolt of energy from the trial judge's statements casting doubts on parts of Ozawa's testimony. While the judge's asides did not find Ozawa, as Ishihara Nobuteru put it yesterday, "99% jet black" (J) they did not allow Ozawa to proclaim hiself pure as the driven snow either.
Later - Guessing as to whether or not the prosecuting lawyers have sought to humiliate the Democratic Party of Japan by announcing their decision to retry Ozawa after the DPJ executive voted to reinstate his party privileges is something the reader should not take two seconds to ponder over. Of course, they did. Such abusive behavior is in line with the conduct of this trial and the trials against Ozawa's secretaries, which from the outset have been politics by the most thuggish of means.]
Now, where was I?
I am on the record as believing Ozawa Ichiro faces constraints on his behavior preventing him from becoming the ogre the mainstream and scandal press predict he will be, now that his shackles are being loosed. (E)
However, my assertions have been predicated on Ozawa's understanding that the Democratic Party of Japan is different from the Liberal Democratic Party. Underpinning such a vision is a belief that after winning the control of the Diet through emulating the pork-barrel promises that made the LDP such an unshakable part of the post-Occupation reality, the DPJ would then shift gears and return the decentralized authority, anti-subsidy, anti-protectionist, anti-pork barrel program that made the pary the darlings of the urban white collar consumer vote.
Intrinsic to such vision was a completely overhaul the disenfranchising House of Representatives single-member districts system. At present, 91 of the single-member districts have population greater than twice the population of the smallest district, Kochi #3. The disparity shook even the somnolent Supreme Court to rule last year that the current system is unconstitutional, violating the right of all citizens to equal protection of the law.
However, when Ozawa effectively came to power through the puppet regime of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, revising the electoral system was not the first item on his agenda -- which it should have been if the DPJ were to have any chance at retaining power in the next House of Representatives election. Instead, what Ozawa did, to the horror of many in the media, was to order all of the first-termers, many of whom had specialist knowledge and had entered politics in order to affect and implement policy, out of the government positions to which Prime Minister Hatoyama had appointed (nakedly and brazenly showing who was calling the shots inside the DPJ). Instead, he ordered those stripped of their government positions and all other first-termers to forget policy and concentrate instead on politicking inside their home districts -- which, when you think about it, only makes sense if the borders of the districts were not set to change.
It is true that at the time Ozawa was not under the gun of the Supreme Court, which was not to deliver its ruling for another year, long after Ozawa had been toppled from power over the Futenma climb-down and the revolt of the middle-ranking lifers of the DPJ. However, numerous lower-ranking decisions had found the existing House of Representatives districts unconstitutional. Also, while the DPJ had won control of the House of Representatives with a mixture of disgust for the LDP and borrowing some of the LDP's vote-buying strategies (an Ozawa innovation that transformed the DPJ from a losing urban-surburban party to a winning national party) -- it was clear that the DPJ could not pull those same two rabbits out the hat twice.
For the DPJ, the choice was either reform the system or die.
So as Ozawa is given his freedom, the question is whether during his time in suspension, did he learn what it means to be a member of the DPJ? Or has he remained adamant in his thinking that the way to run Japan is to accept the country as it is and work around the margins, even though that approach has brought him grief time and time again, whether it was in the LDP, the New Frontier Party, the Liberal Party and his time as the power behind Hatoyama's throne?
In terms of policy, the signs are not encouraging. His opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, given the disparate interests of its negotiating members, may just as well end up crashing of its own accord, reveals an unfortunate attachment to the rural vote as it is currently super-empowered.
Ozawa's unwillingness to play ball with the current party leadership over the imposition of a rise in the consumption tax, which is represents a tough, and yes, contractionary solution to a debt mountain not of the DPJ's making, paints a picture of him as a factional bully, throwing around the weight of the 100 or so members of the DPJ beholden to him, rather than as a party man.
Ozawa's defenders insist that whatever the methods employed, Ozawa's primary interest has been the seizing of policy from the bureaucracy and making it answerable to the voters. To be sure, on the surface, the government of Noda Yoshihiko seems to have relinquished whatever gains not only his party made but much of what the LDP's Koizumi Jun'ichiro wrenched from out of the hands of the bureaucrats. For this reason, an unleashed Ozawa immediately challenging the legitimacy of the current leadership group is not only inevitable but salutatory.
It would be a grave mistake, however, for Ozawa to take on the leadership of DPJ. He must meet with Noda, one-to-one, and see what Noda's real goals and strategies are.
I do not refer to Noda as The Impenetrable One out of laziness. Noda is almost perversely parsimonious with his actual thinking on any given issue, no matter how beautifully he may talk about every issue. You can read Noda's words in the newspaper or on the Web, or hearing speaking him out loud on television or in person. However, as to what he thinks, one draws a blank. He may have a silver tongue but he does not appear to be speaking his mind.
Does Ozawa have the humility to go to the Kantei for a meeting of minds? The outlook is admittedly not promising.
Note - this post has been edited for greater clarity and precision.
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
The World's Most Skeptical Police Officers
A man in his thirties was found dead on a street in Shinagawa yesterday morning in front of a ten storey building. Given the presence of broken branches in the shrubbery about him and a witness reporting to have heard a "whomp" sound, police are assuming the man fell from out of the building. From the seventh floor to be precise, where there is an office of a sexual services establishment, of which the man was an employee. A search inside the office found bloodstains.
And "fell" possibly misrepresents the action. It seems the man was aided in his falling by five or six men, one of whom is the proprietor of the sexual services establishment.
Police are investigating, and I am not making this up, "the possibility that there might have been some kind of trouble in between those with ties to the sexual service establishment." (J)
If this were not a high-class establishment, I might be tempted to make a crack about the police not jumping to conclusions.
Seriously, these are the same folks who made Kono Yoshiyuki's life a living hell after he told them what to look for in the Matsumoto Sarin case?
Trying to keep your conviction rates up, are you?
Later - I guess I should not rail overmuch. I did, after all, proclaim this The Age of Innocence.
And "fell" possibly misrepresents the action. It seems the man was aided in his falling by five or six men, one of whom is the proprietor of the sexual services establishment.
Police are investigating, and I am not making this up, "the possibility that there might have been some kind of trouble in between those with ties to the sexual service establishment." (J)
If this were not a high-class establishment, I might be tempted to make a crack about the police not jumping to conclusions.
Seriously, these are the same folks who made Kono Yoshiyuki's life a living hell after he told them what to look for in the Matsumoto Sarin case?
Trying to keep your conviction rates up, are you?
Later - I guess I should not rail overmuch. I did, after all, proclaim this The Age of Innocence.
Monday, May 07, 2012
We're Not Gonna Take It
The Tokyo Shimbun has some of the most easy-to-parse editorial cartoons in the mediasphere of this blessed land.
However, May 5th's cartoon deserves a special exercise in exegesis.
The manga is the recreation of the teary retirement scenes from girls groups covered by the wide shows and sometimes even make the serious newscasts. The most prominent of these recent retirements was the "graduation" of Maeda Atsuko from the mega-group AKB48.
Here the girl's group name GNP54 -- the GNP standing for GeNPatsu, the contraction for genshiryokuhatsuden = nuclear power station (the cartoonist, after a suggestion from perhaps an exasperated editor, has an aside that GNP here does not mean "Gross National Product" as it normally would) and the 54 the number of nuclear power plants in this blessed land.
The ceremony here is the retirement of the GNP54's final member, Tomari Harako (there is a pun involving her personal name but I will try to keep this simple). Tomari notes the irony of her family name, which is a homophone of "where it stops." With a smile, however, she declares, "But I can be back!" -- which is met by rustling, scattered boos and expressions of surprise. Through her tears she shouts, "But, but with all your support, I can, all the other members can..." -- which rather than being greeted with cheering is met with silence. "Oh, so that's it..." she concludes, allowing the microphone to drop from her hand, the spotlight leaving her face and contracting into a fadeout.
What sets this editorial cartoon apart from any other we may have recently seen?
The Tokyo Shimbun put it dead center on its front page.
We're not gonna take it...
We're not gonna take it...*
Image courtesies: Tokyo Shimbun
However, May 5th's cartoon deserves a special exercise in exegesis.
The manga is the recreation of the teary retirement scenes from girls groups covered by the wide shows and sometimes even make the serious newscasts. The most prominent of these recent retirements was the "graduation" of Maeda Atsuko from the mega-group AKB48.
Here the girl's group name GNP54 -- the GNP standing for GeNPatsu, the contraction for genshiryokuhatsuden = nuclear power station (the cartoonist, after a suggestion from perhaps an exasperated editor, has an aside that GNP here does not mean "Gross National Product" as it normally would) and the 54 the number of nuclear power plants in this blessed land.
The ceremony here is the retirement of the GNP54's final member, Tomari Harako (there is a pun involving her personal name but I will try to keep this simple). Tomari notes the irony of her family name, which is a homophone of "where it stops." With a smile, however, she declares, "But I can be back!" -- which is met by rustling, scattered boos and expressions of surprise. Through her tears she shouts, "But, but with all your support, I can, all the other members can..." -- which rather than being greeted with cheering is met with silence. "Oh, so that's it..." she concludes, allowing the microphone to drop from her hand, the spotlight leaving her face and contracting into a fadeout.
What sets this editorial cartoon apart from any other we may have recently seen?
The Tokyo Shimbun put it dead center on its front page.
We're not gonna take it...
We're not gonna take it...*
Image courtesies: Tokyo Shimbun
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