Please Everyone Just Calm Down

On March 5, in anticipation of the United Nations Security Council approving a new round of economic sanctions on the already sanction-blessed Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Korean People's Army released a statement on its plans for meeting the UN's challenge.

Since the Korea Central News Agency presents information in a fashion that does not allow linking, I present the KPA statement here in all its superheated glory:

On Dec. 12 last year the DPRK legitimately and successfully launched a satellite for peaceful purposes, ensuring international transparency, going beyond practice, and choosing a comparatively mild situation for it.

Seizing the DPRK's satellite launch as an occasion for stifling it from the outset, the U.S. and its allies deliberately negated the DPRK's sovereignty over its satellite launch. They finally prodded the UN Security Council into adopting a "resolution on sanctions" before opting for high-handed hostile acts against the DPRK.

These hostile acts are still going on.

Under this situation the DPRK was compelled to take practical counteractions to defend the security and sovereignty of the country. On Feb. 12 it admirably and successfully conducted the third underground nuclear test for self-defence at the highest level as part of those counteractions.

However, the U.S. imperialists and their allied forces including south Korea are making more persistent and desperate efforts to slap new tougher "sanctions" against the DPRK, far from drawing a due lesson.

Not content with this, they kicked off again the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint military exercises to stifle the DPRK by force of arms by mobilizing huge armed forces of aggression. They will reportedly last for two months from March 1.

Unlike last year the current joint military exercises will be participated in by super-large nuclear-powered carrier task force carrying at least 100 nuclear warheads, B-52H strategic bombers and other means of the U.S. imperialist aggression forces for making ground, sea and air nuclear strikes and its allied forces including south Korea, U.K. and Australia.

From this point of view, the exercises cannot be construed otherwise than the most dangerous nuclear war maneuvers targeted against the DPRK and the most undisguised military provocation to be made by a group of all hues of hostile forces.

This serious situation clearly indicates that the actions of the U.S., south Korea and other hostile forces to infringe upon the sovereignty of the DPRK are now leading to a military offensive for aggression, going beyond the level of outrageous economic "sanctions."

In view of the prevailing situation, the Supreme Command of the KPA which is responsible for the national defence and security of the country and the destiny of the nation sent a meaningful warning message to the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces through the KPA Panmunjom mission on February 23. It warned them that if they ignite a war of aggression in the end, from that moment their fate will be hung by a thread with every hour.

But, the joint military exercises have persisted and the U.S. and the south Korean puppet forces have become all the more undisguised in their base moves to kick up their "sanctions."

Looking back on history, the Korean people have neither shot even a single arrow nor thrown a single stone at the land of the U.S.
The U.S. is, however, working with bloodshot eyes to swallow up the DPRK, not content with having incurred the pent-up grudge of the Korean people which can never be settled.

What matters is that the south Korean puppet forces steeped in worship and sycophancy toward the U.S. are dancing to its tune.
Of late Kim Kwan Jin, puppet minister of Defense, and Jong Sung Jo, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, inspected frontline army corps, fleet command and guided missile units where they blustered that a sort of military provocation is expected from the north and cried out for making "deadly strikes" and "preemptive strikes" at the "bases for provocations."

As far as these guys are concerned, they are a group of traitors who pushed the inter-Korean relations to a collapse together with traitor Lee Myung Bak who knows nothing about politics and military affairs. They are military gangsters who go reckless, unaware of what their master U.S. has in mind, what is the intention of the neighbouring countries and what all fellow countrymen and nation desire.
The puppet authorities, too, are crying out for the dismantlement of nukes and halt to provocation as dictated by their master, without knowing what is precious wealth for the nation. They move like a robot and repeat anything like a parrot.

The sovereignty and dignity of the nation are violated and the supreme interests of the country are seriously threatened by the U.S., the sworn enemy of the Korean people, and maniacs of confrontation with fellow countrymen grouping worst traitors. The army and people of the DPRK can never remain a passive onlooker to this fact.

The spokesman for the KPA Supreme Command is authorized to declare the following important measures:

First, it will take the second and third strong practical counteractions in succession to cope with the high-
handed war acts of the U.S. and all other hostile forces as it had already declared.

The army and people of the DPRK never make an empty talk.

It is the mettle of Songun Korea to do what it is determined to do.

It won victories in the two wars and has advanced along the road of victory despite manifold difficulties.

The army groups on the front, ground forces, the navy, air and anti-air units, strategic rocket units of the KPA, the Worker-Peasant Red Guards and the Young Red Guards have launched an all-out action according to the operational plan finally signed by the dear respected Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un.

Now that the U.S. imperialists seek to attack the DPRK even with nuclear weapons, it will counter them with diversified precision nuclear strike means of Korean style.

Those means are bound to be launched once their buttons are pressed, and the enemies' strongholds be turned into a sea in flames.
This land is neither the Balkans nor Iraq and Libya.

The army and people of the DPRK have everything including lighter and smaller nukes unlike what they had in the past.
Second, the KPA Supreme Command will make the Korean Armistice Agreement totally nullified.

The war maneuvers being staged by the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppet forces are a vivid expression of their systematic violation of the AA.

Accordingly, the Supreme Command of the KPA will completely declare invalid the AA, which has existed for form's sake from March 11, the day when the war maneuvers will enter into a full-dress stage.

The DPRK will make a strike of justice at any target anytime as it pleases without limit, not bound to the AA, and achieve the great cause of the country's reunification, the cherished desire of the nation.

Third, the KPA Supreme Command will totally stop the activities of the Panmunjom mission of the KPA which was tentatively established and operated by it as a negotiating body for establishing a peace-keeping mechanism on the Korean Peninsula.

In this regard it will simultaneously make a decision to cut off the Panmunjom DPRK-U.S. military telephone.

Our choice has become clear now that the moves of all hostile forces to encroach upon the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK are reaching a dangerous phase.

It is the unshakable stand of the army and people of the DPRK and the mode of counteraction of Mt. Paektu style to counter enemies coming in attack with a dagger with a sword, a rifle with an artillery piece and nukes with precision nuclear strike means of Korean style more powerful than them.

The U.S. imperialists and their allies should not forget even a moment that they are standing at the crossroads of their life and death.

A final victory is in store for the army and people of the DPRK who are all out to protect its sovereignty.

The issuance of this statement has led to demands from U.S. (Link), South Korean (Link) and Japanese (Link - J) quarters for a more severe international response.

Question: is there anything so terribly striking, new or frightening about the March 5 statement and its follow up statements?

Here are some of the purportedly torrid lines from the statement and my take on them:

"First, it will take the second and third strong practical counteractions in succession to cope with the high-handed war acts of the U.S. and all other hostile forces as it had already declared."

This seems to be a declaration of at least two more tests will take place that the UN will not like, either of long-range rockets or nuclear devices, sometime in the current calendar year.

"The army and people of the DPRK never make an empty talk."

This is an admission that the Kim regime and KPA have a credibility problem. If they did not have a habit of indulging in empty talk, they would be so determined to explain the seriousness of their threats.

"Now that the U.S. imperialists seek to attack the DPRK even with nuclear weapons, it will counter them with diversified precision nuclear strike means of Korean style."

This seems to only reconfirming that the DPRK rocket and nuclear weapons development programs will not be abandoned or delayed, as "precision nuclear strike means of Korean style" seems to be DPRK-talk for a nuclear weapon-bearing intercontinental ballistic missile.

"This land is neither the Balkans nor Iraq and Libya."

The Kim Dynasty and the KPA have learned lessons from those conflicts and will use all means possible in an attempt to thwart regime change. Duh.

"The army and people of the DPRK have everything including lighter and smaller nukes unlike what they had in the past."

When the KPA is claiming to have these smaller nuclear warheads one should probably assume it in fact does not have them. It would, however, make sense to for the KPA to claim greater capabilities when it is trying to influence the contents of sanctions resolutions.

"Second, the KPA Supreme Command will make the Korean Armistice Agreement totally nullified.

The war maneuvers being staged by the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppet forces are a vivid expression of their systematic violation of the AA.

Accordingly, the Supreme Command of the KPA will completely declare invalid the AA, which has existed for form's sake from March 11, the day when the war maneuvers will enter into a full-dress stage.

The DPRK will make a strike of justice at any target anytime as it pleases without limit, not bound to the AA, and achieve the great cause of the country's reunification, the cherished desire of the nation."

This could be a threat warning of an imminent incident.

It might just as just likely be an admission that the leadership itself does not know when the next violation of the Armistice Agreement will take place. By announcing a violation in advance it can take credit for whatever unapproved incident that occurs (note to local commanders: you will not get the credit for your show of initiative).

"It is the unshakable stand of the army and people of the DPRK and the mode of counteraction of Mt. Paektu style to counter enemies coming in attack with a dagger with a sword, a rifle with an artillery piece and nukes with precision nuclear strike means of Korean style more powerful than them."

From the list of comparatives, one can assume that, as noted before, a "precision nuclear strike means of Korean style" is the current operating euphemism for a nuclear-tipped ICBM.

OK, so the Kim regime and the KPA are angry at the world for being angry at them for their pursuit of a credible nuclear threat that they can then wave at the United States.

Considering that the DPRK's guarantor of extended deterrence is China, can one blame the members of the DPRK ruling regime for pursuing an independent deterrent? Given the weakness of the Chinese nuclear response guarantee, is not the current pace of the DPRK's nuclear and rocketry development programs rather desultory?

(Poverty promotes lassitude, folks.)

As for the the DPRK, running as it is looking over its shoulder at the dust broom of history, let us be real: right now is a lousy time to be an anti-capitalist, anti-American dictator -- and an even worse time to be the anti-capitalist, anti-american dictator's default candy store.

El Commandante has just checked out. The Colonel met death in a culvert; the Al-Tikrit Gang have met the rope. Assad Family Syria (the only one of North Korea's customers to shell out for a nuclear reactor) is teetering on the brink. Myanmar seems to have lost the tyranny script entirely.

Authoritarianism and lawlessness both look like they are in for the long haul. Dictatorship...looks ever so 20th century.

With its twin to the south going from strength to strength and its best customers going belly up, can we just keep calm at DPRK Incorporated's desperate releases of implausible declarations that

a) things are going great, and

b) they are only getting better?

Of late, we have been hearing a lot from the Eastern Seaboard of the United States about Japan and China having a need to cool it over the Senkakus. (Link)

Sound advice.

Can those keeping a careful eye on the pathetic, dysfunctional irritant that is North Korea "cool it" too?

Question Of The Day - On Unconstitutional Diets

If, as the Tokyo High Court found yesterday (Link) and as the Sapporo High Court found today (Link - J) the December 16, 2012 House of Representatives election was unconstitutional, can the representatives seated by said unconstitutional election vote on an amendment to the Constitution?　

The two court rulings so far have kept the House of Representatives in place, foreswearing a nullification of the election results. The argument is that that even though the current House of Representatives was elected in an unconstitutional election, the previous legitimate House of Representatives had, before its dissolution, voted on a plan (the so-called +0/-5 plan submitted by the Liberal Democratic Party) that will after the election commission submits a new electoral map and that map is ratified by the present unconsitutinally elected Diet, make the next House of Representatives election constitutional.

So, in theory, Japan may have a four year interregnum, featuring a fully empowered government without a constitutional basis for its existence. Or, depending on one's views of what constitutes unconstitutionality, may never have a constitutional government again.

Making the struggle over whether or not to amend the Constitution moot, it would seem.

For those who may be despairing of Japanese court decisions ever making any sense, both the Tokyo High Court and the Sapporo High Court have ruled that now that the December 2012 elections have been held, the said elections have moved from "the state of being unconstitutional" (iken jotai) that they were in in March 2011 to being unconstitutional (iken) today.

Whew! At least that is settled.

At least 16 more lower courts decisions to be handed down by March 27. After that, the Supremes will get their shot at making sense of this mess.

Madame Ambassador?

Over at Foreign Policy Coco Masters take a look at the possible impact of the muted mooted appointment of Caroline Kennedy as Ambassador to Japan (Link). While there are few sentences in the article that will likely send the Japan Keyboard Defense Corps swinging into action, Masters takes the intellectual step few journalists writing in English on Japan take: acknowledging that improving the social position of Japanese women is not merely a matter of increasing access to economic opportunity:

Public attitudes in Japan are arguably going backward, however. A poll conducted by the Japanese government last December shows that 51 percent of respondents think women should be stay-at-home mothers. That figure is up 10 percent since 2009 -- with the increase most notable among people in their 20s. Kathy Matsui, chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs and longtime proponent of "womenomics," has said that encouraging the participation of women in the workforce should be a national priority. "It should be up there with solving the fiscal deficit. It should be up there with how to improve Japan's national competitiveness.… It's staring you in the face -- it's half the population."

While the appointment of Kennedy would send an unfortunate message in terms of the acceptability of dynastic rule of democratic states, having a woman in the top spot in Tokyo's diplomatic corps would be a definite plus. I try to imagine a meeting between the new ambassador and Finance Minister Aso Taro -- and see in my mind's eye his struggling over which of his personae to put on display -- the faux-serious policy man, the swinging dandy, the arch grandee -- and I smile.

Though it sounds trite -- and potentially insulting to the women of the country -- having a Madame U.S. ambassador could indeed have a positive effect on expectations and attitudes. The United States government and Ms. Kennedy would have to be willing to jaw-jaw about their ambassador's book publishing, her astute marshalling of her political influence and her having had to shoulder the huge responsibility of managing the legacies her parents left her.

On a more human note, the appointment of a child of the most glittering of all the White Houses to the position of ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary for the world's most powerful nation would mean Crown Princess Masako would finally have someone in Tokyo of sufficient rank and status to talk to as a friend.

Catalinac On Increased Security Awareness

Australia National University's Amy Catalinac has posted an interesting essay to the East Asia Forum. In "Not made in China: Japan’s home-grown national security obsession," Catalinac argues that the increasing prominence of security issues as an organizing principle among Japanese politicians is due to the changes in the incentives politicians have had toward accepting or rejecting a party's official line. She finds that the replacement of medium-sized multiple member districts, where different factions of the Liberal Democratic Party slugged it out against each other for the majority of seats, with single member districts, shifted the goal posts for politicians, particularly those of the now once again superdominant LDP. Under the post-electoral reform regime, politicians are rewarded for their adherence to and advocacy of elements of the party’s policy platform, not the rewarding of particular constituents with pork-barrel projects.

Castilanac's assertion contradicts the conventional explanation that an increasing security consciousness is the result of an increasingly threatening local environment. It seems to provide a solution to one of the puzzles of Japanese politics: if security issues so important, and Japan is more and more threatened each day, why are security discussions hijacked by intellectual dead ends like the abductee problem or the history textbooks screening problem? (Link)

I like a lot of what Catalinac is saying. I am particularly heartened that someone shares my conviction that a rightward shift in Japanese public opinion exists mostly in the imaginations of foreign commentators, particularly Chinese and South Korean ones, whose motivations and assumptions are suspect.

I do have concerns regarding the evidence undergirding Catalinac's hypothesis. As outlined in the paper she released last fall in advance of her book-length study (Link) she has been using the texts of the election manifestos of individual candidates as her basic data set.

The biggest problem with relying on the elections manifestos, aside from the obvious one of few voters reading the darn things -- a problem that Catalinac acknowledges -- is that the target audiences for the documents have shifted. Whereas in the past the manifestos were written for party faithful to read in order to confirm whether a given candidate has the interests of his or her sworn supporters in mind, the manifestos are now being written either to 1) for party officials to peruse in order to check on levels of loyalty to the party or 2) for the floating voter read in order to help overcome his/her natural ambivalence and inertia.

My take has been that politicians adopt security stance complete with the irrationality of many of those stances (for example, the pledge to “solve the abductee problem,” without any reference as to what a solution would look like) because of the limits of creativity in political narrative. Politicians seek to tell stories about themselves in comprehensible shorthands and code words, temporarily stimulating visceral reactions among a sufficiently large number of largely disinterested voters. The parties provide a glossary of effective terminology and slogans, which identify the winning issues politicians can address with the least effort for all those involved.

Catalinac's insistence one can find a strong increase of interest in security issues starting only in 1996 will likely rub some writers the wrong way. Indeed, the standard view is that no dramatic shift exists – that

a) Japan has always been a conservative country and

b) there has always been a freewheeling security discussion, with conservatives, reactionaries and revisionists having the loudest voices

I have always felt uncomfortable with (a) as national survey results have not been generally support of the assertion of an inherently conservative mindset.

As for (b), I have always felt there is a difference between the intellectual battles going on in the weeklies and monthlies and the commonly available set of choices most of the public consumes and cogitates upon. For any given point in time, past or present, one is likely to find more variation of intellectual positions inside the pages of Chuo Koron than existed out on the street.

Gray Matters

Academics is not polemics with glasses on.

- ersatz quotation (2013)

I warned him. (Link)

He became incensed. (Link)

Now the subject of the conversation is in limbo. (Link)

"Comfort Women, Military Prostitution and Human Trafficking" was not a bad study. It was not any kind of study at all.

My guess: this is going to become a rather interesting intellectual contretemps.

In his writing, the author of the now dangling article did get one thing right: I am pompous.

Kind of can't give it up either. Probably should. Can't.

Hat tip to reader Toyotsu for the link.

The Morning Urgh

NHK News has become all but unwatchable in the few months since the smashing victory of Abe Shinzo’s Liberal Democratic Party in the December 16, 2012 elections. The abrupt surrenders to the unwritten rules of the broadcaster’s new masters:

- the simultaneous and unexplained shift to the use of the voiced consonant in the name of the country

- the disappearance of on air political analysis by journalists from the seijibu

- the dutiful and clipped reporting of every governmental panel meeting

- the explosion in the number and length of human interest and traditional culture segments

- the shift in the underlying theme of Tohoku disaster segments from reports of abandonment to tales of perseverance

are reminders of how quickly changes in habits come, when timidity is an institutional virtue.

Not all is depressing. The return of Abe Shinzo & Company has sharpened Mino Monta’s teeth. Three years of not having the LDP to lambaste must have been corrosively dull for the TBS morning show ring master.

Nice it is to have private ownership of media conglomerates, when the national broadcaster rolls over and offers up its throat to the wolf with the red roses.

More On China's Air

Over at the Council on Foreign Relations website, Huang Yangzhong adds some numbers and context to the developing issue of PM 2.5 air pollution, a topic of a recent post.

And what numbers!

Last Thursday morning, readings near Tiananmen Square measured the concentration of PM2.5—fine particles in the air that are smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter and are considered dangerous because they tend to penetrate the gas exchange regions of the lungs—at 469 micrograms per cubic meter, which corresponds to a U.S. EPA Air Quality Index reading of 479 (the scale stops at 500). Anything above 301 is considered “hazardous” in that it can cause “serious aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly,” and there is a “serious risk of respiratory effects in general population.” The PM2.5 levels in other famously polluted cities pale in comparison to those in Beijing; for instance, the highest PM2.5 level in a 24-period recorded in Los Angeles was 43 micrograms per cubic meter.

The poor air quality, according to a leading Chinese public health expert, is worse than SARS because nobody can escape it. Research suggests that air pollution can raise the risk of cardio-respiratory death by 2 to 3 percent for every increase of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of pollutants. Only 1 percent of China’s 560 million urban residents breathe air considered safe by European Union, according to a 2007 World Bank study. A report released by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection in November 2010 showed that about one-third of 113 cities failed to meet national air standards.The 2012 Cancer Registry Annual Report revealed that lung cancer is top among all types of cancer in terms of the number of cases and deaths in China. Indeed, the number of lung cancer-caused mortality in China has increased by 465 percent in the past three decades. In Beijing, the number of lung cancer patients has increased by 60 percent in the last ten years. The rising incidence rate of lung cancer coincides with drastic reduction in the incidence rates of stomach cancer and cervical cancer, which is thought to be a result of improvements in public health standards.

(Link)

I am not sure I fully agree with Huang's conclusion:

Since the regime’s legitimacy hinges upon delivering robust economic growth, governments at all levels continue to pursue growth at the expense of environment. We are going to see more NPC delegates pushing for better environmental protection measures, but don’t expect any fundamental change until the government has shifted to a new legitimacy base and restructured the state-society relationship to allow for more effective participation of civil society groups in the public policy process.

If members of the Chinese Communist Party view the delivery of rapid economic growth as the make or break point, fine. However, the Chinese state has a few more cards -- unified rule of the traditional empire, brute force -- to play in maintaining order. As for institutional blocks to handling the air pollution problem, a Japanese government shift toward addressing Japan's serious pollution problems did not require a shift away from either the delivery of rapid economic growth or the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan.

Furthermore, rapid economic growth never ever falls off the legitimacy table. The failure of Japan's growth engine delegitimized the Liberal Democratic Party and national bureaucracy in the 1990s. A promise of a return to rapid economic growth is the basis for the Abe Cabinet's current popularity.

The failure to address the control of air pollution is a failure of the Chinese Communist Party' imagination. Perhaps, as Martin J. Frid suggests in a comment to my earlier post, the CCP is just being lazy.

In Memoriam

It was on Thursday last week that I learned of the death of William Sakovich, a.k.a. Ampontan. The Saga-based polemicist died in December last year after only the briefest of hospitalizations.

Sakovich was a savage critic of both Japanese and non-Japanese media portrayals of political figures, political parties and the government. His long (very long) critiques of mistakes and prevailing tropes had a wide and devoted readership.

He and I saw eye-to-eye on no known topic. Everything I defended he loathed and vice versa.

Nevertheless it is hard to think I will never meet him in person.

His blog is still up. While his unforgiving political writings attracted readers while he was alive, my guess is that his idiosyncratic treasury of information on festivals (Link) will be his living monument.

Sakovich doubted much, but firmly believed in a bright future for Japan-South Korea relations. From his perch out in westernmost Japan, he saw more evidence of person-to-person exchange and warm feelings than those of us who make our homes in the country's East do.

With his passing, the circle of persons writing regularly on the daily affairs of this blessed land grows ever smaller.


Later - I look around finds Mr. Sakovich's death was reported on Japan Probe. I suppose this indicates I am now consecrating zero seconds per week to the online Japan uniqueness community.

Present At The Dawn

Serendipity is one of those damn words that is too pretentious for common usage. One wishes there were a simple, anglo-saxon word for running across a glory by merest or even the most perverse chance.

There was no reason for me to turn left off of Route 133 and walk down Bashamichi yesterday afternoon in Yokohama. First of all, I was not even supposed to be in Yokohama yesterday.

Yet I did make the turn and was walking down the bricked street, enjoying the time outdoors as much as my antihistimine-suppressed sugi-pollen hay fever allowed...when I saw a knot of serious looking policemen with a portable street barrier down a street to my left.

If I had not stopped to to look at whatever the heck those policemen were doing, I would not have noticed the final setting up of amplifiers and microphones for a free concert in front of Kannai Hall (whatever it was the policeman were doing had nothing to do with the concert, as it turned out).

Had my plans for the day not been in utter disarray, I would not have stopped to listen.

And I would have missed a free public set by the greatest acoustic guitarist no one has ever heard of.

Matsui Yuki creates music that defies the limitations of his instrument (Bent bell tones?). That he managed to make a mistake in his last piece was reassuring, not upsetting.

If you have 4 minutes and 35 seconds to spare today, try clicking on "Friend" on Matsui's homepage (Link). Not only is the recording unprettified (this is the song the way Matsui played it yesterday on the cold, wind-swept Bashamichi) but he has bagful of these compositions to loose upon the world.

More Thoughts On Government, Services And Markets

Many thanks to the persons who have contributed to the child daycare debate, both here and on Gen Kanai’s Facebook page. It has allowed me to sharpen my arguments and have a better understanding of the issue.

So why the fascination?

I) because of the disconnect it reveals between the discussion about Japan and the situation in Japan

One of the presumed keys to a society's success or failure seems to be how a society treats its women members (I say presumed because there are societies such as China where measures of equality between men and women reportedly have declined even as society has undergone a positive economic and social transformation). In terms of participation rates in positions of power and authority (Link - for example), Japan finds itself down among the developing countries.

So how to improve women's participation representation in positions of power?

The answer, both in the domestic and international (Link) arenas has been "greater access to childcare."

The problem is that when one looks at access to child daycare in Japan, the situation is far from dire. In terms of the quality of public daycare, and, outside the very largest cities and Okinawa, access to public daycare, Japan is on a par with some of the best countries in Europe.

How then to explain the absence of women from positions of power? And why the dumping on Japan in an area where, in international comparisons, it stacks up rather well?

B) because of the hints it gives on other relationships between citizens and the government

Japan in the next few decades faces an explosion in the number of its citizens requiring eldercare and shelter in rest homes. The government has no choice but to provide guidance and funding for investment into eldercare, as the free market is unlikely to a) respond quickly enough to projected increases in demand and b) find a socially acceptable equilibrium between availability, quality and cost.

How then is the government to allocate resources in carrying out this project, where Japan has no models to follow because it in the vanguard, the leader because it has the most aged society on the planet?

It turns out that the Japanese government has been running a pilot project for the coming eldercare explosion – its child daycare program.

And it turns out the answer to "how much investment is enough" is damn difficult to pin down.

When the government improves access to low cost, high-quality services, demand for those services increases. Called the "woodwork effect" because increases in supply bring increases in demand, seemingly from out of nowhere -- it indicates that whatever governments do, the best that they hope for is a mildly upset, rather than rabidly upset, citizenry.

The crisis in the provision of childcare, where the number of children on waiting lists stubbornly refuses to come down even as 1) the total number of children has fallen dramatically and 2) the number of daycare spaces made available sets a new record every year, indicates that the coming eldercare crisis is going to be one where all reason is abandoned. If 25,000 children on waiting lists to get into daycare is a national calamity, suppressing Japan's international competitiveness, what will millions of seniors on waiting lists to get into care facilities be portrayed as? How will image and reality be distorted then, to what political or economic ends?