Taking The Cake

Normally I do venture into Japan is weird territory, basically because YouTube amply documents that the United States is the home of the world's weirdest everything.

Nevertheless, this bit of culinary effluvia permits me to take a detour from my general rule.
I stopped by a cake stand this last Sunday. Many flavors were on sale but I felt this one really needed trying.

As the label indicates, the flavor of this particular cake is "Ink Made of Ashes of Bamboo" -- hence the black color.

What did it taste like? Decidedly like cake with a hint of bamboo ashes or some kind of ashes in it.

To be sure, there are pasta al nìvuro di sìccia and pidan, so the wish to make black that which is normally white or golden is trans-global.

However, the ink of bamboo ashes cake will not be one of my favorites. If anything, I expected it to have a richer, smokier flavor.

It Is That Time Of Year Again, Again

For a few more days...

There are a hundred songs about sakura, maybe more. I am currently enamored of AKB48's "Sakura no shiori" (Link). As with nearly all AKB48 videos, the linked video has a long preamble and the imagery, as always, is tailor-made for nympholeptics. However, the singing is beautiful and the music and arrangement completely unlike anything else by the group.

Incidentally, the visit by elements of AKB48 to the U.S.A. for the 100th anniversary of Washington's receiving cherry trees from Japan was something of a public relations disaster for this blessed land, not that one would read about it in the mainstream press. Somehow the young ladies, dressed as they were in their performance outfits, did not come across as the most inspiring of ambassadors for Japan, cool or not. Indeed, they seemed to have reinforced prejudices that this blessed land infantilizes women and treats them as sex objects, and is a naive about the scourge of child pornography.

Whatever could have created that impression? Oh, right (68,736,148 views at last count).

Photo by: MTC

For Those Who Don't Have The Time

To dig or an awareness of just how much is being made available on-line regarding Japan's security environment, the latest edition of Tiago Mauricio's East Asian Security & Defence Digest is out. (Link)

Saying "Yes" To North Korea

ミサイルを
オモチャに駄々っ子
おねだりし

misairu o
omocha ni dadakko
onedari shi

The missile
A spoiled child pleads for it
As though for a toy

- Tomie Haruo
a resident of Setagaya-ku
printed in the Tokyo Shimbun of 2012.03.24

Now that the government of the DPRK has blown the lid off the secrecy surrounding its planned rocket launch, in the biggest way possible (J), the onus is now on the international community -- or at least the members of the international community that thought they had boxed in the DPRK on the matter of testing ballistic missile technology under the guise of a satellite launch -- to figure out how to respond. By letting the non-DPRK media visit the launch site and see a mock up of the supposed satellite, the calls to shoot down the rocket have become absurd (E).

Japanese preparations for a missile intercept of a launch or separation failure, however, are not absurd. There is real danger inherent in the rocket launch. Unless it is a copy of the North Korean designs successfully launched by the Iranians, the launch in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birth will be a test flight. Engineers and scientists have not been allowed their own opinions as to the soundness of the rocket's design nor of the necessary minimum conditions under which the rocket can be launched. They have, of course, a strong incentive to have the rocket perform as planned as their livelihoods or indeed their lives will be at stake. However, the final decision to launch is a political, not a scientific, decision.

The rocket launch has two technical objectives: putting a satellite into earth orbit and having the booster rockets fall within the announced splashdown zones. The chances that an untested design will meet these objectives is unacceptably low, by international standards. Paradoxically, much of the uncertainty regarding the safety of the launch is due to the international community’s ban on North Korean testing of ballistic missile technology – although the North Koreans have had an outlet in having Iranians and Pakistan run test flights of what are basically North Korean designs. It is not clear, however, what indigenous refinements of the basic North Korean design have been shared by the Iranians and the Pakistanis with their original supplier.

Something can and most likely will go wrong. America and its allies have guffawed at previous North Korean failures but such schadenfraude is misplaced and puerile. While North Korean designers have likely learned a great deal from previous failures, they have had far too few failures – because they have been allowed no tests – to learn enough to make sure that this upcoming launch, this incredibly important political event, goes off as planned.

By letting the press view the rocket, however, the North Koreans may have committed a major tactical blunder. The North Korean government invited eight countries and governments to send observers to its satellite launch (E). The Japanese government, the American government, the European Space Agency and even the Russian government (E) have all turned down the invitations on the principle that accepting these invitations would be giving tacit approval of what has been portrayed as U.N. Security Council-prohibited test of ballistic missile technology. The North Korean government indeed issued these invitations on the assumption they would be rejected.

The press event at the launch site, however, allows the Japanese government, other governments and the ESA an opportunity to rescind their refusals, and ask politely to have observers at the launch.

Such a request would put the DPRK in a quandary. The government propaganda department will announce the reversals of the decisions of the previously reluctant countries and the ESA as a coup. Of course, the propaganda department is in the business of transforming everything into a coup, redefining death from starvation, for example, as a triumph of self-determination.

For the DPRK's generals and the coterie surrounding Kim Jong-un, having foreigners, most likely select, knowledgeable analysts, on site will put an unmanageable amount pressure on the launch to be a success. The launch is unstoppable; it has become an event too important to regime survival for any international intervention to countermand (E). With foreign observers, some from hostile powers, on site means the damn thing will have to work. Otherwise the primary goal of justifying the existing regime will be damaged, possibly fatally. A failure in the initial boost phase or at the separation of the primary and secondary boosters could indeed serve as a pretext for Kim Jong-un to launch a purge of the generals surrounding him on the grounds the launch failure ruined his grandpa's birthday party.

If the launch goes forward without a hitch, the observing nations suffer no loss of face. Indeed they have a vested interest in backing down from the appearance of holding bellicose intentions toward the rocket launch. The DPRK has put forward a strong case that the launch is its right under international law guaranteeing open access to peaceful uses of space. If it succeeds in placing the satellite in orbit, which is a big if, it cannot crow that other nations failed to bring the rocket down as they intended. It can crow that the mission's success has left the world dumbfounded -- but the propaganda crew intended to do that anyway, no matter if the rocket put a satellite into orbit or took a quick dive into the East China Sea.

So undo the overhasty announcements of cutoffs of nutritional aid or further negotiations regarding the DPRK's nuclear programs, send observers, wish the DPRK well on the flight -- and have the SM-3s and PAC-3's ready to respond if it becomes clear the rocket is off course and threatening Japan, South Korea or even China.

That the North Koreans are devious buggers who slipped this launch in after a unilateral declaration on a breakthrough on the resumption of nutritional assistance from the United States (E) should have been a surprise to no one. Making a big deal of the North Koreans being duplicitous was a terrible move -- for if after 18 years of negotiating with the DPRK's representatives the DPRK specialists have not learned the art of shrugging their shoulders when the DPRK subsequently acts in way undermining the spirit, if not always the letter, of an agreement, then they are really, really, really stupid. Especially since in this instance the duplicity is so mild, nothing nearly as flat out dangerous nuts as, let us say, setting off a nuclear device or building another nuclear facility for a client like the Syrians.

So let the DPRK have its fireworks display for its big centenary celebration. Adopt the pretense of enjoying it. Put the onus on the DPRK's rocketeers to not mess up. For heads will roll, big-hatted ones, if they blow it.


Later - Many thanks to reader NP, who is French, for correcting my German.

In Memory of Fang Lizhi

Chinese atrophysist and dissident inspiration Fang Lizhi has died (E), in exile, as free-thinking Chinese seemingly must.

The newspaper obituaries note that Fang and his wife hid in the U.S. Embassy for 13 months following the nationwide crackdown on dissidents, connected or not to the Tien An Men protests. What they fail to clarify by saying "hid" meant that at the time their whereabouts were completely unknown.

I once attended one of a pair of lectures given by Fang at my university. The morning lecture had been for his fellow scientists, on his research into mathematically possible universes. The afternoon lecture was about the situation in contemporary China. During the lecture he talked about Tien An Men and his and his wife's disappearance, during which many around the world thought he had been imprisoned or even killed.

He impishly pointed out that even while in hiding he continued to publish his research in scientific journals, somewhat undermining theories that he was dead. "And it was not really a secret where I was," he continued, as he showed a slide of a blow up of the "about the author" section that appears on the first page of a scientific paper.

There at the bottom, as clear as clear could be, was "Dr. Fang can be contacted at the U.S. Embassy, Beijing..."

Redefining Normal For Japan

Thwack!

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

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

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

Questions

- Should it be worrying me that a recent major source of traffic to Shisaku is a website called americanwhohateobamadotcom? Or that two of the top search phrases leading to Shisaku yesterday were "world's easiest job" and "how to betray your best friend"?

- Why does Technorati every few months cut hundreds of authority points from Shisaku, sending it hurtling back down in its "World politics" rankings? Is it because of posts like this one?

- Does Ozawa Ichiro ever say, "You know, I am going to take responsibility for this" about anything?

So The Budget Passes. Now What?

Since Sunday the government of this blessed land has been operating without a budget, an embarrassing state of affairs which happens from time to time (the last time was 14 years ago). For reasons that escape me for the moment, the Democratic Party of Japan's floor leaders managed to demonstrate an alarming inability to count backwards 30 days from April 1, alarming in that it is both simple to do and also reminiscent of the inability of the floor leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan to count backwards 60 days during that party's final years in power.

With the budget bill set to become law today thanks to the 30 day rule written into Article 60 of the Constitution (seemingly the only article of the Constitution that is worth a damn), the opposition-dominated House of Councillors, ever ready to prove itself more than just a place to take a good nap, roused itself yesterday to vote the budget down. This triggered the rigmarole of the formation of a joint committee of both Houses which, amazingly, after long minutes of hard bargaining, found itself in an irreconcilable deadlock on the bill, meaning that the budget bill automatically became law.

On the surface, the 2012 budget is smaller than the 2011 budget, the first year-on-year nominal drop in six years. Add on all the special accounting for the recovery and reconstruction efforts resulting from the triple disaster of 3/11, however, and the budget is the largest ever. (J)

Just getting the budget passed is not much to write home about. The hurdle is the budget enabling legislation (yosan kanren hoan), primarily the approval of the issuance of bonds to pay for the items in the budget. With all the attention that has been focused on the bill raising the consumption tax, which is the sexier story due to the internecine battle it has spawned inside the DPJ, the Diet fight over the enabling legislation has been ignored.

However, passage of the enabling legislation is the real make-or-break fight for the Noda government. Last year Prime Minister Kan Naoto, in a fantastic bit of legerdemain, forced the LDP and the New Komeito to vote for the enabling legislation by threatening that if they did not, he would not resign as prime minister*. Prime Minister Noda, who has no intention of resigning, will have to find his own lever for prying a "Yes" vote from out of the hands of the LDP and the New Komeito.

One of the strategies proposed is keeping the Diet in extended session until the opposition parties just give up. I am not sure how the incentives are supposed to work here, unless the plan is to freak out Tanigaki Sadakazu over his trying to win reelection as LDP President whilst leading his party in a do nothing strike in the Diet, obstreperous behavior that will earn the LDP a serious lashing by the mainstream press (all except by the Nippon Terebi network, which has proven to be even more pro-LDP than its owner the Yomiuri Shimbun). The Diet session is going to be extended anyway due to the number of controversial bills the government has submitted for Diet approval (J). In terms of atmospherics, it will be difficult to disentangle which part of the extension is being carried out in order to complete Diet business and which is meant to drive the opposition parties nuts.

Working out a quid pro quo between the ruling coalition** and the opposition parties would be an option, if this blessed land's political classes could consider Houses of the Diet being controlled by different parties a natural state of affairs. However, the political classes are united in considering such a division unnatural, calling it a "twisted Diet" (nejire kokkai). The quid that the opposition parties want the ruling coalition to pro quo is a dissolution of the Diet in return for a yes vote on the enabling legislation and the bill raising the consumption tax. Since the DPJ is neither suicidal (assuming recent poll numbers are correct, the party would be demolished were elections held this summer) nor unaware that the current Diet district seat apportionment system is unconstitutional, the LDP and the New Komeito are making offers that the DPJ can do nothing but refuse.

So the stage is set for a lengthy stalemate.

Whatever the supercomputers of the Japan Meteorological Agency may be predicting, it is going to be a hot, hot summer.

-------------------------

* The essay is "Kan Won" in Reconstructing 3/11: Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown - how Japan's future depends on its understanding of the 2011 triple disaster available from Amazon.com. (Link)

** Yesterday, Shimoji Mikio, the erstwhile secretary-general of the possibly still extant People's New Party ostensibly fired his superior, Kamei Shizuka, replacing him with Financial Services Minister Jimi Shozaburo (J). Kamei, as one can imagine, does not accept his being fired by his subordinate. At present we seem to have two PNPs: one composed of Kamei and his distant relative, the other of the six MPs who say that the PNP has not withdrawn from the ruling coalition.


Later - Critical minds think in parallel: today's Tokyo Shimbun has a lead editorial on the above subject. (J)

The Tokyo Shimbun's editors seem to be of the opinion that it is worthwhile to remind the legislators that ultimately it is the citizens who will be deciding their political futures. Somehow this reality, of which the legislators have heretofore been seemingly been ignorant, will entice them into turning away from their petty, immediate obsessions and instead stir them to provide leadership for the country.

While the editors are at it, they might as well wish for ponies for everyone as well.

Shintaro Goes To See Toru

Before Tokyo Metropolitan District Governor Ishihara Shintaro was a politician, he was a renowned author. Yesterday he showed his literary chops by managing to squeeze three lies into a three sentence response of 10 words total.

「何も話すことはない。密談。そのうち話す。」

"Nani mo hanasu koto wa nai. Mitsudan. Sono uchi hanasu."

"I have nothing to say. This was a secret meeting. I will talk about it after a certain period of time."

Lie #1: "I have nothing to say."

Oh come on, Ishihara-san, you have something to say about everything. Indeed, one of the reasons some folks despise you is you cannot stop talking about subjects in which you have not the least expertise.

Lie #2: "This was a secret meeting."

Every single news organization had its reporters camped out in front of the Prince Hotel where you had the meeting. "Secret" cannot be used to describe the environment. The only thing that was secret about it was the departure of both principals via secondary exits in a vain attempt to avoid the reporters. (J)

Lie #3: "I will talk about it after a certain period of time."

Let us assume that Lie #2 was true, that yesterday's meeting was a private, secret, clandestine one. Then why in Amaterasu's name would you be promising to reveal the contents of what was discussed at a not-so-distant future time?

Whatever one might say about Ishihara, he is a genius at concision.

The meeting in question was the first between Ishihara and Osaka City mayor and Ishin no kai leader Hashimoto Toru since Hashimoto made a splashy courtesy call on Ishihara during a visit to Tokyo last December. (J)

Just what was discussed between the non-mainstream conservative leaders of Japan's two greatest conurbations during the 1 1/2 hour working lunch is not known. Informed guesses are that Ishihara sounded out Hashimoto regarding the plan Ishihara has to form a new "true conservative" party putting up candidates for the next House of Representatives election. Since Hashimoto has opened a training school for candidates with thousands of initial students, many presumably from the areas where Ishihara would try to have his candidates running, one can guess that Hashimoto's reaction to the Ishihara plan was muted. Hashimoto's enthusiasm would be further curbed by the fact that the politicians associated with the moves toward toward forming a "true conservative" party are Ishihara, Hiranuma Takeo and Kamei Shizuka -- all three of whom are the creakiest and crankiest of political dinosaurs.

Hashimoto's advice, blunt speaker that he is, was probably, "Ishihara-san, give it up now, before you embarrass yourself."

It is hard to know whether or not to read anything in the fact that it was Ishihara, the governor of the world's richest metropolis, visiting Hashimoto, the regional mayor. Perhaps it was Ishihara just returning the favor of Hashimoto's visiting him last year at the offices of the TMD. If so, why the secrecy? Ishihara was on a visit to Kyoto but made time in his schedule for a fast trip to Osaka for the meeting.

Whatever it was the two discussed, it was too important to be handled in a mere phone call, seemingly.

Anyway, Ishihara's extracurricular activities just reinforces my point of the other day.

It Was A Drag When You Left; It Was A Drag When You Were Here

With the flameouts and censures last fall of Defense Minister Ishikawa Tatsuo and Consumer Affairs Minister Yamaoka Kenji, the two close confidants of Ozawa Ichiro in the Cabinet, the cabinet of Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko became essentially Ozawa-influence free. In order to fill the holes in the cabinet ranks he appointed Tanaka Naoki, a weak Ozawa ally (and a defense ignoramus) as his new minister of defense and the incompetent Hirano Hirofumi, former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio's right hand man, as his minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology -- the latter choice seemingly an attempt to drive a wedge between the underrepresented Ozawa and his ally/puppet Hatoyama.

However, as a part of his promise to be a "no sides" leader of the ruling party – i.e., willing to appoint members of all the Democratic Party of Japan's various sub-groups to positions in the government and the party, the sub-cabinet level senior vice-ministerial and parliamentary vice-ministerial posts were filled chock-a-block with Ozawa loyalists.

So it was not terribly surprising that in what may have been meant as a symbolic action on Friday night, four Ozawa loyalists offered their letters of resignation from their government posts, this after the Cabinet approved the bill raising the consumption tax to 10%. Nor was it terribly surprising that 29 Ozawa loyalists offered their letters of resignation from their party posts over the weekend.

Today, Prime Minister Noda, after indicating he would ask the four sub-cabinet officials to withdraw their resignations, brought the resignation letters to the Cabinet, which promptly accepted them. (J)

One reason given for this change of heart is the demand, made by the Liberal Democratic Party yesterday (before, during or after the storm?) that the party status of Financial Services Minister Jimi Shozaburo and the four Ozawa loyalists be clarified before the LDP would acknowledge the government’s representatives sent to Diet committee meetings. (J)

While the complaints of the main opposition party might play a part in the Prime Minister Noda's calculations, his following through on the acceptance of the resignation of the four is only a means to pretend to follow the LDP's lead when he is indeed acting out of his own self-interest. One cannot avoid the impression that LDP leaders have transformed themselves into the Sideshow Bobs of this process, barking complete nonsense from the sidelines. As for Noda, he asked his least credible interlocutor, Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu, to make the calls asking for the four Friday night walkouts to come back.

Accepting the resignation of the four sub-cabinet officials sends two messages. One is to the 29 DPJ MPs who have tendered their resignations from their party posts. The message reads, "Don't believe what the papers say. You're next."

The other message is to Ozawa Ichiro himself. It most likely reads something like, "If you, of your own volition, want to rid the DPJ of your influence by having your people resign from their government and party positions, be my guest. Oh, and by the way, if you have been reading the papers, you may have noticed that the LDP and the New Komeito have targeted your friend Tanaka for a censure motion (E). Considering how much he has done for me and my reputation, please do not expect me to fight too hard on his behalf."