I go away for two weeks and the country goes bonkers.
Item #1: Tokyo Governor Inose Naoki's loan
You are a man of utter probity and profound knowledge, who has just lost his wife and life partner. You have never run for public office in your life and you are suddenly up for the post of the most powerful local government official on Earth, for a city that thanks to you has just won the right to host an Olympics. You are going into the race without a political support group or even a single paid staff member. A shadowy right wing figure approaches you, takes you to a Kamakura hospital and introduces to a nearly totally paralyzed tycoon who asks you, "How are you doing financially?" You quibble. A week later, the man's son calls you in to his office, which is inside the House of Representatives building. He puts 50 million yen ($500,000) in cash on the table and says, "This is a loan. You do not have to pay me interest. You can repay me whenever you want. I only want to help you out. Just to make sure we are on the up-and-up, here is a note verifying the loan."
What does a stressed out, exhausted Inose Naoki do, especially when the loan will be entirely legal? (Link)
Item #2: Blogging The Official Secrets Bill
A bill declaring vast areas of what should be public knowledge "official secrets" and criminalizing investigative reporting and whistle-blowing skulks, unseen, through the halls of the Diet. Stealthily and silently, it lurches toward passage. Suddenly it is dragged out into the sunlight and stamped on the public consciousness by a blog post by actress and model heretofore known mostly for her sacré bleu poitrine. Suddenly, every editorialist and commentator has something to say about the bill, most of which are expressions of stunned disbelief at the bill's sweep and imprecision. To make matters all the weirder, the role of sherpa for the supposedly crucial, ground-breaking, nation-saving bill is given to the state minister for consumer affairs -- the most junior member of the Cabinet.
Despite the public outcry at the unnecessary severity and breadth of the bill, or perhaps because of the outcry, the government rushes the bill through committee, managing to lose, for the first time in recent memory, all the votes of one of the parties that had submitted the bill. A hell-bent rush to railroad the bill through the House of Councillors hits a granite wall, however, when Ishiba Shigeru the secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party, in, yep, a blog post, equates members of the public peacefully assembling and yelling out slogans against the bill to terrorism.
Way to give the despondent opposition to the bill a jolt of adrenaline, Mister "Now-you-know-why-my-Diet-colleagues-would-not-vote-me-head-of-the-LDP-even-though-I-won-the-majority-of-votes-in-the-first-round" -- and with only four days left in the extraordinary session for the House of Councillors to pass the bill! (Link)
To which I can only say, "Amaterasu bless the blog post, the salvation of this blessed land!"
Item #3: Kinshasha Embassy Burning
This morning we have gracing the news reports the incredible arrest of a Japanese diplomat for setting the fire that gutted the Embassy of Japan in Kinshasha. Given the severity of Japanese law as regards arson and the level of respect accorded the careerists of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this is one is going to be
1) the first act of what will be one heck of a legal circus
2) an opportunity for a very embarrassing public review of Gaimusho hiring policies.
(Link - J)
And I have not even begun to think about the implications of China's new air defense zone!
Happy December!
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Thursday, November 21, 2013
The Supreme Court's Decision On The December 2012 Elections
Shisaku is on hiatus while the author is conducting a fish survey. However the Supreme Court decision on the December 2012 House of Representatives election (Link) deserves some kind of comment.
One should probably be checking in with Andrea Ortolani for fine- grained analysis. However, it seems that in the aggregate the Supremes, in declaring the district elections "in a state of unconstitutionality" (iken jotai) with three justices ruling the elections "unconstitutional but not invalid", have worked out a least worst outcome. While a preservation of the dignity of the Court would seemingly have demanded a ruling that the December 2012 elections, carried out as they were in defiance of a Supreme Court order to change the electoral map, be slapped down at least as unconstitutional, if not unconstitutional and invalid (what the logical difference would be between those two possible rulings, I would not wish to ponder).
Ruling the 2012 elections unconstitutional would have created a juridical/legislative black hole, though. If the elections that elected the current crop of Diet members were unconstitutional, then the only legitimate Diet capable of reforming the districts would be the one that was turned out of office a year ago. Reassembling those members now, to vote on reform legislation, would itself be unconstitutional as the terms in office of those members, had they been served out in full, ended in August.
So the Supremes simply repeated themselves -- "this is wrong and you should fix it before you hold another election" -- a flash of a sword but not a real stab the contradictions inherent in the description of the relative powers of the judiciary and the legislature found in Articles 41 and 81 of the Constitution). The contradiction -- the Diet is the supreme organ but the Court is the ultimate decider of constitutionality versus unconstitutionality -- is not something the Supremes would necessarily want to resolve given that the 2012 elections did result in a transfer of power in between parties.
In a seemingly pointless but still significant snit of protest, the Court did pre-emptively strike down the current reformation of the electoral map, the so-called +0/-5 solution passed in the final days of the last Diet, as insufficient to fix the state of unconstitutionality. Fiddling at the margins -- dropping the five smallest districts and moving a few communities in and out of a few districts so that the maximum measured level of disparity is 1.99 -- is NOT what the Supremes want in terms of rectifying the disparities in between the districts. Since the population shifts since 2010, the time of the last census, have resulted the new, "reformed" districts again creeping past the 2.0 disparity standard, the Court had the opportunity to blast the +0/-5 fiddle -- and to the Court's credit, it did.
This aside leaves the door open for the Court to take action at a later date, if the Diet continues to shirk its obligation to renew the nation through more equal electoral district maps. By declaring the +0/-5 solution insufficient, the Supremes have put the Diet on the hook to fix the districts before the next election -- or else the Supremes could chose to really put their feet down.
The Supremes' ruling against the plaintiffs in this round of cases is a blow against those fighting for a rectification of the value of the votes of urban dwellers and the residents of rural constituencies. The Abe government and the current Liberal Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives can also breathe easier -- their elections to power being, if not exactly validated, at least insulated against major challenge.
The Asahi Shimbun is bummed at the setback (Link - J) but it should not be -- the legislative fight against electoral district disparity must continue.
Later - The Yomiuri Shimbun offers a government-supportive English-language edit (Link) and the Mainichi Shimbun a more neutral English-language edit (Link) of the story.
One should probably be checking in with Andrea Ortolani for fine- grained analysis. However, it seems that in the aggregate the Supremes, in declaring the district elections "in a state of unconstitutionality" (iken jotai) with three justices ruling the elections "unconstitutional but not invalid", have worked out a least worst outcome. While a preservation of the dignity of the Court would seemingly have demanded a ruling that the December 2012 elections, carried out as they were in defiance of a Supreme Court order to change the electoral map, be slapped down at least as unconstitutional, if not unconstitutional and invalid (what the logical difference would be between those two possible rulings, I would not wish to ponder).
Ruling the 2012 elections unconstitutional would have created a juridical/legislative black hole, though. If the elections that elected the current crop of Diet members were unconstitutional, then the only legitimate Diet capable of reforming the districts would be the one that was turned out of office a year ago. Reassembling those members now, to vote on reform legislation, would itself be unconstitutional as the terms in office of those members, had they been served out in full, ended in August.
So the Supremes simply repeated themselves -- "this is wrong and you should fix it before you hold another election" -- a flash of a sword but not a real stab the contradictions inherent in the description of the relative powers of the judiciary and the legislature found in Articles 41 and 81 of the Constitution). The contradiction -- the Diet is the supreme organ but the Court is the ultimate decider of constitutionality versus unconstitutionality -- is not something the Supremes would necessarily want to resolve given that the 2012 elections did result in a transfer of power in between parties.
In a seemingly pointless but still significant snit of protest, the Court did pre-emptively strike down the current reformation of the electoral map, the so-called +0/-5 solution passed in the final days of the last Diet, as insufficient to fix the state of unconstitutionality. Fiddling at the margins -- dropping the five smallest districts and moving a few communities in and out of a few districts so that the maximum measured level of disparity is 1.99 -- is NOT what the Supremes want in terms of rectifying the disparities in between the districts. Since the population shifts since 2010, the time of the last census, have resulted the new, "reformed" districts again creeping past the 2.0 disparity standard, the Court had the opportunity to blast the +0/-5 fiddle -- and to the Court's credit, it did.
This aside leaves the door open for the Court to take action at a later date, if the Diet continues to shirk its obligation to renew the nation through more equal electoral district maps. By declaring the +0/-5 solution insufficient, the Supremes have put the Diet on the hook to fix the districts before the next election -- or else the Supremes could chose to really put their feet down.
The Supremes' ruling against the plaintiffs in this round of cases is a blow against those fighting for a rectification of the value of the votes of urban dwellers and the residents of rural constituencies. The Abe government and the current Liberal Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives can also breathe easier -- their elections to power being, if not exactly validated, at least insulated against major challenge.
The Asahi Shimbun is bummed at the setback (Link - J) but it should not be -- the legislative fight against electoral district disparity must continue.
Later - The Yomiuri Shimbun offers a government-supportive English-language edit (Link) and the Mainichi Shimbun a more neutral English-language edit (Link) of the story.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Noble And Obvious And China Will Still Go Bananas About It
According to news reports, the Abe government has decided to dispatch a force of up to 1,000 Self Defense Forces personnel to the Philippines to help in the rescue and recovery effort in the aftermath of 2013 Typhoon #30 --- a.k.a, Typhoon Haiyan, a.k.a. Typhoon Yolanda. For those who have been looking at the photographs and video footage of the disaster zones and thinking, "Isn't this humanitarian catastrophe exactly what the Japanese government and the SDF have been arguing the Osumi and the other helicopter carriers were built to handle?" you are vindicated -- the dispatch includes the Osumi, the Ise and the oiler Towada. (Link - J)
As for the Chinese response to the projected presence of 1,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors either on the ground in Leyte or on ships carrying out operations inside the territorial waters of the Philippines -- well, one can imagine that the military-security folks in Beijing must be rather busy this morning -- for all the wrong reasons, one might add.
Later - An earlier version of this post contained the extraordinary number of 10,000 SDF in the Philippines. Whether that was a bleary-eyed misread or an actual reading of a later corrected report, I cannot say.
Apologies for the confusion.
Later still - Arrghhh! Corrected the wrong place in the above. The current government plan involved 1,000 SDF. 1,000.
As you were.
And even later - Many thanks to reader "Brodie" who alerted me to the mistaken correction. Caught it I did before I read his email...but all corrections are always welcome ("And needed" - Editor).
And yet later still - As for the obvious question, "Why is it that the MSDF helicopter carriers have not already departed for the Philippines?" one can only guess that without their blessed Security Council to gather up their attention and focus it, neither the Prime Minister, the Chief Cabinet Minister nor the Defense Minister could possibly have the mental discipline to make the connection in between the likelihood of desperate need and the dispatch of relief ships.
Thankful should we be that the Liberal Democratic Party, the experienced, proactive, outward-looking party committed to wrenching Japan out of its passivity in order to transform it into a greater force for global good, is back in power.
Or so we have been told, so many times...
As for the Chinese response to the projected presence of 1,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors either on the ground in Leyte or on ships carrying out operations inside the territorial waters of the Philippines -- well, one can imagine that the military-security folks in Beijing must be rather busy this morning -- for all the wrong reasons, one might add.
Later - An earlier version of this post contained the extraordinary number of 10,000 SDF in the Philippines. Whether that was a bleary-eyed misread or an actual reading of a later corrected report, I cannot say.
Apologies for the confusion.
Later still - Arrghhh! Corrected the wrong place in the above. The current government plan involved 1,000 SDF. 1,000.
As you were.
And even later - Many thanks to reader "Brodie" who alerted me to the mistaken correction. Caught it I did before I read his email...but all corrections are always welcome ("And needed" - Editor).
And yet later still - As for the obvious question, "Why is it that the MSDF helicopter carriers have not already departed for the Philippines?" one can only guess that without their blessed Security Council to gather up their attention and focus it, neither the Prime Minister, the Chief Cabinet Minister nor the Defense Minister could possibly have the mental discipline to make the connection in between the likelihood of desperate need and the dispatch of relief ships.
Thankful should we be that the Liberal Democratic Party, the experienced, proactive, outward-looking party committed to wrenching Japan out of its passivity in order to transform it into a greater force for global good, is back in power.
Or so we have been told, so many times...
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
For The Dissemination of Maritime Thinking
There was a major frisson in the foreign financial press earlier in this Diet session over the submission of a bill legalizing casino gambling in Japan (Link). The excitement received a boost this past week as real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan announced a tie up with Fuji Media and construction giant Kajima for an Odaiba casino, pending passage of the legislation, which seemingly has been delayed. (Link)
It is understandable that the financial press would get all hopped up about these recent moves. Gambling is to finance what pornography is to art (and as we know a lot more folks take in pornography than take in art). As for putting a casino in Tokyo, those Orientals -- and once they have a passport and a plane ticket, they are all the same aren't they? -- they love their gambling, correct?
Stop.
Stop. Right. Now.
Sure 100 members of the Diet are either going to the casino legalization meetings or sending their representatives. Sure, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is listed as an honorary chairman of the Diet group wanting to legalize casino gambling.
However, before betting the farm on moves purporting to lead to the construction and operation of casinos in Japan, think: you have billions of yen spend but can only spend it if the law is changed. With that as the initial condition, having 100 Diet members beating a path to your door represents a lousy turnout -- especially since you have hired local agents who are essentially giving away what is essentially free money. And think further: if you were a politician, and you wanted to maximize the amount of money you could extract from the wallets of an industry when there was zero chance of there being a political payoff, would you not want to have the prime minister as the headliner of your scheme?
And if that is not enough to hammer home how thoroughly the international gambling conglomerates are being played, read the first half of Tom Gill's recently published study of power boat gambling, the rationalization of which is the source of the peculiar title of this post (Link). Then take a walk around any Japanese city, looking for all the little plaques explaining how this or that public convenience was payed for by which form of what is ostensibly an illegal activity.
If the gambling moguls think they can go up against the horses, the boats, the bicycles, the motorcycles, pachinko, pachislot and the National Lottery, and the hundreds of thousands employed in these at best parasitic, at worst carnivorous, service providers, and the local governments who either profit from or do not want to talk about their ties to gambling that go back 60 years -- and if the gambling moguls think that by hiring lobbyists they are going to win a change in the Penal Code so that they compete against the deeply mendacious and yet deeply enracinated domestic providers of gambling opportunities, coming in as outsiders, on the further assumption that the National Police Agency will just let the casino operators jet in nouveau riche Chinese with their Singapore accounts filled with the cash siphoned off from their company's pension funds, the Triads and Chinese security services on their tails -- then the international gambling moguls deserve to have their pockets picked by the world's least competent pickpockets -- and I can tell you from experience, there is nothing sadder and less terrifying than a Tokyo pickpocket.
Then again, since I hate gambling in all its forms (I will, as a gentleman, wager the cost of a lunch on a political outcome--but then I wanted to have lunch with the person anyway) seeing Japanese politicians and Japanese lobbyists playing upon the hopes and narcissism of those whose ill-gained fortunes are derived from the playing upon the hopes and narcissism of others makes me smile.
Welcome to Japan.
Later - Sorry for all the typos. Got a little bit hot and bothered, it seems.
It is understandable that the financial press would get all hopped up about these recent moves. Gambling is to finance what pornography is to art (and as we know a lot more folks take in pornography than take in art). As for putting a casino in Tokyo, those Orientals -- and once they have a passport and a plane ticket, they are all the same aren't they? -- they love their gambling, correct?
Stop.
Stop. Right. Now.
Sure 100 members of the Diet are either going to the casino legalization meetings or sending their representatives. Sure, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is listed as an honorary chairman of the Diet group wanting to legalize casino gambling.
However, before betting the farm on moves purporting to lead to the construction and operation of casinos in Japan, think: you have billions of yen spend but can only spend it if the law is changed. With that as the initial condition, having 100 Diet members beating a path to your door represents a lousy turnout -- especially since you have hired local agents who are essentially giving away what is essentially free money. And think further: if you were a politician, and you wanted to maximize the amount of money you could extract from the wallets of an industry when there was zero chance of there being a political payoff, would you not want to have the prime minister as the headliner of your scheme?
And if that is not enough to hammer home how thoroughly the international gambling conglomerates are being played, read the first half of Tom Gill's recently published study of power boat gambling, the rationalization of which is the source of the peculiar title of this post (Link). Then take a walk around any Japanese city, looking for all the little plaques explaining how this or that public convenience was payed for by which form of what is ostensibly an illegal activity.
If the gambling moguls think they can go up against the horses, the boats, the bicycles, the motorcycles, pachinko, pachislot and the National Lottery, and the hundreds of thousands employed in these at best parasitic, at worst carnivorous, service providers, and the local governments who either profit from or do not want to talk about their ties to gambling that go back 60 years -- and if the gambling moguls think that by hiring lobbyists they are going to win a change in the Penal Code so that they compete against the deeply mendacious and yet deeply enracinated domestic providers of gambling opportunities, coming in as outsiders, on the further assumption that the National Police Agency will just let the casino operators jet in nouveau riche Chinese with their Singapore accounts filled with the cash siphoned off from their company's pension funds, the Triads and Chinese security services on their tails -- then the international gambling moguls deserve to have their pockets picked by the world's least competent pickpockets -- and I can tell you from experience, there is nothing sadder and less terrifying than a Tokyo pickpocket.
Then again, since I hate gambling in all its forms (I will, as a gentleman, wager the cost of a lunch on a political outcome--but then I wanted to have lunch with the person anyway) seeing Japanese politicians and Japanese lobbyists playing upon the hopes and narcissism of those whose ill-gained fortunes are derived from the playing upon the hopes and narcissism of others makes me smile.
Welcome to Japan.
Later - Sorry for all the typos. Got a little bit hot and bothered, it seems.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Are We Of His World Or Merely On It?
This is my world
and I am
World Leader Pretend.
- REM, "World Leader Pretend" (1988)
What does Kasai Yoshiyuki want?
- A leveraged buyout of the management of his homeland, installing a chief executive with significant self-worth issues? Check.
- A fantasy vanity maglev project through the heart of his country, with hostage shareholders and ultimately the taxpayers footing the bill? Check.
- The militarization of Japan's space policy? Check.
- U.S. high speed rail policy muddled by sales of advanced railway technology? Check.
- Japan-U.K. strategic relations muddled by sales of advanced railway technology? A work in progress.
- The United States, Japan and India forged into a politico-economic strategic iron triangle? A work in progress.
- A more strongly pro-government and pro-nuclear NHK? Check.
- The use of influence over the prime minister and the cash generated by the Shinkansen in a zero sum game of influence intent on countering China in every corner of the globe, no matter how remote? Check.
The above is just what's available after only a few minutes diddling around in English.
It is probably best to familiarize yourself with Kasai Yoshiyuki's world*. Because if your life is in some way linked to Japan, you already live in it.
--------------------
* Go ahead, Google him. In various combinations: "Yoshiyuki Kasai Shinzo Abe" "Yoshiyuki Kasai China" "Yoshiyuki Kasai India" "Yoshiyuki Kasai space" "Yoshiyuki Kasai
The Asahi Shimbun Embarrasses Itself Again
A few posts ago I showed disrespect toward the The Asahi Shimbun as regards the Yamamoto Taro letter affair. Alone among the major newspapers it had not released an editorial about the incident at the Emperor's autumn garden party, despite the intense and divisive constitutional issues involved. "[I]t is all so below them, I guess," I snarked.
Well, ten days after the incident, the editors of The Asahi Shimbun finally checked in -- with an editorial written from such an Olympian perspective that reading it gives us poor commoners a crick in the neck. (Link)
I will stop calling The Asahi Shimbun a political eunuch with absurd pretentions of being Japan's The New York Times when its editors get their duffs off their clouds and start tossing around some mud like the rest of us.
Want to be dispassionate? Fine. Want to be neutral? Don't. It's too close to neutered.
Well, ten days after the incident, the editors of The Asahi Shimbun finally checked in -- with an editorial written from such an Olympian perspective that reading it gives us poor commoners a crick in the neck. (Link)
I will stop calling The Asahi Shimbun a political eunuch with absurd pretentions of being Japan's The New York Times when its editors get their duffs off their clouds and start tossing around some mud like the rest of us.
Want to be dispassionate? Fine. Want to be neutral? Don't. It's too close to neutered.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Abe Names His NHK Governors - A Postscript
As it turns quite everyone is willing to let Abe Shinzo's choices for governors of national broadcaster NHK go unremarked:
Both quotes are from the Tokyo Shimbun of 9 November 2013, p.6
"He seem to wants to have people who more closely adhere to his vision of the national polity (kokkazo). Prime Minister Abe is the first prime minister in history to so baldly interject [his vision] into the public broadcaster. I feel so sorry (ki no doku) for the viewers."
-- Kawasaki Yasushi, Professor, Sugiyama Jogakuen University, a former reporter for NHK
"We can see in this [set of governors] a posture of not including differing views...As the board of governors of NHK has broad authority, it is best that they have a higher regards of the viewers paying the annual fee..."
-- Hattori Takaaki, Professor of Media Law, Rikkyo University
Both quotes are from the Tokyo Shimbun of 9 November 2013, p.6
Driving Mr. Abe
Is it just me, or is Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, strapped into the passenger seat, a wan smile on his face, riding circles around the Diet, with no one's hands visibly on the steering wheel, the most complete metaphor for the Abe II administration imaginable?
Photo image courtesy: Mainichi Shimbun
Later - A straight take on the story behind the photo.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
The Wonderful Language
I was unlocking the bicycle in front of the local bakery (a very decent brown bread is available there at a very reasonable price) when one member of a quartet of navy uniform-clad male middle school students opined, in my direction, "Explain."
In English.
I stood up.
"'Explain'...'explain'..." he went on, as he was not, as it turned out, talking to me. "I know the word but I don't know what it means."
"Setsumei suru," intoned his three classmates, in unison.
"Right, right...but what is that other 'ex' word...the one meaning 'subarashii?'" he asked, semi-rhetorically.
"'Excellent'," responded his classmates, in unison again.
"'Excellent'...'explain'...I am hopeless in English. I will never get the hang of it," the boy concluded.
To which one of his classmates, in a staccato noun modifier straight out of Mark Twain, declared:
"Behold the (unfit-for-life-as-a-member-of-international-society-and-thus-without-any options-but-to-spend-the-full-length-of-his-days-within-the-confines-of-the-boundaries-of-Japan) idiot (bakamono)."
"Wow," I said to myself, "Not only would that that kid have tickled Twain*...but his take on the basic education requirements for anyone ascribing to global survival sure sounds like someone who has been reading his Robert Dujarric."
The above all happened on Thursday night. Based upon Robert Dujarric's most recent op-ed, published on Friday, M. Dujarric must have been listening in, telepathically.
-------------
* "Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent German novel -- which a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader -- though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can:
"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife met" etc., etc. 1.
1) Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehüllten jetzt sehr ungenirt nach der neusten Mode gekleideten Regierungsräthin begegnet.
That is from The Old Mamselle's Secret, by Mrs. Marlitt. And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in a German newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at all."
In English.
I stood up.
"'Explain'...'explain'..." he went on, as he was not, as it turned out, talking to me. "I know the word but I don't know what it means."
"Setsumei suru," intoned his three classmates, in unison.
"Right, right...but what is that other 'ex' word...the one meaning 'subarashii?'" he asked, semi-rhetorically.
"'Excellent'," responded his classmates, in unison again.
"'Excellent'...'explain'...I am hopeless in English. I will never get the hang of it," the boy concluded.
To which one of his classmates, in a staccato noun modifier straight out of Mark Twain, declared:
"Behold the (unfit-for-life-as-a-member-of-international-society-and-thus-without-any options-but-to-spend-the-full-length-of-his-days-within-the-confines-of-the-boundaries-of-Japan) idiot (bakamono)."
"Wow," I said to myself, "Not only would that that kid have tickled Twain*...but his take on the basic education requirements for anyone ascribing to global survival sure sounds like someone who has been reading his Robert Dujarric."
The above all happened on Thursday night. Based upon Robert Dujarric's most recent op-ed, published on Friday, M. Dujarric must have been listening in, telepathically.
-------------
* "Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent German novel -- which a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader -- though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can:
"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife met" etc., etc. 1.
1) Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehüllten jetzt sehr ungenirt nach der neusten Mode gekleideten Regierungsräthin begegnet.
That is from The Old Mamselle's Secret, by Mrs. Marlitt. And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in a German newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at all."
-- Mark Twain, "The Awful German Language" (1880)
Saturday, November 09, 2013
Abe Names His NHK Governors And No One Says Anything
The insurgency beganWow, is the below ever bad news for the folks working at NHK -- and great news for the commercial terrestrial networks.
And you missed it...
- REM, "Begin the Begin" (1986)
Diet approves NHK governor nomineesFirst off, and the article alludes to this but does not spell this out, the capacity to nominate and approve any official they want was the one power outside the grasp of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and his people prior to the House of Councillors election. The two thirds majority of the House of Representatives the ruling coalition won in December last year gave Abe and Co. the power to override any decision by the House of Councillors -- every decision that is, except a no vote on an appointed position.
Jiji Press
The Diet on Friday confirmed the government-chosen nominees for leadership posts, including NHK governors, at public organizations.
The House of Representatives approved the 29 nominees for 12 organizations by a majority vote at an afternoon plenary meeting, following a similar decision in the morning by the House of Councillors.
This marked the first Diet approval of public organization leadership nominees selected by the government since the Liberal Democratic Party's victory in the upper house election in July ended years of a divided legislature.
The Diet approved the appointment of five nominees for NHK governorships. Of them, author Naoki Hyakuta, former Saitama University Prof. Michiko Hasegawa, Japan Tobacco Inc. adviser Katsuhiko Honda and Naomasa Nakajima, principal of the Kaiyo Academy secondary school, will be newly appointed, while Kyushu Railway Co. Chairman Susumu Ishihara will be reappointed.
All four new appointees have close relations with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which has triggered speculation that Abe wants to increase his influence over the appointment of NHK's next president by sending the four. Current NHK President Masayuki Matsumoto's term ends in January, and his successor will be appointed by the board of governors.
Hyakuta and Abe grew particularly close following a magazine interview. Hasegawa, a conservative thinker, is a strong supporter of the prime minister, while Honda was Abe's tutor in his elementary school days.
Nakajima's school was established with support from Central Japan Railway Co., whose chairman, Yoshiyuki Kasai, advises the prime minister...
(Link)
Now that the coalition holds a majority of seats in the House of Councillors, any appointment at which the New Komeito can shrug its collective shoulders is now a done deal.
Second, to say that the highlighted quartet of new NHK governors are bad news is an understatement.
- The magazine for which the interview was conducted that brought Hyakuta and Abe together? The embarrassing revisionist hothouse WiLL (Link).
- Reactionary polemical professor Hasegawa? Author of such barn burners as What Is This Thing Called Democracy?" (Demokurashii to wa nan na no ka) which draws a direct line between the spread of democracy and the carnage of World War I and Our Truly Terrifying Constitution (Honto ni osoroshii nippon kempo) which argues that the three pillars of the 1947 Constitution - people's sovereignty, human rights and pacifism -- inevitably lead to revolution, the death of monarchs, the guillotine, terror and Japan's dismemberment.
A sort of well-groomed Japanese Glenn Beck-style world view is hers, it seems.
- As for Honda, what more needs to be said? He was Prime Minister Abe's katei kyoshi ("home tutor") when Abe was a boy (to be fair, member of the House of Representations Hirasawa Katsuei also did a stint as an Abe katei kyoshi). All fine and dandy until one realizes that the prime minister attended a second-class private escalator school, where advancement from one grade to the next and one division to the next was automatic. The PM indeed attended the same school from kindergarten to graduation from college -- meaning that the only entrance exam hell he ever faced was when he was all of four years old.
What need did he ever have of a tutor, then?
[For the record, after tutoring Abe, Honda became a lifetime employee at Japan Tobacco, rising through the ranks. He became president of the company in 2000.]
- What the heck is it with Kasai, whom we have discussed before? How is it that a chairman of a private railway company controls so many appointments at NHK, the national broadcaster? Matsumoto, whom Kasai now reportedly wants forced out, is a former Central Japan Railways executive and a former protegé. Kasai arranged to have him appointed president during the Democratic Party of Japan's time in power. Now with Abe we have the appointment of Nakajima, the principal of a school bankrolled by Kasai's company, to the board of governors.
In the name of all that is decent, what is going on here?
Now that the NHK appointments have received Diet approval, editorial independence and critical reporting might find senior management support wanting for a while.
Oh well, there will always be the great nature documentaries and the pedagogical programming of ETere, NHK's education channel.
Later - The Mainichi Shimbun gingerly editorializes against the new members of the board of governors. (Link)
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