Steve Miller of Asia News Weekly caught up with me the other day, allowing me to talk almost coherently about the Budget Speech, the supposed positive inflation/growth cycle and its discontents, constitutional reform and the 2016 House of Councillors election.
Here is the link:
Is China a bully, can Abe complete his reforms, will democracy return to Thailand and More
For the streaming audio click the orange arrow. One can also download the podcast MP3 via the provided link. Mine is the exasperated voice at the beginning of the podcast, with the main body of the conversation starting at the 4:30 mark.
Showing posts with label Constitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Constitution. Show all posts
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
How Prime Minister Abe Shinzo Lost On Sunday
I brought this on myself...
Yesterday we all got a chance to see something we have not seen for a long time: a sober, somber and scared Abe Shinzo. He stumbled through his press conference, repeating himself, at one point launching his favorite overly poetic crutch phrase tsu-tsu-ura-ura ("in every harbor; in every inlet" -- the Japanese equivalent of "from sea to shining sea") twice in the space of 70 seconds. When a reporter from the Abe-hostile Tokyo Shimbun started out the Q&A with two simple questions about voter turnout and the schedule for the compilation of next year's budget (the latter being delayed due to the dissolution of the Diet and the election), Abe first feigned being flustered at being asked "so many questions" (Two is "so many"?) ignored them both, repeated the contents of his opening statement, and stared blankly, pretending he had answered either one.
Had Abe been facing a room of real reporters rather than the powder puff tossers of the Sankei Shinbun, Fuji Television and NHK, we might today be talking about Abe Shinzo's press conference meltdown. As it is, the video, available on the LDP's YouTube channel, features a far-from-impressive performance by the PM. (Link - YouTube video J)
This is the guy whose party won 291 out of 475 seats in Sunday's election, with his ruling coalition retained its supermajority in the House of Representatives at 326 seats? Whose main opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan only gained 11 seats during the middle of a terrible recession, and whose leader lost his district race so badly he could not return to the Diet via the proportional list zombie route?
Yes.
The LDP won on Sunday. The Komeito won on Sunday.
Abe Shinzo lost.
How is this possible?
Missed Expectations -
When a corporation fails to hit the consensus earnings-per-share, its stock price tumbles. The company might post really great numbers. Nevertheless, by not meeting expectations, its performance is deemed a failure.
Advance polling by both the major news organizations and the political parties projected the LDP would win over 300 seats. However, the party finished election night with 291, fewer seats even than the party held in the last Diet.
Early on Abe and the leaders of the coalition had tried to talk down the victory line in this election. However, by the beginning of last week 300 seats became the new normal (the initial high Kyodo projections so depressed the editors of the Tokyo Shimbun, one of Kyodo's owners, that the paper did not print the results on its front page).
As the party leader who called the election, then failed to lead his party to its projected victory, Abe Shinzo lost.
Beating Kaieda Banri -
Abe Shinzo and the rest of the Cabinet conducted themselves with utter gracelessness in the last days of the campaign, traveling to the home districts of the leaders of the opposition, as if they were seeking to not just beat the opposition but decapitate and humiliate it. Abe and Finance Minister Aso Taro indeed finished their campaigns in a boisterous rally in Akihabara for Tokyo District #1 candidate Yamada Miki.
District #1 is of course DPJ leader Kaieda Banri's district.
These "grind their faces into the dirt" tactics have boomeranged. Not only did Kaieda again lose in his district, Yamada beat him by such a large margin that he could not be resurrected on the proportional list. Out of the Diet, Kaieda is out as leader.
Unfortunately for Abe Shinzo, Kaieda Banri was the number one reason why voters would not vote and candidates would not run for the DPJ. In driving him out of the leadership position, which he would have clung to in loud desperation had he been revived as a PR zombie, Abe has kicked out of office his best ally in terms of keeping the DPJ down and the LDP in power.
So Abe lost.
Voter Turnout -
Abe Shinzo won the premiership a second time in what had been up that point the most dispiriting election in a generation, with voter turnout at its lowest ever.
After two years of Abe Shinzo's leadership, the public is even more demoralized, with turnout falling by 7% over 2012's historic low. The first victory was deemed shabby at 59% turnout. Victory at 52% is shabbier still.
Sure, the LDP finished with a million more votes nationwide in the proportional balloting than in 2012. However that gain of 1 million was out of nearly 5.8 million liberated by the breakups of the Japan Restoration Party and the Your Party.
When you pick up only 15% of what was available, you are not a winner.
So Abe lost.
Destruction of the Right Wing -
The hard right Party for the Next Generations, led by Abe Shinzo Best Friend Forever Hiranuma Takeo and Ishihara Shintaro, evaporated, going from 20 to 2 seats. The Your Party, a libertarian, pro-business, anti-bureaucracy party that won 5 million votes in 2012 (just TWO YEARS AGO) did not even survive to contest the election, its founder and Abe Shinzo Best Friend Forever Watanabe Yoshimi going down to defeat in a seat his family had held continuously for 50 years.
In this final agony of his friends to the right, Abe has lost the ability to threaten the Komeito with a new hawk-hawk (or hawk-hawk-hawk) coalition replacing the current hawk-dove, LDP-Komeito coalition. He has also lost useful militants who could ask revisionist history and war responsibility questions, with Abe and his government being able further their own revisionist agendas without taking any responsibility for events ("Look, it's not us. We were just answering questions coming from the opposition!")
So Abe lost.
Empowerment of the Pacifists -
Three parties could walk away from Sunday's elections with their heads held high. The first was the Japan Innovation Party, which clawed and scratched its way to a respectable loss of single seat when the party had been projected to lose over 10.
The two parties who gained seats, and in a big way, were the Komeito and the Communists.
The Komeito, by picking up seats when the LDP lost them, has increased its marginal leverage in negotiations with its coalition partner. The Komeito already made it presence felt in the confused, cramped and unpopular July 1 Cabinet Decision reversing the government's stance as to the unconstitutionality of the exercise of collective self-defense. It is certain that as the focus of the nation's attention shifts to the 15 or so Basic Laws that have to be revised to implement the July 1 Cabinet Decision, the Komeito will make use of this increased leverage so that the policy choices more closely reflect the concerns of the Komeito base.
As for the performance of the JCP, it was off the charts. The JCP not only managed to land a district seat -- an outcome supposedly rendered impossible by the 1993 adoption of single member districts -- but the JCP now has more than the 20 seat minimum necessary for a party's being able to introduce bills to the Diet.
The pacifist Left has been empowered, both in and out of government.
So Abe lost.
Anyone thinks that with the Komeito murmuring louder and the JCP screaming, figuratively, Mr. Abe is going to take his party's victory in Sunday's election to go on and do anything more than pay lip service to more patriotic education, greater Self Defense Forces activity abroad and revision of the Constitution's Article 9 -- as he does in the above linked video -- then that person is in need of a seriousness transplant.
Because, on Sunday, Abe lost.
And he knows it.
Later - Notice I did not say anything about the LDP's getting wiped out in Okinawa...
Later still- This post has been edited to remove typographical and style errors.
Even later still - Tobias Harris, looking at the same facts and coming to the same conclusions, checks in with a brilliant, comprehensive essay for Foreign Policy. (Link)
I heartily agree with his contention that Abe has taken his biggest blunderbuss and shot it, leaving him little with which to discipline his allies and cow his enemies.
Screenshot courtesy: LDP YouTube Channel
Friday, June 20, 2014
Japan, The Differently Abled Country
Good old Mainichi Shimbun. True to its moderate, working-class roots, it has published an editorial today asking a question I have been asking myself for several days now:
"What is so great about being normal?"
The editorial, entitled, "Is it bad to do it as a country of special qualities?" ("Tokushu na kuni" de wa dame ka? -- Link - J) finds that talk about Japan's need to become normal began in earnest over Japan's potential and eventually non-participation in combat in the First Gulf War. Japan's payment of 13 billion dollars in cash as its contribution to the international military campaign earned the country almost nothing in the way of thanks. Instead, demagogues and commentators, primarily in the United States, lambasted Japan for its "checkbook contribution."
In the reverberations of this seeming diplomatic catastrophe, one that had more to do with Japan's failure to open up its markets to trade than sending its troops overseas, the call arose for a "normalization" of Japan, where governments could use the Self Defense Forces more like a regular military. The most prominent outline for this transition was Ozawa Ichiro's Blueprint for a New Japan, making Ozawa, for a while, the great Japanese hope for the Americans (hard to believe that now, after the Hatoyama premiership).
Japan's struggle and need to become normal became a zeitgeist (actually, it has at times all the attributes of a cult). Just google "Japan" and "normal" or "Japan" and "normalization" to see the immense number of hits they generate.
The recent debate over the constitutionality of an exercise of Japan's UN-guaranteed right to enter into collective self defense -- a debate that is supposed to wind up today-- has highlighted more what Japan stands to lose in exercising CSD than what it is likely to gain.
And this is as it should be.
"Normal" is after all, a loaded term. Its opposite is abnormal, a state that no one would want to be in.
However, what if by historical accident, a country was at once stripped of its armed forces, like an individual ensnarled in a traffic accident who loses a limb? One can view that country or individual as being disabled, as less than normal. One would, if one completely mad, instill in that country or individual an overwhelming desire to become normal. Or, one could acknowledge that "accidents do happen" and move on, not focusing on the quantities that are lacking but the qualities that are present.
Looking upon the individual or the country as "differently abled."
There has been a perplexing disconnect between the global consensus that diversity is a positive, making organizations stronger and more flexible, and the drumbeat of those seeking a more "normal" Japan. Where is the appreciation for Japan's idiosyndratic path, the opportunities a "differently abled" Japan affords its allies? Different is supposed to be good, offering one opportunities to achieve goals in new, creative ways.
The world knowing Japan as the "the country where war is unconstitutional" means that it is possible, albeit not inevitable, for Japan and Japanese to perform functions no other nation or people can. Nakamura Tetsu, the miracle worker of Afghanistan, is adamant in believing that his Peshawar no Kai could not be the incredibly noble and effective organization it has been without locals knowing that it is run by a people that will not participate in military action. (Link)
Of course, the use of the word "normal" was facetious from the beginning. Becoming "normal" for a country with an economy the size of Japan meant becoming powerful.
And becoming powerful is the goal of Abe and Company's still tentative but nevertheless unidirectional procession down the path of toward Japanese military flexibility. Anyone who argues otherwise is being tactically mendacious.
And there is nothing wrong with Japan becoming more powerful. The United States is responsible for far more territory and far too many developments. Its commitments to its treaty allies should probably now be seen as reassuring rather than rock-solid. China seems intent on being a bad neighbor; Putin seems intent on being a villain and the Mideast, well, why would anyone want to be involved in its fratricides, except for all that lovely oil and gas?
In such an environment, a stronger Japan is desirable.
However, does Japan have to throw away its unique characteristics to cope with regional and global contigencies? The New Komeito and most honest brokers would say, "No." They have been arguing vociferously, desperately, that Japan does not have to aspire to normalcy -- just greater physical strength and flexibility.
"What is so great about being normal?"
The editorial, entitled, "Is it bad to do it as a country of special qualities?" ("Tokushu na kuni" de wa dame ka? -- Link - J) finds that talk about Japan's need to become normal began in earnest over Japan's potential and eventually non-participation in combat in the First Gulf War. Japan's payment of 13 billion dollars in cash as its contribution to the international military campaign earned the country almost nothing in the way of thanks. Instead, demagogues and commentators, primarily in the United States, lambasted Japan for its "checkbook contribution."
In the reverberations of this seeming diplomatic catastrophe, one that had more to do with Japan's failure to open up its markets to trade than sending its troops overseas, the call arose for a "normalization" of Japan, where governments could use the Self Defense Forces more like a regular military. The most prominent outline for this transition was Ozawa Ichiro's Blueprint for a New Japan, making Ozawa, for a while, the great Japanese hope for the Americans (hard to believe that now, after the Hatoyama premiership).
Japan's struggle and need to become normal became a zeitgeist (actually, it has at times all the attributes of a cult). Just google "Japan" and "normal" or "Japan" and "normalization" to see the immense number of hits they generate.
The recent debate over the constitutionality of an exercise of Japan's UN-guaranteed right to enter into collective self defense -- a debate that is supposed to wind up today-- has highlighted more what Japan stands to lose in exercising CSD than what it is likely to gain.
And this is as it should be.
"Normal" is after all, a loaded term. Its opposite is abnormal, a state that no one would want to be in.
However, what if by historical accident, a country was at once stripped of its armed forces, like an individual ensnarled in a traffic accident who loses a limb? One can view that country or individual as being disabled, as less than normal. One would, if one completely mad, instill in that country or individual an overwhelming desire to become normal. Or, one could acknowledge that "accidents do happen" and move on, not focusing on the quantities that are lacking but the qualities that are present.
Looking upon the individual or the country as "differently abled."
There has been a perplexing disconnect between the global consensus that diversity is a positive, making organizations stronger and more flexible, and the drumbeat of those seeking a more "normal" Japan. Where is the appreciation for Japan's idiosyndratic path, the opportunities a "differently abled" Japan affords its allies? Different is supposed to be good, offering one opportunities to achieve goals in new, creative ways.
The world knowing Japan as the "the country where war is unconstitutional" means that it is possible, albeit not inevitable, for Japan and Japanese to perform functions no other nation or people can. Nakamura Tetsu, the miracle worker of Afghanistan, is adamant in believing that his Peshawar no Kai could not be the incredibly noble and effective organization it has been without locals knowing that it is run by a people that will not participate in military action. (Link)
Of course, the use of the word "normal" was facetious from the beginning. Becoming "normal" for a country with an economy the size of Japan meant becoming powerful.
And becoming powerful is the goal of Abe and Company's still tentative but nevertheless unidirectional procession down the path of toward Japanese military flexibility. Anyone who argues otherwise is being tactically mendacious.
And there is nothing wrong with Japan becoming more powerful. The United States is responsible for far more territory and far too many developments. Its commitments to its treaty allies should probably now be seen as reassuring rather than rock-solid. China seems intent on being a bad neighbor; Putin seems intent on being a villain and the Mideast, well, why would anyone want to be involved in its fratricides, except for all that lovely oil and gas?
In such an environment, a stronger Japan is desirable.
However, does Japan have to throw away its unique characteristics to cope with regional and global contigencies? The New Komeito and most honest brokers would say, "No." They have been arguing vociferously, desperately, that Japan does not have to aspire to normalcy -- just greater physical strength and flexibility.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Abe Shinzo's Virtual Referendum
Today is supposed to be crunch day: the day when the New Komeito decides whether to accept or reject the Liberal Democratic Party's sudden cram down of an expansion of Japan's definition of constitutional self-defense to include collective self-defense.
The choice is not a happy or an easy one.
The New Komeito's mothership, the Soka Gakkai lay religious (I know that that is an oxymoron. So does the SG. Hence its paranoia) organization has already expressed its opposition to the LDP's plan to reverse through a simple Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) the Japanese government's heretofore decades-old official position that the exercise of the right of collective self defense is unconstitutional. For the SG, the only proper path for such a reversal of a previous unconstitutional ruling is a revision or amendment of the Constitution (Link - J).
For the New Komeito, surrendering to LDP pressure on a Cabinet Decision would set the party formally at odds with the SG leadership. This would, of course, do wonders for the party's longtime claims to be independent of the SG. At the same time it would be extremely confusing for the SG flock -- who vote en masse for the New Komeito because is it the political face of the SG.
Why would the LDP be putting its ruling coalition partner through this ordeal? I have speculated that the Abe administration's appreciation of its inability to halt hemorrhaging of public support not only for "constitutional revision via Cabinet Decision" but collective self-defense itself has triggered a panic response. (Link)
What is making the rounds of Nagata-cho now (and for this insight I am indebted to Michael Penn of Shingetsu News) is the idea of a snap dissolution of the House of Representatives after the end of the current Diet ordinary session.
On the face of it, a House of Representatives election now poses unnecessary risks for the LDP and Abe Shinzo. The party already has huge majority in the House of Representatives reflecting the frustration and disgust the voters felt for the political process in December 2012. There is no guarantee that the voters, when given a chance at passing judgment on the Abe Administration, will not opt for independents in the district seat elections and opposition parties in the proportional seat elections. Yes, the polls numbers for the LDP and for the Abe Cabinet are fantastic and the opposition parties abysmal -- but as the House of Councillors election in 2007 showed, the public has the power to clip Abe Shinzo's pretensions of political mastery.
A snap election for the House of Representatives does, of course, nothing to change the seating arrangements in the House of Councillors. The break ups of the Your Party, the disgrace of Watanabe Yoshimi and the division of the Japan Restoration Party into two have only complicated, not eliminated, the possibility of a crafting of a Hawk-Hawk-Hawk (add as many Hawks here as you like) coalition in the House to replace the existing Hawk-Dove LDP-New Komeito coalition.
The argument for the prime minister dissolving the House of Representatives is compelling. Given the thuggishness of reversing a government constitutionality ruling by fiat, the Abe Cabinet will be searching for a means of justifying its actions. A snap election, with the certainty of a strong, possibly entirely extirpating, victory of the LDP over its scattered, fissioning and puny opponents, would demonstrate, according to Abe, the LDP and the Yomiuri media empire, that the public strongly supports the Abe Cabinet's behavior.
Of course, an LDP victory would not be a virtual referendum on the party's policies. It would be a reflection of the current pitiful state of the opposition parties. In a true referendum, such as the one that a revision of the Constitution would require, the voters would get the chance to choose between "Yes" and "No." In the whispered-about snap dissolution and general election, the choice would be between "Yes" and "Nothing."
The further arguments for a snap election are an increase in the LDP's freedom of action and a coverup of the Abe Cabinet's continued fecklessness as regards structural reform.
The LDP's rank-and-file, the young and militant mass of Abe Shinzo acolytes that Machimura Nobutaka finds distressing (Link) are not wrong in wondering why, in the face of polls showing support for the LDP in the 40% range, the LDP has not ditched its coalition with the cautious New Komeito. The relationship does seem an artifact of another time -- when the long term trend in voter behavior was away from the LDP, despite all the financial rewards being dangled, toward alternatives (the 1993 opposition coalition, the New Frontier Party, the Democratic Party of Japan, the Nippon Isshin no Kai, et cetera). for the wild things in the party the obvious choise is to force the New Komeito to chose one way or the other on a Cabinet Decision -- and if they balk, dump the coalition and go to the public for its response.
After the victory, the party could roll up its sleeves and set to work on really remaking Japan, free of the New Komeito's annoying obstructionism.
As for structural reform, on Monday the 16th the government is supposed to release a "third time's the charm" rerevised Third Arrow of Abenomics. All signs are that the government will, despite being given two chances to rethink and revamp its presentation, fail to include the details and synergies global investors and the world media crave. (Link)
What better time then, to turn around to the rest of the world with a defiant, "What? You don't like it? Well, we asked the Japanese voters and they love it!"
So what is the likelihood on this Friday morning of Abe and Friends going through with a virtual referendum after the end of the regular Diet session? Incredibly, I am thinking they are 50-50.
Later - Jiji is reporting that the New Komeito is looking for a duplicitous out smudging the line in between individual and collective self-defense (Link). Wish them luck -- given the time frame on coming to a decision on specific scenarios, New Komeito negotiators will have no opportutinity to coordinate their positions with the Soka Gakkai directorate.
Monday, June 02, 2014
Cramming Collective Security Down Their Throats
Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (from his seat, as Okada Katsuya, who has the floor, is about to change the subject) - “You just don't understand, do you?"
Okada Katsuya - "I don't understand? I think it is you, Mr. Prime Minister who do not understand. You are rude, using that phrase. Saying,'you don’t understand' is rude. When we look over the official record we will clearly see who is the rude one-- who is the one who does not understand. We will take this up some other time. You are the prime minister of the whole country and all its citizens. I wish to offer to you most humbly my thought that when no one is asking you to speak, your shouting out a heckling expression is not something that as a prime minister you ought to be doing."
After weeks of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide trying to cool apprehensions about the government's plans to force a decision on collective self-defense, with the Dynamic Duo speaking nonchalantly about oh, maybe an agreement sometime in time for the Fall extraordinary Diet session (Link) Liberal Democratic Party Vice President Komura Masahiko came down like a hammer on Sunday, saying he wants a Cabinet Decision on CSD by the end of this Diet session -- i.e., in less than three weeks. (Link -J)
Why the sudden sense of urgency and impatience? Is Komura indicating a change in Abe Cabinet strategy? Or was he just shooting off his mouth -- and knowing the dapper former Foreign Minister Komura's character, this would be unusual -- because he was giving his speech in his and the prime minister's militant homeland of Yamaguchi? (Link)
Possibly.
I would rather think the answer to the question "What's happened?" would be "Wednesday."
Wednesday, May 28, 2014, to be exact.
On that day, last week, in the House of Representatives Budget Committee, Prime Minister Abe tried for the first time to explain or defend his government's plans as regards the recommendations in the "Report of the Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security," commonly known as the Yanai Commission Report. (Link)
While great for television -- the above exchange being one of the testier and more entertaining moments -- the session was pretty grim for the government and the LDP. "Train wreck," "fiasco" and "flaming heap of parrot droppings" are just some of the phrases that come to mind regarding Abe's and Cabinet Legislation Bureau chief Yokobatake Yusuke's performances.
The editors of the Mainichi were appalled at the Prime Minister's inability to answer questions in a straightforward way (Link). The editors of The Asahi Shimbun were -- this will surprise no one -- incoherent as to what they were expecting (Link). The editors of The Japan Times were in need of editors (Link). The editors of the Sankei Shimbun, interestingly, urged lawmakers to get a move on with ratifying the government's 15 scenarios wherein CSD should be constitutional, this in order for Japan to be more in line with international norms (Link - J)*. The editors of Pravda-by-the-Palace, a.k.a., the Yomiuri Shimbun, warned -- and I am not making this up -- that the debate on the reinterpretation of the Constitution for the purposes of sanctioning the exercise of the right of collective self-defense could lead to the break up of the Democratic Party of Japan. (Link)
Nobody, in other words, was cheering.
If there is a sense of panic inside the LDP, it is merited. As in the case of the Special Secrets Act, the longer the Yanai proposals getted batted about in committee and in the media, the worse the Abe Cabinet's plans look. It would behoove the government to move, as it did with the secrets act, to cut off debate with some farcical claim that speed is of the essence and further examination of the scenarios would leave Japan unprotected at a time of great clashing of wills in East Asia. (Link)
However, moving as Komura says he wants would provoke an unnecessary collision with the New Komeito, ending with the collapse of the ruling coalition. The sudden chaos would overwhelm the government's all important third try, after two damp squibs, to launch a set of Third Arrow structural reforms -- ones in which international investors and the international news organizations can finally place their faith.
Even for a man of action and turmoil from Choshu like Abe Shinzo, Komura's gambit should seem overwrought and unwise.
------------------------
* An instance of what Tobias Harris refers to as "a momentary lapse into reason."
Thursday, May 29, 2014
New And A Bit Alarming: The Abe Cabinet's "Self-Defense" Category Of Action
We'll wait and seeThe above is a screen shot from the question time of the New Komeito's Toyama Kiyohiko yesterday (May 28) on the change that the Abe Cabinet is suggesting in Japan's ladder of response to threats to the security of Japan's citizens.
A few days more
There might be something there that wasn't there before.
- Howard Ashman and Alan Menken
"Something There" (1991)
On the left is the current ladder, where there are only two steps, in between which is a thick line dividing
- those threats that can be handled by constabulary forces (the National Police Agency and the Japan Coast Guard), labeled "Police Power" and
- those that must be handled by the Self Defense Forces, labeled "War Power."
On the right of the panel is the New Komeito's understanding of the Yanai Commission's recommendation to the Abe government of a new, three step ladder. There is still a thick line separating "War Power" from that which is below it. However, in between "Police Power" and "War Power" is a new step, "Self Defense Power," which an assistant is helpfully indicating with the pointer. Graphically and in a real sense the new "Self Defense" zone extends down into some of what is now considered purely constabulary and up into what is currently considered purely military. The boundary line between "Police Power" and "Self Defense" is furthermore shown as being thin as compared to the boundary delimiting "War Power."
All in all a nifty little graphic representation of just one facet of the ongoing argument over the proper paradigms for Japan's security.
A lot of other panels in the battle of minds can be seen in the 7 hours and 15 minutes of yesterday's House of Representatives Budget Committee testimony, available on the Shugiin TV website at:
http://www.shugiintv.go.jp/jp/index.php?ex=VL&deli_id=43975&media_type=wb
Monday, May 26, 2014
No Mr. Abe, You And China Together Are Still Not Enough
Interesting figures in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun this morning:
Q: Shall the Constitution be reinterpreted in order to make it possible to exercise the right of collective self-defense?
Agree 28%
Disagree 51%
Q: Should their be preparations be brought forward on the legal basis for [ having the Self Defense Forces involvement] so-called gray-zone incidents?
Should be 68%
Should not be 13%
Q: Should SDF units participating in peacekeeping activities be allowed to rush to the armed defense (kaketsuke keigo) of other peacekeeper and/or civilians?
Allowed 47%
Not allowed 34%
Q: Is it necessary to invoke the right collective self-defense?
Necessary 37%
Not necessary 47%
A remarkably level-headed set of numbers, no? The voters in this poll clearly want the government to have a capacity to deploy the SDF in situations where opponents are in plain clothes but way too much for constabulary forces like the Japan Coast Guard to handle, such as trawler-fulls of Chinese special forces disguised as fishermen landing on the Senkakus. They are also generally in favor of a partial normalization of the behavior of Japanese forces in peacekeeping operations, making the SDF contingent valuable as a military, rather than just a logistics force.
At the same time, the voters are at best ambivalent about invoking the right of collective self defense per se. They are also deeply skeptical about reinterpretation, the Constitutional bugbear that Prime Minister Abe's advisors and councils failed to think through until this year.
The error as regards reinterpretation was one of language and group think -- too few people involved in a discussion of a subject using the same limited vocabulary. For the reformers in Japan's defense establishment, all the Cabinet had to do was interpret (kaishaku) the Constitution in a new way. It did not dawn upon them that to undo a previous determination of unconstitutionality required reinterpretation (kaishaku o henko) -- which only the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment can do.
Meanwhile, on the subject of meeting and beating the threats to the nation, the Chinese air force and Chinese official news organs this weekend sought to regale us with their well-known talents for physical comedy Link) and satire. (Link).
Such kidders.
Despite these shenanigans on the part of the powers that be in China which could lead to a sudden to dump the 1946 Constitution, the Japanese public keeps its eyes on the edifice of their democratic form of government and the foundations of the rule of law and popular sovereignty.
Pretty impressive, no?
Q: Shall the Constitution be reinterpreted in order to make it possible to exercise the right of collective self-defense?
Agree 28%
Disagree 51%
Q: Should their be preparations be brought forward on the legal basis for [ having the Self Defense Forces involvement] so-called gray-zone incidents?
Should be 68%
Should not be 13%
Q: Should SDF units participating in peacekeeping activities be allowed to rush to the armed defense (kaketsuke keigo) of other peacekeeper and/or civilians?
Allowed 47%
Not allowed 34%
Q: Is it necessary to invoke the right collective self-defense?
Necessary 37%
Not necessary 47%
A remarkably level-headed set of numbers, no? The voters in this poll clearly want the government to have a capacity to deploy the SDF in situations where opponents are in plain clothes but way too much for constabulary forces like the Japan Coast Guard to handle, such as trawler-fulls of Chinese special forces disguised as fishermen landing on the Senkakus. They are also generally in favor of a partial normalization of the behavior of Japanese forces in peacekeeping operations, making the SDF contingent valuable as a military, rather than just a logistics force.
At the same time, the voters are at best ambivalent about invoking the right of collective self defense per se. They are also deeply skeptical about reinterpretation, the Constitutional bugbear that Prime Minister Abe's advisors and councils failed to think through until this year.
The error as regards reinterpretation was one of language and group think -- too few people involved in a discussion of a subject using the same limited vocabulary. For the reformers in Japan's defense establishment, all the Cabinet had to do was interpret (kaishaku) the Constitution in a new way. It did not dawn upon them that to undo a previous determination of unconstitutionality required reinterpretation (kaishaku o henko) -- which only the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment can do.
Meanwhile, on the subject of meeting and beating the threats to the nation, the Chinese air force and Chinese official news organs this weekend sought to regale us with their well-known talents for physical comedy Link) and satire. (Link).
Such kidders.
Despite these shenanigans on the part of the powers that be in China which could lead to a sudden to dump the 1946 Constitution, the Japanese public keeps its eyes on the edifice of their democratic form of government and the foundations of the rule of law and popular sovereignty.
Pretty impressive, no?
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
The Washington Post Editorial On The Yanai Report
I confess I could not understand why the United States government and those in the Washington-New York power corridor first tried to dissuade Prime Minister Abe Shinzo from paying a visit to Yasukuni Shrine, then went ballistic when he ignored their warnings and went anyway.
The adult reaction to Abe Shinzo's Yasukuni visits (by the way, Abe is going to pay a visit to the shrine again this year -- whether Xi Jinping dangles the prospect of a summit in front of him or not) would be:
"OK, OK. It is horrible. Terrible. Lamentable. However, if all that it takes to keep Abe and his hopped-up followers to be happy is his pretending for one day a year that if he goes to a special hall he can then talk to ghosts, fine. What we in the real world get in return is 364 days of dealing with a politically invulnerable and almost avuncular Japanese prime minister whose name we can actually remember."
A not entirely distasteful prospect, one would think.
But as the Washingon Post editorial on makes clear, visiting Yasukuni is seen not as Abe Shinzo seeking stress relief. Instead visiting Yasukuni is an impediment to Japan's casting off its special status of a nation with a peace constitution:
"We, the Wise Men and Women of the West, want a Japan that will work hand-in-glove with our already pretty ideal friend South Korea to be the bulwark of freedom and democracy in the East Asian region which we so very much no longer wish to be because doing anything hard and complicated takes us away from working on the remodel of the kitchens of our second homes in the countryside."
To harsh an assessment?
I am not ashamed to admit my being indisposed toward any essay beginning its arguments with the hoary "if North Korea fires a missile passing high over the Japanese islands, the commanders of Japanese Kongo-class Aegis destroyers do not have permission to order a missile shoot-down, even if the computed trajectory of the missile predicts impact in U.S. territory" canard. This is the rhetoric of an Okazaki Hisahiko, conjuring up phantasms of Japanese passivity in order that we might wet ourselves.
What the author (my guess is that his initials are F. H.) of this editorial fails to consider is whether the citizens of Japan or South Korea have any interest in being the docile pieces under the control of the American grand master. The answer to that question is that they do not, not now, not for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the peoples of the two countries do not want to work with each other on security affairs if only because making China feel further ostracized and beset is not in their interests (Of course, inducing the Chinese to feel the world is ganging up on the Country of the Center is indeed in nobody's interest).
Also glossed over is the matter of the reinterpretation debate, the core issue highlighted by the excellent New York Time editorial of 10 days ago (Link). While plurality or even a majority of the population (depending upon the poll one consults) are currently sceptical about collective self-defense in general, a larger majority is fairly clear, even at this early stage, that there is no reinterpretation eye of the constitutional needle that the camel of CSD can pass through. These negative numbers will increase if the Abe Cabinet tries either to explain its views of reinterpretation, or worse, seeks to bum rush the necessary Cabinet Decision without a broad public and intra-Diet consensus.
It would be helpful if the Serious Adults of the sort who can pound out these opinion pieces remembered that one should not ever make policy prescriptions on the basis of what would be convenient for oneself. One has to try harder than that and make the case for settling for that which serves the interests of all.
The adult reaction to Abe Shinzo's Yasukuni visits (by the way, Abe is going to pay a visit to the shrine again this year -- whether Xi Jinping dangles the prospect of a summit in front of him or not) would be:
"OK, OK. It is horrible. Terrible. Lamentable. However, if all that it takes to keep Abe and his hopped-up followers to be happy is his pretending for one day a year that if he goes to a special hall he can then talk to ghosts, fine. What we in the real world get in return is 364 days of dealing with a politically invulnerable and almost avuncular Japanese prime minister whose name we can actually remember."
A not entirely distasteful prospect, one would think.
But as the Washingon Post editorial on makes clear, visiting Yasukuni is seen not as Abe Shinzo seeking stress relief. Instead visiting Yasukuni is an impediment to Japan's casting off its special status of a nation with a peace constitution:
But Mr. Abe has needlessly stoked those fears. His visit to a Shinto shrine where Japanese war criminals are honored, statements that have seemed to question the extent of Japan’s culpability in the war, and his associations with right-wing politicians whose statements are even more extreme — all of these have made his motives suspect in neighbors' eyes. That, in turn, has complicated his reasonable quest to turn Japan, nearly seven decades after war’s end, into a more "normal" country."The gist of the editorial is rather simple and rather straightforward:
(Link)
"We, the Wise Men and Women of the West, want a Japan that will work hand-in-glove with our already pretty ideal friend South Korea to be the bulwark of freedom and democracy in the East Asian region which we so very much no longer wish to be because doing anything hard and complicated takes us away from working on the remodel of the kitchens of our second homes in the countryside."
To harsh an assessment?
I am not ashamed to admit my being indisposed toward any essay beginning its arguments with the hoary "if North Korea fires a missile passing high over the Japanese islands, the commanders of Japanese Kongo-class Aegis destroyers do not have permission to order a missile shoot-down, even if the computed trajectory of the missile predicts impact in U.S. territory" canard. This is the rhetoric of an Okazaki Hisahiko, conjuring up phantasms of Japanese passivity in order that we might wet ourselves.
What the author (my guess is that his initials are F. H.) of this editorial fails to consider is whether the citizens of Japan or South Korea have any interest in being the docile pieces under the control of the American grand master. The answer to that question is that they do not, not now, not for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the peoples of the two countries do not want to work with each other on security affairs if only because making China feel further ostracized and beset is not in their interests (Of course, inducing the Chinese to feel the world is ganging up on the Country of the Center is indeed in nobody's interest).
Also glossed over is the matter of the reinterpretation debate, the core issue highlighted by the excellent New York Time editorial of 10 days ago (Link). While plurality or even a majority of the population (depending upon the poll one consults) are currently sceptical about collective self-defense in general, a larger majority is fairly clear, even at this early stage, that there is no reinterpretation eye of the constitutional needle that the camel of CSD can pass through. These negative numbers will increase if the Abe Cabinet tries either to explain its views of reinterpretation, or worse, seeks to bum rush the necessary Cabinet Decision without a broad public and intra-Diet consensus.
It would be helpful if the Serious Adults of the sort who can pound out these opinion pieces remembered that one should not ever make policy prescriptions on the basis of what would be convenient for oneself. One has to try harder than that and make the case for settling for that which serves the interests of all.
Thursday, May 01, 2014
The Banana Defense
Before long in his new post, the voluble Mr. Kahn, shunning "recession" as a euphemism, warned of a "very serious depression" if inflation were not tamed, prompting a private rebuke by the president’s chief domestic policy adviser, Stuart E. Eizenstat.
So instead, Mr. Kahn began referring in public to a possible economic downturn as a "banana," only to be chided by the president of the United Fruit Company and induced to shift once again to a different euphemism, "kumquat."
Source: "Alfred E. Kahn Dies at 93; Prime Mover of Airline Deregulation,", New York Times, 28 December 2010.
Abe Shinzo has a problem.
It is about how to protect Japan, its rights and its interests in the 21st Century.
Prime Minister Abe and many, many members of the Diet wish to vote for legislation enabling Japan to engage in collective self-defense (CSD) with other nations, a legal right it has under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
Unfortunately for Abe and his many allies, the Government of Japan declared many decades back that exercising the right of collective self-defense is unconstitutional. Furthermore, as they have discovered to their chagrin over the course of the current Diet session, once the executive branch of government uses the word "unconstitutional," it cannot take it back.
Ostensibly, Article 81 of Japan's U.S.-drafted Constitution grants the Supreme Court the power to undo CSD's unconstitutionality. However, it could only do so as the result of a lawsuit based upon some incident occurring where plaintiffs can complain of injury due to a government action classifiable as CSD, such as a government official (an SDF officer) being reprimanded for refusing an assignment based on his/her personal view that the assignment requires participation in CSD.
In other words, the Supremes cannot just come out tomorrow and say, "We think CSD is entirely cool so go for it, Prime Minister Abe!"
Perversely, even if a lawsuit made its way to the Supreme Court, the Court could toss the issue right back to the executive branch by declaring the issue political and thus outside its jurisdiction. This is what the Court did in its sweeping Sunagawa Decision (1959).
In the face of this constitutional impasse, the Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner the New Komeito are weaving webs of words verging on the surreal. The LDP seems to be arguing that while CSD is nominally unconstitutional, a very careful expansion of SDF activities into a limited number of areas that have heretofore been considered CSD might be constitutional. The New Komeito, for its part, has indicated a willingness to go along with many proposed loosenings of restrictions on the actions of the Self Defense Forces as long as these can be plausibly argued to not be CSD but instead a form of ISD.
The response to these manoeuvres from the nation's editorialists has been predictably unenthusiastic. At best the scribbling classes find the ruling coalition's arguments to be gibberish. (Link)
Hence the neat idea bubbling up today. According to the Mainichi Shimbun, some smart puppies in government and the LDP have come up with a new way around the constitutional ban on CSD:
Do CSD -- but don't call it CSD. Call it "self-defense" (jiei) instead -- with the feeble caveat of restricting this evasion to "situations where if we do nothing, Japan could be attacked as well." (Link - J)
Now before we guffaw too heartily at this "I will not say the word 'recession' and cannot say 'depression' so I will say 'banana' instead" subterfuge in order to get around a constitutional ban, should we not admit that this is precisely the way we came to have army, navy and air forces called the Ground Self Defense Forces, the Maritime Self Defense Forces and the Air Self Defense Forces?
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
What Gives Abe Shinzo The Right To Re-Interpret The Constitution?
Prime Minister Abe Shinzo anxwering questions in Diet Budget Committee session on 20 Febraury 2014. Original image courtesy The Prime Minister's Residence website.
During the foreign policy and security interpellations in the House Budget Committee session last week Liberal Democratic Party member Iwaya Takeshi asked, amid his questions to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense and other government officials, for the Cabinet Legislation Bureau's opinion on who has the right to interpret the Constitution.
Since Richard Samuels has written What Everybody Needs To know About The Cabinet Legislation Bureau (not the actual title) I will eschew further explanation of the significance of Iwaya asking for the CLB's view.
Deputy CLB Director Yokobatake Yusuke, who was filling in for CLB Director General Komatsu Ichiro during Komatsu's hospitalization, responded that three articles of the Constitution are paramount in determing who can interpret the Constitution.
First, according to Yokobatake, is Article Eighty-One (just why I am writing the number this way becomes clearer later). This article shows the American origins of the revised Japanese Constitution, inserting into the body of the Japanese Constitution what was was missing from the U.S. Constitution and which was only later established in case law by Marbury vs. Madison (1804):
The Supreme Court is the court of last resort with power to determine the constitutionality of any law, order, regulation or official act.
The second article regulating interpretation, according to the CLB, is Article Ninety-Nine. This is a rather surprising choice, as Article Ninety-Nine seems like a bulwark against reinterpretation, not the foundation underneath it:
"The Emperor or the Regent as well as Ministers of State, members of the Diet, judges, and all other public officials have the obligation to respect and uphold this Constitution."
Reinterpretation might be a way of showing respect for the Constitution, maybe.
Finally, Yokobatake concluded, there is Article Argle-Bargle, which establishes that the prime minister, via the Cabinet, has ultimate responsibility.
Now one needs to know that I have tinnitus. My life is a constant series of cuppings of my hand to my ear and saying, "Eh?"
In this case, my saying "Eh?" to the live video broadcast from the Budget Committee chamber did not provoke Yokobatake to return to the microphone and repeat himself.
When I cannot importune the speaker to repeat himself or herself, I have to guess what it was that he or she must have said.
Being less than an expert in the Japanese Constitution but generally knowing my way around, I had to reason out which article would be granting the PM power to interpret the Constitution. Because that which sounds like "Article Argle-Bargle" and the articles in that neighborhood have nothing to do with that right.
I figured Yokobatake must have said, "Article Forty-One" as that article is the traditional cited source of confusion as to who, if anyone, has the ultimate right to interpret the Constitution:
"The Diet shall be the highest organ of state power, and shall be the sole law-making organ of the State."
I plunked out a series of messages saying that the CLB had spoken and by its ordering, had put the Supreme Court on the front lines of constitutional interpretation, with the Diet, the Cabinet and the PM coming after.
It was not until the next day that I could review the archived video on the House of Representatives TV website. To my surprise and not inconsiderable delight I found out that my ears had not failed me. Deputy CLB Director Yokobatake had indeed said, "Article Argle-Bargle." More precisely he said that the Cabinet's and the Prime Minister's power to interpret the Constitution came from "Article Ninety-Five" (Kyuju go jo).
There is a problem with that assertion:
Article 95: A special law, applicable only to one local public entity, cannot be enacted by the Diet without the consent of the majority of the voters of the local public entity concerned, obtained in accordance with law.
Reading the above, one can understand my original reaction of thinking that I had not heard Yokobatake correctly.
It took only a second or two for me to grasp how the Todai Law-trained Yokobatake could be saying that an obscure part of the Constitution on holding referendums on local administrative issues gives the PM the power to interpret the Constitution:
He was reading the article number upside down.
Or at least part of it.
If one flips the first digit of the Arabic numeral notation for Ninety-Five -- 95 -- one gets 65 (rokuju go jo).
Citing Article 65 makes a heck of a lot more sense:
Article 65 - Executive power shall be vested in the Cabinet.
Now one can pat oneself on the back and say, "Isn't that grand. The highest ranking active official in the bureau of the government known as 'The Guardian of The Constitution' (Kenpo no bannin) cites a completely irrelevant article of the Constitution in Budget Committee session before full house of national specialists in the law including the prime minister, Representatives, high ranking bureaucrats and legal experts, and no one flinches or even gets a confused look on his or her face."
Great, fine, but that is not the interesting part of Yokobatake's error.
Yokobatake did not, as I assumed he must, cite Article 41 (I will use the usual format from now on). When one compares the two articles, 41 and 65, "the highest organ of state power" and "sole law-making organ of the state" sure sound more like ultimate authority than simple "executive power."
Reviewing what Abe Shinzo has said regarding his plans to reinterpret the Constitution (which has been the subject of intense and bombastic debate in the newspapers, on blogs and on Twitter), he never says that he has the authority to do so. He declares instead that he has the ultimate responsibility for the Constitution -- which seems to be a different issue.
In terms of the nitty-gritty, when in the process of reinterpreting the Constitution does Abe has to let the Diet ("the highest organ of state power") debate the proposed reinterpretations? Can the Cabinet can issue a Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) approving the interpretatiion allowing for collective security before the passage of the new laws enabling the new interpretations? By citing Article 65 and not citing Article 41, the CLB seems to be taking the rather provocative position that the Cabinet can by itself declare the new interpretations government policy, with the Diet brought in ex post facto.
If the Abe Cabinet tries this approach with collective security legistlation, the resulting firestorm could make last autumn's fight over the Special Designated Secrets Act seem like a match flame in comparison.
Which begs the question: did Yokobatake, the constitutional expert, cite an irrelevant but visually related part of the Constitution on purpose?
Thursday, December 05, 2013
A Brief Note On Japanese Political Vocabulary
I have completed a few more orbits of the Sun than I want to acknowledge. I have made a rather larger number of those orbits whilst standing upon Japanese soil.
It has not been until this autumn, however, that I have come to understand the functions of two nouns -- one a common noun and the other a proper noun -- in Japanese political discourse. The usage of these two nouns has always caused my ears to tingle and my breath to halt. However, until this fall's Potemkin debate on the raising of the consumption tax and the lurching, blood-spewing path the execrable* Official Secrets Bill (my latest read: the ruling coalition will pass the bill amid chaos on Friday, giving the public the reason it has been seeking to hate the Liberal Democratic Party all over again) has taken toward passage, I could not put my finger on why.
Now I can.
Here are the two nouns whose political meanings I have come to understand:
Taisaku- 対策
The dictionary defines taisaku as "countermeasures" - the changes you have to make to your operations in order to cope with a new situation. In Japanese political speech, however, taisaku has a more limited meaning. Rather than being "countermeasures" in a general sense, the taisaku drawn up by bureaucrats and politicians should be understood as "dubious government actions intended to countermand the entirely predictable deleterious side effects of earlier and equally dubious government actions, primarily in the sphere of economics."
The escalating rounds of countermeasures leading up to the decision to go forward with the rise in the consumption tax illustrates this special meaning of taisaku. First we had the bungled Bank of Japan response to the Plaza Accords, which led to asset price bubble. After the piercing of the bubble and the consequent collapse of economic activity, elected officials responded with fiscal stimulus package after fiscal stimulus package, each one too puny to halt economic contraction because of Finance Ministry fears of jacking up the national debt. The too puny fiscal stimulus packages and tentative monetary easings of the 1990s, coupled with Japa'’s long-recognized aging, created an unsustainable level of national debt via-a-vis the nation's pension/health care obligations. Meeting these obligations requires more revenues, which means higher taxes. Higher taxes, especially regressive taxes like the consumption tax, decreases economic activity. So the government has to cobble together a stimulus packages, either cutting back on tax receipts from other areas or borrowing money, which further increases the debt burden, which means the creation of expectations of further tax increases in the future, which diminishes the desire to spend, which...
The main reason why Japan's bureaucrats, politicians and even its big businessman have not ever thought of stepping off the ascending spiral staircase of taisaku is that halting the process would force members of the Establishment say, out loud:
"You know, we screwed up. We pretended to be omniscient, transcendent higher beings when what we were really was cowards and frauds. Sorry."
Which establishments never say. Ever.
Except, of course, when they say, "Taisaku."
Yokota Megumi - 横田めぐみ
Yokota Megumi was a 13 year-old girl, walking home from a badminton practice at her middle school in the heart of Niigata City, Niigata Prefecture on November 15, 1977. On the way, she seems to have crossed the path of North Korean agents. For reasons that will likely never be explained, the agents took her as a captive and spirited her away to North Korea, where she grew up a prisoner, employed as a trainer for North Korean spies hoping to pass as Japanese citizens. She purportedly committed suicide in 1994, and is survived by a former husband and a daughter, both of whom are prisoners of the DPRK regime.
While tragic, Ms. Yokota's story is not unique. A couple dozen other Japanese nationals, hundreds of South Korean nationals and a smattering of citizens of other nations have all been kidnapped and held captive by the irretrievably evil government of the DPRK. Ms. Yokota's story and that of Soga Hitomi, a young woman whose was kidnapped from Sado Island in 1978, indicate that her gender and youth were factors in her survival. They also indicate that the kidnapping of Japanese citizens to become teachers of Japanese mores and culture -- Megumi's eventual role in North Korean society -- was an ad hoc justification for what was a fairly pointless and marginal facet of North Korea's ever-evolving program of extortion through random acts of terror.
In Japanese political diction, however, mention of "Yokota Megumi" is the refuge of the intellectually unsound. Like references to Hitler in English-language discussions of politics, the brandishing of "Yokota Megumi" is supposed to stun the listener into silence. Why does Japan need a national security council? "Yokota Megumi." Why does Japan need such a draconian new official secrets law? "Yokota Megumi." Why does Japan have to revise Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution? "Yokota Megumi." Why does Japan have to …“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! YOU SEE MY FINGERS IN MY EARS, YOU CHINA-LOVING, DPRK-CODDLING DUPE? I HAVE NO RATIONAL REASON FOR CURTAILING CIVIL LIBERTIES, TURNING A BLIND EYE TOWARD XENOPHOBIA AND RAISING JAPAN’S MILITARY POSTURE SO YOKOTA MEGUMI, YOKOTA MEGUMI, YOKOTA MEGUMI!!!"
Here is prime example of Yokota Megumi being dragged in in order to supposedly prove a point, drawn from a major political tract by a famous author:
A flimsy free association of various humiliations of Japan occurring in the autumn of 1977, including the purported Kume kidnapping, which has never been acknowledged by the DPRK, if Kume's disappearance was even a kidnapping. The spinelessness of the Fukuda government toward the Dhaka hijackers leads to the disappearance of Kume in Ishikawa which leads to the release of the police's top person of interest in the Kume disappearance which leads to kidnapping of "Megumi-san" two months later in Niigata City.
Indubitably.
The passage includes a sarcastic quotation from the preamble of the Constitution ("We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all time and are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship, and we have determined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world"). The quote seems a demonstration of an adolescent desire for applause for cleverness. While feeling contempt toward Constitution and its naïve faith in the good intentions of peace-loving peoples of the world is a valid emotional reaction, this contempt should be expressed openly, not hinted at by the snide use of quotation marks.
So why should I or anyone else be give a damn about this snarky connect-the-dots bit of weirdness reminiscent of the histrionic performances of American embarrassment Glenn Beck, one culminating in the author's making a maudlin appeal to sympathy for Ms. Yokota in an absurd bit of speculative history? Because you will find it on page 252 of Toward a New Country (Atarashii kuni e) -- a book published earlier this year by a certain Mr. Abe Shinzo, prime minister of Japan.
Now I understand what my body has been telling me all these years: when in an argument with someone over the appropriateness of the Japanese government's taking a new position as regards security, or its plans to adopt an unprecedented new mode of operation, at the very first utterance of "Yokota Megumi" I should relax, smile and go prepare to go home.
The argument is over. Indeed, there was never any argument on the other side at all.
----------------------------------
* On November 8, the Tokyo Shimbun reprinted the entire working text of the official secrets bill, highlighting the 36 times the lazy authors of the bill had ended their sentences with "and so on and so forth, et cetera" (sono ta).
It has not been until this autumn, however, that I have come to understand the functions of two nouns -- one a common noun and the other a proper noun -- in Japanese political discourse. The usage of these two nouns has always caused my ears to tingle and my breath to halt. However, until this fall's Potemkin debate on the raising of the consumption tax and the lurching, blood-spewing path the execrable* Official Secrets Bill (my latest read: the ruling coalition will pass the bill amid chaos on Friday, giving the public the reason it has been seeking to hate the Liberal Democratic Party all over again) has taken toward passage, I could not put my finger on why.
Now I can.
Here are the two nouns whose political meanings I have come to understand:
Taisaku- 対策
The dictionary defines taisaku as "countermeasures" - the changes you have to make to your operations in order to cope with a new situation. In Japanese political speech, however, taisaku has a more limited meaning. Rather than being "countermeasures" in a general sense, the taisaku drawn up by bureaucrats and politicians should be understood as "dubious government actions intended to countermand the entirely predictable deleterious side effects of earlier and equally dubious government actions, primarily in the sphere of economics."
The escalating rounds of countermeasures leading up to the decision to go forward with the rise in the consumption tax illustrates this special meaning of taisaku. First we had the bungled Bank of Japan response to the Plaza Accords, which led to asset price bubble. After the piercing of the bubble and the consequent collapse of economic activity, elected officials responded with fiscal stimulus package after fiscal stimulus package, each one too puny to halt economic contraction because of Finance Ministry fears of jacking up the national debt. The too puny fiscal stimulus packages and tentative monetary easings of the 1990s, coupled with Japa'’s long-recognized aging, created an unsustainable level of national debt via-a-vis the nation's pension/health care obligations. Meeting these obligations requires more revenues, which means higher taxes. Higher taxes, especially regressive taxes like the consumption tax, decreases economic activity. So the government has to cobble together a stimulus packages, either cutting back on tax receipts from other areas or borrowing money, which further increases the debt burden, which means the creation of expectations of further tax increases in the future, which diminishes the desire to spend, which...
The main reason why Japan's bureaucrats, politicians and even its big businessman have not ever thought of stepping off the ascending spiral staircase of taisaku is that halting the process would force members of the Establishment say, out loud:
"You know, we screwed up. We pretended to be omniscient, transcendent higher beings when what we were really was cowards and frauds. Sorry."
Which establishments never say. Ever.
Except, of course, when they say, "Taisaku."
Yokota Megumi - 横田めぐみ
Yokota Megumi was a 13 year-old girl, walking home from a badminton practice at her middle school in the heart of Niigata City, Niigata Prefecture on November 15, 1977. On the way, she seems to have crossed the path of North Korean agents. For reasons that will likely never be explained, the agents took her as a captive and spirited her away to North Korea, where she grew up a prisoner, employed as a trainer for North Korean spies hoping to pass as Japanese citizens. She purportedly committed suicide in 1994, and is survived by a former husband and a daughter, both of whom are prisoners of the DPRK regime.
While tragic, Ms. Yokota's story is not unique. A couple dozen other Japanese nationals, hundreds of South Korean nationals and a smattering of citizens of other nations have all been kidnapped and held captive by the irretrievably evil government of the DPRK. Ms. Yokota's story and that of Soga Hitomi, a young woman whose was kidnapped from Sado Island in 1978, indicate that her gender and youth were factors in her survival. They also indicate that the kidnapping of Japanese citizens to become teachers of Japanese mores and culture -- Megumi's eventual role in North Korean society -- was an ad hoc justification for what was a fairly pointless and marginal facet of North Korea's ever-evolving program of extortion through random acts of terror.
In Japanese political diction, however, mention of "Yokota Megumi" is the refuge of the intellectually unsound. Like references to Hitler in English-language discussions of politics, the brandishing of "Yokota Megumi" is supposed to stun the listener into silence. Why does Japan need a national security council? "Yokota Megumi." Why does Japan need such a draconian new official secrets law? "Yokota Megumi." Why does Japan have to revise Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution? "Yokota Megumi." Why does Japan have to …“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! YOU SEE MY FINGERS IN MY EARS, YOU CHINA-LOVING, DPRK-CODDLING DUPE? I HAVE NO RATIONAL REASON FOR CURTAILING CIVIL LIBERTIES, TURNING A BLIND EYE TOWARD XENOPHOBIA AND RAISING JAPAN’S MILITARY POSTURE SO YOKOTA MEGUMI, YOKOTA MEGUMI, YOKOTA MEGUMI!!!"
Here is prime example of Yokota Megumi being dragged in in order to supposedly prove a point, drawn from a major political tract by a famous author:
After the Dhaka Incident of September 1977, Kume Yutaka of Ishikawa Prefecture was kidnapped and taken to the Democratic Republic of North Korea. The police authorities of the time arrested the perpetrator. However, knowing that the perpetrator was involved in a covert operations organization of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the police let him go out of fear of a dispute arising with 'peace-loving peoples of the world.'
Because of this, what occurred? Two months later, in November, Yokota Megumi was kidnapped from the seaside of Niigata Prefecture. Had the Government of Japan at the time [of the Kume disappearance] chosen the path of confronting the Government of the DPRK, would not Megumi-san still be living her life in Japan?"
In the end, Japan's postwar system, as symbolized by the Constitution of Japan, could not safeguard the life of a 13 year-old girl. And for us, even now, this problem remains [unresolved].
A flimsy free association of various humiliations of Japan occurring in the autumn of 1977, including the purported Kume kidnapping, which has never been acknowledged by the DPRK, if Kume's disappearance was even a kidnapping. The spinelessness of the Fukuda government toward the Dhaka hijackers leads to the disappearance of Kume in Ishikawa which leads to the release of the police's top person of interest in the Kume disappearance which leads to kidnapping of "Megumi-san" two months later in Niigata City.
Indubitably.
The passage includes a sarcastic quotation from the preamble of the Constitution ("We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all time and are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship, and we have determined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world"). The quote seems a demonstration of an adolescent desire for applause for cleverness. While feeling contempt toward Constitution and its naïve faith in the good intentions of peace-loving peoples of the world is a valid emotional reaction, this contempt should be expressed openly, not hinted at by the snide use of quotation marks.
So why should I or anyone else be give a damn about this snarky connect-the-dots bit of weirdness reminiscent of the histrionic performances of American embarrassment Glenn Beck, one culminating in the author's making a maudlin appeal to sympathy for Ms. Yokota in an absurd bit of speculative history? Because you will find it on page 252 of Toward a New Country (Atarashii kuni e) -- a book published earlier this year by a certain Mr. Abe Shinzo, prime minister of Japan.
Now I understand what my body has been telling me all these years: when in an argument with someone over the appropriateness of the Japanese government's taking a new position as regards security, or its plans to adopt an unprecedented new mode of operation, at the very first utterance of "Yokota Megumi" I should relax, smile and go prepare to go home.
The argument is over. Indeed, there was never any argument on the other side at all.
----------------------------------
* On November 8, the Tokyo Shimbun reprinted the entire working text of the official secrets bill, highlighting the 36 times the lazy authors of the bill had ended their sentences with "and so on and so forth, et cetera" (sono ta).
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.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
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.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Collision Course On Elections
Yesterday the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in the amalgamated 16 cases brought against the nation's prefectural electoral commissions requesting the nullification of the December 2012 House of Representatives elections on the grounds that the degree of disparity in the electoral districts, which reached 2.43 to 1 in the case of Kochi District #3 versus Chiba District #4, violates the constitutional principle of equality under the law. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling before the year is out. (Link - J)
The potential for constitutional chaos is not insignificant. If the court declares the election unconstitutional and invalid, the existing Diet is illegitimate. However, since the Constitution stipulates that only the Diet has authority over the drawing of electoral district boundaries, the country would be bereft of a legal body empowered to pull everyone from out of an electoral black hole.
As the Nihon Keizai Shimbun points out, twice before, in 1972 and in 1983, the Supreme Court has ruled that an election was unconstitutional. In both cases the court ruled that the elections results were nevertheless valid. (Link - J)
No, the concept "unconstitutional but valid" does not make any sense to me either.
The fillip in the cases currently before the court is that in '72 and '83, the Supreme Court was ruling on election districts found unconstitutionally unbalanced after the fact. In the current cases, the Supreme Court told the Diet three years ago that the electoral map was "in a state of unconstitutionality" and warned legislators to fix it before the next House of Representatives election.
The Diet failed to do so.
Given the Supreme Court's advance warning, narrow indeed is intellectual window open for the Court to issue a pass on the validity of the election that brought Abe Shinzo and his allies to power.
[See updated information here] In terms of personal stories, there the one involving the Court's most junior member, Justice Yamamoto Tsuneyuki. Yamamoto did not keep his peace when Prime Minister Abe Shinzo earlier this year kicked him upstairs from his post as Cabinet Legislative Bureau chief in favor of Komatsu Ichiro, a diplomat seen as a pushover on the changing the CLB's position on the constitutionality of collective security (Link). That Yamamoto will be caucusing his fellow justices and ruling on the constitutionality of the election that brought his nemeses Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide to power is the most delicious irony.
Suga does not make many mistakes. Counterattacking against Yamamoto, however, might turn out to have been a big one.
The potential for constitutional chaos is not insignificant. If the court declares the election unconstitutional and invalid, the existing Diet is illegitimate. However, since the Constitution stipulates that only the Diet has authority over the drawing of electoral district boundaries, the country would be bereft of a legal body empowered to pull everyone from out of an electoral black hole.
As the Nihon Keizai Shimbun points out, twice before, in 1972 and in 1983, the Supreme Court has ruled that an election was unconstitutional. In both cases the court ruled that the elections results were nevertheless valid. (Link - J)
No, the concept "unconstitutional but valid" does not make any sense to me either.
The fillip in the cases currently before the court is that in '72 and '83, the Supreme Court was ruling on election districts found unconstitutionally unbalanced after the fact. In the current cases, the Supreme Court told the Diet three years ago that the electoral map was "in a state of unconstitutionality" and warned legislators to fix it before the next House of Representatives election.
The Diet failed to do so.
Given the Supreme Court's advance warning, narrow indeed is intellectual window open for the Court to issue a pass on the validity of the election that brought Abe Shinzo and his allies to power.
[See updated information here] In terms of personal stories, there the one involving the Court's most junior member, Justice Yamamoto Tsuneyuki. Yamamoto did not keep his peace when Prime Minister Abe Shinzo earlier this year kicked him upstairs from his post as Cabinet Legislative Bureau chief in favor of Komatsu Ichiro, a diplomat seen as a pushover on the changing the CLB's position on the constitutionality of collective security (Link). That Yamamoto will be caucusing his fellow justices and ruling on the constitutionality of the election that brought his nemeses Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide to power is the most delicious irony.
Suga does not make many mistakes. Counterattacking against Yamamoto, however, might turn out to have been a big one.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Some Math Required
Thanks to a blog at a major media institution (whose employees I respect) we have been reminded over the last few months that:
1) The Constitution of Japan, in an extremely liberal reform for 1947, inadvertently banned gay marriage:
Given that an individual can establish his or her own sui generis family registry (koseki), I leave it to the readers to work out what could/should/must happen next.
I confess: like much of the rest of the world, I guffawed at the speculations of actor Jeremy Irons as regards changing the definition of marriage (Link). In retrospect, the problem is not that Irons' hypothetical is too far out there: it is that it is upside-down.
So sociologists, time to get out there and start counting.
1) The Constitution of Japan, in an extremely liberal reform for 1947, inadvertently banned gay marriage:
Article 24 - Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis.2) In Japan, adults can adopt other adults. Indeed, adults adopting other adults is the rule. (Link)
With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes.
Given that an individual can establish his or her own sui generis family registry (koseki), I leave it to the readers to work out what could/should/must happen next.
I confess: like much of the rest of the world, I guffawed at the speculations of actor Jeremy Irons as regards changing the definition of marriage (Link). In retrospect, the problem is not that Irons' hypothetical is too far out there: it is that it is upside-down.
So sociologists, time to get out there and start counting.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
An Augustinian Timetable?
Having appointed Komatsu Ichiro to the position of head of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has set the stage for a significant expansion of Japan's capacity to participate in security actions on the behalf of the government personnel of other nations, even unto full-throated collective security.
However, when asked by journalists in New York about Japan's timetable for participation in collective security arrangements, Mr. Abe demurred:
Hmmmm. I hope he did not say this to his friends at the Hudson Institute.
For a guy supposedly chomping at the bit, eager to have Japan bust out and become a major military player, obsessed with getting the country over a hump it has been sizing up for thirty years now (debating the rightness or wrongness of collective security to death in the process), Abe-san sure seems to be reticent about pressing the government to get its arse in gear.
It is just like Augustine of Hippo said, "Lord, make us a first rate military power -- but not yet."
However, when asked by journalists in New York about Japan's timetable for participation in collective security arrangements, Mr. Abe demurred:
一方、首相は行使容認に向けた憲法解釈変更について「時期を設定するつもりは今はない。国民的に理解が進むよう努力する」との考えを示した。According to other news reports, the PM's plan is to not even start a public debate on reinterpretation of the constitution until the new year. (Link - J)
On the one hand, as regards a reinterpretation of the constitution looking toward participation in security actions, the prime minister said, "I am not here to set up timetables. I will work hard on pushing forward a popular understanding [of the changes]."
(Link - J)
Hmmmm. I hope he did not say this to his friends at the Hudson Institute.
For a guy supposedly chomping at the bit, eager to have Japan bust out and become a major military player, obsessed with getting the country over a hump it has been sizing up for thirty years now (debating the rightness or wrongness of collective security to death in the process), Abe-san sure seems to be reticent about pressing the government to get its arse in gear.
It is just like Augustine of Hippo said, "Lord, make us a first rate military power -- but not yet."
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
The Sea Of Futility
Read James Przystup in Comparative Connections -- on the hopeless back-and-forth between the governments of Japan and China since March, with some informative detours along the ways. (Link)
A tragi-comedy in all its glory.
Przystup highlights Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's declaration on August 12 that revision of the Constitution remains his historical mission (Link - J). For those keeping score August 12 was my guestimate of the date Abe would pay a private visit to Yasukuni. It was also the 35th anniversary of the signing of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Friendship.
Abe's declaration of a continued, unshakable commitment to constitutional reform ("Facing the future, facing the revision of the Constitution, I go onward. Revision of the constitution is my historic mission...") flies in the face of the conventional wisdom, which was and is that constitution revision is off the table, replaced by a near-term program of gradual expansion of the activities judged constitutional by the Cabinet Legislative Bureau. The announcement of the appointment of Komatsu Ichiro, the new more malleable head of the CLB, had indeed been announced a week before Abe's declaration. (Link)
One has to discount the seriousness of Abe's words, at least in terms of the PM's schedule for the rest of the year. According to reports, the vow was made at a private dinner at an inn in the PM's nominal hometown of Nagato, Yamaguchi Prefecture. Attending the dinner were top members of his support group (koenkai). Abe probably felt he had to provide, along with actual food and drink, some political red meat. Pledging loyalty to the cause of constitution revision has been one constant in Abe's limited repertoire of political tricks. It is not surprising he dragged the magic act out one more time for his most loyal and biggest fans.
The article ends with a calendar of significant days. One crucial date that is not mentioned, either in Prystrup's article or in Michael J. Green and Nicholas Szechenyi's update on Japan-U.S. relations, is April 28, 2013 -- the first official Return Of Sovereignty Day (Do not bother looking for the event in the previous edition's Green & Szechenyi -- it is not listed there either). At the official ceremony, the first ever, the prime minister intoned portentous piffle of the purest, highest incoherence (Link). The speech was eclipsed, however, by the incident at the end when the Imperial Couple were making their departure from the stage. An impromptu and jubilant chorus of "Long Live The Emperor" (Tenno heika banzai!) froze their Imperial Highnesses in mid-step like two jacked deer.
April 28 seems to mark both the zenith and terminus of Abe's dalliance with history issues. A week later, when asked to clarify his remarks about the definition of shinryaku (invasion, aggression) in Diet session, Abe demurred. When a week later still Liberal Democratic Party policy affairs chief Taka'ichi Sanae claimed that Abe rejects the judgments of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East and the Murayama Statement, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide rubbished her statements, saying she was jawboning her own views, not those of the Abe Government.
After the provocative ceremony and the banzais, something snapped.
Later - As regards the prospects for reinterpreting the constitution, Yuka Hayashi has just posted an interview with a frank Komatsu-san on JapanRealTime. (Link)
-------------
Image: Surfers waiting, hoping for the least wave. Kugenuma Beach, Fujisawa City, Kanagawa Prefecture on 6 December 2009.
Image courtesy: MTC
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Politics And Society In Comic Verse - Special Taro Aso Edition
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Aso Taro's recent peculiar musings on the Nazi takeover of Weimar Germany earned him international scorn.
Aso-sensei also has a taut face topped with a mop of improbably black (he will be 73 years old on September 20) hair severely parted to one side (see above).
The combination got one Takasaki Yusaku of Atsugi City, Kanagawa Prefecture to compose a 17 syllable poem:
髭書けば
顔も似てくる
副総理
Hige kakeba
kao mo nite kuru
fukusori
If you draw in the mustache
There is a resemblance in the face as well
Deputy Prime Minister
The editors of Tokyo Shimbun, which published Mr. Takasaki's poem on the paper's editorial page on August 17, decided that of the 10 poems it published that day, this one was the most in need of a visual prompt.
So the cartoonist Uno produced the below drawing, with the microphone head in just the right, or perhaps ultra-right, position:
Dear Aso-sensei, after this, it might be the time for you to do the switchover to the full Shirasu Jiro look (I agree. It is hard to believe that the one on the left is your grandfather, when Shirasu on the right seems the closer match). You have the money and personal style to make it work. Besides, you can babble convincingly about wanting to be as close to your grandfather as Shirasu was (like in this photo of the two of them on the plane bound for the San Francisco peace conference) while remaining a conservative icon, which Shirasu is.
Later - As for how it was that the internationalized Shirasu -- who opted out of serving the wartime government by taking up farming, returning to public service at the invitation of Yoshida Shigeru as a member of the Liaison Office facilitating the Occupation -- could become a conservative poster boy, see this Japan Times article.
For the zenith of Shirasumania, see this poster of a Takarazuka production of his life. And look, Shirasu is wearing Aso's hat. And yes, the individual in the uniform is supposed to be General Douglas MacArthur.
Beyond this be wonkery - Is there a specific use of "to write" (kaku - 書く) that applies for the penciling in of mustaches? I would have thought that "to draw, to paint" (kaku - 描く) would be correct character here.
This post has been edited to compensate for link rot - MTC
Photo image courtesy: Bloomberg News
Monday, July 22, 2013
Abe's Constitutional Revision Refrain
One clip from last night's NHK interview of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo getting a lot of airplay has the PM, when the subject of revising the Constitution is raised, explaining:
Indeed, in the interview, the prime minister pointed out that whatever his feelings constitutional revision, realizing a dream is not a matter of willpower alone:
Rather than a pledge to keep fighting, the two quotes together sound like the bugling of an honorable retreat. Does Abe have a 2/3rds majority in the House of Councillors? No. Does he have the 50% +1 majority of citizens behind any particular revision? No. So what does he promise? A whole lot of additional talking, with the revisionist parties and with the citizens.
But actually submit revisions? Abe's words may sound bold to his base supporters, telegraphing that the goal is still within reach. However, the awake and aware anti-revision or undecided citizen cannot miss the message: "Sorry, despite my desire and efforts, I do not have the votes for my signature project at this time. I'll be getting back to you as soon as conditions improve."
「国会で発議した後、（国民投票で）国民の皆さんの過半数の賛成がなければ憲法改正はできない...その意味においては、憲法の議論をしっかりと広く深くしていく必要があるとまだあると思う。」It would seem that the Prime Minister is still gung-ho about revision despite the inconvenient truth that the forces of revision failed yesterday to secure the 101 seats they needed for a 2/3rds majority in both Houses of the Diet. The Liberal Democratic Party, the Japan Restoration Party and the Your Party captured 81 seats (65 + 8 + 8, respectively), waaaaayy, waaaayy short of the goal.
"Even after revisions of the Constitution have won the approval of the Diet, they cannot be enacted without the agreement of over half of you the citizens....In that regard, I believe the debate over the Constitution still has to be carried out firmly, broadly and in depth."
Indeed, in the interview, the prime minister pointed out that whatever his feelings constitutional revision, realizing a dream is not a matter of willpower alone:
「まずは私としては96条（の改正）ということでお話をしてきた。維新の会の皆さまも同じ考えだ。その中において、（国会で）３分の２を形成できるかどうかということについてさらに議論を進めていきたい」(Link - J)
"As for myself, first of all the subject of (the revision of) Article 96 came out. I have the same thoughts as you of the Japan Restoration Party. In regards to that, whether or not we can achieve the cobbling together of a 2/3rds majority (in the Diet) I would like to go on further advancing the debate."
Rather than a pledge to keep fighting, the two quotes together sound like the bugling of an honorable retreat. Does Abe have a 2/3rds majority in the House of Councillors? No. Does he have the 50% +1 majority of citizens behind any particular revision? No. So what does he promise? A whole lot of additional talking, with the revisionist parties and with the citizens.
But actually submit revisions? Abe's words may sound bold to his base supporters, telegraphing that the goal is still within reach. However, the awake and aware anti-revision or undecided citizen cannot miss the message: "Sorry, despite my desire and efforts, I do not have the votes for my signature project at this time. I'll be getting back to you as soon as conditions improve."
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Plus Ça Change
Looking back through the archives on the politicking that heaved Abe Shinzo into the nation's highest office for the first time, I came across this little Christian Caryl/Akiko Kashiwagi gem from 17 September 2006:
(Link)
And in 2013, after the end of Japan's special relationship with the George W. Bush Administration, a global financial crisis and China's surpassing of Japan as the world's second largest economy, Abe Shinzo is still enamored of the same two goals.
Read the whole article: Caryl and Kashiwagi's work has withstood the test of time.
Asia's Mystery Man
Newsweek
When Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the controversial Tokyo war memorial known as Yasukuni Shrine last month, the story made headlines around the world and triggered indignant protests in Seoul and Beijing. But when the news broke a few days later that Koizumi's political confidant Shinzo Abe had made his own surreptitious visit to the shrine earlier in the year, few outside Japan took notice. Even given the fact that Abe had made a point of avoiding the cameras, the reactions still seem disproportionate. The first of the two men, after all, is about to step off the political stage and into the history books. The other is almost certain to step onto it this month and become Japan's next prime minister--a job he could hold for years to come.
On Sept. 20, in all likelihood, Abe will be elected president of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party--a victory that will guarantee his election, a few days later, as prime minister...
[snip]
He's got at least two big goals, and they're both risky. The first is revising the Constitution to eliminate Japan's pacifist postwar military tradition, and the second, which could be a function of the first, is defying China's bid for regional pre-eminence. A generation ago, the first idea would have struck mainstream Japanese voters as irresponsibly radical; the second even now strikes many as fraught with uncertainty.
(Link)
And in 2013, after the end of Japan's special relationship with the George W. Bush Administration, a global financial crisis and China's surpassing of Japan as the world's second largest economy, Abe Shinzo is still enamored of the same two goals.
Read the whole article: Caryl and Kashiwagi's work has withstood the test of time.
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