Over The Borderline Of Stupid

Ceci est un Japon

Yesterday the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) announced the results of the screening (kentei) of social science textbooks . The screening, which is for textbooks to be used in the nation's middle and high schools beginning April 2016, found 102 of 104 textbooks passed the new criteria established this past January -- a rather stunning display of quickstep obedience. (Link)

What is making this story newsworthy is the lockstep acceptance by book publishers of a word, that word being koyu (固有), usually translated as "inherent" -- as in the following:

All social studies textbooks for middle school students will include descriptions of the Takeshima islets and the Senkaku Islands as "territories inherently belonging to Japan," among other similar phrases, according to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry.

By saying that not just the Senkaku Islands, where Japan has administrative control, but Dokdo and the Southern Kuriles, where it does not, are all "inherent" territories, the government of Japan is saying that no deals can be struck as regards the final sovereignty of any of these territories and territorial waters.

Which, if you are in the business of solving problems and working toward better tomorrows, which is sort of what democratic governments are supposed to be doing, most of the time (thank you, Immanuel Kant) would be an INCREDIBLY STUPID THING TO INSIST IS YOUR POSITION.

Let us say a Chinese, Russian or South Korean diplomat meets her counterpart in Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The conversation between the two will have to go something like this:

Japanese Diplomat - "I am sorry, but we have nothing to discuss on the matter of sovereignty. The territories are Japanese. End of discussion."

which will most likely be immediately followed by a:

"Hey, wait, where are you going? Stop, stop! I am supposed to sit down with you and discuss things!"

One of the great characteristics of Japanese diplomacy, at least until recently, was the careful consideration done of the potential repercussions of a statement. Whereas Russian or Chinese diplomats (I cannot speak about the ROK diplomatic corps) can be trusted to utter provocative, extremist nonsense, Japanese diplomats have prided themselves on locutions that almost-but-not-quite stake out a position -- a stance that reflects both national aspirations AND reality.

These new criteria claiming that Takeshima, all of the Northern Territories and the Senkakus are all inherent territories -- which is to say that letting go of even a square millimeter of them would diminish Japan as an entity -- mark a surrender to the surreal.

Any deal on control of the Senkakus, on Dokdo, on the Southern Kuriles would be just that: a deal. A deal presupposes compromise and compromises means sacrifice. If one states at the outset that no sacrifice is possible -- "It's either my way or the highway, amigo" -- then one is just being an ass and a damned dangerous one too.

A declaration of a standard of "negotiations without sacrifice" is an example of the threat highlighted by Professor Alexis Dudden in her widely misunderstood op-ed for The New York Times, "The Shape of Japan to Come" (Link). Many reading the op-ed thought Dr. Dudden was issuing a warning that the Abe government was positioning Japan for a military conquest/occupation of disputed territories and territorial waters. Calling Mr. Abe's views "revanchist" did little to discourage such an interpretation.

What Dr. Dudden was trying to convey was likely a more limited warning -- that the Abe administration is leaving reality behind, promising not only to do things it has no intention of doing (the usual business of politics) but also things it cannot possibly do. A government that promises its citizens they are all going to Heaven (a paraphrase of the reaction of one my colleagues to Abe's speech to the Diet of 10 September 2007, delivered two days before he announced his resignation) is not likely to be a helpful international actor, nor a particularly reliable one.

That MEXT officials (and their counterparts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) want to claim for themselves that the impossible is true is bad. That they should want, through the kentei process (and in MOFA's case, through the intimidation of non-Japanese journalists) to insist that everyone shares their grand delusions, is idiocy.


Later - Thanks to reader AO for quickly catching my superfluous insertion of a decade.

Very Kind Of Them #55 - Straight Out Of Coffee Edition

A non-appearance (phone only) appearance on Channel News Asia.

Monday's collapse of service on Tobu Railways's Nikko Line (memo to me: I think* Tobu Railways is an absolutely terrible company) left me far from my computer and Skype, with the battery on my phone at near empty.

With the recording window immanent, I stepped off the train at X Station, went to the local Major International Coffee House Chain outlet, bought a mug of coffee, plugged in my near dead phone into one of the complimentary electrical outlets and asked to talk to the manager.

Manager Y was a magnificently self possessed young woman, who at no point seemed fazed by a crazed, backpack-toting hiker babbling about doing a smartphone Skype broadcast from her store. She had me explain twice what I wanted to try to do, told me that company policy allows no video recording without explicit permission from headquarters -- so a Skype call with video was a no-no -- but if I wanted to talk on the phone to a international television network about South Korea-Japan relations in the 50th anniversary year of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, sure, she would be happy to turn down the volume of the music in the packed store for the quarter-to-half an hour I might be talking to the host in Singapore.

Which is what she did.

Thanks also to the network, for their flexibility, patience and professionalism. The staff improvised, pulling down from the Web the picture of me from almost a decade ago and pasting it to a photo of Mt. Fuji with cherry blossoms (full disclosure: I am not a big sakura fan) to make up for the lack of a Skype video feed.

Please check out the result.




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* My friends with legal backgrounds have explained to me that sticking a superfluous "I think" in front of a statement makes it an opinion and thus not legally actionable. Not having the "I think" (it is my blog, who else would be doing the thinking?) could be considered either slander or libel.

Abe Shinzo And The Right, Rightly

Trending: "Japan tilting/turning/sliding to the right in an alarming way"

Example #1

Example #2

Example #3

Example #4

Hmmm...

Japan is probably not shifting, tilting, sliding, skipping, turning cartwheels or anything else to the right. If that were so, we would see hatred of "foreigners" irrespective of origins. Try as one might, one will find little evidence of generalized increased hatred toward non-Japanese. Antipathy and empathy fatigue are focused on two national groups, Chinese and South Koreans, and is it not even an ethnic disdain: Chinese and South Korean tourists are portrayed as a huge and vital business opportunity. (Link - J)

As for remilitarization, Japan presently spends around 1% of GDP on defense. After the Abe military build up, Japan will be spending...approximately 1% of GDP on defense. Do not even get me started on where in an Aging Japan the government is going to find enough youngsters to meet its force recruitment goals.

As for Abe's Yasukuni visit on December 26, he put off his annual visit until the morning of the one year anniversary of his election as prime minister. He was and is going to make visits on an annual basis. Let us take some solace in his having waited until the very last moment.

So what about the secrecy law, the appointment of mediocrity Momii Katsuto as the head of NHK, wannabe fixer Watanabe Tsuneo as the head of the commission on the secrecy law, Education Minister Shimomura Hakubun's new suggestions on what language teachers should use when talking about the Senkakus and Dokdo -- is it not all of a pattern?

Yes.

But the pattern is not one of a shift to the right.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's cronies are getting greedy, grabbing for stuff the public is not quite ready to cede to them, and which the public may never be willing to cede to them. These cronies are rightists, if by rightist you mean skeptical of/loathing China, tired of Japan's having World War II hung around its neck forever (and no, these cronies do not understand why persons hanging World War II around Japan's neck is possible) and pugnaciously defensive of a Japaneseness they alone can define.

It would be foolish for Abe, his sycophants and puppeteers to think the public is not aware of this piggishness and is not marking down in a ledger all the reasons it should not trust Abe and Friends.

The public has been exceedingly and aberrantly supportive of the Abe Cabinet and the Liberal Democratic Party. This support, however, does not evolve out of love for Abe policies, other than for the extremely activist and liberal (and contrary to longtime LDP theories on the national debt) macroeconomic program. According to the polls, the second most popular reason for supporting the Abe Cabinet, after the economic program, is "Because there is no appropriate alternative ready to step in."

Look around the political landscape of Japan today: to say that "there is no other appropriate person" ready to take Abe's place is really not that bizarre.

So "greedy Friends of Abe" + "liberal economics" + "little hope for anyone better" is supposed to equal "a shift to the right"?

I hope that that is not the math.

A Chinese Nightmare, Post-Sochi

VLADIVOSTOK - When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan sat down last Thursday with President Geun-hye Park at the finals of women's figure skating in Sochi, Russia, the physical and emotional distance between the two leaders seemed an illustration of the freeze in relations between the two countries. Mr. Abe and President Park sat apart, acknowledging each other's presence only once at the start of the evening. Japan First Lady Akie Abe, a fan of Korean culture and a speaker of the Korean language, sat in between the two leaders, eagerly and energetically chatting with the South Korean leader in a manner that made the frostiness between President Park and Prime Minister Abe all the more glaring.

The lack of interaction between President Park and Mr. Abe last week made yesterday's announcement of a broad-based, multilateral agreement on East Asian territorial issues all the more unexpected. Foreign ministers of Japan, South Korea, Russia and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, meeting in this frigid Pacific port, held a news conference outlining an intricate plan for countries in the region to settle longstanding territorial disputes in a wave of mutual recognitions of each other’s territorial claims.

"President Park and Mr. Abe put on an incredible show on Thursday night, better perhaps than the two young ladies," quipped one of President Park's advisers, who asked to remain anonymous. "The two governments had already cut the deal on Dokdo recognition, ending the feud. The two leaders showed no warmth at all toward each in order to keep the whole deal under wraps."

Though the details are not fully hammered out regarding Japanese rights on the northernmost of the two islands the Russians call the Southern Kuriles and the Japanese call their Northern Territories, the basic outlines of yesterday's agreements are:

- Russia will return to Japan of the islands of Shikotan and Habomai, seized by Soviet forces in 1945. Russia will gain sovereignty over the two remaining islands currently under dispute, with former Japanese residents of the islands and their descendants winning special extraterritorial rights of residency and self-rule on the islands.

- Japan and Russia will sign a peace treaty, officially ending World War II.

- Japan will recognize of South Korean sovereignty over islets known as Dokdo, which the Japanese call Takeshima. In return, the South Korea government promises to suspend all official efforts to change the name of the sea in which Dokdo is located from "Sea of Japan" to "East Sea."

- Russia, South Korea and the United States will recognize Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, which China and the government of Taiwan both claim.

The responses of the Chinese government to the declaration on the Senkakus, which Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands, have been confusion, disbelief and anger. Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin, China's senior representative at the Vladivostok talks after the departure of Foreign Minister Wang Yi two days ago, had no prepared statement, leaving the conference hall in a rush with reporters trailing in his wake. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, in a hastily arranged news conference in Beijing, declared, "Japan does not have sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands and no agreement among outsider nations can change this reality. The perfidy of today's illegitimate acts will reverberate through history but will never break China's bond to its sovereign territories."

"China overplayed its hand and absented itself from efforts to find a solution," explained a senior U.S. official, speaking on background. "The declaration of the East China Sea air defense zone in November got everyone's attention, making it clear that just leaving sovereignty issues in limbo was just going to continue to generate threats to everyone's security. Once the ball started rolling on the need for mutual recognitions and mutual sacrifices, the negotiations gained unstoppable momentum, bringing us to the agreement we have today."

The broad-based agreement, which the ministers and Secretary Kerry will be taking back to their capitals for approval...

The Chinese View Of The Senkakus

Over at East Asia Forum, Ren Xiao, the Director of Center for the Study of Chinese Foreign Policy, has published an essay describing in broad strokes background to the Chinese government's stance on the Diaoyus/Senkakus debate. It is a worthwhile read, and I say that as one who has gone on television to defend the Abe government's statements and actions as regards the Senkakus. (Link)

The key points for one on an insignificant perch in Tokyo are:

1) the Chinese government wants it both ways -- hysterically denouncing last year's nationalization of three islands as an inexcusable deviance from the status quo (bad!) and sending its ships into the territorial waters described by the islands to establish a constant physical presence (good!).

2) the Chinese government feels, with some degree of justification, that it has been played by the government of Japan, or at least by its prime ministers. It thought that when money-machine-political phenomenon, medium-bore construction magnate Tanaka Kakuei agreed in off-the-record talks to shelve the issue of the sovereignty of the islands, that it had just cut a verbal deal with Japan. They do not want to acknowledge that the only person they cut a deal with was with a multiply-disgraced and now seriously dead former prime minister. They also do not want to admit that a verbal deal is as good as the paper it is (not) written on.

3) "The history question" comes up, in such a manner as to obfuscate responsibility:

This difficult situation is exacerbated by history. China was invaded by Japan and suffered atrocities at the hands of Japanese imperial forces. These acts live on in China's collective memory, especially because Japanese politicians insist on touching this wound again and again. Relations with Japan have always been a complex and sensitive issue in China's foreign policy. Every time Japan and the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute comes up in the news, people in China become emotional and angry. Chinese leaders and officials cannot afford to be seen as soft towards Japan.

The explanation "people in China become emotional and angry" may be possibly the worst rationalization ever for national policy. It is also an indication of how frayed is the legitimacy of the current Chinese government. China's leaders, for all their pretensions to dictatorial power, have to forswear national self-interest in favor of behavior capable of keeping calm the mob at their doors.

As for the explanation that memories of Japanese misdeeds in the 1930s and 40s remain fresh and painful "because Japanese politicians insist on touching this wound again and again" -- commenter "Arthur" points out the author's glaring dereliction:

And not even in part because the Chinese government insists on pointing out the wound, digging its fingers in and saying "See? See how painful that is?" again and again.

4) Xi Jinping's and the Chinese government's refusal to hold high-level meetings (to my knowledge there has been only the trilateral meeting of the education ministers) much less a bilateral summit, with Abe Shinzo and his government, is petulance not worthy of second grade elementary school recess. However, and this is an indication of how much of a rules-bound giant China has become, not meeting Abe Shinzo or his top ministers is the only card the Chinese government has. Everything and anything else -- rioting, trade curbs, landings on the islands in question -- and China finds itself in the international doghouse, be it with the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the majority of members of ASEAN, et cetera. The only action the Chinese leadership can undertake which does not instigate institutionalized punitive proceedings -- and here is where the similarity between the stance of a nation of 1.3 billion and the miffed seven year-old hits home -- is the refusal to hold someone's hand.

All in favor of a web of international commitments as a way of keeping the peace, raise your hands.

The problem for the Chinese government: if it did, indeed, "grow up" and start behaving like a collection of adults, it would have nothing left with which it could placate its emotional and angry non-electorate.

5) I am not sure if the author, if writing in Chinese, would use the verb "force" one finds at the end of this passage:

One of the steps China has taken is to send in Chinese ships to the disputed waters for regular patrol and 'law enforcement'. The objective is to bring about de facto joint jurisdiction and joint patrolling in the relevant waters as a way to deny Japan's unilateral 'control' of the islands. Beijing wants to force Japan to change its 'no territorial dispute' position. {Emphasis added}

Prime Minister Abe has made it very clear, and has the backing of his electorate behind him on this point, that under no circumstances will any change in the Japanese government's position come as the result of force (Link). Any attempt to "force Japan to change" will be met by unshakable and fierce resistance.

In a larger sense, what we are seeing in Sino-Japanese and Japanese-South Korea government relations (and here I am veering away from Ren Xiao's essay) are the consequences of the triumph of democracy in East Asia -- and the failures of the habits of the governments and parties in the region to keep pace with the internal changes undergone by their respective societies. The main elements of the framework of relations between the states of the region were thrown up by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian governments, by leaders who could make private deals amongst themselves. These leaders shrugged at issues that did not interest them　and faced muted possibilities of public backlash for the deals they negotiated.

Today's leaders do not have the liberty of action their ancestors -- and in the case of the main trio of Xi, Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye, "ancestors" is the correct term (not just a figure of speech but an actual description of the persons involved). For these children and grandchildren of giants the publics of China and South Korea are emotional and angry. Perhaps they always were. The change is that these publics are now also empowered, capable of forcing their political leaders to act according to the dictates of the mob, be it smoldering or flash.

The conundrum for Japan's policy makers is what to do over the long-term with neighbors who seem to have lost the capacity to, as Gordon Sumner memorably urged, "learn to throw the past away." Certainly a surrender of one's positions is one option -- one that has its advocates in the "China and Korea are returning to their original places in the Asian order" school. Surrender is in fact the only option for Japan's policy makers as regards the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute.

For the Senkakus, though, no such option exists. Whatever ornate vision of a nation's glory/destiny one may espouse, a democratically elected government's surrendering to a dictatorial government is an abomination. This is what the Chinese people, for all its trumpeted greatness and its extraordinary size, has to come to understand: that in any conceivable, livable world order, the tiniest democracy, the merest gathering of a few tens of thousands of souls on a mountain massif or a lonely atoll, outranks China.

Threatening Nonsense

You may recall Suzuki Nobuyuki, the radical right winger who managed to capture 74,000 votes in the Tokyo Metropolitan District on July 21 (introduced here, with the look at how he might have been a sponsored spoiler candidate here).

The frighteningly well-spoken Suzuki holds forth in a new video report from Michael Penn: "Japan Grapples With The Rise Of Hate Groups."

If you have 12 minutes, it is worth a watch.

I would take exception to the statement in the report that the noisy, threatening ultra-right is a new phenomenon. All kinds of things were yelled out at political events in the 1960's (the audio to the video of the assassination of Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma demonstrates how out of control the audience was - Link). However, it is true that threats of death and other violence have been beyond the pale for the past 40 years.

I also worry about misinterpretation of the statement that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo shares many of the ideological beliefs of the radical fringe. Rather than sharing ideology, it is probably better to say that Abe-san and his friends in business, academia, and the media have same the data points and talking points in their arsenals as one finds in the speeches and online drivel produced by the fringe groups and politicians like Suzuki.

The claims of radical parties like Suzuki's Restoration New Wind and organizations like former air self defense forces general Tamogami Toshio's Ganbare Nippon are outlandish in their paranoia. They would not have any attraction, though, if they did not in some way provide a template for understanding actual events. The intrusion of Chinese coast guard ships into the territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands (Link) or the erection of monuments to the comfort women -- the women (and some boys) trafficked by the brothel network established to serve the troops and officers of the Imperial Army -- on public land in the United States (Link) provide Japanese hate groups all the evidence they need of a vast global anti-Japanese conspiracy encircling and strangling the nation. These groups do on their own then layer on farcical claims, perhaps out of theatricality, perhaps as ornamentation in order to disguise the poverty of their intellectual wares.

That the relationship between Chinese and South Korean patriots and right wing fringe groups in Japan is symbiotic, each side providing the other with the justification for festering hatred and provocation (possibly providing a comfortable living for some of the participants) rarely makes the news anywhere.

Abe Shinzo and the Holy Grail

Juvenile and stupid of me, but when I read "How Shinzo Abe could win the Nobel Peace Prize," the title of an opinion piece published in Monday's The Financial Times, I could not resist imagining James Clad and Robert Manning as King Arthur and Sir Percival. (Link - YouTube)

Because, uh...Abe Shinzo's family has already got one, you see. (Link)

What is more, it is the only one in Japanese hands.

Abe Shinzo and his relatives have been prime minister for over 20 years out of the 68 since the Japanese surrender to Allied forces (more if you include the marriage relations - Link - J). Having Kishis as the holders of Japan's two Nobel Prizes for Peace would be beyond satire, especially in light of recent revelations of the flexibility of Sato Eisaku's anti-nuclear stand. (Link with key photo)

As for selling the concept of Abe's renouncing of Japan's claims on Dokdo/Takeshima by putting such a renunciation on a level with Sadat's acceptance of the Camp David accords and Nixon's opening with China, one could hardly fault Abe Shinzo for dryly noting, "And taking these bold leaps resulted in huge personal benefits for both men, yes?"

Not that there is not merit in renunciation -- for the United States. Dokdo is a flashpoint in South Korean/Japanese relations, complicating the establishment of an integrated regional security structure of U.S. allies -- not that the establishment of a Japan-South Korea axis in such a structure would in any way be perceived as the crucial step in a strategy of containment of China, much less be one.

Acquiescing to South Korea's military seizure or liberation (choose one) and garrisoning of Dokdo/Takeshima as a fait accompli would make it harder for Japan to hold any sort of line with Russia over the sovereignty of the Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories. It would also be very hard for the Prime Minister to explain to the families of the dozens of Shimane Prefecture fisherman injured or killed and thousands jailed during the period 1954 to 1965 -- from the arrival of South Korean forces to the normalization of relations (not that there is any chance that such a betrayal would lessen the Liberal Democratic Party's hammerlock on Shimane, mind you) -- unless he wrested from the South Korean government a sincere apology for the brutality it showed toward Japanese civilians.

A mental retort of "And it will be a cold day in hell before that ever happens" is not inappropriate here.

Having South Korean forces, armed and armored, occupying Dokdo/Takeshima, islets lacking fresh water sources, scanning the horizon for the Japanese invasion that will never come, and having patriotic South Koreans spending money, time and energy trumpeting South Korea's claim on Dokdo/Takeshima in venues appropriate and inappropriate all over the globe plays into the vital revisionist theme of Japan as victim, in this case of an irrational and therefore indissoluble South Korean paranoia.

In the end, my puerile association of the Clad/Manning appeal with the one King Arthur makes to the French soldier is not far wrong. Abe Shinzo, like Guy de Loimbard, has a stout fortress. An appeal to come outside to join an idealistic quest is something about which (and who could blame him) he is not very keen.

So South Korean and Japanese Governments Do Not Get Along

To what extent does the policy community of the United States understand that the presence of U.S. forces in East Asia creates incentives for the governments of South Korea and Japan to not resolve their differences -- and that Japan-South Korea tensions are indicators of a relatively benign security environment?

What would prompt Japan and South Korea to lay aside or better yet tackle their disputes over Dokdo, the sex slaves of the Japan Imperial Forces　(a.k.a. the "comfort women") and the history of the colonial period?

a) China turning truly evil and dangerous

b) Russia turning truly evil and dangerous

c) North Korea having a truly crazy government and important military capabilities

d) the U.S. really pulling its forces out of the region

As for d), those ruling Japan and South Korea have done the math. If the governments and elites of the two countries get along, then Washington's dreaded "burden sharing" kicks in. If the two sides remain divided, U.S. forces have to stay in the region in pretty much their current form and numbers -- which is not only what the democratic governments of South Korea and Japan want (cheaper, it is) but what all persons of sense inside China want, a massive U.S. presence restraining the crazies inside the PRC from doing anything really stupid.

So the collapse last year of the intelligence sharing agreement in between Japan and South Korea (Link)? An opportunity to mess matters up mercifully missed.

A pulling back from the pantomime dispute over the sovereignty of Dokdo? To be avoided.

Work hard to stop Japanese textbook publishers to stop using weasel words in descriptions of the colonial period and South Koreans to stop playing the historical victim card? Probably not the best use of one's time.

On the matter of the sexual slavery, those who are the guardians of Japan's interests should, but probably will not, present the options on what to do to the people of Japan. For the governments, the incentives are not in favor of reconciliation. Individual citizens of free societies are perhaps incentivized differently.

Two Space Cadets Talking

The translated interview has already been featured on The Wall Street Journal's JapanRealTime blog (Link) and skewered by Our Man in Abiko (Link). Nevertheless, I cannot help but link to the deliciously weird battle of non-sequiturs in between crackpot Motoya Toshio and Liberal Democratic Party ideologue and now Minister of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology Shimomura Hakubun. (Link)

If and when the South Korean and Chinese news complexes come up with translations of this exchange and/or if it gets wide discussions in the Euro-American policy circles, it will come bouncing back into Japan like a 10,000 kilogram rubber ball. It could even be as helpful to Shimomura's career as Motoya's essay contest was for the career of Air Force General Tamogami Toshio. (Link)

If Shimomura is thoroughly and deservedly humiliated by this exchange of absurdities, the floodgates open for looks at the writings and remarks of Minister of General Affairs and Communications Shindo Yoshitaka and State Minister for Administrative Reforms Inada Tomomi. The pair inhale the same vapors as Shimomura, going farther than him in acting out their fantasies of defending Japan. They were a part of the trio of Diet members (the other was the former commander of Japan's forces in Iraq) who tried in August 2011 to enter South Korea in order to visit Ulleung Island, the South Korean territory closest to the disputed Dokdo islets. They were sent packing by ROK immigration officials (Link). In August this year Shindo was a member of the motley crew of Diet and local assembly members who sailed to the Senkakus to conduct an insincere and insulting memorial service for Okinawans who had starved to death on Uotsurijima. (Link)

Shimomura, Shindo and Inada are archetypal Friends of Shinzo. They are in the cabinet because Abe Shinzo wanted them there. Each one of them is a time bomb ticking away.

The PM is probably serious about a focus on the economy, the economy and the economy in the run up to the July House of Councillors election. He does, after all, want to lead the LDP to a further thumping of the Democratic Party of Japan.

The appearance in English of this bit of idle banter in between brother revisionists, however, has the potential to distract him.

And When I Say "Stolen" I Say That With All Due Respect

On September 28, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi of the People's Republic of China delivered a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. In his speech Yang used a weirdly hyperbolic turn of phrase, saying that Japan had stolen the Senkakus from China.

In much of the print, online and broadcast reporting in this blessed land, Yang's use of the word "stolen" was depicted as the Chinese government losing its senses. The evening sports rag Sports Nippon, no stranger to hyperbole itself, was dumbfounded:

This was not North Korea or Iran -- this was China, a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, using this fiery (gekiretsu) expression. It is beyond precedent.

(Link)

Osaka mayor Hashimoto Toru, hearing of the use of the expression "stolen", tweeted on 28th:

Be that as it may, this shows China's lack of class. If it had been me that they said this to, that would have been the end of it. This shows that they are still a long way from acting in an honorable manner in global terms. That at the UN General Assembly, to use an expression like 'stolen' toward a sovereign state like Japan...Japan must retort vehemently."

(Link)

Some in Japan knew that Yang's use of the word "stolen" in his UN speech was not a verbal misstep or a sudden leap in tone. China's State Oceanic Administration on September 20 had released a handbook making exactly the same claim about the islands.

The standard joke one would use in this instance to deflate the tension would be:

"The islands were 'stolen' – that's a technical term, of course. Ha, ha."

What is unfunny is that "stolen" is indeed a technical term. Saying the Senkakus were "stolen" brings them under the purview of the Cairo Communique, which states:

"...Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the first World War in 1914, and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China."

(Link)

That a close reading of the Cairo Communique would find the niggling problem that the Republic of China is still around, ruling Taiwan, can be and is being glossed over the government of People’s Republic. (E)

As to returning to the status quo ante, the ante has been raised for the government of Japan.

The PRC government is aware that Japan annexed the Senkakus in January of 1895, before the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki which ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan. By declaring the Senkakus as "stolen" China has pushed the application of the Cairo Communique backwards in time, prior to the commonly accepted boundary line of April 17, 1895, the date of the signing of the treaty ending of the First Sino-Japanese War.

If the Senkakus are classed as "stolen" the next logical step is to class Okinawa in the same way.

This is not paranoid right wing fantasy. The China Daily, in talking about the status of the Senkakus, is unabashed about declaring Chinese claims on Okinawa as superceding Japanese ones:

Japan took the Liu Chiu Islands, which Japan calls Okinawa, by force from China in 1874, when the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was at war with several countries. The Diaoyu Islands, though, remained under the administration of Taiwan. Following China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95, the Qing government ceded Taiwan, including its subsidiary islands, to Japan.

(Link)

Before plunging too deeply into extreme scenarios involving Okinawa, the unanchored use of the word “stolen” in the Cairo Communique is the source of the GOJ’s inability to admit even the existence of a sovereignty dispute over the Senkakus. The moment the GOJ ever admits that a dispute exists, the Cairo Communique comes into effect.

Togo Kazuhiko has been going around advocating that the government of Japan indeed admit the existence of a dispute (E) -- this in order that there be symmetry in between the GOJ's approaches to the dispute with South Korea over Dokdo/Takeshima and the fight brewing over the Senkakus. That the former head of the Treaties Bureau (service: 1998-99) would fail to appreciate the triggering of the Cairo Communique is flabbergasting.

In addition Foreign Minister Yang’s speech in New York and the State Oceanic Administration handbook, the Chinese government's September 10 demarcation of territorial waters baselines including the Senkakus makes clear that the government of China has no intention of returning to the status quo ante. The baseline declaration requires that Chinese constabulary forces conduct uninterrupted surveillance and security patrols in and about the islands, meaning that JCG and various Chinese government vessels are condemned to a series of confrontations in what Japan considers its territorial waters, non erit finis (E).

Hence the absurdity of the breathless daily reports of Chinese ships entering Japan's territorial waters about the Senkakus.

"Let's all calm down, take a deep breath and remember what is at stake here" punditry notwithstanding, China is pushing hard to undermine Japan’s jurisdiction over the Senkakus, using such tools as exist in its own domestic law, international law and World War II declarations.

The Rubicon is crossed. So what are Japan and its treaty ally the United States going to do about it?

In Terra Australis

Down in the land of tuataras, carnivorous parrots and yellow-eyed penguins, Corey Wallace has produced two must-read posts on on Japanese-Australian military cooperation and Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru’s unexpectedly reasonable Twitter tweets on the Senkakus and Dokdo/Takeshima:

Japan and Australia to take Perhaps the Final Big Step in the Relationship?

and

Hashimoto Digging Himself into a Hole with Japan’s Conservatives?"


The post on Japan-Australia military cooperation contains a salient observation, that “alliances are no longer the weapon of choice for security partnerships.” This presents an interesting lens through which to view Kyle Mizokami's essay for The Atlantic:

Japan and the U.S.: It's Time to Rethink Your Relationship

For another a source on Japan-Australia strategic alignment, J. Berkshire Miller has produced a long post for The Diplomat:

Japan-Australia Ties Key to Regional Stability

So it is not all just the Senkakus, Dokdo/Takeshima, the sex slaves of Japan's Imperial Forces and Abe Shinzo.

Just mostly on those subjects.

Japan's Island Conflicts: What, Where, Why?

A few days ago a friend mailed me:

"Why such a crisis in between Japan and China? Where are we? Where are we heading? Is there a competition for regional leadership? Or are we fooled while something else is happening or coming?"

Sourabh Gupta believes that everything is all a show: that the foreign ministries are all aware where the limits are. So move on, make money, nothing is happening here. (Link)

Those of us watching the extraordinary images of yesterday's non-lethal reenactment of the Battle of Trafalgar (Video J - warnings on link rot apply) in the waters about the Senkakus might be less than confident about the ability of career bureaucrats of the region keeping matters within limits.

Indeed, even prior to yesterday's free-for-all in between a smattering of JCG vessels, 40 Taiwanese fishing boats and 12 Taiwan coast guard escorts, there were plenty of reasons to believe that the governments of the regions do not have matters under control.

One example is very helpfully provided by Mr. Gupta himself. He links to a translated Yomiuri Shimbun article detailing the internal deliberations of the Cabinet over how to best proceed following the government's purchase of the islands from their private Japanese owner. Plans were ranked A to H in terms of likelihood to provoke, "A" being the doing of absolutely nothing and "H" being the deployment of Self Defense Forces on the islands. Prime Minister Noda, who likely wanted to deflect domestic criticism that the government was doing nothing, favored Plan C, which was -- and I am not making this up -- replacing the incandescent bulb in the Uotsurijima's lighthouse with an LED bulb. Foreign Minister Gemba Ko'ichiro and Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya talked the PM out of this plan, arguing that any physical act would be too much for the Chinese government to bear. (E)

This is the level of crazy we are at -- where the changing of a light bulb requires a Cabinet-level decision...

...and no, the foregoing the replacement of a navigational aid's current light source with a brighter, longer-lasting and more energy-efficient one in the end did not diminish one wit the extent to which the Chinese government lost its marbles over the island purchase.

Where is this headed? Ask the government of China. For all the cinematic grandeur of yesterday's maritime encounter, the government of Taiwan has yet to match its inaction with words. While President Ma Ying-jeou did praise those aboard the fishing vessels for their patriotism and those in the Taiwan coast guard for their devotion to duty (E) the government of Taiwan has so far avoided either threatening Japan or accusing the government of Japan of fomenting a state of crisis.

Not that it will not take an age, if that will be enough, to repair the damage yesterday's sea battle will have on Taiwan's previously vital relationship with Japan's right wing. The government of Taiwan will count the costs -- and find them huge.

The government of the People's Republic, however, has talked itself into a corner, ratcheting up the level of rhetoric so high that whoever is unfortunate enough to take over the reins of government from Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao will have to either have to demolish the Sino-Japanese relationship or engineer a deeply wounding climb-down.

Not a great way to start what is supposed to be a decade in power.

As for Japan's other inflamed island dispute, the South Koreans, already in the international doghouse for allowing its obsession over the Dokdo/Takeshima issue to mar the Olympics, yesterday raised their delusion level a notch, with Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan taking his turn at the podium at the United Nations to simultaneously support and denounce the use of international law for the use of solving international political disputes. (E)

The English language readout of the UN presentation is a study in self-absorption and victimhood:

3. Minister Kim emphasized that the rule of law should be based on indispensable values such as justice, morality, territorial integrity and sovereignty. He also highlighted the rule of law should not be used as an instrument of powerful nations to coerce weak nations as shown in the (sic) history; or one to advance political agendas.

4. Before Minister Kim's remark, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba took the floor to state that "The International Court of Justice(ICJ) is an important instrument to resolve the international disputes peacefully, and I call on every member states (sic) to accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ."

※ 67 countries out of 193 UN member states in total, accepted compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ, stipulated in the second clause of Article 36.
- The US, China, France, Russia(permanent members of the UN Security Council), Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia are among those countries which have yet to accept the ICJ's compulsory jurisdiction.

[An aside, but clearly MOFAT-ROK and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have different standards when it comes to English-language press releases. MOFA would discipline officers and their supervisors for releasing a text like the above.]

In a side bilateral meeting, the South Korean and Chinese foreign ministers had what seemed to be extremely cordial talks (E). With the South Korean Foreign Minister to come out from the bilateral meeting and to say that historical issues -- i.e., the behavior Japanese Imperial Forces and the national government of Japan during the period 1868 to 1945 -- should be brought before the UN (J), one cannot fault Japanese news media for finding a zero-sum game underway, with Sino-South Korean friendliness coming at Japan's expense.

Someone, perhaps Mr. Gupta, will have to reassure me that the South Koreans are not so stupid as to make common cause with China against Japan.

Why all are all these different island disputes coming to a head right now? A full answer to that question would fill a book....and needs to be left for another day.

Essential reading on the outlook for the immediate future is Stephanie Kleine-Ahlebrant's Foreigh Policy article "Dangerous Waters" (Link). Her pessimistic conclusion: China's recent moves in submissions to international organizations guarantee a constant Chinese presence in waters Japan considers its own. That in addition to fighting off a crowd of ships from Taiwan, the JCG had to keep an eye on 10 Chinese fisheries and maritime safety agency ships sailing in the same waters indicates that Japan is in for long, enervating and expensive confrontation with its larger, resentful and possibly ungovernable neighbor.

China's leadership, for reasons both temporary and potentially permanent, seems to have taken to abandoning Deng Xiaoping's advice to leave the issue of the sovereignty of the Senkakus to a later and wiser generation. Instead, the leadership seems to be acting on the geology lesson at the heart of the movie The Shawshank Redemption: all one needs to break through to what one's heart desires is time and pressure.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan is in the process of selecting a new leader. Ishiba Shigeru and former prime minister Abe Shinzo, both of them the hardest of the hardliners in the five-way race, survived the first round of voting, the one that combined the votes of local chapters and members of the Diet. Ishiba ran away with the votes in the local chapters, winning over 50% of the local votes. Abe, however, squeaked into the second round with a strong second to Ishihara Nobuteru among the members of the Diet.

In the runoff between the two first round leaders, the decision is in the hands of the members of the Diet alone. Given that Abe has a history of failure and collapse, the election lights are shining on Ishiba.

A Moment This Morning, Bifurcation

On Channel 5 (TV Asahi): a long special segment on the fisherman of Okinoshima, reportedly negatively affected by their inability to fish in the waters around Dokdo/Takeshima (the announcers are definitive -- it is Takeshima) and the inability of Fisheries Agency to keep South Korean ships from fishing inside Japan's exclusive economic zone.

On Channel 7 (Tokyo Television): the broadcast of a Korean historical drama.

From Out Of The Mailbag

"Rather than writing a hatchet job based largely on snark about grammar, why don't you spend a little more time laying out what you think is wrong with the argument? Surely that would be more illuminating?"

Thus was I challenged the other day by an anonymous commentator as regards my dismissal of Dr. Jeffrey Hornung's essay for The Diplomat, "South Korea’s Irresponsible Diplomacy With Japan."

The commenter is absolutely right. I had indulged my aggravation with the misuse of language (a sin from which Seth Garrett has pointed out, I am not immune), metronomic recitation of facts and strained metaphors. Under this veneer of faults lay a more fundamental flaw: the thesis that those in power in Japan have made brave and insufficiently appreciated efforts at reconciliation and reflection in regards to the country's expansionist imperial period. That these efforts have been insufficiently appreciated because they have been insufficiently brave does require illuminating, especially since Dr. Hornung's essay is part of what seems a concerted push by elements of CSIS and the CSIS Pacific Forum across the spectrum of online media:

"South Korea’s Irresponsible Diplomacy With Japan"
Dr. Jeffrey Hornung
Associate Professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu and an Adjunct Fellow with the Office of the Japan Chair at CSIS.

"War memories and territorial disputes in Northeast Asia"
Preeti Nalwa
Non-Resident Kelly Fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS, a Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellow and PhD candidate at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi.

"Korea-Japan: enough is enough!"
Ralph Cossa
President of the Pacific Forum CSIS of Honolulu, an affiliate of CSIS in Washington.

Cossa's essay contains certain annoying items that do not exist, such as Japan's king and its National Assembly (it is Japan's Emperor and the Diet, respectively). However, I can hardly giggle and point, as in a recent post I claimed that the Heisei emperor had visited South Korea -- an assertion for which thoughtful correspondent A. R. has asked me to provide supporting evidence.

Ooops.

I was also recently chided in comments by reader Philippe for writing a puff piece on the final nail being driven in the coffin of Tanigaki Sadakazu's campaign for a second term as Liberal Democratic Party president. The post could be read as trying to beat some life into what had long been an exceedingly dead horse.

To an accusation that the post was a puff piece I plead guilty. I needed for myself, if not for the readership, to balance with the light with the dark, having written the previous day of my uncomprehending horror at the touted candidacy of Abe Shinzo for LDP president. Also, having only recently stumbled across Elvis Costello's "A Monster Went And Ate My Red 2" I was looking for an opportunity to share it.

However, on the broader issue of Tanigaki Sadakazu even thinking about running for a second term, and news media's treatment of the subject as anything more than a joke, that should be a subject of wide and deep discussion.

Tanigaki Sadakazu has been something of a guide star in my writing on the LDP and its problems. In July 2006 I went so far as to call him "the man who put the 'idiot' in idiot-savant." I have probably written more posts about him than on any other politician who was not a prime minister.

Tanigaki is the modern politician who should not have been. He has the social graces of a teenage boy, took eight years to finish his Bachelor's, failed the lawyer's exam six times before finally passing on his seventh try and has never had a real job. Nevertheless he managed to be annointed decades ago the dauphin of the Miyazawa Faction -- the faction led by the flat out smartest man in the Diet. That his rise through the ranks in the faction and the party could be explained by a compliant press -- who could not hide his cringeworthy attempts at ingratiating himself -- as being due to his being a policy wonk (seisaku tsu) should befuddle, perplex and finally anger anyone believing in the role of the Fourth Estate in a free society. Any intelligent person's review of his public statements makes plain he has not the slightest understanding of not just policy, but of common everyday occurrences (failing, for example, to understand that the intersection of the demand curve and the supply curve is the price).

That the political classes and the news media should collude in labeling Tanigaki what he clearly was not, even as they provided evidence that he was not what they were saying he was, has been a source of constant wonder to me. That he should rise to the post where he could have stepped into the role of leader of this blessed land should give everyone pause.

I felt it proper to mark the occasion when the Tanigaki farce seemed finally, irretrievably over.

The Longer The Explanation...

...the more strained the metaphors, the more hyperbolic the rhetoric ("This has arguably brought bilateral ties to their worst nadir..." -- oh please, consult a dictionary and find out what "nadir" means) the less likely the essay in question will make its point...or has a point to make.

"South Korea’s Irresponsible Diplomacy With Japan"

Dr. Hornung's affiliations tell you why this essay was written. A man has to do his job(s). I cannot fault him for that.

However, one has to do one's job well. If one is going to pummel President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea, do not segue into the "Japan-has-apologized-enough-and-here-let-me-run-down-the-list" routine. Is there not a better way?

The other question is, with Jason Miks no longer at the helm at The Diplomat -- Miks having moved on to CNN -- who is letting this flotsam and jetsam over the transom?

The Yomiuri Shimbun Goes On The Prowl

The text has not yet received the attention it deserves, but the Yomiuri Shimbun's August 29 editorial "The Kono Statement: It is natural to revise this 'historical stain'" (Kono danwa: "Fu no isan" no minaoshi wa tozen da) marks a turning point in Japan's political history (Link -J). It is stunning not just for its despicable and stupid call for a revision of the 1993 Kono Statement on the sex slaves of the Japan Imperial Forces comfort stations* but for its desperate batting of eyelashes at Hashimoto Toru ("Stop tweeting for a second and come and sit down next to me...") now that the Yomiuri's long time steady, the Liberal Democratic Party, has hopelessly soiled itself.

Like all floozies, the editors at the Yomiuri have a sharp and seemingly prescient sense of When It Is Time To Move On.

As for the call for a revision or indeed repudiation of the Kono Statement -- a dormant volcano brought violently to life on Monday by People's Life First Party member Toyama Itsuki in his questions put to the Cabinet in the House of Councillors Budget Committee session -- it is based upon the most idiotic of premises imaginable: that the Statement is false because the Government of Japan, in its 1991-93 investigation of the claims of the sex slaves, could not find any documentary evidence linking the coercive or duplicitous recruitment of the sex slaves and actions taken by government officials, be they civilian or military.

How stupid is this?

This stupid:

"Mr. Capone. You have been accused of being the head of Chicago's crime syndicates. What do your own investigations into these matters find?"

"Well, let me see here. Uh, here's my card. Nope, nope. It says here that my occupation is 'secondhand furniture dealer.' It don't say nothin' about no crime syndicates."

"Well, there you have it folks -- another ugly accusation proven untrue. Mr. Capone, our apologies for having troubled you."

As if a single entity could be entrusted to play the roles of defendant, prosecutor and judge all at the same time.

As for the appeal to Hashimoto, it is no mere love call in the middle of the night. It a suitcase-in-each-hand-appearing-at-the-front-door-at-6 a.m. request of "May I come in?"

The Yomiuri has produced its own translation of the editorial ( Link - E). Unfortunately, the translators have taken so many liberties that the result sounds even more callous and mendacious than the original.

Someone will have to produce a better translation, possibly me. If I do it, I post will my draft and have expert commentators offer their suggestions.

For those who want to see the video of the Toyama questions and the answers of Foreign Minister Gemba Ko'ichiro, Chief Cabinet Secretarty Fujimura Osamu, National Safety Commision Chair Matsubara Jin and Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, the House of Councillors video library website is:

http://www.webtv.sangiin.go.jp/webtv/index.php

Go to the calendar and click on August 27. When the list of committee meetings appears, click on the tiny icon of a human face on the far right on the line for the budget committee (予算委員会）. This will open a drop-down list of the questioners and their question session. Click on Toyama Itsuki (外山斎). The playback will begin moments later, in a separate, small window.


---------------------------------------
* The term "comfort women" has always been a misnomer, as comfort station procurers took boys as well as women from the internment camps in Indonesia.

Behaving Like Children - Lee and Noda On The Farm

This blessed land had a nursery song "Yagi-san Yubin."

It goes like this:

白ヤギさんからお手紙着いた
黒ヤギさんたら読まずに食べた
仕方がないのでお手紙書いた
さっきの手紙はご用事なあに

Shiro yagisan kara otegami tsuita
Kuro yagisan tara yomazu ni tabeta
Shikata ga nai no de otegami kaita
Sakki no tegami no goyoji nani

"From the white goat a letter arrived
The black goat, without reading it, ate it up
Itas for nothing, the writing of that letter
But he needed to know, so he wrote a letter back:
What was in that letter?"

In the second verse of the song, the colors of the sender and the consumer are reversed.

Here is brief animation of a little girl singing the song. (Link)

Following the recent amusing/embarrassing pettiness over the delivery or non-delivery of letters of protest between the governments of this blessed land and South Korea (Part I and Part II) the Tokyo Shimbun yesterday printed a new version of the song on a cartoon featuring the visages of the two national leaders.

〇ヤギさんからお手紙着いた
〇ヤギさんたら読まずに吐いた
仕方がないのでお手紙捨てた拾った
さっきの手紙はご用事なあに

[Maru] yagisan kara otegami tsuita
[Maru] yagisan tara yomazu ni haita
Shikata ga nai no de otegami suteta hirotta
Sakki no tegami no goyoji nani

"From the [blank] goat a letter arrived
The [blank] goat, without reading it, coughed it up
It was for nothing that that letter was thrown away
But he needed to know, so he picked the letter up:
What was in that letter?"

Here is the image of the editorial cartoon:

Yes, the two goats in the image are both white. Hence the title, on the left:

"You fill in with color the one you think is black, OK?"


Image courtesy: Tokyo Shimbun

Later - Many thanks to the reader Jordan, for catching the howling kanji error.

Your Serve, Region

Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko gave a live press conference last night, outlining what his government is doing regarding the territorial disputes with the Republic of Korea over Dokdo and China/Taiwan/Hong Kong over the Senkakus. (J)

The approach the Noda government will take is quite simple: it will assert its claims, which it has heretofore done quietly, mostly in the form of including the disputed territories in official maps, wherever appropriate in its interactions with the international community, leaving international opinion to judge the validity of Russian, South Korean and Chinese/Taiwanese behavior.

This approach is in line with the standard procedures of normal democratic states. Authoritarian regimes can enforce, as Deng Xiaoping suggested, the sweeping of competing claims under the rug for later, wiser generations to resolve, with the obvious postscript: "In the meantime, let's stay in power by letting our people make money." Democratic states cannot -- voters like problems resolved in clean, simple and tidy ways.

Adjusting to the new stance will lead to some fumbling. Even foreign policy experts will not "get it" -- see this CNN op-ed by Jimbo Ken, where he argues at the beginning that status quo policies are no longer operative, only to argue at the end that the conduct of relations between Japan and China needs the kinds of personal relations that lubricated and protected the status quo approach.

However, the chances of the new assertiveness' succeeding in freezing further escalation of territorial disputes are at least 50-50. All the governments in the region ex Japan remain at least semi-authorian -- the exception being Taiwan, which has opted out of the current round of the fighting over the Senkakus despite being led by a man whose law degree is based upon studies of Chinese claims in the East China Sea (E and E). The semi-authoritarian regimes can still rely upon considerable powers of persuasion to repress populist behavior - if the regime in question wants to do so. China has deployed both its 50-cent Party of Web commentators and its police forces (E) in a short-circuiting of anti-Japanese mob action in relation to the visit of Hong Kong activists to the Senkakus. That the South Korean president has gone in the other direction, choosing to heighten regional tensions rather than use his presidential powers to tamp them down, over a territory where South Korea has dug-in military forces, is...to be honest, not something I do want to delve into right now because it will be, inshallah, discussed in a future op-ed for Al-Jazeera.

The takeaway from last night's speech is that the balls are now in the courts of the nations surrounding Japan. The government of this blessed land is not going to keep quiet, as was demonstrated in the most recent Defense White Paper where the government put it writing That Which Must Not Be Said: that the civilian government of China and the People's Liberation Army may not be reading from the same piece of sheet music.

It will be up to the governments in the region, coping with their own internal instabilities and tensions, to come up with new narratives to cope with Mr. Noda's New Reality.

It Could Have Been A Lot Worse

In yesterday's post, I lamented that the August 15 anniversary of the end of World War II was the worst of days, due to the absurd nationalist and ehtnocentric emotions the anniversary raises.

However, we have made it through to Thursday, Amaterasu be praised. A lot of bad, stupid events took place and dumb things were said, but all turned out pretty much for the best.

- The fishing boat full of Hong Kong activists, despite the Japan Coast Guard's vigorous efforts to encourage -- and by "encourage" I mean this...

to not try to make landfall at any of the Senkaku Islands, could not take the subtle hint and proceeded close enough to the shore of Uojima for seven of the activists, carrying inexplicably the flags of both the PRC and the ROC, to wade ashore.

CCTV, in a breaking news flash, depressingly referred to the charade as a "successful landing."

On shore, the seven were met by a company of JCG personnel and Okinawa Prefecture police -- a blend of security forces the activists should have thanked their lucky stars for, as coast guard personnel tend to play rough. They are the proud cowboys of Japan's security establishment and have a very short list of rules of engagement.

Despite the reduced chance of their being harmed, two of the activists turned around and immediately swam back to the boat. Perhaps they lost heart; perhaps they had a live interview wairing for them. The remaining five were relieved of their flags and arrested on violations of immigration laws.

Later, after night had fallen, the Coast Guard took control of the fishing vessel, arresting the nine remaining activists on board.

No one got hurt; the Chinese got their testosterone shot. If Japanese authorities learned anything from the Chinese fishing boat collision case, they will put the activists on a flight to Hong Kong, deporting them for being particularly unsuccessful illegal immigrants.

- President Lee Myung-bak, who threw a wrench into Japan-South Korea relations by visiting Dokdo on August 10, doubled down on his diplomatic faux pas by inviting the Heisei Emperor to visit South Korea on the condition that the emperor issue a contrite apology to the peoples of the Korean peninsula for Japan's occupation and annexation of the land a hundred years ago (E). That the Emperor did this the last time he visited the ROK Prime Minister Kan Naoto did this on the 100th anniversary of Korea's annexation seems to have not satisfied President Lee's critics.

For a guy born in Osaka, Lee sure is tough on his original home. Then again, for the suspicious act of having emerged from a uterus in Japan, the president of the Republic of Korea is a presumed puppet of Japan.

Lesson: choose your uterus wisely!

[Choosing the right uterus is only half the story, of course, even in these oligarchical times. The Hatoyama Brothers, Yukio and Kunio, made an excellent choice, only to proceed through their own particular brand of solipsism to make a hash of their advance placement in life.]

- The demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul attracted 300 persons, according to Japanese news reports. In the pouring rain, the famous statue of the young seated girl looked as though she were crying,

While particularly a effective and affective work of art yesterday, the statue has to be moved to a less provocative location. It is, of course, a stand-in for the sex slaves themselves, who cannot, due to their advanced age, keep up the weekly protests much longer.

However, the statue, in its permanence, closes minds. From the point of view of a Japanese diplomat or a Japanese politician, the statement "We will always be here" provokes the response, "Fine. We will always ignore you."

- The two members of the Cabinet who paid their respects at Yasukuni yesterday did so in a private capacity, as they had promised, lessening somewhat the fallout from the visits. They also demonstrated, in their press availabilities after their visits, that neither would make it past the first round of an "evil genius" competition.

- After reporting on the rest of the day's sordid events, NHK's 9 p.m. broadcast a special segment on a heretofore little-publicized facet of the Pacific War: the dispatch of eleven agents from the infamous Nakano military intelligence school to the outer, tiny islands of the Okinawa chain in last year of the war. The goal: to infiltrate local society in preparation of convincing the islanders to sacrifice themselves for the defense of the main islands.

The piece focused on the effort of two sisters to record, as long as persons of at least a certain age in 1945 are still alive, memories of a school teacher who arrived in January 1945 and soon became renowned for his kindness and competence.

The school teacher, was, as it turned out, one of these agents.

When Allied forces arrived near the island, the teacher was one of the local authorities who convinced islanders to retreat in to the forests. Once in the forest, the teacher, who had heretofore been known only for his sweet disposition, suddenly began talking about everyone preparing for a glorious death in battle (gyokusai - literally "a crushing of a jewel"). The islanders, in their good sense, thought he had gone insane and ignored him.

Some time later, after the war was over, Allied intelligence found the agent still at work on the island, arrested him, and took him away.

It was the last anyone on the island saw of him.

Now for the sisters, the recording of the activities of the agent, who went on to live a life of obscure normalcy as a middle school teacher on Honshu, has a deeply personal cast. While on the island, the teacher started living with a local woman, impregnating her. She later gave birth to a son.

That woman was the sisters' aunt and the boy their cousin.

The message repeated throughout the piece was the way the leadership in Tokyo considered the inhabitants of Okinawa expendable (sute ishi - "stones tossed away"). Their value. at least as regards the male inhabitants, was as a potential guerrilla force tying down the Allies, inflicting casualties, and slowing the Allied advance as the main islands prepared to repel an amphibious invasion.

Insufficient reflection on the wrongs done in the war, both on the small and the vast scales?

Not exactly.

Photo image credit: Yomiuri Online

The Worst Of Days

Today should be the best of days. A day of celebration of the end of the worst of all wars. The end of the rule of this blessed land by an oligarchy of military officers. A celebration of the end of the needless sacrifice of millions soldiers and tens of millions of civilians to a false god, a faith that security is bought through the elimination of potential threats on one's horizon, pursued and acquired with blood and treasure, only for horizon to move ahead, non erit finis. It should be a celebration of the end of the long subjugation of the Korean peoples and the attempt to extirpate their culture. The end of the 80 year struggle between China and Japan for mastery of East Asia, a conflict that left both devastated and impoverished.

It should be a day of remembrance, yes for the soldiers who died in the conflict, but more importantly the civilians, who had no part in the conflict between the military men, other than to be crushed and blown to pieces by the machine of war.

A day to raise a glass and say, "It ended on this day."

But it will likely not be the best of days. It will likely be one of the worst.

State Minister for the Abduction Issue and Chairman of the National Security Commission Matsubara Jin and Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Hata Yuichiro promised to visit Yasukuni today. Matsubara earlier this morning made good on this promise. If and when Hata makes good on his promise, these will be the first visits to Yasukuni by Cabinet ministers since the Democratic Party of Japan took power three years ago.  It will be the first visit by more than one Cabinet member since the Koizumi years.

Matsubara has always been a paid-in, Grade Triple-A, choice member of the right-wing bag of nuts. His right-wing bona fides were why prime minister Noda Yoshihiko handed him for the Abductee portfolio, which the DPJ had been passing around like a hot potato. Matsubara was always a candidate for the DPJ-member most likely to visit the shrine on August 15. He has simply made good on the threat that he posed.

Hata has never featured prominently in right wing newsmaking . He has been a regular attendee of August 15 legislators' visits to Yasukuni. A member of the House of Councillors, he is not up for reelection next year; this is no bald electoral stunt. His father Tutsomu, however, seems too ill to run for his House of Representatives seat. So Hata Junior is possibly positioning himself for a run for his father's seat.

Nagano Prefecture is not seen as a part of the conservative heartland. Hata the Younger is a real legacy politician, however, with few or no personal achievements or capacities. With the DPJ a damaged electoral brand, it seems that he feels insufficiently confident he has the gravitas to both forego going to Yasukuni today and still win the Nagano #3 seat his father has occupied since 1969.

On the 10th of this month, Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu asked members of the Cabinet to show self-control as regards official visits to Yasukuni. Matsubara reportedly has and Hata is promising to adhere to the letter, if not the spirit, of Fujimura's request by paying "personal" or "private" visits. (J)

Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko might have asked Matsubara and Hata to suspend their visits or resign as ministers if they really wished to pay their respects. However, any interest Noda may have had in the Japanese Cabinet's demonstrating restraint in the interest of regional peace flew out the window with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's visit to Dokdo/Takeshima on the same day Fujimura made his appeal. After Lee's provocation, no prime minister could survive asking his subordinates to not visit Yasukuni.

In delicious irony, the excuse that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade made for Lees's visit to Dokdo is exactly the same one Koizumi Jun'ichiro used to give for his visits to Yasukuni: of what business is it of other nations when a leader of a country visits a location inside his own land? (E)

Noda is prickly about matters of Japanese honor. As the son of a Ground Self Defense Forces officer he sometimes takes a swerve toward the crazy as regards the actions of the Imperial Forces. His hair-splitting on the status of the 14 Class A war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni or the procurement of the sex slaves known as the comfort women makes Japan's neighbors nervous. In the case of the comfort women issue, Noda's government out of principle had no strategy to deal with the new situation arising from the South Korean Supreme Court's ordering the country's executive branch to publicize the issue. It was Noda's ignoring Lee's importuning him to make some visible effort as regards reconsideration of the comfort women issue that pushed Lee to make his final determination to visit Dokdo. (J)

Meanwhile, somewhere north of the the Taiwan Straits, a shipload of Hong Kong activists is on course for a collision with Japanese Coast vessels just inside the 12 nautical mile perimeter around the Senkaku Islands. According NHK, the activists will arrive in the area about the Senkakus at around noon today, Japan Standard Time (J). As these confrontations have ended fatally in the past (E) it is inexplicable that Hong Kong authorities did not hinder the vessel's departure.

In South Korea, today is Independence Day. Considering how they have viewed the performances of South Korea's athletes at the London Olympics as an expression of national power and the victory in the South Korea-Japan men's soccer match as an expression of spiritual power (E - Fiction is dead: there is no longer any reason to make stuff up) one shudders to think how today's end of Japanese rule over Korea will be celebrated.

So today will be not a celebration of a region liberated from a hypertrophied, paranoid, expansionist nationalism but indeed the opposite, a series of vignettes reminding the rest of the planet on how much this ideological dead end holds the region in its thrall.