What I Wish I Had Told Al-Jazeera

I appeared on Al-Jazeera yesterday, offering two minutes worth of thoughts, such as they may be, on the new Defense White Paper. (Link - and Link J)

What I managed to blurt out was, well, solid, moderate, perhaps even far-seeing -- but definitely not great television.

When asked out how the White Paper defines Chinese actions in the East China Sea, what I should have said was:

"This year's White Paper declares that certain Chinese actions, such as the unilateral declaration without consultation of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) to be 'profoundly dangerous acts.' Non-Japanese media organizations like the Financial Times have flagged the operative adjective here, calling it a condemnation. (Link)

All apologies to the editors of the Financial Times but calling what the Chinese government has been doing 'dangerous' is not a condemnation: it is a simple statement of fact. Indeed 'dangerous' all by its lonesome is an understatement. The authors of the report should have been more prolix, describing China's moves as 'profoundly dangerous, provocative acts, the kind of stupid crap that leads to the therts of wars and stuff' -- and even that would have only been a simple statement of fact."

Oh well, better luck next time...


Later - Writing in The Diplomat, Clint Richards sees the language of the Defense White Paper as unhelpfully incendiary (Link). Richards seems to be arguing that in order to secure of a face-to-face meeting between Abe Shinzo and Xi Jinping the Japanese government should suppress a public accounting of national policies and official interpretations of current events.

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?

Collateral Damage -- Great Whale By-Catch Figures

Apology to readers - this is yet a another post about Japan and whaling. If you are looking for good reads on Japanese politics and nothing else, see Okumura Jun's look at Sunday's election results (Link) and Joe Jones's plunge into what the weekly magazines have been printing about Tokyo Governor-elect Masuzoe Yo'ichi's unconventional private life (Link).


Minke Whale, accidentally drowned in a fishing net, prior to processing. Hakodate, Hokkaido, 2007.

The whale wars go on in the South Pacific, most recently dragging the government of New Zealand into a conflict that inflicts brutal costs on Japan's international reputation. (Link)

Meanwhile, without fanfare or activists with television contracts, a meaningless drowning of thousands of cetaceans is taking place in the fishing nets of every ocean-faring nation. Whatever the figure is, the numbers of cetaceans large and small being killed as collateral damage to the ocean's being strip mined of fish is many, many times the numbers killed by Japanese hunters (I cannot, for example, imagine any whale lasting for long in China's half of the East China Sea). Most of this killing goes on unreported, the remains being cut away and left to the ocean's scavengers.

We have some idea of the level of carnage taking place in the near waters of Japan because, unlike most countries, a dead whale in a  net around here has market value. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries provides a thorough accounting of the sale of whales mistakenly killed -- precisely because they end up in the nation's food markets.

The number of great whales -- whales currently under an International Whaling Commission moratorium -- caught and processed due to accidents is surprisingly large:

Year / number of great whales landed and processed

2006 / 151
2007 / 158
2008 / 136
2009 / 122
2010 / 135
2011 / 126

Over 95% of the great whales accidentally caught and brought in for processing are Minke . Most of the remainder are Humpbacks, with only a rare drowned Eastern Gray, Fin or Pacific Right Whale making its way into the MAFF figures. Sperm Whales, which are toothed whales, are recorded as baleen whales -- the last recorded instance of one being one caught and processed coming in 2006.

The high percentage of Minke is almost certainly due to the huge population of Minke relative the populations of other great whales. Physical bulk also probably plays a part -- large whales like Fins being probably too big to tow into port.

Why are the by-catch figures significant?

1) The number of whales processed as by-catch is larger than the number of whales caught by Japan’s small-scale coastal hunt for Baird’s Beaked Whale, the one big-bodied whale commercial hunt still in existence.

2) While the dolphin meat trade seems a sham, the whale meat trade is clearly economically viable. It is worth a fishing crew’s while to tow a huge creature into port for butchering, using equipment not meant for such an endeavor.

3) While participation in the pelagic North and South Pacific hunts, the small-scale coastal hunt and the dolphin hunt are restricted to a small number of persons in a tiny number of local communities, the by-catch take is national, with whales being butchered and their meat wholesaled in ports in 23 of Japan’s 47 prefectures.

One of the prevailing and self-serving myths of the anti-whaling movement is that the IWC moratorium of 1986 ended commercial whaling. Even discounting the pelagic "research" hunts (why no one in the activist community does diddly about the North Pacific JARPN pelagic hunt has always been a mystery to me) commercial whaling activity in Japan simply shifted to non-IWC protected species. As for IWC-protected whales, their meat is being cut up and sold all over Japan, in what is a fairly sizable, if ostensibly accidental, trade.

For annual figures (Japanese language only) for whale by-catch, the form of distribution of meat, by prefecture and species, see: http://www.jfa.maff.go.jp/j/whale/w_document/index.html


Later - Meanwhile, from the Department of Unlikely Invitations comes a potentially very stupid proposal regarding Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and the Taiji dolphin hunt. (Link)

Hat tip to reader BF.

Original image source: Stranding Network Hokkaido

The Senkakus Debate - A Look At An Essay By Sourabh Gupta

Sourabh Gupta is a terribly smart fellow. He is probably the third most effective agenda sweeper I know, behind Unnamed and Our Man in Abiko.

However, the essays he has written for the East Asia Forum have left me feeling flat. I find myself asking, "Is this the best he can do?"

The latest essay, "Japan–China relations: a grand bargain over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands" (Link) is the latest disappointment. It starts out with a whimper, then slumps over for a long, painful slouch toward a fantasy dressed in reason's clothing.

The downward spiral in Sino–Japanese relations that was unleashed by the Noda government's purchase last September of three of five uninhabited islands of the Senkaku chain shows no sign of abating.

Arrggggghhhh.

Having regained one’s senses after being bludgeoned by such an opening, one has to ask, "Are the assertions in the above valid?"

The downward spiral shows little signs of abating -- if one disregards the one-on-one meeting New Komeito leader Yamaguchi Natsuo had with Xi Xinping as well as formal visits to China by former prime ministers Hatoyama Yukio and Murayama Tomiichi.

Assigning the onset of the downward spiral to the Noda government's purchase of three islands in September is rich. The Noda government's decision sought to prevent private actors from provoking a bilateral incident, as was the case in the Chinese trawler’s ramming of Japan Coast Guard vessels in 2010. The reactions of the Chinese government and proxies in response to the arrest of the trawler captain were outlandish, with China lauding the captain's piratical behavior. Keeping private actors out of the picture was the obvious impetus for the Japanese government preemptive purchase, after Ishihara Shintaro began collecting funds to buy the islands from their private owner.

Propulsion of the downward trajectory in relations has furthermore been rather one sided. Under normal circumstances, relations deteriorate as two parties trade tit-for-tat actions. Since the island purchase, however, the Japanese government has had to endure a tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-for-tat situation -- albeit not without not ancillary public relations benefits.

Beijing is channelling its annoyance at America’s military entanglement into provocative acts against Japanese forces, including the recent training of fire-control radar on a MSDF warship and a helicopter in the East China Sea, an action which China has denied.

How does Gupta know the deep psychological impulses driving of Chinese behavior? Has he been receiving information from the psychiatrists of Chinese naval commanders and their civilian controllers, in violation of doctor-patient confidentiality?

Politically, Beijing seeks a long-term bilateral understanding that shelves the question of ultimate sovereignty of the Senkakus to an indefinite future.

Beijing already has this understanding. It even has a collaborator in the act of shelving: the United States, which, even though Japan is a treaty ally, refuses to acknowledge Japan as having a definitive claim on the Senkakus.

Rather than let yet another dangerously repetitive farce play out at the time of expiration or buy-out of that lease —held incidentally by a relative of the ex-owner of the three islands — Beijing appears prepared to force the issue of the islands' future dispensation at this time.

Is Gupta arguing we should in some way be thankful for China's provocations coming now rather than later? Probably not...but is that not the implication of the above?

One has wonder what is so dangerous about something being repetitive...and from whose Olympian viewpoint is the Sino-Japanese struggle over the Senkakus "farcical"? The two governments are damn serious about the fight; we should be serious too.

That a dispute exists with regard to the status of the Senkakus should be obvious to all but the unbending.

I do not know what those serving in Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs feel about such language. I would be insulted by an outsider trying to insinuate himself into a discussion with a "we are all reasonable men and women here" gambit.

The anonymous slap at the position held by the Government of Japan is particularly unfortunate, as the rest of the paragraph contains useful information.

The essay reaches its nadir in the succeeding paragraph, here presented with the original links:

In the eyes of international law, neither party has a water-tight case. Japan can confidently assert that, in displaying peaceful and continuous exercise of jurisdiction, it has assiduously protected its claim of evidence of title. Besides, it may be reasonably sure that no international court will have the gumption to strip a sovereign of (disputed) territory that it has administered from a point of time that predates the court's establishment itself. Set against this argument is the fraudulent basis of Tokyo's incorporation of the islands as ‘unclaimed territory’ despite clear knowledge to the contrary, as well as the illegal basis of its formalisation, which was done in secrecy and without public notice. An international court may well hold that an incorporation conducted in the de facto shadow of imperial war victory was exactly that, de jure. That no international case law precedent exists with regard to a territorial dispute between a state and its erstwhile imperial master adds to the unpredictability of the verdict. China’s inability to press, and thereby protect, its claim during the crucial early-1950s to late-1960s period must likewise be seen as a grievous failing.

Let us take on this meal morsel by morsel.

1) "In the eyes of international law, neither party has a water-tight case."

Unfortunately, this is not even wrong. In dispute arbitration, one does not need a water-tight case – just one better than the one the other side has. Japanese diplomats, if you scratch them, will say: "If the Chinese have a case, why do they not take it to the International Court of Justice?"

The answer is, of course, because the Chinese would lose as they have

a) insufficiently pursued refutations of Japan's claim and
b) no evidence of effective administrative control for over 120 years.

2) "Set against this argument is the fraudulent basis of Tokyo's incorporation of the islands as 'unclaimed territory' despite clear knowledge to the contrary..."

Whoa, smile when you say that, pardner.

"Fraudulent" is a word on the precipice. When you say it, you probably should not have as your anchor point a New Zealand university master’s thesis by a Chinese-speaking German law student whose argument hinges upon an extension of a 1998 decision on the borders of Eritrea and Yemen to include the Sino-centric world order as explained to us by John K. Fairbank and others in the 1960s.

3) "as well as illegal basis of its formalisation, which was done in secrecy and without public notice."

"Illegal basis" -- another provocative turn of phrase.

One would wish to know from whence Gupta derived this assertion. Unfortunately the linked article is behind the Wall Street Journal's pay wall.

The author of the WSJ article has submitted a post to Nicholas Kristof's blog making the same claims (Link). Unfortunately the evidence presented in the post is inconclusive. Allusive to be sure, but not conclusive.

If I had the full text of Wall Street Journal article, my lack of enthusiasm might be cured.

4) "An international court may well hold that an incorporation conducted in the de facto shadow of imperial war victory was exactly that, de jure."

If anyone can make head or tails of this sentence, please leave an explanatory comment.

5) "That no international case law precedent exists with regard to a territorial dispute between a state and its erstwhile imperial master…"

At no time in history was Japan the imperial master of China. This sentence is therefore an an unexpected and unannounced irruption of the narrow Taiwan-Japan contretemps, unless there is a new meaning for the word "erstwhile" that I am not privy to.

Gupta's prescription for cooling the fires of nationalism -- Japan's throwing open a discussion over sovereignty by admitting the existence of a dispute -- has a number of highly reputable advocates. The initial popularizer of the idea seems to have been the formidable Togo Katsuhiko. The almost always correct Gerald Curtis, in an brilliant essay he circulated yesterday, concurs with the proposal. (Link)

I hold the extreme view that Japan should concede nothing. Beyond the principle that democracies should never make concessions to tyrannies, China is unlikely to stand by any agreements, gentlemanly or not.

In his conclusion, Gupta tells us:

These elements of a settlement are not too much to hope for. The East China Sea has been an arena of peace and cooperation in the post-normalisation era and bilateral, principles-based arrangements have been concluded in the areas of fisheries, marine scientific research and joint development of oil and gas resources. China's and Japan's friends and alliance partners have every incentive to quietly encourage a similar outcome on the vexed Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute.

I am afraid I am about to rain upon a parade.

The collapse of the joint development of oil and gas is fairly well-known (Link). What is less well-known is the effective collapse of the fisheries agreement.

Last week NHK aired a report on the joint fisheries area. It was an eye-opener.

Have a look at this pair of NASA images, here presented with some snarky overlays.





The area inside the orange line is the joint fisheries area. Japanese fisherman, in an effort to preserve the resource, do not use arc lights. However, Chinese vessels use every means including the luring the fish with giant arc lights -- and by doing so have depleted the resource in the joint area. These giant vessels have little recourse but to congregate along the border of the joint area, seeking schools of fish make the unfortunate decision to swim in from inside Japan's EEZ.

In effect, there is nothing joint about the joint fisheries area. Japanese fisherman have given up trying to secure their share of the catch -- a catch that at present probably only exists in the imaginations of diplomats. (Link – J)

A Maritime Balkans

Former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd either writes astonishingly well or has astonishingly capable writers working for him. (Link)

A good read, once one get past the unfortunate "tinderbox on water" metaphor ("A tinderbox? On water? What's the problem then?").

What I Am Reading And Why

- Dr. Adam Posen, one of the merry band of Neo-Keynesians who spent the latter half of the 1990s and the early 00's slapping around the degraded intellectual descendants of Milton Friedman, suggests that Dr. Paul Krugman's recent much linked-to praise of Abenomics (Link) is off base. While the Abe government's monetary program may be fathomable (Nota bene: Posen was a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee from 2009 to 2012) the fiscal stimulus package is at best pointless. (Link)

Dr. Posen does not mention his more famous comrade-in-arms. Nevertheless he is offering Dr. Krugman a friendly hand that the Nobel laureate might pull himself up out of the swamp of Yglesianism (interim definition: "the act of writing about a largely imaginary Japan in an attempt to influence U.S. policy discussions").

Meanwhile, having dug himself into a hole in earlier praise for Abenomics, Matthew Yglesias just keeps on digging. (Link)

- Robert Manning of the Atlantic Council writes a brief background essay (ostensibly as a frame for the emergency visit of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Kurt Cambpell to Seoul and Tokyo -- Link) highlighting one of the factors driving the Chinese government toward more militant behavior in the East and South China Seas: radical overestimation of exploitable hydrocarbon resources. (Link)

Manning's essay showcases the mismatch in between Chinese and non-Chinese estimates of recoverable petroleum in the seas under dispute. Difference in the estimates of recoverable of natural gas are even starker, with Chinese estimates running 125 to 250 times as high as U.S. Geological Service estimates. (Link - tip of the hat to reader JLK)

Anyone think that a fine little bureaucratic quid-pro-quo -- worked out between the Ministry of Land and Resources and the People's Liberation Army against, let us say, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- could be a cause of this extraordinary difference of opinion among geologists?

And Now? Maybe Not So Much

This December 27 Project Syndicate op-ed (Link) ostensibly (but obviously not) by the Prime Minister, sailed under my radar during the long Christmas-New Years gear down.

In the summer of 2007, addressing the Central Hall of the Indian Parliament as Japan's prime minister, I spoke of the "Confluence of the Two Seas" – a phrase that I drew from the title of a book written by the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh in 1655 – to the applause and stomping approval of the assembled lawmakers. In the five years since then, I have become even more strongly convinced that what I said was correct.

Peace, stability, and freedom of navigation in the Pacific Ocean are inseparable from peace, stability, and freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean. Developments affecting each are more closely connected than ever. Japan, as one of the oldest sea-faring democracies in Asia, should play a greater role in preserving the common good in both regions.

Yet, increasingly, the South China Sea seems set to become a "Lake Beijing," which analysts say will be to China what the Sea of Okhotsk was to Soviet Russia: a sea deep enough for the People’s Liberation Army’s navy to base their nuclear-powered attack submarines, capable of launching missiles with nuclear warheads. Soon, the PLA Navy's newly built aircraft carrier will be a common sight – more than sufficient to scare China’s neighbors.

[snip]

The ongoing disputes in the East China Sea and the South China Sea mean that Japan's top foreign-policy priority must be to expand the country's strategic horizons. Japan is a mature maritime democracy, and its choice of close partners should reflect that fact. I envisage a strategy whereby Australia, India, Japan, and the US state of Hawaii form a diamond to safeguard the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean region to the western Pacific. I am prepared to invest, to the greatest possible extent, Japan’s capabilities in this security diamond.

My opponents in the Democratic Party of Japan deserve credit for continuing along the path that I laid out in 2007; that is to say, they have sought to strengthen ties with Australia and India.

The reference to "my opponents in the Democratic Party of Japan" indicates that this little essay has been sitting on the shelf for a while, only seeing publication well after the time the surviving members of the DPJ had fallen below "opponent" status.

As for the "security diamond" and "Lake Beijing" -- I am sure Liberal Democratic Party Vice President Komura Masahiko, the co-chair of the Japan-China Parliamentarians League and Abe Shinzo's conduit to the Chinese leadership, has been having a just dandy time explaining those two concepts away.


A tip of the hat to James Holmes (Link) for highlighting this op-ed.

This Senkakus Thing Is Not Getting Any Better, Folks

For all those those who have told me, in communications public or private, for weeks now that the government of China, after a period of bluster, is ready, if only the Government of Japan were not so stubborn, to resume the fostering of a relationship of increasing trust, stability and reasonableness, a message:

Please...stop.

China raises stakes over disputed islands *
Financial Times

China has started making concerted efforts to chase Japanese ships out of waters surrounding the disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, ratcheting up tensions between Asia's two largest economies.

The Chinese State Oceanic Administration – which enforces the nation's maritime interests – said four of its ships on Tuesday tried to expel Japanese vessels out of waters where they were operating "illegally".

[Snip]

This move by China could change the status quo in a dispute that has escalated in recent years, Chinese analysts said. Last month, Beijing announced a territorial baseline for the disputed islands that defined the exact geographical location of its claimed territory to back its long-standing claim.

"Chinese government vessels did not chase Japanese boats out of the islands' territorial waters in the past, as these waters were an area controlled by the Japanese coastguard," said Li Guoqiang, an expert on border issues at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "But the situation changed when we created a legal basis for enforcing our claim by announcing the territorial baseline for the islands in September."

(Link)

Of course the assertion that State Oceanic Administration ships chased out JCG vessels is a falsehood promoted solely for Chinese domestic consumption. However, that China's government and news agencies are collaborating in the promulgation of this false narrative should worry anyone with the least sense of how countries march into wars.

As for the theory behind the actions, The New York Times reported that former Ambassador Chen Jian yesterday gave a presentation to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong that could singe one's ears off.

Ex-Envoy Says U.S. Stirs China-Japan Tensions
The New York Times

HONG KONG — A longtime Chinese diplomat warned Tuesday that the United States is using Japan as a strategic tool in its effort to mount a comeback in Asia, a policy that he said is serving to heighten tensions between China and Japan.

The retired diplomat, Chen Jian, who served as an under secretary general of the United Nations and as China's ambassador to Japan, said the United States should restrain Tokyo and should focus its diplomatic efforts on bringing about negotiations between China and Japan over the disputed islands in the East China Sea known as the Diaoyu by China and the Senkaku by Japan.

In an unusually biting assessment of the United States, Mr. Chen said: "It is in the U.S. interest to quarrel with China, but not to fight with China." [This is not what Chen said – MTC]

While Mr. Chen has retired from China's diplomatic service, his remarks were particularly significant because they represent the most detailed public exposition of China’s views at a time when Chinese officials have been wary of making comments because of the approaching Communist Party Congress, which is scheduled to begin in Beijing on Nov. 8.

In the speech, which was organized by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was attended by half a dozen Chinese diplomats, Mr. Chen held out an olive branch by urging that discussions between Japan and China should start on ways to reduce the risk of clashes between Chinese and Japanese patrol vessels that have gotten perilously close off the islands in the last month.

But the thrust of his speech was more hard-hitting, particularly regarding the United States. Some in China and Japan see the issue of the islands "as a time bomb planted by the U.S. between China and Japan," he said. "That time bomb is now exploding or about to explode."

Mr. Chen accused the United States of encouraging the right wing in Japan, and fanning a rise of militarism...

Being the skeptical soul that I am, I wondered what Chen really said. Luckily, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong is tech savvy and already has Ambassador Chen's address up on its website. (Link- scroll down)

For those without 26 minutes to spend listening to an inadvertently comic (albeit not Monty Pythonesque comic) view of history and international politics, some of the choicer bits, with commentary:

"Where there is oil, there is always trouble."

No comment necessary here.

"That happened at a time [1968] when China was busily engaged in what is called Cultural Revolution" {my underline – MTC}

Quick, someone call the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dump the stale "Japanese armed forces 'advanced into' (shinpo) China" versus "Japanese armed forces 'invaded' (shinryaku) China" debate. It was never either. Textbooks and government documents should not equivocate: Japanese armed forces were "busily engaged (ii kagen ni shiro) in China."

"I have a story to tell here. I recall at one stage that the then president of Philippines visited China and met Deng Xiaoping. And that former president raised the question of some of the [Nansha] islands, saying that they are so close to the Philippines, why don’t let Philippines hold on to them? And what was Deng's reply? He said, 'For that matter, the Philippines is not that far from China.' (Laughter) Of course what Deng means is not the Philippines is part of China. What he meant is that geographical proximity should not be taken as the solution over sovereignty over islands."

Ha, ha, ha. Funny. They are rolling in the aisles in Manila.

"We are living in a globalized world and an information age. These two factors have changed everybody’s life as well as relations between states. They have quickened the space of changes in the pattern of international relations. So now we say today the world is undergoing a major transformation and adjustment. They have given rise to what is called popularism and nationalism, both of which are on the rise."

Retranslation: "Sorry, when we let our citizens torch your facilities, loot your stores and assault your diplomatic missions, it's not us, it's globalization and silicon chips/glass fiber/signal multiplexing/html that are to blame."

"The interaction of the media, politicians and the general public is far greater than before. The result of that interaction is…often leads to the escalation of tension, whether domestic or between states."

Of course, we are not talking about China here. In China, the government exerts benign control over the media, to promote peace and respect for law, both domestically and in between states.

"While most of China's neighbors regard China's rise as an opportunity, for opportunity I mean closer cooperation to achieve mutual development and prosperity, some of our neighbors regard it as a mixed blessing: opportunity in economic terms and challenge in security terms. As China is in the process of rising, and it will take years for China to be really strong, economically and militarily, some countries that have territorial disputes with China regard these years, I mean now and the coming years, as their last opportunity to take hold of what they believe belongs to them."{my underline - MTC}

Do the smart cookies understand now why I have been such a stick in the mud over the Government of Japan’s never admitting the existence of a territorial dispute over the Senkakus? Or be cajoled into attempting to deploy cute sophistry? (Link)

"What is 'smart power'? As I see it, smart power is combination of two mutually reinforcing means...mechanisms. One, making use of outside force or outside countries. Two, exploiting contradiction among countries of the region."

Outside force or outside countries? The inside being...where? Let me guess: Japan is "outside" and ASEAN is "inside."

As for the second point, someone needs to email Hun Sen and tell him the bad news that from now on, China is relying on dumb power alone. No more mon, no more fun.

"U.S. is urging Japan to play a greater role in the region -- in security terms, not just in the economic terms -- which suits the purpose of the right wing in Japan more than perfectly."

Though not nearly so perfectly as Chinese government-abetted anti-Japan rioting, the promotion of anti-Japanese feelings through education, the boycotts of Japanese products, the cut-offs of the exports of materials vital to Japanese industry, the dispatch of Chinese government vessels into Japanese territorial waters and attacks on Japanese diplomats and diplomatic missions. So suck on that America!

"But, are there guarantees that Japan and the Philippines...and other countries for that matter, will not misjudge U.S. intentions, and carry their quarrel with China too far, and draw United States and China into a confrontation? The danger is apparent and China needs to be alert to that."

"Too far"...What a concept! China asserts that the Senkakus are theirs and the area within the nine-dash line is at the very least a core interest. By definition, Japan claiming sovereignty over the Senkakus and the Philippines having facilities in the Spratlys – i.e., the status quo – is too far.

"No, what are China's policy options? [snip] I see two major determinants: protection of sovereignty and preservation of stability, both at home and abroad. The first is the responsibility of any national state, that is to protect national sovereignty. The latter is the prerequisite of development. China's option must be something less than perfect; it has to be between these two considerations."

A less-than perfect world for China. Oh boo-hoo-hoo.

For Amaterasu's sake, grow up.

"That explains why, so far, the Chinese government has not taken any pro-active action to initiate changes in the status quo, wherever the dispute lies. China only respond to what it sees as provocation. The only question one can raise is whether the response is commensurate."

No, one can also ask the question whether what China sees as provocation is in fact provocation, or merely a pretext for China to leap down from its Olympian foregoing of "proactive action to initiate changes" to a grubby initiation of changes in the status quo.

The above, minus the snarky MTC commentary, is only a taste of what is available. There is a stunningly weird attempt to explain Japanese domestic politics. The conclusion features a ridiculous set of principles for China to follow in its grinding acquisition of territories – a set of principles which, sorry to tell those enamored of the concept of submitting territorial disputes to the International Court of Justice, never once invokes international law. Indeed, Chen explains at the beginning of his presentation that international law is a root cause of the current territorial disputes.

Peace should be the ultimate goal of all actors in the East Asian region. What we have, however, is not peace but a cold ceasefire. Peace requires humility, empathy and an acceptance of reality. The leadership of China, for its own reasons, finds those three requirements inimical to its interests.

----------

* Michiyo-san and Ms. Hille, I got the message. Will your editors cut me some slack, as I select only a small part of the text and provide the link to the original article?

Parsing Okada On The Senkakus - Oh Neo Where Art Thou?

Until yesterday, I lived as so many of you, in an intellectual landscape of great green trees, wide, clear rivers, and in the distance, peaks with their first dustings of autumn snow.

Now my mind wanders in a battered and bruised land, a sere landscape of ghostly shapes appearing and dissappearing, enshrouded in mist hanging above a gray crumble of burnt soil and blackened rocks.

If only I had not stumbled over this:

Japan's deputy PM admits Diaoyus dispute, opening path to China talks
Deputy PM acknowledges dispute with China over islands, potentially paving way for talks
South China Morning Post

Teddy Ng teddy.ng@scmp.com -- The top deputy to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has acknowledged that a dispute with China exists over the East China Sea - a key concession and potential olive branch to Beijing.

Speaking at a meeting of the ruling Democratic Party, Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada said Tokyo's control of the Diaoyu Islands - known in Japan as the Senkakus - could not be questioned, even as he admitted Beijing took issue with its claim.

"The Senkaku issue is not a territorial problem, but, as a matter of fact, there is a dispute between China and Japan," Okada was quoted by Kyodo News as saying. "Both sides must fix the current situation through dialogue."

Tokyo has long refused to acknowledge even the existence of a disagreement, a key roadblock to Beijing's efforts to draw it into negotiations. Noda's government has maintained the position even as coastguards from mainland China, Japan and Taiwan conduct competing patrols in the surrounding waters.

The dispute has resulted in widespread anti-Japanese protests and boycotts in mainland China, which have begun to take a toll on the Japanese economy. Japanese exports fell 10.3 per cent year on year in September.

Okada blamed nationalist Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara's bid to buy the islands from their private Japanese owner for triggering the row. Noda announced his own purchase plan in a bid to defuse the situation, but it only further angered Beijing.

"We need to tell China that it is safer for the islands to be controlled by the central government than by the Tokyo metropolitan government," Okada said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing had always wanted to resolve the row through negotiations.

Luo Zhaohui, the ministry's Asian affairs director, went to Tokyo to meet his Japanese counterparts earlier this month, paving the way for bilateral talks.

(Link)

What? What? What?

Okada breaks with the official position in a significant way -- and the Sankei Shimbun does not go bananas, issuing a spate of editorials and op-eds battering Okada for his perfidious utterance?

How did a shift in Japan's stance, or Japan's stance as explained by Okada, fly completely under the radar?

I put out an all-points-bulletin for the original Japanese statement, which Mure Dickie of the Financial Times graciously provided:

尖閣諸島「都の購入計画間違い」　岡田副総理

2012/10/21 20:17

　岡田克也副総理は21日、和歌山市で講演し、沖縄県・尖閣諸島の国有化の背景に石原慎太郎東京都知事による購入計画があったことに触れ 「都が尖閣問題に乗り出したのは間違いだった。都は外交問題の責任を取れない。結果的に中国から非常に厳しい反応が返ってきた」と批判した。

　同時に「『都よりは政府が持った方が安定的』と中国側に伝えている。尖閣は領土問題ではないが議論があることは事実で、対話を通じ今の状況を鎮めないといけない」と指摘した。

(Link - J)

In what constitutes a glaring case of burying the lede, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun chose to emphasize in its headline Okada's stating that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's plan to purchase the Senkakus was an error. A precedent-shattering shift in the government's stance on the status of the Senkakus is left to swing in the breeze in the last line.

For the benefit of those who do not read Japanese, or whose computers do not accept kanji, here is the last line, in romaji and in my translation.

"Senkaku wa ryodo mondai de wa nai ga giron ga aru koto wa jijitsu de, taiwa wo tsujiru ima no jokyo o shizumeru to ikenai."

"The Senkakus are not a territorial issue. However, that a debate exists is a fact. Given this, we must calm/quiet the present situation through dialogue."

The words that Okada puts in opposition are mondai (問題) and giron (議論). Mondai in the phrase ryodo mondai is "issue" – no question about that. However, what does giron mean? According to the Kojien dictionary, giron is:

a) The coming together for the purpose of transmitting of one’s own theories
b) To argue with another on a theoretical level
c) To set opinions to fighting against one another

So calling giron a "debate" is not a bad shorthand.

Now here is where we part with reality.

One might believe that "Let's debate the issues" is an uncomplicated and banal phrase. However, this is not so in the world Okada would have us inhabit.

In this new world one can still debate issues. One can also debate non-issues, such as whether curry with rice tastes better when one puts the curry on top of the rice or when one puts it next to the rice (that I have to ask guests, out of courtesy, which way they want their curry served indicates that the human race is marked for extinction). Non-issues are differences between two states of being that are so trivial as to be not worth one’s time discussing – but we do so anyway.

However, to the polar opposites issues and non-issues we are now supposed to accept a third pole: the not issues.

When the first ideas were being floated on how Japan could hold to its official stance on sovereignty over the Senkakus whilst giving the other side, whether it be Chinese or Taiwanese, some place to stand upon, I joked one had to resort to quantum mechanics to understand the proposals. (Link)

Quantum mechanical explanations, however, will do one no good here. There is no assumption of Japanese sovereignty both existing and not existing, the state of matter called “superposition.” Here, Okada has stated that there is no territorial issue involving the Senkakus. In physics terms, the wave function has collapsed: the territorial issue does not exist.

However, according to Okada, while an issue does not exist, a debate does.

Presumably, Mr. Luo and his counterpart Sugiyama Shinsuke, the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau chief at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, have been meeting in order to discuss everything except the sovereignty issue.

Why? Because the sovereignty issue does not exist.

If the issue of sovereighty does not exist, you cannot have a debate about it. If you cannot have a debate about it, you cannot have a debate about anything related to it. All substantive debate about who can and will do what where depends upon who has sovereignty at that "where."

So from the moment you start debating anything peripheral to the Senkakus, you are immediately thrown back to debating about something that does not exist.

So how are Mssrs. Luo and Sugiyama occupying their time?

They could ostensibly be discussing phenomenology: debating whether or not they are really there debating or, as it were, not debating about something that does not exist.

They could be discussing baseball, both in Japan and the United States. Or the U.S. elections. Or the Chinese leadership transition. Or Japan’s constipated legislative process.

They could be amusing themselves and their staffs with role-switching, saying, “OK, for this session I’ll be you and you’ll be me. Let’s see what happens.”

However, they cannot be talking about the issue that has brought them together because that, as we know, does not exist.

At which point I begin to regret not having chosen the blue pill.

These Stars Collide

A Manic Monday for the Noda Cabinet and the Democratic Party of Japan

- The "Let's Demoralize The Embassy Staffs By Sending A Handful Of Old White Boys To Talk Turkey (shichimencho) With Those Quarelling Asiatics" roadshow (Link) rolls into the Prime Minister's Residence for a meeting with the Anaconda himself. I shudder to think who else the Washington Quartet will be meeting today -- though shadowing them the whole day would provide a resourceful journalist with a list of the influence peddlers and weak points inside the Japanese establishment. Knowing the group leader, the quartet are starting out their morning with a sushi breakfast in Tsukiji.

- The ripples of Maehara Seiji's tossing his expectation of a Diet dissolution by the year's end into the pond of Diet politics will spread out everywhere. Already, Democratic Party of Japan's Acting Secretary Azumi Jun has had to, on a Sunday when the Diet is not in session, tell reporters that Maehara's private views are not those of the party (Link - J). Liberal Democratic President Abe Shinzo, probably thinking his visit to Yasukuni (Link) is being rewarded earlier than even he could have imagined, pounded away last night on the theme that when a minister of Maehara's standing says that the prime minister has no choice but dissolve the Diet by year's end, it places a huge burden of expectations on the PM. (Link - J)

Does it ever.

- The heat from the staggering drops in the Cabinet popularity and party popularity figures recorded in the weekend's public opinion poll results could evaporate the DPJ-People New Party's slim majority in the House of Representatives.

The Asahi Shimbun

Cabinet support

Support 18% (-5%)
Do Not Support 59% (+3%)

Which party will you vote for in the party list section of the next House of Representatives election?

DPJ 13% (-4%)
LDP 36% (+6%)

(Link -J)

Fuji News Network

Which party will you vote for in the party list section of the next House of Representatives election?

DPJ 11.6% (-5.2%)
LDP 32.4% (+0.3%)

(Latest figures -J and previous figures - J)

- The pusillanimous and scandal-tarred Minister of Law Tanaka Keishu (Link), still hiding out in his hospital, refuses to resign. (Link - J)

What a way to start a week, eh, Prime Minister Noda?

The Washington Establishment Gets Worried, Boards Aircraft

Reading the below report makes me sigh:

In Asia Trip, U.S. Group Will Tackle Islands Feud
The New York Times

October 19, 2012 - The visit, backed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, follows a naval exercise by China on Friday to support its territorial claims and talk by a prominent candidate for prime minister in Japan about stationing personnel on the islands to improve security.

"As each side tries to assert its position, there is a risk of an inadvertent escalation of tensions and even confrontation,” said James B. Steinberg, who served as the deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration and is one of those on the trip. "The question is, how we get back to the relative stability in which the islands were in dispute but people were not trying to change facts on the ground."

Other members of the group include Richard L. Armitage, who served as deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush; Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush's national security adviser; and Joseph S. Nye Jr., a former Pentagon and intelligence official in the Clinton administration.

The group is scheduled to meet with Japan's prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, on Monday and to visit with the Chinese leadership on Tuesday. China has not informed the group with whom they will be meeting.

The trip was arranged after Mr. Steinberg and other members of the group discussed what might be done to tamp down the tensions over the islands, which are called Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese.

After the idea of a visit was pitched to State Department aides, Mrs. Clinton endorsed it, giving it a quasi-official status...

(Link)

Out of respect to the principle that if one has real problems with a person, one should keep one's opinions to oneself, I will refrain from saying what I think of these individuals. The exception would be Hadley, about whom I know nothing, save that he served on the Bush White House national security team, whose provision of nationial security was...mixed?

If the group is coming to the Prime Minister's Residence to deliver the message that the assertions heretofore made by the U.S. government -- that the Senkakus fall under the writ of the Japan-U.S. Security Arrangements -- are true only in theory, that would be something Prime Minister Noda needs to know immediately. As to any other ideas the quartet might present, the PM probably will listen to them and digest them -- not necessarily for what they say on the surface (one has to leave open the possibility someone in the quartet knows something about China the GOJ does not), but for what they say regarding the prejudices and preoccupations of the slices of America's transnational policy elite each member of the quarter of represents.

This Cabinet and the rest of the Japanese government are not the gang of uniformed innocents America's permanent foreign policy establishment believes them to be.

[An aside: one of the favorite demeaning tales with which members of the American policy elite regale themselves is the "amateurish" attempt by the Kan government to prosecute the Chinese fishing boat captain who rammed two Japan Coast Guard vessels off the Senkakus in 2010. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Kan government, the JCG and the Japanese judicial system behaved as true professionals, handling in an open, formal and neutral manner a situation no one had considered before as regards the Senkakus: an unprovocked attack on Japanese government personnel by a foreign assailant in an area under the administration of Japan. What was amateurish was rice-eating surrender monkey and then Chief Cabinet Secretary's Yoshito Sengoku's interference in the judicial process in the face of ham-handed Chinese pressure, then his denial of having done so.]

I cannot help but smile at the seeming pointlessness of the itinerary, at least as it is described in The New York Times. They do not know whom they are meeting in Beijing. I do not know what other folks do -- but when I walk out my front door I try to know in advance whom it is I am going out to meet. And even if the quartet did know, Beijing is in the midst of a leadership transition thrown into chaos by the Bo Xilai affair and Xi Jinping's mysterious disappearances. The quartet have no idea whether or not Madame Secretary of Ministry X will, come December, be Madame Nobody.

As for meeting with the Anaconda himself -- oh, why give the secret away...


Later - A much belated afterthought...but if there were a way for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to broadcast her lack of confidence in the skills and contacts of Ambassador to Japan John Roos and Ambassador to China Gary Locke, and all the other diplomats working in those embassies, it would be to give official recognition to an ad hoc Track II mission with only half an itinerary.

The Senkakus: When I Say Private Property, I Mean...

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

- Woody Guthrie, "This Land Is Your Land" *
(1940/1956)

A long, long time ago, I studied medieval Japanese history under Professor Jeffrey P. Mass. His lectures and writings at that time revolved around the concept of shiki ( 職 ) in the system of landholding and land management of the late Heian and Kamakura periods. Professor Mass published voluminously on the subject, both analyses and straight translations of documents.

Many years later I was making small talk with a professor after mutual introductions. I mentioned in passing that I had studied medieval history with Dr. Mass, to which the professor responded, "Oh yes, Jeff Mass. I have never quite understood what the point of his project was."

I bit my tongue at the time, as it was a first meeting. In my mind, however, I hissed, "Dr. Mass was investigating the fundamental nature of private property. We may think we understand what that private property is. Dr. Mass' research showed, very quietly, that we are just kidding ourselves."

Dr. Mass and his attempts to pound through my thick skull (an attempt that failed, at that time) that the concepts of private property are far from universal and indeed are institutionally and yes, culturally specific came to mind as I read the second point in Okumura Jun's posting of his thoughts on Yves Tiberghien's recent paper on the Senkakus.

Quoting from Okumura-san's post:

...the difference in the legal systems of the two countries regarding real estate ownership and more generally the state and the individual must have contributed significantly to Chinese misunderstanding of the Noda administration’s intent. Simply put, the Chinese public must find the notion that the state would have to engage in a regular bidding match with a local governor for a piece of land that is registered in a private individual’s name absurd. I suspect that most of China’s political and national security leadership, with little to no direct personal exposure to the legal and political systems of the West, also find it intuitively difficult to understand. He touches on this point briefly when you say, “Especially in a Chinese context, it seems unthinkable that there would not be a third option where the national government could step in to prevent the Tokyo deal without doing a full nationalization.” This must have been true at the grassroots and leadership levels alike and contributed significantly to the visceral fury and ferocity and made the conflict more intractable.

(Link)

I am not sure that Chinese local cadres and thugs are entirely bereft of an understanding of a concept of property rights as transcending and superseding law. They certainly understand the "What's mine is mine and what's yours is also mine" principle.

What I am sure is that the Chinese Communist Party has a vested interested in shutting down fast any discussion of the nature of property rights, especially as to the limits on state action such rights might impose.

It is not that folks cannot understand. They can, if given peace and quiet and not having someone shouting, "It's time to hate now! It's time to hate now" in their ears all the time. It is that the state does not want them to understand, as Professor Mass tried to get me to understand so many years ago, that private property may be something entirely foreign to one's vision of reality.

Ironically, the same professor who admitted perplexity as to the point at Dr. Mass' work wrote the fundamental text on another facet of the Senkakus controversy: how in Edo period, during what was purportedly the era of sakoku, Japan had at its contact points with the continent diffuse and porous borders, controlled in an ambiguous and fluid way by both the Edo bakufu and tozama ( 外様 ) daimyo -- where international relations were to a large extent "privatized" by both the relevant hanshu and the Tokugawa.

----------------------------
* The above verse is not included in the linked Guthrie recording. However, it appears in the copyrighted version, available here. Neil Young and Crazy Horse sing the verse twice in their version of the song.

A Plan Only An OB Could Love And Kyodo Could Report With A Straight Face

I was intrigued, as well as a bit dismayed, with the headlines appearing starting a few hours ago.

Japan may "acknowledge" China's claim to Diaoyu Islands to calm tension: media
Xinhua

TOKYO, Oct. 10 -- Japan is considering plans to calm tensions with China by acknowledging Chinese claims to the disputed islands in the East China Sea, while maintaining its own position, Kyodo news cited sources as saying on Tuesday.

The report said that the plans would allow Japan, without changing its long-held position, to compromise a little with China, which has called on Tokyo to acknowledge the existence of a dispute over the Chinese Diaoyu Islands, referred to as Senkaku Islands in Japan...

Bummer, I thought. The Government of Japan has no reason to acknowledge Chinese claims to the islands. To do so would be reckless to the point of idiocy unless it had iron-clad promises from the PRC and ROC governments to take the dispute to the International Court of Justice -- which the PRC n-e-v-e-r does.

So I rescanned the top paragraph again to confirm the source of the report.

Oh Amaterasu, it is Kyodo News, citing unnamed sources.

Kyodo News, jointly owned by all the prefectural newspapers, answers to no one. Unsurprisingly, this makes it Trial Balloon Central.

Let us go to the original, English-language report:

Japan may "acknowledge" China's claim to island to calm tension
Kyodo

TOKYO, Oct. 10, Japan is considering plans to calm heightened tensions with China by acknowledging Chinese claims to disputed islands in the East China Sea, while maintaining its position that no official territorial dispute exists over the islet group, sources close to the matter said Tuesday.

The plans would allow Japan, without changing its long-held position, to compromise a little with China, which has called on Tokyo to acknowledge the existence of a dispute over the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, called Diaoyu by the Chinese.

It remains uncertain, however, whether China would be encouraged by the Japanese step to improve the soured ties, according to the sources...

(Link)

Really? The sources are not certain the Chinese would want to be played for fools, with the GOJ in superposition, simultaneously admitting and not admitting the existence of a dispute?

The sources are not sure the Chinese are not in the mood to play games with Schrödinger's Cat?

Meow!

This is the kind of logical nonsense (at the macroscopic level) that Ministry of Foreign Affairs OBs ("Old Boys" - and yes, they are all boys, in both the sexual and development meanings of the term) just love to churn out, in their certainty that the rest of residents of this blessed land and people just about everywhere else are really, really stupid. It is on par with "Yes we apologizing, no we are not -- but look, here's a nifty signed letter from prime minister what's-his name-this-year?!? Now take the money. Take it! TAKE THE DAMNED MONEY AND SHUT UP!" nonsense that has the country in such trouble with the Republic of Korea over the sexual slaves of the Japan Imperial Forces.

Unless the Government of Japan has decided to radically restructure, operating now only on the quantum level, we should expect to hear this idea, though it hardly deserves the appellation, come crashing into the ground.

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?

Thought Over Coffee -- What Is Different About The Current Senkakus Dispute

With the Chinese authorities dialing down the protests and violence inside China, not permitting the departure of 1000 fishing vessels to challenge the 12 nautical mile territorial waters limit about the Senkakus, instead limiting itself to dispatching an admittedly large (12 vessels) contingent of its Maritime Surveillance and Fisheries Administration vessels to conduct annoying forays into the territorial waters zone, it is worthwhile to consider what is could be so different in between the 2010 dispute over the Senkakus, where the Chinese entities escalated their anti-Japan actions daily until the Prosecutors Office in Naha, Okinawa released the Chinese pirate fishing boat captain -- and the current standoff, where the Chinese government is pulling back to florid rhetorical posturing (J) with the Japanese government ceding nothing.

Some analysts might point to the quick deportation this time of the Hong Kong activists who landed on Uorijima as the key difference. However, the violence against Japanese interests in China began after the activists arrived home, and even after the return of their vessel to Hong Kong. The quick resolution of the Hong Kong landing indeed made some hopeful that Japan and China had reached a certain level of entente over Senkakus issues. (J)

Violence erupted later, all over China, and the Chinese government went into patriotic pronouncement overkill -- this over the Japanese government's preventative move of purchasing the available islands in order to keep them out of the hands of agent provocateur Ishihara Shintaro.

The government of China could have gone one of two ways in defusing internal anger over the Japanese national government's move. It could have argued that while distasteful, the GOJ's purchase was the lesser of two evils. The Chinese government could have also dismissed the GOJ's action with contempt -- i.e., "If the Japanese government wants to waste Japanese taxpayer money in a bid to acquire title over lands that are not even in Japan, great!"

So why take the unpredictable and potential global PR disaster route of unleashing the anti-Japanese activists and common folk against Japanese targets inside China? Why not play it cool, treating the Japanese like Lilliputians not worth China's time? Certainly the dry tinder of the patriotic education policy exists -- but why set a match to it, only to snuff it out a few days later?

Two answers come to mind.

The first is that the leadership transition in China has been so fouled up by the Bo Xilai Affair and its aftermath that everyone is grasping at symbols of loyalty and patriotism. The disappearance without explanation of president-in-waiting Xi Jinping during the height of the crisis indicates that something has gone very wrong in what is supposed to be an orderly and heavily foreshadowed process.

With Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao are cleaning out their desks and stepping back from the management of daily affairs, and as yet no one officially in place to wield power, nobody in Beijing or elsewhere knew what the actual PRC government policy is as regards the Senkakus islands purchase. As a result there was a sudden burst of policy entrepreneurship, with different parts of the government flashing green lights in the hope of securing their reputations.

The other possibility is that the Chinese government thought it was, and then quickly realized it was not, still dealing with Sengoku Yoshito.

I can be accused of conducting verbal drive-by-shootings of government and party officials. Targets of multiple rounds of my ire include former prime minister Hatoyama Yukio -- who on the 17th announced a correction (shusei) of his previous intimations he would leave the DPJ should party leader Noda Yoshihiko win reelection on September 21 (J) -- and LDP president Tanigaki Sadakazu -- though I maintained a long ceasefire in my campaign against him after his wife's passing. I have also been upset time and time again at Ozawa Ichiro out of a profound sense of disappointment at his having spent the last 20 years demolishing every vehicle of progressive reform he has built through his stunning lack of awareness of his vulnerabilities.

Sengoku Yoshito is one of the politicians about whom I find it hard to have a nice thing to say.

He is first of all a bully, his tongue getting him into scrape after scrape. Just last week a judge tossed out, on a technicality, a hefty misuse of office lawsuit filed against him by a member of the LDP, whom Sengoku, when he was Chief Cabinet Secretary, dismissed in a press conference with a "I have no intention of paying the least bit of attention to the crap that a craphead says." (J) In June Sengoku lost a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a female journalist against him for remarks he had made about her, prompting some of the DPJ's women Diet members to ask the party to ostracize him.

If Sengoku's disdain for the rest of humankind were not problematic enough, he has an uncanny ability to misapprehend when he is in an advantageous position. He styles himself a hard-headed realist, not understanding that what he is is, to borrow a phrase from Homer Simpson, a rice-eating surrender monkey.

Sengoku is the presumed architect of the release of the Chinese fishing boat captain in 2010, pressuring the Naha District Prosecutors Office in Prime Minister Kan Naoto's absence to release the captain on the novel legal grounds that a prosecution is impossible because the arrest was becoming an international incident. Sengoku then implausibly denied that he had put any pressure on the Naha Prosecutors Office. He tried to suppress the public viewing of the Japan Coast Guard video of the collisions at sea involving the Chinese ship, despite the images being definite proof the Chinese captain willfully rammed the JCG vessels – when the public release of the video would have redounded to the government’s credit and whose failed suppression became a huge embarrassment when a coast guardsman posted the videos up on YouTube.

More recently, Sengoku was the source of a bizarre story that Prime Minister Noda was ready to accept the LDP’s electoral reform bill, the so-called +0/-5 bill, without reservations or modifications. That the DPJ would throw away its ace card, the ability to draft an electoral reform bill to its liking due to the Supreme Court's having ruled the current electoral map unconstitutional, was sheer lunacy. This did not prevent Sengoku from going on Yomiuri Television (a fine, pro-DPJ news outlet, to be sure) to repeat this nonsensical assertion. (J)

Sengoku is currently Acting Policy Research Chair of the DPJ. While this is a grand-sounding title in English, it is actually a middle-ranking position. It is far enough from the central secretariat to keep Sengoku from meddling in policy formation but is high enough that Sengoku, who has an inflated opinion of himself, does not feel slighted. It also keeps Sengoku at close enough range for Policy Chairman Maehara Seiji to keeps tabs on whatever mischief Sengoku may be up to.

Sengoku has also been given the seemingly crucial task of drafting the party's electoral manifesto. Handing Sengoku this responsibility would seem a risky decision for the party secretariat to make. However, prime minister Noda's habit of issuing statements of policy with adverbs, where the careful insertion of an adverbial phrase undermines the statement just enough that the careless listener believes he has heard what he wanted to hear while the careful listener realizes the PM has not committed himself to anything – guarantees that Sengoku's task of composing a coherent, up-to-date document is a Sisyphean one.

Anyhow, Sengoku, who was one the Diet members and former Diet members scheduled to depart on a special friendship visit to China on September 26 – a visit that has been cancelled (J) -- is not around to wave his white flag of courage in the face of Chinese violence and provocations. Instead, the Chinese government has to deal with with Noda, Foreign Minister Gemba Ko'ichiro and Maehara, who was Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism – the home ministry of the Japan Coast Guard – at the time of the Chinese fishing boat collisions.

Eeek! Sound the retreat!

Where The Sky Loves The Sea

Sadogashima as seen from along the Echigo-Nana'ura Highway
Niigata City, Niigata Prefecture on September 15, 2012

I have been spending a few days away from a keyboard and the Gmail address, visiting Tanaka Kaueiland, where the likeness of the man reviled by most of the country can still be found on the walls inside homes, a strange messiah of a most simple and durable cult.

I have still been watching the news and reading the newspapers, though.

An aside, but I have a great love for the prefectural newspapers. They all carry uncut and undigested Kyodo News reports -- which is unsurprising, since they own the operation. They also are a window into local passions and worries -- views that rarely are translated and transmitted to the outside world. The problem is not unique to Japan -- I cannot imagine the vastnesses of what one could know about India were one able to read the morning news in the 35 or so main languages of the country -- but even in a country with a single main language and an openness to investigating local conditions, the narrowness of the window through which the world views this blessed land is sobering.

Sobering also has been the intimidation the Chinese government seems ready to turn on and off in an attempt to rattle the nerves of the government and people of this blessed land:

Backing off not an option for China
Global Times
15 September 2012

[snip]

Intense friction entails high geopolitical risks and the possibility of negative impacts to both economies. But with a high level of support from the public, China is gaining the upper hand psychologically in such a contest.

China is diplomatically resourceful in Northeast Asia compared to Japan, which is notorious in its sovereignty disputes with regional players.

It is clear that Japan touched probably the thorniest issue in bilateral ties, which in turn serves as an opportunity for China. We should seize the chance and make historic advancements in safeguarding our sovereignty by breaking Japan's "administration" of the islands.

China should be confident about strategically overwhelming Japan. The People's Liberation Army's Navy and Air Force, as well as its Second Artillery Corps, are advised to increase their preparation and intensify their deterrence against Japan's Self-Defense Forces.

China will not shy away if Japan chooses to resort to its military. As friction escalates, it is more likely for Japan to retreat in the face of unreliable US security assurances and China's strengthened strategic combat capabilities...

The Senkakus are worth putting China's strategic missile forces on high alert?

Who are these people? What planet do they expect to share with anyone?

Of course, they are the same folks who bring us:

Violence is never appropriate solution
Global Times
17 September 2012

[snip]

Protests against Japan's provocation over the Diaoyu Islands broke out in several Chinese cities over the weekend. Violent action targeting Japanese products and enterprises happened in places including Xi'an and Changsha, leaving many Chinese nationals to suffer economic losses. The violence was condemned by Chinese media. It appears that public opinion has reached a clear consensus this time.

Since the May 4th Movement of a century ago, mass protests in China have often been accompanied by violence, and unrelated targets can be in the crossfire. Public opinion however often judges violence from a fixed set of values and becomes rather selective in deciding whether to support or oppose it.

Violent protests plague many countries, especially developing economies. Anti-US protests are currently marring the Arab world. China has been making progress in staging orderly protests in recent years. Street protests have not necessarily been disorderly on every occasion. In major hubs such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, protests are often carried out in a more civilized way. Meanwhile, voices against violent protests are on the rise. This time is no different. Violence cannot be tolerated simply because the protests are aimed at Japan...

Nuclear weapons? OK. Drink bottles and eggs? Not OK. Even if the target is Japan.

As for the 1000 ship armada of fishing vessels yesterday reported to be sailing for the Senkakus, it has failed to show up. Whether this is due to the passage of the super typhoon or is simply an example of vaporware journalism, remains to be seen. As of noon, the Japan Coast Guard had encountered but a lone Chinese fisheries patrol boat that quickly popped in and just as quickly popped out of the 12 nautical mile zone about the Senkakus.

Just what the Chinese government's game is, aside from convincing the people of Japan that the Chinese people as a whole are nuts, confounds. The most likely explanation for having police guiding the protests and the news media at once condoning, then denouncing violence, is to smoke out potential troublemakers to be watched and harassed -- or coopted into playing parts in the government's future stage-managed protests.

As for the effect of the images of protestors battling police in front of Japanese diplomatic missions, the burning of Japanese-owned or operated businesses and the interviews of men and women on the street spouting inanities (a smart thing for the individual to do, as one cannot never be sure of the actual identities of the members of the camera crew) it could not be possible less conducive to a passive resignation to Chinese suzereinty over the East Asian region.

Or as one cartoonist for the Global Times chose (out of recondite ironic protest?) to depict the peace China will bring to the East China Sea:

Tips of the hat to Corey Wallace and Bryce Wakefield for links in this post.

Worth One's Time #1

Since the Facebook page of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS) at Temple University, Japan tells the visitor absolutely nothing about upcoming events, I will step in and reprint the announcement of an must-see presentation:

'Battle stations?' Sea Power and Sino-Japanese Security Relations in the East China Sea
Date: Thursday, September 13, 2012
Time: 7:00p.m. (Talk will start at 7:30p.m.)
Venue:
Temple University, Japan Campus, Mita 5F
(access: http://www.tuj.ac.jp/maps/tokyo.html)
Speaker:
Alessio Patalano
Moderator:
Robert Dujarric
Admission: Free (Open to general public)
Language: English
RSVP:
icas@tuj.temple.edu
*If you RSVP you are automatically registered. If possible, we ask you to RSVP but we always welcome participants even you do not RSVP.
*RSVPなしでも参加できますので、直接会場へお越しください。

Dr. Patalano knows more about Japan's maritime power than anyone else, at least among those publishing works for the general reader. Where others speak of generalities, he speaks in specifics and whether others speak of elements deracinated from time, he embeds everything in the now.

Now ICAS, fix your darn Facebook page!

The Chinese Fishing Boat Captain Slips Through The Net Again

So much for all that.

The other day I had a post on the Committees for the Inquest of the Prosecution, the liberalization of indictment procedures intended to serve as a backup route for citizens to bring to justice politicians and power brokers prosecutors found too intimidating to challenge. Unfortunately, the Committees have morphed into tools for conspiracy theorists and self-righteous vigilanteism.

Except in the post I praised the decision of the Naha Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution to indict the Chinese fishing boat captain who rammed two Japan Coast vessels patrolling the waters off the Senkaku Islets in September 2010. The captain was arrested on charges of interfering with officers of the Government of Japan carrying out their duties -- which any sane person would admit he did. The Naha Prosecutors Office, however, after receiving the captain from the Coast Guard, dropped all charges against him on the peculiar, extra-legal excuse that the arrest had become an international incident.

"So what does that have to do with anything? That the arrest is becoming an international incident is Kasumigaseki's problem, not yours," was the response from the public -- which saw the release as the result of base and craven (no one in Tokyo would admit to having pressured the Naha prosecutors) political meddling in the judicial process.

For once, it seemed, a Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution was going to perform the function for which it had been created: indicting and bringing to trial someone the prosecutors would not touch due to their spinelessness.

Indict him they did and bring him to trial they did -- but that is the end of the story. Last Thursday the presiding judge Suzuki Hideyuki revoked the right to prosecute (koso gikyaku) in the case, ending the trial.

The judge's action came after the three court-appointed lawyers failed to deliver a letter of indictment to the ship's captain within the requisite 60 days after they filed their mandated indictment (kyosei kiso) on March 15, 2012. The lawyers had until midnight, May 16 to provide the court with proof the indictment had been delivered. (J)

That they failed to complete their task in the allotted time should surprise no one. Under the Treaty between Japan and the People's Republic of China on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters (2007) indictments handed down in Japanese courts are sent to the Homusho (Ministry of Justice) which then forwards them to its counterpart in China, the Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo Shifabu.

Funny thing happened to that Naha District Court letter of indictment, or did not happen, as the case might be. The Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo Shifabu seems to have not forwarded the letter to local authorities to serve to the captain. Indeed, just to demonstrate that tough-minded justice ministry bureaucrats that they may be, those working at the Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo Shifabu are not without a sense of humor, they waited, according to the Sankei Shimbun, until May 15, the day before the expiration date of the letter of indictment, to send a message to Ministry of Justice of Japan that:

"As the Senkakus Islets (sic) are our national territory, we cannot accept applications made by the judiciary of Japan." (J)*

The Sankei Shimbun is understandably up in arms about these developments. It demands to know why Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko did not bring up the matter of the non-delivery of the letter of indictment when he met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on May 13.

Gosh, why would he not bring the matter up? Why would that be? Can anyone think of a reason? Or any number of reasons?

So the case -- which had the potential of becoming a major irritant in the bilateral relationship -- ends not with bang, but with a snigger.



Later - This post has been edited for clarity.

-------------------------------
* The Sankei Shimbun commits a howling error here. There is no way that the PRC Ministry of Justice would refer to the islands in question as the Senkaku shoto.

The Comfort Woman Statue

So now I know what was really ticking off the crowd of folks I ran into on Wednesday.

Statue Deepens Dispute Over Wartime Sex Slavery
The New York Times

The unsmiling teenage girl in traditional Korean dress sits in a chair, her feet bare, her hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the Japanese Embassy across a narrow street in central Seoul. Within a day, the life-size bronze statue had become the focal point of a simmering diplomatic dispute as President Lee Myung-bak prepared to visit Tokyo this weekend.

The statue, named the Peace Monument, was financed with citizens' donations and installed Wednesday, when five women in their 80s and 90s who were forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military during World War II held their thousandth weekly protest in front of the embassy, joined by their supporters.

For them and many other Koreans, the statue — placed so that Japanese diplomats see it as they leave their embassy — carries a clear message: Japan should acknowledge what it did to as many as 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, who historians say were forced or lured into working as prostitutes at frontline brothels for Japanese soldiers.

The Japanese government's main spokesman, the chief cabinet secretary Osamu Fujimura, called the installation of the statue "extremely regrettable" and said that his government would ask that it be removed. South Korean officials said Japan cited international treaties that required host governments to help protect the dignity of diplomatic missions. On Thursday, South Korea made it clear that it had no intention of forcing the protesters to remove the statue...

(Link)

Well, OK, the statue is there to stay. Lest it become a permanent sore in Japan-South Korea relations and a focal point of anti-Korean sentiment in Japan (as it was on Wednesday) the Japanese Embassy should follow some good advice:

"Dont't get mad; get even."

- Robert F. Kennedy

"You say potato and I say potahto.
You say tomato and I say tomahto.
Potato. Potahto. Tomato. Tomahto.
Let's call the whole thing off."

- George and Ira Gershwin

If anyone had half a gram of sense in the Japanese Embassy in Seoul or at the Foreign Ministry in Kasumigaseki, there should have been a press release:

In Seoul today, opposite the Japanese Embassy, a peace statue was unveiled, commemorating the positve contributions of the Japanese occupation and annexation of Korea. The statue is of a young Korean woman, sitting in a chair. She is happy because she is attending her first day in class, an opportunity extended to her by the education policies of the Japanese authorities. Especially meaningful is that she can receive an education despite her poverty, symbolized by her bare feet. At the same time, the young woman is sad, as the chair beside her is empty. The empty chair represents the wasted lives of millions of young women held back by the repressive paternalism of Korean society."

And let it go at that.

Art is plastic, open to interpretation. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

The statue helps out in that it is ambiguous. The expression on the young woman's face is not unsmiling, as The New York Times states with conviction. It is at best blank, with a bias toward cheerful.


Lest anyone think I am being puckish and denigrating the comfort women's rights to an offical apology and compensation, I am not. They have deserved and have been denied the right to hold their heads up high in their communities, able to say, "I was never a prostitute. I was a prisoner of the Japanese Imperial military."

However, when there are situations and provocations too fraught with domestic political baggage to be resolved by diplomats, the only possible solution is an embrace of ambiguity non erit finis*.

Ambiguity and a resignation to the status quo are the salves and supports of East Asian peace. They keep Taiwan free of Beijing's control; keep the Senkakus Japanese territory; and keep the Russians and the Japanese from ever coming together to surround and thus render paranoid China (ambiguity also keeps the Republic of Korea and Japan from becoming close, despite their democratic governments. No thing is ever always a positive).

Making demands that the statue be removed are going to lead nowhere. The government of Japan should just insist, as it does in the Senkakus, the East China Sea and in the Northern Territories that it believes what it does about the situation, no matter what the other side says -- and let those on the other side cut off their own fingers in frustration at the GOJ's intransigence.

And then do its damndest to give the surviving comfort women what they deserve.

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* Not the World of Warcraft guild of the same name.

Image Courtesy: Yomiuri Online