Of The Financial Times And Japan

I love the Japan team of the Financial Times. Mure Dickie, Jonathan Soble and Michiyo Nakamoto (and former Tokyo bureau chief David Pilling, when he takes a flyer at writing about his former home base) deserve nothing but the most effusive of praise for presenting the country as it is, without only-in-Japan dross or a misguided/lazy rephrasing of what appears in the less-than-reflective, scandal-fluffing domestic news media.

I just wish they would stop one-on-one interviews with Japanese figures. It causes their interview subjects nothing but trouble.

The latest victim of the curse of the FT interview is ambassador to China Niwa Uichiro (J). In an interview with the FT, he was asked about Tokyo Metropolitan District Governor and agent provocateur emeritus Ishihara Shintaro's plan to have the TMD purchase three of the Senkaku Islands from their private owner (if you are Chinese, Taiwanese or from Hong Kong, p-r-iv-a-t-e o-w-n-e-r is of course pronounced "färs-kl ˈkleɪmənt").

According to the FT, Niwa responded:

“If Mr Ishihara's plans are acted upon, then it will result in an extremely grave crisis in relations between Japan and China.”

(Link)

True, or at least possibly true. It depends on how the Chinese view Ishihara's making Kurihara Kunioki (E) a very rich man in the one-hop transfer, thanks to the quick thinking of Vice and Actual TMD Governor Inose Naoki, of private donations to Mr. Kunioka's account (E). If the Chinese government, which has been very circumspect and withdrawn of late, shrugs the sale off as bunch of self-described patriots throwing their money away, all will be well.

Trigger the deluge of condemnation, nevertheless, from the usual suspects: Ishihara (no surprise here), the anti-government press (E) and the Noda government, obsessed as it is with the concept that nothing -- NOTHING -- can get in the way of the passage of the bills raising the consumption tax.

As for the Financial Times, it landed a two-for-one deal out of the interview, publishing the interview, then publishing the government's response to the interview. (E)

It has been six years since I dashed off my ever-more-seriously-in-need-of-an-update-and-revision Rules of Japanese News. Despite the list's intemperate origins, Rule #2 still seems to have some juice left in it:

"If an exclusive interview produces a scoop for the Financial Times, the interviewee probably did not understand the question."

Later - Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko was waded in the Niwa controversy. In testimony to the House of Representatives, the PM stated he will not be asking for Niwa's resignation, saying that Foreign Minister Gemba Ko'ichiro delivered a warning to Niwa, and that Niwa had reflected deeply upon his actions. (J)

Of course, this was the same vote of confidence that Noda expressed in Minister of Defense Tanaka Naoki and Minister of Infrastructure, Land, Transport and Tourism Maeda Takeshi...and we all know how well that turned out for those two men.

Closing One Loophole

There has always been an odd loophole in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) regarding the handling of cases of traffic accidents caused by members of U.S. forces or Defense Department civilian employees. As long as the perpetrators -- for these are cases where who caused the accident is undeniably a U.S. national working for U.S. Forces Japan -- could argue that he or she was on official duty, then he or she would be handed over to the U.S. for prosecution. This was true even when the perpetrators were found to be drunk at the time of the accident.

This morning, Foreign Minister Gemba Koichiro promised that he would meet with his U.S. counterparts on revising the SOFA so that in these cases or similar crimes committed by a chemically impaired U.S. Forces member or DOD civilian employee the perpetrators would lose the right to argue they were acting while on official duty, i.e. would lose their immunity from Japanese law. He also promised to visit Okinawa, where this has been a big issue, to meet with officials and explain the Japanese government's concern about this issue (J).

Now if only someone could figure out how to close the loophole on the American side -- where civilian employees cannot be tried in military tribunals, meaning that if one commits a crime while on duty in an area under Japanese juridiction, he or she gets off scott-free...

No, Japan Is Not Entering TPP Negotiations With An Option To Quit

No, Maehara Seiji is not reckless. No, the government is not confused.

And no, you will not know any of this, even if you follow the news reports.

On NHK's Sunday 9 a.m. talk show, Maehara Seiji, the Democratic Party of Japan Policy Research Chairman, suggested that Japan could enter into talks to join the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) only to skip out at a later date, if the elements of the pact turned out to not be to Japan's liking (ja).

The political background for making such a suggestion is clear: the outlook for the DPJ leadership pushing the Diet to give its nod to Japan participating in TPP negotiations is growing murkier by the hour. It was expected that agriculture, forestry and fisheries would be dead set against Japan participating in negotiations. As a consequence, their representative organizations were given a day to vent their grievances before the DPJ TPP project team. However, the Central Union of Agriculture Cooperatives (Zenchu) has upped the ante by employing a rarely used constitutional maneuver of petitioning the Diet in order to stop Japan’s participation in TPP talks, saying that it had the support of 350 of the Diet’s members (en). At the same time, all kinds of organizations that had been expected to remain on the sidelines have come out against Japan precipitously joining TPP negotiations, including the Consumer’s Union of Japan (Nisshoren) and the Japan Medical Association (en).

With the complexity and breadth of the TPP becoming wider known, causing more and more organizations to come out against Japan’s participation, Maehara and the rest of the DPJ’s leadership have under tremendous pressure to get as many of the DPJ’s fence sitters down on the side of the TPP as soon as possible. The temptation must have been great to drum up support now by saying that Japan’s participation could be considered contingent -- that Japan could begin negotiations only to pull out later with no harm, no foul.

Maehara's statement of course sent heads whipping around. That Japan could enter into talks with an expressed ambivalence or indeed insincerity challenged the government's and TPP opponents' common view that the fight is over whether Japan will be a committed incipient partner or will just not show up. What Maehara was suggesting was there was room at the negotiations for Japan to have some kind of special observer status, neither fully in nor fully out.

The problem with Maehara's gambit is obvious. If any entity were to enter into negotiations with Japan, it would have to consider the possibility that Japan would whip out its "option to quit" card from out its back pocket at the first sign of stress. With the possibility that the government might retreat, no nation or organization would ever want to negotiate with the Japanese government.

Being that he is no idiot, Maehara realized that he had misspoken in a big way. In a streetside interview after the end of the NHK program, he refined his statement, saying that when he was talking about Japan backing out of TPP discussions, it would be in the context of heretofore unknown facts about the pact came to light, or some other such surprise.

Pay attention to the time indication in the top right corner of this TV Asahi replay of the Maehara streetside interview (ja). Note that it says, "After 10 a.m." -- ie., after Maehara had walked off the set at NHK. Note also that TV Asahi completely ignores Maehara's nuanced restatement of his position in favor of its own narrative -- that DPJ policy chief Maehara Seiji has suggested Japan will enter into negotiations with a clear option to pull out.

Unfortunately for Maehara, what one says on Nichiyo Toron, NHK's showcase political talk show, matters far more than what one says on the street afterward. Not even for a television network that is a rival to NHK that broadcasts on its news program the video of one's restating one's position.

Since Maehara's remarks on Nichiyo Toron and his restatement of his position immediately afterward, the government has been fighting a losing battle with the news media over what is or is not Japan's position on participating in TPP negotiations.

Fully aware that under the reorganization of the DPJ's policy making process Maehara has an influence on policy second only to the prime minister*, the news media has whippped Maehara’s Nichiyo Toron comment into a confection of confusion inside the government and the ruling party. When Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu on Monday defended Maehara's restated opinion, and said there were past instances of Japan pulling out of negotiations with similar characteristics, the news media treated Fujimura's support as being support for Maehara’s original statement on the Nichiyo Toron program. When on Monday afternoon Fujimura said that Japan considers its promises to the United States weighty and important, the news media portrayed this as Fujimura reversing his position of earlier in the day (en). When on Tuesday, Fujimura again reaffirmed there are numerous historical instances of Japan pulling out of negotiations, the reporting made it seem that Fujimura had reversed himself yet again (ja).

Of course, the new media's misuse of Maehara's position opened the door for the opposition to criticize the ruling party and the government, with Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Ishira Nobuteru blasting Maehara and Fujimura for having no sense of how diplomatic relations are conducted (ja)

Even editorial cartoonists, who should know better, have had misguided fun at Maehara's expense. Here is the Tokyo Shimbun's Tuesday morning edition cartoon, drawing parallels between Maehara's stance on Japan 's TPP negotiations to Kim Jong-il's stance on participation in the Six Party Talks.


Panel 1 – Label: TPP
President Barack Obama : "Japan has to quickly commit to participation."

Panel 2 – Label: In and out, in and out
Maehara: "If we participate, there's the option of pulling out."

Panel 3 – Label: The Six Party Talks
Kim Jong-il to Maehara – "That's right. There's the option. There's the option."

Title: "Doing It The DPRK Way"


Poor Foreign Minister Gemba Koichiro. He has had to go out of his way to reassure international partners that Japan is not entering into negotiations willy-nilly without any guarantee of sticking around (en). Not what he thought he would be doing when he accepted the job from Noda Yoshihiko, I am sure. Note also that the report on Gemba's refutation of the principle of Japan entering into negotiation with an option to pull out perpetuates the false narrative that Maehara and Fujimura are arguing for just such a right.

The press has bought into that narrative. The government and the citizenry are being swept up into it, no matter what anyone wants or does.


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* There have been further additions to the policy making diagram since I wrote about it, putting one more advisory council in between the DPJ Policy Research Council and the Cabinet. In general, however, Maehara's special status has been preserved.

Image: Tokyo Shimbun of October 25, 2011.

Commercial Whaling Deal In Peril

On the verge of the most important meeting of the International Whaling Commission in decades, when the body will be considered the possibility of revising its easily evaded moratorium on the hunting of large baleen whales and sperm whales in favor of a strictly limited and regulated commercial hunt, the key actors in the drama are going to be absent due to illness. IWC chairman Christian Maquieira, whose plan to bring all commercial whaling back under IWC control from out of the metastasizing exceptions that have been undermining the moratorium, namely

1) Japan's scientific whale hunts

2) Iceland's and Norway's self-exemptions from the moratorium on principle, and

3) South Korea's and Japan's increasing by-catch numbers, both legitimate and not-so

will not attend due to a personal illness. Japan's nominal top gun on whaling issues, newly-appointed Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Yamada Masahiko, will likely skip the meeting because his every waking moment tied up with the consequences of the still-not contained Miyazaki Prefecture outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

With all the leg work that has gone into preparing for the Morocco conference and all the recent acrimony over Japan's scientific whaling program -- not to mention the unnecessarily petty and hopeless International Court of Justice suit filed against Japan's Southern Ocean scientific whaling hunt by the government of Australia -- that it all might come to naught over of the unfortunate absences of a small number of key decision makers is distressing

It is unfortunate that in the political turmoil that has taken place over these past few weeks (remember three weeks ago? Back when Prime Minister Hatoyama was receiving the Chinese premier and the Liberal Democratic Party was polling ahead of the Democratic Party of Japan in the proportional vote for the House of Councillors?) the important opportunity provided by the June 21 Agadir, Morocco IWC conference to quarantine the lingering and debilitating debate over Japan's whaling has been lost from view. Japan needs a high powered individual at the Agadir meeting, a dealmaker and strategic thinker, rather than a pinch hitter sent by the MAFF. Right now, both the meeting's maestro and the crucial main actor will be absent from the scene.

Considering the depth of the wound the scientific whaling program inflicts upon Japan and the unique opportunity presented by the Maquieira proposal for Japan to wriggle is way out of it, all whilst retaining its international dignity -- cries out for some bold, even whacky improvisation. Prime Minister Kan should send a special ambassador, extraordinary and plenipotentiary, to the Agadir meeting to negotiate in Japan's behalf. This person would need to be of extremely high rank, considered an advocate of the MAFF yet also with a clear vision of japan's overall strategic position and the imperative sometimes, in order to improve that position, of radical shifts in emphasis.

The ideal candidate: Ishiba Shigeru.

Yes, the idea the idea is daft: the gentlemen is a member of the opposition. The idea that one could convince the policy research council chairman of the LDP to depart on a government mission on the eve of an election that is crucial to his party's very survival is...nuts.

Nevertheless, who else could one send? The man is the former MAFF Minister of the most recent LDP Cabinet. He knows the MAFF bureaucrats, their strengths and their weak points. He is also the acknowledged of grand poobah of the security affairs wonks, able to discern the strategic long-term interest of Japan in the slightest shift in the winds of international opinion. He could never, ever, despite whatever concession he might accede to, ever be tarred with the brush of having "sold out Japan" on the issue.

Ishiba's party would gag, but why not reciprocate? Send Democratic Party of Japan Policy Research Council Chairman Genba Koichiro and House of Councillors member for Tottori Kawakawi Yoshihiro as his deputies? Kawakami has experience as the head of the DPJ's Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Committee, and his attendance at the meeting, along with Genba's, would blunt the impact of Ishiba's not being able to campaign in his home prefecture on behalf of the LDP's candidate there or LDP candidates around the country.

Just a thought. Actually more of a wild, flailing gesture desperately trying to save the limited, shore-based commercial whaling proposal, which I have written about earlier here and here.