In Memoriam

It was on Thursday last week that I learned of the death of William Sakovich, a.k.a. Ampontan. The Saga-based polemicist died in December last year after only the briefest of hospitalizations.

Sakovich was a savage critic of both Japanese and non-Japanese media portrayals of political figures, political parties and the government. His long (very long) critiques of mistakes and prevailing tropes had a wide and devoted readership.

He and I saw eye-to-eye on no known topic. Everything I defended he loathed and vice versa.

Nevertheless it is hard to think I will never meet him in person.

His blog is still up. While his unforgiving political writings attracted readers while he was alive, my guess is that his idiosyncratic treasury of information on festivals (Link) will be his living monument.

Sakovich doubted much, but firmly believed in a bright future for Japan-South Korea relations. From his perch out in westernmost Japan, he saw more evidence of person-to-person exchange and warm feelings than those of us who make our homes in the country's East do.

With his passing, the circle of persons writing regularly on the daily affairs of this blessed land grows ever smaller.


Later - I look around finds Mr. Sakovich's death was reported on Japan Probe. I suppose this indicates I am now consecrating zero seconds per week to the online Japan uniqueness community.

Blog On Economics With A Strong Japan Component

Okumura Jun has linked to Dr. Noah Smith's blog Noahpinion and it is a worthwhile read (Link). Dr. Smith is a rare Japan hand in the high stakes economics blogosphere, having lived in this blessed land for a number of years. Dr. Smith has some admirers in Japan, notably noted economics blogger Ikeda Nobuo, who has allowed Dr. Smith to post on his Agora site. (Link)

In his latest post on Japan's economy, "Should Japan Reflate?" Dr. Smith wonders whether it matters much if the monetary and fiscal policies of the Abe Cabinet trigger high levels of inflation or even hyperinflation. In his judgment, it would not. (Link)

I hesitate to agree with his conclusion.

While I have to agree with the self-evident statement that inflation destroys debt, which would be good for the economy, it would also destroy the value of bonds, which would be bad. Dr. Smith refers to such value destruction as a "tax" on elderly bondholders -- which it is in terms of outcomes. However, high or hyper-inflation would be dishonest taxation, one not vetted by an electoral test.

Inadvertently Dr. Smith's post highlights, rather than dismisses, the danger posed by the Abe government's enthusiasm for inflation. Dr. Smith claims that previous global incidences of hyperinflation have not been terribly damaging, at least from an economics standpoint (his use of Weimar Germany's hyperinflation as an example of a benign result tests my patience. As I remember, the collapse of faith in the Weimar government had a decidedly negative political outcome). As is often noted, almost all of Japan's debt is held by Japanese investors and institutions. What this means is that if inflation takes off, Japanese creditors get torched. This is completely different from the Latin American hyperinflations, where economic irresponsibility burned overseas bondholders as much as domestic ones (Argentina defaults and Italian pensioners are ruined, in the most recent example). High or hyper-inflation in this latter case is like lighting a stick of dynamite, throwing it, getting knocked down by the shockwave, then picking oneself up grinning, saying, "Whew, that was fun!" In the Japanese case, with Japanese on both sides of the creditor-debtor divide, inflation is like lighting a stick of dynamite, then holding on to it.

Not so fun.


Later - Dr. Smith replies in Comments.

Blog On European Participation In Asian Security

Reader Dr. Philip Shetler Jones has a blog on Europe and the role European countries are playing/could play in Asian security affairs:

Europe Asia Security Forum

Pardon my saying it, but what a résumé!

Appreciations

Stephen Harner is a former U.S. diplomat, Japan-based business executive turned China-based business executive and now a Japan-based consultant. He blogs for Forbes Magazine at http://blogs.forbes.com/stephenharner/ (the link in the blogroll is Whither Japan).

For outstanding -- and I mean eye-wateringly good -- analyses of Japan issues for free, one cannot do better than the researchers at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Dehli. Their "Comments" are works of outstanding scholarship. The latest one on Japan, "Political Rift Deepens in Japan over Senkakus’ Nationalization," is available here.

Note that all the references within the comment are to articles the domestic press; none from non-Japanese sources. Nobody else does that, not even the truly excellent folks at the Congressional Reference Service (CRS) -- who, to be fair, have to answer to U.S. congressmen and their staffs who may have read something in the New York Times or Stars and Stripes.

And now, a bleg. Will the graduate student who is blogging his readings of the Big Books on Japan with the word "Heian" in the title line of his blog please contact me, so I can add your blog's name to the blogroll?

For Those Who Don't Have The Time

To dig or an awareness of just how much is being made available on-line regarding Japan's security environment, the latest edition of Tiago Mauricio's East Asian Security & Defence Digest is out. (Link)

Redefining Normal For Japan

Thwack!

That is the sound that this essay by Soeya Yoshihide, Director of Keio University's Institute of East Asian Studies, makes. It delivers a punishing blow to the arguments of a raft of U.S. and U.K. monographs and op-eds published over the last two decades on the significance of Japan's normalization in military affairs.

Given the number of targets it hits, it is the whack-a-mole of blog posts.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

Well Said

Tobias Harris does a supercalifrajilistic job of explaining the ramifications of yesterday's House of Representatives vote on the road construction bill.

Nihon Cassandra drinks of the bitter cup and expounds upon the TCI/J-Power ruckus and vermicious Steel Partners extortion play. We mere mortals are properly edified.

Anna Kitanaka wonders how "Japan" can want stuff.

David Daniel Morales, writing about the short stories of Murakami Haruki over at Néojaponisme, entirely fails to grasp the concept of "you should get this into print" -- with his on-line readers reaping the benefits.

Later - M.A.R.X.Y. quite rightly asks in comments me what the hell I am saying.

Why blogging matters - Japan edition

Tobias Harris goes home and is promptly horrified.

Janne Morén shows what happens when drop dead design sense meets demographic data.

Okumura Jun writes off the cuff about the healthcare system (once and twice and thrice).

Ad Blankestijn seems intent on giving away the manuscript to a fantastic guide to Japan.

Me? I tip-tap-type out marginalia.

A Hundred Things Now To Do or Say....

...before the sun goes down upon this day.

Janne Morén of Janne in Osaka speculates on the potential for diminishing loyalty to institutions, be they universities or political parties.

Bill Sakovich -- whose posts continue to improve as the number of comments in his comments section has shrunk (yes, I am being obscure on purpose) -- has a detailed rundown on the main actors and currents in the Sentaku movement.

The Mitsubishi Heavy shipyards in Nagasaki turned over the keys to the Ashigara, the sixth and final Kongō-class Aegis destroyer, to the Marine Self Defense Forces (Where have you gone Iwashita Yatarō?) in a ceremony in Sasebo.

And in business news, the yen-per-dollar rate sliced through the par level like a knife falling through a sheet of paper, driving the Nikkei Index down to new lows.

A lot to get a handle on.

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Hyakunin Isshu Ceiling of the Zendōji (detail)
Yorii City, Saitama Prefecture
February 11, 2008
Image credit: MTC

About bloody time

Whippet-smart and multi-talented (a photographic eye to die for) journalist Anna Kitanaka has a blog.

Finally, a female voice in the professional Japan politics & society blogosphere.

If we can now convince her bosses to shell out a little to give her a proper page, she could be a force.

Who let the dogs out?

cynic

1. A person who believes all people are motivated by selfishness.
2. A person whose outlook is scornfully and often habitually negative.

A Cynic was an ancient Greek philosopher or a member of a group of ancient Greek philosophers who believed that virtue is the only good and that the only means of achieving it was through self-control. The sect was founded by Antisthenes in the 4th century B.C. From Greek kunikos and then through Latin cynicus, "dog".

These sect members had a doglike insolence, a doglike disregard for social customs, a doglike use of tubs or kennels for sleeping, and a currish insistence upon one's own opinion.

Nihon Cassandra forwards a message to those who luxuriated in the carry trade from their ultimate creditor.

Western Fear of the Neonsign explores the (insert Japanese noun)-as-metaphor publishing industry.

And this site is so subversive, it should be mandatory reading in most democracies.