Consider My Mind Blown

Just in case anyone is missing the significance of Abe Shinzo's sudden rush to meet with Donald Trump, try recalling who Abe is, or at least who is supposed to be according to his domestic critics and elements of the international news media and non-Japanese academia.

Come with me on a short walk-through what seems to be Ultimate Irony Town:

Abe Shinzo

Is traveling to the United States

To plead with the incipient leader of the United States

To foster and preserve a liberal, rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific

And ask him to not indulge himself in facile, nationalist posturing,

Lashing out based on a dated and embarrassing worldview.

Do you need to hear that again?

Abe Shinzo

Is traveling to the United States

To plead with the incipient leader of the United States

To foster and preserve a liberal, rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific

And ask him to not indulge himself in facile, nationalist posturing,

Lashing out based on a dated and embarrassing worldview.

Now some links to commentary by folks I admire:

On the Trump victory’s implication for American leadership in East Asia, Daniel Sneider

http://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/144829

On the importance of TPP, Mireya Solis

https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-trans-pacific-partnership-the-politics-of-openness-and-leadership-in-the-asia-pacific-2/

James D. J. Brown on the implications of the Trump victory for Japan-Russia relations

http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Viewpoints/James-D.J.-Brown-Japan-s-Abe-eyes-Trump-factor-in-Russia-policy

On the Abe visit with Trump, Robert Dujarric

http://thediplomat.com/2016/11/what-should-shinzo-abe-say-to-donald-trump/

As I have been saying for a long while, though hardly believing it myself:

Abe Shinzo = liberal icon


Later -

I would endorse Funabashi Yoichi's op-ed for The New York Times but the judgmental "should" appears too often for my tastes. Perhaps others would benefit from reading it, nonetheless:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/opinion/the-trump-effect-on-tokyo.html?_r=1

Speaking Of The Dead

De profundis clamavi ad te Domine!

"From the depths I call out to thee, oh My Lord!"

Yesterday, Former U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel "Sandy" Berger died at the age of 70. None of the Japanese language obituaries of him mention Berger's having been awarded last month the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun, the nation's highest award for non-Japanese (Link), a fact that CNN, in its obituary, did not fail to mention. (Link)

Berger's award was peculiar in at least three ways. First because he has never been portrayed in the popular media as a particularly special friend of Japan, or as someone openly associated with the careful management of the Tokyo-Washington political relationship. Second because of his infamous and shameful attempt to walk out of the U.S. National Archives with original copies of government documents hidden in his pants -- an incident so bizarre it would normally disqualify someone from receiving a major award. Thirdly because he was a token Democrat in an otherwise staunchly Republican list of American awardees announced on November 2.

Who were the other Americans (5 of the 12 awardees were Americans) receiving the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun this Autumn? Hold on to your hats (and possibly your hearts):

Richard Armitage
Brent Scowcroft
James Baker
Donald Rumsfeld

The first three would be on anyone's list of The Usual Suspects list of Establishment Friends of Japan. They were all going to get the Grand Cordon eventually.

The last name, however, should have been the source of screams of disbelief. "DONALD RUMSFELD!?!" Co-concoctor of the now 11 year old Iraq War? A figure so divisive and disgraced U.S. Republicans will not touch him?

Need anyone be reminded that Donald Rumsfeld was U.S. Secretary of Defense when a gaggle of joy-riding Republican donors crashed a U.S. nuclear-power submarine into a training vessel of a Japanese high school, sinking the ship killing five teachers and four students? That he refused to send a high-ranking Defense Department official to apologize to the families and the Japanese nation after the accident? And that he repeatedly said "No" to requests that just out of simple decency he stop the practice of allowing civilians to handle and operate U.S. weapons platforms and systems? (Link)

That guy gets a Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun? Who submitted the recommendation?

And no, that former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro himself did not leave his golf game after hearing the first reports of the Ehime Maru Accident, a show of detachment and contempt that forced the hated Mori's resignation and his replacement by Koizumi Jun'ichiro, does not make Donald Rumsfeld's being gonged any the less appalling.

The Washington Post Editorial On The Yanai Report

I confess I could not understand why the United States government and those in the Washington-New York power corridor first tried to dissuade Prime Minister Abe Shinzo from paying a visit to Yasukuni Shrine, then went ballistic when he ignored their warnings and went anyway.

The adult reaction to Abe Shinzo's Yasukuni visits (by the way, Abe is going to pay a visit to the shrine again this year -- whether Xi Jinping dangles the prospect of a summit in front of him or not) would be:

"OK, OK. It is horrible. Terrible. Lamentable. However, if all that it takes to keep Abe and his hopped-up followers to be happy is his pretending for one day a year that if he goes to a special hall he can then talk to ghosts, fine. What we in the real world get in return is 364 days of dealing with a politically invulnerable and almost avuncular Japanese prime minister whose name we can actually remember."

A not entirely distasteful prospect, one would think.

But as the Washingon Post editorial on makes clear, visiting Yasukuni is seen not as Abe Shinzo seeking stress relief. Instead visiting Yasukuni is an impediment to Japan's casting off its special status of a nation with a peace constitution:

But Mr. Abe has needlessly stoked those fears. His visit to a Shinto shrine where Japanese war criminals are honored, statements that have seemed to question the extent of Japan’s culpability in the war, and his associations with right-wing politicians whose statements are even more extreme — all of these have made his motives suspect in neighbors' eyes. That, in turn, has complicated his reasonable quest to turn Japan, nearly seven decades after war’s end, into a more "normal" country."

(Link)

The gist of the editorial is rather simple and rather straightforward:

"We, the Wise Men and Women of the West, want a Japan that will work hand-in-glove with our already pretty ideal friend South Korea to be the bulwark of freedom and democracy in the East Asian region which we so very much no longer wish to be because doing anything hard and complicated takes us away from working on the remodel of the kitchens of our second homes in the countryside."

To harsh an assessment?

I am not ashamed to admit my being indisposed toward any essay beginning its arguments with the hoary "if North Korea fires a missile passing high over the Japanese islands, the commanders of Japanese Kongo-class Aegis destroyers do not have permission to order a missile shoot-down, even if the computed trajectory of the missile predicts impact in U.S. territory" canard. This is the rhetoric of an Okazaki Hisahiko, conjuring up phantasms of Japanese passivity in order that we might wet ourselves.

What the author (my guess is that his initials are F. H.) of this editorial fails to consider is whether the citizens of Japan or South Korea have any interest in being the docile pieces under the control of the American grand master. The answer to that question is that they do not, not now, not for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the peoples of the two countries do not want to work with each other on security affairs if only because making China feel further ostracized and beset is not in their interests (Of course, inducing the Chinese to feel the world is ganging up on the Country of the Center is indeed in nobody's interest).

Also glossed over is the matter of the reinterpretation debate, the core issue highlighted by the excellent New York Time editorial of 10 days ago (Link). While plurality or even a majority of the population (depending upon the poll one consults) are currently sceptical about collective self-defense in general, a larger majority is fairly clear, even at this early stage, that there is no reinterpretation eye of the constitutional needle that the camel of CSD can pass through. These negative numbers will increase if the Abe Cabinet tries either to explain its views of reinterpretation, or worse, seeks to bum rush the necessary Cabinet Decision without a broad public and intra-Diet consensus.

It would be helpful if the Serious Adults of the sort who can pound out these opinion pieces remembered that one should not ever make policy prescriptions on the basis of what would be convenient for oneself. One has to try harder than that and make the case for settling for that which serves the interests of all.

Very Kind Of Them #17

Lesley Clark of McClatchy News has done a terrible thing: she has reported my views accurately and succintly.

"World War II Complicates Obama's Trip to Asia"

Talk about a tiny basket of ideas that manages to offend just about everybody.

In A Blue Metal Can With Yellow Lettering

Wow.

Member of the House of Councillors for Tottori Prefecture, Ph.D (George Washington University, wrote his dissertation on the conversion of the Soviet military-industrial complex to civilian production), member of the New Renaissance Party and Group of Independents Caucus (current membership = 3), former staffer for both the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Congressional Research Service (CRS) Hamada Kazuyuki (Link) seems to be his own brand of nuts.

I mean nuts.

I mean deluxe with that certain special je-ne-sais-quoi nuts:

..in some quarters, Mr. Obama is derided as "the worst president of the postwar era."

Of the many, the biggest reason for the collapse of [Barack Obama's] reputation is his bad relationship with his wife.

It is an open secret that the pair are already in negotiations for a divorce and that "they are waiting for his term in office to end, at which point they will separate."

If you ask the President, he will tell you, "I cannot show my face to the voters after her spendthrift ways."

[snip]

On the other hand, if you get Mrs. [Obama] to speak, she will tell you, "The President is a pathological philanderer. He uses the Secret Service in this regard and has them cover up the evidence."

Hamada-sensei, dude, are you sure you should be publishing this stuff as a post on your official blog? (Link - J)

My assumption: Hamada Kazuyuki is not on the list of invitees to the State Dinner tomorrow night.

If he is, he shouldn't be.

Another assumption: Hamada is not sought out by his former Washington colleagues as a valued source of insight into the politics in this blessed land.

And to think I thought Fujita Yukihisa's 9/11 conspiracy theories painful to read...which they were, as Fujita was one of the few members of the Diet willing to criticize Japan's pre-1945 record of imperial expansion and human trafficking.

Many thanks to Kyodo's Ben Dooley for highlighting this astonishing glimpse into a truly...original thinker. (Link)

A Pair Of Readings For The Obama Visit

Two folks I like a lot, whom I am on good terms with, and who might as well be on separate planets, writing about this week's visit by President Barack Obama.

Sheila Smith
"Our Anxiety as the President Heads to Asia" (Link)

Stephen Harner
"After Multiple Dissings, A Wary Japan 'Welcomes' Obama" (Link)

The really fun part of the exercise? Knowing which one is the ex-diplomat.

Nota Bene - Harner knows I really disagree with his assessment of Robert Kelly's essay for The Diplomat.

Short And Sweet And Sour

If I were Abe Shinzo, with a secure party leadership position, the opposition parties in disarray, an economic revolution winning applause and the leaders of my two most powerful neighbors disrespecting me and my country, and I received a urging from the U.S. Embassy, Tokyo to:

"...find constructive ways to deal with sensitive issues from the past, to improve their relations, and to promote cooperation in advancing our shared goals of regional peace and stability."

My response would be:

"What about your approach to...Iran?"

"Cuba?"

"Oh, and any time the North Koreans offer you anything as regards missiles and nuclear weapons development program, you take it. OK? Put your pride in a hamper, just for once, OK? Because North Koreans are never going to offer us anything. OK?"

I am no admirer of the Prime Minister, his allies or their political and economic programs.　However, the U.S. is out of line in criticizing Abe for demonstrating a lack of strategic vision and an inability to confront unresolved historical animosities.

In the the unhelpful pandering to venal domestic voting blocs and interest groups, we are all guilty.

The Lady Is Not Amused

This is still your honeymoon interval, Madame Ambassador. Hope you had a cheering and heartwarming Christmas.

What? You have some statement?

Please go ahead. It's a free country

Statement on Prime Minister Abe's December 26 Visit to Yasukuni Shrine

December 26, 2013

Japan is a valued ally and friend. Nevertheless, the United States is disappointed that Japan's leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan's neighbors.

The United States hopes that both Japan and its neighbors will find constructive ways to deal with sensitive issues from the past, to improve their relations, and to promote cooperation in advancing our shared goals of regional peace and stability.

We take note of the Prime Minister’s expression of remorse for the past and his reaffirmation of Japan's commitment to peace.

(Link)

The Japanese text is here.

Ambassador Kennedy should not be too upset. Prime Minister Abe did not seek to humiliate her in particular. What he has done is show his fundamental indifference toward the advice given him by every U.S. government official who has met either him or Foreign Minister Kishida over the last year. He certainly has humiliated all the Track 2 emissaries he sent to Washington or those who spoke on his behalf in Washington, with the exception of course of Yasukuni rationalizer Professor Kevin Doak.

Then again, the Washington visitors and denizens know darn well that the oldest rule in politics is "You gotta dance with them what brung ya."

Today all Abe done is done danced with them that brung 'im.

Tip of the hat to Robert Dujarric for the links.

A Chinese Nightmare, Post-Sochi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The United States Votes With Flowers

An official of the Department of Defense, currently on an involuntary vacation, yesterday alerted me to the laying of a wreath at the Chidorigafuchi National Memorial by the visiting U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense. I expressed to my friend a confident hope that good weather would encourage the major news organizations to highlight the Secretaries' visit to the Memorial, which progressive elements within the U.S. government and Japanese society have longed argued is the appropriate place for public officials to pay tribute to Japan's war dead.

Well, a day later, it seems I was a little too sanguine in my assessment. Agence France Presse, in its Japanese edition, played up the visit and its significance (Link - J). In English, The Japan Times went hog wild, with a title "Kerry, Hagel visit Chidorigafuchi to diminish Yasukuni," invincible to the ministrations of the mightiest of message massagers (Link). The New York Times in high-minded, above-it-all sobriety, managed to publish a huge photo of John Kerry and Chuck Hagel leaving the memorial without explaining the visit's significance. (Link)

As for the home team, there is very little good news to report. I saw no footage of the visit on any of the news programs I looked at over the last half day. National broadcaster NHK has nothing up in its online gallery (Surprised? No). On Google News, the only domestic news source with a report on the visit is Jiji Press, which has up only a brief account composed of five short sentences. Analysis of the significance of the visit is compressed into the last sentence, and is diffident, at best:

Ａ級戦犯が合祀（ごうし）され、閣僚による参拝が中国などとの対立要因となっている靖国神社とは異なり、宗教色はない。

Unlike Yasukuni Shrine, where Class A War Criminals are honored and where visits by members of the Cabinet cause strife with China and other countries, [Chidorigafuchi] does not have a religious aspect to it.

(Link - J)

Perhaps the U.S. government shutdown prevented the U.S. Embassy from drumming up interest in the wreath laying, leading domestic news organizations to feel comfortable in ignoring a very obvious U.S. prod to improve the visibility and popularity of Chidorigafuchi (the Jiji News report indeed felt it necessary to spend two of its five sentenceｓ explaining what the hell the Chidorigafuchi National Memorial is, as just publishing "Chidorigafuchi" would　have left　readers wondering, "Why is anyone talking about a famous cherry blossom viewing site at this time of year?").

So for the visit to have any bite, the newsgoround has to make another circuit. The　non-Japanese news outlets have to　make a news story out of the fact that Japanese news outlets ignored the wreath laying. This would compel　domestic news organization to report on the non-Japanese news media's making a fuss over the lack of coverage of the event when it happened.

T'is is a mad, mad mass media we have in this blessed land, with most peculiar tribal customs.


Later -The online version of the Sankei Shimbun does have a contemporaneous report on the visit of the secretaries to the Chidorigafuchi memorial. According the Sankei account, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when asked for comment about the wreath laying, said it had no knowledge of the event. (Link - J)

MOFA said it had no knowledge of the U.S. Secretary of State's intent to visit a national memorial on the sidelines of attending a 2+2 Meeting in Tokyo?

Curiouser and curiouser...

Tip of the hat to Michishita Narushige for the link.

Your Chosen Profession

Tom Bishop: Nathan, we killed this man. We used him and we killed him. Okay then, you got to help me understand this one. You got... Nathan, what are we doing here? And don't give me some bullshit about the greater good.

Nathan Muir: That's exactly what it's about. Because what we do is unfortunately very, very necessary. And if you're not willing to sacrifice scum like Schmidt for those that want nothing more than their freedom, then you better take a long hard look at your chosen profession, my friend. Because it doesn't get any easier. You wanna walk? You wanna walk, walk.

-- Spy Game (2001)

Daniel H. Garrett walked.

My first response to a cursory reading of Garrett's letter, which I only found out about because of a mention of it in Sentaku, was, "Amaterasu, have I ever met this person?"

My second thought was, "I have to email X to ask him just how editorial at Japan Focus came to approve the publication of this lettter."

My third was, "How did the U.S. government manage to hire someone as unclear about the nature of the business he has chosen? The record of Garrett's education and employment on LinkedIn indicates an individual of rather...unconventional makeup.

I can sympathize with a desire to do good everyday in all things. And diplomats do a lot of good and decent things, overall. However, delivering incredibly bad, stupid, short-sighted and insulting messages to friends and enemies alike, as well as ferreting out intelligence from persons who are naive enough to open up to you, was Mr. Garrett's job -- a job that hundreds of diplomats from all parts of the globe do in Tokyo every day.

Speaking only in generalities until everything is declassified was another part of Mr. Garrett's job -- which the thousands of diplomats passing through in Tokyo manage to do in deference to the needs and interests of their employers.　Keeping one's peace does not mean keeping quiet, either. Former U.S. Foreign Service officers like Rodney Armstrong and Stephen Harner manage to engage in ferocious criticism of the Japan-U.S. relationship while keeping the details of their own service under wraps.

Mr. Garrett seems to have been an idealist mistakenly in service to an imperial power -- a well-intentioned, pro-democracy, inadvertent (to borrow Robert Dujarric's adjective) imperial power, but an imperial power nevertheless. Walking out on that empire turns one's employer into a laughingstock -- but not for the unfortunate policies and presumptuous attitude revealed. No, for having handed to an amateur a job reserved for professionals.

Oh, How To Play This One!

Judging from the responses when searching Google News in Japanese, the domestic media has not yet reported on this story:

Fourth star for Harry Harris
Pensecola News Journal

Pensacola becomes the home of lots of military brass, and this area also produces its share of high-ranking officers.

Harry B. Harris Jr., a 1974 graduate of Booker T. Washington High School, has been nominated by President Barack Obama for his fourth star as a Navy admiral, the Pentagon announced on Tuesday.

With the promotion, Harris, a vice admiral who is now assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is scheduled to be assigned to command the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the Navy said.

As commander of the Pacific Fleet, Harris will oversee the world’s largest sea operation, encompassing more than half the Earth’s surface and including about 1,100 aircraft, 200 ships and submarines and roughly 140,000 military and civilian personnel.

Harris, 56, is the son of a Navy enlisted man and a Japanese woman who worked for the military as a civilian translator...

(Link)

So after the local mediaverse gets off its duff, how will this country's bloodline-conscious interpret a hafu's taking over as proconsul for the Indo-Pacific?

Wow, do I ever see the opportunity for misunderstandings here...oh, and a lot of images of excruciatingly bad gift swaps too.

It is just after 4:30 in the morning. What are the chances that NHK has a camera crew in Harris's mother's nominal furusato right now, interviewing seniors who would rather be watering their plants?

Tip of the hat to Paul Giarra for the link.


Later - Yes, I agree. It will be interesting to see this news is parsed in China.

Critical Voices

- From his home where the kiwis walk and the keas fly, Corey Wallace takes a look at yesterday's New York Times article on a purported shift away from pacifism. (Link)

The problem of Japanese pacifism is a straw man, a dummy that various actors take out of the closet to pummel in front of audiences of assorted arms merchants, paranoids, anti-Japan poseurs and insecure revisionists. The asymmetric alliance relationship and the care Japanese officials take in delineating the actions permissible and impermissible under the Constitution combine to form the biggest free lunch ever served. Think of the contrafactual: a fully armed, U.S.-allied Japan with no constitutional restrictions on its actions, without the presence of a regional equivalent of NATO or even an OSCE. Recall that last year the South Korean government ditched Japan at the altar on the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA） -- this with a constrained Japanese defense establishment. (Link)

- From Washington, Clyde Prestowitz argues that naming Caroline Kennedy ambassador to Japan would be a departure from the Kennedy Way. (Link)

Prestowitz argues that President Barack Obama broke the mold on Japan ambassadorships with his nomination of John Roos. This elides over George W. Bush's appointment of a big campaign contributor and business associate as his second ambassador. The last of the long line of "big fish" U.S. ambassadors was former Senator Howard Baker, who served 2001-05. Since then, wealthy campaign bundlers and contributors have filled the top spot, just as they seem to do for every other advanced industrialized U.S. ally.

At best, naming an academic giant or a big political fish would be a step backward from Japan's still young status as a normal nation. At worst, it would send a false signal of an Obama Administration sense that the Roos appointment was a mistake and/or that the situation in East Asia is so fraught as to need an emergency change of direction.

Regarding The Ambassadorial Appointment Stories

A reader writes asking whether or not I will be posting on the rumored imminent nomination of Caroline Kennedy as the new United States Ambassador in Tokyo. (Link)

In early in March I said that I look favorably upon the appointment, with Robert Dujarric offering a wise suggestion in comments.

My position has not changed in the interim.

As for the "Joseph Nye is seen as a better" crowd, I have only one question; why is your list of alternatives "Joseph Nye" and nobody else?

While we are on the subject of U.S. Ambassadors to Tokyo, CSIS has provided a transcript of former Ambassador Thomas Schieffer's keynote address at the annual conference of Japan-U.S. alliance managers (Link). The Texas Democrat's take on the status of the alliance reads rather well. Given what I know of Schieffer's timbre and timing, it probably sounded 10 times better.

Schieffer does not figure highly in the pantheon of former ambassadors for reasons that escape me. He did make the mistake of not calling upon Ozawa Ichiro and the Democratic Party of Japan during the first 15 months following Ozawa's taking over the helm of the Democratic Party of Japan, setting the stage for an incredibly embarrassing first meeting with Ozawa after the Abe Shinzo-led Liberal Democratic Party's defeat in the 2007 House of Councillors election. Other than this howling error, Schieffer was an assiduous, conscientious and level-headed advocate for the United States.

The last of which may have been the problem.

That Schieffer possesses a sharp mind as well as a sharp wit is not in doubt. Proof: he was able to go into a business with George W. Bush, giving Bush a management position in that business, and end the arrangement happily, netting tens of millions of dollars.

Let the improbability of that outcome sink in for a second.

Despite his smarts, he looked down upon no one. The one time I met him, at a reception at the Embassy of Luxembourg, he walked up to the receiving line, alone. When Luxembourg staffers tried to lead him past the receiving line to greet the Luxembourg Ambassador right away, Schieffer waved them off with a gentle, "If you don't mind, I would prefer to stand in line and wait my turn just like everybody else" -- which he then proceeded to do.

I suppose his handlers never knew quite what to make of him.

Madame Ambassador?

Over at Foreign Policy Coco Masters take a look at the possible impact of the muted mooted appointment of Caroline Kennedy as Ambassador to Japan (Link). While there are few sentences in the article that will likely send the Japan Keyboard Defense Corps swinging into action, Masters takes the intellectual step few journalists writing in English on Japan take: acknowledging that improving the social position of Japanese women is not merely a matter of increasing access to economic opportunity:

Public attitudes in Japan are arguably going backward, however. A poll conducted by the Japanese government last December shows that 51 percent of respondents think women should be stay-at-home mothers. That figure is up 10 percent since 2009 -- with the increase most notable among people in their 20s. Kathy Matsui, chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs and longtime proponent of "womenomics," has said that encouraging the participation of women in the workforce should be a national priority. "It should be up there with solving the fiscal deficit. It should be up there with how to improve Japan's national competitiveness.… It's staring you in the face -- it's half the population."

While the appointment of Kennedy would send an unfortunate message in terms of the acceptability of dynastic rule of democratic states, having a woman in the top spot in Tokyo's diplomatic corps would be a definite plus. I try to imagine a meeting between the new ambassador and Finance Minister Aso Taro -- and see in my mind's eye his struggling over which of his personae to put on display -- the faux-serious policy man, the swinging dandy, the arch grandee -- and I smile.

Though it sounds trite -- and potentially insulting to the women of the country -- having a Madame U.S. ambassador could indeed have a positive effect on expectations and attitudes. The United States government and Ms. Kennedy would have to be willing to jaw-jaw about their ambassador's book publishing, her astute marshalling of her political influence and her having had to shoulder the huge responsibility of managing the legacies her parents left her.

On a more human note, the appointment of a child of the most glittering of all the White Houses to the position of ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary for the world's most powerful nation would mean Crown Princess Masako would finally have someone in Tokyo of sufficient rank and status to talk to as a friend.

Just Two More

As regards the Abe-Obama meeting of minds over the weekend, I failed to recommend the look-behind-the-scenes of the run up to the summit provided by Peter Ennis:

"Obama to embrace Japan, not Abe"

My mistake.

The post reveals the quiet but quite obvious desperation of the Abe camp, which needed the summit to counter domestic inertia on number of issues including the Futenma Replacement Facility, Japan's participation in negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership and Japan's becoming a signatory to the Hague Treaty on child abduction (if I see another essay uncritically accepting accusations of domestic violence as sufficient grounds for dismissing the crime of child abduction, my head will explode -- not that it has not already exploded in response to the public debate over the appropriateness of corporal punishment).

On what can be seen as the other side of the ledger, I was waiting for a commentary on the passing of Donald Richie that confronted the issues of power, knowledge, cultural transmission and sexuality he embodied.

Out of respect for the dead, no such commentary appeared.

It was left to the excrutiatingly humble Richard Lloyd Parry to fill in the void, through a Facebook link to his scintitilating 2006 examination of Richie's The Japan Journals. (Link)

A laudatory, yet damning obituary, published six years before the fact.

If you should read but a single piece of writing about Japan today, let it be Parry's essay.

Holding The Line In North Korea

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea's detonation of a nuclear test device on Tuesday caught folks off guard. The test itself was, of course, not unexpected -- the preparations having been visible from space for weeks. Not inexplicable either was the timing of the test -- just hours before President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address, where an act of North Korean defiance would have maximum impact on the U.S. national conversation, and a safe few days before the anniversary of the birth of leader Kim Jong-un's father, Kim Jong-il (a.k.a., the Day of the Shining Star).

As for the detonation, my feelings are congratulatory -- as in "Congratulations, DPRK. You have replicated the technological sophistication of the United States of the late 1940s, at the cost of only the loss of membership in the family of humankind and most of the basic necessities of human life."

In order to keep a sense of proportion about the North Korean regime, one needs to adopt an attitude of sad resignation. Fearful of the outside world and of each other, the North Koreans pursue a weapons capability with the very reasonable goal of putting their enemies at a risk level equal to the one the DPRK faces. Of course, each step in the direction of such a capability boxes the leadership in more and more. Eventually the DPRK will produce, Amaterasu knows when, a nuclear-tipped long-range ballistic missile. What is certain is by that time they do they will be working on it by candlelight, chewing on leather for the flavor.

Japan and its U.S. ally are demanding a reversal of the programs building toward a North Korean nuclear-tipped ICBM. Given the fundamental insecurity of the DPRK regime, both on psychological and politico-economic grounds, such demands are ludicrous. The best anyone could hope for is a suspension of ongoing research & development -- and the only way that could happen would be if all in the United States collectively declared themselves utterly terrified by the awesome capabilities of the mighty and legitimate Kim regime.

Of course, for reasons of both politics and sanity, the United States cannot play the role of the elephant terrified of the mouse. Instead the U.S. plays the role of the exasperated adult, scolding the misbehaving child:

"...the Government of North Korea should abandon and dismantle its provocative ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs, cease its proliferation activities, and come into immediate compliance with all United Nations Security Council resolutions and its commitments under the 2005 Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks"

Yes, the DRPK should do these things, in order that the world might be more convenient for a hyperpower with a short attention span. Funny thing, though, the leaders of the DPRK will not do what they should, and moreover would not be leaders for very long if they did.

My thinking on the need for greater realism as to North Korea's nuclear and missile programs is best reflected in the recent essay by Dr. Muthiah Alagappa, "North Korean Nuclear Test: Implications for Asian Security," published by PacNet (no URL for the essay yet - but the PacNetters assure me that there will be one soon). At the same time, I am sympathetic to the Nth country problem outlined by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis in his essay "Friends with Benefits" published by Foreign Policy last week (Link -- the South Koreans did what in 2000?!?). Indeed, I am on record at the same publication for concern pre-election about Japan's capacity to become a Nth nation, a view which earned me the scorn, probably deserved, of Dr. Michael Green. (Link)

And the above image? It is a shot through the glass at the Perry Hall in Kurihama (Link - J) of an 1854 woodcut showing a fearful and tear-stained Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his similarly awe-stricken and crying officers cringing in terror as they present a letter from U.S. king Millard Fillmore to the mighty magistrate (bugyo) of Uraga.

When it comes to surrealist, seemingly delusional misrepresentations of one's country's stature in international affairs (Link) pretty much everyone's been there, done that.

Just remember what happened to the bakufu that greenlighted the above representation of Japan's place in the world.