He Says All The Right Things

Martin Fackler has delivered:

Japan Says It Will Abide by Apologies Over Actions in World War II
The New York Times

TOKYO — Japan's conservative government will abide by official apologies that the country's leaders made two decades ago to the victims of World War II in Asia, top officials said Tuesday, backing away from earlier suggestions that the government might try to revise or even repudiate the apologies.

Japan formally apologized in 1993 to the women who were forced into wartime brothels for Japanese soldiers, and in 1995 to nations that suffered from Japanese aggression during the war. Both apologies rankled Japanese ultranationalists, and there were concerns that the hawkish current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, would try to appeal to them by whitewashing Japan's wartime atrocities, a step that would probably infuriate Japan’s neighbors.

The United States shared those concerns, and it urged the Abe government to show restraint on historical issues so that Japan would not further isolate itself diplomatically in the region.

The concerns intensified last month when members of Mr. Abe's cabinet visited a Tokyo shrine that honors Japanese war dead, including some who were executed for war crimes, drawing angry reactions from China and South Korea. Those nations also responded strongly a few days later when Mr. Abe seemed to question in Parliament whether Japan was actually the aggressor during the war, saying that the definition of "invasion" was relative and suggesting that his cabinet might not stand by the 1995 apology in its entirety.

On Tuesday, the Japanese foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, apparently sought to dispel those concerns, telling reporters that Mr. Abe shared the views expressed in the 1995 apology, which was made by a Socialist prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama. At a separate news conference, the chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said the Abe government would not revise the 1993 apology, which formally recognized the military's responsibility in forcing women into sexual slavery...

(Link)

Hmmm...maybe.

Maybe "the Abe government would not revise the 1993 apology, which formally recognized the military’s responsibility in forcing women into sexual slavery" is what Suga wanted to say.

Unfortunately, what actually came out of his mouth, according to the NHK video report (Link - J video) was:

"[The Abe Government] has not said that it is studying the Kono Statement, including the possibility of revision. For the Abe Government, the basic line of thought is that t[he sex slave issue] is not one we must make into a political or foreign policy issue."

Suga's syntax and word choice open possibilities for coy "How were we to know?" excuses later, on the order of "How were we to know that foreign governments were going to make political or foreign policy issues of our revising of the Kono Statement?" There is also that peculiar use of the phrase "must make into" (ni saseru beki)– as if there were some outside force pressing upon the poor, defenseless Abe Government, pushing it to make revisions to the Kono Statement it does not want to make.

Then there is the matter of the seemingly superfluous "the basic line of thought is that" (to iu no ga kihonteki na kangaekata da). It is true that there are no word police to cut short this kind of verbal spinning of wheels. As a consequence such verbosity is rampant, particularly in political speech.

This does not mean that Suga was not being very careful in piling up a wall of subordination at the end of his sentence. He has left open the door for a "Well, it was not our basic idea to revise the Kono Statement...but we were thinking about revision in a sort of oblique way...and then the political situation changed and we decided to go through with it."

As for trusting what members of the Abe Government say, there is that problem too. When a snake tells you "I'm not hungry" (Or, more specifically, "My basic thought is that I'm not hungry") -- is what matters is the fact that the snake said, "I'm not hungry" or that he is a snake?

So, yes -- I do prefer Toko Sekiguchi's more cautious take on the same story (Link) -- but even she puts in a "never" where it does not likely belong.


Later - The online English-language edition of Pravda-by-the-Palace checks in with its own restrained version of the story (Link). The kicker phrase in the English language version is "effectively modifying Abe's position on history." In an abbreviated Japanese version of the story, the operative phrase is shusho no hatsugen o jijitsujo kido shusei suru koto -- which translates more literally as "what is for all intents and purposes a rectification of the trajectory of the prime minister's statements." (Link - J)


Image courtesy: NHK

The Yomiuri Shimbun Goes On The Prowl

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

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

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

How stupid is this?

This stupid:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

More Gasoline

Just when you thought that Japan-Republic of Korea relations could not get any worse, Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, August 15 Yasukuni Shrine visitor and right wing fruitcake Matsubara Jin, in Diet questioning, has stated that he would want the Cabinet to discuss a partial retraction of the Kono Statement of 1993 regarding the sex slaves of the Japan Imperial Forces comfort stations. (J)

Really, not the best of times for a Cabinet member to be expressing a wish of this kind. Indeed, there is never a good time for a Cabinet member to express such an opinion.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu (Fujimura the Unbelievable) has responded in his usual force-free manner, "There is nothing that the government feels it needs to do."

Expect the usual explosions on the other side of the Tsushima Strait.


Later - What is Matsubara doing? He is misreading the situation. He is interpreting the louder publicizing of positions the government of Japan has always held to be the trumpets announcing the dawn of the Era of Fruitcakery.

He is, as he is in almost all things, wrong.

What Knowledgeable Friends Are For

It seems I have won my bet with Okumura Jun on the size of the July 6 protest in front of the Prime Minister's Residence. According to Tokyo Metropolitan Police estimates 17,000 demonstrators showed up on June 29, the day after the restart of the #3 reactor of the Oi nuclear power plant. According to the same source, 21,000 demonstrators showed up on Friday night (Protest organizers have of course said that far more protesters showed up on both nights than the police claim. Given the incentives, I am sure the correct number is somewhere in between).

Now Okumura-san can claim that the 24% increase in estimated crowd size, rather than the greater than 25% decrease he predicted, was due to the free-for-all that happened at the Foreign Correspondent's Club earlier in the day, when the non-Japanese press bludgeoned Kurokawa Kiyoshi, chairman of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Commission for the discrepancies between the English language précis and the Japanese text, including the foul attribution of the failure to "Japanese culture" found only in the English version ((F and E). Perhaps it was the obvious the desire of the folks on Friday to be out protesting in the rain, rather than under clear skies as was the case the week before.

Whatever.

All joking aside, what was stunning and important was that the mainstream news media on Friday stopped pretending the protests were not happening. TV news broadcasts had helicopters circling the Prime Minister's Residence (try that one in Washington DC, Beijing or Moscow) broadcasting live images of the crowd. The newspapers stepped up their coverage, including even the Yomiuri Shimbun, which refused to report on the June 29 protest. (J)

So over lunch at Aux Bacchanales (Okumura-san spent part of his formative years in a majority French-speaking city and I went to a bilingual school where one of the languages was French -- so our having lunch in a Tokyo bistro appropriate, thank you very much), I will have the chance to discuss why he and I have such different views of the timing of the next House of Representatives election.

As far as I can see, there is only one human being of consequence who wants a snap election after the passage of the consumption tax bill through the House of Councillors: Liberal Democratic Party President Tanigaki Sadakazu. Tanigaki knows that if the Diet is not dissolved before the end of its session on September 8, he will have to face an LDP presidential election. Due to his lackluster performance as LDP leader -- the party failing under his leadership to capitalize on numerous bumbles and fumbles of the Democratic Party of Japan -- he will go down as only the second LDP president, after Kono Yohei, to never become prime minister.

Sadly, and all too typically, Tanigaki is alone in believing that the stage is set for elections. The news media complex, after reporting at length in February that the current electoral map is unconstitutional, then repeating the process in May following the Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko's on-air admission that the districts are unconstitutional, are humming that elections will be held in the next two months -- proving once again that for the domestic media, facts will never be allowed to get in the way of a good story*.

For his party and party-to-be, Ozawa Ichiro has been declaiming that elections are imminent (J - check out the invaluable pyramid of the number of elections of the House of Representatives members of Ozawa's proto-party). However, Ozawa is merely using the threat of elections in order to 1) keep his fellow rebels close to him, 2) encourage to other members of the DPJ to defect (this in order that they might avoid going into elections tarred with the brush of raising taxes) and 3) perpetuate the illusion that he knows more than he actually knows**.

As for Tanigaki's fellow LDP's members, they are worried that entering a campaign with Tanigaki at the head of the party will lead to disaster. Better to wait until September, replace Tanigaki with someone more dynamic like Ishiba Shigeru, Ishihara Nobuteru or Hayashi Yoshimasa***, then push the Noda government to the wall in the fall extraordinary Diet session.

As always, there is the unresolved matter of rendering the holding of elections constitutional. The current situation would make a great trivia game "gotcha" question: "Name the countries in Northeast Asia where the holding of national elections is illegal." In a recent GlobalTalk 21 post, Okumura-san argues that a snap election is possible, either via the legislative fiddle devised by the LDP -- eliminate the five smallest electoral districts and their 5 seats in the Diet, lowering the discrepancy between the smallest remaining district and the largest to 1.78, well below the Supreme Court's threshold of 1.99 -- or simply bullrush the Emperor and the Supreme Court, in succession, over the unconstitutionality of the districts.

As for the latter solution, forget it. There is no way under the sun (intentional allusion) that Prime Minister Noda will convince the present emperor to send this blessed land spinning into an extra-constitutional void. He is a people's emperor, willing to junk tradition when tradition is contrary to fact or contemporary practice. Moreover, he is the son of Hirohito: he will never, ever, ever allow an extra-constitutional assertion of power by any branch of the government.

As for the first solution, not even the LDP, which dreamed it up, believes the DPJ will ever accept it. Redistricting is the key to the kingdom of heaven: he or she who holds in his or her hand determines who shall rule this nation for the next decade. It is the prize that the DPJ fought for -- to reward the DPJ's core urban/suburban constituencies with the representation they had so long been denied under LDP rule...and lest it be forgotten, the sad-sack district, the one whose voters are the least represented in the House of Representatives, whose votes are worth only 40% of the votes in the least populous Kochi #3 district -- that is Chiba District #4 -- Prime Minister Noda's district.

As if the DPJ needed any more reason to delay the next election, the popularity numbers for Hashimoto Toru's Ishin no kai have not yet plateaued. Until such time as it is clear just how far Hashimoto's political movement can roll, the incentive is to sit tight.

So a snap election? In the evening newspapers' dreams perhaps.

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* The "Ozawa Ichiro is corrupt" presumption is another example.

** This is a classic smart prophet's double game. If the prophesied comes about, then the prophet was right. If the prophesied does not come about, the prophet claims it was precisely because of his/her prophecy that those in control altered conditions so as to render the prophesied impossible.

*** Hayashi has already founded his own study group, a precursor to a major candidate's run for the office of the presidency. He is the default Washington candidate (E). He is, however, a member of the House of Councillors, a huge demerit in LDP internal politics. Party members want to a leader from the House of Representatives, where he/she will share in the fates of those thrown into an election by a Diet dissolution.

Sunday's Listening In

It is hard to type away about the foibles and failures of Japan's political classes at the time when a tragedy of immense proportions is befalling the people of Myanmar. Not an entirely avoidable tragedy...but certainly one that need not have been so murderous.

I will nevertheless try.

Depending upon one's tastes, this morning's Nichiyō Tōron on NHK was either an utter waste of time or a useful, succinct introduction to why Japanese Diet politics has become moribund. Through an inexplicably bad decision, the parliamentary affairs chairmen (kokkai taisaku inchō) of the major parties were brought together to debate the hot sujets du jour: the road construction bill--scheduled for a ruling coalition override in the House of Representatives on Tuesday--and the implementation of the over-75 elder care system.

Now, as a general rule, one does not want the parliamentary affairs chairmen slanging each other at close range in front of cameras. These are men (and they are all men) who are supposed to get together and work out the schedules of bills, the terms under which bills will be debated and the corralling of one's own party's worst elements and tendencies--this in order to have the parliamentary process move along with some sense of decorum.

The parliamentary affairs chairmen need to be able to understand what the other chairman are thinking, what their pressure points are, where the others are capable of compromise.

Sniping at the other side, listing all the reasons the other side is to blame for the breakdown of Diet proceedings is the responsibility of the party general-secretaries, or at worst, the party research council chairmen. Having the diet affairs chairmen passing the buck around was tawdry--and screamed, "We need an election! Or at least a leadership shakeup!"

"A waste," thought I as the six parliamentary affairs chairmen merely quoted their party lines--which consists of little more than "It's their fault!" '" No, no, it's their fault!"--when they should have been considering what happens in the Diet after the train wreck of Monday's rejection of the road construction bill in the House of Councillors and Tuesday's override of the rejection.

The issue that was worthwhile debating--"What kind of country do we want to have?"--was never addressed.

Some might say, "of course" belongs somewhere in that previous sentence...but I am not so cynical.

Interestingly this broadcast has taken place after House of Representatives Speaker Kōno Yōhei called LDP Secretary General Ibuki Bunmei and LDP Parliamentary Affairs Chairman Ōshima Tadamori to his office to read them the riot act over the deterioration of relations between the parties in the Diet, particularly the LDP's response to the blockade of the Speaker's Office on April 30. On that day a phalanx of Democratic Party of Japan legislators had prevented Kōno from making his way from his office in Diet Building to the House of Representatives chamber where he was to gavele opent the session where the ruling coalition was to use its two-thirds majority to override House of Councillors inaction on the bill reviving the temporary gasoline tax levy. DPJ members blocked the door to Kōno's office for an hour in what was a symbolic final act of protest against the use of the override provision to pass the unpopular bill. After an hour passed, Kōno made his way to the House of Representatives chamber and the vote took place.

In retribution for the telegenic brouhaha, the LDP-dominated Disciplinary Committee began punitive action against Democratic Party of Japan Representative Mikazuki Taizō, a leader of the blockade.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, Kōno told Ibuki and Ōshima on Friday to issue a cease and desist order to party members leading the persecution of Mikazuki. The young lawmaker had apologized to the Speaker in person. As far as he (Kōno) was concerned, there was no need for further punishment.

"This kind of skirmish happened because you guys are fumbling around. I want the parties talking to each other."

spake Kōno unto the pair from the LDP.

Those who may have been disturbed by the physicality of the blockade might wish to note that Kōno did not invite Hatoyama Yukio or Yamaoka Kenji or any of the other secretary generals or parliamentary affairs chairmen to the meeting.

Just his own party's men.

Makes you wonder where the ostensibly neutral Kōno thinks the greatest fault lies.

Then again, "let's all just get along" is a popular message among those far from the LDP's centers of power. Yosano Kaoru and Aso Tarō, who aside from both being on the outs in the party also are charter members of the "Persons-Less-Illustrious-Than-Their-Grandparents" Club, are coming out with a joint article in Bungei Shunjū calling for a collective LDP-DPJ formulation of next year's budget.

Sort of a "Well, gosh that was unpleasant...but don't give up on us just yet!" kind of appeal to come out and play one more time.

Funny thing about this call for comity though...if I were in the DPJ, I would be thinking that working out a budget together was what the LDP should have been inviting the DPJ to do last year.

Better late than never, I guess.