Three Fine Things In The Background

Three very fine things giving a frisson when looking at the images broadcast of Their Imperial Majesties' visit to the war memorials in the Republic of Palau:

1) That it is Muraki Atsuko, there on the left in the above screen shot from NHK, who is the master of ceremonies. Muraki is one of the very few victims of a prosecutorial frame-up to ever to win full exoneration and restitution, with the prosecutor who fabricated the evidence against her going to prison in her stead. (Link)

2) That Muraki is not just some flunkey or monomaniacal freak but a straight arrow, high-achieving, dedicated human being in what can only be described an awesome marriage whom the prime minister can take pride in having appointed to the highest office available to her in what was then only the second appointment of a woman as a vice minister. (Link)

3) That it is the Vice Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare presiding at the commemoration events at the newly refurbished memorial on the island of Peliliu, not the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs -- making it crystal clear once again that it is the MHLW, not MOFA, that is in control of war memory in Japan.

Live Blogging The FCCJ Press Conference Morishita Joji, Japan's Delegate To The IWCF

14:30 Nobody's home. Or almost nobody.

There is a reason, of course. The Foreign Press Center two days ago hosted a Morishita press conference. A lot of the foreign press went to that press conference. Today only 35% of the seats in this small room are occupied.

This is the second embarrassingly under-attended press conference I have been to this week. Wednesday's press conference of Eda Kenji on Wednesday, the urbane and erudite co-leader of the Japan Innovation Party, one of the only two significant non-Communist opposition parties, had rows of empty chairs in the working press -- despite our being in the midst of a crucial and increasingly combatative House of Representatives election campaign.

Then again, Morishita answers a length with a lot of victimization complaints, which can be a tremendous turn off.

He did answer my question on the scientific bases of the Revised Management Procedure (RMP) and a Minke harvest when the Minke are under pressure from larger Fin and Humpback. Seems to me that taking only animals from a population under pressure gives one a very skewed sense of the ecosystem's functioning.

Morishita is far more convincing, more accessible and more personable when he is discussing the possible scientific results from animal sampling. He should stay on arguing the science, exclusively. The "Us vs. Them" narrative simply irritates.

Later - Two observations

a) Morishita-san in his answers makes an unusual assumption: that their are folks who are interested in hearing how oppressive it is to not be liked.

b) that the under-attendance at both the Eda Kenji event and the Morishita event have a same cause: the sch Foreign Press Center's scheduling and promoting the first Morishita press conference two days earlier at the basically the same time as the FCCJ's Eda press conference.

Where's Shinzo? - The Snow's Fallin' Edition

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo on the telephone with Olympic gold medallist Han'yu Yuzuru on 15 February 2014. Image courtesy The Prime Minister's Residence.

The great snowstorm of this past weekend is becoming, albeit weakly so far, a Katrina moment for the Abe Administration. The damage is stunning, particularly to homes and Japan's winter food production infrastructure. An astonishing number of communities remain cut off five days after the snow began falling in earnest. The entire prefecture of Yamanashi entered Monday without a single surface transportation link to connect it with the outside world, this despite decades of loving attention from the Liberal Democratic Party's Road and Construction Tribes.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s whereabouts and actions during the storm and its aftermath have become a matter of controversy and criticism both in Diet sessions and on the Web. (Link)

For the record, here is my annotated translation of the prime minister's schedule as it appeared in my morning newspaper, detailing where the prime minister was and what he was doing the day the storm arrived and the two days afterward:

Friday, February 14
Morning
7:58 leaves Prime Minister's Residential Quarters for Prime Minister's Residence
8:02 Arrives Prime Minister's Residence.. Chairs meeting of the Headquarters for the Promotion of Social Security Reform (Link)
8:22 Cabinet meeting
8:36 meets with Minister of State for Gender Equality Mori Masako
10:46 meets with Paddy Burke, Chairperson of the Senate of the Republic of Ireland (Link)
Afternoon:
12:01 meets with Minister in charge of Trans Pacific Partnership Amari Akira
12:58 arrives Diet Building
13:02 arrives at plenary session of the House of Representatives
13:03 meets with Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru
13:22 arrives Prime Minister's Residence
14:02 meets Saiki Akitaka, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs
14:13 meets Kozuki Toyohisa, Director-General of the Division of European Affairs, MOFA
15:41 meets Thomas Enders, CEO of The Airbus Group
16:01 meets Kitamura Shigeru, Director of Cabinet Intelligence
16:31 meets Minister of Defense Onodera Itsunori and Administrative Vice Minister for Defense Nishi Masanori
17:12 chairs meeting of the Council for Science and Technology Policy (Link)
18:20 summit meeting with Christopher Loeak, president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (Link)
18:49 joint press announcement with President Loeak
19:01 Arrives at Prime Minister's Residential Quarters. Formal dinner with President Loeak
20:24 Bid farewell to President Loeak. Returns to Prime Minister’s Residential Quarters.

Saturday, February 15
Morning:
Receives no visitors, stays at the Prime Minister’s Residential Quarters
Afternoon:
14:25 interview by members of the domestic broadcast media
14:31 telephone call with Han'yu Yuzuru, gold medallist, men's singles figure skating, Sochi Olympic Games (Link)
14:54 Arrives at personal residence in Tomigaya, Shibuya City, Tokyo

Sunday, February 16
Morning:
Receives no visitors, stays at his personal residence in Tomigaya
Evening:
17:49 Dinner with supporters (unnamed) at Akasaka tempura restaurant Rakutei.
20:05 Returns to personal residence in Tomigaya

If the Democratic Party of Japan had half a gram of political sense it would have its members hogging every microphone, preening before every camera and tying up Diet proceedings, demanding that the Prime Minister explain his and his administration’s dilatory response to the weather catastrophe -- no matter how petty, superficial, crass, exploitative and petulant it makes the DPJ look from afar.

Because as we know from what happened after 3/11 that is exactly what the LDP would be doing, if it were still the main opposition party.

What A Welcome Back!

I go away for two weeks and the country goes bonkers.

Item #1: Tokyo Governor Inose Naoki's loan

You are a man of utter probity and profound knowledge, who has just lost his wife and life partner. You have never run for public office in your life and you are suddenly up for the post of the most powerful local government official on Earth, for a city that thanks to you has just won the right to host an Olympics. You are going into the race without a political support group or even a single paid staff member. A shadowy right wing figure approaches you, takes you to a Kamakura hospital and introduces to a nearly totally paralyzed tycoon who asks you, "How are you doing financially?" You quibble. A week later, the man's son calls you in to his office, which is inside the House of Representatives building. He puts 50 million yen ($500,000) in cash on the table and says, "This is a loan. You do not have to pay me interest. You can repay me whenever you want. I only want to help you out. Just to make sure we are on the up-and-up, here is a note verifying the loan."

What does a stressed out, exhausted Inose Naoki do, especially when the loan will be entirely legal? (Link)


Item #2: Blogging The Official Secrets Bill

A bill declaring vast areas of what should be public knowledge "official secrets" and criminalizing investigative reporting and whistle-blowing skulks, unseen, through the halls of the Diet. Stealthily and silently, it lurches toward passage. Suddenly it is dragged out into the sunlight and stamped on the public consciousness by a blog post by actress and model heretofore known mostly for her sacré bleu poitrine. Suddenly, every editorialist and commentator has something to say about the bill, most of which are expressions of stunned disbelief at the bill's sweep and imprecision. To make matters all the weirder, the role of sherpa for the supposedly crucial, ground-breaking, nation-saving bill is given to the state minister for consumer affairs -- the most junior member of the Cabinet.

Despite the public outcry at the unnecessary severity and breadth of the bill, or perhaps because of the outcry, the government rushes the bill through committee, managing to lose, for the first time in recent memory, all the votes of one of the parties that had submitted the bill. A hell-bent rush to railroad the bill through the House of Councillors hits a granite wall, however, when Ishiba Shigeru the secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party, in, yep, a blog post, equates members of the public peacefully assembling and yelling out slogans against the bill to terrorism.

Way to give the despondent opposition to the bill a jolt of adrenaline, Mister "Now-you-know-why-my-Diet-colleagues-would-not-vote-me-head-of-the-LDP-even-though-I-won-the-majority-of-votes-in-the-first-round" -- and with only four days left in the extraordinary session for the House of Councillors to pass the bill! (Link)

To which I can only say, "Amaterasu bless the blog post, the salvation of this blessed land!"

Item #3: Kinshasha Embassy Burning

This morning we have gracing the news reports the incredible arrest of a Japanese diplomat for setting the fire that gutted the Embassy of Japan in Kinshasha. Given the severity of Japanese law as regards arson and the level of respect accorded the careerists of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this is one is going to be

1) the first act of what will be one heck of a legal circus

2) an opportunity for a very embarrassing public review of Gaimusho hiring policies.

(Link - J)

And I have not even begun to think about the implications of China's new air defense zone!

Happy December!

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.

Tell Me Something I Do Not Know

Every once in a while, in the course of wading through the effluvia, I come across a news article or news fragment that truly astonishes.

I would have never guessed, for example, that Togo Shigemori, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Class A War Criminal, though born in Japan, was ethnically Korean.

The story of the Togo family was already very interesting. To have the founder turn out to have been of Korean stock (assuming the Russian academic author knows what he is talking about) makes them all the more fascinating.

A tip of the hat to Japan Probe.

Tomahawk Down

It seems all but official. Newspapers are reporting that according to Japanese government sources, the United States government has come to decision to retire the nuclear-armed Tomahawk cruise missile (TLAM/N). The retirement of these cruise missiles essentially closes the door on the deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in the East Asia theater.

In December, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis at published a vital research note on a dangerous fundamental flaw in the TLAM\N that would seemingly make it unusable against its most likely targets in North Korea. Also in December, Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya sent letters to the U.S. secretaries of state and defense disavowing a Japanese government intent to offer advice to the U.S. government on the desirability of particular U.S. nuclear weapons systems.

Today's article on the purported decision in The Asahi Shimbun makes note of the fundamental logical inconsistency (also noted by The Japan Times) regarding Japan's advocating the redeployment of these short-range missiles on U.S. attack submarines. Where would these vessels stop and where would they sail if their presence in Japanese waters or arrival in a Japanese port violates the "no-introduction" pledge of the Three Non-Nuclear Principles? Would a submarine positioning itself to defend Japan with TLAM\Ns have to start its voyage in Guam, then enter the Sea of Japan on the South Korean side of the Tsushima Straits in order to avoid triggering a violation of the pledge? Furthermore, how could a government that made a campaign promise to expose the existence of heretofore denied secret agreements on the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan during military contingencies then turn around and adopt a Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy for U.S. submarines possibly carrying TLAM/Ns?

Unanswered at the end of this drama is the question of who ordered Japan's diplomats to lobby the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (the Perry Commission) to suggest in its report that the U.S. retain the TLAM/N...and under what conception of Japan's stance on nuclear weapons was such lobbying justified. "Go and sin no more," seems to be Okada's view toward his bureaucrat subordinates...and his decision to not look into this matter further seems a wise choice.

No Ministry For You!

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has been off-line what seems like all day today.

No word on the cause.