Choshu Rules, Again

The donjon of Hagi Castle, prior to its destruction in 1874

Kawamura Takeo is a seven-term House of Representatives member from Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture. If news reports are accurate, he is the number one candidate to replace Ishiba Shigeru as Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party. (Link - J)

If Kawamura is appointed Secretary-General, Yamaguchi Prefecture, with its 1.4 million inhabitants and 4 House of Representatives members, will be providing the nation with:

President of the LDP and Prime Minister: Abe Shinzo

Vice president of the LDP: Komura Masahiko
(also Japan's top China hand and leader of the government's side in the battle over the exercise of the right of collective self-defense)

Secretary-General of the LDP: Kawamura Takeo

The rest of Yamaguchi's Diet delegation does none too shabbily, posting-wise. The final member of the House of Representatives delegation, Kishi Nobuo, the prime minister's younger brother, is Parliamentary Senior Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. House of Councillors member Hayashi Yoshimasa competed with Abe for the post of party president in September 2012 and is the current Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

[So what is wrong with Eguchi Kiyoshi, the final member of Yamaguchi's Diet delegation? Nothing. He is just new on the job, having taken over remaining House of Councillors seat when Kishi Nobuo moved to the House of Representatives in 2012.]

For those keeping score, this means the han of Choshu (castle town: Hagi) which with the han of Satsuma (modern day Kagoshima Prefecture) and Tosa (Kochi Prefecture) overthrew the Tokugawa bakufu establishing a new political order that became so thoroughly monopolized by Satsuma and Choshu leaders the period is called "the era of Satcho dominance," is in pretty much in charge of Japan 146 years after the Meiji Restoration.

Bring's to mind William Faulkner's observation that the past's not only not dead, it's not even past.

From The Places They Have Seen We Might Know Who They Are

This morning Prime Minister Abe Shinzo paid a visit to the Tomioka Silk Works, Japan's first Western-style silk production facility, recently named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He paid tribute to the citizens' groups which had cared for the site through its many decades of sleepy neglect and who spearheaded the drive to have the site designated a part of the world's heritage (Link). The prime minister also showed his appreciation for the women whose labors inside Tomioka and Japan's other giant silk mills produced the export yen that helped pay for the national strengthening policies of the Meiji Era.

Local community efforts, women working with the nation reaping benefits, international recognition - all great political messages to latch onto and integrate in the prime minister's Abenomics master narrative.(Link - J video)

However, in the "recognition for the previously under-recognized" travel league, the prime minister got trounced this week by their Imperial Majesties.



Yesterday the Emperor and the Empress finished a forty six year long project of national contrition and inclusiveness. They visited the Tohoku Shinseien, a former leprosarium, fulfilling a promise made in 1968 to visit all the former incarceration sites for sufferers of Hansen's Disease. (Link - J video)

Japan's leprosariums, where education and care was minimal, stayed in operation decades after other countries had ceased to isolate their Hansen's disease sufferers. It was not until 1996 that the draconian Leprosy Control Act was repealed. It took a 2001 unconstitutionality ruling by the Supreme Court (a rarity) to open the door for the Koizumi Cabinet to apologize for successive Japanese governments's violations of the patients's civil and human rights. (Link)

Their Highnesses's travel itineraries do not shirk revisiting the dark sides of the country's history. In May they visited the areas affected by Ashio Copper Poisoning Disaster, indicating that his Highness was not entirely displeased by House of Councillors member Yamamoto Taro's clumsy reinactment of the Tanaka Shozo Appeal last year -- and that their Highnesses are keeping their eyes on the government's fumbling at Fukushima Daiichi. In June their Highnesses paid their respects at the location of the wreck of the wartime evacuation ship Tsushima Maru, sunk by a U.S. submarine in August 1944 with loss of 1418 persons, most of them children. (Link - J)

It is hard not to love the Emperor and Empress for their efforts, at their advanced ages, to promote a full and complete reckoning of the nation's history.

Which suggests an intriguing idea. If Abe Shinzo's views of history make him unsuitable to meet or invite to China or South Korea, how about inviting their Imperial Majesties instead? By inviting them one proves that one's problems are with the policies of the Japanese government, not the Japanese people. One also gives oneself a wonderful chance to get off the merry-go-round of hatred and suspicion the region finds itself on.


Images courtesies: NHK News

Flowers For Korekiyo

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Today is the 78th anniversary of the 2/26 Incident (Ni-ni-roku jiken). (Link)

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has been relying on Takahashi Korekiyo as the guide star and historical anchor for his Abenomics economics policies (Link). Do you think the PM has sent flowers to the old man's grave today or to his statue in the park next to the Canadian Embassy, the site where the soldiers found him and killed him?

I was trying to think the other day of what Abe could do to demonstrate that his 'escape for the postwar regime' is more than just a glorification of the Meiji State. "What could he do to repudiate the course the country took under the Meiji Constitution?" I asked myself. "Perhaps he could reverse a historical wrong, proving that he is not in thrall to the myth of a virile and respected pre-1945 Japan."

I tried to think how far back in time one would have to go for Abe Shinzo to be able to admit, "OK, what the government did there was wrong."

"If not apologies for the invasion of China, not the assassination of Zhang Zuolin, not the annexation of Korea, how about a partdon of Kotoku Shusui, tried and executed in 1911 for the High Treason Incident of 1910? That was a domestic affair so there are no implications for Japan's current fraught relationships with its neighbors. And since it all happened over a hundred years ago, who could have any problem with it?"

Then I had to clap my hand to my forehead:

"Idiot! Of course there is someone who would have a problem with it. Member of the House of Representatives Hiranuma Takeo, Abe's Best Friend Forever and the co-leader of Abe's Sosei Nippon movement (Link) is the adopted son of Hiranuma Kiichiro - the prosecutor of the High Treason Incident defendants!"

One hundred and three years on...and hopeless impediments to realistic and healing assessments of history are still with us.

And now the sun is going down.

Suggested Exhibition #2

If you find yourself in the vicinity of Ogikubo Station on the Chuo Line and have a few minutes to spare, you might want to walk up to the Suginami Historical Museum's Amanuma Branch Museum (Suginami kuritsu kyodo hakubutsukan bunkan) for a tiny exhibit of mass-produced toys and toy making in the period prior to, during and immediately after the Occupation.

The impact of the march to war upon the toys children play with is not something that often comes to mind when one considers the social history of the Meiji, Taisho and early Showa periods. Big changes came not just the permissible and suggested themes of play but in the materials as well, with metal disappearing from toy making very early during Japan's adventure on the continent, the tin and iron sucked up into industrial production for the war. By the very end, toy makers were reduced to making toys out of celluloid and thin strips of bamboo.

Particularly fascinating are the pair of Occupation era propaganda films on the postwar birth of a workshop toy making industry. Waste (empty tin cans) from the U.S. military's canteens and clubs became the raw material for an almost entirely hand-powered process producing toy cars for export.

A whole world of asides ("And into tin toys beat our trash/nations shall learn war no more"; "Japanese were exporting cars only a few years after the surrender, only these were made of tin"; "Yeah, and that must have been the last time an American bigshot could be smiling at a display of Japanese cars ready for export"...) come to mind as one watches the films, which are showing in a continuous loop on the video monitor next to the staircase.

Lovers of historical irony will probably like the jellied alcohol-fueled model nuclear power station in the later postwar section of the exhibit, as well as toys of the 1930s proclaiming Japan's military might.

The exhibit runs through December 1. There are special programs on the 20th of this month and on November 3.

Information on the bunkan (Japanese only) can be found here.

Finance Minister Aso Taro's Golden Tongue

Aso Taro's talking without thinking has gotten him into trouble again.

Japan Finance Minister's 'Weimar Constitution' Comment Draws Fire
JapanRealTime

[Snip]

During a Tokyo speech Monday, Mr. Aso — who also serves as deputy prime minister and was once prime minister — said Japan should learn how Germany’s constitution under the Weimar Republic was transformed by the Nazis before anybody realized what was happening.

"Germany's Weimar Constitution was changed before anyone noticed. It was changed before anyone was aware. Why don’t we learn from that technique," Japanese media quoted Mr. Aso as saying. The comments were confirmed by his office.

His aides said Mr. Aso was in his local district on the southern island of Kyushu on Wednesday and couldn't be reached for comment. But they said his remarks were taken out of context, and Mr. Aso didn’t say anything to praise Nazi Germany. Rather, he was trying to convey how discussions over constitutional revision should be conducted in a calm environment.

"Minister Aso referred to pre-war Germany as a negative example for Japan," said Ichiro Muramatsu, one of Mr. Aso's secretaries. "Continuing emotionally charged discussions could lead the discussions into a wrong direction. Mr. Aso didn't in any way support the Nazi constitution or the way they changed the Weimer constitution."

A report by Kyodo news agency also quoted Mr. Aso as saying how the Weimar constitution was the most "progressive" in Europe at the time, but that the Nazis emerged under it. "Even under a good constitution, things like that happen," he was quoted as saying...

(Link)

As the human charged with doing damage control for Aso Taro, Mr. Muramatsu must enjoy some of the best job security of any person on the planet.

But what of Mr. Aso? Has this latest incident of mental diarrhea marked the end of his usefulness?

Aso Taro is by his own admission a cheerful dolt. His book Totsute mo nai Nihon is a gleeful celebration of his doltishness. His outbursts, simultaneously colorful and idiotic as they are, demand explanation by bon mot. Indeed, I have prepared a trio of such, for anyone who needs one:

- "It is not correct to say that Mr. Aso is a stranger to his own mind. It is clear, though, that the two are not communicating most of the time."

- "Claiming one can understand what Aso is trying to say presumes that Aso understands what it is he is trying to say. There is nothing in his history to support this latter assumption."

- "Aso was appointed Finance Minister because of his inability to understand what he would be defending. For Abenomics to fly, it needed an advocate at Finance who not only could not understand what he was saying, but who would not even try to understand what he was saying."

Unfortunately, in this instance, Aso Taro probably knew exactly what he was saying. His extraordinary "Isn't there something we can learn from the Nazi takeover of Weimar?" flourish was made to an audience provided by the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (Kokka kihon mondai kenkyujo - Link) -- former Prime Minister's Residence frequent visitor Sakurai Yoshiko's talk shop for purveyors of myths of former national greatness and present-day national peril all wrapped in a love of the state power that Meiji oligarchs might have found overwrought (well, aside from Yamagata Aritomo, for whom no amount of love of state power could be overwrought).

When Aso was pointing out how easy it was for the Nazis to push aside the constitution of Weimar he was obviously not telegraphing an unstated "We must therefore be vigilant in preserving Japan's liberal democratic charter" to the assembled. He was telling these True Conservatives to stay cool, keep quiet and let an indigenous form of state-centered revisionism take over by degrees.

Over the course of these first months of the second coming of Abe Shinzo MOF minister Aso has provided the domestic and international news media with a string of bizarre statements, fashion and otherwise. These deviations from message have all rolled off his and the Abe Cabinet's collective backs with such ease that many critics of Abe Shinzo and Abenomics believe the domestic news media and the Abe government are in cahoots, or at least signed a secret armistice.

Aso's latest excursion into bizarro world, however, may be his last as Finance Minister. While Abe clearly appointed Aso because there was no chance of Aso ever understanding what the Finance Ministry bureaucrats wanted him to say (a trick Abe learned from Koizumi Jun'ichiro, who neutralized the Finance Ministry by appointing Tanigaki Sadakazu to lead it) he also needed Aso close by tied to an impossible-to-shirk mountain of major responsibilities so as to keep Aso from wandering off and indulging himself in the kinds of intra-party machinations that brought the first Abe premiership to crisis and collapse. Aso's motor mouth has therefore been allowed to run rampant, despite the titters of the world community.

With this utterance, however, Aso has crossed a red line. He has revealed the carefully concealed truth that the Abe Cabinet's core illiberal supporters, rather than being supplanted by the Economy Firsters in Abe's circle of advisors, have been merely biding their time offstage, secure in the final victory of their cause. For this blunder Aso may find himself bereft of a portfolio after the next Cabinet reshuffle -- which many news organizations are projecting will take place in the first days of September.

Aso's failure to check himself should be met with gratitude, not umbrage or opprobrium. He has once again, without fully intending to do so, pulled aside the curtain of respectability hiding the dark intentions of a political movement with little, when seen under the bright light of the rising sun, to recommend it.

For as long as he is in office Aso remains, as he has been, the Cabinet's inadvertent patriot.

The Last Man

The Past
Was
Be Here Now

- George Harrison, "Be Here Now" (1973)

This one really is for the history books: at 2 a.m. local time, Kimura Jiroemon of Kyotango City, Kyoto Prefecture, died. (Link - J)

Kimura, born in the 30th year of the Meiji era, was 116 years, 54 days old at his death. For followers of the Gregorian calendar, Kimura was the last man alive to have been born in the 19th century.　(Link)

Thank You, Aurelia George Mulgan

With clarity, erudition and thoroughness, Aurelia George Mulgan attacks the thicket of nonsense flung about by the forces both within and without Japan in support/defense of constitutional revision:

Abe rocks Japan’s constitutional boat

For those whose inquiry begins and end at "Japan has proven itself capable of self-control. What could be wrong with normalization?" -- the essay's crucial paragraph:

The price of formally amending Article 9 will be high, particularly in terms of Japan's foreign relations. China and South Korea will 'over-interpret' the move as signifying a dramatic change in the status quo and the rise of a potential Japanese military threat. Moreover, Japan will no longer be able to lay a strong claim to being a 'peace state', which has been an important source of its soft power. The proposal to revise Article 9 could, therefore, have a destabilising effect in the region and come at the cost of Japan's international standing and soft power.

Due to the absence of regional economic and security structures, due to Japan's being in a bad geo-political neighborhood (think of when Japan exited from the Occupation: no other industrialized states nearby, no other democracy in the region except the chaotic Philippines) -- and due the halt in the program of purging the government of totalitarianism, post-Occupation Japan faced unleapable hurdles to integration (some China-sodden commentators might say "re-integration") into East Asia. The latter half of the 20th century would then most likely have been much like the first half: constant warfare, with an armed Japan in contestation with the Soviet Union and a fragmented China, the dogs of war unleashed by a breakdown, after a decade or so, of Japan's alliance with the world's premier maritime power.

[As to the implications of a martial post-1945 Japan on the process of decolonization in this alternate universe East Asia, the mind boggles.]

Article 9 had a purpose and effect of breaking the chain of inevitability. Japan could integrate into East Asia at minimal cost, both in terms of its own sovereignty and social structure. A de jure shackled Japan had a chance of living at peace with the military dictatorships and expansionist communist states of the region. A demilitarized Japan could be given free rein to permit the rehabilitation of its pre-war elites.

Someone needs to look the PM in the eye and tell him, "Look, your enthusiasm for constitutional revisionism is misguided. The Meiji State was a miserable one for the common people. But forget about them. The only reason your grandfather could walk out of Sugamo Prison alive and hearty to take up where he left off, becoming Prime Minister less than eight years later -- was Article 9. Article 9 made it possible for your grandfather's younger brother to, eventually, succeed him, your great uncle Eisaku becoming the longest serving post-war prime minister. It has allowed you, who have been steeped in a culture of unscientific, ahistorical, backward-looking authoritarian fantabulism, to become Prime Minister not once but twice.

Forget about what Article 9 has done for the average citizen; think about the tremendous service it has done for your family."

The attempt to encourage a reconsideration of a commitment to constitution revision out of simple self-interest would likely fail. However, that does not mean it would be wrong to at least try it.

A Question About Nakayama Nariaki's Character

Shimazu Nariakira (1809-1858)

[Warning - a Work In Progress - Wonky and Speculative]

A few days ago I put forth a suggestion for what Japan commentators should say when they are asked, "Why are Japan's politicians such idiots when it comes to the feelings aroused by actions and words that seem to slight the invasions of Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries?" (Link)

I suggested that commentators say, "It's not a Japan thing. It's a Satsuma thing."

One commenter asked:

Could you explain what a "Satsuma thing" is for those of us who normally think of Satsuma as a sweet potato?

I of course have an idea what I mean. However, to make my proposal more substantial I stopped by the local library.

Whilst perusing a quick guide to the Edo-Meiji transition I was struck by the entry on Shimazu Nariakira (島津斉彬), the 11th daimyo of Satsuma, whom Taiga Dorama viewers would recognize as the adopted father of Atsuhime.

I was struck by the second character of the 11th daimyo's personal name.

Hin ( 彬 ), while simple in construction, is a pretty darn obscure kanji. It does not appear among the 5,500 characters listed in Nelson's -- at least the edition of Nelson's on my bookshelf. It does appear in Kojien but seems to be used for but a single word - hinpin ( 彬彬 ) -- which means "when that which is on the outside is the same as that which is on the inside" -- which is a pretty cool state of being, in ceteris paribus.

Looking at the name I said to myself, "That's funny. I have only seen that character one other time...and that is in the name of...nah, it couldn't be."

But, of course, it is. One of the Japanese readings of hin is "akira" as in Shimazu Nariakira. However, another reading is "aki" -- and there just happens to be politician whose name features that reading of the character.

Nakayama Nariaki (中山成彬).

Who is Nakayama Nariaki?

Just a member of the Diet so unapologetic about Japan's international behavior prior to 1945 that he managed to make himself a personal non grata in the Liberal Democratic Party. Nakayama N.'s wife Kyoko was the special advisor for the North Korean abductees issue for three prime ministers in a row (Abe, Fukuda fils and Aso). Nakayama N. returned to Nagata-cho in December after a long period in the political wilderness via the swearing of allegiance to the Ishihara Shintaro-led Japan Restoration Association.

So what?

Well it was Nakayama N. who was feeding the questions to prime minister Abe Shinzo on April 10 when Abe made the dangerous assertion that a Japanese politician's visiting Yasukuni is the same as an American president's visiting Arlington National Cemetery (Link - J) -- the first in what have been a string of Abe responses and Diet member actions which have crippled what had been improving Sino-Japanese and South Korea-Japan relations.

Why would a member of the opposition be serving up revisionist softballs for Abe Shinzo to hit out of the ballpark?

It could be that the JRA is trying to play nice with the LDP to lay the groundwork for a political alliance between the two parties after the July elections.

Then again, it could be that Nakayama Nariaki entered the Diet in 1986 as a member of the Seiwakai, or as it was known at the time, the Abe Faction -- led at that time by a certain Abe Shintaro, the father of a certain Abe Shinzo.

So what about so what? Nakayama's from Miyazaki, not Kagoshima.

True, but Nakayama is from southwest Miyazaki, from the city of Kobayashi, which, in the Edo Period, was inside the Kagoshima han, a.k.a. Satsuma.

If one indeed put plugs the characters for "Shimazu Nariakira" and "Nakayama Nariaki" into Google, out pops a cascade of speculation, mostly on the list-serve 2Chaneru, about the connection in between the daimyo's and the JRA politician's names -- but no official confirmation of a link.

Given the rarity of the character in question, the near homophony of the given names, Nakayama's birthplace and Nakayama's jut-jawed nationalism, it would be weird if the person who came up with Nakayama's given name were not a Shimazu clan fan.

Mito may have provided the ideology; Choshu the brains; Tosa the inspiration. Satsuma provided the brawn..not just in the Restoration in '68, but the Invade Korea dispute (Seikanron) in '73, the invasion of Taiwan in '74, the pressuring of Korea to sign the Kanghwa Treaty in '76, both sides in the Seinan War in '77 (the reason why Yasukuni was established), deposing the Ryukyuan king in '79...

"Japanese nationalism" -- it's all interconnected...and a lot of the time, it's Just A Satsuma Thing.


Later - For fans of the institutional, rather than the familial, indicators, both Nakayama Nariaki and Nakayama Kyoko are former Finance Ministry bureaucrats.

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

For The Love Of Fukushima

On the 7th, representatives of the Tokyo Olympics committee submitted the Tokyo Metropolitan District's bid for the 2020 Olympics. (Link)

One of the claims made in the bid is that the games will be a celebration of and a contribution to the recovery of the Tohoku from the effects of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns. Considering that the Tokyo Olympics 2.0 would be held eight years from now and almost entirely within a small area inside the TMD, the association with the recovery effort seems a stretch. The proposal has two or perhaps three of the preliminary soccer matches played in Sendai, but otherwise the link between the Olympics and the Tohoku disasters will be tenuous to the point of stimulating nervous laughter.

I had a chance to hear Inose Naoki, now officially the governor of the TMD, offer some more concrete examples of how the TMD was contributing to the Tohoku recovery effort. The TMD has dispatch hundreds of TMD bureaucrats on short stays to help administer the recovering areas (many prefectures are doing this, most prominently Aichi Prefecture) and is training and housing applicants for school teaching positions in the Tohoku.

One of the programs Inose described sounded trivial but was in fact important. The TMD has issued coupons offering discounts on day trips or overnight stays in the Aizu-Wakamatsu area of Fukushima Prefecture. Whilst several towns the coast region of Fukushima are uninhabitable due to the Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear power station disaster, and vast areas of coastal and central Fukushima are contaminated with nuclear fallout, the interior area around the city of Aizu-Wakamatsu is relatively contamination-free. However, as the region is inside Fukushima Prefecture, the largest of Japan's prefectures, it has seen its tourist visits fall through the floor. Since Aizu-Wakamatsu area was dependent on tourism, the false association with Fukushima Dai'ichi has sledgehammered the local economy.

In the wake of the TMD's efforts to promote a return to the area (for a of slideshow from my one visit to Aizu-Wakamatsu, in 2009, click Here) the national broadcast network NHK has a new Taiga Dorama series, Yae no Sakura, set in Aizu-Wakamatsu. Like most Taiga dramas, the current series, airing every Sunday night for the rest of this year, is strongly tied to local, prefectural and NHK-led national efforts to promote tourism to the locales in which the story takes place.

Learning the lesson brought home by last year's calamitous series on Taira no Kiyomori (one senryu of autumn last year had Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko musing, "No matter how bad my popularity ratings are, they are still better than those for that Taiga Drama series on Taira no Kiyomori...") the main character, like the protagonists of the recent smash hits Atsuhime and Gon...Himetachi no Sengoku is a plucky young female historical figure.

For some reason watching young women fight disdain, prejudice and adversity is more fun than watching middle-aged men sitting around shouting at one another.

Of course, Yae no Sakura takes "plucky" to a whole new level, as the heroine is Yamamoto Yae, the bakumatsu badass with a Spencer rifle carbine who served as a commander in the defense of Aizu-Wakamatsu's castle against the forces of the Meiji government (Link), fighting alongside her estranged first husband. She survives the war, moves to Kyoto and marries Iijima Jo (Joseph Hardy Neesima), the founder of Doshisha University. (Link)

In the NHK depiction, the decidedly nonconformist Yae mutters the Aizu-Wakamatsu motto naranu koto wa naranu mono desu ("that which must not be shall not be") with contemptuous irony.

Not so salutory was private broadcast network TBS' attempt at a costume drama contribution to Aizu-Wakamatsu tourism, Byakkotai. If Yamamoto Yae's story is one to remember, the story of the Byakkotai (White Tiger Company) is a story one wishes everyone would forget. The teenagers of the White Tiger Company managed to make nothing of their brief lives, winning fame only for committing suicide upon the belief, mistaken as it turned, that Aizu-Wakamatsu's castle had fallen to the armies of the Meiji Emperor.

Just to make the already horrid (visiting the reconstructed Aizu-Wakamatsu castle and seeing the large portraits each of the young men under moody lighting makes one ill) story more wretched, TBS made no attempts to hide selfish goal of producing yet another does-the-country-with-its-high-suicide-rate-really-need-yet-another-glorification-of-suicide-as-beautiful-and-brave drama: the promotion of the latest generation of precious jimusho boys and boy band wannabees.　(Link)

For the love of Fukushima, give me the girl with the gun!

The Revolutionary Council Overreaches

It was strange watching the video of Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru presiding over the meeting of an Ishin no kai steering committee as the delegates ratified list of ultimate goals for the quasi-party, if and when it participates in national elections.

The list of the Ishin no kai goals includes:

- abolition of the House of Councillors

- direct elections of the Prime Minister

- abolition of the prefectures in favor of larger regional units resembling the German lander (the various plans known collectively as the doshusei).

- abolition of the grants from the national government tax revenues to local areas (chihokofuzei) in favor of direct taxation carried out by the local areas themselves

[By the way, where are the sources of the chihokofuzei grant monies?

32% of income taxes
32% of taxes on alcohol
34% of corporate income taxes
29.5% of the consumption tax
25% of tobacco taxes (Source)

Not a bad cut of national revenues...]

- elimination of national pension payments to the wealthiest taxpayers after their retirement (nenkin hokenryo no kakesute - J)

What was so strange about the video clip was how disengaged Hashimoto looked (especially since that last idea is his). Whether it was out of boredom, madness or a desperate attempt to anesthetize himself to the berzerk radicalism of his minions, Hashimoto was simply not there, emotionally or intellectually.

The list of campaign promises, which the Ishin no kai, in complete agreement with its ersatz Meiji Restoration revivalist ethos has called its "Eight Policies from the Ship" (senchu hassaku) in imitation of Sakamoto Ryoma's famous missive, has already drawn guffaws from the established political parties. The leaders and spokesmen of the parties had a field day yesterday, pointing out that item after item would require not just a revision of numerous laws but even amendment of the Constitution, a document which has not seen the alteration of even a single punctuation mark since its promulgation on November 3, 1946. (J). That any and every amendment would require not only its passage through the Diet with a two-thirds vote in both Houses but approval from the voters in a national referendum (the governing rules of which came into effect less that a year ago - J) casts the Ishin no kai wish list into the realm of fantasy.

Applause did come from some quarters yesterday. Predictably, the terrible twins of the Chubu Region Aichi Governor Omura Hideaki and Nagoya Mayor Kawamura Takashi had nice things to say about the quasi-party platform (J). Omura echoes every decentralization plan coming out of Osaka and Kawamura, well, he is just nuts (but in a damnably warm and clever way. His tour de force has been providing the depleted Tohoku with wave after wave of Nagoya civil servants to replace persons lost in the triple disaster or for the training of their replacements -J).

The surprise was the positive reaction of the Your Party to the Ishin no kai proposals. Your Party leader Watanabe Yoshimi praised the list, saying that in terms of bringing the national bureaucracy under control, decentralizing of authority and making Japan a nation of prosperity, the goals of the Ishin no kai and the Your Party are completely in sync (J).

Maybe he just scanned the text.

Major media outlets have panned the proposals. The Asahi Shimbun suggests that the ideas expressed needed a little more intra-party discussion before being released (J). The Sankei Shimbun wonders what happens to the Emperor as head of state, if the prime minister is popularly elected (J).

Up until now the Ishin no kai has been on a roll. It had, possibly because the reality of what it represented had not been spelled out, been gaining popularity in the public imagination.

It remains to be seen whether the release of this wild wish list slams the brakes on the what had been until a hurtling "Go Go Hashimoto" freight train.

Men of Defense on the Defensive

In response to Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi's sending a letter of reprimand to Colonel Nakazawa Takeshi for his having made a disparaging reference to the Prime Minister in a speech at the opening ceremony for a joint U.S. Force Japan-Japan Self Defense Forces drill last week, the Liberal Democratic Party's defense tribesmen are denouncing the disciplinary action. Ishiba Shigeru, the defense otaku and head of the LDP policy research council, complained, "What the colonel said was actually self-evident...When you say, 'It's outrageous!' it is troubling that you are not saying what it is that is so outrageous." Nakatani Gen, a former SDF officer, chimed in with a suitably duplicitous, "If you punish someone in front of the troops simply for indicating the importance of the Japan-U.S. alliance, you will damage morale."

Nakatani-san, Colonel Nakazawa probably did not receive his stiffly worded letter because he was expressing a high opinion of the Japan-U.S. security relationship.

Anyway, Mssrs. Ishiba and Nakatani have through their protests almost certainly locked up the frustrated former SDF officer vote.

A voting bloc both of them already had in their pockets anyway.

Then again, when the LDP is growing more feeble and fissiparous by the day, it is perhaps best to make sure one has nailed down even the most loyal of loyal constituencies.

A Right And Proper Military

Over at Twisting Flowers, Ethan Chua has a meditation upon the uproar over Colonel Nakazawa Takeshi's seeming mockery of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio last Wednesday in a speech at the opening ceremony for a joint U.S. Forces Japan / Self Defense Forces exercise. Colonel Nakazawa supposedly said that the Japan-U.S. alliance...

"...cannot be maintained by diplomacy or political rhetoric. Least of all can it be maintained by the words ‘trust me.'"

The colonel has received a written reprimand for these remarks, which are clearly in reference to the assurance to "Trust me" that the Prime Minister reportedly gave to President Barack Obama last year on finding a replacement site for the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station on Okinawa.

A written reprimand, no matter how strictly worded or damaging to Nakazawa's record, seems hardly sufficient. By disparaging one of the phrases that has become indelibly associated with the Prime Minister, Nakazawa clearly indicated his ultimate loyalty is not with the civilian leadership of his country. Instead, it seems he posited some higher power as giving him he right to mock, however indirectly, the PM. Whether that entity is the Alliance, the U.S. military or the defense of Japan is irrelevant - that Nakazawa should have thought that his service put him in the position of criticizing the Prime Minister is unbelievable. That he should have done so seemingly in the presence of U.S. military officers at a public ceremony is unforgivable.

It is a measure of the Democratic Party of Japan's dangerous intellectual disengagement from military matters that this matter is being allowed to be swept under the rug without a vigorous public debate. Though many are drawing parallels between Nakazawa's remarks and the Tamogami affair, Tamogami's firing was done in the glare of camera lights, over what was, in the grander scheme, a difference of opinion about history. Nakazawa's transgression is being quickly papered over, despite its begging the question as to whom Colonel Nakazawa felt he owed his ultimate loyalty.

Since the incident occured as a part of a joint SDF-USFJ exercise, the U.S. Ambassador and the Commander of USFJ would be full in their rights to go to Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi and explain to him that the U.S. takes insubordination very seriously -- and that a military with officers who do not see themselves as fundamentally loyal to their own government is of no use to the U.S. as an ally.

Later - It seems that the Defense Minister is suitably furious at Colonel Nakazawa's remarks.

Now the trick is to find out from whence this morning's English language version of The Asahi Shimbun could derive this gem of a paragraph:

Kitazawa said Nakazawa's remark represented "an extremely dangerous thought" that could lead to a coup.

The North Koreans Are Just Like Us

I was watching "Kaabee" -- Yamada Yoji's 2008 star vehicle for the ever luminous Yoshinaga Sayuri (is is hard to wrap one's mind around the concept that she is 64) on television Sunday night. The story is a familiar one but well told of a saintly mother trying to raise two children in Meiji Constitution Japan, struggling mightily to maintain her dignity and a roof over her family's head as the increasing paranoia, poverty and military adventurism of the state grinds her loved ones and acquaintances into dust.

The scene at the train station, where the family is seeing off the happy-go-lucky uncle whilst all around them families are saying goodbye to their young men being sent to the front in China, all under the watchful eyes of the Kempeitai, prompted my viewing companion to remark:

"It looks like North Korea."

Hmmm... Meiji Japan's occupation of the Korean Peninsula taught the Koreans everything they ever needed to know about how to run totalitarian military dictatorship ruled by living gods...a point Christopher Hitchens fails to make his essay for Slate magazine because he is a) unaware of it and b) it does not suit his purposes.

Renting the "Kaabee" DVD would be a good way to remind oneself of how intensely, sickly weird this blessed land was in its pre-1945 incarnation, and how sick a person has be to think of the Meiji State as representing a more dignified and beautiful Japan.

Later - More bluntly still, just as many in Japan see their country as a preserver of real Chinese culture (see Banyan's piece in this week's Economist on this point) the DPRK should be proud of its meticulous maintainance of the essence and practices of Meiji Constitution Japan.

Nor anything that is thy neighbors

Let us say you are well-off, pink-hued, native-English speaking citizen of a Security Council P5 country, a country whose mottled history has left its Latin name often prefaced by the word "perfidious." Is there not something a little unseemly about trash talking in a lingua franca publication about Japan's invisibility on the international level?*

Japan goes missing: invisible host at the summit
Financial Times

By Philip Stephens - July 3 2008 19:18 - I have a question. Where is Japan? The world leaders and accompanying media hordes heading this weekend for the shores of Lake Toya need not turn to their atlases. The question is one of psychology rather than geography. Japan is still the world’s second most powerful economy. Politically, it is all but invisible.

(...)

This is all of a piece with its barely visible profile in the global arena. I spend a fair part of my life on the international conference circuit. Never before have governments – of rising as well as mature powers – devoted as much time to peering into their crystal balls in search of a new geopolitical landscape. By and large – I can think of one recent exception – Japan is absent from such events. What is more, Japan's place in the new order rarely merits mention by its peers.

(..)

Scroll back to the late 1980s. Japan was the rising power. Academics and journalists fell over themselves in the rush to predict that its economic might was destined to eclipse that of the US. When foreign policy experts declared that the 21st century would belong to Asia, they were not thinking about China and India.

Politicians in Washington fulminated as Japanese companies snapped up such American icons as New York’s Rockefeller Center and Hollywood's Columbia Pictures. US motorists swapped their Fords and Chevrolets for Toyotas.

And now? Well, western consumers still buy Toyotas; and Sony and Toshiba continue to produce all manner of electronic wizardry. But Japan has become an afterthought in the discourse about the fast-shifting balance of global power. The Asian century is about China and India...

What a wonderful thing it must be to be on the international conference circuit, on expenses-paid junkets from one hotel suite to the next, bumping into individuals as well-coiffed as oneself and, oddly, also on expenses-paid junkets; everyone milling about in hotel lobbies and banquet halls, reading from Powerpoint slides and thinking the big thoughts--never once feeling shame at the hard-earned money of citizens and end consumers supporting all this largesse being shoveled over to persons already rich!

Fie on you parasites! And blwklwdtmp on your thoughts!

First, as a point of rhetoric, can we quit it with the "Japan was a monster in the 1980s" comparative? It has been twenty years since the superwealth of the 1980s was exposed as a mirage, the result of some rather creative accounting by companies and dumb policy moves by the Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance. How can a columnist in the world's premier economics daily hearken back to the 1980s as if they were the salad days of Japanese dominance? (Oh, I know he caveats later in the text--but why bring it up at all if it it was mostly a sham?)

As for Japan's political invisibility and its being "an afterthought in the discourse about the fast-shifting balance of global power" - consider this: Japan did the stomping-all-about-the-globe-my-civilization-is-ahead-of-yours-so-I-know-what-is-good-for-you thing -- and lost.

Having lost the war, and finding itself in a neighborhood where everybody not only hated Japan but also had a different political system, democratic Japan learned to keep its head above water and its nose out of other people's business.

So Japan is not an active player the new imperium game, engaging itself in "the discourse about the fast-shifting balance of global power." So it prefers to stay on the sidelines as the new great powers clash.

This is bad?

So many on the international cocktail conference circuit seem to have bought into the rhetoric flashed by a tiny circle of English-language speaking imperial restoration wingers -- because it interlocked so well with their own plans :

"Oh, I know they say naughty things about the Chinese people and the War sometimes but to their credit they understand the world as it really is--the noontime buffet is being sponsored by EADS? Oh, BP. They're doing good stuff with solar, aren't they? Boy, the Russians giving them a time, eh? So EADS is tomorrow. Good. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, they know that the world is nasty, brutish and on the edge of chaos, demanding our attention, munificence and strong will."

The revisionists promised the conference circuit moochers veterans an upswelling of popular support for their realignment of Japan's habits and thoughts, making the Japanese people "proud" again, able to seize their "rightful place" in the international community and shoulder the burdens of an advanced nation.

But no.

Meiji is dead.

The covetousness--the horrible, gnawing desire "to have what other countries have" or just take for oneself, no matter the consequences -- the desire to acquire the trappings of power that drove both the early Meiji consensus and the later Great East Asian Co-prosperity consensuses -- that covetousness is restricted today to a hollow-eyed, empty-pupiled minority whose dreams of power and status are judged by decent folk to be unseemly.

Few in the Land of the Rising Sun dream of power and status as their ancestors did. Many if not most have found their own version of the Tenth Commandment, desiring only to get along. The limits of their purportedly ignoble existence are narrow: Study, Graduate, Work, Marry, Grow Old, Receive a Pension and Die in Bed.

Little point is there in clawing and scratching down down the road to glory.

Indeed, to even want to do so is a sin.

------------------------

* If you have something nasty to say about another country, make sure it is translated into the language of the people you are dumping on.