Regarding Osaka's Ambitions and Koizumi The Younger

Uploaded to YouTube, the latest from Langley Esquire's Tokyo on Fire series of videos, with host Timothy Langley, Nancy Snow and me offering our takes on the results of the November 22 Osaka double election. (Link)

Liberal Democratic Party president Abe Shinzo's gloating abandonment of the Osaka chapter of the LDP is a thing of wonder. As a display of raw power, I can think of nothing comparable in recent Japanese politics, save perhaps Koizumi Shinjiro's winning the most votes of any candidate for office in the December 2014 House of Representatives election, despite having spent only TWO DAYS campaigning in his district. (Link)

Double Take In Osaka

What to make of yesterday's double victory of the Osaka Ishin no Kai in the Osaka gubernatorial and mayoral races? (Link)

Not terribly much. At least not on a national scale.

While the candidates of Hashimoto Toru's and Matsui Ichiro's start up party were able to seize both posts over united establishment rivals, keeping alive Hashimoto's pet project of transforming Osaka into a metropolitan district (the merits of which no one has yet been able to explain to me) the caveats to the victories are many.

First was voter turnout. The gubernatorial and mayoral races attracted 45.4% and 50.5% of the voters, respectively. Both numbers were down from the last Osaka double election, 7.4% down in the prefectural race and a big 10.4% down in the race for the Osaka mayor's office. Both figures were way, way down from the Osaka unification referendum in May where 2/3 of the voters showed up in a contest Hashimoto's forces lost by a whisper. (Link - J)

Second was the ambivalent position of the Abe Administration toward Osaka's political actors. Despite their immense difference in backgrounds, Prime Minister Abe and Hashimoto have long seen each other in a common cause. Hashimoto indeed asked Abe four years ago to leave the Liberal Democratic Party and become leader of his first upstart national party. Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide have been very solicitous of Hashimoto, making time in their schedules to meet with him and saying nice things about him at every invitation.

The close political cooperative relationship between Abe and Hashimoto has engineered a complete breakdown in coordination and trust between the Osaka chapters of the LDP and the national LDP headquarters. The LDP in Osaka ran its own candidates in the double election, asking for and receiving electoral support from blood rivals the Democratic Party of Japan and the Japan Communist Party. The election also caused a minor split between national allies the LDP and Komeito, with the Osaka Komeito chapter releasing its supporters to vote for whomever they wished.

Third, even with their victories in the executive branch posts, the Osaka Ishin no Kai still lacks enough seats in the prefectural and municipal assemblies to initiate the metro area plan. Osaka Ishin no Kai will still need cooperation from another party, ostensibly the Komeito since they are the enemies of just about everybody else.

Fourth, even with this victory, the Osaka Ishin no Kai is still only the rump of the rump of the national party Hashimoto co-led to an astonishing second-place finish in the proportional vote of the House of Representatives election of 2012. Independents spin-offs of the national party still remain in other parts of the country, some clinging to the Ishin brand name while clinging also to a significant amount of Hashimoto's cash in their bank accounts. Hashimoto is going to be fighting for that money -- to the detriment of his political mission and the forward progress of his regionalist movement.

Tactically, Prime Minister Abe's embrace of Hashimoto seems a disaster. He has made enemies of the LDP establishment in Osaka, Japan's second city.

Strategically, however, Abe's continued encouragement of Hashimoto's efforts hurts the national forces of opposition. As long as Hashimoto and his acolytes are in operation, the Kansai region has its own, home-grown opposition to the LDP. With the Ishin no Kai and the LDP slugging it out, perhaps good-naturedly (if Abe invests the time to bring the two sides to a truce) in the Kansai, the DPJ will have forego making a play for the Kansai's rich harvest of seats, making the path to becoming a worthwhile national challenger to the LDP all the harder.


Later - This morning's NHK news has zero reports on the Osaka elections results. Granted, today is a national holiday, meaning that NHK's newscasts are abbreviated. However, even the commercial networks seem to be downplaying the story -- demonstrating that the post-Koizumi, post-DPJ erosion of the image of politics and politicians continues. While terrible news for governance in Japan, the continued decline of the salience of politics is great news for those infatuated with/dependent upon the façade of stability.

May Have Got Memo, Did Not Read It

Dear Japan Communist Party,

Please check your email. There should be a message from the Liberal Democratic Party, the New Komeito and the Democratic Party of Japan.

If it is not there, it should be. As a stopgap, I am forwarding what I believe is a translation of the main body of the text:

Hashimoto Toru is resigning as mayor of Osaka City in order to win reelection to office. He wants to claim a mandate for his One Osaka plan.

Holding a by-election will cost the taxpayers money.

If we all pull together and agree to refuse to run candidates in this by-election, Hashimoto can be reelected without an actual vote, saving the taxpayers their money.

This automatic reelection will solve nothing because the situation in the assemblies will be as they were. Furthermore, since there was no actual polling of the electorate, Hashimoto will not be able to claim a mandate.

If we hang together on this we come out looking like fiscally prudent, sober folks. Hashimoto comes out looking like the petulant child.

What is he going to do? Call another election to replace the one we would not let him have?

Let us stay focused on the goal: getting him to resign and not run for reelection.

If we stick together on this we can send him back to daytime television, where he belongs.

Later - If the above is unintelligible (Since you wrote it, would unintelligibility be a surprise? - Ed.) it is in reference to this (have looked, have not found an English-language source).

Osaka City Shuffle

In May of last year I published a somewhat weak piece on Hashimoto Toru  at The New York Times's Latitude blog. I was trying to fathom what, other than narcissistic blindness, could have prompted Hashimoto to start talking about sex and war. My conclusion, such as it was, was that Hashimoto could not accept being outside the spotlight, the political appeal of his party and his political insurgency fading. So he just ran off at the mouth until nobody could ignore him anymore.

It seems that this aspect of his character, the need to have folks talking about him, has prompted his latest, expensive, pointless act:

Firebrand Osaka Mayor Calls It Quits, to Seek Re-election
JapanRealTime

His days as Japan's rising political star may be over, but you can still count on Toru Hashimoto to cause a stir...and do a lot of talking.

Osaka's firebrand mayor officially announced his resignation Monday to seek reelection in a perplexing move he described was necessary to break the political logjam hindering one of his key policy goals.

(Link)

As for "and to do a lot of talking" he certainly did do that -- as the Martin post notes, the Hashimoto press conference lasted longer than the supposedly eternal Chris Christie press GW bridge conference. Hashimoto also managed to churn out a blizzard of over 60 Twitter tweets -- after having said nada via his favorite social media platform since January 18.

He loves to explain himself...or at least feels he has a lot of explaining to do.

Hashimoto seems on the fast train back to television, following in the footsteps of his fellow talent-turned politician and until recently fellow party member Higashikokubaru Hideo.

Perhaps the pair will hook up to form a manzai comedy duo.

Two politicians of the last quarter have bucked the system, relying on public theater as an alternative pathways to political office and power: Koizumi Jun'ichiro and Hashimoto Toru. Unlike Koizumi, Hashimoto seems determined to leave office never having actually done anything.


Later - Back on Twitter this morning Hashimoto is revisiting the controversy of last May over his remarks regarding the comfort womens/sexual slaves of the Japan Imperial Forces. According to the recently resigned mayor, the world's treatment of him and Japan is unfair (anfea).

Clearly he has no friend able to take his shoulder, look him in the face and say, "Hashimoto-san. For your own good, put the phone down."

Abenomics In The Wringer

Watching newly appointed Council On Industrial Competitiveness member and Koizumi revolutionaire Takenaka Heizo get batted around by the panel on this morning's Asa Zuba! program, after a long segment on Shimane Prefecture (#1 in public works spending per capita of all of Japan's prefectures) construction company executives exulting at the Abe government's proposed economic stimulus package -- a report played absolutely straight so as to infuriate viewers in the Tokyo Metropolitan District, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Aichi, Kyoto and Osaka -- one had to wonder whether or not the fix was in from the beginning: that the news mediaverse treated the Liberal Democratic Party with kid gloves and piled scorn upon Democratic Party of Japan-governments because it missed having a party in power so transparently stupid and self-serving in its ways that the stories just write themselves.

As for the articles skeptical of Abenomics, they keep arriving over the Intertube. (Link and Link and Link)

Meanwhile, its favorite party back in charge of the Prime Minister's Residence, Pravda-by-the-Palace has resumed its abject sycophancy, portraying the impossible (or at least highly improbable) as likely. (Link)

Hashimoto Toru's Beast

So it's decided then.

The correct pronunciation of Osaka mayor Hashimoto Toru's new party is Nippon Ishin no Kai - the "in your face" pugnacious pronunciation of the two characters making up the name of this blessed land. The same pronunciation used by the dinosaur Sunrise Party (Tachiagare Nippon).

Hashimoto was in his element yesterday at the unveiling party, roving back and forth across the stage, tossing out laugh lines like an American-style stand-up comedian. He looked like the ideal new national leader -- vibrant, youthful, in command of his facts, unconcerned by the challenges ahead, promising a new-different-better tomorrow.

Clearly, Hashimoto has what it takes to shock the uncommitted voters out of their lethargy, getting them to walk over to their local elementary schools to write down on their ballots the names of his candidates and the name of his party -- long and complex though that name may be. The differences between himself and likely offerings from the two mainline political parties is stark.

Of course, that Hashimoto -- as of this writing -- is planning to remain mayor of Osaka, meaning that the voters, in voting for the Japan Renewal/Restoration Party (no word yet on the official English translation) Party and its district candidates will not be voting for Hashimoto to take over as prime minister, seems a huge hurdle for the party to vault.

However, should the JRA win big, a workaround -- one of his party's Osaka district representatives suddenly resigning his/her seat due to illness, for example -- will be found for Hashimoto to earn his seat in the Diet and take over from a seat warmer premier, probably chosen from among the three current members of the House of Representatives who appeared on the JRA stage yesterday.

Hashimoto could also just go back on his word and run for a Diet seat. It would not be the first time he has backed away from a stance.

For good or ill, powering the JRA is:

Testosterone - The Democratic Party of Japan has trouble promoting women -- just look at the Cabinet. However, the JRA leaves the DPJ in the dust in terms of its unabashed celebration of the Y-chromosome. There were women on the stage at the unveiling, shunted way over to the side. At a glance, one would not notice them.

Osaka boosterism - The headquarters of the new party will be in Osaka: a practical matter when the head of the party is the mayor of Osaka. The JRA will indeed hammer away with the message that unlike the traditional parties, it has its home far from the evil influence of the Diet Building and the ministries.

Locating itself in Osaka has positive and negative aspects for the new party. In terms of fundraising, the JRA will be able to draw upon the wounded local pride of wealthy Osakans and Osaka-based companies, who have seen their prefecture fall from second rank to third in terms of population and economic might. However, by locating the headquarters in Osaka, the JRA faces the potential accusation that the party is solely about Osakan pride of place, not about national leadership at all.

Brevity - Hashimoto's performance on stage yesterday demonstrated the message discipline imposed by his constant tweeting on Twitter. Every thought was expressed in chunks of words that if you analyzed them, would probably turn out to be 140 characters long or less. His speech was the dream of every television program director -- pre-edited into 15 to 20 second bits -- and every campaign manager: memorable, direct and short.

In our scrambled, hustling, buzzing present, Hashimoto's punchy concision will overwhelm the rambling, dissembling presentations of his rival party leaders. Though the majority of voters may not respond to all of Hashimoto's messages, they will remember enough of his points to be willing to give his party a chance at power.

Incidentally, former prime minister Abe Shinzo, in announcing his candidacy for the presidency of the Liberal Democratic Party, sold himself as Hashimoto's blood brother, insinuating that he was only candidate in the race capable of linking the hands of the LDP and the JRA, the grand prize being the two-thirds majority of seats in the House of Representatives and House of Councillors necessary to amend the Constitution. (J)

Considering how Abe does not seem to have made any new friends inside the LDP, the same cast of shady characters (Amari Akira, Inaba Tomomi, Shiozaki Yasuhisa...) standing to the left and the right of his podium yesterday as were orbiting him five years ago, the bond between himself and Hashimoto is the new wrinkle saving Abe's candidacy from being anything but a bad joke.


Later - The use of Nippon instead of Nihon for the name of the country is not necessarily a signifier of revisionist nationalist views. Fans at sporting events chant out "Nip'pon, Nip'pon, Nip'pon" because it is a heck of a lot easier to yell than "Ni-hon, Ni-hon, Ni-hon."

It Could Have Been A Lot Worse

In yesterday's post, I lamented that the August 15 anniversary of the end of World War II was the worst of days, due to the absurd nationalist and ehtnocentric emotions the anniversary raises.

However, we have made it through to Thursday, Amaterasu be praised. A lot of bad, stupid events took place and dumb things were said, but all turned out pretty much for the best.

- The fishing boat full of Hong Kong activists, despite the Japan Coast Guard's vigorous efforts to encourage -- and by "encourage" I mean this...

to not try to make landfall at any of the Senkaku Islands, could not take the subtle hint and proceeded close enough to the shore of Uojima for seven of the activists, carrying inexplicably the flags of both the PRC and the ROC, to wade ashore.

CCTV, in a breaking news flash, depressingly referred to the charade as a "successful landing."

On shore, the seven were met by a company of JCG personnel and Okinawa Prefecture police -- a blend of security forces the activists should have thanked their lucky stars for, as coast guard personnel tend to play rough. They are the proud cowboys of Japan's security establishment and have a very short list of rules of engagement.

Despite the reduced chance of their being harmed, two of the activists turned around and immediately swam back to the boat. Perhaps they lost heart; perhaps they had a live interview wairing for them. The remaining five were relieved of their flags and arrested on violations of immigration laws.

Later, after night had fallen, the Coast Guard took control of the fishing vessel, arresting the nine remaining activists on board.

No one got hurt; the Chinese got their testosterone shot. If Japanese authorities learned anything from the Chinese fishing boat collision case, they will put the activists on a flight to Hong Kong, deporting them for being particularly unsuccessful illegal immigrants.

- President Lee Myung-bak, who threw a wrench into Japan-South Korea relations by visiting Dokdo on August 10, doubled down on his diplomatic faux pas by inviting the Heisei Emperor to visit South Korea on the condition that the emperor issue a contrite apology to the peoples of the Korean peninsula for Japan's occupation and annexation of the land a hundred years ago (E). That the Emperor did this the last time he visited the ROK Prime Minister Kan Naoto did this on the 100th anniversary of Korea's annexation seems to have not satisfied President Lee's critics.

For a guy born in Osaka, Lee sure is tough on his original home. Then again, for the suspicious act of having emerged from a uterus in Japan, the president of the Republic of Korea is a presumed puppet of Japan.

Lesson: choose your uterus wisely!

[Choosing the right uterus is only half the story, of course, even in these oligarchical times. The Hatoyama Brothers, Yukio and Kunio, made an excellent choice, only to proceed through their own particular brand of solipsism to make a hash of their advance placement in life.]

- The demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul attracted 300 persons, according to Japanese news reports. In the pouring rain, the famous statue of the young seated girl looked as though she were crying,

While particularly a effective and affective work of art yesterday, the statue has to be moved to a less provocative location. It is, of course, a stand-in for the sex slaves themselves, who cannot, due to their advanced age, keep up the weekly protests much longer.

However, the statue, in its permanence, closes minds. From the point of view of a Japanese diplomat or a Japanese politician, the statement "We will always be here" provokes the response, "Fine. We will always ignore you."

- The two members of the Cabinet who paid their respects at Yasukuni yesterday did so in a private capacity, as they had promised, lessening somewhat the fallout from the visits. They also demonstrated, in their press availabilities after their visits, that neither would make it past the first round of an "evil genius" competition.

- After reporting on the rest of the day's sordid events, NHK's 9 p.m. broadcast a special segment on a heretofore little-publicized facet of the Pacific War: the dispatch of eleven agents from the infamous Nakano military intelligence school to the outer, tiny islands of the Okinawa chain in last year of the war. The goal: to infiltrate local society in preparation of convincing the islanders to sacrifice themselves for the defense of the main islands.

The piece focused on the effort of two sisters to record, as long as persons of at least a certain age in 1945 are still alive, memories of a school teacher who arrived in January 1945 and soon became renowned for his kindness and competence.

The school teacher, was, as it turned out, one of these agents.

When Allied forces arrived near the island, the teacher was one of the local authorities who convinced islanders to retreat in to the forests. Once in the forest, the teacher, who had heretofore been known only for his sweet disposition, suddenly began talking about everyone preparing for a glorious death in battle (gyokusai - literally "a crushing of a jewel"). The islanders, in their good sense, thought he had gone insane and ignored him.

Some time later, after the war was over, Allied intelligence found the agent still at work on the island, arrested him, and took him away.

It was the last anyone on the island saw of him.

Now for the sisters, the recording of the activities of the agent, who went on to live a life of obscure normalcy as a middle school teacher on Honshu, has a deeply personal cast. While on the island, the teacher started living with a local woman, impregnating her. She later gave birth to a son.

That woman was the sisters' aunt and the boy their cousin.

The message repeated throughout the piece was the way the leadership in Tokyo considered the inhabitants of Okinawa expendable (sute ishi - "stones tossed away"). Their value. at least as regards the male inhabitants, was as a potential guerrilla force tying down the Allies, inflicting casualties, and slowing the Allied advance as the main islands prepared to repel an amphibious invasion.

Insufficient reflection on the wrongs done in the war, both on the small and the vast scales?

Not exactly.

Photo image credit: Yomiuri Online

De Re Osaka

Okumura Jun has laid down the gauntlet on the complaints Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru made about the bunraku puppet theater, the viewing of which so irked the Hashist that he broke the silence he fell into after revelation of his affair with a bar hostess.

[An aside - but when one considers the depth of contrition the heretofore unabashed Hashimoto has displayed since the publication of the Bungei Shunju article detailing the affair, one has to guess this was not a first offense. There is a strong sense of the wife and mother of his seven children having issued an ultimatum on the order of "if it ever happens again..."]

Okumura presents a synopsis of Hashimoto's five-day long rant against the performance he saw:

"1. Bunraku is a popular art form. As such, it must reach out to masses.* If the cultural elite disagree, it should not ask for public handouts. Maintaining Intangible Cultural Assets is the national government’s business.

2. The current script for The Sonezaki Shinju, which was Hashimoto’s second Bunraku experience, is actually a 1955 adaptation. Maybe they should try something new that appeals to contemporary tastes or go back to the original.

3. It’s hard for the novice audience member to ignore the dressed-up, in-your-face, head-and-right hand puppeteer. They should do something about that."

(Link)

As for the three points, the easiest one to dispense with is the second. Hashimoto is absolutely correct: the performance he saw was a 1955 translation of the Chikamatsu original into modern Japanese. However, if the original were performed, not a soul in the house would understand it. As for performing something more modern, archaic-sounding pseudo-Japanese has not changed much since 1955.

As for the third point, Okumura is dead wrong. In live performance, the three puppeteers manipulating the puppet, including the master who performs with his head exposed, actually disappear. Televised performances give no hint of this -- one's cognitive functions get hung up on the thought, "Hey, I can see the puppeteers' heads!"

As for the first point, bunraku is one of only two things of note in Osaka, the other being Janne Morén.

Much longer is the list of the afflictions Osaka imposes upon the rest of this blessed land, for which the city makes no attempt to atone:

- Osaka Castle, the ugliest remake in the country -- and the town's preeminent landmark

- Kuidaore Taro, the giant moving crab and the Glico man: the city's three most recognized sui generis tourist attractions, all of them advertisements

- the Hanshin Tigers (when Hashin plays the Yomiuri Giants, all persons of conscience mutter, "Amaterasu, is there not a way for them both to lose?")

- Hanshin Tigers fans

- Osaka-style okanomiyaki

- modern manzai

- Yoshimoto Kogyo comedians (see "modern manzai")

- Osaka ben (no, I'm sorry, it does not sound naturally funny)

Osaka should get some credit for birthing our morning reads, the Mainichi Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun having been founded there. However, the active centers of all the papers switched to Tokyo after the Easter Capital rose from out of the demographic catastrophe that struck it following the abandonment of the sankin kotai rotation system.

The preservation of bunraku is therefore very much in the interest of the Osaka City government. Without the traditional puppet theater, Osaka is little more than a lead candidate for the world's most annoying conurbation.

Hashimoto Toru Comes Back Down To Earth

In a Golden Week post ("Chaos Awaits") I made a spectacularly wrong prediction: that private lawyers hired to prosecute Ozawa Ichiro would not bother to appeal the verdict handed down on April 26, despite noting in the very same post that the judge may have ruled Ozawa "Not Guilty," but did not like it, preferring, if he could, to rule the case against him to be "Not Proven."

[I blew it at least two ways. I overestimated the concerns the three lawyers might have as to the negative effects a continued pursuit of Ozawa would have on their images and income streams. I underestimated the likely financial rewards the lawyers could reap -- for "consultations" and "advice" from seemingly not very demanding clients -- should they continue their quixotic tilting at Ozawa.]

In the same post, I proposed three goals for the Democratic Party of Japan and Prime Minister Noda:

- carry out a public relations campaign laying out the government's reason for a need to raise the consumption tax, with the PM in particular stepping forward to sell his vision

- continue to find ways of driving wedges in between the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito

- fail, despite their best efforts, to win the support of regional leaders in the Kansai for a restart of the Oi reactors, setting up Hashimoto Toru, an opponent of the restarts, for a fall.

The Noda government is making good progress on the first item, sending the PM into a buzz saw of a live interview on NHK's 9 o'clock news on May 17.

As for the second item, any progress that had been made, particularly in drawing the LDP and the New Komeito apart on the issue of electoral district reform, has probably been sent into reverse by the Li Chenguang Affair. The two parties will march in lock-step, together with the Your Party and the Sunrise Party, demanding a full investigation into Li's contacts with DPJ politicians.

The third item, as cynical and cold-blooded a political calculus as one can make in Japan, seems likely now to never be tested. Hashimoto has backed away from full opposition to a restart of the Oi reactors, paving the way for them to be brought back online. (E)

Hashimoto may be stubborn and a poll watcher but he is not stupid. He held his ground long enough to make his point -- that the national government is rushing the restarts, having no grounds on which to assert the safety of reactor operations under extreme conditions. However, with the surge in power consumption to come in the months of July and August and the likelihood that no matter how private persons, governments and corporations cut back on power usage, Hashimoto faced being blamed for the brownouts and timed blackouts the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) would have impose to preserve its transmission grid.

Once the Oi reactors are started, it will be very difficult to shut them down again. Even with the Oi reactors online, KEPCO will make it through the summer only by the skin of its teeth -- and only thanks to loss-creating shutdowns by businesses. Once the summer is over the company will want to shut down at least a few of its thermal plants for maintenance, jacking up the pressure for keeping the Oi plants online.

Given the threats the continued shutdown of the reactors pose to the economic well-being of the people of Osaka -- and their very lives, the loss of the capacity to cool living spaces or keep life-saving devices on being very real -- there was only so far Hashimoto could ride the populist anti-nuclear wave.

Bang A Gong

The Spring list of awardees of national honors is out and it is a snoozer. Except for Sakaiya Tai'ichi, Iwashita Shima and Jacques Diouf, one is left asking "Who are these folks?" and in the rare instance where one knows the answer, "Why this award, now?"

Sakaiya Tai'ichi (real name: Ikeguchi Kotaro) has received the Grand Cordon Order of the Rising Sun for his contributions as a former bureaucrat and a writer of fiction and non-fiction. He was, until recently, a key supporter of Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru, providing some intellectual firepower and legitimacy to Hashimoto's Osaka Ishin no Kai movement. He has downplayed his ties with Hashimoto since the Ishin no Kai released its eight point Ishin Hassaku plan for reviving the country, parts of which Sakaiya has derided as rubbish.

Choosing to honor actress Iwashita Shima (real name: Shinoda Shima) with an Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, a decidedly low-ranking award for someone who has contributed so much to Japanese cinema, still represents a pretty gutsy call for the awards committee. Iwashita, whatever her actual morals, always played the baddest of the bad girls. In terms of the number of sex scenes in which she has appeared in what have been classed as serious films, she is simply without peer (if I am wrong in this, please tell me).

That Iwashita travels in rather better social circles than the characters she has played can be surmised by her having been one of the featured lecturers last year at Shimomura Mitsuko's juku.

As for the awards, they are, as they always have been, a way of only adding to the disparity between what bureaucrats do for other bureaucrats and what they do for the populace at large. In addition to their pensions, their lump sum retirement grants, their falling gently into sinecures at corporations or non-profits, bureaucrats and other officials are still receiving the lion's share of the gongs: over 56% of the 4110 handed out this spring. (J)

Also as usual, the over 50% of the population of this blessed land with XX chromosomes got gypped, receiving a mere 9% of the awards.

Like They Had Never Asked Before

In a follow up on my post of the other day, NHK has released a survey of the residents of Oi Township, the home of the reactors the government is pushing hard to restart (E), the residents of the the four communities surrounding Oi Township (Maizuru City, Obama City, Takashima City and Wakasa Township) and the City of Osaka -- where the eventual main consumers of the power generated by the Oi reactors live.

The results:

In Oi Township

In favor of the restart 54%
Opposed 37%

In the four surrounding municipalities

Opposed 60%

In Osaka City

Opposed 62%

(Link - J)