Monkey Business - A Senryu Commentary On The Stadium Controversy

二幕目
白紙決断
猿芝居

Nimakume
hakushi ketsudan
sarushibai

ACT TWO
"Decision To Go Back To The Drawing Board"
Lame monkey show

- Takase Kunio (Hachioji City)

Two Fridays ago, after weeks of wrangling over the ever-rising price and gargantuan dimensions of the new National Stadium, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo announced that the Tokyo Olympic effort would abandon the Zara Hadid "bicycle helmet" design in favor of...nothing.

Well not exactly nothing. Back to a blank sheet of paper (in J. - hakushi) upon which...someone will drawn up new plans answering...well, actually nobody knows what the criteria are that the new design for the new stadium must meet, only that it cannot cost as much as the Hadid design and has to fit 80,000 spectators, maybe. Oh, and it has to be ready in less than five years. And it might have to keep spectators and athletes from keeling over from heat stroke despite daily shade temperatures of 35 degrees...maybe.

That no one to date has taken a fall -- or even personal responsibility -- for the selection of the stadium design has wounded Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and exposed the emptiness of his and his party's promises of bringing professionalism back to Japanese government. The PM directly appointed two very close political allies -- his former faction boss Mori Yoshiro and Member of the House of Representatives Shimomura Hakubun -- to the private and ministerial posts with the greatest influence over the 2020 Olympics project. Push came to shove over the stadium's costs in the inconvenient person of Tokyo Metropolitan Governor Masuzoe Yoichi who balked at the size of Tokyo's share of the final bill. Rather than demonstrating the PM's wisdom in having picked archetypal conservative's conservative men's men, the pair of Abe Best Friends Forever Mori and Shimomura retreated to pre-adolescent pointing of fingers at each other as the one responsible for promoting an unwanted trophy stadium. Oh, yes, and at the looming, terrifying form of architect Ando Tadao, who had led the architectural subcommittee of the wise person's group overseeing the Olympic bid.

The unwillingness of anyone of authority to stop the juggernaut of the stadium plan even as project costs and public hatred of the design soared led several critics of the project, including Governor Masuzoe, to draw parallels between the increasingly hopeless stadium project and Japan's march to war in the 1930s and 40s (Link - J). To too many, the constant hot potato passing and failure to confront the situation squarely was like the ever-receding horizon of a final security perimenter toward which the Imperial armies kept marching, marching, marching... with automatic approvals at each step from men with fine titles but without a scintilla of a responsibility or remorse.

Not an image one can welcome, not in this 70th anniversary year of the firebombing of Tokyo, the destruction of Japan's cities, the Battle of Okinawa, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan's surrender and the beginning of the Occupation. Not to mention right in the middle of the Diet's consideration of legislation ending a 50 year understanding that collective self defense -- the right to engage in military on behalf of another country anywhere in the world -- is unconstitutional.

The person ultimately responsible for this debacle? Prime Minister Abe of course. He appointed these gentlemen (and they are all men) to their posts. He has not to this point managed to eke a resignation out of a single one of them.

All of which stimulated Tokyo Shimbun reader Takase to compose the above bitter senryu. The author is seeing the scene as if it being played out upon stage, with the stage hand lifting up and flipping over the paper on which the name of the second act of the drama is written. The new scene has the impressive-sounding all-kanji name of Hakushi Ketsudan ("Decision of the White Sheet").

However, looking at the stage, all the author sees are monkeys dressed in kimono, pretending to do a play. It is saru shibai -- "monkey theater."

The twist comes in that latter phrase. Saru shibai has a second, derisive meaning of acts done incompetently, pathetically and with all the sense wrung out of them.

A proper English colloquialism for saru shibai would be "lame" -- and the performances of every supposed adult in this drama has indeed been lame.

And don't even get me started on the selection of the designs for the official logos of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. I have elsewhere characterized these fine artistic statements as "Soviet Constructivism beats up Robert Indiana in a dark alleyway."

--------------
The senryu by Takase Kunio can be found on page 5 of the Saturday, July 25 morning edition of the Tokyo Shimbun.

A Month Away

Been away...doing things...and not doing things too.

Much has happened in the interim...and in at the same time, not much, aside from world spot oil prices (huge shifts there) has changed.

Two items of note:

1) Abe Shinzo did not go to Yasukuni Shrine in the 2014 calendar year.

He may have done so in secret. Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi supposedly paid a secret visit in 1992. Current Education Minister Shimomura Hakubun supposedly paid a secret visit sometime in 2013, proving that the trick can still be pulled off.

By not publicly paying his respects at Yasukuni, Abe has betrayed the revisionists and the mawkish sentimentalists, those who have been the rungs on the ladder he has climbed to prominence within the Liberal Democratic Party and ultimately into the premiership. It is fitting: what one does with rungs is step on them.

In not visiting Yasukuni, Abe has also shown he is playing a very long game indeed in terms of being a mover and shaker in East Asian politics, sacrificing immediate political and psychological advantages for a bigger political payoff later.

2) Anti-government conservative forces triumphed in the Saga gubernatorial election.

A Japan Agriculture (JA)-supported candidate defeating the LDP-Komeito supported candidate. Most analysis focuses on the supposed black eye suffered by the Abe administration, a third embarrassment after last year's humiliations in Shiga and Okinawa -- and on the supposed red flag the victory portends for the Abe Administration's hopes to reorganize Japan's agricultural sector -- both for growth and to facilitate the completion of Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations.

What is less talked about is the implications of the victory of a non-LDP supported conservative for the basing of U.S. forces in Japan. Since his victory, the new governor of Saga has been desperately trying to reverse the agreement the prefecture has with the national government to host Self Defense Forces V-22 Ospreys at Saga Airport. As a special Socialist Party project team noted in 2009, Saga Airport boasts a very, very long runway, is not very, very far from Sasebo and its U.S. Navy homeported amphibious strike group, and is surrounded on three side by hectares of hectares of rice paddies, with narry a dwelling in sight -- the perfect place, really, for a Futenma replacement facility (FRF). The already agree-upon SDF deployment, with the ancillary development of the infrastructure to host Ospreys, is an open door to deployment of U.S. Marines Ospreys at the same dedicated facility.

How Pyrrhic a victory JA's triumph over the Abe government will appear in retrospect -- and how clever the administration -- if Saga Airport becomes a supplement to, a second, or in the extreme a replacement for the fraught Henoko FRF.

Who Is Up For A Yasukuni Visit Today?

UPDATE1: as of 09:45 JST, cabinet ministers SHINDO Yoshitaka and FURUYA Keiji have both visited Yasukuni Shrine, with Furuya declaring he signed in as "Minister of State Furuya Keiji." HAGIUDA Ko'ichi has also paid a visit, delivering Prime Minister ABE Shinzo's donation.

UPDATE 2: Minister of Japan Cool And Much Else INADA Tomomi paid her respects in the afternoon in the company of the History and Creativity Association, her small group of Diet member fellow travelers (here is their post-Yasukuni group shot from last year Link)completing the list of the Terrible Trio. Policy Research Council chief TAKAICHI Sanae, as at seemingly every major shrine event, was front and center of the Association of Diet Members For Everyone Making Visits To Yasukuni Together multi-party mass visitation. (Link - J)



Credit Abe Shinzo for having some sense. He has told the press that he will avoid making, either immediately prior to or immediately after the national ceremony commemorating the end of World War II, a visit to Yasukuni Shrine today. With his relations with the leaders of China and South Korea still in the deep freeze (Link), Putin acting like a woman scorned (Link or Link), investors showing less and less confidence in his economic reform program (Link) and world in general in turmoil, he has decided to not set the region on fire with a gratuitous end-of-The-War day visit. (Link - J video)

Instead, Abe will reprise his restraint of last year by having an aide make a a cash donation in his name instead.

So who should we be on the lookout for today at Yasukuni's gates?

Hagiuda Ko'ichi - it has been a quiet couple of months for the man who last year seemed to be speaking directly from Abe Shinzo's limbic system. If the Big Boy from Hachioji (where the Imperial tombs are located, as he will happily tell you) is once again the bag man for Abe's donation to Yasukuni, he should once again be viewed as the wide back door into Abe's chamber of secrets.

The Terrible Trio - Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Shindo Yoshitaka, State Minister for Japan Cool And A Lot Of Other Stuff Inada Tomomi and Chairman of the National Safety Commission Furuya Keiji -- the Terrible Trio -- have said nothing about going but will be going. Shindo and Furuya will probably not survive the Cabinet reshuffle on September 3 (somebody has to lose his/her job to make space for cabinet hopefuls and it is easier for Abe to dump his male Best Friends) so have an incentive to go out in a blaze of glory, signing the registers as "Member of The Abe Cabinet." Inada, who is rumored to be taking over for Taka'ichi Sanae at the Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council (and one cannot think of a better way of cementing the continued irrelevance of the PARC - Link) will visit but probably either early in the morning or in the late afternoon in a private capacity. Not that she has to, mind you: Takaichi herself will be once again the smug front and center of the phalanx of Diet members paying their respects in today's heat.

Shimomura Hakubun - The arch-conservative and token poor person in Abe Shinzo inner circle has had a very quiet one and a half years, indulging in his inner revisionist only once in a florrid and ultimately pointless bid to stop the tiny Okinawan town of Taketomi from using a social studies textbook of its own choosing (Link). Oddly, he has not been mentioned among the cabinet members who are going to be retained in the reshuffle, despite his incredible patience in not carrying out the wholesale smashing of the education system long promised by Abe Shinzo loyalists and allies. If Shimomura shows up at Yasukuni today he will be signaling that he knows he will not be leading the revolution after September.

Any Other Cabinet Minister - If any other of the Cabinet's members pay their respects, it will be pretty much a declaration of his/her being in the "Shatter and splatter/Pitcher and platter/What do we care?/We won't be there!" category of September non-survivors. Since having the image of being "better than Abe at least" in terms of sensitivity to Chinese and Korean sentiments is one of the few selling points a challenger can offer, one cannot expect any of the bigwigs or factions leaders (Tanigaki, Ishihara, for example) to show up.

Ishiba Shigeru - If LDP Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru shows up today, it means he is most definitely trolling for a "even more patriotic than Abe" reputation. Ishiba is looking to challenge Abe for the LDP presidency in September next year if the LDP's performance in local elections over the next nine months is less than stellar -- which is looking pretty likely (the  next two big tests, the Fukushima and Okinawa gubernatorial elections, look incredibly tough for the party). Ishiba has already planted his flag in more militant territory than Team Abe in the matter of a Diet examination of the recent recantations by The Asahi Shimbun of certain of their stories on the comfort women (Link). A Yasukuni visit today would indicate Ishiba is making a serious play for the affections of the radicals in the party.


Later -Yes, I too will be glad when this day is over, so I can stop talking about The War -- at least until December when Abe does make his annual pilgrimage to Yasukuni.


Image: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo laying a wreath at the atomic bombing memorial in Nagasaki on August 9, 2014.
Image courtesy: Abe Shinzo official Facebook page.

What Could Have Been - The Tokyo Governor's Election Edition

Campaign flyers for Tokyo Metropolitan District Governor's election. Left: Hosokawa Morihiro. Right: Tamogami Toshio. Click on image to open in large format.

Well let me tell you 'bout the way she looked
The way she'd act and the colour of her hair
Her voice was soft and cool
Her eyes were clear and bright
But she's not there.

- Rod Argent, "She's Not There" (1964)

This morning, election morning, the residents of the Tokyo Metropolitan District will be waking up to a city covered with a record-breaking but rapidly melting mass of snow. Fitting is it that a brief, intense and yet somehow empty gubernatorial campaign season ends with the metropole stuck beneath in a cold, damp white blanket.

Former Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare Masuzoe Yo'ichi seems guaranteed victory. He managed to campaign without controversy, on what seemed to be the unchallenging proposition, "Yes, I am good enough." And "good enough" seems indeed good enough to prevail, if enough of the electorate tramps out in the snow to the election centers.

Former Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro ran on the premise of "Utsunomiya Kenji, the anti-nuclear candidate, is too uninspiring to win" -- which might be true. However, Hosokawa turned out to be even less inspiring Utsunomiya or indeed any reasonably animate human being. Despite the electric jolt of having former prime minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro as buzz creator, Hosokawa's campaign was pretty much dead on arrival. As Okumura Jun pungently put it, "at least the Vasa sailed 1300 meters before it sank, much better than Hosokawa's candidacy." - Link).

Utsunomiya Kenji's candidacy needed more time. This seems weird for a candidate who did not stop running for the governorship even after losing to Inose Naoki in a landslide. In the year after finishing a distant second, Utsunomiya made 130 public appearances, as if he knew he was going to get another shot at the governorship soon. Of all the candidates, only Utsunomiya was ready from the git-go, his posters appearing in my mailbox the first day of the campaign season. As the campaign season progressed and voters could take a look at him his candidacy became more credible -- especially in contrast to Hosokawa's.

However, the presence of two strong anti-nuclear candidates, one supported by the traditional left parties, one not, divides the progressive and nuclear-phobic vote, meaning Utsunomiya seems destined to finish second again.

The candidature of former Air Self Defense Forces Chief of Staff Tamogami Toshio has been a travesty from beginning to end. The man has no business running for a local assembly seat, much less the governorship of the world's mightiest megalopolis. The news media, which should have buried him on the first day under a mountain of ugly facts about him and his followers, instead have at times seemed gleeful enablers of his candidacy. He will end up with an entirely revolting number of votes, most of which will come from voters who know next to nothing about him.

The voters of Tokyo, of course, have a right to feel robbed. In the build up to former governor Inose Naoki's resignation, the parties and the news media speculated about a whole raft of potential candidates, pretty much any of whom could have prevailed against the current core quartet. On the Liberal Democrat Party side, the potential nominees included Environment Minister Ishihara Nobuteru (whose home was literally around the corner from mine way back when in Suginami-ku), Education Minister Shimomura Hakubun (like he would ever give up that portfolio), former Finance Ministry bureaucrat/Koizumi assassin/Mr. Masuzoe and self-image train wreck Katayama Satsuki and former multiple Winter and Summer Olympian Hashimoto Seiko (I am sure Senator Hashimoto much prefers being where she has been, marching at the head of the Japan delegation at the Sochi games). On the Democratic Party of Japan side there was discussion of nominating of Nagatsuma Akira, the bureaucracy's bête noire.

Of December's would be candidates, there was one potential matchup that would have really sizzled. If only the Abe Shinzo LDP had put its reputation on the line by following up on the rumors and nominating Koike Yuriko to be its champion, with the Democrats responding in kind with Ren Ho. That would have been a battle for the ages, pitting sharp looks with sharp minds and even sharper tongues -- and one worthy of the prize that is Tokyo.

Abe Shinzo And The Right, Rightly

Trending: "Japan tilting/turning/sliding to the right in an alarming way"

Example #1

Example #2

Example #3

Example #4

Hmmm...

Japan is probably not shifting, tilting, sliding, skipping, turning cartwheels or anything else to the right. If that were so, we would see hatred of "foreigners" irrespective of origins. Try as one might, one will find little evidence of generalized increased hatred toward non-Japanese. Antipathy and empathy fatigue are focused on two national groups, Chinese and South Koreans, and is it not even an ethnic disdain: Chinese and South Korean tourists are portrayed as a huge and vital business opportunity. (Link - J)

As for remilitarization, Japan presently spends around 1% of GDP on defense. After the Abe military build up, Japan will be spending...approximately 1% of GDP on defense. Do not even get me started on where in an Aging Japan the government is going to find enough youngsters to meet its force recruitment goals.

As for Abe's Yasukuni visit on December 26, he put off his annual visit until the morning of the one year anniversary of his election as prime minister. He was and is going to make visits on an annual basis. Let us take some solace in his having waited until the very last moment.

So what about the secrecy law, the appointment of mediocrity Momii Katsuto as the head of NHK, wannabe fixer Watanabe Tsuneo as the head of the commission on the secrecy law, Education Minister Shimomura Hakubun's new suggestions on what language teachers should use when talking about the Senkakus and Dokdo -- is it not all of a pattern?

Yes.

But the pattern is not one of a shift to the right.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's cronies are getting greedy, grabbing for stuff the public is not quite ready to cede to them, and which the public may never be willing to cede to them. These cronies are rightists, if by rightist you mean skeptical of/loathing China, tired of Japan's having World War II hung around its neck forever (and no, these cronies do not understand why persons hanging World War II around Japan's neck is possible) and pugnaciously defensive of a Japaneseness they alone can define.

It would be foolish for Abe, his sycophants and puppeteers to think the public is not aware of this piggishness and is not marking down in a ledger all the reasons it should not trust Abe and Friends.

The public has been exceedingly and aberrantly supportive of the Abe Cabinet and the Liberal Democratic Party. This support, however, does not evolve out of love for Abe policies, other than for the extremely activist and liberal (and contrary to longtime LDP theories on the national debt) macroeconomic program. According to the polls, the second most popular reason for supporting the Abe Cabinet, after the economic program, is "Because there is no appropriate alternative ready to step in."

Look around the political landscape of Japan today: to say that "there is no other appropriate person" ready to take Abe's place is really not that bizarre.

So "greedy Friends of Abe" + "liberal economics" + "little hope for anyone better" is supposed to equal "a shift to the right"?

I hope that that is not the math.

Damn You Science! - The Response

Whew, that was fast.

But a single day had to pass after the Obokata announcement of a new and better pathway to producing stem cells, one seemingly consigning to the footnotes the government's 110 billion yen investment in Yamanaka Shinya's induced pluripotent stem cell method, for Education Minister Shimomura Hakubun to announce a plan to dramatically raise both the Riken research center's official status and the Riken staff pay (Link). The Yomiuri Shimbun, perhaps getting a little ahead of itself, speculates that under new guidelines research centers of Riken's new elevated status could offer hot researchers pay packages of USD 1 million per year. (Link - J)

Whatever one may want to say about the Abe Administration, one cannot complain about its moving too slowly and meekly to exploit opportunities to get behind a winning team.

Inose's Fall And After

Tokyo Governor Inose Naoki today announced that he has informed the head of the municipal assembly of his intention to resign his office. Inose's move comes at the end of weeks of nearly incessant calls for his resignation. Inose accepted and never declared a personal no-interest, no-expiration-date loan of 50 million yen from the family owners of the Tokushukai medical empire, currently under investigation for massive violations of the nation's voting laws in last December's House of Representatives election. (Link)

Inose has, as yet, not been charged with any impropriety in accepting the private loan -- or for having returned the money in haste after the executives of the Tokushukai were rounded up and arrested. A citizens group has filed an official complaint with the Tokyo Prosecutors' Office asking for an investigation into Inose's possibly failing to declare the loan as a political donation. The prosecutors are obliged to look into the case but are unlikely to file charges. With Inose no longer in office it is possible the matter will end there. However, the citizens group can continue to hound Inose for years via the out-of-control Committee for the Inquest of the Prosecution system of citizens' indictments.

We have seen this movie too many times. An individual bubbles up from out of the murk, offering a chance to shake up the way the country operates. He then makes a mistake, or pushes too hard in trying overturn the Establishment -- and the investigators suddenly arrive. A credulous and craven media complex rushes in, broadcasting or publishing every rumor as fact, as though it were damning evidence of a criminal enterprise -- camouflaging all the while the sources whose assertions would not pass the smell test if their identities were known. The public, confused by the reporting and by inculcated and reinforced biases against rabble rousers, or desiring only that everything in life be quiet and unthreatening, abandons the previous crowd darling. Horie Takafumi, Murakami Yoshiaki, Ozawa Ichiro -- all toppled by nonsense accusations or perjured testimony. Now Inose Naoki, the most assiduous administrator the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has ever had and likely will ever have, joins the list.

That Inose's political position had become untenable became crystal clear when the Democratic Party of Japan came out against him. If there were any party or group that had a philosophical or ethical reason to call a timeout on the scrum against governor, it would be the party whose own term in power was hobbled and then cut short by the obscenely thin charges filed against the secretaries of its leader Ozawa and against Ozawa himself in 2009-11. In what is evidence of the DPJ's total lack of sense of what it stands for, the party jumped into the fray with both feet, with Assembly Member for Fuchu City Koyama Kunihiko turning in an almost hysterical performance at Tuesday's committee meeting. Party Leader Kaieda Banri, who as a protégé of Ozawa should know better, responded to news of Inose's plan to resign by saying, "Those voters who supported Inose are now forced to grasping at huge disappointment. Given that he came under a cloud of doubt, he should have resigned sooner." (Link - J)

The monumental stupidity of Kaeda's statement -- repudiating due process of law and the presumption of innocence -- reinforces the belief that the DPJ is doomed failure as long as he is the head of it.

As to why the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito, which supported Inose's candidature in 2012, should so suddenly turn against him, the answer is two-fold. First, by going after Inose for accepting Tokushukai money the LDP is making a bold bid to have the public forget that the money men in this affair, Tokuda Torao and Tokuda Takeshi -- were both LDP members of the House of Representatives. It is insane to believe that skewering Inose would cover up the LDP's fingerprints on the 50 million yen -- but goodness, it seems to have worked.

The other reason why the LDP wanted Inose gone is, unsurprisingly, money. Not paltry 50 million sums from the Tokudas -- real money. The hundreds of billions of yen that will be spent on Olympics-related construction and events preparations over the next six years. Inose rose to influence though penning books on the horrible waste inflicted by government budgets and the countryside by the construction industry, working at that time hand-in-glove with the LDP. If there is an eminence grise or noire in this drama, it is the members and supporters of the LDP's Road Tribe, who have long sought a means of wreaking vengeance on Inose for having turned the country against them.

With Inose the skeptic and critic out of the way, replaced with a more pliant successor, the Olympics can become the cover story for a thousand sins and abuses.

As for who will run in the by-election to elect a new governor, several names are being bandied about. Media types and Nagata-cho hallways rats have been flogging former Health Minister Masuzoe Yo'ichi as one likely to toss his hat in the ring. The resignation of Higashikokubaru Hideo from the Diet a week ago already initiated a burst of predictions he would be in the race.

The Sankei Shimbun, which has few scruples as to accuracy or plausability, has floated the names of LDP communications director Koike Yuriko (a Shisaku favorite legislator), Abe Shinzo's body double Hagiuda Ko'ichi and dark lord Minister of Education Shimomura Hakubun as potential candidates. (Link - J)

The hapless DPJ, which has a real opportunity to score points against the LDP in the aftermath of the publicly scorned passage of the Special Secrets Protection bill, has no idea whom it might nominate (Why am I not surprised?). Some in the DPJ are reportedly thinking the party should nominate Ren Ho, the House of Councillors member who heretofore has always been the bridesmaid in all big time political post guessing games.

Having the half-Taiwanese, sharp-tongued, whippet smart, media savvy, gorgeous and still youthful Ren Ho as the governor of Tokyo would send a plethora of positive messages to the world. Domestically, however, it would be a recipe for disaster. Prime Minister Abe's most consistently applause line when in conservative circles is an sarcastic echo of Ren Ho's famous question to government-supported supercomputer scientists who worked for 10 years without building an actual machine because they could never guarantee the machine would be #1 in the world. Incredulous that the geeks had consumed hundreds of millions of yen in government subsidies without producing anything, Ren Ho asked the project administrators, "What was wrong with being #2?" [So whenever Abe talks rouses the faithful with a "Let us pledge to be #1 in the world!" he is not riffing on Ezra Vogel; he is mocking Ren Ho.]

If the DPJ was smart, which it is not, it would nominate former Tottori governor and former Minister of Internal Affairs Katayama Yoshiro. The good professor actually knows and cares about administration and has a decent respect for the people's intelligence. Admirable qualities, those.

Why the race for governor matters, of course, is not that Tokyo is the most populous city in the country, that it is host of the national government or even that it will host the Olympics in 2020. It is that Tokyo Metropolitan Government is a fabulously wealthy local government, second only in economic/political significance to the U.S. states of California and Texas.

To sit behind the governor's desk inside the Tocho is a hell of responsibility. It needs a hell of a person.

Shimomura Hakubun, Japan's New Friendly Face To The World

Prime Minister Abe is giving Shimomura Hakubun, the minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, a man who really does not need another title, another title:

Minister for the Olympics (Link)

Oh, what could possibly go wrong with this appointment?

Ummm...

Uhhhh...

Whoa...*

Mmmmm...

Cough...

-------

* Bet you didn't know that "The 67 years since the end of World War II have been a history of Japan's destruction."

Oh Really, Minister Shimomura?

It had been a conundrum.

Of the four arch-revisionist Friends of Shinzo in the Cabinet -- Inada Tomomi, Shindo Yoshitaka, Furuya Keiji and Shimomura Hakubun -- all except Shimomura had paid their respects at Yasukuni. It took Inada a little bit longer to make the trip. However, she eventually made it, turning the event into a minor plug for her minor effort at organizing young reactionaries into a movement.

Until yesterday it seemed as though Shimomura, for all the horrible, authoritarian, illiberal nonsense he has sworn to inflict upon the primary-through-high-school education system, had the strategic sense to follow a less provocatively ideological line than the Terrible Trio.

Yesterday, Minister Shimomura stopped the seeming:

Minister reveals visit to Yasukuni Shrine
Jiji Press

Education minister Hakubun Shimomura revealed Friday that he has visited war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo since he took office in December.

"I've already visited there [Yasukuni Shrine]. I have also visited as a minister," Shimomura said at a press conference. He did not explain when he visited the shrine or the style of prayer he made...

(Link)

This revelation, on the heels of Aso Taro's brilliant attempt to convince an audience of revisionists to look to the undoing of the Weimar Republic, will do little to reassure folks outside of Japan that the barking mad within the Abe entourage are any less in lock-step than they were during the last Abe Cabinet.

As to the possibility of Shimomura's revelation of a clandestine visit's being a part of efforts to provide the proper atmospherics for an Abe climbdown on his vow to visit Yasukuni (Link) -- of that I would not be surprised. I would not be surprised if it turns out that Shimomura lied -- that he indeed has not paid his respects at Yasukuni since becoming a minister -- but was willing to say that he did in order to make it look as though the excursions into national pride malarkey the Abe administration can take are not as constrained by geo-politics and economics as they really are.

Later - Yes, I agree. Having the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology claiming he makes Yasukuni visits on the sly is not helpful to Tokyo's bid for the 2020 Olympics.

Then again, given some of the illiberal governments of recent winners in the Olympics beauty pageant (Beijing 2008; Sochi 2014), having a lousy international reputation does not necessarily hurt one's standing among the Olympic villagers.

As Regards The Awards To Nagashima Shigeo And Matsui Hideki

Writing for The Japan Times, sports writer and longtime cultural observer Robert Whiting presents the stats and contributions to Japanese life arguments for the government's decision to bestow People's Honour Awards upon Nagashima Shigeo and Matsui Hideki. (Link)

Reading Whiting's article was refreshing, in that it was the first one I have come across with nice things to say about the government's decision -- if one ignores, of course, the obligatory puff pieces from The Yomiuri Shimbun, the mother ship that owns the Yomiuri Giants Japan baseball franchise. (Link)

The People's Honour Award is the government's most prestigious decoration for contributions to sport and culture. Since the first one was handed out in 1978 to O Sadaharu for besting Henry Aaron's career home run record, only 21 persons and one team -- the 2011 women's world cup winning squad -- have received the award. Seven of the decorated, including the Nadeshiko Japan squad, have been sports figures. The other contributors to Japanese culture receiving the nod have been musical composers (four), poets (three), singers Misora Hibari and Fujiyama Ichiro, film director Kurosawa Akira, manga artist Hasegawa Machiko (the creator of Sazae-san), actress Mori Mitsuko and explorer Uemura Aoki.

Uemura received his award following his disappearance on the way down from his solo ascent of Denali. Kurosawa's and Misora's decorations were also awarded posthumously, as was the most recent award, given last year to the all-time sumo tournament wins record holder Taiho.

There was some murmuring in 2011 about the appropriateness (and expense - the award is usually accompanied by a very expensive gift) of handing out the award to an entire World Cup team --despite the immense joy the Nadeshiko victory brought to the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown-weary country.

However, this year's award was the first to be greeted by a chorus of "Huh? Why now? What for?"

As the Whiting article makes clear, both Nagashima and Matsui have made huge contributions to baseball, with Nagashima excelling with the Yomiuri Giants as a player and then as a manager and Matsui having a stellar career in both the Japan and Major Leagues, playing in each league’s marquee team.

However, world cinema giant Kurosawa, Taiho and Misora Hibari – persons who defined the era in which they lived – did not receive their People's Honour Awards until after their deaths, indicating just how hard prime ministers have thought about the qualifications for People's Honour Award status. The awardee cannot just be excellent at what he or she does. He or she must change the way the Japanese see themselves and the world sees Japan. For Takahashi Naoko to receive the award in 2000 it was not enough that she had been the first Japanese to win an Olympic marathon. She had to be representing an incredibly frustrated, marathon-mad country, stuck in the middle of a 20 year Olympic medal drought, who so thoroughly blew away the Olympic record that her time was not bettered until the Olympics were held in pancake-flat London in 2012.

The announcements of the awards to Nagashima and Matsui -- and the breaking of the news story about the awards by the tiny circulation Jomo Shimbun, the hometown newspaper of Gunma Prefecture -- led many persons to initially conclude the story was an April Fools Day prank. Once the Abe government confirmed that it was indeed honoring Nagashima and Matsui, a storm of speculation broke out as the ulterior motive behind the government's decision:

Maybe Nagashima is at death's door – Having failed to give Taiho the honor he so richly deserved during his lifetime -- his junior Chiyonofuji having received his People's Honour Awared in 1989 -- Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and minister for sports Shimomura Hakubun wanted to make sure that Nagashima got his award while he was alive. Nagashima had a stroke in 2004; Mori Mitsuko, the only living senior citizen to be granted the award in the last two decades, also received hers after a crippling stroke.

Matsui's award was just an add-on to make the attempt to beat the Grim Reaper less naked.

The government is pandering to Sixties Nostalgia – "The Giants, Taiho and fried egg (Jaiyantsu, Taiho, tamago yaki)– the three things kids like!" was a catch phrase of the 1960s. It was the golden era of Japanese male sports and also time of the Japanese economic miracle (which, since it has been replicated by South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and China, is looking a lot less miraculous). Pandering to nostalgia for the 1960s, when the people were poor but virtuous and hard-working (Link - J) is one of the prime minister's favorite gambits and represents an attempt to mine the mountain of votes of those who were either children or young adults during those years of fast growth and order (and horrible pollution, and Okinawa still in under U.S. Occupation, and...)

Since O Sadaharu of the V9 Era Giants (when the team won nine championships in a row...yikes) received a People's Honour Award, why not hand out an award to Nagashima, his fellow superstar teammate?

Thank you, The Yomiuri Shimbun - Japan has two major conservative media conglomerates, the Fuji Sankei Group and the Yomiuri Shimbun Group. The Fuji Sankei Group follows a conservatism of principle, demanding that the government adopt strong defense posture, national pride (some would call it xenophobia), a philosophy of limited government and hands-off economics. In many ways, the Sankei Groups political stance echoes principles guiding the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal).

The Yomiuri Group, however, is the bullhorn of The Establishment -- and in the political world, The Establishment is the Liberal Democratic Party. During the three and half years the LDP was out of power, no media group worked harder to undercut the government and cross the line in between journalism and news manufacture than the Yomiuri's print and broadcast news arms. For the Yomiuri Group's meritorious service to the LDP's cause, the Abe government is handing out the nation's highest honor to former Yomiuri Giants players.

While the Fuji Sankei Groups traffics in 1960's nostalgia and the Sankei Shimbun did print an editorial congratulating the two ball players (Link - J) -- the newspaper did not turn a blind eye to political public relations aspect of the move. On April 3 Sankei Shimbun printed a cartoon of Matsui and Nagashima sitting in the bleachers at the ballpark as an eager Abe Shinzo, dressed as a concessionaire, offers them medals from out of a box marked "People's Honour Awards." The caption on the cartoon reads: "Are we being used for political purposes? Why now? Ah, let's just forget about it and celebrate!"

(The centrist Asahi Shimbun printed a similarly sarcastic cartoon of Abe, Nagashima and Matsui on its editorial page on April 3 as well.)

It is not as though the Abe government and the ruling coalition need the public relations fillip of hoisting Nagashima and Matsui atop pedestals. Even after damaging the value of yen, promising to monetize the budget deficit and grasping the twin nettles of accession to Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations and a move of the functions of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to a replacement facility within Okinawa (or perhaps, because of these actions) the Abe Cabinet's support ratings are at above 70 percent (Link - J video) and the LDP's popularity is at opposition knockout height.

An aside: Nagashima and Matsui will be the first basebal players in this baseball-crazy land to accept a People's Honour Award (Suzuki Ichiro has been offered the award twice and has twice turned it down) whose parents were both Japanese. O Sadaharu (Sadaharu Oh)'s father hailed from Taiwan, which was from 1895 to 1945 part of the Japanese empire ("O" is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese surname "Wang"). Kinugasa Sachio, who was the only other People's Honour Award honoree from baseball (he received his in 1990 for surpassing the consecutive game playing record of Lou Gehrig) never knew his biological father. From Kinugasa's features, skin tone and his tightly spiralling hair, however, it is clear that Kinugasa's father was an African American.

As Okumura Jun has previously noted (Link) for what is supposed to be a racist country (Link), less than perfect Japaneseness has mattered little in public recognition of sporting greatness. Taiho, the other human member of the 1960's trinity of "Giants – Taiho – fried egg" – had, like O and Kinugasa, only one Japanese parent. His father, Markyan Borishko, was a Cossack from Ukraine. Rikidozan, the professional wrestler whose flamboyant performances against designated loser American opponents were the guilty television pleasures of the early 1960s, was a citizen of North Korea (which is why today the most frequent Japan-North Korea cultural exchanges are tours of the DPRK by Japanese professional wrestlers).

As for Robert Whiting, he steered clear of politics and cultural criticism in his article on the Nagashima and Matsui awards. He will likely show no such restraint when he will be one of the featured speakers in a discussion of an incredibly hot button topic, "Does Japan have a violence problem in sports?" tonight at Temple Univerity Japan's Azabu Hall.

Sadly, I will not be able to attend what is likely to be a fascinating evening event.

Not A Tree Again

In a repeat of the low profile he maintained in 2006-7, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo will not be attending the Spring Festival at Yasukuni Shrine (Link). As in 2007, he will pay his respects solely via sponsoring a masakaki (真榊) display.

Abe to make offering at Yasukuni
Jiji Press

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will make an offering of masakaki tree stands for an annual spring festival set to be held at Yasukuni Shrine from April 21 to 23, informed sources said Friday.

Abe made a similar offering for the 2007 spring festival at the Shinto shrine for the war dead when he was last prime minister. However, he did not visit the shrine during his previous 12-month term in office...

(Link)

This decision represents the best of all possible worlds to Abe. He can check off a box with his nationalist or ultra-nationalist supporters whilst doing nothing the Chinese or South Korean leaderships can plausibly criticize.

Crunch time will come in August, though. I cannot see him foregoing a visit to Yasukuni this time around. Then again, if he pays a visit, it is hard to imagine him preventing Cabinet ministers Shindo, Furuya, Inada and Shimomura from paying visits as well. In reponse to which Chinese and South Koreans would go bananas.

Decisions, decisions...

Then again, a sudden private visit to Yasukuni now would provide sharp shock jolting the public's eye away from the stunning court decisions this past month regarding the constitutionality of the December 2012 election.


Later -As for the title of this post, it is a reference to the confused media reports five years ago.

More On East Asia's Aristocracies

While political dynasties are a perverse development in democracies around the world, the case of East Asia is alarming. I have posted briefly and unremarkably here and here on the topic, which deserves far more attention. Over at the East Asian Forum, Julius Trajano and Yoes Kenawas bring me up to speed on the political dynasty situation in the Philippines, which I was aware of, and in Indonesia, which I was not (Link). Their analysis of the causes of dynasty formation and their proposed solutions indicate a parochial focus, though, rather than a broad-based comparative approach.

A big book to be written, or big conference to be organized. Problem: who will fund a deep look into such a discomforting subject?

Back in this blessed land, the members of the Cabinet revealed their assets yesterday, with caveats. As the Wall Street Journal reports, members of Abe II are by and large significantly better off than the members of the Noda Cabinet. (Link)

My morning dead-tree news delivery device devoted a full page to the members of the Cabinet and their holdings:

I had always wondered what was the juice behind Inada Tomomi, the card-carrying Friend of Shinzo and lawyer whose leaden pronouncements of doom have been a page-filler of the right wing press for the past decade. The answer seems to be her husband's diversified equity holdings and a bewildering number of small Tokyo rental properties the couple co-own.

In terms of landholdings, the very wealthy Taro Aso (whose dandyism is now a subject international commentary) and Prime Minister Abe Shinzo are the barons. In terms of number and variety of declared holdings, however, National Safety Commissioner and Abe family retainer Furuya Keiji puts all other Cabinet members to shame. He lists 62 real estate holdings, 9 of which are of less than 10 meters square. Three of his listed properties are only 1 square meter in size (total assessed value = 60,000 yen) while nine parcels of forest and field land are given an accounting value of zero (which means that the parcel is worth less than the cutoff point of 10,000 yen).

The person with the shortest report is, unsurprisingly, child of dire poverty Shimomura Hakubun. His holdings are not just small, but sadly unimaginative: his home, 200 million in bank savings accounts and 60 million in postal savings. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide and State Minister for Declining Birthrate and Consumer Affairs Mori Masako, two of the Cabinet's coolest and most celebral members, are also asset-light.

Winners of the "we know what the rules are" awards are the earnest sons of privilege Sadagaki Tanigaki and Ishihara Nobuteru, both of whom list savings accounts with the guaranteed amount in them -- and not one yen more.

The Unwritten Essay On Japan's Judo Crisis

This Guardian story on the crisis in Japanese judo is a good start. (Link)

However, the story of purported mentors and leaders succumbing to the spell of committing acts of violence upon young athletes should be expanded further, including:

- politicians getting caught flat-footed, with Minister of Education Shimomura Hakubun having to deal both on the level of sport and education with adult-on-child violence, not the child-on-child bullying violence he has his nostrums for...and all reactionary politicians trying to feel their way around what is the national consensus on corporeal punishment (taibatsu)

- Hashimoto Toru's sudden swerve into absolutism against violence in the Sakuranomiya High School case, seemingly only after he realized the case could be used in his war against the Osaka City school board

- the role of gaiatsu still seems to play in reform, with the international judo federation and the International Olympic Committee putting pressure on the Japan national judo federation to go beyond its earlier investigations and disciplinary measures

- how quickly the Japan Olympic Committee, desperate to win the 2020 Olympics for Tokyo, simply overran the national judo foundation in bringing the scandal to light and forcing resignations

- the role the internationalization of judo, with the continued blind eye being shown to the spoiling techniques Japanese judo despises, has played in pushing Japanese judoka to overcompensate with pure aggression (Ever watch Matsumoto Kaori, Japan's only gold medalist in London, psyche herself up?)

- the national crisis that already existed in the provision of judo instructors for youngsters, after the passage (when guess who was in charge) of an education reform bill that blindly made the learning of a martial art mandatory - without anyone having checked beforehand whether there were enough teachers trained in the teaching of children or that the martial art could even be practiced safely (Link)

Judo is a Japanese sport enwrapped in a host of mystical and ahistorical associations that has gone global. No need for a hook.

That Aso Slip Of The Tongue

Okumura Jun wonders (Link) why I did not dance a jig over Finance Minister Aso Taro's "my brainstem does the talking" attempt to link dying with dignity and the cost of life-extending technologies. (Link)

There are a number of reasons.

First is I like Aso-san, a lot. He is by his own admission a simpleton, the worst student he ever met. While a holder of reactionary views, he is inconsistent, liking many things other reactionaries find corrupt and immoral. I admire and cherish his insouciance and his patriotism -- qualities so lacking in most of the fanatics whose company he keeps.

Second, Aso has competition. While he has earned most of the attention this week for both his "hurry up and die" comment and for losing his shirt in negotiations with Bank of Japan governor Shirakawa Masaaki (Link), economic revitalization minister Amari Akira is probably still ahead on points. From his wandering off message as regards the strength of the yen (Link) to his incredibly bizarre four strategic targets for Government of Japan economic policy (Link) Amari seems intent on embarrassing himself and his boss.

The Abe Cabinet and the Liberal Democratic Party leadership are full of ticking time bombs: the poverty-scarred Shimomura Hakubun at MEXT, policy research chief Takaichi Sanae (Link), National Public Security Commission head Furuya Keiji, Shindo Yoshitaka at MIC...

Jumping all over Aso for his well-intentioned gaffe will only numb audiences in advance of the waves of nonsense that will be issuing from the Friends of Shinzo over the coming days, weeks, months and years.

Which brings up the third reason why I let Aso's comment slide: there is so much that is substantively wrong in what Abe and Company want to do to Japan that to pick apart a gaffe is to be complicit in a diversion of attention. That Aso said what he said does not reveal a heretofore dark hidden agenda or mindset anymore than Yanagisawa Hakuo's baby-making machines metaphor did (Link). What we learned is that Aso cannot express a thought to save his life -- which we already knew.

Two Space Cadets Talking

The translated interview has already been featured on The Wall Street Journal's JapanRealTime blog (Link) and skewered by Our Man in Abiko (Link). Nevertheless, I cannot help but link to the deliciously weird battle of non-sequiturs in between crackpot Motoya Toshio and Liberal Democratic Party ideologue and now Minister of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology Shimomura Hakubun. (Link)

If and when the South Korean and Chinese news complexes come up with translations of this exchange and/or if it gets wide discussions in the Euro-American policy circles, it will come bouncing back into Japan like a 10,000 kilogram rubber ball. It could even be as helpful to Shimomura's career as Motoya's essay contest was for the career of Air Force General Tamogami Toshio. (Link)

If Shimomura is thoroughly and deservedly humiliated by this exchange of absurdities, the floodgates open for looks at the writings and remarks of Minister of General Affairs and Communications Shindo Yoshitaka and State Minister for Administrative Reforms Inada Tomomi. The pair inhale the same vapors as Shimomura, going farther than him in acting out their fantasies of defending Japan. They were a part of the trio of Diet members (the other was the former commander of Japan's forces in Iraq) who tried in August 2011 to enter South Korea in order to visit Ulleung Island, the South Korean territory closest to the disputed Dokdo islets. They were sent packing by ROK immigration officials (Link). In August this year Shindo was a member of the motley crew of Diet and local assembly members who sailed to the Senkakus to conduct an insincere and insulting memorial service for Okinawans who had starved to death on Uotsurijima. (Link)

Shimomura, Shindo and Inada are archetypal Friends of Shinzo. They are in the cabinet because Abe Shinzo wanted them there. Each one of them is a time bomb ticking away.

The PM is probably serious about a focus on the economy, the economy and the economy in the run up to the July House of Councillors election. He does, after all, want to lead the LDP to a further thumping of the Democratic Party of Japan.

The appearance in English of this bit of idle banter in between brother revisionists, however, has the potential to distract him.