Sussing Out Abe's Next Move

Yesterday's resignation of Democratic Party leader Renho only days after a major DP victory in the Sendai mayoral election, together with the resignation of Cabinet-support sapping Inada Tomomi as Minister of Defense opens up to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo an opportunity to initiate what 24 hours ago would have been considered political suicide: dissolve the Diet and call a House of Representatives election. Indeed, this decision may already have been made -- it certainly makes the Inada resignation more comprehensible ("Why now? She is about to be let go in the Cabinet reshuffle!" was a natural, immediate reaction to yesterday's announcement).

As the results of the July 2 Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections have shown, the LDP's recent dominance has been all about the absence of a centrist opposition with a clear pathway to victory. Offer a ruthless alternative, one that leaps over the structural impediments and clientalism designed to return the LDP to power time after time, and the resentment of the voters will lift you to victory. Koike Yuriko, with her amazing ability to tear away the Komeito from its coalition with the LDP at the same time as dog whistling to the Tamogami Right (too quickly forgotten is her calculated dissing of the South Koreans) provided Tokyo voters with just such an alternative.

The obvious decision for Abe, who faces declining poll numbers and obvious factional maneuvering against him, is dissolve the Diet, proclaiming, "I am asking for the judgment of my performance from the voters" or something like that. With the DP leaderless and no national Koike party as yet, the chances are fairly good that Abe's LDP will march to another victory under his command. Perhaps one which fails to return a Constitution revision-capable 2/3rds majority in the House of Representatives for the ruling coalition -- but still a simple LDP majority (take that, Komeito!) in the lower house.

At least, that's the way it looks.

Chutzpah Redefined, Or Just Money To Burn?

My morning dead tree news delivery device, the Tokyo Shimbun, the alpha dog of the prefectural newspapers, is left wing. It holds court, in most analyses, in the space between left-leaning The Asahi Shimbun and the Communist Party's house organ Akahata ("Red Flag").

For me, the TS is an easy-to-read, localized Asahi with its head screwed on straight and blood in its veins -- the latter two qualities earning the paper the admiration of even my more the-time-to-return-Japan-to-normal-nation-status-was-yesterday-leaning friends. (Link)

Hence my amazement at this morning's front page.



See it? It is hard to miss.

But, just in case, here it is, the bottom-right hand corner, enlarged.



Yes, c'mon all you lefties. Here is what you need: Tamogami Senso Daigaku ("Tamogami"s University Studies of War"). Yes, the very latest tome from your very best friend, forcibly retired Air Self Defense Forces general and Tokyo gubernatorial candidate Tamogami Toshio. (Archive)

[Long pause for fulmination]

I know that advertising can be scattershot, sometimes lacking in aim at a target audience.

But having an ad for a Tamogami book on war, photo of the man lecturing the reader included, on the front page of the Tokyo Shimbun is beyond mere incompetence or laziness.

This is pure provocation.

Hell Freezes Over: Tamogami Toshio At Asahi Shimbun Event

Tomorrow, on Constitution Day, at a conference organized by The Asahi Shimbun's employees union on war and the Constitution, General Tamogami Toshio will be one of the featured speakers.

Let me say that again.

Tomorrow,

on Constitution Day,

at a conference organized by The Asahi Shimbun's employees union

on war and the Constitution,

General Tamogami Toshio (Retired)

will be one of the featured speakers.

You don't believe me? Look at the image above. Click on it if you want to see it in a larger size.

I called the number on the poster. It is the number of the employees's union. The event will take place tomorrow.

This is so wrong in so many ways one can only think that Hell hath truly frozen over.

Being In The Right State Of Mind

I have been willing to suspend judgment. I have been willing to view Eien no Zero's box office appeal (Link) as merely being just another iteration of a once-in-decade phenomena, seen last with Otokotachi no Yamato (Link - video). I was willing to accept the 610,000 votes retired general Tamogami Toshio received in the Tokyo Metropolitan governor's race as the by-product of the Liberal Democratic Party's continuing inability to field a candidate for the post, a base level contempt for politics and a somnolent and therefore complicit press.

However, even I have to admit "This time it may be different" when the magazine display area at the entrance of the Book Express outlet at Ueno Station has literaｌｌｙ front and center multiple stacked copies of paranoid revisionist drivel publication WiLL (Link) with cheerful handwritten signs extolling its virtues.

In Ueno Station, alongside all the panda junk!

A small plea: if anyone is passing by or through Ueno today, please grab photo imaages of the whole storefront and the display, as I was not in a position yesterday to stop and take the shots.

Abe Shinzo's World, Framed

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo chairing a meeting of the Ministerial Council on Monthly Economic Report and Other Relative Issues on 19 February 2014. Image courtesy the Prime Minister's Residence website.

It is a good day when one article helps illuminate the substrate of reality beneath the facade of events.

If so, yesterday was an amazing day.

- In refutation of Abe Shinzo's remarks in Davos on the severity of the threat posed by China's rise (Link), Robert Dujarric takes apart the idea that China is this century's Wilhelmine Germany. (Link)

Dujarric's arguments notwithstanding, Abe was not wrong to at least try an association of 2014 with 1914 (Link). He seems to have a sense, and it is not an unreasonable one, that the rest of the world has caught up with where he and his friends were on China during the first Abe Administration. Abe and Company's Sinophobia made them freaks in 2006. In 2014, their paranoia is mainstream. (Link)

An acid "We told you so!" from Abe and his supporters would not be out of place.

- Illustrating the extent to which a desperate desire for autonomy (What I have identified as the revisionist right's fervent and quixotic hope that Japan can become the Turkey of East Asia) drives even the Abe Administration's macroeconomic policies is Andrew Browne's interview of Abe economics guru Honda Etsuro (Link). There is nothing in Honda's righteous and occasionally maudlin performance that should come as a surprise to anyone who has listened to Japanese business executives, politicians and academics -- men and women -- talk these past two decades. The huge audience for the the books of Hyakuta Naoki (Link) and the big turnout for General Tamogami Toshio in the Tokyo gubernatorial election show that a sizable fraction of the general population is sympathetic to the revisionist project as well -- far more than Japan explainers have been willing to admit. What is interesting is Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide reached into to his rapidly depleting store of credibility to deny in the Diet that Abenomics has a military objective. (Link)

The inescapable problem with the Japanese revisionist quest for autonomy (the right, for example, for Japanese school curricula to be as crammed with nationalist claptrap as the school curricula of China and South Korea) is, beyond all else, where to get the money for it. The governments national and local are in debt up to their eyeballs, the national government relying on ridiculous levels of deficit financing to keep the economy from cratering. Demographics is hammering down Japan's potential rate of growth. Raising Japan's defense spending to meet the challenge of China's rise would require either heftier taxation or nonsensical cuts in current government spending on non-security programs.

Abenomics, if a full program of easing, stimulus and restructuring were carried out, would go part way toward funding a more autonomous Japan -- but only part way. What the revisionists would never admit is they have no answers for how to pay for the whole journey.

Very Quickly On The Tokyo Metropolitan Governor's Race's Results

1) Masuzoe Yo'ichi won. However, there is little reason for the Liberal Democratic Party leadership to get all happy about the victory. Masuzoe only just surpassed the total for the two weak anti-nuclear candidates combined, even with 70% of the Liberal Democratic Party voters and greater than 90% of the New Komeito voters voting for him -- at a time when the LDP is eight times as popular as any of the opposition parties.

As for what happens next, Masuzoe has to get along with an LDP-dominated metropolitan legislature. As NHK so kindly reminded Masuzoe and the rest of this morning in the historical review clip prefacing the live studio interview of him, Masuzoe broke away from the LDP in 2009 declaiming, "The LDP's historical role in Japanese politics has come to an end."

Have fun with that.

2) The candidate the Democratic Party of Japan's supported, an ex-prime minister backed by the most popular prime minister of the last 40 years, came in third. Will heads roll at DPJ headquarters? No! Timidity and failure are now party trademarks.

3) The outcomes of Utsunomiya Kenji's candidacy was far from embarrassing. It was also far from victory. Interestingly, he did better the further away one drew from the Metropolitan district's core.

4) Tamogami Toshio received 610,000 votes. That is not enough in the way of a ground force to overthrow the government (not that Tamogami would want to -- in my recollection, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo appointed him head of the country's Air Self Defense Forces). However, it sure makes for a nice base from which to recruit new members for Tamogami's hard core revisionist, paranoid and xenophobic Ganbare Nippon! organization. We should also expect that his rallies, which were merely attracted thousands, will now attract tens of thousands, marching and shouting without police intervention (or Ishiba Shigeru complaining about the noise, I am guessing) right past the Diet buildings.

This was a fundraising and membership drive for Tamogami. The news media, by shying away from hard looks at Tamogami's past and his followers and their intimidating methods for whatever reason, served as silent enablers to this fiasco.

Go try to tell the South Koreans and Chinese this morning about Japan's deeply ingrained pacifism. They will laugh.

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.

Tamogami Toshio Live, Live (And Freaking Me Out)

Working journalist MP is tweeting from inside the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan Tamogami Toshio press conference. Sitting down in a random spot, he finds that his table companions are:

Nishiyama Yujiro - a former candidate for governor, whose proposals included disaster drills with all 13 million residents of Tokyo participating simultaneously -- stopping their cars, blocking all access to the Internet. See him try to explain this idea in what was to be his free NHK broadcast gubernatorial election video. (Link - J video)

Motegi Hiromichi - arch-conservative commentator, author of such works as Do Not Be Afraid Of Radiation! and Elementary Schools Do Not Need English!. Watch him explain how the U.S. caused World War II (Link - J) at an event where current FCCJ member and former the Times, FT and NYT bureau chief Henry Stokes was also a featured speaker.

Nishimura Koyu - Advertising writer turned polemicist. Most recent work an article appearing on the website of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Truth entitled, "The Truth of the 'Comfort Women' Intelligence Warfare." (Link)

Oh, MP was also surprised to see Dewi Sukarno in the Tamogami entourage

Why do the things that I predict have to come true?


Later - Also as predicted, MP reports that Tamogami supporter Nishiyama, claiming to be a journalist, grabs microphone to ask The General a question.

Tamogami Toshio, Live

The news slows
People forget
The shares crash, hopes are dashed
People forget
Forget they're hiding.
Behind an eminence front
An eminence front - it's a put-on
Come and join the party
Dress to kill

- Pete Townsend, "Eminence Front" (1982)

The candidacy of former Chief of Staff of the Air Self Defense Forces Tamogami Toshio for the post of governor of Tokyo has been a thing of wonder. First that the general, who lives a very comfortable life off not only his taxpayer-funded pension but also off the revenues generated by his, and this is the organization's real name, “Fight Hard Japan! - All Nation Action Committee” (Ganbare Nippon - Zenkoku Kodo Iinkai) -- the umbrella under which all of Japan's xenophobes and paranoids seem to seek shelter -- is not the smartest in terms of personal cash flow. That he should come out of retirement to take on the job of running the Tokyo Metropolitan District, a place crammed with the very sort of folks his followers want expelled from Japan or locked up in prison, in his first attempt to ever run for anything (the other three main candidates having run and won election to some kind of office in the past) challenges the boundaries of "hubris" and "chutzpah" (the closest Japanese-language equivalent being jishin no kajo, an "excess of confidence").

Second, that the Japanese news media as a whole, not just scared-stiff folks at NHK News (Link) but everyone, has been handling Tamogami with kid gloves. Seemingly The General's email, Facebook and Twitter army of savages has scared the daylights anyone who might deign to ask him about his dismissal early retirement, his organization, his followers, his relationship with Abe Shinzo, his impossible government spending and tax cut promises, his politicization of the ASDF, his participation in a contest rigged to select him as the winner (Link), what he will do to protect the Korean residents of Shin Okubo from death threats and other forms of harassment, his views on the outbreak of World War II (Link), his plans for patriotic education in Tokyo schools, his sexualized campaign (Link - J)...et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

Today, however, Tamogami will appear at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan (Link). He will be facing a room full of folks who are rather harder to terrify than Japan's news media producers and distributors. To be sure, there will be ringers in the room -- Tamogami would never put in an appearance anywhere where the crowd is not at least salted, if not completed stuffed, with revisionists ready to sing his praises. These folks will try to grab the microphone and eat up the clock with powder puff and leading questions.

If the non-Japan journalists show up prepped and ready -- and if the moderator cuts off the ringers at the git go -- then this shichimencho may finally feel the fork he has up until now avoid having stuck in him.

We will see how Tamogami responds to a sticking. My bet is that the results will be...unattractive.

About The Other Sovereignty Day Commemoration

[The below is a draft post, with sections left incomplete.]

The first official return of sovereignty day commemoration ceremony, complete with the presence of their Imperial Majesties, was held on April 28, the 61st anniversary of the end of the Occupation.

The official ceremony garnered attention worldwide, much of it not appreciative.

Despite the domestic and international temperatures raised by this event, the ceremony itself passed relatively smoothly.

There was only one unscripted moment, dutifully ignored by all the major broadcasters except the center-left TBS network. One of the attendees started shouting, "Tenno heika banzai!" ("May the Emperor live 10,000 years!"). Much of the rest of the audience soon joined in, causing the Imperial Couple, who had been leaving, to freeze like two deer caught in the headlights. (Link – J video)

Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, when asked later about the banzais, responded that they were an impromptu and natural occurrence. (Link -J )

A trio of banzais probably should not be seen as a harbinger of world's end. Given that the attendees were the cream of the nation's revisionist political class, a little off-script self-described loyalist enthusiasm should have been expected.

In terms revisionist theater, the official ceremony in the morning was a strictly amateur production.

The professionals made their appearance in the afternoon at People's Assembly For Return To Sovereignty Day (Shuken kaifuku kinenbi kokumin shukai) at the Hibiya Kokaido -- a general overview of which has been provided to us by Channel Sakura. (Link – J　video)

The above linked video has just about everything one could hope for:

- A "materials-bought-at-the-100-yen-store" studio set

- The organizer Ijiri Kazuo (former columnist for the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, adjunct professor at Takushoku University, member of Sakurai Yoshiko’s Fundamentals think tank and member of the New Textbook group) boasting of filling up the lower tier and half of the upper tier (How thrilled is Ijiri about the turnout? He insists on going over it twice with the announcer.)

- The Amazon event hostess (yes, the tall lady in the denim tube skirt and the sandals in this shot who runs the non-profit that cleans up beaches, is a Channel Sakura announcer and a member of the Self Defense Forces Reserves.)

- The complete hash made of the singing of the Kimigayo (It takes a special kind of impatience to mess up a performance of the world's shortest national anthem.)

And that is what you get in the first 2:50 of the Channel Sakura digest, before any of the featured speakers opens his or her mouth.

And who were the featured speakers?

Based upon the videos uploaded to YouTube, about 20 VIPs were on the schedule, with one would be speaker, the one with the highest government office of the group, having his brief greeting read out by the hostess.

I present the speakers and links to their speeches below in what I believe is the proper order, with the names of active members of the National Diet in bold:

Kobori Keichiro – emeritus professor of comparative literature, Meiji University. Studied German literature at Tokyo University alongside Nishio Kanji), member of the New Textbook group. (Full Speech – J)

Noda Takeshi - Chairman of the Diet Members' League for a Return of Sovereignty Day, Chairman of the LDP House of Representatives delegation, chairman of the LDP's Tax Committee, former member of the Liberal Party. (Full Speech – J)

Shindo Yoshitaka (in absentia) – Minister of General Affairs and Telecommunications, member of the House of Representatives, grandson of Kuribayashi Tadamichi -- the commander of the defense of Iojima. (Read Message - J)

Takaichi Sanae - Chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council, member of the House of Representatives, leader of the Diet members delegation visit to Yasukuni on April 23 (Link), seated at the right hand of Abe Shinzo when Abe was elected LDP president (Link - Amari Akira was to his left), graduate of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, former aide to U.S. House of Representatives members Patricia Schroeder (Full Speech - J)

Hiranuma Takeo - Acting Representative of the Japan Restoration Association, member of the House of Representatives, former leader of the Sunrise Party, leader of the postal rebellion against Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro, adopted son of convicted Class A War Criminal Hiranuma Kiichiro. (Full Speech - J)

Kiuchi Minoru - Parliamentary Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hiranuma disciple, former postal rebel (successfully fought off Koizumi candidate Katayama Satsuki), former Ministry of Foreign Affairs bureaucrat. (Full Speech - J)

Yamatani Eriko -member of the House of Councillors, deputy chairman of the LDP committee on security and terrorism, former special advisor to the prime minister on education revitalization, former editor in chief of Sankei Living, originally elected to the Diet as a DPJ proportional seat candidate. (Full Speech - J)

Araki Kazuhiro – Professor of International Relations at Takushoku University, member of Sakurai Yoshiko’s Fundamental think tank, former Ground Self Defense Forces officer, GSDF Reserves member. (Full Speech - J)

Sugihara Makoto – Chairman of the New Textbook group, publisher of works on war responsibility, member of the Advisory Committee of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact. (Full Speech – J)

Nishida Shoji - LDP member of the House of Councillors, vice chairman’s of the parliamentarian’s league promoting visits to Yasukuni. (Full Speech – J)

Uto Takashi - Deputy chairman of the House of Councillors Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, LDP member, graduate of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, former Air Self Defense Forces fighter pilot. (Full Speech – J)

Akaike Masaaki – Guest professor at Meiji University, former LDP member of the House of Representatives, graduate of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, former principal of the Japan Aviation High School. (Full Speech – J)

Nishioka Tsutomu – Professor at Tokyo Christian University, chairman of the national association for the aid to those abducted by the DPRK. (Full Speech - J)

Koike Yuriko - Chairman of the LDP Public Affairs Division, member of the House of Representatives, member of the board of directors of Renault, former chairman of the LDP General Council, former minister of defense, former minister of the environment, successful Koizumi candidate in 2005, former member of the Liberal Party, former television announcer, graduate of Cairo University, English and Arabic speaker (Full Speech - J)

Yamada Kenji - member of the House of Representatives, director with Societe Generale Private Banking, former employee of Mitsui Sumitomo Bank, seconded for a while to the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. (Full Speech


[snip]

Tamogami Toshio – Chairman of Hang Tough Japan! All Japan Action Committee (Ganbare Nippon Zenkoku kodo iinkai), the former Chief of Staff of the Air Self Defense Forces who was relieved of his command and forced into retirement for composing a controversial essay (Link) exonerating Japan's pre-1945 government of war guilt. (Full Speech – J)

[snip]

-

"But wait. This event took place at the Hibiya Kokaido? Isn't that the hall where...?"

Yes, the hall where this happened (video has a viewer discretion warning).

Grotesque and utterly inappropriate?

Yes and no.

Perversely, along with Asanuma Inejiro, the hopes of Japan's revisionists were felled on that day 52 years ago. Asanuma's televised assassination delegitimized the ultra-patriotic and the revisionits, condemning them to a political Siberia from which they were to not to emerge for 45 years. Asanuma's 17 year-old assassin hanged himself in his cell a few weeks after the killing, seemingly sorry not for robbing a man of his life, but for having caused trouble for his comrades.

[The phrase the assassin scratched on the wall of his holding cell wall before taking his life? "I would give up life seven times more for my country. Tenno heika banzai!"]

In retrospect, Japan's Left probably never had what it took to push the revisionists and ultras back. The deniers had to, and did, do themselves in.

Now, after a half-a-hundred circuits about the Sun, we face perhaps a new reality.

If the above video of General Tamogami does not sate your craving for fulminating resentment, you can catch him live tomorrow (May 3). He will be participating in a panel discussion in Iwakuni (where the U.S. Marines base is) at the Iwakuni Shimin Kaikan.

"So who's on the panel with him?"

Funny you should ask that. One name: member of the House of Representatives Kishi Nobuo.

"You mean?"

Yes. The prime minister's younger brother. (Link – J)

Springtime for Japan's revisionists: one does not have to exaggerate, construct tenuous connections or issue paranoid prognostications.

The story writes itself.

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.

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.