Politics and Poetry: Senryu For The Week Of March 23, 2013 - The Shrieking Begins

It is hard not to applaud, if only while shaking one's head, at the performance of the Abe Administration and the Liberal Democratic Party. Against all odds and all expectations they have steamrollered all opposition to their policy program. The equities, bond and currency markets have sung a tune that the an informed but uncritical lay person can hum, with the unsurprising result of public support for the Cabinet and the party rising ever higher in public opinion polls. (Link - J)

Every single thing Abe and his party have sought to make happen has happened. Unless there is some extraordinary reversal of fortune between now and election day, Abe's LDP will sweep the district and the proportional races, leaving out of courtesy – not necessity—a smattering of seats to their electoral allies, the New Komeito.

With the seeming inevitability of a landslide and the prospects of an Abe administration unleashed following a massive victory in the July elections, the tone of the comic verse published in my Saturday newspaper have taken a decidedly uncomic turn.

国あげて
あとはしらぬと
花見酒

Kuni agete
Ato wa shiranu to
Hanamizake

All over the country
No knowledge of that which is to come
The sake of cherry blossom viewing

It is cherry blossom viewing season (at an unseasonably early time, yet another brick in the wall of worry for those of us wishing a livable planet for our children) and indulging to excess on alcohol is a part of the festivities. However, the oblivion described is far from blissful. The lack of knowledge of the future refers not just to loss of fear of the future from drunkenness but also to the quick scattering of the cherry blossoms, who know no future because they have none. The "All over the country" furthermore does not refer just the geographical space but the people of Japan, who are drinking themselves into a stupor because they do not want to know the future.

労組より
鶴一声で
勝ち取れる

Roso yori
Tsuru hitokoe de
Kachitoreru

Rather than the labor unions
From the voice of ultimate power (one call of the crane)
Comes conquest

It has been the time of the ritualized spring struggle (shunto) in between the labor unions and the managements of the major corporations. The remuneration rate rises won by the major unions become the standard for remuneration in all businesses.

As has been the case for longer than anyone wishes to contemplate, labor union requests for dramatically higher wages – i.e., a sharing of the profits the corporations have made through long term cost-cutting and the recent fall of the yen – have been turned down by corporate executives, even with the Abe government encouraging corporations to be more generous. (Link)

The crane voice of Tsusu hitokoe de is not the crane’s cry of classical poetry, which is associated with a love of one’s children and one’s homeland. Instead it is the voice of ultimate, unquestionable authority (in this cases, the CEOs of the corporations). With a single utterance, it ends all conversation.

オスプレイ
頭上に祝う
主権の日

Osupurei
zujo ni iwau
shuken no hi

Ospreys
overhead celebrate
the day of return of our sovereignty

The LDP in its December 2012 election manifesto promised to establish a national day of remembrance of Japan’s Occupation. On March 12, the Cabinet ratified the establishment of a public commoration, choosing April 28, the anniversary of the entry into effect of the San Francisco peace treaty, as the day. While shuken no hi will not be a national holiday, there will be a formal government ceremony with the emperor in attendance
.
The establishment of this day of national liberation has understandably infuriated Okinawans, for whom April 28 is a day of shame. (Link)

The author of the senryu mocks the pretentions of the Abe administration, pointing out that the same week the Cabinet established a day celebrating the end of the Occupation, U.S. Forces Japan began conducting training flights of the highly controversial V22A Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft over Japan’s main islands.

公約と
詐欺と分かるも
時遅し

Koyaku to
sagi to wakaru mo
toki ososhi

Even if you can differentiate
campaign promises from fraud
it's too late

One cannot get more negative than insinuating the campaign promises of the ruling party are fraud (sagi).

The negative view of the author is nevertheless one very much of the minority. Cabinet approval is riding high at over 70%. When voters who support the Cabinet are asked why they are doing so, an overwhelming (possibly historic) majority say, "faith in the Cabinet's policies."

The popularity of the government's programs and the reality that the election has already happened prompt the bitter final line of toki ososhi -- translatable as "It's too late for that now" or "That ship has sailed."

The sense of hopelessness reached its apogee this week in the poem that the editors of my local paper published at the top of their weekly feature of poems sent in by readers.

あんなにも
反対したのに
もう賛成

Anna ni mo
hantai shita no ni
mo sansei

After opposing it
So much
You are now agreeing to it

In contrast to the topicality of most senryu, the lead poem is transcendent, without a clear link to a specific incident or government act. It might be a reference to the Democratic Party of Japan's voting in favor of the appointment of former Finance Ministry bureaucrat Kuroda Katsuhiko as Governor of the Bank of Japan five years after the DPJ provoked a major crisis in rejecting two Finance Ministry old boys for the post. Then again, the author may be referring to another betrayal of conscience.

Very possibly the author is making a sweeping accusation of all, cursing all for surrendering to the new regime, abandoning principles and beliefs without a fight.

And When I Say "Stolen" I Say That With All Due Respect

On September 28, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi of the People's Republic of China delivered a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. In his speech Yang used a weirdly hyperbolic turn of phrase, saying that Japan had stolen the Senkakus from China.

In much of the print, online and broadcast reporting in this blessed land, Yang's use of the word "stolen" was depicted as the Chinese government losing its senses. The evening sports rag Sports Nippon, no stranger to hyperbole itself, was dumbfounded:

This was not North Korea or Iran -- this was China, a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, using this fiery (gekiretsu) expression. It is beyond precedent.

(Link)

Osaka mayor Hashimoto Toru, hearing of the use of the expression "stolen", tweeted on 28th:

Be that as it may, this shows China's lack of class. If it had been me that they said this to, that would have been the end of it. This shows that they are still a long way from acting in an honorable manner in global terms. That at the UN General Assembly, to use an expression like 'stolen' toward a sovereign state like Japan...Japan must retort vehemently."

(Link)

Some in Japan knew that Yang's use of the word "stolen" in his UN speech was not a verbal misstep or a sudden leap in tone. China's State Oceanic Administration on September 20 had released a handbook making exactly the same claim about the islands.

The standard joke one would use in this instance to deflate the tension would be:

"The islands were 'stolen' – that's a technical term, of course. Ha, ha."

What is unfunny is that "stolen" is indeed a technical term. Saying the Senkakus were "stolen" brings them under the purview of the Cairo Communique, which states:

"...Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the first World War in 1914, and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China."

(Link)

That a close reading of the Cairo Communique would find the niggling problem that the Republic of China is still around, ruling Taiwan, can be and is being glossed over the government of People’s Republic. (E)

As to returning to the status quo ante, the ante has been raised for the government of Japan.

The PRC government is aware that Japan annexed the Senkakus in January of 1895, before the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki which ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan. By declaring the Senkakus as "stolen" China has pushed the application of the Cairo Communique backwards in time, prior to the commonly accepted boundary line of April 17, 1895, the date of the signing of the treaty ending of the First Sino-Japanese War.

If the Senkakus are classed as "stolen" the next logical step is to class Okinawa in the same way.

This is not paranoid right wing fantasy. The China Daily, in talking about the status of the Senkakus, is unabashed about declaring Chinese claims on Okinawa as superceding Japanese ones:

Japan took the Liu Chiu Islands, which Japan calls Okinawa, by force from China in 1874, when the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was at war with several countries. The Diaoyu Islands, though, remained under the administration of Taiwan. Following China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95, the Qing government ceded Taiwan, including its subsidiary islands, to Japan.

(Link)

Before plunging too deeply into extreme scenarios involving Okinawa, the unanchored use of the word “stolen” in the Cairo Communique is the source of the GOJ’s inability to admit even the existence of a sovereignty dispute over the Senkakus. The moment the GOJ ever admits that a dispute exists, the Cairo Communique comes into effect.

Togo Kazuhiko has been going around advocating that the government of Japan indeed admit the existence of a dispute (E) -- this in order that there be symmetry in between the GOJ's approaches to the dispute with South Korea over Dokdo/Takeshima and the fight brewing over the Senkakus. That the former head of the Treaties Bureau (service: 1998-99) would fail to appreciate the triggering of the Cairo Communique is flabbergasting.

In addition Foreign Minister Yang’s speech in New York and the State Oceanic Administration handbook, the Chinese government's September 10 demarcation of territorial waters baselines including the Senkakus makes clear that the government of China has no intention of returning to the status quo ante. The baseline declaration requires that Chinese constabulary forces conduct uninterrupted surveillance and security patrols in and about the islands, meaning that JCG and various Chinese government vessels are condemned to a series of confrontations in what Japan considers its territorial waters, non erit finis (E).

Hence the absurdity of the breathless daily reports of Chinese ships entering Japan's territorial waters about the Senkakus.

"Let's all calm down, take a deep breath and remember what is at stake here" punditry notwithstanding, China is pushing hard to undermine Japan’s jurisdiction over the Senkakus, using such tools as exist in its own domestic law, international law and World War II declarations.

The Rubicon is crossed. So what are Japan and its treaty ally the United States going to do about it?

A Plane Without A Policy

Michael Auslin of AEI has produced an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal taking quite a different view of the likely Japanese government decision to purchase Lockheed-Martin F-35s than I did the other day. At least in terms of which direction the author's thumb is pointing.

As far as I can tell from the essay, the clear advantage for Japan in owning a set (and by a set I mean 40, the number of planes being jiggled about in the mainstream press) of F-35s is that the plane will be invisible to pilots of the current generation of Chinese and Russian attack fighters. Which is all very well and good up to the point where the F-35 actually fires something, when its presence will then become very much known.

Now the possession of F-35s could have a deterrent effect, making Chinese or Russian commanders less willing to invade Japanese airspace or attack a Japanese ship or aircraft in international airspace or waters on the chance that an F-35 could be nearby, ready to retaliate. However, in the event that such an intrusion or attack would occur, it would certainly only be carried out as a part of a coordinated and multi-asset planned attack, which the presence of F-35s would not deter.

An F-35 could ostensibly be used to loiter around in the wake of an attack squadron of F-15s and/or F-2s, serving as an invisible friend of these planes should they be set upon by more acrobatic Sukhoi 27 and Sukhoi 30 variants. However, not even the role of silent protector works out in terms of Self Defense Forces doctrine, because stealth is only really advantageous when given the chance to fire first, without warning, which no ASDF commander has the authority to order and no ASDF pilot is trained to do. Firing on the Sukhois after they have engaged the F-15s or F-2s may be psychologically rewarding, but will not bring back the lost F-15s and F-2s. Firing on the Sukhois while they are engaging the F-15s and F-2s will make a messy situation only messier (Missiles here, missiles there -- missiles, missiles everywhere...).

As for ASDF F-35s invisibly intruding into Chinese, Russian or DPRK airspace, what would be the mission? Destroying the opponents command and control systems? Destroying fixed missile sites? Destroying mobile missile launchers? Engaging fighters over the other country's territory? All of these acts are not just contrary to Japanese defense doctrine, they are unconstitutional -- and no seriously proposed revision to the Japanese constitution gets within even shouting distance of permitting such missions except as a response to an attack on Japan, which is already covered under the Japan-U.S. Security Arrangements -- i.e., it is a problem for the United States to handle, whereupon the F-35s that would be responding will be U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy planes.

No matter how one slices it, one cannot come up with a mission for Japanese F-35s to perform, save keeping the U.S. government happy and the reputation for paying exorbitant amounts of money for a small number of fighters intact.

As for the Russian and Chinese stealth fighter programs, which are themselves responses to the threat posed by the U.S.A.'s F-22s -- a threat that, every so often (twice this year, at least) does not exist -- neither of them are going anywhere soon, either because the generals are kidding themselves (the Russians) or the generals know damn well that test flying a prototype stealth fighter in daylight is not something a country with a serious stealth program does (the Chinese).

And if the policy problems were not enough to kill interest in the F-35, the plane itself, as Tobias Harris passes on in a Facebook link, has so far been a dud.

So I would agree with Michael Auslin in thinking a Government of Japan decision to acquire the F-35 has Tokyo taking security to another plane (Hardy, har har har!). Unfortunately, it is another astral plane.

Later - It probably means nothing...but it seems the announcement of the F-35's having won the contest to become Japan's next generation fighter has been delayed.

Erratum Demonstratum

On Tuesday, I stated that there has always been a loophole in the implementation of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), one that the government was in serious negotiations with U.S. officials to close. Under current procedures, when an member of the armed services or a U.S. defense department employee commits a crime or causes an accident while on duty, no matter if the person involved in the incident was chemically impaired (i.e., stoned or drunk) the arresting Japanese authorities had to turn over the suspect to the U.S side upon request.

The issue was especially fraught in the case of non-military personnel, the U.S. Supreme Court having ruled long ago that U.S. civilians cannot be tried in military tribunals. Whether the defendant will be turned over to a U.S. court for trial and whether, in the absence most of the time of the victims from the U.S. courtroon, the sentence will be commensurate with the crime has become a hot issue particularly in Okinawa. In the period 2006 to 2010 the U.S. Forces Japan exercised its jurisdiction over non-military personnel held by Japanese police 62 times. In 27 of the incidents, proceedings against the individuals transferred to U.S. custody ended with no charges being filed (J).

Anyway, I was wrong on the issue of "always." The problems with the implementation of the SOFA only began in 2006, when the U.S Forces Japan began issuing special "get out of jail free" documents for U.S. DOD civilian employees under the 2000 Military Extraterritoriality Jurisdiction Act (MEJA). Prior to that time, the USFJ left civilians to be tried by Japanese courts, while taking into custody U.S. military personnel. In recent years, the final jurisdiction of the U.S. military member perpetrator has been negotiated on a case-by-case basis -- the bias being toward trial in a U.S. military tribunal, as the punishments there are almost always more severe than those meted out by Japanese courts.

The Asahi Shimbun, by the way, seems to have gotten ahead of itself on this story, claiming that the two governments have already pretty much sealed the deal and that the new procedures will cover drunk driving incidents by military personnel on duty as well as the civilian employees (J). Nobody else is reporting that the deal is done or that the USFJ is giving up its right to demand the transfer of U.S. military personnel to U.S. custody.

Closing One Loophole

There has always been an odd loophole in the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) regarding the handling of cases of traffic accidents caused by members of U.S. forces or Defense Department civilian employees. As long as the perpetrators -- for these are cases where who caused the accident is undeniably a U.S. national working for U.S. Forces Japan -- could argue that he or she was on official duty, then he or she would be handed over to the U.S. for prosecution. This was true even when the perpetrators were found to be drunk at the time of the accident.

This morning, Foreign Minister Gemba Koichiro promised that he would meet with his U.S. counterparts on revising the SOFA so that in these cases or similar crimes committed by a chemically impaired U.S. Forces member or DOD civilian employee the perpetrators would lose the right to argue they were acting while on official duty, i.e. would lose their immunity from Japanese law. He also promised to visit Okinawa, where this has been a big issue, to meet with officials and explain the Japanese government's concern about this issue (J).

Now if only someone could figure out how to close the loophole on the American side -- where civilian employees cannot be tried in military tribunals, meaning that if one commits a crime while on duty in an area under Japanese juridiction, he or she gets off scott-free...