In Addition On The Abductees Deal

Over at 38North, the place for all things DPRK, Dr. Sheila Smith has up a long post on the new Abe Cabinet-DPRK agreement to reopen the investigation into the fates of Japanese either kidnapped or purportedly kidnapped by North Koreans or Japanese Red Army terrorists in the 1970s. (Link)

Four points to help fill out her narrative:

- What ultimately sank the Koizumi initiative on normalization was not a loss of public support for engagement with Pyongyang. It was the Japanese government's reneging on the agreement to return the living abductees to North Korea after a series of family visits. By keeping the five, deprogramming them and allowing the abductee lobby to use them as cudgels against the DPRK (and against any post-Abe government that tried to circumvent the abductee lobby to engage Pyongyang) Japan taught the DPRK a lesson in bloody-minded double-crossing -- something that Kim Jong-il thought he knew everything about.

- After Iijima Isao paid his very public visit to Pyongyang (Link) the chattering classes in Washington and New York mocked him, saying he had been used as a propaganda tool of the North Koreans to no gain. For that derision there has been no apology, nor will there be any. Furthermore, Iijima's lesson on how one gets the ball rolling with the DPRK will be ignored.

- While support for the abductees is wide, one should not be too certain of its depth. Like the current emnity for Chinese and South Koreans (distinct from emnity felt toward the Xi and Park governments) outrage over the abductees is mostly a pose, a feeling one is supposed to feel. A maudlin minority of miscontents and dupes shows up at abductee events. In public opinion polls, the majority of voters express inextinguishable anger. Altogether, though these items do not add up to much in the way of a public movement.

- Ergo: there is no public to punish the Abe 2.0 Cabinet if this initiative fails to bear fruit. The abductees issue is private business, owned by a coterie of Diet members of which Abe Shinzo is a charter member. The issue has been managed for the purpose of humiliating and boxing in administrations, this in order to pave the way for a return of a revisionist government. That the person in charge of that government is Abe Shinzo, the man the abductee issue first made prime minister, pretty much guarantees that when the Pyongyang investigators find nothing new, the response in Japan will be a dull thud.

A Brief Note On Japanese Political Vocabulary

I have completed a few more orbits of the Sun than I want to acknowledge. I have made a rather larger number of those orbits whilst standing upon Japanese soil.

It has not been until this autumn, however, that I have come to understand the functions of two nouns -- one a common noun and the other a proper noun -- in Japanese political discourse. The usage of these two nouns has always caused my ears to tingle and my breath to halt. However, until this fall's Potemkin debate on the raising of the consumption tax and the lurching, blood-spewing path the execrable* Official Secrets Bill (my latest read: the ruling coalition will pass the bill amid chaos on Friday, giving the public the reason it has been seeking to hate the Liberal Democratic Party all over again) has taken toward passage, I could not put my finger on why.

Now I can.

Here are the two nouns whose political meanings I have come to understand:

Taisaku- 対策

The dictionary defines taisaku as "countermeasures" - the changes you have to make to your operations in order to cope with a new situation. In Japanese political speech, however, taisaku has a more limited meaning. Rather than being "countermeasures" in a general sense, the taisaku drawn up by bureaucrats and politicians should be understood as "dubious government actions intended to countermand the entirely predictable deleterious side effects of earlier and equally dubious government actions, primarily in the sphere of economics."

The escalating rounds of countermeasures leading up to the decision to go forward with the rise in the consumption tax illustrates this special meaning of taisaku. First we had the bungled Bank of Japan response to the Plaza Accords, which led to asset price bubble. After the piercing of the bubble and the consequent collapse of economic activity, elected officials responded with fiscal stimulus package after fiscal stimulus package, each one too puny to halt economic contraction because of Finance Ministry fears of jacking up the national debt. The too puny fiscal stimulus packages and tentative monetary easings of the 1990s, coupled with Japa'’s long-recognized aging, created an unsustainable level of national debt via-a-vis the nation's pension/health care obligations. Meeting these obligations requires more revenues, which means higher taxes. Higher taxes, especially regressive taxes like the consumption tax, decreases economic activity. So the government has to cobble together a stimulus packages, either cutting back on tax receipts from other areas or borrowing money, which further increases the debt burden, which means the creation of expectations of further tax increases in the future, which diminishes the desire to spend, which...

The main reason why Japan's bureaucrats, politicians and even its big businessman have not ever thought of stepping off the ascending spiral staircase of taisaku is that halting the process would force members of the Establishment say, out loud:

"You know, we screwed up. We pretended to be omniscient, transcendent higher beings when what we were really was cowards and frauds. Sorry."

Which establishments never say. Ever.

Except, of course, when they say, "Taisaku."


Yokota Megumi - 横田めぐみ

Yokota Megumi was a 13 year-old girl, walking home from a badminton practice at her middle school in the heart of Niigata City, Niigata Prefecture on November 15, 1977. On the way, she seems to have crossed the path of North Korean agents. For reasons that will likely never be explained, the agents took her as a captive and spirited her away to North Korea, where she grew up a prisoner, employed as a trainer for North Korean spies hoping to pass as Japanese citizens. She purportedly committed suicide in 1994, and is survived by a former husband and a daughter, both of whom are prisoners of the DPRK regime.

While tragic, Ms. Yokota's story is not unique. A couple dozen other Japanese nationals, hundreds of South Korean nationals and a smattering of citizens of other nations have all been kidnapped and held captive by the irretrievably evil government of the DPRK. Ms. Yokota's story and that of Soga Hitomi, a young woman whose was kidnapped from Sado Island in 1978, indicate that her gender and youth were factors in her survival. They also indicate that the kidnapping of Japanese citizens to become teachers of Japanese mores and culture -- Megumi's eventual role in North Korean society -- was an ad hoc justification for what was a fairly pointless and marginal facet of North Korea's ever-evolving program of extortion through random acts of terror.

In Japanese political diction, however, mention of "Yokota Megumi" is the refuge of the intellectually unsound. Like references to Hitler in English-language discussions of politics, the brandishing of "Yokota Megumi" is supposed to stun the listener into silence. Why does Japan need a national security council? "Yokota Megumi." Why does Japan need such a draconian new official secrets law? "Yokota Megumi." Why does Japan have to revise Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution? "Yokota Megumi." Why does Japan have to …“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! YOU SEE MY FINGERS IN MY EARS, YOU CHINA-LOVING, DPRK-CODDLING DUPE? I HAVE NO RATIONAL REASON FOR CURTAILING CIVIL LIBERTIES, TURNING A BLIND EYE TOWARD XENOPHOBIA AND RAISING JAPAN’S MILITARY POSTURE SO YOKOTA MEGUMI, YOKOTA MEGUMI, YOKOTA MEGUMI!!!"

Here is prime example of Yokota Megumi being dragged in in order to supposedly prove a point, drawn from a major political tract by a famous author:

After the Dhaka Incident of September 1977, Kume Yutaka of Ishikawa Prefecture was kidnapped and taken to the Democratic Republic of North Korea. The police authorities of the time arrested the perpetrator. However, knowing that the perpetrator was involved in a covert operations organization of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the police let him go out of fear of a dispute arising with 'peace-loving peoples of the world.'

Because of this, what occurred? Two months later, in November, Yokota Megumi was kidnapped from the seaside of Niigata Prefecture. Had the Government of Japan at the time [of the Kume disappearance] chosen the path of confronting the Government of the DPRK, would not Megumi-san still be living her life in Japan?"

In the end, Japan's postwar system, as symbolized by the Constitution of Japan, could not safeguard the life of a 13 year-old girl. And for us, even now, this problem remains [unresolved].

A flimsy free association of various humiliations of Japan occurring in the autumn of 1977, including the purported Kume kidnapping, which has never been acknowledged by the DPRK, if Kume's disappearance was even a kidnapping. The spinelessness of the Fukuda government toward the Dhaka hijackers leads to the disappearance of Kume in Ishikawa which leads to the release of the police's top person of interest in the Kume disappearance which leads to kidnapping of "Megumi-san" two months later in Niigata City.

Indubitably.

The passage includes a sarcastic quotation from the preamble of the Constitution ("We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all time and are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship, and we have determined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world"). The quote seems a demonstration of an adolescent desire for applause for cleverness. While feeling contempt toward Constitution and its naïve faith in the good intentions of peace-loving peoples of the world is a valid emotional reaction, this contempt should be expressed openly, not hinted at by the snide use of quotation marks.

So why should I or anyone else be give a damn about this snarky connect-the-dots bit of weirdness reminiscent of the histrionic performances of American embarrassment Glenn Beck, one culminating in the author's making a maudlin appeal to sympathy for Ms. Yokota in an absurd bit of speculative history? Because you will find it on page 252 of Toward a New Country (Atarashii kuni e) -- a book published earlier this year by a certain Mr. Abe Shinzo, prime minister of Japan.

Now I understand what my body has been telling me all these years: when in an argument with someone over the appropriateness of the Japanese government's taking a new position as regards security, or its plans to adopt an unprecedented new mode of operation, at the very first utterance of "Yokota Megumi" I should relax, smile and go prepare to go home.

The argument is over. Indeed, there was never any argument on the other side at all.

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

* On November 8, the Tokyo Shimbun reprinted the entire working text of the official secrets bill, highlighting the 36 times the lazy authors of the bill had ended their sentences with "and so on and so forth, et cetera" (sono ta).

A Minor Contrarian Note On The Abductees Obsession

No postings in a time of turmoil and change -- bad, bad, bad. Excuses few have I save the lassitude of the final week of a long, hot August.

I have, however, been thinking about Japan's policy moves as regards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Japanese government mewling about the fate of those abducted by the DPRK in the 1970s and 80s is probably one of the most frustrating and annoying diplomatic shows on Earth, at least among those put on by the diplomatic corps of the advanced industrialized countries. Japan's representatives performed a lacrimosa on behalf of the abductees and their families yet again this week　-- with the twist being that this time it was to an international panel responsible for actually listening to the stories. (Link and Link)

Japan's official obsession with the abductees, rather than generating sympathy, likely has turned opinion against Japan on the issue. The world's diplomats and employees of international organizations must dread Japanese presentations, as morose tales and demands for resolution of the abductees issue clog the agendas and fritter away precious time at every international gathering.

Then again, being annoying might be the whole point of the exercise. Given the way the DPRK regimes operates, which is to give crumbs in returns for huge sums of money, and the price the North Koreans will demand from Japan for any further moves on the abductees issue, given that Japan stiffed the North Koreans in 2004 by both keeping its citizens and their loved ones and halting all moves toward normalization, the next round of action, which will be a last one since freedom of travel for Yokota Megumi's daughter Kim Eun Gyong is the only card the North Koreans have left, will likely come at a price which will give the rest of the world, particularly Japan's ally the United States -- which has just hit another wall as regards to one of its own citizens held in the DPRK (Link) -- serious heartburn.

At which point having annoyed the rest of the world to tears over the abductees will reveal itself as a brilliant strategy rather than an obtuse surrender to trivial domestic political pressures. The rest of the world might gag at Japan's paying off the indefensible DPRK regime in return for what will seem truly risible humanitarian gestures. However, if whatever Pyongyang coughs up gets the Japanese government to shut up once and for all about the abductee issue, the sighs of relief in diplomatic circles will be embarrassingly audible.

--
Nota bene - Normally I would not link to Karajan. But for a performance featuring Price, Pavarotti and Ghiurov, I will make an exception.

Worthwhile Reads #2 - On Abe And The Revisionists

And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
We call it 'Riding the Gravy Train' - yeah...

Pink Floyd, "Have a Cigar" (1975)

Two good essays from yesterday on Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and the potential limitations on his freedom of action on the issues purportedly dear to him and his Friends:

Brad Glosserman, PacNet

Abe's dilemmas

Karl Gufstasson, East Asia Forum

Japanese Prime Minister Abe's U-turn on the Murayama Statement

Both essays hint at what appears to be a change in the way Abe Shinzo and his Cabinet operate. Both Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party squeaked into power in the LDP presidential and December House of Representatives elections, meaning that both faced pressures to produce results in the immediate term. However, for various reasons (the most convincing one I have heard: "the Japanese people are just tired of being in a bent over in a defensive crouch"), the man and the party have a mad surplus of political capital in the bank (Cabinet support, Party support). The July 21 (?) House of Councillors election will be a coronation.

Relieved of worries about July, Abe & Company can be insincere in every direction. They do not have to pander to a core constituency; they do not have to assemble a coalition of disparate forces. Instead they can play upon the neediness of particular interest groups by making what are head fakes toward their hot button issues, feigning commitment to a position, stirring up a fire storm of protest in response, then beating a hasty retreat. Tobias Harris has highlighted this stimulus-response-retreat pattern for the specific case of constitutional reform. However, the this-has-to-be-done/wow-why-are-folks-so-angry/oh-I-guess-it-can-wait model seems applicable to almost any policy initiative and constituency.

In terms of the red meat revisionist issues of Yasukuni visits, revising Article 9, war responsibility, the sanctioned brothel system and garrisoning the Senkakus, Abe and his Cabinet have the luxury of limiting themselves to gestures, signs and code words, signaling to their revisionist followers of their purported true beliefs, while going through desultory pantomimes of being held back by Japan's internal and external foes.

Of course, by making intermittent, sulphurous and maudlin shows of addressing an issue -- such as, let us say, securing the transfers of the remains of the deceased abductees and freedom of travel for the surviving relatives still in North Korea -- but never actually achieving the stated goals (or by constantly moving the goal posts further, which is effectively the same thing) -- the politician's gravy train rolls on.

Is Today The Day For The DPRK?

Yesterday Abe Shinzo envoy and symbol manipulator extraordinaire Iijima Isao (the bald gentleman above) met with President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly Kim Yong-nam (the other...errr...gentleman above).

Now it is true that the government of North Korea could just be trotting out its #2 leader for a meeting that goes nowhere, releasing footage of Iijima and Kim in The Big Chairs in front of The Big Painting only to metaphorically pull the chair out from under Iijima-san's massive posterior, humiliating both him and his prime minister.

However, does one need the #2 in the leadership to take time out of his busy schedule of evildoing in order to humiliate Iijima, whose formal title is the decidedly modest one of Special Advisor to the Cabinet (naikaku kambo sanyo)? Would not ordering a driver to take Iijima all around greater Pyongyang, permitting him meet no one of consequence, have done the trick? Yes, some commentators have suggested that the meetings Iijima has had with top government officials are designed to make South Korean and U.S. officials worried that Japan is about to cut a deal undermining ongoing denuclearization and military pull back efforts. (Link)

But a breakthrough, even a lousy one, should be welcomed, right?

As I noted earlier, the complete lack of coordination between the Government of Japan and the governments of the United States, South Korea and seemingly China...and the only-Abe-could-get-away-with-this keeping in the dark of the families of the abducted are indicators that Abe has something in the works similar to, if not commensurate with, the Nixon Shock (Nikuson shokku).

If Iijima has secured a deal in Pyongyang regarding a resolution of the abductees issue then that deal could be put to the Cabinet for Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) during the its regularly scheduled meeting today (Friday). Prime Minister Abe could then call a special press conference starting at, if experience is any guide, 18:00 local time.

We shall see.

Image courtesy: Sankei News

The Kim Jong Il Statement

There is a reason why I call The Yomiuri Shimbun "Pravda-by-the-Palace."

I know that I should not because the Yomiuri organization employs the husband of a dear friend. The YS has also made, through its Japan News, a concerted effort to force The Japan Times to figure out the mechanics and purpose of an English-language newspaper.

However, my prejudices, suspicions and disdain for the editors of the Yomiuri all get bolstered by the publication of pieces like this:

Kono remark twisted 'comfort women' issue

The Yomiuri ShimbunA statement in 1993 by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono that suggested the government admitted forced recruitment of so-called comfort women aggravated what had already become a diplomatic problem between Japan and South Korea.

The Asahi Shimbun in 1992 published an article on the issue of comfort women that included some misinterpretations. The story reported that the Imperial Japanese Army had controlled and supervised the establishment of comfort stations, as well as the recruitment of women.

It also said the military mainly recruited Korean women under the name of Teishin Tai (volunteer labor force) in a forcible manner. It misleadingly labeled the “Jyoshi Teishin Tai” (women’s volunteer corps) under the wartime labor mobilization system as “comfort women hunting.”

The major focus of the problem was thus whether the comfort women were forcibly recruited.

The Cabinet of then Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa announced in July that year results of an investigation into the issue, in which it said there was no evidence that women were recruited against their will by the military.

Since then, however, criticism against Japan in South Korea has not let up. In an effort to politically settle the issue, Kono made the statement in August 1993, saying the government admitted the military was directly or indirectly involved in establishing and managing comfort stations and transferring comfort women. It also apologized and expressed remorse to former comfort women.

However, as the misunderstanding that the government admitted the defunct Imperial army forcefully recruited comfort women has spread, the first Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved a written answer to Diet questions on the matter at a cabinet meeting in March 2007.

In it, the government said there were no descriptions in any documents the government found that directly pointed to forced recruitment of women by the military or government authorities.

(Link)

The Japanese version of the above can be found here.

There are false narratives whose origins can be traced back errors in one newspaper story printed long ago. However, it is the height of absurdity to trace the negative view of Japan's Imperial Age system of military brothels to a vocabulary mistake, if there even was one, by the cross-town rival The Asahi Shimbun.

As for the lack-of-documentation argument, I wish someone would stand up to it with a simple parallel:

"You know, Kim Jong-il's verbal apology of 17 September 2002 was only him talking. There exist no official government documents actually proving that Japan's so-called abductees were taken against their wills. Sure they say they were abducted -- but where is the documentary evidence for this?"

And before turning away, thinking "MTC, you are just being vulgar" consider how much of the abductee movement's pull depends the stories of Soga Hitomi and Yokota Megumi -- who, being minors just going about their daily lives at the time of their disappearance, clearly fit the definition of abduction.  Less is said about the disappearances of adults like Arimoto Keiko, who as a student studying English in Europe made the unfortunate mistake of befriending members of the Red Army Faction Japan Red Army terrorist organization...

[For the record it is Arimoto's story that is the most compelling, with her, her husband and infant being murdered after their betrayal by Japan's Socialist Party.]

...where the non-issue over use or non-use of physical force in abduction, where there is illusion of choice, whether to be lured or not be lured, has its clearest parallel.

As for the applause line in the above for the Abe Cabinet's 2007 revision of the Kono Statement, what can one say? Sycophancy is unbecoming to anyone, but least of all to a purported news organization.


Later - My thanks to the readers who pointed out the incorrect terrorist group name.

Non Verbal In Pyongyang

Iijima Isao, Koizumi Jun'ichiro's public relations wizard brought back into the Prime Minister's Residence by a suitably chastened Abe Shinzo, whose previous turn as Prime Minister shuddered from one P.R. disaster to the next, arrived in Pyongyang, luggage in hand (a kahuna who carries his own bags, wonderful!) for a big time official meeting with North Korean officials.

How do we know that this is a big time official visit?

Look at the lapel.



Iijima has his Prime Minister's Residence service badge on.

Oh, Iijima could have forgotten to take the badge off before leaving the plane. However, such an oversight is unlikely, given that the symbolism master was traveling to Pyongyang -- where the lapel badge is EVERYTHING.

An aside, but for a bald, fat dude, Iijima rocks the two-toned dress shirt look.

In all seriousness, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo spent a significant chunk of time during his exceedingly brief Diet Policy Speech promising a resolution of the North Korean abductees issue. With Iijima on the case in and heads rolling in Pyongyang, perhaps Abe was not, as I assumed at the time of the policy speech, just blowing smoke about a resolution of the abduction conundrum.

Prepare to be surprised. Nay, astonished.


Later - An earlier version of this post was published without the photo image. Apologies.

Screen grab courtesy: NHK

Catalinac On Increased Security Awareness

Australia National University's Amy Catalinac has posted an interesting essay to the East Asia Forum. In "Not made in China: Japan’s home-grown national security obsession," Catalinac argues that the increasing prominence of security issues as an organizing principle among Japanese politicians is due to the changes in the incentives politicians have had toward accepting or rejecting a party's official line. She finds that the replacement of medium-sized multiple member districts, where different factions of the Liberal Democratic Party slugged it out against each other for the majority of seats, with single member districts, shifted the goal posts for politicians, particularly those of the now once again superdominant LDP. Under the post-electoral reform regime, politicians are rewarded for their adherence to and advocacy of elements of the party’s policy platform, not the rewarding of particular constituents with pork-barrel projects.

Castilanac's assertion contradicts the conventional explanation that an increasing security consciousness is the result of an increasingly threatening local environment. It seems to provide a solution to one of the puzzles of Japanese politics: if security issues so important, and Japan is more and more threatened each day, why are security discussions hijacked by intellectual dead ends like the abductee problem or the history textbooks screening problem? (Link)

I like a lot of what Catalinac is saying. I am particularly heartened that someone shares my conviction that a rightward shift in Japanese public opinion exists mostly in the imaginations of foreign commentators, particularly Chinese and South Korean ones, whose motivations and assumptions are suspect.

I do have concerns regarding the evidence undergirding Catalinac's hypothesis. As outlined in the paper she released last fall in advance of her book-length study (Link) she has been using the texts of the election manifestos of individual candidates as her basic data set.

The biggest problem with relying on the elections manifestos, aside from the obvious one of few voters reading the darn things -- a problem that Catalinac acknowledges -- is that the target audiences for the documents have shifted. Whereas in the past the manifestos were written for party faithful to read in order to confirm whether a given candidate has the interests of his or her sworn supporters in mind, the manifestos are now being written either to 1) for party officials to peruse in order to check on levels of loyalty to the party or 2) for the floating voter read in order to help overcome his/her natural ambivalence and inertia.

My take has been that politicians adopt security stance complete with the irrationality of many of those stances (for example, the pledge to “solve the abductee problem,” without any reference as to what a solution would look like) because of the limits of creativity in political narrative. Politicians seek to tell stories about themselves in comprehensible shorthands and code words, temporarily stimulating visceral reactions among a sufficiently large number of largely disinterested voters. The parties provide a glossary of effective terminology and slogans, which identify the winning issues politicians can address with the least effort for all those involved.

Catalinac's insistence one can find a strong increase of interest in security issues starting only in 1996 will likely rub some writers the wrong way. Indeed, the standard view is that no dramatic shift exists – that

a) Japan has always been a conservative country and

b) there has always been a freewheeling security discussion, with conservatives, reactionaries and revisionists having the loudest voices

I have always felt uncomfortable with (a) as national survey results have not been generally support of the assertion of an inherently conservative mindset.

As for (b), I have always felt there is a difference between the intellectual battles going on in the weeklies and monthlies and the commonly available set of choices most of the public consumes and cogitates upon. For any given point in time, past or present, one is likely to find more variation of intellectual positions inside the pages of Chuo Koron than existed out on the street.

What Does Abe Know That We Do Not Know?

The most peculiar moment in the prime minister's policy speech yesterday?

The one that starts at the 16:22 mark of the exceedingly brief (18:55 - with applause) address, the text of which I repost and translate below. When watching the video (Link) pay close attention to what happens after Abe finishes his last sentence.

そして何よりも、拉致問題の解決です。全ての拉致被害者の御家族が御自身の手で肉親を抱きしめる日が訪れるまで、私の使命は終わりません。北朝鮮に「対話と圧力」の方針を貫き、全ての拉致被害者の安全確保及び即時帰国、拉致に関する真相究明、拉致実行犯の引渡しの三点に向けて、全力を尽くします。

And then, more than anything, a resolution of the abductees problem. Until the day is upon us when all of the families of the abducted can hold their relations in their arms, my mission will not have ended. I will not swerve from the plan of employing "dialogue and pressure" upon the DPRK. I will exert every effort to meet the three goals of confirming the safety of and securing the immediate return of all of the abducted, clearing up the mystery surrounding the abductions and having those responsible for the abductions handed over to our custody.

Notice the oddity? After Abe thunders out his determination, he is not greeted with a chorus of hooting or sustained applause. Just embarrassed-sounding shouts from a few members, quickly abandoned.

The abductees issue is Abe's signature issue -- the pole he has used to vault over his more experienced and politically savvy rivals in the party. The stick, if you will, that props him up.

One would have thought that the reactionary Friends of Shinzo, many of whom owe their seats and prominence to incessant thumping of rostrums about the abductees, would have prepared a coordinated explosion of applause and shouting at Abe's declaration of unwielding will.

One would have thought that...and been wrong.

I am not sure I understand the politics of including this paragraph in the speech, without support. The promises made are impossible to realize -- unless Abe knows something nobody else knows. Neither those in the chamber nor the public needed a reminder that Abe is Abductee Man.

So what was the point of making outlandish promises? To highlight the differences between his approach and the approaches of the last three Democratic Party of Japan prime ministers? When there cannot be any differences, either in approach or in outcomes?

The Momentum Conundrum

The Mainichi Shimbun and TBS are holding fast to their predictions of last week and the 10th that the Liberal Democratic Party en route to winning a stunning victory in Sunday's election. Based on data from the December 4—5 Kyodo poll and telephone polls conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun's local bureaux, the media outlets are projecting the LDP will capture 300 seats.

The other predictions (all numbers are approximate)

DPJ 70
JRA 70
New Komeito 30
Your Party 16
Tomorrow Party 10
JCP 9
SDP 1
Shinto Dai’ichi 1
Kokumin Shinto 1
Nippon Dream 0
Renaissance 0

I know what you are saying: the above adds up to 508 seats, 28 more than are actually in the House of Representatives. Like I said, these numbers are approximate. (Link – J)

Note that the figures predict that the LDP and the New Komeito will capture 330 seats, giving the two parties a supermajority in the House of Representatives. A supermajority would give an LDP-led coalition government the power to pass any legislation, overriding the decisions or inaction of the House of Councillors. The only government activity still held up by the "twisted" state of the Diet would be major appointments, such as the selection of a replacement for Bank of Japan Governor Shirakawa Masaaki.

The methodology used to generate these numbers is most likely not unsound, taking into account historical patterns of voting, the current plurality the LDP has in the public opinion polls, head-to-head competition in between DPJ candidates and candidates of the breakaway Tomorrow Party and an expected low level of voter turnout. NHK's most recent poll finds 63% of respondents saying they will definitely vote, a 7 point drop from the equivalent figure in 2009. (Link – J).

Nevertheless there is a problem: a lack of a clear move toward the LDP in the opinion polls. Given the LDP’s lead and the supposed disgust the electorate feels toward the feckless rule of the DPJ, we should be seeing a shift toward the LDP in the national polls as voting day approaches. However, as the post of yesterday indicated, polls are not showing any sustained momentum toward the LDP – even if one extends the timeline back to June, immediately prior to Ozawa Ichiro's departure from the DPJ (Link).

Where is the kuki of kuki ga yomenai (a.k.a. "KY"), the zeitgeist which would encourage the undecided to hop aboard the LDP's bandwagon?

Adding to the mystery was last night’s report last night on NHK News 9 program on the prime minister's campaigning all around the country on behalf of DPJ candidates. The reporting was so soft and glowing, with the prime minister almost always shown smiling, that the result was close to an illegal campaign advertisement. Does NHK know something we do not know? Or was the network trying to cover its tail after spending the last few weeks handling LDP president Abe Shinzo with kid gloves? Does NHK want to say to the DPJ on December 17, "Hey, it wasn't us that sank your campaign..."?

As the national broadcaster, NHK has an incentive to be hypersensitive to changes in the political winds. As an organization, it is paranoid about Abe Shinzo. He and his fellow travelers have a history of interfering in NHK editorial independence. During the Abe administration, NHK indeed became AIN, the "Abductee Information Network," cramming in programming about the Japanese abducted by DPRK operatives during the 1970s where it had no business being.

So last night's broadcast was either a harbinger or an "Asta la vista, baby."

For insertion in the "Really?" file, cross-referenced with the momentum conundrum, is the news item, also reported by the Mainichi Shimbun, that early voting is down sharply from 2009. As of Monday, one week before voting day, 2,549,501 citizens had voted early. This is a 17% drop in participation in the early voter program over 2009, when 3,055,634 voters had turned in ballots one week prior to the election. (Link)

Public opinion polls find reduced enthusiasm for voting..and around half of the voters undecided as to whom they want as their representatives...and fewer voters are taking advantage of early voting.

I wonder how those three facts fit together.

That Southern Sort Of Sanity

Usually the thought of a National Bureau of Asian Research interview of a director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy would send me running for the hills.

However, the NBR interview with Rory Metcalf is a worthwhile read, realist in the most positive sense of that loaded word. (Link)

I must confess a particular affinity for one of Metcalf's propositions, though my heart knows it to be little more than a vain wish:

And certainly the closer the Australia-U.S. alliance becomes, the more confident Canberra should feel in offering candid counsel to Washington about Asia policy.

I had always hoped that the government of this blessed land might play a such a role in its dealings with the United States, that of the friend who grabs the other friend's shoulder and says, "Will you please just calm down and consider the repercussions, for just one second, before you react?"

Having the world's second largest economy and a significant capacity to carry out soft power initiatives should have given this blessed land enough leverage to stand its ground and talk sense to the United States, when the United States, for its own internal domestic political reasons could not make sense of a situation. However, strategic confusion within this blessed land as regards its neighborhood, with the right wing ramping up the DPRK abductees issue and fears of strategic abandonment over Futenma to the point where intelligent debate over Japan's own position in the world was driven to the fringes, quashed the development of an intellectual alternative to whatever-the-United-States-says-as-long-as-we-do-not-have-to-provide-troops bureaucratic default response to any of the world's crises.

Of course, internal strategic confusion was only half of the problem. The U.S. prides itself as the defender of democratic values. However, the sheer size of the U.S. security apparatus means those values do not necessarily extend to the U.S. listening to what any of its friends and allies say. The size of Japan's population and economy could have made this blessed land a worthwhile sounding board for the saner minds in Washington, However, the relationship between Japan and the U.S. was and is radically asymmetric, with the U.S. committed to the defense of Japan while Japan is not committed to the defense of the United States. Japanese expressions of caution would have fallen on deaf ears.

A similar asymmetry exists in the Australia-U.S. relationship. Given Australia's intense economic integration with the People's Republic of China and its diplomatic relations with the DPRK, Canberra should and does have a different and useful take on the politico-economic development of East Asia, one the U.S. could profit from if its government and non-government players choose to listen. Unfortunately, because the U.S. is such a disproportionately huge presence not just in the region but around the globe, it will likely refuse to listen to advice, no matter how sound. "Shut up and take our Marines," will be the response from the Washington echo chamber, where flexibility and patience are not considered the worthwhile counsels of serious thinkers.

He Who Laughs Last

I'm sure my critics will say
It's a grotesque display.
Well they can bite me baby
I perform this way.

- Al Yankovic, "I Perform This Way" (2011)

Despite the best effort of Shukan Bunshun, Kaieda Banri (Wait, was he not Ozawa Ichiro and Hatoyama Yukio's candidate in the last DPJ election? Yes, but he was also the 1996 author of this tome. Ambition has many colors) and mysterious associations working their magic from the shadows Ozawa Ichiro has survived to serve more than 25 years in the Diet. After passing the 25-year milestone, members of the House of Representatives are entitled to a number of perquisites, one of which is the hanging of his or her portrait in the Diet Building.

Ozawa, being a retiring, secretive individual of course...wait, here he is, beaming in front of his portrait as it is being hung for the benefit of the cameras both still and video. In a dose of purest irony, the portrait is hung in the room where the Committee for Judicial Affairs has its meetings.

The portrait has its host of critics. To be sure, it sure clashes with the more genial and relaxed mood of its immediate neighbors.

The Liberal Democratic Party's Hirasawa Katsuei -- "Mr. Abductees Issue" to you and me -- has complained that it gives him the creeps (iwakan - 違和感). "I feel like it's staring at me," he complains. (J)

Hirasawa and others have declaimed that now, while Ozawa is still on trial for violating the political funding laws, is hardly the time to hang his portrait. Such complaints have very little traction, however, given that the House of Representatives Steering Committee has just greenlighted a similar hanging in the Diet of the portrait of jailbird Suzuki Muneo, the multi-year winner of the "Most Corrupt Member of the Diet" in public surveys. (J)

But while Ozawa is beaming, possibly even laughing in the above photo images, I am not sure whether or not the joke is on Ozawa's many enemies or on himself.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, a close-up of the portrait, painted a former graduate of Ozawa's political training school:
I have heard it said that truth is beauty, and beauty truth.

Though my artistic judgments have landed me in trouble of late, I will venture that the adage is hereby proven wrong.

Image courtesies:
Top: Tokyo Shimbun
Middle: Jiji Press
Bottom: TV Asahi

The abductee issue hits the wall

It seemed inevitable...and yet the day never came.

It seemed it would never come.

It was going to happen one day, over some incident or demand -- the day when the populace of Japan decided it heard enough of the sob stories of the families of the abductees -- the persons kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s as a part of a seemingly ad hoc program of providing North Korean agents with unwilling instructors of Japanese language and customs. While five of these kidnapped persons eventually returned to Japan, the majority, according to the DPRK government, did not survive their captivity. The demands for the parents and siblings of these unreturned kidnappees have held successive Japanese governments hostage to pursue a hopeless and unrealistic total struggle against the government of the DPRK until the abductee problem is resolved to the families' satisfaction.

Long the darlings of the right wing in Japanese politics, for whom the vivid demonization of the DPRK was a convenient cover for a weakening of post-1945 Japanese pacifism, the families and the government seem to have crossed the Rubicon this week. They invited to Japan Kim Hyon Hui, the convicted DPRK assassin, who, posing as a Japanese traveler, planted a bomb on KAL jetliner in 1988, killing all 115 persons aboard the aircraft. To make matters worse, the families met with Kim at the country home of former prime minister Hatoyama Yukio in the exclusive and expensive resort town of Karuizawa.

Kim certainly had direct ties with one of the abductees, Taguchi Taeko, who was her teacher of Japanese in Pyongyang. Indeed it was Kim's confession that she had learned her Japanese from a woman abducted from Japan that punched the first hole in the Japanese government's assertions that the abductee problem did not exist, that the missing persons were not kidnapped, just missing. As a member of the special espionage branch Kim certainly knew of the other abducted Japanese. However, since she has been interviewed almost incessantly since her arrest, she certainly had nothing new to tell the families of those who did not return. There was certainly no reason to bring her to Japan, considering her terrorist past.

In bringing the pardoned Kim to Japan and entertaining her in such lavish style when she has nothing of substance of offer the government of Japan or the families of the abductees, except yet another opportunity for someone to repeat a maudlin retelling of the Yokota Megumi story, the government and the abductee families seem to have blown the collective fuses of economics-problems-focused public.

Need it be said that the opposition Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, which itself had once been in the thrall of the abductee issue, is having a field day criticizing the current government for its solicitude toward Kim?

In the records of public relations and media management failures, this visit looks like one for the textbooks -- on how even a completely controlled, can't miss event can dissolve into a media circus and a public embarrassment.

Which begs the questions --

1) Why can't the DPJ do PR?

and

2) Will this overstaged visit be the abductee families' last hurrah?

The Imperative Case in Japanese Party Names

"Stand Up Japan!" (Tachiagare Nippon). That is the proposed name of the new Yosano-Hiranuma party.

"Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro thought of the name," Hiranuma says.

Why am I not the least bit surprised by this revelation?

Today, the nascent conservative-conservative party lured House of Councillors member Nakagawa Yoshio, the uncle of the late Nakagawa Sho'ichi, into submitting his resignation from the LDP. Together with former Minister of Transportation Fujii Takao, who is widely expected to be announcing his departure from the LDP soon, the new party will be starting out with the statutory minimum of 5 sitting Diet members necessary to be eligible for public elections funds.

The recruitment drive seems far from over. House of Councillors member, former Finance Ministry bureaucrat and former State Minister for Abductee Issues Nakayama Kyoko (a triple play!) is reportedly being courted, as is her currently out-of-office and notorious spouse Nakayama Nariaki.

From the looks of it, the Hiranuma-led party will be packed with hardliners.

Why does that not surprise me?

Meanwhile, sitting LDP House of Councillors member and potential recruit to the Hiranuma cause Konoike Yoshitada, whose homepage absolutely has to be seen to be believed, has seemingly gotten a sudden case of cold feet.

The new party is scheduled to open for business starting on April 10.

I cannot wait.

Later - The Mainichi Online has just put up an English language write-up of the story.

For Those Who Have Lost Much, A New Day

Headline on the front page of my newspaper this morning:

Aiming Toward Accession to the Hague Convention: Prime Minister Indicates the Preparation for the Legal Underpinnings

After so many years, and after so much utter excrement about how it would be too difficult to reform family law and police practice in such a way as to force law enforcement officials into treating child abduction as a crime, a first step toward justice.

The prime minister's assertion that "in order to come to a quick resolution, we have to find a path toward making this happen" is only a start -- but a good one.

Some folks still hold a cynical "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss" view of the Democratic Party of Japan and the ruling coalition -- that all the hopes the people have for change will come crashing down due to inescapable realities. This dismissive view is rapidly losing value. Considering the amount of time, energy and attention that have been lost to going through Prime Minister Hatoyama's and DPJ Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro's finances these first few months under the new regime, I would be willing to be on record as saying the revolution has been moving forward at an encouragingly rapid clip.