Very Kind Of Them: Tokyo On Fire, Episode 10 - Nuclear Power in Japan

Nancy Snow was away two weeks ago, leaving Timothy Langley and me to carrying out a males-only exchange of views on Japan's nuclear reactor restarts, power plant siting issues, the Fukui injunction against the restart of the Takahama reactors, the US-Japan security relationship, the April local elections and the landing of a drone on the roof of the Prime Minister's Residence.

Very Kind Of Them #54 - Local Elections Edition

The latest installment of Langley Esquire's "Tokyo On Fire" series of YouTube videos/ITunes podcasts on burning issues in Japanese politics was an incredible gas to record. I was forever at the brink of talking way too much (Since when have you ever had a sense of proportion in matters pertaining to Japanese politics? - Ed.) but was pulled back by presenter Timothy Langley and fellow guest Dr. Nancy Snow.

Please check it out: Tokyo on Fire: Episode 8 - Japan's Local Elections

Two small errors:

1) I am an Adjunct Fellow, not Professor, at Temple University Japan's Institute for Contemporary Asian Studies, 

[Memo to Me, Memo to Me: compose announcement regarding changes along these lines for publication later]

and

2) I say at one point that 23% of prefectural and municipal assemblies have no women in them at all. That number is too high. The correct number is 21% of Japan's 1788 assemblies have no women members. (Link)

Yes, An Expletive Is Appropriate Here

Yesterday the government began placing bags of Fukushima topsoil contaminated by the March 2011 nuclear accidents into an "interim" storage facility near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi complex.

The scale of the enterprise boggles the imagination. As the The Japan News (a.k.a, the Yomiuri Shimbun, translated into English) reports:

The Environment Ministry plans to move the contaminated soil — currently being kept at more than 75,000 locations in the prefecture’s 43 villages, towns and cities — to the facility gradually. Work to remove the soil, seen as an impediment to reconstruction efforts, has finally been launched.

The construction of the facility is planned in a coastal area of about 1,600 hectares that straddles the line between the towns of Okuma and Futaba. The facility, which is designed to prevent leaks of radioactive substances, is capable of storing up to 22 million cubic meters of soil and other radioactive waste for a maximum of 30 years.

For a period of one year, the transfer will be conducted on a trial basis. During the period, 10 million cubic meters of soil will be moved from the villages, towns and cities affected... (1)

Ten million cubic meters? In a "trial run"? In a year?

Folks, to give some sense of what they are talking about doing, the standard 20 foot shipping container on the back of the truck in the below photograph is 33 cubic meters -- and that is outside dimensions, not what you can actually pack inside.



That means, just doing the math roughly, 304,000 truckloads of the above size, 830 truckloads every single day (no holidays), will arrive and be unloaded at the site -- in a year.

Something is seriously wrong with these numbers. If not, something is seriously wrong with the folks in charge.

It gets worse. In the highly redacted online Japanese version of this article, the 12 bags (~12 cubic meters) of topsoil deposited in yesterday's opening ceremony were brought to the site in two dump trucks. At that rate it would take 1.7 million truck trips to transport the 10 million cubic meters of soil from the current short-term storage sites to the "interim" site.

This is just...insane.

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1) "Soil transfer to interim storage begins / Major step in recovery of Fukushima." The Japan News, 14 March 2015.

Live Blogging The Oe Kenzaburo Press Conference

Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo (b. 1931.01.31) will be speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. I will see if I can live blog the event


Oe Kenzaburo arriving at the FCCJ.

12:42 Journalist Kamata Satoshi is offering introductory statement of the situation in Fukushima on the eve of the 4th anniversary of the triple disaster of 3/11.

12:46 Oe begins his remarks. He speaks in a high, halting voice.



12:51 Oe points out the ridiculousness of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's insistence in Buenos Aires that "Fukushima is under control" -- and that the attitude of duplicity (to self, the country and the world) became the seeming norm.

By contrast, the German people were able to view the nuclear issue as a world issue. Japanese could not see the problem in a global sense.

13:00 "In my literature, trees play a huge role. I think the fate of the trees of Fukushima is a symbol of the scale and methodology of the clean up effort. In particular 80,000 highly contaminated large trees have been cut down, chopped up and put into storage.

13:01 One of the ideas is to burn the wood of these trees, collecting the ashes and burying it. But what of all the radiation released in the burning?

While not downgrading the suffering of humans, the loss of these trees is striking to me. Trees are promises to the future. Here the future has been lost.

The Germans [Oe is riffing on the ongoing visit to Japan of Chancellor Angela Merkel] thinks about the limits of technology -- that Chancellor Merkel in a conversation with Prime Minister Abe noted that despite Japan's technical prowess, control of a nuclear facility was lost. Prime Minister Abe, however, has no such reaction and reflection to Fukushima.

13:09 The current government of Japan has no understanding of the issues and no Japanese politicians who have the will and the capacity to learn from the lessons of Fukushima.

This government does not pay attention to the views of non-Japanese, particularly the government of Asia.

13:13 [In a nice segue, Oe draws a parallel by the Japanese government's state of denial about the seriousness of the situation in Fukushima and the state of denial regarding relations toward China -- as regards the Senkakus -- and South Korea -- as regards Takeshima or as the South Koreans call it "Dokto" -- that in both cases, the current Japanese government seems to have no intention or effort to change the terrible relations that exist]

13:19 Five years I had decided to give up the life of a novelist...I wanted to start a new way of living. I took my hints on what to do with the rest of my life from the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said. I had been rereading my own work when Said was diagnosed with leukemia.

13:24 Said got me thinking about the artistic style of the end of humanity or the end of a single person's life.

On Late Style - his book of his views on the style expressing one's thoughts in the face of one's end...got me thinking about my end and the world's end.

13:29 Fukushima represents a late style of humankind's express of barbarism. Adorno spoke of barbarism after Auschwitz. After Auschwitz, after Hiroshima and now after Fukushima, what is literary production if not barbarism -- what would Said have said?

How are we to live, what is the style in the state of utter disappointment? The interviewers of Said would say at the end, all he felt optimistic (rakkanteki) about .life

[Oe's prolix delivery would overwhelm an ordinary translation. Takamatsu Tamako, the FCCJ's translator is far from ordinary.]

13:34 I want, in my late style, post-novelist period in my life to find out how others speak, how to not be involved in barbarism.

Ein Saga *

In my latest post for Langley Esquire (Link) I note that the party makeup of the Kagoshima Prefectural Assembly left no doubt of as to the outcome of the vote on the Sendai reactor restarts.

So how does the Kagoshima assembly stack up against the assemblies of the prefectures hosting the reactors most likely to next come up for a vote? Where else will restart approval be a foregone conclusion?

A little chart of the party allegiances of the seat holders in the assemblies of the five prefectures with reactors most likely to next come up for restart approval, based upon data I collected from the websites of the assemblies.


Click on image to open in a larger format.

Stunning, ne? Makes one wonder whether or not Saga Prefecture has a law making it illegal to run for office if one belongs to a major party other than the LDP.

Later - An anonymous commenter point how erroneous was my the anomalous result. Thank you anonymous commenter! I have replaced the former image with a corrected one.

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* For the reference, there is YouTube.

T'is true, I am inordinately fond of Sibelius.

What To Call The New Order

I was asked a few months back what we should be calling the Japanese political order in the aftermath of the July House of Councillors election, whether it is indeed the return of the "1.5 Party System" of old. The phrase "1.5 Party System" is a demeaning* and easily apprehended international version of what was domestically called "the 1955 System," after the year the two factions of the Socialists on the left and the Liberal Party and the Japan Democratic Party on the right merged to form two large left/right divide parties, with the right dominant due to the left's division into Socialist and Communist camps. I responded that a better term for the current situation would be a 1.0 Party System. Under the 1955 system, the Socialists could tie up Diet business in a serious way and had to be paid off to an extent the term "1.5 Party System" leaves unclear. "1.5 Party System" indeed undersells the political threat that the Socialists posed (which the LDP neutralized in a whole host of shoddy ways, including absurd levels of disproportion in between rural and urban voting districts). However, the "0.5" in the "1.5" does give the Socialists at least some heft -- which they had.

After last year's House of Representatives election and the July election the rump opposition parties in the Diet are little more than confused noise machines without any power to foment change. Hence my suggestion of a "1.0 System" moniker.

The image of an utterly powerless opposition (the 0 in the 1.0 expression) is obviously an exaggeration. The general concept is not, however, entirely without merit. Leadership of Japan's small but dogged anti-nuclear power and anti-secrecy bill forces, the current most prominent movements challenging the government's attempts to sweep problems under the rug and move on, comes almost entirely from outside the Diet.

I have been and will continue using the 1.0 System expression, having possibly coined it. However, one sees in the news media the indigenous expression ikkyo tajaku (一強多弱 - "one strong, many weak"), an expansion of the standard expression ikkyo meaning "dominant." I have seen the four character compound used on NHK and I think TBS network broadcasts. Here is a letter to editor of The Asahi Shimbun that uses the phrase, though the first character is replaced by the Arabic numeral 1.

When written in kanji the expression ikkyo tajaku is both visually arresting and easily understood. However, what is/would be the elegant and succint English translation?

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

* Speaking of demeaning, why did the author insert a denigration of Japanese tech praxis in this article on South Korean reverse engineering of U.S. military technology?

No Nukes, Again

The morning papers are reminding me that as of tomorrow when the Oi #4 reactor goes offline for maintenance, Japan will once again be without nuclear-generated electrical power. (Link - J)

Paul Scalise (a friend) argues frequently, forcefully and plausibly that the continued shutdowns of the country's nuclear power plants imperils the finances and indeed the existence of the nation's power companies (Link - the text, not the video). Business scholar Ulrike Schaede, somewhat less plausibly, argues that Abenomics will fail without reactor restarts. (Link)

As for what the public thinks, the most recent Asahi Shimbun opinion poll, conducted September 7 and 8, finds 26% of the public in favor of reactor restarts, and 56% opposed (Link - J). The monthly NHK poll, conducted September 6, 7 and 8, found 22% in favor, 41% opposed and 34% undecided on the restarts, even under the proviso that the restarts would be of reactors meeting new, stricter Nuclear Regulation Authority safety guidelines. (Link)

Most of the public feels cautious about accepting official statements regarding the safety of operation of the nuclear power stations. There is also seemingly a great deal of skepticism about pronouncements of doom should the reactors continue to be kept offline. That the power grid has not collapsed, and the economy crumpled, after probably the hottest spring and summer on record, puts a dent in the credibility of those arguing for restarts even if public opinion is against them.

A pair of senryu and accompanying cartoons on that subject:

原発が
いらぬと分かる
夏終わる

Genpatsu ga
iranu to wakaru
natsu owaru

Learning that we do not need
nuclear reactors
a summer ends

(by "Michi" of Suginami City, published in the Tokyo Shimbun of 7 September 2013)

酷暑にも
電力不足の
声はなし

Kokusho ni mo
denryoku fusoku no
koe nashi

Despite the blistering heat
of a lack of electric power
no voice is heard

(by Koyano Takeshi of Higashiyamato City, published in the Tokyo Shimbun of 31 August 2013)

In the case of the latter poen, the cartoonist has drawn a dog with a mouth, nose and eyes that together form the corporate logo of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Link). It is sweating bullets beneath a burning sun. Despite its suffering, however, it does not bark or howl -- a seeming extended reference to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous dog that did not bark in the Sherlock Holmes story "Silver Blaze."

An aside, but one of the striking attributes of the humorous verses and cartoons published in the Tokyo Shimbun is how many of them require a knowledge of non-Japanese music or literature, international affairs or English to understand. However, neither the Tokyo Shimbun nor its parent the Chunichi Shimbun do any publishing in English. The upshot is that the products of the Japanese news organizations whose outlook and shared culture would be most recognizable to non-Japanese readers remain locked up behind the wall of the Japanese language.

Funny, that.

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Image courtesies: Tokyo Shimbun

Me Talking About India-Japan Nuclear Power Cooperation

Via Voice of America. (Link)

My family name, however, is pronounced "Chew-check." You can find us primarily in Slovenia and Croatia.

A Gift For The Nuclear Village

The restart of nuclear reactors in this blessed land has run up against a number of hurdles. One is the possibly intentional slow pace at which local communities around the nation's nuclear plants are drawing up evacuation plans (Link – J). Another has been the unwillingness of commissions of experts to declare inactive the seismic faults that run through nation's reactor sites.

Those wanting to throw doubt on the assessments of these seismic experts received a huge gift yesterday:

Fault researcher admits error / Team analyzing Tachikawa geology misidentified material
The Yomiuri Shimbun

Researchers who surveyed the Tachikawa fault reiterated apologies at a press conference Thursday for errors they made in their analysis.

"We're very sorry for having caused confusion," one researcher said. The team was found to have made such mistakes as erroneously identifying man-made material as rock.

Local governments concerned accepted the development in a coolheaded manner, but told residents to continue preparing for earthquakes that could be caused by the fault.

Prof. Hiroshi Sato of the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute, who wrongly judged the geological structure of the Tachikawa fault, repeatedly apologized for the mistake.

Tatsuya Ishiyama, an assistant professor of the institute who conducted the analysis with Sato, said, "I'm very sorry for causing confusion among local residents and communities."

Regarding the factors that lead to the erroneous judgment, Sato said, "There were artificial materials at a site where I assumed I'd find the fault."

Sato also has engaged in the examination of faults on the grounds of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Higashidori nuclear power plant, on which a team of examiners compiled a report in February that said it is highly likely they are active faults.

Asked whether he will resign from the research team, Sato said: "If I'm urged to resign for being unqualified, I will quit. But once I accept an appointment, I want to fulfill my responsibilities as a researcher."

As geological experts have predicted that a 7.4-magnitude could strike the Tachikawa fault, killing as many as 2,600 people, residents are highly interested in the research. When the research site opened to the public in February, more than 10,000 people visited.

The central government provided about 100 million yen a year in subsidies for the research, with about 23 million yen already spent on drilling and other work.

The research team said it will restart the analysis using other data such as older geological charts…

(Link)

Professor Sato did himself no favors at the press conference. From the clips shown on television, his attitude was of bemusement at his misidenfication of the concrete foundations of the former Nissan assembly plant as a natural rock feature demonstrating the likely active state of the Tachikawa Fault.

Shame? OK. Defiance? OK. Bemusement? Probably not so OK.

What would have been Professor Sato's reaction to one of his undergrads presenting a paper misidentifying concrete as a natural formation? An "A" for effort?

The pro-nuclear Sankei newspaper has quite reasonably jumped all over the news of Sato's blunder. By the dastardly and utterly fair tactic of reprinting Sato's definitive statements on the activity of faults, including the incredible claim yesterday that the fault under the Totsu Higashidori Nuclear Power Station is "active without any doubt" –- and noting that Sato is a rotating member of the team of experts investigating the seismic faults underlying the nation's nuclear power plants -- it pretty much detonates the credibility of the team's assessments. (Link – J)

Science is about a willingness to make mistakes, with compensatory measures to catch and identify them. As one earthquake fault researcher points out in the Sankei article, "It often happens that there are differences of opinion over whether, at a given location, a fault is there or not. That is why verification from a number of experts is necessary before a judgment can be delivered."

However, lay understanding of science is that years of training and the scientific method winnow out the possibility of making mistakes, especially boneheaded ones like mistaking concrete for rock.

In this instance, it is hard to fault (pun unintended) the lay understanding of how science should work.

As to the decision to make the fully funded Tachikawa Fault investigation into a public spectacle ("When the research site opened to the public in February, more than 10,000 people visited.") -- that just redefines idiocy downward.

Later - Via the offices of The Japan Times comes the Kyodo News version of the debacle. (Link)

A New Union Of Forces Of The Left

The slapdash creation yesterday of the Japan Party of the Future (Nippon Mirai no To) in part answers the heretofore burning question, "Where is the umbrella party of the left, the correlate of the Liberal Democratic Party as the umbrella party of the center-right, now that the ruling Democratic Party of Japan has effectively expelled all of its anti-consumption tax, anti-nuclear power and anti-Trans Pacific Partnership members?" (Link)

Funny how political realignment, which was assumed was going to result in urban, free-market, multilateralist, liberals facing off against rural, crony-capitalist, bilateral relations and traditional social policy conservatives has become a four-way fight between parties and close allies with market socialism, social conservatism, activist foreign policy, regressive social policy, patriotism, fiscal rectitude, loose monetary policy, subsidies and education reform all in a jumble.

Considering how many parties have formed and disappeared over the last two weeks, it is not out of place to wonder whether the voters will be given enough time to discern what the various electoral alliances stand for.

The whole mad process of creating viable electoral groupings should end on December 4, when the final party lists are announced. Politicians have become so addicted to rebranding, however, that they may still be redefining themselves during their last speeches in the final hours of December 15.

Hashimoto Toru Says No

One of Abe Shinzo's main selling points, if not his only one in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election, was his purportedly having mesmerized Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru. The conventional wisdom was that if any one of the five candidates in presidential contest was going to work out an entente with Hashimoto's Japan Restoration Party, it was going to be Abe.

Post-House of Representatives election, maybe. Pre-election? No.

Hashimoto went out of his way yesterday to tell a grand lie on Abe's behalf, saying that he was a trustworthy politician:

"I have great expectations for him. I believe him a politician in whom one can place one's trust. I would like to for him to pull the LDP in his wake."

(Link - J)

He also noted that in terms of reform of the constitution, he and Abe were on the same page.

Unfortunately for those in the LDP who were hoping that the 42 year-old Hashimoto would defer in awe to his 58 year-old senior, Hashimoto also noted that the JNR's commitment to the Trans Pacific Partnership and the phaseout of the use of nuclear power were at odds with the LDP's positions on these issues.

As for the all-important matter of election cooperation, Hashimoto dumped a bucketful of ice water on the concept, saying that JNR, which formally begins operations on Friday, will run a candidate in every district possible, irrespective of the LDP's candidate in that district. (J)

Ostensibly Hashimoto's promise means that the JNR could field a candidate in Abe's Yamaguchi #4 district -- not that that would be a very wise move in terms of a post-election bargaining position.

Hashimoto's promise also means that old wine LDP and fresh face JNR candidates could split the right-leaning vote, allowing the centrist Democratic Party of Japan candidates to sneak away with the districts.

Not a pleasant thought for the LDP membership.

As for fresh faces, the JNR secretariat is looking at capping the number of Diet members allowed to flee to the party at around 15 (J). JNR leaders are aware that the party can hardly present itself as an insurgent movement if its ranks are stuffed with retreads from the LDP, DPJ and Your Party. Nine current members of the Diet sat in on the JNR's most recent policy roundtable. These nine are slated to be introduced as party candidates at Friday's unveiling.

JNR leaders are also aware that the party relies on its early converts and those who enrolled in Hashimoto's juku for both ground forces and funding. With the party refusing corporate and union donations, and ineligible for public funding until April of next year, it needs to dangle candidacies as rewards for the sacrifices party workers and supporters must make.

On Sino-American Nuclear Talks

For further relief from the Sturm und Drang views of East Asian issues, Jeffrey Lewis (full disclosure: I had dinner under the tracks of the Yamanote Line with Dr. Lewis a few years back) offers his eminently readable take on the issue of strategic stability in between the United States and China.

Dr. Lewis always writes on the bright side of life, an attitude that has served him well save in one instance -- that funny box on the Euphrates that turned out to be a North Korean-built Syrian nuclear reactor (with the current violence and chaos in Syria, is anyone sending the Israelis chocolate or flowers thanking them for having bombed that absurdity out of existence?).

Dr. Lewis should come to Tokyo more often and get better press. With the jousting over the Senkakus and yes-we-will-no-we-won't dispute over nuclear power phaseout, a lot of uninformed nonsense about nuclear weapons is issuing from the mouths of individuals who really should be keeping their thoughts to themselves.

To The Nuclear Non-Option, An Addendum

After linking to the Associated Press' decidedly unsatisfactory report on discussions of Japan's nuclear reactors and the latent nuclear weapons capability they represent, it is only fair and proper to link to a worthwhile read.

This would be the update from the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) on Japan's civilian highly-enriched uranium (HEU) programs.

Civilian HEU: Japan

Now this is the real deal. Plutonium is nasty stuff and difficult to transform into big bang weapons (just ask the North Koreans). HEU is nasty stuff and way too easy to transform into big bang weapons.

Where does Japan have its HEU? The update page lists four locations.

Yes, I too hope these sites are well guarded.

The Nuclear Non-Option

Yuri Kageyama has an interesting article out about the relationship between Japan's currently crippled civilian nuclear power program and Japan's need for a virtual nuclear weapon capability:

Japan’s muted pro-bomb voices become louder as nation debates phasing out nuclear power
Associated Press

TOKYO — A contentious debate over nuclear power in Japan is bringing another question out of the shadows: Should Japan keep open the possibility of making nuclear weapons — even if only as an option?

It may seem surprising in the only country devastated by atomic bombs, particularly as it marks the 67th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki three days later. The Japanese government officially renounces nuclear weapons, and the vast majority of citizens oppose them.

But as Japan weighs whether to phase out nuclear power, some conservatives, including some influential politicians and thinkers, are becoming more vocal about their belief that Japan should have at least the ability to make nuclear weapons.

The two issues are intertwined because nuclear plants can develop the technology and produce the fuel needed for weaponry, as highlighted by concerns that Iran is advancing a nuclear power program to mask bomb development...

(Link)

Part of "interesting" is, sadly, sarcasm. The writing is often higgledy-piggledy, like the last paragraph quoted above. Until nuclear power plants grow arms and eyes, I would find it hard for any of them could develop any technology. Nuclear weaponry does not need fuel. And, as the Iranian nuclear fuel technology programs...oh forget, the paragraph is a lost cause.

Later in the article is the howler: "Japan has 45 tons of separated plutonium, enough for several Nagasaki-type bombs." As a commenter to the article has noted, 45 tons of separated plutonium can be converted in a bit more than "several" Nagasaki-type bombs.

As for the presumption behind the article, that defense and security commentators have heretofore been quiet about drawing a direct line between the operation of nuclear power plants and a nuclear deterrent, this is simply not true. Indeed, the article itself points out that an "outspoken" Ishihara Shintaro and Abe Shinzo have been asking for Japan to make more vigorous use of its virtual deterrent (Note to self: do not include in any argument evidence that contradicts the thesis).

The article concludes with this weird quote:

"If people keep saying (nuclear energy) is for having nuclear weapons capability, that is not good,” Suzuki said. “It's not wise. Technically it may be true [my emphasis - MTC], but it sends a very bad message to the international community."

When something is technically true, saying the opposite is technically false. Technically.

The end quote indicates the story that Kageyama has missed: that talking about a civilian nuclear power program as a virtual nuclear deterrent is just nuts.

In isolation, the position sounds rational: Japan is surrounded by nuclear weapons states; Japan needs a backstop should the U.S. withdraw its nuclear umbrella; North Korean threatens Japan so Japan should be able to pose an equal and opposite threat to North Korea; the international non-proliferation system, with its nuclear and non-nuclear states, is not only unequal, it has outliers and rogues like Israel, India and Pakistan who remain solidly encased in the international community.

However, the position cannot be put forward in isolation. When one tries to map out step-by-step scenarios where the U.S. abandons Japan, or where Japan unilaterally declares itself a nuclear weapons state, or where Japan pulls a South Africa/Israel assembled-in-secret trick -- and then one takes the further step of imagining how regional actors and the international community would react, one realizes one has fallen off the edge of the world.

To put in another way, Herman Kahn may have asked you to think the unthinkable, and you can flatter yourself thinking yourself up to that task. However, Aesop's much older Fables should remind us all that while, yes, having a bell on the cat would be nice...

The July Trade Deficit And The Green Movement

While in June, Japan's trade surplus, despite a 24.5% year-on-year increase in the imports of liquified natural gas for power generation, was 60 billion yen -- a minor decline from June 2011, when it was 64 billion yen (J). In the year to June, however, Japan's trade deficit was 2.9 trillion yen, up 103% from the previous 6 month span and greater than the trade deficit for all of 2011. Fuel imports were up 21% in the first 6 months of this year, with LNG imports up a hefty 49.4%. (J)

The trade deficit in July, however, is likely to be even more stunning. With utilities and independent power producers possibly trying to stock up before the worst days of summer, the deficit for just the first half of July was a colossal 368 billion yen. Given unceasing heat waves this blessed land has experience over the second half of this month, it would not surprise if the deficit in July is greater than one quarter of the deficit over the first half of the year. (J)

Headlines regarding a massive importation and burning of fossil fuels for electric power generation will certain provide grist for the mills of those who wish to disparage the anti-nuclear movement. It will be hard to argue for a cessation of the use of nuclear power generation, as the Green Party, established on Saturday, has demanded (J) in this atmosphere. In light of Japan's burgeoning LNG addiction, absolutism about nuclear power is likely to garner the mockery of the news media, the Noda government and the industrial establishment.

The Green Party (Midori no to -- not to be confused with Midori no kaze, the four woman, anti-nuclear, anti-TPP caucus in the House of Councillors) hopes to run district and party list candidates in next summer's House of Councillors election. As for the next House of Representatives election, whenever it is held, the Greens hope to present a list of candidates for the proportional election, while possibly lending support to the candidates of existing and like-thinking parties in the districts.

The existence of a third anti-nuclear party in the proportional voting is bad, bad news for both the SDP and LF. The SDP could conceivably fall beneath the five Diet-member limit for a party eligible for public elections funds. With Green support, however, some of the SDP members fighting for district seats might gain an edge.

Unlike the SDP, the LF has enough viable candidates in the district seats that the Green Party's participation in a House of Representatives election does not pose an existential threat. Nevertheless the LF, with its opportunistic rather than ideological stance against nuclear power, has to worry about a Green Party's whittling votes in the proportional race. The LF's sizable proportional seat contingent in the House of Representatives could face annihilation.

The Greens set out with significant barriers to their affecting policies in the way the party wishes. They will have a hard time fighting an image of anti-nuclear fanaticism. They will also splinter the anti-nuclear movement, paradoxically serving the interests of the moderately-pro-nuclear ruling Democratic Party and the strongly pro-nuclear Liberal Democratic Party.

By the time Hashimoto Toru's Osaka Ishin no kai enters the ring, assuming Hashimoto Toru emerges from his current funk (J) and assuming Hashimoto still wishes to take on national politics after the parties in the Diet went on their knees yesterday, promising to transform Osaka Prefecture into a Metropolitan District by the end of August (J) -- and given Hashimoto's pragmatic "opposed but oh well we need it right now" approach to nuclear power --the importance of the Greens to national politics will become somewhat clearer.

In Sunday's Yamaguchi Prefecture gubernatorial election, Hashimoto's anti-nuclear advisor Iida Tetsuya Tetsunari, campaigning against the completion of the Kaminoseki nuclear power station, finished a respectable second in a field of four, garnering an impressive 35% of the vote to 48% for the LDP-New Komeito backed winning candidate.

Iida's second-place finish and receipt of over a third of the vote was particularly impressive given he had only been in the race for a month; had no formal organization when he started; was practically a carpet bagger (he has not lived in the prefecture for 35 years); Yamaguchi is absolutely dominated by the LDP; and a former DPJ member was one of the other three candidates running.

Now interpreting the results as indicative of a strong anti-nuclear allergy, even the most conservative and public works-dependent of prefectures, might be premature. Nearly 50% of the public nationwide allies itself with no particular political party, meaning that a powerful anti-all established parties feeling already exists in the electorate. Both the LDP-New Komeito-back candidate and the former DPJ member candidates could have also been victims of an anti-MV-22 Osprey backlash, the controversial aircraft having been deployed last week to the U.S. Marine Corps base in Iwakuni.

The high percentage of the total vote Iida received may have also been aided by the low overall voter turnout. Gubernatorial elections have of late had notoriously low turnouts. Sunday's contest was no exception, attracting only attracted 45.32% of the electorate -- the second lowest percentage ever for the normally politically charged prefecture. (J)

Just what percentage of votes a protest candidate like Iida would win in a national contest, when participation numbers are much higher, is at best unclear.

However, it can be argued that Iida's participation likely sparked interest in what was going to be a lackluster contest, increasing voter participation. If slates of outsider candidates can lure to the polls those who would otherwise toss away their ballots, the LDP and the DPJ, but particulary the DPJ, will be in serious straits. The Noda government's rollout of the Oi reactor restarts was a fiasco, energizing as if with a lightning strike the previously somnolent anti-nuclear movement. All the DPJ, even those favoring a nuclear phase-out, are tarred with the brush of the Noda government's impossibly quick determination of the safety of the Oi reactors.

So what will be the color of the revolution, or at least this iteration of it?


Later - Here is the Nihon Keizai Shimbun report on the preliminary July first half trade figures making the same guess I did above. (J - WARNING - link rot sets in fast)

Much later - Many thanks to reader MP for his alert reading of this post.

Oh Please Just, Go Away

On Friday, former (thank Amaterasu) prime minister Hatoyama Yukio showed up in front of the Prime Minister's residence to show his support for the Friday evening anti-nuclear protests.

Hatoyama and Social Democratic Party leader Fukushima Mizuho -- the woman he fired when she would not approve his repudiation of his campaign promise to move the U.S. Marine Corps elements currently at Futenma to a location outside of Okinawa Prefecture.

Honestly, this man should be behind bars, not out on the streets.

During his premiership, his immediate underlings were discovered to be running a criminal enterprise, converting, through thousands of false transactions, taxable gift mountains of cash from his mother into bogus, non-taxable political donations, some, mysteriously and remarkably, from persons no longer living.

Ozawa Ichiro is roasted over the coals, and continues to be roasted over them, over a single loan he made to his own political organization where no taxes were evaded nor no illegal profits made.

Hatoyama gets to pay the back taxes on the gifts (600 million yen's worth of back taxes), his underlings get prison terms and he walks away scott-free.

My bad if I misunderstand the legal niceties involved, but was there not a requirement to investigate what Hatoyama knew and when it was that he did know it?

Had I been at the protest on Friday, I would have screamed "Kaere! seikyoku iranai!" * -- a sentiment seemingly shared, quietly, by some of the protest participants (J) -- or to get under Hatoyama's notoriously thin skin, insert Yosano Kaoru's deathless and dead-on epithet, delivered in Diet session two years ago (E):

"Kaere! Heisei datsuzei no o!" **

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* "Go Home! We don't need political maneuvering!"

** "Go Home! King of the Heisei Era tax evaders!"

Photo courtesy: Mainichijp

Where It's At At The Asahi

It may be just one long "just-so" story...but what a story!

Keio University professor Oguma Eiji offers The Asahi Shimbun's English-language AJW a rollicking, wide-ranging take on what's going on (Hurry up and copy, before link rot sets in).

Yes, Oguma's old university home page was way cooler.

The Nakatsugawa Mystery Solved, Or Ozawaism Without Ozawa

Well, that was fast.

In my post of yesterday, I was puzzled what Nakatsugawa Hirosato, a Tokyo Bloc proportional seat representative of the Democratic Party of Japan could be doing quitting the party to serve as an independent.

It turns out the answer depended on what one believes "independent" means.

If by independent one thinks "serving in the Diet without attachment to any party" then Nakatsugawa's resignation yesterday made no sense.

If, however, by independent one means "a label to paste upon oneself until the party one hopes to join organizes itself" then a proportional seat member throwing himself off the DPJ party list before the party got around to throwing him off itself makes complete sense.

As it turns out, Nakatsugawa seems to be the missing piece in the plans of Kiuchi Takatane, the first man out the door in the buildup to the passage of the consumption tax bill. Kiuchi, the Tokyo District #9 seatholder and a former Merrill Lynch partner, is The Big Money behind a new parliamentary caucus in the House of Representatives, just as Tanioka Kuniko is The Big Money behind the new Green Wind (Midori no kaze) caucus in the House of Councillors.

Kiuchi, it turns out, is further along in the process of building a party around himself than Tanioka. Nakatsugawa, if and when his resignation from the DPJ is accepted, would become the fifth member of the Kiuchi's new caucus, currently slated to be called "the Association of Reform Independents" (Kaikaku mushozokukai) (J). With five members the caucus could be converted into a formal party, eligible for public campaign funding and other goodies.

The caucus, which is to be launched today without Nakatsugawa's participation, is composed of Kiuchi, a North Kanto proportional seat holder, a South Kanto proportional seat holder (Nakatsugawa, if and when he joins, would complete a Kanto Plain trifecta) and Sato Yuko, a Nagoya District seat holder and former political secretary to current Nagoya City mayor and major loon Kawamura Takashi.

So on successive days the DPJ has seen defections tied to monied former members, both of whom were recruited by Ozawa Ichiro, each establishing proto-parties linked to neither the DPJ, the LDP nor Ozawa Ichiro's Livelihood Party.

It is impossible to tell how far either Kiuchi's or Tanioka's caucuses can go. Neither Tanioka's liberal (don't tax but spend) or Kiuchi's neo-liberal (don't tax and don't spend, indeed, cut) ideologies electrify the electorate. Tanioka is an irrepressible talker, so will have no problem in promoting Green Wind and keeping it in the public eye. Kiuchi's communication skills are so far unknown. Kiuchi's focus so far on the Kanto Plain area, where Watanabe Yoshimi's Your Party has its base (and indeed, featuring a political philosophy which is nearly indistinguishable from Watanabe's), and Tanioka's only having women in her caucus are hurdles both incipient leaders will have to overcome before either caucus can become a significant new forces in politics, both which in their essences seem to be competing flavors of Ozawaism-without-Ozawa.

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* In my post yesterday about the Green Wind, I did not acknowledge the association of Green Wind with Die Grünen and other Green parties in Europe. While the association is there, particularly in Green Wind's anti-nuclear stance, the connection of green with wind in a caucus of the House of Councillors is the stronger precedent. The House of Councillors has had the Furyokukai ("Wind-Green-Association") and then the Shinfuryokukai ("New-Wind-Green-Association"). The latter association formed a joint caucus with the DPJ only to be absorbed into it, leaving only the name of the caucus -- The Democratic Party Of Japan and New Wind Green Association Caucus -- as a reminder of the Shinfuryokai's existence.

Sayonara Genpatsu Rally, Yoyogi Park, July 16, 2012

Prime Minister Loach is asked, and not politely either, to not forget the suffering of Fukushima Prefecture.

In the end I was only able to spend around 15 minutes at the rally, capturing a few crowd shots and the beginnings of one of the three marches out of the park. I never got near the main stage.

( Slideshow )

Two items:

- the organizers claimed 170,000 demonstrators at the rally; the police estimate 75,000. I presume the real number was somewhere near the midpoint. I was at the rally -- but only for 15 minutes. The main assembly area is also a major thoroughfare from Shibuya to Yoyogi. Who was attending and who was just transiting?

- Union participation was strong (the above image is of the back of a Tokyo metropolitan railway union man). On the 28th of June Japanese Trade Union Confederation (RENGO) chairman Koga Nobuaki warned at a Liberal Democratic Party of Japan event that the support of his organization may be up for grabs. If the unions are free agents, due the DPJ's backtracking on its social welfare promises and the imposition of a rise in the consumption tax, then the party loses not just a big chunk of its base but much of its on-the-ground organizational strength.

Blue Ocean, Blue Skies?

Today is Ocean Day, a national holiday. It is a day where we are expected to reflect upon the ocean, what great gifts she has given us and how much she means to us (as one wag once put it to me, the national goal is "Let's Ocean!"). Of course, having three-day weekend just days before the school year's summer break is daft -- but then July did not have a national holiday of its own...

Sakamoto Ryuichi and Oe Kenzaburo are leading an anti-nuclear demonstration today in Yoyogi Park. Organizers hope to draw 100,000 persons to the event. (Poster - J)

I might attend, on proliferation and radioactive waste disposal grounds. No one has ever found reasonable solutions to those two problems.

Of course, if I were the GE gas turbine division chief or the gas turbine division chief of any of the Heavies, I would require my employees to attend, with the division providing the sushi, beer, non-alcoholic alternatives and mandatory sky-blue tarp.

Photo image: the Geo-Cosmos globe at the Miraikan, Koto City, Tokyo Metropolitan District.

Image courtesy: MTC