First Read - 7 March 2015

Screenshot of 6 March 2015 NHK morning news caricature of U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and East Asian leaders unable to sit down and talk because of discord over history in this year, the 70th anniversary of the final year of World War II.

- There is a huge amount to like in Professor Jennifer Lind's essay for the Council on Foreign Relations on the prospects for warming Japan-Republic of Korea ties (Link). However, the essay does not emphasize strongly enough how the current frozen state of ties, the government of South Korea having, or pretending to have, concerns in common with the government of China as regards Japan, furthers the ROK's best interests. One would only has to consider the hypothetical of an East Asia without a Japan to realize there is nothing fundamental to the current Sino-ROK warmth, that the ROK would be in a perilous position indeed if not for the focus Japan's presence provides.

Rather than offer hints about Japan-ROK spring, Professor Lind should have hammered away at the likelihood of a long frost.

The knife attack this week on U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert (Link) and the government of Japan's revision of its description of the ROK on the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs website from "a neighboring country with whom we share common values of liberty, democracy and free markets" to "most important neighbors to each other" (sic) - Link J - video) may be harbingers of change in the ROK's heretofore rather cushy position in East Asian politics. The U.S. government has been fairly tolerant toward the ROK government's and civil society's anti-Japanese radicalism, allowing South Korean activists to push past the envelope of what are normally acceptable expressions of historical anger. The government of Japan has also been mild in its responses to violence against its diplomats and citizens. The GOJ clearly has had enough of the ROK's special status. The US Gov may be less automatic in its support as well.

- The big story in the news today is the general positive noises coming out of the bilateral talks in between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito on the legal framework for an exercise of the right of self-defense (Link). The Komeito is purportedly signaling an understanding of the LDP position in the aggregate. The LDP's coalition partner needs more specifics about the levels of response to distant attacks that might threaten the safety of Japan. (Link - J)

The LDP has to be feeling pretty good about the Komeito's mild distress at this point. With the Unified Local Elections coming up on April 12 and April 26, the Komeito should be in the position to arm wrestle the LDP into moderating or even abandoning its more ambitious security proposals. That the Komeito is merely reticent at this point bodes well for major Komeito retreats in May.

- The really big story on security on Friday was the Cabinet Decision on changing the structure of the Defense Ministry giving uniformed, active-duty officers of the Self Defense Forces direct access to the Ministery of Defense (Link). Arguments for the change are feeble: there is no evidence the requirement that the requirement to work with the "suits gang" (sebiro gumi) prevented the "uniform gang" (seifuku gumi) from acting or offering their views to the minister or director-general. Arguments against the change are the results of memory, both in terms of the nation in general and the Self Defense Forces in particular. The current structure has been supported, like the determination of the unconstitutionality of the exercise of collective self-defense, by generations of prime ministers. That the minister leading the change, Nakatani Gen, is a former member of the Ground Self Defense Forces, makes the change look less like a reform and more like a rejection of the reality of history.

In a broader sense, I am beginning to think that "escape from the postwar regime" means "in our future, there will be no history."

The change is still only a proposition. Like the 1 July 2014 Cabinet Decision on collective self-defense, it is not enshrined in legislation. Like the July 1 Decision, it is the subject of withering criticism from the opposition parties.

However, like the July 1 Decision, any delay or modification in the implementation of the plan depends upon the Komeito's intestinal fortitude.

First Read - 6 March 2015

- The knife attack yesterday on U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert (Link) immediately brought to mind the much more serious stabbing of U.S. Ambassador Edwin Reischauer in Tokyo on 24 March 1964 (Link). However, seemingly only to my mind, as a Google News search of "Reischauer" in katakana returns nothing more recent than reports of the visit of Dr. Kent Calder of the Reischauer Center.

For those historically minded, Dr. George R. Packard, the author of book in the above link and Ambassador Reischauer's special assistant, is still with us. Someone should try to contact him for historical perspective -- especially because he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the Ampo disturbances.

- For those of us who were wondering, "When only about 33% of those in their twenties vote in national elections, what is the point of lowering the voting age from 20 to 18 years-of-age for national referendums on constitution revisions?" the Liberal Democratic Party let the other shoe drop yesterday. The LDP unveiled plans to have all definitions of adulthood lowered to 18 years of age -- in particular the right to charge (and presumably, in the case of murder, execute) youths 18 and 19 years-of-age as adults. "With rights must come responsibilities (gimu)" intoned LDP policy research chief Inada Tomomi, repeating the conservatives' mantra regarding the Constitution.

That this proposition comes amidst then nation's horror at the murder of 13 year old Uemura Ryota by a gang of youths led by an 18 year old is a mere coincidence.

The Komeito and opposition parties are deeply skeptical about the LDP's plans, saying that changing the legal definition of childhood goes far beyond discussions the parties have had on the subject of altering the franchise. (Link - J)

Just what the LDP has been thinking on the issue of lowering the voting age, aside from a bizarre, "if we can lower the voting age AND change the education system to inculcate hyperpatriotism, making younger voters more ready to vote for us AND we can hang the killer of Uemura Ryota, we will be invincible!" is a mystery.

Then again, what the other parties cooperating on the bill lowering the voting age are thinking is equally mysterious.

As for Inada, a wild, wild guess: though no hint of this has escaped Abe Shinzo's lips, he wants her or Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Taka'ichi Sanae to succeed him as prime minister.

My First Hate Tweet

Over the weekend, non-Japanese media sites published a number of articles and opinion pieces on the proliferation and dissemination over Japan's Internet of hundreds of altered images of the Islamic State hostage video. The authors of the pieces found the images "hilarious" or even thrilling, exhibiting sense of nonchalant defiance of the IS attempt to terrorize the Japanese people.

If only.

Anyone with even a smidgeon of knowledge of Japan, seeing only a handful of the images being rebroadcast and interpreted by these authors (the images are horrible -- I will not provide a link to them but this Japan Times article does) would know in an instant what these things are.

They are not humor.

They are not admirable defiance.

They are the products of the diseased, restless minds of Japan's worst racists.

We have seen all this poorly executed garbage before. Where the black-clad figure of the knife-wielding militant now stands, we have seen a multitude of modified images of South Korean president Park Geun-hye (and Lee Myungbak and Roo Moo-hyuun before her) and of Chinese president Xi Jinping (and Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin before him). The nation's league of sick hatemongers have just taken a slight detour into territories in which underinformed non-Japanese find their bretheren in prejudice and ignorance.

Consider the alternative explanation: Japan's heretofore non-hate spewing, non-image altering masses have suddenly taken on the habits of the habitual hatemongers for just this one hostage crisis.

Right.

Ticked off at the misapprehension of Japanese society I tweeted an irritated conjecture:

I wonder if media types would be so fawning http://t.co/0KZM7XQqzs if they found out JPN creators honed skills in anti-China/Korea imagery
— Michael Thomas Cucek (@MichaelTCucek) January 25, 2015

I should not have been surprised -- but nevertheless was -- that within the hour, a Twitter user posted a hate tweet in response, one that creatively alludes to the decapitation of Yukawa Haruna, the Korean consumption of dog meat and the supposed fates of folks like me who look under the rocks of this blessed land to see what is lurking beneath:



Really attractive, no?

I do not enjoy being right in my guesses about how low the human spirit can sink. I must, however, admit a certain intellectual satisfaction at having guessed the origins of the current grotesquery.

As for anyone seeking to follow up on this morning's entertainment via a malicious email, don't bother. Some soul sent me wonderful malware last year hoping to set my computer to melting or burning. To him or her, be it know that my laptop was a Toshiba. So it ran fine. Incredibly HOT but fine -- right through a Tokyo summer.

To anyone who might wish to emulate that charitable contribution to my computer's software, I no longer open my mail on an any device I would feel sad to lose.

So thanks again "jjjj" for confirming this morning that I may not be entirely wrong in being cautious.

Where The Wind Blows

Michael Penn thinks out loud and clearly about the right of this spring. (Link)

As for the drop-dead fantastic photo image at the head of the piece, what matters Hitler to them, or them to Hitler?

Oh, in case you did not catch it, the donor of the 137 books on The Diary of Anne Frank to the Tokyo Central Library, to be distributed to the libraries which lost books to vandals, is one Sugihara Chiune. He lives, evidently -- staff at the Central Library got to speak with "Mr. Sugihara" on the telephone. Reports of his death in 1986 appear to have been exaggerated. (Link - J)

Unsurprsingly, there are now reports that among the 300+ copies of "Anne Frank's 'Diary' and related works" with pages ripped out are books primarily on Sugihara. Upsetting this is to folks in Gifu. (Link - J video)