Very Kind Of Him #56

Even though the disputes Stephen Harner and I have over Chinese international conduct and the outlook for a Pax Sinica can only be described "volcanic," Mr. Harner was incredibly kind to me the other day, mentioning my East Asia Forum post in his latest essay for Forbes. (Link)

As one example of my differences with Mr. Harner's assertions, I cannot see how Japan's national interest would be served by its joining in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. I do know that Japan's interest is served by not closing the door on Japan's participation at some later date, which Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide has done by saying that "Japan has no plans to participate at the present time." (Link - J Video)

Oh, maybe participate, someday. Just not today.

Comprendo, mi amigo?

Very Kind Of Them #55 - Straight Out Of Coffee Edition

A non-appearance (phone only) appearance on Channel News Asia.

Monday's collapse of service on Tobu Railways's Nikko Line (memo to me: I think* Tobu Railways is an absolutely terrible company) left me far from my computer and Skype, with the battery on my phone at near empty.

With the recording window immanent, I stepped off the train at X Station, went to the local Major International Coffee House Chain outlet, bought a mug of coffee, plugged in my near dead phone into one of the complimentary electrical outlets and asked to talk to the manager.

Manager Y was a magnificently self possessed young woman, who at no point seemed fazed by a crazed, backpack-toting hiker babbling about doing a smartphone Skype broadcast from her store. She had me explain twice what I wanted to try to do, told me that company policy allows no video recording without explicit permission from headquarters -- so a Skype call with video was a no-no -- but if I wanted to talk on the phone to a international television network about South Korea-Japan relations in the 50th anniversary year of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, sure, she would be happy to turn down the volume of the music in the packed store for the quarter-to-half an hour I might be talking to the host in Singapore.

Which is what she did.

Thanks also to the network, for their flexibility, patience and professionalism. The staff improvised, pulling down from the Web the picture of me from almost a decade ago and pasting it to a photo of Mt. Fuji with cherry blossoms (full disclosure: I am not a big sakura fan) to make up for the lack of a Skype video feed.

Please check out the result.




----------------------------------------------
* My friends with legal backgrounds have explained to me that sticking a superfluous "I think" in front of a statement makes it an opinion and thus not legally actionable. Not having the "I think" (it is my blog, who else would be doing the thinking?) could be considered either slander or libel.

How The Comfort Women Came Into Being: A Sketch Of A Racial/Legal Entity

Yes, they really called it that.

Imperialism and racial fears and sex and commerce and legalism mix badly, it turns out.

International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic (4 May 1910)

Article 1

Whoever, in order to gratify the passions of another person, has procured, enticed, or led away, even with her consent, a woman or girl under age, for immoral purposes, shall be punished, notwithstanding that the various acts constituting the offence may have been committed in different countries.

Article 2

Whoever, in order to gratify the passions of another person, has, by fraud, or by means of violence, threats, abuse of authority, or any other method of compulsion, procured, enticed, or led away a woman or girl over age, for immoral purposes, shall also be punished, notwithstanding that the various acts constituting the offence may have been committed in different countries.

(...)

(Link)

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

International Convention for the Suppression of the Trafficking of Women and Children (30 September 1921)

Article 1.

The High Contracting Parties agree that, in the event of their not being already Parties to the Agreement of May 18, 1904, and the Convention of May 4, 1910, mentioned above, they will transmit, with the least possible delay, their ratifications of, or adhesions to, those instruments in the manner laid down therein.

Article 2.

The High Contracting Parties agree to take all measures to discover and prosecute persons who are engaged in the traffic in children of both sexes and who commit offences within the meaning of Article i of the Convention of May 4, 1910.

Article 3.

The High Contracting Parties agree to take the necessary steps to secure the punishment of attempts to commit, and, within legal limits, of acts preparatory to the commission of, the offences specified in Articles 1 and 2 of the Convention of May 4, 1910.

[Snip]

Article 14.

Any Member or State signing the present Convention may declare that the signature does not include any or all of its colonies, overseas possessions, protectorates or territories under its sovereignty or authority, and may subsequently adhere separately on behalf of any such colony, overseas possession, protectorate or territory so excluded in its declaration.

[Snip]

Japan: The undersigned delegate of Japan ... declares that his signature does not include Chosen, Taiwan and the leased territory of Kwantung.

HAYASHI

(Link)

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

The government of Japan eventually acceded to the 1921 Convention in 1925. It expanded the original list of exempt territories to include Japan's South Pacific trust territories and the Japanese half of Sakhalin Island. (Link)

So, according to treaty, someone tricking a Japanese woman or woman residing in Japan into transport abroad to serve as a prostitute, or using force to do same, was illegal.

Tricking a Taiwanese or Korean woman or child, or even having a Taiwanese or Korean child go voluntarily, was not illegal.

If you were in the procurement business, let us say for a large institutional client who also was in charge of regulating said business, where and how would go about your business?

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

The comfort women system was not sui generis, a product of diseased national mindset. It was in many ways an unintended consequence of international conventions put forth by Europeans attempting to prevent women of European extraction ending up in the brothels of brown-skinned peoples -- and Europeans not being confident they had the resources or legal precedent to extend the writ of those conventions to the many peoples and cultures residing in their colonies. Europeans, because they were racists, unthinkingly opened a huge hole in the first international trafficking agreements -- which Japanese and the Japanese military, because they were not racists, proceeded to exploit.

Imperialism and colonialism were the roots of the problem though. It was these fundamental insults to human dignity and human life that made the best intentions and noble sentiments go wildly astray.

Very Kind Of Them #18

Kirk Spitzer asked me a few questions about the Obama visit last week, particularly why there was not a clear public delineations of differences as to history, or at least not during the time President Obama was in Tokyo:

"Obama signals deepening commitment to Japan, Abe"

I tossed out a few more ideas, which perhaps I should post sometime later this week.

Flowers For Korekiyo

)

Today is the 78th anniversary of the 2/26 Incident (Ni-ni-roku jiken). (Link)

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has been relying on Takahashi Korekiyo as the guide star and historical anchor for his Abenomics economics policies (Link). Do you think the PM has sent flowers to the old man's grave today or to his statue in the park next to the Canadian Embassy, the site where the soldiers found him and killed him?

I was trying to think the other day of what Abe could do to demonstrate that his 'escape for the postwar regime' is more than just a glorification of the Meiji State. "What could he do to repudiate the course the country took under the Meiji Constitution?" I asked myself. "Perhaps he could reverse a historical wrong, proving that he is not in thrall to the myth of a virile and respected pre-1945 Japan."

I tried to think how far back in time one would have to go for Abe Shinzo to be able to admit, "OK, what the government did there was wrong."

"If not apologies for the invasion of China, not the assassination of Zhang Zuolin, not the annexation of Korea, how about a partdon of Kotoku Shusui, tried and executed in 1911 for the High Treason Incident of 1910? That was a domestic affair so there are no implications for Japan's current fraught relationships with its neighbors. And since it all happened over a hundred years ago, who could have any problem with it?"

Then I had to clap my hand to my forehead:

"Idiot! Of course there is someone who would have a problem with it. Member of the House of Representatives Hiranuma Takeo, Abe's Best Friend Forever and the co-leader of Abe's Sosei Nippon movement (Link) is the adopted son of Hiranuma Kiichiro - the prosecutor of the High Treason Incident defendants!"

One hundred and three years on...and hopeless impediments to realistic and healing assessments of history are still with us.

And now the sun is going down.

Abe Shinzo's World, Framed

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

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

If so, yesterday was an amazing day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Presentations Of Great Importance On Abenomics

There are two must-not-miss presentations at Temple University, Japan this month -- neither of which, paradoxically, I can attend.

But you, dear reader, possibly can.

- The one tonight (Link) has Richard Smethurst speaking about the man whose face should be on the 10,000 yen bill (pax, Fukuzawa Yukichi admirers). I have heard on the authority of one of the best lecturers I know that Dr. Smethurst is a solid speaker. As for Takahashi Korekiyo, about whom Dr. Smethurst wrote the book, his brilliance, humanity and death haunt me. That the government of Abe Shinzo has sought to align itself and its economic policies on the side of the angels by linking Abenomics to Takahashi is both thrilling and disquieting.

- On November 29, Naomi Fink, CEO of Europacifica Consulting, will be speaking on Abenomics and the wealth gap. (Link)

Why you should go, even if the subject matter or time slot are outside your comfort zone?

Simple: wherever the room and whatever its size, Ms. Fink is almost certainly the smartest person in it.

You will learn about this blessed land.

Pronouncing Patriotism

In a post of a few days back -- which lost me the readership of an old friend but won me thanks from one of three Japan political scientists whose opinions I care about -- I reported on the national broadcaster NHK and its seeming struggles with the pronunciation of the name of the country, whether it is "Nihon" or "Nippon."

I noted in the post that former DPJ House of Representatives member Iwakuni Tetsundo had gone so far as to put the question of the pronunciation of the country's name to the government, to which the Aso Cabinet responded, officially, that "Nihon" and "Nippon" are equally correct. I promised at the time that I would try to find out from Iwakuni-sensei himself the reasons why he asked for a government assertion of the correct pronunciation of the country's name.

Yesterday, in an email, Iwakuni-sensei responded. His response was much longer and detailed than I anticipated. As a consequence I will post the gist of it here, rather that merely insert a few words into the earlier post, as I promised.

Iwakuni-sensei starts out by saying that the question he submitted to the Cabinet on June 19, 2009 (Link - J) speaks for itself. However, his interest in the pronunciation question was piqued by discussions going on within the House of Representatives Education Committee. Members from the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito ruling coalition would say "Nihon." The Socialists would say "Nippon." The Communists would say "Nihon." Moreover, looking at what children were being taught in school, the first year elementary school textbooks introduced the country as "Nihon." However, by the third year, readings of the Chinese characters for the country name expanded to "Nippon" without explanation.

Looking around, Iwakuni-sensei found inconsistencies in the speech of government officials. Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro, when he announced the dispatch of Self Defense Forces personnel to Iraq, peppered his speech with various iterations of "Nippon" -- but when discussing the dispatch at other times referred to the country as "Nihon." Bank of Japan Governor Hayami Masaru, a Protestant Christian, introduced himself as "Nihon Ginko no Hayami desu" ("I'm Hayami of the Bank of Japan") even though on the nation's currency (pull out a bill if you have one on you) the name of the issuing authority is "Nippon Ginko."

More interesting still is the choice of the members of the Imperial Family: they never say "Nippon."

In part this is due to tradition. The "pa-pi-pu-pe-po" sounds do not appear in speech before the late Edo Period. They are nowhere to be found in the Manyoshu. They cannot be found in any of the reign or imperial names.

However, more important to the Imperial Family of today is the association between the undemocratic Meiji Constitution Imperial State -- the Dai Nippon Teikoku -- and usage of the plosive consonant version of the country name. As Iwakuni-sensei told a Chicago audience in October last year, during the war years persons who used "Nihon" for the country name put themselves at risk of having their status as citizens challenged.

If the current Heisei Emperor -- an opponent of all coerced expressions of patriotism, as was illustrated by his famous flambeing of the nationalist Tokyo Board of Education member Yonenaga Kunio* -- never says "Nippon" nor allows his sons to say it , one would not be far wrong in guessing the plosive consonant country name carries too much historical baggage for safe daily use.

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

* At the Emperor's Autumn Garden Party in 2004, Yonenaga introduced himself with a preening "It my job to see to it that in all the middle schools of Japan, everyone is made to raise the flag and sing the national anthem." The emperor replied, with deadly wistful understatement and indirection, "You know, it would desirable that it were done in a way that could not be called forcible" ("Yahari, kyosei ni naru to iu koto de wa nai koto ga tomoshii nozomashii desu ne.").

So South Korean and Japanese Governments Do Not Get Along

To what extent does the policy community of the United States understand that the presence of U.S. forces in East Asia creates incentives for the governments of South Korea and Japan to not resolve their differences -- and that Japan-South Korea tensions are indicators of a relatively benign security environment?

What would prompt Japan and South Korea to lay aside or better yet tackle their disputes over Dokdo, the sex slaves of the Japan Imperial Forces　(a.k.a. the "comfort women") and the history of the colonial period?

a) China turning truly evil and dangerous

b) Russia turning truly evil and dangerous

c) North Korea having a truly crazy government and important military capabilities

d) the U.S. really pulling its forces out of the region

As for d), those ruling Japan and South Korea have done the math. If the governments and elites of the two countries get along, then Washington's dreaded "burden sharing" kicks in. If the two sides remain divided, U.S. forces have to stay in the region in pretty much their current form and numbers -- which is not only what the democratic governments of South Korea and Japan want (cheaper, it is) but what all persons of sense inside China want, a massive U.S. presence restraining the crazies inside the PRC from doing anything really stupid.

So the collapse last year of the intelligence sharing agreement in between Japan and South Korea (Link)? An opportunity to mess matters up mercifully missed.

A pulling back from the pantomime dispute over the sovereignty of Dokdo? To be avoided.

Work hard to stop Japanese textbook publishers to stop using weasel words in descriptions of the colonial period and South Koreans to stop playing the historical victim card? Probably not the best use of one's time.

On the matter of the sexual slavery, those who are the guardians of Japan's interests should, but probably will not, present the options on what to do to the people of Japan. For the governments, the incentives are not in favor of reconciliation. Individual citizens of free societies are perhaps incentivized differently.

This Senkakus Thing Is Not Getting Any Better, Folks

For all those those who have told me, in communications public or private, for weeks now that the government of China, after a period of bluster, is ready, if only the Government of Japan were not so stubborn, to resume the fostering of a relationship of increasing trust, stability and reasonableness, a message:

Please...stop.

China raises stakes over disputed islands *
Financial Times

China has started making concerted efforts to chase Japanese ships out of waters surrounding the disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, ratcheting up tensions between Asia's two largest economies.

The Chinese State Oceanic Administration – which enforces the nation's maritime interests – said four of its ships on Tuesday tried to expel Japanese vessels out of waters where they were operating "illegally".

[Snip]

This move by China could change the status quo in a dispute that has escalated in recent years, Chinese analysts said. Last month, Beijing announced a territorial baseline for the disputed islands that defined the exact geographical location of its claimed territory to back its long-standing claim.

"Chinese government vessels did not chase Japanese boats out of the islands' territorial waters in the past, as these waters were an area controlled by the Japanese coastguard," said Li Guoqiang, an expert on border issues at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "But the situation changed when we created a legal basis for enforcing our claim by announcing the territorial baseline for the islands in September."

(Link)

Of course the assertion that State Oceanic Administration ships chased out JCG vessels is a falsehood promoted solely for Chinese domestic consumption. However, that China's government and news agencies are collaborating in the promulgation of this false narrative should worry anyone with the least sense of how countries march into wars.

As for the theory behind the actions, The New York Times reported that former Ambassador Chen Jian yesterday gave a presentation to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong that could singe one's ears off.

Ex-Envoy Says U.S. Stirs China-Japan Tensions
The New York Times

HONG KONG — A longtime Chinese diplomat warned Tuesday that the United States is using Japan as a strategic tool in its effort to mount a comeback in Asia, a policy that he said is serving to heighten tensions between China and Japan.

The retired diplomat, Chen Jian, who served as an under secretary general of the United Nations and as China's ambassador to Japan, said the United States should restrain Tokyo and should focus its diplomatic efforts on bringing about negotiations between China and Japan over the disputed islands in the East China Sea known as the Diaoyu by China and the Senkaku by Japan.

In an unusually biting assessment of the United States, Mr. Chen said: "It is in the U.S. interest to quarrel with China, but not to fight with China." [This is not what Chen said – MTC]

While Mr. Chen has retired from China's diplomatic service, his remarks were particularly significant because they represent the most detailed public exposition of China’s views at a time when Chinese officials have been wary of making comments because of the approaching Communist Party Congress, which is scheduled to begin in Beijing on Nov. 8.

In the speech, which was organized by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was attended by half a dozen Chinese diplomats, Mr. Chen held out an olive branch by urging that discussions between Japan and China should start on ways to reduce the risk of clashes between Chinese and Japanese patrol vessels that have gotten perilously close off the islands in the last month.

But the thrust of his speech was more hard-hitting, particularly regarding the United States. Some in China and Japan see the issue of the islands "as a time bomb planted by the U.S. between China and Japan," he said. "That time bomb is now exploding or about to explode."

Mr. Chen accused the United States of encouraging the right wing in Japan, and fanning a rise of militarism...

Being the skeptical soul that I am, I wondered what Chen really said. Luckily, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong is tech savvy and already has Ambassador Chen's address up on its website. (Link- scroll down)

For those without 26 minutes to spend listening to an inadvertently comic (albeit not Monty Pythonesque comic) view of history and international politics, some of the choicer bits, with commentary:

"Where there is oil, there is always trouble."

No comment necessary here.

"That happened at a time [1968] when China was busily engaged in what is called Cultural Revolution" {my underline – MTC}

Quick, someone call the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dump the stale "Japanese armed forces 'advanced into' (shinpo) China" versus "Japanese armed forces 'invaded' (shinryaku) China" debate. It was never either. Textbooks and government documents should not equivocate: Japanese armed forces were "busily engaged (ii kagen ni shiro) in China."

"I have a story to tell here. I recall at one stage that the then president of Philippines visited China and met Deng Xiaoping. And that former president raised the question of some of the [Nansha] islands, saying that they are so close to the Philippines, why don’t let Philippines hold on to them? And what was Deng's reply? He said, 'For that matter, the Philippines is not that far from China.' (Laughter) Of course what Deng means is not the Philippines is part of China. What he meant is that geographical proximity should not be taken as the solution over sovereignty over islands."

Ha, ha, ha. Funny. They are rolling in the aisles in Manila.

"We are living in a globalized world and an information age. These two factors have changed everybody’s life as well as relations between states. They have quickened the space of changes in the pattern of international relations. So now we say today the world is undergoing a major transformation and adjustment. They have given rise to what is called popularism and nationalism, both of which are on the rise."

Retranslation: "Sorry, when we let our citizens torch your facilities, loot your stores and assault your diplomatic missions, it's not us, it's globalization and silicon chips/glass fiber/signal multiplexing/html that are to blame."

"The interaction of the media, politicians and the general public is far greater than before. The result of that interaction is…often leads to the escalation of tension, whether domestic or between states."

Of course, we are not talking about China here. In China, the government exerts benign control over the media, to promote peace and respect for law, both domestically and in between states.

"While most of China's neighbors regard China's rise as an opportunity, for opportunity I mean closer cooperation to achieve mutual development and prosperity, some of our neighbors regard it as a mixed blessing: opportunity in economic terms and challenge in security terms. As China is in the process of rising, and it will take years for China to be really strong, economically and militarily, some countries that have territorial disputes with China regard these years, I mean now and the coming years, as their last opportunity to take hold of what they believe belongs to them."{my underline - MTC}

Do the smart cookies understand now why I have been such a stick in the mud over the Government of Japan’s never admitting the existence of a territorial dispute over the Senkakus? Or be cajoled into attempting to deploy cute sophistry? (Link)

"What is 'smart power'? As I see it, smart power is combination of two mutually reinforcing means...mechanisms. One, making use of outside force or outside countries. Two, exploiting contradiction among countries of the region."

Outside force or outside countries? The inside being...where? Let me guess: Japan is "outside" and ASEAN is "inside."

As for the second point, someone needs to email Hun Sen and tell him the bad news that from now on, China is relying on dumb power alone. No more mon, no more fun.

"U.S. is urging Japan to play a greater role in the region -- in security terms, not just in the economic terms -- which suits the purpose of the right wing in Japan more than perfectly."

Though not nearly so perfectly as Chinese government-abetted anti-Japan rioting, the promotion of anti-Japanese feelings through education, the boycotts of Japanese products, the cut-offs of the exports of materials vital to Japanese industry, the dispatch of Chinese government vessels into Japanese territorial waters and attacks on Japanese diplomats and diplomatic missions. So suck on that America!

"But, are there guarantees that Japan and the Philippines...and other countries for that matter, will not misjudge U.S. intentions, and carry their quarrel with China too far, and draw United States and China into a confrontation? The danger is apparent and China needs to be alert to that."

"Too far"...What a concept! China asserts that the Senkakus are theirs and the area within the nine-dash line is at the very least a core interest. By definition, Japan claiming sovereignty over the Senkakus and the Philippines having facilities in the Spratlys – i.e., the status quo – is too far.

"No, what are China's policy options? [snip] I see two major determinants: protection of sovereignty and preservation of stability, both at home and abroad. The first is the responsibility of any national state, that is to protect national sovereignty. The latter is the prerequisite of development. China's option must be something less than perfect; it has to be between these two considerations."

A less-than perfect world for China. Oh boo-hoo-hoo.

For Amaterasu's sake, grow up.

"That explains why, so far, the Chinese government has not taken any pro-active action to initiate changes in the status quo, wherever the dispute lies. China only respond to what it sees as provocation. The only question one can raise is whether the response is commensurate."

No, one can also ask the question whether what China sees as provocation is in fact provocation, or merely a pretext for China to leap down from its Olympian foregoing of "proactive action to initiate changes" to a grubby initiation of changes in the status quo.

The above, minus the snarky MTC commentary, is only a taste of what is available. There is a stunningly weird attempt to explain Japanese domestic politics. The conclusion features a ridiculous set of principles for China to follow in its grinding acquisition of territories – a set of principles which, sorry to tell those enamored of the concept of submitting territorial disputes to the International Court of Justice, never once invokes international law. Indeed, Chen explains at the beginning of his presentation that international law is a root cause of the current territorial disputes.

Peace should be the ultimate goal of all actors in the East Asian region. What we have, however, is not peace but a cold ceasefire. Peace requires humility, empathy and an acceptance of reality. The leadership of China, for its own reasons, finds those three requirements inimical to its interests.

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* Michiyo-san and Ms. Hille, I got the message. Will your editors cut me some slack, as I select only a small part of the text and provide the link to the original article?

Behaving Like Children - Lee and Noda On The Farm

This blessed land had a nursery song "Yagi-san Yubin."

It goes like this:

白ヤギさんからお手紙着いた
黒ヤギさんたら読まずに食べた
仕方がないのでお手紙書いた
さっきの手紙はご用事なあに

Shiro yagisan kara otegami tsuita
Kuro yagisan tara yomazu ni tabeta
Shikata ga nai no de otegami kaita
Sakki no tegami no goyoji nani

"From the white goat a letter arrived
The black goat, without reading it, ate it up
Itas for nothing, the writing of that letter
But he needed to know, so he wrote a letter back:
What was in that letter?"

In the second verse of the song, the colors of the sender and the consumer are reversed.

Here is brief animation of a little girl singing the song. (Link)

Following the recent amusing/embarrassing pettiness over the delivery or non-delivery of letters of protest between the governments of this blessed land and South Korea (Part I and Part II) the Tokyo Shimbun yesterday printed a new version of the song on a cartoon featuring the visages of the two national leaders.

〇ヤギさんからお手紙着いた
〇ヤギさんたら読まずに吐いた
仕方がないのでお手紙捨てた拾った
さっきの手紙はご用事なあに

[Maru] yagisan kara otegami tsuita
[Maru] yagisan tara yomazu ni haita
Shikata ga nai no de otegami suteta hirotta
Sakki no tegami no goyoji nani

"From the [blank] goat a letter arrived
The [blank] goat, without reading it, coughed it up
It was for nothing that that letter was thrown away
But he needed to know, so he picked the letter up:
What was in that letter?"

Here is the image of the editorial cartoon:

Yes, the two goats in the image are both white. Hence the title, on the left:

"You fill in with color the one you think is black, OK?"


Image courtesy: Tokyo Shimbun

Later - Many thanks to the reader Jordan, for catching the howling kanji error.

Pictures of Modern Patriotism

Two parades...

Tokyo, August 20, 2012 - Double decker buses on the Ginza carrying medalists from the 2012 London Olympics

Chengdu, August 19, 2012 - Marchers demanding Japan give up the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands

Call me a fool but I am glad I did not choose Mandarin. I probably missed out on becoming insanely wealthy. However, I do not have to try to justify anger over ebullience.

I did study Korean, for a year. Another missed opportunity.

Then again, being able to read the Choson Ilbo's "Japan Needs to Take a Cold Look at Its Empire" in the original would likely not make it any better.

Still obsessing about the assassination of Queen Min? Did someone slip something into my coffee this morning?

Can you imagine the Austrian Minister for European and Foreign Affairs calling Belgrade, "Yo, Serbia. Before I get into your tariffs on the importation of wheat straw as a part of your accession application, what are you going to do about Gavrilo Princip?"

Photo image credits:
Top: Yomiuri Online
Bottom: Wall Street Journal China Real Time

The Comfort Woman Statue

So now I know what was really ticking off the crowd of folks I ran into on Wednesday.

Statue Deepens Dispute Over Wartime Sex Slavery
The New York Times

The unsmiling teenage girl in traditional Korean dress sits in a chair, her feet bare, her hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the Japanese Embassy across a narrow street in central Seoul. Within a day, the life-size bronze statue had become the focal point of a simmering diplomatic dispute as President Lee Myung-bak prepared to visit Tokyo this weekend.

The statue, named the Peace Monument, was financed with citizens' donations and installed Wednesday, when five women in their 80s and 90s who were forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military during World War II held their thousandth weekly protest in front of the embassy, joined by their supporters.

For them and many other Koreans, the statue — placed so that Japanese diplomats see it as they leave their embassy — carries a clear message: Japan should acknowledge what it did to as many as 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, who historians say were forced or lured into working as prostitutes at frontline brothels for Japanese soldiers.

The Japanese government's main spokesman, the chief cabinet secretary Osamu Fujimura, called the installation of the statue "extremely regrettable" and said that his government would ask that it be removed. South Korean officials said Japan cited international treaties that required host governments to help protect the dignity of diplomatic missions. On Thursday, South Korea made it clear that it had no intention of forcing the protesters to remove the statue...

(Link)

Well, OK, the statue is there to stay. Lest it become a permanent sore in Japan-South Korea relations and a focal point of anti-Korean sentiment in Japan (as it was on Wednesday) the Japanese Embassy should follow some good advice:

"Dont't get mad; get even."

- Robert F. Kennedy

"You say potato and I say potahto.
You say tomato and I say tomahto.
Potato. Potahto. Tomato. Tomahto.
Let's call the whole thing off."

- George and Ira Gershwin

If anyone had half a gram of sense in the Japanese Embassy in Seoul or at the Foreign Ministry in Kasumigaseki, there should have been a press release:

In Seoul today, opposite the Japanese Embassy, a peace statue was unveiled, commemorating the positve contributions of the Japanese occupation and annexation of Korea. The statue is of a young Korean woman, sitting in a chair. She is happy because she is attending her first day in class, an opportunity extended to her by the education policies of the Japanese authorities. Especially meaningful is that she can receive an education despite her poverty, symbolized by her bare feet. At the same time, the young woman is sad, as the chair beside her is empty. The empty chair represents the wasted lives of millions of young women held back by the repressive paternalism of Korean society."

And let it go at that.

Art is plastic, open to interpretation. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

The statue helps out in that it is ambiguous. The expression on the young woman's face is not unsmiling, as The New York Times states with conviction. It is at best blank, with a bias toward cheerful.


Lest anyone think I am being puckish and denigrating the comfort women's rights to an offical apology and compensation, I am not. They have deserved and have been denied the right to hold their heads up high in their communities, able to say, "I was never a prostitute. I was a prisoner of the Japanese Imperial military."

However, when there are situations and provocations too fraught with domestic political baggage to be resolved by diplomats, the only possible solution is an embrace of ambiguity non erit finis*.

Ambiguity and a resignation to the status quo are the salves and supports of East Asian peace. They keep Taiwan free of Beijing's control; keep the Senkakus Japanese territory; and keep the Russians and the Japanese from ever coming together to surround and thus render paranoid China (ambiguity also keeps the Republic of Korea and Japan from becoming close, despite their democratic governments. No thing is ever always a positive).

Making demands that the statue be removed are going to lead nowhere. The government of Japan should just insist, as it does in the Senkakus, the East China Sea and in the Northern Territories that it believes what it does about the situation, no matter what the other side says -- and let those on the other side cut off their own fingers in frustration at the GOJ's intransigence.

And then do its damndest to give the surviving comfort women what they deserve.

-----------------------------------------------------
* Not the World of Warcraft guild of the same name.

Image Courtesy: Yomiuri Online

Hawks and Doves - Idle Thoughts On

Former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichirō, watching the towers of the World Trade Center fall, understood in an instant that the terms of the Japan-U.S. alliance had been reset. Whatever the Cabinet Legislative Bureau had ever said was or was not constitutional vis-a-vis the use of the Self Defense Forces in service of the alliance was no longer operative.

And Koizumi set about realigning the policies of Japan with the new reality.

Do the various interested parties in the United States understand that the Koizumi shift was conditional, not ideological--and that events since the Afghan War--the new, new reality-- have been resetting the terms of the alliance again?

I sure hope they have.

The United States and other countries (at the urging of the United States) have been asking the Japanese government to increase

a) Japan's military capabilities and

b) its direct participation in international security operations.

One longtime dove argument against such an increase in military capabilities and/or commitment to international security cooperation has been that, in the context of a dependent Japanese alliance with the United States, a more militarily capable Japan would find itself with paradoxically less autonomy than before -- that due to the SDF's greater usefulness, Japan would get dragged into U.S. military adventures.

The U.S. Embassy counterargument was, in grotesque simplification, a lengthy huff:

"Are you saying that you worry that the United States, Japan's ultimate protector, would engage in illegitimate, security-diminishing military adventurism, unthinkingly sacrifice its own blood and treasure, and the blood and treasure of its allies? I' m sorry but you are barking up the wrong tree. The United States is not pre-1945 Japan, sending its soldiers into country after country, chasing after some ever-receding horizon of ultimate security!"

Well, hmmm...

An aside - I hope that the recent mania, particularly the U.S. media's cooperation in the suppression of dissenting views--and the willingness of U.S. elites to surrender their skepticism over a preemptive, non-UN sanctioned invasion of a sovereign nation and the establishment of an intrusive, corner-cutting, torturing, secret police state at home -- finally lets the pre-war citizens of Japan off the war-responsibility hook. Considering what few institutional supports and what little leverage Japanese citizens had under the Meiji Constitution, their record in defense of their freedoms and against the propaganda of the militarists turns out not to have been so poor after all.

The questions in the history courses used to be:

"How could they let this happen? Was there no one to say 'Stop'? Was there some cultural predilection to obedience that made them give up their rights and succumb to war fever?"

The answers turn out to be, in order, "Easily," "No" and "No."

Since it turns out that the United States can gin itself into a war fever and drag its allies into a murky, blood-soaked adventure without clear endpoint or purpose, have we come to a juncture where purported Japanese foot-dragging and self-limitation on security cooperation no longer looks irresponsible but instead looks prudent? Where Japan's emphasis on contributing to world security through leadership on disease control, global warming, combatting poverty...and Japan's basic acceptance of the sovereignty of all nations...has stopped looking merely smart but indeed begins to look...moral?

And do the "Japan specialists" advising the two candidates for the U.S. presidency understand that a post-Iraq, post-Abu Ghraib (and many other things too) Japan-U.S. alliance has the two allies on a different footing than before?

I see evidence of an awareness of the shift--but I do not see an acceptance of it.