All Out Of Ammo

Gimme back my bullets
Put 'em back where they belong
Ain't foolin' around
Cause I've done had my fun
Ain't gonna see no more damage done...

- Rossington/Van Zandt, "Gimme Back My Bullets" (1976)

The pathetic story of the peripatetic 10,000 rounds of ammunition lent by Japanese Self Defense Forces to their bereft South Korean counterparts participating in a UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan has come to an absurd close. The South Korean troops on Thursday transferred the bullets to UN custody, their government having flown in from South Korea the same amount of ammo, using up precious space in UN cargo helicopter flights to deliver politically correct incipient chunks of flying death to South Korean forces. (Link)

So much for appreciation of the Abe Cabinet's doctrine of "proactive pacifism" (sekkyokuteki heiwashugi), so much for practicality, so much for an "we're all in this together" Band of Brothers bonding among forces under UN command.

Over at The Marmot's Hole, Robert Koehler last year documented most of the background to this week's return. It is not a pretty tale. Particularly depressing is that objections to the ammunition transfer preceded Abe Shinzo's visit to Yasukuni. (Link)

While it is appropriate to dump on the government of South Korea for Olympian levels of pettiness, the actions and stances of the Abe administration deserve an equal measure of ridicule. The much ballyhooed new National Security Council, in only its second meeting and in its first decision, choose to at least circumvent if not trash precedent.　The 1976 expansion of the original 1967 Three Principles on Arms Exports (Buki yushutu sangensoku) states that Japan shall "take precautions against not making a mistake in exporting weaponry" (buki no yushutsu o tsutsushimu mono to suru). While lending ammunition to folks who insult you by sending it back to you untouched would in most instances be classified as a mistake, "not making a mistake" in the 1976 interpretation is the violation of Japan's self-reimagination as a "peace state" (heiwa kokka - Link -J).

Strictly speaking, the NSC's approval of the SDF's lending South Korean forces their ammunition did not transgress the boundaries of the expanded Three Principles. If the South Korean forces had actually used the ammunition, however, the loan would have immediately fallen outside the boundaries of permitted action.

So the South Koreans, by acting like idiots, actually did Abe's NSC a favor.

Exactly why Japan needed to establish an NSC has never been satisfactorily explained. Lionel Pierre Fatton, writing in The Diplomat, does his damnedest to make the innovation seem worthwhile. (Link)

However, reading the Fatton's argument, one comes away with the question:

"Restricting the number of persons having input into major decisions helps make the process faster. However, when in the history of humankind has the reduction of the number of persons offering their opinions ever made a decision better?"

That the NSC's first action was a double fiasco -- a violation of precedent had it succeeded in arming the South Korean forces and an embarrassment because it did not -- casts into doubt the rhetorical edifice supporting the establishment of the NSC.

There is an argument that the first decision of the NSC went sour precisely because the decision was made prior to the creation of an NSC secretariat and the assignment of staff -- deficiencies that have since been partially remedied (Link and Link). Presumably, once the NSC secretariat gets up to speed analyzing issues and suggesting solutions, the chances of another South Sudan fiasco will fall.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

If a group of officials start out their terms in an office with a demonstration of a willingness to approve violations of stated government principles without consulting with staff experts aforehand, it becomes harder to believe promises that the group will never, ever do it again.

AMPO 2

Update @ 19:00 - Using the majority it holds in the House of Councillors, the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic and the New Komeito voted down the motion of censure against Consumer Affairs Minister Mori Masako. In a further harassing action to prevent consideration of the Official Secrets Bill, the Democratic Party of Japan has submitted a motion of no confidence in the House of Representatives. The motion has no hope of passage. However, all House of Representatives action is suspended until the no confidence measure is voted down.

-----

It is so wonderful being wrong.

Despite or perhaps because of an unsightly railroading of the Official Secrets Bill through committee of the House of Counicillors, the goverment had to abandon its plans of voting on the bill in plenary session today. Faced with the procedural blockage of the submission of a motion of censure of Minister of Consumer Affairs Mori Masako, the secrets bill's sherpa, the ruling coalition has decided to extend the Diet session to the 9th, in order to have the extra time necessary to pass the bill.

The extension has risks for the goverment. Public protest against the bill has been rising at an exponential rate, with long-dormant civil society suddenly finding a reason to wake up and say "No" to Abe & Company. Performing artists ("Yoshinaga Sayuri!" the scandal rags shouted yesterday, an indication of the government's peril, having roused Japan's greatest actress to come out forcefully against the law), writers, lawyers and local and prefectural assemblies (Okinawa's prefectural assembly joined Fukushima's yesterday in passing a motion against the bill) are finding common cause against the incipient law.

This could be a wild weekend - with possible burgeoning marches and demonstrations.

If the Abe government prevails in the passage of the bill on the 9th, it may find the victory Pyrrhic. It has taken its eye off the economy and economic policy -- its supposed most important foci. It has given a skeptical public a reason to fear and loathe the Liberal Democratic Party. Come the next election, the LDP and its disgraced ally the New Komeito may find themselves again on the street -- this only after an election in July that made them seem bullet proof.

As for Abe himself, he must imagining himself leading the second coming of the Japan-U.S. Security Arrangements, with the him replaying the role of his grandfather, dragging a kicking and screaming country into a new era of security and prosperity.

If does, he has fallen prey to the worst of vices of any leader: believing his own PR nonsense.

What A Welcome Back!

I go away for two weeks and the country goes bonkers.

Item #1: Tokyo Governor Inose Naoki's loan

You are a man of utter probity and profound knowledge, who has just lost his wife and life partner. You have never run for public office in your life and you are suddenly up for the post of the most powerful local government official on Earth, for a city that thanks to you has just won the right to host an Olympics. You are going into the race without a political support group or even a single paid staff member. A shadowy right wing figure approaches you, takes you to a Kamakura hospital and introduces to a nearly totally paralyzed tycoon who asks you, "How are you doing financially?" You quibble. A week later, the man's son calls you in to his office, which is inside the House of Representatives building. He puts 50 million yen ($500,000) in cash on the table and says, "This is a loan. You do not have to pay me interest. You can repay me whenever you want. I only want to help you out. Just to make sure we are on the up-and-up, here is a note verifying the loan."

What does a stressed out, exhausted Inose Naoki do, especially when the loan will be entirely legal? (Link)


Item #2: Blogging The Official Secrets Bill

A bill declaring vast areas of what should be public knowledge "official secrets" and criminalizing investigative reporting and whistle-blowing skulks, unseen, through the halls of the Diet. Stealthily and silently, it lurches toward passage. Suddenly it is dragged out into the sunlight and stamped on the public consciousness by a blog post by actress and model heretofore known mostly for her sacré bleu poitrine. Suddenly, every editorialist and commentator has something to say about the bill, most of which are expressions of stunned disbelief at the bill's sweep and imprecision. To make matters all the weirder, the role of sherpa for the supposedly crucial, ground-breaking, nation-saving bill is given to the state minister for consumer affairs -- the most junior member of the Cabinet.

Despite the public outcry at the unnecessary severity and breadth of the bill, or perhaps because of the outcry, the government rushes the bill through committee, managing to lose, for the first time in recent memory, all the votes of one of the parties that had submitted the bill. A hell-bent rush to railroad the bill through the House of Councillors hits a granite wall, however, when Ishiba Shigeru the secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party, in, yep, a blog post, equates members of the public peacefully assembling and yelling out slogans against the bill to terrorism.

Way to give the despondent opposition to the bill a jolt of adrenaline, Mister "Now-you-know-why-my-Diet-colleagues-would-not-vote-me-head-of-the-LDP-even-though-I-won-the-majority-of-votes-in-the-first-round" -- and with only four days left in the extraordinary session for the House of Councillors to pass the bill! (Link)

To which I can only say, "Amaterasu bless the blog post, the salvation of this blessed land!"

Item #3: Kinshasha Embassy Burning

This morning we have gracing the news reports the incredible arrest of a Japanese diplomat for setting the fire that gutted the Embassy of Japan in Kinshasha. Given the severity of Japanese law as regards arson and the level of respect accorded the careerists of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this is one is going to be

1) the first act of what will be one heck of a legal circus

2) an opportunity for a very embarrassing public review of Gaimusho hiring policies.

(Link - J)

And I have not even begun to think about the implications of China's new air defense zone!

Happy December!

Follow Up On Koike Yuriko

A week ago, in a post about the Official Secret Bill (Yes, someday I will write about something else) and Koike Yuriko, the Liberal Democratic Party's top public information honcho, I wrote that:

"Publishing in English via Project Syndicate, she has disseminated anti-Democratic Party of Japan and pro-Abe Shinzo propaganda worldwide underneath the radar of the local representatives of the foreign press."

As luck, or the simple passage of time, would have it, Koike has clocked in with one of her stomping propaganda pieces:

Reinventing a key security institution in Japan

Shinzo Abe's second term as Japan's Prime Minister began with a laser-like focus on economic revitalization. That policy, almost instantly dubbed "Abenomics", comprises what have been called the three "arrows": bold monetary policy, an expansionary fiscal stance, and structural reforms to stimulate private investment. Hosting the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020 has added a fourth arrow to this quiver in the form of increased infrastructure investment and tourism revenue in the years up to the games.

To be sure, after 15 years of deflationary recession, revitalization of the Japanese economy remains far from complete. Nonetheless, the effects of Abe's reforms are becoming visible in areas such as equity prices and exchange rates.

But Abe also confronts a security environment in Asia that is every bit as brittle as Japan's economy was before his government took office last December. Indeed, he confronted many of the same issues during his first administration seven years ago. His efforts back then were halted by his own resignation, and he is now making a second attempt to establish a national security governance system to meet Japan's needs—and those of its allies—in 21st century Asia.

In a speech to a plenary session of the lower house of Japan's Diet on 25 October, Abe emphasized that, given the current security situation in Asia, "It is essential to strengthen command functions for implementing the Prime Minister's national security policy." Now that split control of the Diet's upper and lower houses has been resolved, with Abe's Liberal Democrats in strong control of both chambers, a Bill to modernize Japan's national security governance is certain to pass.

The Bill that Abe has submitted aims to establish a Japanese National Security Council (NSC), based on lessons from the successes and failures of similar institutions in other countries, such as NSC in the US. The Security Council of Japan—something of a stopgap measure created to provide advice from relevant cabinet members to the Prime Minister in times of crisis—will now be reorganized as a formal institution.

The new NSC's membership will be limited to the Prime Minister, the cabinet secretary, and the foreign and defence ministers, with relevant ministers added on an ad hoc basis. A permanent National Security Secretariat, headed by a person with abundant diplomatic experience, will be established in the Prime Minister's office, with 60 security specialists from various fields laying the policy groundwork for medium and long-term national security strategy.

(Link)

First, compliments where deserved. The text is both in straightforward, colloquial English and makes sense, in any language.

Second, Koike-san, cool it on the clapping-for-oneself-in-the-North-Korean-manner adjectives and adjectivals ("laser-like," "bold," "abundant") will ya?

Third, how much shorter would the work day of Prime Minister's Residence journalists be if Koike were given the job of official government spokesperson? Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide, who is as good at his multi-tasking nightmare job as anyone ever has been, nevertheless leaves folks drooling with strings of rhetorical questions rather than clearcut assertions or denials.

If Koike were wrangling the journalists, the daily press conference would be, "Here's the news -- so listen up, you idiots."

The essay is interesting for its detour into self-indulgence, with Koike venting once again about the Prime Minister's Schedule, her pet peeve, her discussion of which caused the government angina last week. That an international audience would not understand a single thing about whatever it is about the Schedule that puts Koike into such a snit (not that domestic audiences can either) does not bother her in the least, evidently.

Lawrence Repeta On the Official Secrets Bill

Last Friday I published an unhappy look at the official secrets bill the ruling coalition intends to vote into law this Diet session. On Saturday, Professor Lawrence Repeta of Meiji University published a serious examination of the bill in the context of bureaucratic implementation of existing secrecy laws. (Link)

The inescapable conclusion: the pending Official Secrets bill is absolutely wrong for this blessed land. The country lacks most of the institutional and juridical frameworks and habits necessary to prevent an abuse of the power to declare certain information an official secret. Oh certainly, bureaucrats could detoxify situation by simply voluntarily foregoing the invocation of the law. How likely is that sort of benign neglect, though, when the new law creates a mechanism for bureaucrats to hide, then erase, any wrongdoing or error?

Worthwhile Reads For October 16, 2013

You Can't Touch This - Ayako Mie in The Japan Times on the really spiny legislation up for debate and a vote in the brief 52 days left before the end of the Extraordinary Diet Session (Link - J) --  bills so potentially explosive Prime Minister Abe Shinzo failed to mention them in his Diet Policy Address (Link - J). The omission of even a hint about the Official Secrets bill, which surrogates like Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru have been touting as a package deal with the establishment of a national security council, shows how fraught the outlook is.

Reform My Sweet Watusi - Sawa Takamitsu can be all over the map in his commentaries (a trait shared by a certain yours truly) but he hits the mark in an essay, also in the JT, accusing the Abe administration of reversing the reform legacy of not just the Koizumi administration, but the Nakasone administration as well. His sharpest characterization? That the peculiar attempt to browbeat big business into delivering wage hikes -- rather than, for example, creating incentives for more hiring of permanent workers or higher wages for workers already hired -- is nothing more than an attempt to establish a form of state capitalism. (Link)

As for Abe's numerous public declarations of wanting to earn the title of "Japan's #1 Salesman" it is strange that the promise has not stimulated journalists and commentators to recall French president Charles De Gaulle's famous description of Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato as a vulgar little transistors merchant.

They Made The Bed. You Have To Lie In It - Robert Dujarric, writing for The Diplomat, tells it like it is regarding the so-called East Asian history problem: Japan's engagement with historical issues is compared to West Germany's and likely always will be. Yes, the Japanese right is right: it is unfair. Incredibly so. Jiminy never told you, Fate is unkind sometimes, too. (Link)

Can You See The Real Me? Walter Lohman, John Fleming and Olivia Enos of the Heritage Foundation have produced a series of beautifully edited graphics pages providing the visual starting points for many a discussion of Asian security and economic issues. Pretty, pretty, pretty. (Link)

The State Secrets Law's Surprising Opponent

"I want to live in this Japan I love ❤ forever and ever. If , however, because each and every one of us fails to raise his or her voice right now, this bill passes as is during autumn extraordinary session of the Diet -- because we did not act as citizens investigating it..."

Tarento (a.k.a. "celebrity") Fujiwara Norika is known for, well, largely two things (Link). That she might have thoughts as well as...uh...attributes...probably would not strike many folks as likely.

Which is why the Japanese news mediaverse is all in a tizzy about Ms. Fujiwara's September 13 posting to her online diary (Link - J) encouraging her countrymen and women to start paying attention to the new state secrets bill up for passage in the Diet during the fall extraordinary session (Link - J). She urges all citizens, whether for or against the draft, to offer public comment -- and lists the relevant government email and postal addresses and fax number. She also notes that the deadline for public comment is September 17.

The nation's news organizations were not going to go quietly in the darkening fall without making a huge fuss about the draft law, which commentators see as seriously restricting the public's ability to learn about government misbehavior, malfeasance and/or incompetence. The Abe government has unsurprisingly promised that the law will not endangering anything except behavior threatening to Japan's security (Link). Reporters, cognizant of how enhancement of the legal protections on personal privacy have become a blanket protection on the heretofore unreported conduct of public figures, have not unreasonable doubts as to whether the secrecy law will simply criminalize what remains of investigative journalism.

Ms. Fujiwara's sudden championing of the public's right to know has made the task of news media organizations -- which can be accused of hectoring the electorate and making mountains out of molehills -- highlighting the dangers of the state secrets law a lot easier -- and a lot sexier too.

Help comes in from strange quarters sometimes.


Later -The September 18 edition of The Japan Times has provided more details of Ms. Fujiwara's opposition to the bill. (Link)

If Pigs Had Wings

Over at the Council for Foreign Relations website, Dr. Jeffrey Hornung of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies Pacific Forum CSIS has posted a contribution to the "Is Japan in Decline?" debate series. Like most of Dr. Hornung's published opinion pieces, the essay presents a "the glass is half full" review of Japan's participation in international security activities, geared toward convincing American audiences* of Japan's possibly increasing security relevance.

While the essay (Link) is a decent review of what Japan has done -- and what Japan has done is not bad -- what I found most interesting was the last paragraph:

What should be clear is that, despite talk of Japan's decline, it is actively engaged in the security and diplomatic spheres in an effort to promote regional stability. Continuing this engagement will depend on Japan’s ability to overcome two domestic challenges: demographic implosion and mounting public debt. Both problems will have adverse effects on Japan's economy and the military, which will constrain defense spending and an ability to fund/expand security and diplomatic initiatives. Both require adept political leadership to rectify. If Japanese leaders can overcome these challenges, it would mean continuing opportunities to provide crucial resources to security partnerships and initiatives as well as leadership toward developing institutions and initiatives. If Japanese leaders fail, however, regional security will suffer as the gap left by the withdrawal of Japanese military capacity, expertise, and resources as well as diplomatic vision and commitment to multilateral institutions/initiatives will be difficult to replace. It is in this light that, if we envision a world without Japan, we can see it as being a consequential power.

The above is flatulent nonsense. Under no conceivable (pun unintended) scenario can Japan's population decline be arrested. The cohort of women in their peak childbearing years is simply too small (see graph here).

As for mounting public debt, given the reality that the Abe administration's answer to Japan's economic malaise is not structural reform but a stimulus package funded by construction bonds, talking about reductions of Japan's debt is a purely philosophical exercise. Indeed, the only method of debt reduction under discussion is default. (Link)

Contrary to Dr. Hornung's assertions, the limits on Japan's engagement in regional and global security cannot be the demographic shift ("implosion" is hyperbole) or public indebtedness. If they were, then the argument would already be over. China's and to a lesser extent North Korea's actions and the government's framing of new Japan Self Defense Forces security initiatives are the two most significant factors -- and will be for the foreseeable future.

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

* Given the percentage of the world's elites educated in United States universities, writing for American elite audiences is globalization-on-the-cheap.

Someone To Keep An Eye Out For

Kirk Spitzer is consistently the best journalist around for articles on Japan defense issues. (Link)

Not a particularly profound observation, perhaps...but since when has that ever stopped me from climbing atop my virtual beer crate?

The Washington Establishment Gets Worried, Boards Aircraft

Reading the below report makes me sigh:

In Asia Trip, U.S. Group Will Tackle Islands Feud
The New York Times

October 19, 2012 - The visit, backed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, follows a naval exercise by China on Friday to support its territorial claims and talk by a prominent candidate for prime minister in Japan about stationing personnel on the islands to improve security.

"As each side tries to assert its position, there is a risk of an inadvertent escalation of tensions and even confrontation,” said James B. Steinberg, who served as the deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration and is one of those on the trip. "The question is, how we get back to the relative stability in which the islands were in dispute but people were not trying to change facts on the ground."

Other members of the group include Richard L. Armitage, who served as deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush; Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush's national security adviser; and Joseph S. Nye Jr., a former Pentagon and intelligence official in the Clinton administration.

The group is scheduled to meet with Japan's prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, on Monday and to visit with the Chinese leadership on Tuesday. China has not informed the group with whom they will be meeting.

The trip was arranged after Mr. Steinberg and other members of the group discussed what might be done to tamp down the tensions over the islands, which are called Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese.

After the idea of a visit was pitched to State Department aides, Mrs. Clinton endorsed it, giving it a quasi-official status...

(Link)

Out of respect to the principle that if one has real problems with a person, one should keep one's opinions to oneself, I will refrain from saying what I think of these individuals. The exception would be Hadley, about whom I know nothing, save that he served on the Bush White House national security team, whose provision of nationial security was...mixed?

If the group is coming to the Prime Minister's Residence to deliver the message that the assertions heretofore made by the U.S. government -- that the Senkakus fall under the writ of the Japan-U.S. Security Arrangements -- are true only in theory, that would be something Prime Minister Noda needs to know immediately. As to any other ideas the quartet might present, the PM probably will listen to them and digest them -- not necessarily for what they say on the surface (one has to leave open the possibility someone in the quartet knows something about China the GOJ does not), but for what they say regarding the prejudices and preoccupations of the slices of America's transnational policy elite each member of the quarter of represents.

This Cabinet and the rest of the Japanese government are not the gang of uniformed innocents America's permanent foreign policy establishment believes them to be.

[An aside: one of the favorite demeaning tales with which members of the American policy elite regale themselves is the "amateurish" attempt by the Kan government to prosecute the Chinese fishing boat captain who rammed two Japan Coast Guard vessels off the Senkakus in 2010. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Kan government, the JCG and the Japanese judicial system behaved as true professionals, handling in an open, formal and neutral manner a situation no one had considered before as regards the Senkakus: an unprovocked attack on Japanese government personnel by a foreign assailant in an area under the administration of Japan. What was amateurish was rice-eating surrender monkey and then Chief Cabinet Secretary's Yoshito Sengoku's interference in the judicial process in the face of ham-handed Chinese pressure, then his denial of having done so.]

I cannot help but smile at the seeming pointlessness of the itinerary, at least as it is described in The New York Times. They do not know whom they are meeting in Beijing. I do not know what other folks do -- but when I walk out my front door I try to know in advance whom it is I am going out to meet. And even if the quartet did know, Beijing is in the midst of a leadership transition thrown into chaos by the Bo Xilai affair and Xi Jinping's mysterious disappearances. The quartet have no idea whether or not Madame Secretary of Ministry X will, come December, be Madame Nobody.

As for meeting with the Anaconda himself -- oh, why give the secret away...


Later - A much belated afterthought...but if there were a way for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to broadcast her lack of confidence in the skills and contacts of Ambassador to Japan John Roos and Ambassador to China Gary Locke, and all the other diplomats working in those embassies, it would be to give official recognition to an ad hoc Track II mission with only half an itinerary.

Worthwhile Reads for October 3

Two essays worth reading...

1) While I find the stated positions of Abe Shinzo regarding the sexual slaves of the Imperial Forces, love of the national government nation and the options as regards the Senkakus so disturbing I cannot think dispassionately about a potential Abe premiership, others are not so hobbled by their emotions. Andrew Levidis of Kyoto University has produced a level-headed essay on Abe's foreign and security policy:

Shinzo Abe and the dream of a conservative Asia

Do not be turned off, as I initially was, by the Ivan Morris reference in the introduction. Bull through it, ignoring the glaring contradiction between the Morris thesis and the political resuscitation of Abe's career.

2) As is his wont, Okumura Jun has offered an interesting exegesis on the most recent public opinion polls and speculates why the Kyodo News poll is probably the most reliable indicator of the popularity of particular parties.

Some Thoughts around the New Noda Cabinet Polls… on the Japan Restoration Party

Okumura's theory that the voters in the less-populous prefectures are getting their news from the prefectural paper, where national political news comes from the Kyodo News wire service, has significant electoral implications, especially since the less populous prefectures are over-represented in the Diet.

The most recent polls from Kyodo, The Asahi Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun repeat the truly peculiar phenomena of the polls of last week and the weekend:

i) a rise in the popularity of the Noda Cabinet,

ii) a majority of those polled having no positive expectations from Abe Shinzo and his lieutenants,

iii) the popularity of Liberal Democratic Party soaring, often to their highest levels since the August 2009 election defeat, with the percentage of those polled supporting the LDP now double the percentage supporting the Democratic Party of Japan,

iV) support levels of the DPJ remaining flat.

The results in the aggregate seem senseless. How can the LDP become so much more popular when it elects a leader the majority of those polled find unimpressive. How can the popularity of the Noda Cabinet rise while the popularity of the DPJ declines -- in every single poll?

I see two major forces as likely pushing up the LDP party support figures:

I) The "Anyone But Tanigaki Sadakazu" effect -- The fall of Tanigaki from power has brought back into the fold traditional LDP supporters among the patriotic fantabulist crowd, the social conservatives and the strong leadership worshippers. These voters, finding Hashimoto Toru a distasteful parvenu, had been hiding out among the voters on the record as supporting no party. With Tanigaki gone, these traditional LDP voters are standing up and being counted.

II) The "Let's Slap China Around" effect -- All of the LDP's candidates in the LDP presidential election, not just the winner Abe, spent weeks making loud and extravagant promises that if put in charge of the nation, they would protect Japan's territories and territorial waters from the Chinese threat, showing the Chinese that Japan cannot be pushed around.

Given that Chinese government has been ratcheting up the war of words with Japan over the Senkakus, and now sends its constabulary ships on daily violations of the territorial waters about those islands, the LDP's fantasy tough guy rhetoric has been stirring and falsely reassuring.

The key question is whether with its popularity in the 30% range and the DPJ's in the 10-15% range, does the LDP have the ability to lure disaffected members of the DPJ to vote against the Noda Cabinet in a no-confidence motion, toppling the Noda government?

The snap answer would seemingly be "Yes."

In Terra Australis

Down in the land of tuataras, carnivorous parrots and yellow-eyed penguins, Corey Wallace has produced two must-read posts on on Japanese-Australian military cooperation and Osaka City Mayor Hashimoto Toru’s unexpectedly reasonable Twitter tweets on the Senkakus and Dokdo/Takeshima:

Japan and Australia to take Perhaps the Final Big Step in the Relationship?

and

Hashimoto Digging Himself into a Hole with Japan’s Conservatives?"


The post on Japan-Australia military cooperation contains a salient observation, that “alliances are no longer the weapon of choice for security partnerships.” This presents an interesting lens through which to view Kyle Mizokami's essay for The Atlantic:

Japan and the U.S.: It's Time to Rethink Your Relationship

For another a source on Japan-Australia strategic alignment, J. Berkshire Miller has produced a long post for The Diplomat:

Japan-Australia Ties Key to Regional Stability

So it is not all just the Senkakus, Dokdo/Takeshima, the sex slaves of Japan's Imperial Forces and Abe Shinzo.

Just mostly on those subjects.

The Morimoto Appointment

There are many stories to be chasing after.

There is the humanization of arrested Aum Shinrikyo fujitive Kikuchi Naoko in the news media and the implications the humanization of a mass murderer could have on the imposition of the death penalty in her case -- a given, considering the sentences handed out to the other members of the cult -- or even the death penalty's continued application. Can the state kill a person who has, during her life on the run, worked as an eldercare provider? Is there such a thing as redemption after committing great evil? And what of the National Police Agency's incapacity to capture anyone unless that person is handed to them on a platter* or in the case of Hirata Makoto, tries desperately (Link) to hand himself in on a platter? And what of the irony of the Kikuchi arrest coming the day after rededication of a monument to Sakamoto Kuniko -- the Sakamotos being the first of Aum's victims, whose killings, had they been investigated (it would not have been too hard. One of the cult members, horrified at what he and his fellow followers had done, left his Aum Shinrikyo badge at the scene of the crime) would have stopped the whole mad murderous machine in its tracks? (Link - J)

One talk about the flip side of the collapse of the economies in rural areas: that larger-than-one-would-imagine-in-a-country-with-a-population-as-big-as-Japan's tracts of uninhabited land are available for renewable energy resource projects -- nicely graded and leveled abandoned rice paddies, failed golf courses, unused rural economic development zones and perhaps even an underused airport or two make fine candidates for solar farms. (Link) **

However, the big story is the Cabinet reshuffle (Link) and the big story of the Cabinet reshuffle the appointment of academic Morimoto Satoshi as Minister of Defense.

For those looking for background on the appointment there is a wealth of material. Morimoto has been in the public eye for two decades as a public intellectual of the first rank, serving as the media's go-to conservative academic on matters such as the Japan-U.S. security alliance, the DPRK, defense systems, the revolution in military affairs and the rise of Chinese military power. If someone were looking for "gotcha" moments -- stunningly incorrect predictions, overblown rhetoric, rumor mongering, untenable analysis -- there are hundreds of hours of video and ten of thousands of words to troll through. Luckily for Morimoto and Prime Minister Noda, the organizations with the most reflexive tendencies to go trolling for items with which to embarrass Morimoto and the government -- the Yomiuri Shimbun and its Nihon Terebi terrestrial TV network and the Sankei Shimbun and its terrestrial network Fuji TV -- both have relied on Morimoto as the outside expert most likely to hew to their editorial line.

Morimoto is a hardline realist. He has little love for Article 9 and the limits placed upon Japan's ability to engage in multilateral security actions. A former Air Self Defense Forces (the most gungho of the services) officer and a graduate of the National Defense Academy, he has probably always dreamed of being Minister of Defense. Now he has the responsibility to be one. He will be the man in the cross hairs and the guy with his name on the dotted line when the government signs the contract for the acquisition of F-35 Lightning IIs, with the costs and delivery dates to be determined.

Morimoto has previous experience in government, having been appointed the first Special Advisor to the Minister of Defense after the position was created during the premiership of Aso Taro. As a former member of an LDP administration with no previously noted links to the Democratic Party of Japan, he represents a bit of wicked deviousness on Prime Minister Noda's part: after disgracing the position with two Ozawa Ichiro-nominated defense ignoramuses -- whom the LDP had the House of Councillors censure -- he gives the country a defense minister about whom the LDP can raise not a peep of protest.

Morimoto, despite his defense smarts, comes into office with severe handicaps that will limit his ability to transform his own ideas into action. First, he is a non-politician: he will facing the bureaucracy naked, without even a political secretary to back him up. Such support as he will enjoy will come from the Prime Minister's Residence (the Kantei) and in the person of the man who appointed him. Second, the cost of acquiring the F-35 threatens to upset the balance between the ASDF and the already beset Ground Self Defense Forces and the proud and dominant Maritime Self Defense Forces. After personnel costs and procurement costs, Morimoto will have little to spend on actual operations or any expansion of operations he might press the government to consider.

The appointment of Morimoto once again raises the question of whether or not Noda is his own defense minister. While he for once has less experienced in defense matters than person he has appointed as his defense minister, being only the son of an SDF man rather than a former SDF man himself, Noda still believes himself an expert in the nuts and bolts of defense policy.

The appointment seems more a tactical move rather than a strategic one. At a stroke Noda has neutralized potential LDP, right wing and center-right media and nationalist complaints about his support for a robust Japanese defense capability and outlook. Left-leaning and leftist news media have indeed been hopping up and down that the appointment of an academic rather than a politician means that the MOD bureaucracy and uniformed officers will be too powerful, undermining the concept of civilian control (shibirian kontororu***). He will win the applause of the American think-tank-political-appointee merry-go-round ridership, who will be thrilled by Morimoto's heretofore unshakable support of the Japan-U.S. alliance and his hardline security stances, ignoring Morimoto's rather weak bureaucratic and non-existent political support. He also removes from the commentariat one of his most potent and visible potential critics.

So Morimoto has the "right" views and the wrong attributes. We shall have to see which of the two initial conditions proves the more significant.


Later - And yes, I did notice. It was the first thing out of my mouth when I saw the Cabinet lineup in the paper this morning: "What? Again? Where are the women, you torpid [expletive deleted] sea slug?"


Later still - This post has been edited for greater clarity.

Way later - The Magnificent Kiwis have checked in -- Bryce Wakefield in Comments and Corey Wallace over at Japan Security Watch (Link) -- with far more intelligent things to say about the Morimoto apppointment than I have.


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* Until further notice, I will remain agnostic regarding the police story that a neighbor recognized Kikuchi and turned her in. The difference in appearances between the 1994 Kikuchi and the woman arrested on Sunday are significant (Link). It seems unlikely that anyone looking at her would see the chubby, smiling former runner, especially as Kikuchi, while living in Sagamihara, was, according to residents, always hiding her face by looking at the ground.

A more likely scenario is that her lover, exhausted by life on the lam, turned her in with a promise of clemency for himself and mercy for her, with police concocting the alert neighbor story to keep the public on the lookout for the last remaining Aum fugitive, Takahashi Katsuya.

** Note to The Economist: the title of your story about this subject has to be, "Huge...tracts of land..."

*** One critic whose opinions I value has said that whenever elites in this blessed land want to reduce the ability of citizens to understand certain concepts, they simply take the English word and transliterate it using katakana. The plague of katakana eigo terms in finance industry terminology (konpuraiansu, gabanansu...) would tend to support the "let's keep them in the dark" thesis.

The Bloodletting Begins - China, Spying and Phytosanitary Restrictions

The dirty game of leaking from the Li Chunguang case has begun. Unsurprisingly, the Yomiuri Shimbun is at the forefront at publishing the leaked information, targeting members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan with missiles of filled with innuendo and non-sequiturs.

Agriculture leak to be probed / Ministry team to investigate Chinese diplomat's link to secret documents

The agriculture ministry will set up an investigation team within the ministry to investigate the alleged leaking of classified documents, following Wednesday's report by The Yomiuri Shimbun that a Chinese diplomat may be responsible for the security breach.

Speaking to reporters at the ministry on Wednesday, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Michihiko Kano said: "As long as such a report was made, I believe it's important to thoroughly investigate the case as a ministry. I told this to the team members."

The leaked documents are believed to contain information on a program for exporting agricultural products to China. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported the 45-year-old first secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo, who is suspected of espionage, was involved in the program organized by the Promotion Association of Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries & Foods Exporting to China, a Tokyo-based incorporated body.

The diplomat, who also is suspected of violating the Alien Registration Law, has already left Japan

Senior Vice Minister Tsukasa Iwamoto will lead the ministry's investigative team, whose members include several senior officials, such as Parliamentary Secretary Tetsuo Morimoto and a vice minister, Kano said

The ministry's other senior vice minister, Nobutaka Tsutsui, who led the program in question, was not included in the team

Asked about Tsutsui, Kano said, "I guess we'll have to ask him [about the leak]."

Read the full story (Link) though there is really not much of a story. A shipload of Japanese produce and fish destined for a special Japanese agricultural products promotion got held up at agricultural inspection by the Chinese government's failure to waive its usual phytosanitary restrictions. Li went to visit Vice-Minister Tsutsui, presumably to explain what was going on and/or offer an apology. The shipment eventually had to be destroyed.

End of story.

TV Asahi has a report out alleging that Li entertained members of the DPJ's agriculture tribe, MAFF elite bureaucrats and representatives of agricultural interests at restaurants and other venues (ANN News - J - time sensitive).

The Mainichi Shimbun's coverage of the story hones in on the opening of the bank accounts and the money allegedly transferred to those accounts (E). That the Mainichi acquired such detailed information as the exact amounts transferred to the accounts says very little that is admirable about the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's ability to protect information with possible vital national security implications.

As can be seen from the Yomiuri and Mainichi texts and the TV Asahi segment, the mainstream media is clinging with desperation to their at once inconsistent and overbearing applications of restrictions on revealing the identities and images of persons under investigation (Why the giant, floating blue ball, TV Asahi, on what seems to be footage from open government sources?) Internet news outlets, You Tube and the non-Japanese press are circulating reports featuring Li's name and image. The hopeless maintenance of a veil of secrecy makes the story seem more sinister, which may be good for ratings. However, the effort at concealment makes the mainstream press look like fools, in the same way their tentative coverage of the Olympus scandal did, after FACTA and the foreign press had already broken the case wide open.

Later - Will opposition parties go bananas about Li Chunguang's activities, the extent to which the government's had knowledge of them, the possibility of security breaches and the compromising of appointed officials and bureaucrats, tying the Diet's schedule into knots, making it impossible for the Noda government to pass the legislation necessary for the implementation of its political program?

Let us say, to be brief, yes.

Later still - Li's purported efforts to influence opinions at MAFF and among legislators with strong ties to agriculture interests will mean that the MAFF will likely be off-limits to foreign entities trying to encourage the loosening of restrictions on agriculture trade and the ending of agriculture and fishery subsidies. This would indicate that Japanese participation in TPP negotiations are deader than Elvis, for the time being.

About That Other Failure

Last Friday, the DPRK launched a rocket in commemoration of 100th birthday of the country's founder Kim Il-sung. U.S. thermal imaging satellites immediately detecting the ignition of the rocket's engines. Under information-sharing agreements worked out long ago between Japan and the United States, the launch detection warning .was relayed to the government of Japan. The U.S. information was immediately shared with Japan's Self Defense Forces, which were on high alert to detect, track and, if necessary, shoot down the rocket-- oops, I'm sorry, missile.

The service personnel on board three Aegis-class destroyers equipped with SM-3 missiles and the personnel at the ground based radar stations on Shimokoshikijima (E), Fukuejima and numerous other sites in Kyushu, northern Chugoku and Okinawa stared at their screens, waiting for the confirmation of the rocket's rise.

And they waited.

And they waited.

And they waited.

Funny thing about the Earth: it's curved. If some object blows up before it rises above your horizon, you are going to be waiting forever.

Both the Aegis destroyers in the East China Sea were cruising far to the south (having two in the Sea was a public relations stunt: in terms of missile defense and radar coverage, one was more than sufficient). The choice of positioning did provide greater protection to the Okinawa Islands but also did not upset the Chinese. It would have made more sense from an intelligence gathering standpoint to position one of the two destroyers in the north, closer to the launch site. Unfortunately, China tends to consider the northern part of the East China Sea and all of the Yellow Sea as a no-go area for all but the most intrepid of foreign naval powers.

So following Friday morning's launch, Japan was blind to a no-longer-existing-possible-threat. Which, when you think about it, is no big shakes.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu, the government spokesman and concurrently the government's COO, did not come out of the Security Council -- which he is a part of, meaning that he is somehow responsible for reporting to the public on a meeting he supposed to be attending -- until an hour after the launch to admit the fascinating but tentative possibility that a launch may have taken place.

All of which looks terribly bad and stupid, considering that U.S. and South Korean officials were making announcements of a launch having taken place within minutes of the launch's having taken place.

Predictably, the main opposition parties have gone to town on the "failure" of the government to keep the public informed in a timely manner about what was going on. The national official security threat system called J-Alert was never engaged. Government email communications even 50 minutes after the launch were saying that a launch had not been confirmed. In a bit of humorous bad luck resulting from the width of the computer screens of the government's official communications systems and the peculiarities of Japanese sentence structure, the message from the government read what is is the equivalent of:

"As for the launch of a missile, the current status is that a missile launch confirmation has

not happened."

Whatever hyperventilations about the Japanese government's lack of preparedness or bad execution emerge, three points:

1) With the rocket doing itself in, nobody was ever in a position to get hurt.

2) The SDF and the government followed prudent protocols, showing they had learned from the false positive report in 2009 that led to an unnecessary warning being passed on to local officials.

3) The ridiculousness of Fujimura's having had to have been in two places at once may fan into flame the ever-smouldering debate over the Cabinet's need for a dedicated spokesman.

Burning one of the five Special Advisor to the Prime Minister (shusho hosakan) positions in order to appoint an individual charged solely with providing information to the public was one of the few good ideas former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo brought with him when took over as prime minister. That the decision blew up in his face was due to his having chosen the shameless self-promoter Seko Hiroshige as his Special Advisor for public communications.

Ever since the Seko fiasco, no PM has been willing to repeat the experiment -- which is too bad, as the present arrangement has never been to the public's benefit in terms of providing comprehensive and comprehensible information. It has also in some cases become something of a power trip for the man (yes, only men so far) chosen to simultaneously wear two very important government hats, turning the Chief Cabinet Secretary into something of a Chief Cabinet Jerk.

For Those Who Don't Have The Time

To dig or an awareness of just how much is being made available on-line regarding Japan's security environment, the latest edition of Tiago Mauricio's East Asian Security & Defence Digest is out. (Link)

A Government With Its Priorities Straight

The Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito have been giving the government of Noda Yoshihiko a lot of flack over its response to the announcement of Kim Jong-il's death. They claim that the government's response was lackadaisical and foolhardy and betrayed a lack of sense of crisis over the event.

The timeline on what happened on Monday morning went something like this (all times are JST):

10:00 The KCNA posts a bulletin that an important announcement will be made in two hours' time.

11:00 Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu is asked in his morning press conference whether he has heard about the DPRK announcement. Fujimura replies, "Yes, but we do not know what it is. So?"

11:59 The PM departs for a noontime rally promoting his vision of fundamental reforms and cutting government waste. He tells Fujimura, "If the announcement is anything important, call me back."

12:03 Fujimura learns that Kim Jong-il is dead.

12:05 Fujimura calls the PM; informs him of the situation. The PM's car is turned around.

12:09 The PM arrives at the Prime Minister's Residence.

12:10 The PM calls for a convening of the National Security Council.

13:01 The National Security Council is convened. Missing are Foreign Minister Gemba Koichiro (in Washington) and National Public Safety Commission Chairman and State Minister for North Korean Abductions Yamaoka Kenji (in his Tochigi Prefecture constituency on a political tour).

13:30 Fujimura holds a press conference on the news.

Now it must be said that Yamaoka's not returning to the capital in time for the Security Council meeting looks incredibly bad. Then again, since he has been censured by the House of Councillors and is thus on track to resign from his positions in the government (perhaps now a near certainty, despite his being Ozawa Ichiro's right hand man), his absence was not much of a loss.

In truth, the Noda government's unperturbed attitude toward the surprise announcement of Kim Jong-il's death shows it has its priorities straight, not backwards.

First, the prospect of an announcement from North Korea did not drive the Prime Minister's Office into a tizzy. The Prime Minister and the government went about their business, until such time as a real security threat had been confirmed. Instead, the prime minister in particular concentrated on the important task of winning public support for his painful and fundamental reforms of the Japanese economy and public services, a herculean task.

Second, the absence of vital members of the National Security Council, indeed the members most directly involved with the response to national security threats, did not affect the functioning of the Council. Some effort was probably made to whisk Yamaoka back to Tokyo in time for the meeting but when it was clear he was not going to make it, the meeting went on without him.

This is a demonstration of a government in control, not out of touch. It focused on the nation's fundamental and chronic problems, not the sudden irruption of an event that it had no control over, had no obvious consequences and required no specific action (read the list of what the Japanese government committed itself to doing posthaste here - hat tip to Japan Real Time).

The LDP and the New Komeito are just barking -- but their barking will likely be heard by their friends in Washington, who are banking on the LDP-New Komeito coalition's return to power next year.

Later - In reconstructing what went wrong with the summoning of Yamaoka back to the capital following the DPRK's 10:00 a.m. alert as to a coming special announcement, the government has determined that the fault lay with the staff at the Prime Minister's Residence, who failed to contact Yamaoka in a timely fashion (J). Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura has apologized for this failure, absolving Yamaoka of any responsibility.

Lest anyone argue that this apology undermines my thesis, please note that this was clearly an error in execution, not in priorities.