Live Blogging Prime Minister Abe 's Policy Address

2:27 And the weirdness begins: Endo Toshiaki comes out for a presentation on resolution regarding the 2020 Olympics.

2:24 That's All Folks! Let's all go out there and serve the public. (The Man is Finished Speaking)

2:23 Crowd shot of the New Komeito's upper deck of seat holders. Party policy research chief secretary-general Inoue Yoshihisa seems to be asleep.

2:21 Second maudlin anecdote: what Paralympic athlete Sato Mami told him, about not counting what one has lost but what one has gained.

2:21 PM has fought for the natinal interest in his many overseas official visits, and promoted Japan's charms.

2:19 Japan faces an increasingly severe security environment. PM promises to stregthen the security response apparatus in the Prime Minister's Residence.

2:18 Here in the 21st century, Japan must abandon its reflexive passive and become an energetic participant in world peace and security actions.

2:17 Getting excited, strikes the rostrum.

2:16 Promises to reform the healthcare system but assures seniors that his goal is safety -- so I guess he is sorry now for the co-payment increases his cabinet approved in August.

2:14 Declares that this will be the parliamentary session of "taking on the question of realizing the economic growth strategy" -- a rather long-winded locution.

2:13 "In the TPP negotiations we will attack that which needs to be attacked, protect that which needs to protected." -- which means diddly, of course.

2: 11 First export story: the delicious food of Japan which I have been promoting as the country #1 salesman. However, PM notes, agriculture been unable to lower costs and become more productive. Pledge to double agriculture incomes in 10 years, nevertheless.

2:10 Notes the reality that prosperity will come when women and the young receive opportunitis for greater remuneration.

2:08 Claims his economic growth strategy will bring back Japan's economic vitality, only better than in the past, because women will be participating in it.

2:07 First maudlin anecdote: reads letter to him purportedly by a young married woman forced to leave her home in Fukushima.

2:05 Notes that recovery and reconstruction from the triple disaster of 3/11 is behind schedule or halted. Promises action as the earliest.

Pledges total effort to decomission Fukushima #1 and control the radiation linkage.

2:03 Starts out by quoting national economic growth statistics at length, and selectively so as to tell the happiest tale.

Prime Minister's Policy Speech to the House of Representatives starts at 14:00

OSIIOIIDI *

* Oh Sure, It Is OK If I Do It

私としては、このような政府の行為は日本国憲法の要請である天皇陛下の政治的利用の禁止に抵触するものであり、断じて容認できないと考え、次期通常国会をはじめとするあらゆる場において、憲法第三条に定められた内閣の責任を追及していく覚悟です。

"For me, this kind of government action represents an infringement of the ban upon the political use of the Emperor, as set down in the Constitution. I simply cannot accept it, I am prepared, as a first order of business, to pursue, in the next regular Diet session, the Cabinet's responsibility for this infringement under Article 3 of the Constitution -- and pursue it everywhere else as well!"

That was Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council Chairman Ishiba Shigeru, writing in his blog on December 15, 2009 about what was clearly in his mind a heinous abuse of the constitutional status and royal person of Japan's fragile 75 year-old monarch.

What the Democratic Party of Japan-led coalition government did was ask the Imperial Household Agency to arrange a brief private chat at the Imperial Palace between His Majesty and then Vice-President of China Xi Jinping. The Agency initially rejected the government's request based upon an internal rule that all requests for Imperial audiences must be made at least 30 days in advance. The Hatoyama government had put in its application 19 days prior to the proposed meeting date. Backed by the DPJ's then Secretary-General and China Best Friend Ozawa Ichiro, the government persisted (or insisted, depending upon your politics). In the face of pressure, the Agency relented, agreeing to arrange an audience.

The government's pushing for a reversal of the Agency's decision unleashed a storm of protest from both the opposition LDP and right wing activists, an uproar abetted by Grand Steward Haketa Shingo's unprecedented public complaints about the government's actions. (Link)

Despite the acrimony, including the ultra-rightists protesting in front of the Palace (Link), the meeting went off without a hitch, with Japan emerging a big symbolic winner.

Fast forward four years. An LDP-led coalition government rules Japan. Ishiba is now Secretary-General of the LDP.

In an agreement signed in May, the Abe government confirmed its readiness to send Japan's now 79 year-old monarch and his equally frail spouse on a state visit to the healthful confines of India (Link) a visit that K. V. Kesavan alerts us, begins on November 30. (Link)

India...kind of far away...maybe kind of arduous...

Last month, Grand Steward Kazaoka Noriyuki questioned the propriety of the government's urging Princess Hisako to travel to Buenos Aires in order to shore up the Tokyo bid for the 2020 Olympics. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide gave Kazaoka a public tongue lashing for having the gall to try to divine what their Imperial Majesties were thinking about the Princess' trip. (Link)

Princess Hisako's participation led to questions from all quarters regarding the use of the Imperial institution to political ends (Link). In a development that will likely leave some scratching their heads (aren't Japan's right wingers a cabal?) arch-nationalist cartoonist Kobayashi Yoshinori blew his top -- mocking the government's official explanation that the Princess was only attending in order to thank the international community for its contributions to disaster relief and recovery in the Tohoku region. In Kobayashi's view, to see the dispatch of the Princess as anything but use of the Imperial House for political gain would be inane. (Link)

Kobayashi's being a stickler about keeping the Imperial Family above politics comes as something of a surprise. Then again, Kobayashi has been of late marching to the beat of his own drummer.

As it turns out, the decision to have Princess Hisako address the IOC congress was a masterstroke. Unlike the terrifying sing-song and presumably English-language presentations by eye candy like fencer Ota Yuki and gymnast Tanaka Rie, Princess Hisako, a Cambridge graduate and translator before she married Prince Takamado (the Prince, in his charming, off-kilter way, proposed marriage to her in English) marched through the text of her opening speech both in more-than-acceptable French and then The Queen's English.

The political taint of Princess Hisako's dispatch to Buenos Aires pales, of course, besides the government decision to have their Imperial Majesties preside over the first official commemoration of the anniversary of the end of the Allied Occupation. That celebration, fraught from the outset by the slap to the face it delivers to Okinawa (Link) descended into farce when the hopped up hyper-patriot almost exclusively LDP and Japan Restoration Party attendees hooted out a triple “Long live the Emperor!” (Tenno heika banzai!) at the clearly uncomfortable Imperial Couple. (Link)

The hypocrisy of the LDP as regards use of the Imperial House for political ends, as demonstrated by Ishiba’s dudgeon over an afternoon courtesy call at the Palace (so uncool) versus nothing but smiles about a state visit to India (What problem? I do not see any problem) is emblematic of a greater trend. Having the budget under the DPJ government stay the same size but emphasize temporary support for citizens over the permanent laying of concrete ? That's baramaki ("pork barrel politics"). Passing huge supplementary spending bills and reconstituting the funding for the wasteful Construction State? That is setting up the basic conditions for economic expansion. The DPJ's prime minister not visiting Yasukuni? The mark of a squirming, China-coddling, disloyal mindset. Prime Minister Abe's not visiting Yasukuni? The mark of a mature, realistic ethos in the LDP and the Cabinet.

For issue after issue -- expansionist monetary and fiscal policy, ambitious plans for a greater acceptance of women in the workplace, delays in restarting nuclear power plants, tossing the interests of the agriculture sector to the wolves in Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations -- the progressive policies are being promoted and instituted by what is the regressive party, and indeed the most regressive members of that party. Give the DPJ power, and these same policy initiatives would be hacked down from behind by the very  persons currently implementing and promoting them.

So the LDP's electoral slogan "Japan, Let's Take It Back" (Nippon o, torimodosu!)? Not really descriptive of the Abe government's and the LDP's current trajectory.

I have a suggestion:

"Hypocrisy? Just Let Us Get Away With It!"

Is Nothing Sacred?

And the world and the world and the world.
The world drags me down...

- The Cult, "She Sells Sanctuary" (1985)

Here is an item for filing in the "Surprises That Come As No Surprise" file:

Japan may opt to give up 'sanctuary' on TPP items
Yomiuri Shimbun

The government and ruling parties will begin considering whether tariffs on five categories of agricultural products that have been regarded as a “sanctuary” can be removed in tariff negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) multilateral trade initiative, in which 12 countries, including Japan and the United States, are participants, according to sources.

The government and the ruling parties have treated five categories of products—rice; wheat; beef and pork; dairy products; and farm products that are used as sweeteners, such as sugar cane—as key product categories for which tariffs should be maintained.

But now that the talks are facing difficulties, the government and ruling parties have to consider whether tariffs on some products in the categories can be removed.

Koya Nishikawa, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s committee on the TPP, said Sunday he would consider removing items during his visit to Bali, Indonesia.

"We have to consider whether [some products in the five categories] can be removed [from subjects for maintaining tariffs]," Nishikawa told reporters.

Akira Amari, state minister in charge of TPP affairs, said Sunday in Bali, "It's helpful that our party will hold discussions," indicating that the government will start considering the issue in step with the LDP’s review.

In response, LDP Secretary General Shigeru Ishiba told reporters Monday morning at the LDP headquarters, "Unless we put individual items into consideration, we will not be able to lead the negotiations to our advantage..."

(Link)

Who would have ever guessed that up unto and through the July elections, where rural district votes outweigh urban and suburban ones at ratios up 5 to 1, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party would swear eternal protections for Japan's beautiful agriculture, only to turn around post-election and offer up those protections as a sacrifice in order to win a deal improving Japan's negotiating position in a trade pact Japan's large multinationals and major business lobbies see as crucial?

Who would have guessed at this treachery?

It is as if Abe Shinzo were beholden in some way to big business interests for his return to power (Link) -- and as if Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party were preparing for the possibility, however remote, that agriculture's inordinate and disproportionate influence on national affairs might be undone by a blow from on high.

An aside - while reversing course on the sanctuary status of agricultural products may hurt Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and the LDP in the long run, in the short run, the person in pain is Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Hayashi Yoshimasa. It is Hayashi's job to protect the interests of Japan's primary products producers in the Cabinet -- and he is clearly failing as champion.

That Hayashi would be hung out to dry does not come as much of surprise: he did run against Abe for the post of party president last year. Abe punished him for his temerity, giving him a portfolio destined to make him either decidedly unpopular or a laughingstock.

Hayashi's predicament is not exceptional: the other LDP presidents-in-waiting who had the misfortune of running against Abe are in similar straits. Ishiba Shigeru, who defeated Abe in the first round of voting but did not gain the majority necessary to become president, received the consolation prize of the party secretary-generalship -- only to be shackled with the chaperoning of two women (and thus undismissable) sanyaku who detest one another other. At the same time the Cabinet and the Prime Minister's Residence have been surreptitiously gobbling up powers, instigating without announcement a more Westminister-like system of policy and party management, diminishing the importance of party leadership posts.

As for Ishihara Nobuteru, Abe appointed him Minister of the Environment -- and no one has heard from or seen Ishihara since.

Later - What I have to guess is Tamzin Booth of The Economist has checked in with a fleshed out Banyan post on the Abe government's perfidity. (Link)

As for Ishihara Nobuteru, no sooner do I declare him missing-in-action but he turns up in Kyushu, at a most interesting United Nations conference. (Link)

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Photo image of axe-wielding Hayashi Yoshimasa courtesy Yomiuri Shimbun

In Business - Cars And Cancer Insurance

Two recent offerings worth a look:

- Dr. Mike Smitka putting a torch to the idea that Japan will be playing to its strengths if Japanese companies push forward in developing innovative hybrid and electric car technologies (taking a swipe along the way at the larger fallacy of engineers, bureaucrats and lobbyists being able to identify and nurture technogies with real potential economic impact). (Link)

- Why behind closed doors discussions about liberalization of Japan's insurance markets bog down in fighting about what to do about a single company and its almost worthless (for the consumer -- it a gold mine for the company) product. It's about money and fear -- lots and lots of both. (Link)

The Eternal Sunshine Of Noda Yoshihiko’s Spotty Recollection

The DPJ's Gang of Six

Former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, who inexplicably called an election last December which led to his party's extirpation, is now doing P.R. for himself under the Bold, Mature and Sober labels.

Noda 'chose tax hike over being premier'
The Japan News

Former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said in a recent interview that he placed more importance on raising the consumption tax rate than remaining prime minister when he decided last August to approve the increase.

As head of the then ruling party, Noda agreed with the then two opposition parties on comprehensive social security and tax system reforms, including the consumption tax hike.

[Snip]

Noda said he had intended to resign from his Diet seat if he could not pave the way for raising the consumption tax.

"At the time I thought I might have to choose between the consumption tax hike or my post as prime minister," Noda said. "After also considering that I would have to choose between the tax increase and my own party [many members of which opposed the increase], I said I was willing to bet my political life. I meant that I intended to resign as a Diet member."

During the meeting of the leaders of the three parties last August, Noda was urged by then LDP President Sadakazu Tanigaki to specify when he, as the prime minister, would dissolve the lower house. At the time, the LDP wanted the lower house election to be held soon as it expected to score a major victory in the election, while the DPJ leadership wanted to delay the election as much as possible.

Noda said he replied: "I'll use an abstract expression but in a way that is as clear as possible. Both 'in the near future' and 'sometime soon' are all right with me."

After Tanigaki said, "I prefer 'sometime soon,'" Noda agreed to use that expression to describe when his administration would call an election, he said in the interview.

About the meaning of "sometime soon," Noda revealed that he had been determined to dissolve the lower house by the year-end.
“The only choice was [dissolution] by year-end. That was the bottom line. It was better for the nation considering the effects on preparing and implementing the budget," he said.

(Link)

No.

No, no, no, no and no.

That Abe Shinzo with his assault on the Bank of Japan and his profligate budgets would be reviving the animal spirits of the Japanese economy in 2013 was not something Noda could even vaguely foresee in mid-2012. Abe Shinzo was not the president of the LDP at the time. Noda was negotiating with Abe's hapless predecessor Tanigaki Sadakazu -- a mark demanding a double cross* if there ever was one -- whose economic policies were as no more expansionist than the DPJ's were. "LDP president Abe" to whom Noda would ultimately surrender, was still only a gleam in the eyes of revisionist and fantabulist members of the business establishment.

As for the excuse Noda makes for a November dissolution followed by a mid-December election, it does not hold water. An orderly process of compiling a budget is important, yes. However, is a sideshow if the DPJ has, as it did, a majority in the House of Representatives. The Constitution makes it clear that whatever the hell else happens, Japan's budget cannot be held hostage to a minority (the relevant passages are in Article 60, in case you are wondering).

What Noda did achieve, through his sobriety and iron-willed determination, was the electoral destruction of his party, the upending of a two-decade long process of building up a two-major-parties-alternating-as-the-party-of-government system and the short-circuiting the redrawing of the House of Representatives electoral map so as to reflect the Supreme Court's rulings on disproportionate representation -- all this, into the dumpster, in order to get the LDP to vote in favor of an LDP policy manifesto item. Furthermore, by calling the election in December, Noda made sure that the DPJ would suffer a huge cut in its 2013 government subsidy, making the financing of a return to power any time soon all the harder. Had Noda simply waited until January 2 for his announcement, his party, even if it lost a lot of seats in the subsequent elections, would still be on a decent financial footing.

Noda did not twist the LDP's arm, they twisted his, and his mind too. Snapping the spine of the DPJ was their job and Noda did it for them. If, as Noda indicates in this interview, it was either win the LDP's and the New Komeito's support for raising the consumption tax or resign from the Diet, I can think of hundreds if not millions of persons ready to cry, "Why the heck did you not resign from the Diet then?"

Furthermore, the Democrats cannot rid themselves of their portly DINO. He won his district handily last December by a greater margin than in August 2009. In addition, of all the members of the so-called "Gang of Six" of neither-entirely-cooperative-nor-entirely-helpful center-right leaders of the party (Noda, Edano Yukio, Azumi Jun, Okada Katsuya, Gemba Ko'ichiro and Maehara Seiji - Link - J), only Noda was able to bask in the glow of a DPJ candidate winning a seat in his home prefecture this past July.

Since the Democrats (and the rest of us) are stuck with Noda, the least we can ask for is that news organizations assign reporters willing to corner him on his dunderheaded management of the DPJ.

---------------
* How hapless was Tanigaki Sadakazu? He could be lulled into a debate over whether the House of Representatives should be dissolved "sometime soon" or "in the near future" and into choosing one of the two alternatives, allowing him to walk out of the building thinking he had extracted a concession from out of Noda.

Original image courtesy: Sankei Shimbun

Abe Shinzo And China's New Leaders: A Thought

President Barack Obama, his schedule consumed by negotiations aimed at ending a standoff with representatives from a former separatist region of the United States, will not be attending a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders this weekend. (Link)

While disappointing in its demonstration of the U.S.A.'s continued inability to behave like a modern state, Obama's cancellation does provides an opening for Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who is attending the summit (Link). Abe has managed to have big time bilateral meetings with just about everybody else in Asia (by the end of the month, for example, he will have visited all 10 ASEAN countries - Link). However, he has heretofore had no luck at all securing bilateral face time with Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Geun Hye.

An Mr. Obama no-show gives Abe the opportunity to leave a message on Facebook for his so far less-than-engaging counterparts:

"Gee, President Xi and President Park, Barack's not attending. I will miss him too. Unless I am mistaken, this means you now have an open slot in your schedule. Can we meet? Unless, of course, you are looking forward to your chance at experiencing firsthand U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's mesmerizing storytelling."

If meetings do not occur, it will not be due to intransigence on the Japanese side. The Abe folks are all for meetings, without preconditions.

If Abe and Xi do meet, however, a photo of the pair facing each other in chairs may be about all one can expect. While there are a myriad of ideas that Abe would love to bounce off of Xi, expecting a leader-to-leader talk without posturing and pretense may be too much.

From the vantage point of a perch in Tokyo, with all the biases that that entails, the chances for a personal "OK, the television crews are gone now, we can cut the crap" interaction with the present generation of Chinese leaders seems remote.

The nature of the game has changed. In the past, the official titles of the top leaders of China were adjuncts to who they were, after-the-fact official recognitions of real power, the locus of which was elsewhere -- but about which no one could plead ignorance. With Xi and his generation, however, the office is who they are. There is little leeway to get around "the official position" in private talks -- because the official position is that which the leaders must cling to in order to stay leaders. Indeed, who Xi is -- a princeling so in with the in crowd that he was able to marry one of China's superstar singers -- is precisely what Xi would probably want everyone to forget.

So while it would be great for Abe to have a chance to sit down with Xi and Park sometime in the next few days (I have likened those excusing the dearth of high-level Sino-Japanese and South Korean-Japanese contacts since Abe became PM to a coroner telling a police officer, "Well, except for the bullet in the brain and other one in the heart, this guy's in great shape!") breakthroughs should probably not be on anyone's wish list.

Honours Deserved And Given

On Tuesday, just before lunch time, Murata Natsue, a 40 year old employee of her father's real estate company, was sitting in the front seat of a van at a railway crossing. Her father was at the wheel of the van. Directly in front of them, a 74 yeard old man collapsed onto the railway tracks. Against her father's wishes, Natsue leapt out of the van, scrambled under the crossing bar and spun the old man around 90 degrees, so that he was lying in the railbed where the train could not hit him. At that moment the train arrived, striking and killing her. (Link)

Murata Natsue's sacrifice, made in saving the life of an elderly stranger, has stunned the nation.

This morning the Cabinet, in its first meeting since the accident, produced a Cabinet Decision (kakugi kettei) posthumously awarding Murata the Medal of Honour with Red Ribbon (pictured above) -- the nation's highest award for lifesaving, given to those who saved others at no thought for themselves.　(Link - J)

Whatever one might want to say about this Abe Cabinet, one cannot say it is insensitive and slow to respond to the sacrifices made by ordinary citizens. The family of a most unlikely heroine did not have to wait for the nation's highest authorities to recognize and pay homage to her courage and selflessness. Many a Cabinet of the past, when faced with such an extraordinary occurence, would likely have shuffled papers, deciding only to "assiduously study" (shikkari to kento suru) the appropriateness of national honours.


Later - The Yomiuri Shimbun's online English-language service files its report. (Link)

Later still (Monday) - Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide visited with the Murata family at the funeral home prior to the start of last night's wake. He brought with him a special proclamation from Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who is in Indonesia for the APEC summit. Kanagawa Prefecture Governor Kuroiwa Yuji and Yokohama City mayor Hayashi Fumiko showed up in person to pay their respects. (Link - J)

The United States Votes With Flowers

An official of the Department of Defense, currently on an involuntary vacation, yesterday alerted me to the laying of a wreath at the Chidorigafuchi National Memorial by the visiting U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense. I expressed to my friend a confident hope that good weather would encourage the major news organizations to highlight the Secretaries' visit to the Memorial, which progressive elements within the U.S. government and Japanese society have longed argued is the appropriate place for public officials to pay tribute to Japan's war dead.

Well, a day later, it seems I was a little too sanguine in my assessment. Agence France Presse, in its Japanese edition, played up the visit and its significance (Link - J). In English, The Japan Times went hog wild, with a title "Kerry, Hagel visit Chidorigafuchi to diminish Yasukuni," invincible to the ministrations of the mightiest of message massagers (Link). The New York Times in high-minded, above-it-all sobriety, managed to publish a huge photo of John Kerry and Chuck Hagel leaving the memorial without explaining the visit's significance. (Link)

As for the home team, there is very little good news to report. I saw no footage of the visit on any of the news programs I looked at over the last half day. National broadcaster NHK has nothing up in its online gallery (Surprised? No). On Google News, the only domestic news source with a report on the visit is Jiji Press, which has up only a brief account composed of five short sentences. Analysis of the significance of the visit is compressed into the last sentence, and is diffident, at best:

Ａ級戦犯が合祀（ごうし）され、閣僚による参拝が中国などとの対立要因となっている靖国神社とは異なり、宗教色はない。

Unlike Yasukuni Shrine, where Class A War Criminals are honored and where visits by members of the Cabinet cause strife with China and other countries, [Chidorigafuchi] does not have a religious aspect to it.

(Link - J)

Perhaps the U.S. government shutdown prevented the U.S. Embassy from drumming up interest in the wreath laying, leading domestic news organizations to feel comfortable in ignoring a very obvious U.S. prod to improve the visibility and popularity of Chidorigafuchi (the Jiji News report indeed felt it necessary to spend two of its five sentenceｓ explaining what the hell the Chidorigafuchi National Memorial is, as just publishing "Chidorigafuchi" would　have left　readers wondering, "Why is anyone talking about a famous cherry blossom viewing site at this time of year?").

So for the visit to have any bite, the newsgoround has to make another circuit. The　non-Japanese news outlets have to　make a news story out of the fact that Japanese news outlets ignored the wreath laying. This would compel　domestic news organization to report on the non-Japanese news media's making a fuss over the lack of coverage of the event when it happened.

T'is is a mad, mad mass media we have in this blessed land, with most peculiar tribal customs.


Later -The online version of the Sankei Shimbun does have a contemporaneous report on the visit of the secretaries to the Chidorigafuchi memorial. According the Sankei account, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when asked for comment about the wreath laying, said it had no knowledge of the event. (Link - J)

MOFA said it had no knowledge of the U.S. Secretary of State's intent to visit a national memorial on the sidelines of attending a 2+2 Meeting in Tokyo?

Curiouser and curiouser...

Tip of the hat to Michishita Narushige for the link.

Abe Shinzo's Friends Indeed

"It is called the Unbegun Symphony. It used to be called the Pathetic Symphony. Now these names as you may know, like the Jupiter Symphony and the Eroica Symphony...now these names as you may know, they are usually not given by the composer. They are given by friends or the musicians and stuff. This name, the Pathetic Symphony, was given to the piece by some of my old friends.

(Pause)

Well, I have a new set of friends now...and we're calling it the Unbegun Symphony."

- Peter Schickele, "The Unbegun Symphony" (1966) *

Well, he has a new set of friends now...

When I hear Abe Shinzo arguing for a stimulus package (taking cash out of the national treasury and distributing it to politically important constituencies) in order to offset the likely downturn in individual and corporate spending after the consumption tax rise (raised in order to pay for the higher health and pension costs associated with a larger population of retirees) so as to not derail the economic growth associated with Abenomics monetary policy (which, by targeting inflation, will eat away at the spending power of those on fixed incomes and/or living off their savings, i.e., retirees) and fiscal policy (which by accelerating the rate of increase of the national debt, threatens jumps in interest rates demanded by borrowers, which will increase the percentage of the national budget consecrated to debt service, decreasing the amount of money available for everything else, most importantly pensions and healthcare for the elderly) all against the advice of economists Honda Etsuro and Hamada Ko'ichi, the two identified "fathers of Abenomics," whilst simultaneously trying to drum up support globally for an as yet unknown set of structural reforms to be decided on...soon...because the set of reforms his brain trust of supposedly market savvy and creative CEOs produced for the big June announcement were either trivial (Link) or so nakedly self-serving (Rakuten CEO Mikitani Hiroshi going so far as to threaten to quit Abe's industrial competitiveness council if the sales of drugs and medical equipment over the Internet were not in included in the June announcement) as to embarrass the PM -- I blackly remember Professor Schickele's sardonic, "Well, I have a new set of friends now..."

In his return to power a year ago, Abe Shinzo seems to have secretly made a deal with himself and his eminence grise Suga Yoshihide. Abe would nod in the direction of old coterie of supporters and allies, the so-called "Friends of Abe" like Taka'ichi Sanae, Furuya Keiji and Inada Tomomi -- and yes, even the duplicitous and too glib Aso Taro -- relying upon them as the backbone for his challenge to the status quo within the Liberal Democratic Party. The muscle and momentum for the takeover of the party and the government, however, would come from the zaikai, with new style but still establishment business moguls like Mikitani, Takeda Phamaceuticals CEO and Keizai Doyukai head Hasegawa Yasuchika, JR Central Chairman Kasai Yasuyuki, Fuji Film CEO Komori Shigetaka as a set of "New Friends of Shinzo" -- persons whom when you talked to them seemed full of ideas on how to transform Japan into an economic powerhouse, a state capable of paying for the kind of raw politico-military power Abe had seemingly previously thought could only come through the imposition from above of a hair-trigger patriotic, paranoid obedience to authority -- you know, like the mindset the Chinese seem to be fostering.

The New Friends seemed full of the promise of a revived fukukoku kyohei, but a fukoku kyohei for the Facebook Age -- with the New Friends of Shinzo providing the ideas and capital for the fukoku and the Old Friends providing the applause for the Abe/Suga duarchy's tentative tiptoeing toward the kyohei.

As I watch Abe's epic, manic, economic speedballing -- meeting everyone, asking everyone's advice, with resulting announcements of new economic policies off-setting the effects of previous economic policies offsetting the effects of yet earlier policies engaged to counter the consequences of even older policies, with frenetic searches for new statistics demonstrating earlier that the latest policies are indeed working (Link) or that the current policies need yet newer policies to offset them -- I find myself worrying, "Won't the pressures of finding a path through the bewilderingly numerous, numbingly complex and often mutually contradictory plans of the New Friends of Abe cause the man to break down -- just like the unseemly power-grabbing and intransigence of the Old Friends did?"

A disconcerting thought for a sunny day.


Later - It is not a sign of the Apocalypse, but when the Yomiuri Shimbun, which is as a rule sycophantic in its coverage of the policies of the LDP prime ministers, is like me in shaking its head at the PM's mutually negating proposals (Link) then the sum of the parts of the current administration's ideas is clearly less than a whole.

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* The album An Hysteric Return: P.D.Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall is available here.

Your Chosen Profession

Tom Bishop: Nathan, we killed this man. We used him and we killed him. Okay then, you got to help me understand this one. You got... Nathan, what are we doing here? And don't give me some bullshit about the greater good.

Nathan Muir: That's exactly what it's about. Because what we do is unfortunately very, very necessary. And if you're not willing to sacrifice scum like Schmidt for those that want nothing more than their freedom, then you better take a long hard look at your chosen profession, my friend. Because it doesn't get any easier. You wanna walk? You wanna walk, walk.

-- Spy Game (2001)

Daniel H. Garrett walked.

My first response to a cursory reading of Garrett's letter, which I only found out about because of a mention of it in Sentaku, was, "Amaterasu, have I ever met this person?"

My second thought was, "I have to email X to ask him just how editorial at Japan Focus came to approve the publication of this lettter."

My third was, "How did the U.S. government manage to hire someone as unclear about the nature of the business he has chosen? The record of Garrett's education and employment on LinkedIn indicates an individual of rather...unconventional makeup.

I can sympathize with a desire to do good everyday in all things. And diplomats do a lot of good and decent things, overall. However, delivering incredibly bad, stupid, short-sighted and insulting messages to friends and enemies alike, as well as ferreting out intelligence from persons who are naive enough to open up to you, was Mr. Garrett's job -- a job that hundreds of diplomats from all parts of the globe do in Tokyo every day.

Speaking only in generalities until everything is declassified was another part of Mr. Garrett's job -- which the thousands of diplomats passing through in Tokyo manage to do in deference to the needs and interests of their employers.　Keeping one's peace does not mean keeping quiet, either. Former U.S. Foreign Service officers like Rodney Armstrong and Stephen Harner manage to engage in ferocious criticism of the Japan-U.S. relationship while keeping the details of their own service under wraps.

Mr. Garrett seems to have been an idealist mistakenly in service to an imperial power -- a well-intentioned, pro-democracy, inadvertent (to borrow Robert Dujarric's adjective) imperial power, but an imperial power nevertheless. Walking out on that empire turns one's employer into a laughingstock -- but not for the unfortunate policies and presumptuous attitude revealed. No, for having handed to an amateur a job reserved for professionals.