From Out Of The Mailbag

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,,

"Rather than writing a hatchet job based largely on snark about grammar, why don't you spend a little more time laying out what you think is wrong with the argument? Surely that would be more illuminating?"

Thus was I challenged the other day by an anonymous commentator as regards my dismissal of Dr. Jeffrey Hornung's essay for The Diplomat, "South Korea’s Irresponsible Diplomacy With Japan."

The commenter is absolutely right. I had indulged my aggravation with the misuse of language (a sin from which Seth Garrett has pointed out, I am not immune), metronomic recitation of facts and strained metaphors. Under this veneer of faults lay a more fundamental flaw: the thesis that those in power in Japan have made brave and insufficiently appreciated efforts at reconciliation and reflection in regards to the country's expansionist imperial period. That these efforts have been insufficiently appreciated because they have been insufficiently brave does require illuminating, especially since Dr. Hornung's essay is part of what seems a concerted push by elements of CSIS and the CSIS Pacific Forum across the spectrum of online media:

"South Korea’s Irresponsible Diplomacy With Japan"
Dr. Jeffrey Hornung
Associate Professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu and an Adjunct Fellow with the Office of the Japan Chair at CSIS.

"War memories and territorial disputes in Northeast Asia"
Preeti Nalwa
Non-Resident Kelly Fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS, a Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellow and PhD candidate at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi.

"Korea-Japan: enough is enough!"
Ralph Cossa
President of the Pacific Forum CSIS of Honolulu, an affiliate of CSIS in Washington.

Cossa's essay contains certain annoying items that do not exist, such as Japan's king and its National Assembly (it is Japan's Emperor and the Diet, respectively). However, I can hardly giggle and point, as in a recent post I claimed that the Heisei emperor had visited South Korea -- an assertion for which thoughtful correspondent A. R. has asked me to provide supporting evidence.

Ooops.

I was also recently chided in comments by reader Philippe for writing a puff piece on the final nail being driven in the coffin of Tanigaki Sadakazu's campaign for a second term as Liberal Democratic Party president. The post could be read as trying to beat some life into what had long been an exceedingly dead horse.

To an accusation that the post was a puff piece I plead guilty. I needed for myself, if not for the readership, to balance with the light with the dark, having written the previous day of my uncomprehending horror at the touted candidacy of Abe Shinzo for LDP president. Also, having only recently stumbled across Elvis Costello's "A Monster Went And Ate My Red 2" I was looking for an opportunity to share it.

However, on the broader issue of Tanigaki Sadakazu even thinking about running for a second term, and news media's treatment of the subject as anything more than a joke, that should be a subject of wide and deep discussion.

Tanigaki Sadakazu has been something of a guide star in my writing on the LDP and its problems. In July 2006 I went so far as to call him "the man who put the 'idiot' in idiot-savant." I have probably written more posts about him than on any other politician who was not a prime minister.

Tanigaki is the modern politician who should not have been. He has the social graces of a teenage boy, took eight years to finish his Bachelor's, failed the lawyer's exam six times before finally passing on his seventh try and has never had a real job. Nevertheless he managed to be annointed decades ago the dauphin of the Miyazawa Faction -- the faction led by the flat out smartest man in the Diet. That his rise through the ranks in the faction and the party could be explained by a compliant press -- who could not hide his cringeworthy attempts at ingratiating himself -- as being due to his being a policy wonk (seisaku tsu) should befuddle, perplex and finally anger anyone believing in the role of the Fourth Estate in a free society. Any intelligent person's review of his public statements makes plain he has not the slightest understanding of not just policy, but of common everyday occurrences (failing, for example, to understand that the intersection of the demand curve and the supply curve is the price).

That the political classes and the news media should collude in labeling Tanigaki what he clearly was not, even as they provided evidence that he was not what they were saying he was, has been a source of constant wonder to me. That he should rise to the post where he could have stepped into the role of leader of this blessed land should give everyone pause.

I felt it proper to mark the occasion when the Tanigaki farce seemed finally, irretrievably over.

No Man's Lands - A Thought

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, I attended a noon luncheon at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan featuring presentations by Katsuhiko Togo, a renowned and controversial former Director-General of the Treaties Bureau (where only the absolutely brightest career diplomats serve) and Park Il, professor at Osaka City University.  Their presentations focused on the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute and possible ways the South Korean and Japanese governments can climb down from their current enervated excited states.

Among the proposals floated by Mr. Togo was a new general code of  conduct for all of the players in Japan's territorial disputes.  Insistence that no territorial dispute exists over such-and-such a disputed territory, thus preventing the two governments even having discussions over the territories, should be abandoned.  "There is no territorial dispute so we have nothing to talk about" is the attitude adopted by South Korea over Dokdo/Takeshima and Russia over the Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories.  It is the brick wall Japan's diplomats or politicians run into when they try to engage their counterparts in discussions over these islands.

This stance is also the one taken by Japan over the Senkakus.  Under Togo's proposal, Japan would abandon its insistence that the Senkakus are indisputably Japanese territory, allowing discussion with the Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong governments over the status of the islands.

Such an approach would be both intellectually consistent and absolutely wrong.  Opening up the sovereignty over the Senkakus to discussion thows away one of Japan's ace cards.

The Senkakus are indisputably Japanese territory. We know this by inference.

How? Let us take a tour around the Pacific.

Name: Clipperton Island
Controlling State: France
Population: 0
Garrison soldiers: 0
Nearest inhabited land: Mexico

Name: Baker Island
Controlling State: U.S.A.
Population: 0
Garrison soldiers: 0
Nearest inhabited land: U.S.A., Australia

Name: Minamitorishima
Controlling State: Japan
Population: 0
Garrison soldiers: 0
Nearest inhabited land: Northern Marianas Islands, Wake Island (U.S.A.)

The sovereignty of none of these islands is contested. They are also not protected by standing forces, though a standby barracks was constructed on Minamitorishima in 2011.

Call me off my rocker -- but a sure way to indicate a lack of confidence over one's hold upon a Pacific island is to put soldiers on it or colonize it. By contrast, by leaving an island or a set of islands alone, allowing no inhabitants, unapproved visitors or soldiers on it or them, the more confidence you can exude that your claim is valid.

Why then put the Senkakus on a par with the heavily militarized Dokto/Takeshima, Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories, and the garrisoned islands of the Spratlys and the Paracels?


Later - Togo-sensei has published a written treatment of ideas regarding Japan's three major territorial disputes on the NBR website:

"Japan’s Territorial Problem: The Northern Territories, Takeshima, and the Senkaku Islands" (Link)

Later still - Someone has do a history of the Togo family, though it is difficult to imagine that Togo-sensei himself does not have already have a thick manuscript and the support documents in a fire-proof safe at home. If there were ever a "well, you do not see that every day" story, the saga of the Togo family is it.

The Longer The Explanation...

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, ...the more strained the metaphors, the more hyperbolic the rhetoric ("This has arguably brought bilateral ties to their worst nadir..." -- oh please, consult a dictionary and find out what "nadir" means) the less likely the essay in question will make its point...or has a point to make.

"South Korea’s Irresponsible Diplomacy With Japan"

Dr. Hornung's affiliations tell you why this essay was written. A man has to do his job(s). I cannot fault him for that.

However, one has to do one's job well. If one is going to pummel President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea, do not segue into the "Japan-has-apologized-enough-and-here-let-me-run-down-the-list" routine. Is there not a better way?

The other question is, with Jason Miks no longer at the helm at The Diplomat -- Miks having moved on to CNN -- who is letting this flotsam and jetsam over the transom?

More Gasoline

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Just when you thought that Japan-Republic of Korea relations could not get any worse, Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, August 15 Yasukuni Shrine visitor and right wing fruitcake Matsubara Jin, in Diet questioning, has stated that he would want the Cabinet to discuss a partial retraction of the Kono Statement of 1993 regarding the sex slaves of the Japan Imperial Forces comfort stations. (J)

Really, not the best of times for a Cabinet member to be expressing a wish of this kind. Indeed, there is never a good time for a Cabinet member to express such an opinion.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu (Fujimura the Unbelievable) has responded in his usual force-free manner, "There is nothing that the government feels it needs to do."

Expect the usual explosions on the other side of the Tsushima Strait.


Later - What is Matsubara doing? He is misreading the situation. He is interpreting the louder publicizing of positions the government of Japan has always held to be the trumpets announcing the dawn of the Era of Fruitcakery.

He is, as he is in almost all things, wrong.

Behaving Like Children - Lee and Noda On The Farm

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, 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.

Your Serve, Region

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko gave a live press conference last night, outlining what his government is doing regarding the territorial disputes with the Republic of Korea over Dokdo and China/Taiwan/Hong Kong over the Senkakus. (J)

The approach the Noda government will take is quite simple: it will assert its claims, which it has heretofore done quietly, mostly in the form of including the disputed territories in official maps, wherever appropriate in its interactions with the international community, leaving international opinion to judge the validity of Russian, South Korean and Chinese/Taiwanese behavior.

This approach is in line with the standard procedures of normal democratic states. Authoritarian regimes can enforce, as Deng Xiaoping suggested, the sweeping of competing claims under the rug for later, wiser generations to resolve, with the obvious postscript: "In the meantime, let's stay in power by letting our people make money." Democratic states cannot -- voters like problems resolved in clean, simple and tidy ways.

Adjusting to the new stance will lead to some fumbling. Even foreign policy experts will not "get it" -- see this CNN op-ed by Jimbo Ken, where he argues at the beginning that status quo policies are no longer operative, only to argue at the end that the conduct of relations between Japan and China needs the kinds of personal relations that lubricated and protected the status quo approach.

However, the chances of the new assertiveness' succeeding in freezing further escalation of territorial disputes are at least 50-50. All the governments in the region ex Japan remain at least semi-authorian -- the exception being Taiwan, which has opted out of the current round of the fighting over the Senkakus despite being led by a man whose law degree is based upon studies of Chinese claims in the East China Sea (E and E). The semi-authoritarian regimes can still rely upon considerable powers of persuasion to repress populist behavior - if the regime in question wants to do so. China has deployed both its 50-cent Party of Web commentators and its police forces (E) in a short-circuiting of anti-Japanese mob action in relation to the visit of Hong Kong activists to the Senkakus. That the South Korean president has gone in the other direction, choosing to heighten regional tensions rather than use his presidential powers to tamp them down, over a territory where South Korea has dug-in military forces, is...to be honest, not something I do want to delve into right now because it will be, inshallah, discussed in a future op-ed for Al-Jazeera.

The takeaway from last night's speech is that the balls are now in the courts of the nations surrounding Japan. The government of this blessed land is not going to keep quiet, as was demonstrated in the most recent Defense White Paper where the government put it writing That Which Must Not Be Said: that the civilian government of China and the People's Liberation Army may not be reading from the same piece of sheet music.

It will be up to the governments in the region, coping with their own internal instabilities and tensions, to come up with new narratives to cope with Mr. Noda's New Reality.

Pictures of Modern Patriotism

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, 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

It Could Have Been A Lot Worse

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In yesterday's post, I lamented that the August 15 anniversary of the end of World War II was the worst of days, due to the absurd nationalist and ehtnocentric emotions the anniversary raises.

However, we have made it through to Thursday, Amaterasu be praised. A lot of bad, stupid events took place and dumb things were said, but all turned out pretty much for the best.

- The fishing boat full of Hong Kong activists, despite the Japan Coast Guard's vigorous efforts to encourage -- and by "encourage" I mean this...

to not try to make landfall at any of the Senkaku Islands, could not take the subtle hint and proceeded close enough to the shore of Uojima for seven of the activists, carrying inexplicably the flags of both the PRC and the ROC, to wade ashore.

CCTV, in a breaking news flash, depressingly referred to the charade as a "successful landing."

On shore, the seven were met by a company of JCG personnel and Okinawa Prefecture police -- a blend of security forces the activists should have thanked their lucky stars for, as coast guard personnel tend to play rough. They are the proud cowboys of Japan's security establishment and have a very short list of rules of engagement.

Despite the reduced chance of their being harmed, two of the activists turned around and immediately swam back to the boat. Perhaps they lost heart; perhaps they had a live interview wairing for them. The remaining five were relieved of their flags and arrested on violations of immigration laws.

Later, after night had fallen, the Coast Guard took control of the fishing vessel, arresting the nine remaining activists on board.

No one got hurt; the Chinese got their testosterone shot. If Japanese authorities learned anything from the Chinese fishing boat collision case, they will put the activists on a flight to Hong Kong, deporting them for being particularly unsuccessful illegal immigrants.

- President Lee Myung-bak, who threw a wrench into Japan-South Korea relations by visiting Dokdo on August 10, doubled down on his diplomatic faux pas by inviting the Heisei Emperor to visit South Korea on the condition that the emperor issue a contrite apology to the peoples of the Korean peninsula for Japan's occupation and annexation of the land a hundred years ago (E). That the Emperor did this the last time he visited the ROK Prime Minister Kan Naoto did this on the 100th anniversary of Korea's annexation seems to have not satisfied President Lee's critics.

For a guy born in Osaka, Lee sure is tough on his original home. Then again, for the suspicious act of having emerged from a uterus in Japan, the president of the Republic of Korea is a presumed puppet of Japan.

Lesson: choose your uterus wisely!

[Choosing the right uterus is only half the story, of course, even in these oligarchical times. The Hatoyama Brothers, Yukio and Kunio, made an excellent choice, only to proceed through their own particular brand of solipsism to make a hash of their advance placement in life.]

- The demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul attracted 300 persons, according to Japanese news reports. In the pouring rain, the famous statue of the young seated girl looked as though she were crying,

While particularly a effective and affective work of art yesterday, the statue has to be moved to a less provocative location. It is, of course, a stand-in for the sex slaves themselves, who cannot, due to their advanced age, keep up the weekly protests much longer.

However, the statue, in its permanence, closes minds. From the point of view of a Japanese diplomat or a Japanese politician, the statement "We will always be here" provokes the response, "Fine. We will always ignore you."

- The two members of the Cabinet who paid their respects at Yasukuni yesterday did so in a private capacity, as they had promised, lessening somewhat the fallout from the visits. They also demonstrated, in their press availabilities after their visits, that neither would make it past the first round of an "evil genius" competition.

- After reporting on the rest of the day's sordid events, NHK's 9 p.m. broadcast a special segment on a heretofore little-publicized facet of the Pacific War: the dispatch of eleven agents from the infamous Nakano military intelligence school to the outer, tiny islands of the Okinawa chain in last year of the war. The goal: to infiltrate local society in preparation of convincing the islanders to sacrifice themselves for the defense of the main islands.

The piece focused on the effort of two sisters to record, as long as persons of at least a certain age in 1945 are still alive, memories of a school teacher who arrived in January 1945 and soon became renowned for his kindness and competence.

The school teacher, was, as it turned out, one of these agents.

When Allied forces arrived near the island, the teacher was one of the local authorities who convinced islanders to retreat in to the forests. Once in the forest, the teacher, who had heretofore been known only for his sweet disposition, suddenly began talking about everyone preparing for a glorious death in battle (gyokusai - literally "a crushing of a jewel"). The islanders, in their good sense, thought he had gone insane and ignored him.

Some time later, after the war was over, Allied intelligence found the agent still at work on the island, arrested him, and took him away.

It was the last anyone on the island saw of him.

Now for the sisters, the recording of the activities of the agent, who went on to live a life of obscure normalcy as a middle school teacher on Honshu, has a deeply personal cast. While on the island, the teacher started living with a local woman, impregnating her. She later gave birth to a son.

That woman was the sisters' aunt and the boy their cousin.

The message repeated throughout the piece was the way the leadership in Tokyo considered the inhabitants of Okinawa expendable (sute ishi - "stones tossed away"). Their value. at least as regards the male inhabitants, was as a potential guerrilla force tying down the Allies, inflicting casualties, and slowing the Allied advance as the main islands prepared to repel an amphibious invasion.

Insufficient reflection on the wrongs done in the war, both on the small and the vast scales?

Not exactly.

Photo image credit: Yomiuri Online

The Worst Of Days

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Today should be the best of days. A day of celebration of the end of the worst of all wars. The end of the rule of this blessed land by an oligarchy of military officers. A celebration of the end of the needless sacrifice of millions soldiers and tens of millions of civilians to a false god, a faith that security is bought through the elimination of potential threats on one's horizon, pursued and acquired with blood and treasure, only for horizon to move ahead, non erit finis. It should be a celebration of the end of the long subjugation of the Korean peoples and the attempt to extirpate their culture. The end of the 80 year struggle between China and Japan for mastery of East Asia, a conflict that left both devastated and impoverished.

It should be a day of remembrance, yes for the soldiers who died in the conflict, but more importantly the civilians, who had no part in the conflict between the military men, other than to be crushed and blown to pieces by the machine of war.

A day to raise a glass and say, "It ended on this day."

But it will likely not be the best of days. It will likely be one of the worst.

State Minister for the Abduction Issue and Chairman of the National Security Commission Matsubara Jin and Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Hata Yuichiro promised to visit Yasukuni today. Matsubara earlier this morning made good on this promise. If and when Hata makes good on his promise, these will be the first visits to Yasukuni by Cabinet ministers since the Democratic Party of Japan took power three years ago.  It will be the first visit by more than one Cabinet member since the Koizumi years.

Matsubara has always been a paid-in, Grade Triple-A, choice member of the right-wing bag of nuts. His right-wing bona fides were why prime minister Noda Yoshihiko handed him for the Abductee portfolio, which the DPJ had been passing around like a hot potato. Matsubara was always a candidate for the DPJ-member most likely to visit the shrine on August 15. He has simply made good on the threat that he posed.

Hata has never featured prominently in right wing newsmaking . He has been a regular attendee of August 15 legislators' visits to Yasukuni. A member of the House of Councillors, he is not up for reelection next year; this is no bald electoral stunt. His father Tutsomu, however, seems too ill to run for his House of Representatives seat. So Hata Junior is possibly positioning himself for a run for his father's seat.

Nagano Prefecture is not seen as a part of the conservative heartland. Hata the Younger is a real legacy politician, however, with few or no personal achievements or capacities. With the DPJ a damaged electoral brand, it seems that he feels insufficiently confident he has the gravitas to both forego going to Yasukuni today and still win the Nagano #3 seat his father has occupied since 1969.

On the 10th of this month, Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu asked members of the Cabinet to show self-control as regards official visits to Yasukuni. Matsubara reportedly has and Hata is promising to adhere to the letter, if not the spirit, of Fujimura's request by paying "personal" or "private" visits. (J)

Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko might have asked Matsubara and Hata to suspend their visits or resign as ministers if they really wished to pay their respects. However, any interest Noda may have had in the Japanese Cabinet's demonstrating restraint in the interest of regional peace flew out the window with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's visit to Dokdo/Takeshima on the same day Fujimura made his appeal. After Lee's provocation, no prime minister could survive asking his subordinates to not visit Yasukuni.

In delicious irony, the excuse that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade made for Lees's visit to Dokdo is exactly the same one Koizumi Jun'ichiro used to give for his visits to Yasukuni: of what business is it of other nations when a leader of a country visits a location inside his own land? (E)

Noda is prickly about matters of Japanese honor. As the son of a Ground Self Defense Forces officer he sometimes takes a swerve toward the crazy as regards the actions of the Imperial Forces. His hair-splitting on the status of the 14 Class A war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni or the procurement of the sex slaves known as the comfort women makes Japan's neighbors nervous. In the case of the comfort women issue, Noda's government out of principle had no strategy to deal with the new situation arising from the South Korean Supreme Court's ordering the country's executive branch to publicize the issue. It was Noda's ignoring Lee's importuning him to make some visible effort as regards reconsideration of the comfort women issue that pushed Lee to make his final determination to visit Dokdo. (J)

Meanwhile, somewhere north of the the Taiwan Straits, a shipload of Hong Kong activists is on course for a collision with Japanese Coast vessels just inside the 12 nautical mile perimeter around the Senkaku Islands. According NHK, the activists will arrive in the area about the Senkakus at around noon today, Japan Standard Time (J). As these confrontations have ended fatally in the past (E) it is inexplicable that Hong Kong authorities did not hinder the vessel's departure.

In South Korea, today is Independence Day. Considering how they have viewed the performances of South Korea's athletes at the London Olympics as an expression of national power and the victory in the South Korea-Japan men's soccer match as an expression of spiritual power (E - Fiction is dead: there is no longer any reason to make stuff up) one shudders to think how today's end of Japanese rule over Korea will be celebrated.

So today will be not a celebration of a region liberated from a hypertrophied, paranoid, expansionist nationalism but indeed the opposite, a series of vignettes reminding the rest of the planet on how much this ideological dead end holds the region in its thrall.

Take The Medals And Run

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The London Olympics are over. I was wondering which "surviving band members" would be the closing act -- and prayed over and over, "Please, please, please do not make it Paul McCartney and Ringo doing 'Hey Jude'."

I could also not help but wonder, particularly after the closing ceremonies had an incomprehensible phoenix segment ("Well, so much for the Stravinsky," I said to myself) what the heck the organizers of the Sochi Olympics will inflict upon us:

"And after that performance by an unknown Russian rapper and Nashi vice-president, a tribute to the internal security services!"

As for this blessed land, its athletes, most of whom were quickly flown home, thereby missing all the fun, are carrying either around their necks or safely in overhead luggage bins medals from 38 team or individual placings, more than the athletes of Japan have ever won at a single Olympiad. These results were achieved despite Japanese judoists boring almost everyone to tears with their uninspired performances in the national sport. Congratulations to their opponents for staying awake long enough to outpoint Japan's embarrassing representatives.

Japan finished in a respectable, if not spectacular, sixth place in the overall medals standings, making London second only to the Athens Olympiad in terms of Japan's final rank in the total medal table. This represents a significantly different final tally and ranking, as I had to point out to a commenter after my post of a week ago, from the country's recent performances at non-boycott Summer Olympics.

2012 London 38 medals - 6th place in total medals won

2008 Beijing 25 / 11th

2004 Athens 37 / 5th

2000 Sydney 18 / 15th

1996 Atlanta 14 / 23rd

1992 Barcelona 22 / 17th

1988 Seoul 14 / 14th

Some not so quite so edifying observations reading les Jeux Olympiques de Londres:

- Know when to not win - The last thing that Japan women's soccer coach Sasaki Norio wanted was to have his team in the same half of the knockout round as the United States. So he told his players play for a tie, not a win, in their final round-robin game against South Africa. He sent in his ace striker Kawasumi Naomi as a substitute in the 58th minute with the apology, "I am embarrassed to ask this, but please do not take one of your magnificent cutting-in shots." (J)

One day later, four women's badminton teams, including the favorite from the People's Republic of China, were ejected from their competition for intentionally trying to lose, this in order to win better placings in their knockout round draw. The sports world reacted with horror. Sasaki was suddenly no longer the strategist but the traitor for his admission he had had his players going for the tie.

However, the criticism was ex-post-facto, leaving only a smattering of sports pundits feeling a smug satisfaction at having "said the right thing" about the Japanese women's soccer team's tactics. (E)

Result for this blessed land: a place in the women's soccer final and a silver medal finish.

- If you are trying lose on purpose, make it look good - The Indian badminton coach protested that the Japanese women's doubles pair should have also been ejected from the competition, having lost its final match against an unranked Chinese Taipei team. Since the Japanese team did not do something stupid and obvious like repeatedly serving into the net, however, the protest was rejected. (J).

Result for this blessed land: a place in the final and a silver medal finish.

- Argue that a man falling in an upside vertical position is doing a handstand. Really - Men's gymnastics team leader and eventual individual all-around gold medalist Uchimura Kohei had terrible results during the first two days of competition. In his last event in the team competition finals, the pommel horse, he went for his dismount and missed it, spinning wildly splayed leg and out of control but nevertheless landing on both feet. The initial judgment of the move was that it was worthless, leaving the Japanese team out of the medal standings. The team bumrushed the judges podium and browbeat the judges into calling whatever it was that Uchimura did a handstand.

Result for this blessed land: the extra points needed for a silver medal finish.

(Are we seeing a pattern here?)

- It's not how you play the game, it's whether or not the referee is blind - While the United States-Japan final in women's soccer was thing of beauty (with a few unnecessary love hugs and a missed handball inside the U.S. penalty area), the United States-Canada game was unwatchable. Canadian fouling of the U.S. side was criminal. Les Canadiennes may have argued that they were robbed (E). They should be glad to not be right now sitting in a London jail cell, awaiting trial on assault charges.

- Don't be helpful - Handsome, bi-national, English-speaking, well-spoken and well-like retiring hammer thrower Murofushi Koji was a shoo-in for election to an athlete's spot on the International Olympic Committee.

That is until he tried to explain to another athlete how to vote in the IOC athlete's representative election. Using his Ipad, he called up the relevant IOC page.

Zing! Expulsion as a candidate for election rigging! (E)

At the Olympics, The Golden Rule is "You are here for the gold; leave the helping out to the volunteers."

- Taekwondo is not the national sport of Korea. Going bonkers over Dokdo/Takeshima is the national sport of Korea - They'll cheer! They'll cry. You'll kiss your bronze medal goodbye!

South Korean soccer midfielder Park Jong-woo and his ridiculous, "Dokdo is ours!" sign on the pitch after South Korea's 2-0 victory over the Japanese team in the bronze medal match. (E)

One wonders whether he will be a national hero, rather than a national embarrassment.


Later - Oh, I see. They had Sir Paul playing "Hey Jude" at the opening ceremonies. Just could not stop themselves, could they?

So much better to have Roger Daltrey at the end looking out over the athletes singing, "Teenage wasteland/It's only teenage wasteland."

Image courtesy: Mainichi JP

He Just Keeps Getting Better And Better

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Over at Japan Security Watch and the search-engine-optimization-hostile σ1, Corey Wallace takes a grand tour of East Asia and the pitfalls looming in the massive wave of government changeovers this fall.

READ IT. (Link)

Mr. Wallace hedges in his final paragraph, describing the post's viewpoint as as "mostly cynical."

You can relax, Mr. Wallace: no one has ever lost any money on "mostly cynical" -- ever.

It's Complicated

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Of course, it is not only the spring days of Chinese diplomats which are being ruined by blunt instructions from the ministry back home. Japanese diplomats based in New York are also being told to issue dumb statements, inflaming issues best left alone.

It seems the brilliant strategic campaign being waged on the Palisades Park, New Jersey comfort women monument, briefly described in a long post earlier this week, has, in the immortal words of the Showa Emperor, "developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest."

Or so says The New York Times (Link).

Many, many thanks to read MK for the follow up on this misguided adventure.