Do Not Study Too Hard, Hosono-san

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Contrary to a heretofore unknown rule that cabinet members should not challenge the prime minister in party elections, Minister of (deep breath) the Environment, the Restoration from and Prevention of Nuclear Accident and Nuclear Power Policy and Administration (i.e. - the haaardest working man in the government), unfaithful husband and hot young hunk of political man meat Hosono Goshi is reportedly studying a run for the post of leader of the Democratic Party of Japan. It seems a host of front benchers from amongst the supporters of former Prime Minister Kan Naoto, Policy Research Coumcil Chairman Maehara Seiji and former Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Kano Michihiko, want Hosono to become the DPJ's face, giving the party at least a chance at fighting the brainless default vote for the Liberal Democratic Party or much worse, the as-yet unnamed and unfounded national party of 42 year-old Osaka wunderkind Hashimoto Toru.

"Studying" (kento shite iru/kento ni haita) in a political context usually means quite the opposite of the usual meaning of the word. When a government official or a party official says, "We are studying the matter" what he/she is usually saying is, "You have asked an incredibly stupid question about a wild hypothetical. I have not the least intention of answering your question you rancid excuse for a journalist. Now sit down and shut up."

However, in this instance, Hosono, whom we know can sometimes put his brain in park, may indeed be studying a bid for the party leadership in the usual sense of the word "study."

Why will Hosono, after his brief period of study (he will be making an announcement today) likely not challenge incumbent prime minister Noda Yoshihiko, who otherwise would have a lock on the DPJ leader election?

Having a fourth DPJ prime minister since August 2009 makes the party look stupid - This was the reason Maehara gave to his supporters when he met them at lunch yesterday (J). Unfortunately, Maehara group members went to Hosono in the evening and before the cameras presented him with a written request to run. Hosono received the request, responding, "The election of a party leader is to be approached with trepidation. In that, my feeling has not changed." (J)

Seen another way, were Hosono to run and win, he would be the fifth party leader since 2009, an even further indication of party flightiness.

Putting a new bright face on the party does not work - The LDP tried to save the House of Councillors election of 2007 by naming the young Abe Shinzo, a man with a history of underachievement, as the party's fresh face. It then revved up the public relations machine (remember the egregious Newsweek Asia edition cover story comparing Abe Akie to Jacqueline Kennedy?).

The result was not quite as salubrious as planned. (E)

Then there was Fukuda Yasuo's surprise resignation in 2008 in order to open the way for the happy-go-lucky, Akihabara-loving Aso Taro to be the face of the party in a snap election in the fall.

That did not pan out, due to a little something referred to as the Lehman Brothers Crash.

Then there was Hatoyama Yukio's sudden resignation as prime minister in June 2010, simultaneously purging himself and the scandal-hobbled Ozawa Ichiro from the leadership, allowing Kan Naoto, Mr. Clean, to take over in time to save the DPJ from a loss of its majority in the July House of Councillors election.

That did not work out as planned, either. (E)

Policies and party image, it seems, matter.

Why take the hit when you can pick up the pieces? - With the DPJ likely to suffer a crushing losses in the next round of elections, the leader, whoever he is, will have to resign to take responsibility for the defeats.

Why be that leader? Why not bide one's time and run for the party leadership in the aftermath of the electoral debacle, taking up the role of the architect of the party's resurgence?

Later - The news media are reporting that Hosono, unlike that fateful night under street lamp with Yamamoto Mona, is doing the sensible thing and not succumbing to flattering attention. (J)

Slackjawed With Amazement at the Kurokawa Report

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, For me to list all the non-sequiturs, self-contradictory passages, half-truths, prevarications ("It is possible that..."), unsupported accusations, self-evident statements presented as revelations (Prime Minister Kan Naoto's visit to the plant "diverted the attention and time of the on-site operational staff." Oh cut the crap: the presence of a wasp in the control room would have had the same effect) and the reticence to assign blame in the final report of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Commission (Kokkai Tokyo Denryoku Fukushima Genshiryokuhatsudenjo jiko chousa iinkai), I would be typing all day, all night -- for weeks.

It is really that bad.

If the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the International Atomic Energy Commission had any sense, they would immediately hire a team of Japan scholars to tear this [unfortunate choice of words removed - Ed.] apart, and form special investigative commissions of their own to compare and contrast all the official reports produced so far.

The download page of the Kurokawa Commission report crashed a little after 9 pm last night (and is still down at the time of the publication of this post), preventing access to the most important versions of the documents. The reports themselves, when one could access them, were presented in impossible to copy-and-paste formats and in a maze of links and pages, indicating how little the powers-that-be have wanted the world and/or the citizens of Japan to take look at the Commission's findings and come to their own conclusions.

That the English language version of the report has the commission president blaming Japanese culture for contributing the disaster, whilst the Japanese language version omits this little chestnut, is simply so revolting an appeal to international stereotypes regarding the people of this blessed land that my morning coffee today tastes like sewer water -- and Amaterasu knows I love my coffee.

Later - This post has been edited to remove non-worksafe language.

Fukushima Dai'ichi - The Greater Truth Or The Big Lie?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, As one with a deep and considered faith that former prime minister Kan Naoto led this blessed land through its darkest days of the postwar era with a proper mix of grit, effort and screaming at idiots and liars, Thurday promises to be a very important day:

THE NATIONAL DIET OF JAPAN FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR ACCIDENT

INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION COMMISSION

TO RELEASE REPORT ON FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR ACCIDENT

On July 5, Chairman Kiyoshi Kurokawa of The National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) will deliver its final report to Mr. Takahiro Yokomichi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Mr. Kenji Hirata, President of the House of Councillors

The long-awaited report comes at the end of a six-month investigation into the nuclear accident of March 11, 2011

The Commission, the first of its kind in the history of Japan’s constitutional government, received its mandate from the National Diet to investigate the causes of the accident, the causes of the subsequent damage and the effectiveness of the emergency response.

The Commission was also charged with investigating Japan’s nuclear policies and regulations and to offer recommendations to prevent a similar occurrence.

The Commission held over 900 hours of hearings and interviews with over 1100 people. It was able to use the powers of the legislative body to obtain necessary documents and evidence

The Commission acted on behalf of the Japanese people—independent from any elected member of either House of the Diet, from the restrictions of the government bureaucracy, and from the financial influence of the nuclear power lobby

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

July 5, 2012

Date and Time: July 5, 2012, Thursday, 11:00 start

Venue:

Conference Hall (1F) in the House of Councillors Members Office Building
Address: 2-1-1, Nagata-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

-11:00-11:10am

Final Commission Meeting confirming the Report (to be broadcasted online with simultaneous English interpretation

Conference Hall (1st floor) House of Councillors Members’ Office Bldg

Open to the public and the press. Attendees must preregister—registration information is available online

-19:00
Press Conference (to be broadcasted online with simultaneous English interpretation

A presentation by the Chairman and all Members of the Commission will be followed by a Q&A session

Conference Hall (1st floor) House of Councillors Members’ Office Bldg

Open to the press only. Attendees must preregister—registration information is available online.

* An English edition of the Executive Summary will be available in a print version and on the website; an English translation of the entire report will be available for downloading at a later date. Past hearings (including those of former Prime Minister Naoto Kan and current METI minister Yukio Edano) and commission meetings can also be viewed in English on our website.

(Source)

A lot of folks, namely the Liberal Democratic Party, the nuclear village and the mass media outlets that reprinted, uncritically, the slanders of their sources inside Tokyo Electric Power and the national bureaucracy, have a lot riding on the report's railroading Kan, the then Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio, other members of the Kan Cabinet and the Democratic Party of Japan's political appointees in government. The committee's lead investigator, corporate mischief maker Nomura Shuya, gave a mendacious and manipulative presentation of what might be the commission's findings on June 9 -- a performance that earned Nomura a veiled rebuke from Dr. Kurokawa in the written review of the meeting.

Dr. Kurokawa will be presenting the findings of his commission in a presumably less fraught environment at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) on Monday, July 9, from from 16:40 to 18:10. Registration for this presentation closes on Friday, July 6. (Link - J)

It is possible that the news media entertainment complex of this blessed land will present the finding of the Comission in a comprehensive, fair and self-critical manner.

Possible, but not likely.

The End Game

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The Democratic Party of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, the only three parties that matter -- a state of affairs so grating to the other parties in the Diet that the three leftist microparties and the one libertarian miniparty are joining hands to protest the "price fixing going on behind closed doors" (J) -- are putting the final touches on a final agreement on the shakai hosho zei ittai kaikaku an, the bills enabling the combined reforms of social security and tax systems. (J)

There are some hurdles standing in the way of the three parties coming to an agreement by the Prime Minister's deadline of June 15. The LDP wants the Noda government to repudiate the DPJ's 2009 manifesto pledge to rewrite pension law so as to guarantee that all pensioners receive a minimun 70,000 yen per month from the national pension plan. The LDP and the New Komeito together want Noda to repudiate the DPJ manifesto pledge to repeal the special eldercare system for persons over 75 years of age, a terribly unpopular and initially confusing program of mandatory healthcare prepayment the two parties sweated blood to pass when they held the reins of government. The three parties are also at loggerheads over what, if anything, they should do to lessen the impact of the imposition of the consumption tax on those person living at or below the poverty line.

Now according to the news noise machine, Prime Minister Noda is desperate and willing to sacrifice the DPJ's identity (E) or prepared to discard policies intrinsic to the DPJ's unity (E) all for the sake of winning the LDP's and the New Komeito's votes in favor of the passage of the bills raising the consumption tax.

Maybe. It depends on what one believes DPJ policies are.

If one takes the simplistic route, that DPJ policies are all the policies listed in the 2009 and 2010 manifestos, then the above assertions are true.

If, however, one takes the position that the policies listed in the 2009 manifesto were the ones Ozawa Ichiro tossed together trying to buy the support of every special interest the LDP, in its internal shift to becoming a modern, urban-based party, had left lying in the dust, without any concern as to whether the resulting program was internally consistent or affordable -- i.e., LIES -- then:

a) the DPJ is a party of lies and liars, and thus their promises are worthless rhetoric, not policies, or

b) the promises made in the 2009 manifesto, which Kan Naoto tried desperately to render more concrete and believable in the 2010 manifesto, were never the policies of the DPJ, just electoral dandruff clinging to Ozawa Ichiro's jacket.

When Ozawa loyalist and true believer Kawauchi Hiroshi wails about the impending deal on the sheaf of bills reforming the pension and tax systems...

"The LDP's proposal is unacceptable. If we were to agree, the DPJ would become the LDP."

...he is not only showing that he is more a courtier than a politician but also a poor student of history. Fiscal consolidation, realistic pension funding schemes and a willingness to sacrifice growth for stability are core policy positions of the original DPJ. These were the principles undergirding the August 2005 party platform, under then party leader, now Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya.

That DPJ co-founder Hatoyama Yukio forgets what he used to believe and defends the 2009 manifesto as holy writ (J) is neither implausible nor particularly significant. Like the White Queen, Hatoyama can believe a half a dozen impossible things before breakfast.

What the representatives of the DPJ, the LDP and the New Komeito are going to be banging heads over today are the remnants of the fight. The DPJ has a rather weaker position due to the PM's having set a deadline. This prevents the DPJ from exercising its ultimate weapon of extending the Diet session, forcing everyone to just sit on their tailbones until the LDP and the New Komeito fall into bickering in between themselves over just who is preventing the passage of their favorite bits of legislation. It should surprise no one that the DPJ has chosen this moment to float a trial balloon for a radical restructuring of both the LDP's and the DPJ's plans to reform the House of Representatives which hews close to what the New Komeito has been proposing and which would mess up the proportional seat voting for the LDP (E) -- just at the moment the LDP is showing strength in that half of the ballot.

All could go haywire at the last moment. Someone could say something untoward about someone else's sister, leading to a termination of negotiations.

All indications are, however, is that what we are seeing is the end game, one where the LDP and the New Komeito will wander away from the table having agreed to have their members vote with the government on a raft of bills, with neither the promise for elections nor the Noda repudiation of Ozawa Ichiro which the two parties had been demanding.

A Union Is Pulled And The Government Is Better For It

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, At a cursory glance, I have been going a bit overboard on what a bad idea it is to merge Japan's two systems of childcare (Part I and Part II). I saw the unification of the hoikuen and yochien systems as reform for reform's sake: not offering a clear solution to a problem largely restricted to Tokyo and its bedroom suburbs; certain to spawn rivalries in between the personnel of the forcibly merged systems; and encouraging decay in the regulation covering childcare facilities.

Well, the plan to merge the two systems has been dumped. It is being killed in order to win the Liberal Democratic Party's support for the legislation of the combined reforms of social security and tax systems (shakai hosho zei ittai kaikaku, or ittai kaikaku for short). Health, Labour and Welfare Minister Komiyama Yoko (glaringly the only woman in the Noda Cabinet) has stated she will not fight for the unification. (J)

Now commentators would want us to think that this retreat from the promise made in the Democratic Party of Japan's 2010 Manifesto is a demonstration of the hopeless inability of the DPJ to follow through on its promises.

There is of course, another way of looking the situation: that the sacrifice of this promise and others like it are strategic and cheap -- giving up what have upon reflection been very bad or at least unaffordable ideas (eliminating expressway tolls; the 26,000 yen-a-month child allowance system) in return for what would be difficult-to-obtain cooperation from the LDP and the New Komeito on significant reforms, many of which the LDP and the New Komeito were too cowardly to impose upon the country when they held power.

Prime Minister Noda should therefore send gift sets to former party leaders Ozawa Ichiro and Kan Naoto, thanking them for stuffing the 2009 and 2010 manifestos with so many expendable promises.

Why Does This Not Shock Me?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The Sankei Shimbun, in a bit of title legerdemain, has made it seem as though it has been given an exclusive look inside the Diet commission report on the Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear power plant disaster -- and that the conclusions are damning:

東電の調査報告書案「官邸の介入、無用な混乱助長させた」

"The Draft Tokyo Electric Power Investigation Report: 'The Intervention of the Prime Minister's Office Fomented Needless Confusion'"

Read that headline too quickly and after hearing so much about the Diet-appointed commission investigating the disaster, and you might misassociate the news flash with a leak from the Diet commission draft report.

Only when you read the article do you realize that what Sankei is promoting as an exclusive is a leak from Tokyo Electric Power Company's own internal report that the company is compiling to compete with the Diet commission's report. TEPCO's report find (gasp) that the Kan government's bypassing of TEPCO's information controls interfered with operations at the Fukushima Dai'ichi plant.

(Link)

Why am I not shocked -- at TEPCO's conclusions and the way the Sankei Shimbun has filed this story?

Nomura Shuya's Preemptive Strike

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Does the world know who Nomura Shuya is?

He is a lawyer with Mori, Hamada & Matsumoto, a corporate law firm specializing in M&A, restructuring and finance. He is a professor of law at Chuo University, teaching commercial law, civil law and business law strategy. Just how he has time for any work for his law firm or preparation for his classes is a question, as he has been on 68 different government committees or government report drafting boards since 1998 (J).

Nomura furthermore has a weekly appearance on the Nihon Terebi network's late night newscast. Nihon Terebi is owned by the Yomiuri Shimbun and both have a strong anti-Democratic Party of Japan bias, the television network even more so than the flagship newspaper. Nomura crows about his media appearances on his website (J).

Nomura is also a member of the Diet-appointed Tokyo Electric Power Company Fukushima Dai'ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident Investigation Committee (Tokyo Denryoku Fukushima genshiryoku hatsuden jiko chosa iinkai), the second official and third major investigation into the government's response to the meltdowns, explosions and release of radioactive materials at the Fukushima Dai'ichi plant.

That being a contributor to Nihon Terebi newscasts during his tenure as a committee member should be considered a glaring conflict of interest has obviously never troubled Nomura's conscience.

The committee held an open hearing on Saturday. Nomura took advantage of his time to read out a series of rhetorical questions, throwing into doubt Prime Minister Kan's decision to by-pass the institutional route of receiving information on the situation at the plant from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which would be receiving its information from Tokyo Electric Power Company's Tokyo headquarters, which would be receiving its information from its workers at the plant. Finding this route utterly dysfunctional, due to the NISA's almost amateurish information collection and dissemination capacities and TEPCO's obsessive secrecy, the prime minister and the rest of the Cabinet carried out direct communications with the plant managers.

Nomura seems to have made a calculated bet that the mediasphere would misrepresent his musings as statements of the committee's findings. Some media outlets, such as TV Asahi, found themselves struggling mightily with the gravitational pull of Nomura's presumed authority as the committee's chief investigator, but still maintained some measure of integrity by presenting Nomura's questions and his "there are those who are of the opinion that" gambits as questions, not statements of fact (J - Time Sensitive). Most of the news media succumbed, presenting Nomura's musings as a preliminary release of the findings of the committee, employing casuistry to cover their tails should the conclusions in the final report, due at the end of this month, be at odds with the headlines of Sunday (see the Yomiuri Shimbun's gutless use of the word shiteki in this article - J).

As for the careless non-Japanese news media, members stumbled over themselves to get the story out and wrong. (E)

The takeaway from Nomura's performance, that a desperate government's bypassing of a corporation's executives and the bureaucrats of the agency in charge of promoting the industry in question led to confusion in the response to the emergency, must have the partners at Mori, Hamada & Matsumoto smiling.


Later - This post has been edited for clarity.

Later still - - Damning excerpt from committee chair Kurokawa Kiyoshi's review of the meeting of June 9.

また、危機管理体制の構築、リスクコミュニケーションの在り方等について、第二回論点整理として、現時点の論点を暫定的に示した。なお、論点整理は、国会事故調の論点の全てを示すものではなく、また、国会事故調としての結論を示すものではない。国会事故調の最終的な調査結果については、一括して最終の報告書に反映される

"In addition, as for the structure of the crisis control system, the way of communicating risks, et cetera, the second set of points of contention, the issues at the moment have been indicated in a provisional way. Still, the clearing up the points of contention has not been an indication of all of the points of contention the accident investigation committee is considering, nor is it indicative of conclusions made by the accident investigation committee. As for the final results of the investigation of the accident investigation committee, these will be reflected comprehensively in the final report."

(Link - J)

Much, much later - The Yomiuri Online's dishonest account of the goings-on at the meeting (E), now happily immortalized on the world's data servers.

Ecce Homo

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Today former prime minister Kan Naoto is appearing before the Diet's "Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Power Plant Accident Investigative Committee" (Tokyo denryoku Fukushima genpatsu jiko chosa iinkai). Kan's testimony is the culmination of the Committee's investigations, which have seen former minister after former minister summoned to tell his version of what happened during the first few hours, days and weeks of the Fukushima Dai'ichi disaster. Former Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio had his day before the Committee yesterday (On a Sunday! The Diet is normally like Melina Mercouri -- never on a Sunday!).

Today, however, is the grand finale, the final act, where the biggest fish in the sea is hauled out and interrogated about his actions and decisions in the most hectic and desperate days this blessed land has known since 1945.

The Committee's chairman is Kurokawa Kiyoshi (bio), a Fellow at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) and an emeritus professor of Tokyo University. Despite the pointed, possibly highly technical questions it might ask, the Committee is likely to not be the kangaroo court the opposition and members of the news media desire.

Nevertheless, the news media and the opposition will hover like vultures over Kan's testimony, trying to find sentences to misconstrue, quote in isolation and otherwise tease and torture until meaning is drained from them. The colossal politico-media-entertainment squid bought into and promoted a narrative that the PM was an impediment to those who were fighting a panicked and ultimately failed effort to prevent meltdowns, explosions and the release of many terabequerels of radiation. Its members even went so far as to accuse him of initiating cascades of events that worsened the disaster.

So far, the news has accentuated the negative:

Japan refused US offer of nuclear experts in PM office

Edano: PM's office did not block use of 'meltdown'

Japan government spokesman says he didn’t deliberately mislead public on nuclear crisis
(Check out the accompanying photo. Shameless!)

As can be expected, each of the participants has used the occasion of his testimony to exonerate himself (E - photo issue as above). As a consequence, the final report of the Committee is likely to present a braid of different narratives, rather than a definitive chain of causation.

Most desperate to get their version out are the Tokyo Electric Power executives, who were not interviewed for the most recently compiled comprehensive investigation into the Fukushima nuclear disaster, produced by Funabashi Yoiichi's Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation (Link - J). If anybody has had a story to tell (and I do mean story) it is TEPCO executives, particularly as then president Shimizu Masataka checked himself into a hospital less than two weeks into the crisis. (E)

In the end, the report will disappoint those who want someone to blame. A giant earthquake and a towering tsunami hit a nuclear power station designed to resist the greatest natural blow this blessed land had heretofore experienced, not a black swan event. With the main and backup systems gone, everyone, with the possible exception of the TEPCO executives and the unprepared public information service of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, performed heroic ad hoc efforts to bring the nuclear reactors under control and ensure the public's safety.

So while the wire services, the nightly news on the anti-DPJ channels and even the reports the neutral channels, out of a misunderstanding of the concept of fairness, will bore in on the confusion and improvisation in March and early April 2011, and tomorrow's newspapers will echo and elaborate upon tonight's themes, the truth is that individuals like former Prime Minister Kan and plant manager Yoshida Masao, by following their better instincts, led others to do the same, and prevented a disaster from becoming a cataclysm.

Hold up your chin, blessed land, for producing men and women such as these.

Mr. Noda's Ambivalent Attitude Toward The National Bureaucracy

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The conventional wisdom state that Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko is a tool/enabler of a resurrected national bureaucracy.

Signs of the return of bureaucratic power include:

- the reinstitution of the right of bureaucrats, particularly the head of the Cabinet Legislative Office, to testify in the Diet

- the full acceptance of a plan to raise the consumption tax to 10% -- a longtime dream of the Ministry of Finance (actually their dream is to send the consumption tax rate even higher).

This a corollary of Noda's having moved directly from the position of Finance Minister to the premiership. Former prime minister Kan Naoto made the same move in June of 2010, and seemingly the first words out of his mouth upon taking over as the country's leader were that taxes will need to be raised. This statement sent Kan's and the Democratic Party of Japan's popularity ratings southward and is credited as having been a significant factor in the the DPJ's losses in the July 2010 House of Councillors election -- losses that handed control of the House to the opposition, derailing the DPJ's ambitious plans to change the way the country is run.

In the popular view, any politician who serves as the minister of finance succumbs to that bureaucracy's mantras, becoming a glassy-eyed novitiate in the cult of raising the consumption tax ("Must-raise-the-tax. Must-save-Japan")

- the deceleration in the campaign to cut the funding of projects of questionable merit made by the ministries and the quasi-government entities that provide retiring bureaucrat with cushy sinecures

- the acceptance without question or amendment of the budget compiled by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, including spending for a restart of the Yamba Dam project -- the cancellation of which was the signal in 2009 that the new DPJ-led government was willing to go to the wall to effect change in the country

- the selection of the F-35 as Japan's next generation fighter, which seems to have no justifications other than simultaneously pleasing the United States government and satisfying the Ministry of Defense's lust for stealth -- even if Japan's beleaguered defense contractors get nothing out of the deal and the stealth technology remains entirely in the hands of the United States

[Please add to the list, if you can, in comments]

It is tempting to believe that the PM is allowing national bureaucrats (kokka komuin) to run amok because he needs them as allies or at least neutral parties. He cannot be fighting simultaneously on two fronts against both the bureaucrats and the political opposition, as the first DPJ prime ministers Hatoyama Yukio and Naoto Kan tried to do, with catastrophic results.

Evidence exists, however, that the above is only half of a double-sided game the PM is having with the national bureaucrats, the left hand taking while the right hand gives. Noda did nothing to stop his party from swallowing whole a New Komeito bill cutting bureaucratic salaries by an average of 7.8% for the next two years, with a retroactive cut of 0.23% for this year and no collective bargaining rights, the last item being a promise the DPJ made to the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), a crucial vote machine for the party. He has a government-appointed panel recommending a four million yen cut in the lump sum bonus bureaucrats receive upon retirement, as well as an accelerated program of early retirement buyouts. ( J)

Prime Minister Noda has said and done nothing about Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya's staggering cuts in the intake of new recruits into career track positions, this taking place on top of previous cuts in the number of national bureaucrats:

Number of career-track hirees
by the office, commission, ministry and agency
April 2012 --> April 2013

Cabinet Secretariat 10 --> 4

Cabinet Legislative Office 2 --> 1

Cabinet Office 35 --> 20

Imperial Household Agency 32 --> 16

Japan Fair Trade Commission 37 --> 22

National Police Agency 164 --> 100

Financial Services Agency 42 --> 22

Consumer Affairs Agency 2 --> 1

Ministry of Internal Affairs
and Communications 120 --> 73

Ministry of Justice 1,475 --> 942

Ministry of Foreign Affairs 141 --> 80

Ministry of Finance 1,482 --> 929

Ministry of Education,Culture,
Sports, Science & Technology 66 -> 36

Ministry of Health, Labour
and Welfare 625 --> 298

Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries 235 --> 120

Ministry of Economy
Trade and Industry 181 -- 107

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure
Transport and Tourism 1078 --> 682

Ministry of the Environment 34 --> 27

Ministry of Defense 575 --> 300

Source:
Ministry of General Affairs and Telecommunications

With these assaults on the income and the number of national bureaucrats (who will have to do the same amount of work as their predecessors, despite their reduced numbers) is it any wonder that the number of those taking the entrance examinations to become national bureaucrats dropped 13% in between 2011 and 2012? (J)

So is Prime Minister Noda just so much putty in the hands of the bureaucracy? The numbers do not seem to support that view.

The Emperor After The Fall

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Today is The Big Day -- when the judge in the Ozawa Ichiro trial on violations of the Public Funds Control Law Political Funds Control Act hands down his verdict and if Ozawa is found guilty, his sentence. The news is full of analysis of the meaning of the Ozawa verdict, including these two pieces by Toko Sekiguchi (E) and Aurelia George Mulgan (E).

I hate to be the grump in any instance -- but the verdict today is largely irrelevant. As Sekiguchi points out in her piece, Ozawa will appeal if he is found guilty. If he is found not guilty, the Association of Those Seeking the Truth (Shinjitsu o Motomeru Kai) will have failed in its quest to milk the arrest of Okubo Takanori for some evidence to put Ozawa away. Given that the members of this group, whoever they are, all seem to be in retirement and thus with plenty of time on their hands to cause mischief (the Devil makes work for idle hands, after all), it is likely the Association will just find another blind alley to send prosecutors running down.

(An aside: the slavering anti-Ozawa weekly Shukan Bunshun decided that yesterday, the eve of the verdict, was the perfect day to release an exclusive story about a heretofore unknown child Ozawa fathered out of wedlock. Classy rag, that Shukan Bunshun.)

Whatever the purported goals of the cases against Ozawa and his aides, the political purpose has been served. The arrest of Okubo forced Ozawa to resign as head of the Democratic Party of Japan on the eve of the election that was to push the Liberal Democratic Party off its perch and install a DPJ-led coalition government. The resignation as party leader prevented Ozawa becoming prime minister. While Ozawa was able to engineer the election of his ally-puppet Hatoyama Yukio as his replacement, with Ozawa taking the role of effective party leader through the post of DPJ Secretary-General, Ozawa was denied the prize which he had long desired and had long labored to seize. As for the arrests of former aides Ishikawa Tomohiro and Ikeda Mitsutomo, on the basis of evidence of violations of the Public Funds Control Law found by the prosecutors after a proctological search through the documents seized in relation to Okubo's arrest, these weakened Ozawa's position in the party, making it possible for middle-level legislators to challenge his stranglehold on party policy making.

Ozawa's indictment on January 31, 2011 (E) gave the anti-Ozawa members of the DPJ, including prime minister Kan Naoto, the leverage needed to force party secretary-general Koshi'ishi Azuma, an Ozawa ally, to suspend Ozawa's party privileges.

Stripped of all formal party positions and even access to party funds for his own reelection. Ozawa had to exercise influence indirectly through the first-term and second-term legislators in Houses of Representatives and the House of Councillors whom he had hand-picked as candidates, and through the largely second- and third-grade legislators who had followed him through party after party. These nominal disciples number about 150 legislators, a third of the DPJ's membership in the Diet.

However, without his hands on the money spigots of the party, particularly the public financing provided to finance elections, Ozawa has had to rely on the bonds of affection, loyalty and his own funding apparatus to keep his allies faithful. This bond has weakened, however, as Ozawa's time in internal exile has dragged on. On issues of policy, such as opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the rise in the consumption tax, he has had to ally himself with other disaffected elements of the party, such as Mr. No To Everything Yamada Masahiko. He also found himself, in June 2011, on the verge joining hands with the LDP, the party he had worked so hard to unseat and dismantle, in a vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Kan. Only a last-minute and ultimately empty face-saving compromise worked out by the feckless Hatoyama prevented Ozawa from fulfilling the media's negative portrayal of  him as a selfish destroyer of parties and governments.

Even this indirect influence over party policy making has evaporated, however. In a show of principle and utter political naïveté, Ozawa's allies in the DPJ dragged out the party debate over the legislation raising the consumption tax from a projected 3 days to 3 weeks. Exasperated, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko cut off debate, giving the final decision on the legislation to Policy Research Chairman Maeda Maehara Seiji -- an outcome that effectively negated the entire three weeks of debate. In response, four of Ozawa's acolytes in government positions and 30 in party positions resigned their posts. Eager to preserve party unity, the party leadership refused to accept the resignations, giving the legislators and Ozawa a chance to reconsider their actions. After six days of waiting, the government accepted the resignations of the government appointees on April 5 (E). It still left the door open, though, for those who had resigned party posts.

The party, however, very quietly shut that final door on Monday (J,) accepting resignations of the Ozawa allies who had resigned their party posts.

So as the political commentariat and twitterati await the verdict with bated breath, the political impact of the outcome is less significant than political observers will admit. Ozawa is now more shadow than shadow shogun. The current leadership group, knowing his tendencies, will not permit his appointment to any position of power. He will not be allowed near the party's pot of political funds. His followers have abandoned the positions they could have used to influence or if necessary gum up policy making.

Ozawa has been the most influential, hated and fascinating politician of the last 30 years. However, whatever happens today will not shake the political world to its roots. Its branches may shiver a bit -- but that is all.

 Later - My apologies for the HTML failures that led to half the original text being swallowed up into the ether.

Still later - Many thanks to alert readers O.J. and M.P. for catching the errors.

Energy And The Future Of The DPJ

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, There have been so many issues raised that have been purported to be the mark of death for the Democratic Party of Japan at the polls.

The first and least plausible was a lousing up of the Japan-U.S. alliance over the government taking a less antagonistic stance toward China and rethinking the Futenma-to-Henoko plan -- a plan which at present looks deader than the Okinawan Sho Dynasty.

The second was the raising of the consumption tax from 5% to 10%. Prime Minister Kan Naoto's simply talking about the tax was supposedly a main cause of the DPJ's poor (but not horrific performance) in the House of Councillors election of 2010. The explanation might be plausible had former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and Ozawa Ichiro not handed Kan a severely skeptical electorate, enervated by both Hatoyama's inability to know his own mind and Ozawa's putting on a show of seizing dictatorial control of the nation's policy making apparatus -- neatly fitting into narratives of DPJ amateurishness cultivated by the party's enemies in the bureaucracy, the press, the permanent commentariat and the opposition alliance of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito.

In any case, the collapse of consumer spending after the imposition of the first step toward 10%; the opposition of Ozawa Ichiro, Yamada Masahiko and others in the DPJ leading to a schism of the party; the violation of the campaign pledge to immediate take a tax rise to the voters to seek their approval -- any and all of these were to doom the DPJ at the ballot box.

The third spine breaker was supposedly Kan's enthusiastic support of the country's becoming early participant in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a program taken up, as in all things, wearily by his successor Noda Yoshihiko (seriously, is therei nothing that Noda does with zest out of joy, rather than out of what seems a resentful sense of duty?). Trying to play catch-up on the TPP is a supposedly transparent attempt to curry favor with the still pro-LDP Nippon Keidanren, Keizai Doyukai and the multinationals at the expense of Japan's parasitical farmers and protected insurance and healthcare giants, with those groups joining to paint entrance into the TPP as the end of Japan as we know it. Hysteria whipped up by these presumed losers in a post-TPP accession economy would doom the DPJ in rural areas and among elderly voters, ensuring a wiping out of the party.

However, what is going to kill the DPJ -- or appears to be killing it -- is none of the above but an entirely new and unexpected phenomenon: a mass rejection of the restart of Japan's idled nuclear power plants. The prefectural governments are up in arms (as I noted in passing, the government of Shiga and Kyoto prefectures had severe reservations regarding the restart of the Oi reactors. Yesterday, they made their demands public (J). Local communities are in seemingly unflinching opposition; the DPJ is split (E - did I not say that everything Sengoku Yoshito touches turns to mud?) and the electorate has switched to being largely for it to being largely against it - by a margin of nearly two-to-one. (J)

As a result of the nation's new nuclear antipathy, the popularity of the Noda Cabinet and the DPJ have plummeted into the Death Zone, with support for the Cabinet dropping over 5 percentage points over the last month (J). The entity most likely to profit from these falls are not necessarily the current opposition the LDP but the Ishin no Kai, which, along its pie-in-the-sky political program is likely to absorb the anti-nuclear power plant restart stance of its leader Hashimoto Toru. (E)

All of which is of particularly morbid interest as Japan's power and energy positions are likely not nearly as dire as the conventional wisdom holds. Todd Kreider of Kanazawa University, who can be "difficult" in discussions, has a crushing April 13 post to the NBR Japan Forum claiming that contrary to the hype, energy-security-wise, this blessed land is in pretty good shape. (E) *

Ironic it would be for the DPJ to go to its Waterloo over a problem that might not even exist.


Later - The raw results of the Asahi Shimbun poll on energy attitudes are what most everyone is talking (J). Interestingly, the Asahi poll gives support levels for the DPJ double those of the Jiji Press poll above -- and more importantly for the DPJ's fortunes, above those for the LDP.

-----------------------------
* As for all links to individual NBR Forum posts, if you cannot access the page directly, go to the main page, scroll down to the "Join the Forum" section and click on the link "Visit the Japan Forum's online message archive."

Reputed: On Sengoku And Hatoyama

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

大飯なる
茶番に怒り
通り越し

Oi naru
Chaban ni ikari
Torikoshi

Anger over
The grand farce of Oi
We pass it by

Alternate (see the below acknowledgment)

The grand farce of Oi
Leaves me beyond anger

This morning's Tokyo Shimbun has an exclusive report with a screaming banner headline stretching across the whole top of the broad sheet:

「チーム仙谷」再稼働主導　首相・閣僚４者協議　形だけ

Leading the (Reactor) Restart Is "Team Sengoku": The Prime Ministerial Council of Four is a Figurehead

(Link -J)

The article purports that the four-man (yes sadly, all men) council charged (pun unintended) with deciding whether the nuclear reactors of Japan, starting with Kansai Electric Power Company’s Oi Power Station Units #3 and #4, will restart or not, has been superseded by a five-man team (ibid) led not by the prime minister but Sengoku Yoshito, the Acting Chairman of the Democratic Party of Japan’s Policy Research Council.

One part of the shock value of this report is supposed to come from the revelation that the prime minister is not primarily responsible for leading a decision of such immense magnitude and significance. The other is that the real leader is a person of operating from a post of relatively minor status, nominally far below those of the ministers he is leading.

The membership of the Council of Four is Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu, Minister of Economics, Trade and Industry Edano Yukio and Minister of the Environment and State Minister for the Nuclear Accident Settlement and Prevention Hosono Goshi. "Team Sengoku" is supposedly composed of Sengoku, Edano and Hosono together with State Minister for National Policy Furukawa Motohisa and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Saito Tsuyoshi.

According to the report, Noda and Fujimura are so busy with ushering through the legislation needed to raise the consumption tax to 10% that they have ceded formal operation of the Council to this unofficial group.

If this report is accurate, the ceding of the restart decision to a group led by Sengoku seems great news for advocates for a quick return to nuclear power. Sengoku is seen as the great pragmatist, with an overarching view of national goals far beyond immediate politics and traditional stances. According to the report, he also in his years in the opposition was close to the power industry, a closeness he maintained during his time as the head of the national strategy office and as Kan Naoto's Chief Cabinet Minister.

However, opponents to nuclear power should take heart from the report as well. Despite his much lauded smarts (E) Sengoku has a black thumb: everything he touches seems to turn to mud.

Like Liberal Democratic President Tanigaki Sadakazu, Sengoku has a reputation for policy brilliance that outstrips his achievements. Unlike the featherweight Tanigaki, however, Sengoku's stumbles have had serious consequences. His almost indescribably bad resolution of the Chinese ship captain arrest crisis, carried out while Prime Minister Kan was out of the country, not only made him a marked man (the House of Councillors eventually censured Sengoku, forcing his resignation as Chief Cabinet Minister) but fatally wounded the Kan administration.

Sengoku's farsightedness, while admirable in isolation, possibly makes him blind to present day reality.

Speaking of reputations, former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio has got himself into a heap of trouble with his ill-considered private visit to Iran.

Hatoyama on his own after 'private' Iran trip
Kyodo

The administration distanced itself Tuesday from the brewing controversy stemming from a visit by former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to Iran, which was carried out over government objections.

Hatoyama was quoted by Tehran as criticizing the International Atomic Energy Agency for "applying double standards" to the country in his talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the former prime minister denied making such comments after he returned to Japan on Monday…

(Link)

Admittedly, "ill-considered" is superfluous in a sentence about Hatoyama. One strains to remember a decision he has made which has avoided descent into the "ill-considered" category. One may laud his decision to resign as prime minister and his commitment to take Ozawa Ichiro with him as "salutary" – but was his decision in that instance "carefully considered"? No.

As for the Iranians, all congratulations to them. Clearly they have been reading up on Hatoyama. They knew that they could print whatever passel of nonsense they could dream up, fully aware that when Hatoyama returned home and complained that he had never said anything of the things attributed to him, no one would believe him.

Regarding the senryu at the head of this post, it comes from what was an excellent batch printed in the Tokyo Shimbun three Saturdays ago. The last two weekends have been disappointing, with little to share in terms of topicality or clever word play.

The key in the above is oi naru. Oi is written in the kanji of the Oi nuclear power station. Naru would then be a classical version of the modern no. However, oinaru, if written only in kana (おおいなる) or with the kanji dai means "great" or "grand" (大いなる) becomes the adjective oinaru, meaning "great."

So oinaru chaban is at once "the Oi farce" and "the grand farce."


Later - Credit where credit is due: the senryu above is by Tezuka Tatsuo, a resident of Yachimata City, Chiba Prefecture. Printed in the Tokyo Shimbun of 12.03.24.

Later still - Many thanks to reader AG who has pointed out that if you curl around the last line break and add the article o, you get the phrase ikari o torikoshi, which means "beyond anger"

So The Budget Passes. Now What?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Since Sunday the government of this blessed land has been operating without a budget, an embarrassing state of affairs which happens from time to time (the last time was 14 years ago). For reasons that escape me for the moment, the Democratic Party of Japan's floor leaders managed to demonstrate an alarming inability to count backwards 30 days from April 1, alarming in that it is both simple to do and also reminiscent of the inability of the floor leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan to count backwards 60 days during that party's final years in power.

With the budget bill set to become law today thanks to the 30 day rule written into Article 60 of the Constitution (seemingly the only article of the Constitution that is worth a damn), the opposition-dominated House of Councillors, ever ready to prove itself more than just a place to take a good nap, roused itself yesterday to vote the budget down. This triggered the rigmarole of the formation of a joint committee of both Houses which, amazingly, after long minutes of hard bargaining, found itself in an irreconcilable deadlock on the bill, meaning that the budget bill automatically became law.

On the surface, the 2012 budget is smaller than the 2011 budget, the first year-on-year nominal drop in six years. Add on all the special accounting for the recovery and reconstruction efforts resulting from the triple disaster of 3/11, however, and the budget is the largest ever. (J)

Just getting the budget passed is not much to write home about. The hurdle is the budget enabling legislation (yosan kanren hoan), primarily the approval of the issuance of bonds to pay for the items in the budget. With all the attention that has been focused on the bill raising the consumption tax, which is the sexier story due to the internecine battle it has spawned inside the DPJ, the Diet fight over the enabling legislation has been ignored.

However, passage of the enabling legislation is the real make-or-break fight for the Noda government. Last year Prime Minister Kan Naoto, in a fantastic bit of legerdemain, forced the LDP and the New Komeito to vote for the enabling legislation by threatening that if they did not, he would not resign as prime minister*. Prime Minister Noda, who has no intention of resigning, will have to find his own lever for prying a "Yes" vote from out of the hands of the LDP and the New Komeito.

One of the strategies proposed is keeping the Diet in extended session until the opposition parties just give up. I am not sure how the incentives are supposed to work here, unless the plan is to freak out Tanigaki Sadakazu over his trying to win reelection as LDP President whilst leading his party in a do nothing strike in the Diet, obstreperous behavior that will earn the LDP a serious lashing by the mainstream press (all except by the Nippon Terebi network, which has proven to be even more pro-LDP than its owner the Yomiuri Shimbun). The Diet session is going to be extended anyway due to the number of controversial bills the government has submitted for Diet approval (J). In terms of atmospherics, it will be difficult to disentangle which part of the extension is being carried out in order to complete Diet business and which is meant to drive the opposition parties nuts.

Working out a quid pro quo between the ruling coalition** and the opposition parties would be an option, if this blessed land's political classes could consider Houses of the Diet being controlled by different parties a natural state of affairs. However, the political classes are united in considering such a division unnatural, calling it a "twisted Diet" (nejire kokkai). The quid that the opposition parties want the ruling coalition to pro quo is a dissolution of the Diet in return for a yes vote on the enabling legislation and the bill raising the consumption tax. Since the DPJ is neither suicidal (assuming recent poll numbers are correct, the party would be demolished were elections held this summer) nor unaware that the current Diet district seat apportionment system is unconstitutional, the LDP and the New Komeito are making offers that the DPJ can do nothing but refuse.

So the stage is set for a lengthy stalemate.

Whatever the supercomputers of the Japan Meteorological Agency may be predicting, it is going to be a hot, hot summer.

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

* The essay is "Kan Won" in Reconstructing 3/11: Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown - how Japan's future depends on its understanding of the 2011 triple disaster available from Amazon.com. (Link)

** Yesterday, Shimoji Mikio, the erstwhile secretary-general of the possibly still extant People's New Party ostensibly fired his superior, Kamei Shizuka, replacing him with Financial Services Minister Jimi Shozaburo (J). Kamei, as one can imagine, does not accept his being fired by his subordinate. At present we seem to have two PNPs: one composed of Kamei and his distant relative, the other of the six MPs who say that the PNP has not withdrawn from the ruling coalition.


Later - Critical minds think in parallel: today's Tokyo Shimbun has a lead editorial on the above subject. (J)

The Tokyo Shimbun's editors seem to be of the opinion that it is worthwhile to remind the legislators that ultimately it is the citizens who will be deciding their political futures. Somehow this reality, of which the legislators have heretofore been seemingly been ignorant, will entice them into turning away from their petty, immediate obsessions and instead stir them to provide leadership for the country.

While the editors are at it, they might as well wish for ponies for everyone as well.

The Usual Suspects; The Usual Outcome?

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, They were supposed to wrap things up on Friday but they could not come to an agreement.

They were supposed to come up with some neat ideas over the weekend to patch up the yawning fissure in between the two sides. However, there were no realistic ideas, just a lot of wishes expressed.

Monday was supposed to be the day when the final offers were made...but...you can guess the outcome.

Finally, in the wee hours of this morning, the chair of the Democratic Party of Japan ad hoc committee trying to forge an intra-party consensus on the conditions for the raising of the consumption tax declared the debate over. Those opposed to the raising of the consumption tax raised a fuss...but that is what they were going to do anyway.

So the drafting of the final language of the bill is handed over to (ichinin suru) Policy Research Council Chairman Maehara Seiji, which is tantamount to this multi-week debate's never having taken place.

The Noda Yoshihiko led-executive did offer some last minute concessions. The first was the mentioning of economic growth targets in the body of the bill as a necessary consideration for reconsideration of the appropriateness of the timing of the tax rise, without actually having those targets serve as triggers. What was promised was sort of "It would be nice if we have nominal growth of 3% and real growth of 2% when the tax is raised. It we do not have these levels of growth we will be vewy, vewy sad." Opponents to the tax rise have been demanding the numerical triggers. They were, shall we say, less than impressed at the leadership's offer.

The other concession was the elimination of the article in the bill which left the door open for further raising of the consumption tax beyond 10% after 2014. Both sides of the debate, however, knew from the outset that that particular article was a sacrificial lamb, so its elimination is more an insult than a concession.

So the bill is set for approval by the Cabinet this Friday, meeting a deadline set in a 2009 bill for reforms of the consumption tax. Will the anti-tax group, most of whom are either supporters or past supporters of splitists (borrowing the Chinese pejorative) Ozawa Ichiro and Hatoyama Yukio, go so far as to break away from the DPJ?

No.

Why say that with such conviction? These folks have been staying up late (last night's session lasted 7 hours), night after night, doing their darndest to stymie the leadership from offering to the Diet its own version of the bill.

Yes, and after all that effort, they did not manage to do diddly, did they?

Let us surmise that this was a debate with a pre-determined outcome, a pantomime show put on for the benefit of those either hoping for

1) a break up of the DPJ,
2) a halt in the raising of the consumption tax,
3) evidence of real, considered policy debate within the ruling party,
4) an intra-party political drama keeping the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito off the nation's TV screens and political news pages, or
5) any combination of the previous four elements.

The first hint that this was a set piece was the players. In a real debate, there would be twists and turns, unforeseen heroes, impromptu memorable quips. However, in this show, we saw the same seven characters:

Policy Research Chairman Maehara Seiji
Tax Committee Chairman Fujii Haruhisa

in the pro-tax corner

Azuma Shozo (now with a beard)
Kawauchi Hiroshi
Yamada "Mr. No To Everything" Masahiko

in the anti-tax corner

with Ozawa Ichiro and Hatoyama Yukio catcalling in from undisclosed locations, never from within the confines of the committee room itself (the place was packed last night, with 200 legislators attending)

saying the same darned things one would expect them to say.

The second hint was that this debate was framed as an "Ozawa vs. the Leadership" smackdown. By now we should have learned that when push comes to shove, Ozawa does not have the numbers to back up his either dominating the DPJ or breaking it. The closest he came was in September of 2010, when he ran directly against Kan Naoto for the post of party leader. At least among the Diet membership, Ozawa came tantalizingly close to beating Kan in the voting. The takeaway from that date, however, is that despite having so much of the present membership of the Diet indebted to him for their seats, he still failed to win a majority of the votes of the Diet membership. As for the votes of the assembly members and the party supporters, Ozawa got snowed under.

When Ozawa had the chance, nine months later, to put Kan away by leading his followers in voting "yes" for an LDP-sponsored no-confidence motion, he demurred, not even bothering to show up at the Diet chamber for the vote.

So when the fight is billed "Ozawa vs. the powers that be" we should be suspicious, even with the big dog about to slip his leash.

Of course, there is a major problem looming for the leadership: Kamei Shizuka's opposition to the consumption tax hike. Friday's Cabinet approval has to be unanimous. If the People's New Party's representative in the Cabinet, Financial Services Minister Jimi Shozaburo (who is kind of busy right now) does not vote for the proposal, it cannot be offered to the Diet as a government bill. Oddly, the commentariat is largely silent on the possibility that Noda will have to fire Jimi in the same way as Hatoyama had to fire Consumer Affairs Minister Fukushima Mizuho when she refused to sign off on the Futenma-to-Henoko decision. If Noda fires Jimi, then the PNP will likely follow the Democratic Socialists out of the government.

While the departure of the PNP would not mean much for the Noda government in terms of lost votes in the Diet, the optics of such a break up would be poor.

Since Kamei has been talking on and on about the establishment of a new "true conservative" party, however, it is possible that the PNP is already dead. Jimi can thus be ready to vote "yes" for the bill on Friday, making the PNP's moribund state official, and allowing Noda to move on to the next phase: corralling either the LDP or the New Komeito into voting for the bill.

The Article 51 Exemption

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, During the Friday's House of Councillors Budget Committee session, the first Liberal Democratic Party questioner was the painfully little-known Ishizaki Yosuke (OK, try; try to name whom he represents. See? Neither could I. I had to look it up).

Ishizaki Y. (there were, unbelievably, two LDP questioners in Friday's budget session with the surname Ishizaki) began his questions with the following speech, none of which had anything to do with the business of the day:

Last year on March 29, in a session of the Budget Committee with the purpose of reviewing what had happened, I was seated at this seat.

This was the first session of the Budget Committee after the Great Easter Japan Disaster. Prime Minister Kan and the members of the Cabinet were all in emergency disaster relief uniforms. I asked, "Was it not strange for the supreme commander of the disaster relief effort to board a helicopter for the nuclear power station? For the prime minister to go before Tokyo Electric Power Company, going about yelling at them, "What are you going to do?" I asked, "Was not the venting [of the reactor vessels] and the provision of seawater to the reactors slowed down by this?"

What I got in return was, "At at time of national crisis, to question whether or not government the government was harassing [TEPCO and its workers] -- give us a break (keshikaran)"

Yet now, a year later, if you look at the news reports of today, we have come to learn that almost everything I insisted at the time was true. [Isolated shouts]"

Uh, no. In either retractions of previous stories, reports from the news outlets contradicting their own previous assertions and from reports on the investigations of outside organizations, nearly every one of the things you asserted on that day, Senator Ishizaki, turned out to be false.

How do the members of the Diet get away with continuing to hold to positions that are demonstrably untrue? How do they get to repeat them, so that they are once again entered into the historical record?

First, no one is watching. Well, I was watching -- but what good does that do? Actually that is not true either. My old Mizuho Bank branch used to have the Diet sessions on for the edification/entertainment/sedation of their customers waiting their turns. Many municipal office waiting areas have the broadcasts on for similar reasons. So I was not exactly the only witness to Ishizaki's attempt to rerewrite history.

Second, there is the little business of Article 51 of the Constitution. What Senator Ishizaki was insisting was true was a slander of former Prime Minister Kan Naoto. Even though it was not in his initial slanderous remarks, Ishizaki went on later to implicate and by doing so slander the then Chief Cabinet Minister, now Minister of Economics, Trade and Industry Edano Yukio, seated not four meters away.

What could Edano or Kan do to stop Ishizaki from perpetuating lies and damaging their reputations? Absolutely nothing. It was his Diet time, in which he can say any damn thing about any damn citizen he chooses, because, under Article 51:

Members of both Houses shall not be held liable outside the House for speeches, debates or votes cast inside the House.

Unless his own colleagues censure or expel him, a costly process in terms of political capital and time, he is going to have a lectern at which he can spew outrageous (keshikaran) calumnies forever.

Ishizaki Y. is truly blessed. Contrary to the adage, he can have not only his own opinions but his own facts.

For the video of the session, click here, and do a little digging.

Dogma, Meet Karma

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, I am not known as a vicious human being...though Tanigaki Sadakazu may take exception to that assertion.

I have, however, enjoyed almost too much the titanic implosion of Yamamoto Masahiro on the National Bureau of Asian Research's Japan-U.S. Discussion Forum. His self-appointed Sisyphean task is to perpetuate, with increasing shrillness and decreasing tolerance, the now increasingly untenable myth of Prime Minister Kan Naoto's behaving in anything other than a "heroic" manner (J) during the Fukushima Dai'ichi crisis.

NBR is considered a moderately center-right organization. Its list-serve is hardly a sump of leftist skulduggery. Avowed leftist Ronald Dore indeed complains that his most provocative thought pieces are constantly being rejected by the list moderator.

However, if you come aboard with an uncritical recitation of the accounts of last year printed in the Sankei Shimbun or, when you are feeling particularly magnanimous and collegiate, the Yomiuri Shimbun, you are going to get your behind fried. When you go further and claim that your view comes from having read Japanese-language sources rather than reading English-language ones, on a list serve of Japan experts, you are going to get your oshiri handed to you. If you then deliver a farewell address, vowing to drop the subject as others are ganging up on you, then come back with a list of demands on how the debate should be conducted on what is already a moderated forum, well...

Yamamoto Masahiro does not identify himself as being associated with any institution. There are a host of Yamamoto Masahiros on the Web. I would suspect, however, that the Yamamoto Masahiro in question is not the Tokyo University mathematician but indeed the author of Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity. The review of the book in the American Historical Review states that Yamamoto is "a self-described 'centrist-revisionist'."

This is an interesting compound noun. It seems to mean, "Yes, we killed, mutilated and raped large numbers of persons in absolutely horrible ways -- but not as many as you think!" with what appears after the "but" as the "revisionist" part of the phrase.

"Centrist-revisionist" in an absolute sense seems to mean cherry-picking the written record for evidence confirming one's prejudices and rejecting the documentation and reasoning of others as biased and politically-tainted.

The fun begins on March 5, in an over-the-top post by Gregory Clark, a character in his own right. Just start on the main list then pop back and forth to follow the discussion.

As I said, I am enjoying the results way too much.

3/11 - A Selective Online Bibliography

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, I will not lie. I have not read through, watched or listened to all of the below. However, I will offer a few comments on what I have checked out:

- The Frontline documentary is required viewing for those who want to get a sense of just how tense the situation was at the Fukushima Dai’ichi plant.

- The Economist review “The death of trust” is the most succinct and readable account of the current state of Japan’s political atmosphere.

- The Fred Hiatt op-ed is fatuous. I include it because I mentioned the Washington appearance of the haiku poet in a previous post. From the quote, she has drawn just about the worst lesson one could draw from the disaster. The irony is completely lost on her: one has to have access to a free air ticket to Washington and likely be put up at a fine hotel in order to deliver a message to a well-heeled audience that post-3/11 Japanese have to learn to live more simply.

- Fackler is himself.

- The Kuhn audio starts off in the direction indicated in the title but ends up nowhere.

- The Jayasuriya and Yamashita piece promotes a false history of the Kan cabinet. The cabinet’s popularity did not fall post 3/11 because of mismanagement of the disaster. It fell because of uncritical media reporting of rumors of spread by unknown forces, most likely TEPCO and members of the bureaucracy, which opposition politicians then made Exhibit A in parliamentary interpellations.

- The SSJ Forum (free registry required) and the WSJ’s Japan Real Time blog contain too many excellent posts on the triple disaster to list.

- Dick Samuels gives away too much for free.

- Sheila Smith is everywhere, which is only appropriate.


*
Aldrich, Daniel P.
Fukushima One Year Later: An Interview with Daniel P. Aldrich

*
Aldrich, Daniel P.
Social Networks and Japan’s 3/11 Disaster

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Aldrich, Daniel P.
Civil society rising

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Anderson, Kent et al
Nikkei Weekly special online edition

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Auslin, Michael
After earthquake, lessons for Japan and the world

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Auslin, Michael et al
AEI Hosts Conference Around Anniversary of Japan Disasters (video)

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Bader, Jeffrey A.
Inside the White House During Fukushima: Managing Multiple Crises

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Fackler, Martin
Nuclear Disaster in Japan Was Avoidable, Critics Contend

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Fackler, Martin
Japan's Nuclear Energy Industry Nears Shutdown, at Least for Now

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Frontline
Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown (video)

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Funabashi, Yo'ichi and Kay Kitazawa
Fukushima in review: A complex disaster, a disastrous response

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Green, Michael J.
Post–March 11: Japan's Political and Economic Landscape Now and Ahead: An interview with Michael J. Green

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Green, Michael J. et al
Nikkei Weekly special online edition

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Hiatt, Fred
A year after the disaster of 3/11, Japan looks inward

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Ishii, Sumie
Relief Efforts in Japan One Year Later: Reflections and Lessons Learned: An Interview with Sumie Ishii

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The Economist
The death of trust

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The Economist
Power politics

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Fukuda, Nobuo
Japan's Nuclear Cabal

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Hayashi, Yuka et al
An Altered Japan Marks a Year After Quake

(See also http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/ for numerous other articles by many different authors)

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Kan, Naoto
Former Japanese PM Naoto Kan on the Fukushima Disaster: A Changing View of Nuclear Power

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Kitazawa, Kay and Yo'ichi Funabashi
Fukushima in review: A complex disaster, a disastrous response

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Kuhn, Anthony
Rethinking, Not Just Rebuilding, Japan's Northeast (audio)

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Jayasuriya, Sisira and Nobuaki Yamashita
Japan's 3/11 disaster: one year on

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Masset, Christian et al
Nikkei Weekly special online edition

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Matsumura, Masahiro
Japan's revenge of the mandarins

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MIT Japan 3.11 Initiative
MIT Japan 3.11 Initiative receives grant

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O'Brian, Miles
Near Fukushima, a Big 'Guessing Game' Over Long-Term Risks (video)

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O'Brian, Miles
In Japan, Nuclear Cleanup May Be Mission: Impossible (video)

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Samuels, Richard J.
Policy Change in a Post-Crisis Japan: An Interview with Richard J. Samuels

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Scalise, Paul
ANS Committee Report on Fukushima

(See also various posts on the SSJ Forum at http://ssj.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/)

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Singer, Peter
When Prevention is Better Than Relief

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Smith, Sheila
Japan's political aftershocks

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Smith, Sheila
Japan's Day of Remembrance

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Smith, Sheila et al
Nikkei Weekly special online edition

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Smith, Sheila et al
AEI Hosts Conference Around Anniversary of Japan Disasters (video)

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Tabuchi, Hiroko
An Anniversary of 'Heartbreaking Grief' in Japan

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Tabuchi, Hiroko
Effects of Japan's Disaster Are Still Unfolding

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Tabuchi, Hiroko
Japan Finds Story of Hope in Undertaker Who Offered Calm Amid Disaster

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Takenaka, Heizo
Will the Sun Still Rise?

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Yamashita, Nobuaki and Sisira Jayasuriya
Japan's 3/11 disaster: one year on


Suggestions of other URLs are much appreciated. Also reports of any broken links.

And for a low, low price you can get Reconstructing 311, with yours truly and a cast of rather better characters.

Perhaps They Will Never Know

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Today is a day of remembrance, a day when a goodly part of the nation will actually take a break from its usual frenetic Sundays to stand at attention for a minute of silence at 2:46 p.m. The emperor, bless his 78 year-old soul, will take part in memorial activities, despite having had a heart bypass operation 3 weeks ago. He at least believes this a day like no other. We should all think as he does.

In the spirit of the day, I shall restrain myself from my usual fury or glee at the latest shenanigans of the nation's political classes. My mind is consumed at present with a typhoon of contempt for all but a few of the elected and the meritocratic and nepotistic elites. However, I will hold the storm's fury back for this one day.

One point, however. Many publications and broadcasts (and one famous organization, inexplicably still headed by a defrocked imperial prince) have been carping about the lack of progress in the reconstruction of the ravaged and broken areas of the Tohoku (we should not forget that the earthquake and its aftershocks wreaked havoc far from the reach of the tsunami). The failure to begin rebuilding the lost communities, whether once again in the tsunami zones or on the shaved-off tops of nearby mountains, is ascribed to the current divided Diet or, in certain quarters, the inexperienced hands of the Democratic Party of Japan-led government.

No and no and No and NO!

The elites who are charged with guiding us, or at least using our tax money wisely, are not at a loss with what to do with the Tohoku. They are at a loss with what to do with Japan -- and have been so for 20 years now. Oh some of them have a plan, the Abe Shinzo-Shimomura Kokubun-Hiranuma Takeos and their ilk, to turn the populace into authority-fearing, emperor-loving, nation-building automatons...but sorry, been there, done that and no, it does not turn out very nicely, thank you very much (note to government of the PRC: imprison your colonels now, while you still can). The Liberal Democratic Party and the followers of Ozawa Ichiro made it their common cause in the midst of the disaster's rescue and stabilization phase to drive Prime Minister Kan Naoto from office. Now they are trying to do the same to Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko during what is still the recovery phase. If either of these opposition camps were to seize the wheel of the ship of state, however, neither would have the foggiest notion in what direction to sail the Nihon Maru.

The ship has been adrift for two decades. Every so often a steady hand has taken hold of the tiller -- Hashimoto Ryutaro, Koizumi Jun'ichiro -- but it was always to right wrongs ten years too late, when it hardly mattered anymore. The victory by the DPJ was the same -- its program of putting people's livelihoods first was not revolutionary -- it was archaic, practically an anachronism. By the time the LDP had power stripped from out of its cold, near-dead claws, the treasury was empty; the countryside depleted, dependent and despondent; the cities ugly, unkempt and angry.

So today, as the cameras sweep over the barren lots and skeletons of structures for this anniversary, before running off to cover some other epiphenomenon or catastrophe, tune out the blather about the present day political mess. The images are of Japan as it is, as it has been under the veneer of efficiency and equality and beyond Tokyo's glitz and youth and energy. The stillness and lethargy are not aberrant: they are symptomatic of a ruling class without time in their schedules for the people they are supposed to be leading.

The Rehabilitation Of Kan

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, With the one year anniversary of 3/11 fast approaching, the reviews and reassessments of the crazed first few hours, days and weeks after the triple disaster have been coming in over the transom at a predictable yet indigestible rate. So much material is being released, so many seminars and commemorative events are being held that the mind can absorb only a fraction of the information bombarding it.

Nevertheless, from amidst the cacophony, one muffled truth of the catastrophe is at last being heard clearly: Prime Minister Kan Naoto performed his job up to what were the limits of what was humanly possible and kept focused on the important, whilst almost everyone around him lost his or her heads.

As of last week, the domestic news media was still failing to appreciate how it was taken in by its sources in the power industry and the national bureaucracy in campaigning against Kan's leadership during the crisis. As if reading from the same script, the papers and the broadcast media all claimed on Monday last week that a 400 page report (an English précis by the group's leader Funabashi Yoichi can be found here) by the Rebuild Japan Initiative (Nihon saiken inishiateibu) would offer incontrovertible proof that Kan's micromanagement and intrusion into so many aspects of the crisis, particularly the attempts to control the mushrooming disaster at the Fukushima Dai'ichi plant, contributed to confusion and bad decision making.

However, in the release of the report and in the press conference by the co-authors, the exact opposite was shown to be true. Kan's intense involvement and refusal, after the power company representatives and the bureaucracy failed him, to take anything being told to him at face value, turned out to be at worst unimportant and at best crucial for mitigating the catastrophe. What complaints there were about Kan's intensity came from bureaucrats who were dumbfounded that this damned politician was doing their jobs and appointing civilian advisers to aid him. That he had to do their jobs or appoint others to do them because they themselves were not doing them did not, according to the media's quotes from the report, ever cross the bureaucrats' minds.

The rehabilitation of Kan's reputation is being led, as was the investigation in the Olympus scandal, by outsiders, both domestic and foreign. The mainstream is still caught up in its own master narrative, that the Kan Cabinet's disaster response was a failure and Kan a self-deluded meddler. Some organizations are beginning to grasp how thoroughly they were led astray by their sources (J). Others are doubling down (J), committed to their narrative and their prejudices.

Since I myself have a reputation to protect -- of being one prone to extreme statements -- put me down as nominating Kan Naoto as Japan's greatest prime minister since Yoshida Shigeru. With little public support for his cabinet, the upper echelons of the national bureaucracy inert to the point of malfeasance, an opposition that only three weeks after the disaster was accusing him in Diet committee of having caused the explosions at Fukushima Dai'ichi and a pair of quislings in his party who came within centimeters of leading their followers into joining hands with the opposition in a no-confidence motion against his cabinet, he oversaw the largest ever mobilization of the Self Defense Forces, the most massive disaster rescue and relief operation in the country's history, the greatest evacuation, housing and resettlement operation of the postwar era and the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl -- and when he had no political allies or capital left, leveraged his resignation into a means of extorting from his many enemies the passage of three last vital pieces of legislation. (E)

Nakasone Yasuhiro and Koizumi Jun'ichiro retired from the scene with golden halos. Kan had to spin straw into gold -- and having done it, received not a thimbleful of credit for it.

The Poetry of the Everyday – Part I – Messages

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, On March 5 haiku poet Mayazumi Madoka gave a lecture in Washington on haiku and 3/11.

Though I was not there, I am skeptical that what she said had much relevance to the triple disaster, whose one year anniversary we are swiftly approaching.

The composition of haiku is unimaginably difficult in the best of times. In most hands it devolves into mere metric pretention. At their very best haiku pin down in 17 syllables the intersection of a time and a place in a manner that is at once considered, playful, serious and artless.

Given its intense brevity, haiku requires an immense body of knowledge to appreciate. Most of that physical knowledge has been irrevocably lost in the vast increase of personal material wealth and the disassociation of individuals from nature and its rhythms since haiku’s golden age. As for the literary historical knowledge, so many centuries have passed and so many poems composed that only scholars and devoted amateurs could place in context particular words, phrases or themes. Those without a knowledge of what has been said before would be lost. In 1994, while on a visit to the United States, Emperor Akihito (the Heisei Emperor) paid a visit to American school teaching Japanese language. In a short presentation on composing haiku, the emperor took Basho’s famous verse on the frog (kawazu) leaping into a pond, but changed the protagonist from a frog to an old turtle. The emperor was commenting on his own visit to the school, where the children were awaiting an appointed magical moment only for an old turtle to show up. The old turtle, was, of course, the emperor himself, in a charming bit of self-deprecation – a turn of phrase that was, unsurprisingly, completely lost on everyone present.

But beyond the technical and literary historical problems thwarting attempts to bridge the gap between haiku and 3/11, haiku is just not an art form amenable to comprehending cataclysm. Guernica gives a sense of cataclysm. Fortuna et Imperatrix Mundi gives a sense of cataclysm. Haiku, with its requirements that there be a season word (Who wants to remember the light snow falling in Iwate?) and an essential simultaneous disassociation from time and the capture of a moment, all in 17 syllables – cannot suffice, I am afraid.

Which is not to say that brevity cannot capture the terror and pathos of the events of 3/11. The hearts of the country had been captured by the story of "the voice of the angel" Endo Miki, 24 year-old Minami Sanrikucho civil servant who kept broadcasting warnings about the impending tsunami over the town’s loudspeakers until the waves drowned her. Her body was found in early May. However, it is the last minute emails of her high school classmate and co-worker at the disaster center, the also 24 years-old Miura Arisa, whose body was not found until January this year amid the town's rubbish heaps, which have become the words befitting the disaster.

In her last message, to her mother, which her mother was not to receive until several days after March 11 due to the back up of electronic traffic, Ms. Miura wrote:

無事ですか!?
6メートルの津波きます
役所流されたらごめん

Buji desu ka!?
6 metoru no tsunami kimasu
Yakusho nagasaretara gomen

Are you OK!?
A six meter tsunami is coming
If the public offices are washed away sorry (forgive me)

The waters that were to engulf Miura Arisa, Endo Miki and 39 of their fellow disaster relief workers were much higher than 6 meters. The only persons who managed to survive the tsunami did so by clinging to the metalwork atop the purportedly tsunami-safe three story structure.

As for the final gomen, it is the jagged edge of sadness, the apology of a child for committing the unfilial act of dying whilst in the line of duty, leaving her parent behind to mourn. (J)

Last week's issuance of the civilian report on the Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear power plant meltdown had in it another brief yet eloquent passage worthy of repetition, describing the clash between the tedious mentality of the everyday with the forces arrayed against the country.

On the first morning of the catastrophe, when the Tokyo Electric Power Company was failing to inform the government of the situation at the plant, Prime Minister Kan made the difficult decision to visit the plant himself to get a grip on the situation, in both meanings of the term.

Hearing of the PM's determination to visit Fukushima Dai'ichi himself, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio warned of what he thought were the likely significant consequences:

枝野官：　絶対にあとから政治的な批判をされる。
菅総理：あとからの批判とこの時点で原発をコントロールすることとどっちが大事なんだ。
枝野：分かっているならどうぞ

Edano: Zettai ni ato kara seijiteki na hihan o sareru.
Kan: Ato kara no hihan to kono jiten de genpatsu o kontororu suru koto to dotchi ga daiji nan da.
Edano: Wakatte iru nara dozo.

Edano: There is no doubt about it, afterwards you will be criticized politically.
Kan: Between being criticized afterward and getting control of the nuclear power plant, which is more important right now?
Edano: As long as you understand (the situation), please, go ahead. (J)

Edano, the saintly Edano who had a Twitter stream begging him to get some sleep in the aftermath of the disaster, is here revealed as the political operative, thinking about how the issue of Kan's visit would be perceived in the poisonous political atmosphere of Nagatacho. Meanwhile Kan, the selfish Kan who would not give up his premiership until he got his three wishes granted, is clearly in control of his senses, if not the situation up at Fukushima, where the #1 and #2 reactors had already melted down and the building housing reactor #1 was only hours away from exploding.