"Wenn Ich Kultur Höre..."

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, This report from Malcolm Foster of the Associated Press was going so well...

Doctors: Japan nuclear plant workers face stigma
Associated Press

TOKYO – A growing number of Japanese workers who are risking their health to shut down the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant are suffering from depression, anxiety about the future and a loss of motivation, say two doctors who visit them regularly.

But their psychological problems are driven less by fears about developing cancer from radiation exposure and more by something immediate and personal: Discrimination from the very community they tried to protect, says Jun Shigemura, who heads a volunteer team of about ten psychiatrists and psychologists from the National Defense Medical College who meet with Tokyo Electric Power Co. nuclear plant employees.

They tell therapists they have been harangued by residents displaced in Japan's nuclear disaster and threatened with signs on their doors telling them to leave. Some of their children have been taunted at school, and prospective landlords have turned them away.

"They have become targets of people's anger," Shigemura told The Associated Press.

TEPCO workers — in their readily identifiable blue uniforms — were once considered to be among the elite in this rural area 230 kilometers (140 kilometers) north of Tokyo. But after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima plant, residents came to view them as "perpetrators," Shigemura said.

Many TEPCO families in the area now hide their link to the company for fear of criticism, local doctors and psychiatrists say.

Shigemura likens the workers' experience to that of U.S. Vietnam veterans returning home to hostility in the 1960s and early '70s.

"They both worked for (the good of) their countries, but they got a backlash," he said.

(Link)

Wonderful. Sensible. Relevant across national boundaries, showing a commonality of human experience! Excellent contrast with prejudice shown the Hiroshima survivors (today is the anniversary, for those who forget these things).

That members of the public should lash out in frustration against TEPCO workers is understandable. As was the case in the Vietnam protestors' channeling of their frustrations on the blameless Vietnam veterans, the leaders of the organizations responsible for a national, preventable disaster accepted no blame for what had gone seriously wrong on their watches, and the system of representative government, which should have protected to the people and failing that, quickly rectified the problems, instead responded with platitudes and shoddy, dishonest, desultory diddling.

Then, after so much good has been done, someone has to go and shoot the report in the foot:

Culture helps explain some of these dynamics, including the strong Japanese sense of duty and group responsibility.

"People believe the workers share in the responsibility" for the disaster even though they didn't cause it, Tanigawa said.

Ach, ach, ach!

How did one of the co-authors come up with this analysis? Public opinion polling? Interviews with citizens not linked to TEPCO? Post-disaster ethnographies?

Oh, one of the subjects felt as though society was against him (Link). But that is not quite the same thing as society actually being against him, is it?

Can we have some sort of rule here? That when an interviewee from this blessed land cites culture as a reason for a certain outcome, that the questioner ask, immediately, before one more word leaves the interview subject's mouth, "On what data do you base that statement?"

When the interviewee turns out to not have any hard evidence to back up his or her claim, the interviewer should say, "Thanks. I know what you were trying to do. However, it is not helping. Let's stick to what the data says, OK?"

To The Nuclear Non-Option, An Addendum

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, After linking to the Associated Press' decidedly unsatisfactory report on discussions of Japan's nuclear reactors and the latent nuclear weapons capability they represent, it is only fair and proper to link to a worthwhile read.

This would be the update from the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) on Japan's civilian highly-enriched uranium (HEU) programs.

Civilian HEU: Japan

Now this is the real deal. Plutonium is nasty stuff and difficult to transform into big bang weapons (just ask the North Koreans). HEU is nasty stuff and way too easy to transform into big bang weapons.

Where does Japan have its HEU? The update page lists four locations.

Yes, I too hope these sites are well guarded.

The Nuclear Non-Option

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Yuri Kageyama has an interesting article out about the relationship between Japan's currently crippled civilian nuclear power program and Japan's need for a virtual nuclear weapon capability:

Japan’s muted pro-bomb voices become louder as nation debates phasing out nuclear power
Associated Press

TOKYO — A contentious debate over nuclear power in Japan is bringing another question out of the shadows: Should Japan keep open the possibility of making nuclear weapons — even if only as an option?

It may seem surprising in the only country devastated by atomic bombs, particularly as it marks the 67th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki three days later. The Japanese government officially renounces nuclear weapons, and the vast majority of citizens oppose them.

But as Japan weighs whether to phase out nuclear power, some conservatives, including some influential politicians and thinkers, are becoming more vocal about their belief that Japan should have at least the ability to make nuclear weapons.

The two issues are intertwined because nuclear plants can develop the technology and produce the fuel needed for weaponry, as highlighted by concerns that Iran is advancing a nuclear power program to mask bomb development...

(Link)

Part of "interesting" is, sadly, sarcasm. The writing is often higgledy-piggledy, like the last paragraph quoted above. Until nuclear power plants grow arms and eyes, I would find it hard for any of them could develop any technology. Nuclear weaponry does not need fuel. And, as the Iranian nuclear fuel technology programs...oh forget, the paragraph is a lost cause.

Later in the article is the howler: "Japan has 45 tons of separated plutonium, enough for several Nagasaki-type bombs." As a commenter to the article has noted, 45 tons of separated plutonium can be converted in a bit more than "several" Nagasaki-type bombs.

As for the presumption behind the article, that defense and security commentators have heretofore been quiet about drawing a direct line between the operation of nuclear power plants and a nuclear deterrent, this is simply not true. Indeed, the article itself points out that an "outspoken" Ishihara Shintaro and Abe Shinzo have been asking for Japan to make more vigorous use of its virtual deterrent (Note to self: do not include in any argument evidence that contradicts the thesis).

The article concludes with this weird quote:

"If people keep saying (nuclear energy) is for having nuclear weapons capability, that is not good,” Suzuki said. “It's not wise. Technically it may be true [my emphasis - MTC], but it sends a very bad message to the international community."

When something is technically true, saying the opposite is technically false. Technically.

The end quote indicates the story that Kageyama has missed: that talking about a civilian nuclear power program as a virtual nuclear deterrent is just nuts.

In isolation, the position sounds rational: Japan is surrounded by nuclear weapons states; Japan needs a backstop should the U.S. withdraw its nuclear umbrella; North Korean threatens Japan so Japan should be able to pose an equal and opposite threat to North Korea; the international non-proliferation system, with its nuclear and non-nuclear states, is not only unequal, it has outliers and rogues like Israel, India and Pakistan who remain solidly encased in the international community.

However, the position cannot be put forward in isolation. When one tries to map out step-by-step scenarios where the U.S. abandons Japan, or where Japan unilaterally declares itself a nuclear weapons state, or where Japan pulls a South Africa/Israel assembled-in-secret trick -- and then one takes the further step of imagining how regional actors and the international community would react, one realizes one has fallen off the edge of the world.

To put in another way, Herman Kahn may have asked you to think the unthinkable, and you can flatter yourself thinking yourself up to that task. However, Aesop's much older Fables should remind us all that while, yes, having a bell on the cat would be nice...

Sayonara Genpatsu Rally, Yoyogi Park, July 16, 2012

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Prime Minister Loach is asked, and not politely either, to not forget the suffering of Fukushima Prefecture.

In the end I was only able to spend around 15 minutes at the rally, capturing a few crowd shots and the beginnings of one of the three marches out of the park. I never got near the main stage.

( Slideshow )

Two items:

- the organizers claimed 170,000 demonstrators at the rally; the police estimate 75,000. I presume the real number was somewhere near the midpoint. I was at the rally -- but only for 15 minutes. The main assembly area is also a major thoroughfare from Shibuya to Yoyogi. Who was attending and who was just transiting?

- Union participation was strong (the above image is of the back of a Tokyo metropolitan railway union man). On the 28th of June Japanese Trade Union Confederation (RENGO) chairman Koga Nobuaki warned at a Liberal Democratic Party of Japan event that the support of his organization may be up for grabs. If the unions are free agents, due the DPJ's backtracking on its social welfare promises and the imposition of a rise in the consumption tax, then the party loses not just a big chunk of its base but much of its on-the-ground organizational strength.

Blue Ocean, Blue Skies?

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

Today is Ocean Day, a national holiday. It is a day where we are expected to reflect upon the ocean, what great gifts she has given us and how much she means to us (as one wag once put it to me, the national goal is "Let's Ocean!"). Of course, having three-day weekend just days before the school year's summer break is daft -- but then July did not have a national holiday of its own...

Sakamoto Ryuichi and Oe Kenzaburo are leading an anti-nuclear demonstration today in Yoyogi Park. Organizers hope to draw 100,000 persons to the event. (Poster - J)

I might attend, on proliferation and radioactive waste disposal grounds. No one has ever found reasonable solutions to those two problems.

Of course, if I were the GE gas turbine division chief or the gas turbine division chief of any of the Heavies, I would require my employees to attend, with the division providing the sushi, beer, non-alcoholic alternatives and mandatory sky-blue tarp.

Photo image: the Geo-Cosmos globe at the Miraikan, Koto City, Tokyo Metropolitan District.

Image courtesy: MTC

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.

Laboring To Retrieve Some Semblance of Relevance

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, When Yamaoka Kenji dropped off the 40 resignation letters from Democratic Party of Japan members of the House of Representatives at the DPJ secretary-general's office on Monday, the curiously round number of 40 raised some eyebrows. Suspicions were reinforced by the odd coincidence that 40 was precisely the number of likely defectors being batted around in press reporting immediately prior to the delivery of the letters.

No matter how good their reporters are, no paper or television station ever gets the numbers spot on. Close, sure. But on the money? A damn rare occurrence.

It was not outside the realm of conjecture that former DPJ leader Ozawa Ichiro and Yamaoka had asked some of those who wanted to quit the DPJ to remain behind, to become sleepers, poised to resign from the DPJ in dramatic style when the new Ozawa-led breakaway party came into being.

However, so botched was the Monday breakout, with 3 of the 40 asking to have their resignations rescinded and a fourth becoming an independent, that a drastic change the narrative was in order. The story was becoming one of laughable oafishness and presumption rather than menace.

So it seems that Ozawa chose to burn one of his presumed sleepers.

Kato Gaku (Nagano District #5, freshman) was one of the 17 DPJ members of the House who had voted against the bill raising the consumption tax to 10% by 2015 but who elected to stay on the in the party. On Tuesday the DPJ executive tagged Kato with a two-month suspension of his party privileges.

Somehow Kato found this punishment, which would see him reinstated with full rights in time for the DPJ's leadership election in September, too onerous to bear. Exile and potential electoral oblivion seems to have been preferable.

Kato's attempts to create the impression that he had come to his decision on his own were almost sad. After meeting with Acting President Tarutoko Shinji, Kato explained his resignation as being a result of the likelihood there will be a House of Representatives election within the next two months and he wanted to prevent the increase in the consumption tax (J) -- two thoughts that whether considered together or in isolation, make not a bit of sense.

After Kato's meeting with DPJ secretary-general Koshi'ishi Azuma, he told waiting reporters, "I have come to this decision by myself." Such a claim is, of course, ludicrous. Whenever an adult male Homo sapiens tells you he came to a decision by himself, it is precisely because he did not.

Meanwhile the other 18 members of the DPJ under suspension -- the 17 others who had earned two month suspension plus Hatoyama Yukio, whose "no" vote on the consumption tax legislation was deemed so heinous, coming as it did from a founder of the party, that he was slapped with a six month suspension -- met with 3 of the House of Councillors members who had had their resignation tendered to the secretary-general on Monday in a study group meeting on of the passage of the consumption tax bill through the House of Councillors. Hatoyama, the parrot that he is, borrowed Ozawa Ichiro's catchphrase of "putting the livelihood of the people first" (kokumin no seikatsu ga daichi - a phrase Ozawa allies today registered as the names of the new caucuses for the DPJ rebels in the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors) as the reason he will continue to struggle with the DPJ leadership, even after receiving the party's most severe form of punishment short of expulsion. Hatoyama also parroted the blunt warning of Ozawa Sakihito (no relation (to Ozawa Ichiro) that if the all the members of the opposition, Party Kizuna, the yet-to-be-formed Ozawa party and the DPJ members under suspension were to vote together, a no-confidence motion again the Cabinet would pass. (J)

Theoretically, true. Practically, impossible.

The LDP and the New Komeito crave power; the Your Party hates the Noda government's contractionary economic policies and the deference it pays to the bureaucracy; and the Socialists hate the tax rise and the government's policies on the restarts of Japan's idled nuclear reactors.

But to think that all the members of these parties, plus the Sunrise Party, the other microparties, the independents plus the Communists will all join hands with Ozawa Ichiro and Hatoyama Yukio to topple the Noda government is wishful thinking at its most wishful.

As for Hatoyama's and Ozawa Sakihito thuggish, numerically implausible threats, they have flushed down the toilet any chance of the mainstream DPJ leadership ever allowing either man any responsibility greater than crossing guard or perhaps garbage collector.

How many Kato Gakus still sleep among the ranks of the DPJ? My guess is four, perhaps five more. It is possible, however, that my confidence in Noda Yoshihiko's mastery of the numbers blinds me to the likelihood of a much larger and damaging number of potential defectors remaining.

As for Ozawa Sakihito, he clearly seems to have missed the elementary school lesson that when someone treats you with leniency, you show remorse and, for a decent interval, remain silent.


Later - This text has been edited for clarity.

Light My Fire

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, With thousands protestors in the streets without the obvious dirction of nationalist or labor organizations, an unprecedented and unforeseen explosion of grassroots discontent (E), operators of the Oi Nuclear Power Station flicked the ON switch at the plant at 21:00 last night, with the #3 reactor going critical at 06:00 this morning. (J)

The nuclear fight in Japan is not over. It is just beginning. This is the battle going on its summer break.


Later - Okumura Jun of the Eurasia Group and GLOBALTALK 21 has bet me a lunch at Aux Bacchanales if next week's Friday night protest draws even 75% of the number who showed up at the June 29 protest.

I have taken that bet.

Unless he 1) opens his mouth only to insert food or drink or 2) intentionally babbles complete nonsense or lies, win or lose, I come out ahead.

Now if I could only get Gerald Curtis, Naomi Fink, Gillian Tett, Oshima Tadamori, Prime Minister Noda, Egawa Shoko or Aida Masae (a.k.a. Hara Setsuko) to make the same bet...

Sengoku Yoshito Continues To Bring Joy To His DPJ Comrades

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Despite a reputation of being one of the chief thinkers/heavy hitters of the Democratic Party of Japan (E), former chief cabinet secretary and current Acting President Sengoku Yoshito continues to be his own worst enemy.

The denouement of Sengoku's most recent publicized case of self-wounding came on Tuesday, when the judge in his libel suits against Shukan Shincho and Shukan Bunshun ruled in favor of the defendants.

In January of 2011 both magazines reported that Sengoku had sexually harassed a woman reporter in a 2010 end-of-the-year celebration at the Prime Minister's Residence. Rather than going the smart route of doing nothing, only noting that neither of the publications is a friend of the DPJ and neither is very scrupulous about printing the truth, Sengoku pulled an Oscar Wilde, filing libel suits against the publications, demanding 10 million yen from each.

On Tuesday, the judge ruled that far from being libelous, the accounts of the incident at the Residence were indeed truthful -- that Sengoku had said something to the woman and that that something was sufficiently vulgar and demeaning as to constitute sexual harassment. (J)

So, as of Tuesday, Sengoku is no longer a stumble bum and possibly a cad. He is now a stumble bum and definitely a cad.

Sengoku is considering filing an appeal.

In the meantime, Sengoku -- the DPJ's point man on the restart of the Oi nuclear reactors and the nuclear industry in general-- met yesterday with his counterparts in the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito to finalize the details on the legislation establishing a new regulatory system for the nuclear power industry (J). He is also leading the drafting of the DPJ's new policy manifesto. (J)

Good to see that the DPJ is not entrusting Sengoku, who has a demonstrated tendency to trip over himself, with any important tasks.

Hashimoto Toru Comes Back Down To Earth

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In a Golden Week post ("Chaos Awaits") I made a spectacularly wrong prediction: that private lawyers hired to prosecute Ozawa Ichiro would not bother to appeal the verdict handed down on April 26, despite noting in the very same post that the judge may have ruled Ozawa "Not Guilty," but did not like it, preferring, if he could, to rule the case against him to be "Not Proven."

[I blew it at least two ways. I overestimated the concerns the three lawyers might have as to the negative effects a continued pursuit of Ozawa would have on their images and income streams. I underestimated the likely financial rewards the lawyers could reap -- for "consultations" and "advice" from seemingly not very demanding clients -- should they continue their quixotic tilting at Ozawa.]

In the same post, I proposed three goals for the Democratic Party of Japan and Prime Minister Noda:

- carry out a public relations campaign laying out the government's reason for a need to raise the consumption tax, with the PM in particular stepping forward to sell his vision

- continue to find ways of driving wedges in between the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito

- fail, despite their best efforts, to win the support of regional leaders in the Kansai for a restart of the Oi reactors, setting up Hashimoto Toru, an opponent of the restarts, for a fall.

The Noda government is making good progress on the first item, sending the PM into a buzz saw of a live interview on NHK's 9 o'clock news on May 17.

As for the second item, any progress that had been made, particularly in drawing the LDP and the New Komeito apart on the issue of electoral district reform, has probably been sent into reverse by the Li Chenguang Affair. The two parties will march in lock-step, together with the Your Party and the Sunrise Party, demanding a full investigation into Li's contacts with DPJ politicians.

The third item, as cynical and cold-blooded a political calculus as one can make in Japan, seems likely now to never be tested. Hashimoto has backed away from full opposition to a restart of the Oi reactors, paving the way for them to be brought back online. (E)

Hashimoto may be stubborn and a poll watcher but he is not stupid. He held his ground long enough to make his point -- that the national government is rushing the restarts, having no grounds on which to assert the safety of reactor operations under extreme conditions. However, with the surge in power consumption to come in the months of July and August and the likelihood that no matter how private persons, governments and corporations cut back on power usage, Hashimoto faced being blamed for the brownouts and timed blackouts the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) would have impose to preserve its transmission grid.

Once the Oi reactors are started, it will be very difficult to shut them down again. Even with the Oi reactors online, KEPCO will make it through the summer only by the skin of its teeth -- and only thanks to loss-creating shutdowns by businesses. Once the summer is over the company will want to shut down at least a few of its thermal plants for maintenance, jacking up the pressure for keeping the Oi plants online.

Given the threats the continued shutdown of the reactors pose to the economic well-being of the people of Osaka -- and their very lives, the loss of the capacity to cool living spaces or keep life-saving devices on being very real -- there was only so far Hashimoto could ride the populist anti-nuclear wave.

Catching up with Toru and Yoshihiko

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, At little less than two weeks ago, I wrote:

The goals for the Noda Cabinet and the DPJ, if it can hold together as a party, are [snip] hope that after exerting every possible effort to restart the Oi reactors and other reactors feeding into Kansai Electric Power (KEPCO)'s grid, their efforts fail.

The last is a cynical but seemingly necessary failure of the imposition of national will over local governmental authorities. Any responsible national government, looking at the predicted shortfalls of generating power in the Kansai, would be proceeding as the Noda government has proceeded. The politicians and the citizens of the Kansai region, particularly the voters of Osaka City and their mayor, Hashimoto Toru, have perversely been those most opposed to the restart of the reactors, despite KEPCO's assertions that it faces a crushing lack of generating capacity of nearly 20% this summer.

Hashimoto and the voters of Osaka have a deep mistrust of KEPCO, extending back to last year. KEPCO's management has been far from transparent about its power capacity and rate calculations. However, this blessed land dodged a bullet last year, the summer being rather mild and the nation's tolerance for energy saving being exceptionally high. This year may be very different, and will almost certainly be most different not in the capital region or the region hardest hit by the earthquakes and tsunami but in the Kansai and Hokkaido, where the power companies were most deeply committed to nuclear power.

Should Hashimoto and other local leaders persist in hampering the restarts of reactors, and the resulting lack of power generating capacity lead to blackouts, either planned or unplanned, the Kansai's current regionalist challenge to Tokyo control will be severely damaged. Hashimoto's political ambitions may indeed be seriously set back, if the government can pin the blame for the power cuts on him, saying, "We told you so, we told you so, we told you so...and you just wouldn't listen."

(Link)

Well, guess what appeared in The Japan Times yesterday?

Kansai power crunch just political rivalry?
Oi reactor factor tied to Noda's Hashimoto feud

By ERIC JOHNSTON - Staff writer - OSAKA — The confrontation between the central government and Kansai area leaders over the restart of two nuclear reactors in Oi, Fukui Prefecture, has more to do with the growing power struggle between Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda than with safety or objective attempts to determine how much electricity will be available this summer.

Since February, Kansai Electric Power Co. has revised downward its projected electricity shortages after being grilled by Hashimoto-appointed critics.

On Tuesday, Kepco said that while it currently stands by its projection of a 15 percent shortage, a combination of purchasing electricity from other suppliers, ramping up natural energy use and instituting curbs on power use might actually shrink the projected shortage to 5 percent.

Meanwhile, the governors of Kyoto and Shiga as well as Hashimoto are critical of the way Noda's administration is pushing for the Oi reactors' restart without addressing their detailed safety concerns.

They are also angry the administration and Kepco announced blackout preparations without first consulting independent outside experts who might offer different views.

The reason for these actions, Hashimoto's supporters and critics suggest, is pure politics.

"Right now, the central government says that, depending on the circumstances, it will have to cut power this summer and that if so, it will be Hashimoto's fault. But Hashimoto is not responsible for the Oi reactors. The central government and Kepco are," Tetsunari Iida, head of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, said in a recent local media interview. He is also a Hashimoto adviser who serves on an Osaka city committee challenging Kepco over its projections of electricity shortages if the Oi reactors remain idled.

"Tokyo is growing increasingly worried about Hashimoto's rising popularity. Warnings of shortages from politicians and bureaucrats critical of Hashimoto have convinced many in Kansai that Noda's real aim is to do whatever he can to halt or at least slow Hashimoto's rise," said Yuji Yoshitomi, a local freelance journalist who has written critically of Hashimoto...

(Link)

The funny/sad aspect of this whole KEPCO vs. Hashimoto struggle, with the Noda government playing the role of concern troll, is that Osaka City is the top shareholder in KEPCO. In theory Hashimoto and the Ishin no kai should be pressuring the KEPCO executives to at least pay attention to their ideas and answer their questions. They are failing, in part because the Osaka stake, while large (9%), is still far from controlling.

Let the game of chicken (or as we say in this blessed land, chikin gemu) roll on!

In Lotus Land

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Thank goodness for The Tokyo Diplomat. Without it I would never have been alerted to Tokyo Metropolitan District Governor Ishihara Shintaro's spectacularly weird suggestion that nuclear power plants be built on Nokogiriyama in Chiba Prefecture ("There's a lot of empty land up there," the governor claims), under the reasoning that if the Greater Tokyo Area is the consumer of the power produced by nuclear power plants, it should host a few. (J)

Guys, and Kannon-sama, Ishihara-chiji thinks you need some big time engineering company.

Black-tailed gulls (Umineko - Larus crassirostris) over Nokogiriyama.


Kannon of the Nippon-ji.
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.


Jigoku nozoki ("The Glimpse Into Hell").
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.


One of the 1,500 Rakkan.
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.


The Great Buddha of the Nippon-ji
(carved 1783-6 and until 1984 the largest Buddha figure in Japan).
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.


Face of the Great Buddha of the Nippon-ji.
Nokogiriyama, Chiba Prefecture.

All photos: MTC

We're Not Gonna Take It

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The Tokyo Shimbun has some of the most easy-to-parse editorial cartoons in the mediasphere of this blessed land.

However, May 5th's cartoon deserves a special exercise in exegesis.

The manga is the recreation of the teary retirement scenes from girls groups covered by the wide shows and sometimes even make the serious newscasts. The most prominent of these recent retirements was the "graduation" of Maeda Atsuko from the mega-group AKB48.

Here the girl's group name GNP54 -- the GNP standing for GeNPatsu, the contraction for genshiryokuhatsuden = nuclear power station (the cartoonist, after a suggestion from perhaps an exasperated editor, has an aside that GNP here does not mean "Gross National Product" as it normally would) and the 54 the number of nuclear power plants in this blessed land.

The ceremony here is the retirement of the GNP54's final member, Tomari Harako (there is a pun involving her personal name but I will try to keep this simple). Tomari notes the irony of her family name, which is a homophone of "where it stops." With a smile, however, she declares, "But I can be back!" -- which is met by rustling, scattered boos and expressions of surprise. Through her tears she shouts, "But, but with all your support, I can, all the other members can..." -- which rather than being greeted with cheering is met with silence. "Oh, so that's it..." she concludes, allowing the microphone to drop from her hand, the spotlight leaving her face and contracting into a fadeout.

What sets this editorial cartoon apart from any other we may have recently seen?

The Tokyo Shimbun put it dead center on its front page.

We're not gonna take it...
We're not gonna take it...*


Image courtesies: Tokyo Shimbun

The Night The Lights Stayed On

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Shingetsu News has a tongue-in-cheek report on the shutdown of the Tomari #3 reactor for routine maintenance, as seen from Shinjuku's Kabuki-cho.

(Link)

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Missed Something Here

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Those in the know, whoever you are, could you explain when koi became, in the words of Yuri Kageyama of AP:

Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nation's 50 nuclear reactors Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol.

(Link)

Except for the coincidental occurrence of the shutdown of the Tomari #3 reactor on the Tango no Sekku holiday, is there some other reason heretofore not widely stated for carp streamers or the giant images of any other fish being "potent anti-nuclear" symbols? Please let me know in comments.

Furthermore, is it not a wee bit misleading to refer to a crowd of 5,500 in Tokyo as "thousands of Japanese"? A crowd of 5,500 is less than five Odakyu express trains pulling into Shinjuku.

By the way, this week's heavy rains wiped out the display of Japan's largest koi nobori (J), trimmed parades and eliminated numerous scheduled outdoor celebrations of spring (J) -- as well as a hacking out an unhealthy chunk of the seasonal revenues of major tourist sites.


Later - Here are some anti-nuclear protest/celebration crowd figures from other major cities:

Sapporo: 450
Nagoya: 250
Osaka: 600
Fukuoka: 50

Like They Had Never Asked Before

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, In a follow up on my post of the other day, NHK has released a survey of the residents of Oi Township, the home of the reactors the government is pushing hard to restart (E), the residents of the the four communities surrounding Oi Township (Maizuru City, Obama City, Takashima City and Wakasa Township) and the City of Osaka -- where the eventual main consumers of the power generated by the Oi reactors live.

The results:

In Oi Township

In favor of the restart 54%
Opposed 37%

In the four surrounding municipalities

Opposed 60%

In Osaka City

Opposed 62%

(Link - J)

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."

The Point About The Oi Reactor Restart

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Martin Fackler has had an article published in the NYT:

Japan Seeks to Restart Some Nuclear Power Plants
The New York Times

TOKYO — Hoping to avert potentially devastating summer power shortages, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Friday that his government would seek to restart two nuclear reactors, in what would be a first step toward ending an almost complete shutdown of the nation’s nuclear power industry.

Mr. Noda declared units No. 3 and No. 4 at the Ohi Nuclear Power Plant in western Japan to be safe based on the results of computer simulations designed to check the reactors’ tolerance of a large earthquake and tsunami like those last year that knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The resulting meltdowns and explosions spewed radiation across a wide area of northeastern Japan and the Pacific Ocean in the worst nuclear accident since the one at Chernobyl a quarter century earlier.

Mr. Noda now faces the tricky task of convincing skeptical local leaders and voters in Fukui prefecture, where the Ohi plant is located, that it is safe to turn the reactors back on. Public concerns about safety after the Fukushima accident have prevented Japan from restarting any of its nuclear reactors as they have been gradually taken offline for legally mandated maintenance checks...

(Link)

Except for the cryptic reference to "skeptical local leaders" Fackler and the NYT manage to almost, but not quite, entirely miss the main point regarding the restart of Oi reactors. Given the government's new, Fukushima-derived regulations regarding evacuations out of areas within 30 kilometers of a nuclear power station, not just 10, the range of evacuation goes beyond the borders of Fukui Prefecture and well into Kyoto and Shiga Prefectures. The major cities of Obama (Fukui Prefecture) and Maizuru (Kyoto Prefecture) are within the 30 kilometer zone.

As far as the governors of Kyoto and Shiga are concerned, the government has done close to nothing to help prepare their prefectures for an accident at Oi. The mayor of Maizuru says it is simply not the time to restart the reactors (J) -- prompting a major presentation by Democratic Party Policy Research Chairman Maehara Seiji in the city last night (J).

The takeaway missing from Fackler's report is that restarting the nuclear power plants now involves far more municipalities, prefectures and voters than the original start ups did. As Daniel Aldrich has documented, it was hard enough to win local approval to build the darn things in the first place. The problem now is that post-Fukushima, what counts as "local" is too big and too variegated for the power suppliers and the government to buy off.

Convincing so many folks that they must run the risk of losing their hometowns (not their their lives - as nuclear advocates say, no one died from the Fukushima nucleotide release, if one does not count the individuals who survived the tsunami but were trapped in the debris and were left to die of shock, dehydration and starvation when rescue crews were pulled from the disaster zone) and livelihoods so the neon can stay in Osaka, when Osaka mayor Hashimoto Toru has declared war on the DPJ-led government for trying to restart the Oi reactors (J) -- well, it is a bit more of a climb than the Fackler piece indicates.

A Way Too Newsy Day

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, What we know after yesterday is:

- The DPRK is a miserably poor country locked in a Stalinist nightmare ruled by a kid who grew up in Switzerland who likely as not wishes the whole horrible structure would go to hell. The country can threaten the Republic of Korea with the annihilation of Seoul through artillery fire and Japan with a barrage of fairly reliable Nodong missiles. Other than that it is a pathetic candidate for a threat to human civilization.

In other words, it is right now a land offering a hint of opportunity, not to be walloped with the same tired routines of going to the UN Security Council for a bunch of whiff and poofing.

Also that Japanese news programs, driven by pressures from (viewers/advertisers/government/right-wing organizations/the United States - circle one or more) have an almost infinite creativity when it comes to thinking up pejorative alternatives, no matter how long-winded -- "the artificial satellite, in reality a long-range ballistic missile," "the long-range ballistic missile called an earth-sensing artificial satellite," "the artificial satellite in name only, actually a ballistic missile" -- to the simple, neutral term "rocket."

- You do not need a confession to convict a person of murder and sentence her to death. All you need is a string of bodies left behind someone who extorted all the money she could from the victims before they managed to commit suicide whilst drugged. (E)

Also that the lengthy trial of an unattractive woman capable of luring in, defrauding and killing three lonely men, keeping up a blog of her activities, is a huge draw among middle-aged and young women. For the record, which is slim, the these out-of-the-ordinary trial attendees have been dubbed the Kanae Girls (kanae gyaru).

- A former banker with Nomura Securities can go before the microphones in the Diet in sworn testimony, admit to producing accounts in no way reflecting the realities of the fund he was managing, admit to running a Ponzi scheme (tenbai sukiimu)-- and still insist he had no intent to defraud anybody.

The guy has got a hell of a lawyer: "Just keep telling the truth but repeating that you're sorry and you never meant to hurt anyone and the judge will go easy on you, I promise."

Sad thing is, that lawyer is almost certainly right.

- When you as a government body hurriedly approve the restart of two nuclear reactors, after the nation has suffered the worst civilian nuclear disaster since and the only one on a par with Chernobyl, based on a safety assessment finding that procedures for preventing the repeat of the disaster have, for the most part (omune ni), been put into place -- the Japanese public, prefectural governments and the press will go bananas. (E)

I mean like top-of-every-newscast, first-four-pages-of-the-newspaper-on-a-day-that-the-DPRK-fires-off-a-rocket bananas.

Yesterday I posited that the fate of Maeda Takeshi, the ethically compromised and extremely unhelpful Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, would be a page 2 story in this morning's newspaper.

Heck, he is not even in this morning's newspaper.

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"