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.

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"

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.

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.