The Morimoto Appointment

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, There are many stories to be chasing after.

There is the humanization of arrested Aum Shinrikyo fujitive Kikuchi Naoko in the news media and the implications the humanization of a mass murderer could have on the imposition of the death penalty in her case -- a given, considering the sentences handed out to the other members of the cult -- or even the death penalty's continued application. Can the state kill a person who has, during her life on the run, worked as an eldercare provider? Is there such a thing as redemption after committing great evil? And what of the National Police Agency's incapacity to capture anyone unless that person is handed to them on a platter* or in the case of Hirata Makoto, tries desperately (E) to hand himself in on a platter? And what of the irony of the Kikuchi arrest coming the day after rededication of a monument to Sakamoto Kuniko -- the Sakamotos being the first of Aum's victims, whose killings, had they been investigated (it would not have been too hard. One of the cult members, horrified at what he and his fellow followers had done, left his Aum Shinrikyo badge at the scene of the crime) would have stopped the whole mad murderous machine in its tracks? (J)

One talk about the flip side of the collapse of the economies in rural areas: that larger-than-one-would-imagine-in-a-country-with-a-population-as-big-as-Japan's tracts of uninhabited land are available for renewable energy resource projects -- nicely graded and leveled abandoned rice paddies, failed golf courses, unused rural economic development zones and perhaps even an underused airport or two make fine candidates for solar farms. (E) **

However, the big story is the Cabinet reshuffle (E) and the big story of the Cabinet reshuffle the appointment of academic Morimoto Satoshi as Minister of Defense.

For those looking for background on the appointment there is a wealth of material. Morimoto has been in the public eye for two decades as a public intellectual of the first rank, serving as the media's go-to conservative academic on matters such as the Japan-U.S. security alliance, the DPRK, defense systems, the revolution in military affairs and the rise of Chinese military power. If someone were looking for "gotcha" moments -- stunningly incorrect predictions, overblown rhetoric, rumor mongering, untenable analysis -- there are hundreds of hours of video and ten of thousands of words to troll through. Luckily for Morimoto and Prime Minister Noda, the organizations with the most reflexive tendencies to go trolling for items with which to embarrass Morimoto and the government -- the Yomiuri Shimbun and its Nihon Terebi terrestrial TV network and the Sankei Shimbun and its terrestrial network Fuji TV -- both have relied on Morimoto as the outside expert most likely to hew to their editorial line.

Morimoto is a hardline realist. He has little love for Article 9 and the limits placed upon Japan's ability to engage in multilateral security actions. A former Air Self Defense Forces (the most gungho of the services) officer and a graduate of the National Defense Academy, he has probably always dreamed of being Minister of Defense. Now he has the responsibility to be one. He will be the man in the cross hairs and the guy with his name on the dotted line when the government signs the contract for the acquisition of F-35 Lightning IIs, with the costs and delivery dates to be determined.

Morimoto has previous experience in government, having been appointed the first Special Advisor to the Minister of Defense after the position was created during the premiership of Aso Taro. As a former member of an LDP administration with no previously noted links to the Democratic Party of Japan, he represents a bit of wicked deviousness on Prime Minister Noda's part: after disgracing the position with two Ozawa Ichiro-nominated defense ignoramuses -- whom the LDP had the House of Councillors censure -- he gives the country a defense minister about whom the LDP can raise not a peep of protest.

Morimoto, despite his defense smarts, comes into office with severe handicaps that will limit his ability to transform his own ideas into action. First, he is a non-politician: he will facing the bureaucracy naked, without even a political secretary to back him up. Such support as he will enjoy will come from the Prime Minister's Residence (the Kantei) and in the person of the man who appointed him. Second, the cost of acquiring the F-35 threatens to upset the balance between the ASDF and the already beset Ground Self Defense Forces and the proud and dominant Maritime Self Defense Forces. After personnel costs and procurement costs, Morimoto will have little to spend on actual operations or any expansion of operations he might press the government to consider.

The appointment of Morimoto once again raises the question of whether or not Noda is his own defense minister. While he for once has less experienced in defense matters than person he has appointed as his defense minister, being only the son of an SDF man rather than a former SDF man himself, Noda still believes himself an expert in the nuts and bolts of defense policy.

The appointment seems more a tactical move rather than a strategic one. At a stroke Noda has neutralized potential LDP, right wing and center-right media and nationalist complaints about his support for a robust Japanese defense capability and outlook. Left-leaning and leftist news media have indeed been hopping up and down that the appointment of an academic rather than a politician means that the MOD bureaucracy and uniformed officers will be too powerful, undermining the concept of civilian control (shibirian kontororu***). He will win the applause of the American think-tank-political-appointee merry-go-round ridership, who will be thrilled by Morimoto's heretofore unshakable support of the Japan-U.S. alliance and his hardline security stances, ignoring Morimoto's rather weak bureaucratic and non-existent political support. He also removes from the commentariat one of his most potent and visible potential critics.

So Morimoto has the "right" views and the wrong attributes. We shall have to see which of the two initial conditions proves the more significant.


Later - And yes, I did notice. It was the first thing out of my mouth when I saw the Cabinet lineup in the paper this morning: "What? Again? Where are the women, you torpid [expletive deleted] sea slug?"


Later still - This post has been edited for greater clarity.

Way later - The Magnificent Kiwis have checked in -- Bryce Wakefield in Comments and Corey Wallace over at Japan Security Watch (Link) -- with far more intelligent things to say about the Morimoto apppointment than I have.


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* Until further notice, I will remain agnostic regarding the police story that a neighbor recognized Kikuchi and turned her in. The difference in appearances between the 1994 Kikuchi and the woman arrested on Sunday are significant (E). It seems unlikely that anyone looking at her would see the chubby, smiling former runner, especially as Kikuchi, while living in Sagamihara, was, according to residents, always hiding her face by looking at the ground.

A more likely scenario is that her lover, exhausted by life on the lam, turned her in with a promise of clemency for himself and mercy for her, with police concocting the alert neighbor story to keep the public on the lookout for the last remaining Aum fugitive, Takahashi Katsuya.

** Note to The Economist: the title of your story about this subject has to be, "Huge...tracts of land..."

*** One critic whose opinions I value has said that whenever elites in this blessed land want to reduce the ability of citizens to understand certain concepts, they simply take the English word and transliterate it using katakana. The plague of katakana eigo terms in finance industry terminology (konpuraiansu, gabanansu...) would tend to support the "let's keep them in the dark" thesis.

The Bloodletting Begins - China, Spying and Phytosanitary Restrictions

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, The dirty game of leaking from the Li Chunguang case has begun. Unsurprisingly, the Yomiuri Shimbun is at the forefront at publishing the leaked information, targeting members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan with missiles of filled with innuendo and non-sequiturs.

Agriculture leak to be probed / Ministry team to investigate Chinese diplomat's link to secret documents

The agriculture ministry will set up an investigation team within the ministry to investigate the alleged leaking of classified documents, following Wednesday's report by The Yomiuri Shimbun that a Chinese diplomat may be responsible for the security breach.

Speaking to reporters at the ministry on Wednesday, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Michihiko Kano said: "As long as such a report was made, I believe it's important to thoroughly investigate the case as a ministry. I told this to the team members."

The leaked documents are believed to contain information on a program for exporting agricultural products to China. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported the 45-year-old first secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo, who is suspected of espionage, was involved in the program organized by the Promotion Association of Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries & Foods Exporting to China, a Tokyo-based incorporated body.

The diplomat, who also is suspected of violating the Alien Registration Law, has already left Japan

Senior Vice Minister Tsukasa Iwamoto will lead the ministry's investigative team, whose members include several senior officials, such as Parliamentary Secretary Tetsuo Morimoto and a vice minister, Kano said

The ministry's other senior vice minister, Nobutaka Tsutsui, who led the program in question, was not included in the team

Asked about Tsutsui, Kano said, "I guess we'll have to ask him [about the leak]."

Read the full story (Link) though there is really not much of a story. A shipload of Japanese produce and fish destined for a special Japanese agricultural products promotion got held up at agricultural inspection by the Chinese government's failure to waive its usual phytosanitary restrictions. Li went to visit Vice-Minister Tsutsui, presumably to explain what was going on and/or offer an apology. The shipment eventually had to be destroyed.

End of story.

TV Asahi has a report out alleging that Li entertained members of the DPJ's agriculture tribe, MAFF elite bureaucrats and representatives of agricultural interests at restaurants and other venues (ANN News - J - time sensitive).

The Mainichi Shimbun's coverage of the story hones in on the opening of the bank accounts and the money allegedly transferred to those accounts (E). That the Mainichi acquired such detailed information as the exact amounts transferred to the accounts says very little that is admirable about the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's ability to protect information with possible vital national security implications.

As can be seen from the Yomiuri and Mainichi texts and the TV Asahi segment, the mainstream media is clinging with desperation to their at once inconsistent and overbearing applications of restrictions on revealing the identities and images of persons under investigation (Why the giant, floating blue ball, TV Asahi, on what seems to be footage from open government sources?) Internet news outlets, You Tube and the non-Japanese press are circulating reports featuring Li's name and image. The hopeless maintenance of a veil of secrecy makes the story seem more sinister, which may be good for ratings. However, the effort at concealment makes the mainstream press look like fools, in the same way their tentative coverage of the Olympus scandal did, after FACTA and the foreign press had already broken the case wide open.

Later - Will opposition parties go bananas about Li Chunguang's activities, the extent to which the government's had knowledge of them, the possibility of security breaches and the compromising of appointed officials and bureaucrats, tying the Diet's schedule into knots, making it impossible for the Noda government to pass the legislation necessary for the implementation of its political program?

Let us say, to be brief, yes.

Later still - Li's purported efforts to influence opinions at MAFF and among legislators with strong ties to agriculture interests will mean that the MAFF will likely be off-limits to foreign entities trying to encourage the loosening of restrictions on agriculture trade and the ending of agriculture and fishery subsidies. This would indicate that Japanese participation in TPP negotiations are deader than Elvis, for the time being.

About That Other Failure

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, Last Friday, the DPRK launched a rocket in commemoration of 100th birthday of the country's founder Kim Il-sung. U.S. thermal imaging satellites immediately detecting the ignition of the rocket's engines. Under information-sharing agreements worked out long ago between Japan and the United States, the launch detection warning .was relayed to the government of Japan. The U.S. information was immediately shared with Japan's Self Defense Forces, which were on high alert to detect, track and, if necessary, shoot down the rocket-- oops, I'm sorry, missile.

The service personnel on board three Aegis-class destroyers equipped with SM-3 missiles and the personnel at the ground based radar stations on Shimokoshikijima (E), Fukuejima and numerous other sites in Kyushu, northern Chugoku and Okinawa stared at their screens, waiting for the confirmation of the rocket's rise.

And they waited.

And they waited.

And they waited.

Funny thing about the Earth: it's curved. If some object blows up before it rises above your horizon, you are going to be waiting forever.

Both the Aegis destroyers in the East China Sea were cruising far to the south (having two in the Sea was a public relations stunt: in terms of missile defense and radar coverage, one was more than sufficient). The choice of positioning did provide greater protection to the Okinawa Islands but also did not upset the Chinese. It would have made more sense from an intelligence gathering standpoint to position one of the two destroyers in the north, closer to the launch site. Unfortunately, China tends to consider the northern part of the East China Sea and all of the Yellow Sea as a no-go area for all but the most intrepid of foreign naval powers.

So following Friday morning's launch, Japan was blind to a no-longer-existing-possible-threat. Which, when you think about it, is no big shakes.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu, the government spokesman and concurrently the government's COO, did not come out of the Security Council -- which he is a part of, meaning that he is somehow responsible for reporting to the public on a meeting he supposed to be attending -- until an hour after the launch to admit the fascinating but tentative possibility that a launch may have taken place.

All of which looks terribly bad and stupid, considering that U.S. and South Korean officials were making announcements of a launch having taken place within minutes of the launch's having taken place.

Predictably, the main opposition parties have gone to town on the "failure" of the government to keep the public informed in a timely manner about what was going on. The national official security threat system called J-Alert was never engaged. Government email communications even 50 minutes after the launch were saying that a launch had not been confirmed. In a bit of humorous bad luck resulting from the width of the computer screens of the government's official communications systems and the peculiarities of Japanese sentence structure, the message from the government read what is is the equivalent of:

"As for the launch of a missile, the current status is that a missile launch confirmation has

not happened."

Whatever hyperventilations about the Japanese government's lack of preparedness or bad execution emerge, three points:

1) With the rocket doing itself in, nobody was ever in a position to get hurt.

2) The SDF and the government followed prudent protocols, showing they had learned from the false positive report in 2009 that led to an unnecessary warning being passed on to local officials.

3) The ridiculousness of Fujimura's having had to have been in two places at once may fan into flame the ever-smouldering debate over the Cabinet's need for a dedicated spokesman.

Burning one of the five Special Advisor to the Prime Minister (shusho hosakan) positions in order to appoint an individual charged solely with providing information to the public was one of the few good ideas former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo brought with him when took over as prime minister. That the decision blew up in his face was due to his having chosen the shameless self-promoter Seko Hiroshige as his Special Advisor for public communications.

Ever since the Seko fiasco, no PM has been willing to repeat the experiment -- which is too bad, as the present arrangement has never been to the public's benefit in terms of providing comprehensive and comprehensible information. It has also in some cases become something of a power trip for the man (yes, only men so far) chosen to simultaneously wear two very important government hats, turning the Chief Cabinet Secretary into something of a Chief Cabinet Jerk.

For Those Who Don't Have The Time

PLEASE WAIT LOADING ,,,,,,,,, To dig or an awareness of just how much is being made available on-line regarding Japan's security environment, the latest edition of Tiago Mauricio's East Asian Security & Defence Digest is out. (Link)