The White Peril 白禍

Not only are the two Japan Post subsidiaries related to the mails less profitable than the bank and the insurance company, but they also, according to the Yomiuri, owe back-taxes for Japanese fiscal year 2008, halfway through which the system was privatized:

Following investigations by the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau into the two companies, the bureau notified the firms of their unreported earnings for the business year ending March 2008, according to sources.

The companies are expected to be levied about 9.2 billion yen in back taxes, including penalty, corporate and local taxes, the sources said.

The total undeclared income reportedly is more than 20 billion yen.

...

It also said Japan Post Service and Japan Post Network logged 3.53 billion yen and 5.69 billion yen, respectively, to pay for taxes, on the assumption that the two companies would likely have to pay back taxes.

Although Japan Post Group said it had a "difference in understanding" with the bureau, the group said it would abide by the notification.

Well, you know, in Japan, these things are all about perspective.

The Japan Post family of companies released its first financial statements for a full fiscal year since privatization--well, more like partial governmental divestiture, but in today's climate, anything that even resembles a shift in the direction of less federal control of a major industry feels like a refreshing change--and the numbers are mixed:

In the consolidated financial statements for J-FY 2008 Q4 that Japan Post released on 22 May, current income (corresponding to sales revenues) was JPY 19.9617 trillion, current profits were JPY 830.5 billion, and net profits (for the quarter) were JPY 422.7 billion. Since privatization in October 2007, this round is the first release of financial statements for a full fiscal year, and while all four companies operating under the Japan Post umbrella ultimately secured balances in the black, the three remaining companies when Japan Post Insurance is excluded fell short of standing projections. CEO Yoshifumi Nishikawa indicated in an interview that he intends to stay on the pitcher's mound until the two financial subsidiaries [the insurance companies and the savings bank] are in a condition to list their stock, which is planned for as early as J-FY 2010.

It's the two finance-related arms that are making most of the profits; the holding company wants to jack up the contribution from the remaining two companies, one of which runs the post offices and the other of which runs the shipping and courier logistics of the old postal system. The Mainichi has an English version here, which scrambles the order of the original Japanese article but doesn't omit much of the information.

The lead editorial in the Nikkei this morning is headlined "How should Japan contribute to 'demand within Asia'?"

In getting the global economic crisis under control, Asia, which is called the growth center of the 21st Century, looms large. In a 21 May lecture, Prime Minister Taro Aso called for the expansion of "demand within Asia"; how can Japan fulfill a leading role in doing so? The challenges posed and responsibilities thrust upon it are weighty.

The prime minister took as his topic "Toward an Asia that surmounts the economic crisis and soars again," and he stressed that there is a need to shift the Asian economy from the export-driven structure it's had up to now into a structure driven by internal demand. Where that is concerned, the diverse nations and territories of Asia are not likely to dissent.

...

A supplementary-budget proposal for FY 2009 that undertakes additional economic measures on a scale that exceeds the previous maximum of JPY 15 trillion is not under deliberation in the House of Councillors. It's necessary to start taking financial action, but annual expenditures that it's not unrealistic to expect to be tied to money politics will not contribute to an increase in Japan's ability to grow. There's a need to move forward in parallel with structural reforms, such as deregulation, as well.

On the other hand, we will have to accept more from Asian nations and territories--not just imports but also human resources. Pain will accompany the opening of agricultural markets and things, but there's no way to get around it.

In connection with the stability and expansion of Asian financial markets, the prime minister stated, "we want to make the 'yen' something that different countries can use for financing in times of crisis." The idea is to provide emergency loans of Japanese yen to countries that have insufficient foreign currency, but it can also be considered an intention to "internationalize the yen."

In Asia, China has pushed for an economy built on the yuan with trade negotiations with neighboring nations and territories such as ASEAN. These are activities with a view toward a "yuan currency sphere."

China is the 3rd-largest economy in GDP after the United States and Japan. There's a high probability that it will pull ahead of Japan in one or two years. Still, the hurdles to internationalization for the yuan are higher than for the yen.

The prime minister has issued invitations to heads of state of five nations in the Mekong River Basin, such as Thailand and Vietnam, and also announced that he will hold the first "Japan-Mekong Summit" within the year. The nations of the Mekong Basin, which border China, are of major geographic importance.

It is important for Japan to strengthen its tie-ups with and trust from Asian nations and territories and to show some ability to develop a concept for the expansion of demand within Asia. That will also have an effect on the renaissance of the Japanese economy.

I quote the editorial at some length not because it says anything new but because it doesn't. Take away the figures specific to the budget and to China, and this sounds like just about every editorial on the Japanese economy in the last fifteen years: Asia is becoming more important, we need to liberalize our markets and make nice with the neighbors, and that means not being so closed off. The current crisis does change things, and it will be interesting, if that's the word, to follow possible damage to the dollar as the world currency.

But I'm not so sure the yen is a good candidate for a replacement, even in Asia. I've always found it interesting that we in the West are so bent on explaining Japan; in my experience, people from other places in Asia are far more willing to conclude that Japan is just plain weird and leave it at that. Perhaps part of the reason is that they already understand Buddhism and Confucianism and therefore don't get hung up on trying out novel ways of applying them to the Japanese--I don't know. In any case, countries in Asia know they need Japan and have a lot to gain from tapping into its industrial capacity, but they seem to recognize the Japanese political and economic systems as real headaches for outsiders beyond a certain point. And the Nikkei can wag its finger about the necessary but difficult process of making Japan more open to foreigners, but to this point, somehow talk of "internationalization" has rarely resulted in meaningful action. If nothing else, it should be interesting to see how Beijing reacts to Aso's Mekong Basin thing.

You've already been told to watch this, haven't you? I think Jon Stewart's often very funny, but on this particular topic, what Bill Whittle says in response to his statements--which are not only not funny but positively monstrous--cannot be repeated enough. Note that, unless I missed it, he was able to make his case without even mentioning Unit 731 or anything else about the kempeitai, either. He also doesn't mention, regarding the charge that America was just trying to show the Soviet Union who's boss, that it was Japan that had decided it was a good idea to start playing the Soviets off the United States in the first place. (I'm not saying his argument is therefore flawed, only that he hasn't exhausted the material he could have used to support it.)

I adore Japan. I happily took a degree in Japanese literature, and I loved every minute of the eleven years I lived in Tokyo; while I'm very happy to be home, there are many things I miss about it. I work in an all-Japanese office (except for me, obviously). I'm glad we're strategic and military partners now.

But now is not then. War with an implacable enemy requires tough choices, and I'm glad our grandfathers made saving their own people the top priority.

Added later: Whittle also has a blog post with quite a few good comments, including one by Connie du Toit that recommends an episode from the documentary The World at War, which you may remember from when it was broadcast on television.

This article in the Mainichi reports that the flow of refugees across the northern DPRK border has slowed. The reason? Much of it is financed by organizations in prosperous South Korea, but the world economic slowdown is making funding scarce. The blurb says:

The number of dappokusha fleeing from North Korea to China has decreased substantially. Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin Province, China, which abuts the PRC-DPRK border. It's the biggest stronghold of the refugee business, but the activities of the brokers who maneuver behind the scenes guiding refugees through are at a standstill. This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and in addition to a heightened level of alert at the border, the effects of the financial crisis have stopped the money that gets to them from South Korea. However, the defections supported by the brokers are a "necessary evil." Beyond the border, there's a backlog of desperate people.

The article itself is of the punchy human-interest type, relating information about a particular broker:

The man is a former member of the PRC armed forces. His role is to move dappokusha who've crossed the Tuman River to a hideout in an apartment building in Yanbian. According to the man, there are (1) a border-crossing team, which works with collaborators on the DPRK side and guides [refugees] through the border crossing; (2) the man's conveyance team; (3) the hideout-management team; (4) the long-distance-conveyance team, [to move people further] to Beijing and elsewhere. When dappokusha succeed in defecting to South Korea, suitable remuneration [in the form of] processing fees is largely provided by a support organization there in the ROK.

The situation on the ROK side is a major reason defection has decreased. It's figured that "processing fees paid to Chinese brokers run an average of 100000 yuan (approx.1.4 million yen)," according to [a source] affiliated with a support organization. The man's client is a South Korean religious group; donations from organizations and individuals were an effective source of capital, but "the Korean economy has cooled off, and donations have dropped of dramatically, so the flow of money is poor," he added.

1.4 million yen is about $14000.

I love this report in the Yomiuri:

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency announced on 29 March that there is a possibility that the launch of North Korea's long-range ballistic missile under the guise of an "artificial satellite" will take place after 6 April due to weather conditions.

North Korea has announced that to international organizations that the launch will take place between 4 and 8 April, but according to the Yonhap wire service, The [Republic of] Korea Meteorological Agency has forecast that, at the launch base in Musudanri, North Hambyong Province, weather conditions will be "overcast beginning 3 April, with rain or snow falling on the afternoon of 4 April, and heavy cloud cover on 5 April also."

However, ROK forecasts have a bad reputation with citizens as "often inaccurate."

Oh. All right, then.

Another Yomiuri article, this time posted to the English site, says that intercepting the missile could be difficult for Japan because, of course, no one knows exactly where it will go. This handy diagram is appended:






If you're having a hard time reading that, the red lines represent paths in which the rocket falls on land in Japan--the solid line if it's the first booster rocket to separate, the dotted line if there's just not enough thrust off the launchpad and the whole thing flops.

The lead editorial in the Nikkei today carries the headline "Make due preparation for North Korea missile tests."

In response to the North Korean ballistic missile test, nominally [for] an "artificial satellite," the government has convened a security meeting and confirmed a plan to intercept the missile if it falls over Japan's territory or territorial waters; Minister of Defense Yasukazu Hamada has for the first time issued an order, predicated on the Self-Defense Force Law, to destroy it.

...

Prime Minister Taro Aso instructed [attendees] at the security meeting to "be vigilant and adopt a firm and resolute stance." If there is disarray in Japan, the result will only be that we've played into North Korea's hands. In order to avoid that, at the stage when the launch date is imminent, and even more after the launch, the appropriate providing of information by the government will be indispensable. That point must especially be emphasized from the get-go.

The Japanese and United States governments have declared that, even if it were an "artificial satellite," the launch would violate UNSC Resolution 1695, which was adopted after North Korea launched a series of missiles in July 2006, and UNSC Resolution 1718, from after the nuclear tests of October that year. Improvements in the performance of North Korean missiles are a direct threat to the U.S. and Japan.

Accordingly, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton warned that "this will affect the six-party talks revolving around nuclear issues, and [North Korea] will end up paying high compensation." If North Korea ignores the warning and forges ahead with the launch, a debate will be raised at the UNSC [over measures that] include sanctions.

On the other hand, the Spokesperson for the DPRK Minister of Foreign Affairs [stated] that, if the Security Council makes an issue of the "launch of an artificial satellite," then "denuclearization will be set back, and we will adopt the necessary strong measures," implying a resumption of nuclear testing. This development reminds one of 2006, with its series of missile launches and nuclear testing. That's possibly due to expecations that the scenario in which the U.S. government did a 180 [and pursue] a path of conciliation after the nuclear testing.

That switch to a path of conciliation is linked to the refusal [to allow] inspection during denuclearization, and to the new missile tests. If we consider these facts, it is necessary for not only Japan, the U.S., and South Korea, but also [all other] participants in the six-party talks, including China and Russia, to be sure of their resolve not to repeat the mistake.

The Japanese phrase used at the end there is 過ちを繰り替えさない, which echoes--I can't imagine this is a coincidence, given that it's part of the last sentence of an op-ed about nuclear weapons--the inscription on the Hiroshima memorial: 安らかに眠って下さい/過ちは繰り返しませぬから ("Rest in peace, for we will not repeat the mistake").

I'm apparently getting slack, because I didn't look out for this aspect of the Aso-Obama meeting, which had been toyed with a bit beforehand:

It turns out that North Korea and the global financial crisis were not the only topics on Prime Minister Taro Aso's mind during summit talks Tuesday in Washington with President Barack Obama.

He also tried to sell the U.S. leader on Shinkansen technology; Obama's reaction to the pitch was also keenly awaited back in Japan.

...

Aso's pitch to Obama likely came after lobbying by Japanese railway companies eager to join in a plan being pushed by California for the United States' first high-speed rail system. It is estimated to cost 3 trillion yen to construct the system, with plans calling for partial operations starting in 2020.

Yoshiyuki Kasai, chairman of Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai), attended an international conference on the environment in Los Angeles in January.

He played up the advantages of the Shinkansen, saying "among high-speed trains, Japan's bullet trains emit a small volume of carbon dioxide and the trains also cause comparatively little noise and vibration."

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism is setting up a group to promote bullet train exports that will include members from trading companies and JR Tokai and East Japan Railway Co. (JR East).

A specialist from the ministry's Railway Bureau will be permanently based in the United States.

California's provisional high-speed rail plan is, I have no doubt, as porky as any other such proposal, but at least it's a region in which HSR actually makes sense. Like the Northeast Corridor, the SAN-SAN belt is long and narrow but short enough for it to be reasonable to expect plenty of people to make a trade-off between air speed and rail thrift. (Not sure what happens when you factor in the subsidies.) So, of course, is Japan--especially if you're not going all the way from Sapporo to Fukuoka, which most people aren't.

The bullet train in Japan really is a boon, and so is its newer cousin in Taiwan, which opened two years ago after a string of bidding and construction hiccups. It would be a bad idea for the US to go overboard on the boffo ground transportation projects, though...especially if federal money means Amtrak could be involved.

The lead editorial in the Nikkei munches over whether and why Prime Minister Aso was dissed on his state visit to Washington:

Prime Minister Taro Aso became the first foreign head of state to visit the White House during the Obama administration. It was the worst possible timing from the vantage point of public opinion vis-a-vis America, overlapping with President Obama's first address to congress and [coming when] interest within the US was low.

...

After the meeting, the plan was for both heads of state to announce the content of their conversation to the press corps, but even that didn't happen. The prime minister appeared before the press corps; however, the president didn't show his face, and instead the White House presented a simple statement of twenty-one lines.

The opening of the statement was "Today, President Obama conducted a detailed conference with the prime minister of Japan revolving around cooperation between the two nations in the areas of the global economic crisis and other matters." Really? He thought of himself as hosting "the prime minister of Japan" rather than Prime Minister Aso?

President Obama, during the photo session before the meeting, stated, "US-Japan friendship is of extreme importance, which is the reason that I asked the prime minister to be the first top-ranking foreign official to visit the Oval Office."

However, if one looks at the visit overall, it wasn't really consistent with the gravity of protocol toward the first foreign head of state to make a visit.

The administrations are different, so exact comparisons cannot be made, but during the Bush administration, both Prime Ministers Jun'ichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe went to Camp David for their first visits. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda stayed at Blair House (the state guesthouse). Prime Minister Aso stayed at a hotel in Washington.

In matters of meetings betweent heads of state, the content is crucial, and it isn't appropriate to exaggerate peripheral problems. However, this time around, both the US and Japan underscored the protocol significance of being the first visitor. In the world of diplomacy, if we take protocol to be important also, it comparisons with precedent must be made.

Foreign relations influence domestic politics. Prime Minister Aso, who's in uncomfortable territory where domestic politics is concerned, may have sought an early visit to the US in hopes that the effect would be to buoy him decisively. That the US accepted has been said to be the result of being mindful of China.

On the other hand, domestic politics also influence foreign relations. They give Aso a respectful welcome as the prime minister of Japan, but that doesn't mean they wish to build an individual relationship [as] fellow politicians--and if you look hard at the reality of Japanese domestic politics, for the moment it wouldn't seem unreasonable if that were President Obama's thinking.

Secretary of State Clinton--who'd have thought a year ago that we'd be typing that?--has visited Japan, where she met separately with Prime Minister Taro Aso, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hirofumi Nakasone, and Minister of Defense Yasukazu Hamada.

Secretary of State Clinton, at a joint press conference after her meeting with the Foreign Minister, issued a warning, strongly underscoring that "North Korea has intimated that there is a possibility of missile launches, but such behavior serves no purpose, and it will not aid in the progress of (US-DPRK) relations." At the meeting with the Prime Minister, she stated, in connection with North Korea issues, "We would like to come to a decisive solution within the framework of the six-party talks, and that would include the Japanese abductee issue."

At the meeting with the Defense Minister, she touched on the activities of the Maritime Defense Force, which is investigating Japanese deployments to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia, and issued a request: "We would be grateful if you could look into the possibility of providing aid and defense to foreign ships in times of emergency." The Defense Minister responded, "We're considering that and looking into a new law [that would make it possible to provide defense for foreign-registered ships as well]."

It's hard to tell whether the "comprehensive solution" referred to in the headline will come to pass. It's not even certain that the DPRK knows where all the abductees as yet unaccounted for ended up, painful as that is for the Japanese families in question. Tokyo has tried to get Washington and Beijing to put pressure on Pyongyang, but the issue tends to get backburnered, and it's not really because of callousness. The nuclear and black-market issues are very pressing, while the abductee issue doesn't appear to be. There's been no information that I've seen recently to suggest that there are known living abductees waiting to be repatriated.

And yes, I've heard about soon-to-be-former Minister of Finance Shoichi Nakagawa's unfortunate sensitivity to his cold medicine. You really have to watch out for those side-effects.

Secretary of State Clinton--who'd have thought a year ago that we'd be typing that?--has visited Japan, where she met separately with Prime Minister Taro Aso, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hirofumi Nakasone, and Minister of Defense Yasukazu Hamada.

Secretary of State Clinton, at a joint press conference after her meeting with the Foreign Minister, issued a warning, strongly underscoring that "North Korea has intimated that there is a possibility of missile launches, but such behavior serves no purpose, and it will not aid in the progress of (US-DPRK) relations." At the meeting with the Prime Minister, she stated, in connection with North Korea issues, "We would like to come to a decisive solution within the framework of the six-party talks, and that would include the Japanese abductee issue."

At the meeting with the Defense Minister, she touched on the activities of the Maritime Defense Force, which is investigating Japanese deployments to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia, and issued a request: "We would be grateful if you could look into the possibility of providing aid and defense to foreign ships in times of emergency." The Defense Minister responded, "We're considering that and looking into a new law [that would make it possible to provide defense for foreign-registered ships as well]."

It's hard to tell whether the "comprehensive solution" referred to in the headline will come to pass. It's not even certain that the DPRK knows where all the abductees as yet unaccounted for ended up, painful as that is for the Japanese families in question. Tokyo has tried to get Washington and Beijing to put pressure on Pyongyang, but the issue tends to get backburnered, and it's not really because of callousness. The nuclear and black-market issues are very pressing, while the abductee issue doesn't appear to be. There's been no information that I've seen recently to suggest that there are known living abductees waiting to be repatriated.

And yes, I've heard about soon-to-be-former Minister of Finance Shoichi Nakagawa's unfortunate sensitivity to his cold medicine. You really have to watch out for those side-effects.

Former Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi, who made privatization of Japan Post his line in the sand in the run-up to the 2005 snap election, isn't pleased with current Prime Minister Taro Aso's performance on the subject:

On 12 February, Former Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi of the LDP made his greetings at a gathering held at party headquarters to call for progress in Japan Post privatization and roundly criticized a series of pronouncements by Prime Minister Taro Aso related to Japan Post privatization: "If there's no trust in the prime minister's statements, we won't be able to put up a good fight in elections."

Koizumi censured the prime minister for his statements, saying, "I'm flat-out disgusted--to the point that I want to laugh more than get angry." He indicated that "the way things have been recently, it makes me wonder whether the prime minister hasn't since before been taking shots at people who are trying to do battle (in the lower house election)."

Among other things, Aso has contended on NHK that the apportionment of the privatized Japan Post has not been settled--which is to say, people knew Japan Post was to be privatized, but not that it was to be divided into four subsidiaries (retail bank, insurance, distribution/conveyance of letters and parcels, and window services/storefront operations) under the holding company.

I'm not sure how it's possible to think such a thing. The structure of the new Japan Post was debated, and debated, and debated. Japanese news yak shows, which love flow charts, diagrammed it. If there were people who didn't understand that the proposed structure was a sticking point, that's their problem.

Of course, the bill that passed was a compromise, meaning that those of us who supported privatization rather than "privatization" were given cause for worry. The government is supposed to spin banking and insurance off completely by 2017 and to retain a one-third stake in the postal operations, but a lot can happen in a decade. From the moment the privatization bill was drafted, its lack of provisions against mutual shareholding raised fears that the four new companies would find a way to remain shackled to each other. There was a bill introduced in 2007 to freeze the selling off of stakes and assets; it passed the upper house, which is in control of the opposition. And the bank (Yucho) and insurance (Kampo) arms have been pushing to compete in the marketplace with their private counterparts, which lack the advantages of continued government stakes and brand assocation.

Yucho is also the world's largest bank by assets. Together with Kampo, it holds roughly a quarter of Japanese household assets (lots of federal bonds, too). But having been a branch of the government and then a semi-public corporation gives Japan Post Holdings and its hatchlings additional potential for collusion and sweetheart deals. The selling off of group of hotels owned by Kampo was canceled after allegations that the bid was far too low. The postal part of the operation has been busy, too. Japan Post Holdings had existed for approximately three nanoseconds when it made a deal with Nittsu (Nippon Express) to consolidate parcel services. The new brand name (it's the Obama Era now, so maybe イエス郵ペリカン?) debuts later this year. There was serious discussion of mutual shareholding, too. Who wouldn't want to get in on infrastructure initally set up by the government and still bearing its imprimatur?

To be competitive without falling back on their state-controlled history, the service companies are going to need to streamline their operations, but the closures and firings that would be necessary to do so have been hotly contested. The old postal service had unprofitable outlets throughout rural Japan, but they became not only embodiments of its mandate to serve all citizens equally but also fiefdoms for ill-supervised local postmasters, who repaid the LDP by drumming up votes in the countryside to help keep it in power. The LDP has more free-market supporters than the opposition, which isn't saying much to begin with, but many officials are wary of biting the hand that has fed them for so long.

The lead editorial in the Nikkei today opposes protectionism, both in general and in specific (that is, U.S. and Japan) cases:

If a certain country sets policies that benefit only its domestic enterprises, there is the possibility that its trading partners will incline toward similar protectionist measures as a countermove. If this vicious cycle is left uncontrolled, it is possible that the WTO's non-discrimination principle, which places importance on equal competition between domestic and foreign entities, will exist in name only.

...

The United States is not the only country suffering. Global demand has contracted, and both developed and developing countries both are contending with the same sorts of under-performing organizations and manufacturers domestically. It will be no strange thing if other countries are hesitating over criticizing America because they think tomorrow it could be their hide.

Latent in all this is the danger that protectionist barriers will go up. If we shut our eyes tight against one another's actions, cases that are essentially outside the applicability of the WTO conventions will keep piling up as faits accomplis. Even [staying carefully] outside the line demarcating governmental provisions that could conflict with the WTO conventions, there's plenty of room to exercise grey-area judgments related to subsidies, technology barriers, quarantining, and import procedures.

Japan, of course, has its own not-so-nice history with protectionism, so the Nikkei could have warned more against economic drag rather than just focusing on retaliatory measures by trading partners.

The "Fork it over!" scam (nee the "It's me!" scam) is apparently still going, though it's been around for a half-decade at this point and one would have hoped that almost everyone would be on the alert. The Nikkei reports, though, that the amount defrauded in January was the lowest recorded:

On 10 February, the National Police Agency announced that confirmed cases of the "Make the deposit!" fraud numbered 810 in January, with total takings of ¥983 million, both the lowest figures since July 2004, when monthly statistics were first compiled.

The breakdown of the cases was as follows: 342 incidents and ¥596 million for the "It's me" scam, 223 incidents and ¥228 million for the fraudulent billing scam, 200 incidents and ¥125 million for the financing/insurance scam, 45 incidents and ¥2.8 million for the [tax] refund scam. There were 64 suspects related to 287 cases apprehended, for an arrest rate of 35.4%.

It's become more common for perpetrators to skip asking for a bank transfer and just show up at the houses of victims, disguised as motorbike couriers, asking for the cash.

I know what you're thinking: Japan is so hip, modern, and cool! Isn't there any way we Yanks could get in on that whole racy, danger-boy thing of letting people who want money they don't deserve find clever ways to get it from those who earned it?

The answer is "You'd better believe it!" NRO had a useful breakdown of some of the proposed beneficiaries of this latest spending spree (as passed by the House), which is enough to make you wish the booty were all going to thugs disguised as bike couriers instead. The saddest part of the NRO piece is in the middle, where the much-tried authors can no longer even pretend to categorize the outlays as honest attempts at stimulus and just group some under "Pure Pork":

The problem with trying to spend $1 trillion quickly is that you end up wasting a lot of it. Take, for instance, the proposed $4.5 billion addition to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers budget. Not only does this effectively double the Corps' budget overnight, but it adds to the Corps' $3.2 billion unobligated balance—money that has been appropriated, but that the Corps has not yet figured out how to spend. Keep in mind, this is an agency that is often criticized for wasting taxpayers’ money. "They cannot spend that money wisely," says Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "I don't even think they can spend that much money unwisely."

Speaking of spending money unwisely, the stimulus bill adds another $850 million for Amtrak, the railroad that can't turn a profit. [Sean sobs quietly.] There’s also $1.7 billion for "critical deferred maintenance needs" in the National Park System, and $55 million for the preservation of historic landmarks. Also, the U.S. Coast Guard needs $87 million for a polar icebreaking ship--maybe global warming isn't working fast enough.

It should come as no surprise that rural communities--those parts of the nation that were hardest hit by rampant real-estate speculation and the collapse of the investment--banking industry--are in dire need of an additional $7.6 billion for "advancement programs." Congress passed a $300 billion farm bill last year, but apparently that wasn't enough. This bill provides additional subsidies for farmers, including $150 million for producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish.

It is not clear to me how any of this represents a break with the profligacy of the Bush administration, or how it represents the learning and internalization of the lessons Japan taught us during its Lost Decade.

Of course, the most infuriating part was the line "The federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life," which, as a response to doubts that Washington should be playing Mr. Fix-it, begs the question something fierce. You'd think that government-as-resource-suck was a fact of nature--you know...birdies fly, crickets chirp, cheetahs tear apart gazelles with their sharp teeth and pointy claws, and money flows to D.C.

Added after a cup of tea: Nick Gillespie at Reason.com:

It is far from clear what the hell Schumer could possibly mean when he says we have to stop continuing the very policies that got us in such a pickle. Like what? Too much government spending? Too much government subsidy of the housing market? Too much consumer spending? Isn't this thing specificially designed to get all of that moving again? How about letting housing values actually sink down to where they might actually deserve to be? How about letting Fed rates drift up from 0 percent for a quarter or three? How about simply cutting taxes across the board, accompanied by spending cuts?

That said, Republicans, especially in the Senate, don't have any credibility on fiscal issues. They did nothing but break the bank when they actually ran the government and they did next to nothing when George W. Bush and Twitchy Paulson rolled out the bailout barrel last fall.

Tragically, the scene from North Avenue Irregulars in which one of the women, having hidden a tape recorder in her bra to entrap the crooks, accidentally starts playing "The Beer Barrel Polka" doesn't seem to be on YouTube. It does have Cloris Leachman taking revenge for her broken nails, though.

Kasumigaseki, perhaps even more than Washington, is full of the sort of people who have been thrillingly sure, since the moment they won the Scissors and Paste Monitor of the Year award in kindergarten, that they were destined to boss their fellow citizens around for their own good.

天下り (amakudari: lit., "descent from heaven," used the way we say, "revolving door") is one of the first words you learn when studying Japanese politics. The system is one of the reasons very smart, capable people are willing to join the civil service for less money than they would make in the private sector: their reward later in their careers is to take over "advisory" positions in semi-governmental organizations related to the ministries or bureaux they once worked for, using their connections and insider knowledge to everyone's benefit.

Except that of the taxpayers, naturally. The amakudari system keeps regulatory power within a closed circle of insiders who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, however inimical to innovation that may make them. And, of course, it encourages back-scratching and sweetheart deals on the public-interest projects under the control of the ministries and semi-public corporations involved.

The Asahi has a news article that lays out the essentials:

Prime Minister Taro Aso on Tuesday moved up the planned abolishment of mediations by ministries in finding cushy post-retirement jobs for bureaucrats. But he left intact a new personnel center that opposition parties say will continue the harshly criticized practice of amakudari in a different form.

Aso said he plans to issue an edict to ban, by the end of this year, ministries from setting up opportunities for amakudari, in which retired bureaucrats land jobs in industries once under their jurisdiction, and watari, the practice of retired officials hopping from one job to another in those industries.

...

Under revisions made in 2007 to the national civil service law, amakudari mediations by ministries will be abolished by December 2011.

The lead editorial in the Nikkei today urges Tokyo to expedite the process of barring ministries from serving as HR brokers for these sorts of deals, declaring that the Aso administration and the Diet have a responsibility to push through reform over the objections of the federal bureaucrats. Prime Minister Aso has stated that he doesn't plan to approve any deal-brokering for watari from here on, and a proposed new edict would ban it.

The new Public-Private Human Resource Exhcange Center (or however it's officially Anglicized) will not succeed in separating the moneychangers from the temple, to be sure, but the intention is to put revolving-door deals under some sort of centralized scrutiny, which may help somewhat. Of course, it may succeed in nothing but adding an extra layer of rubber-stampers to the amakudari process; that will depend partially on the personnel actually selected to run these things, which is still being discussed.

Damn. Recalls of cars and gyoza are bad enough, but this is way too much:

Manufacturers of electric toilet seats equipped with a warm water bidet are warning users of a potential fire risk following a series of accidents, which they said were caused by defects and, in some cases, improper usage.

An industry group is issuing customers with flyers featuring illustrations on proper usage, while explaining past accidents.

Electric toilet seats with bidets began to be widely produced in 1980. According to a survey conducted by the Cabinet Office, 68.3 percent of households across the country had at least one such product as of March.

...

However, a committee comprising 10 electric toilet seat manufacturers has said some of the accidents might have been caused by improper usage. Of 152 cases of fire and smoke accidents reported by the manufacturers since 1991, the committee judged that 24 were highly likely to have been caused by improper usage.

As someone who lived in Tokyo for a dozen years and had an electronic toilet seat for most of them, I miss the thing terribly. Having come back to the States, I feel like a gorilla having to go without the butt wash. I hope all these householders can go back to using their appliances in trusting bliss.

Today's lead editorial in the Nikkei is headlined "Accounting improprieties by regional governments cause trouble with separation of powers."

After the Board of Audit conducted a nationwide investigation of 12 prefectures, it came to light that federal subsidies exceeding 500 million yen had been used improperly. Cases in which slush funds were eked out through fabricated orders to suppliers were also discovered. Each entity should, at the same time as it returns the misappopriated portion of funds to the federal government, do its own thorough investigation that includes how the slush funds were used.

...

The accounting improprieties indicated by the Board of Audit are largely of two types. One was the MO of "deposit," in which orders for purchasees of office supplies and things were fraudulently generated, and the capital accumulated in the account of the relevant supplier. Because subsidy money left over must be returned to Tokyo, the method was to move it into suppliers' accounts at the end of the fiscal year, and from the next year on, to make payments from that account when goods were actually purchased.

Another was the allocation of subsidies. There were cases in which temporary employees hired for the work of allocating subsidy money were rotated to other jobs, and funds for their business travel were obtained from subsidies that were unrelated to it.

...

Increasing the transparency of administration and use of public funds is one of the minimum conditions for moving forward with regional separation of powers. Even those entities that were not subjects of the current investigation should do their own investigations and clear out all the corruption ["drain out all the pus," in the evocative Japanese phrasing--SRK].

That accounting improprieties were left unattended in each prefecture until the Board of Audit pointed them out is also a problem. Even if we allow that the tricks used were clever, what on earth were the prefectural assemblies and the auditing committees, which were supposed to verify budgeting and book-closing, doing? We call on everyone from the employees of the regional entities to the audit committees to do some hard soul-searching.

Aichi Prefecture apparently took (the biggest slice of) the cake, with diverted subsidies and dodgy expenditures totaling 130 million yen. Bear in mind that only a quarter of Japan's prefectures were studied, too.

The "separation of powers" part is, of course, the long-standing argument over what and how much Tokyo should be giving back to prefectural (and municipal) governments. I can see the point that giving more power to regional governments that are busy creating slush funds is a bad idea. On the other hand, the sense of assurance that Tokyo is far, far away and not looking too hard makes it easier to get crafty. And pouring so much tax and revenue from around Japan into one federal pool makes the resulting funds seem to come from big, abstract Tokyo rather than living, breathing taxpayers in local officials' own communities. It's inexcusable that they regard the subsidy system as an open tap, but it's not really hard to see how they get that way.

9 August is now over in Japan; mayor of Nagasaki Tomihisa Taue gave the expected speech on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing:

This year is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dr. Takashi Nagai, a physician who dedicated himself to caring for victims of the bombing. Nagasaki mayor Tomihisa Taue cited Nagai's words in his peace address: "In war there is neither victory nor defeat. What there is is only destruction." He also addressed the world: "Without the abolition of nuclear weapons, there is no future for humankind." As he did last year, he sought from the Japanese government leadership toward the abolition of nuclear weapons and the codification in law of the three principles of non-nuclearization.

The three principles are that Japan will not (1) possess, (2) create, or (3) import nuclear armaments.

I know I harp on this every year, but the fact--in this case as in so many others--is that suffering does not necessarily confer wisdom. The image of Japanese people as innocent burn victims and saintly doctors running about trying to alleviate suffering is not inaccurate in and of itself, but it does lack context. By the time of the Nagasaki bombing, the Japanese Empire had executed its plan of overrunning as much of East and Southeast Asia as it could get its hands on, figuring that if and when it lost the war, it could expect to bargain to retain at least some of its occupied territories. It rejected the Potsdam Declaration, even when it was clear that it could not possibly win the Pacific War. It tried to see whether it could leverage itself a more advantageous deal by approaching Moscow. It balked at surrendering even after the Hiroshima bombing. The suicidal belligerence of the Japanese in combat was well known, as was their egregious treatment of conquered peoples and prisoners of war, so a ground invasion promised to expend even more men and resources on a war that the Japanese knew they had already lost. Japan in 1945 was an extremely tenacious enemy that warranted an extreme response; that it is now peaceably integrated into the world economy as an industrial and consumer powerhouse does not change that.

Added on 11 August: Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse posted yesterday at Pajamas Media:

The stories of survivors are harrowing — flames everywhere, people walking by whose flesh had been ripped off their bodies by heat and the blast, the inability to find loved ones. All the ghastliness of Dante’s Hell and a Gothic horror novel rolled into one. We pity them and ache for what they went through that horrible day.

But once –just once– I would like to hear the horror stories of the men and women of Pearl Harbor as counterpoint to the suffering of the Japanese and a reminder of who started the war and how they did it. I want to hear from those who can tell equally horrific tales of death and destruction. How Japanese aircraft strafed our men with machine gun fire while they were swimming for their lives through flaming oil spills, the result of a surprise attack against a nation with whom they were at peace. Or how the hundreds of men trapped in the USS Arizona slowly suffocated over 10 days as divers frantically tried to cut through the superstructure and rescue their comrades.

Perhaps we might even ask surviving POWs to bear witness to their ordeal in Japanese prison camps — surely as brutal, inhuman, and gruesome an atrocity as has ever been inflicted on enemy soldiers.

While we’re at it, I am sure there are thousands of witnesses who would want to testify about how the Japanese army raped its way across Asia. This little discussed aspect of the war is a non-event for the most part in Japanese histories. But the millions of women who suffered unspeakable mistreatment by the Japanese army deserve a hearing whenever the tragedy of Hiroshima is remembered.

Yes, no more Hiroshimas. But to take the atomic bombing of Japan totally out of context and use it to highlight one nation or one city’s suffering is morally offensive. The war with Japan, with its racial overtones on both sides as well as the undeniable cruelty and barbarity by the Japanese military, should have been ended the second it was possible to do so. Anything less makes the moral arguments surrounding the use of the atomic bomb an exercise in sophistry.

Yes. He also has much more background about the decision to use the atom bombs.

My, reporters can be uncritical. The Asahi reports that this year, the mayor of Nagasaki will cite the opinions of prominent Americans in calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons:

In calling for peace at the memorial ceremony, Taue will discuss proposals by Kissinger and three other key U.S. figures who, concerned by nuclear proliferation, have done an about-turn and called for the abolition of the (world's) "deadliest weapons."

"In the United States, the largest nuclear power, those who formerly led nuclear policies are speaking out (against such weapons)," Taue says. "I have decided to take it up so I can more strongly appeal to the United States for what Nagasaki has long sought."

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world's only cities to experience atomic bombing, are trying to press the nuclear powers more aggressively for action to eliminate their arsenals.

Okay, fine. But then there's this:

The Bush administration has refused to ratify the CTBT.

But the two men vying to replace him have both made clear they have different goals.

"We'll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy," Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said July 16.

Earlier on May 27, Republican Sen. John McCain said former President Ronald Reagan's dream of seeing nuclear weapons banished from the Earth "is my dream, too."

You remember Ronald Reagan, right? He helped hasten the collapse of the U.S.S.R. by dramatically cutting back the U.S. defense program.

I mean, yeah, sure, a world without nuclear weapons was Reagan's dream. I'm sure it's McCain's. It's mine, too. We all have plenty of dreams. But reality is where we live, and the McCain speech referred to by the Asahi reporters does not indicate that the mayors can expect much from him:

Our highest priority must be to reduce the danger that nuclear weapons will ever be used. Such weapons, while still important to deter an attack with weapons of mass destruction against us and our allies, represent the most abhorrent and indiscriminate form of warfare known to man. We do, quite literally, possess the means to destroy all of mankind. We must seek to do all we can to ensure that nuclear weapons will never again be used.

While working closely with allies who rely on our nuclear umbrella for their security, I would ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff to engage in a comprehensive review of all aspects of our nuclear strategy and policy. I would keep an open mind on all responsible proposals. At the same time, we must continue to deploy a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent, robust missile defenses and superior conventional forces that are capable of defending the United States and our allies. But I will seek to reduce the size of our nuclear arsenal to the lowest number possible consistent with our security requirements and global commitments. Today we deploy thousands of nuclear warheads. It is my hope to move as rapidly as possible to a significantly smaller force.

I'm sure Obama recognizes this, too, BTW--I'm just not focusing on him because no one tried to demonstrate that he was a nuclear abolitionist by comparing him with Ronald Reagan. Sheesh.

The fact is that nuclear weapons now exist, and we need to maintain them as one of our options in case we again encounter an enemy that's like, well, the Japanese Empire.

Yes, Japan knew that it could no longer win the war by August; but it had flouted the Potsdam Declaration and continued to figure that, if it held out, it would be allowed to retain some of the territories it occupied (and perhaps avoid being occupied itself). Who knows how many more Allied personnel would have died if it had come down to a ground invasion? Japan is now a peaceable society; back then it was not.

The anniversaries are a good opportunity to think about the unprecedented destruction the bombings caused and the agonizing ethical and moral decisions that led up to them. Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered horribly--but that doesn't make Japan the victim in the war; nor does it make complete nuclear disarmament practicable.

Interesting news in the case of the tainted gyoza:

An unknown number of Chinese suffered serious pesticide poisoning in mid-June after eating frozen gyoza dumplings made by a Chinese firm that recalled the products after identical cases were reported in Japan earlier this year, according to sources.

Chinese authorities have determined that methamidophos in the gyoza, produced by Tianyang Food, based in Hebei Province, was the source of the poisonings, which matched those in Japan.

With the likelihood the gyoza were contaminated in China having increased, Chinese investigators are expected to step up efforts once more to determine whether the poisonings were deliberate or accidental. According to the sources, it is unknown how many people were poisoned in China, their exact symptoms, or why products that had already been recalled were marketed again. They said the distribution route of the gyoza also was unclear.

It had been starting to look as if the gyoza in Japan may have been tampered with, most likely to make Chinese food processors look bad. The poisonings are not, of course, being reported widely in China.

It's already 6 August in Japan; that makes it the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. One Japanese man thinks the Germans are insufficiently aware of how awful the U.S. was to Japan at the end of the war. No, really:

Before the anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, Japanese former president of a company, now residing in Hamburg, Shigemi Kawakatsu (79) completed the manuscript of a book that includes the German translation of his friends' accounts of their experience of the bombing and a compilation of the bombing victims' drawings. The book is called The Hell of Atomic Bombing: Sketches of Hell by Those Who Are Living Proof of the Hiroshima A-Bombing; Tracing the Fates of the Bombing Victims (A4; 200 pp).

...

"I want to sear the hell of the atomic bombings into the reader's vision," [Kawakatsu said, explaining why] he incorporated approximately two hundred drawings of the bombing made by citizens and preserved in the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. The poet Sankichi Tooge's piece about the bombing is also included. Kawakatsu said, "The sensitivities of the Germans are similar to those of the Japanese. They are sure to understand the cruelty of the bombing."

Kawakatsu was motivated by a close friend, a bombing survivor who didn't write about his experiences until a few years ago:

Kawakatsu put himself into [his friend] Okada's place, translating how the black ran fell on him as he fled from the violent fires, how he saw people drifting around like ghosts crying out, "Water...water," and how he collapsed from exhaustion and slept among charred corpses.

The accounts of the atomic bombings are, indeed, horrific; but I fail to be convinced that the lesson to be drawn from them is that the Germans and Japanese should feel a heightened sense of kinship over their shared suffering. In this context, a sentence like "The sensitivities of the Germans are similar to those of the Japanese" strikes me as chilling rather than touching. No one expects Japan (or Germany) to spend the rest of civilized eternity groveling for forgiveness because of the war; but it does seem reasonable to expect it not to strike a flat, uncomplicated victim pose. Kawakatsu is not some kind of official spokesperson for Japan--I realize that--but his attitude is, in many ways, representative. How often do you hear Japanese people who undertake war-related documentary projects of this magnitude publicly expressing the hope that Unit 731 or the Nanking Massacre will never be repeated?

Added on 11 August: Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse posted yesterday at Pajamas Media:

The stories of survivors are harrowing — flames everywhere, people walking by whose flesh had been ripped off their bodies by heat and the blast, the inability to find loved ones. All the ghastliness of Dante’s Hell and a Gothic horror novel rolled into one. We pity them and ache for what they went through that horrible day.

But once –just once– I would like to hear the horror stories of the men and women of Pearl Harbor as counterpoint to the suffering of the Japanese and a reminder of who started the war and how they did it. I want to hear from those who can tell equally horrific tales of death and destruction. How Japanese aircraft strafed our men with machine gun fire while they were swimming for their lives through flaming oil spills, the result of a surprise attack against a nation with whom they were at peace. Or how the hundreds of men trapped in the USS Arizona slowly suffocated over 10 days as divers frantically tried to cut through the superstructure and rescue their comrades.

Perhaps we might even ask surviving POWs to bear witness to their ordeal in Japanese prison camps — surely as brutal, inhuman, and gruesome an atrocity as has ever been inflicted on enemy soldiers.

While we’re at it, I am sure there are thousands of witnesses who would want to testify about how the Japanese army raped its way across Asia. This little discussed aspect of the war is a non-event for the most part in Japanese histories. But the millions of women who suffered unspeakable mistreatment by the Japanese army deserve a hearing whenever the tragedy of Hiroshima is remembered.

Yes, no more Hiroshimas. But to take the atomic bombing of Japan totally out of context and use it to highlight one nation or one city’s suffering is morally offensive. The war with Japan, with its racial overtones on both sides as well as the undeniable cruelty and barbarity by the Japanese military, should have been ended the second it was possible to do so. Anything less makes the moral arguments surrounding the use of the atomic bomb an exercise in sophistry.

I already linked Moran's piece on another post, but because a lot of the people who land here come through searches about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the Tokyo firebombings, I think it's important to have it available here, too.

Japan is taking another step to change its xenophobic image:

Japan plans to accept more refugees in response to growing criticism that the nation gives money to help refugees but shuts its doors when they seek shelter, sources said.

...

Japan joined the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1981.

However, the number of people granted official refugee status here pales in comparison with other industrialized nations.

For example, Japan gave official refugee status to 41 people in 2007. In the same year, 14 nations, including the United States and European countries, accepted about 75,000 refugees from Myanmar, Iraq and other areas.

Lest any Japanese readers worry that the place will be flooded with foreigners, note that the plan is rather modest: "Japan will become the first Asian nation to introduce the program, and will accept about 30 refugees, possibly people from Myanmar (Burma) who are now in Thailand, in fiscal 2010 at the earliest, the sources said."

A magnitude 6.8 (JMA scale strong 6) hit Iwate Prefecture twenty minutes or so ago. No reports of damage yet, but that's a major quake.

The Nikkei says...

In a survey of convenience stores in 2007 by Nikkei, Inc., the clear sense is that the convenience market has become saturated. Growth in the number of outlets has stalled, reaching 44542 (a 0.4% increase over the previous year), the lowest rate of increase since the survey was first conducted in 1978. And with the percent increase in total revenues also 1.3%, current growth models--increasing profits while opening outlet after outlet--are reaching a point of transition.

One of the hardest things to get used to being back in the City is the lack of convenience stores, which are more omni-present in Tokyo than Duane Reade and Starbucks here. You can't go twenty feet in Tokyo without hitting a 7-Eleven, Family Mart, am-pm, Lawson's, Sunkus, Mini Stop. I'm sure I've forgotten a huge chain or two. Convenience store chains in Japan have been competing fiercely for ages now, getting famous chefs to put their names on prepared ramen and touting the freshness of their sushi and rice products. (7-Eleven's distribution system has been much admired.)

They're probably the most common landmark used to give directions in Japan at this point, and when you move into a new neighborhood, you learn within a week which outlets in your neighborhood are clean and bright and which are the dumps. When you come back to New York, actually having to keep your eye out for something that looks like a bodega when you're out of milk and can't wait for the Fresh Direct order is really disorienting (for me, at least).

Anyway, it wouldn't be surprising if the market were actually close to saturation.

Eels are a summer delicacy in Japan that's especially been in the news because one of the recent food-fraud scandals has involved the labeling of imported eels from China as domestic. The latest eel-related crime (no cracks about "giving the authorities the slip," please) is somewhat more straightforward theft:

Thieves are believed to have stolen 160 live eels from an outdoor water tank behind an eel restaurant in Kani, Gifu Prefecture, late Saturday or early Sunday, according to police.

...

The eels had been delivered from Isshikicho, Aichi Prefecture. They reportedly had a value after preparation and cooking of about 300,000 yen.

*******

Well, this is interesting. How could I not have noticed? When you click through to the English edition of the Mainichi, the first page you get starts like this:

The Mainichi Newspapers Co., Ltd. continued to post extremely inappropriate articles in the WaiWai column of the Mainichi Daily News (MDN), its English Web site. We have reported the results of an in-house investigation into the case on Pages 22 and 23 of the July 20 morning edition of the Mainichi Shimbun.

We continued to post articles that contained incorrect information about Japan and indecent sexual content. These articles, many of which were not checked, should not have been dispatched to Japan or the world. We apologize deeply for causing many people trouble and for betraying the public's trust in the Mainichi Shimbun.

The WaiWai column, for those who haven't had the (guilty--and, really, not always pleasurable) pleasure, culled pieces from some of Japan's (ahem) livelier popular rags and translated them into English.

Like many other companies in Japan, Mainichi Newspapers apparently had few senior managers or editors who paid attention to what was going on in the English department, and it took a Japanese reader who actually knows English to write in complaining that WaiWai was making the Japanese look like wackos. The direct supervisor of the column editor had apparently warned him to ease up on the blue content but then failed to check whether he was actually doing so:

Among the stories carried in the column was one titled "The Cook, the Beast, the Vice and its Lover" describing abnormal sexual preferences (September 2007) and another headlined "Ancient rice festival has reputation smeared by 'therapeutic' facial cream claims" linking a traditional festival to sexual practices (December 2005). The column also reported on Japanese tourists participating in tours involving illegal activity in some countries, including Ecuador and Belarus (July 2003). These stories were translated without confirming any of these claims.

Other stories inappropriately took up issues of underage sex; did not explain how figures cited in the Japanese original were calculated, inviting misunderstanding; and portrayed the comments of several women in a magazine article as indicating a general trend. [If that last were a criterion, the entire New York Times Style section would have to be junked.--SRK]

The lead paragraph of a story about a manga introducing the Defense Ministry's policies, which features a young girl character, adds a description of the ministry not found in the original article, claiming it is "the successor of the government ministry that gave the world Pearl Harbor and the Rape of Nanking." The explanation given by the column editor for this addition was that it served to accentuate the gap between the ministry and the manga character.

It should be noted that the material on the Mainichi Daily News homepage leaned heavily toward reports of crimes and bizarre behavior, often with half-jokey headlines. That doesn't excuse publishing misinformation, if that is indeed what happened. I'm only pointing out that the WaiWai column didn't stick out the way it would have at, say, the English Asahi. Plenty of WaiWai stories were pretty plainly kernels of truth whirled into an entertaining froth with plenty of National Enquirer-ish flavoring of dubitable accuracy. Critical readers who already knew something about Japan were, I think, generally able to figure out which parts were likely to be dodgy. That doesn't excuse staff writers for translating stories with little regard for accuracy; it also doesn't excuse the editors who didn't institute more systematic fact-checking even after they knew something was screwy. But I think it does make it unlikely that WaiWai stories convinced huge numbers of foreign readers that the majority of Japanese men were choosing blow-up dolls over live brides.