The White Peril 白禍

There's this plan for three-pronged economic reform, the overall aim of which is to put more tax revenue directly in the hands of the local governments that ultimately use it. In the existing system, much of the money only gets back to them after going through federal ministries and their attendant agencies, public corporations, semi-public corporations, and various hangers-on. The reforms would change that by giving local governments the rights to collect more of the tax money and use it as they see fit.

This means a significant loss of control and influence for the federal-level ministries, so they've come up with their own three-pronged resistance.

Some are hoping that, if they loudly proclaim what a good idea they think the subsidy cuts are, no one will notice if they quietly work to keep a few key ones unchanged:

Only the Cabinet Office and the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry wholeheartedly supported the subsidy-cut plan put forward by the six organizations. But even within the Cabinet Office, rumblings were evident, with its demand that special consideration be given to the 33.9 billion yen in subsidies Okinawa Prefecture receives from the central government.

Others are brazenly refusing to play along--not out of self-interest, but rather because (never heard this one before, huh?) it would be irresponsible to the children:

The six organizations' proposal called for a cut in state subsidies for services provided by local governments under the compulsory education system by 1.13 trillion yen, but the education ministry flatly refused to play ball. "The subsidies are essential from the standpoint of preserving the equal opportunities for and standards of education, as guaranteed by the Constitution," the ministry said.

For anyone reading from the US, bear in mind that this is not quite as bad as hearing the same thing at home would be. The Japanese public education system has plenty of flaws, but it is working better overall than its American counterpart. Still, you have to wonder whether the Monbusho has been studying the NEA playbook.

Sadly, not all the other ministries have an obvious it's-for-the-children angle to work, so they're forced to get craftier. They'll agree to the cut subsidies, all right, but somehow the money thus "freed" will end up being even more firmly under their control. This, too, could have been modeled on some NEA or AFT proposal, whereby competency standards for schools somehow ultimately mean that we're paying the non-performers more in funding:

Although the construction ministry came up with a plan to reduce subsidies for repairing and improving rivers by 7.4 billion yen, and the agriculture ministry proposed slashing donations to agricultural committees by 2.8 billion yen, the savings will fall outside tax revenue to be transferred to local governments under the reform plan.

Instead, the two ministries want the bulk of the proposed savings to be transformed into grants that can be spent at their discretion for any purpose deemed suitable.

Don't you just love it?

I'm glad Reuters is pointing this out: The deadline before Shosei Koda, the abducted Japanese citizen, was supposed to be murdered by his kidnappers has passed. The situation is agonizing, and I hope he's released safely. But not all the Japanese are directing all their outrage at the government:

The hostage crisis poses a challenge to Koizumi, who is a close ally of President Bush and sent troops to Iraq despite strong public opposition.

But with many Japanese blaming Koda for putting himself at risk, political fallout might be limited, analysts said.

Exhausted members of Koda's family begged for the life of a young man who they said had no ties to Japan's military, no political agenda and was not in search of personal gain.

"He is just a warm-hearted person who wanted to see what he could do for peace and help the people of Iraq," Koda's brother, Maki, told a news conference.

By all accounts, Koda was an easy-going, bum-around type--there are a lot of them who wander around Southeast Asia. I don't think it's heartlessly blaming the victim to point out that wandering into Iraq from Jordan as an unaffiliated civilian was an extremely bad idea. People seem to be forgoing the opportunity to vent their opposition to Koizumi's close ties to Bush, which is nice to see. (I'm not saying people who disagree with Japan's non-combat participation in the Iraq reconstruction should refrain from criticizing it, only that not acknowledging the degree to which Koda imperiled himself would be dishonest.)

Added at 11:15, 30 October: They think they've found Koda's body. No confirmation yet, though.

Added at 11:15, 31 October: NHK has just confirmed that Koda's body was found in Iraq, and I assume the story's already...yes, on Reuters. The fingerprints match.

Just finalized my flight reservation to go home for Thanksgiving--first time in a good seven years. I mean, it's not the first time I've been home, but it'll be the first time I can make both my father's side of the family's dinner on Sunday and the other side on Thursday. Now that the ticket is bought (I pushed the "MUG ME!" button after entering my card number, and the JAL confirmation screen said, "You will accumulate miles on this flight." I'd better!), I'm almost giddy with excitement at seeing fall in Pennsylvania for the first time in nearly a decade, even if I will be getting there after most of the prettiest leaves are gone.

Someone mentioned the Mercalli scale of earthquake intensity, so I looked it up. The source that gives the most fleshed-out description of each level was at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory site. The one that's decribed in a way that sounds as if it might be very close to the original (which I assume was translated directly from Italian in the 1930's) was at about.com:

I. Not felt except by a very few under especially favorable circumstances.

II. Felt only by a few persons at rest, especially on upper floors of buildings. Delicately suspended objects may swing.

III. Felt quite noticeably indoors, especially on upper floors of buildings, but many people do not recognize it as an earthquake. Standing motor cars may rock slightly. Vibration like passing truck. Duration estimated.

IV. During the day felt indoors by many, outdoors by few. At night some awakened. Dishes, windows, and doors disturbed; walls make creaking sound. Sensation like heavy truck striking building. Standing motorcars rock noticeably.

V. Felt by nearly everyone; many awakened. Some dishes, windows, etc., broken; a few instances of cracked plaster; unstable objects overturned. Disturbance of trees, poles, and other tall objects sometimes noticed. Pendulum clocks may stop.

VI. Felt by all; many frightened and run outdoors. Some heavy furniture moved; a few instances of fallen plaster or damaged chimneys. Damage slight.

VII. Everybody runs outdoors. Damage negligible in buildings of good design and construction slight to moderate in well built ordinary structures; considerable in poorly built or badly designed structures. Some chimneys broken. Noticed by persons driving motor cars.

VIII. Damage slight in specially designed structures; considerable in ordinary substantial buildings, with partial collapse; great in poorly built structures. Panel walls thrown out of frame structures. Fall of chimneys, factory stacks, columns, monuments, walls. Heavy furniture overturned. Sand and mud ejected in small amounts. Changes in well water. Persons driving motor cars disturbed.

IX. Damage considerable in specially designed structures; well-designed frame structures thrown out of plumb; great in substantial buildings, with partial collapse. Buildings shifted off foundations. Ground cracked conspicuously. Underground pipes broken.

X. Some well-built wooden structures destroyed; most masonry and frame structures destroyed with foundations; ground badly cracked. Rails bent. Landslides considerable from river banks and steep slopes. Shifted sand and mud. Water splashed over banks.

XI. Few, if any (masonry), structures remain standing. Bridges destroyed. Broad fissures in ground. Underground pipelines completely out of service. Earth slumps and land slips in soft ground. Rails bent greatly.

XII. Damage total. Waves seen on ground surfaces. Lines of sight and level distorted. Objects thrown upward into the air.

Level XII sounds like the apocalypse, with the Earth actually convulsing and objects tossed like confetti.

What I find interesting is the locution, "Everybody runs outdoors." That's the first thing you learn not to do when you live in earthquake country. (Yes, as those last two links indicate, Sunday isn't the first time I've thought about this. The NHK special I referred to was very engagingly put together, even if it inevitably started giving off a sort of "which way do you think you'll die?" vibe toward the end, after an hour of computer models of pancaking highways and dramatizations of fires. Hasn't stopped me from going to basement restaurants, or anything, though. Did I say something recently about avoiding parentheticals? Never mind. I'll work on that next week.)

Another Japanese citizen has been taken hostage in Iraq. The last pair were months ago; they were freed. But there's been quite a bit of beheading since then, and the threat, naturally, is that he will be murdered if Japan doesn't withdraw its non-combat SDF personnel within 48 hours. Koizumi, being Koizumi, says no.

Hope of finding survivors among the missing from the earthquakes this weekend is dwindling, but there was one touching rescue story today. There were a mother and her two children in one of the cars that were buried in landslides; the woman and her daughter (whose body hadn't been freed yet when the Nikkei story was posted) died, but her little two-year-old boy survived. Of course, it's late October; he was suffering from dehydration and hypothermia and headwounds, but he made it through. And he's conscious--the first thing he said when he recognized his father calling him was, "I want a drink of water." I'm sure the guy was never so happy to hear anything in his life. The number of confirmed dead is now 32. Tragic, each one, but way lower than it might have been, given the number of strong quakes.

There was apparently another aftershock this morning, in fact, which was perceptible in Tokyo. I didn't notice; I was in a car at the time. But of course, there are still plenty of problems to deal with, including stranded villagers and the stress put on many of the elderly survivors.

This is the sort of worrisome thing I mentioned the other day in relation to the Kobe earthquake and in possible relation to damage from the earthquakes in Niigata over the weekend:

Researchers said the destructive temblors that hit central Niigata Prefecture from early Saturday evening occurred in an area that has usually been considered safe from major seismic activity.

The buried fault lines along which the quakes seem to have occurred are not visible from the surface. That could spell bad news for other regions that have not been too worried about the possibility of a big quake because no fault lines are evident near the surface.

Yet the weekend quakes weren't the first for Niigata.

According to Tameshige Tsukuda, an associate professor at the Earthquake Research Institute of the University of Tokyo, the area of the epicenters was also the site of the massive 1828 Sanjo Earthquake that killed about 1,400 people. The extent of that quake's damage led scientists to estimate it had likely registered about a magnitude 6.9 on the Richter scale.

The area from Niigata city through Ojiya and Nagaoka and along the Shinanogawa River toward Nagano city is known as the Shinanogawa River seismic zone because of its deep fault lines.

"There have been very few major earthquakes in recent years in the area from Niigata city to Nagaoka, and the region was considered free from earthquakes," Tsukuda said.

In fact, on Oct. 13, the governmental Earthquake Research Committee predicted a less than 2 percent chance that a major quake would strike the fault belt at the western end of the Nagaoka plain within the next 30 years.

Ah, yes, probability. There's no problem with using it to project where quakes are likely to happen, obviously--you have to start with something, or you can't prepare at all. But given how often seismologists have been reduced to saying things on the order of, "Kobe?! How very extraordinary!" (or, of the Sendai earthquake, "That wasn't the one we were expecting") lately, I wonder how well regions that are considered "safe zones" are being provided with just-in-case preparation. It certainly looks as if it could prove useful.

The LDP's Research Commission on the Constitution has reached a conclusion about how to deal with the dubious constitutionality of using the SDF in international conflicts: change the constitution:

The members of the Liberal Democratic Party's Research Commission on the Constitution agreed Friday to propose revising the second paragraph of Article 9 of the Constitution to state that the nation possesses military forces.

During the discussion of an outline of the party's draft amendments to the Constitution, the commission, chaired by Okiharu Yasuoka, also agreed to expand the list of duties fulfilled by the Self-Defense Forces to include national defense and international cooperation.

The party is set to compile the outline by the end of the year.

During the discussion conducted at the party headquarters in Tokyo, most of the members insisted that the constitutionality of the SDF should be clarified by stipulating that the nation has military potential.

Most of the members said it was not necessary to stipulate in the Constitution the nation's right of collective self-defense, citing that few countries specify such a right in their constitutions. Under the right of collective self-defense, a nation may consider an attack against its allies as one against itself and may launch counterattacks against an aggressor that has attacked an ally.

I'm assuming that part about changing the wording of Article 9 means that there would be an amendment. I'm certainly no constitutional law scholar, but I don't think the Diet can just go in with a red pen and change phrases without leaving a record at the end of the document. Have to ask a lawyer friend.

Prime Minister Koizumi was apparently talking about possibly proceeding without a constitutional amendment (the Asahi article is very vaguely worded, and I never found the original Japanese versions). Naturally, the usual "51st state" fears have also been raised:

Pointing out that the United States has forces stationed worldwide, former Home Affairs Minister Takeshi Noda said Japan would be obliged to follow the United States anywhere in the world if some form of restriction [on the type of collective self-defense the SDF can participate in without being regarded as violating the non-aggression pledge in Article 9] was not stipulated.

Given that the SDF has been waddling, swimming, and quacking like a military for years now--and given that Japan has the DPRK and the PRC to worry about as much as or more than the US--officially acknowledging that it has a military seems to me to be the sensible thing to do. It would be sensible even if Japan weren't angling for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The world is both different (Japan is super-rich, no longer a devastated post-war mess) and the same (resentment over Japan's conduct during its occupation of Asia is kept raw by visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and the cagey wording of apologies on the part of Japanese politicians) compared to fifty years ago in ways that make the genteel fiction that the SDF is a glorified police force dangerous to maintain.

Sixteen people are confirmed dead in last night's earthquakes, and more damage has been reported: a collapsed tunnel, what sounds like an entire buried village. (In Japan, news footage of mudslides is relatively common, BTW.)

Added at 18:03: As you can imagine, NHK is all earthquake, all the time, today. A few things I should probably clarify: I've been saying this wasn't a "major" catastrophe. The terms in which I'm speaking are other quakes of 6.8-ish magnitude we might use as a point of reference: The Bam quake in Iran that flattened a city and killed 30000 last December, for example. You might count the Kobe quake (6.9 M_J) itself, for that matter. It killed 6500 people, caused upper floors of the city hall to pancake, and took out sections of the bullet train and expressway that link Tokyo with the south. By comparison, 21 dead, 1500 seeking treatment, and some buckled roads and crumbled concrete are tragic but manageable. (I'm not making light of the loss of houses and other property, but if you're going to suffer from an earthquake, it's better to have to rebuild your house than to die when it crashes on your head.) It's also fortunate that there weren't more fires; the first quake hit at 6 o'clock, when a lot of people probably had gas flames going preparing dinner.

The Mainichi is reporting that last night's quake actually had higher "acceleration" than the Kobe quake. This is apparently different from 震度 (shindo, the ground-level movement measured by the JMA scale) and magnitude (measured by the Richter scale). Something to do with how furious the vibrations are. Note that Niigata was still getting aftershocks into this afternoon. They may still be, though NHK hasn't said. Some of the aftershocks were weak 5's on the JMA scale, which was surely intense enough to scare the blazes out of people who'd just gone through three strong 6's in succession.

Something I don't think I've ever mentioned, but that many of you may have encountered in the course of reading about Japan, is that the Japanese don't use the Richter scale when describing the intensity of an earthquake. They do use it to measure it for geological purposes (as in, to record how much energy was released), but for the purposes of broadcasting how strong it was, they use a system developed by the Japan Meteorological Agency. The scale is interesting because it's calibrated by what most of us really want to know: How was it experienced by people?

7 - In most buildings, wall tiles and windowpanes are damaged and fall. In some cases, reinforced concrete-block walls collapse.

6 upper - In many buildings, wall tiles and windowpanes are damaged and fall. Most unreinforced concrete-block walls collapse. 315 -- 400 gal

6 lower - In some buildings, wall tiles and windowpanes are damaged and fall. 250 -- 315 gal

5 upper - In many cases, unreinforced concrete-block walls collapse and tombstones overturn. Many automobiles stop due to difficulty in driving. Occasionally, poorly installed vending machines fall. 140 -- 250 gal

5 lower - Most people try to escape from danger, some finding it difficult to move. 80 -- 140 gal

4 - Many people are frightened. Some people try to escape from danger. Most sleeping people awake. 25 -- 80 gal

3 - Felt by most people in the building. Some people are frightened. 8 -- 25 gal

2 - Felt by many people in the building. Some sleeping people awake. 2.5 -- 8 gal

1 - Felt by only some people in the building. 0.8 -- 2.5 gal

0 - Imperceptible to people. Less than 0.8 gal

They use a pendulum to measure how much the ground moves at locations around the country. (At least, they used to--it's entirely possible they have electronic sensors now.) As you can see, the quake in Niigata a few minutes ago, being a strong 6, may have caused considerable damage. NHK still, of course, doesn't have much word. I'm not sure whether building codes there are similar to those in Tokyo. One of the problems in Kobe during the Great Hanshin Earthquake ten years ago was that, in Japanese terms, that region is not a major earthquake zone, so most buildings weren't built quake-proof and older buildings were not retro-fitted. They're reporting an explosion at a gas station and 3 cars buried under a cliffslide (I'm only half-hearing--it doesn't sound as if anything major collapsed or anyone was killed).

Another shake at the NHK studio in Niigata. It started 30 seconds ago, and now we're feeling it. Big-time. Whew. This one's at least as big as the one a half-hour ago. The newscaster's telling people to open a door or window (that way if the frame's distorted you can still get out if there's a fire), so they may be expecting more aftershocks. Okay, it was a weak 6 in Niigata, and another 3 or 4 here. It's in rural areas that the biggest worry of falling roof tiles and collapsing wooden buildings exists; it's a good sign that they're not reporting much damage from areas outside Niigata cities, but it's too soon to say for sure.

18:45: And now they're correcting that one to another strong 6.

18:55: Or wait, they're saying it was a weak 5. That one was spooky for me because you could see the newsroom in Niigata start to shake, and then we felt it half a minute later. It's interesting to note that, while everyone's afraid of another big quake here in Tokyo, the major ones we've had over the last ten years have all been in other regions: Kobe, of course, but also Sendai and Hokkaido (always a hotspot, I think).

Looks as if there was a train derailment and there were a few people injured in falls, but fortunately nothing major. BTW, there was another one in the middle there at 18:15 that I didn't get around to mentioning. The Nikkei has its first report up and says that the magnitudes (this is different from the JMA scale--"magnitude" still isn't the Richter scale in Japan, but it's more comparable) were 6.8, 5.9, and 6.3.

23:09: Three deaths have been reported, and inevitably there were some houses that collapsed. Something else Reuters mentions, which I'd wondered about, is that in places where the ground is already soaked and destabilized from this year's barrage of typhoons, even low-intensity shaking could be enough to cause more mudslides. That doesn't apply to Niigata, I don't think. But since the center of the quake was pretty close to the geographical center of mainland Japan, it could apply to some of the prefectures in southern Honshu.

The ongoing mad cow disease flap has meant that Japan is still not importing US beef. There's talk (again) of negotiations to end the ban, but Japan had been demanding until recently that every [Another quake! This one's milder, but I hope no one's getting it big-time somewhere else...Where's that remote?...Looks like there's no worry of tsunamis, but the one a few minutes ago was over 6 on the Japanese scale at its center in Niigata. We felt it at 3 or 4 in the Tokyo area, according to the NHK map.] head of cattle be tested. Having been persuaded that the risk can still be minimized with random testing of fewer than 100% (the article doesn't say how many fewer), Japan may be in more of a mood to negotiate.

Enough potassium cyanide to kill 1000 people has been stolen from a professor at Kyoto University:

Officials of the graduate school's pharmaceutical school said that one of its professors had found a 20-year-old bottle of potassium cyanide labeled KCN, the chemical symbol, while sifting through old chemicals on a shelf Wednesday night.

The professor kept the lethal chemical in a locked box to distinguish it from others he planned to dispose of.

On Thursday, the 62-year-old professor asked an assistant researcher to check the box that had been left in the corridor.

Not having taken chemistry for a good long time, I don't know whether potassium cyanide degrades after 20 years, but I'm assuming a university would know how to store it properly to preserve it--and in any case, the professor, who's in a position to know, sure seems worried. [Ooh, earthquake, one of those swaying ones...getting bigger...Whoa! Not intense, but not dissipating, either, and it's been 30 seconds or so.]

Colin Powell is coming to Japan tomorrow to talk about the restructuring of US troop deployments in Japan. It looks as if the plan will be engineered through a three-step process of negotiating: First the US and Japan need to arrive at a level of "strategic mutual agreement*" to serve as a basis for furthering their shared security interests, then the concrete plan for reorganization needs to be hammered out between them. (Apparently, the order of these two steps was originally supposed to be reversed--that is, it would be decided how many soldiers would be retained in Japan, and then the two governments would talk about how best to allocate them to various needs.) And then...well, they'll actually implement it.

Of course, if it were that easy, diplomats and negotiators would not have a reputation for liking a drink or six, and in this case, probably the biggest potential sticking point is this:

The objective is to finalize a restructuring proposal, predicated on the willingness of local authorities in Japan, by the end of May 2005.

The US military is not popular in many base towns, especially those in Okinawa. This article covers the most recent arrest for sexual assault (this time by a civilian base worker who allegedly broke into the victim's house). There was a 12-year-old girl assaulted and murdered by three servicemen in 1995. These incidents have outraged Okinawans, who tend to feel--not without foundation--that mainland Japan has been only too happy to shove as much US miltary presence as possible off on its poor southern cousins. Unmentioned, oddly, was the relatively recent notorious 2002 conviction of a USAF staff sergeant for the rape of an Okinawan woman outside a nightclub in 2001. (The Time article was written before the conviction, but I linked it because its discussion of the tension between servicemen and locals was relatively well worked-out and even-handed.)

I'm not trying to slam the armed forces here. How to handle thousands of guys living pent up lives away from their wives and girlfriends was a problem for military leaders long before the US was a superpower. And there's probably no way to maintain the security of, say, a crashed military helicopter without miffing the local police who come to the scene.

At the same time, making an effort not to give locals the impression that they're being treated with curt, secretive occupying-army superiority is not just the nice and ethical thing to do, it becomes important when negotiations of the sort that are to surround the planned restructuring take place. It's unclear how much movement there will be of personnel to other parts of Japan from Okinawa--there's been talk for a while of closing certain intallations there, anyway--but it's likely that it will relieve many Okinawans and rattle many Japanese in the new location.
* I know "mutual agreement" is redundant. "Agreement" alone wouldn't have had the connotation of back-and-forth negotiation that's implied by the Nikkei article, so I decided to compromise. Translation, like mutual defense agreements, is full of compromises.

Okay, you know, I'm a big fan of rain, but enough is enough. This is number 23, for those who are keeping count. There are already 28 dead or missing; it's supposed to pass us here in Tokyo some time before sunrise. Here's hoping there are no further casualties.

Added at 23:54: And now that I pay attention, things are awfully quiet out there. Maybe the worst is past already? From what the news says, Utsunomiya is still getting rain. Doesn't even look all that windy, though.

Added on 21 October: This CNN article has the number of dead at 30 and the number of missing at 40; the Nikkei has the numbers at 46 and 42, respectively. As usual, most of the casualties were in Western Japan, where the jagged landscape makes landslides and the flooding of valleys an ever-present danger. And then there are the high waves and flying objects from the wind to factor in. Atsushi's fine; his city didn't get hit this time, but in addition to the 88 dead and missing, there were 300 injured, and no one's begun to count the property damage and agricultural losses. They're bound to be high, especially in places such as Ehime Prefecture, which has taken it on the chin more than once this season.

This typhoon and the one that came through Tokyo a few weeks ago have not only been unusually strong, they've also been lastingly unpleasant: Neither was followed by the usual clear weather you get after a typhoon. "Probably because there's another one in line," everyone jokes. But we can still joke because Tokyo hasn't had much damage or injury.

Added on 22 October: It feels a bit unseemly to keep posting updated casualty counts, as if one were keeping score at a baseball game, but since Simon World kindly linked this post, those who are interested in what we can only hope is the final word can go to the English Asahi: 65 dead and 21 missing. That's the worst for any single storm since 1979. And as the article points out, a lot of the soil was saturated practically to liquefaction by previous storms, so landslides were even worse this time than they have been before this year. It reminds you how fragile our infrastructure is when nature decides to play rough...though on the other hand, feats such as the rescue of a bunch of bus passengers, who sat on top of their vehicle as the water rose, remind you how fortunate we are to live in a world with such resilient systems to respond to disasters. The sun is out in Tokyo today, at least, so let's hope there will be some respite before anyone gets hammered again. It's not yet the end of typhoon season.

For anyone who's been sleeping too soundly, here are two reports from the Asahi that I didn't get around to mentioning. One relates that, while Japan is pouring money into its spy satellite network, it is still overwhelmingly dependent on information actually picked up by US satellites:

It was only after North Korea lobbed a Taepodong missile over the Japanese archipelago in August 1998 that the government decided to step up monitoring of the reclusive state via satellite.

Almost five years and billions of yen later, Japan launched its own reconnaissance satellites--one optical and one radar--in March 2003.

Two more were planned to go up last November but remain grounded after the H2A rocket No. 6, which was to carry the satellites, failed to launch.

In the past 18 months, a whopping 250 billion yen has been spent on the project. To top that off, annual running costs are in the range of 20 billion yen. In August, the government announced that another optical satellite will be launched next fiscal year. A second radar satellite is slated for fiscal 2006.

As always, my point is not that Japan's image as technologically advanced is a lie. It's that Japan, like every other country, is better at some things than at others. And at the moment, rockets are not its strong suit. (Last November is not the first time one has failed to launch or had to be shot down.) As someone who loves both America and Japan, I'm glad as always that we're helping each other out.

Of course, America is not the only country Japan trades with, and investigators are now trying figure out exactly how measuring instruments (which can be used to make aluminum tubes--we all remember from Colin Powell why those matter, right?) shipped to Malaysia ended up in a Libyan nuclear facility:

Seemingly innocuous but high-tech precision instruments that found their way to a nuclear facility in Libya were rerouted after being shipped directly from a manufacturer in Japan to a company in Malaysia, sources said.

The devices included precision instruments for three-dimensional measurements, which can be used to develop nuclear weapons.

...

Asked for comment, a senior official with the Kanagawa company said it ``was beyond imagination'' that the equipment ended up in Libya.

A spokesman for the Scomi group, parent company of SCOPE, said it had no idea how the instruments were resold for onward export. It strenuously denied having links to the nuclear black market.

There doesn't seem to be any indication that the Japanese company knew its instruments were going to be routed illegally to Libya, which is good, of course.

Japan will be ensconced as a non-permanent member of the UNSC for another two-year term (the last one was five years ago). This should help with its bid for permanent membership, especially since Kofi Annan is supposedly kicking around ideas for major reform in 2005. My favorite part of the article was the end:

There is a view in the government that Japan's nonpermanent membership of the Security Council will make it easier for the country to gather intelligence.

On the other hand, Japan's status as a nonpermanent member means the country will come under pressure to make difficult decisions on a range of issues.

Damn and blast those difficult decisions on a range of issues! They'll be the death of us all yet. In case you're wondering whether the Yomiuri is referring to, you know, anything in particular, the Taipei Times is a little less vague. On the other side of the Formosa Strait, The People's Daily slyly but pointedly compares Japan's and Germany's respective willingness to reckon with their WWII behavior. Guess--just guess--who comes out looking better.

The issues surrounding Japan's bid for permanent membership haven't really shifted much in the last several months, from what I can tell. Japan, China, and the Koreas are still dancing around each other, and the interpretation of Article 9 of the constitution is still subject to debate, though we're not hearing much about it at the moment. Two years is a long time in diplomatic terms, though; there's plenty of time for Japan, China, the Koreas, and the US to nettle each other in unpredictable ways. Fun for the whole North Pacific family!

Oh, and this isn't exactly the same topic, but it's related: Nathan posted again the other day about what he sees as distortions in Americans' views of the PRC. I'm not convinced by everything he says, but I am convinced by his overall point that it's as bad to treat China as if it were still under Mao as it is to figure its economic liberalization has made its past sins all better.

Nichi Nichi reminded me about last week's group suicides in Saitama and Yokosuka. The one in Saitama was the largest single group suicide in Japan ever. I hadn't seen the Japan Times article, which centers on whether the Internet is to be blamed for helping to raise the suicide rate significantly. Agenda Bender actually asked me about it passing earlier in the week:

Stay away from those online suicide cults.

What's the deal with the charcoal grills IN THE CARS, btw? They don't sell rubber hose in Japan? Or is charcoal that much cheaper than gas?

I'd kind of wondered that myself. Surely, if you can find the duct tape aisle, you can find the spools-of-tubing aisle. I don't know what the unit price of charcoal is here, but it's impossible to believe it's not less than that of gas. On the other hand, the you-can't-take-it-with you principle would seem to indicate that splurging on one final topping of the tank is within reason.

I suspect one of two things. Either there's some manga series in which the grill-fumes method was used and people are copying it (likely) or the police have started looking for suspicious ductwork connected to the exhaust pipe of parked vans in outlying areas (I can't assess the likelihood of this, but given the notice that these suicides are getting, it strikes me as possible) and the suicide sites have begun to warn readers to avoid detection by not rigging things up that way.

Oh, no. Looks like I won't be able to vote for Bush after all. The cool kids don't want me to:

If global opinion polls counted, U.S. President George W. Bush would be voted out of office.

Democratic contender John Kerry was the preferred winner in the U.S. presidential election Nov. 2 by the majority of people in eight of 10 nations, according to a survey sponsored by influential newspapers in each of those countries. The poll was taken in September and earlier this month.

Most people polled in Japan, Britain, South Korea, Spain, Mexico, Australia, France and Canada would like to see Republican incumbent Bush get the boot.

Only in Israel and Russia did a majority welcome another four years of Bush.

...

In Canada, Spain and Mexico, 55 to 60 percent were pro-Kerry, while in Australia, Japan and Britain, a little over 50 percent were pro-Kerry.

Among nations where more pollees wanted Kerry to win than Bush, 30 percent in Japan still said they wanted Bush.

In Japan, about 900 randomly chosen people gave valid responses on Oct. 2 and 3.

In Japan the proportion was 50 for Kerry to 30 for Bush--less of a difference than I might have thought, actually. It seems reasonable to figure that in the other countries in which Kerry got around 50% support, Bush also got around 30%. I say it seems reasonable because that's my sense from talking to people. My methods are admittedly not scientific, but I meet quite a few people from other countries who, while skeptical of many things about the way the WOT is actually being carried out, believe that America needs to defend itself and its interests and would be pretty wussy if it failed to do so. Some even acknowledge the part the American military does in general to make their own countries or shipping lanes safer. There aren't as many of them as there are of lockstep leftists, but they're there, all right.

It's also interesting that the two countries in which Bush got more support were those in which the populace has daily experience with trying to protect itself from murderous thugs, many of the Islamofascist persuasion.* You think...?

No, no, of course not. Why pull for the guy who promises the crush the bad guys that want to off you right after the Americans, when you can pull for the guy who'll make nice with your own head of state?

One last thing:

The poll also showed that 60 to 80 percent in most nations have a favorable opinion of Americans.

Thanks, everyone. But I'm still voting for Bush. Just as Koizumi would.
* I haven't forgotten that Spain has the Basques and that trains were blown up in Madrid a few months ago. But it seems that, like the IRA in Britain, terrorist groups in Spain have only been very sporadically active for the last few years; I'll welcome correction if I'm wrong.

Oh, for the love of--I wasn't going to say anything about this, but obviously it's going to be big news for a while. Not that it shouldn't be...only, given all the attention we've been paying to reform of the postal service lately, you'd think the last thing we'd need is a less sexy scandal. We've got one, though: Secret donations to a former Prime Minister by...the Japan Dental Association. At least it wasn't the podiatrists.

For those new to this particular item, here's where it stood a month ago. Note the blasé presentation of this as merely an inflated version of business as usual:

The JDA provides a typical example of "triangular collusion" among the LDP [This is not because the LDP is an especially venal party; it's just that it's the one that has power to peddle.--SRK], bureaucracy and industry. Its former chairman is charged with bribing members of a government panel on medical insurance in an attempt to increase payments for dental services. In April, five men were arrested on bribery charges.

Hospitals and clinics receive payments at given rates under the medical insurance system, and revising these rates is almost always a politically charged issue. The Japan Dentists Federation, the political arm of the JDA and a major fundraiser for the LDP, contributed about 1.5 billion yen to the party's campaign-financing organization for three years from 2000. Hashimoto, who formerly served as health and welfare minister, was the boss of LDP legislators who had close ties to the ministry.

According to investigators, the 100-million yen check was given to Hashimoto at a private meeting with senior JDA officials. At that time, the JDA was fielding a candidate for the 2001 Upper House election. It is reported that the meeting was attended by Hiromu Nonaka, former LDP secretary general and Mikio Aoki, chairman of the LDP's Upper House caucus, and that both confirmed the check. Hashimoto has said he "does not remember" receiving the money, and both Nonaka and Aoki have denied attending the meeting.

How can someone not remember a 100-million yen transaction? Prosecutors must meet public expectations by unraveling the whole truth. Failure to do so will seriously damage their reputation. The purpose of the Political Funds Control Law is to "ensure fairness of political activity through public disclosure of incoming and outgoing political funds and thereby contribute to the development of democratic politics."

I may add to this later, but for now it seems to me to be pretty much its own commentary. (And that doesn't even consider the fact that Japanese dental care is about as good as British dental care.)

Two troubling incidents from yesterday indicate why Japan's new initiative to adapt security strategies from Israel to local conditions is coming none too soon. A man sprayed some unknown chemical in a train at a major transfer point and then melted away before being caught, and a woman decided to take slices with a knife at three people going through another big transfer station.

Japan's rail system is very efficient; everyone knows that. Everyone also knows about the inhuman crowding you get during morning rush hour and on the last trains at night. For the last five years, I lived right in Shibuya, within walking distance of my office. When I moved to Atsushi's place, I was back on the Toyoko Line, commuting into Shibuya on one of the most crowded commuter lines in Tokyo (and therefore the world). Thankfully, my workday is cockeyed so I don't have to go in between 8 and 9 a.m., and we're just a few express stops out. But it's hard to cram yourself onto a train with...jeez, how many people is it when I'm going in for an early meeting? Close to 75 in a car, I'd imagine...it's hard to pack onto a train like that, in this day and age, without thinking how vulnerable everyone would be to another sarin attack or to some nutcase with a knife.

Any city or country has special points of vulnerability created by local conditions, of course. And perfect security is impossible. I'm sure everyone who's lived in Tokyo has had the experience of waiting for someone just outside the turnstiles of one of the train lines and suddenly realizing how many people are actually pouring out as every train arrives. You can't really let yourself keep thinking about it or you'd go insane and start rampaging yourself (or maybe that's just me; I'm an introvert in a big way).

But it does underscore the impossibility of preventing all possible attacks, and the resultant need for train companies and users to know what to do when one hits. Fortunately, Japan is generally an orderly society, and Tokyo commuters specifically are well-accustomed to moving quickly away from the train in hordes without trampling each other.

The biggest worry I can see would be an attack on one of the last trains of the night, especially on a Thursday or Friday. Those who know Tokyo will understand exactly what I'm talking about, but for those who don't: A good number, perhaps even a majority, of commuters on those trains are solidly sloshed, and a significant proportion of those people are close to falling-down drunk. Some fast-acting poison that required quick reflexes in getting the hell out of the train and off the platform could be really deadly, especially if its absortion were accelerated by alcohol. Here's hoping we never have to worry about it.

The Yomiuri reports that prefectural governments will be responsible for drawing up new local security procedures to deal with potential attacks, particularly by missile or terrorism. For its part, the federal government is revising its own outdated Cold War-era rulebook, with a choice of model that I find nothing short of thrilling:

The government is following Israel's example in compiling manuals stipulating these measures and distributing them to the public.

Israel was hit by about 40 missiles from Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. At that time, Israeli authorities distributed manuals that included such measures as having people seal windows and avoid the outer walls when inside a house or building.

It was reported that only two people were killed by the missile attacks as a result of such measures.

The government believes that the public distribution of such manuals will be effective in fully informing people of evacuation and other safety measures, according to the sources.

When the Japanese tendency toward decentralization hits the post-War Japanese tendency toward rigid procedure-worship, the results are often very poor. But there's an equally strong tradition of initiative at the village level--you can still see it in the organization of parades on festival days, which a fascinating article I read long ago posited was the origin of the Japan, Inc. corporate structure--that at its best combines group loyalty with idiosyncratic local knowledge. The new security plans are still in process, but if they really do succeed in allowing the federal government to expose the nation to the wisdom of Israel's experience while allowing local authorities to devise the actual protocols that work best for them...well, I'll be happy as a pig in sh*t.

Hmmm.... Getting kind of boring around here. What would liven things up some?

I know: Another typhoon! This one is set to land in Shizuoka Prefecture and to pass right over Tokyo. My luckless boyfriend, who's lived in western Kyushu through the hammering it's gotten this summer, has followed today's entrant--the strongest typhoon to hit eastern Japan in over ten years, apparently--here for the three-day weekend. Luckily, the leading edge of the storm didn't keep his plane from being able to land, though a few dozen other domestic flights have already been canceled. He just cellphone-mailed that he's on the ground and on his way here.

Also luckily, we shouldn't need to grab more than maybe a liter of milk from 7-Eleven, since I made sure everything was stocked for his arrival anyway, including another Columbo DVD. I've already watched it, it is true, but I'll gladly sit through at least one of the episodes again: Vera Miles and Vincent Price play the owners of rival cosmetics companies seeking the formula for a wrinkle-erasing miracle cream. Does it get gayer than that? Oh, and the murder from which the plot is generated involves vengeful Miles impulsively hitting a young Martin Sheen on the head with a microscope, her eyes wide and lip curled in that wonderful fury TV murderers always get right before they bash someone's skull in. I know it's anachronistic, since the show was recorded in 1971, but I see it as vicarious revenge for all of us who feel insulted by the hamhanded propaganda orgy that is The West Wing.

Anyway, in the last few days, it's become apparent that there are, in fact, at least a few people reading here from within Japan, so stay safe, everyone.

Added at 11:50: Looks like I jumped the gun. I was looking at the Nikkei site and figured that if the 9:00 a.m. post said the storm was about to make landfall, it probably had by two hours later. It hasn't.

You know, one begins to think that maybe it would be better for everyone if the engineers at Mitsubishi Fuso shifted to careers that didn't, uh, require so much engineering:

A seat on a bus made by troubled Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corp. collapsed after the driver abruptly hit the brakes, leaving a woman passenger with minor injuries, officials said.

Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corp., which has been plagued by a clutch defection cover-up scandal, had earlier informed the government about its intended recall of the same type of buses to repair seat parts.

That the company was aware of the problem and had taken the novel step of planning a recall before its top managers were threatened with arrest helps, I suppose. And at least this time, it isn't the sort of problem that could directly cause a crash. (The Asahi article contains this passage: "Although Kawasoe denied any knowledge of the defects, prosecutors said otherwise in their opening statement. They said that soon after Kawasoe became MMC president, the vice president in charge of the problem advised him to end the practice of ordering secret repairs without recalling vehicles with defective parts." I know it's just a lack of felicity in English translation, but it suggests a Lewis Carroll-ish corporate structure in which there's a Vice-President for Defective Products. Unfortunately, that seems to be ghoulishly close to the truth in this case.)

The LDP's coalition partner, the New Komei Party, has released a position paper that gingerly revises its former position on the export of weapons. Its new approach may make it easier to relax restrictions on technology transfers to the US.

*******

Koizumi has been somewhat more assertive in ensuring that other proposals by his administration are realized. Or not--the article veers back and forth a lot. It also gives a good indication of the headache-inducing nature of factional politics in the Diet, which you need several flow charts, an almanac, a sextant, and perhaps a rabbit's foot to navigate through. Suffice it to say that--duh!--the Koizumi administration is hoping that it's posted enough higher-ups who support its Japan Post privatization plan that there will be pressure on those who don't to fall in line.

*******

Finally, two consecutively-posted stories over at the English Yomiuri sum up the state of government spending with (surely unintentional?) dark comedy: Most federal ministries are bankrupt by normal accounting standards, but they are eager to maintain the amount they dole out in subsidies. (Note: The River Bureau is part of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport.)

The proposal to cut subsidies is part of the Koizumi administration's proposals for "three-pronged reform" (which is usually rendered "trinity reform," but that kind of weirds me out). The idea is to cut federal subsidies to local governments, to lower the amount of money passing through the allocation tax system (whereby federal tax money makes a U-turn and is sent back in specified amounts to local governments), and to make up for the decreased amount of money flowing from federal to local government by localizing more tax collection. Take a wild guess why federal ministries are lukewarm on that idea.

Flamin' Norah! That one was big somewhere. I guess we'll know where in a few. Let's hope it was offshore....

Added on 7 October: It was centered in Ibaraki Prefecture, 5 on the Japanese scale.

Oh, my. This disturbs me from beginning to end.

The DPRK's People's Army* has a unit of hackers that is operating at a first-world level, says South Korea's Department of Defense:

こうした専門要員は人民武力省（国防省）の指揮自動化局や偵察局に配属され、ハッカー部隊として韓国や米国、日本などの軍事情報収集、軍の指揮・通信網を混乱させるなどのサイバー戦を担当しているとした。

These specialized personnel are assigned to the Command/Mobilization and Reconnaissance Agencies of the Ministry of the Korean People's Army (the DPRK's department of defense) and are believed to be in charge of cyberwar strikes such as disrupting South Korean, US, and Japanese intelligence gathering and armed forces command and communications networks.

You can't really be shocked by this, but I think it does underscore that North Korea (despite its ineptitude in many areas) is not just sitting there counting its long-range missiles while we natter about "getting back to the negotiating table." Yet another reason to be thankful that we have resilience and dynamism on our side.
* Is that what they call it in English? I'll look later...uh, yeah, it is. Well, it's the Korean People's Army, to remind us all that those heirs to the Shilla in the South are not real Koreans but stooges who have sold out to the West. Don't bother bringing up that if we extended the metaphor, we might remember that the Shilla cooperated with the Chinese to take down the northern Koguryô kingdom, and the side that's allied with China now is.... It's not the Tang Dynasty anymore. BTW, have you seen the official DPRK website? Not hours of amusement, but certainly minutes. I notice there's no link to a Korean Friendship Association in Japan, too.

I don't know that I have any readers who also live here in Japan, but if you do, it might interest you to read this from the Mainichi:

Japan's rank-and-file police officers are calling on the general public to protect themselves as they believe law enforcers alone cannot maintain peace and order, a National Police Agency (NPA) report showed on Friday.

The 2004 NPA white paper asked 2,000 experienced officers working at local police boxes across Japan about "what is needed to maintain security."

A staggering 95 percent of them admitted that they alone could not maintain domestic order, the survey shows.

Some 80 percent of them said that individuals should try to protect themselves, while 50 percent said citizens should form local crime prevention groups.

Well, fine. I'm willing to take responsibility for my own protection*, but given that guns are illegal for private citizens here, what am I supposed to do? Rig up pongee sticks? Make sure to take that cleaver to the tinker's regularly and sleep with it under the pillow?

The neighborhood crime watch part sounds good, but it has a ways to go:

When asked about how they have joined hands with local residents to prevent crime, about 50 percent of the polled officers said they had not established sufficient cooperation.

...

When asked about what they wanted officers to improve, more than half of the polled citizens said they wanted more patrols.

At the same time, many said they didn't want to see police boxes with no officers.

...

The white paper also questioned about 1,200 crime-prevention volunteer groups in Japan about the problems they face.

About 60 percent of the groups said that volunteers were afraid of dangerous situations when they patrol.

Now, it must be added that there's almost certainly a SLOPs-like sampling issue here. That is, the places in Japan that actually have citizen crime patrols are likely to be places that have had crimes already. There's no indication that Tokyo or Osaka is going to turn, wholesale, into London or DC. The social factors that keep crime low in Japan have been well-documented by others, and I'm on record as protesting against the Japan-is-going-to-hell strain in a lot of post-Bubble Western reporting. Nevertheless, the economic disruptions over the last ten years have increased everyday social pressures, and crime is increasing. I'm not just talking about crime committed by resident foreigners, which is the only kind Japanese people like to hear about. I mean also Japanese people turning to crime because they have zero employment prospects or have just gone unhinged. The number of crimes is low. It's probably going to remain low; that's one of the many good points of Japanese shame culture.

But if you're the victim of a crime, it's not likely to be much comfort that you're only one out of a statistical few thousand, or that the national crime rate is still lower than that of Indonesia. And like a lot of post-War American suburbs when violent and property crime began spreading outward from urban cores a few decades ago, most places in Japan are not designed for crime prevention. They were, rather, built under the assumption that things would always be safe.

Case in point: The building Atsushi and I live in was built in 2000. It's in one of the most populous wards of Tokyo, albeit in a residential area; but still, there was no security system to speak of until one of the ground-floor units was broken into. The front entrance had a keyboard/intercom system for admitting visitors, and the back doors to the parking garage required keys to enter. But all that separated the front doors to three ground-floor apartments from the parking lot was a four-foot wall with some shrubs in front of it. (And even now, the lobby and elevators are the only places in the building with security cameras.)

Mark you, we're among the lucky who live in a new building run by a responsive management company. A lot of apartment buildings in Tokyo have no doors at the entrances; the corridors are essentially open-air or accessible from fire escape-like stairways. And housing here, even a lot of high-end housing, tends to be made of flimsy materials: hollow-core outer doors, sliding picture windows with single panes of the approximate stoutness of sugar glass, uninsulated walls.

As someone who's lived in Philadelphia and New York, I'll be interested to see how things develop. The thinking that citizens go about their business without fear because the government and police are looking after everyone's safety is very deeply ingrained here. However unfortunate it is that vigilance against crime is becoming more necessary in Japan, it's a good sign that this white paper has been publicized.

Added on 3 October: Brian Tiemann is in New York and has posted his impressions. Interesting as always. He doesn't mention this, but of course, one of the reasons Times Square is clean and safe now is the Giuliani administration's very controversial "broken windows" approach to crime-fighting. The year I lived in New York was 1995-96; I'd spent a lot of time there before, but not as a resident. It's fair to say--and even many of his supporters, I think, acknowledge this--that the mayor's office and police were pretty high-handed in their dealings with citizens and businesses. Questions have also been raised about what some see as the virtual annexing of the Times Square/42nd Street area by Disney. Still, given New York's reputation in the '70's and '80's, it's not hard to see why people thought they had only two choices: ruthlessly stamp out every visible infraction of any law whatever, or live with junkies and streetwalkers in pedestrians' faces.
* Well, I would persuade my Japanese-citizen boyfriend to keep a gun in the apartment. I have the distinct feeling that even if guns were legal, foreigners wouldn't be allowed to carry them.