The White Peril 白禍

My news-gathering has been pretty lite this week, but Asahi has the results of its latest poll up, and they're interesting as always--particularly this nearly-even split:

Asked whether Koizumi should continue to visit Yasukuni, 38 percent of those polled said yes, and 39 percent said no.

Japan's neighbors have strongly criticized the visits to the Tokyo shrine that honors Japan's war dead, including Class-A war criminals.

...

Asked about China's stance, about 30 percent of the pollees said it was only natural, while 57 percent did not think so.

Those polled in their 30s and 40s were more opposed to Koizumi's visits, while more than 40 percent of those in their 20s or 70s and older said the visits should continue.

Among those who wanted Koizumi to continue his Yasukuni visits, nearly 60 percent said measures should be taken to win the understanding of the Chinese and South Koreans.

What, one wonders, did the other 40 percent say? Tell China and Korea to stick it? There's nothing much surprising about the age breakdown: those in their thirties and forties are the ones whose lives are most directly affected by the economic environment, and trade with China and Korea plays a major, major, major role in the current Japanese economy. People in their seventies remember the War; and people in their twenties, I suspect, just don't see what the big deal is one way or the other.

The poll also included questions about the Koizumi administration overall and the deployment of non-combat SDF personnel in Iraq specifically. Support/oppose figures haven't changed much for those.

Speaking of the Koizumi administration's performance in domestic terms, the three-pronged reform package has been finalized, naturally in much less aggressive form than was originally proposed. The amount of tax yen that will ultimately be spun off to regional and local collection is smaller than it appears:

Under the decentralization plan, the central government will transfer 2.4 trillion yen in tax-collecting authority-and thus spending-decision power-to local governments. But that figure falls short of the 3 trillion yen sought by prefectures and municipalities and includes 650 billion yen that has already been transferred in the current fiscal year.

As the Asahi mentions further down in the article, Koizumi--no fool, he--did not huff and puff and waste political capital fighting for every last coin, or even every last 10000 yen bill. But I think the changes will have the salutary effect of having framed government spending questions in terms of how much should be entrusted to local authorities, rather than how many hands money can be made to pass through on its U-turn from the provinces to Tokyo and back again.

30 November 10:29 EST

With a bunch of college friends in NJ, and probably going down to DC overnight before heading up to the City.

My poor friends in Dallas are wondering whether I'm actually planning to see them (still am!) or it was all just a scam. Someday I'll tell you about trying to use my JAL mileage club/credit card to get a ticket through JAL America. (See, it's a foreign-issued credit card--no, I'm not joking; I can't use my JAL card to order a JAL ticket on-line or over the phone if the flight originates outside Japan. You know, you think you have all the dumb-ass rules figured out after eight years of no-you-can't-do-that, but there's always one lying in wait somewhere. Luckily, there's a JAL office in New York, so I plan to stand in the middle of it and scream until someone issues me a ticket--with miles, honey--on the card issued by his own airline.)

28 November 11:30 EST

One of the main points of contention in the whole Yasukuni Shrine flap has been whether Koizumi (among other high-level government officials) is making his pilgrimages in his capacity as a public servant or as a private citizen. It matters, naturally, because the separation of church and state argument doesn't wash at all if he and his cabinet are just tradition-minded Japanese paying their respects. The latest development internal to Japan is that a court in Chiba has ruled that the visits are, in fact, official.

Reasonable enough. Also reasonable was this part (lower two paragraphs):

A court here Thursday ruled that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Yasukuni Shrine in 2001 in his official capacity, but it skirted the issue of whether the trip violated the constitutional separation of the state and religion.

The Chiba District Court also rejected a compensation claim from 63 plaintiffs who demanded the state and the prime minister pay 100,000 yen to each member for inflicting mental pain from the Aug. 13, 2001, visit.

The plaintiffs, including Christian and Buddhist priests, had argued Koizumi's homage to the Shinto shrine was an act to give privileges to a specific religion, thereby violating the Constitution as well as their rights.

America has many wonderful things to give to the world. Surely something we might consider keeping to ourselves until it mercifully dies off, however, is the habit of deeming any collision with an opposing idea "mental pain," which is a violation of one's "rights." There is nothing I am aware of to prevent Christian and Buddhist Japanese from performing their own kinds of prayers unobtrusively at the memorial, or from setting up their own memorial on dedicated ground of their own. The legitimate issues surrounding the Japanese government's treatment of its World War II conduct, which still has a major influence on its relationships with its neighbors, are only obscured by these shenanigans. And that's unfortunate, because they really need dealing with.

26 November 15:25 EST

Prime Minister Koizumi, in Chile for a 6-nation summit, has once again been asked by China to stop official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where the soldiers memorialized include war criminals. His answer seems perfectly reasonable on its face:

Japan's current state of peace was developed through the sacrifices of multitudes of men who went resolutely off to battle and laid down their lives for it. It is with those thoughts in mind that we make our pilgrimages [to the shrine].

I'd say that, in World War II terms, those who laid down their lives for peace in Japan as it exists today were actually on the Allied side. But the dead memorialized at the Yasukuni Shrine include those from conflicts dating back to the Meiji Restoration. Also, it's important to remember that there are fewer than 20 war criminals memorialized there, out of a total of over 2 million enshrined. Even those from World War II were mostly soldiers who were fighting for their country in its tradition of honor. It is sometimes said that, even so, official visits by politicians to the shrine violate constitutional law (which, like America's, prevents the federal government from establishing a state religion). That sort of argument has never impressed me; it's not as if anyone is trying to communicate with the ancestors for guidance about public policy. Well, as far as I know.

The real problem, I think--not that this is an original insight of mine, or anything--is that Japan has done a lousy job of persuasively showing remorse when apologizing and providing redress for its war crimes. That makes every little gesture of respect toward World War II-era leaders and soldiers feel like a a new affront to the rest of Asia.

It's possible that nothing would truly satisfy the Chinese, Koreans, and Southeast Asians. After all, World War II is only the most recent installment in the grand East Asian tradition of inter-ethnic hostility, recrimination, and contempt. Still, Japan's piecemeal approach makes it easy for diplomatic friend and foe alike to repair to events sixty years past as an excuse for not being cooperative, and the Japanese government appears disinclined to do much about it.

23 November 00:23 EST

Of course, the Japanese have been having transportation-related woes lately, too. JAL and ANA are still safe, thankfully, but Mistubishi Fuso has just...can you guess?...issued another recall. This is of the latest-year model of the truck that caused a deadly accident and a spate of fender-benders a while back. The metal wheel hub apparently still has a weakness that could make it fail, though apparently it's a different weakness from the one, dating back to 1995, that caused the prevous accidents.

22 November 02:16 EST

The PRC has had yet another commercial plane crash. This time, fortunately, it was a commuter plane with low capacity and only 53 people aboard. Except for flag carrier Air China, which had its first and only crash ever a few years ago in Korea, Chinese airlines are notoriously accident-prone. A friend who's lived there and in Taiwan believes the big problem is twofold: using equipment (such as planes and diagnostic machines) until its useful age is long past, and a work ethic that credits showing up and doing what you're told as much as it does good job performance. Safety standards have been tightened, and things are probably slowly changing for the better as carriers such as China Southern and China Eastern compete for international business travel. But we're very fortunate that in the West, our chief worry when we board an airliner involves the quality of the food, service, and in-flight entertainment.

22 November 02:03 EST

Some updates on news items I usually post about when there are new developments.

First, yet another of the world's inexhaustible supply of expert panels making contributions to the obvious has...well, made a contribution to the obvious: namely, if a major earthquake hit Tokyo, there could be catastrophic damage. This particular shocker was dispensed to us through an NHK special last night that was nowhere near as cool as the one they broadcast a few years ago. As always, the predictions are carefully qualified because the amount of damage would depend not just on the Richter scale magnitude (total energy release) but also on how deep underground the focus is, which affects how bad the shaking is at the surface. The special this time around featured man-on-the-street interviews of people explaining what most frightened them about a potential earthquake. Is it the possibility of being trapped on the subway? Being trampled by panicky mobs of citizens? Being tossed around like clothes in a Speed Queen if you're on one of the upper floors of a skyscraper? It was, in a strange way, comfortingly ghoulish.

*******

The draft of the proposed constitutional amendment, designed to allow Japan to participate with allies in collective self-defense operations, has been completed by the ruling coalition's committee. It explicitly renounces nuclear arming (not a few people think Japan has quietly developed nukes already). That's actually not the only amendment up for debate. There's to be change in the way the Emperor's position is to be articulated, and there are a few individual rights made explicit. Japanese accounts don't seem to have good quotations from the proposal, but FWIW, the Nikkei's most recent report is here.

And for those of us who came of age in the '80's, former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone has endorsed the idea of a revision--he was a friend of Reagan at the end of the Cold War, so this is not a surprise--and has his own, slightly different proposal from the committee's.

*******

The Koizumi administration has gotten some hold-outs among the ministries on board for its subsidy-reduction plan. Education and welfare seem to be the remaining major points of contention.

*******

Oh, and I can't believe I neglected to say anything about this Monday--Atsushi e-mailed me about it the moment he saw the news report: Japan's ranking eligible bachelorette is engaged. Princess Sayako, daughter of the current emperor and empress, and sister of the crown prince, is 35. The media have been trying to put a polite mask over everyone's complete and utter disbelief, but it's not working too well.

The deployment of Japan's Self-Defense Forces in a non-combat capacity in Iraq will be extended. The New Komei Party, which is the LDP's partner in the ruling coalition, is pacifist and balked for a while at approving the extension; things haven't gotten any easier since the hostage was beheaded. Things were resolved earlier this week, but the posting of the English summary at the Yomiuri is nice to see on Veteran's Day.

Via NichiNichi, a link to an article by Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Tokyo Bureau Chief. It's actually worth going to the Daily Kos to read it, if you're interested in problems with international journalism. It's long, and most of the points are familiar to those who've listened to reporters complain for the last several years. But she gives the impression of genuinely trying to be fair-minded.

The problem is...well, here's how she begins:

In November 2003, I had the rare opportunity to interview Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for CNN. The interview came at an important time as Japan wrestled with the question of whether to send non-combat Self-Defense Force troops to Iraq. ... The potential dispatch was also considered to be a political gamble for Prime Minister Koizumi - given that public opinion polls showed a majority of Japanese were against sending troops at that time. Thus, not surprisingly, most of my 30-minute interview with Koizumi dealt with the Iraq question. ... He believed that Japan must stand behind the United States against terrorism because this was simply the right thing to do, whatever his critics might say. It was a matter of good versus evil. However, he did have some constructive criticism for Bush: Koizumi hoped that the U.S. would cooperate more closely with the United Nations and do more to build consensus within the international community.

I remember the interview she's talking about. Not word for word, obviously, but she's right that it did get a lot of (justifiable) attention, and that it didn't show Bush in what you'd think of as a bad light. The upshot is that not even one soundbite was aired on CNN USA. Her explanation for why American viewers didn't get to see it:

As it turned out, the morning (according to U.S. East Coast time) that we sent in our Koizumi interview happened to be a very busy "news morning" for the CNN USA morning shows. There was CNN's first interview with Private Jessica Lynch, the young woman who had been captured by Iraqi soldiers during the war and then rescued. There was also an exclusive interview with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, and updates on the Michael Jackson Trial. I was told that while the International Assignment Desk editors had lobbied CNN USA show producers to include soundbites from Koizumi's interview in their programs, in the end the producers claimed they simply did not have room in their shows that morning to run even one Koizumi soundbite. Later in the day, there was major news in the U.S. about a court ruling on gay marriage, which "blew out" most other stories from the evening programming lineup. Thus Koizumi's words were not heard in the U.S.

(We queers just can't help causing trouble, can we?) As it happens, I agree very much that Koizumi's contribution to the WOT has been underreported in the American press and is probably, as a consequence, undervalued by many Americans who support it. Yes, part of that is that I live in Japan, so Japanese news has more "felt" importance for me than it does for other Americans. But I think I can distinguish between a pronouncement by Koizumi on the WOT and, say, Matsuda Seiko's latest, pathetic Madonna-like lunge back toward the spotlight.

But there are other things to consider. For one thing, CNN has a website. Was the interview posted there? MacKinnon doesn't say. For another, CNN declined to run her interview on that particular day. It's galling that she and Koizumi were dissed in favor of Michael Jackson, but did CNN consistently fail to give play to the fact that Koizumi's support for Bush's policies was given in the face of a lot of public opposition? At the time, I was watching CNN International with the rest of Japan, so I don't know. We sure as hell hear about it here, but then, we would, wouldn't we?


That brings me to another point. MacKinnon writes:

This is the case for viewers everywhere - be they American, Middle Eastern, South African, or Japanese. Based on my interactions with Japanese commercial broadcasters, I know that they are under the same kind of budget pressures and competitive pressures to boost viewership ratings as American broadcasters are. As a result, international news reports focus on what producers believe will keep Japanese audiences watching - which means that like in the U.S., many of the important but "boring" or complicated stories get passed over. Of course, public broadcaster NHK has a different mandate which includes extensive international news coverage. However I have been told by several reporters at NHK that they frequently encounter situations in which producers and assignment editors have been unwilling to contradict majority public opinion or sentiment in Japan. This has been particularly true on stories related to North Korea and to the Japanese citizens who were taken hostage in Iraq earlier this year.

This puts the lie to the Kos poster's take on MacKinnon's piece, which naturally is that news reporting must be removed from profit-seeking. It's an open secret in Japan that the major media have to curry favor with the government. They have to watch themselves around the unelected bureaucrats more than around the members of the Diet, it is true; but to the extent that legislators have pull, they tend to pull in the direction of pleasing their constituents. That's their job, after all. NHK is in that bind even more than other organizations. When you're publicly funded, the government has more direct ways to...you know, incentivize you. What's the solution? MacKinnon has it, in my opinion, though her dark tone indicates that she thinks it's hypothetical rather than actually working:

Before we leap to moral judgments or condemnations, we must be realistic. In truth, it is unrealistic to expect commercially-driven TV news companies to do anything other than to seek profit maximization - while at the same time selling a product that can still be defined as "news" in some way. The search for profit maximization means that these companies will shape their news to fit the tastes and values of the majority of their most lucrative potential audience. Citizens of democracies who want to be well informed must understand this. They cannot expect to be passive consumers of whatever news comes their way from a name-brand news source. They must question, contrast, and compare. They must demand better quality information.

Well, okay, MacKinnon only has part of the solution. The part she doesn't have is: Get national governments out of the business of running their citizens' lives down to every last detail. It's hard to be an informed citizen when understanding how Washington or Tokyo is micromanaging you requires you to be conversant with everything from education theory to the approval processes for pharmaceuticals. I'm all for intellectual curiosity, but I'd prefer to expend a bit less on figuring out which decisions have been premade for me and how. I don't know that shrinking government would make people less interested in junk news about pop stars, but it would certainly decrease the number of government pronouncements competing for airing. The part she has down is that citizens have to demand better information. Sure. But aren't we? The instances MacKinnon points to are genuinely disturbing if taken at face value--and I see no reason not to. But are there major stories that simply aren't available at all for those of us in Western countries with access to cable television, Internet connections, and publications? In the process of dealing with the question of whether the news networks are being honest when they package themselves as balanced news sources, she doesn't seem to register that it's possible to work around them, and that people are doing so. I subscribe to the Nikkei and watch NHK, but I also read three of the other major Japanese newspapers on-line, have CNNj, and can look at link-based blogs like Instapundit if I want to be pointed in the direction of things I might have missed. I mean, I know you all know that, or else you wouldn't be reading this page. But MacKinnon, who makes noises about wanting people to go to a multiplicity of sources for their news, in the end seems to think that CNN's arbitrary selection of what to broadcast is a Major Problem that most people are dangerously unaware of. It's baffling.

The Mainichi reports that a new poll shows support for the Koizumi administration's decision to stand firm on its Iraq policy in the face of the abduction of Shosei Koda last month:

A total of 57 percent of the 1,095 pollees said they supported the government's stance, even though Iraqi militants murdered Japanese national Shosei Koda after they threatened to kill him unless Japan withdraw the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) from Iraq.

Only 24 percent said they didn't back the government's decision to maintain SDF reconstruction activities in Iraq.

However, the poll also found that a majority, 51 percent, wanted Japan to withdraw the SDF from Iraq when its deployment expires on Dec. 14. Only 27 percent said the government should extend the dispatch of the SDF.

That sounds about right to me. The Japanese love their country and don't take well to seeing it treated contemptuously by foreigners. They are also big on stoically fulfilling your duty to your in-group--the Japanese may no longer be used to actual war, but they've retained that aspect of their famed warrior culture. Most people, I think, recognize that the US is part of Japan's in-group in geopolitical terms, even if they wish Koizumi weren't quite so willing to back Bush's policies with SDF personnel. On the other hand, this makes sense also:

The poll, carried out over the weekend, shows that the percentage of those who are in support of the government's stance to refuse a request of SDF withdrawal dropped slightly, compared to April, when other militants demanded the troops leave after kidnapping three Japanese people.

This drop in the percentage of people in support of the government's stance is apparently attributable to the shocking murder of Koda.

The Japanese frequently fall into the same trap the Americans do: because they sell goods and give out aid and send tourist money to everyone else, they don't understand why anyone would resent them. (In more Japan-specific terms, a shocking number of people simply cannot fathom why ill-will over World War II continues to the present day; that was a long time ago, the thinking goes, and we've been building factories in your country and employing your people for decades since then. Besides, we can't attack anyone again--it's in the constitution.)

BTW, there's been yet another aftershock in Niigata. (We felt it here pretty strongly; I was worried it might have been a good 6 somewhere else.) This one was 5 on the JMA scale and seems to have caused a few landslides, with injuries but luckily no deaths.

Muneo Suzuki, possibly the single most corrupt politician in this entire archipelago, has been sentenced to two years in prison. When he was first arrested, it was a blow to the credibility of the Koizumi administration. Suzuki did his power-brokering and cronyist bid-rigging for the LDP, the ruling party, and Koizumi's platform had promised reform and a break with politics as usual.

BTW, while I was looking for a link that might summarize the many and varied crimes of which Suzuki has been accused (this is as good as any, though it doesn't date all the way back to when the scandal started cooking), Google came up with this tidbit: He was a featured speaker on political ethics at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan this spring! Yes, I know, they wouldn't have been able to get him to talk if they'd openly planned to be adversarial, but still.

It's yesterday's news, but for the record, Koizumi's reaction to Bush's reelection was the expected one:

The government Thursday welcomed U.S. President George W. Bush's reelection, expecting that his administration's policies toward Iraq and North Korea, both important issues to Japan, would be maintained.

Government officials said they would talk to the second Bush administration over a host of bilateral problems to be tackled with the U.S. government.

During the presidential race, the government was seriously concerned that the result could significantly affect the U.S. policy toward Iraq.

Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry's criticism of Bush's Iraq policy contrasted with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's strong support.

I noticed that, too.

Japan's three-pronged reform continues to generate controversy in the government; the most recent focus is on education. It's not exactly like the fight over voucher programs in the States, but there are similarities in that the main point of contention is whether federal or local governments are in charge of the public school system:

On Monday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda and Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Taro Aso had a heated discussion with Education, Science and Technology Minister Nariaki Nakayama at the Prime Minister's Office. The debate ended without a consensus being reached.

The dreaded lack of consensus! There are a bunch of issues here. One is that it's possible to interpret the Japanese constitution as placing the responsibility for education on the federal government:

Article 26 [Right to Education, Compulsory Education]

(1) All people shall have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability, as provided by law.
(2) All people shall be obligated to have all boys and girls under their protection receive ordinary education as provided for by law.
(3) Such compulsory education shall be free.

The constitution gives both sexes and all classes equal rights to education (according to their ability--the PC era wasn't yet a glimmer in Judith Butler's eye), but it doesn't really say who's in charge of delivering it.

On the other side, local governments sensibly note that with the aging population, the balance between funding needed for elder care and funding needed for child care is shifting. Their feeling is that they should be able to work with a pool of welfare money, using local knowledge to determine what proportion goes to whom. We'll see how things develop. The LDP is very keen on seeing its reforms go through, so expect compromises.

Charles Jenkins has been found guilty of desertion. That's not a surprise, but some of his family had been insisting that he must have been abducted himself, as his Japanese wife Hitomi Soga was 15 years later. His own plea was guilty to desertion and aiding the enemy and not guilty to treason and soliciting others to desert. He's likely to serve his sentence in what looks like minimal confinement. His wife's hometown is in Niigata; there don't seem to be any reports on how much earthquake damage it suffered. One hopes none, considering what she's suffered over the last 25 years.