The White Peril 白禍

On the other hand, not all the noise this week is good. Lead story of the Nikkei evening edition that I plucked from the mailbox after a hard day at the office:

North Korea: Pieces in place for building of nuclear facilities, production of nuclear weapons

The DPRK has revealed that it has restarted the construction of two nuclear reactors, which was frozen after a 1994 agreement it had mapped out with the US. The move is regarded as an attempt mass-manufacture nuclear weapons; both reactors are low-velocity graphite reactors that can be used to extract weapons-grade plutonium.

This is so great!

Not long ago, the only disturbances at Japanese shareholders meetings came from sokaiya racketeers.

That era ended Wednesday with round after round of tongue-lashings from legitimate shareholders fed up with deceit, waste and simple incompetence of management.

Of companies that closed their books at the end of March and are listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, 1,072, or 59.8 percent, held their shareholders meetings on Wednesday.

It was the first time for the number to fall below 60 percent.

Amid a series of scandals and heightened interest in corporate takeovers, there was a significant increase in the number of individual shareholders at the meetings, many of whom took management to task.

(Nikkei version in Japanese here.)

Sometimes the rigidity of Japanese gender roles can be very darkly amusing--even multiple-murderers play along. This week, two sentences in notorious late-90s murders were upheld. One was the death sentence of the woman convicted of poisoning several acquaintances at a summer festival in 1998:

The Osaka High Court on Tuesday dismissed a woman's appeal against a lower court ruling that sentenced her to death for killing four people at a festival by lacing a curry stew with arsenic.

The appeal trial focused on the credibility of Masumi Hayashi's not-guilty plea over accusations that she put arsenic into a communal curry pot during a summer festival in Wakayama in July 1998.

...

The Wakayama District Court, based on witnesses' accounts, ruled in December 2002 that Hayashi was wearing white clothes and acted suspiciously when she opened the lid of the curry pot.

The district court also ruled that Hayashi had known that people would die from the poison and therefore sentenced her to death.

The Osaka High Court also found Hayashi guilty in several other attempted murder and fraud cases, supporting the Wakayama District Court's ruling that Hayashi attempted to poison her husband and a male acquaintance for insurance benefits.

Hayashi said that her husband and the man drank arsenic by themselves to obtain insurance money and therefore, she didn't try to murder them.

Homicide for the purpose of getting life insurance money is common in Japan.

The man whose death sentence was affirmed was having none of that slow-acting, within-the-family-circle stuff:

The Hiroshima High Court on Tuesday upheld a lower court death sentence handed to a man for killing five and injuring 10 others when he went on a berserk rampage at JR Shimonoseki Station in 1999.

Yasuaki Uwabe, 41, was convicted of driving his car into the concourse of the station in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture in September 1999, and hitting three people, killing two of them.

Jumping out of the vehicle, Uwabe then began attacking innocent bystanders with a knife. The slashing spree left another three people dead.

When Hayashi and Uwabe are executed, it's likely to happen without advance warning (even to their families) and may be timed to reassure the public that the justice system is dealing effectively with crime.

A few nights ago, Atsushi reminded me in our nightly conversation that the property tax was due by the end of the month. Monday's a day off for me, so I figured that while I was heading to the post office anyway, I may as well mail some other stuff: I took care of a friend's wedding present, letter to my grandfather, few other things. Need I tell you what, when I was halfway out the door and feeling all smug and accomplished, I realized I'd forgotten to do? Personally, I blame the fact that Japan Post hasn't yet been privatized. After all, a private corporation accountable to its customers would develop an array of services more responsive to their needs and...uh...thus...you know, more...memorable. (Don't worry, A., I went back in and paid it.)

Anyway, the privatization bill is still being haggled over. Latest news is:

On the evening of 28 June, the LDP agreed to a review of the Japan Post privatization bill that included the revision of 4 items. The central revision was that, as one of the functions the window-services corporation will be allowed to perform, "the work of a bank or insurance agency" is given as an example. Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi assented to the revision. In accepting this resolution, which had been a sticking point through the debate over revisions, the LDP executive body aims to see the bill passed by the Lower House by the beginning of July. Opposition to the bill is still deep-rooted even among some in the party, however, so there are still many issues that stand in the way of its approval.

This is the same Koizumi who was saying yesterday that he would accept no revisions; he said tonight that his position had not changed. Okay, whatever you say. Perhaps the new provisions don't strike him as neutering the reforms. Along those lines, it remains unclear whether mochiai (mutual shareholding) will be explicitly permitted; some in the LDP were pushing for such a provision yesterday.

Oh, I think I've forgotten to mention this:

The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry says it has a slush fund of 31 million yen amassed from setting aside some research expenses to be paid to an affiliate organization.

Vice Minister Hideji Sugiyama also said at a press conference Thursday that Taizo Nakatomi, former head of the planning office at the minister's secretariat, misappropriated part of the fund for his private stock transactions.

Nakatomi, 48, was dismissed on June 6.

The ministry had withheld information related to the slush fund because investigators asked the ministry to keep it confidential.

This was the topic of the Nikkei's main editorial yesterday morning:

Another former official at METI has just recently been charged with insider trading, after all. If we add this new slush fund problem, is it not apparent that there's an institutional lack of vigilance that doesn't end with just one individual? Minister of ETI Nakagawa has resolved to establish an investigative committee made up of outside lawyers and other experts; what he must go on to do is to make sure the facts of ministry doings are brought to light and then cut out the rot.

...

Do the problems really stop with METI? Or do the same problems exist in other Kasumigaseki ministries and government bodies? The issue cannot be settled by targeting the one person at one ministry involved in this particular instance of malfeasance; it is necessary to make the flow of money through the entire government thoroughly transparent, including that involved in relationships among federal ministries and semi-governmental corporations.

I used "cut out the rot" because that's the way we'd usually put it in English. For anyone who's interested, though, the more evocative Japanese metaphor in the original is 膿を出し切る (umi wo dashikiru: "drain all the pus"). Whatever we're calling the infection, obviously, there's a reason the questions at the beginning of that last paragraph are loaded, and everyone in Japan knows it. That doesn't mean the government's moves toward transparency aren't working--the reason we're discussing these cases is that they've been exposed, after all--but they are working slowly.

Machiruda, who does a better job of paying close attention to the China-Japan competition for natural resources than I do, links to a Financial Times series on China's energy ambitions. Good reading, even if the formatting is clunky to negotiate. An article that's not specifically related to fossil fuel procurement is on page 7: "Chinese learn to talk contracts, not contacts." As you probably figured from that headline, it's about how Chinese businessmen are adapting to the Western model of contractual obligation rather than cronyism.

On a different note, Machiruda also went to Nikko earlier this month and posts a photograph of one of the shrine entrances. It's very elaborate, and reminds me of something I've always thought was a shame. When you mention "Japanese architecture" or "Japanese furnishings," Westerners tend to picture, you know, like, Ikea with rice paper. Of course, that's not inaccurate, especially nowadays, with the mass-produced buildings and furniture that are artifacts of Japan's economic efflorescence after the war. Unstained wood, rice paper, and bamboo; low-lying pieces of furniture that seem to hover horizontally over the floor; austere lack of detailing--those are all elements that are genuinely traditional.

But Japan has its rococo strain, too--a bequest of the Momoyama Era. People are often surprised at that, because it's not the "Japanese aesthetic" that influences Western designers. You also don't see much complicated design or bright color in contemporary Japanese houses, with the exception of red lacquer. Rooms are small here, and colorful patterns can get claustrophobic. The tendency to shove brightly-colored cartoon animals, giant lit-up signs, and ornately fugly tile patterns (the station in my beloved Shibuya has at its south exit one of the worst offenders I've ever seen, but it has plenty of competition) in our faces outdoors seems to be the modern outlet for the Japanese instinct for lavishness. The combination of that garish overlighting and obnoxious vanity-project architecture outdoors means that it can make the nondescript blandness of the average Tokyo interior something of a relief.

But only something of. We need a new rug in the living room, and I told Atsushi that I was thinking of something in maybe navy blue or wine red. I figured this would go over well: he's very conservative about his colors. (I also figured the red might be useful for when our dinner guests have had a few.) But his reply was, "Hmm. Won't that make the room too dark?" At this point, I laughed. It wasn't nice, but I couldn't help it. I was like, "Dearest, we have beige vinyl walls, beige curtains, blond wood flooring, and white woodwork. Put a mesh bag of dodge balls in the corner and this could be a nursery school gymnasium. There is no way we could make this place too dark unless we unscrewed all the light bulbs."

Wow. Was I making a point somewhere? China's mad for fossil fuels, it's a shame Japanese rococo isn't better known, and I'm going to have to wear Atsushi down to get a rug that isn't beige into the house. Yeah. Hope everyone's having a good weekend.

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, whom fellow Reagan fans will remember, weighed in on the Yasukuni Shrine issue this morning:

Speaking on a Fuji Television program on the morning of 26 June, former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone emphatically voiced his opposition to the construction of a secular facility to commemorate Japan's war dead in place of the Yasukuni Shrine: "I've been against it all along. We absolutely need to avoid letting the Yasukuni Shrine, where those who died for our country are honored, be abandoned."

Of Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi's visits to the shrine, he indicated that "[At this point] they're not in the best interest of the nation. If the Class A war criminals cannot be enshrined separately, I think he should leave off visiting." On the topic of the Tokyo Tribunals, he stated, "I don't concede [that they were just]. Not in the least do I believe that those convicted of Class A war crimes were criminals."

Well, that's unequivocal. Of course, context would help. (I wasn't watching the show.) The belief that many were imprisoned or executed simply for losing the war is understandable in some cases. However, "some cases" does not include those involved in orchestrating a war that included the Rape of Nanking and the comfort women system, which is what we're talking about when we use the bland designation "Class A war crimes." And considering what used to happen to the vanquished in less enlightened times, the punishments meted out to the Germans and Japanese were relatively mild.

It's been a soundbite kind of day here in Japan. From Shinzo Abe, the LDP's acting General Secretary:

Of China-Japan relations, Abe, addressing a press conference, stated, "It is necessary for Japan to engage in a good deal of humble consideration, but we must also be able to count on China to make efforts [to change] structural problems of its own, such as it's anti-Japanese educational system." About Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi's pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine, he said, "His behavior is perfectly proper for a leader of the nation."

I'm not sure, but I think there's a pun there: 一国 refers to "ultra-nationalists" as well as "the whole country," doesn't it?

Speaking of Koizumi and the Yasukuni Shrine, as one so often does these days, I've seen nothing to indicate that Katsuya Okada did, in fact, put the screws in on that topic today. And why would he? There were more important criticisms to level, such as, "Dude, you were so totally schnockered at the meeting the other day--DON'T. EVEN."

At a meeting of the lower house Audits Committee [Literally this would be the "Book Settling Operations and Audits Committee," and if anyone has any idea how the hell we're supposed to translate that one, I'd love to hear.--SRK] on 22 June, the Prime Minister and DPJ leader Katsuya Okada sparred energetically.

In his first response [to questioning], Koizumi disputed [the claims about him]: "I hadn't drunk so much as a drop. Is it proper to go around making these ridiculous accusations without any confirmation?" Okada retorted, "We tried to get a confirmation through the Operations Committee, but the LDP issued no response [to our inquiries]." The Prime Minister refused to concede: "So with no confirmation, you went ahead and submitted a motion to have me censured?"

Just another day running the government of the most mature democracy in the world's most populous region.

The Yasukuni Shrine has not been neglected, though:

Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi spoke to reporters about Health, Labour, and Welfare official Masahiro Morioka's declaration that he had doubts that the Tokyo tribunals [after WWII] had been just. Indicating that he perceived Morioka's statements as inappropriate, he said, "I'd like to you bear in mind that this was the viewpoint of a single official." Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda also emphasized at a press conference that "while (we can debate over) the widely-harbored questions about whether it is appropriate for the victors to pass judgment on the vanquished, the fact remains that the government accepted the judgments handed down, and so we have no standing to register dissent."

Morioka, speaking at a meeting the same day, stated, "Japan implemented its war operations in compliance with international laws governing wartime conduct; that aspect should not have been subject to [further trial and] judgment. It is a mistake to say that the victors only were upright and that the losers were [entirely] in the wrong."

Banal observation: If government officials didn't have the word appropriate at their disposal, they'd never be able to open their mouths lest some actual value judgment slip out.

By the way, the word I've translated as "victor" here is one I very much like, as you might imagine: 戦勝者 (senshousha: "war/battle" + "win" + "person").

Katsuya Okada, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, has opined that Prime Minister Koizumi has a decision to make:

Speaking about pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine that were a focal point of the recent meeting between top Japanese and ROK officials, Katsuya Okada told a press conference on 21 June, "Koizumi has failed to convince [people of the rectitude of his position], and therefore his only options are to cease making pilgrimages of his own volition or to resign as Prime Minister." Okada will pursue this line of argument with the Prime Minister on 22 June at a meeting of the Audits Committee of the House of Representatives.

Of course, being the opposition leader, Okada has more or less a duty to throw darts at Koizumi. Much as I like Koizumi, though--especially as a forceful and articulate US ally in the WOT--he really has botched this particular issue and good.

In its campaign for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, Japan has been reduced to trumpeting that it's gotten the support of...Tunisia.

There was an interesting article in the Asahi about Japan's screw-ups on the issue (the piece is from a few weeks ago--this is one of those posts I started and then somehow never finished):

Japan made two serious miscalculations that have all but sunk its strategy to win a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Tokyo overestimated support from the United States by failing to recognize that U.S. interests come first in Washington, not the desires of a key ally. [Duh.--SRK]

The second mistake was Tokyo's underestimation of anger against Japan in China, which has used its growing influence in the world to thwart Tokyo's long-cherished dream to join the exclusive club at the United Nations.

Foreign Minister Machimura's tour through Brunei, Vietnam, and Cambodia to drum up support didn't work so hot--relations with China are important to everyone in the region. Its position right about now is pretty clear, and that makes it hard for its southern neighbors to cross it.

Part of the problem is, though that the G-4 strategy (that is, banding together with Germany, India, and Brazil to push for a set of seats) carried risks that are inherent, predating the recent flare-up of troubles with China. This English Yomiuri article explains one main disadvantage:

Another government source, however, was pessimistic about maintaining the G-4 position.

"As the United States doesn't want to see the European Union getting more say on the international stage, Germany's permanent membership, at least, was out of the question for Washington. Berlin must have been shocked by the U.S. announcement, and the G-4 may end up in disarray," the source said.

Grouping resources allowed the candidate countries more angles from which to massage support out of less-strategic governments, but it also meant that they all stood or fell on each other's alliances and enmities. Need it be pointed out that all these countries have their enemies? We in Japan have been paying the most attention to China, for obvious reasons. But Pakistan has made its feelings known, too.

That the Bush administration seriously supports Japan but does not want a permanent seat for Germany along with it is believable enough. (Reuters has a summary of the Thursday announcements here, BTW.) Let's not forget that the issues surrounding Article 9 of the constitution--which obviously affects whether Japan can participate in collective military defense--have not been resolved. Prime Minister Koizumi has promised to push on with the G-4 plan, but it seems inevitable that the group will, some time after its coming Brussels confab, be announcing its own face-saving postponement to deal with other matters.

The Japanese tolerance for drunkenness is something you never quite get used to. I mean, I've got English, German, and Polish genes in me, so I know how to tie one on--believe me. What I'm talking about is public, undisguised drunkenness, which is a big no-no in the States (at least, everywhere I've been).

That Tokyo stress gets to everyone, though, including LDP members of the Diet:

The session [of the House of Representatives on Friday] began its recess at 5 p.m. and reopened just before 9 p.m. Tomoko Abe (Social Democratic Party), who had stood up to argue against voting [to extend the Diet session], looked out over the red faces of several members and spoke. "We should all get out of here right now," she said, raising her voice. "If this is going to be the 'Pickled Diet,' there's no need to extend the session."

When Osamu Yoshida (DPJ) got in Ken'ya Akiba's (LDP) face, Akiba left the chamber immediately after casting his vote, despite the fact that the doors were officially sealed for the session. Subsequently, there was commotion in the chamber.

There's often commotion in the chamber. (That's a fact that seems to floor a lot of Westerners schooled to think of Japan as a place where the citizens do everything in neat rows.)

DPJ leader Katsuya Okada censured the Prime Minister:

"Prime Minister Koizumi and former Prime Minister Yoshio Mori were both casting votes red-faced. You'd think they'd understand how to comport themselves during these sorts of proceedings."

Fingers are being pointed in multiple directions: the DPJ has submitted a motion to the Speaker of the House that Akiba and Mori be disciplined. The LDP is seeking disciplinary action against Yoshida.

I'm a big believer in strict formal behavior on ceremonial occasions, and obviously public service at the level of Diet membership deserves to be performed very respectfully. On the other hand, it doesn't take much alcohol for a lot of East Asians to turn bright red. I don't know that I'd be affronted if a bunch of MP's had one or two servings of liquor over a four-hour period. It's odd that the opposition party was apparently able to abstain, though.

Added after lunch: Atsushi--safely delivered to me by JAL, thankfully--says that there was at least one DPJ representative who was also looking extra-ruddy at this particular Diet session, so it wasn't just the LDP.

Added before dinner: Thanks to Dean for linking this. His angle is interesting. I've now lived in Japan for a quarter of my life, so I'm used to undisguised curiosity about ethnic characteristics. It can get annoying. Japanese people don't always apply to foreigners the respect for personal space they use among each other, and I get heartily sick of having my arm hair yanked as if I were a science exhibit. (Being told, "Wow! That's so sexy!" while it's happening doesn't help. Hair is attached, people.) And some of the reasoning is a bit sketchy. I've heard all of these multiple times over the years: "Are you sure all your ancestors are northern European? You're so dark!" (I have no idea where this one comes from. I have green eyes and the skin tone of a dead mackeral's underbelly; only my hair is brown.) "You can't be American! Americans are fat!" (Not if they have to pay Tokyo food prices for eight years.) "You can't be American! You're so quiet!" (If it makes any difference, my superpower arrogance more than compensates for my lack of volubility.)

It can also get ugly. One frequently hears Koreans blithely characterized as congenitally lazy and stupid, for example. My standard reply is to wonder aloud where all those impressive math/science scores in the ROK and among Korean immigrants in the US come from.

On the whole, though, the sheer frank acknowledgement that there are physical differences in the way people have evolved in various parts of the globe can be refreshing. When the tone is good-natured rather than petty, hearing one Japanese person tell another that he has "a Thai nose" or "Indian eyebrows" is kind of sweet.

Okay, must we always do this right before Atsushi is scheduled to fly home?

An All Nippon Airways (ANA) plane made an emergency landing at Osaka Airport Friday morning after its cockpit filled with smoke, airline officials said.

At around 10:55 a.m., the captain of ANA DHC8-400 turbo-prop plane radioed to air traffic controllers that its cockpit had filled with smoke, ANA officials said.

The aircraft returned and made an emergency landing at the airport at 11:09 a.m. None of the 64 passengers or crewmembers was injured.

This has been a real banner week for airline mishaps/publicizing of mishaps.

Brick wall, meet head:

Questions still remain even after 48 hours of debate over postal privatization bills among members of the House of Representatives' special committee, which is discussing how the three postal services will change following privatization.

...

[Social Democrat Mitsuko] Tomon said she was concerned the amount of depopulated areas could change as a result of continuing town, city and village mergers, adding that the mergers could make it difficult for the government to maintain the current number of postal employees. [No! Not fewer government employees!--SRK]

She then asked the government to release the number of post offices at the end of fiscal 2005 after consolidation under the former Special Mergers Law was complete.

In response to her question, Cabinet Councilor Makoto Hosomi from the government's postal privatization preparation office reassured Tomon that the number would not change because the areas would continue to be regarded as depopulated even after increasing in size and finances through mergers.

The government has said the number of post offices in urban areas will drop after the privatization.

...

Heizo Takenaka, state minister in charge of economic, fiscal and postal reform policy, has not mentioned any details about efforts to streamline the services, but has said such actions would depend on the judgment of post office network management, and the ministry would direct and supervise if necessary.

Been a great day for Japanese aeronautics, yeah? First, we had this morning's incident in which a JAL flight landed at Haneda so bumpy-like that two of the plane's tires were shredded:

The Ministry of Land, Transportation, and Infrastructure designated this a "serious incident" in which there had been risk of a major accident. Four investigators were dispatched by the Air and Rail Accident Research Committee.

According to JAL, the captain (39) and copilot (37) have stated that at the time of the accident, "The rear wheels showed absolutely no aberrations up until landing, but at the instant the front wheels touched down, there were several abnormal jolts that made a bang." At the time, the copilot was steering the plane.

Cheeringly, JAL's managing director affirmed that future passenger safety is not in jeopardy with a comment that can be best summarized as, "Huh?"

On the afternoon of 15 May, JAL International's managing director, Takao Imai, addressed a press conference held at the Ministry of Land, Transportation, and Infrastructure. "We have no idea what the origin of the problem was. We've heard of no precedent for this kind of thing, including at other airlines," he said with a bewildered expression.

Not to be outdone, ANA had to suspend a pilot and copilot after an incident last week in which a plane flew in the wrong air lane for over a half-hour:

Flight 664 bound for Tokyo took off from Nagasaki Airport just past 11 a.m. on June 5.About 10 minutes after take-off, while ascending past 3,000 meters, the captain of the Boeing 767 noticed that his computer screen showed a higher altitude than the one on the co-pilot's screen.

The captain reconnected his altimeter to what he mistakenly believed was a third computer in the cockpit. In fact, he had reconnected it to the co-pilot's computer-the one that had malfunctioned and displayed the wrong altitude.

But the captain believed that nothing was wrong because the two figures for altitude matched.

...

"The biggest factor in this case was the captain's error on the number of computers," ANA's chief of operation control division told reporters at the transport ministry Tuesday.

"This was a critical matter of impermissible nature. Mistaken altitude figures could nullify the air traffic controlling system that administers the safety of other airplanes."

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on Tuesday gave a stern warning to ANA.

Why should JAL get all the stern warnings?

All in all, the perfect time to announce that Japan and France are planning to cooperate in the development of a new SST to replace the defunct Concorde. (Yes, I know the new jet will be created by aerospace engineers and not pilots or air traffic controllers. The coincidence is still funny.)

The student who threw a home-made bomb into a classroom full of students on Friday may, the principal admits, have been suffering from bullying. Of a kind:

On 13 June, Principal Yukio Hironaka of Hikari Prefectural High School, in the city of Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture, held a press conference to discuss the incident last Friday in which a bottle bomb exploded after being thrown into a classroom in use, injuring 58 students. Hironaka said, "It is possible that there was bullying, in a broad sense of the term, behind the incident," acknowledgin the possibility that bullying was the motive for the student (18) who was arrested for throwing the bomb.

The information is still sketchy, but the Nikkei article goes on to mention something that's being reported elsewhere: this wasn't the kind of ijime in which everyone turned on a single student and made him a target. When other students would address him, he would walk away. The Mainichi also says that he was into survival games:

After graduating from the school, however, all the friends he played survival games with entered other schools and he could not make friends with his new classmates at Hikari High School, leading him to become increasingly isolated.

Whenever classes were reorganized, his new classmates tried to make friends with him, but he ignored them each time. A few months later, his classmates gave up trying to speak to him, according to the sources.

There have been cases in which bullying appears to have driven otherwise-healthy children insane. Bullying is hard to take anywhere, but it's an especially potent force in a society that so stresses group identity and fitting in. The pattern here, to the extent that it's emerging, is that the student in question rebuffed people who were actually trying to be friendly. There was obviously something going on there, though we probably won't know what for a while. Incidentally, the bomb was made in a fashion similar to those favored by Palestinian suicide bombers: it contained lots of hard little objects designed to maximize injuries.

Darn. NHK just had a lengthy report today on a big-time victim of the newest variety of the "Pay up!" scam, and I was all excited to write about it--but, of course, the Mainichi English edition, which can be relied upon to report the latest scumbag-related news the minute it hits the airwaves, got there first:

Four people who apparently made 100 million yen carrying out a scam centering on people's fears of a relative being arrested for groping female train commuters were arrested in Tokyo, police said on Monday.

...

Police said the specific case for which Mitsuyama and his co-conspirators were arrested involved a call made in March to a 56-year-old Kawasaki woman.

Mitsuyama claimed to be a lawyer acting on behalf of the woman's husband and said her husband used his mobile phone to take racy pictures, police said, adding that Mitsuyama had threatened to contact the media if the woman did not obey his demands for money.

Eventually, the suspects forced the woman to transfer 3.5 million yen into an account they had designated, police said.

Claiming to be seeking hush money to cover-up a relative's arrest for groping female train commuters has become a popular type of fraud in recent weeks, police said.

Since the recent introduction of women's only trains in Tokyo and a crackdown on train perverts last month to coincide with the change, the number of victims falling for the scam has increased, with about 80 reported cases in Tokyo during May alone.

The ease with which women are prepared to believe their husbands were groping random women on trains is its own commentary. However, those who collect Japanese compounds will love this new one, which is the way NHK labeled the swindle (I'd just seen it explained piecemeal in sentences before): 痴漢示談金振り込め詐欺 (chikan-jidankin-furikome-sagi: "the [out-of-court] settlement-for-groping 'Pay up!' scam"). Were it not for that native Japanese verb in the middle, it would be a marvel of 漢語 dementia.

In other exciting news, Atsushi's parents received a "Pay up!" call last week, but the story they were given was nothing exciting--the story was just a dumb old car accident, if I recall correctly. They're savvy people and didn't pay, fortunately. I did get a kick out of imagining some con artist's possibly trying to impersonate Atsushi by calling his parents and greeting them with "オレ、オレ!" (ore-ore: "It's me, it's me!"), which was the original version of the scam. Having heard his end of four years of phone calls to the parents, I can attest that he always announces himself with a warm but respectful "Hello, this is Atsu."

Interesting mini-article on the Nikkei:

Honda, Matsushita Electric, and about 120 other companies will introduce a system that allows the use of cellular phones to cast votes at general shareholder meetings. Many corporations are giving more consideration to individual shareholders and are urging the exercise of individual voting rights by increasing the convenience [of the system]. The number of corporations that allow Internet-based voting is also expected to increase to around 300. The IT-ization of the operations side of shareholder meetings has been advancing, with the ease with which shareholders can see their wishes reflected in company policy increasing accordingly.

This represents a big shift. Their influence is not what it once was, but the 総会屋 (soukaiya: "general" + "meeting" + "shopkeeper") are still around, and I assume that allowing people to vote remotely--surely that's the purpose of Internet voting?--is to no small degree a move to counter them.

I wasn't going to write my own explanation of what the soukaiya do, but there doesn't seem to be a good, concise definition that I can link to as a primary source. This Mainichi article from a few years ago gives a representative sample of their activities. The soukaiya basically buy small numbers of shares in a company, dig up some of its management's nastier doings (every company has nasty doings ready for digging, of course) and threaten to disrupt the general shareholders' meeting if not given hush money. Some of them are tied to vast networks of gangsters, but many are independent. Those not ambitious enough to poke around for scandalous material have been known to simply show up and start blurting out inanities in the hopes that someone will give them a few hundred bucks to shut the hell up. Beats working at 7-Eleven, apparently.

Of course, soukaiya are the interesting problem. The more mundane but far-reaching problem has been that many Japanese companies engage in mutual shareholding. The big banks were required to sell off their mutually-held shares, and though many other companies within conglomerates have retained them among themselves, the result has been an overall increase in the number of small shareholders. Whether financial transparency has really increased enough for them to have any idea what they're voting about is debatable, but the fact that air is being let in is encouraging.

Sleeping too soundly? Get a load of the participial modifier that begins this Asahi article:

Fearing a flare-up in North Korea at any time, the Defense Agency has abandoned plans for the domestic production of a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and will purchase U.S.-made planes instead, sources said.

They said the decision was made because strengthened surveillance of airspace around Japan has become a priority, given the uncertain situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Analysts said it likely would have taken a decade for Japan to deploy a domestically produced unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The Pentagon operates several UAV versions, so deploying one that fits Defense Agency needs should be no problem, the sources said.

The aircraft would be used not only for patrol and reconnaissance over Japanese airspace, but could also be used for intelligence gathering from North Korea-even while flying in Japan's Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ), which establishes the boundaries for territorial airspace.

...

A Defense Agency study team visited the United States in April for a first-hand look at what UAVs actually do. Members focused on high-altitude aircraft like the Global Hawk and Predator as well as the low-altitude Fire Scout and Eagle Eye.

I don't know that the DPRK is going to erupt at Japan any time soon--though the SDF should be able to predict better than I can. I do know (this is something I've remarked on before) that the feeling of living in Japan is completely different from that of living in the States. If you're good at spatial relations, you know that map in your head that appears whenever you read the name of a country or think about the location of a city? When you're in America, of course, the only close-by major countries are Mexico and Canada. Our closest enemy is Cuba, and it hasn't exactly been making many belligerent noises lately.

In Japan, you're within spitting distance of the DPRK, one of the craziest regimes on the planet, which tests missiles by flying them over your head and has been known to sneak onto your shores and snatch your citizens. Moving westward, you also have China, the most populous country in the world, a rising economic competitor whose citizens alternate between gratefully taking jobs and consuming goods created by your enterprises, on the one hand, and demonstrating against you, on the other. It treats nearby democracy Taiwan as a renegade province. Even South Korea, the other democracy in the region, has bitter memories of being occupied by you within the last century and is not always amicable.

It's little wonder that everyday citizens don't think too hard about world politics; you could drive yourself insane. I'm glad the SDF, whose job it is to deal with grim realities, is accelerating its plans, even if it means buying planes from foreigners.

Japanese convenience stores, especially 7-Eleven, have shaped food retailing here in ways that have drawn a lot of attention. The egg-salad sandwiches on spongy white bread, the triangular o-nigiri, and the salads consisting largely of shredded iceberg lettuce and canned corn are still there, but they've been joined by snazzier and tastier offerings (some developed in cooperation with restaurant chefs) that are very popular among people who have to eat lunch at their desks or just hate to cook. The industry has become very competitive.

Of course, the potential downside is the eternal problem of inventory. The Mainichi appears to be doing a series on wastefulness in Japan, spurred by the declaration by Nobel Peace Prize Wangari Maathai winner a few months ago that she just loves Japanese conservation-mindedness, and the first installment (Japanese, English) is about how much prepared food is thrown away at various convenience stores:

In Japan, about 20 million tons of food waste is thrown out each year. That's about 150 kilograms per person. As Japan looks to eliminate wastefulness, adopting the spirit of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, this unused food is raising questions over overproduction, especially in Japan's convenience store business.

...

"We do this because we're taking into consideration the period in which the products will actually be consumed after they are taken home," explains an official from the Kanto convenience store. As a rule the store is not permitted to discount products approaching their expiry date in the same way as supermarkets do.

On the day the store was visited, it discarded 75 items, with a combined price of about 16,000 yen. Last year, a total of 4.5 million yen worth of prepared food products were thrown out — about 8 percent of sales of prepared food.

That does sound like a lot, though I suspect that among Japan's notoriously inefficient domestic industries it may not be egregious. You also have to wonder about a few things. For one, how does it stack up against the noodle shops and corporate dormitory cafeterias where many people who now eat convenience store meals would otherwise have eaten? Or against the amount of food such people who don't like to cook throw away after one of their valiant but futile attempts at shopping?

I was also wondering about compliance with recycling regulations, oddly unmentioned in the Mainichi article. I'm not very familiar with Japan for Sustainability, but it also quotes the 20 million tons figure and gives some others that are, presumably, based on the same data:

Of the household and general commercial waste, about 20 million tons consist of food waste. This is six times the weight of used-newspaper waste and 4 times that of discarded automobiles.

Out of 20 million tons of food waste, 18% is produced at the "processing and manufacturing" stage, about 30% is commercial waste from food distribution channels and restaurants, and the remaining 52% is from households. This means that, every year, Japanese households produce about 10 million tons of food waste, equivalent to annual rice consumption in Japan.

The article also has a few interesting examples of businesses that are recycling their food waste. (I'm not really sure I needed to know that the New Otani Hotel has a compost pile underneath it, but, hey.)

The US-Japan cooperative missile defense program is moving forward:

Speaking to reporters at a hotel in Singapore, Ono said the sea-based missile defense project would move from research to development, with the agency planning to request several billions of yen in fiscal 2006 for the first year's development.

Production will begin following a five-year development phase that ends in fiscal 2011, he said.

Japan and the United States are jointly developing a large sea-based interceptor missile with a 53-centimeter diameter with a longer range that enables it to cover a wide area. The missile can distinguish a targeted missile from a decoy.

The most interesting reason this is a good thing for Japan to be considering is buried near the end of the article:

"Japan doesn't consider China a threat, but Beijing's defense spending is under wraps. A Chinese submarine intruded into Japanese waters and its marine survey and gas field development are provocative," Ono said.

The conflict over exploration for fossil fuels (especially a particular natural gas field) has been growing. Demand is growing in China's expanding economy, and it's always been high in Japan's:

Although the current standoff has not changed, it is very regrettable that the PRC has continued its project of developing the Shungyo Gas Fields near the center line [between China and Japan]. The Chinese side says that it expects to open the field for production as early as October. It will be a major problem if the rough sailing for negotiations and long-term developments turn out to be advantageous only for the PRC side. The PRC should first temporarily cease development of the Shungyo Gas Fields.

From some on the PRC side, the following argument has recently emerged: there is a fault line between the gas fields and the center line through maritime territory on the Japanese side, so because it is partitioned by geological structure, Japanese natural resources will not be affected even if [China] begins production of gas and petroleum from Shungyo. But if that is the case, we would like to see it proved clearly with detailed data. After all, what both countries need to do is get an objective confirmation of what the true state of the available natural resources is. The sharing of accurate information will make cool-headed dialogue possible.

The Japanese government has already deemed the move by the Chinese to develop the gas fields a "possible infringement on our rights." It's not surprising everyone is so worked up: estimates are that there are 7 trillion cubic feet of gas under there, and (as the Nikkei editorial above implies) it is not certain that the fault line actually partitions the reservoirs into distinct pockets. The BBC has a simple surface map that gives at least a basic idea where we're talking about.

No one is predicting at this point that China and Japan are in danger of full-scale war over natural resources. Nevertheless, it's important to remember, as accusations about history books and shrine visits fly around, that there are more substantive things under dispute.

The US-Japan cooperative missile defense program is moving forward:

Speaking to reporters at a hotel in Singapore, Ono said the sea-based missile defense project would move from research to development, with the agency planning to request several billions of yen in fiscal 2006 for the first year's development.

Production will begin following a five-year development phase that ends in fiscal 2011, he said.

Japan and the United States are jointly developing a large sea-based interceptor missile with a 53-centimeter diameter with a longer range that enables it to cover a wide area. The missile can distinguish a targeted missile from a decoy.

The most interesting reason this is a good thing for Japan to be considering is buried near the end of the article:

"Japan doesn't consider China a threat, but Beijing's defense spending is under wraps. A Chinese submarine intruded into Japanese waters and its marine survey and gas field development are provocative," Ono said.

The conflict over exploration for fossil fuels (especially a particular natural gas field) has been growing. Demand is growing in China's expanding economy, and it's always been high in Japan's:

Although the current standoff has not changed, it is very regrettable that the PRC has continued its project of developing the Shungyo Gas Fields near the center line [between China and Japan]. The Chinese side says that it expects to open the field for production as early as October. It will be a major problem if the rough sailing for negotiations and long-term developments turn out to be advantageous only for the PRC side. The PRC should first temporarily cease development of the Shungyo Gas Fields.

From some on the PRC side, the following argument has recently emerged: there is a fault line between the gas fields and the center line through maritime territory on the Japanese side, so because it is partitioned by geological structure, Japanese natural resources will not be affected even if [China] begins production of gas and petroleum from Shungyo. But if that is the case, we would like to see it proved clearly with detailed data. After all, what both countries need to do is get an objective confirmation of what the true state of the available natural resources is. The sharing of accurate information will make cool-headed dialogue possible.

The Japanese government has already deemed the move by the Chinese to develop the gas fields a "possible infringement on our rights." It's not surprising everyone is so worked up: estimates are that there are 7 trillion cubic feet of gas under there, and (as the Nikkei editorial above implies) it is not certain that the fault line actually partitions the reservoirs into distinct pockets. The BBC has a simple surface map that gives at least a basic idea where we're talking about.

No one is predicting at this point that China and Japan are in danger of full-scale war over natural resources. Nevertheless, it's important to remember, as accusations about history books and shrine visits fly around, that there are more substantive things under dispute.

Well, knock me over with a feather:

A rapid spread of AIDS over the past decade has reached a level that has confounded and alarmed the health establishment in Japan, a country that has long felt protected by a first-rate health system and widespread condom use.

Infections which had stayed at infinitesimal levels [as in, official levels--SRK] are surging at rates similar to developing countries, and some experts say the real number of Japanese with HIV or AIDS is two to four times the official toll.

The rest of the experts probably peg it at five times. This is one of those Japan stories that get recycled every few years (I commented on a few others last year when Susanna asked about a specific one). That isn't to say that such articles aren't addressing real problems; it's the air of discovery that's irritating. Likewise the tendency toward exaggeration:

Among women, Sato is one of the careful ones. The 23-year-old Tokyoite has unprotected sex with multiple partners, but at least she occasionally gets herself tested for HIV.

That first sentence is idiotic. Ms. Sato may be "one of the careful ones" among the women who live in Tokyo (or Osaka), go clubbing frequently, and hook up with strange men all the time. But Tokyo and Osaka don't represent Japan any more than New York and LA represent America, even if they do comprise a higher proportion of the population.

Still, the government is not worrying over nothing. I will leave straight people and their dissolute ways to those who know them more intimately. But I heard plenty of real lulus as a gay guy newly arrived from New York in the mid-90's. Chief among them was the one that said you can't get HIV from Japanese people (unless they've lived abroad, in which case they're practically foreigners, anyway). For at least two or three years, the messages with the free condoms in the bar toilets have emphasized that the incidence of reported infection in Tokyo has been on the rise and that Japanese-only saunas are not to be considered extra-safe. I'm not sure how easy it's going to be to bring down infection rates in a country in which "if nobody talks about it, it's not happening" is a major social principle and tolerance for male playing around is frequently taken to an extreme.

Nichi Nichi has a good roundup of the depressing results of the Japanese government's new "no taste" "no tie" policy. Among the pictures is one of Prime Minister Koizumi in an Okinawan shirt, looking as if he were practicing his Bea Arthur drag act.

Naturally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs isn't pressing the policy too much; an acquaintance of mine who was brought up in Switzerland was recently taken to task by his supervisor there for wearing a striped shirt and wine-colored tie rather than the funeral-director look (white shirt, tie in color range from grey to navy with non-assertive pattern) that's an unofficial requirement.

Otherwise, there's a lot of huffing and puffing going on to make un-suit-edness "cool." Yuriko Koike, the Minister of the Environment, has called upon designers to come up with "cool biz" looks. There will be a fashion show of them at the Aichi World Expo.

As Joe says, given the torturing heat and humidity of summer here, and the fact that a lot of people travel around in packed trains rather than cars, it makes sense not to require them to dress to the point of near-suffocation. Still, it's unfortunate, if not unexpected, that everyone seems to be gravitating toward the dress-shirt-without-a-tie look. (I mean, everyone besides the high-ranking officials who are dressing distinctively just to draw attention to the policy.) It makes them all look as if they'd neglected to finish putting their clothes on in the morning. Or taken off their jackets and ties in preparation for a few rounds of beer and karaoke. Outfits that didn't look as if something were missing--linen or scrupulously pressed chambray with trousers would be the obvious choices--would look more on-duty.

Sometimes, it feels as if I'd never left America:

The Democratic Party of Japan's return to Diet sessions Wednesday reflected its acknowledgement of the limit on what can be gained from adopting the outmoded parliamentary tactic of boycotting debates.

During the current Diet session, the DPJ refused to attend debates for several days over a dispute concerning the absence of Heizo Takenaka, the minister responsible for postal privatization, from a session of the House of Representatives' Internal Affairs and Communications Committee.

The 10-day boycott did not result in any remarkable achievements. Instead it gave the impression that the largest opposition party was indecisive on how to confront the ruling coalition.

Which country is this? Oh, yeah: the one where the leader of the Democratic Party is actually kind of cute, which is a convenient distinguishing factor.

Regarding larger developments in the Japan Post privatization free-for-all...let's see. A former Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Seiko Noda, had some questions for Prime Minister Koizumi in committee this morning:

"Mr. Prime Minister, if you are so certain that Japan Post is irredeemable as a public corporation, why did you pass its public incorporation bill during your administration?" Ms. Noda asked, attacking the Prime Minister's position.

Koizumi stated, "Both ruling and opposition parties overwhelmingly opposed privatization, so as a politician it was my job to find a way to push through that." He indicated that setting up the Japan Post Public Corporation had not been his real intention all along.

Ms. Noda went on to indicate that the government had not explained thoroughly the disadvantages of privatization and ended her series of questions by saying, "One can by no means clearly see what ideals would be accomplished by the results of privatizing the [existing] public corporation. In the midst of that [state of affairs], there's extraordinary uncertainty and room for hesitation involved in pushing forward with this [plan]."

Also heard:

Eiji Ozawa (LDP) critized the bills related to the privatization proposal as unrealistic and said, "The Prime Minister is [behaving like] Don Quixote." The Prime Minister stated, "Well, actually, I like Don Quixote. I'd like the privatization of Japan Post to make people say [later], 'That Koizumi knew what he was doing, after all.'"

(I took quite a bit of liberty with that last part. 先見の明があったな actually means something more literally like, "had the clarity of foresight, huh!" I couldn't find a better way to de-clunk-ify it.) Ozawa is presumably talking about the literary character and not the arson-prone discount retailer. Before I moved into Atsushi's apartment, I lived in the Dogenzaka section of Shibuya--right across the street, essentially, from the 東急本店. Whenever I so much as went out for a run, I'd be assailed by that insufferable "Don, Don, Don...Don Quiiiii...Don, Qui...Hoh, Teh" theme song. I thought I'd lose my mind.

What was the topic? Ah, yes: Japan Post, as it so often is. Anyway, things are moving along, kind of. No one expected the opposition to melt away, or to fail to play the who-knows-what-will-happen-without-the-government-to-nanny-this? card. I'd kind of enjoy it if someone in the government just stood up and said, "Mr. Prime Minister, Japan Post has a great deal of money, and, to be frank, WE WANT THAT MONEY! WE WANT TO KEEP OUR MITTS ON EVERY YEN OF THAT MOOONNNNNNEEEEEEEY!" Hoping for that amount of forthrightness would be...well, quixotic, one might say.

What with all the attention the reform of Japan Post has gotten, the woes of Japan's Social Insurance program--which is even more screwed than its US counterpart--can sometimes go virtually unnoticed. The government's been thinking about it, though (Japanese, English). The recommendation involves those three little words we all love to hear: "new government entity."

As part of the Social Insurance Agency reform, a new government entity will be established to manage public pension programs, but the government will retain complete control over the system.

The plan was based on similar recommendations made in a final report by an advisory panel on the agency's reform to Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda and Liberal Democratic Party proposals.

The government has finally completed a reform plan, prompted by the revelation of a series of scandals involving the agency. But its plan may attract criticism as only creating a different facade rather than implementing an overhaul.

...

Unlike the heated discussions of the past, the LDP panel meeting held at the party's headquarters Tuesday proceeded quietly.

I'll bet! Of course, it's easy to argue airily that having the government in charge will keep things going as smoothly as possible, but when you look at the specifics, there's plenty to be doubtful about. Non-payment of premiums is already a pervasive problem. Last year right around this time, it was starting to sound as if no bureaucrat in the history of the Japanese government had ever made a single payment into the kitty. Speak of setting a good example, huh? In the meantime, the restructuring of the SIA is supposed to take place in 2008, so there's plenty of time for things to become even more Byzantine as more and more people with something to lose have their say. Should be fun.

Latest word on the expansion of permanent membership to the UN Security Council:

The contents of US policy on the reform of the United Nations Security Council, to be released this month, have been revealed. The major focal point is how to expand the number of permanent seats, and on that issue, the pillars of the US's position are (1) the criteria for selection [of new permanent member states] should give more weight to "degree of contribution" to the UN than to regional balance, (2) that new members should not be granted veto power, and (3) that the number of new members should be kept to a minimum.

Even in the Nikkei article, "degree of contribution" is in quotation marks; presumably, it was not elaborated on. Japan is the second-largest monetary contributor to the UN, but the PRC is a UNSC member that already has veto power.

If you're interested something that'll really shake up your vision of the world, by all means, don't bother clicking here. Japan's latest scandal to serve up a tasty stew of collusion, bid-rigging, and the revolving door between government and public or semi-public corporations involves bridge-building:

A former director of Japan Highway Public Corporation played a pivotal role in fixing contracts for JH bridges, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Friday.

...

He compiled the list [of contracts pre-allocated to various construction firms] following JH's customary announcement of the list of orders to be placed for the fiscal year. He would then have Takashi Tanaka, the deputy chief of the bridge division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., distribute his own list of predetermined contractor winners to the companies.

...

The arrests are related to a scandal involving bridge projects ordered by the Construction and Transport Ministry under which two cartels divvied up the public works projects amongst member companies.

...

The retired JH executive once was a central figure in Kazura-kai (vine society), an association of former JH officials who had landed cushy jobs at bridge building companies in a practice known as amakudari, or descent from heaven. Members of the group met regularly and handled sales at JH on behalf of their new employers.

The former JH director's list of predetermined contract allocations covered nearly 100 large projects each year. Sources have pointed out that it would have been difficult for him to do everything on his own, therefore, Kazura-kai members are suspected of involvement in allotting JH orders to specific bridge builders.

Obviously, as a supporter of free markets, I don't approve of any of this for one second. I do, however, feel a great deal of sympathy for young and talented Japanese people moving into public-sector jobs. The whole system has been designed so that they spend most of their careers making less money than their schoolmates who moved into private industry, with the express expectation that they'll be able to cash in on their connections through their post-retirement jobs. Not the sort of work for an idealist.

This might also be a good time to note that the 2001 reshuffling of the federal ministries does not seem to have occasioned the dawn of efficiency and transparency in federal doings that had been promised. Then, too, these things take time. If there's one thing bureaucrats know how to do, it's cling to power with the tenacity of barnacles. Scandals are always depressing, but they at least represent some gains for public accountability. In Japan's huge and boondoggle-prone construction sector, every little bit helps.