The White Peril 白禍

There have been some updates to ongoing stories here:

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The president of JR East has reportedly hinted that he will resign. It kind of seems a shame, because for once, we may be looking at a genuine freak accident:

The sources said the Construction and Transport Ministry's Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission believes a microburst may have caused the accident mainly because an anemometer placed near the accident site had recorded winds of only 72 kph at the time an express train on East Japan Railway Co.'s Uetsu Line derailed.

A microburst produces winds of 252 kph or greater in small areas with a radius of only several hundred meters to two kilometers.

According to investigations by the commission and other parties, a cold front was passing through the Shonaimachi area, generating thunderclouds at the time of the accident. Thunderclouds are thought to cause microbursts--a phenomenon in which cool air rushes to the surface in an intensely localized area, resulting in strong downdrafts.

Aviation weather experts have paid more attention to the sudden gusts, as they have led to fatal airplane crashes during takeoff or landing. But because a microburst is locally formed and does not last long, they prove difficult to predict.

There seems to be evidence that the bridge and artificial embankment were constructed in such a way as to force the air through in a sort of wind-tunnel effect; but at the same time, the driver was going well below the speed limit for that stretch of rail in those reported conditions. It's good to see JR East talk about installing new meters in the area, but if we're talking about something akin to wind shear in airline flights, perfect safety is going to be impossible to achieve.

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It's a bit late in the game, but two DPRK agents with major involvement in the 1970s abductions of Japanese citizens from beaches have been identified:

Two North Korean agents have been identified as the perpetrators responsible for abducting two couples who have since been repatriated to Japan, sources said Friday.

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said some people in the intelligence agency "fell into blindly motivated patriotism and heroism," when he admitted in September 2002 that North Korea was responsible for abducting Japanese.

However, police authorities suspect that some of the abductors held important positions that could influence the agency's decision-making, because Sin, who was arrested in South Korea in February 1985 and then transferred to Pyongyang in September 2000, has been treated as a hero at home.

According to Hitomi Soga, 46, who was repatriated along with the couples, Sin served as a tutor for her and her fellow abductee Megumi Yokota. Soga and Yokota were forcibly taken to North Korea in August 1978 and November 1977, respectively.

Hitomi Soga, of course, is the wife of US Army deserter Charles Jenkins.

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The man whose wife and two sons were killed by toxic hydrogen sulfide gas at an Akita Prefecture hot spring resort area has died. He never regained consciousness.

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Oh, and I don't think I mentioned this yet, did I? The government is freaking because the population of Japan has begun to decline earlier than had been projected:

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on Tuesday confirmed what could be the start of a prolonged crisis for Japan: The nation's population is already shrinking.

The ministry released provisional figures that show the population on Oct. 1 was about 19,000 fewer than the estimated 127.776 million of October 2004.

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Populations in 32 of the 47 prefectures fell since the last official count. Nine prefectures--Nara, Fukui, Nagano, Ishikawa, Yamanashi, Ibaraki, Miyagi, Gifu and Gunma--recorded gains between 1995 and 2000, but this time around, all nine prefectures saw population decreases. Akita Prefecture had the biggest drop, at 3.7 percent from the level five years ago.

The census results showed a trend toward population shifts to major metropolitan areas.

Tokyo had the biggest population gain, at 510,000, a 4.2-percent rise over the last census. Kanagawa Prefecture recorded a gain of 300,000, or 3.5 percent more, and Aichi Prefecture an increase of 210,000, or 3 percent more people.

Other prefectures boasting larger populations were Okinawa, with a 3.2-percent rise thanks mainly to a large number of births, and Shiga, with a 2.8-percent rise because of an increase in commuters to the Osaka and Kyoto areas.

The country gained 2.47 million households in the period, or 5.2 percent, to reach a total 49.53 million.

While there were more households in all 47 prefectures, the average number per household fell to 2.58, from 2.7 in the 2000 census.

The increase in metro area populations is actually rather interesting; given the much-publicized J-turn phenomenon of the 90s, it likely means not that people are moving into urban cores but that they're moving into bed towns that are part of contiguous areas of high population density.

From the Japan Defense Agency:

The Japan Defense Agency and the Self-Defense Forces are adding muscle to their defense preparations designed to respond to a hypothetical attack by the PRC's People's Liberation Army on, for example, Ishigaki Island or the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture. In January, the Ground Self-Defense Force will conduct its first joint remote island defense training with with United States Marine Corps. The Maritime Self-Defense Force will set its hand to developing Advanced Lightweight Torpedos in order to boost its response capabilities toward Chinese submarines.

The G-SDF will dispatch 125 personnel from the Western Army infantry regiment [link] (Sasebo City, Nagasaki Prefecture) to San Diego, CA, from 9 - 27 January. It will conduct reconnaissance training to facilitate landing and information gathering on a remote island that could conceivably be occupied. In addition to studying swim-based reconnaissance at the USMC reconnaissance school, the G-SDF will undergo ground training and acquire know-how for planning on-land assaults that incorporate complex conditions such as climate.

For its part, the SDF has (at least as of 2004, presumably the last year for which finalized records exist) increased the amount of assistance--supplies, equipment, transportation--it gives to the US military:

The number of cases in which the Self-Defense Forces provided supplies or support for the U.S. military more than tripled in fiscal 2004 from the previous year, the Defense Agency said.

The increase stems from a 2004 revision to the acquisition and cross-servicing agreement (ACSA), enabling the SDF to provide such assistance to the U.S. military even during routine training drills.

The agreement was originally intended only for U.N. peacekeeping operations or joint training drills.

But Tokyo and Washington have become increasingly interdependent in terms of military cooperation. In addition, enhancing Japan's role in logistics support for U.S. troops is part of an interim report on U.S. military realignment.

According to the Defense Agency, the SDF provided goods and services to the U.S. military in response to requests 212 times between April and December 2004.

For all of fiscal 2003, the figure was 67.

BTW, specifically regarding PRC-Japan relations, the latest conflict is over the suicide of a Japanese consul stationed in Shanghai. The Japanese government says Chinese officials pressed him to reveal information about Japan's policies regarding disputed islands. That incident was not, BTW, a factor in the results of a recent cabinet poll:

Fewer Japanese than ever feel well disposed toward China, with a Cabinet Office survey finding only about one-third of respondents had positive feelings about the country and a record-high 63.4 percent did not, according to the poll released Saturday.

The favorable response toward China fell 5.2 percentage points from the previous survey in 2004 to 32.4 percent, marking its lowest level since such questions were first asked in 1978.

The percentage of respondents who did not have positive feelings about China was up 5.2 percentage points from the 2004 survey, surpassing the 60 percent line for the first time.

A Cabinet Office official commented, "It may have been affected by large-scale anti-Japanese demonstrations across China and disputes between the two nations over the development of gas fields in the East China Sea and other issues."

The survey was conducted on 3,000 people aged 20 or older nationwide in early to mid-October. The response rate was 58.5 percent.

Concerning Japan-China ties, 71.2 percent, up 10.2 points from last year, said relations were not good, with 19.7 percent, down 8.4 points, saying relations were positive.

Figures for the ROK dropped also, but they remained above 50 percent.

Finally, apropos of nothing: the compound that means "torpedo" is 魚雷 (gyorai: "fish" + "thunder"), which I think is just about the coolest thing ever. Land mines are known as 地雷 (jirai: "earth" + "thunder").

For those keeping count out of ghoulishness, the number of buildings affected by the Aneha scandal has reached 89:

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport announced on 30 December that a hotel in Kirishima City, Kagoshima Prefecture, had been newly confirmed as a structure for which architect Hidetsugu Aneha had falsified structural calculations. The number of problem buildings has now reached 89 in 18 prefectures.

This was the first building confirmed as fraudulently certified in Kagoshima Prefecture. The prefectural government had at first reported that there was no falsification, but a new examination demonstrated that the structural calculation documents contained falsifications.

The hotel, the Sun Hotel Kokubun, received its architectural confirmation in November 1999 and has 52% of the minimum standard earthquake resistance. It was reported to be closed for business on 27 December.

A woman and her two children have died at a hot spring resort, likely from inhaling noxious gas:

On 29 December, University of Tokyo tutor Yasushi Matsui (47) of Toshima Ward, Tokyo, was in critical condition and his wife and two sons died at the Doroyu Hot Springs in Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture; on 30 December, the Yuzawa Station of the Akita Prefectural Police began an investigation into the circumstances of the accident near the Okuyama Inn, where the four were found collapsed close to a snow-covered basin [as in a depression in the ground, not as in a birdbath--SRK].

The Yuzawa Station considers it possible that the family of four inhaled sulfur oxide hydrogen sulfide [Bad transation my fault, sorry; the article did, indeed, say 硫化水素.--SRK] gas that had accumulated in the basin and been poisoned; it is hurrying to establish the cause of death through autopsies of the dead woman and boys.

According to the investigation, the basin has a diameter of 2 meters and a depth of 1.5 meters; it is located about 10 meters from one side of the inn's parking lot.

I've somehow never managed to get to Yellowstone, but I'm assuming toxic gases are a problem at some of its fumaroles and things, too. In Japan when you go to see steam vents and the like in hot spring areas, there are often purposefully scary signs posted that warn you to leave the area immediately if you start feeling funny. They also warn that people with heart conditions and the like should stay away. Unfortunately, the ground has lots of cracks, some small and unnoticeable.

Yesterday's train derailment was very unfortunate, but unlike the disaster in Amagasaki in April, it doesn't seem to indicate any problems with JR. Cars were swept off the tracks by strong wind as the train went over a bridge; four people were killed and over thirty injured. The driver was going within the speed limit:

At the moment of the derailment, the train was estimated to be running at about 100 kph, well below the speed limit for that section, police said.

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JR East officials said a wind meter was positioned about 1 kilometer north of the disaster site.

If the meter detects winds of 72 kph or faster, a warning is sent to an anti-disaster information system installed at JR East's Niigata branch, which is in charge of the Uetsu Line. An alarm will also sound at the branch, but drivers are not required to reduce their speeds in these conditions.

However, trains are obliged to slow down to 25 kph when wind speeds exceeding 90 kph are registered.

Train operations are suspended in areas with winds reaching 108 kph, the officials said.

But the wind meter near the accident site only recorded a maximum speed of 72 kph at 7:16 p.m., the officials said.

For that reason, the driver of the Inaho No. 14 was allowed to operate at the maximum speed of 120 kph in that section, according to the officials.

So it looks as if any human error that contributed was involved in the design of the bridge.

How rattled are people about the Aneha scandal? This is posted in the mail/package alcove in the lobby of our apartment building. It opened in 2000, and there has never been any suggestion whatever that its structural strength calculations were questionable. Translated, the substantive parts sandwiched between the ritual greetings say:

Recently, the "scandal in which the Aneha Design office falsified structural calculations" has been reported in newspapers and the like. Please be secure in the knowledge that none of the structural calculations for this building were contracted out to the design office at Aneha.

Furthermore, we have obtained confirmation that "this building was erected based on properly executed structural calculations."

Additionally, the structural calculations have been checked through independent inspection by XXXX Estate's structural technicians, with no reliance on the design firm or body of inspectors [that originally certified the building]; and the strength and distribution of rebar concrete in actual construction has been checked by quality control experts.

I'm sure that cost a pretty penny, especially if the company's dozens of apartment buildings in metropolitan Tokyo are all being re-inspected. But it's understandable that such measures were deemed necessary, considering the multiple levels of negligence that have been shown to have allowed Aneha to get away with his deceptions. At this point, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport is considering providing assistance to owners of hotels and condominiums that have up to 50% of the mandated earthquake resistance level. The money would cover up to 15.2% of inspection and retrofitting costs.

Given the strike, it seemed prudent to ask the car service to leave extra time to get to JFK from Murray Hill--not that it needed extra prodding--and, naturally, traffic ended up being none too bad. It was rather touching to have taxis slide up to the curb (I waited outside with my stuff to make sure the drive didn't waste time buzzing for me) and be asked by the passenger riding shotgun whether I needed to carpool to the airport. Just try getting a cab in Manhattan if you look as if you're going to the airport at any other time! No glitches getting here and through emigration, though my thoughts as always ran along the lines of Why is it so easy for airport authorities in Asia to figure out how to set up enough tables for you to put your stuff back together after being scanned, while US airports make you take off your jackets and shoes and belt and take out your laptop...and then expect five people to reassemble themselves with a single 3'*3' slab of formica to lean on at the end of the line? Sheesh.

The problems I'm worried about, actually, are at the other end: Japan is expecting to be hammered by snow in Hokkaido and along the Pacific coast, so Atsushi's flight out of Kyushu on Friday could be delayed or canceled. We'll just have to wait and see. In other Japan news, the Building Contractors' Society of Japan is writing a manual to help people spot falsified structural strength calculations. That's nice, but I thought the whole scary point was the that falsifications were transparent and that it was a surprise no one had caught them. (BTW, here's yet more evidence that one of the construction companies, Huser, was warned ahead of time of Aneha's bogus figures. Residents of condominiums it built are asking to have the company declared bankrupt.) And there's more information about Kosuke Ito, the LDP Diet member who went to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport and asked for Huser to be treated gently:

Ito, who once served as director general of the National Land Agency, visited the director of the ministry's construction supervision division with Huser Management Ltd. President Susumu Kojima on Nov. 15, two days before the ministry disclosed the scandal.

"It'd be a problem if the company had to dismantle buildings (constructed based on falsified quake-resistance data)," the bureaucrat quoted President Kojima as telling him.

"Would you please consider his request?" Ito then told the division director.

The director said he rejected the request. "The safety of the residents is the top priority."

Ito denied having asked the bureaucrat for leniency for the Tokyo-based Huser. "People were already living in the condominiums, so the top priority was to ensure safety of the residents as soon as possible. I thought we had no time to lose, so I took him to the ministry on the same day."

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In September last year, Kojima bought 50 tickets, each priced at 20,000 yen, to a fund-raising party for Ito's political fund-raising organization. Kojima has paid a 160,000 yen membership fee annually to the organization over the past four years.

Speaking of tense relations between government bodies, the Japan and PRC foreign ministers may meet. Or, if precedent is any indication, not.

Can't wait to get back home.

Virginia Postrel has one of her interesting posts about sprawl up. Fun fact from my part of the world: New York is more densely populated than Tokyo. Of course, that's from official measurements, but it's really not so hard to believe. Simply dividing the total population by the total land area gives a nice, rough point of departure, but as Virginia points out about New York and LA, it doesn't tell the whole story by half.

If you visit Tokyo, as opposed to living in it, you may never really see much outside the major interchange stations on the Yamanote Line; but just a few stops beyond that inner ring, the landscape is completely different. When I lived in Shibuya, my apartment building was the only residential structure within a good five or six contiguous blocks. Where we live now, just four stations outside Shibuya in Setagaya Ward, just about everything is residential. The storefronts, even along major thoroughfares such as Komazawa Avenue, mostly have apartments above them. Zoning in Japan is kind of weird to many Westerners--there really is a lot of mixed construction--but as an overall pattern, Tokyo is one of those cities in which nighttime and daytime populations cluster in visibly different places, which means that the crushing density tends to follow people around--or, more accurately, that they create it by all moving together.

And like just about any other city, Tokyo doesn't stop at Tokyo. Urban-level average population density continues southwest through Kawasaki (1.3 million), Yokohama (3.5 million), and the smaller cities in Kanagawa Prefecture, including Atsushi's hometown of Kamakura (a comparative hamlet at 170,000). It also goes east through Chiba Prefecture, north through Saitama Prefecture, and west through the municipalities that have been annexed by the Tokyo Metropolitan District but aren't part of the original twenty-three wards. None of these places is in the mindspace that you'd think of as Tokyo, but they're definitely part of the metro area. By contrast, some land (such as hiking places deep in the mountains in Ome City, to which you have to take an old single-track train) is so unpopulated that even calling it rural seems a stretch, but it lies inside Tokyo Metro, so it's counted for a lot of statistics.

I'm trying hard not to shrug my shoulders and say, "That's what you get, scumbag" in reacting to this little story:

A middle-aged man died after being overpowered by train passengers at a station here for molesting a woman on a train on Tuesday morning, police said.

Local police are questioning the passengers who captured the man over details about the incident, and are trying to identify the man believed to be a 40-year-old company employee from Nishi-ku, Osaka.

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After the man began to run away, four male passengers, including two police officers who were on their way to work, chased him for some 50 meters before tackling him on the platform. He fell unconscious shortly afterwards, and later died.

Assuming the accusation of chikan wasn't mistaken, and assuming the four guys who ran him down didn't keep whaling the hell out of him long after he'd capitulated--Aside: Why don't I ever get chased down train platforms by off-duty police officers who want to wrestle? Probably because I'd have to start grabbing boobies to get 'em heated up--I'm thinking we should chalk this one up to the occupational hazards of groping strange women on trains. If you're going to assault people, you're implicitly taking on the risk that they (or others) will come to the decisive defense of their persons. Same deal with breaking into someone's house or car.

The patronage system in Japan is such that this is basically the first we're hearing of this:

Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizum held an end-of-year party on 20 December, inviting all Diet members newly elected to the lower house in September to the Prime Minister's residence. However, those legislators who are already members of factions that are opposed to the administration's policies were not invited. Within the LDP, some took this as the "flag hoisting for the Koizumi faction"; it is not inconceivable that in the movements of these "Koizumi Kids" will determine where September's general election goes.

Koizumi was originally a member of the Mori faction, then its de facto head, but he withdrew from it in 2001 when he was gearing up for real to run for Prime Minister. His former mentor has frequently expressed shock in public at Koizumi's political tactics--but then, given Mori's record of non-achievement as PM, I don't know that his opinions carry much substantive weight. However, he did, despite his general lack of popularity, play the connections game. Koizumi famously has not (except on certain occasions when his opportunism was blatant), and his ability to form a viable faction of his own has been dubitable. As always with early moves like this, we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Prime Minister Koizumi is putting the most kindly light on Democratic Party of Japan leader Maehara's recent rejection of the idea of fuller cooperation with the ruling coalition:

On 16 December, Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi spoke about DPJ leader Seiji Maehara's denial of the possibility of a "broad alliance" with the LDP: "As the head of the opposition party, he had no choice but to say such a thing." Koizumi went further and stated, "The world of politics is difficult to predict even in the short-term. In Germany, such cooperation had been said to be impossible, but it came to pass," suggesting once again that a broad alliance [was feasible]. He was responding to questions from the press corps at the Prime Minister's residence.

Regarding the wave upon wave of criticisms leveled at Maehara at the [DPJ] party convention, Koizumi gave the DPJ leader a shout-out: "Being in a leadership position is tough. I hope Mr. Maehara will see things through and ride out his current difficulties."

That last reference to "Mr. Maehara" may be a noun of direct address, but that doesn't really affect the basic meaning. Maehara has been relatively quiet. You see him quoted frequently, of course--he's the opposition leader, after all--but his comments rarely have the irritability of Katsuya Okada's. Of course, that could mean either that he's shrewdly buying his time or that he realizes how green he is and is steering a middle course out of fear that he'll make a misstep. Or some of both.

BTW, Maehara, one of whose distinguishing characteristics is his higher level of hawkishness than previous DPJ leaders, intimated to the press on a visit to Okinawa that he could be prepared to agree to a special provision to shift land use rights from Naha to Tokyo in order to implement the transfer of US military facilities at Futenma. On the other hand, he's criticized the government's current treatment of the Okinawa government: "When restructuring specific [military] bases, close consultation with--and consent of--regional government entities, is indispensable; but [the approach] this time around was extremely crude. It demonstrated contempt [for Okinawa]." Tension between the capital and the provinces is a fact of life for every large, complex society I'm aware of, and in Japan, things are especially prickly between Tokyo and Okinawa.

Okinawa has its own distinct language and history and sorely resents being treated, as it views things, like the mainland's trash dump. The locals don't like putting up with the off-hours behavior of military personnel and the foreign control of large swaths of land, but they'd be in an economic pickle if we left, and they know it. Regarding US military installations, of course, things aren't black and white. Okinawa is the poorest prefecture in Japan. Having our bases there brings in money and creates jobs. The US could probably learn to cultivate a more friendly manner toward its sub-tropical hosts, but I'm not sure how much good that would do when the far more long-term problem is with the deep rift between Tokyo and Naha.

Prime Minister Koizumi is putting the most kindly light on Democratic Party of Japan leader Maehara's recent rejection of the idea of fuller cooperation with the ruling coalition:

On 16 December, Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi spoke about DPJ leader Seiji Maehara's denial of the possibility of a "broad alliance" with the LDP: "As the head of the opposition party, he had no choice but to say such a thing." Koizumi went further and stated, "The world of politics is difficult to predict even in the short-term. In Germany, such cooperation had been said to be impossible, but it came to pass," suggesting once again that a broad alliance [was feasible]. He was responding to questions from the press corps at the Prime Minister's residence.

Regarding the wave upon wave of criticisms leveled at Maehara at the [DPJ] party convention, Koizumi gave the DPJ leader a shout-out: "Being in a leadership position is tough. I hope Mr. Maehara will see things through and ride out his current difficulties."

That last reference to "Mr. Maehara" may be a noun of direct address, but that doesn't really affect the basic meaning. Maehara has been relatively quiet. You see him quoted frequently, of course--he's the opposition leader, after all--but his comments rarely have the irritability of Katsuya Okada's. Of course, that could mean either that he's shrewdly buying his time or that he realizes how green he is and is steering a middle course out of fear that he'll make a misstep. Or some of both.

BTW, Maehara, one of whose distinguishing characteristics is his higher level of hawkishness than previous DPJ leaders, intimated to the press on a visit to Okinawa that he could be prepared to agree to a special provision to shift land use rights from Naha to Tokyo in order to implement the transfer of US military facilities at Futenma. On the other hand, he's criticized the government's current treatment of the Okinawa government: "When restructuring specific [military] bases, close consultation with--and consent of--regional government entities, is indispensable; but [the approach] this time around was extremely crude. It demonstrated contempt [for Okinawa]." Tension between the capital and the provinces is a fact of life for every large, complex society I'm aware of, and in Japan, things are especially prickly between Tokyo and Okinawa.

Okinawa has its own distinct language and history and sorely resents being treated, as it views things, like the mainland's trash dump. The locals don't like putting up with the off-hours behavior of military personnel and the foreign control of large swaths of land, but they'd be in an economic pickle if we left, and they know it. Regarding US military installations, of course, things aren't black and white. Okinawa is the poorest prefecture in Japan. Having our bases there brings in money and creates jobs. The US could probably learn to cultivate a more friendly manner toward its sub-tropical hosts, but I'm not sure how much good that would do when the far more long-term problem is with the deep rift between Tokyo and Naha.

The ban on US beef imports to Japan has been lifted, thus (one can only fervently hope) freeing our leaders to talk about more important things in meetings. Just for the record, the contents of the first shipment are nearly itemized by the Asahi:

The first shipment of U.S. beef touched down at Narita International Airport early Friday morning, just four days after the government lifted its ban, officials said.

The shipment, containing 4.3 tons of cut beef and 0.3 tons of internal organs, was imported by leading ham and sausage maker Marudai Food Co., based in Osaka. The meat passed through quarantine Friday.

A joint missile initiative between Japan and the US is moving ahead:

On 15 December, the government opened meeting on national security at the Prime Minister's residence, entering into proceedings to move joint Japan-US technological research on next-generation missile defense systems into the development phase starting in 2006. The Japan Defense Agency explained that development expenditures over nine years will total US $2.1 to 2.7 billion, and that Japan is coordinating with the United States under a plan for Japan to shoulder US $1.0 to 1.2 billion of that burden.

The missile type in question is the Aegis, which is ship-based.

Added at 11:30: The US and Japan are also set to run joint ground exercises:

The Ground Self-Defense Force and the U.S. Marine Corps will carry out the first bilateral joint drill off the west coast of the United States in January to infiltrate a remote island and regain control of it from an enemy, sources said Thursday.

Until recently, U.S. forces have been reluctant to carry out joint exercises with Japan on a remote island in an effort to avoid possible confrontation with China.

The decision, however, was made to demonstrate bilateral cooperation in Okinawa Prefecture and the Southwest Islands against China, which has been rapidly boosting its military capability in the last few years.

...

The map exercise incorporates exchanging gunfire with the enemy to regain control of the island.

"The U.S. marines are superior to the GSDF in terms of combat capability. The drill is aimed at learning the basics in landing operations, including infiltration, from the marines. The exercise levels will be increased as the drill continues," a senior GSDF officer said.

About 600 islands lie off the Kyushu and Okinawa regions, however, GSDF bases are located only on the main island of Okinawa and Tsushima island in Nagasaki Prefecture. The Southwest Islands are poorly protected by Japan's defense system.

Whenever I bring this sort of thing up, someone inevitably asks, "Do you really expect China to attack Japan?" And, well, no, I don't think anyone really does, given things as they are now. The state of the PRC military makes a coup against the CCP appear unlikely, and CCP itself, mindful of its in many ways tenuous grip on power, would be foolish to launch an assault against Japan. But circumstances can change very quickly; and besides, purely from the standpoint of basic readiness, it's simply ridiculous for Japan--prosperous and insular as it is--not to have solid plans for defense against a large, restless neighbor with a historical pattern of hostility toward Japan. As the Asahi glancingly notes, the point of the exercise is also to impress upon other players in the region that the US and Japan partnership is firm.

The Aneha scandal has continued to ripen nicely:

In the earthquake resistance falsification scandal, the House of Representatives Land, Transport, and Infrastructure committee held a meeting to receive testimony that lasted through the day. Akira Shinotsuka (45), the former head of the Tokyo branch of Kimura Construction (Yashiro City, Kumamoto Prefecture; currently in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings), gave testimony concerning the rebar used in construction, normally 80-100 kilograms per square meter. "The idea in our company was to shoot below that quantity, to 70 kilograms [per square meter]," he stated. He acknowledged that this cap on the quantity of rebar had become the company's standard practice.

Hidetsugu Aneha (48), former first-class architect, testified, "I was under very specific* pressure (from Mr. Shinotsuka), having received suggestions that I reduce the normal 80-100 kilogram figure to 60 kilograms." Shinotsuka defended himself by saying, "Some reductions were within legal bounds. My perception is not that I applied heavy pressure [on Mr. Aneha]."

The English Asahi has a bit more fun with this latest round of hot potato. Note the droll near-zeugma in the second paragraph here:

Aneha, citing health reasons, had declined two previous requests to appear before the committee. But he was practically forced to appear Wednesday after being summoned as a sworn witness.

His testimony was filled with remorse, admissions and the name of Akira Shinozuka, former Tokyo branch chief of Kimura Construction Co.

...

Aneha quoted Shinozuka as saying in 1998, "We won't give you any work if you don't reduce the volume of reinforcing steel to be used.''

At that time, Aneha said about 90 percent of his work came from Kimura Construction. "If I refused, my income would have fallen close to zero. So I did it even though I knew it was wrong,'' Aneha said.

Aneha also said he felt Shinozuka understood the illegality of what he was asking the architect to do.

The Mainichi adds a few more dimensions:

Hidetsugu Aneha also cast suspicion on inspection agencies who failed to spot his misdeeds, saying such falsified records -- which masked potentially catastrophic defects in hotels and condominiums -- should be easy to detect.

...

The uproar has hit a sensitive nerve in Japan, calling into question building safety in one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries. Authorities say that at least 71 Aneha-linked structures could collapse even in a moderate tremor.

Confirming the fears of many, a contrite Aneha described a construction industry in which developers eager for profits browbeat architects into cutting corners -- or risk losing business. Safety fears, he said, never entered the equation. [!!!!!!!!!!!!--SRK]

"I was under heavy pressure, but initially I refused partly because of my pride as first-class certified architect," the soft-spoken witness said. "But I had a sick wife who was in and out of a hospital, and refusing meant zero income."

Apparently, anyone with an ill family member is justified in making deals with the devil to maintain his income. I'll have to remember that.

BTW, while the people actually living in the unsafe buildings deserve most of the sympathy, let's not forget that others were screwed, too:

Independent hotel operators who have stopped business after their premises were found to have been built using falsified earthquake resistance data will be unable to receive financial support from the government--unlike owners of defective condominium units.

...

The 70-year-old owner of the Hotel Senpia in Ina, Nagano Prefecture, was introduced to Kimura Construction Co. in 1999 by a local building contractor. The contractor told him that "the company knows how to keep costs down."

He demolished a rice milling plant and a warehouse he had been running for many years, and Kimura Construction, a Kumamoto Prefecture-based company now filing for bankruptcy, took charge of building the 110-room, eight-story hotel.

However, as the man was recovering from the shock of hearing that Aneha had falsified the earthquake-resistance data of his hotel, Kimura Construction filed for bankruptcy, seeking refuge in the courts. His chances of getting compensation from the company have all but disappeared.

...

The government decided to help condo owners by offering public money. But hotel owners were not included in the scheme because they are different from condo owners, who were unable to choose the construction companies involved, according to the Construction and Transport Ministry.

One hotel owner, who borrowed heavily from a bank, said, "We're suffering just as much as apartment owners."

I wouldn't necessarily throw myself into a full-scale pity party for these people--if you're told a construction company, of all enterprises, has a reputation for keeping costs down, the obvious thing to ask next is which corners are being cut. That's just common sense. On the other hand, the government supplied multiple confirmations that each of these buildings had passed certification and inspection procedures. It's not unreasonable for the elderly--whose work life was active when Japan Inc. had a reputation for uncompromising manufacturing competence that made it the envy of the world--to figure that a building couldn't pass certification by multiple government functionaries without having any possible problems discovered somewhere along the way.

I'm also not sure I buy the government's convenient dividing line between condo owners and hotel owners. People choose residential buildings by developers all the time in Japan; the different companies have distinct reputations, possibly the product of PR rather than substance, but still real to Japanese consumers. I'm frequently told, when people hear the name of our building, that Atsushi made a wise decision by going with reliable Mistubishi Estate. Even in the Japanese post-Bubble economy, new apartment buildings go up all the time. I suppose it may be true that condominium buyers are somehow more constrained in their choice of developers than landowners who want to build hotels, but the reason is not immediately obvious.



* Not even my sense of humor is black enough to permit me to translate 具体的 as "concrete" here.

What novel trouble have those rascals in East Asia found to get themselves into while I'm sleeping on the opposite side of the globe? Not much, it appears--the trouble is pretty much as per usual. Of course, ASEAN meetings have a way, by means of throwing enemies into close quarters, of exacerbating friction:

[The recent] series of international meetings, conceived with an eye toward designing a future East Asian cooperative entity, the issues that have become obstacles to regional collaboration between Japan and the PRC, which face off as the area's two major powers, were thrown into sharp relief. After the 14 December closing of the ASEAN Summit session, Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi held a press coference in the city of Kuala Lumpur and protested against the refusal of the PRC and ROK to hold official [head-of-state] meetings with Japan because of the Prime Minister's pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine. No mending of relations appears to be in sight.

"Our prayers for peace and our respects for those who fell during wartime are matters of the heart, an issue of psychological liberty. I cannot understand the criticism of our pilgrimages." The Prime Minister's choice of words was nearly the same as it would be inside Japan, but in the context of close observation by journalists from the assembled nations of Asia, he uncharacteristically expanded on "criticism from the PRC."

"I have from the start argued for PRC-Japanese friendship. Even if we're at swords-point on one or two items, that does not affect our ability to continue moving forward in developing our relations," he said, but he betrayed discomfort in his facial expression.

Nothing in the above is particularly new; it just serves to highlight the unwillingness of either Japan or its critics to budge on the Yasukuni issue.

Prime Minister Koizumi and DPJ leader Maehara are nearing an agreement on constitutional revision, kind of:

On 9 December, Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi indicated a desire cooperate with the Democratic Party of Japan on constitutional revision. Concerning his continued active pursuit of dicsussion about [the need to] approve collective self-defense with DPJ leader Seiji Maehara, he related, "Mr. Maehara has been an advocate of constitutional revision from a while back. From here on, I think that there are points on which he will be able to cooperate with the LDP."

Maehara positioned himself as notably more hawkish than other existing DPJ leaders--certainly including the colorless Katsuya Okada. (Remember him?)

Joel at Far Outliers links to a discussion that compares Japanese kamikaze pilots with today's suicide bombers. He notes a strange inconsistency:

Notice how the Japanese are presented as the victims, and those winning the war as their "oppressors"? Exactly when, during the half-century between 1895 and 1945 did Japan switch from being oppressor to victim? In 1895? In 1904? 1910? In 1931? 1937? In 1941? 1942? 1943? Yes, that's it, at precisely the moment when they began to lose they became the victims, despite the appalling number of casualties they continued to inflict on themselves and others by not conceding defeat.

Yeah. Funny how that works.

The cabinet has officially voted to extend the SDF deployment in Iraq:

The Cabinet on Thursday approved the extension of the Self-Defense Forces' mission to assist reconstruction in Iraq for a year beyond next Wednesday's deadline.

"We decided to extend the mission for two reasons: Iraq is on its way toward establishing a democratic government, and the U.N. [Security Council] has unanimously decided to extend the deployment of multilateral forces there," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a news conference after the Cabinet meeting.

The new basic plan for the SDF's Iraq mission states that the troops' mandate will expire on Dec. 14, 2006. But it also indicates the deployment can be shortened should Australian and British forces providing the Japanese personnel with a security umbrella decide to pull out.

...

Prior to the Cabinet meeting Thursday, Koizumi had a series of meetings with leaders of coalition partner New Komeito and opposition parties to obtain their understanding in extending the Iraqi mission.

The cabinet has officially voted to extend the SDF deployment in Iraq:

The Cabinet on Thursday approved the extension of the Self-Defense Forces' mission to assist reconstruction in Iraq for a year beyond next Wednesday's deadline.

"We decided to extend the mission for two reasons: Iraq is on its way toward establishing a democratic government, and the U.N. [Security Council] has unanimously decided to extend the deployment of multilateral forces there," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a news conference after the Cabinet meeting.

The new basic plan for the SDF's Iraq mission states that the troops' mandate will expire on Dec. 14, 2006. But it also indicates the deployment can be shortened should Australian and British forces providing the Japanese personnel with a security umbrella decide to pull out.

...

Prior to the Cabinet meeting Thursday, Koizumi had a series of meetings with leaders of coalition partner New Komeito and opposition parties to obtain their understanding in extending the Iraqi mission.

Radiation is not the only thing Japanese power companies release when they're feeling all oops!-ish, apparently:

Kansai Electric (KEPCO) revealed on 9 December that an administrative-level employee at its nuclear operations headquarters (Mihama, Fukui Prefecture) leaked to the Internet documents related to earthquake resistance at nuclear plants. The documents had been saved on his personal computer and were uploaded through file-sharing software called Winny. The company stated that no information in the documents would cause security problems related to nuclear materials. The same day, Kenkichi Hirose, chair of the security committee at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, summoned KEPCO president Yosuke Mori and issued the company a stern face-to-face warning [to avoid such screw-ups in the future].

If you've seen the Mihama facility mentioned before, you're probably recalling the accident last year when an under-maintained pipe ruptured and blasted a dozen or so unfortunate plant workers with super-hot steam. Five of them died. This weeks information leak appears to have been unimportant in terms of the content of the documents, but given the track record we're looking at here, it could very well be indicative of more serious and wide-ranging organization problems in KEPCO's nuclear division.

Attention-grabbing lead paragraph of the week goes to the English Asahi:

The land ministry Thursday started a series of inspections to determine the extent of incompetence, inadequacies and possible corruption in an industry sector responsible for the safety of people's lives.

One tiny thing to be grateful for is that this is connected to the Aneha scandal and not, you know, some entirely new revelation about a whole different industry:

Twelve inspectors of the ministry's Housing Bureau started searching Japan ERI Co., the nation's largest building inspection company, in Tokyo's Minato Ward, at 9:30 a.m. [The article is dated 9 September.--SRK]

The ministry wants to determine why the company failed to act on a warning in 2004 that former architect Hidetsugu Aneha had faked a structural-strength report for a building in Tokyo.

Japan ERI Co. is not the same company that was warned by an on-site construction manager that reinforcements at the ground level were insufficient, so we have yet another organization to finger for not listening to alarms that had in fact been sounded.

Naturally, some people are taking this opportunity to cast aspersions on privatization:

Some experts say these private-sector companies have a difficult time being objective in their inspections. That is because real estate developers are not only the inspection companies' clients, they are often their shareholders.

And this is different from the government's being in bed with major keiretsu, their banks, and major constructions firms...how, exactly? Obviously, there were problems with monitoring here. Whether they stem from the very fact that the government privatized some of its inspection functions is a very debatable point, especially considering that when the fraud-filled documents did, in fact, hit the desks of government construction agencies, they let them pass through without challenging them. Another good thing to bear in mind is that, while it's not exactly classic amakudari, the inspectors now being targeted for investigation have interesting origins:

"We will completely cooperate with the ministry's inspections," Takahide Suzuki, the Japan ERI president, said in a statement. "By doing so, we want to regain the people's trust in our company."

Japan ERI employs 165 building inspectors, including 102 who had worked in local governments.

Other companies said they do not have the manpower to keep pace with the demand.

"We have no other choice but to employ people who worked as construction superintendents in local governments," an official said.

Just keeps getting better, huh?

Yesterday was Pearl Harbor Day. Good to reflect on in these times.

There's no report of any substantive agreement, but Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso met with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Washington yesterday. Japan related its plan to extend the SDF deployment in Iraq and also emphasized that the restructuring of US military facilities here in Japan is running into opposition from the places affected (such as Okinawa). Rumsfeld would like to see China fulfill a constructive role in world society, including transparency about its military spending. Japan affirmed that it would like to expand its own international role and would prefer, really, to avoid being blown up by the DPRK. So everything is as per usual; if there are interesting developments, I assume we'll hear about them.

There's no report of any substantive agreement, but Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso met with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Washington yesterday. Japan related its plan to extend the SDF deployment in Iraq and also emphasized that the restructuring of US military facilities here in Japan is running into opposition from the places affected (such as Okinawa). Rumsfeld would like to see China fulfill a constructive role in world society, including transparency about its military spending. Japan affirmed that it would like to expand its own international role and would prefer, really, to avoid being blown up by the DPRK. So everything is as per usual; if there are interesting developments, I assume we'll hear about them.

Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Kazuo Kitagawa has made an announcement about the Aneha scandal:

Regarding the earthquake resistance falsification scandal, Minister of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Kazuo Kitagawa announced on 4 December that he is investigating a plan to have federal and prefectural-level government bodies bear the entire burden of paying for the demolition of condominium complexes known to have insufficient earthquake resistance. His reasoning was that "there is also a danger to residents in surrounding buildings, so [the demolition] has a prominent public interest dimension." He related this to the press corps this morning after a television appearance.

Kitagawa explained that the reason for public assistance in this case was that "assessing who bears responsibility among the developers and other parties requires time, and we cannot wait that long."

Some of the affected residents have already organized a group so they can share information and possibly negotiate collectively. Kitagawa isn't kidding about the danger to the neighbors, BTW; the catastrophic 1999 Taiwan earthquake saw several large, modern buildings tip over.

Oh, yeah, and just in case you're not already rattled enough over this whole mess, check this out:

The architecture firm that designed one of the buildings for which disgraced architect Hidetsugu Aneha faked strength reports says it met directly with the building companies to warn them about Aneha in early 2004, but was ignored.

The Kanagawa Prefecture-based design company, and Atlas Sekkei, the architectural firm in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward asked to check Aneha's structural-strength reports, said they spotted irregularities in those reports.

The Kanagawa design firm said it had a meeting with Kumamoto-based Kimura Construction Co. and Tokyo-based consulting firm Sogo Keiei Kenkyujo (Soken) in early 2004 to point out the problems.

But the two firms did nothing. Both Kimura Construction and Soken continued to commission work to Aneha, leading to the construction of a string of defective hotels and condominiums.

The latest revelation directly contradicts what officials at Kimura and Soken have said.

The Nikkei editors on the latest developments in "trinity reforms," short version:

Why are we calling something that will benefit no one "reform"?

Ouch. Here's where that comes from:

In the agreement between the federal government and the ruling coalition, the transfer of funding for facilities and equipment, which had been sought by the regional governments, was partially approved for the first time. Facilities and equipment are the area in which it is easiest for regional governments to demonstrate some ingenuity in planning, so they're part of the point of reform.

At the trinity reform stage, reductions in federal subsidies and transfers of sources of tax money were taken care of, but reform of regional tax grants was left unattended to. Along with measures such as reductions in the number of public employees in regional government bodies, possibility of decreases in grants should be investigated.

The subsidies the federal government provides to regional governments now add up to a burden of approximately ¥20 trillion (US $167 billion). There is no other state that intrudes on regional affairs using such gargantuan amounts of subsidy money. At ¥4 trillion in reductions in this first phase of reform, each federal ministry managed to get away with its systems and structures surviving unchanged in practical terms. This state of affairs does not deserve the name "structural reform." The agreement between the federal government and the ruling coalition was rather vague about how reform would proceed from here on, but they must forge ahead into a second phase of reform that returns the focus to the main task.

The regional governments' complaint, of course, is that even if they get direct access to more money (because tax revenue goes to them directly rather than being routed through Tokyo), that doesn't increase their discretionary power. They're still bound to the rules set up by the federal ministries. In this aging society, that's an especially touchy issue with livelihood protection and child care subsidies. What they fear is that cosmetic cuts in subsidies will give them no more autonomy but a lot more work to do, since they'll have more taxes to assess, collect, and process.

Added after a cup of tea: I might add here, for those who haven't kept track, that the reforms about to implemented are positively revolutionary compared with those that took effect in 2001. That year, a bunch of ministries and agencies were smushed together to form new, larger bodies--the idea being that fewer official entities must make things more efficient, right? So, for example, the former 文部省 (monbushou: "Ministry of Education and Culture") was alloyed with the 科学技術庁 (kagakugijutsuchou: "Science and Technology Agency") to form the 文部科学省 (monbukagakushou: "Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology"--no kidding, that's the official English name).

The victim of the latest sicko child killer was found yesterday; she's been identified as the girl who went missing in Tochigi Prefecture on Thursday. (This is, of course, a different sicko child killer from the one who strangled a second grader in Hiroshima and dumped her body in a box on the curb a few weeks ago.) The girl's father was quoted as reacting with a good deal more rage than parents in these (increasingly frequent) cases tend to be. There appears to be a suspect, but he hasn't been identified or located yet.

The Iraqi Prime Minister will visit Japan on 5 December:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on 1 December that Prime Minister of Iraq [Ibrahim] al-Jaafari is scheduled for a two-day visit to Japan, beginning 2 December, during which he will meet with Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi. It is al-Jaafari's first visit to Japan. He is expected to request once again that the deployment of SDF personnel in Iraq be extended. His visit is at Japan's invitation, and [he and Japanese officials] will exchange views about the status of Iraq's reconstruction and support [Japan can offer] from here forward.

This is about the fiftieth time we've seen news that the extension of the SDF deployment has somehow become official, so perhaps the request next week will just be a face-to-face formality.

The Iraqi Prime Minister will visit Japan on 5 December:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on 1 December that Prime Minister of Iraq [Ibrahim] al-Jaafari is scheduled for a two-day visit to Japan, beginning 2 December, during which he will meet with Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi. It is al-Jaafari's first visit to Japan. He is expected to request once again that the deployment of SDF personnel in Iraq be extended. His visit is at Japan's invitation, and [he and Japanese officials] will exchange views about the status of Iraq's reconstruction and support [Japan can offer] from here forward.

This is about the fiftieth time we've seen news that the extension of the SDF deployment has somehow become official, so perhaps the request next week will just be a face-to-face formality.