The White Peril 白禍

There don't seem to be many new stories or particularly fascinating developments on existing ones--which is good because I've been busy as hell. The cherry blossoms are blooming early, though--third earliest in Tokyo proper since record-keeping began, apparently.

The neighborhood in which my office is is called 桜ヶ丘 (sakura ga oka: lit., "cherry hill," though putting it that way has somewhat Joisey-ish connotations for me), and that is, of course, because the main through street is lined with cherry trees. By yesterday, the blossoms seemed to be about 80% open, and last night was the first night this year that they floodlit them. I spent yesterday doing a fair bit of end-of-year document-shredding and straightening up, so by 8 p.m. or so I was feeling a little dusty and decided a walk down to the bottom of the hill for a Coke or something was in order. When I got to the end of the alley from our building and looked up, there they were: clouds of cherry blossoms, like an apparition from some other, purer world, somehow feeling pink without actually looking pink. I may have gasped. It was one of those mono no aware moments that remind you why the Japanese have always regarded the natural surroundings in their native islands as spookily, mysteriously beautiful.

Then I was snapped back to Earth for another Japan moment, this one of somewhat more recent origin: I had to thread through all the people trying to take each other's pictures ("Yumi-chan, dame yo...you have to get closer in!") with the blossoms in the background, in addition to the usual steady procession of taxis, delivery guys on motorbikes, and sauntering students with their gigantic backpacks, in order to get down the street to the Family Mart. But hey, I'm always the one saying I like the crush, so no complaints. I still reserve the right to bitch about the kiln-like summer heat, though.

Work should clear up in a few days, leaving me not so much more time as more mind space to devote to other things.

March is the last month of the fiscal year in Japan, and even though I'm not a banker or accountant, it's still raining Excel sheets for another week or so yet. And the fact that the cherry trees bloomed early this year means that everyone has essentially been scrambling to move up the planned blossom-viewing parties. Kind of busy.

A few news items of interest here while my attention was diverted elsewhere:

A district court has ordered a nuclear reactor shut, deeming its earthquake-proofing inadequate:

The Kanazawa District Court on Friday ordered Hokuriku Electric Power Co. to stop operating the No. 2 reactor at its Shika nuclear power plant in Shikamachi, Ishikawa Prefecture, ruling that the reactor may be susceptible to earthquakes.

The ruling recognized a demand by a citizens group that the 1,358-megawatt No. 2 advanced boiling-water reactor be shut down.

Hokuriku Electric has said it will appeal to the high court to overturn the ruling.

Presiding Judge Kenichi Ido said, "The reactor has a problem in its antiseismic design, and there's a real possibility that the plaintiffs might be exposed to radiation if there was an accident at the plant."

...

The district court then ruled, "An earthquake beyond Hokuriku Electric's expectations could occur," and pointed out the following:

-- The estimate that the largest earthquake that could possibly hit the area would have a magnitude of 6.5 is too conservative.

-- The probability of an earthquake occurring along the Ochigata fault line was not taken into consideration.

-- The method employed to determine the correct design needed to adequately cope with an earthquake is inappropriate.

Three reactors at Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s Onagawa nuclear power station in Miyagi Prefecture were automatically shut down in August after being rocked by an earthquake stronger than had been factored into the reactors' antiseismic designs.

I haven't heard much more detail than that, but it certainly doesn't sound out of the realm of possibility. The Yomiuri has a summary of the factors that are supposed to be considered in such assessments. Yesterday's main Nikkei editorial observed drily:

It's not that power generation would be disrupted by unanticipated vibrations, or that they would lead to the release of mass quantities of radioactive material. The issue is risk evaluation for the system in toto, and whether it's rational to go so far as to halt operations. In that respect, the ruling was on the abrupt side; however, we must give serious thought to grave indications that the state and [plant] operators have been slack about incorporating the latest technology and approaches into quake resistance evaluation.

The editorial points out that feel-good estimates about how severe an earthquake in any region could be fail to take into account hidden fault lines and other unpalatable possibilities.

Oh, yeah, and inspectors identified a crack in a pipe at another reactor, this one in Fukushima and owned by TEPCO.

If you'd like to escape the possibility of being double-whammied by a catastrophic earthquake and radiation exposure, you may want to fly out on ANA:

Trouble-plagued Japan Airlines Corp. was reprimanded yet again Wednesday for operating a 134-seat McDonnell Douglas MD-87 passenger plane for 10 days without conducting a mandatory inspection on its main landing gear.

The cause for the failure to inspect the landing gear was simple: The JAL official in charge forgot to give the instructions.

And when the airline finally did the required inspection on Monday, it bungled that as well.

...

The plane was supposed to have been thoroughly examined by March 11 for cracks in a metal part of the left main landing gear.

JAL maintenance workers had, in fact, scheduled the inspection for Feb. 26, well before the due date, and entered that date on their computers, airline officials said.

But the employee in charge of the inspection forgot to give the instructions.

On Monday, the employee realized the inspection had not been carried out when the computer flashed a warning.

The MD-87 was inspected Monday at Shin-Chitose Airport in Hokkaido. But JAL's problems did not end there.

The transport ministry found out Thursday that the JAL inspector who conducted the check omitted an important procedure.

The 44-year-old inspector was supposed to have used a fluorescent solvent to search for cracks. However, he did not use this solvent, and said he didn't find any cracks.

And if you decide you'd prefer to evade the risks of modern life by leaving this world of dew behind altogether, there's apparently a great doctor we could hook you up with:

Police are investigating the deaths of seven elderly patients at a hospital in Imizu, Toyama Prefecture, who died between 2000 and 2005 after a surgeon removed their artificial respirators, the hospital said Saturday.

Imizu City Hospital said it contacted the police last year as it suspected the surgeon euthanized the patients.

...

The first ruling by a court in the nation on a doctor administering a mercy killing was in March 1995, when the Yokohama District Court gave a doctor at the Tokai University School of Medicine Hospital a two-year suspended prison sentence for administering a lethal injection of potassium chloride in April 1991 to a patient suffering from terminal cancer. The doctor was arrested on suspicion of murder.

In the ruling, the presiding judge set four conditions that must be met to allow doctors to legally euthanize a patient:

-- The patient is suffering from unbearable pain.

-- Death is inevitable and close at hand.

-- There is no other way to relieve the patient's pain.

-- The patient has clearly expressed consent that his or her life be shortened.

I think it would be heartless to deny hopelessly ill people with untreatable pain the right to go off artificial respiration if their heads are clear and they know what they're doing; but of course, in this aging society, it would be exceedingly dangerous to set precedents that could allow doctors to off patients in an effort to free up beds or save money.

There was a not-too-bad article in The Japan Times a few days ago--how often do I type that?--about what real, live Japanese gays think of Masaki Sumitani, a.k.a. Hard Gay. The writer can't resist drawing hammy attention to what a broad-minded sensi-hetero he is, which is a little trying:

How right can it be to satirize people who are so marginalized in Japanese society that they have effectively no freedom to respond?

An official at Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., Hard Gay's promotion company, said neither the comedian nor the company intend [sic--dude, find yourself a persnickety-grammarian fag friend and get him to explain the finer points of correlative conjunctions--SRK] to insult anyone.

Still, the logical thing seemed to be to ask some Japanese homosexuals what they think of Hard Gay--whose handlers, by the way, say that he is straight and has a girlfriend.

What did he find when he asked around? Some gays think Hard Gay is funny. He makes them laugh. Some gays think Hard Gay is mocking homosexuals. That makes them sad. And some gays don't pay much attention one way or another. He makes them feel bored.

A real revelation, huh?

It's hard to fault the reporter, exactly. Being in the position of weighing the positions of people whose world he doesn't inhabit, he probably figured it was wise to keep asking around until he got one yes, one no, and one neither on the issue raised just to keep all the bases covered. Also, if you're a foreign reporter who wants to find out what gay people think about this or that, you probably have little choice but to wander to Shinjuku 2-chome, choose a prominently gay shop with an open front door (implying that non-regulars are welcome), and start talking to the guy behind the counter. Or to look up gay organizations in the phone directory and start dialing.

Unfortunately, that kind of approach produces the same problems that "researchers" who are taken more seriously get into when they conduct "studies" by trawling for subjects at bars or in classified ads, and they're worth looking at. While he got a set of varied opinions, it's questionable whether he talked to a representative sample of gay Japanese people.

Guys who own gay shops and bars are, obviously, those who have elected to work as well as socialize in gay life. Gay organizations have relatively low memberships, too--partially because a lot of people would be scared to be on their mailing lists and things, but also because such organizations just aren't very popular in Japan. (Most people have their hands full conforming to all the expectations within their companies and neighborhoods. The last thing they need is another group to be beholden to.) And obviously the sorts of people who are going to join a study circle dedicated to solemnly working out their feelings about a TV character are going to constitute a self-selecting sample. The Japan Times was therefore talking to a sample of the gay population that had an unusual amount of energy to devote to sitting around thinking about the meaning of homosexuality in society.

That doesn't mean there was nothing to learn from them. Their opinions are as genuine as anyone else's--though the reporter doesn't seem to have cared much that the guy from the Sapporo organization he talked is transgendered and not even gay. But experience leads me to suspect that the representative opinion was the one relegated to this throwaway paragraph:

Other gays felt pretty much the same, he said. "We don't really talk about him [Hard Gay] much."

I don't know a scientific sample of the gay Japanese population myself, probably, but my acquaintance would seem to square with that. I have quite a few friends who hang out in little pub-like Shibuya gay bars and rarely venture to Ageha or 2-chome or other more high-profile places. They tend to be ordinary office worker types who don't know many foreigners besides me. The other Japanese guys I know are those who like foreigners and hang out in 2-chome at the handful of foreigner-friendly places. Many of them have spent significant time in the States or places in the British Commonwealth and thus can compare gay life here to gay life in other places.

And I've only ever heard Hard Gay mentioned twice. Once, someone told an acquaintance of mine that he looked like him, which he does (his facial features, I mean). Another time, when I went out in a black T-shirt of somewhat unforgiving cut, one of the bar guys cracked that I was "looking very Hard Gay." ("No, he just looks like a homo as always," a friend piped up.)

Otherwise, nothing, even at gatherings where uncensored bitchy opinions are flowing freely about anything and everything. The implication of the article's conclusion, that there are a lot of gay Japanese who would protest about Hard Gay's image if they felt at liberty to, doesn't strike me as plausible. If pressed, I guess most people I know would say that while Sumitani's antics are a bit much, at least the stereotype he's reinforcing is one of vigor rather than nelliness, and you can't expect things to change in Japan overnight.

Even the acknowledgment that gays exist in Japan represents progress. Open homosexuals are at a disadvantage here, but so are career women and ethnic Koreans. This is a society that values conformity above all, and everyone is used to the fact. Everyone here has secrets. In general, if you preserve the expected public face, no one is going to interrogate you about your private life. We can question whether it should have to be that way in an ideal world, but the gay guys I know all pretty much seem to accept with equanimity that that's the way it is for now and that it's a trade-off they can live with.

Yesterday was a busy day in Pyongyang:

In a notice dated 21 March, the permanent committee of North Korea's eleventh Supreme People's Assembly (the equivalent of the Diet) announced a resolution to hold its fourth session on 11 April in Pyongyang. The resolution was publicized on the radio on 22 March by means of a Korean Central News Agency release. The focus of the session will be whether to hammer out a new economic policy program based on the results of Kim Jong-il's January visit to China. The backdrop for the session being the failure of 6-party talks after North Korea's objection to "financial sanctions" by the United States, [the world] will also be listening closely for any mention of the nuclear issue.

The Supreme People's Assembly will hold a session to discuss the state budget in spring of next year. Kim Jong-il attended last year's session, at which a state budget in which an 11.4% increase in spending over the previous year was approved. On the nuclear issue, North Korea has taken the the position that an end to sanctions by the US is the "minimum condition" for a resumption of 6-party talks.

This isn't exciting news; in a way, what moved me to cite it was its sheer everyday-ness.

You get regular, poker-faced reports in the Japanese media of stuff like the above--as if the Supreme People's Assembly were in any way, shape, or form actually comparable to the Diet! Japan has a gajillion political parties, a free press, freedom of movement for its citizens, a capitalist economy, and a high standard of living. (I mean, yes, I grouse a lot about the power held by bureaucrats rather than elected officials here, and there are plenty of things that would be more liberalized and transparent if I were running the place. Even so, there's no comparison.) Everyone knows that the DPRK is run by nut cases and their sane toadies whose idea of fun is shooting test missiles over our heads and who wouldn't know viable economic policy if it jumped up and bit 'em in the ass. On the other hand, it's close by. Knowing what's going on there is important, and frothing over its evil and craziness is not going to move it farther away. So Japanese reporters, and the citizens they report for, note important developments and then get on with business.

When American friends asked me what the Japanese (or at least, those Japanese who pay attention to international business and news stories) thought of the brouhaha over the Dubai Ports World deal, it was hard to put into words. I don't think it made us look anti-Arab or more generally racist, just kind of skittish and a bit silly.

We're not used to having enemies near to hand in America. Our only actual borders are with Canada and New Mexico. No one's worried about Cuba since the Bay of Pigs; and Alaska, despite its proximity to what was the USSR during the Cold War, has a low population and is isolated from the US mainland. We think of our enemies as far away.

But since most deep-seated ethnic and religious rivalries developed over local resources long before communication and transportation technology enabled animosity to be projected quickly over long distances, having hostile neighbors is a fact of life for much, if not most, of the world. Pakistan trades with India; China, Japan, and South Korea trade with each other; Israel trades with several of its Arab neighbors. The driving force, needless to say, is economics and not trust--the Israelis haven't suddenly forgotten what happened in 1948 in their zeal for selling their plastics. Trade is an economic good in general, and mutually beneficial economic ties also make mutually destructive war a riskier and therefore less likely response to frictions that arise.

The analogy to Dubai isn't perfect: I realize that with the ports deal, we weren't talking about whether to import its actual goods. But then, it turned out that we weren't talking about outsourcing port security to the UAE, either. Ultimately, it wasn't at all clear what the issue was; the jabber about "lack of transparency" seemed lame, given that none of those issuing it seemed to have been too worried about such matters before.

So I think it was difficult for businesspeople who followed the story to see it as being motivated by much beyond anxiety over the fact that people from around where the terrorists are--you know, over there--might be spending a lot of time at our ports. The UAE, despite having recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan a while back, is a known center of entrepreneurship and a major US ally in the region. So I think that, given that you can practically see the DPRK's missile silos with binoculars from Honshu's west coast, the reaction read as a bit on the hysterical side to Japanese people I know.

The arguments over the relocation of US military facilities now housed in Futenma are still developing. Prime Minister Koizumi met with Japan Defense Agency head Fukushiro Nukaga this morning, and talks with the US are slated to begin the day after tomorrow:

The main focus of the talks will be the issue of who will pay for the relocation of Marines currently stationed in Okinawa to Guam. The US has asked Japan to pay 75% of the US $10 billion tab. Japan, the relevant cabinet ministers having agreed that they "cannot accept" such a burden, plans to negotiate for a lower percentage.

Of course, the price tag may be the focus of Thursday's talks, but it's not the only bone of contention:

Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, Mayor of Nago City in Okinawa Prefecture, the planned site to which certain US military installations are to be relocated from Futenma [USMC] Air Station as part of negotiations over restructuring, held a meeting in Naha with Okinawa Governor Keiichi Inamine on 21 March. The Mayor expressed his intention to oppose a new, slightly tweaked proposal by LDP Policy Committee Chairman Hidenao Nakagawa; the new plan would move the facilities to the shoreline of Camp Schwab.

Governor Inamine affirmed his own rejection of the tweaked proposal and his support for the Mayor's stance: "We will persevere together."

...

At the meeting, the Mayor emphasized that he would not consider negotiations unless there was a large-scale shift of the planned site of relocation offshore in the "shoreline proposal": "(Area residents have) acceded to (an existing plan, which would create a facility off the Henoko district of Nago), a variation on the 'offshore proposal.'"

A few months back, residents weren't keen about any plan at all. The federal government continues to state that it will not accommodate more than minor adjustments to the plan and will keep talking to residents until it gets them to accept it.

The Nikkei had an uncharacteristically squishy editorial about China-Japan relations the other day--squishy in that its recommendations were airy and unspecific:

Japan-PRC relations have been deteriorating for a while, but one can't help feeling especially anxious over the "war of condemnations" between the two governments since last month. On 8 February, Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan told a visiting group from the Japan-China Society, "We have no no more hopes for Prime Minister Koizumi."

On 7 March, PRC Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing harshly criticized Prime Minister Koizumi's pilgimages to the Yasukuni Shrine as "an imbecilic and immoral thing" at a National People's Congress press conference. Li's indignant manner was not characteristic of him. Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe countered, "It is inappropriate to criticize the leaders of other nations in terms so lacking in dignity." Quite so.

But on the other hand, on the Japanese side, Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso has provoked the Chinese by repeatedly referring to Taiwan as a "country" (4 February, 9 March). Aso emended his statement on 9 March, stating, "Well, it's accurate to call it a 'territory,'" but there are reports in China that there are doubts there about whether the slip of the tongue was really unintentional. It's aberrant for those responsible for diplomatic relations between the two countries to repeatedly express themselves in ways that betray loss of a sense of good citizenship. [Our leaders] must not lose their reason and decorum in dealing with each other.

In the midst of all this, PRC Premier Wen Jiabao held a press conference for domestic and foreign journalists at which he tersely indicated what China's provisional Japan policy is. Of relations between the two countries while Prime Minister Koizumi, who continues to make pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine, is in office, Wen stated, "Smooth progress has hit extraordinary obstacles, but the responsibility lies with the leaders of Japan," thereby differentiating between the public and its leaders.

What makes it so squishy is the way it the way it focuses paragraph after paragraph on failures of nice-making and then gives its most concrete policy recommendation in a single blink-and-you-miss-it sentence later on: "Through expansion of exchange and economic cooperation between our peoples, we can prevent the deterioration of political relations from having a deleterious influence on economics and trade."

Well, sure. Liberalized trade is likely to strengthen bonds between China and Japan and make occasional diplomatic eruptions of their ancient enmity less damaging. But Japan still needs to draw lines about what it is and is not willing to concede. Could it make things easier on itself if Koizumi were less obstinate about the Yasukuni Shrine pilgrimages and Aso occasionally learned to rein it in about...well, anything? It's reasonable to think so. At the same time, the CCP is not populated by idiots. China knows how useful it is to be able to divert its citizens' dissatisfaction with their own rulers in the direction of Japan. (Remember last year's demonstrations.)

But let's not forget that Koizumi is no dummy himself. The course he's steering doesn't look so wise right now, given that things have gone from a cessation of meetings between heads of state to an open expression by the PRC that it doesn't think it can deal with Japan while he's running the government. After all, despite the PRC's operatic gestures of woundedness over Japan's bad faith, it's difficult to assess how much regional friction would actually be lessened if Japan decided to keep its own counsel about Taiwan and to stop the Yasukuni pilgrimages. China could very easily channel more of its animosity into the issue of development of East China Sea gas fields, or Japan's ongoing joint military programs with the US. Both of those are in and of themselves issues of material, and not just symbolic, significance. Perhaps Koizumi thinks he can smooth the way for more concessions from China on things that matter come this autumn if he's combative enough to make his successors look accommodating by comparison.

Thomas Schieffer, who appears to keep a low profile as US Ambassador to Japan, is in the news today for having visited the beach from which Megumi Yokota was abducted by DPRK agents in 1977:

The ambassador was accompanied on the visit by Yokota's 73-year-old father Shigeru and others, who explained the kidnapping to him. It was the first abduction scene visit by a high-ranking U.S. government official.

In a news conference after the visit, Schieffer said he was moved by the experience, and that the injustice of the abductions should be solved no matter how many years it took. He added he intended to discuss the issue with U.S. President George W. Bush when he next met him.

...

The visit is seen as lending support to Japan's stance of seeking a solution to the abductions, following the failure of comprehensive talks between Japan and North Korea in February.

The abductee issue is a big one for Japan (both the government and the public). When there are talks between the DPRK and the US in which Japan is involved, it tends to get backburnered in favor of more attention to, you know, nuclear development and stuff. And Japan and North Korea certainly haven't solved it between themselves.

Megumi Yokota, BTW, is the abductee whose unknown whereabouts have been reported on most frequently since the issue really gained steam several years ago. The DPRK gave Japan a pile of bones that turned out not to be hers.

Citizens in Iwakuni voted against the relocation of USMC facilities there:

An overwhelming majority of residents of Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, on Sunday said "no" to the planned relocation of 57 carrier-based aircraft to the U.S. Marine Corps' Iwakuni Air Base, casting a shadow over plans to realign of U.S. forces in Japan.

According to the Iwakuni municipal election administration commission, 43,433 citizens voted against the plan while 5,369 approved it.

The voter turnout was 58.68 percent, exceeding the 50 percent required for the votes to be counted.

...

Japan and U.S. governments are scheduled to make a final report on the realignment plan by the end of March. The central government is unlikely to change the relocation plan due to the Sunday's results because the plebiscite is not legally binding.

...

On March 20, eight days after the referendum, Iwakuni will be merged with six towns and a village. Six of these municipalities have already notified the central government of their general agreement with the plan.

This morning Shinzo Abe says:

[Abe] stated emphatically, "I'd like to be mindful of the result as we move forward and explain things to the residents in good faith." At the same time, "We're at the stage at which our negotiations with the US have basically gelled; that's our conclusion," he related, indicating that his view was that the relocation plans would not change.

The US agreed last week to return three facilities in Okinawa to Japan.

As if just in time to illustrate why cracking down on loan sharks is a good idea, this story appeared in the Mainichi today:

Two former employees of a loan shark have admitted during questioning that they intimidated a debtor, who later killed herself with two relatives, in a bid to force her to repay her debts, police said.

...

Seven employees of the loan shark, including the two, extended a total of around 32,000 yen in loans to the woman who lived in Yao, Osaka Prefecture, between April and June 2003. They then threatened her into paying about 167,000 yen in interest, approximately 225 times the legal limit, police said.

32,000 yen is around US $300; we're not talking about a loan for big money here. Of course, you don't need to know that to realize that 167,000 yen is over 500% interest--and that someone who needs to go to a loan shark for $300 at past retirement age is hardly likely to be able to cough up over $1000 within a few years from then.

After obtaining the loans, the woman received phone calls from the loan sharks almost every day, saying, "You borrowed the money so repay it. Otherwise, I'll kill you." The victim recorded the threatening calls on tape.

In June, the woman, her 61-year-old husband and her 81-year-old brother killed themselves by jumping in front of a train on the JR Kansai Line. She left a suicide note saying, "I'm scared by the phone calls every night."

This is from the Yomiuri:

Japan and the United States successfully conducted the first test of a jointly developed ballistic missile defense system off Hawaii on Wednesday, the U.S. Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency said.

The U.S. Standard Missile-3 vehicle, which incorporates a new nose cone developed by Japan, was launched at 10:45 a.m., local time, on Wednesday by the USS Lake Erie, an Aegis-equipped cruiser, near Kauai Island, the agency said.

Within one minute of launching, the new nose cone opened, without the missile having to maneuver, releasing a kinetic warhead targeting an "enemy" missile, according to the agency.

The conventional SM-3 required maneuvering to eject the nose cone before releasing the warhead to hit its target, raising concern the missiles could go off course during such a procedure.

Cool. Japan's track record with high-profile launchables has been rather spotty over the last several years--and yes, I know that missiles and rockets aren't the same thing--so the recent successes should be good morale, uh, boosters. (I can't find it now, but there was a report somewhere the other day that the DPRK had test-fired a short-range missile or two this week.)

This is par for the course in my adopted corner of the world:

"It's a law-abiding state that has a mature democratic system and, in economic terms, espouses liberal economic policies. It's a country whose values Japan shares." So saying, Minister of Foreign Affaird Taro Aso, at a lower house budgetary committee meeting on 9 March, called Taiwan a "state." Immediately thereafter, he corrected himself: "Well, I'm speaking on the premise that China is recognized as one unified legal government. Fundamentally, it would be accurate to say, 'territory.'" However, there are those who are discomfited by such repeated "off-message" expressions, which are at odds with the official position taken within the government.

The LDP's Naoki Okada responded to Aso's backpedaling with "How do we get a handle on Taiwan strategically?"

The question is not an idle one, given the state of economics and diplomacy in the region. Naturally, the PRC was spitting nickels:

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang called on Japan to honor its commitments made to China over the status of Taiwan, reiterating Beijing's stance that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.

"China strongly protests this crude interference in its internal affairs," Qin said, expressing "surprise that a high-ranking Japanese diplomat would make such remarks."

Aso has ruffled Chinese feathers repeatedly in recent months, most recently by accusing Beijing of using female spies to seduce Japanese diplomats and later blackmail them for classified information.

He also triggered protests from Beijing by calling China a significant threat in Asia, and suggesting that Taiwan's high educational standards were a legacy of Tokyo's 1895-1945 colonial rule over the island.

Japan, you may recall, plays the "interference in internal affairs" card about the Yasukuni Shrine pilgrimage issue frequently.

I don't think I ever posted about Aso's honey of a comment about Taiwan's education standards, BTW. The Nikkei cites part of it in the above article: "Taiwan has kept up with the times because it is a country with an extremely high level of education, thanks to improvements in literacy rates [during the occupation]." (In that bit, he called Taiwan a 国, which can be and usually is translated "country" but can also mean "province," but unlike yesterday didn't use the word 国家, which very explicitly denotes a "state" or "nation.") It doesn't seem to me unreasonable to point out that some of Japan's policies benefited the Taiwanese in some ways--though perhaps part of that is due to my American public education, in which a good half of the time spent on social science seems to be devoted to the complex legacies of colonial rule.

As the foreign minister, though, you'd think Aso would be diplomatic enough to have put in something along the lines of "our forebears did many things for both better and worse in Taiwan, but surely one accomplishment for which we can safely honor them is...." And given that a half-century has passed since Japan left Taiwan, it's rather odd not to acknowledge that the Taiwanese educational system wouldn't be of the high caliber it is were it not for the diligence of the Taiwanese themselves in keeping it up since then. The PRC accused Aso of "glamourizing colonization" in that case, BTW.

Attention to this is long overdue:

The Financial Services Agency has firmed up a new policy direction that will strengthen regulations on "excessive loans," those loans that exceed the borrower's ability to repay. The goal is to address a current [financial] reality in which the piling on of debts has ushered in such serious social problems as personal bankruptcy and suicide. The toughened regulations are intended to put the brakes on loans that result in debtors' having their houses seized and losing the means to live and to prohibit excessive requirements from loan guarantors. The FSA intends to eradicate "grey area interest," interest currently not subject to punishment even though it exceeds the [limit imposed by] the Interest Rate Restriction Law. In addition to improving oversight, the idea is to crack down on "excessive lending" by the loan industry.

The English version has just about as much detail as the original Japanese, though the order of facts is scrambled. I doubt that the solution lies in more restrictions on interest rates, usurious though they frequently are in Japan. The main problem here is more often out and out fraud, with unscrupulous lenders approving loans that they know borrowers will never be able to pay off. Requiring the sara-kin to put the results of their background checks on potential borrowers in writing sounds like a good first step, assuming the borrowers know what they're looking at and the regulators assigned actually check what they're supposed to be checking.

There was a demonstration over the weekend against the transfer of current Futenma base facilities to another location in Okinawa:

More than 30,000 people rallied in Japan's southern Okinawa island Sunday against plans to relocate a U.S. air base to another area on the island, demanding that the facility be moved outside the country, a news report said.

Organizers said an estimated 35,000 people participated in the two-hour rally in the city of Ginowan, site of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station, Kyodo News agency said.

"The city of Ginowan strongly demands that Futenma ... be shut down immediately and relocated outside of Japan," Ginowan Mayor Yoichi Iha was quoted by Kyodo as saying.

...

The plan to move the base--agreed to by Tokyo and Washington in October--also calls for the transfer of 7,000 Marines from Okinawa over six years to the U.S. territory Guam and the shifting of some operations to other cities on Japan's main islands.

Okinawa is Japan's poorest prefecture, and areas surrounding US military installations there (well, and elsewhere, too, but especially in Okinawa) tend to have a love-hate relationship with the bases. Our personnel create entire economies that would disappear if they left; on the other hand, entertainment districts that cater to servicemen have higher incidences of street crime than do surrounding areas, and when there are off-base accidents (as in the crash of a helicopter in Okinawa a few years ago) military commanders can come off high-handed. While I support our military policy, obviously, when it comes to specific accusations of misconduct, it can be difficult to know whom to sympathize with.

Speaking of Okinawa-related characters of dubitable sympathy, I can only assume the translator who came up with the first paragraph of this piece for the Yomiuri was laughing so hard he or she could barely type:

Technical Councillor Mamoru Ikezawa, the former third most senior official at the Defense Facilities Administration Agency, was aware of the agency's illegal bid-rigging practices, but was unable to stop them--and ended up playing a leading role.

According to informed sources, Ikezawa told agency colleagues that he would put a stop to "illegal practices." This was an apparent reference to agency projects that included the relocation of facilities of the U.S. Marine Corps' Iwakuni Air Station in Yamaguchi Prefecture.

Ikezawa, 57, and two other agency officials were arrested in late January and have since been indicted on suspicion of rigging air-conditioning project bids.

Late last month, prosecutors served the three with fresh arrest warrants on suspicion they organized rigged bids for projects at U.S. bases in Yamaguchi and Nagasaki prefectures.

Ikezawa is suspected of putting a higher priority on amakudari--wherein retiring government officials get jobs with private firms or public-service corporations in sectors related to their previous occupations--than on putting an end to bid-rigging.

"Ended up playing a leading role"? Well, yes, I suppose it's safe to say that means he "was unable to stop them." I don't see any reason to doubt that he was sincere enough about his desire to put a stop to collusion and amakudari. However, he made his choice, and I don't see what point there is to the it's-the-thought-that-counts qualifications now. (The Japanese version of the article, which doesn't contain much more information than the English version, is here.)

It's been a while since there was much news about the disputed East China Sea gas fields, but another round of talks begins today:

At the third round of talks, Japan proposed joint development of gas fields at four locations that straddle the midline boundary [between Japan and PRC territories] and run along a fossil fuel vein, including the Shungyo field. China continues in its stance of not recognizing the midline as the boundary and, in addition, has taken the position that the Shungyo field is in "non-disputed waters" (in the words of the Foreign Minister) on the western side of the midline and that resources there are China's.

All kinds of progress, huh? The Asahi has an English report that's already much more detailed, though of course no specifics have emerged yet from this fourth round of talks. The new talks are in no small part the work of the new Minister of Trade, Economy, and Industry:

Since succeeding Shoichi Nakagawa as trade minister in October, Nikai has taken a more conciliatory stance.

Nakagawa had attempted to pressure China by granting test drilling rights over the disputed East China Sea gas fields to a private Japanese firm.

Nikai argued that even if the rights were granted, private companies would not be able to do any work if China maintained a confrontational stance.

Nikai's repeated calls for more talks apparently convinced China that compromise is possible.

China finished laying a pipeline from Chunxiao [I'm calling it "shungyo," the Japanized pronunciation for 春暁, though the Japanese name is supposed to be "shirakawa".--SRK] to the Chinese mainland in October. Experts thought China was about to start production, but there has been no noticeable work since then. Government sources say China has likely halted operations temporarily to save face for Nikai.

So the consensus, such as there is, seems to be that this particular round of talks will accomplish demonstrations of goodwill but no actual progress on exploration and drilling policy. Next time, maybe?

So. You know when your copy of Bruce Bawer's new book has just come from Amazon and you're all like, Cool! I shall recline languourously on the sofa and drink tea and eat madeleines and read about what happened While Europe Slept, and Life is like, Wait a minute, there--you have people at the OFFICE who are DEPENDING on you to work LATE, and you're like, Wah! and Life is like, Look, bitch--no GAINFUL without EMPLOYMENT...?

Yeah, me too.

I'm sure it'll be great when I get to it, possibly this weekend when Atsushi's home again and we can do the tea thing together.

Of course, excess employment is not everyone's problem right now. A prominent DPJ member has resigned over the whole e-mail flap:

Following its admission that what it claimed to be an explosive e-mail was inauthentic, the Democratic Party of Japan announced Tuesday one of its executives had resigned from his post as the party publicly apologized for the accusation made by a party lawmaker about a son of the Liberal Democratic Party's secretary general.

DPJ Diet Affairs Committee Chairman Yoshihiko Noda resigned Tuesday. He told the party's executive committee he made the decision to step down from his post in order to take responsibility for giving lawmaker Hisayasu Nagata the green light to make an allegation that turned out to be false and which resulted in a nearly two-week-long dispute that stalled other Diet business.

Nagata, meanwhile, was suspended from the party for six months. He was also dismissed as vice chairman of the party's Diet Affairs Committee and director of the House of Representatives Financial Affairs Committee.

An interesting cultural point is made by DPJ leader Seiji Maehara's reaction:

"Though I've decided to continue in my position and make a fresh start for the party, somebody must take responsibility so I had to let the Diet affairs chief, whom I trust most, go," Maehara said.

At least he stopped short of "This hurts me more than it hurts you, Yoshi-kun."

Another resignation that may bode well for us JAL fliers was announced today:

JAL officially announced on 1 March that JAL Group CED Toshiyuki Shinmachi (63) will accept responsibility for the corporation's internal conflicts, step down from his post and assume the position of Chairman of the Board, which carries no right to representation; he will be succeeded as president by Haruka Nishimatsu (58). At a press conference, Shinmachi explained the reason for his stepping down: "We must attend to the situation sooner rather than later to recover [the public's] trust."

...

Nishimatsu said, "The JAL Group is in danger of not surviving. I want to get the board and our employees on the same page in order to recover [the public's] trust."

The Mainichi has an English report here.

Shinmachi apparently considered pulling a Maehara:

The president of the holding company of the Japan Airlines (JAL) group, Toshiyuki Shinmachi, is poised to step down to settle internal strife that began after four executives demanded he and two other top executives resign to take responsibility for the company's poor performance, company officials said.

...

Vice President Katsuo Haneda and Senior Managing Director Hidekazu Nishizuka, who had been urged by the four executives to step down, will also leave their positions, while the company will apparently demand that at least one of the four rebel executives resign.

Shinmachi had initially intended to propose that both of the two top executives and the rebels should be punished to take responsibility for the internal strife while he remained as president for now.

We'll see what happens, of course. Luckily this is all anticipatory. Unlike, say, JR West, JAL has lost trust not because of a horrifying fatal accident but because of debate and a series of bad-PR warnings from the JAA and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport.