On The Meaning Of Yasukuni Today

Over the next few hours a herd of Diet members will march through the confines of Yasukuni Shrine, participating in an annual political and personal rite. The march will offend many inside Japan and many outside of it. The governments of China and South Korea will offer critical comment.

One focus of attention attention today will be on the number of Diet members who show up (we should expect an uptick from last year's numbers as newly elected members of the House of Councillors make their debuts). Another will be a will she/won't she as regards newly-elected governor of Tokyo Koike Yuriko, whose heretofore staunch nationalist posture now clashes with her task of leading a cosmopolitan metropole.

The greatest emphasis, however, will be on visitations by members of the Cabinet. One, Minister of Reconstruction Imamura Masahiro, already paid his visit to the shrine on Thursday the 11th. Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Takaichi Sanae has vowed to pay a visit today. Minister of Defense Inada Tomomi, who leads a special group within the LDP dedicated to visiting Yasukuni, was suddenly dispatched a study tour of SDF operations in Djibouti. Her gleeful departure from the airport on Friday left little doubt that the purpose of of her trip was the government's trying to keep her away from the shrine on the end-of-war day.

In light of Minister Inada's bubbly egress from Japan it is not inappropriate to revisit a point I have made previously about the August 15 Yasukuni sampai.

For some of the 210,000 or so who visit the shrine on a typical August 15, a visit on the end of war day is an act of REVERENCE, a time to reflect upon and pay tribute to the sacrifices of those died in service to the nation.

For many, including those who arrive in various kinds of dress up – black suits and ties, phony military uniforms or Hawaiian shirts (a favorite of gangster bosses) – the visit to Yasukuni on August 15 is an opportunity to TRANSGRESS, to engage in an activity notable only for being in very bad taste. It is the same delicious sense of being stupid and bad in public, of violating the rules of good society along with one's equally transgressive peers, which is the foundation of the current political support for Donald Trump or the hero worship of Vladimir Putin.

The qualitative difference between the two can be summed up by the difference, in English, between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is (and for this definition, I am indebted to my TUJ Summer Semester student T. S.) when one loves one's country enough to die for it. Nationalism is (and for this definition, I am indebted to my TUJ Summer Semester student L. K.) is when one loves one country so much one one hates others for it.

For too many showing up today at Yasukuni today it will be nationalism, not patriotism, which propels them through the torii.

The New Abe Lineup At Party Central

In few hours Prime Minister Abe Shinzo will unveil his new lineup for the top party posts of the Liberal Democratic Party and a new Cabinet. From hints that have been leaked to the new agencies so far, Abe seems to be proceeding on the assumption that loyalty and closeness to him, not competence, experience or judgment, should be his main selection criteria.

LDP Party Secretariat

Replacing the seriously injured Tanigaki Sadakazu at Secretary-General will be Nikai Toshihiro. Leader of a medium-sized faction, Nikai was long seen as a potential rival of the Prime Minister. During his stint as chairman of the Diet Budget Committee Nikai was extremely solicitous of opposition members pounding away at the Abe government and the prime minister himself. In the last year or so, however, Abe has made a special effort to woo Nikai, kicking him upstairs into the special post of Chairman of the General Council and visiting him in his home district. The Wakayama legislator has reciprocated with pledges of loyalty and friendship, the most dramatic of which was his recent post-election expression of support for an extension of Abe's presidential term past the party rules-determined 6 years.

[For those with issues as regards Japan's killing of cetaceans, it's panic time. The whaling fleet's mother ship is homeported in Abe's district. The Taiji dolphin-killing "cove" is in Nikai's.]

The appointment of Nikai means that once again the LDP's day-to-day management will be in the hands of a politician with links to China. Tanigaki's ties were largely emotional, his affection for Chinese poetry being one of his remarked-upon traits. Nikai's ties, however, are much more nuts-and-bolts. He is probably the active legislator with the deepest and broadest network of ties with officials and politicians of China. His appointment will likely both please and pain the CCP. If Nikai asks to come across the water and meet with a few old friends, how can the Chinese government refuse?

Ostensibly keeping an eye on Nikai will be Hosoda Hiroyuki, who will take over Nikai's chairmanship of the LDP General Council. Hosoda is the leader of the Seiwakai, the largest faction and the faction to which Abe belongs. It is a measure of Abe's respect for and wariness of Nikai that he has asked his faction leader to step in and run the party’s main meetings.

Moving out of her party position of policy chief and into the Cabinet is Inada Tomomi, a protégé of the Prime Minister's and a fellow Seiwakai member. She will be taking over the defense portfolio – a symbolic, not substantive choice, as Inada has heretofore not been seen as taking a particular interest in defense issues (her own interests can be gleaned from the name of her personal Diet member group, "The Tradition and Innovation Association"). She is also something of an arriviste in party circles, having only served four terms in the Diet. She will be leapfrogging over some 70 LDP legislators who 1) have more elections to the Diet than her and 2) have never served in a Cabinet post.

Taking over her spot as chairman of the Policy Research Council and rising ever so slightly in party rank will be Motegi Toshimitsu. Motegi was the chairman of the party's elections strategy committee and thus nominally the architect of the party's wins in the Hokkaido #5 by-election and the July 10 House of Councillors election this year. However, since the LDP is fighting what is still a prostrate and disarmed opposition, Motegi's actual motivational and organizational strengths remain in question.

Motegi seems to be one of Abe's most important cultivated allies. The Harvard master's degree holder and former McKinsey consultant is a frequent guest and golf partner of the PM. He also has as many elections to the Diet (8) as the PM. Motegi would seem a possible a dark horse candidate to step in to the premiership, should the PM need to suddenly step down. However, Motegi did not start out his political career in the LDP, having first won his seat as a member of the opposition Japan New Party (Nihon Shinto).

Can Abe Save The Tokyo Olympics?

So the Yomiuri Shimbun is sycophantic. Tell me something I did not already know. (Link)

But beyond asking the reader to laugh at the Yomiuri articles's North Korea-like reverence for direct guidance from the Supreme Leader, some further, unbridled thoughts on the story of the search for a National Stadium:

1) These are the Abe Olympics

It is not clear from what springs Abe Shinzo's authority over matters as mundane (but crucial, given the current plan to hold the Olympics in August) as what kind of cooling system will be employed to keep spectators at the National Stadium feeling somewhat more comfortable. True Abe is the head of the government and the chairman of the government committee overseeing the Olympic effort.

However, a chairmanship is not an executive role. These are the decisions that need to be made by the director-general of a bureaucratic organization. The committee should be merely rubber stamping the decision of this as yet unnamed director-general.

So what is Abe doing here?

Guess: making sure that when he hands off the premiership in 2018 in a precedent-shattering transfer of power (to Inada Tomomi) parachuting in as the savior of the floundering Tokyo 2020 organization, that there still will be a Tokyo 2020 organization for him to save.

Abe decided to go all in in 2013, flying to Buenos Aires, delivering a speech in English in support of the Tokyo Olympic bid. At the time it seemed to many (including yours truly) that the Olympics were to be both an integral structural element and the capstone of the Abenomics economic revitalization program.

Hence the befuddlement of many (including yours truly) at Abe's inexplicable appointment of a leadership team of superannuated, serial losers and misfits to guide the Olympics effort.

What seems more likely now is that inevitable failure of the committee to guide the Olympics effort was not a bug but a feature, with the ages of the principals giving away the plot from the outset.

Under a not-at-all implausible scenario it was Abe's intention to descend from the Olympian heights of the PM's office; supplant an ineffective and insipid Mori Yoshiro-led program; electrify the staff, volunteers and partners with his new, dynamic, experienced leadership (all brimming vim and vigor); and with only seconds to spare, lead Tokyo to host an Olympics putting all previous and future Olympics to shame.

Only, of course, having put a band of self-important stuffed shirts whose only real daytime activity should be a round of golf in charge of a modern Olympics imploded far sooner than Abe could have dreamed. Perhaps he thought that his back would be covered by charter member of the Friends of Abe: Minister of Education, Culure, Sports, Science and Technology Shimomura Hakubun (seen musing above at the meeting of the steering committee for the new National Stadium). If so, Abe seriously misread his revisionist co-conspirator: Shimomura, who lifted himself out of dire poverty through academic scholarships, actually cares about education – and nothing else.

So bereft of direction was the structure Abe put into place that it had to be Abe, not the committee or Minister Shimomura, who had to pull the plug on the gargantuan Zara Hadid-designed Bicycle Helmet. It is Abe who is making changes to the design specifications for the next attempt.

2) They still do not know what the heck they are doing

One does not have to read the analysis of the new stadium plan, though there is a lot of juicy stuff coming out, to know that even with Abe's direct intervention, the Olympics effort is ensnared in a web of cross-purposes.

One only has to read the official government description of Friday's meeting of the National Stadium committee.

According to the Prime Minister's Residence website, those deciding on the new design for the new National Stadium will "undertake their investigation bending an ear to the voices of the citizens and the athletes."

Gee, what a concept.

As comedian Chris Rock would say, the Kantei wants the committee to get credit for activities any other committee knows it is just supposed to do.

Under the rubric of "putting the athletes first" the committee will, and I am not making this up, "as a principle limit the functions of the national stadium to what is necessary to put on the sporting events themselves."

Huh?

How is building a structure that does the least possible and still be called an Olympics venue become "putting the athletes first"? Was a design for a structure in which Olympic events cannot be held one of the alternatives?

Then there the little matter of the design itself. The committee promises, and again I am not making this up, to "simultaneously reflect international universal design, Japaneseness and other such attributes."

What?

How can anything have a goal of simultaneously reflecting "international universal design" and "Japaneseness" and qualities that are "like these things" – which is to say, "like" polar opposites (if something has "Japaneseness" that means by definition is it not "universal")-- qualities that are not even described? (Link – J)

Mark this still a catastrophe-in-progress.

What would save this situation would be an open, national competition, with a young unknown architect or designer offering a simple, spare and elegant design (with an impact the lines of Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC with its legion of imitators, including Okinawa's "Cornerstone of Peace") bailing out Abe and his cronies from the fiasco they have spawned. The narrative of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics being a citizen's Olympics could then be resurrected.

No, I am not hopeful.

Original image courtesy: Prime Minister's Residence.

Where We Go After Down

US Dollar versus JPY over the last eleven hours

After a Monday of global stock market instability and collapse the Abe government will be facing questions about what it can do to protect Japan’s economy from damage. The Cabinet will have its regularly scheduled Tuesday meeting. Afterward media organizations will ask Chief Cabinet Minister Suga Yoshihide what if anything the Abe government intends to do to restore confidence in Japanese markets. Prime Minister Abe likely faces as similar fate in the Diet, the opposition homing in on the unfair but entirely reasonable question of what he as prime minister will order his subordinates to do.

The answer Suga and Abe will not own up to is that there is virtually nothing the Abe government can do except watch the screens with dread. This government is tapped out when it comes to either deploying cash or inspiring confidence. Increased fiscal stimulus was already in the cards for this autumn; it is now a virtual certainty. Such fiscal stimulus is designed, however, to cope with the heretofore obstinate refusal of the Japanese economy to respond to the ministrations of the Bank of Japan, not to quell current market turmoil.

Liberal Democratic Party hacks will be tempted to argue that the public need not be worried, that equities markets are wrong and Japan's future is bright because of the yet-to-be realized growth effects of the Third Abenomics or robotics or some other such rigmarole. I am waiting for some peppy puppy (please, please, please let it be Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council Chair Inada Tomomi) to say, "Just look at how much the yen strengthened yesterday! It is a sign that global investors appreciate the opportunities and stabilities created by the Abe program!" That the effect any of the major proposals of the Third Arrow would be deflationary, exacerbating the market's fears about growth, will not trouble any part of the soft squishy heads of the Abe True Believers, of course.

Had we a ruthless, determined opposition in this blessed land, television shows this morning would feature street smart and mean-looking (yes, I am thinking of Renho) MPs complaining that the Japanese government would have the capacity to deploy assets to calm markets, making Japan the global leader Abe Shinzo always blabs about, a except of course that Team Abe robbed the national piggy bank to inflate the profits of its zaikai and construction industry friends.

That Japan lacks a serious opposition means of course the country will not be tying itself into knots, each side blaming the other. Of course it also means that the country will generate zero ideas on what it is that the government must do, as members of the parties in power will merely keep repeating the idiot mantra, "Markets go up. Markets go down. The important thing is to not panic. Wait for the government's current policies to bear fruit."

Image courtesy: Yahoo! Finance Japan

First Read - 6 March 2015

- The knife attack yesterday on U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert (Link) immediately brought to mind the much more serious stabbing of U.S. Ambassador Edwin Reischauer in Tokyo on 24 March 1964 (Link). However, seemingly only to my mind, as a Google News search of "Reischauer" in katakana returns nothing more recent than reports of the visit of Dr. Kent Calder of the Reischauer Center.

For those historically minded, Dr. George R. Packard, the author of book in the above link and Ambassador Reischauer's special assistant, is still with us. Someone should try to contact him for historical perspective -- especially because he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the Ampo disturbances.

- For those of us who were wondering, "When only about 33% of those in their twenties vote in national elections, what is the point of lowering the voting age from 20 to 18 years-of-age for national referendums on constitution revisions?" the Liberal Democratic Party let the other shoe drop yesterday. The LDP unveiled plans to have all definitions of adulthood lowered to 18 years of age -- in particular the right to charge (and presumably, in the case of murder, execute) youths 18 and 19 years-of-age as adults. "With rights must come responsibilities (gimu)" intoned LDP policy research chief Inada Tomomi, repeating the conservatives' mantra regarding the Constitution.

That this proposition comes amidst then nation's horror at the murder of 13 year old Uemura Ryota by a gang of youths led by an 18 year old is a mere coincidence.

The Komeito and opposition parties are deeply skeptical about the LDP's plans, saying that changing the legal definition of childhood goes far beyond discussions the parties have had on the subject of altering the franchise. (Link - J)

Just what the LDP has been thinking on the issue of lowering the voting age, aside from a bizarre, "if we can lower the voting age AND change the education system to inculcate hyperpatriotism, making younger voters more ready to vote for us AND we can hang the killer of Uemura Ryota, we will be invincible!" is a mystery.

Then again, what the other parties cooperating on the bill lowering the voting age are thinking is equally mysterious.

As for Inada, a wild, wild guess: though no hint of this has escaped Abe Shinzo's lips, he wants her or Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Taka'ichi Sanae to succeed him as prime minister.

Who Is Up For A Yasukuni Visit Today?

UPDATE1: as of 09:45 JST, cabinet ministers SHINDO Yoshitaka and FURUYA Keiji have both visited Yasukuni Shrine, with Furuya declaring he signed in as "Minister of State Furuya Keiji." HAGIUDA Ko'ichi has also paid a visit, delivering Prime Minister ABE Shinzo's donation.

UPDATE 2: Minister of Japan Cool And Much Else INADA Tomomi paid her respects in the afternoon in the company of the History and Creativity Association, her small group of Diet member fellow travelers (here is their post-Yasukuni group shot from last year Link)completing the list of the Terrible Trio. Policy Research Council chief TAKAICHI Sanae, as at seemingly every major shrine event, was front and center of the Association of Diet Members For Everyone Making Visits To Yasukuni Together multi-party mass visitation. (Link - J)



Credit Abe Shinzo for having some sense. He has told the press that he will avoid making, either immediately prior to or immediately after the national ceremony commemorating the end of World War II, a visit to Yasukuni Shrine today. With his relations with the leaders of China and South Korea still in the deep freeze (Link), Putin acting like a woman scorned (Link or Link), investors showing less and less confidence in his economic reform program (Link) and world in general in turmoil, he has decided to not set the region on fire with a gratuitous end-of-The-War day visit. (Link - J video)

Instead, Abe will reprise his restraint of last year by having an aide make a a cash donation in his name instead.

So who should we be on the lookout for today at Yasukuni's gates?

Hagiuda Ko'ichi - it has been a quiet couple of months for the man who last year seemed to be speaking directly from Abe Shinzo's limbic system. If the Big Boy from Hachioji (where the Imperial tombs are located, as he will happily tell you) is once again the bag man for Abe's donation to Yasukuni, he should once again be viewed as the wide back door into Abe's chamber of secrets.

The Terrible Trio - Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Shindo Yoshitaka, State Minister for Japan Cool And A Lot Of Other Stuff Inada Tomomi and Chairman of the National Safety Commission Furuya Keiji -- the Terrible Trio -- have said nothing about going but will be going. Shindo and Furuya will probably not survive the Cabinet reshuffle on September 3 (somebody has to lose his/her job to make space for cabinet hopefuls and it is easier for Abe to dump his male Best Friends) so have an incentive to go out in a blaze of glory, signing the registers as "Member of The Abe Cabinet." Inada, who is rumored to be taking over for Taka'ichi Sanae at the Liberal Democratic Party's Policy Research Council (and one cannot think of a better way of cementing the continued irrelevance of the PARC - Link) will visit but probably either early in the morning or in the late afternoon in a private capacity. Not that she has to, mind you: Takaichi herself will be once again the smug front and center of the phalanx of Diet members paying their respects in today's heat.

Shimomura Hakubun - The arch-conservative and token poor person in Abe Shinzo inner circle has had a very quiet one and a half years, indulging in his inner revisionist only once in a florrid and ultimately pointless bid to stop the tiny Okinawan town of Taketomi from using a social studies textbook of its own choosing (Link). Oddly, he has not been mentioned among the cabinet members who are going to be retained in the reshuffle, despite his incredible patience in not carrying out the wholesale smashing of the education system long promised by Abe Shinzo loyalists and allies. If Shimomura shows up at Yasukuni today he will be signaling that he knows he will not be leading the revolution after September.

Any Other Cabinet Minister - If any other of the Cabinet's members pay their respects, it will be pretty much a declaration of his/her being in the "Shatter and splatter/Pitcher and platter/What do we care?/We won't be there!" category of September non-survivors. Since having the image of being "better than Abe at least" in terms of sensitivity to Chinese and Korean sentiments is one of the few selling points a challenger can offer, one cannot expect any of the bigwigs or factions leaders (Tanigaki, Ishihara, for example) to show up.

Ishiba Shigeru - If LDP Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru shows up today, it means he is most definitely trolling for a "even more patriotic than Abe" reputation. Ishiba is looking to challenge Abe for the LDP presidency in September next year if the LDP's performance in local elections over the next nine months is less than stellar -- which is looking pretty likely (the  next two big tests, the Fukushima and Okinawa gubernatorial elections, look incredibly tough for the party). Ishiba has already planted his flag in more militant territory than Team Abe in the matter of a Diet examination of the recent recantations by The Asahi Shimbun of certain of their stories on the comfort women (Link). A Yasukuni visit today would indicate Ishiba is making a serious play for the affections of the radicals in the party.


Later -Yes, I too will be glad when this day is over, so I can stop talking about The War -- at least until December when Abe does make his annual pilgrimage to Yasukuni.


Image: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo laying a wreath at the atomic bombing memorial in Nagasaki on August 9, 2014.
Image courtesy: Abe Shinzo official Facebook page.

Prior To President Obama's Arrival - A Question Of Atmospherics

Source: Clay's Flickr photostream, under a Creative Commons License.

The Sunday visit to Yasukuni Shrine by Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission and Kishi family retainer Furuya Keiji (Link), the April 12 visit to the shrine of Minister of Interal Affairs and Communications Shindo Yoshitaka (Link), Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's sponsorship yet again of a masakaki decoration for the shrine during its Spring Festival (Link) and the battalion of members of the Diet scheduled to pay their respects at the shrine on Tuesday, all right on the eve of the Obama visit should not necessarily be viewed as provocative pandering to revisionist, fantabulist followers in defiance of the United States's message of disappointment at Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's visit on 26 December 2013 (Link)and the laying of wreaths at Chidorigafuchi by visiting U.S. Secretaries Chuck Hagel and John Kerry on 3 October 2013. (Link)

Instead getting all the visits of those who are just hell bent to pay some sort of tribute to Japan's loyally self-sacrificing imperial subjects out of the way before President Obama's plane touches down is supposed to be as a concession of sorts to the United States.

The insistence of the current level of reverence as moderation will suffer a loss of credibility if

a) either Finance Minister Aso Taro, State Minister for Administrative Reform Inada Tomomi and/or Education Minister Shimomura

b) any Liberal Democratic Party member of the Diet shows up at Yasukuni during the Obama visit.

Aso has been keeping his head down ever since his infamous "Is there not something to learn from the overthrow of the Weimar Constitution?" musings of last year (Link) and Inada and Shimomura deferred their visits. If any of these three ministers pops up in Kudanshita any time between now and Wednesday noon -- then we should not be surprised to see fireworks -- which in this blessed land are usually a summer phenomenon.

Incidentally, I recently visited the attached Yushukan (Link). I had long eschewed going, not wishing to give a yen to the shrine or its affiliates. However, when a certain officer of the Congressional Research Service asked if I were available to tag along on a visit, I broke my longstanding vow.

On the whole I found the place a lot less lurid than I expected, with the arguments more allusive and evasive than I could have imagined. Some parts are heinous -- the description of the fall of Nanjing, for example. However, on the whole, I came away with the feeling of the hopelessness of Japan's imperial enterprise, with all its jury-rigged suicide systems and walls of the faces of, as Steven Stills once wrote about a different time and a different struggle, "All the brave soldiers |That cannot get older." (Link - video)

If the goal of the Yushukan is to fill one with a sense of awe or sadness, it fails. What even the mildly questioning mind comes away with is a sense of the essential and obvious stupidity of the Japanese imperial enterprise.

The section of the museum on the build up to the Pacific War, with the focus on Japan's resources crisis in the face of U.S. embargoes, is a window into the fear Japanese conservatives have about energy, particularly nuclear energy and the nuclear fuel cycle. Looking at the exhibits at the Yushukan it is not surprising that the present generation -- who have never known anything but abundance -- are nevertheless paranoid about Japan ever being pushed into making a strategic choice out of a want of raw materials.

Magic Out Of Okayama

The third of the Laws of the late great science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke states:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Bet old Arthur would have loved to have seen this.

A bit of magic out of Okayama to keep in mind when one is exhausted by the demographic and debt trend lines or when the televised form of State Minister Inada Tomomi presiding over yet another bogus innovation or Cool Japan forum sends one searching for a shoe to throw.

Three Disquieting Items On The Sideboard

Today is a no newspaper day in Japan, the result of the one day a month the country's newspaper reporters and editors ostensibly are allowed off the merry-go-round.

In the absence of a morning paper one can hold in one's hands, a trio of depressing news stories you may have missed from the past two weeks:

1) Somehow I Don't Think That That's The Lesson

From Center for a New American Security expert Patrick Cronin, in a post for the War on the Rocks blog, an anecdote in relation to China’s recently declared air defense identification zone. It slaps a question mark on the judgment of Koike Yuriko, the Liberal Democratic Party's multilingual and multifaceted main communications officer:

...The logic of where this air superiority contest is heading can be illustrated by a chilling anecdote related last week at the Center for a New American Security by Japanese Parliamentarian Yuriko Koike. Representative Koike, who was national security advisor to Shinzo Abe during his previous stint as Prime Minister, recounted how she missed her Libyan Airlines flight from Tripoli to Cairo on 21 February 1973. That flight strayed into Israeli-controlled airspace and was shot down by Israeli F-4 Phantom II fighters, killing 108 people.

Reflecting on her near-miss with death, Representative Koike said the incident taught her what it means to protect one's airspace, implying that any country serious about air sovereignty must be willing to act as decisively as the Israelis did 40 years ago over the Sinai Peninsula. But whereas former Minister Koike was recalling a personal vignette, the Chinese government was enunciating official policy…

(Link)

One hopes that Dr. Cronin misunderstood Ms. Koike's point. A normal person, having missed a commercial passenger flight that ended up being shot down by fighter jets, would probably not come away from that brush with death with increased admiration for the fighter pilots and their political masters. A normal person indeed would ask, "How we fix the world so as to prevent such a tragedy ever happening again?"

Then again, Dr. Cronin is quoting Koike "The Iron Butterfly" Yuriko. Maybe she really did come out of a near death experience with increased appreciation for those who have killed innocent civilians by mistake. Or on purpose, I don't know.

2) These Are The Alternatives? Really?

Catherine Traywick has a report out for Foreign Policy on America's role as a supporter of the new Special Secrets Protection Act. The piece, checking in with folks who know, offers a fairly decent rundown on the positive reasons why the Abe government and the Liberal Democratic Party felt compelled to put passage of the new law on the front burner. It underplays the level to which the new Act is a simple aping of American statutes and practices as regards secrecy, ignoring the qualitative and cultural differences in between the two country's bureaucracies and jurisprudence.

What is really disturbing about the piece, however, is the concluding comment from Denny Roy of the East West Center in Honolulu. Trying to put the Act into perspective, where it is a vital element in the aggrandizing of the Japan-U.S. military alliance, Mr. Roy offers this choice:

"Would you rather have Japan as a friendly dictator able to go to war with you -- even if it doesn't live up to your democratic values -- or would you rather have a pacifistic Japan that has limitations in terms of military ability?"

(Link)

The answer to this question of course is, "The latter! The latter! The latter! Or, possibly, neither of these two! Pray that we may never be offered this choice!"

Given the vagaries of journalism, Mr. Roy may have been quoted improperly or out of context. If the above Hobson's Choice ever even enters into the minds of U.S. policy makers, though, then everyone should pretty much forget about the U.S. being a benign power that learns from its mistakes.

3) It's An End of the World As We Know It Party

The extraordinary session of the Diet has ended in confusion and rushed action, with items on the legislative calendar left undone, a last minute extension and an unsightly near midnight vote on the most sweeping and regressive piece of civil liberties legislation in decades.

At a point in the legislative calendar when the attention of Diet members was worth, in Mark Twain's words, "four dollars a minute" one would hardly expect that the prime minister and 400 of his closest friends, including 200 member of the Diet, would take the afternoon off to throw a party celebrating the coming of a new, more patriotic and traditionalist Japan.

Well, they did. On November 26. In the middle of the afternoon.

Don't bother looking for a description of the party on the Prime Minister's Residence web page. Or on Prime Minister's Facebook page. Or on the home page or Facebook page of Minister of State for Regulatory Reform (and Administrative Reform and Civil Service Reform and "Cool Japan" Strategy and the "Challenge Again" Initiative) Inada Tomomi -- though she most certainly was there.

One has to go to the home page of Abe/Kishi family retainer and Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission Furuya Keiji to find mention of the conservative pow-wow (Link - J). Furuya, who has a habit of documenting his most Sisyphean endeavors in great detail, posts a pair of photos from the shindig, including a quartet shot of him with Hyakuta Naoki, the author Prime Minister Abe recently appointed to the board of governors of NHK in what is the crawling coup d’etat against that entity's independence and balance.

To be fair, Prime Minister Abe spent only 12 minutes at the Sosei Nippon study reunion (kenshukai) -- a really a short span of time when one considers that he is the chairman of Sosei Nippon.

What is Sosei Nippon? There is a home page (Link) but oddly, in this supposed new era of openness and internationalization, the group's home　page is only in Japanese.

For a description of the organization in English there is Matthew Penney's guide to the revisionist organizations boasting Cabinet ministers as members. Therein Sosei Nippon ("Japan's Rebirth") is described as:

A Diet group formed in 2007. Members pledge to "protect Japanese traditions and culture", "rethink the postwar order", and "protect Japan's national interests and make Japan a country respected by international society". They have hosted lectures by rightist pundits and authors such as Sakurai Yoshiko and Fujiwara Masahiko. After the ouster of the LDP from power, the group publically accused the Democratic Party of manifesting "socialistic and totalitarian tendencies". They pledged to stand against DPJ proposals to allow husbands and wives to have different surnames – something that the group argued would undermine "family togetherness" – and moves to allow permanent residents to vote in local elections, part of a larger pattern of assertions by conservative lawmakers that foreigners in Japan are neither loyal nor committed to the Japanese state and undermine the social order. The group has a limited web presence and seems to have had difficulty establishing a clear identity as many of its assertions on history, culture, and contemporary society are already covered by more focused Diet member groups.
(Link)

The November 26 event did not go entirely unnoticed by the news media conglomerates. The Sankei Shimbun published the following account (translation by MTC):

At Sosei Nippon Gathering, Prime Minister Says, "I Will Take Us Back To A Japan of Glory"

Sosei Nippon, the cross-party league of Diet members which has Prime Minister Abe Shinzo as its chairman, held, on November 26, its study reunion inside the Diet Members #1 Office Building. By declaring, "This is only the start of our taking Japan back to glory," the PM demonstrated his desire to press forward with a politics deeply rooted in conservatism.

At the reunion there about 400 persons, including members of the Diet and local assembly lawmakers. Journalist Sakurai Yoshiko and novelist Hyakuta Naoki gave speeches. Chairman of the National Safety Commission Furuya Keiji called out to the group, "The role of [this league] is to enracinate real conservatism deep in the earth." State Minister for Administrative Reform Inada Tomomi put forth the appeal, "What I want to realize is the casting off of the postwar regime."

(Link- J)

Nothing terribly weird that we have never heard before from the featured speakers in the above, of course. But why hold the reunion in the midst of the hectic last days of the Diet session? Furthermore, whenever I see the word "glory" (hokori) rear its ugly head -- I start looking for the exit.

Abe Shinzo's Friends Indeed

"It is called the Unbegun Symphony. It used to be called the Pathetic Symphony. Now these names as you may know, like the Jupiter Symphony and the Eroica Symphony...now these names as you may know, they are usually not given by the composer. They are given by friends or the musicians and stuff. This name, the Pathetic Symphony, was given to the piece by some of my old friends.

(Pause)

Well, I have a new set of friends now...and we're calling it the Unbegun Symphony."

- Peter Schickele, "The Unbegun Symphony" (1966) *

Well, he has a new set of friends now...

When I hear Abe Shinzo arguing for a stimulus package (taking cash out of the national treasury and distributing it to politically important constituencies) in order to offset the likely downturn in individual and corporate spending after the consumption tax rise (raised in order to pay for the higher health and pension costs associated with a larger population of retirees) so as to not derail the economic growth associated with Abenomics monetary policy (which, by targeting inflation, will eat away at the spending power of those on fixed incomes and/or living off their savings, i.e., retirees) and fiscal policy (which by accelerating the rate of increase of the national debt, threatens jumps in interest rates demanded by borrowers, which will increase the percentage of the national budget consecrated to debt service, decreasing the amount of money available for everything else, most importantly pensions and healthcare for the elderly) all against the advice of economists Honda Etsuro and Hamada Ko'ichi, the two identified "fathers of Abenomics," whilst simultaneously trying to drum up support globally for an as yet unknown set of structural reforms to be decided on...soon...because the set of reforms his brain trust of supposedly market savvy and creative CEOs produced for the big June announcement were either trivial (Link) or so nakedly self-serving (Rakuten CEO Mikitani Hiroshi going so far as to threaten to quit Abe's industrial competitiveness council if the sales of drugs and medical equipment over the Internet were not in included in the June announcement) as to embarrass the PM -- I blackly remember Professor Schickele's sardonic, "Well, I have a new set of friends now..."

In his return to power a year ago, Abe Shinzo seems to have secretly made a deal with himself and his eminence grise Suga Yoshihide. Abe would nod in the direction of old coterie of supporters and allies, the so-called "Friends of Abe" like Taka'ichi Sanae, Furuya Keiji and Inada Tomomi -- and yes, even the duplicitous and too glib Aso Taro -- relying upon them as the backbone for his challenge to the status quo within the Liberal Democratic Party. The muscle and momentum for the takeover of the party and the government, however, would come from the zaikai, with new style but still establishment business moguls like Mikitani, Takeda Phamaceuticals CEO and Keizai Doyukai head Hasegawa Yasuchika, JR Central Chairman Kasai Yasuyuki, Fuji Film CEO Komori Shigetaka as a set of "New Friends of Shinzo" -- persons whom when you talked to them seemed full of ideas on how to transform Japan into an economic powerhouse, a state capable of paying for the kind of raw politico-military power Abe had seemingly previously thought could only come through the imposition from above of a hair-trigger patriotic, paranoid obedience to authority -- you know, like the mindset the Chinese seem to be fostering.

The New Friends seemed full of the promise of a revived fukukoku kyohei, but a fukoku kyohei for the Facebook Age -- with the New Friends of Shinzo providing the ideas and capital for the fukoku and the Old Friends providing the applause for the Abe/Suga duarchy's tentative tiptoeing toward the kyohei.

As I watch Abe's epic, manic, economic speedballing -- meeting everyone, asking everyone's advice, with resulting announcements of new economic policies off-setting the effects of previous economic policies offsetting the effects of yet earlier policies engaged to counter the consequences of even older policies, with frenetic searches for new statistics demonstrating earlier that the latest policies are indeed working (Link) or that the current policies need yet newer policies to offset them -- I find myself worrying, "Won't the pressures of finding a path through the bewilderingly numerous, numbingly complex and often mutually contradictory plans of the New Friends of Abe cause the man to break down -- just like the unseemly power-grabbing and intransigence of the Old Friends did?"

A disconcerting thought for a sunny day.


Later - It is not a sign of the Apocalypse, but when the Yomiuri Shimbun, which is as a rule sycophantic in its coverage of the policies of the LDP prime ministers, is like me in shaking its head at the PM's mutually negating proposals (Link) then the sum of the parts of the current administration's ideas is clearly less than a whole.

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* The album An Hysteric Return: P.D.Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall is available here.

Live Blogging The Yasukuni Visit Shuffle

12:55 - If the current level of Cabinet visitation of Yasukuni holds -- with only the Terrible Trio paying their respects in person and the Prime Minister sending an envoy -- then the "Japan is turning rightward" argument really does not hold up.

By staying away from Yasukuni when he was but a few hundred meters away, Abe Shinzo has lobbed the ball into the Chinese leadership's side of the court. Plainly and without shouting, he has declared, "There, I have foregone my favorite ceremonial act and my electoral base's litmus test to reach out to you. What, if anything are you going to do for me?"


--

12:10 - The Prime Minister and the Emperor　have delivered their speeches at the official war's end ceremony at the Nihon Budokan. Neither man's speech, in a cursory listen, had anything surprising or new in it.

For the record, the PM, in addition to the official noontime ceremony, did lay a wreath at around 11:30 a.m. on the altar to the unknown war dead at Chidorigafuchi. (Link)

11:55 - Minister for Administrative Reform and a few other things Inada Tomomi has basically confirmed that she will visit Yasukuni later today. After this morning's cabinet meeting she told reporters, "I believe it is accepted that the citizens of a sovereign nation have the right to show their gratitude, respect and condolences for those who have given up their lives for country."

If Inada does go, three of the four most radical members of the Cabinet (Education Minister Shimomura Hakubun is on an official overseas trip), the three I have dubbed the Terrible Trio, will all have paid their respects on this the most sensitive day.

(Note that by saying, "those have given up their lives for their country" (jibun no kuni no tame ni inochi o sasageta katagata, she includes those who were executed or died after being imprisonned for doing what they thought was right.)

10:10 - Hagiuda Ko'ichi, member of the House of Representatives (Tokyo District #24), the Special Advisor to the Party President (a rarely filled Liberal Democratic Party advisory position) and rugby enthusiast (he is 180cm tall and weighs 93 kg) has visited Yasukuni as Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's representative. He paid for an offering (tamagushiryo) in the PM's name, supposedly with money that the PM gave him, and signed the register "Abe Shinzo, President of the LDP" on the PM's behalf. (Link - J)

10:05 - Correction, Furuya Keiji paid his respects in an official capacity, signing the register as "Minister of State, Furuya Keiji."

9:30 - Shindo Yoshitaka, minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, grandson of Kuribayashi Tadamichi, the commander of the defense of Iojima (Iwo Jima), and failed visitor to Ulleung-do (Link) has visited in a private capacity.

Furuya Keiji, Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission and the Minister of State for the Abduction Issue, and a Abe family retainer, has visited in a private capacity. Asked for comment, he replied, "I paid homage as a Japanese."

(It's not as though anyone was expecting him to pay homage as a Korean...)

(Link - J)

Oh Really, Minister Shimomura?

It had been a conundrum.

Of the four arch-revisionist Friends of Shinzo in the Cabinet -- Inada Tomomi, Shindo Yoshitaka, Furuya Keiji and Shimomura Hakubun -- all except Shimomura had paid their respects at Yasukuni. It took Inada a little bit longer to make the trip. However, she eventually made it, turning the event into a minor plug for her minor effort at organizing young reactionaries into a movement.

Until yesterday it seemed as though Shimomura, for all the horrible, authoritarian, illiberal nonsense he has sworn to inflict upon the primary-through-high-school education system, had the strategic sense to follow a less provocatively ideological line than the Terrible Trio.

Yesterday, Minister Shimomura stopped the seeming:

Minister reveals visit to Yasukuni Shrine
Jiji Press

Education minister Hakubun Shimomura revealed Friday that he has visited war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo since he took office in December.

"I've already visited there [Yasukuni Shrine]. I have also visited as a minister," Shimomura said at a press conference. He did not explain when he visited the shrine or the style of prayer he made...

(Link)

This revelation, on the heels of Aso Taro's brilliant attempt to convince an audience of revisionists to look to the undoing of the Weimar Republic, will do little to reassure folks outside of Japan that the barking mad within the Abe entourage are any less in lock-step than they were during the last Abe Cabinet.

As to the possibility of Shimomura's revelation of a clandestine visit's being a part of efforts to provide the proper atmospherics for an Abe climbdown on his vow to visit Yasukuni (Link) -- of that I would not be surprised. I would not be surprised if it turns out that Shimomura lied -- that he indeed has not paid his respects at Yasukuni since becoming a minister -- but was willing to say that he did in order to make it look as though the excursions into national pride malarkey the Abe administration can take are not as constrained by geo-politics and economics as they really are.

Later - Yes, I agree. Having the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology claiming he makes Yasukuni visits on the sly is not helpful to Tokyo's bid for the 2020 Olympics.

Then again, given some of the illiberal governments of recent winners in the Olympics beauty pageant (Beijing 2008; Sochi 2014), having a lousy international reputation does not necessarily hurt one's standing among the Olympic villagers.

Inada Checks In

Late 19th image of the Yasukuni obelisk commemorating those who died in the Seinan War

I was certain that Minister for Administrative Reform Inada Tomomi was going to join the other two members of the Abe Cabinet's Terrible Trio in paying her respects at Yasukuni during the shrine's spring festival. I was very surprised when she was not one among the herd.

On Sunday, she made up for it:

Inada now fourth Cabinet minister to visit Yasukuni
Kyodo

Administrative reform minister Tomomi Inada on Sunday became the fourth member of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet to break the taboo of visiting war-linked Yasukuni Shrine, sources said.

Inada's visit to Yasukuni, which along with the nation's war dead honors Class-A war criminals, followed those by Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Yoshitaka Shindo on April 20 and by Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and Keiji Furuya, state minister for the abduction issue, on April 21...

It took Inada a while but she finally checked in. I had said over a month ago that she, Furuya and Shindo would be hard pressed not to.

I guess Inada made a judgment call based upon her own convenience and a sense of historical grandeur. She could pay her visit earlier in the week, in conjunction with the annual Spring Festival or wait for a visit to Yasukuni in combination with the ceremony marking the first official Return of National Sovereignty Day -- a double dip of hardline goodness that was on the menu of many of the attendees at Sunday's official ceremony.


Later - The online Mainichi Shinbun confirms my suspicion of a combined outing. Inada paid her respects and signed the shrine register. Unlike Furuya Keiji, she made no mention of her ministerial position. Instead she wrote down "Association for Tradition and Creation" (Dento to sozo no kai), the study group of Class of 2005 conservative lawmakers she founded (Link - J) and then "Member of the House of Representatives Inada Tomomi." (Link - J)

Ave Imperator, De Rideri Te Salutant

My hometown newspaper has something of a problem with Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. No, strike that. My hometown newspaper has a huge problem with Abe Shinzo. The editors of the Tokyo Shimbun could have chosen any number of the images from the PM's visit to the Nico Nico Douga event at Makuhari Messe. However, they thought the above -- which I am sure made Abe public relations wizard Iijima Isao wince and wish he were somewhere else -- was perfect for the middle of Sunday's politics page.

Sakusen, seiko!

Later - No, I do not want to think about why the Self Defense Forces had one of its latest generation tanks on display at a geeks, gamers and net vidiots convention. Perhaps the Minister for Cool Japan (yes, there is one) can explain it. Indeed, given the identity of the Minister for Cool Japan, I am pretty sure she can.

Later still - Video of Abe's visit to the event, courtesy TBS. (Link - J video)

Much, much later - TBS has removed the video but private videos are up on YouTube and other video sharing sites.

A scathing exegesis of Abe's tank photo op can be found at The Point. (Link)

Image courtesy: Kyodo News

On The Monday Morning After The Yasukuni Visits

Dawn is breaking over the towers of Shinjuku, replete with the promise of a brilliant azure-sky spring day.

Weather not exactly reflecting the international storm that is likely to break out over the course of the morning.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Taro Aso and Public Safety Commission Chairman Furuya Keiji paid their respects at Yasukuni Shrine. Minister for Internal Affairs and Telecommunications Shindo Yoshitaka paid a visit on Saturday (Link). Aso merely walked up to the offerings box, paid his respects and left, without entering the main building. Shindo and Furuya went inside and signed the register, with Furuya claiming he signed in as "Furuya Keiji, Minister of the Cabinet."

Yesterday was the first day of the shrine's three day spring festival. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has pledged to stay away in the flesh if not the spirit. However, do not be surprised if State Minister for Administrative Reforms　(and Bureacratic Reform and Cool Japan Promotion and Taking On Life's Challenges Again -- no I am not making those last two up) Inada Tomomi pays her respects either today or tomorrow -- today being the more likely choice given that the Cabinet meets on Tuesdays.

Inada, Furuya and Shinoda were the trio of Cabinet picks that had trouble written all over them, the three Friends of Shinzo who stirred up trouble over the last two years with their provocative actions whilst on trips outside Japan -- or at least whilst outside Japan's airspace, Inada's and Shindo's trip to Ulleung-do having not progressed beyond the arrival lounge at Kimpo Airport. (Link)

Stepping back at bit from what has transpired and is likely to transpire over the next few hours, Yasukuni is a huge, symbolic non-issue in East Asian life, a lovely carbuncle upon the face of Japan, the legacy of the confused and confusing priorities and habits of the samurai of one particular han (藩).

I just wish that there were Chinese and South Korean commentators who could tell their countrymen and women, "Look, most of this stuff that drives us to distraction? Most of the time it is not a Japan thing. Most of the time, it's a Satsuma thing."

Need proof?

Minister Inada, who hails from Fukui Prefecture, who is her hero?

Saigo Takamori. (Link - J)


Later - For those keeping score on the importance of dynasties and lineages in Asian politics, Minister Shindo is the grandson of Kuribayashi Tadamichi, commander of the defense of Iojima (a.k.a., Iwo Jima - Link - J).

Later still - Et non, et non, et non...

The tree story, it's back. Via Reuters. (Link)

Like I said three weeks ago a masakaki is not a tree (see above). Furthermore, Abe's making an identical offering in 2007 did not "infuriate China" -- so saying that it is likely to do so this time around is no more than provocative pot stirring.

Even later still - Martin Fackler of The New York Times checks in with his version of the story, with Prime Minister Abe offering yet another species of tree the masakaki is not and misidentifying Kato Katsunobu (and yes, I would love to say something about the hair, associating Kato with a certain Muppet) as a member of the Cabinet (Link). Kato is a Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, a position that will get your name listed on the Cabinet page of the Prime Minister's Residence (Link) but which nonetheless does not make you a cabinet member.

Far later than the above - Jonathan Soble of the Financial Times finds evidence of the Abe pine too. (Link)

To be fair about this mysterious pine business, Zojoji Temple in Minato Ward has "Grant's Pine" (Guranto matsu) in its main courtyard, which a former U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant planted there in 1879. All fine and wonderful except of course Grant's Pine is not a pine but a Himalayan Cedar (Cedrus deodara).


Image courtesy: Shingu4138.co.jp

Not A Tree Again

In a repeat of the low profile he maintained in 2006-7, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo will not be attending the Spring Festival at Yasukuni Shrine (Link). As in 2007, he will pay his respects solely via sponsoring a masakaki (真榊) display.

Abe to make offering at Yasukuni
Jiji Press

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will make an offering of masakaki tree stands for an annual spring festival set to be held at Yasukuni Shrine from April 21 to 23, informed sources said Friday.

Abe made a similar offering for the 2007 spring festival at the Shinto shrine for the war dead when he was last prime minister. However, he did not visit the shrine during his previous 12-month term in office...

(Link)

This decision represents the best of all possible worlds to Abe. He can check off a box with his nationalist or ultra-nationalist supporters whilst doing nothing the Chinese or South Korean leaderships can plausibly criticize.

Crunch time will come in August, though. I cannot see him foregoing a visit to Yasukuni this time around. Then again, if he pays a visit, it is hard to imagine him preventing Cabinet ministers Shindo, Furuya, Inada and Shimomura from paying visits as well. In reponse to which Chinese and South Koreans would go bananas.

Decisions, decisions...

Then again, a sudden private visit to Yasukuni now would provide sharp shock jolting the public's eye away from the stunning court decisions this past month regarding the constitutionality of the December 2012 election.


Later -As for the title of this post, it is a reference to the confused media reports five years ago.

More On East Asia's Aristocracies

While political dynasties are a perverse development in democracies around the world, the case of East Asia is alarming. I have posted briefly and unremarkably here and here on the topic, which deserves far more attention. Over at the East Asian Forum, Julius Trajano and Yoes Kenawas bring me up to speed on the political dynasty situation in the Philippines, which I was aware of, and in Indonesia, which I was not (Link). Their analysis of the causes of dynasty formation and their proposed solutions indicate a parochial focus, though, rather than a broad-based comparative approach.

A big book to be written, or big conference to be organized. Problem: who will fund a deep look into such a discomforting subject?

Back in this blessed land, the members of the Cabinet revealed their assets yesterday, with caveats. As the Wall Street Journal reports, members of Abe II are by and large significantly better off than the members of the Noda Cabinet. (Link)

My morning dead-tree news delivery device devoted a full page to the members of the Cabinet and their holdings:

I had always wondered what was the juice behind Inada Tomomi, the card-carrying Friend of Shinzo and lawyer whose leaden pronouncements of doom have been a page-filler of the right wing press for the past decade. The answer seems to be her husband's diversified equity holdings and a bewildering number of small Tokyo rental properties the couple co-own.

In terms of landholdings, the very wealthy Taro Aso (whose dandyism is now a subject international commentary) and Prime Minister Abe Shinzo are the barons. In terms of number and variety of declared holdings, however, National Safety Commissioner and Abe family retainer Furuya Keiji puts all other Cabinet members to shame. He lists 62 real estate holdings, 9 of which are of less than 10 meters square. Three of his listed properties are only 1 square meter in size (total assessed value = 60,000 yen) while nine parcels of forest and field land are given an accounting value of zero (which means that the parcel is worth less than the cutoff point of 10,000 yen).

The person with the shortest report is, unsurprisingly, child of dire poverty Shimomura Hakubun. His holdings are not just small, but sadly unimaginative: his home, 200 million in bank savings accounts and 60 million in postal savings. Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide and State Minister for Declining Birthrate and Consumer Affairs Mori Masako, two of the Cabinet's coolest and most celebral members, are also asset-light.

Winners of the "we know what the rules are" awards are the earnest sons of privilege Sadagaki Tanigaki and Ishihara Nobuteru, both of whom list savings accounts with the guaranteed amount in them -- and not one yen more.

Two Space Cadets Talking

The translated interview has already been featured on The Wall Street Journal's JapanRealTime blog (Link) and skewered by Our Man in Abiko (Link). Nevertheless, I cannot help but link to the deliciously weird battle of non-sequiturs in between crackpot Motoya Toshio and Liberal Democratic Party ideologue and now Minister of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology Shimomura Hakubun. (Link)

If and when the South Korean and Chinese news complexes come up with translations of this exchange and/or if it gets wide discussions in the Euro-American policy circles, it will come bouncing back into Japan like a 10,000 kilogram rubber ball. It could even be as helpful to Shimomura's career as Motoya's essay contest was for the career of Air Force General Tamogami Toshio. (Link)

If Shimomura is thoroughly and deservedly humiliated by this exchange of absurdities, the floodgates open for looks at the writings and remarks of Minister of General Affairs and Communications Shindo Yoshitaka and State Minister for Administrative Reforms Inada Tomomi. The pair inhale the same vapors as Shimomura, going farther than him in acting out their fantasies of defending Japan. They were a part of the trio of Diet members (the other was the former commander of Japan's forces in Iraq) who tried in August 2011 to enter South Korea in order to visit Ulleung Island, the South Korean territory closest to the disputed Dokdo islets. They were sent packing by ROK immigration officials (Link). In August this year Shindo was a member of the motley crew of Diet and local assembly members who sailed to the Senkakus to conduct an insincere and insulting memorial service for Okinawans who had starved to death on Uotsurijima. (Link)

Shimomura, Shindo and Inada are archetypal Friends of Shinzo. They are in the cabinet because Abe Shinzo wanted them there. Each one of them is a time bomb ticking away.

The PM is probably serious about a focus on the economy, the economy and the economy in the run up to the July House of Councillors election. He does, after all, want to lead the LDP to a further thumping of the Democratic Party of Japan.

The appearance in English of this bit of idle banter in between brother revisionists, however, has the potential to distract him.