Live Blogging The Shiomura Press Conference At The FCCJ

16:00 Q and A is being extended but I have to go. Too bad.

15:56 Angela Kubo asks a three-part uestion: how did you feel when Suzuki came before you to apologize, have you forgiven him, and do you think Suzuki is sincere or do you believe he was forced to come forward? Shiomura was shocked at the apology, has no arranged her thoughts and has not forgiven. She recognizes that coming forward to bravery. As for his sincerity, she does not know.

15:55 Q: What do you think about changing laws to increase an assembly member's ability to identify a person who is speaking slanderously? Shiomura [wisely] says changes to the laws and regulations are a last resort.

15:50 Question about Abe's statement today about creating a society where women shine. Shoimura says it is a nice sentiment but that in Tokyo Assembly, this has not yet taken place.

15:40 French journalist questioner offers his sumpathies as French man. Asks her whether she has plans to run for a Diet seat.

15:36 Shiomura notes that yes, Prime Minister Abe has put women's empowerment at the center of his program. He most likely had thoughts about this incident. She wished she could learn what his thoughts are.

15:31 Questioner Friedrich is surprised that a young (for Friedrich, 51 years of age is young) man was the confessed heckler.

15:25 First question is not a question but a diatribe by newsletter writer.

15:24 Shiomura says she will not let the matter rest on Suzuki's apology. He was the not the only one heckling. end of Shiomura statement.

15:20 According to Shiomura, the [LDP]'s caucus in the Tokyo Assembly would not take action to help in the reprimanding of one of its members. Instead the caucus said to her that she had 3 days to provide the name of the perpertrator -- after that the matter would be no longer actionable.

15:15 Shiomura tries "the heckling was not about me personally, this is about the women who are suffering" gambit. [We will have to see how the cynical press goes for that statement]

15:10 She was surprised particularly at everyone laughing and smiling at the loud comments. She had to keep going because she only had 11 minutes.

15:05 Shiomura explains that had been heckled before in committee session but she did not expect such medieval (koten) heckling. She was talking about three subjects: passive smoking, care of dogs and help for women's pregnancy and childbirth issues. She was heckled only during her speaking on the last subject.

15:03 "Thank you for coming here on a busy day"? Stock phrase. Problem: she is talking to a room full of folks for whom coming to hear her speak is them doing their jobs.

15:00 The room is full to bursting, 17 cameras along the back wall. Photographers mob the lectern.

An LDP Trying To Take Sexual Images Seriously

With more and more devices being equipped with camera lenses, astonishing data capacity of even tiny items and the transnational space of the Internet, the question of the legal status of uploaded still and motion imagery of one's private sexual behavior is not trivial, particularly in this blessed land where a reputation is still a highly valued if schizophrenically protected asset.

Nevertheless, the shoulders bunch up at Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council announcing the establishment of a Special Committee on Revenge Porno (Ribenji poruno tokumei iinkai) studying what the government can do, if anything, about the uploading of private sexual content to the Internet (Link - J). It might be because of the gratuitous use of loan words in the name of the committee -- gratuitous in that if the effort were sincere there would be a recognizable kanji-based description of the subject being tackled. Perhaps it is because LDP Policy Research Chair Takaichi Sanae's discussing almost any subject tenses the shoulders (NHK had her and the other party policy chiefs on Nichiyo Toron yesterday -- and her every pose and utterance telegraphed her contempt and boredom at the proceedings).

Most likely, however, it is the announcement that the chairman of the special committee on "revenge porno" will be Hirasawa Katsuei.

While there are likely defensible expertise and organizational reasons why Hirasawa might be qualified to lead the committee, it would seem reasonable, given the delicate nature of the assumed offense, to choose a standard bearer who could conceivably be a victim -- or at least would not lead the lay person to titter at the absurdity the thought of the standard bearer ever being a victim. Sadly, of all the members of the LDP, Hirasawa has to be least plausible potential victim of the uploading of his/her private sexual content -- the only "revenge" being what the imagery would be doing to the viewer's retinas and brain. To be fair, the party has named Mihara Junko, a far more plausible potential victim to be Hirasawa's lieutenant. (Link - J)

The announcement of the formation of this committee reeks of insincerity, trendiness and desperation. It is is too small an issue -- at least as packaged -- for Takaichi or even Hirasawa to be handling. That Takaichi feels it necessary to show she has a grip on this problem indicates either she has no sense of proportion or that much of the heavy lifting of policy making has been taken away from the LDP policy research council.

The latter possibility, where a defanged LDP PARC has ceded to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister's myriad advisory committees the role of policy incubator undercuts LDP President Abe Shinzo's favorite talking point on his commitment to women's empowerment. He never stops reminding audiences of his having appointed Takaichi and Noda Seiko, the chair of the General Council, to high party posts. That these posts have nowhere near their former importance (the General Council seeimng to be a body in search of a purpose, given the demise of the factions) would be a most inconvenient truth for the PM to face.

Not Another Harangue About Public Day Care In Japan

Every year about this time the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare releases the report on the state of the nation's public day care facilities as of April 1. In reponse I usually I lose my senses and compose a long post on how the statistics once again show that the provision of public day care by local authorities is really good, contrary to the reporting of journalists and assertions of Japanese day care activists. The purported failure of local jurisdictions to be responsive to the needs of working parents turns out to be that-- purported -- existing mostly only in lazy strings of anecdotes.

I will restrain myself this year. I will only ask readers to look at the MHLW press release (Link - J) and note:

- The total number of children attending public day care in Japan increased by 42,779. To put that in perspective, that represents the equivalent opening of 850 new day care centers (the newest one in my neighbor accommodates 50 children) in a single calendar year. This was the largest year-on-year increase in children ever.

- The actual number of new day care center that opened -- 327 -- indicates that much of the record increase in children was handled by existing facilities with excess capacity

- Only two prefectures have chronic day care deficits as represented by waiting lists: Tokyo and Okinawa. All other prefectures are either at zero children on waiting lists or are on a course toward that goal.

- Yokohama, the municipality that gets all the attention from the press and the politicians for zeroing out its waiting lists (Link) was not even in the top five among cities cutting back on its lists last year. The best performer in raw numbers was Nagoya, which managed to reduce its waiting lists by 73% in a single year. There were 1032 children on waiting lists in Nagoya in April 2012 but only 280 children a year later.

- Maintaining a reputation of success is costly. Keeping the promise to have no children on waiting lists within three years meant the Yokohama city government had to find or build public daycare accommodations for 3,740 more children in the last fiscal year. The Tokyo ward of Suginami, which won national recognition for its zeroing out of its waiting lists a decade ago, is still recovering from the consequences of earning a reputation of being "working parent friendly" and thus an attractive destination for young parents or would be parents. Of all the nation's municipalities Suginami had the largest raw increase in children on waiting lists.

- Despite immense efforts of local authorities, the number of children on waiting lists nationwide remained stuck above 20,000 -- though there was improvement, with the totals falling from 24,825 to 22,741.

The struggles of Yokohama and Suginami to keep ahead of increases in demand and the failure of the nationwide numbers to plummet, despite record levels of new children getting incepted into the system (an annual increase double the number on the waiting lists!) -- illustrate the difficulties of inherent in meeting the challenge of what reader JC calls the "out of the woodwork effect" -- where increases of the supply of a good increases the demand for that good, even with rising prices.

Considering that local authorities have little ability to raise funds for specific projects, that the total and relative numbers of small children are declining, that both the national and local budgets have to accommodate rapid increases in costs associated with the elderly (who vote) and all levels of government face severe fiscal crises, the effort being put into increasing access to public day care seems very respectable.

Not that you would ever hear about these successes from demagogues fishing for the votes of women (Link) or worse from men who wish to show their sensitivity.  For the record, public day care is used by families -- sometimes single-parent, most times not -- not women.　In these families the men are very often equal partners in child rearing and the household. Indeed, in terms of beneficial social transformation of individuals, day care centers probably rarely make better mothers -- but they seem to make better fathers.

Just Two More

As regards the Abe-Obama meeting of minds over the weekend, I failed to recommend the look-behind-the-scenes of the run up to the summit provided by Peter Ennis:

"Obama to embrace Japan, not Abe"

My mistake.

The post reveals the quiet but quite obvious desperation of the Abe camp, which needed the summit to counter domestic inertia on number of issues including the Futenma Replacement Facility, Japan's participation in negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership and Japan's becoming a signatory to the Hague Treaty on child abduction (if I see another essay uncritically accepting accusations of domestic violence as sufficient grounds for dismissing the crime of child abduction, my head will explode -- not that it has not already exploded in response to the public debate over the appropriateness of corporal punishment).

On what can be seen as the other side of the ledger, I was waiting for a commentary on the passing of Donald Richie that confronted the issues of power, knowledge, cultural transmission and sexuality he embodied.

Out of respect for the dead, no such commentary appeared.

It was left to the excrutiatingly humble Richard Lloyd Parry to fill in the void, through a Facebook link to his scintitilating 2006 examination of Richie's The Japan Journals. (Link)

A laudatory, yet damning obituary, published six years before the fact.

If you should read but a single piece of writing about Japan today, let it be Parry's essay.

Checking Up On The Humanization Of Hashimoto Toru

For all those who believed that Osaka City mayor Hashimoto Toru would take the punch to the gut of the revelation of a 2006-08 affair with a bar hostess with scarcely a break in his stride, it is now been eight full days since the Opinionated One has tweeted on his Twitter account.

Today we have news of the notoriously judgmental Hashimoto will be giving those whom he previously disparaged a second chance.

In 2008, during his term as governor of Osaka Prefecture, Hashimoto, Osaka native though he is, attended his first bunraku performance.

His response to viewing this cultural treasure, kept alive by generations of musicians, joruri chanters and master puppeteers:

"I will not go a second time. If the performers don't change and start responding to the demands of the audience, I cannot accept (the Bunraku Kyokai's application for public support)."

And freeze public funding for the association he did, when he became Osaka City's mayor.

However, yesterday, Hashimoto let out that he will be attending a second performance of the bunraku tomorrow (July 26) -- on the grounds that he had heard that the bunraku artists had made significant efforts to promote the art form and increase attendance, such as standing outside of railway stations inviting commuters to become patrons.

It seems that for the new, more humble Hashimoto, a solid effort to do better is good enough to make him break a vow.

The performance he will be attending on Thursday? The war horse of the repertoire, what La Bohéme is to opera and Romeo and Juliet is to theater...you know what is coming...wait for it...The Love Suicides At Sonezaki (Sonezaki shinju). (J)

I do not expect...but heck, there is always hope...that the giri versus ninjo conflict therein gets him thinking about his own situation in a new light.

Checking In On Hashimoto Toru's Twitter Tweets

Taking up the story from where we left off on Friday:

July 20 - 0 tweets

As regards the affair Hosono Goshi had with Yamamoto Mona, which has in no way impaired Hosono's career -- indeed, a few of the weeklies have annointed Hosono as the man most likely to succeed Noda Yoshihiko as prime minister -- there was one more reason the news media chose to gang-tackle one of its own rather than the straying, handsome young politician. Yamamoto, aside from having been at the time single, a TV personality, young and beautiful is only half-Japanese, her father being...gasp...a Norwegian sailor! Yes, there is nothing that quite says out-of-control, hot-blooded sexual predator like "Mona Hegdal" -- her birth name.

As for Mona-san, who went through months of being batted around like a ping-pong ball dropped on a floor covered with mousetraps, she seems to be doing all right.

Hashimoto Toru's Infidelity Revealed

On July 18, Shukan Bunshun printed a full-documented article (an oddity, for the publication) revealing the existence of sexual relationship between Osaka mayor Hashimoto Toru and a bar hostess since 2006. Unfortunately for Hashimoto, he had married his longtime live-in girlfriend Noriko in 1995, making his sexual relationship with the bar hostess an illicit affair.

Now Hashimoto's ability to escape damage to his image from the revelation of the affair could be helped if his marriage could be categorized as, to put it delicately, unfulfilling. However, in between 1997 and 2007, Noriko gave birth to 7 children -- which, given suppressed fertility during lactation, is evidence of nearly uninterrupted "good relations" from 1996 to 2006.

To those who would dismiss the matter, noting that many other politicians have had affairs exposed with little effect on their careers, I would offer the proposition that times have changed. True, Hashimoto has claimed to be a poor father, if not poor at fathering -- though he perversely won a "Best Father" award in 2006 -- the year he began his affair with the hostess. Hashimoto's his most famous quote on his parenting skills is: "Without my wife present, my limit of my being with the kids is about 30 minutes."

His rubbishing of his fathering skills (which his wife has echoed, saying, "What could I possibly have to tell you about his childrearing?") is one thing, abandoning his pregnant wife for a fling with a bar hostess will hurt him and his Ishin no kai with women voters, who make up at least half of his and his organization's supporters.

In general, hypocrisy does not wear well on lawyers, particularly ones who have made a career out of calling out others for their hypocrisy and stupidity.

Hashimoto is in heavy damage control mode, repeating since the publication of the story that he has caused his wife and family distress (J). Yesterday at a press availability he told reporters 15 times "This is an internal matter of the family" -- which means, of course, that it is not. (J)

How serious does Hashimoto think this story affects his public image? One measure is the extent to which he has clammed up since the Shukan Bunshun article has appeared.

Let us check out his Twitter feed, to be found at http://twitter.com/t_ishin/

July 8 - 97 tweets (!!!)
July 9 - 25 tweets
July 10 - 16 tweets
July 11 - 39 tweets (25 seem to be misdated July 12)
July 12 - 35 tweets
July 13 - 24 tweets
July 14 - 24 tweets
July 15 - 30 tweets
July 16 - 8 tweets
July 17 - 4 tweets
July 18 - 0 tweets
July 19 - 0 tweets

When Japan's most opinionated and possibly arrogant self-made man shuts up, he is telling you something: that he at least thinks himself in the deep bat guano.


Later - The Japan Times article on the scandal revisits Yamamoto Mona's affair with the married Hosono Goshi (E). The scandal did nothing to dent Hosono's standing within the Democratic Party of Japan. Hosono is indeed now the serving Minister of the Environment and the Cabinet's point man on the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Hosono's being able to shrug off the affair was aided by the popular depictions of Yamamoto, at the time a TV news reader and single, as having been the aggressor in the relationship.

Denki Groove - Shonen Young

Curse W. David Marx for turning me on to "Shōnen Young" by techno sonic manipulators Denki Groove (master of ceremonies Ishino Takkyū's homepage has a good English side).

The video is beyond fascinating; it is hypnotic.

To think that all you need to reproduce an entire era's worth of banal, virginal femininity is pale lipstick, lip gloss, a hair dryer and pastel monochrome backgrounds.

Even the image of the woman in silver with the antennae works as a "this was the producer's idea. We know it doesn't work" interlude.

"Shōnen Young" was released as a single on December 5 of last year. The video is obviously a direct attack on the commercial depictions of young women. However, it takes an end run around the easy, polemical route. In a darkly ironic set of images, it sandwiches the viewer between imagery objectifying the feminine face and body and the subversion of the authority of those images.

I can think of entire books this could replace--and a raft of assertions about "Nihonjin" it undermines.

May's Song is "Shōnen Young" by Denki Groove, in the column on the right or here.

Earth Angel Watch

Hmmmm...

Though the Lionheart, the honorary chairman, did not show up for the inaugural meeting of the "Parliamentary League to Achieve the Goals of the Kyoto Protocol" (Kyōto Giteisho Mokuhyō Tassei Giin Renmei) former LDP Secretary-General Nakagawa Hidenao ("Big Nakagawa") and a bevvy of assassins (former Minister of the Environment Koike Yuriko; former State Minister for Gender Equality and Social Affairs Inoguchi Kuniko) did.

A bevvy of assassins and former Komeitō leader Hamayotsu Toshiko.

And Arai "The Grocer Parliamentarian" Jun'ichirō - a Koizumi Kid and the chairman of the Waseda Shōtengai Association. Hard as it may be to believe, Arai has a shelf-full of urban environmental improvement awards at home.

An interesting collection of folks.

I wonder what Koizumi Jun'ichirō, Big Nakagawa (Nakagawa the Sane) and Koike (the new league's secretary-general) think they will be able to do to encourage the realization of the protocol's difficult-to-achieve goals for Japan.

Or whom they think their opponents are.

And I ask because, in my recollection, the Lionheart is not a big joiner of groups...

For filling a vacancy, a crazy idea

Why not Ōta Hiroko for Bank of Japan Governor?

She is an academic with tons of government experience, is considered an independent thinker in favor of economic reform, knows her macro and her micro and if not famous, is at least a recognized figure in overseas economic circles.

How about it, Prime Minister Fukuda? How about shattering the glass ceiling in order to shock your moribund administration back into life?

Click here for her cv in English, complete with unflattering photo image.

Neither hot tea...

...nor cold milk should you be drinking should you ever decide to pay a cybervisit to House of Representatives member Katayama Satsuki's homepage.

There is Photoshopping an image...and then there is Photoshoplifting it.

She a damn University of Tokyo, Faculty of Law graduate and a former Ministry of Finance career-track bureaucrat, for Amaterasu's sake! Who thought that such manipulation was necessary? Or not instantly, completely, risibly hilarious?

For an actual, unretouched photo of the former Mrs. Masuzoe--a handsome and accomplished woman, by any standard--check out her page on the LDP website.

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My thanks to reader TN for the tip.