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Politics

In Beijing, Christopher Hill, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan that North Korea would have to pledge to implement four key conditions in order for the six party talks to resume. US demands include the complete closure of facilities related to North Korea’s nuclear test, the declaration of all nuclear facilities and programs, the opening of all nuclear-related facilities for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and that all work at an experimental nuclear reactor in Yongbyon that produces plutonium be shut down.

According to an annual Yomiuri Shimbun-Gallup poll published on Friday, a record 66 percent of Japanese respondents think the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty contributes to the stability of the Asia-Pacific region. According to the Yomiuri, analysts believe that the four percent increase over last year’s figures are due to North Korea’s July test launch of four missiles and October test of a nuclear device.

The Liberal Democratic Party would like to set the voting age at 18 years or older for national referendums as part of its its draft revision bill on national referendums concerning constitutional revision procedures. If effected, this would lower the voting age on this sort of referendum to 18 from the current voting age of 20.

Osamu Kobayashi, the mayor of Narita City in Chiba Prefecture was arrested Saturday on suspicion of accepting a bribe of 10 million yen in exchange for awarding a contract to manage a municipal garbage incinerator, police said. Also arrested were two executives of TEC, a garbage disposal firm who landed a no-bid contract with the city. The executives admitted handing the money over to Kobayashi, who was not quoted as saying, “The charges against me are rubbish.”

On friday, the Kobe District Court ordered that the state compensate Japanese citizens left behind in China after World War II who were later ill-treated for years by the Japanese government. In the first such decision where a Japanese court has sided on behalf of those left behind during the close of the war, the court announced that the government should provide a total of 468.6 million yen to 61 of the 65 plaintiffs for its failure to take care of them.

Business and Economy

Mixed news on the state of the Japanese economy this week. On the same day, December 1st, a story in the International Herald Tribune announced, “Japan’s economy sets off more talk of a rate increase,” while Bloomberg declared, “Japan’s inflation unexpectedly slowed in October as oil prices dropped, damping speculation the central bank will raise the lowest interest rates among major economies later this month.” With daily flip-flops from the major business news organizations fueling speculation over whether or not Japan’s central bank will actually raise interest rates later this month, your correspondent at TPR decided to take matters into his own hands, pick up the phone and call Bank of Japan governor Toshihiko Fukui himself to demand the facts. Your correspondent was promptly hung up on by the switchboard operator.

Bloomberg is also reporting that Japan’s wage growth slowed in September and that this may have a negative effect on consumer spending. A lack of growth in personal consumption, which drives half of the world’s second largest economy, has been preventing Japan’s economic recovery from gaining inflationary traction.

With the US economy looking somewhat shaky, export-driven stocks such as Canon and Matsushita, the parent company of Panasonic, declined on concerns that their largest overseas customer may be soon tightening his belt.

Nintendo’s new Wii gaming console was launched across Japan on Saturday. Enthusiastic (and somewhat chilly) fans formed long lines outside electronics stores across the nation to be the first in Japan to get their hands on Nintendo’s new system. It was previously launched in the United States last week.

Digital terrestrial TV broadcasting is finally available in all 47 prefectural capitals after the remaining eight prefectures started the service on Friday, exactly three years after the digitization of ground-based broadcasting began on Dec. 1, 2003. Okayama, Kagawa, Saga, Oita, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Miyazaki and Kagoshima were the last to be hooked up to the system, which now reaches 84% of all households in Japan.

In a recent interview with the Asahi Shibmun, Sony’s president, Ryoji Chubachi told the paper that a swift and frank response to a slew of recent quality-control problems is imperative for the company to regain customer trust. Chubachi said, “Customers don’t have a lot of patience when it comes to defective products that require immediate attention. What’s important is transparency and promptness…Quality will not improve unless employees understand that their salaries come from Sony’s customers, not from its president.” Chubachi did not mention the current size of his bank account balance.

Society

On Saturday, the Education Rebuilding Council, which was set up by Prime Minister Abe in order to recommend reforms for the education system, announced that it is set to propose measures next month to help improve the quality of teachers in an attempt to “rebuild” the education system. Sources close to the panel say that the proposal will introduce a license renewal system which will aimed at screening out incompetent teachers while establishing rewards for good teachers in the way of better raises and faster promotions.

According to Kyodo News, a number of domestic violence cases in which Japanese citizens were arrested in California and nearby locations prompted the Japanese Consulate General in San Francisco to issue a warning Friday to Japanese nationals. The consulate informed its citizens abroad that domestic violence is illegal in both Japan and their host nations.

And that brings us to The Last Word…

Without a doubt, some form of media and public opinion manipulation goes on in all societies. Corporations may call it advertising, marketing or public relations. Politicians tend to use terms such as policy initiatives, campaigns and, increasingly these days, public relations. When the two get together, as they have recently in Japan, they call such manipulation of the public opinion, “Town Hall Meetings.”

Brought to our attention by the Mutant Frog Travelogue, the government of Japan has been using Dentsu, the world’s largest advertising firm, to arrange and administer its town hall style meetings. Initially, Dentsu was awarded a no-bid contract for this work, and proceeded to charge the taxpayers to the tune of 21.85 million yen, not including advertising. Once the contracts were opened up to bidding, Dentsu was again awarded the contract and the price was cut to 12.85 million yen.

A government report revealed that six of the eight town meetings on education reform were stacked with supporters of the government’s plan. Education Minister Ibuki Bunmei unapologetically commented that, “I received a report (from ministry officials) that, in the past, there were cases in which those opposed to the government’s proposals occupied most of the meeting halls by mobilizing their acquaintances. To prevent that, the government officials in charge of town meetings asked local government officials to mobilize people.”

Government spending in order to influence public opinion also spilled over into judicial reform. On the heels of the above report, on the same day, it was revealed that the government paid some 16 million yen, or the equivalent of some 67,000 yen per participant, to attend a town hall meeting with voters in Naha, Okinawa, in October 2005 to discuss judicial reform. And in Miyazaki? There the government spent another 12 million yen, or the equivalent of 56,000 yen per participant, for a similar session on judicial reform.

Clearly, something wrong has been done. But, it behooves us to remember that the most frightening aspect of George Orwell’s 1984 was not the rat in Room 101, not the daily television broadcasts of Big Brother imploring his charges to do calisthenics each morning, not the deliberate re-writing and destruction of history in order to make citizens forget the past, not the perpetual state of war that gave the citizens of Eurasia a common enemy to rally against, not the doublespeak slogans reminding us that “War is Peace.” No. The most frightening aspect of this world that we have been shown is the moment when Winston is betrayed and turned in by his supposed lover, when we realize there is no way out, because the state surrounds us, not because it listens to what we say, but because it has rigged the system to stamp out our opinions before we say them.

And what should scare us more is that no one seems upset when fiction spills over into reality, that everyone around us, including us, has kept our mouths shut - hammered down, if you will.

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