In this edition of TPR News: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s approval ratings continue their slide, Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma puts on some (more) shoeshine lipstick, the Education Rebuilding Council recommends longer class hours and beatings for the nation’s students, bid-rigging in Nagoya, food safety scandals and the affordability of your very own fashion consultant.

Politics

In its January survey, the Yomiuri is reporting a 7.5% fall in approval ratings for the Abe administration, to 48%. The administration had previously weighed in with a score of 65.1 in November and in 55.9 December. In the same survey, the Cabinet disapproval rating climbed by 8.9%, and now stands at 38.9%. The Yomiuri cited recent scandals as the most recent cause for the continued drop in approval ratings. Interestingly, amongst those who replied that they supported the Liberal Democratic Party, the Abe Cabinet’s approval ratings fell by seven points, to 79.3%.

At the other side of the editorial spectrum, over at the Asahi Shimbun, support for the Abe administration is reported to be at 39%, down 8% from last month. Disapproval ratings increased from 32% to 37%. The Asahi also reports that scandals are hurting the Prime Minister’s image, but also cites respondents as being upset that the administration is doing nothing to address the growing gap between Japan’s rich and poor. When asked if they perceived the administration as being ‘powerful,’ 12 % said yes. 67% also reported feeling that the administration is ‘unreliable.’ The Asahi concludes with the somewhat odd assertion that, “If the ranks of unaffiliated voters keep swelling until they form the largest group of voters, Japanese politics could become unstable.”

On January 14, Kyodo News reported that Abe’s approval rating was at 45%, a figure just about in the middle of the Yomiuri-Asahi results.

A few more statistics? The Asahi Shimbun also published an editorial entitled No faith in LDP, Minshuto (LDP of course stands for Liberal Democratic party and Minshuto is the Japanese name for the DPJ, or Democratic Party of Japan). According to poll results cited, 89% of respondents stated that their income was not growing, 48 percent said it was “inappropriate” that Abe has picked constitutional revision as an Upper House election issue, and 69 percent think that the DPJ has so far failed to fulfill its role as the leading opposition party.

Earlier this week, Abe responded to questions concerning poll numbers by saying:

A politician cannot perform correctly if his actions are based on aims to improve his approval rating. There’s a good time and a bad time. I receive those results modestly. I’ll put all my forces to carry out my policies.

Early Wednesday, Japan’s new Defense Minister, Fumio Kyuma, said U.S. President George W. Bush made a mistake in deciding to go war against Iraq. According to Bloomberg, Kyuma said, “President Bush went to war on the presumption that there might be nuclear weapons. That decision was wrong.” Reuters translates Kyuma’s words as, “I think President Bush launched the war in a situation as if there were nuclear weapons, but I think that decision was wrong.”

My translation of what you just heard:

It seems to me that Mr Bush plunged into the war in Iraq as though the circumstances were that there were nuclear weapons there, but I think that judgement was a mistake.

Also on Wednesday, the Education Rebuilding Council submitted its interim report to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe . According to Kyodo News, the report features, “Proposals to lengthen classroom hours and allow teachers to resort to now-banned corporal punishment.”

(As I am now officially checking my objectivity at the door for a moment, please bear with me.)

Upon reading the above quote from Kyodo I thought, “There must be something wrong with that translation.” I checked the Japanese and low and behold, the translators were dead on. Then I found this gem from BBC News, entitled Japan schools to rethink beating, from which I will quote a tad:

Japan schools to rethink beating

Japanese schools should rethink their decades-old ban on corporal punishment, a government-appointed panel has urged.

The report, submitted amid growing concern over bullying, stopped short of overtly backing beating, but suggested an end to a policy of leniency…

…Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called the report “wonderful”.

He said what was important now was to carry it out, though it could take some time.

Striking students has been illegal in Japan since 1947. It was banned as part of the Fundamental Law of Education, not to mention that it is in flagrant violation of the United Nation’s 1989 Convention on the Right of the Child. Could someone please explain to me how this is part of building a “Beautiful Country?” Even just recommending such a thing…

(Back to objectivity, and the news.)

Business

Bid-rigging scandals continue apace, this time in Nagoya Prefecture, where construction company employees have informed the media that the city’s subway as well as expressway projects have been tainted by rigged bids. It is expected that the Fair Trade Commission will launch an investigation into the contracts surrounding these deals, and criminal complaints could be filed.

Based on data from 3,000 shops across Japan, Sony’s PlayStation 3 is suffering from a further decline in sales. Game console sales, including the PS3, Microsoft’s XBox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii, have all been down across the board last week.

The Chicago Tribune, along with scores of other sources, has run an Associated Press article examining the state of Japan’s economy. According to the article, “International Monetary Fund chief Rodrigo de Rato urged Japan’s central bank to take heed of sluggish prices in setting its monetary policy. De Rato made his comment in a speech in Tokyo.” Last week, Japan’s central bank, the Bank of Japan, voted to keep benchmark interest rates at 0.25%, prompting many observers to assert that the bank had caved to political pressure. Few of these outside observers, however, made a case for why the rate should be raised. Members of the Abe Cabinet, including Finance Minister Hiroko Ota, have stated their opinion that Japan is still not yet truly recovered from years of deflationary pressure.

Soichiro Chigusa, the President of KTV in Osaka, and nine other company members, will be punished over the running of a television program that was later discovered to have used fabricated data on the nutritional benefits of natto fermented soybeans. The programs claims that eating natto twice a day would lead to weight loss have since been discredited. In the weeks following the airing of the program, supermarket shelves were raided of natto, and there were nationwide shortages of the sticky food, as consumers battled to jump on the natto bandwagon. Chigusa will receive a 30% pay cut for three months.

Fujiya, which was hit with a scandal involving the use of expired milk as ingredients in its cakes and other confectioneries, has informed strategic partner Morinaga that it intends to go through rehabilitation on its own. An executive from Morinaga had offered to help Fujiya with building quality control systems. Morinaga’s current chairman, Gota Morinaga, is the father-in-law of current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Society

The Yomiuri is reporting that not only are Japan’s prisons overcrowded, but that they are full of foreign prisoners. The piece focuses on a prison in Fuchu City, Tokyo, where 550 of the 3,200 inmates are foreign nationals, or 17.19% of the prison population. Nationwide statistics are scattered throughout the article, but putting them together reveals that 5,312 of 71,500, or 7.43%, of inmates nationwide hail from outside Japan.

A recent Associated Press article entitled Foreigners, if conspicuous, hard to fit in, has been picked up and run by both the foreign media and English media here in Japan. The article details the lives of Brazilian immigrants of Japanese ancestory, who now form Japan’s third largest ethnic minority after Chinese and Koreans. In a post entitled Good foreigner, bad foreigner, Adam Richards at the Mutant Frog Travelogue notes that such stories involving Japan’s foreign residents have recently been appearing in the news quite frequently.

And finally, the Japan Times is reporting that personal style coaches are no longer available to only the rich and famous. For those of us without the time to pore over fashion magazines, a website called the Personal Stylist Databank can help us find someone who can help us look good.

And that takes us to the Last Word…

I don’t know where to start. Education or Defense Minister Kyuma? I suppose since I’ve already ranted a bit on Education, I’ll take it up with Mr Kyuma. This won’t be the first time, either. On the December 12 edition of TPR News, I called for his immediate resignation or firing after Mr Kyuma made comments that Japan’s government did not support the US-led war in Iraq, and that Prime Minister Koizumi’s support for the war was only his personal opinion. On the January 6 edition of TPR News, Garrett DeOrio pointed out that Mr Kyuma seemed to be meddling with base realignment plans that had already been decided, and that his involvement seemed to demonstrate his lack of understanding on the issue.

So, Mr Kyuma is at it again. This time he’s claiming that US President George Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake. We already know that, Mr Kyuma; that’s not news. Mr Bush’s reasons and justifications for invading Iraq may have changed with the seasons, but for Mr Kyuma to equate them with a situation involving nuclear weapons is either terribly stupid, or terribly dishonest. Yes, there was the yellowcake fiasco, which President Bush has never been held responsible for. But he never said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.

I find it interesting that Bloomberg and Reuters both translate Mr Kyuma’s remarks as having him said, “President Bush.” He said no such thing. Kyuma said, “Bush-san,” which translates to “Mr Bush.” “President Bush” in Japanese would be stated as ブッシュ大統� � “Busshu Daitouryou.” Why not be accurate on this point? The use of title seems to show the contempt Mr Kyuma is willing to public express for his nation’s greatest ally.

I can’t imagine that this is making Prime Minister Abe very happy. On Friday, he is expected to announce his plans to strengthen the Japan-US security arrangement. Once again, his own Cabinet Ministers are working against him. One has to wonder if the prime Minister was able to get much sleep last night.

All we can do is once again call for his resignation or immediate firing. But that might be more dangerous than we’d like: what if Foreign Minister Taro Aso moved into the Defense Minister position?

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