In this edition of TPR News, we look at the ongoing political problems related to the Japanese government’s handling of issues related to World War II, the continued good health of amakudari, the gas between Japan and China, bread and beer, and the murder of Miss Lindsay Ann Hawker.

Politics

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is set to visit Tokyo from April 11th to 13th, just after visiting South Korea, and the kantei seems intent on filling the air with tension before he arrives.

In 1978, Yasukuni Shrine decided to add 14 convicted Class A war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, to the two-and-a-half million spirits enshrined therein and drew harsh criticism for Japan from its Asian neighbors. The government’s way out of such entanglements has always been to point out that Yasukuni has been independent of the government since the end of World War II and acted on its own. This is still true, but documents released by the National Diet Library on Wednesday have shown that officials of the former Health Ministry discussed the controversial enshrinement with the Shrine in 1969.

Predictably, and quite possibly accurately, Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, in separate statements, said they saw nothing wrong with the meeting, that it did not violate the separation of state and religion mandated by the Constitution.

(Read on …)

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 TPR News: 3/31/07: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Welcome to the first release of BizCast Japan! We initially mentioned that a regular podcast on business in Japan was in the works back in January (or was it December?), and it’s finally here.

Co-hosts Albrecht Stahmer and Ken Worsley start off with a discussion of some recent headlines in Japan’s business world: The circus surrounding the trial of former Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie, the recent lawsuit brought against Japan Air Lines by four former employees, and the return of US beef to Seiyu, the Wal-Mart-owned chain of supermarkets.

In the “Quick Picks” section, Albrecht elects to discuss efforts by Citibank to acquire a controlling interest of scandal-ridden investment house Nikko Cordial, in a move he terms, “A Japanese regulator’s wet dream.”

Finally, the “In Focus” section zooms in on Japanese service brands as they crank up their overseas operations. We look at Uniqlo, Yoshinoya, Matsuya, Gyu-Kaku and Watami, five Japanese corporations that are making concerted efforts to turn themselves into globally recognized brands. What are they doing? What challenges do they face? What advantages might they have?

As always, thank you for listening!

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In this edition of TPR News, we look at the Prime Minister’s approval ratings, the kickoff to the April 8 Tokyo Gubernatorial Election, some criticism of Shinzo Abe from a former cabinet minister, progress (or lack thereof) in the Six-Party Talks, and take a quick swing around the business world…

Politics

A Mainichi Shimbun poll conducted over the past weekend indicated that disapproval of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet rose by one point to 42%, while support for the Cabinet also dropped by one point to 35%. The Yomiuri Shimbun is reporting that the support rate for Abe’s Cabinet fell for the fifth straight month in March, reaching 43.8 percent. According to the Yomiuri:

In the survey, about 60 percent of respondents said they did not approve either “at all” or “somewhat” of what the prime minister or his Cabinet had done since the administration was inaugurated in September, while only 36 percent said they “very much” or “more or less” approved of him or his Cabinet.

Perhaps most tellingly for the Abe administration, the Yomiuri found that only 28 percent said they approved of the way Abe and his Cabinet dealt with the North Korea issues, while 18 percent said they approved of the Cabinet’s measures for education reform. 78 percent of respondents said Abe did not show any signs of leadership. (Yomiuri article in Japanese with the original wording of the questions)

(Read on …)

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 TPR News: 03/27/07: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Kouichi Toyama is one of the 14 candidates running for Governor of Tokyo. His 「政見放送」, or broadcast of political views, is currently the number one watched video on Youtube. Here it is:

The opening lines:

有権者諸賢。私が外山恒一である。諸賢。この国は最悪� 。政治改革� なんとか改革� とか。私はそんなことには一切興味がない。

You in the voting public! I am Kouichi Toyama. Ladies and gentlemen! This country is a disaster! Political reform this and reform that. I have absolutely no interest in such things.

(Thanks to Adamu for suggesting how to make the English sound more natural).

Here is the Japanese Wikipedia page about Kouichi Toyama.

Kouichi Toyama’s website and blog. On his blog you can see him performing some of his songs.

Hi, Adam here. Some of you might remember me from Mutant Frog Travelogue. I’ll be posting some of my translations and thoughts here while MF is down.

I’d like to take a look at the state of education reform in Japan. Since at least 1997, when Japan’s senior ruling coalition party, the LDP, formed its first study group on the issue, voices calling for major educational reform have grown louder, particularly from conservative elements in the LDP who sought a more traditional curriculum that instills patriotism and focuses on learning the basics. Current educational policies, particularly “relaxed education” that calls for fewer teaching hours and less strenuous lessons, were increasingly seen as failing as Japan’s place in international education rankings fell and social problems such as the phenomenon of NEETs (people Not in Employment, Education, or Training) seemed to spell doom and gloom for Japan’s future. Perhaps more importantly, the decline in the political power of teachers’ unions that has coincided with the decline of Japan’s leftist political parties has made it possible for the LDP to push reforms forward that would have generated unmanageable protests in the past.

Last year, one of Prime Minister Abe’s biggest legislative triumphs was to pass the first major revision to Japan’s Basic Law on Education since it was enacted during America’s occupation of the country after World War 2. Features of the law, hammered out after years of coordination within the LDP and with its coalition partner, the Soka Gakkai-backed New Komeito, included a requirement that schools teach students to “love” their country. The bills passed handily thanks to the ruling coalition’s numbers in the Diet, but not without a swarm of controversy and criticism from Japan’s political left, including perceived insensitivity by Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki over a spate of student suicides and the discovery that the government had planted questioners in town meetings held to promote the new education policy.

The “Basic Law” (full text available in Japanese here) was, true to its name, short and lacked detail, and left the numerous existing supplementary laws, cabinet orders, and other regulations unchanged. As a next step, the Abe administration established the Central Council for Education, a private advisory body to the prime minister set up to outline proposals for more detailed changes, such as how many hours students should attend class, just how patriotism should be instilled, and what mechanisms for teacher accountability should be established. The council released its first report in January, which included proposals for a 10% increase in classroom hours, suspension for perpetrators of classroom bullying, and a system that would require teachers to renew their licenses periodically.

(Read on …)

In October 1942, War correspondent Quentin Reynolds traveled up to Toronto to express his undying admiration for Canada and his lack of admiration for “the Nazi spy whose footsteps you’ve been retracing across Canada. . . the renegade who chooses to call himself Colin Ross.”

Reynolds brings the War and the threat of Nazi domination home to his Canadian audience by telling them of what he had seen in some of the countries Ross had “spied out for his Nazi masters - France and Belgium and Holland and Norway, Russia and England.

“A man who has seen those countries since Hitler struck at them has pictures engraved on his soul that will torment him forever. That’s why I remember that Colin Ross spied upon my own country [the US] and upon you in Canada. That’s why I’m here tonight. To tell you a story about one of your own cities and of a family that lives there. . .”

A story about what would happen if Nazi Eyes On Canada

became Nazi Boots On Canada.

Are you still holding out on the War effort?

(Originally aired on October 11, 1942.)

In case you missed it, Nazi Eyes On Canada #2.

In case you missed it, Nazi Eyes On Canada #1.

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Welcome to the 20th edition of Seijigiri! We haven’t devoted an entire episode to domestic Japanese politics since early February, so it was good to get back on track with this release. It’s a big longer than usual, at about 45 minutes, but we’ve stuck to two main issues:

1) The first half is a discussion of the unified local elections coming up on April 8, which the official campaign period opened for on Thursday, March 22 (when this was recorded) . We touch on the trends that are taking shape with this election, including how the voters and candidates view both the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan. We also talk about revisions to the Public Offices Election Law that took effect from Thursday, and how those changes will affect the course of campaigns across the country. This section closes with a discussion of the candidates running for the office of Governor of Tokyo.

2) In the second half of this release we get into Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recent troubles with statements concerning ‘comfort women,’ his attempts to play games with semantics and distract from the real issues, the role of his cabinet in all of this, pressure coming from lawmakers such as former Education Minister Nariaki Nakayama, and how this might fit into Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s upcoming (shortened) visit to Tokyo.

As always, many of our sources can be found in the TPR 2007 News Cloud, and we look forward to any feedback you might have.

Garrett and Ken

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Editor’s note: Except for the part where Abe intends to repeat past atrocities, the KCNA isn’t as funny as usual with this trio. Nevertheless, it keeps me well-informed.

Japanese Education Chief’s Balderdash about Human Rights Rapped
Pyongyang, March 13 (KCNA) — Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ibuki recently said that no matter how nutritious it is, if one ate only butter every day, one would get metabolic syndrome, adding that “Human rights are important, but if we respect them too much, Japanese society will end up having human rights metabolic syndrome.”
Rodong Sinmun Tuesday observes in a signed commentary in this regard:

(Read on …)

In this edition of TPR News: local election campaigns heat up as Tokyo Governor Ishihara’s Olympic dreams are challeneged, the Six-Party Talks falter, Patriot missiles come to Tokyo, amakudari is not gone after all, the 1995 sarin gas attacks are remembered, and plenty of business and economy news.

Politics

Campaigning in gubernatorial elections in thirteen prefectures and mayoral elections in four major cities officially begins on Thursday. Campaigns are expected to focus on local issues, especially those dealing with local economies and welfare programs. The April 8th elections are widely seen as being important precursors to the July House of Councillors elections.

During his Sunday announcement that he will run for Governor of Iwate Prefecture, current Prefectural Assemblyman The Great Sasuke expressed his intention to continue wearing his mask even if he is elected as governor, saying, “I have been allowed to wear this when I am acting as a prefectural assembly member.”

Saying, “Japan now has no dream. But (if Tokyo hosts the Olympics), it would be a huge gift to the wasted spirit of our youth,” Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara declared a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics to be the centerpiece of his campaign.

His challengers disagreed. The strongest of them, former Miyagi Governor Shiro Asano, said hosting the Olympics in Hiroshima or Nagasaki to emphasize peace would raise the national spirit, but saw no value in bringing the Olympics to Tokyo.

(Read on …)

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 TPR News: 3/22/07: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Editor’s note: There has been much talk recently of the 1993 statement made by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono concerning the Japanese government’s investigation into the “Comfort Women” affair. (The statement was never adopted by the Diet.) I think it’s worth taking a look at the actual text, so that we can keep it in mind when evaluating statements that are made about it. What follows is the full text of the Kono Statement, as it appears in English on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

The Government of Japan has been conducting a study on the issue of wartime “comfort women” since December 1991. I wish to announce the findings as a result of that study.

As a result of the study which indicates that comfort stations were operated in extensive areas for long periods, it is apparent that there existed a great number of comfort women. Comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military authorities of the day. The then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women. The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military. The Government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments. They lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere.

(Read on …)