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.

The revelation casts renewed doubts over the role of the government in the actions and stances of the Shrine and its museum, the Yushukan, and follows closely on the heels of Abe’s recent remarks in response to the possibility of a US House resolution calling on Japan to apologize for enslaving thousands of women in sexual servitude during World War II, in which the Prime Minister used a tortured semantic argument to less than fully acknowledge Japan’s responsibility for what it did.

As Abe’s low approval ratings have shown, for one reason or another, a growing segment of the population is not behind him. A petition handed to the government on Thursday shows that at least some of the Prime Minister’s unpopularity is due to his stances on issues stemming from World War II. In it, over 14,400 people, the majority of whom were Japanese, called on the Prime Minister to issue a new apology to the comfort women and provide them with compensation.

In the book Oral History: Asian Women’s Fund, slated for publication this week by the Asian Women’s Fund, whose work officially ends today, House of Representatives Speaker Yohei Kono is quoted as defending the statement he issued in 1993, as Chief Cabinet Secretary, acknowledging the government’s role in the sexual enslavement of thousands of women during World War II, by saying, “It is not intellectually sincere to discuss this as if there had been no ‘comfort women’ issue,” targeting critics of what is known as the “Kono Statement.”

He pointed out obvious things, such as the possibility of the Army or the Government having destroyed documents - a possibility apparently not entertained by the Prime Minister or those who share his view of history - and said, “I have no intention of evading responsibility (for issuing the statement.) I have absolutely no intention of withdrawing it, either.”

China tried to make progress in its dispute with Japan over gas exploration rights in the East China Sea by tabling a proposal for joint development in order to try to get things moving in a stalemated process. Both countries agree that the answer to the problem is joint development of the area, but disagree on where the demarcation line between their territories is and where such development should take place.

If, as the government and Prime Minister say, amakudari, descent from Heaven, the golden parachute, is on the way out, it’s sure had one heck of a last fling. The ranks of retired bureaucrats collecting top salaries for watching the clock from cushy chairs in the private sector swelled by 5,789 in 2006, bringing the total to 27,882 fallen angels at 4,576 firms, an increase of 589 from 2005.

It’s not such a bad deal for the firms that employ retired bureaucrats, though. Apparently having one’s former colleagues employed at relevant firms makes bureaucrats jobs cushier, too, and everyone benefits. Except taxpayers, of course. Firms employing retired bureaucrats received 4.89 trillion yen in state subsidies in just the first half of fiscal 2006. In addition, such firms were able to avoid bidding processes to receive 1.8001 trillion yen in contracts for state projects, 98% of the total. Percentages for individual ministries went up to 99.99% for the Ministry of Finance. (For a more detailed breakdown by ministry, click here.)

While Abe has submitted proposals to the Diet to change the system, these proposals will have little real effect, it seems. Under the kantei’s proposals, a goernmental “human resources bank” would be created to arrange jobs for retiring bureaucrats and would be allowed to employ retired bureaucrats iself. However, retired bureaucrats working in the human resources bank would be prohibited from arranging jobs for people who had worked in the same ministries or agencies as them. That meager safeguard disappeared in the face of LDP opposition, though, which means nothing will be changed. I’d make the Last Word, but it’s not even really an opinion. Nothing is changing. Amakudari and the shadowy practices that go along with it are alive, well, and in no danger of disappearing.

Camaigning in the April unified elections is in full swing and deserves more attention than it can be given here. Look to the upcoming Seijigiri #21 and other articles on TPR for information.

Business and the Economy

Yamazaki Baking is set to become Fujiya’s largest shareholder, and thereby take control over the embattled confectionery maker. In an announcement made on Tuesday, it was revealed that Yamazaki will purchase a 35 percent stake in Fujiya for about 16 billion yen. The companies have stated that Yamazaki will lend better corporate governance and help Fujiya ensure that sanitation standards are followed. Last weekend, Fujiya resumed limited sales of its cakes at about 30% of its shops nationwide. Due to a significant number of employees leaving after food safety scandals came to light in January, the company is currently unable to operate at 100% retail capacity.

On Thursday, the shareholders of Sapporo Breweries voted to approve an ‘Advance Warning System’ that will provide the company’s board of directors with the means to thwart takeover attempts. The move is intended to prevent a takeover bid from US based hedge fund Steel Partners, which is currently the largest single shareholder in Sapporo, and campaigned strongly against the approval of the ‘Advance Warning System.’

Earlier this week, Keidanren proposed that skilled foreign workers be allowed to receive temporary full-time working positions at Japanese companies in areas where workers are in demand. The business lobby organization asserted that skilled workers in industries such as sheet metal processing, welding and shipbuilding, who are currently unable to receive work visas, should be made eligible for the program. Keidanren also said that foreign workers should be required to demonstrate “certain levels of Japanese language ability,” and that their period of stay should be limited to one or three years.

Soichiro Chigusa, the president of The president of Kansai Telecasting Corporation, or KTV, in Osaka, will reportedly announce his resignation sometime early next week. Chigusa’s resignation is intended to take responsibility for a scandal that saw producers at KTV using fabricated data in their television programs, including one episode which contained 16 instances of misinformation, including eight fabrications of data with one on the dietary benefits of natto fermented soybeans. Other episodes included voice-overs of foreign scientists with false translations of their words. According to the Yomiuri, Chigusa’s successor will likely be chosen from among the broadcaster’s executives.

Society

On Thursday, the Nagoya Disrict Court rejected a suit filed by 168 people displaced at the end of World War II. In the complaint, the plaintiffs claimed that the Japanese government lacked a sufficient policy to bring them back to Japan at the end of the War, generally after having been separated from their parents, and offered insufficient assistance, such as language training, to allow them to live normal lives after their return to Japan.

The suit was the fifth such suit to receive a ruling out of fifteen suits filed by about 2,200 people in similar circumstances. Last December’s decision by the Kobe District Court that the government failed in is responsibilities and had to pay 61 of 65 plaintiffs a total of 468.6 million yen, has been the only decision not in the government’s favor.

A number of the war-displaced have recently begun publicizing their stories and have received assistance from a variety of charities and non-profit groups, such as the Japan-China Friendship Association. The Narrative Group of Settlers in Manchuria and Mongolia, a group that attempts to propagate and record the stories of the war-displaced and settlers of Japan’s wartime colonies and puppet states, is attempting to find both funding and a location for a museum that would perform such functions.

Many Japanese nationals stranded in Manchuria or Inner Mongolia were unable to return to Japan until after Japan normalized relations with China in 1972 and others were unable to visit Japan to search for their relations until Japan organized group tours for such a purpose in 1981.

While we normally don’t cover individual crimes, and certainly don’t want to imply that the nationality of either the victim or the perpetrator makes any crime more or less heinous or noteworthy, the recent murder of 22-year-old British Nova teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker in Ichikawa, Chiba has generated interest and debate that range well beyond most other murders and touches on issues that are relevant to a number of topics well within the purview of TPR News’s normal reporting.

While the details of what led up to Miss Hawker’s murder have yet to be fully cleared up, the story so far is that the recent graduate of the University of Leeds had been at Nova for just over five months, had been harassed and stalked by someone, possibly the killer, and had gone to the apartment of 28-year-old Tatsuya Ichihashi to teach a private lesson.

It is reported that Miss Hawker, who had told friends back in England that she intended to leave Japan because she found Japanese men “creepy,” had been stopped by a man at Gyotoku station, where both she and Ichihashi lived, and was asked for her name, phone number, and private English lessons. She refused and rode away on a bicycle. The man, apparently in good shape, followed her home. Details are blurry, but apparently, with her roommates at home, she allowed the man into her apartment for a drink of water.

In Ichihashi’s apartment, at the time of the murder, she was beaten, bound, strangled, suffocated, and buried in sand in a bathtub placed on the balcony of Ichihashi’s apartment - apparently in that order. Neighbors told police they had heard scraping and dragging sounds emanating from Ichihashi’s apartment, apparently from the bathtub being removed and dragged out onto the balcony.

When Ichihashi was confronted by police in front of his apartment, he apparently affirmed that he was in fact Tatsuya Ichihashi, then fled barefooted down the fire escape, losing pursuing officers at an intersection.

Miss Hawker’s father and boyfriend arrived in Japan to claim her body and gave a tearful statement to the press, asking people to help the police apprehend the killer.

Ichihashi is the primary and, it seems, only suspect in the case.

All of us here at Trans-Pacific Radio join the rest of our community here - both on line and off, both Japanese and foreign - in offering our sincere condolences to Miss Hawker’s family and friends.

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