In this edition of TPR News, we take a look at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s first visit to the United States since assuming the country’s top post, what transpired during that visit, some media reaction to that visit, Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s visit to the US, Toyota’s 2007 first quarter sales results, Japan’s mobile telephone industry, efforts to reduce Japan’s suicide rate, and some words on Tatsuya Ichihashi, the presumed murderer of Lindsay Ann Hawker.

Politics

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with US President George W Bush during his first visit to the US as Prime Minister on Thursday and Friday. The two heads of state discussed bilateral efforts to protect intellectual property rights, strengthen energy security, increase the transparency of government regulations, and to foster democratic development across the globe. They both expressed a commitment to the Doha Round of WTO development talks and discussed the possibility of a Free Trade Area in the Asia-Pacific Region as a long-term goal.

The White House and Ministry of Foreign Affairs released nearly identical descriptions of the talks to the media. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an additional statement on “Energy Security, Clean Development and Climate Change” that stated:

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China became Japan’s largest trading partner in fiscal 2006, which ended on March 31, replacing the United States for the first time since the end of the Second World War, according to preliminary figures released on Wednesday by Japan’s Finance Ministry.

Japan’s trade with China, excluding Hong Kong, rose 16.5 percent in fiscal 2006 from a year earlier, totaling 25.42 trillion yen (about $213.6 billion), while that with the U.S. increased 10.3 percent to 25.16 trillion yen ($211.4 billion). The trade data are measured on a customs-cleared basis before adjustment for seasonal factors and given on a yen-denominated basis.

The rising trend of Sino-Japanese trade is expected to continue amid a thaw in bilateral relations since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office last September. Under his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who angered China — and South Korea — by repeatedly visiting the war-related Yasukuni Shrine, Sino-Japanese relations were said to be “hot in business” but “cold in politics.”

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Many thanks to Japan Probe for bringing this one to our attention. On March 29, Fareed Zakaria interviewed Yoshihisa Komori, a Washington DC-based Editor-at-Large for Japan’s Sankei Shinbun for the PBS series Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria. The two men discussed the so-called ‘comfort women’ issue and what was meant by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s comments concerning the involvement of Japan’s military in the recruitment of such women during the Second World War.

Not to knock Komori too hard, since I’ll leave that to the commentators, but three things struck me: He looks off camera quite a bit, he brings up every red herring and irrelevant side issue he can think of, and he’s well fixated on playing the ‘victim’ game. I don’t think he was a wise choice at all for Japan to have speaking on its behalf.

Veracifier is a (relatively) new show (vlog?) about politics being produced by Next New Networks (an interesting Business Week writeup on what they’re doing).

I first came across the show when I read about their interview with John Kerry before his appearance on the Colbert Report. Veracifier had footage of Colbert out of character, which I couldn’t resist seeing. That led me to their website, where I found that “Japanese-Iraqi Solidarity Feeds Hungry Iraq” was the title of their first release. Here it is:

What’s interesting about this? Truth is, aside from a couple of short interviews, we don’t get to hear much from people on the ground at all. And, in terms of what Japan’s Self-Defense Forces members are doing, we hear very little, and see even less. We get to see some yellow bags with an expression of gratitude printed on them.

Well enough. Nonetheless, what I think we’re seeing is a very simple example of what the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could be doing if they desired to increase public awareness of what their mission in Iraq is all about. If.

Last chance. Things are not looking up for Canada, which needs every penny you can spare, every penny beyond basic living expenses, for the War effort.

Every penny is needed to prevent Nazi Eyes On Canada. . .

from becoming Nazi Boots On Canada.

In the conclusion to the CBC’s 1942 series, produced by J. Frank Wills and hosted by Orson Welles, small town newspaper, editor Sam Dornan of Saskatchewan looks up at a Nazi swastika hanging, in 1949, where he and other Canadians had proudly sung “God Save the King” before their tall King and their lovely Queen in 1939.

In 1949, they play “The Horst Wessel Song. . . the song that made a hero out of a beer hall brawler, the song that canonized a gutter rat.”

The men in uniform present in 1939, the men of Canada’s Army, Navy, and Air Force, the men in the scarlet tunics of the Royal Candian Mounted Police, have been replaced by men of Germany’s Panzer divisions, that overran Canada, and men of the Luftwaffe, who destroyed Canada’s cities from the air, and of the Gestapo, with the heavy hands of murderers.

The veterans of World War I have been replaced by the veterans of the conquest of Poland and France, of England, the United States, and Canada.

Where the radiant Queen once reviewed Canada’s men in uniform, men in the uniform of Nazi Germany now parade for the delight of the Gauleiter of Canada, the spy Colin Ross.

In this rousing finale, one of Canada’s last heroes, the last symbol of Canada’s freedom, faces execution.

(Originally aired on October 25, 1942.)

In case you missed it, Nazi Eyes On Canada, part 4, with Vincent Price.

Nazi Eyes On Canada, part 3, with Quentin Reynolds.

Nazi Eyes On Canada, part 2, with House Jameson.

Nazi Eyes On Canada, premiere, with Helen Hayes.

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In this edition of TPR News, we look at the second round of local elections, the state of Japan’s Upper House leading into July’s elections, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts at constitutional reform, his upcoming visit to Washington, defense matters concerning the US and Japan, taxi fares, domestic violence laws, and an excellent new resource on Japan’s legal system.

TPR News is generously supported by O-Creative.

Breaking News

A verdict in the Lucie Blackman case has just been announced. Kyodo News is reporting that defendant Joji Obara has been sentenced to life in prison for raping and drugging nine women, and causing the death of one. Obara, however, has been acquitted of all charges involving the death of Lucie Blackman.

Politics

In the second round of local elections held on Sunday, Makoto Yokoo, the son-in-law of murdered incumbent Itcho Ito and reporter for the local daily Nishinippon Shimbun, was defeated by former Nagasaki municipal office employee Tomihisa Taue in the race for mayor of Nagasaki. Both men, who submitted their candidacy paperwork the day after the former mayor was shot and killed outside of JR Nagasaki Station, ran as independents.

(Read on …)

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While Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition may seem to be cruising easily toward the first revision of the country’s postwar pacifist constitution, it has encountered an unexpected head wind - a decline in public support for the move.

In a historic step toward revising the supreme law, Japan’s Diet (Parliament) will almost certainly enact a bill soon setting the rules for a national referendum required for any constitutional changes. It will do this on the strength of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-led coalition’s majority in both houses of the Diet.

But recent opinion polls show that public support for constitutional amendments, especially rewriting a clause that has put strict restrictions on Japanese military activities since the end of World War II, has plummeted.

According to a survey of 3,000 Japanese nationwide conducted by the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest national daily, 46% of those polled favor constitutional revisions, while 39% oppose them, with the rest undecided or having no opinion.

Although those who favor constitutional revisions have consistently outnumbered those who oppose them for 15 years, the percentage of the former has dropped for three years running. The 46% support ratio represents a drop of nine percentage points from a similar poll taken a year ago before Abe took office. Meanwhile, the 39% disapproval ratio was seven percentage points higher from a year ago.

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In this edition of Seijigiri, Garrett and Ken start with a very brief discussion on the implications of the recent first round of unified local elections (this was recorded on Friday, before the second round of local elections). For further in-depth analysis of these elections, we suggest reading Matt Dioguardi’s Democratic Party of Japan makes large gains in local elections at Japan in Amber, Debito Arudou’s Election Special at debito.org, or TPR News for April 11, which also detailed the election results.

We move on to discuss the recent murder of Nagasaki mayor Itcho Ito, and the implications that may have. This leads into a discussion on administrative reform and the incredibly slim odds that anything will be done on this issue other than the ruling party deciding to call it by another name in an effort to make its continuance palpable to Japan’s electorate.

We then move into a discussion of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s recent visit to Japan and what was accomplished in his meetings with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. After that, we look at Abe’s own upcoming visit to the United States, where he is set to meet with US President George W Bush. We briefly discuss US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s visit to Japan earlier this year and his attempt to get Abe to tell him what a satisfactory resolution on the North Korean abduction issue would be for Japan.

Finally, we end with a brief look at Japan’s antiquated paternity laws and civil code regarding family law. What are the forces behind not allowing DNA testing to determine paternity in Japan?

In terms of production, there are two spots of about ten seconds each where there is a tad of audible line noise. We decided to leave it in rather than re-record in order to preserve the flow of the show. The voices remain 100% audible during these short periods, though we thought it worth mentioning. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Once again, thank you for listening. We do intend to have the next edition of Seijigiri released during the first week of May, so there will be no Golden Week rest for the wicked…

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Ambulances, cops, crying kids, confusion - the usual hallmarks of breaking news coverage of a disaster. The bits, no news station can resist - graphical semi-dramatizations of what might have happened based on snippets of eyewitness, or, more often, secondhand testimony. In this case, yellow humanoid things lined up against a wall as a green humanoid thing in a baseball cap aimed a gun at them, then at his own head, never firing.

Now for a bit of disclosure, I’m not going to pretend that my Japanese is perfect. I’m not going to pretend that I never make mistakes or mishear things on TV. I will eagerly admit that there are many words I don’t know, some of which may sound like words I do know. However, I don’t usually get really lost following TV news and what I heard, more than once, and confirmed with people who do speak Japanese just about perfectly, being Japanese and all, was that there was a shooting at Virginia Tech.

So far so good.

Then I heard that the shooter was a Korean exchange student in his third year studying English language.

Got it.

Then I heard that he might have singled out Japanese students.

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Just before 8:00 Tuesday evening, 61-year-old Itcho Ito became the second consecutive mayor of Nagasaki to be shot while holding that position. Unlike his predecessor, Hitoshi Motoshima, Ito unfortunately did not survive the shooting. It has been reported that one of the two bullets that hit him sliced through his heart. His death was officially announced at 2:28 Wednesday morning.

In 1990, Ito’s predecessor, Hitoshi Motoshima, was shot in front of Nagasaki city hall, and his shooter told police he was unhappy with Motoshima for saying that the Showa Emperor was responsible for the war.

Ito’s case does not seem to hold such political or symbolic significance. Rumors on Internet boards say that the shooter, 59-year-old Tetsuya Shiroo, has claimed to be upset about damage having been done to his car while driving past a city-run construction site. Kyodo tells us that Shiroo is the acting leader of the Suishin-kai group, which is affiliated with Japan’s largest organized crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi.

Claims of ‘car damage’ should thus be transparent to anyone who has spent some time in Japan, although it does seem odd for this time-honored extortionary tactic to be used in a political assassination.

At any rate, the story is still developing, and our goal was not to write a long piece about it, but rather to link to all videos of coverage that we could find on You Tube. I have arranged them with the most recent at the top of the post (in other words, videos that are pure coverage tend to be at the bottom of the post). So, without any further ado:

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