In this edition of TPR News, we look at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s upcoming visit to Japan, media treatment of the ‘comfort women’ issue, Prime Minister Abe’s phone call to US president George Bush, the bankruptcy of Eichi Shuppan, the activity of foreign ‘activist funds’ in the Japanese marketplace, and Japan’s antiquated laws on paternity and divorce.

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Politics

Speaking to Japanese media in Beijing on Wednesday, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said, “Individual Japanese leaders have visited (the Yasukuni shrine) numerous times and hurt the feelings of the Chinese people…I hope this will never happen again.” Wen’s comments were made exactly one week before he is set to arrive in Tokyo for talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. On the same day, Abe repeated that his stance on whether or not he will visit the controversial shrine is, “as I stated before,” which means that Abe will not say one way or the other if he will make a visit to Yasukuni at any time.

The Yomiuri Shimbun has published an editorial on the “so-called comfort women problem” that has been circulating in the Japan-based blogosphere. The Yomiuri points out that Prime Minister Abe’s comments on the issue have not been helpful, and have instead created the result that, “The number of U.S. congressional members who have thrown their support behind Honda’s draft resolution has been increasing in the wake of Abe’s statement.” Actual names and numbers are not given.

The Yomiuri then attempts to trace the roots of the issue’s flare-up in the global media - although the Yomiuri only recognizes the US media - by shifting blame away from Mr Abe’s comments and onto Hiroshige Seko, the special adviser in charge of Abe’s public relations. As the Yomiuri puts it:

As many in the government have noted, Hiroshige Seko, an adviser to the prime minister, sowed the seeds of the controversy when he visited the United States in February. During the visit, he met a number of U.S. lawmakers, pointedly criticizing the draft resolution, and a problem that otherwise would have been left unheeded was exacerbated.

On April 5, Democratic Senator from Hawaii Daniel Inouye expressed his opposition to the resolution calling for Japan to apologize over the comfort women issue in a letter sent to Representative Tom Lantos, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, and other lawmakers. Senator Inouye stated that passage of the resolution would be unnecessary and could possibly have a negative impact on US-Japan relations.

On Wednesday, Abe told reporters that his goal with having a twenty minute phone conversation with US President George W Bush on Tuesday night was to explain:

My remarks were not reported accurately [in the United States]. I explained my true intention to avoid any misunderstanding before I visit the United States at the end of this month.

Abe reportedly told Bush, “I am deeply sympathetic to the former comfort women who suffered hardships, and I have expressed my apologies over the extremely agonizing circumstances into which they were placed.” Speaking at another press conference on Wednesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told reporters that the comfort women issue would most likely not be on the agenda during this month’s talks between Abe and Bush, saying, “I suppose Bush understood the prime minister’s intention. The president said he trusts the prime minister and the Japanese. We can guess that the issue won’t be raised during the talks.”

The Asahi reacted to Abe’s phone call by saying that the Prime Minister is “now trying to distance himself from further political fallout ahead of his visit to the United States, where pressure is mounting for Japan to issue yet another apology.” The Asahi joins the Yomiuri in pointing out that Abe’s remarks have not been helpful, commenting:

Only six representatives agreed to cosponsor a bipartisan resolution calling on Tokyo to apologize for the “comfort women” issue when Congressman Mike Honda, a California Democrat, introduced it to the House of Representatives on Jan. 31. By Monday, there were 77 names.

Abe will be making his first visit as Prime Minister to the US on April 26-27, where he is scheduled to have dinner at the White House before joining Bush for talks at Camp David. Despite the Asahi’s claim that Abe’s comments have cast a shadow over his visit, according to Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino, the two leaders are set to discuss their cooperation in global affairs and their “continuing strong cooperation in bilateral alliance matters and in economic relations.”

For further reading on the comfort women issue and how it has played out thus far, Foreign Policy has recently published a short but insightful interview with Columbia University Professor Gerald Curtis.

Business and the Economy

Eichi Shuppan, publishers of the now infamous Gaijin Hanzai Ura File magazine, has gone bankrupt. In a story that was broken to the English blogging world by Fukumimi and quickly picked up at Japan Probe, Eichi appears to have left behind outstanding debts of about 2.3 billion yen (about $20 million).

Last Thursday, shareholders of Sapporo Breweries voted to approve an ‘advance warning system’ for takeovers that will provide the company’s board of directors with the means to thwart takeover attempts. Specifically, Sapporo’s board is attempting to avoid being taken over by Steel Partners Japan Strategic Fund, which is currently Sapporo’s largest shareholder. Whether the vote represents a fear of foreign funds taking over Japanese firms, a rejection of Steel Partners, or expresses support for the board of directors remains the subject of much punditry.

Regarding Japan’s relation with funds, and especially those funds seeking to buy out Japanese firms, the cover of last week’s edition of Newsweek Japan depicted the Japanese flag, its red sun surrounded by various domestic brand logos, being sucked into a hole. The headline to the featured story read 「ファンド嫌いで沈むニッポン」, or, “Nippon Sinking in Fund Phobia,” and showed a cartoon of an American businessman entertaining a range of global clients, while a nervous looking gentleman wearing a necktie with the Hinomaru emblazoned on it looks on from a distance.

According to the Bank of Japan’s quarterly Tankan Survey of large manufacturers, business confidence among such firms weakened in the three months to March, showing the first drop in a year, and may be a reflection of concern about the perceived uncertainty of the U.S. economy.

Finally, Japanese automakers continue to pound their American counterparts in the marketplace. Despite continued weak domestic sales results, Japanese automakers saw spectacular results in 2006. Toyota’s sales rose 7.7% in March, Nissan’s were up 3.9%, and Honda has said it is expecting to post a record year. On the US side, Ford saw its sales fall 12.4%, GM’s sales were down 7.7%, and DaimlerChrysler saw sales slip 4.6%. Seeking to drum up votes in her home constituency, Michigan Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow said, “Unfair trade practices, like currency manipulation, that cost American jobs cannot be allowed to continue, no matter who the culprit is.”

On March 28, Stabenow introduced a piece of legislation called the “Japan Currency Manipulation Act” which is intended to stop the Japanese government from participating in what she called the “unfair trade practice of manipulating its yen currency.”

Society

The Japan Times has published two recent articles concerning government-led reforms to the nation’s labor laws that are currently under consideration. The first article, entitled Reforms offer little promise for part-timers, details the growing number of part-time workers in Japan and the challenges they face in terms of reduced salaries and benefits, despite being expected to do more and more of the work that was formerly the domain of full-time, salaried workers. The second article, entitled What the government is trying to accomplish, is written in a Q&A format and describes the six bills that have been submitted to the Diet that are intended to “revise labor regulations to better suit diversifying working conditions.”

Who rules on the blogosphere? According to Technortati’s April 2007 State of the Live Web report, the number of blogs in existence has grown to 72 million worldwide. Of that number, 37% are written in Japanese, 36% in English, and 8% in Chinese. Last year’s report showed English at 39% and Japanese at 33% of the blogoshpere. Hong Kong based Rebecca MacKinnon, a co-founder of international blog aggregator Global Voices Online, said:

We’ve seen an explosion in non-English systems over the past year. Not to belittle Technorati and the very impressive work they’ve done, but perhaps it has become impossible to try and count all blogs in the world…Worldwide, many people have things to say. For nothing, you can use this publishing platform to communicate with whomever you want.

In terms of the top ten languages in which blogs are written, Farsi was the only newcomer.

On his new Japan Law Blog, Joe Jones (a member of the team at Mutant Frog Travelogue) has written a post on the laws surrounding divorce and paternity in Japan. The Daily Yomiuri has also weighed in with a recent piece on this issue, pointing out that Japan’s laws on paternity:

[have] been part of the Civil Code since the law took effect in 1898. The provision is aimed at clarifying the legal responsibility of fathers to support their children, thereby stabilizing their relationships with their families. This means the law has remained unchanged, although it was established at a time when it was scientifically difficult to decide whether a baby of a remarried woman was the progeny of her new husband or her former husband.

Although reforms to the civil code that would allow women to resume using their maiden names after marriage were proposed in 1996, they have been opposed by members of the LDP and have not made any headway through the Diet. Here at TPR, we hope that both this reform, and the introduction of DNA-based scientific testing to determine paternity will become part of “A Beautiful Country, Japan.”

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