In this edition of TPR News, we look at the passage of Mike Honda’s comfort women resolution to the full House of Representatives, the candidacy of Alberto Fujimori for Japan’s Upper House elections, the reaction to North Korean missile tests this week, the life of former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, who passed away this week, a range of economic reports, and the ongoing hunt for the murderer of Lindsay Ann Hawker

Politics

On Wednesday, the International Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives voted 39-2 to pass a resolution sponsored by Representative Mike Honda (D-CA) which calls for Japan to “formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner” for forcing an estimated 200,000 women into sexual slavery during World War II. The resolution now moves on to debate in the full House, where a vote could take place in mid-July. Speaking in Tokyo on Wednesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said, “Our government stance has been clarified on many occasions, including (during) our Prime Minister’s visit to the United States in April…I don’t think we want to add more than that..”

(Read on …)

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 TPR News: 6/29/07: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Thanks to Debito Arudo for bringing this to our attention. What follows is a copy of an email from Caroline Pover, the CEO of Caroline Pover Inc. and Weekender, Inc.

Dear Friends & Associates

As you probably know, 22-year-old Lindsay Ann Hawker was teaching English in
Japan when she was brutally murdered at the end of March this year. Tatsuya
Ichihashi remains the Japanese police’s only suspect and has still not been
found.

In support of Lindsay’s family and the Japanese police in their hunt for
this man, I am launching a T-shirt campaign. I hope that enough people - men
and women, Japanese and foreign - will wear this T-shirt so that this man’s
face is seen by as many people as possible in Japan, on a daily basis.

I met with Lindsay’s family yesterday, who said: “The more people that wear
the T-shirts, the more support that we will feel is being shown for us.
Lindsay was a teacher, who loved her life in Japan. She would have been
first in the queue to buy and wear such a T-shirt for another victim. She
had a strong sense of justice, and would have done anything she could have
to have helped others.”

PLEASE play a part in assisting Lindsay’s family in keeping this man’s face
right where people can see it. Buy a t-shirt and wear it at the gym,
dropping the kids off at school, going shopping, on the train, and just
walking around - wear it anywhere you will be seen by many people. If you
don’t live in Japan, why not help by buying shirts for us to give to people
who do?

There are many things you can do to help: buy and wear a T-shirt, buy LOTS
of T-shirts for us to give to people to wear, volunteer to help with the
campaign, get your company involved, and pass on this email to all your
foreign and Japanese friends living in Japan. If you are involved with any
print media, we also have a print campaign you are welcome to use.

On behalf of the Hawker family, thank you very much for your support.

Caroline
———–
To order T-shirts go to http://www.cafepress.com/beingabroad

To volunteer yourself, your company, or media coverage, please email
caroline@carolinepover.com

Please forward this email to your foreign and Japanese friends living in
Japan.

–
Caroline Pover
President & CEO
Caroline Pover, Inc. & Weekender, Inc.
———————–
Being A Broad http://www.being-a-broad.com
Alexandra Press http://www.alexandrapress.com
Weekender magazine http://www.weekenderjapan.com
———————–
Tel: 03-5549-2038
Fax: 03-5549-2039
Email: caroline@carolinepover.com
Chuo Iikura Bldg 5F, 3-4-11 Azabudai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0041, Japan

This week’s talks may pave the way for easing Tokyo’s strict import restrictions

Japan and the United States will begin talks this week on easing Tokyo’s strict import restrictions on American beef.

The Japanese government announced on Monday that experts from the two countries will meet on Wednesday and Thursday in Tokyo to discuss the safety of American beef. If progress is made this week, further talks will be held between high-level government officials.

This week’s Japan-U.S. meeting will come two weeks after Tokyo’s decision on June 13 to stop re-inspecting all beef shipments from the U.S. and shift to a sampling system of inspections.

Japan made the decision to end re-inspections of all beef shipments from the U.S. after it found no safety problems at dozens of U.S. meatpacking facilities it inspected. Japanese officials inspected 28 meatpacking plants in 14 states in May to evaluate their compliance with conditions Japan imposed over mad cow disease concerns.

The OIE agreed in late May to allow the U.S. to export beef regardless of cattle age under the organization’s standards for mad cow disease prevention, providing Washington with fresh ammunition to pressure Tokyo to ease its beef import regulations. OIE is the French acronym of the World Organization for Animal Health.

(Read on …)

What happens when you take out full page ads in US newspapers attempting to put forward the ‘Show us the proof!’ line of argument concerning WW2-era sex slaves and then have a sitting lawmaker announce, “We are absolutely positive that there was no massacre in Nanking,” to the world?

You end up pouring gas on a fire. I actually did this once, when I was ten or so years old. I learned, in a flash, that it was a bad idea. These are grown men who cannot comprehend the concept of pouring gas on a fire in the international public relations arena.

Back in January, before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushed the issue to the front page of newspapers all over the world, it was doubtful that Representative Mike Honda’s nonbinding resolution would come to vote in the committee, much less get passed on to the full floor of the House of Representatives for debate.

That’s exactly what happened today.

On Tuesday US time, the resolution introduced by Japanese-American lawmaker Mike Honda was approved 39 to 2 by the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee in a step that allows the nonbinding measure to move to the full House.

(Read on …)

In this edition of TPR News: US House members get set to vote on the “comfort women” resolution and Japan is not happy; the Prime Minister’s approval ratings continue to fall; the Upper House elections are delayed; Social Insurance Agency officials may have embezzled payments as part of the ongoing mess there; Abe’s fortunes decline; Steel Partners takes Bull Dog to court; scandal at Meat Hope; no punishment for bullies or teachers who bully; and a few choice tidbits from the Japan blogosphere.

Politics

Our top two stories center on Japan’s relationship with America.

On June 26th, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives plans to vote on Rep. Mike Honda’s proposed non-binding resolution calling on the Prime Minister of Japan to formally apologize for the coercion of (mostly Korean) women into sexual servitude during World War II. 140 legislators, from both parties, have pledged support for the bill, which Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to have ever served in Congress, said would pass by “a substantial margin” when he announced the hearing last weekend.

(Yes, we know Rep. Lantos’s having survived the Holocaust is irrelevant, but mentioning it serves to remind people of who he is.)

After the resolution passes the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Honda expects it to come before the full House “sometime in mid-July.” If and when it does, and in the less certain event that it passes the full House, the victory will be a hard won one for Honda and the Korean Women’s advocacy group with whom he has worked. (Some of the affected women are Rep. Honda’s constituents in California.) A resolution on the same issue, proposed over a year ago, received broad bipartisan support, and was scuttled preceding then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s valedictory visit to Washington and Graceland. The resolution was then resubmitted last September, only to be blocked by the then-Republican majority in the House.

(For more background on Rep. Mike Honda’s “comfort women” resolution and the Japan lobby’s role in the affair, listen to Seijigiri #12, from November 16, 2006.)

(Read on …)

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 TPR News: 6/25/07: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Alan Ladd and twenty girls - trapped by the rapacious Japs!

From 1934 to 1955, after Hollywood stars made movies, they reprised their roles on the Lux Radio Theater.

On November 22, 1943 Alan Ladd and Loretta Young went into the CBS studios to broadcast the radio version of their topical film China.

Alan Ladd plays Mr. Jones, a cynical oil hawker in China in 1941, who thinks the “Japs” are good customers. He runs into Loretta Young’s Carolyn Grant, a teacher in Chengdu, whose girls are the hope of the new China for which the brave Chinese soldiers fight.

As Mr. Jones is trying to get to Shanghai and falling for Miss Grant (of course), he sees an orphan baby he and his traveling companions had picked up and named “Donald Duck” killed, along with old women, by barbaric Japanese forces. The climax comes on December 10, 1941, when Mr. Jones finds out, from a smug Japanese general, that the Japanese “like America very much. So much that we’re going to take it away from you,” and that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor three days before.

(Read on …)

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With Seijigiri getting this week off, BizCast #5 is out a week early. In this edition, we have our first ever interview, with Brett Nelson, who has co-founded two hedge fund groups in Japan and joins us to give some insight into how the industry is run, what’s involved in setting up a hedge fund in Japan, and what we should expect from them in the future.

We start with four headlines, first discussing You Tube’s recent unfurling of a Japanese language version of its website. We barely scratch the surface here, and there are many side issues left to discuss in the future. We then move on to a quick look at McDonald’s Japan’s recent decision to raise prices in urban areas and cut them in the countryside.

After that, we discuss the 210 companies which, at their upcoming annual shareholder’s meetings, are expected to vote on whether or not to adopt anti-takeover measures. That leads into a short mention of the Urban Renaissance Headquarters, which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe finally discussed publicly on Tuesday.

After that, we spend twenty minutes discussing hedge funds in Japan with Brett Nelson. We talk about what hedge funds do in Japan, how their operations are limited, what’s involved in setting one up, and much more.

Thanks to Brett for coming on to talk to us, and we hope to have you back on the show in the future.

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 BizCast Japan #5: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It’s not quite time for the next edition of TPR News yet, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a quick update:

First, this morning the Yomiuri reported that a 12 day extension of the current Diet session was basically agreed to on Tuesday. That would extend the session to July 5, and push the Upper House election back one week, to July 29. According to the Yomiuri, the Secretaries General of the LDP and its coalition partner, New Komeito, will finalize their plans and then request that Lower House Speaker Yohei Kono initiate procedures to extend the session.

The Yomiuri quotes an unnamed opposition lawmaker as saying, “We won’t allow the ruling parties to extend the session just because it suits them.”

The Asahi reports that senior LDP lawmakers see the 12 day extension as necessary to pass key pieces of legislation. On Tuesday, Toranosuke Katayama, the secretary-general of the LDP’s Upper House caucus, told reporters, “We cannot just scrap important bills, and we have no choice but to prioritize their passage, even if it affects the date of the voting.”

In slightly stranger news, the Kokumin Shinto (or People’s New Party) has asked Alberto Fujimori, the former president of Peru who stands accused of crimes against humanity and is currently under house arrest in that country, to run in the Upper House election next month.

Kokumin Shinto was formed by former LDP lawmaker Shizuka Kamei in response to former Prime Minister Koizumi’s plan to privatize Japan’s postal system.

In this edition of TPR News, we look at a new plan to extend the current Diet session, the Prime Minister’s free-falling approval ratings, problems at the Social Insurance Agency, corporate scandals at Nova and Comsn, what’s happening with US beef, how much money the yakuza is raking in from fees, anger over high school textbooks in Okinawa, and two court rulings concerning events from World War II.

Politics

After initially saying that he would not move to extend the current Diet session, on Friday Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that he had come to an agreement with leadership in the Liberal Democratic Party on a plan to extend the session in order to push through the remaining pieces of legislation, including reforms to the public servant system and a bill designed to reform the system of ‘Amakudari,’ by which retiring bureaucrats are handed jobs in industries that they once oversaw.

Abe’s plan to extend the Diet session by 5 days would have no effect on Japan’s political schedule, although the 12 day extension that some lawmakers are pushing for may result in a delay in the Upper House election, which is currently set for July 22. If the Diet session were extended by 12 days, the election would be moved back one week, to July 29.

Earlier this week, the Yomiuri Shimbun’s Koichi Akaza wrote, “The pension issue has been casting dark clouds over the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Social Insurance Agency’s sloppy handling of pension subscription records has heightened public indignation and contributed to a plunge in the approval rating for the Abe Cabinet.” In a separate article published today, it was noted that the Social Insurance Agency has launched a nationwide probe into a special pension premium payment system that was adopted in the 1970s. This system was set up to allow people to retroactively pay unpaid pension premiums in a lump sum. Many people have recently complained that there are no records of their payments made through this system.

(Read on …)

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 TPR News: 6/17/07: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download