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.

According to the Yomiuri’s most recent poll figures, support for Abe’s Cabinet has slid to 33 percent, and its disapproval rating stands at 54 percent. Both figures are the worst recorded for the Abe Cabinet since it came to power in late September of last year.

The Asahi Shimbun is reporting that amongst voters in their 20s and 30s, Abe enjoys only a 16% support rate. 54 percent of such voters, however, still think Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party will win the Upper House election next month.

Jiji Press tells us that support for Abe’s Cabinet has dipped to 28.8 percent, according to a survey carried out over June 8-11. This is down 10.6 percentage points from a month earlier, and is the lowest yet for the Abe Cabinet. In fact, the 28.8% support rating would be the lowest for any survey of Cabinet support since April 2001, at the end of Yoshiro Mori’s run as Prime Minister.

Although a string of scandals involving the Social Insurance Agency have gradually been exposed over the past three years, the most recent debacle, in which it was discovered that there have been approximately 50 million cases of pension premium payments that cannot be identified, finally set off the public anger that has driven down the Prime Minister’s approval ratings and threatens to sway the election away from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

In reaction to the scandal, the Prime Minister has attempted to shore up public support through a series of measures, including stepping up pressure on dismantling the Social Insurance Agency itself. On Thursday, Abe suggested that the government adopt a single social security number for each pensioner. According to Abe, this would help to centralize pension information and increase efficiency in determining which payment belongs to which payee. In addition, Abe suggested creating an IC card system which would store each individual’s data.

An Asahi Shimbun poll conducted over June 9 and 10 found 29% of voters expressing support for the Democratic Party of Japan in the upcoming Upper House election and 23% favoring the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. A week earlier, the same poll had shown the LDP holding on to a slight lead, at 24% to 23%.

The Asahi’s poll also showed a slight recovery in support for the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with 34% of respondents expressing support, up 4% from the previous poll. The nonsupport rate for the Abe Cabinet fell one percentage point to 48%.

Regarding the pension fund fiasco, Chris Salzberg at Global Voices Online has done a fantastic write-up that details the LDP’s attempt to pin the blame for the whole mess on Naoto Kan of the DPJ, who was Minister of Health, labor and Welfare in 1996, when the plan to computerize pension account records was approved.

As reported at The Marmot’s Hole and quickly picked up at Occidentalism, a group called the Committee for Historical Facts has taken out a full page advertisement in the Washington Post in order to present their view on the so-called ‘comfort women’ controversy (Click here for full size version).

On Friday, the Prime Minister told his cabinet ministers that more effort must be put into pushing Japan as a venue for international conferences. The government plans to hold a meeting next Wednesday with business representatives and academics in order to further discuss the plan. Abe laid the foundation for this plan in his policy speech to the Diet made on September 29, 2006, when he said, “I will expand the number of major international conferences held in Japan by at least 50 percent within five years, with the aim of making Japan the largest international conference host nation in Asia.”

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone has admitted in a recent interview that US warships might have carried nuclear weapons through Japan’s territorial waters under his watch in the 1980s, especially in the Tsugaru Channel, the body of water that separates the northern island of Hokkaido from Honshu. Nakasone said that such a transit would have happened without his knowledge.

Business and the Economy

English language school operator Nova has been barred from signing new contracts with students for courses lasting longer than a year or exceeding 70 hours of instruction. The suspension in business activities was handed down on Thursday by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which had also been investigating Nova’s business practices, issued an improvement order to the company on Wednesday, the day before METI’s order. On Friday, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said that Nova would no longer qualify for the program of government subsidies designed to support educational opportunities, known in Japanese as “給付金。” According to the Nikkei, about 71,000 Nova students have received a total of about 16.1 billion yen in such subsidies since 1999.

According to the Nikkei, foreign ownership of companies listed on five of Japan’s major stock exchanges increased by 1.3% to 28% in fiscal 2006. The data includes the Tokyo Stock Exchange but not the smaller Jasdaq Securities Exchange. 2006 was the fourth consecutive year with a record-high number of foreign investment owning such public corporations. Individual shareholders increased by 1.2 million, setting a new record for the 11th straight year. There are now 39.28 million individual investors who own shares traded on the five surveyed stock exchanges.

At the end of its policy board meeting on Friday, the Bank of Japan decided against raising the nation’s benchmark interest rates. Many observers have postulated that no rise in interest rates will come until after the Upper House election in July, and thus the next interest rate hike from the BOJ may have to wait until August. Speaking to reporters in Tokyo, BOJ Governor Toshihiko Fukui said, “(the nine board members) have unanimously agreed that we must examine a number of factors before changing our policy.” Fukui did not say exactly what those factors would be.

Steel Partners continues its efforts to buy out sauce maker Bull Dog. On May 18, Steel Partners had offered to buy all existing shares of Bull Dog at 1,584 yen per share. On Friday, that offer was raised to 1,700 yen per share, and the offer will stay open until August 10. Bull Dog is actively seeking to take defense measures against Steel Partners’ bid for acquisition. Bull Dog traded at a high of 1,750 yen on Friday before settling to close at 1,694.

On Friday, a METI Vice Minister, Takao Kitabata, criticized the investment tactics employed by Steel Partners, claiming that none of its takeover proposals are helping to increase corporate values, and that “poison pill” tactics are fully legal.

Pepsi Ice Cucumber has hit the shelves in Japan. Aya Takemoto, spokesperson for Suntory (Pepsi’s distributor in Japan) told the press, “We wanted a flavor that makes people think of keeping cool in the summer heat. We thought cucumber was just perfect.” Pepsi Ice Cucumber will only be on sale for the duration of the summer and only in Japan. Suntory hopes to ship 300,000 cases of the beverage over the next three months. Pepsi Ice Cucumber is the star of the pilot episode of Lunch with Cheapy D, which you can watch on You Tube.

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Agriculture released a report stating that U.S. beef shipment facilities are up to par with Japanese import standards, and thus there is no longer a need for the requirement that every box of American beef shipped to Japan be opened and inspected upon arrival. Although the inspectors found more cases of mislabeled shipments during their tours of US meatpacking facilities, they determined there was no longer a risk that animal parts that could potentially carry BSE would be included in any shipments to Japan. Such parts usually include any brain matter or spinal cord tissue.

On Friday, the Ministry of Finance announced that the government plans to sell about 900 properties, including 2.4 hectares of land near Tokyo’s Otemachi area, where the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau and the Japan Meteorological Agency are currently located, for something in the neighborhood of 370 billion yen. Could this be the future location fort the planned ‘district’ for foreign workers?

Finally, although we do not have time to delve into the issues surrounding scandals with Comsn, the embattled operator of nursing care facilities in Japan, we can recommend that those who wish to read up on the issue do so by starting with recent posts at “From the inside, looking in,” which is Shin Fukushige’s blog.

Society

On Sunday, Waseda University’s baseball team defeated Tokai University 4-1, and thus claimed it’s first All-Japan University Baseball Championship in 33 years.

According to police sources, in 2006 Japan’s largest crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi, brought in at least 1 billion yen worth of contributions from affiliated gangs across the country. Police sources reported that the Yamaguchi-gumi had somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 members and affiliate members at the end of last year. According to the Yomiuri, contribution money is used for “operational expenses at the [Kobe] headquarters and entertainment expenses for socializing with other organizations.”

On Friday, a third child was left at Japan’s only anonymous drop box for unwanted babies, located in the Western Japan city of Kumamoto. Known in Japanese as “konotori no yurikago,” the facilitiy’s name translates to “Stork Cradle” in English. The child is believed to be about two months old, although its gender was not given. The hospital plans to care for the child and put him or her up for adoption. The Japan times has recently published editorials expressing support or disdain for the baby hatch on its website. One such editorial, “Baby Hatch is not the answer” by Krishna Haksar, may be read by following the link. Unfortunately, “Baby hatch beats alternative“, an editorial written in response to Haksar’s, is anonymous.

Also on Friday, district courts in Sapporo and Kochi rejected claims for damages made by Japanese citizens who had been abandoned in China during the close of the Second World War. Presiding Judge Katsuhiko Kasai, speaking from Sapporo, said that the Japanese government had no obligation to quickly resettle the plaintiffs in Japan once the war ended, or help them make a living after they arrived in Japan. In Kochi, n Kochi, Judge Shinji Shintani declared that it had been illegal for the government to treat war-displaced Japanese citizens as foreigners in 1973 and in the years following.

In another court ruling, Japan’s Supreme Court rejected appeals by dozens of Chinese seeking compensation for being forced into slave labor during World War II. 42 former Chinese laborers, about half of whom are still alive, had sought 847 million yen in damages from the Japanese government and the ten companies they had worked for during the war. The case, which was originally filed in 1997, was dismissed by the Tokyo High Court last year, as the 20-year statute of limitations had expired. The Supreme Court’s decision makes the High Court’s ruling final.

Anger continues to mount in Okinawa over a central government decision to change high school textbook descriptions of the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Education made a request to textbook publishers, asking them to remove any references to claims that the Imperial Japanese Army forced Okinawa’s residents to commit mass suicide during the closing days of World War II. Opposition has even come from members of the ruling party: Last Thursday, the Liberal Democratic Party caucus in the Okinawa prefectural assembly agreed to support a statement calling on the education ministry to retract its decision in textbook screening. Education Ministry officials hold the stance that there is no solid proof that the military had overseen mass suicides in Japan’s southernmost prefecture.

The group of four people from North Korea who arrived in Japan by boat on June 2 has left Japan and arrived in South Korea. According to Reuters, the fact that the four were wearing wristwatches led to some speculation that they might not be so poor after all.

And finally, ten Pakistani navy sailors have gone AWOL in Tokyo, after their ships made a rare goodwill visit to the Port of Tokyo. According to news reports, the men, ranging in age from 19 to 34 years old, went to Akihabara on Tuesday afternoon, but never returned to the two ships. The two Pakistani naval vessels have departed without them.

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