I’m not sure how Koike is better qualified for the job, though. Call me old fashioned, but I like to see someone with some stars on their shoulders in any defense chief position.

One thing I didn’t address in the piece and which I will address here is the nature and motivation behind Kyuma’s often stupid remarks.

I really think his heart was in the right place. Unlike Koike, he wanted peace and didn’t believe in any kind of nationalistic rhetoric. He didn’t bill himself as a reformer with his brown nose still up Abe’s. . . mmhmm.

It might have been only a matter of time before Kyuma used shouganai in connection with the A-bomb and it was certainly only a matter of time before he said something in public that would make me wonder whether he was the only functionally illiterate adult in Japan, but it was by no means a matter of time until Kyuma said something stupid in a nationalistic line, such as “We should move on China next week.”

Koike is smarter and better qualified for the job, but we are losing a little something with Kyuma: his thorniness. Kyuma was not really one of Abe’s boys. Kyuma acted as a drag on the Defense Ministry, not only because of incompetence, but also because he was genuinely concerned with peace. I think his backtracking and explaining earlier this week were unfortunate because he implied something important in his original statement.

To call an A-bomb attack unavoidable, inevitable, not to be helped, or however else you want to translate shouganai implies that events had reached a point where nothing better could happen. This implies that things were pretty bad, which they were, and pokes a hole in this bullshit notion of Japanese victimhood.

How did things get to that point?

Koike is a smart woman, but her heart is not in the right place at all. She’s a party hack. Her first statement, calling the A-bombing “unacceptable from a humanitarian viewpoint” and “an outright challenge to human beings” was both vapid and gutless.

Of course A-bombing is bad. Who the hell has said it’s not? It takes no stones to say so.

She also went on to say, “We will continue to firmly maintain the relationship with the U.S. under the Japan-U.S. security treaty.”

Doesn’t that require just a little bit of explanation? If you’re going to call an action an outright challenge to human beings and accept the mantle of a segment of the body politic that has sidestepped the nuclear issue by saying US actions were inconsistent with international law (while also, incidentally, saying that the Tokyo Tribunal was invalid because there was no relevant law at the time to which Japan was a party), then pledge to work closely and seek closer ties with the very nation that violated international law and issued this outright challenge to humanity, you have some serious explaining to do.

One press conference and Koike has already shown us she is not about to take any chances or put her intelligence to use.

As for her clothes: who the fuck cares what the new Defense Minister of Japan is wearing? Sometimes I have some serious doubts about the British press.