TPR News is proud to welcome its first celebrity guest reader, Mr. Debito Arudou. If you normally read instead of listening, this would be a great time to check out the audio version.

In this edition of TPR News: A rundown of the polls prior to Sunday’s Upper House election, news from Japan’s business and economy sectors, TEPCo’s struggle for credibility in the wake of problems at the Kashiwazaki nuclear power plant following the earthquake in that region, and the return of our “Last Word” commentary…

Politics

The once-delayed House of Councillors election is nigh. On Sunday, those voters who have not been among the record number to take advantage of early voting opportunities will go to the polls to decide what some observers are calling one of Japan’s most important Upper House elections in the post-War era.

In the Asahi Shimbun’s final pre-election poll, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan increased it’s lead over the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, with 32% of respondents in proportional representation districts saying they’d vote for the DPJ and only 20% expressing an intention to vote for the LDP. In prefectural districts, the DPJ’s lead was slightly smaller - it led the LDP 34% to 24%.

The Cabinet’s approval rating held steady at 30%, but disapproval inched up to 56%.

While the press and some political analysts have said the DPJ was popular among women for many election cycles now, the Asahi’s poll, like previous election returns, shows this to be not entirely true. The DPJ led the LDP 22% to 19% among women, but had a much larger lead - 43% to 22% among men.

Among hotly courted unaffiliated voters, 24% leaned toward the DPJ, while a mere 7% thought the LDP was swell.

And the leaders - 50% of respondents thought the DPJ’s Ichiro Ozawa was a better leader than Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, while only 31% thought the opposite. As with the parties themselves, Ozawa’s lead was more pronounced among men.

Another Asahi survey, this one an Internet survey asking who potential voters thought would win Sunday’s election, showed the DPJ edging out the LDP 42% to 40% among voters in their 20s and 30s - an instrumental age group in the LDP’s 2005 House of Representatives landslide victory.

The poll numbers are significant when one considers that the LDP had large leads in most polls in mid-May.

The New Komeito, the Japan Communist Party, and the Social Democratic Party all polled in single digits. The People’s New Party, which is running former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, failed to poll highly enough to be statistically significant.

Perhaps the most telling figures coming from the Asahi poll, though, are the 88% of respondents who said they were still angry about the pension fiasco - generally considered to be a deficit for the LDP - and the 72% who said they wanted drastic political change, obviously not good for the ruling coalition, especially the main party of that coalition, which has controlled politics for virtually all of the past 52 years and is the direct successor of those who ran things before it came into being.

The Yomiuri Shimbun, which tends to be more sanguine about the LDP’s prospects, also has bad tidings for the ruling coalition. Those results show the LDP having a hard time gaining even 40 seats and the DPJ finishing with over 60. They also predict that the LDP might win fewer than ten of the 29 single seat districts and that the LDP’s coalition partner, the New Komeito, may have trouble winning even 13 seats - its total in the 2001 election.

Business and the Economy

Japan’s core Consumer Price Index has fallen for the fifth straight month, showing a 0.1% decline in June. Amongst the major categories surveyed by the Ministry of General Affairs, only clothing and footwear (0.4%) and medical care (1.0%) showed increases against June 2006.

In a bit of business news that is also highly political, or perhaps political news that is highly business-related, a US House of Representatives committee voted to maintain the prohibition on export of F-22A Raptor jets, meaning a speculated sale of the advanced military aircraft to Japan will not go through.

Another suggestion that English schools are not the cash cows their owners hope they will be: Osaka-based ABC Language School, a relatively small player with four schools in the Kansai area, joined Lado, NCB, Nexxus - NCB’s stillborn successor, and a host of others in filing for bankruptcy on Monday. ABC, which had 800 customers, owes creditors an estimated 100 million yen.

Japan’s fourth and fifth-largest department store chains, Mitsukoshi and Isetan, have entered into talks over a capital tie-up with eye toward future management integration. With combined sales of 1.58 trillion yen, the new pairing would pass J Front Retailing Company, a holding company comprised of Matsuzakaya Holdings and Daimaru, which will come into being in September, to become the country’s largest department store chain. Both Mitsukoshi and Isetan would keep their own names and looks to take advantage of their long histories and brand-recognition, which, in the case of Mitsukoshi, stretches back to 1673.

The move is an attempt to increase operating efficiency in the face of two consecutive years of falling sales and competition from large shopping malls being built by supermarket chains.

Speaking of falling sales, according to a report released by the Ministry of Trade, Economy and Industry on Friday, Japan’s retail sales fell by 0.4% in June. A combination of higher taxes, lower wages and uncertainty caused by the government’s handling of the pension fiasco has combined to result in lowered consumer confidence. Sales of new cars, electronics and beverages continued falling.

Society

TEPCo’s woes at the Kashiwazaki-Kashiwa nuclear plant continue as the utility reported on Tuesday that the crane used lift the lid of the pressure container - the main body of the reactor - when confirming the strength of the reactor core on the number 6 reactor, was damaged. Although the crane damage, in and of itself, is not dangerous, it must be repaired before the reactor core can be inspected, which means there could be further delays in bringing the reactor back on line.

Additionally, firefighting pipes near the number 1 reactor were damaged in the earthquake, causing approximately 2,000 tons of water to flood the building housing it. The water entered the building through the entrance for a power cable, which was also damaged in the quake, and spilled down stairwells to the fourth sub-basement, the building’s bottom floor.

In the number 6 reactor, radioactive water sloshed from a spent nuclear fuel storage pool onto the operating floor, where it is being wiped up by workers in protective suits using paper towels, which are then wrapped up in plastic bags.

TEPCo says there is no risk of a further radiation leak, but is having a hard time maintaining the trust of a public that saw the utility’s earlier announcements reversed or revised.

TEPCo has also announced that it will not be able to begin its inspection of the reactor core until September because of the large amount of clean-up necessary in the contaminated number 1 reactor building. It is also reported that improved firefighting systems and earthquake resistance measures will be required. This means the utility will have to restart thermal power plants to meet peak demand in August, which will, of course, cause increased carbon dioxide emissions.

Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Akira Amari admitted that the government did not do enough to ensure the validity of TEPCo’s risk survey prior to the construction of the facility, at which time some local residents protested that the site was too clost to an active fault. Geomorphological experts have charged that TEPCo dramatically underestimated the size of the fault when it reported a length of seven or eight kilometers. Those experts say the government’s recent estimate of somewhere between 20 and 30 kilometers is closer to the truth.

Up in Hokkaido, arson and sabotage have slowed construction of reactor number 3 at Hokkaido Electric Power Company’s Tomari nuclear plant. Fires broke out on July 3rd and 4th and were followed three fires on July 11th, after which security at the site was increased and access restricted, however the deliberate cutting of a welding cable in two places and a small fire on Tuesday caused Hokkaido Governor Harumi Takahashi to express her frustration on Wednesday, saying, “We have repeatedly asked the company to prevent a recurrence, and I must say that its measures have been insufficient.”

Hokkaido Electric Power Company plans to increase the number of security guards from 14 to 70 to keep watch on the site and the 1,500 people working there.

The setbacks to Japan’s nuclear power grid will make it even harder for Japan to meet its Kyoto Protocol emissions targets. In 2005, greenhouse gas emissions increased 7.8%, putting Japan farther from its goal of cutting emissions by 6% from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

On Wednesday, a panel of experts from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry and the Environment Ministry issued a draft interim report saying it would be “extremely difficult” for Japan to hit its Kyoto target. The report recommends assigning emissions targets to industries that currently have none, including hospitals, schools, pachinko parlors, newspapers, and more, on the grounds that energy-saving steps need to be taken everywhere.

Tetsunari Iida, head of the independent Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, criticized the report as offering only “inoffensive but ineffective steps,” and showing no eagerness to reach the Kyoto goals.

In other environmental news, Japan’s whaling is still in the news and drawing increased criticism. On Tuesday, Humane Society International reported the 262 of the 505 minke whales and one of the three fin whales killed in the 2006-2007 season were pregnant, according to the official reports of Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd., the company that actually carries out Japan’s whaling as a government contractor. The Humane Society plans to use the information as evidence in an Australian Federal Court trial set to begin on September 18th, the first-ever legal action against Japanese whaling, in which the plaintiffs will claim the Japanese whalers have breached Australian law by hunting in the protected Australian Whale Sanctuary, adjacent to Antarctic territory claimed by Australia.

The Last Word

Hello Trans Pacific Radio listeners. Arudou Debito from Debito.org here. Okay, I’m going to give you another one of my outlandish opinions. Wouldja expect anything less from me? Here it comes:

I love Japanese elections.

Yeah, I know, there’s a lot to be sick of. Sound truckery full of meaningless platitudes at high volume. Cookie-cutter candidates in thrall to money politics. And an electorate that never seems to throw the bums out.

But I say it again, I love the stuff.

I admit a natural bias. I was a government major in college, and I always found the science of popular appeal to be fascinating. How can you be a man (usually a man) for all seasons, saying as little as possible as many times as possible, and not alienating any potential votes by tailoring your talks to the audience? Especially in other systems (not enough in Japan, I admit) where the press tags along more, to hold candidates’ feet to the fire whenever there are contradictions in their platform.

But the main reason I love hanging around Japanese elections is because I can vote. I’ve voted four times now in national and local elections, and always love to hang around candidates during the only times their out of their bolt holes, and want anything to do with you. I mean when they’re speaking, or out cupping hands with the public. Witness my sociological experiment.

You can’t see me, but I’m a six-foot white boy, aged 42, who is learning how to wear more colorful clothes as I get older. Anyway, whenever I come onto the scene, the reactions are always indicative of what kind of campaign is being run.

Up in Hokkaido, where I’m from, I’ve watched three candidates speak this election. One from the far-right “Shinpuu”, or “New Wind” party. They don’t like foreigners much, as they are the only party out there this election that even mentions public safety as part of their platform. Their handlers, who pass out pamphlets around the trucks, wouldn’t give me one, even after I asked for one. Within character. Burn in hell.

I also saw Ms Tahara, the fabled Ainu candidate, this morning in her sound truck. She’s running under convicted felon Suzuki Muneo’s splinter party. Her handlers gave me a good wave, but she saw me, she quickly averted her glance, and focused her bows and smiles on people she though would be more worth the extra second or two.

Pretty stupid, really, since even if I couldn’t vote (which I can), I might just have family here which I might influence with a bit of bad-mouthing. Bad-mouthing politicians over booze in this country is a national sport, so she’s obviously not professional enough to avoid alienating people.

Then just before I got on the train to the plane down to Tokyo this morning, there was the Social Democratic Party’s Mr Asano stepping down from his sound truck and catching the tail-end of the morning rush. He’s quite left wing, has a clear and emotive campaign stump, and basically hasn’t got a hope in this election.

Ah, so what. I like underdogs, especially when they are on my side of the fence, and actually happened to vote for him yesterday during absentee balloting. So I went up and told him so.

He turned out to be very friendly, especially after I told him I was on facetime terms with party leader Fukushima Mizuho. But more to my liking was that he even knew about the “Japanese Only” Otaru Onsens Case, and recognized me after that. He then said all the things I wanted to hear without a whiff of irony. Five minutes later out of his busy schedule we had exchanged meishi and seen each other off with waves. Godspeed. Glad I wasted my vote on him.

Anyway, the lesson to be learned here: Elections are as inevitable as taxes, and when they’re not, the country is in trouble. So if you have to learn to live with them, learn how to enjoy them.

One thing I suggest you do is to actually wave at the sound trucks. As a veteran of sound trucks myself, I speak from personal experience when I say we really appreciate it. Somebody is paying attention to us. Even if you can’t vote–or rather, especially if they think you can’t vote, the reaction you get is usually priceless.

‘Cos if they don’t wave back, don’t even deign to treat you like a human being, then let others know. Politicians of all people have gotta learn that foreigners are people too. And that some of them, no matter how they look, have got the vote now.

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