In this edition of TPR News: More political scandals accompanied by a slew of resignations, the upcoming extraordinary Diet session, Yasuo Tanaka takes his New Party Nippon to the DPJ, Japan and North Korea get nowhere in Ulan Bator, a schoolgirl sues Nova, boxers retire to the police force, dolphin meat is toxic, a typhoon pounds Tokyo (mothers and grandmothers around the world, your darlings are fine), and a great new blog.

Politics

Honma, Sata, Matsuoka, Akagi, Endo. What do they have in common? All are members of Shinzo Abe’s Cabinets who left amid scandals related to financial impropriety. The list goes on, though. On Monday, Vice Foreign Minister Yukiko Sakamoto stepped down after admitting that her political fund had filed false reports in 2004 and 2005.

Former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki handled his political fund scandal well and it created less of a ruckus than others. Education Minister in both Abe Cabinets, Bunmei Ibuki also lied on political fund reports, but refused to go and was lucky enough to see his misdeeds overshadowed by those of Farm Minister Matsuoka, who hanged himself after being unable to shake the cloud of scandal for months.

In the current Cabinet, which is less than two weeks old, State Minister in charge of Gender Equality and Population Issues, Yoko Kamikawa, filed corrections to three of her political fund reports, from December 2000, April 2004, and February 2006, which, euphemistically, failed to reflect loans made to her organization totalling 28.84 million yen.

On Monday, the same day that Sakamoto stepped down, Takehiko Endo became the third consecutive Agriculture Minister to resign for reasons related to falsification of items on political fund reports. No sooner had Endo vowed to stay at his post and do his utmost than the DPJ vowed to force him out than new Chief Cabinet Secretary Kaoru Yosano told Endo that the best thing would be to hit the road.

In contrast to his predecessor, Mr. Yosano took control of the Endo situation from the outset, sharing responsibility for dealing with Endo with newly-appointed LDP Secretary General Taro Aso. The two apparently handled the situation so quickly and thoroughly that they left Prime Minister Abe out of the loop, which may have been helpful to the LDP considering the glacial pace and indecisive manner in which Abe dealt with earlier, similar scandals. In a move that Abe seems not to have carried out in his first Cabinet, Yosano and other senior LDP members carefully vetted Endo’s successor in the hopes of avoiding yet another scandal.

Endo was replaced at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, by his immediate predecessor, Masatoshi Wakabayashi, who is serving in an interim capacity for the third time, which, added to the seven times he pinch hit while the actual appointees were overseas, makes this the tenth time he has served as Agriculture Minister.

Says Wakabayashi of his return to the big chair: “I had thought that I would not be called in in relief anymore, but because it is an emergency situation, I am going to fulfill my responsibilities.”

Says Shisaku’s MTC, who alerted us to this fascinating bit of trivia:

Wakabayashi should not be so humble. Finding a MAFF Minister capable of just fulfilling his responsibilities has proven to be a damn difficult thing to do.

Just to round things out at MAFF, Endo’s Vice Minister Yoshio Kobayashi has decided to resign to take responsibility for his failure to deal with the misuse of subsidies by the Yamagata farmers’ association headed by Endo, despite having known about the 1999 incident for at least three years.

That’s not all, though. Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita joined the ever-growing club by admitting that his political fund had misreported loans he made to it since 1996. There are a few instances of unclear accounting concerning Kamoshita’s fund, but the discrepancy drawing the most attention is a loan of ten million yen Kamoshita made to his fund on August 10, 1996. Or was it two million yen? The trouble is that his fund reports, which are required by law to list the fund’s financial transactions of over a certain size for at least the preceding ten years, list the loan as having been ten million yen, but the report from the date of the loan lists it as only two million yen, which is what the fund paid back to him.

Kamoshita apologized and said it was all a mistake, which is par for the course. What is unusual about his case is that it might have actually been a mistake. Considering the sheer number of political fund discrepancies, “mistakes,” inexpicable entries, inexplicable omissions, and outright lies - accumulated at a volume and pace to give bloggers carpal tunnel and leave commentators breathless - it would not be to much of a stretch to conclude that political fund reports were routinely doctored or cooked in one direction or the other to benefit either the nominal beneficiaries of the funds or their cronies. This would not shock many. No-bid contracts make up almost all public spending, a quasi-secret, opaque shadow budget funds public works and, hence, the amakudari of slews of retired bureaucrats, and reports of graft don’t even make the front page of the dailies. Thus, were the latest in the lengthy string of financial scandals to beset a Cabinet member actually an honest mistake, it would defy the odds.

If, dear reader, you’re waiting for a little more information to come out before you make up your mind about Kamoshita and if you’re finding it hard to presume his innocence, you’re not alone.

We’re still not quite done. Bowing to pressure from both sides of the aisle following the indictment of two of his campaign staffers, Yutaka Kobayashi, handed House of Councillors President Satsuki Eda his resignation on Tuesday, thus tossing another gob of mud in his LDP’s eye.

According to the Public Offices Election Law, an elected representative can be held accountable for offenses committed by his staffers in the line of duty. OK, to this observer, that makes sense.

The offense in question?

Kobayashi’s accountant and a staffer allegedly paid a total of 1.53 million yen to 24 campaigners, including college students, for activities such as pamphleteering.

So they paid low-level campaign staff. Which is illegal. Which is hard to understand. Which leads to an editorial comment longer than we have time for now.

There’s one more casualty in this edition of TPR News. Again, our thanks to MTC for bringing this to our attention. We’ll even quote him again.

Oddly enough, someone or something has found it expedient to persuade Tamazawa Tokuichirō, a Tōhoku Bloc proportional House of Representatives seat holder (9 elections to the Diet) a former…wait for it…Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries with big campaign financial scandal problems (No? Really? C’mon!) that this would be the perfect time for him to resign from the LDP–and furthermore tender his resignation from his position as…wait for it…Chairman of the House of Representatives Political Ethics Committee.

It’s like preemptive whack-a-mole…

Couldn’t have said it better.

(Might be this time for Mr. Abe. Nope, scratch that. This time. Failing that, it’s this time. And repeat.)

All this with an extraordinary Diet session due to start on Monday, September 10th.

Wherever he goes, it seems Yasuo Tanaka is fond of bold moves. He came to prominence by shaking things up as governor of Nagano. Now he has said he will ally the New Party Nippon, of which he is the only member in the Diet, with the opposition DPJ in the upcoming Diet session. While Tanaka will not bring many votes to the opposition camp, he is a popular, charismatic politician known for being able to make his case in an appealing way. In exchange for this, by teaming up with the DPJ, Tanaka will be able to meetings of committees other than his own Land and Transport Committee and will get a lot more floor time to ask questions, which will probably allow him to debate Prime Minister Abe directly.

Some DPJ members are worried about Tanaka’s aggressive, even autocratic leadership style. While Governor of Nagano, he was subject to a vote of no-confidence in 2002 and had a contentious relationship with the Prefectural Assembly because he rejected their arguments as he fought against wasteful, harmful, and unnecessary public works projects, such as dams, the construction of which he halted in Nagano.

While such moves made him enormously popular with his constituents and with observers like yours truly, it earned him the enmity of Assemblymen who stood to profit from massive public construction projects and will probably make him some enemies in the Diet for the same reason.

Once the extraordinary Diet session begins, the big issue will be the renewal of the anti-terrorism special measures law set to expire on November 1st. The law must be renewed or a similar law must be passed in order for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to continue their mission in Afghanistan, which includes providing American ships with fuel in the Indian Ocean and assisting coalition forces with logistics.

DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa has said the law should not be renewed.

Hanging over the Diet session, though, will be the cloud of a general election. The DPJ and its allies in the opposition are sure to push for Abe’s ouster, especially given the momentum they’ve gained from the recent spate of resignations and the kantei’s ongoing trouble with scandals - none of which is helping the embattled Prime Minister shed his image of weakness.

While LDP General Council Chairman Toshihiro Nikai says he does not expect the resignations and the taint of scandal to adversely impact the Abe administration because, “most political parties have cases of election violations,” other members of the LDP-New Komeito ruling coalition are not so sure, with some senior members of powerful LDP factions saying they are sure the scandals will hurt their party and that they are stepping up their own preparations for a general election.

The opposition has wasted no time in pouncing on the ruling camp. DPJ Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama asked, “Why is this kind of problem endless?” And Social Democratic Party leader Mizuho Fukushima jabbed with, “The fact that the LDP has produced another ‘money and politics’ scandal shows that its old money politics inclinations have not changed.”

In other political news, Japan and North Korea ended their two-day normalization talks in Ulan Bator, Mongolia without making any headway in their attempts to resolve the abduction issue as the first step toward rapprochement. As has always happened before, North Korea insisted that it had not kidnapped all 17 people on Japan’s list and Japan insisted that it had, demanding new investigations.

Just to make sure that the world knows it would never criticize a rare and precious uncritical ally, the US House of Representatives has countered the not-very-sharp sting of the adoption of House Resolution 121, which suggested that Japan issue an apology for its treatment of “comfort women” during World War II and the wars leading up to it, by unanimously adopting a resoution that “commends the government of Japan for its role in enhancing stability in the Asia-Pacific region” and “expresses appreciation to the government of Japan for its contributions to international efforts to combat terrorism.”

Presumably, the US House viewed such a step as necessary considering the tough fight set to ensue over Japan’s continued military participation in the US-led “War on Terror.” Perhaps no one in the House noticed that it is the Ozawa-led DPJ, not known for being offended at the idea that Japan did anything wrong during World War II, that opposes the renewal of the anti-terror special measures law, not the ruling Abe-led LDP, which does take umbrage at such a suggestion.

Problems with the opposition? Seek to appease the ruling party. Hmm. . .

Business and the Economy

Due to time and space constraints, this edition of TPR News has to forgo the business and economy news, but we suggest stopping by Japan Economy News until the next edition of TPR News is released and addresses this omission.

On one interesting note, though, a high school girl who had been a Nova student is suing the ailing English school over what she says was backhanded dealing. As the end of her contract approached, Nova told her that her unused lesson points could be carried over to a new contract she signed. So she signed a new contract, but, when she canceled it, Nova refused to refund her for the price of the unused points that had carried over from her first contract.

Society

What do you do with a punch-drunk boxer?

What do you do with a punch-drunk boxer?

What do you do with a punch-drunk boxer earl-eye in the mornin’?

Dress him up in a police uniform and turn him loose.

The Japan Boxing Commission is thinking about the long-term welfare of its boxers these days. A concerted effort is being made to find jobs for retired boxers in the Japanese police force. Despite the reported difficulty of the entrance examination, a professional pugilist by the name of Tatsuya Tsubouchi (27) will join the ranks as an officer in Osaka in October. His final fight as a professional super-bantam weight boxer (55.3 kg) is scheduled for September 23, 2007.

Typhoon number nine (aka Fitow) made its way through the Kanto region of Japan on Thursday and early Friday. It is now moving north through the main island of Honshu, and it is expected to head back out to sea on Sunday the 9th. Widespread flooding, high winds, and property damage were reported throughout Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures. At least 52 injuries and one death were reported as of Friday morning.

Taiji city in Wakayama prefecture is moving ahead with plans to construct a dolphin meat processing plant. Students in schools around Taiji are being fed dolphin meat about twice a month despite evidence that the meat contains dangerous levels of mercury. In a break from the norm, two local assemblymen, Junichiro Yamashita and Hisato Yono, have spoken out in order to warn consumers and parents about the toxicity of dolphin meat and the threat it poses to the children who are eating it. They complained that the media has turned a blind eye to the situation in Taiji.

Prince Hisahito, whose birth was one of the first topics discussed on TPR, turned a year old on Thursday.

And, on a final note, TPR’s own Christopher Pellegrini has started an interesting new blog that compiles and comments on news-making events involving police throughout Japan. The nascent project is called, simply, Japanese Police.

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