Fukuda, Afghanistan, Nova and Taxi Fares: TPR News for Monday, October 8, 2007
In this edition of TPR News: The new Prime Minister settles in, the fight over the SDF’s involvement in the Afghanistan mission gets set to start, the US wants more money from Japan, Nova’s woes continue as the end nears, people are getting more pessimistic, the Cabinet Office wants to help skilled foreigners get jobs, cab fares are set to rise, protests in Okinawa stop a bit of textbook whitewashing, and photojournalist Kenji Nagai is murdered in Burma.
Politics
A lot has happened in the world of politics since the last TPR News release. Yasuo Fukuda won the presidency of the Liberal Democratic Party, then the Prime Ministership of Japan. He put togethr a Cabinet that includes 15 of the 17 members of Shinzo Abe’s second Cabinet, with the portfolios merely being shifted around among the same hands. He made Bunmei Ibuki Secretary General of the LDP and, through elevation of a position, made the LDP’s top three positions a quartet. All four party leadership positions are filled by faction heads who threw their support behind Fukuda in the race. On the other hand, the new Prime Minister did away with all of the special advisor positions Abe created.
It is widely thought that Fukuda is there to shore up support for the LDP before calling a general election in the Spring.
So far, as Prime Minister, Fukuda has said a lot of the right things, especially in his first address to the Diet on Monday - he called for cooperation between the the ruling coalition and the opposition, called for a warmer, fuzzier politics, and spoke of necessary reforms, but his pronouncements have been lacking specifics.
“Self-reliance and coexistence” and “hope and peace of mind” became his catchphrases, repeated like mantra, when he talked about the issues drawing greatest public dissatisfaction: education, poverty, the environment, and, of course, social security. As expected, Fukuda used these catchphrases, interspersed with liberal amounts of “sincerity” and other conciliatory words to distance himself from the rigid Abe or the flamboyant Koizumi. Notably, Fukuda did not so much as mention constitutional revision.
Domestically, Fukuda talked a good deal about the urban-rural split, promising to have his government look into it. No entirely new ideas were proposed, but municipal and prefectural mergers were mentioned, as was a shifting of tax authority to local or prefectural governments, to put more money in their hands. Above all, the positive-feedback loop that is the “graying” of the countryside was lamented.
In other areas, Fukuda listed goals that, while less loftily phrased and a little more clear, were similar to those of his predecessor, even mentioning Abe’s “Cool Earth 50″ plan to combat global warming. In foreign policy, the new Prime Minister put the North Korean nuclear issue and the continuation of the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s mandate to operate in the Indian Ocean in support of “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan at the top of the agenda.
The opposition Democratic Party has voiced it’s opposition to the mission, but has hinted that it would approve of sending people to Afghanistan, on the ground, to offer assistance. This would either require a new law or mean the people sent would be civilians working strictly in an aid capacity.
In an effort to reauthorize the MSDF’s mission before the current anti-terrorism special measures law expires on November 1st, new Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura, Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, and Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba met on Tuesday and decided to submit a new bill by mid-October. Unlike the slightly broader anti-terrorism special measures law, the new bill will explicitly limit the MSDF to providing fuel and water to ISAF, or coalition, ships, which, despite the previously broader mandate, is all the MSDF has been doing for past six years anyway.
Among the controversies surrounding the MSDF’s mission in the Indian Ocean and the obstacles to renewal of its mandate has been a concern that the US had been using fuel obtained from the MSDF in Iraq, which would violate the narrow provisions of the law under which the MSDF has been operating. Supposedly, records on the US supply ship Pecos show that fuel from the MSDF’s Tokiwa was eventually used by the US carrier Kitty Hawk, which was involved in the Iraq War.
In response to the allegations, a US official said, “We’re getting the fuel in the OEF mission area and we’re using it for OEF missions. It hasn’t been diverted. It’s all been used for OEF.
“Japanese fuel accounts for about 10 percent of the fuel that has been used there overall. [US ships operating in the area] have a lot more OEF missions than Japanese fuel accounts for.”
The LDP hopes the Pentagon’s explanation will help overcome opposition to the mission in the Diet.
For the US’s part, Washington is pressing Japan to cover a greater proportion of the utility bills of US Forces stationed in Japan. The US says it is going to significant expense to beef up its security role in the region is response to potential threats from North Korea and China. Japan is reluctant to accept the expansion of the so-called “sympathy budget.” When coupled with the struggle over the MSDF’s mission in the Indian Ocean, this new demand is unlikely to improve Washington’s popularity in Japan. According to an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “A crack could form in the Japan-U.S. relationship.” (Keep in mind, though, that that’s a trope trotted out whenever Japan is unhappy and carries even less weight when it’s anonymous.)
Business and the Economy
Embattled English Language School Operator Nova has until October 19 to submit a report to the JASDAQ stock exchange detailing how it intends to improve its business practices. Nova, which is facing delisting from the stock market and the possibility of bankruptcy, submitted a report to the exchange on Friday. JASDAQ, however, almost immediately rejected that report and its plan for business improvements. With the next payday for instructors and part-time staff now a week away, Nova’s future may become more clear in the days ahead.
On Friday, the government announced that it plans to retool the way it collects, analyzes and distributes economic reports. According to the Cabinet Office, there are currently 55 basic statistics that are compiled by seven different government ministries. The University of Tokyo’s Kei Takeuchi is in charge of the commission on statistics, and plans to shift the focus of official statistics away from its current concentration on manufacturing to better reflect activity in the services sectors.
The Bank of Japan’s September Standard of Living Survey indicated slight increases in pessimism over recent quarters. According to the survey, only 6.7% of respondents stated that the business situation has improved in the past year, while one third said that it had worsened. At the same time, 45% said that their income was lower than it was a year ago, while only 8% reported a rise in income over the past year. Regarding the Bank of Japan itself, 58.1% said that the BOJ’s public explanations of policy are difficult to understand.
According to reports made public by the Financial Services Agency on Friday, 38 life insurance companies admitted that they failed to pay out on 1.2 million valid policy claims which totaled about 91 billion yen. 15 other firms are expected to file their reports on nonpayment with the FSA by the end of November.
In an effort to encourage Japanese firms to hire foreign employees with Japanese language skills and qualifications, the Cabinet Office has proposed issuing foreign workers documentation that would certify their employment histories and relevant qualifications. According to the Nikkei, “Many Japanese firms are hesitant about hiring foreigners, because cultural and other issues often prevent their assimilation within the company.” Providing a government-sponsored certification is expected to make firms feel less uneasy about hiring foreigners.
On Sunday, the iPod Touch was released in Japan, and about 100 die hard Apple fans lined up outside the company’s store in Ginza. Many are seeing the iPod Touch as a sort of test case for the iPhone, which Apple is expected to roll out in Japan sometime next year.
Miss that last train again? If you plan on taking a taxi home, it’s going to cost a bit more in a couple of months. After ten years without a fare hike, Tokyo’s taxi rates are looking to be set to increase by 9% in December. The basic minimum fare will be raised from 660 to 710 yen. Taxi companies have been requesting the hikes since last year, citing increased fuel costs as pinching profits and preventing wages from increasing.
Society
Kenji Nagai, a Japanese photojournalist, was shot at point-blank range by a Burmese soldier while filming a pro-democracy rally in Myanmar last week.
The Myanmar government originally claimed that Nagai’s death was the result of a stray bullet. However, video recorded by a third-party confirmed that he was murdered by a soldier while lying on his back on the ground.
The Japanese government, by way of the Metropolitan Police Department and enabled by a law that allows Japan to pursue charges against people guilty of capital offenses in other countries, has filed charges against the Burmese government.
110,000 people protested in Okinawa over central government attempts to whitewash wartime atrocities in the region.
The medium at stake is high school textbooks. The government has sought to downplay the military’s role in instigating mass suicides in Okinawa following Japan’s defeat in World War II. Their ultimate goal appears to be the removal of any such narrative from the collective consciousness.
In an impressive act of defiance, the citizenry of Okinawa has elected to display its displeasure with the intentions of the central government. The government under former prime minister Shinzo Abe had said that there was enough disagreement (by nationalist scholars) with the assertion that the military drove citizens into mass forced suicides that it was not right, “to determine that there were military orders.”
In the face of the current popular opposition, however, the government under Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has softened its stance.
All of this sounds strikingly familiar to the internal government debate over whether there is “evidence” that some women were forced to become sexual slaves during the war.
In slightly more light-hearted news, Japanese civil servants were recently punished for their overwhelming affection for nerdy Japanese pop-culture.
Six of the Agriculture Ministry’s finest were reprimanded for spending way too much time contributing to popular on-line reference, Wikipedia.
One of the six bureaucrats made 260 entries on Gundam, an anime series about giant robots, while on the clock.
The misuse of payroll time extends back to 2003 and includes a rather wide array of topics.Japan is slated to begin photographing and fingerprinting all foreign visitors starting November 20th, 2007.
Tourists and longer-term residents alike should expect the same treatment that non-EU citizens receive in Europe, and non-US citizens receive in America.
The government enacted this legislation this spring in order to tighten security in the face of the threat from foreign terrorists.
In modern history, only Japanese nationals have been responsible for terrorist acts on Japanese soil, but that is apparently beside the point.
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