USMC Rape in Okinawa, Voting Changes, and Gyoza: TPR News for Friday, February 15, 2008
In this edition of TPR News: A Marine stands accused of raping a 14-year-old girl in Okinawa; Iwakuni moves closer to hosting US jets; the gyoza scandal continues as most people say they won’t eat Chinese food; the latest business news; and much more.
Politics
The top story of the past few days has been the arrest of a US Marine in Okinawa for the rape of a 14-year-old junior high school girl on Sunday. We’ll have more on the crime itself in the Society section.
The case, of course, has serious political ramifications as well as criminal ones as it arouses greater opposition to the Marines’ never popular presence in Okinawa among the locals, leading to protests which could slow the relocation of the units currently at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Camp Schwab, a process already dogged by environmental concerns and the opposition of Okinawa’s relatively new Governor Hirokazu Nakaima. The rape and the furore surrounding it could also force the US to consider accelerating construction of a base on Guam to which many of the Marines based in Okinawa are set to be moved.
The assault, at least the eighth sex crime perpetrated by American military personnel in Okinawa since the end of World War II, could also spark a reevaluation of Japan’s defense agreements with the US, including Japan’s share of the financial burden for the relocation of the Marines to Guam. While Tokyo has supported the Marines’ internal moves in Okinawa and their presence in the prefecture, which is home to 75% of the US forces in Japan, it has had to apply significant pressure to the Okinawan government and local groups in order to move things along. Needless to say, Okinawans are not becoming any more amenable to giving the US military what they and the central government want.
US Ambassador Thomas Schieffer and Lieutenant General Bruce A. Wright, commander of the US Forces in Japan, visited Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura and Governor Nakaima on Wednesday to assure them that the US took the issue seriously and was taking steps to insure that such incidents did not occur again. American officials have promised a review of the cultural training received by and disciplinary measures applied to US troops throughout Japan, possibly including restrictions on US military personnel living off-base.
In another issue affecting US forces in Japan, the LDP’s Yoshihiko Fukuda was elected Mayor of Iwakuni on Sunday. Fukuda, who resigned from the Diet to run for Mayor, replaces Katsusuke Ihara, who resigned in December after the city council repeatedly voted down his plan to issue bonds to make up for central government subsidies lost due to his opposition to the relocation of US carrier aircraft from Atsugi, Kanagawa to his Yamaguchi town. Despite the opposition of 87% of the town’s residents to the move in a March 2006 referendum and Ihara’s reelection by a wide margin a month later, voters apparently felt the pinch of the lost subsidies more than they feared the future reduction in quality of life Ihara said would come with the jets. Fukuda has promised to use the 13.4 billion yen Iwakuni will gain over the next decade in subsidies to revitalize the local economy.
In a third military-related story, an LDP joint committee began discussions on a permanent dispatch law for the Self-Defense Forces on Wednesday. Currently, the Diet must pass a specific law every time the SDF is sent overseas.
On Sunday, the Air Self-Defense Force scrambled 22 fighters and two airborne warning aircraft to join four American F-18s in intercepting a pair of Russian Tupolev 95 bombers, one of which flew over the USS Nimitz at an altitude of only 2,000 feet, while one, possibly both, violated Japanese airspace over uninhabited Sofugan in the Izu archipelago.
With the goal of allowing 18-year-olds to vote in a referendum on constitutional revision, Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama directed an advisory panel to look into the possibility of lowering the age of majority from 20 to 18. Such a change would not only require changes to the Public Offices Election Law, but would also lower the drinking and smoking ages. While some, apparently under the impression that 18 and 19-year-olds do not currently drink, oppose the move, others point out that 18 is already the legal marriage age for men. For women, it is 16.
The opposition DPJ also has a move to expand the voting pool up its sleeve. In a move supported by the LDP’s ruling coalition partner, the New Komeito, some DPJ members would like to extend the franchise to permanent residents, allowing them to vote in local elections. While the number of permanent residents is small enough that their votes would be highly unlikely to affect any election even if they voted as a bloc, a split over the proposed bill has arisen in the DPJ with a group opposed to the plan calling on Party leadership not to apply a whip to force legislators to vote in favor of the bill. High-ranking Party officials are on both sides of the issue.
In September 2005, when she opposed then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s postal reform bill, “rebel” Seiko Noda of Gifu’s No. 1 district was kicked out of the LDP and replaced by “assassin” Yukari Sato in the election. Noda ran as an independent and won the seat, but Sato made it into the Diet through the proportional representation system. A little over two years on, Noda had been readmitted to the LDP, the possibility of a general election loomed, and the LDP found itself with two candidates set to vie for the same seat. This awkward situation was resolved last Friday when the Party decided that Noda would compete to hold onto her seat and Sato would run in Tokyo’s No. 5 district. At a press conference at which both women were all smiles, Noda said she hoped to become friends with her one-time rival.
Business and the Economy
Troubled Japan Air Lines has apparently convinced a consortium of 14 firms to contribute a total of 150 billion yen, which will be used to buy preferred stock in JAL. JAL plans to use the capital injection to purchase more fuel-efficient aircraft. Amongst the 14 firms lined up to provide new capital are JAL’s four main creditor banks, six trading houses and four oil wholesalers.
Another firm that might be soon looking for capital injections is Seiyu, the struggling chain of supermarkets. Last week, Seiyu announced another projected doubling of losses for the year 2007, which means that the firm is now projecting a loss of 20.9 billion yen. It has ben reported that Wal-Mart, which now owns about 96% of Seiyu, may be looking for Citibank or Mizuho Corporate Bank to provide Seiyu with a capital injection.
Two recent comments by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Vice Minister Takao Kitabata have caused a bit of a storm. Speaking in Tokyo, Kitabata told listeners:
To be blunt, shareholders in general do not have the ability to run a company, and they are fickle and irresponsible.They only take on a limited responsibility, but they greedily demand high dividend payments. Steel Partners goes so far as to issue threats to corporate managers and other shareholders.
The very next day, Kitabata told participants of another meeting in Tokyo:
Day traders are typically the most corrupt shareholders. They are fools, capricious and irresponsible, so that voting rights need not be given to them.
Although both talks were given in late January, comments did not surface publicly until the second week of Ferruary. On February 8, METI Minister Akira Amari told reporters that he has advised Kitaba to “avoid making misleading remarks.” Kitabata then admitted that his comments were “inappropriate.” Amari then added, “[Kitabata] said the lecture was exclusively targeted at members of the institute and he did not expect that all of his remarks would be disclosed to outside parties.”
According to data released by the Cabinet Office on Thursday, Japan’s GDP grew 0.9% in the September-December quarter, for an annualized growth rate of 3.7%. According to the report, capital spending rose 2.9 percent from the previous quarter, while consumer spending moved up just a bit, by 0.2 percent. Total domestic demand increased 0.5 percent, despite the fact that housing investment was down 9.1 percent. Exports rose 2.9 percent, with automobile and software exports leading the charge.
Japan’s consumer confidence index slipped yet again in January, for the fourth month in a row. The Cabinet Office announced that consumer confidence is now at its lowest point in about 4 1/2 years. The report also showed that 84.9% of households expect to see higher prices over the coming year.
12 corporations, including Sony, Hewlitt-Packard, Nokia, and Nike, have joined with the World Wildlife Federation to pledge reductions in the greenhouse gas emissions. Sony itself has endorsed a 50% cut in emissions by the year 2050.
Finally, the chief of a post office in Odate, Akita Prefecture, was arrested on Friday under suspicion of printing forged 10,000 yen notes. Yoshitaka Saito is suspected of printing almost 500 counterfeits of the notes, which he apparently made with his home scanner and PC. Police have said that he has admitted to the allegations and that they are investigating the process he used in making the notes.
Society
More than 75% of respondents to a recent phone survey conducted by Kyodo News responded that they will not be purchasing Chinese-made food products anymore. The survey and its results are evidence of the national panic that has erupted due to revelations in January that some gyoza (dumplings) produced and shipped from China was contaminated with a toxic insecticide (methamidophos).
The current food “crisis” comes hot on the heels of a slew of domestic scandals that have taken place in Japan over the past couple of years. “Goza-gate”, as some are calling it, has grown to such ridiculous proportions in the media that it could prove a boon to Japan’s battered food industry. The Kyodo News phone survey seems to suggest that increasing numbers of people are content to buy locally, even if it does mean paying more and dealing with the possibility that the “best-by” dates have been altered.
While some 2,700 people claimed that they had fallen ill in the wake of public revelations that ten people had been poisoned (all of whom were from three separate families in Hyogo and Chiba prefectures), health professionals have since concluded that only the original 10 cases were actually connected to the tainted gyoza.
In a separate report, it was found that at least some of the dichlorvos, a second chemical found on the outside of the imported packages, might have fallen from an insect-repelling plate that was hanging from the ceiling of a storeroom owned by Co-op Ishii in Tokushima prefecture. This new revelation should help to back up Chinese claims that the insecticides were probably not introduced into the gyoza at the factory that produced them.
The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has elected Makoto Miyazaki as its president for the next two years. Miyazaki is known to be a proponent of judicial reform, and the 63-year-old lawyer was able to beat Shunkichi Takayama by earning 56% of the vote while Takayama earned 42%.
One area where Miyazaki does not agree with the government’s reform agenda is the plan to increase the number of people who pass the bar examination each year. He appears to share the view that many lawyers feel that there isn’t enough demand for law services to warrant the government’s plan to increase the number of people who pass the bar from less than 1,000 to around 3,000 annually. The proposed increase in lawyers would allegedly, “make it difficult for new lawyers to land jobs but also reduce earnings among all lawyers.”
In its scramble to get in line with the Kyoto Protocol, Japan has entered into negotiations with several countries to buy their emissions credits. It is possible that Japan will be able to purchase 100 million tons worth of emissions credits from Russia.
Russia boasts well over 4 billion tons of credits that it can sell to other countries as it is nowhere near reaching its quota. Japan, on the other hand, looks set to fall a couple hundred million tons short of its goal of reducing emissions by six percent of 1990 levels. However, even if Japan is able to buy the 260 million tons of credit from other countries that it needs to reach its goal, it will not have actually succeeded in reducing emissions in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol as purchasing credits only means that a country has enough money to buy into looking as though it is compliant with the intentions of the 1997 accord.
38-year-old US Marine, Tyrone Hadnott, a Staff Sergeant at Camp Courtney in Okinawa, Japan, has been arrested after allegedly raping a 14-year-old junior high school student late Sunday night.
After meeting the girl a couple hours earlier, the soldier convinced the girl to let him give her a ride home on his motorbike. Instead he drove her to his house where he tried to force himself upon her. According to reports, she started crying and it was then that he told her he would drive her home. He then parked the car on a street in Chatan and allegedly raped her.
Hadnott claims that he did not rape the girl. He says that he forcibly tried to kiss her. He is currently in Japanese police custody and will likely not be released during the next two weeks.
Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima and mayor Mitsuko Tomon have condemned the attack. An official complaint has been lodged with the US embassy by the Japanese government.
This case has reminded people across Japan of an assault in 1995 when three US servicemen gang-raped a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa.
The 1995 rape case helped spur the relocation of the Futenma air station. The plan has yet to be fully enacted due to resistance from the community destined to receive the relocated soldiers.
That community will now be able to argue that the relocation is not only against their interests environmentally, but it is also detrimental to their safety.
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