It’s good to be back. Thanks to everyone who kept in touch during Seijigiri’s absence from the airwaves, or the series of tubes, or whatever it is.

In this edition of what remains perhaps Japan’s only political podcast, your hosts Ken Worsley and Garrett DeOrio take a look at what’s in store for the DPJ in its first regular Diet session. The statute of limitations for murder looks like it may be on its way out, sufferage for Special Permanent Residents is on the horizon again (but Shizuka Kamei doesn’t like it), and the fate of the relocation plan for USMC Air Station Futenma remains in question, especially as the election of new Nago Mayor Inamine would seem to uphold the views of those Okinawans who’d rather not have the Marines in their neighborhood.

All of this, though, is happening under the shadow of the scandals surrounding political fund donations to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and shday land purchases by the political fund of DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa.

Exciting times have returned.

For those of you who are in Tokyo and need a fix, tomorrow night Adam Richards and Garrett DeOrio will be doing a live edition of Seijigiri at the Pink Cow in Shibuya as part of the Pink Cow Connections (PCC) series.

The guys will be taking a look back at 2009 in politics and the headlines and prognosticating about the future, as well as taking any and all questions - some of the folks in the audience were the highlights of the night last time. Could be you this time.

Ken and Garrett did such a show back in June and enjoyed both the good turnout and the good company (as well as drinking almost all of the Pink Cow’s Sam Adams.)

It’s at 7:00 p.m., costs ￥2000 (which gets you a light, but tatsy meal or a drink), and is a great opportunity to network, talk politics, business, or whatever suits your fancy, and enjoy yourself on a Tuesday night.

For more info, click here.

We hope to see you there.

Foul play has been ruled out.

The Kyodo report contains one interesting line:

When Nakagawa’s 50-year-old wife came home at around 9 p.m. Saturday, she saw him sleeping with his upper body leaning against the bed, his face down, but did not sense anything was wrong, they said.

The way that’s phrased makes it sound like an unusual posture, but perhaps not that unusual considering the number of even more unusual sleeping positions in which Mrs. Nakagawa must have seen her husband over the years.

Former Prime Minister Taro Aso expressed shock, as did other LDP members.

Neighbors reported that Nakagawa had seemed “gloomy” of late and had not been out in his garden - understandable, considering that he’d fallen about as far as someone in his position could fall over the seven months.

On the other hand, Nakagawa’s father, who’d built up the family’s power base in Hokkaido died in a Sapporo hotel in 1983 under circumstances that most observers believe to have been suicide. Considering Shoichi Nakagawa’s problems with drink and his poor professional fortunes of late, such a prospect is easy to imagine, but don’t wait for investigators to say so publicly, even after the autopsy (which will be “administrative” as opposed to “judicial” - the type of autopsy performed when a crime is suspected.)

Obviously, each candidate city has spent years and millions of dollars already in an attempt to snag the Games, in the process making more and more promises that are almost certainly unachievable. (Tokyo budgeted $48 million for bidding alone, with $27 million of that explicitly coming from the metropolitan government.)

In this respect, the competition to get the Olympics is quite a bit like a political campaign: even if one of the candidates wanted to be up front about it and make a case, the process drags everyone involved down into the muck of disingenuous myopia. Once the bids begin, candidates go for the gold no matter what the costs - appealing in a sprinter, less so in a government. After all, the whole point of hosting the Olympics is to benefit the host city and environs in one way or another, right?

On Friday, the contenders are pulling out all the stops. In addition to the wining, dining, and wooing of the IOC that has already taken place, big names will be on hand to pitch for their respective cities. For Chicago, President Obama announced last week that he would join his wife, Michelle, in Copenhagen to make the case, even as protests heat up in the Chicago itself and fewer and fewer respondents to polls say they really want to see the Olympics in their town. For our own Tokyo, new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will make the case in what the media here have been entertainingly, but ridiculously calling “Hatoyama vs. Obama.”

First, let’s set aside some of the hogwash about what the Olympics actually represents. The sports? The Olympics is the premier competition for sports that, great as they may be, are otherwise small-time spectator events. Huzzah for track and field athletes, badminton players, swimmers, and competitive preteen gymnasts. For all the IOC’s blather about sportsmanship and global community-building, it’s hard to see that the Olympics is superior in any way to regular team sports leagues in this age of the NBA making a mint in China, Japanese stars breaking MLB records, and the seemingly unending permutations of professional soccer events at the club and national levels. Not to mention that the Olympics seem to bring out more jingoism and ruthless focusing on medal counts than any kind of sportsmanship or competition. (Canada, host of the next Winter Games, for instance, has just barred foreign athletes from training with Canadian coaches or training in Canada, so that said athletes will provide less competition for Canadian athletes, who will then have a better chance at winning more medals. Huzzah for international cooperation!)

Sportsmanship and values? I could see believing this if you were at an age when Santa Claus was still a motivation for good behavior. The Olympics has been just as beset by allegations of doping and other forms of cheating as any other sporting event outside of those that are openly fixed (pro wrestling), known to be fixed to all but the most die-hard wearers of blindfolds (sumo), or pretty much center themselves on the fine line between doping and not doping (bodybuilding, if you want to call it a sport.)

And that’s just in the events themselves! The process behind Olympics is far shadier. If you think the bribing of IOC officials with cash and hookers was a one-off in the vice den that was Salt Lake City in the late ’90s, I have some WWE bets I’d like to discuss with you.

It’s that last point that concerns us here. What benefit is there, really, for a city hosting the Olympics?

To be fair, hosting the Olympics probably makes sense as an image booster or branding exercise. This is especially true for the smaller cities that usually host the Winter Games and is easy to understand for bigger cities that need the boost, too. For most of the 20th century, this boost to big towns was probably the case: Berlin in 1936, when Hitler showed off the new Germany, risen from the ashes of the Great War; Helsinki in 1952 in the same boat - showcasing its and Europe’s recovery from World War II; Melbourne in 1956, breaking onto the world stage; even Tokyo in 1964, showing off Japan’s impressive recovery, the next phase in the modernization and integration into the wider world that Japan had been undergoing since the Meiji Restoration. What is harder to understand is why big, well-known cities would want to blow the cash and invite in the headaches of the Olympics when they stand to gain very little.

So, should the Olympics come to Tokyo, what’s in it for the city?

On the positive side, a miasma of pablum about sportsmanship. The branding and profile-raising aspects are moot. Tokyo is easily one of the best-known cities in the world. Beyond that, it’s known for being modern, safe, and a great international capital of business, culture, fashion, technology, and more. The idea that the Summer Games will suddenly bring a flood of investment or waves of attention that will improve Tokyo’s lot is hard to defend at best.

The primary and greatest consideration is the one easiest to quantify and the one that casts a shadow over every decision made by a government, especially by a government in Japan after the burst of the economic bubble. We hear about the problems every day: the declining birthrate, the aging population and the attendant pension fiasco, widespread underemployment, feelings of economic and professional insecurity, ever-increasing debts, and more. Tokyo, with its continued growth and centrality to business and politics in Japan, might be all right, but it has already sent revenue out to less well-off municipalities and hosts a central government whose debts are approaching 200% of GDP - a scenario that is not looking any more rosy these days.

What all of these problems have in common is that they do not yet benefit from a solid solution and they will all certainly cost money. Lots of money. By some estimates, more money than we will able to pay, for it is, after all, all of us paying taxes who will have to pay larger and larger amounts, especially if we’re not set to retire just yet.

The only thing the Olympics are sure to bring is debt. In short, even if Tokyo really wanted the Olympics (and why anyone with accurate information would want them is confusing), the city could not afford them.

The Olympics, especially the larger, costlier Summer Olympics, are a government-funded enterprise. Yes, there is plenty of nice talk about private investment covering large portions of the costs, but this is purely for show.

To wit: Right after claiming, “If Tokyo is selected to host the Games of the XXXI Olympiad in 2016, the OCOG budget will be financed entirely through private sector funds,” Tokyo’s bid states:

TOKYO 2016 is confident that the financial robustness of the future OCOG will prevent any deficit. In addition, the Governor of Tokyo has made a solid commitment to cover any deficiencies that may occur in the OCOG budget. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will provide a guarantee with the Candidature File in the next phase.
Furthermore, the Prime Minister of Japan promises total support with regards to the staging of the Games of the XXXI Olympiad including the financial support.

In other words, “The Organizing Committee will raise some money, but don’t worry, we have the city and the government on the hook for whatever it actually costs.”

In fact, the Tokyo Olympic bid opens by touting the city’s pecuniary hardiness, pointing out that Tokyo’s 2007 general accounts budget was $57.409 billion and that the special accounts budget was $38.279 billion (at ￥115 = $1.) All well and good, but the intent is clear: the government is willing and able to spend a lot.

Now, this is all boilerplate so far. Every candidate city states that the relevant governments will back up its miraculously privately-funded Olympic Committee and, in reality, every relevant government does end up paying, usually a lot more than it expected to.

Tokyo’s case gets more and more problematic, though.

First, the budgeting process.

No Olympics has ever made money. None. Now, we’ve all heard reports of how much a city made, but there is one important caveat: none of the big costs - infrastructure, venues, security, transportation, utilities, etc. - are included in the OCOG budget.

That’s right. Olympic committees show wonderful gains for their cities by not counting any expenditures beyond their own operating expenses.
The TOCOG’s total budget? $3,115,252,000.

Surprised? You should be - that’s only one-sixth of what London is officially set to spend. No wonder they talk of private funding - all of their spending is set to be done in bringing the Games to Tokyo and managing their own office. Once the real heavy spending comes into the picture, we, the taxpayers, get to take over.

So how much do they say it will cost us?

Well, that’s harder to answer succinctly. The bid projects $13,127,581,000 in necessary capital investments, which is telling as the breakdown assumes no capital investment necessary for a number of venues - from the 1964 Olympic Stadium, which will almost certainly have to be rebuilt (according to the IOC, in addition to anyone who’s seen it) to the as-yet nonexistent venues for some marine events.

The cash flow projections show bank loans of $27,778,000 annually every year from 2010 to 2017 (at ￥108 = $1), which combined with other financing will provide for the $2,327,579,000 in projected operating cost outflows for 2010 through 2017.

So, we can take the bid as saying it will cost roughly $14,194,537,000 for the Games themselves, plus the $48 million for the bid itself, which makes. . .
US$14,242,537,000
. . . which is a little over $1,114 per resident of Tokyo, in addition to Tokyoites having to spend a lot on tickets and merchandise in order to add enough to what the tourists will spend to make it work out.

(For those who are interested, the large pdf of Tokyo’s bid plan can be downloaded from the official Tokyo 2016 site. All costs are estimated in yen and converted to US dollars at the rates specified. I used USD here for the purposes of comparison with other cities.)

Is that figure believable?

Well, first, remember what that includes and doesn’t include. Pretty much all of the hidden or tangential costs are treated as irrelevant. The TOCOG has arranged free use of public transport for people with tickets to events at the Games as well as guarantees for reimbursement of hotel prices that exceed a set maximum, price gouging that may occur, and more.

There should also be some skepticism directed toward the claim that revenues will exactly match TOCOG expenditures. Those revenues also include $85.7 million in “donations” and $814,822,000 in ticket sales. Now, either tickets will be hugely expensive or a lot of people are expected to attend events (or at least buy tickets.) My guess would be that the TOCOG, having cited “high interest in sports” as one of Tokyo’s attractive points, is doing what previous host cities apparently did, and is acting on the assumption that every ticket available will be sold at whatever asking price is set. Anyone who has attended large sporting events in Japan knows very well what is likely to happen: events with well-known Japanese competitors will be packed, other events will quiet. Tokyo might have to add tumbleweed clean-up to the budget. Despite the fact that the host country is expected to compete in every event, events in which the Japanese entrant is unknown will be up against events in which Japan has a higher profile. No competition.

Heck, there won’t even be baseball or softball.

Skepticism is also appropriate to any aspect of an Olympic hosting bid considering the enormous discrepancies that have existed between previous bids and the actual costs of the events, even without correcting for the preposterous bookkeeping that has stadia, security, and expenses born by government as somehow not counting toward the cost of staging the Olympics.

London, for example, more than tripled its initial projections of just over $4.8 billion to nearly $14.9 billion in 2007, and is now expected to spend well over $16 billion - and that’s just what they’re admitting to. You can bet your Granny’s teeth there’s still a good bit of fudging going on.

Beijing spent at least $58.5 billion. Officially. Which is to say it was probably a lot more.

Now, we could say that Tokyo was somehow more transparent, more trustworthy; that the Japanese government and a panel here would not engage in such shenanigans (more than they already have), but. . .

(Take some time to laugh that off.)

In fact, looking back, every host city has had cost overruns and every host city has lost money. The Olympics is a loss leader. This could make sense for, say Tokyo in 1964, when the city had something to show the world and the Olympics provided a good stage, but it makes no sense for Tokyo now.

Readers who have been in Tokyo recently might have noticed TV ads showing dirt schoolyards turning to lush lawns a la British public schools and other wonderful improvements that we will supposedly see if we get the Olympics. The question, of course, is: If those things can be done, why aren’t they being done?

Is having decent school facilities a reward for supporting Gov. Ishihara’s vanity project the Olympics? Or are we supposed to believe that unlike every other city that has ever hosted the Olympics, including Tokyo itself, somehow, some way Tokyo in 2016 is not only going to spend less than Athens in 2004, Beijing in 2008, or London in 2012, but also make more money? Not only make more, but be the first city to ever turn a profit off hosting the Olympics?

Believe it if you want to, but do see me about those pro wrestling bets.

Other Factors

Money is a major consideration, of course, even the main consideration, but it is not the only consideration. Despite the TOCOG’s claims that many or most of the Olympic facilities are already in place, anyone who sees those or who knows what the IOC asks for and invariably gets, knows that this is not the case.

In fact, in its most recent evaluation of the four candidate cities, Tokyo received a lower score than expected, partially due to the fact that many of the proposed venues were not only not ready to go, but would have to be rebuilt.

Was the 2002 World Cup not a lesson? Are there not state-of-the-art soccer stadia sitting largely empty throughout the land? Does Tokyo need another stadium, which will sit empty as there are already too many large facilities of the type sitting around and growing obsolete?

What Tokyo needs is green space and a plan for the future that is not centered on paving and building more. As it stands, the TOCOG proposes building Olympic facilities in one of Tokyo’s exceedingly few places with grass people can walk on - Yoyogi Park. Yoyogi Park may be big by local standards, but it is not so big or so empty that the construction of a large professional sports venue in it would not destroy the place.

The Olympics will mean massive construction, which will be a hassle. After the Olympics there will be even more unnecessary, underutilized behemoths dotting the skyline. This is not only a waste of money, but makes the city uglier. This has happened in Japan before. In January 2004, on my first trip to the City of Nagano, I surprised to see temporary stages with the 1998 Winter Olympic logo still up, unused, looking shabby, in the center of town.

The Greek government is struggling to deal not only with debt related to the 2004 Athens Olympics, but with the problems surrounding the veritable ghost towns that have sprung up - crime in abandoned stadia and the like. Sydney had grand plans to turn the 2000 Olympic Village into housing. Hasn’t happened yet.

All of that construction will add to existing traffic problems, putting even more strain on the city’s infrastructure.

Then there are the human rights issues. Beijing supposedly forcibly evicted, sometimes without compensation, at least 1.5 million people in order to make way for Olympics-related construction. Seoul did the same to as many as 800,000. Sure, those were both dictatorships, but similar accusations surfaced in Atlanta - massive eminent domain claims, insufficient compensation, cursory legal proceedings, if any.

So much for that Olympic spirit.

Should we not expect such problems in Tokyo? The bid is centered on an are around Tokyo Bay, east of Haneda - an area that is largely industrial and low-income. How will those relocations be handled? What of the people who don’t want to leave their homes to make way for the Coca-Cola Presents Super Global Hand-holding Olympic Food Court, or whatever winds up there?

Above all, though, is the manner in which the TOCOG has handled this bid. To be fair, they have not done anything other cities didn’t do, but that’s precisely the problem. The entire process of bidding for the Olympics is a lot like the propaganda of the Games themselves: rife with misrepresentation, simply omitting anything unpleasant.

The budget is not at all reflective of the actual costs of the Games and the proposal paints a picture inconsistent with reality on the ground.

Perhaps the most heartening thing about all of this is the most significant reason the IOC rated Tokyo more lowly than the city expected: only 55% of respondents wanted to see the Olympics come to their city - twelve points lower than Chicago, 27 points lower than Rio, and 29 points lower than Madrid.

Given the way the rest of the bidding process is handled, even that 55% is probably bogus. (If any readers out there have been able to find methodology on the polling, do let me know - some of those in Chicago opposed to bringing the Olympics there, have been saying the polls there were very much like the old party machine elections there.)

So, while it is far too late for this missive to make any difference (as if it would have anyway), let the Obamas and Hatoyamas have a good time in Copenhagen, but give the Olympics to a city that might benefit (viz. Rio), or to a city whose people really want them (Rio or Madrid, on the assumption that any city’s polls are valid.) Don’t give them to Tokyo - nothing good will come of it.

As most TPR readers or listeners know, after trying many other avenues of reconciliation, Arudou and two other plaintiffs filed and won a civil suit against Yu-no-Hana, as well as two appeals. The first and only decision against the plaintiffs was in a civil suit before the Supreme Court against the City of Otaru for negligence.

The case generated more publicity and hardship than Arudou or his co-plaintiffs had anticipated and wound up launching Arudou down a new path of human rights advocacy, on which he continues to this day.

Also as most TPR readers and listeners know, Debito Arudou has become a somewhat controversial name, at least among Western residents of Japan. To mark the anniversary, Arudou has submitted a piece on the case for the forthcoming issue of Japonesia Review (published by People’s Plan) and has been reflecting on the case on his own blog, Debito.org.

For those who are interested in a full, detailed account of the case, TPR recommends simply reading the book Japanese Only (available in both English and Japanese) as a starting point. For information on the book, or to order it, visit the Japanese Only book site.

For now, though, a very brief synopsis to bring everyone up to speed, in Arudou’s own words (from the preface to his article in Japonesia Review.)

On September 19, 1999, a group of seventeen people went to take a bath at a “super sento” (public bathhouse) named Yunohana Onsen in Otaru, Hokkaido. All seventeen were Japanese, except for three Caucasian males (including the author) from America and Germany, and one Chinese woman, from Shanghai. She, like the non-Japanese (NJ) men, was married to a Japanese and came to Yunohana as an international family. We had heard over the Internet that Yunohana, Otaru’s largest bathhouse, was not only refusing entry to NJ, they were even openly displaying a “JAPANESE ONLY” sign on their front door in three languages (Japanese, English, and Russian).

As soon as everyone had entered and bought tickets, we were told that the three Caucasian males in our group (your author included) were not allowed inside.

Consulting with the manager on duty, we heard Yunohana’s justification: Russian sailors (who at the time were frequent visitors to and traders with Otaru) had a history of not following bathhouse rules, therefore were not allowed in because they might cause trouble and inconvenience Japanese customers. When we made it clear that we were neither Russian sailors nor troublemakers, Yunohana said it did not matter: “Refusing only Russians would be discrimination. So we refuse all foreigners equally.”

All foreigners? All. “How about our Chinese friend you allowed in?” As soon as they realized their mistake, management showed her the door. We asked them further about their criteria for determining who was “Japanese”, since it was clear by this example that it was whether somebody looked “Asian” enough. So my wife at the time asked about our daughters, both of whom were born and raised in Japan, spoke Japanese as their first language, and have Japanese citizenship.

One looks more Asian, with black hair and brown eyes, while one looks more Western, with brown hair and bluish eyes. How would they be treated under Yunohana’s rules?

“The Japanese-looking one can come in. But the younger one who looks like a gaijin will be refused entry.”

This made it clear to everyone, nationwide, that “Japanese Only” signs and rules would affect Japanese citizens too.

In the ten years since the case, much has changed and debate over Arudou’s goal and tactics continues apace. As with any heated issue (and human rights issues are always heated), the disagreements range from perfectly legitimate concerns to objections that are, to put it nicely, based on misinformation or incorrect assumptions.

It is no secret that Arudou has many critics (in the interest of disclosure, it is worth it to point out that while we here at TPR pull no punches with the man and feel it necessary to play Devil’s Advocate at the least, we do know him sociably and will say that, politics aside, he’s a likable guy - just exercise caution before bringing up the topic of Duran Duran.) It is also no secret that, for a variety of reasons, his most vocal critics are almost entirely non-Japanese.

Among the most high profile of those critics is Gregory Clark, whose column in the Japan Times gives him perhaps a wider audience than most other writers on the topic. On January 15th of this year, Clark wrote a risible and deeply disingenuous column for the paper headlined “Antiforeigner discrimination is a right for Japanese people”.

In the column, Clark tries to paint a picture of a contemptible rabble-rousing jerk that he very clearly hints is Arudou (it’s not. As far as we can tell, there is no such person as the one Clark is writing about.) Wondering at Clark’s vitriol and some of his more outlandish statements, this observer settled on the following paragraph:

Recently [Westerners in Japan who hate Japan] have revived the story of how they bravely abolished antiforeigner discrimination from bathhouses in the port town of Otaru in Hokkaido. Since I was closely involved, allow me to throw some extra light on that affair.

Gregory Clark was closely involved in the case? Only one way to sort out this glaring discrepancy: ask the sources. After receiving no reply to an e-mail sent to the address listed on Clark’s site, TPR contacted Arudou and asked him to clarify Clark’s connection to the case in a telephone conversation, excerpts of which are printed here:

What was the name of the onsen in Otaru?
Yu-no-hana. Do note that in his most recent article decrying the “bathhouse fanatics”, “Antiforeigner discrimination is a right for Japanese people”, Clark even got the name of the onsen wrong. He rendered it as “Yunohara“. So much for the depth of his connection to the case. (It has since been corrected in the online version, but I have the print version if you’d like to verify.)

Were you a plaintiff? How many other plaintiffs were there, what were their names?
Yes, I was a plaintiff. There were three plaintiffs - Olaf Karthaus, Ken Sutherland, and myself.

Was Gregory Clark a plaintiff?
No.

Was Gregory Clark a defendant?
No.

Was Gregory Clark the attorney for either side?
No.

Did either side seek legal or personal advice from Gregory Clark concerning the case before or during the trial?
No.

Was Gregory Clark a judge or court officer in the case?
No.

Was Gregory Clark a reporter assigned to the courtroom?
No.

Was Gregory Clark present in the courtroom during the trial?
No.

About how many people were in the room?
The courtroom was full to capacity, but I never saw Gregory Clark.

Was Gregory Clark a co-author of Japanese Only?
No. [Ed. note: On his site, Clark claims to have never read the book.]

Was Gregory Clark your editor?
No. We have never met.

Did you or your editor seek his counsel while writing or preparing the book?
No, of course not.

Has Gregory Clark ever discussed the case with you or with the owners of the Yu-no-Hana?
With me, no.I don’t know about the owners of Yu-no-Hana. He’s evasive on that point. He says he went to dockside, but never mentions going into the bathhouse or trying to get in.

When did you become a Japanese citizen?
October 10, 2000.

When were you turned away from the onsen?
The first time was September 19, 1999, the second time was January 3, 2000, and the third time was October 31, 2000.

So you were turned away when you were a Japanese citizen?
Yes.

Was your daughter with you?
The first time, yes.

Was she turned away?
No. We were told one daughter will have to be turned away when she gets older because she looks more Caucasian. Olaf’s late son Daniel was effectively turned away as Olaf was the only male in the family and Daniel, being a child, couldn’t go in on his own. Daniel was 10, my daughters were 3 and 5.

Was the daughter who would have to be turned away in the future a natural born Japanese citizen?
Yes.

What was the reason given for you and your daughter being turned away?
The first time, it was rules. Because of Russian sailors potentially causing problems. The bathhouse couldn’t just refuse Russians. They let a Chinese woman who was with us in, then asked her to leave when I asked about the kids and the owners realized they’d already let a foreign woman enter. The second time, they gave the same answer of rules and also said their customers didn’t want foreigners in, but the survey they said they’d taken was not shown to us, nor were the questions on it. I wanted to solve it amicably, so I went to negotiate. They acknowledged my citizenship, but would not allow me entry.

Had you, Olaf, Ken, or your daughter ever been ejected from a bathhouse for improper behavior?
No.

Had you, Olaf, Ken, or your daughter ever been to an onsen or sento prior to going to Yu-no-Hana?
Yes, of course.

So you were familiar with the practice of bathing?
Yes.

And you were familiar with the practice of not causing a ruckus in the baths?
Yes. We were all were permanent residents who’d been to many bathhouses in Japan.

How old was your daughter at the time?
Three years old.

Were either of you ever Russian sailors?
No.

Did any of the plaintiffs speak Japanese at the time?
Yes.

What was the court decision in the case?
In our favor vs. the onsen. The district court called it “irrational discrimination.” They ruled it was not illegal, but ordered the onsen to pay each plaintiff one million yen. Yu-no-Hana appealed, but the high court gave the same decision. The onsen lost all three times, all the way up to the Supreme Court case against city of Otaru.

How many court cases have you been involved in?
Four.

Has Greogry Clark been involved in any of your cases in any way?
No. He comments a lot, and I’ve tried to correct some of the factual errors and mistakes, but he avoids such conversations.

And just to clarify, do hate Japan or Japanese culture or are you seeking to destroy any part of Japanese culture?
No, of course not.

Without giving the impression that Arudou and Clark are in the midst of a personal feud (as far this observer can tell, it’s a one-way feud, if that), both men have written about the other - Clark mostly about Arudou and Arudou mostly pointing out Clark’s errors. As we were unable to speak to Clark (although, any reply from him would be most welcome: transpacificradio@gmail.com, sir), his motivations are unclear, especially as his writings on the topic and on Arudou have a decidedly ad hominem tilt and do contain relevant factual errors and rather substantial leaps in logic. Arudou, for his part, repeatedly stated that he is not in any sort of grudge match with Clark, although they do disagree on some rather substantial points (viz. whether or not racial discrimination is an acceptable way of maintaining certain cultural norms that are under a perceived threat from foreignness - Clark having explicitly said it is, Arudou having spent much time working in the opposite direction.)

Critics such as Clark aside (and there is really no need to get bogged down in one man’s vendetta against another here), Arudou, whom many you, dear readers, might know better as just Debito, has attracted a fair amount of support as well.

He can, and has, presented his own case, though, so TPR tossed a few more critical, but general questions at him.

What do you think would be different today had you simply accepted the policy of the Yunohana Onsen and grumbled about it to yourself, as most of us probably would have done? Would the landscape of rights for minorities be much different in Japan today?

Of course it would be. Back in the 1990’s, we had boosters up here in Hokkaido advertising this area as ripe for international investment because people here “are not racist”. Sorry to have spoiled the party by pointing out the truth, but we had “Japanese Only” signs up back then too, as far back as 1993 in Otaru. And as we documented in my book JAPANESE ONLY, people were not doing enough to have these signs taken down. So they spread across Hokkaido, then the nation.

Even then, however, we had the disclaimers: The media and various spokespeople trying to make out that it wasn’t “racism” per se, more a matter of “cultural misunderstandings” or even in some ways “just desserts”. It took a court case before we had a formal recognition that it was in fact “racial discrimination”. And that it was an illegal activity. With this, the apologists lost a leg to stand on when trying to deny the fundamental fact that “Japanese Only” behavior is racism. Without that, the landscape would of course have been much different — “culture” would have continued to hold sway to explain it all away. I think things would possibly be much worse, because people being discriminated against would not have had a clear avenue for some sort of redress without the Otaru Onsens Case.

2. Some of your critics would say that confrontational actions, such as filing lawsuits, naming and shaming, etc. cause friction and division rather than promote understanding. That your tactics, if not your message, might cause many people in Japan to simply be reconfirmed in their prejudices or to develop a prejudice where little or none had previously existed. In other words, that someone might not care one way or the other about issues of discrimination, but hear about lawsuits or protests and find those actions distasteful, then step into a mindset assuming that such confrontation was somehow anti-Japanese, either in terms of racial difference or in terms of violating Japanese social norms.
Do you think any harm is caused by your tactics? If not, why not? And if so, in what way and is there anything you’d either like to have done differently or are doing differently these days?

Look, one person’s “confrontation” is another person’s “standing up for oneself” and “doing the right thing”. To some, even so much as giving a funny look is “confrontational”, so the only way to avoid any charges of “confrontationalism” is to have done nothing. That is not tenable. The claim of “distasteful confrontationalism” is meaningless since it’s impossible to define a limit to it, short of outright violence — which of course we did not engage in.

As for lawsuits themselves, people engage in them plenty in this society too. As pointed out in JAPANESE ONLY page 280, according to the Ministry of Justice in 1998 alone there were 5,454,942 court cases (some with multiple plaintiffs) at all levels in Japan –nearly one per two dozen people if you want to get all shirty about it. Even if we narrow it down to civil suits, like the one we engaged in, there were still half a million cases that year. There’s nothing anti-normative about a lawsuit in Japan when it’s a perfectly legal and necessary activity. What’s the point of having a judiciary if you don’t use it to resolve disputes? People who say “Japanese don’t sue” are just ignorant, and if they find it distasteful, too bad. There’s no accounting for taste.

Did we cause harm? Of course not. Study the record in my book. We went through EVERY OTHER possible channel — administrative, legislative, even interpersonal, and all peaceful — for fifteen months before we even brought a courtroom into it. And yet “Japanese Only” signs and rules stayed up at Onsen Yunohana. We had no other choice but to take it to court. Just going through available channels.

As for the “developed a prejudice through our actions” crowd, that’s just blaming the victim. No matter what, there exist actual avowed racists in any society. We did not create them, although we certainly brought their practices to light. and you can’t let them make the rules for the rest of society. Especially since Japan promised it wouldn’t to the United Nations when it signed the treaties apposite to this situation. Ultimately, the lawsuit made it clear for everyone to see where the problem is — the lack of a law outlawing this practice. And this problem won’t go away until there is a law, enforceable with penalties for law enforcement to exercise.

3. If the GOJ were to pass a law prohibiting racial discrimination in line with the relevant human rights agreements and UN injunctions, would your work be done? Would such a law be both necessary and sufficient? If not, what is the ultimate end goal and when is good enough good enough?

If we get that law with enforceable penalties, I would have accomplished a life goal. The ultimate end goal, if at all reachable, is a society which not only recognizes any resident and contributor to a society as entitled to all its fruits and bound by its responsibilities as any other, but also seeks to make things better for anyone regardless of color, creed, yada yada yada, you get the idea. Of course, racial discrimination will not completely disappear - it exists in all societies even with laws against it. But the existence of potential lawbreakers is no excuse for not having a law. Especially when we know what good that law does - we have plenty of positive historical examples, even taking in account the hiccoughs and difficulties. Having one is is better than having an unequal society where people get shunted into castes from birth and can never reach their potential. No law means discrimination is not an illegal activity. By definition.

Case in point: What’s happening with “Japanese Only” rules is against the Japanese Constitution, Article 14. Yet there is no law in the civil code in specific to enforce to stop it. Hence it’s unconstitutional, yet not illegal. Why the half-assedness here? A law is necessary. Write it and enforce it well enough and it will be sufficient.

As always, we look forward to hearing what our readers think. Have at it.

In fact, as promised, the new Cabinet is made up entirely of elected representatives. Every portfolio went to a DPJ member, with only two positions going to the DPJ’s partners: State Minister in Charge of Consumer Affairs and the Declining Birthrate to SDP head Mizuho Fukushima and State Minister in Charge of Financial and Postal Issues to People’s New Party chief Shizuka Kamei.

So, without further ado, the Cabinet:

Yukio Hatoyama, Prime Minister

Apparently, the fact that Hatoyama’s wife, the former Takarazuka actress Miyuki is a bit, shall we say, eccentric is the most interesting thing about the man outside of Japan, even more interesting than his being known as “the alien.”Hatoyama, though, is a bit of both new and old. Prior to entering politics in 1986, he was an engineering professor at Senshu University, a position he held since earning his PhD in engineering from Stanford University. Hatoyama is also prone to big thoughts, as his much-discussed editorial in Voice showed. He has also been criticized by former PM Yashuhiro Nakasone, among others, for being too nice, too soft, insufficiently decisive. That seems to have changed at least a bit over the years, with Hatoyama taking over the DPJ presidency from Ichiro Ozawa last Spring and leading his party to a history-making victory on August 30th. As mentioned above, Hatoyama has handled the press firmly and successfully since the election, threatening to change appointments if any were leaked.

However, Hatoyama is, like many of his predecessors, from a political dynasty and the the wealthiest stratum of Japanese society. His father, Iichiro, served as Foreign Minister and his father before him was both Prime Minister (at one time for a mere 46 days) and a founding member of the LDP. Hatoyama’s mother was from the Ishibashi family, best known for founding Bridgestone tires. More recently, his brother, Kunio, served as Justice Minister, then Internal Affairs Minister in the Fukuda and Aso Cabinets and was known for being among the finest issuers of egregious and offensive statements in a party that produced a fair number of such talented individuals.

Hirofumi Hirano, Chief Cabinet Secretary

One-time Matsushita (Panasonic) union leader Hirano’s main attribute is his loyalty to Hatoyama, which is perhaps the key ingredient in an effective Chief Cabinet Secretary. As he lined up votes for Hatoyama as party president after Ichiro Ozawa stepped aside, he will now need to make sure the Cabinet sticks to the game plan and doesn’t fall prey to the plague of the last few LDP cabinets - scandals, contradictions of the PM, etc.

Naoto Kan, Deputy Prime Minister and State Minister for National Strategy and Economic and Fiscal Policy

Kan co-founded the DPJ and was party president from 2002 to May 2004, when he resigned after it was found that he hadn’t made pension payments - a scandal that grew to include a number of pols, including then-PM Koizumi.Kan also served as Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare when he was still in the LDP in the mid-’90s, a fact the LDP, when it was getting desperate, used to try to pin the pension fiasco on the DPJ.

Like new MHLW Akira Nagatsuma, Kan gained fame by discovering a scandal of sorts. In his case, HIV-tainted blood products. After a lengthy legal battle, the government accepted responsibility for improper screening and the subsequent infection of some of the patients who received the products.

In his new role, Kan’s main responsibility will be to guide policy and tackle the problems witht he budget - no small feat as the DPJ hopes to take the power of budget-making out of the hands of the MOF and consolidate it in the hands of the Cabinet. No one likes to give up power. Rumor has it, the MOF is already looking at the DPJ as something to be survived, not something with which they should cooperate.

Hirohisa Fujii, Minister of Finance

This one had pretty much been leaked. Fujii’s name was making the rounds as a possible Finance Minister even before the election, and rightly so, as he has a reputation for being an expert on taxes and the budget. He was also Finance Minister under former PMs Morihiro Hosokawa and Tsutomu Hata of the then-Socialist party - the only two non-LDP PMs of the LDP era.At 77, though, Fujii is December to the May of many of his fellow DPJ members and retired, albeit only for two years, after his loss in the September 2005 snap election.

Katsuya Okada, Minister of Foreign Affairs

Another DPJ heavyweight, Okada was in the unfortunate position of leading the DPJ through the September 2005 general election, which Koizumi managed to make LDP vs. LDP (over postal privatization, leading to the creation of the People’s New Party) and in which the DPJ wound up in a position numerically weaker than that in which the LDP now finds itself.

Okada was once a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), successor to MITI, which effectively ruled Japan - a background that might be helpful in the DPJ’s upcoming battles with the bureaucracy. Like other senior DPJ members, he started his political career in the LDP. He also has a bit of a pedigree - his father founded retail giant Aeon and his brother is now CEO.

Perhaps of interest to TPR readers and listeners, Okada is the most prominent member of a group of lawmakers that seeks to give permanent residents suffrage in local elections.

Keiko Chiba, Minister of Justice

Also of particular interest to foreign residents of Japan will be Keiko Chiba, who was a human rights lawyer befor getting her start in politics with the Social Democratic Party. In marked contrast to earlier Justice Ministers, Chiba is part of a group of lawmakers that supports Amnesty International. She also seeks to set up prefectural groups to promote human rights and advocates for the rights of foreign workers.

It was not long ago that Kunio Hatoyama, the new PM’s brother, was Justice Minister and opined that Japan kept the death penalty because the Japanese simply valued life more than Westerners, who didn’t really care about human life and, thus, were willing to treat murder less seriously. She is now in a position to change a number of Japan’s most pressing rights problems: from relatively unmonitored police interrogations to the quasi-slavery that exists under the guest worker program to perhaps even Japan’s administration of the death penalty - a move her office announced almost immediately upon her ascension to the post. Look for incremental improvements, such as setting definite dates for executions and the videotaping of confessions.

Akira Nagatsuma, Minister of Health, Labour, and Welfare

Our man. We here at TPR record in and have two of our editors living in Tokyo’s 7th district, in which Nagatsuma regained his seat after losing it in the 2005 election.

This is a particularly fitting ministerial appointment as Nagatsuma calls himself “Mister Nenkin” (Mister Pension), a reference to his main claim to fame: uncovering the 50 million pension accounts which were either lost or for which the owners were unknown - possibly the government’s biggest, most pressing ongoing scandal of the past few years.

He held a number of high-ranking posts in the shadow cabinet while the DPJ was in the opposition.

Toshimi Kitazawa, Minister of Defense

Defense Minister is a natural fit for Kitazawa, who has been heading the Upper House foreign policy and defense committee. Kitazawa had a taste of authority when he worked for Socialist PM Hata as parliamentary vice farm minister.

While the DPJ is unlikely to make reevaluation of Japan’s alliance with the US a top policy priority, its junior coalition partners are pushing for it and Kitazawa will have his work cut out for him with the realignment of the USMC in Okinawa and Japan’s increasingly assertive use of the SDF, even if nothing currently in the works changes much.

Kazuhiro Haraguchi, Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications

Two years after first enetering the Diet with the now-defunct New Frontier Party in 1996, Haraguchi joined the DPJ. He is academically pedigreed, having graduated from both the University of Tokyo and the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, but has never before held a senior government position.

Masayuki Naoshima, Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry

Having worked for Toyota prior to entering national politics with the old Democratic Socialist Party, METI might be an apt portfolio for Naoshima. He is best known, at the moment at least, for having been chairman of the DPJ’s policy research committee and, as such, having played a major role in putting together the party’s platform, which, even if it wasn’t a primary factor in the DPJ’s success on August 30th, certainly did no harm and included a few points (think budget reform, not the abolition of tolls) that could form the backbone of a true reform agenda.

Seiji Maehara, Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism

Maehara headed the DPJ during Koizumi’s last year in office and resigned from that post after accusing an LDP Diet member’s son of having been connected to the then-failing Livedoor, but not being able to publicly back it up.

He is still a force to be reckoned with in DPJ politics, though, and could become a central figure in reform efforts as the Transport Ministry is likely to see some substantial changes (at least if cost-cutting and the elimination of government waste really are major DPJ goals.)

Tatsuo Kawabata, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology

For the DPJ, Kawabata served as vice chairman of the audits and administrative oversight committee. Before getting into politics with the New Frontier Party, he was a union leader for Toray and an engineer.

While Education Minister possibly reached its peak as a glamor job when the distinctly unqualified Ibuki Bunmei held the portfolio under PM Shinzo Abe, who set out a series of vague goals involving MEXT, it is still a portfolio with clout and that could play a big role in some of the DPJ’s proposed reforms.

Hirotaka Akamatsu, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries

Akamatsu is another DPJ member whose previous post as election affairs chief probably gave him an inside knowledge of the party that could help him. However, it is likely that his real struggles will be with the Ministry he now heads - one that will need to be a target of the DPJ’s reform efforts if the party wants to trim the fat.

The Farm Ministry long played a key role in the LDP’s system of patronage and Akamatsu’s new post dominated the headlines for the last few months of former PM Abe’s tenure as scandal-best Farm Minister Matsuoka committed suicide and was succeeded in that post by two more appointees who wound up resigning under the clouds of very similar scandals.

Sakihito Ozawa, Minister of Environmental Affairs

Ozawa’s claim to fame stems largely from his success as a close ally of the new PM. In addition to serving as chairman of the rallying and canvassing commission for the DPJ, he was shadow Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry while the DPJ was in the opposition and served on the financial affairs committee and as chairman of the environmental committee, which led nicely to his current position.

Prior to becoming an elected politician in 1992 (with the Japan New Party), Ozawa worked for the Bank of Tokyo, then as head of the LDP Diet members’ policy-making group.

Hiroshi Nakai, National Public Safety Commission Chairman

Nakai spent well over 30 years in the opposition, having been a member of the Democratic Socialist Party for almost 20 years, during which time he served in the Hata Cabinet, then as a member of the New Frontier Party and the Liberal Party (under Ichiro Ozawa), until the party merged with the DPJ.

He has served as vice president of the DPJ and, more recently, worked abduction issue strategy as well as on less pressing matters, such as the committee for the relocation of the National Diet.

Shizuka Kamei, State Minister in Charge of Financial and Postal Issues

This post makes perfect sense as Kamei left the LDP to form the New Party Nippon as a protest against former PM Koizumi’s postal privatization plans. While the LDP had great success in the 2005 election centered around the issue, Kamei succeeded in holding on to his Hiroshima seat by fending off a challenge from a high-profile Koizumi “assassin” - business wunderkind-turned-convict Takafumi Horie.

A one-time police official, Kamei is one of only two non-DPJ members in the Cabinet and is an open and influential opponent of the death penalty - an argument that may gain more traction now that Ms. Chiba heads the MOJ.

Yoshito Sengoku, State Minister in Charge of Administrative Reform

Well, the job title alone shows just how much former lawyer Sengoku has his work cut out for him. A DPJ member since just about the time the party was founded, Sengoku first entered national politics with Social Democratic Party of Japan, a forerunner of today’s SDP.

Mizuho Fukushima, State Minister in Charge of Consumer Affairs and the Declining Birthrate

While the SDP, which she heads, is certainly not seeing much growth, Fukushima is now in perhaps the most powerful position she’s had.

Known for her advocacy of women’s rights, foreigners’ rights, and other human rights issues, Fukushima has a somewhat higher profile than her party and is frequently in the public eye. While she has but one daughter with her common-law partner, she’ll now have to encourage the younger generation to do a bit more than that and have at least 2.1 kids. The DPJ has advocated paying more to families with young kids in order to offset some of the costs of having children, but the new government will have to address some deeper, more firmly-rooted problems before they’re likely to see real change in people’s lifestyles and reproductive decisions.

So, there you have it - the new Cabinet. Unlike LDP Cabinets, the new ministers should be a bit more focused as DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa does not want DPJ members with portfolios also holding executive positions within the party.

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