Some of my political posts went to Facebook, so this is a for-the-record compilation of 2014’s. Note that this is simply my initial posts for threads I initiated and includes neither the back and forth that ensured nor things I might have written within threads initiated by other people. Apologies in advance if some of them are a little obscure.
20140114
Tokyo race sideshow: Having expelled Masuzoe, the LDP said they would not support him but would not mind if the Tokyo Chapter supported him, which the Tokyo Chapter did. Now there are reports that the LDP executive met on the 14th and decided to officially support Masuzoe. Why? Ask them. But then Koizumi announced he is supporting Hosokawa. Does this mean the LDP is going to expel Koizumi? Ha!
20140119
Back in 2007, PM Abe was asked about the approx 51million people whose pension records were lost or otherwise totally fouled up. And he said the govt would clear everything up, down to the last person. 「最後の一人まで徹底的にチェックする」Now, again with Abe as PM, we have the news that the govt is finally giving up on approx 21 million of these cases. So much for Abe’s promises. Unless he plans to say, “Yes, we did check them all. And about 40% of them were beyond repair. Sorry ’bout that.”
20140508
The LDP’s Noda Seiko has an interview in the June Sekai in which she ties security policy to the coming dearth of young males to man the SDF and suggests that policies need to be reality-based.
So I am waiting for Abe to start saying that, yes, while women should be in the labor force, it is their patriotic duty to have children too.
20140511
When a Chinese ship rammed a Japanese ship some time ago, China and China’s friends told us, “No, the Japanese ship swerved to get in the path of the Chinese ship. China would never ram another ship. Chinese are peaceful people. That’s not the sort of thing we would ever do.” And now we hear that the Vietnamese are up to Japan’s old tricks.
Maybe, just maybe, if this keeps happening to China, the Chinese pilots could be a little more circumspect, knowing that other ships are going to get in their way? Or maybe they should not bother, because nobody believes them anyway.
20140523
In other post, I mentioned the solar panels on the Kantei (Prime Minister’s Office) and wondered how much electricity they generate. Curious, I phoned the Kantei to ask. Got connected to someone who said he can’t say. So I asked if that means he doesn’t know or it’s a secret. He can’t say. So I asked if there is someplace that knows and can say. He can’t say. Stupid ridiculous. If you’re going to put a picture up on your website touting the panels, be prepared to answer a question about them. Especially from someone (I identified myself as an ordinary voter) who helped pay for them.
20140611
If you are not sure you want to say yes and the other person is pressing you for an immediate answer, the only reasonable answer is no. Doesn’t matter what the high-pressure salesman is selling.
20140714
Lots of talk about the impact of nuclear power plants and collective self-defense on the Shiga election results, but I suspect Okinawa was also a factor. Okinawa, you will recall, was where a bunch of LDP people got elected promising to oppose the Henoko base and then bowed to pressure from headquarters to line up squarely behind it — where they showed clearly that LDP people think headquarters is more important than the local voters are.
20140805
Abe was back telling the party faithful progress has been made on taking the country back. Taking it back from whom, I ask. The people?
20140811
Having gotten bad press for saying, bluntly, about siting the nuclear waste disposal facilities, “ultimately, it’s a money issue, isn’t it,” Ishihara was back in the news seeking siting approval with a trunkload of money. This is special (tied) grants, called 交付金. Such grants exist for all kinds of purposes: to get local approval for nuclear power plants, to get approval for waste disposal, to get approval for destroying fishing sites, to compensate for rural poverty, to build unsustainable cultural facilities, and more. But I have not seen a comprehensive list of how much goes where under what rationale. There are aggregate sums in national budgets, but it would be interesting to see a list of projects, locations, rationalizations, and yen amounts. Probably a very long list.
20140813
Got almost-home just as a neighbor (age 80+) was getting his newspaper. We both looked at the GDP headline and quickly agreed that, of course, if you raise taxes and wages do not go up an equivalent amount, people have less left for consumption. And we wondered why the current govt does not understand this. Or perhaps they do and they don’t care, because they need the money to buy go-alongs and votes.
20140815
Do not understand people who say Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) is unsuitable for kids because it has some gruesome scenes. What do they want? Walt-Disney pretty? War is pretty? Hiroshima was pretty? If these people want to object, let them object to the reality, not the depiction. If they don’t like gruesome, let them object to past and future wars, not comic renditions.
20140817
Daniel Aldrich and James Platte have an interesting article in the Washington Post that includes the paragraph
“Making matters worse, Japan pays a very high price for natural gas, the so-called Asian premium. According to BP, Japan paid $16.75 per million BTU of natural gas in 2012, while the U.S. Henry Hub price was $2.76 per million. Natural gas prices in Japan hit a record high of $20.125 per million BTU this past February. The devaluation of the yen against the dollar has made the situation even worse.”
Does anyone here know why this Asian Premium exists? (And is it really an Asian premium or just a Japanese-electrical-power-company premium?)
20140824
There is talk, in the wake of the events in Hiroshima, that municipalities should have to draw up “hazard maps” and should have to warn people which areas are safe to build in and which are not. Very reasonable idea. But if it were implemented, you would see lots of real estate prices drop all over the country. Which means it is unlikely to happen.
20140903
I do not know if it is intentional or not, but the 地方創成大臣 (minister for reviving local economies?) idea very much resembles Takeshita’s 故郷創成(furusato sousei), which basically involved giving all manner of little towns and villages Y10million to do whatever they wanted to do with. Was a really foolish idea then, and doubt it improves with age.
20140905
Having agreed to nuclear waste storage in Fukushima and perhaps thinking this is not a popular decision, Governor Sato has announced he will not run for re-election. I wonder what he will find to fill his time once he leaves the governorship. Surely not a Tepco advisory post, but what?
20140909
経団連が政治献金を再開するならば、その受取手が企業献金の代わりに導入された政党助成金を受取らないよね。当然な話しだね。ね。
20140921
Was going to watch the 7:00 news, but then I remembered that the first four stories on the noon news were look-how-hard-we’re-working pieces featuring, in order, Aso, Ishiba, Obuchi, and Kishida.
20140925
アメリカが「自衛権の行使」と言っている以上「集団的自衛権」を言いはる安倍君の見解はいかがでしょうか。やはり、同盟国と一緒に戦うべき（共に自衛権を行使すべき）でしょうか。
20141012
All the fuss about the 50th anniversary of the Tokyo Olympics opening on Oct 10 reminds me that Sports Day was declared a holiday to commemorate that. But it was later moved to “the second Monday” or something when the LDP, in its infinite wisdom, decided Japan needed more three-day weekends to boost the tourism industry. Of course, there were some holidays that were not relegated to Mondays, but only those that had some scientific basis, like the autumn equinox and 紀元節 (National Foundation Day or some fool thing).
20141015
One of the local television commentators commenting on yet another story about a politician using public money — or does it stop becoming public money once it is doled out to a politician to finance his public service? — in a suspect way suggested politicians should use the Internet to post their complete financial accounts for all to see. Excellent idea. Including the receipts, please.
20141017
General question: I have looked around and cannot find a definite answer, so let me ask here. Is there any limit to the number of support groups a Japanese politician can have/run? I know each politician is supposedly limited to one group to handle all the money, but I also see multiple groups mentioned in the Obuchi case. What am I missing?
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20141020
Am glad those two (Obuchi and Matsushima) are out, but wish they had been ousted on policy substance and not technicalities.
20141029
With all of the politicians caught with fiddled accounts, and all of the accusations and counter-accusations and lame excuses they engender — to say nothing of the general pox-on-all-your-houses mood they engender — maybe the politicians can agree to treat each politician as a separate family firm and mandate the same reporting requirements that other small businesses are subject to. A professional accountant checking the books, for example. And because this is largely tax money, post all of the accounts and receipts for everything, down to the last yen, on the Internet so everyone can check it and problems can be corrected sooner rather than later.
20141105
Rather than relaxing the building regulations to allow ever-taller condos with ever-more residential units, Japanese officialdom should be working on the empty-house problem. Why are we building all of these additional homes when we have all of these houses sitting empty — many of them very near where the new homes are being built, so it is not just a population-shift issue.
20141108
In all of this talk about equal pay for equal work (regular employees vs temporary staff), I have not heard anyone mention that retirement bonuses are just like other bonuses — basically deferred salary — and should be included in the calculation of how much regular employees get.
20141111
Suddenly there is all of this talk about how the Prime Minister might dissolve the Diet and call a snap (House of Reps) election. Abe went on record as saying he is not even thinking of it. That was two days ago. Today he apparently said he has not made any decision on the timing. So he’s thinking about it. But the rumors are for December. Why?
Well, one thought that comes to mind is that that’s also when he’s supposed to make the decision on whether or not to hike the consumption tax to 10%. And there are other unpopular decisions to be made. But if the LDP campaigns on a wide-ranging and nebulous platform — e.g., raise the consumption tax to pay for enhanced social welfare, prudently restart some nuclear power plants to ensure the economy can grow, beef up the military to defend Japan’s borders, pass out barrels of money to help local economies, rethink the election system to make it constitutional while maintaining local representation, tighten information security because we all know that is a good thing in the abstract, promote free trade while protecting Japan’s vital sectors, and a host of other things the LDP might or might not want to do together with pseudo reasons for doing them — the LDP-Komei coalition can probably retain its majority and then claim “the people have spoken” and claim a mandate for whatever it is they want to do out of this grab bag. If the list is long enough, Abe and friends can even slip some really atrocious things in there in the expectation voters will not notice them or will assume they are window dressing and not priority goals. So why not an election? An election is always a wonderful distraction, and much more fun than the specifics of all of those promises you made (such as actually inching closer to gender equality without offending conservatives who long for the good old days when women were legally subservient to their menfolk).
20141118
Reading a book that includes this passage about political parties in Japan: “Other (partie)s are dedicated to spreading a single message. Messages include world peace, environmental protection, and gay rights. The need to protect the peace constitution is as well represented as the need to respect the emperor and revise the constitution.” Which surprised me, because I did not think/realize that respecting the emperor and revising the constitution were one and the same message.
20141119
With almost everyone agreed that further raising the consumption tax should be delayed, that is not the issue. The real issue is: Do you trust Abe economic policy enough that you are willing to remove any and all discretionary leeway on when the tax is eventually raised?
20141202
So if 47% of the people on welfare assistance (the dole) are live-alone old people, what does that say about the pension system(s)?
20141204
Every once in a while, I read someone saying that they understand great works different every time they read them. And I wonder: Do “ordinary people” actually go back and reread fiction? Reference material, yes. Because it is reference. And because you are not so much rereading it as you are looking for something. But literature? Do you really reread stuff? [Which drew a score of responses from people saying, “of course I reread the things I enjoy. And I learn a little more each time I read them.”]
20141207
Interesting that a party that was a party to the three party agreement to raise the consumption tax (happened), streamline the Diet (did not happen), and beef up social security (did not happen) is campaigning on a promise to work to get the tax on some items set at less than 10% when the consumption tax is raised to 10% — interesting first because the idea of lower consumption tax rates on some items was part of the three-party agreement that cleared the way for raising the tax to 8% and was supposed to happen when the tax went up to 8% — interesting second because that party was part of the govt coalition that raised the tax without providing partial-exemption categories — and interesting third because the best that party has been able to do is to get its coalition partner LDP to agree that they will aim to have some reduced-tax categories when the consumption tax goes up to 10%. Having been part of the coalition that ignored/broke the promise, they are now campaigning on a “we might, just might, actually do it next time” platform.
20141214
Odd that the U.S., which shouts about free trade and trade barriers and all, should have a number of companies that are ultra-insular on Internet shopping. I wanted to send some friends some edible goodies for the holidays, but it is not as easy as I thought it would be.
One place that looked good would only accept orders from within the U.S. My order was to a U.S. destination, but they could not take it. Why? Because their computer system cannot separate the shipping address and the billing address and they cannot ship to Japan. (It should not be that difficult to have separate pages for entering these addresses, to make them both mandatory, and to make them separate. But they say they cannot do it. Which I read as resounding indifference.)
Another place looked good, but the billing address (drop-down menu) had to be an address in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. Those were the only choices. Perhaps they only have stores in these three countries. And if so, I could understand their not wanting to ship stuff overseas. But that should not mean they can only accept money from these three countries.
Credit cards are set up to do currency conversion. So long as the shipping address is in-country, it should not matter where the person who is paying for this is. Or is this part of multi-ethnic America’s “we don’t want to deal with no furriners” mindset? Odd.
20141215
In all of the talk about the LDP-Komei coalition’s landslide, it is worth noting that this was basically a confirmation of the status quo. The LDP lost three seats and the Komei (which campaigned in part on a we-can-rein-the-LDP-in platform) gained four. So the coalition ended up gaining all of one seat. By contrast, the DPJ gained 11 and the JCP gained 13. The real damage was to the smaller opposition parties, the biggest loser being the “next-generation party,” which lost 17 seats. And since this is a party sympathetic to Abe’s revisionist aspirations, its loss should not encourage Abe.
20141216
Listening to someone from the DPJ saying they lost the election because they did not have enough time. Nonsense, in a way. Because if you wait until the last minute to do something, of course you don’t have enough time. But you did not need to wait. That’s like waiting until the night before to study for a test and then complaining you did not have enough time. You had the time. You just assumed there would not be an election and you could coast for a few years in comfortable opposition.
Reminds me of the LDP-govt’s complaints about not being understood. Much easier to blame the people for not understanding (i.e., disapproving) the policy than to rethink the policy itself. Much easier to say you did not have enough time than to settle down and formulate/promote an alternative set of policies people can believe in and vote for.
20141217
(in response to somebody complaining that “the gaijin pundits” are complaining that the voter turn-out was low when US and UK turn-outs are just as low or lower)
Neither a gaijin nor a pundit, I call the election turn-out low because I do not think “the people” should be considered to have spoken when only about half spoke. True, the system is built to favor big parties, but that is a separate issue. The result affects everyone, so closer to everyone should seek to influence the result (i.e., should vote). It’s the difference between democracy and demicracy (which is not in your dictionary because I just made it up). Do not understand, or sympathize with, the apathy.
20141217
Do not understand why oil prices are where they are — why production is not being cut. Some people say the Saudis are lining up against the U.S. and trying to kill shale oil development in its crib. Others say the Saudis are lining up with the U.S. and putting pressure on Russia. Me? I have no idea. You?
20141222
So a friend sent my wife some Asahi beer. We do not drink Asahi. Won’t even use it to water the plants. It was sent from the ItoYokado Oimachi store, so I called the local ItoYokado and asked if we could exchange it for a different brand. It is unopened. In its pristine box and all. Their answer: “No.” Why not? Policy.
Which impresses me as a stupid policy. It’s not like this is fish or something that is going to go bad and become unsellable. It’s in cans. Will keep for years. So why not earn a little customer goodwill by saying: “Yes, bring it in and we’ll make the switch”?
I thought the Seven-i people (ItoYokado’s parent company) were smarter marketers than this. Disappointing.
[Postscript: Turns out this is possible but is very strongly discouraged because it causes all kinds of grief for the retailer. Not recommended.]
20141229
Among the interesting articles in the December 22 New Yorker is one about graphene (a neat new material with all kinds of fantastic properties that the scientists and engineers have yet to figure out how to use). Article is titled “Material Question” and is by-lined John Colapinto. At one point the researchers tested a graphene oxide and “discovered that the graphene oxide binds with the radioactive elements forming a sludge that could easily be scooped away. Not long afterward, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan created a devastating spill of nuclear material and (Rice University’s James) Tour flew to Japan to pitch the technology to the Japanese. ‘We’re deploying it right now in Fukushima,’ he told me.”
Yet a little later in the article, there is this: “The technology for the Fukushima-reactor cleanup stalled when scientists in Japan couldn’t get the powder to work, and the postdoc who developed the method was unable to get a visa to go assist them.”
I have no idea when this was or who the PM at the time was. Kan? Noda? Abe? I don’t know. So this is not about him. But if the government is at all serious about making Fukushima cleanup a top priority, surely this guy could be issued a visa. If he has disqualifying factors, make an exception, give him a 72-hour transit visa under close supervision, and renew it as necessary. Or is the reality that the visa regulations trump Fukushima? This is probably a case of bureaucratic silo vision, but it is not like Fukushima has not been in the news. Hope the government will check this and, if it is true, find out who is responsible, and put him/her/them on the unemployed rolls. Accountability has to be more than just a word in the dictionary. Priority on getting things under control in Fukushima has to be more than just a campaign slogan. Appalling.