JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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Hikozaemon
The 400m is his own money. The prosecution has no direct evidence or wrongdoing. The investigation was politically timed and politically motivated to keep him from influence when the DPJ came to power. All valid points.
But hey - go the "stomp on the guys who want to actually change Japan" machine! Looks like you've got Japan Today on your side...
Don't worry, LDP will be back in power soon, Ozawa will be back in opposition where he can't challenge beaurocratic rule, and all this will die down.
Posted in: Ozawa pleads not guilty as trial gets under way
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Hikozaemon
This is not about nuclear power generally - this is a very specific case.
Until 3/11, I didn't mind nuclear power, but agreed with the long campaign to get this one plant shut down. It is directly on top of what is now known to be the most dangerous fault in Japan, considered almost certain to experience a catastrophic earthquake within the next 10 years. And not an tsunami - a direct hit, Shindo 7 (sideways shaking of more than 3 metres at a time). No nuclear plant has ever been directly hit by the kind of seismic shape geologists are now certain will directly strike Hamaoka.
Point is, there are only two sensible positions on this:
You shut down all nuclear reactors.
You shut down this one reactor and build another one somewhere else.
Restarting Hamaoka is folly. As a Tokyo resident, last thing I want is two crippled radioactive plants 250km north and south of Tokyo.
Posted in: Local assembly wants Hamaoka nuclear plant permanently shut down
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Hikozaemon
Zucronium - I agree completely, mainstream reporting of this case is a perfect example of that.
Posted in: 3 of Ozawa's aides convicted over political funding violations
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Hikozaemon
Herefornow - Ishikawa's press conference is being shown on TV - he said a lot more than what AP is quoting, and into the detail of why the conviction is flawed. Primarily the fact that the court accepted the allegations made without any affirming evidence, and rejecting evidence to the contrary. He said he can't accept a conviction based on a made up version of the events, and plans to appeal. Which is fair enough.
The LDP however, and the court take his defiance as you do - a sigh of lack of remorse. This is what is usually used to pressure people charged into Japan into confessions.
This trial and convictions, if you listen to any of the details about how it was carried out, is a farce.
Posted in: 3 of Ozawa's aides convicted over political funding violations
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Hikozaemon
Please understand that Kyodo News wires are straight up kisha-club coverage of the news put into English - this story is an excellent opportunity for people to read a little more broadly from Japanese language sources and compare what goes into coverage here, and what is left out - especially if you go beyond kisha-club sourced media.
Posted in: 3 of Ozawa's aides convicted over political funding violations
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Hikozaemon
All witness testimony was rejected by the court, the conviction was made purely on the evidence of the timeline suggested by investigators and the plausibility of their explanation that it probably came from dango payments from contractors.
No evidence was cited in the convictions - this was based purely on circumstance - which is pretty weak, even by Japanese judicial standards. The lack of detail and critical analysis in English language reporting is probably behind why people are swallowing up the propaganda that Ozawa is a criminal that needs to be kicked out of politics, but even a high level look at how this trial was prosecuted and carried out shows that this entire case is baseless and politically motivated to try to keep Ozawa from exerting influence.
Posted in: 3 of Ozawa's aides convicted over political funding violations
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Hikozaemon
Amazing what sheep followers of English media are on this site about this topic.
3 people convicted based on purely circumstantial evidence about a politically motivated fairytale invented by prosecutors.
You people have to get a little smarter and learn what is really going on with this stuff.
Posted in: 3 of Ozawa's aides convicted over political funding violations
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Hikozaemon
Kirwan is responsible. He is responsible for making sure he picks a team of guys that can catch a ball and make a tackle, and to train and build them up so that they can play to a gameplan that suits the team.
If Japan had any thing close to an acceptable error rate, and had lost to Tonga based on Tonga having a superior game plan, then I would accept, it is the players being outplayed.
Truth is that the players came out half baked - guys capable of playing much better seemed to be daydreaming at times. The team lacked sharpness and concentration, as well as basic skills. That comes down to preparation, which is the responsibility of the coach.
I love JK as a player, and he is a good guy. But he was hired solely for the purpose of making sure Japan could beat Tonga and Canada at the world cup. He has already failed in that mission, and you already have other world class test coaches in Japan with stronger credentials than JK has, starting with Eddie Jones at Suntory.
JK failed to bring a fully baked Japan team, that has so far failed to play to its potential, except for some bright moments in the France game. Canada are in rampant form right now - if JK wants to find any kind of decent coaching work after this RWC, he's going to have to make sure his team has its heads pulled in tomorrow.
Posted in: Tonga beats Japan 31-18 at World Cup
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Hikozaemon
Winning this game was the minimum for the JRFU's expectations with Kirwan. He will be out of the job, and given the last two performances of Japan, probably have trouble getting coaching work in a tier 1 nation afterwards.
Yes, the reffing was substandard, but so were the Japanese team. I guess that while Japan may complain about some of the mysterious calls, they did benefit with a try from an incorrect call, so c'est la vie - neither team profited, just made the spectacle even more cringeworthy to watch seeing the ref mess up also.
Anyway, Japan was let down, once again, by the lack of basic skills shown by its representative players. Too many easy passes dropped cold under no pressure, too many inaccurate throws and meaningless kicks. Defense was good, and some players kept up their end, but the level of basic unforced errors that plague the team are a disgrace to Japan, and the 120,000 players in Japan from professional teams to high school players, most of whom it seems who can pass and catch a ball better than many of the guys wearing the national jersey. In 1987 when JK played for NZ, players would actually do push ups on the field if they dropped a ball or missed a tackle.
Japan had the skills and firepower to beat Tonga, as they have done repeatedly in recent years, but they lacked the concentration and beginner level ball skills to do it. Tonga had the concentration, and the drive to play for 80 minutes and hold Japan out. Good on them.
Japan needs to get rid of university rugby, and start developing uptake systems to find talent from high school age, and to get them into competitive club rugby as early as possible, and to select representative members from the very highly skilled, very large rugby playing population in Japan. Too many Keio and Waseda old boys who get a blazer and treat their post university rugby like it is retirement.
If Japan plays like that, Canada will beat them in the final pool match. JK needs to set minimum standards and try to show us what he has been doing with the team for the last few years.
Peace
Posted in: Tonga beats Japan 31-18 at World Cup
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Hikozaemon
Well, looking on the bright side, at least he didn't say he thought Japan's nuclear future was more dangerous than it currently is.
Posted in: Hosono tells IAEA that Japan will have 'safer nuclear future'
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Hikozaemon
The 1965 treaty was kept secret at the behest of the Korean side, that was afraid of precisely this happening to them - millions queing up for their cut of Japan's compensation payout.
Again, sucks for the people of South Korea, but they were screwed by their own government, not Japan.
Peace
Posted in: S Korea to propose sex slave talks with Japan
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Hikozaemon
Hey Gyouza - Hatoyama has frankly, always been a bit of a pussy. He was never so much snarling with the LDP when in opposition (Kan was good at bashing them, however), but kind of uppity passive-aggressive.
The childraising benefits, reduction of schooling costs, making highways free, demanding cuts in administrative spending, pretty much each bullet on the manifesto stayed intact under Hatoyama's government, only because the government drew from all factions, and the manifesto was really the only thing that held all sides of the DPJ together.
When Kan shut out the former liberal party factions of Ozawa and Hatoyama from his cabinet, he also took to undoing their parts of the DPJ manifesto. It was petty stupid internal politics, that undermined the more important need for the DPJ to restructure how government operates in Japan.
Hatoyama's downfall was going off the reservation and trying too idealistic and too hard to be liked over the Futenma issue. It was painful to watch, and showed why the guy really couldn't be left alone to speak his mind freely - although it was astounding to me that a guy with a political pedigree like his could so fundamentally misjudge the US/Japanese security relationship.
The LDP is revelling in its position, with some justification. The DPJ indeed made the LDP's life hell when it took over the upper house and held up the budget for months - they drove Fukuda to resign out of obstruction and frustration. So now that the tables are reversed, there is no question that there is an element of payback involved. Also, the LDP is aware that the more difficult they make it for the DPJ, and the more they humiliate them in parliament, as they will continue to do, the more Japanese voters will distance themselves from them.
The big difference between opposition doing this in the old days, and the LDP doing this now, is that they know that the endgame will be their return to power. They are basically like a football team that has put 50 points on the opposition and is gleefully rubbing it in as the clock winds down. It's kind of understandable - I'll bet the LDP is just starting to realize how much more fun opposition is than actually being in power.
The only consolation is that tables will turn and this time next year, LDP will be back in power, only unfortunately with a majority in each house, so no one will really be able to do anything to hold them back until a new viable opposition party forms.
Posted in: LDP chief grills Noda in Diet Q&A session
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Hikozaemon
Gyouza - Kan started undoing the manifesto long before the quake, and he would have been impeached within March had the quake not saved him.
As for Edano, I liked him, but after being anti-nuclear bureau bashing Kan's front man for so long, Noda makes him METI minister and look at how quickly he changed his tune. He's all "fire-'em up" again now, just being a mouthpiece for the ministry. It's very disappointing to see.
People here swallow the media propaganda on Ozawa, but that first year, with Ren Ho and friends in those gymnasiums dragging those people into the sunlight and holding them accountable for spending for the first time in history was a spectacular kick in the balls and assertion of political authority over administration in Japan like has never been done in history. Of course, Ozawa's powerless now, but I agree, that time period represented a glimmer of hope for meaningful structural reform. If only Hatoyama wasn't so bone-headedly idealistic about the US-Japan security alliance... That was the opening needed to end the show.
Still, it was a nice 12 months of hope for meaningful change in Japan.
Posted in: LDP chief grills Noda in Diet Q&A session
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Hikozaemon
GW - the LDP, the bureaucrats, the keidanren, and the controlled media have all been in bed together for 60 years. The role of the LDP in that alliance was to shield the policy making administrative arm of government from accountability.
The LDP is guilty of letting bureaucrats set up a flawed system of nuclear monitoring and safety, but so is the Keidanren whose members also have profited enormously from the construction and maintenance work on the plants for TEPCO and the government, as well as the media that coopearted with everyone and helped to keep critics silent.
The LDP's role in the last half century was to take the fall while in power for any screw ups from the Japanese beaurocracy in exchange for favors in return. Blaming them is pointless. Their whole purpose for existing is to accept blame for screw ups.
Kan is just as guilty of being less interested in structural reform than starting factional fights with Ozawa, a guy who did keep up the good fight all through Hatoyama's cabinet of dragging beaurocrats into the sunlight in public gymnasiums and forcing them to disclose their hidden discretionary budgets, which are a major part of the way these corrupt systems are sustained.
Kan did break from the LDP tradition refusing to take the fall for nuclear safety agency complicity in the accident, publicly and openly blaming them for incompetence after the fact, but he did nowhere near enough to address these problems after coming to power.
People should wake up and blame the system of government that set this whole thing up, and demand accountability from the beaurocrats that drafted and implemented Japan's flawed nuclear policy, and were criminally negligent in properly monitoring and holding the companies left to run the plants accountable. With Ozawa expelled due to a political prosecution, and Kan exiled from government, happily handing over to another kasumigaseki servant to take over (as Kan himself was, at least with regards to the Finance Ministry), all hope of meaningful steps to fix these problems for now are gone. The civil servants are now firmly in charge of the DPJ, just as they will be of the LDP next year. And that is what is most disappointing about this capitulation by Noda's cabinet, and what Tanigaki is revelling in. The DPJ has sold out just like the LDP did, and is now just as responsible as the LDP for being a rubber stamp for bad policy.
Posted in: LDP chief grills Noda in Diet Q&A session
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Hikozaemon
Beangry - every country in the world accepts the Senkaku islands are Japanese sovereign territory, part of Okinawa, and that Japanese coastguard are the customs forces . The only countries that ignore that are China, and Taiwan. And even those two countries only asserted any claim after gas was found nearby in the 1980s, long after they had reverted to Japanese control. Japan asserted sovereignty against the islands unopposed long prior to the treaty of Shimonoseki.
China needs to learn to accept its borders if it wants to win the trust and confidence of its neighbors in its intentions with its militarization.
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Hikozaemon
Everyone would feel a lot less worried about China's military build up if it did not so aggressively ignore its internationally recognized borders and claim territory from each of its neighbors based on a chip off its shoulder about Qing Dynasty treaties that established those borders.
For a country that so brazenly refuses to accept the reality of the international system as it currently is (Taiwan is not a country, large parts of Russia, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Vietnam, the South China Sea and the East China Sea are Chinese, even though they have been recognized settled territory of those countries for 200 years or more), and screams its denials of reality so loud, the worry is of course that Submarine and destoryers cutting through Okinawa, building of temporary bases in the Spratlys, occasional shots over the border with India and Vietnam, and denial of Taiwan's existence will all have the potential to escalate in an ugly uncontrolled manner if it had more firepower and confidence.
Thank god the US is in East Asia acting as a restraint on China, but how much longer that will last, who can say? Japan is not the only country worried about Chinese militarism and expansionism - China's neighbors need to work together to welcome China into greater international engagement with mutual respect for borders and international law. Not the insane aggressive Maoist policies on history and borders that it continues to espouse while hiding the rapid modernization and growth of its military.
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Hikozaemon
Zichi, take a look at the long history of politicians having "disagreements" with their civil servants. Makiko Tanaka is my favorite example, but basically it works out very simply. The politician becomes subject to a sudden scandal and media frenzy which ends in their prompt resignation and/or arrest.
Press always sides with the civil service, because they know the lifespan of most political appointments is that of a fruitfly. Politicians either play ball, get a few public works projects in their constituencies with some nice kickbacks and funding for their reelection, or fight, and end up the center of a storm.
Hence, very few politicians ever contradict or fight against the civil service "proposals" for policy, which should be taken as offers that cannot really be refused.
Of course, civil service will go along with some policy directions and initiatives of a new cabinet - but it is all back scratching. Policy details have always been crafted and proposed by the civil service. The role of politicians is to help their ministries compete for budget allocation, and to resign when anyone in the ministry with a lifetime job screws up. THAT is why Japan has such a crappy system of nuclear power safety.
The LDP is guilty of being a pillar that protected that system, just as the DPJ is under the current cabinet. But none of this ever had anything to do with politics.
Posted in: LDP chief grills Noda in Diet Q&A session
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Hikozaemon
Zichi - take a seat. Sorry to tell you the tooth fairy ain't real, but I'd wager that not a single energy related policy has ever been drafted by the LDP. They may have sat in on meetings, and certainly it was their job to rubber stamp laws.
Policy in Japan is not a function of parliament. The LDP outsources all policy making to what was MITI at the time, and the other agencies that oversaw construction and maintenance of the plants.
The LDP never wrote any energy policy, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with safety standards. Politicians do NOT choose bureaucrats for posts - they rubber stamp the appointments that are decided internally.
Policy, particularly in nuclear energy has never been politically controlled in Japan. That is why this happened - they have been set up and run without any kind of democratic oversight or responsibility.
It isn't possible to understand anything about Japanese politics without understanding how Japan is governed and policy is made first. Politics in Japan is completely separate to policy. Ozawa, Hatoyama and Kan tried for two years to change that, but they all failed fighting amongst themselves, and now we are back to form with Noda doing things the way things have always been done. DPJ/LDP is irrelevant - at the moment, they are the same thing, which is a party which gives up governance of Japan to faceless unaccountable bureaucrats.
Posted in: LDP chief grills Noda in Diet Q&A session
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Hikozaemon
Zichi - the LDP is not responsible for Japan's nuclear disaster. Policy in Japan is made by the beaurocracy - those folks in Kasumigaseki. All that LDP did was rubber stamp their policies. And that is all Noda is doing today.
Politics has nothing to do with it.
Posted in: LDP chief grills Noda in Diet Q&A session
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Hikozaemon
The article is incomplete - he basically pointed out that Kan and Noda both agreed to the 3 party agreement with Komeito and LDP, which constitutes a breach of the promises they made in their election manifesto.
He basically said that by agreeing to the LDP's terms and withdrawing its manifesto promises, the DPJ has lost the mandate it was elected under, and should call a new election now to win a new mandate for its revised (broken) policies.
And he is right - Kan betrayed DPJ voters, and the DPJ under Noda is just an extension of the LDP - Tanigaki is gleefully rubbing this in. Tanigaki basically has Noda and the DPJ over a pommel horse like the guy in Pulp Fiction, and he is turning the country music up high...
None of this would have happened if Ozawa had been in a position to stop Kan screwing things up by losing the upper house, trashing the DPJ manifesto and selling out to the LDP like he did.
Nice to see Ozawa's guy - the party secretary, vainly try to remind Noda in a question asking him to reassert that he believes in the principle of political control of beaurocracy, which Noda basically flubbed on saying politicians need to respect the expertise of Japan's bureaucrats. You know, the ones who recommended and ran Japan's nuclear plants assuring everyone it was all okay.
Tanigaki is right, and probably loving his job right now.
Posted in: LDP chief grills Noda in Diet Q&A session