Japanese politics

I sent the following comment to Japan without the sugar:

The Toyota problem is a story that isn't really there.

A constellation of different factors just happen to hit at the same time to make people think there was a story. The media has been awful in its reportage. If you really want some perspective on this, go to the Wikipedia article on this and read the criticism section. Specifically, follow the links to the related articles in auto magazines, popular mechanics, and consumer reports.

After that, ask if it's even fair that the owners of GM should be in a position to judge Toyota at all. Then, remember that the LDP and Toyota management were probably very cosy. Not so with the DPJ and Toyota management.

In my opinion, which I regard as fallible and downright prone to error, you are latching on to a misleading narrative here.

The types of articles we would really need to read to study this issue would be articles like this: http://www.aceee.org/pubs/t021full.pdf

No, I'm not a Toyota apologist, but the amount of apparent mendacity and hypocrisy I've seen in the mass media over this is just so overwhelming, I find it hard to stomach sometimes. But I guess it's all par for the course.

Then again, I could be wrong.

[I'll add this now -- The media is having a heyday calling Japanese who try to grasp what's actually going on conspiracy theorists. That is if you don't buy the ludicrous narrative the media has provided, you are a conspiracy nut. Not only this, but those wacky Japanese just have a propensity for such nuttiness. The LA times goes so far as to quote a professor of Asian studies as saying, "the conspiracy theory on these Toyota hearings is alive and well in Japan ... Conspiracy theories don't deal with the facts, but there's a comfort factor among the Japanese public in believing that Japan is being made the scapegoat for U.S. economic problems." And Newsweek notes, "Initially, many in Japan denied the problem, called the controversy an American overreaction, and concocted conspiracy theories about the U.S. government or unions sabotaging Toyota cars to boost sales of the government-supported General Motors." Whatever.]

From the AFP, Eight countries press Japan on parental abductions:

Envoys of eight countries met the Japanese foreign minister Saturday to press the government to sign a treaty to prevent international parental child abductions. Activists say that thousands of foreign parents have lost access to children in Japan, where the courts virtually never award child custody to a divorced foreign parent. Japan is the only nation among the Group of Seven industrialised nations that has not signed the 1980 Hague Convention that requires countries to return a child wrongfully kept there to their country of habitual residence. ... Activist groups estimate that over the years up to 10,000 dual-citizenship children in Japan have been prevented from seeing a foreign parent.

The state of Japan basically shields Japanese parents from legal obligations they have elsewhere. The media is sometimes complicit in this in that accusations against foreign spouses are taken at face value.

For a primer on Japanese family law or lack thereof, here is a great article (found via debito.org):

• Judges fill the gaps in Japan's family law

Glancing at the morning Asahi things don't look so good for chief secretary Ichiro Ozawa. The main headlines says 67% of people surveyed want him to resign. The next line notes that support for the Hatoyama cabinet has fallen to 42% and the disapproval rating is 41%. That's in the upper right, being the top news. If you move to the upper left there's an article detailing all the shady dealings and listing the various large numbers of unaccounted for political contributions and so on and so forth. This is complete with a complicated chart!

Poking around, I see the headline article in online here. Take a look at the Asahi's graph, the blue line slopping down is approval, the red line slopping up is disapproval:

The Yomiuri has a similar story online here. According to them, 70% of the people they surveyed want Ozawa to step down. Here's there graph showing approval (red line sloping down) and disapproval (blue line slping up) of the Hatoyama cabinet:

And if that's not bad enough, this morning Bloomberg can't even get Ozawa's name right (they'll probably have this fixed by the time you check the link):

Seventy percent of people surveyed by the Yomiuri newspaper said Ichiro Suzuki should resign as the secretary-general of the governing Democratic Party of Japan after the arrests of his current and former aides.

The survey also shows that Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s approval rating fell to 45 percent from 56 percent earlier this month. The DPJ has public support of 34 percent, compared with 20 percent for the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, the newspaper said.

The Yomiuri took the telephone survey Jan. 16-17 and obtained 1,146 valid responses. The newspaper didn’t provide a margin of error.

Should be an interesting week.

I wonder the following. Perhaps all politicians (not just in Japan, but anywhere) are dirty. Perhaps all politicians have a skeleton in their closet that someone knows about. And perhaps whenever a scandal hits the papers, it's not because, for shame, that single politician actually did something "wrong", but merely because there's a type of turf war going on and someone is being called out as part of it.

Is any of that true? I don't know. But I wonder about it.

Watching the latest scandal revolving around Ichiro Ozawa come to light, it leaves me wondering even more.

Just read the lurid details from the Yomiuri, Ozawa 'got 50 mil. yen as reward for dam order':

... Ozawa's political fund management organization, purchased a plot of land in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, out of 400 million yen in off-the-books cash. The organization did not record the money transfer in its political fund report for 2004.

Okay, that almost $4.5 million of off-the-books cash. Wow. Where'd the money come from? I mean where would Ozawa's organization get this money?

The article suggests this:

Former executives of Mizutani Construction Co. have told prosecutors that 50 million yen the firm gave to House of Representatives member Tomohiro Ishikawa in October 2004 when he was secretary to Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa was a "reward" for the company winning a dam construction contract, a source said Thursday. The former executives of the second-tier general contractor based in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, told the special investigation squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office they handed the money to Ishikawa, who was one of Ozawa's privately hired secretaries at the time. Recently, they told the prosecutors that the money had been paid as a reward after the company won contracts to build Isawa Dam in Oshu, Iwate Prefecture, which was ordered by the Tohoku Regional Bureau of the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry.

Okay. That accounts for about a fourth of the money. How about the rest?

Well the end of the article states:

According to sources, the former Mizutani executives previously told prosecutors they had handed Ishikawa 50 million yen in cash in October 2004 at a hotel in Minato Ward, Tokyo. It also came to light that the former executives told the prosecutors that they handed Okubo another 50 million yen in April 2005 at the same hotel.

And so on and so forth ...

If Ichiro Ozawa has a blueprint for a new Japan, I suppose this isn't it. Is he even guilty? Or is he even *more* guilty than any other politician in Japan -- or perhaps just a little more skillful than the rest?

According to this morning's Asahi, considerations about whether Ozawa should resign -- or not -- are focused on two things. How necessary is he to getting passage of desired legislation, particularly the budget, versus criticism he will bring from the LDP if he continues on. What's obviously absent from this calculation is whether or not Ozawa is innocent or not. Why? Because no one cares. He obviously is, and he obviously isn't.

From the Economist, Bad Blood:

Mr Ozawa occupies an unparalleled position in Japanese politics. As architect of the DPJ’s historic victory in elections last August, the party believes it owes him a debt of gratitude, and needs him to manage a big win in upper-house elections this summer. Yet he is also widely seen as a dark presence, whose role hardly squares with the DPJ’s vows to make Japanese politics more open. All requests to DPJ lawmakers for public-spending projects are channelled through him, and he often appears to put the party’s interests before those of the government. Recently, he has flaunted his authority by taking more than 100 DPJ lawmakers on an official trip to China, and inviting them to a banquet at his home on New Year’s Day. Increasingly, the “shadow shogun”, as he is known, is stepping into the limelight.

Yup. Read the rest of the article. The economist rightly notes that Fujii's withdrawal was probably not about health issues, but about struggling with Ozawa. 

A recent editorial at the Daily Yomiuri begins this way:

Without progress in the fields of science and technology, new industries will stagnate, which may put this nation on the road to decline. How then should the government bolster science and technology--a key source of national strength.

An editorial that starts out this way is already on the wrong foot. Ask yourself this, what is it that everyone needs but doesn't have right now? Does anyone really know? The free market is a place where various producers compete to answer this question, and the one that answers it best succeeds. 

Can the government really compete with the free market in determining what we really need? There's a name for this and it's called central planning. Over half a century ago, the famous Austrian economist F. A. Hayek recognized the following:

 Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge. But a little reflection will show that there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active coöperation. 

He goes on in his essay to discuss how the free market, and the price system acting as a means of communicating information, will always succeed far better than a centrally planned economy. The editors of the Daily Yomiuri would be wise to read his essay.

A doctor of neurology has an interesting editorial in today's Asahi, he argues:

Fears of a breakdown of the nation's health-care system are rising, with critics questioning the overall quality of medical services.

As someone in clinical practice with long experience working in both Japan and the United States, I wish to propose a system that would require doctors to renew their medical licenses on a regular basis.

Such a system would improve the quality of medical treatment through the efforts of doctors working at self-improvement.

In Japan, once a doctor graduates from medical school and passes a national qualifying examination, he or she is set to work for life. That is, unless one commits a serious transgression, such as misconduct that warrants administrative punishment. There is no requirement for doctors to renew their licenses.

Few countries allow such a state of affairs, especially among industrialized nations.

That's quite interesting. We all want good health care, and certainly I'm sure we would all prefer a doctor that is up to date in the latest techniques as opposed to one that isn't. However, if it's the case that there is a shortage of doctors in Japan, will this create yet another impediment?

If doctors are not already doing what is suggested above, I think we have to ask why? After all, if there were two doctors, one up to date and the other not, wouldn't we prefer the up to date one? So wouldn't he then make more money? Doe this not happen in Japan?

In general, I do think that private organizations can be created to handle these situations. There could be a private organization that issues its own seal of approval for different doctors depending on whether they qualify or not. Doctor's who have this seal of approval might be thought of as safer and thus be favored in the market place.

I think one possible impediment to the market solutions I am mentioning is national health care and centralization of authority. I guess this just reflects my own prejudices. Without investigating the matter more carefully I can only speculate.

From the Daily Yomiuri:

Meanwhile, referring to the next upper house election, Ozawa said, "We have achieved a change of government, but the battle of liberation hasn't ended yet."

"In summer, we'll have a final battle [the upper house election]. I'll leave the government administration to Prime Minister [Yukio] Hatoyama, and devote myself to the battle as a supreme commander of the people's liberation army's field battle unit," Ozawa added.

Okay, so Ozawa sees himself as the supreme commander of the people's liberation army's field battle unit. An interesting choice of words. And he said this because he was in China?

The Japan Times editorial on the recent reports about school violence begins this way:

Violent behavior in Japanese schools increased to an all-time high in 2008, according to a recent report from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Students, teachers and other people were victims of 60,000 violent incidents involving primary, middle and high school students.

And ends this way:

Students need better outlets for releasing tensions, and in ways that are meaningful for them, not simply imposed from above. Schools need to provide clear guidance and well-defined boundaries, but this clarity must be balanced by reasonable flexibility and student autonomy, too. When that happens, students can learn that violence is the worst choice of all, and always a failure, for all involved.

In the midsts of all this I can't find a single concrete policy suggestions. I can certainly find some fairly weird and vague comments like this:

Despite the shocking increase in violence, some hope was contained in the report. Schools have been successful in reducing bullying. The number of bullying cases reported was down by 30 percent from 2006. This two-year turnaround resulted from the hard work of teachers, administrators, police and parents, as well as from students themselves. If the serious youth problem of bullying can be curtailed, school violence can be as well. One day, hopefully, violence, like bullying, will start to be seen as dasai (uncool).

I don't know a lot about this issue. I do know that once you get into junior high school in Japan you are basically a full time student in almost the same sense a salary man is a full time employee. That is you spend all your time at club or at school or studying or going to a juku. A lot of the time spent studying is in memorizing a massive number of facts that have no pertinent meaning to your particular life. A lot of time is spent learning how to submit to authority. A lot of time is spent acculturating and learning how to "get along" with others. So the system isn't working that well these days. Violence is breaking out. Now, why am I suppose to be surprised? 

How about doing away with public schools? Okay, that's too radical. Fine. Well, how about just making it easier to go to private schools? From what I've heard it is extraordinarily hard to get accredited as a private school in Japan, is that wrong? Given the massive amount of money that goes towards financing jukus, I'm sure parents could afford private schools, if they were made more readily available. The irony is that basically most of the important stuff a lot of studnets learn these days, like how to pass tests, is done studying at jukus. So if that's the case, why not just let the jukus sort of work their way into private schools?

But, I don't doubt that the jukus support the current system. After all, public education has to show tangible results so the focus is always on standardized tests. This favors the jukus because that's what they teach, how to do well on standardized tests. Surly these juku companies must lobby government officials to support the present system. I would guess.

Now, I'm just a blogger, and I can't claim any expertise here. This is all speculation. How much can I really say? But I would have hoped that the Japan Times would have been able to do a better job than just saying we can change. Just consider all the issues out there worth exploring.

What do you think?

The Yomiuri editors are upset that Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping requested to see the emperor with only 20 days of advance notice. The rules state he should have given at least 30, but apparently Prime Minister Hatoyama pushed through the request himself. The Yomiuri says:

It is quite understandable that Shingo Haketa, grand steward of the Imperial Household Agency, expressed grave concern at a press conference Friday about the decision process that led to an audience with the Emperor being hastily arranged for Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping. Breaking with convention, Haketa said, could lead to political exploitation of the Emperor.

Xi is scheduled to visit Japan from Monday and meet the Emperor a day later.

According to Haketa, the agency received a request from the Chinese government for a meeting with the Emperor through the Foreign Ministry on Nov. 26, which was less than 20 days before Xi's planned visit.

Government regulations state that an application for a meeting with the Emperor by any visiting foreign dignitary must be received at least one month in advance. Therefore, a day after receiving the petition, the agency told Beijing it could not accept the request in accordance with this rule.

However, the matter did not end there.

According to Haketa, he was phoned on two occasions by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano, who asked that Xi be exempted from the rule.

The top government spokesman pressed Haketa to accept his request, saying on his second call that he was making it "on the instruction of the prime minister."

Hm. I'll have to think about this. Does this mean China can push Japan around? Or does it mean Japan is very hospitable to important neighbors? Or does it mean absolutely nothing at all?