Shift to isle defense requires upgrade of all three branches

Abstract: The Cold War ended about 20 years ago and Japan is finally trying to execute a drastic transformation of the Ground Self-Defense Force by shifting its focus from the north to the southwest — effectively relaxing its guard against Russia and bolstering it against China. Facing China’s growing military power, the new 10-year national defense guidelines the Cabinet endorsed in December spell out plans to bolster the defense of islands to the southwest, most notably Okinawa and the disputed Senkaku chain in the East China Sea. The GSDF will procure 17 MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and 52 amphibious vehicles and create new units dedicated to defending “remote islands” like the Senkakus, which are controlled by Japan but claimed by China and Taiwan. The GSDF plans to remove all of its tanks from Honshu and leave only about 300 on Hokkaido and Kyushu. The Defense Ministry will meanwhile procure 99 faster, more maneuverable combat vehicles that will be capable of reaching speeds of 100 kph and can be airlifted to remote islands. Experts are skeptical about the need for amphibious units to defend the Senkakus, arguing the GSDF might be just trying to secure budget allocations at a time when the debt-ridden government has little room to increase the defense budget further. Without air and maritime superiority, an amphibious unit would have little chance of prevailing in a battle over a remote island. Thus the Maritime Self-Defense Force and Air Self-Defense Force need to be reinforced before amphibious units are introduced, said Shunji Taoka, a noted military journalist and former senior writer for the major daily Asahi Shimbun. “If you maintain air and maritime superiority, no (enemy) force could approach (a remote island). If you lose it, you cannot send an amphibious unit there. “So it is air and maritime superiority that matters. You don’t need a landing force” to defend the Senkakus, Taoka maintained. Toshiyuki Shikata, a professor of Teikyo University and former commanding general of the GSDF’s Northern Area Army, agreed that the most important element in defending an island is air superiority, and then to win control of the seas. “Given that (improving) the MSDF and ASDF is the priority now, the GSDF is in a difficult situation” when it comes to budget allocations, Shikata said. But he stressed that the creation of an amphibious unit that includes Ospreys will greatly enhance the GSDF’s capabilities and be useful if a remote Japanese island needs to be recaptured, like one of the Senkakus. The Osprey flies twice as fast as the aging CH-47 helicopters long used to transport GSDF troops. Shikata estimates that an Osprey could carry SDF troops from a camp on Okinawa Island to the Senkakus in an hour, whereas it would take some 10 hours if they went by ship. “The great thing about (Osprey) is its speed,” said Noboru Yamaguchi, a former lieutenant general of the GSDF who is now a professor at the National Defense Academy of Japan. Ospreys have a range of around 600 km and can be refueled in flight. The islands of Okinawa could even be defended by MV-22s based in Honshu, Yamaguchi said. He emphasized it is urgent for the operations of the ASDF, MSDF and GSDF to be integrated in order to defend remote islands. As it is, joint operations for the three branches are key elements of the new national defense guidelines, which call for bolstering the network data linkage among the ASDF, MSDF and GSDF. The Defense Ministry plans to purchase six U.S.-made AAV-7 amphibious assault vehicles to study their performance before making a final decision on which equipment to procure.


Tokyo, Washington agree to stay course on sealing TPP

Abstract: DAVOS, SWITZERLAND - Japan and the United States have agreed to continue to work closely on speedily concluding the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks, trade minister Toshimitsu Motegi said after meeting Saturday with the U.S. trade chief on the fringes of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Motegi, the Economy, Trade and Industry minister, said he urged Washington to show more flexibility in his meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. Froman called on both sides to do so, Motegi said. The 12 TPP countries bordering the Pacific Ocean have been struggling to seal a pact at an early date after missing a much-touted 2013 deadline for an agreement at their last ministerial meeting in December in Singapore. Tokyo and Washington have been at odds over how to deal with tariffs that Japan seeks to retain on five “sacred” farm product categories. The U.S.-led TPP aims in principle to abolish all tariffs. Farm minister Yoshimasa Hayashi also met separately with Froman and said they discussed tariffs on the five sensitive categories, which are rice, wheat, beef and pork, dairy products and sugar. He declined to elaborate. The U.S. government, which hopes an outcome can be reached before midterm elections in November, is proposing convening the next 12-country ministerial meeting in late February, but it has yet to be confirmed. TPP nations initially sought to hold such a meeting in January, but decided to delay it because there was little chance of overcoming the huge gaps over such issues as tariffs, intellectual property rights as well as reform of state-owned firms. In a separate meeting of trade ministers, meanwhile, chiefs of the world’s biggest economies pledged to broaden a deal to boost global trade, with the U.S. saying nothing is off-limits. At a Swiss-hosted meeting on the sidelines of the WEF, ministers from China, the European Union, Japan, the U.S. and 15 other nations agreed to build on the “positive momentum” of a World Trade Organization summit last December in Bali where its 159 member economies agreed to cut customs red tape. Motegi said Saturday’s discussion focused on “how to go forward with the WTO” while also implementing the red tape-cutting provisions previously agreed to in Bali. Japan, he said, has shown “a considerable amount of flexibility” during the talks and hopes the U.S. will be similarly flexible. The ministers agreed to address the most difficult remaining negotiating topics of agriculture, market access and services that eluded an agreement last month in the first WTO deal since the global trade body was formed in 1995, said Swiss Economics Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann, who hosted the meeting. BOJ’s Kuroda cautious Jiji Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda expressed cautious optimism on the global economy at a discussion in Davos, Switzerland, on Saturday. The U.S. economy is “likely to grow by 3 percent this year and next year,” and the European economy is “finally recovering and growing,” Kuroda said. Japan is also making “significant progress” and can get out of deflation, he noted. “We have to be always mindful of” downside risks, Kuroda said, but added, “I think we can be cautiously optimistic about the global economic outlook.” “There is still a long way to go” before the central bank reaches its 2 percent inflation target, the BOJ chief said.


No plan best plan in Kansai nuclear disaster

Abstract: Ten months after regional governments were required to submit nuclear disaster evacuation plans, a lack of central government guidance and local-level cooperation is generating concern that Kansai will be ill-prepared to respond if any of Fukui Prefecture’s 13 commercial reactors suffers a meltdown. Questions remain about how fleeing Fukui residents who pass through neighboring Kyoto would be stopped and screened for radiation, and how residents in the rural northern areas closest to the reactors would be gathered and evacuated in a timely manner. Evacuating the elderly, young mothers and the pregnant is also a serious concern. There is also the question of what to do if Shiga’s Lake Biwa, which supplies drinking water to about 14.5 million people, gets contaminated with radiation. Citizens’ groups have posed these and other detailed questions to prefectural officials in Kyoto and the Union of Kansai Governments, a loose federation of seven prefectures and four major cities in the region. But Kansai officials reply that, on many issues, there is little they can do because the central government hasn’t drafted specific guidelines. For example, while Tokyo will order residents within 30 km of a nuclear plant to evacuate in a crisis, winds could stretch a radioactive plume well beyond that range. Detailed plans based on wind projections during a radiation leak continue to be discussed, but there is little in the way of concrete proposals. It is also unclear how evacuations would be carried out if a storm, blizzard or other natural disaster on the Sea of Japan coastline of Fukui or Kyoto ends up closing access roads within 30 km of a power plant. Local disaster response plans have yet to spell out how people in northern Kyoto, which is rural and lacks the wide thoroughfares of the capital, can be effectively evacuated. “Kansai authorities have admitted that many towns and cities are not ready to receive evacuees. Authorities admit that the evacuation of pregnant women, young children and others who need care should be a priority, but no such plans are in place,” said anti-nuclear activist Aileen Mioko Smith of Kyoto-based Green Action, following meetings with Kyoto and Kansai officials late last year. Under a Union of Kansai Governments agreement, Hyogo Prefecture is in charge of coordinating disaster response policy for the union’s seven prefectural members, although Fukui is not one of them. Last year, Hyogo officials carried out a simulation of what would happen just to Hyogo if a Fukushima-like event were to occur at one of the four reactor sites in Fukui. They concluded that the town of Sasayama (population 43,832) would be exposed to a maximum of 167 milliseiverts over a seven-day period, three times an international level that triggers the use of iodine tablets. Guidelines established by the Nuclear Regulation Authority call for iodine tablets to be distributed to those within 5 km of a nuclear plant. While there are discussions about extending the radius to 30 km, no final decision has been made. “I don’t think that stockpiling and dispensing iodine tablets is particularly difficult compared with, say, stockpiling Tamiflu for avian flu. Plans need to be revised quickly,” Hyogo Gov. Toshizo Ido said when the results were announced. Under the Hyogo simulation, parts of Kyoto Prefecture would be in even greater danger — a point Smith and other Kyoto citizens have made to local officials. In Kyoto, there are now specific emergency drills based on what would happen in a nuclear disaster. The most recent exercise was conducted on Jan. 17, the 19th anniversary of the Kobe earthquake. The small drill involved about 20 prefectural and Self-Defense Forces officials responding to reports of radiation in the air following an earthquake and tsunami. The drill assumed that critical information from the national SPEEDI network, which assesses radiation levels in real time, would be conveyed to them quickly. There are seven SPEEDI monitoring spots within 10 km of the power plants in Fukui that collect data on Fukui and Kyoto prefectures, and another six within 30 km, including one in Shiga. Kansai leaders recognize that more monitoring stations, particularly in northern Kyoto and Hyogo, are needed, but without guidance from the central government, as well as funding, there is little they can do. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has made restarting the nation’s nuclear reactors a primary goal. The discussions have focused mostly on the technical issues related to the plants and whether the fault lines surrounding them, or in some cases under them, are active. Given the widespread concerns, Smith says such thinking puts the cart before the horse. “It’s a very serious problem that Japanese nuclear power regulation does not require evacuation plan approval as a prerequisite for restarting nuclear power plants,” she said.

fukushima no . 1
kansai
fukui
fukushima nuclear power plant
evacuation plans


Jury still out on Kansai union's worth

Abstract: OSAKA - A useless talk shop that will ultimately be remembered as a massive waste of taxpayer money, or a farsighted experiment that will someday be seen as the forerunner of a fundamentally new system of central government? That’s the question that supporters and critics of the Union of Kansai Governments are asking three years after seven Kansai prefectures and four major cities banded together to increase cooperation in everything from disaster planning to tourism promotion and standardized testing and licensing. Due to geography, Kansai’s main cities of Osaka, Kyoto, Nara and Kobe are no more than an hour apart by limited express trains. It’s possible to travel to all four in under 2½ hours, which is less than the time it takes to travel by shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka. But familiarity often breeds contempt. Kansai’s local governments have a long history of not cooperating with each other, resulting in rival plans to attract businesses and tourists. They’ve also been plagued by traditionally limited communication or mountains of bureaucratic red tape when it came to things like dispatching emergency vehicles and personnel across prefectural borders. Over the past three years, progress has been made toward removing some of the barriers. The governors and mayors meet on a regular basis and draw up plans in areas they specifically agree to coordinate for the entire union. Hyogo, having suffered the 1995 Kobe earthquake, is in charge of coordinating disaster relief measures. Kyoto is in charge of tourism promotion for the region, while Osaka is in charge of economic development. Their most visible success to date has been agreeing to get the entire region to cut back on electricity usage in 2011 after the nuclear power plants were shut down, resulting in expeditious, coordinated action that prevented rolling blackouts during the peak summer months. But while demonstrating some ability to react to outside events, the union has been poor at being proactive, partially because of the limited local powers under the prefectural government system. Advocates of the union point out that it’s too early to issue a final report card on how useful it is, and that its ultimate goal is to replace the Meiji Era prefectural system with a series of semi-autonomous regional blocs and a weak central government. Needless to say, that idea is met with open hostility in Tokyo, which fears it would lose power and prestige. Critics come in two types. The first consists of those who see the union as a good idea being poorly executed because of central government regulations, entrenched local bureaucratic rivalries and differing attitudes among the political members about the wisdom of drawing too closely together. The second group, even as they agree with the first group about the problems, sees the union as fundamentally anti-democratic, a creation of Kansai’s corporate lobby that is more interested in taking away local rights to, for example, block construction of an airport, dam or power plant. The union is not about smaller government, they say, but about creating a Kansai fiefdom that would be run as a giant corporation where efficiency trumps local democracy. To what extent the union’s political leaders will be willing to spend political capital to enact ideas has always been the question. As efforts to formulate a detailed, unionwide disaster response plan in the event of not only an earthquake and tsunami, but also a nuclear disaster demonstrate, however, local politicians and bureaucrats are hard-wired to deal with the problems in front of them, not those on the horizon, however imperative it may be to address them before they become disasters.

osaka
kyoto
kobe
nara
union of kansai governments


Japan, Russia discuss territorial issue

Abstract: The deputy foreign ministers of Japan and Russia met Friday in Tokyo to resume talks for settling the long-standing territorial dispute over the Russian-held islands off Hokkaido. Deputy Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama is representing Japan while the Russian delegation is led by Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov. Similar talks were held last August in Moscow. Since the summit last April between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Vladimir Putin, Tokyo and Moscow have moved closer, with the two countries reinforcing common interests in areas such as energy and security. Several summits and talks between top officials have followed. Tokyo hopes to grab the momentum to break the territorial stalemate and conclude a peace treaty with Russia. Japan has said that if Russia acknowledges the four islands as belonging to Japan, Tokyo is prepared to respond flexibly to the timing and manner of their actual return. But Russia has shown no signs of recognizing Japanese sovereignty. After day-long talks at the Foreign Ministry’s Iikura guesthouse, Sugiyama said the two had practical and meaningful discussions on the deadlocked territorial dispute. “We discussed (the territorial dispute) from historical, legal and many different aspects. We’ve spent the whole afternoon on this matter, talking to the extent that I’ve become bit exhausted,” Sugiyama told reporters after the eight-hour meeting, of which five hours were dedicated to the territorial issue. “We had talks last August (in Moscow), but this was the first for me to have such earnest discussions using hours covering various issues (on the territorial dispute),” Sugiyama said. But holding such meaningful discussions just one time is not enough to resolve the long-standing issue, he said, adding that Tokyo and Moscow will arrange to schedule the next negotiations. Along with the territorial dispute, the two discussed economic cooperation and cultural exchanges as well as the situation in North Korea, the Middle East and Central Asia, he said. The meeting precedes talks Saturday between Foreign Ministers Fumio Kishida and Sergey Lavrov in Germany, Abe’s attendance at the Feb. 7 opening ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics and an expected visit to Japan by Putin this year. The dispute over the islands, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia, has prevented Tokyo and Moscow from concluding a peace treaty for World War II. The four islands — Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai islet group — were seized by Soviet forces in the closing days of World War II after Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945. Abe and Putin agreed in their April meeting in Moscow to resume the sovereignty negotiations. Since then, the two leaders have held four meetings and are expected to hold another one in February when Abe visits Sochi. “Although there still remains a wide gap between the positions of Japan and Russia concerning the issue of the Northern Territories, the main pending issue, Japan will persistently engage in negotiations in order to resolve the issue of the attribution of the four islands and conclude a peace treaty with Russia,” Kishida said Jan. 24 in an address on the first day of the current Diet session. Information from Kyodo added

russia
territorial row
shinsuke sugiyama
igor morgulov


Lixil mulls another overseas takeover

Abstract: Lixil Group Corp., which agreed to buy bathroom-fixture makers American Standard Brands and Grohe Group last year, is studying another overseas acquisition to boost revenue from emerging markets. The planned deal will help Tokyo-based Lixil achieve its target of increasing sales from emerging markets to more than 30 percent of its revenue, from about 20 percent now, Chief Executive Officer Yoshiaki Fujimori said in an interview Monday. The company could spend tens of billions of yen on its next takeover, Fujimori added. Since Fujimori joined the company in June 2011, Lixil has spent $5.3 billion buying companies in the U.S. and Europe to counter slowing demand at home amid the shrinking population. It is now seeking acquisitions that can help increase revenue from Southeast Asia, South America and Africa, he said. “2014 will be the year for Lixil to start full-fledged efforts to globalize itself with the brands we have created and gained through acquisitions,” said Fujimori, who formerly worked for General Electric Co. “We’ll seek a two-digit percentage growth in revenue by expanding sales from emerging markets.” Fujimori declined to identify any targets, saying only that a deal would be “water-related.” Besides bathroom fixtures, Lixil also manufactures building materials for housing as well as doors and windows. To keep pace with its global shift, Lixil plans to reshape management for some of its departments, including human resources, marketing and business development, Fujimori said. The company will hire an American lawyer fluent in Japanese, Chinese and English to head its legal department starting in April, he said, without identifying the person. In September, Lixil and Development Bank of Japan agreed to acquire an 87.5 percent stake in Germany’s Grohe, a maker of high-end faucets and other bathroom fixtures, for €2.94 billion ($4 billion). The deal is expected to close by June 30. It earlier bought the maker of American Standard toilets for $542 million and has also purchased Permasteelisa SpA, which made walls for the Guggenheim Museum and Sydney Opera House. Lixil’s revenue for the year that ended in March 2013 rose 11 percent to ¥1.44 trillion, while net income jumped more than elevenfold to ¥21.3 billion. It forecasts profit of ¥41 billion for this business year, on revenue of ¥1.6 trillion, Lixil said in its Nov. 5 earnings statement. Fujimori said he almost pulled out of early negotiations to buy Grohe after disagreeing on price and will always keep the option of walking away from an acquisition. “You don’t put yourself in a position that you must make a deal no matter what,” he said.


Taiwan unveils baby panda to public

Abstract: TAIPEI - A 6-month old giant panda was unveiled to her adoring public in Taiwan on Monday, as long lines of children of all ages queued up at the Taipei zoo to see the cub cavorting around her cage with an understandably protective mother. Yuan Zai’s debut had long been anticipated on this island of 23 million people. With delighted visitors passing in front of her cage at the rate of 40 per minute, Yuan Zai showed off her climbing skills before retreating to mother Yuan Yuan’s embrace, and then heading off for a nap. She currently sleeps 20 hours a day. Zoo officials say they will be able to accommodate 19,000 visitors a day to see Yuan Zai, whose mother and father came to Taiwan from China in late 2008. Their arrival was seen at the time as a high water mark in Beijing’s use of “soft power” in Taiwan, which split from the mainland amid civil war in 1949, and remains the object of unwavering Chinese attempts to bring it back into the fold — by persuasion if possible, by force if necessary. But politics seemed to be about the last thing on the minds of Yuan Zai’s fan base Monday as again and again visitors’ faces lit up with broad smiles amid giggles of glee and repeated cries of “how cute” or “how beautiful.” Chinese giant pandas have been a hit all around the world, but they seem to have a special cachet in Taiwan, where animal figures are so much in vogue that Taiwanese airline company Eva Airways has found that festooning its aircraft in the livery of fictional Japanese character Hello Kitty provides a powerful boost to sales.


Renesas hopes to ax 5,400 more jobs

Abstract: Struggling chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp., seeking to accelerate restructuring efforts, plans to slash another 5,400 domestic employees, or around 20 percent of its workforce, by the end of March 2016 through early retirements, according to company sources. The labor union, however, opposes the plan. The move by the labor side could make it difficult for the company to carry out the personnel cuts. Renesas aims to achieve an operating margin of 10 percent in fiscal 2016. It cut about 3,000 employees last fall after the third round of calls for early retirement, but it has been forced to consider additional restructuring measures as it fell short of its goal. The semiconductor maker has been rebuilding its management after seeing its business deteriorate due to the strong yen in the past and intensifying competition from overseas rivals. During the three calls for early retirement since its launch in 2010 through the merger of Renesas Technology Corp. and NEC Corp.’s semiconductor unit, more than 11,000 workers left the company. After announcing the closure of some production bases, Renesas received ¥150 billion in investment from the government-backed Innovation Network Corporation of Japan and eight Japanese companies, including Toyota Motor Corp., last September. Renesas intends to further slash its fixed costs to improve profits as its profit plan does not see sales increasing, the sources said. As for the envisioned personnel cut, the company plans to introduce a new program to encourage employees to transfer to other companies in addition to soliciting early retirements, the sources said. PCs tumble in Asia Singapore AFP-JIJI Sales of personal computers fell 10 percent in the Asia-Pacific region last year due to sluggish economic growth and tough competition from mobile devices, an industry analyst said. International Data Corp. said Tuesday that sales of PCs fell to 108 million units outside Japan, marking the region’s first annual double-digit decline. “The economic sluggishness in big emerging markets in the region adversely affected buying sentiment,” IDC said. “On the consumer side, smartphone and tablet distractions spread throughout the region this year, further contributing to the sharp decline in the PC market.” IDC analyst Handoko Andi added that “2014 is expected to remain another challenging year for the PC market as competition will only grow among the devices.”

renesas
job cuts
restructuring
chipmakers


Sea Shepherd: Dolphin roundup biggest in four years

Abstract: Fishermen in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, have finished killing about 40 dolphins targeted for their meat as part of a larger group trapped recently in what activists say was the biggest roundup they have witnessed in the last four annual hunts. Sea Shepherd, best known for its anti-whaling activities, said that of roughly 250 captured dolphins, the fishermen first selected 52 to keep alive for sale to aquariums and other customers. They included a rare albino calf and its mother. Of the rest, about 40 were killed, one became stuck in a net and drowned, and the others were released, it said. A video released Tuesday ( apne.ws/1hIC1xm ) by Sea Shepherd shows dozens of fishermen on boats surveying the dolphins after they were confined to a cove with nets. Divers can be seen holding the dolphins selected for sale and guiding them to nets hanging off the boats. While other dolphins have been killed since the hunting season began in September, Sea Shepherd said the 250 herded into the cove last Friday was the largest group it has seen since it began monitoring the hunt. The annual hunt in the village of Taiji received high-profile criticism when U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy tweeted last weekend that she was deeply concerned about the practice. The fishermen say the hunt is part of their tradition and call foreign critics who eat other kinds of meat hypocritical. A government spokesman defended the annual dolphin hunt on Monday, saying it is carried out in accordance with the law. The hunt was the subject of the Academy Award-winning 2009 film “The Cove.”


In Davos, gripping kabuki with little substance

Abstract: Afriend asks via email: “Did you see the video of Abe in Davos?” I hadn’t. So I did. Many thanks to the friend for some highly toe-curling and blood-curdling entertainment. Much effort must have gone into achieving that overall effect. Gripping as the performance was, the temptation to hide behind the couch for sheer embarrassment was rather great. Apart from the entertainment value, there were a number of points that I felt compelled to comment on regarding the content of Abe’s speech. Three to be precise. For one, the gent doth protest too much, methinks. I have discovered that Wikipedia has some interesting things on this point. Let me quote them verbatim: ” ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks” is a quotation from the 1602 play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. It has been used as a figure of speech, in various phrasings, to indicate that a person’s overly frequent or vehement attempts to convince others of something have ironically helped to convince others that the opposite is true, by making the person look insincere and defensive.” To my mind, the above sounds like the live commentary on that Davos speech of Abe’s. There was much protestation concerning the robustness of the Japanese economy, of the new industries that were about to spring to life, of the vibrancy that defies the concept of twilight. All this is great stuff insofar as rallying cries go. But are they true? More to the point, why so much emphasis on health and well being? Such excess protestation tends to sow seeds of doubt. Does he know something we don’t? Are things so bad that he has to go to this extent to protest against reality? Is he in denial? And so forth. Of course, it could well be that he believes he can walk on water anyway. In which case woe betide those who are on board when his ship starts sinking after all. The second issue is one of positioning. Abe was supposedly given the honor of delivering a keynote speech for the Davos gathering. Putting aside for the moment the issue of what on earth these meetings are for in the first place, keynote speeches are surely not about posturing. Nor are they about parading one’s perceived achievements. Keynote speeches, as I understand them, should set the tone for the questions that need to be addressed in the discussions that are about to take place. Such speeches ought to inspire. They should get people thinking. They should stimulate minds. They should give rise to discourse of a high intellectual caliber. High octane was much in evidence in the Abe speech, but to what keynote end was not at all evident. The third issue is one of semantics. The prime minister and his cohorts seem eager to make the phrase “ganban kisei” catch on. “Ganban” is a thick slab of rock. “Kisei” is regulation. Japanese newspapers reported that the prime minister made much of this phrase in his Davos speech. What the prime minister actually said in English was that he will go ahead and destroy all “rock solid vested interests.” “Rock solid” is entirely acceptable as a translation for ganban. But what about vested interests? Are all rules and regulations actually vested interests? Should all regulations be the target of ax-grinding and drill-wielding because they are by definition borne out of vested interests? Are there no regulations anywhere that are deemed legitimate because they protect the right kind of interests? In this day and age of “black” companies that exploit their staff, it could well be that we need more, not less, regulation. Of the right kind. Noriko Hama is an economist and a professor at Doshisha University Graduate School of Business.

shinzo abe
world economic forum
davos
noriko hama
japanese perspectives
wef


More than 1,600 overcome by heat last week

Abstract: Hospitals across Japan treated 1,637 people for heatstroke last week, including four fatalities, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said Tuesday. The preliminary tally represents a more than sevenfold increase from 230 cases during the same period a year earlier, and compares with 352 cases the previous week. The agency said casualties spiked Saturday and Sunday, when temperatures topped 35 degrees in some parts of the country. Of those taken to the hospital by ambulance, 425 people required hospitalization and 41 required stays of three weeks or more. More than 40 percent of those hospitalized were 65 or older. The heat showed no signs of easing Tuesday as the town of Bihoro in Hokkaido recorded an all-time high of 37.2 degrees by early afternoon. It was the fourth consecutive day in which temperatures in Japan topped 35. The Meteorological Agency issued a heat alert for most of Hokkaido and for nearby Akita Prefecture, and urged the public to take precautions against heatstroke. The agency reported the start of the rainy season in the Shikoku region in western Japan, two days earlier than normal. The rainy season usually ends in Shikoku around July 18


When a physical wasteland bred a moral wasteland

Abstract: He lived by fire and he died by fire. He was vile — coldblooded, amoral, ruthless. He was the man his time called for, and the man his time called forth — a vile time, by most standards. Its name is Sengoku Jidai, a period of prolonged civil war. Oda Nobunaga (1534-82) is its most representative character — a military genius and a moral monster. He was a visionary, a shaper of the future, to which, if necessary — and it was — he would sacrifice the present. Or was he simply power-mad? The central government, long impotent, had collapsed altogether, leaving Japan a confused welter of domains ruled by ungovernable warlords — some 260 of them as of 1467. The Onin War that began that year dragged on for a decade, reducing Kyoto, the ancient capital, to a smoldering ruin. The Zen poet Ikkyu (1394-1481) wrote: “One burst of flame and the capital — gilt palaces and how many mansions — turns before one’s eyes into wasteland.” Physical wasteland breeds moral wasteland — a morality of the sword. “As the cherry among blossoms, so the warrior among men,” goes an old saying. No saint, the warrior. “The path of the soldier is a deceitful one,” wrote the Confucian scholar Kaibara Ekiken (1630-1714). Bored with the peace of his own time, Ekiken looked back with nostalgia on Nobunaga’s era, perhaps on Nobunaga himself. “Depending on the circumstances of the moment,” he wrote, “one might trick or betray one’s allies, usurp the spoils won by others or throw the land into turmoil and seize it from those above: As a matter of military tactics, there is nothing wrong with this. It is the way of warfare in Japan.” The end of the Onin War brought not peace but fighting under different names, or under no names, for causes that defy attempts to make them sound noble. Or, perhaps not. For beneath the sordid land hunger and lust for power, amid the carnage, the disdain for life, the shifting alliances and betrayals and breakdown of even a semblance of moral decency as anyone now living understands the term, an idea was taking shape, vague at first, clearer as time passed. Nobunaga, with what mixture of idealism and cynicism it is impossible to know, was among the first to articulate it. His motto, tenka fubu (“the realm, ruled by might”) meant, in effect, national unification, under a ruler strong enough to quell chaos and impose order on fierce local lords. He was the man and his the might, he thought. So it might have proved, had he lived. He was born in 1534, son of a minor samurai in a minor province, Owari, roughly today’s Aichi Prefecture. His father’s death in 1551 left the family headship in dispute, and the first act by which we know Nobunaga is his murder, by a foul stratagem, of a younger brother asserting rival claims. The second is more significant — stunning, in fact. With 3,000 soldiers he crushed an army of 25,000 — probably the largest army in Japan at the time — led by a neighboring lord en route to Kyoto to press his own version of something like tenka fubu. If you’ve never heard of the Imagawa clan, it’s because Nobunaga effectively wiped it out — otherwise you might have. He was suddenly much sought after as an ally. Alliances were customarily sealed with marriages. Nobunaga’s younger sister, Oichi, symbol to later times of the samurai woman quietly enduring the unendurable, around 1565 was given in marriage to a son of the Asai clan. In 1570, the Asai broke with Nobunaga and joined his enemy, the Asakura clan. Didn’t they know who they were dealing with? Defeated, a surviving Asai-Asakura remnant sought refuge in the Enryakuji, one of thousands of Buddhist temples on Mount Hiei overlooking Kyoto. Buddhist monks then were not what they are now. They were armed and dangerous. Here was Nobunaga’s chance. His soldiers set fire to the surrounding dry fields. Thousands burned to death. “Everything, everywhere,” says a contemporary chronicle, “from the central cathedral to the 21 shrines of the Mountain King, the bell tower and the library, were burned to the ground.” Buddhism in Japan never recovered its dominating influence. Oichi was permitted to return to her brother’s castle with her three daughters. Her infant son, however, was put to death. By 1582, Nobunaga was master of Kyoto and of one-third of Japan. The nation’s future seemed his to mold. A resentful retainer turned on him, setting fire to the Kyoto temple in which he was hosting a tea party. Nobunaga’s body was never found. The future was his anyway — or was it? It was, in that within 30 years of his death tenka fubu was no dream but reality, Japan firmly united under the rule of Nobunaga’s ally, Tokugawa Ieyasu, first of a long line of Tokugawa shoguns stretching all the way ahead to 1867. In another sense, Nobunaga was less successful. Not he but his treacherous assassin was the hero of 18th-century kabuki re-enactments. In one play, his killer declaims, “Heedless of remonstrance, Nobunaga destroyed shrines and temples, daily piling up atrocity upon atrocity. It was my calling to slay him for the sake of the warrior’s way, for the sake of the realm” Never mind that in the Sengoku Jidai there was no “realm” — and not much of a “warrior’s way” either, unless it was the “way” articulated by Ekiken, or by a warlord named Uesugi Kenshin (1530-78), a Nobunaga rival and a Zen man who succinctly summed up both Zen and his times: “Those who cling to life die. Those who defy death live.”


U.S. professors urge universities to sever ties with China's Confucius Institutes

Abstract: BUFFALO, NEW YORK - University professors in the United States have joined their Canadian counterparts in urging universities to cut ties with Confucius Institutes unless the agreements that bring them to campus are reworked to guarantee academic freedom. A report by the American Association of University Professors said universities “have sacrificed the integrity of the university and its academic staff” by allowing the Chinese government to supervise curriculum and staff at the institutes it has established on more than 100 North American campuses to promote Chinese culture and language. “Allowing any third-party control of academic matters is inconsistent with principles of academic freedom, shared governance, and the institutional autonomy of colleges and universities,” the report by the association’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure said. The Canadian Association of University Teachers raised the same issues in December following an instructor’s human rights complaint alleging discrimination based on her belief in Falun Gong, a spiritual group that has been banned in China. The complaint led McMaster University in Ontario to close its Confucius Institute last year after the complaint was settled through mediation. The Beijing headquarters for the Confucius Institutes, the Office of Chinese Language Council International, known as Hanban, did not respond to requests for comment. However, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, ran an article Friday seeking to refute the AAUP report’s claims, quoting representatives from foreign institutions from Germany to Thailand who called them unfounded. When reached, directors at several Confucius Institutes in the U.S. also defended the institutes, saying the AAUP doesn’t understand how they work. “The university comes first, and then the Confucius Institute, which must operate within the rules of the university,” said Xu Zaocheng, director of the institute at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. “It is true that it is a program under the Chinese Ministry of Education, but the accusations reflect the Cold War mentality,” Xu said. The Chinese “fund these activities, but they are not controlling them,” said Stephen Dunnett, chairman of the binational committee that oversees the University at Buffalo’s 5-year-old institute. “If they came here and said we will give you this money but we’re going to control it: We’re going to pick the curriculum, we’re going to pick the teachers by ourselves, and we’re going to teach or not teach what we want. . . . What U.S. university would ever do that?” he said.


Doctor admits trying to murder dialysis patient 'on impulse'

Abstract: A doctor has admitted trying to kill a dialysis patient by removing a tube and causing the man to bleed out, police said Friday. Internist Kenjiro Hashizume of Machida, western Tokyo, told investigators he went to his clinic and picked a victim at random after suddenly getting an urge to kill someone, officers at Machida Police Station said. Hashizume, 49, was arrested Thursday for allegedly removing a tube that controlled the blood flow of a patient undergoing dialysis the previous day. He appeared before the Tokyo Public Prosecutor’s Office on Friday. A specialist in internal medicine, Hashizume is director of the Akebono No. 2 Clinic, which specializes in kidney conditions. Police quoted him saying he felt a sudden urge to kill when calling at a convenience store on his way home from work at 7 p.m. Wednesday. He returned to the clinic at around 8:20 p.m. The 50-year-old victim realized he had been disconnected from the dialyzer when he saw blood spurting from a tube, police said. Hashizume then drove to Machida Police Station and turned himself in. The victim is described as being in a stable condition. Police suspect the physician may be mentally ill. Hashizume said he has been telling his family about problems at work and other worries for years, adding that he tried to kill himself a few days before the incident, the police said. “I tried to commit suicide but I failed,” they quoted him as saying. “I wanted to kill someone, then get caught by police and be put to death.” They added Hashizume reported having trouble sleeping and concentrating at work for about six months. During questioning, the police said Hashizume told them he picked the victim “because he happened to be near the entrance” of the dialysis room. About 10 patients were undergoing treatment at the time and were under the care of clinic staff on shift at that time.Toshiaki Nango, director of the Sanyukai group, which runs Akebono No. 2, apologized for what happened. The company also runs two other clinics and Akebono Hospital in Machida. A similar event at the same clinic resulted in the death of a woman in June 2010, investigators said. The patient died of severe bleeding after a tube was disconnected. Hashizume was the doctor who confirmed the woman’s death, but investigators concluded that one of the nurses, not Hashizume, was responsible and filed a case with prosecutors on charges of professional negligence resulting in death. Patients and neighbors expressed shock at the arrest of a man they had considered mild-mannered. “He looked really gentle and didn’t seem to be capable of doing such a horrible thing,” said a man in his 70s living near the clinic. Fujiko Kinoshita, 72, a Machida resident received dialysis treatment under Hashizume’s care, gave a similar impression. “He was very polite and always kind when he responded to my questions,” Kinoshita said.


The hormone behind man's best friend

Abstract: The other day I saw a picture of a dead dog on Twitter. Gross, right? Not at all, for this wasn’t just any old dog: This was Hachiko, perhaps the most famous dog in the world, and certainly the most famous in Japan. The tweet announced that it was the last photo ever taken of Hachiko. He is shown lying on a pallet, surrounded by the staff of Shibuya Station and his owner’s wife. It is 1935, and every day for the last 11 years Hachiko has been turning up at Shibuya Station to meet his master, a University of Tokyo professor called Hidesaburo Ueno. But unbeknownst to the dog, the professor died in 1925, so for 10 of those years Hachiko has waited in vain. Even when he was alive, Hachiko was a famous dog. People would come to see him, pat him and give him treats. But when he died (of cancer, not from a yakitori skewer as some legends have it), the fame just got bigger. A year before his death, a statue was erected outside the station in his honor. It’s obvious why he is so famous. It’s a touching story. People like to feel the sad warmth that comes from contemplating a story of death, loyalty and love. When I searched Twitter to find the photo I’d seen, I found lots of mentions of Hachiko, lots of stories about him and lots of retweets of “the last photo.” Dog lovers are a fierce tribe, and it may be reckless to even ask why dogs are so loyal, or seem coldly scientific to investigate the underlying cause. But getting on for 100 years since Professor Ueno’s death, fellow University of Tokyo scientists are doing just that. Teresa Romero, Miho Nagasawa and colleagues — all current or one-time dog owners — are looking at how the hormone oxytocin is involved in the way dogs form bonds with humans and other dogs. If Hachiko is the world’s most famous dog, oxytocin may be the most famous hormone. (Though adrenalin would put up a good fight.) Often introduced as “the cuddle chemical,” “the love hormone” or even “the moral molecule,” it is known to be involved in the formation of the bond between mother and child (the contractions of the uterus stimulate its production). It is behind the monogamous pairing of prairie voles, and it can also make people more trusting. Most research on oxytocin has been on monogamous animals, and in humans in a reproductive context. Romero and Nagasawa wanted to explore its possible role in other types of social relationships. Being dog people, they naturally wondered about dogs — canine relations with humans and with other dogs. How do dogs — which are pack animals, remember — form social bonds with their group members? “Oxytocin was an excellent candidate, since previous research has shown that it plays an important role in parental bonding and mating in both humans and other animals,” says Romero. And if oxytocin is involved, it makes sense to investigate its role in the relationship dogs form with humans. The team recruited 16 dogs. (It would be nice for my story if one of the subjects was an Akita dog, the same breed as Hachiko, but no: nine standard poodles, four Labrador retrievers, one German shepherd, one Shetland sheep dog and one border collie.) The animals were given oxytocin in a nasal spray, and their behavior was recorded for the next half hour. The team found that compared with dogs given only a saline nasal spray, the oxytocin-dosed dogs showed more positive social behavior toward other dogs and humans. They approached them more, looked toward them more and initiated social contact more. “Oxytocin plays an important role in how dogs form and maintain friendly relationships with both their owners and dog partners,” says Romero. The team conclude that oxytocin might be the way enduring cooperative bonds evolved. Dogs or other animals don’t need to understand that it will be in their genetic best interest to cooperate with each other, or even with other species — oxytocin does it for them. Dog people will often assert that their dogs have moods, and even that dogs are capable of love. Sometimes it’s hard to deny the idea. I read about a dog with a lifelong hatred of water, but which jumped into a lake to drag a fallen child to safety. But oxytocin can explain bonding without invoking love. Since the hormone enhances the feeling of reward that the animal receives, a dog automatically learns to associated the good feeling it gets from positive interactions with another dog or with a human. A positive feedback loop means that if it repeats something that has given it a rewarding feeling — such as waiting for its master at the train station for the pat on the head it receives — it will continue to perform that behavior. Or as Romero puts it: “Our results provide new insight into the mechanisms that facilitate the maintenance of close social bonds and complement a growing body of evidence that identifies oxytocin as one of the neurochemical foundations of sociality in mammals.” Her work is published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI reference: 10.1073/pnas.1322868111). It makes me wonder about Hachiko. Why did he wait so long? Was he stuck in a hopeless feedback loop, waiting every day for a reward that never came? “It’s unknown if differences in the type and distribution of oxytocin receptors in dogs modulate their behavior,” says Romero. Surely in normal cases the loop wears out — dogs stop waiting, people stop loving. If you never stop loving and you never stop waiting, is something wrong? Actually, I think that’s something that no experiments on oxytocin will ever answer.


Is 'rational' Toru Hashimoto acting irrationally?

Abstract: Just how little influential political or intellectual opposition in Japan is there to fundamentally conservative politics and economic theories touting the wisdom of the corporate mentality? Well consider this: Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of Osaka and co-founder of Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party), may soon start to look like a rational moderate. Yet that’s the Alice in Wonderland world we’re in, following Nippon Ishin’s split between Hashimoto and 37 of his mostly Osaka, mostly younger followers, and Shintaro Ishihara and the 23 mostly Old Men of Tokyo (at least at the top), who are by and large conservative or ultraright-wing in their views and supported by the more extreme elements of Japan’s electorate. After the split, “rational” was the word Hashimoto used several times to describe the character of his Osaka supporters. They are, he suggested, men and women more interested in practical issues than in refighting World War II or nursing a grudge over the U.S.-led Occupation. When it comes to China and South Korea, there’s something of an attitude in the Hashimoto camp of “business is business and politics are politics,” and the two can, and should be, separated (although they erred badly in assuming their Asian “friends” would feel the same way about Hashimoto’s “comfort women” remarks last year). As a politician, Hashimoto has visited China and South Korea (but hasn’t yet set foot in the continental U.S.) and was impressed by the energy — and comparative youthfulness — of local government and business leaders, how “rational” they appeared, and how Osaka needed some of their “pragmatic” leadership. Of course, the rationale behind Hashimoto’s use of the word rational is political and ideological. His economic advisers tend to admire the political-economic policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The mostly older male corporate leaders and academics were studious young men during the 1980s, when such theories were in vogue. They learned their lessons well, even if most have learned little since. But the new version of Hashimoto and Nippon Ishin is drawing interest both inside and outside of Osaka. The Democratic Party of Japan’s Seiji Maehara, the darling of U.S.-Japan think tank experts and a China hawk, appears interested in a political alliance with Hashimoto. Maehara, from neighboring Kyoto, enjoys the support of many businesses there involved in renewable energy, a key Hashimoto goal. Since Hashimoto’s Nippon Ishin already plans to merge with Yui no To, which will add 14 members, an agreement with Maehara and his roughly 20 followers to merge or cooperate in the Diet would turn it into a powerful opposition party. If, as some in Osaka predict, the DPJ’s Goshi Hosono and his 15 followers also decide to tie up with Hashimoto, the Osaka mayor would again be one of Japan’s most influential politicians. However, the break with Ishihara and the political chattering about how many Diet allies Hashimoto will wind up with obscures a vital fact: Locally, he and his Osaka-based group Osaka Ishin no Kai (One Osaka) are in deep trouble. The plan to administratively merge the city of Osaka with the prefecture is all but dead due to opposition in both assemblies from New Komeito and the LDP. Osaka Ishin’s members are now nervously eyeing their prospects in the local elections scheduled for spring 2015, wondering if they’ll be voted out of office. So while many in Osaka are happy that Hashimoto ditched Ishihara and continue to back him during his attempt to recast himself as a rational opposition leader in the Diet, a growing number in Osaka are wondering if Hashimoto’s claim of rationality isn’t — politically at least — irrational. View from Osaka is a monthly column that examines the latest news from a Kansai perspective.

china
nippon ishin no kai
shintaro ishihara
toru hashimoto
osaka
south korea
kansai
japan restoration party


Gambling experts await green light

Abstract: At last month’s Global Gaming Expo Asia (G2E) in Macau, casino and resort operators, game machine manufacturers, government officials and countless others gathered to review gaming laws and markets in countries ranging from Vietnam to China and the Philippines. But at this year’s G2E in the 3,000-room Venetian Macao resort, which boasts a shopping arcade mimicking the canals of Venice and acres of casino space large enough to host thousands of attendees from over 70 countries, it was Japan, the one major Asian country without casinos, that was on the minds of many attendees. “There are a couple of things that are different this time about the movement in Japan to legalize gaming through integrated resorts compared to past discussions. First, there is now political stability with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Second, there’s a renewed emphasis on the economy with ‘Abenomics,’ and this type of economic project fits in with those macroeconomic policies,” said Ed Bowers, senior vice president of global gaming development at MGM Resorts International, which is interested in building a casino in Osaka. Gaming professionals noted that, unlike Tokyo, Osaka government officials have been very proactive in courting international resort operators and interest in the city is high. However, Bowers and Japanese gaming officials present in Macau, while optimistic, were also cautious. “It’s going to take time. The IR promotion bill now being considered in the Diet has to be passed, probably in the autumn session. Within a year after that, the government has to draw up the legal framework for casinos and then amend or create new legislation necessary to allow casinos,” said Takashi Kiso, CEO of the International Casino Institute, a Japanese think tank and lobby group. Nobody in Macau was placing bets on whether casino gambling would arrive in Japan before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But there was a general feeling that, when Japan does open its first integrated resort with a casino in Osaka or elsewhere, it will likely be a hybrid of the casino models found in Singapore and Macau. “The Singapore model restricts entry of locals, with controls such as entrance fees and third-party blacklisting (those on welfare or with bad financial records). At the Venetian in Macau, you have a casino right in the middle of the complex. But in Singapore, the casino had to be more hidden, and those wanting to go would have to find it themselves. There are also severe restrictions on advertising,” said Steve Park, managing director of KORE Co., a Seoul-based consulting firm to the international gaming industry. “The Macau model is freer but puts more responsibility on individuals to ensure they don’t end up in harm’s way. Singapore, though, is paternalistic,” Park said. “If you look at South Korea, a Confucian-based culture, or Japan, also very conservative, the paternalistic model of restrictions has to be to their nature. That’s probably why those countries’ officials like the Singapore model better than the Macau or Las Vegas model.”


Shark 'photo-bombs' competition for surfing mothers in Australia

Abstract: CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - A jumping shark has “photo-bombed” a surfing competition off an Australian beach. Amateur photographer Steph Bellamy captured the image of the shark with her smartphone on Sunday as she was photographing mothers and their children paddling on their surfboards off a beach in the New South Wales state town of Coffs Harbour. Bellamy, 47, said Tuesday that she did not know that the splash in her viewfinder was a shark until she examined the image on her phone moments later. “He jumped twice, he photo-bombed big time, then he went on his way,” Bellamy said. “Photo-bombing” is a term for when someone jumps into the frame of a photo just before the shot is taken. The mothers, like Bellamy, had children in the Coffs Harbour Boardriders club and were taking part in a special mothers’ heat toward the end of day of a local surfing competition when the shark appeared a few meters away from the group. She photographed the second breach. Bellamy quickly showed the image to organizers, proving that the split-second disturbance had not been caused by a dolphin or tuna. The surfers were called out of the water. But about 15 minutes later, most returned and the completion continued, she said. “Nobody was rattled. Everybody was really cool and blown away that I got the shot,” Bellamy said. Colin Simpfendorfer, a James Cook University shark expert, confirmed that the image was of a shark. He said it was possibly a spinner shark, which is common in the region and is known to jump from the water. He estimated it was around 2 meters long. Lee Winkler, who was among the surfers near the shark, said he mistook it for a tuna. “It was having a bit of fun,” Winkler said. “It just jumped up and had a spin, then jumped up and had another spin, then went away.”


LDP campaign message diverges in urban, rural areas

Abstract: The Dec. 14 Lower House election is being billed as primarily a voter referendum on economic issues, especially “Abenomics.” But regardless of what the parties’ Tokyo headquarters say is official policy on various issues, it’s what the candidates and the local party chapters say, or don’t say, out on the campaign trail that wins or loses votes. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s national platform devotes one paragraph to the Trans-Pacific Partnership — that the party is pursuing the most favorable path for Japan’s interests based on previous LDP and Diet resolutions. But in those parts of the country where the free trade pact is a particularly sensitive issue, local LDP chapters have released their own interpretations. “We will not allow the abolishment of tariffs on important agricultural items, and that won’t stop us from withdrawing (from negotiations) if these sacred areas can’t be guaranteed. We’ll protect until the end the life and industry of the people of Hokkaido,” the LDP Hokkaido chapter campaign platform reads. In the Hokkaido No. 11 district, the LDP’s Yuko Nakagawa, 55, is seeking re-election in a district that includes the farm-heavy Obihiro and Tokaichi areas, where anti-TPP sentiment is among the strongest in Japan. She has repeatedly reminded voters of the prefectural chapter’s message, even though opinion about the TPP in Hokkaido as a whole is varied. “Eastern Hokkaido is generally more against TPP than western Hokkaido and the Sapporo area, which is more like Tokyo,” says Shoko Uchida, a Tokyo-based anti-TPP activist. “People just want cheap agricultural goods.” In early 2013, a Mainichi Shimbun survey of 480 Lower House members on their attitudes about participating in TPP negotiations revealed that 244 were opposed. The negotiations remain stalled, partially due to the inability of Tokyo and Washington to come to an agreement on agricultural products. Other issues high on voters’ minds are restarting the nation’s idled nuclear power plants to public concerns about collective self-defense and the new state secrets law. The national LDP’s platform is more detailed about nuclear power than it is on the TPP, calling it an important baseload energy source. It goes on to talk about the need to obtain local understanding for restarting reactors if they pass the new safety regulations. In Kagoshima Prefecture, where two reactors at the Sendai plant may be restarted early next year, the LDP’s prefectural chapter has similar language about the need to pass new safety standards. But it also says it will make the maximum effort to obtain the sufficient understanding of residents and local governments, which can be read as broader in scope than merely obtaining the permission of Satsumasendai, the city where the plant is located. The Sendai plant lies in the Kagoshima No. 3 district, where incumbent Takeshi Noma, who is running as an independent and is wary of the restarts. Noma is facing off against LDP and Komeito-backed Takuma Miyaji in a race that is expected to be close.

tpp
liberal democratic party
lower house election
platform
local chapters


#pulsepresents: gift idea grab bag

Abstract: Stumped about what kind of Christmas gift to give the Japanophile in your life? Here’s a grab bag of possibilities, prepared by Japan Pulse’s elves. And you can follow us on Twitter for more #pulsepresents , tweeted daily. Commemorative Tokaido Shinkansen KitKats Trainspotters will love you forever if you can track down a package of these cool limited edition KitKats, sold in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the Tokaido Shinkansen. The packaging, depicted a number of classics, can be folded into a mini train. The flavor is, inexplicably, frozen mikan. Jagarico Panic In this hot potato-style game, which requires the actual potato snack, players take turns opening up the container to remove a crunchy potato stick. The loser has to draw a penalty card which, in this video, includes a tissue nose probe. Ew. “The Art of Setting Stones” For your stressed-out friend, we suggest “The Art of Setting Stones” an overview of traditional Japanese gardens, which describes how the gardens are both “a microcosm of the natural universe and a clear expression of our humanity.” Ki no Kami Snap Animals The “Wooden Paper” Snap Animals series lets kids build their own toys by snapping together shapes to construct various animals. Cardcaptor Sakura Cosmetics Cardcaptors of the Clow, expect the unexpected blemish now! A new cosmetic kit featuring Sakura’s magical tools doubles as cute trinkets from the anime and manga series, as well as lip balm and foundation. Funagata Bags Designer Kazumi Takigawa has created a new type of canvas bag that has a similar look of the typical brown paper bag but with the functionality and durability of a tote. Each bag is handmade in a variety of shapes and sizes. Hello Kitty, Hello 40 On her anniversary, 40 fans — from comic artists to toy creators — pay homage to world’s most famous mouthless feline.


Rage against the capital's (bureaucratic) machine

Abstract: As the Dec. 14 Lower House election demonstrated, media analysis of political campaigning typically focuses on personalities and parties. In recent years, official manifests serve as TV talking points as pundits — be they boorish young comedians or serious, sober-minded, gray-haired fellows — debate at length each party’s stance on the economy, social welfare, constitutional revision, nuclear power, self-defense or the rural-urban divide. Invariably, reams of data are presented as insightful analysis, while no reporter wishes to be thought of as being irresponsible for depriving the citizenry of their right to know how many terms the candidate has previously won, or failing to show how they are all striving equally hard to win. But while the media focus on politicians and elected parties address the who, what, where and when of Japanese politics, it can fall short of providing a road map to understanding the “why.” That’s because, as any loyal Osakan will tell you, the country’s media tend to give the bureaucracy’s role in the political process something of a pass. One of the reasons Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto’s Ishin no To (Japan Innovation Party) is hated in Tokyo so much is that, among other things, it proposes some fundamental reforms that strike at the heart of the nation’s bureaucratic kingdom, and the cozy relations that exist between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito and the bureaucracy. It’s not just oft-heard demands such as cuts in civil-servant salaries that Ishin wants, but something much more frightening: accounting transparency. The Osaka lawyers and business consultant types who joined Hashimoto’s movement brought with them standards and practices from the corporate world that threatened the unwritten rules developed over decades of LDP cooperation with the bureaucrats. Osaka’s corporate world is hardly an international model of accountability. Yet, compared to the creative bookkeeping exercised by the central government and the Diet, it at least has a logic, and a clear goal — profit — that can be easily understood. However, because Ishin handled one of its key issues, the integration of Osaka city and prefecture, so poorly, running up against entrenched local political and bureaucratic opposition that it has yet to be overcome, it was no wonder that many Osaka voters cast their ballots for the LDP or Komeito in single-district seats, even as the party finished first in Osaka Prefecture for proportional seats. Of course, the former requires more votes to obtain than the latter. But the message out of Osaka seems to be that, while voters in certain districts personally preferred LDP Candidate A to Ishin Candidate B, the number of votes cast for Ishin’s proportional seats means many in Osaka have not given upon on the dreams of either Hashimoto or Ishin to achieve civil-service reform and, eventually, more autonomy for local government. This is because a lot of younger, ambitious Osaka voters don’t trust the LDP to do much more than maintain a good relationship with the bureaucrats — namely, maintain the status quo and not move forward with fundamental reform. Such an attitude could well be seen again in April, when voters go to the polls in local elections nationwide. Ishin does not have a majority in either the municipal or prefectural assemblies, and how the Lower House results will affect those campaigns is unclear. Of course, much of Ishin’s rhetoric about corrupt bureaucrats is just that, while what sounds like utopia to Hashimoto’s supporters sounds like dystopia to a lot of other people. But Hashimoto’s reform philosophy still resonates deeply in Osaka, even if voters went for the LDP this time due to Hashimoto’s personality and Ishin’s inability to translate rhetoric into reality.

shinzo abe
toru hashimoto
osaka
ldp
liberal democratic party
bureaucracy
ishin no to
japan innovation party


Sea Shepherd protesters found in contempt of court for anti-whaling campaign

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO - Radical environmentalists were found in contempt of court Friday for failing to heed an order to halt their relentless campaign to disrupt the annual whale hunt off the waters of Antarctica. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a commissioner to determine how much Paul Watson and members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society he founded owe Japanese whalers for lawyer fees, damage to their ships and for violating the court order to stop their dangerous protests. The Japanese whalers are demanding $2 million in addition to their lawyer fees and damage and cost to their ships for warding off the protests. Calls and emails to the Sea Shepherd U.S. office and its lawyer were not returned Friday. In 2012, the court ordered Sea Shepherd to stay at least 500 feet (150 meters) from Japanese whalers and to halt dangerous activities like attempting to ram the whaler and also throwing smoke bombs and bottles of acid at the Japanese ships. The crews of Sea Shepherd ships also drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders, launch flares with hooks and point high-powered lasers at the Japanese whalers to annoy crew members. The Sea Shepherd’s exploits have been documented on the long-running Animal Planet reality TV series “Whale Wars.” The Japanese whalers filed a lawsuit in Seattle in 2011 seeking a court order halting the Sea Shepherd’s campaign. The 9th Circuit in December 2012 ordered the Sea Shepherd’s to stop their dangerous harassment of the Japanese fleet and for the group’s four ships to stay at least 500 feet (150 meters) from the whalers. Watson then transferred all of Sea Shepherd’s U.S. assets to foreign entities controlled by the group. Sea Shepherd has organizations in Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Watson also stepped down from the board of directors of Sea Shepherd organizations in the United States and Australia. Sea Shepherd Australia took over management of “operation zero tolerance,” the group’s annual harassment campaign of the whalers in the Southern Ocean. Watson also resigned as captain of the Sea Shepherd’s flagship the “Steve Irwin,” but remained aboard as an “observer.” In February 2013, the 9th Circuit appointed a commissioner to investigate whether Watson or Sea Shepherd should be held in contempt of court. The commissioner concluded on Jan. 31 that the Sea Shepherds weren’t in violation of the court order because the harassment campaign was being managed outside the United States. That same month, the Sea Shepherd’s ship “Steve Irwin” with Watson aboard collided with a Japanese whaler. On Friday, a three-judge panel rejected the commissioner’s findings. The 9th Circuit ruled that the transfer of asset and control of the Sea Shepherd from the U.S. to Australia and other countries didn’t change its 2012 order to the group to cease its dangerous activities. Contrary to the commissioner’s conclusions, the 9th Circuit said that Watson and the Sea Shepherd’s U.S. affiliate could be found liable for aiding and abetting the organization’s foreign offices to violate the court’s injunction. “Sea Shepherd U.S. is liable because it intentionally furnished cash payments, and a vessel and equipment worth millions of dollars, to individuals and entities it knew would likely violate the injunction,” Judge Milan Smith wrote for the unanimous panel. The court ordered the case sent back to the commissioner to determine how much the whalers are owed.


State secrecy law takes effect amid protests, concerns over press freedom

Abstract: Japan’s controversial state secrets law came into effect Wednesday as hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets, saying the measure undermines the public’s right to know and demanding that it be scrapped. More than 300 protesters, including roughly 100 journalists, gathered in front of the prime minister’s office in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward, chanting slogans like “We oppose the secrecy law for going to war” and “Information belongs to citizens.” “We’ve seen more and more pressure on media organizations that are critical of the administration,” said Seigo Arasaki, who heads the Japan Federation of Newspaper Workers Unions, known as Shimbun Roren. “We will monitor how the law will be applied, and raise questions,.” Under the law that cleared the Diet in December 2013, the heads of 19 government ministries and agencies can now designate as state secrets information deemed to be sensitive in the areas of diplomacy, defense, counterterrorism and counterespionage. A recent Kyodo News survey covering the 19 government offices showed the number of state secrets will likely be around 460,000. Civil servants or others who leak the secrets will face up to 10 years in prison, and those who instigate leaks, including journalists, will be subject to a prison term of up to five years. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who established the National Security Council to speed up decision-making on diplomacy and defense, has said the law will help Japan to promote exchanges of sensitive information with other countries and forge closer ties with them. State secrets are defined in 55 categories, including information about the development of submarines, aircraft, weapons and ammunition. Intelligence and images obtained via radio waves and satellites and provided by foreign governments and international organizations could be withheld from the public. The initial five-year-designation period for a state secret can be extended for up to 30 years. But state secrets can be classified for a maximum 60 years if approved by the Cabinet for security reasons. The law takes effect just as Abe appears to be seeking greater influence over the nation’s media, according to Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. The LDP sent a letter to Japan’s five biggest broadcasters last month to demand “neutral” reporting on the election. Abe told reporters on Dec. 1 he didn’t order the party to send the letter, though he hoped the election would be covered “fairly and impartially.” The Japanese Federation of Bar Associations said on its website the new act opens the door to the government arbitrarily designating secrets. “The definition of secret is very vague, and people, including myself, are wary of misuse,” said Kaori Hayashi, a professor at Tokyo University’s Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies. The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association said in a Dec. 8 statement the maximum sentence for leaks was too harsh and could damage reporting activities and the public’s “right to know.” Criticism has also been directed at the absence of an independent watchdog, as oversight entities will be placed under government control. To ease such public concerns, the Cabinet approved guidelines on the handling of state secrets, pledging that it will keep “the minimum amount of information as secrets for the shortest period of time possible” as the public’s right to know should be “greatly respected” in a democratic society. “We will make sure that the people’s right to know will not be hurt,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Tuesday. It has been revealed, meanwhile, that the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, which holds jurisdiction over the secrecy law, had warned government offices in 2011 that people who have studied or worked abroad have a higher risk of leaking state secrets. Under the secrecy law, security clearance is required for officials to handle state secrets, and the government will set up hotlines so officials can report suspicions about arbitrary classification or declassification of state secrets. The prime minister is also required to make an annual report to the Diet on the designation, safeguarding and disclosure of state secrets. After the passage of the secrecy bill last year, Japan fell six places to 59th out of 180 nations in Reporters Without Borders’ 2014 World Press Freedom Index, below such nations as Serbia and Botswana. “Investigative journalism, public interest and the confidentiality of journalists’ sources are all being sacrificed by legislators bent on ensuring that their country’s image is spared embarrassing revelations,” the group said.


Digital tack taken to revive interest in New Year's cards

Abstract: The tradition of sending “nengajo,” or New Year’s postcards, has been in decline as people turn to the Internet, social networking and digital gadgets like smartphones instead of putting pen to paper. Japan Post Co., the postal arm of government-owned Japan Post Holdings Co., is thus hoping to get younger generations interested in writing paper greeting cards this year by introducing a digital feature known as augmented reality, or AR. “Young people are using smartphones now, and we hope to attract them to the New Year’s greeting card tradition through those smartphones,” said Hiroyuki Sugita, senior manager at logistics and sales at Japan Post. “By connecting digital to tradition, we want them to discover the fun of sending New Year’s greeting cards,” he said. Numbers tell the story about the decline in nengajo. Japan Post’s issuance of New Year’s cards peaked in 2003 at 4.45 billion. The number has been falling every year since 2008, and only 3.3 billion have been issued this year. In a bid to revive interest in the New Year’s tradition, Japan Post this year is selling cards that offer virtual character content, including Hello Kitty and Japan Post’s Poskuma bear mascot, via augmented reality. Japan Post said all plain New Year’s greeting cards, which account for about 80 percent of the 3.3 billion copies, have an AR feature provided by Sony Corp. The AR feature is viewable via a special app downloaded on smartphones. The stamp locations on the cards have an embedded AR code that, when viewed through a smartphone, displays Poskuma mascot offering a greeting. Japan Post will update the special AR content on New Year’s Day so it features the pop idol group Nogizaka 48. Japan Post has produced various New Year’s greeting card designs over the years, but they never offered digital elements, Sugita said. “This time, we have blended (digital elements in the paper cards) with smartphone applications, so that customers can enjoy a different experience,” he said. Japan Post has also prepared 15 million copies of Hello Kitty-themed New Year’s cards with an AR feature provided by creator Sanrio Co. “We’ve surveyed people about (greeting card) characters and Hello Kitty is popular every year. Kitty is also popular with younger generations of women that we’d like to target for New Year’s cards,” said Shuichi Adachi, assistant manager of the postage stamp and postcard division. Naturally the AR content of the Hello Kitty cards boasts the feline character, which will appear on card recipients’ smartphone screens, clad in kimono and offering a greeting. People can also touch and move the AR Kitty around on the screen and adjust its size. Recipients can also take a picture with the AR Kitty and use it on return greeting cards. Adachi said just offering an AR feature that offers virtual content wouldn’t be very interesting, so Japan Post made it possible to take pictures with the character and use them to design New Year’s cards. Still, it is unclear how AR content will help motivate people to get back to the paper tradition, as many young people now use SNS services like Facebook , Twitter and Line to greet friends over the holidays. Japan Post offers Line nengajo services, too. While the Internet and smartphones have contributed to decline in nengajo writing, Sugita and Adachi also mentioned that Japanese people are generally becoming more sensitive about giving out their home addresses as they become increasingly aware of the need to protect personal information. This trend is also cooling people to the traditional New Year’s greeting cards, upon which they provide their address and personal notes, they said, in the belief that going digital is somehow safer. Also, “people can easily contact their friends with smartphones, so they don’t need to know their address,” Sugita said. Sugita noted that while young people nowadays rarely write and send New Year’s greeting cards, the tradition is also on decline among older generations.

new year
technology
japan post
augmented reality
ar
nengajo


Ishin-DPJ tieup, Kepco's greed to play key roles in April polls

Abstract: The Dec. 14 Lower House election was many things. But in terms of domestic politics, it was merely a prelude to something far more important: the nationwide local elections next April. Even as debate continues about whether the election weakened Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, strengthened coalition partner Komeito, showed Ishin no To (Japan Innovation Party) could still garner support, reinvigorated the Japanese Communist Party or sounded the death knell for extreme right-wing parties and politicians, all eyes have turned to April 12 and 26, 2015, when nearly 1,000 local governments, from prefectural assemblies to small villages, hold elections for governor, mayor and their legislative bodies. National-level politicians have had their eye on the April elections for a while now. Since September, Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party in particular have been talking up and promising assistance to different regions, at the sometimes nervous insistence of local LDP leaders worried that the party’s Diet members have paid insufficient attention to Japan outside of Tokyo and the bread-and-butter (or perhaps rice-and-miso soup) issues local voters expect politicians to address. For Kansai, Sunday’s Lower House election result and what it means for next April likely depends on three things. First, whether the unexpectedly strong showing of Ishin no To, co-headed by Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, will also benefit his local political group Osaka Ishin no Kai (One Osaka). Before the election, Ishin no To was widely predicted to lose as many as half of its 42 Lower House seats to LDP or Democratic Party of Japan candidates. But voters returned 41 Ishin members to the Diet. Osaka Ishin members hold pluralities in the Osaka Municipal and Prefectural assemblies. Hashimoto, and Osaka Ishin, have staked their entire existence on being able to merge the city and prefecture. However, opposition from all of the other parties, including Hashimoto’s nominal local partner Komeito, has prevented this from happening. With the LDP and Komeito agreeing to field candidates locally against Osaka Ishin in April, the party could find its strength further reduced. According to a Mainichi Shimbun prediction, 31 of the 53 single-seat districts in Osaka Prefecture will be up for grabs in April, but, thanks to the LDP-Komeito cooperation agreement, Osaka Ishin will only win only two, with the other 29 going to the ruling coalition. The second factor in who wins what in Kansai is related to the first. Hashimoto wants to tie up with those from the DPJ’s more conservative wing — especially those who are not beholden to the Rengo trade union confederation or strong unions in general. Prominent DPJ politicians mentioned by pundits as possibly joining Hashimoto include Seiji Maehara, who represents Kyoto, as well as Goshi Hosono, who represents Shizuoka but was born, raised and went to school in Shiga and Kyoto prefectures. “We’re happy to cooperate with those DPJ members who share our goals. But not DPJ members like Kiyomi Tsujimoto,” said Osaka Gov. and Ishin Secretary-General Ichiro Matsui during a recent television appearance with Tsujimoto, a liberal Lower House member from Osaka who is strongly backed by workers’ unions. The DPJ and Ishin are already working to forge a cooperation agreement for at least some races in Kansai next April. In Kyoto, where Hashimoto and Ishin are generally unpopular because they’re seen as crude loudmouths from neighboring Osaka, the two parties are plotting a strategy that would ensure no Ishin candidate runs in the same district as a DPJ candidate for the Kyoto Municipal and Prefectural assembly elections. If this “Kyoto connection” by the DPJ and Ishin produces satisfactory results, it would likely lead to other efforts by the parties’ leaders to cooperate, at the local level at least. Finally, the other issue likely to play a major role in the April elections, and one the newly elected, or re-elected, Lower House members from Kansai will have to carefully manage, is the question of reactor restarts and electricity supply. With the announcements last week that the Nuclear Regulation Authority had cleared reactors 3 and 4 at the Takahama plant, helping smooth the way for Kansai Electric Power Co. to restart them next year, and that Kepco is planning to raise prices by as much as 10 percent next April not because of a projected rise in fuel costs, but to improve its bottom line, local voters are angry at the utility. The Takahama reactors are unlikely to be restarted until after the April elections. But the NRA decision has put the problem in a political spotlight the LDP had hoped to avoid.

ldp
elections
ishin no to
snap election 2014


In no-surprise poll, parties' main players re-elected in Kinki

Abstract: In an election that produced no surprises, it’s little wonder the biggest political names in the six prefectures that make up the Kinki region (Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Nara and Wakayama) were all returned to the Diet, though one or two had a close call. No doubt Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was especially happy with the result in the Nara No. 2 district, which includes the prefecture’s eastern edge along the border with Osaka and the city of Nara. There, his close friend, the ultra-right wing Sanae Takaichi, his internal affairs and communications minister, easily defeated a candidate from former Liberal Democratic Party heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa’s latest political incarnation, Seikatsu no To (People’s Life Party). Takaichi, who in 2003 lost her seat in the district and was forced to relocate to a more conservative, rural part of the prefecture, bagged over 96,000 votes, one of the highest totals among Kinki bloc winners and about 58,000 more than her Seikatsu no To rival. The man who unseated Takaichi in the city of Nara 11 years ago also had a big night. Sumio Mabuchi of the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition force, served in the DPJ Cabinet of Naoto Kan from 2010 to 2011 as transport minister and minister for Okinawa and the Northern Territories, and then as a special adviser to the prime minister following the March 2011 quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. Mabuchi had a brief scare, running neck and neck with the LDP candidate for a couple of hours after the polls closed last Sunday. But he ended up with 79,000 votes, about 12,000 more than his rival. The other prominent DPJ candidate to win re-election was Kiyomi Tsujimoto, who took Osaka’s No. 10 district, which includes the city of Takatsuki, after a three-way battle involving a candidate from the LDP-Komeito ruling coalition and one from Ishin no To (Japan Innovation Party). Kenta Matsunami, the 43-year-old Ishin candidate, comes from a long line of Osaka politicians dogged by allegations of close ties to organized crime. But Matsunami is also a favorite of Ishin leaders Toru Hashimoto and Ichiro Matsui. Both campaigned hard on his behalf. He just managed to squeak back into the Diet under the proportional representation system. The other prominent DPJ member who cruised to victory was former Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, from Kyoto’s No. 2 district, which includes much of the eastern part of the city of Kyoto. Maehara, who beat the ruling bloc-backed candidate by nearly 30,000 votes, enjoys the support of Kyocera Corp. founder Kazuo Inamori, who was appointed chairman of then-bankrupt Japan Airlines in 2010 after Maehara, who was then transport minister, pushed for him. But Kyoto was also where two of the LDP’s biggest heavyweights were returned to the Diet. Sadakazu Tanigaki, the party’s secretary-general, easily won re-election. He represents the Kyoto No. 5 district, a large, rural area in the northern part of the prefecture along the Sea of Japan. Extending from Hyogo Prefecture in the west to Fukui Prefecture in the east, it includes the port of Maizuru, likely to be a major evacuation point if disaster strikes Fukui’s Mihama nuclear power plant, which lies 5 km from parts of the city. Meanwhile, former LDP Finance Minister Bunmei Ibuki trounced his Japanese Communist Party candidate in the Kyoto No. 1 district, which includes the more central and western parts of the city of Kyoto, by a margin of 20,000 votes. With big local names from both the LDP and the DPJ back in the Diet, Kansai remains well-represented by the most powerful established parties. Despite the rise of Hashimoto’s Ishin no To these past few years, these parties remain as strong in Kansai as they are elsewhere.


'Right to be forgotten' on the Internet gains traction in Japan

Abstract: The Internet has made fact-checking easy and people routinely use it for this end, for example, to Google client names and personal backgrounds before their first business meeting, or to take a quick glance at a potential new hire’s reputation. But such information may become harder to acquire and background searches may someday yield little information. An increasing number of people are demanding that unflattering personal tidbits about them be deleted from online search results, especially in Europe, where moves to protect the “right to be forgotten” have gained momentum. At the same time, search engines are coming under greater pressure to act on such demands. Following are questions and answers regarding the legal issues surrounding the right to be forgotten: What is the “right to be forgotten” and how has the term come to be used? The right to be forgotten — an individual’s right to be freed from perpetual online stigmatization as a result of some past action — is stipulated in a draft version of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which the European Commission is trying to introduce to unify regulations on data protection within the EU. The term “right to be forgotten” became widely known worldwide following a May ruling by the European Court of Justice involving a Spanish man who demanded his past debt record be removed from the Internet. The court said a Spanish newspaper that carried articles about the man can leave them on its website, but Google must remove links to them, citing his “right to be forgotten after a certain time.” The court also said individuals have the right to demand that search engines, including Google, remove results that are deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive.” How has Google responded? California-based Google Inc. set up a special Web form for people in Europe to file requests for removal of search results. As of Dec. 2, Google had received 178,609 requests covering 630,919 Internet addresses. It has deleted some 60 percent of all considered for removal to date but refuses to remove the rest. Google’s action, however, means that only the links to the articles are deleted, not the websites themselves. Therefore, people can still access such sites if they know the URL. Has the European decision influenced Japan? Yes. In a possible first in Japan, the Tokyo District Court in October issued an injunction ordering Google to remove the titles and snippets to websites revealing the name of a man who claimed his privacy rights were violated due to articles hinting at past criminal activity. Tomohiro Kanda, who represented the man, said the judges clearly had the European court’s ruling in mind when they ordered Google to take down the site titles and snippets. Google has since deleted search results deemed by the court as infringing on the man’s privacy, Kanda said. But generally speaking, Japanese judges have yet to reach a consensus on how to balance the right to privacy and the freedom of expression and of information. Last January, the Tokyo High Court reversed a lower court ruling that forbade Google from showing predictions in its search bar. In that case, a man sought an injunction, saying searches of his name would turn up words that suggest his involvement in a crime he did not commit. Presiding Judge Kenta Suzuki turned down the request, saying the damage the man suffers from such searches “does not outweigh the damage that Google and other Internet users would suffer (from losing that function).” The man has appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Then in September, the Kyoto District Court rejected a suit filed against Google’s Japan unit by a man in his 40s seeking to have his arrest record removed from its search results. The judges said the case lacked legal grounds and sided with Google Japan’s position that it is the U.S. parent company, not the Japanese unit, that is responsible for managing searches and therefore it is not obliged to supervise them. In the absence of regulations, Yahoo Japan convened a panel of outside experts last month to discuss the issue. Yahoo Japan, which, according to a 2009 report by U.S.-based comScore, had a 51 percent share of all search inquiries in Japan, followed by Google’s 38 percent, aims to come up with its own criteria for removal of search results by the end of March. How are privacy rights defined in Japan? Does excessive protection of those rights hurt people’s right to know and the free flow of information? Privacy rights are not clearly written into Japanese law but have been established through court precedents as part of personal rights, said Kenta Yamada, a professor of media law and journalism at Senshu University. He said that the 2003 Personal Information Protection Law only stipulates what businesses should do in handling personal information and does not spell out individuals’ rights to privacy. Yamada said he is worried the October injunction by the Tokyo District Court “will pose a huge danger to the freedom of expression,” as it could be abused by politicians or others to silence critics. “Japan is unique in the world in that politicians are quick to sue the media for defamation,” he said. “It does not matter whether they win the cases or not. It is a form of threat, and can easily lead to self-censorship on the part of the media. The October injunction could fuel that trend.” But Yamada also said that from a purely legal standpoint, Japan’s protection of free speech is among the strongest in the world. Article 21 of the Constitution places no conditions on the freedom of expression, declaring that “freedom of speech, press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed” and that “no censorship shall be maintained.” Will Japan have more court cases brought by individuals? Undoubtedly. Attorney Kanda said he has been bombarded with requests from people wanting him to represent them. Also, the Tokyo District Court has seen a sharp increase in petitions for injunctions against malicious Internet postings, with the number of such petitions handled by the court growing more than 20-fold in four years, from 33 in 2009 to 711 in 2013, according to a recent report by Kyodo News citing court sources.

google
privacy
yahoo japan
right to be forgotten