Shizuka “Crusher” Kamei

Adamu from last week:

Shizuka Kamei has been appointed minister of postal issues and financial services. The man is a fierce, fierce fighter who likes to dredge up personal scandals using his ties as a former police official. That’s probably how he got the job. Now he’s going to make sure Japan Post remains the world’s biggest and possibly worst-managed bank and he’s going to crush regional banks by allowing all the people they lended money to stop paying for three years. Great.

Adamu didn’t elaborate at the time, this is what he was talking about: Kamei is pushing for a moratorium on loan repayments for small and medium-sized companies, and says this moratorium should last for three years. This would mean that small businesses with loans or credit lines from banks which cannot be repaid can avoid being pushed into bankruptcy by their creditors and basically demand a stay as a right. And -if- when banks have problems because they can’t collect the money that they loaned, Kamei thinks the government should step in with capital infusions to the banks. And on it goes, this thing of ours.

Let’s be clear that this is not the US cash infusion into/takeover of major institutions such as Citibank, AIG, and GM. The US directly acted on the belief that these companies were vital spokes to the superstructure of the economy, and their failure would be a disaster. (Exhibit A: “Lehman Shock.”) And Washington gained an enormous level of control in these takeovers that, while controversial, do give it a major say in how macro-management operates.

Kamei’s efforts to keep small companies afloat may look noble from the little guy’s perspective. But it’s woefully short-sighted. Small companies across Japan’s countryside that are having trouble making repayments should either restructure themselves, or fail and be restructured by creditors or new management. Many have antiquated management with regards to accounting, employment rosters, operational efficiency, supply chains, etc. Companies that can’t adapt to changed economic environments are supposed to fail. Yes, some good companies caught in unlucky times are destined to be caught in the current credit crunch as they are unable to repay loans and go bankrupt. But bankruptcy is a good thing! It is the engine of economic development that allows bad companies to fail, stifled talent to move elsewhere, assets to be sold at whatever price the market will bear, and bad management to be replaced. Yes, it sucks that people lose jobs and shareholders forfeit their investments, but that’s life! Letting this happen is a necessity for economic growth.

And on top of this, the poor local banks, only barely functioning after 15 years of treading water with the bad loan crisis, will now inevitably reduce their limited lending activities to nothing. There will be no money to lend, thus no local business growth or economic development, and thus no entrepreneurial activity. A short-term benefit for stabilized employment rates means the countryside gets screwed in the long term.

Adamu said that he hopes Kamei “simply collapses under his own weight. He may well overreach in a position that gives him barely any authority at all.” Indeed — Minister of Finance Fujii opposes the moratorium plan, saying that now is not the right time, to which Kamei responded “The Minister of Finance should stick to his own job.” And while the official party line is that the moratorium is an item of discussion, Kamei has said that the “three party union” is agreed on this issue. Also, legal jurisdiction over postal privatization resides with Minister of Internal Affairs Haraguchi, who said at a press conference on the 18th “I want to work together with Minister Kamei [on the postal privatization issue].” Kamei said in an interview afterwards, “I will handle post office privatization on my responsibility as we discuss going forward. I have no intention of including Minister Haraguchi on this.”

(Oh, and an endnote to point out how much of an idiot Kamei is, in waffling over his opposition to foreigners voting in local elections, he had this to say: “The ratio of resident foreigners differs by region. It would be unacceptable if worry and dissatisfaction arose in certain areas where Japanese are the minority and their personal will is not reflected in local politics.” The town with the largest percentage of foreign residents is Oizumi-machi in Gunma prefecture, with a 10% population of foreign nationals. If I reverse engineer his point to its logical conclusion, we should implement voting for foreigners in local elections immediately and reconsider it in a few decades when there is finally a town large enough to put Japanese people in the minority.)

45 thoughts on “Shizuka “Crusher” Kamei”

  1. Without defending Kamei, I’d be surprised if the largest percentage of foreign residents in a local electoral district was 10% Is a town the smallest electoral unit? There are areas like the Homi Estate with a population of nearly 9,000 which is 48% Brazilian so I would have thought that there would be a higher percentage somewhere. Of course, I’m just thinking about a simple foreign resident count. The permanent resident population would be much smaller. I’d take a guess that the zainichi Korean population of some districts in west Japan would mean they would have the highest potential percentage of foreign voters.

    There is, however, another fear which opponents of extending the suffrage have. During an edition of 太田光の私が総理大臣になったら…秘書田中, where Mona Yamamoto proposed giving the right to vote in local elections to foreigners with 10 years continuous residence, politician Katsuei Hirasawa suggested that foreigners would mobilize to dominate certain districts and could even vote on local decisions with national implications. He suggested that Korean residents could register in Shimane and oppose local decisions like voting for Takeshima Day. He also argued that they could vote to have the Korean national flag raised at school graduation ceremonies. I don’t know how easy it is to change your registration to get the vote in another district but it is an accusation which is sometimes levelled against Soka Gakkai followers voting for Komeito candidates.

  2. “Is a town the smallest electoral unit?”

    Yes — a 市町村 is the smallest electoral unit. Homi danchi is a neighborhood in Toyota City, which has a population of 421,000, of which the total foreign population is 15,220, or less than 4%.

    “Politician Katsuei Hirasawa suggested that foreigners would mobilize to dominate certain districts and could even vote on local decisions with national implications. He suggested that Korean residents could register in Shimane and oppose local decisions like voting for Takeshima Day. He also argued that they could vote to have the Korean national flag raised at school graduation ceremonies.”

    More Kameian logic — “if foreigners were to be a majority in Shimane, they could vote against Takeshima Day!”, as if that’s a national security issue. To register to vote in a municipality (or anywhere), you must have lived (changed your juminhyo address) for a period of at least 3 months — then you can vote. Were the entire Zainichi population of Japan to relocate to Shimane en masse they might be able to muster a majority vote for the prefectural assembly candidates opposing Takeshima Day (which was not voted for referendum). Were this to actually happen, or were the interests or respect to another state to be prioritized over Japan ala raising the Japanese flag, I hope that the Diet would revoke any law permitting foreigners to vote. And because that option is always available, I will once again reverse engineer the bizarre logic and say that Japan should implement voting for foreigners in local elections immediately and reconsider it only when foreigners are responsible for electing radicals who propose the measures raised by the fearmongering Hirasawa.

    As it happens, I oppose suffrage for foreign residents in local elections and think anyone who wants to vote should naturalize. I’m also revolted by the DPJ pro-foreigner voting caucus, 在日韓国人をはじめとする永住外国人住民の法的地位向上を推進する議員連盟, which is inherently racist by its very title. But the logic used by opponents is just so twisted as to make me think otherwise.

  3. Thanks for that. I suppose the 10% figure surprised me because it’s the same as the foreign populations of Shinjuku and Minato wards – Minato may even be more – and I thought, obviously wrongly, that there would be a district in Osaka or Nagoya with a higher proportion than that. Still, it’s a sidetrack anyway since these numbers are irrelevant for the suffrage debate which only affects permanent residents.

    There was a proposal floated before the election that suffrage would only be granted to permanent residents on a reciprocity basis. I haven’t seen it mentioned since but that struck me as a way of further narrowing it down to mostly zainichi Koreans without explicitly legislating as such.

  4. You are right that Shinjuku and Minato are about 10%. Oizumi’s is actually a little higher than than. I made the mistake of looking at wikipedia, which quoted the foreigner population of Oizumi as “約1割”, and another website that said Oizumi had the highest population of foreigners in Japan. Looking at the Somusho official figures, here are the numbers:

    群馬県大泉町: population 41,000, of which 6,400 are foreigners, a ratio of 15.6% (largest foreigner population in Japan of any municipality)
    東京都港区: population 185,600, of which 19,000 are foreigners, a ratio of 10.2%
    東京都新宿区: population 277,00, of which 30,000 are foreigners, a ratio of 10.8%

    Apologies for any confusion.

  5. I also can’t quite get behind the idea of allowing foreigners to vote. If suffrage rights aren’t restricted to citizens, then what exactly is the point of naturalizing? On the other hand, I would be very, very much in favor of allowing dual citizenship as an alternate method to solving the problems that granting partial suffrage to resident foreigners is supposed to solve.

  6. Agreed — just replace “dual citizenship” with “multiple citizenship.”

    The whole foreigner local suffrage thing was just an endnote — how about Kamei’s moratorium and his heavy-handedness with other members of the DPJ cabinet?

  7. “I’m also revolted by the DPJ pro-foreigner voting caucus, 在日韓国人をはじめとする永住外国人住民の法的地位向上を推進する議員連盟, which is inherently racist by its very title”

    Why is that inherently racist? If you assume that this DPJ group sees 在日韓国人 as synonymous with 特別永住者, then there is already a distinction between 在日韓国人 and other permanent residents. Or is the notion that they haven’t highlighted the difference between “special permanent residents” and other Koreans that might happen to be in Japan what you find offensive?

    While I am in favour of voting rights for permanent residents, I do see the 特別永住者 as acting as something of an impediment to that particular objective, however. The state has made it fairly easy for 特別永住者 to naturalise, and most within the establishment would probably prefer that they do so to put an end to the inconvenient distinction between them and “ordinary” citizens. Handing over voting rights would remove an incentive for them to naturalise, and yet withholding voting rights from them while extending them to other residents would be “unfair.” Thus, they serve as a sort of keystone in the residents’ voting rights debate.

    Anyway, Kamei and co are just begging the question. In the unlikely event that Korean residents all move to Shimane, putting an end to Takeshima Day and pushing for “kimchi Fridays” at school cafeterias, that should be okay in a democratic system.

  8. “If suffrage rights aren’t restricted to citizens, then what exactly is the point of naturalizing?”

    There are certain positions that one is not allowed to attain without naturalising. Elected official, for one. Also, it is next to impossible to revoke citizenship. Not so with permanent residence. Citizenship would be handy if you plan on spending some time abroad and moving back to Japan in future.

  9. “In the unlikely event that Korean residents all move to Shimane, putting an end to Takeshima Day and pushing for “kimchi Fridays” at school cafeterias, that should be okay in a democratic system.”

    Isn’t that something like Gerrymandering? Okay, the people move, not the boundaries, but the idea is the same. It may be technically legal, but certainly unethical. Bit like having a company softball game and hiring Joe Dimaggio to work at the plant the day before…

  10. One thing to clear up about the moratorium – the proposal is actually to let companies suspend principal payments. They would keep making interest payments for the three years. Apparently Kamei’s sympathy for those poor hardworking small businesses isn’t limitless.

    Even so, the moratorium is insane and must be stopped. If no one is able to say no to Kamei he could end up sparking massive inflation.

    The Nikkei estimates that the annual interest charged on the 280 trillion yen in outstanding loans to SMEs comes in at around 3 trillion a year.

    It appears that Kamei is basically asking banks to do this at their own expense. But you know that won’t fly. With almost their entire loan portfolios basically non-performing, regional banks will start to go under (probably starting with shinkin and others that concentrate almost solely on loans to SMEs). When that happens, the depositors insurance will have to bail out depositors and the government might have to step in and prop some up directly.

    Depending on the damage the costs could range anywhere from the interest costs to hundreds of trillions of yen, which would have to come from either government bonds, or if the Bank of Japan won’t buy those the government can start directly printing its own legal tender. Adding, say, 200 trillion yen (almost 2/5 of 2007 GDP) to the money supply would increase it by 13%, a huge jump for a country that’s gotten used to prices more or less staying flat.

    http://www.nikkei.co.jp/news/shasetsu/20090917AS1K1700217092009.html

    See “broadly defined liquidity”
    http://www.boj.or.jp/type/stat/boj_stat/ms/ms0908.pdf

    http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E7%B5%8C%E6%B8%88

  11. Oh I should mention, Ikeda Nobuo has been twittering about the hyper-inflation scenario. He thinks Kamei might have a master plan to use inflation to eliminate Japan’s deficits. I think he might be half-joking, but he says it might be worth a try to get Japan out of the deflationary trap…

  12. A number of economists over the years have argued that Japan should aim to generate inflationary conditions. As well as reducing the value of deficits and combating the deflationary trap, the logic runs that it would also weaken the yen, helping exports and increasing the value of dollar asset holdings. Apart from the idea being anathema to central bankers who went through the oil shocks, it’s difficult to think of examples where inflation has been successfully introduced into an economy without damaging results. I’ve read a couple of professional economists backing away from the idea lately on the basis that Japan could have tried it while the rest of the world was ticking along but not know the foundations are shaky. That’s a common theme elsewhere, I’ve noticed. It seems many were happy to see Japan embark on economic experimentation while the rest of the world looked robust but now would almost prefer the country to muddle along while everyone else tries to set themselves to rights.

  13. As for the voting rights issue, I have a proposal – why not just let only the zainichi vote and get elected? There are plenty of zainichi-only laws and programs already, so why not just extend it to elections? I think the historical uniqueness of the situation would make it safe from becoming a slippery slope scenario.

  14. “If you assume that this DPJ group sees 在日韓国人 as synonymous with 特別永住者, then there is already a distinction between 在日韓国人 and other permanent residents.”

    A government policy or policy proposal that prioritizes one non-citizen ethnicity over another non-citizen ethnicity is racist. That is what the DPJ caucus says in its very title. Therefore, it is racist.

    If the caucus was called 特別永住者をはじめとする永住外国人住民etc., then I would have no problem. But that’s not what it says. And since 特別永住者 includes 在日韓国人, 在日朝鮮人, and 在日台湾人, plus a few additional persons thrown in, you cannot see 在日韓国人 as synonymous with 特別永住者.

    The caucus was formed on the basis of 相互主義 (reciprocity), after the ROK approved voting rights for ALL permanent residents. A few people in the DPJ then said that means that Japan should grant voting rights for only Korean permanent residents.

  15. Great point on the inflation debate from Mulboyne.

    Also, I thought the “をはじめとする永住外国人” wording was decent.

  16. Yeah, all that phrase implies to me is that the (South) Koreans are simply the most numerous PRs to whom this would apply.
    “Beginnning with Tokyo, Japanese cities are full of Japanese” doesn’t seem to be exclusionary to other cities, though the phrase does look odder in English than Japanese.

  17. “damaging results”

    Before Curzon beat me to it, I was going to write a version of this post focusing on just what we could expect in a high-inflation Japan.

    One consequence that might hurt Americans working in Japan the most would be the weakened yen/dollar rate. Anyone who came over here hoping to repay dollar-denominated student loans would suddenly find their payments rise dramatically. Thank goodness I finished my loans under the LDP! Conversely, some Americans who earn their pay in dollars would do just fine with high inflation.

  18. “Conversely, some Americans who earn their pay in dollars would do just fine with high inflation.”

    Inflation banzai!

  19. “And since 特別永住者 includes 在日韓国人, 在日朝鮮人, and 在日台湾人, plus a few additional persons thrown in, you cannot see 在日韓国人 as synonymous with 特別永住者.”

    Are there actually any 特別永住者 that aren’t of Korean or Taiwanese descent?

    “In the unlikely event that Korean residents all move to Shimane…”
    Considering how urban the Korean population in Japan is, I think Shimane is safe.

  20. I’d be more concerned about a Tsushima vote to join South Korea. Or not.

    In any case, we haven’t seen the kind of zainichi mass movement potential in the past two decades as we saw in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the more conspicuous zainichi activities lately have actually been “friendship” organizations and the incessant selling of outsider/insider perspectives in mass culture ala Kaneshiro Kazuki and Kang Sang Jung, the Japanese intelligentsia version of the hardest working man in show business (Todai’s answer to Christopher Walken). On the whole, I kinda like both of them, however.

  21. M-Bone: there is no right by municipalities or prefectures to secede from Japan. This could not be accomplished by a vote.

    Roy: Are there actually any 特別永住者 that aren’t of Korean or Taiwanese descent?

    Yes — Chinese and Russian.

  22. “Are there actually any 特別永住者 that aren’t of Korean or Taiwanese descent?”

    中国残留孤児 and their (Chinese) families have special status in a distinct category.

  23. “This could not be accomplished by a vote.”

    I know – parodying the paranoia. It would make a great rightwing manga.

    To put things into perspective, people power in Okinawan municipalities has proven powerless time and again.

  24. 2007年末時点では、特別永住者の国籍のうち、韓国・朝鮮は426207人(99%)、中国は2986人(0.7%)、その他は1036人(0.24%)である.

    So who is that 0.24%? You can get Tokubetsu if one parent was a tokubetsu, so even if you choose the other nationality, you can be Tokubetsu.

    Here’s the official government stats:
    -Total: 430,229

    -Asia: 429,283
    Afghan: 8
    Burma: 2
    Sri Lanka: 2
    China: 2,986
    India: 3
    Indonesia: 4
    Iran: 8
    Koreas: 426,207
    Kuwait: 1
    Malaysia: 7
    Pakistan: 3
    Philippines: 42
    Singapore: 2
    Thailand: 13

    -Europe 130
    Albania: 2
    Denmark: 1
    France: 40. Huh???
    Germany: 10
    Greece: 6
    Hungary: 1
    Ireland: 3
    Italy: 7
    Kazakstan: 1
    Malta: 1
    Holland: 8
    Poland: 1
    Romania: 1
    Russia: only 3
    Spain: 2
    Sweden: 5
    Switzerland: 12
    UK: 55!!
    Slovakia: 1

    -Africa: 23
    Congo: 1
    Djibouti: 1
    Ghana: 2
    Morocco: 3
    Nigeria: 12 ??
    Sierra Leone: 1
    Tunisia: 1
    Egypt: 2

    -North America: 582
    Canada: 78!! What are these Canadians doing??
    Costa Rica: 2
    Haiti: 1
    Jamaica: 2
    Mexico: 8
    The United States of Marrying Korean Zainichis: 491!!!

    -South America: 37
    Argentina: 1
    Bolivia: 3
    Brazil: 24
    Colombia: 2
    Peru: 7

    -Oceania: 78
    Australia: 58!!
    New Zealand: 17

    -Stateless: 69

    Well, the trend is clear. Aside from those from the original three (N/S Korea, Taiwan), the zainichi tend to be the offspring of marriages between Zainichi and people from first-world Enrlighs-speaking countries, followed by other European and the Philippines.

  25. (Curzon or Adamu: the formatting screwed up. two dashes somehow mean something else. Is is possible to change the list so that those with two on one line separated by an M-dash are on two lines? Thanks….)

  26. “So who is that 0.24%? You can get Tokubetsu if one parent was a tokubetsu, so even if you choose the other nationality, you can be Tokubetsu.”

    Important point, that had sort of slipped my mind. However, the key thing is that tokubetsu status was ORIGINALLY only granted to Koreans and Taiwanese- everyone else got some other status. It’s odd that this list doesn’t include Taiwan. I assume that most of the people listed under “China” are actually Taiwanese, but you’d think they would be listed separately due to the Taiwan-specific origin, not to mention the fact that Japan now no longer lists Taiwan (ROC) citizens as being from China on immigration and ID forms.

  27. “I assume that most of the people listed under “China” are actually Taiwanese”

    That was my assumption as well. With immigration, Taiwanese I understand use a special passport, not a PRC one, and not a Taiwan (ROC) one as Japan won’t recognise that. Anyway, it’s not a PRC one. I saw one many years ago that a Taiwanese friend had, so it may not be the same now, and my memory may be foggy.

    Thanks for the format fixing, whoever did it.
    Not sure which countries speak “Enrlighs” however….

  28. “With immigration, Taiwanese I understand use a special passport, not a PRC one, and not a Taiwan (ROC) one as Japan won’t recognise that.”

    Nope. Although the Republic of China isn’t formally recognized, every country in the world (except PRC of course, and maybe some other oddballs like North Korea) recognizes the ROC passport without any trouble. I don’t know if the current administration has changed it back, but a few years ago they even stopped printing Republic of China on the outside cover, with just “Taiwan” being listed. However, until 2 or so years ago, Taiwanese in Japan had to register as “Taiwan (China)”, or maybe “China (Taiwan)”, but either way they were labeled as Chinese. Now they are allowed to list their nationality as simply “Taiwan”, including on gaijin cards and other official documents.

  29. Do you know if that has changed in the past 15 or so years?
    Perhaps my memory is foggy, but I could have sworn there was a special way around the lack of formal recognition that wasn’t a simple ROC passport.

    BTW, it seems that ROC is still there. but with Taiwan added to (officially) prevent confusion.

  30. I don’t believe it’s changed. Passports can be recognized even when the issuing government is granted an ambiguous status. The only trouble that Taiwanese have had in terms of immigration is that pressure from the PRC has kept most countries from granting Taiwanese visa-free tourist entry, although Japan started giving them a 90-day entry about two years ago, followed by I believe Ireland and the UK. The US hinted they were going to last year and then backed off, but may grant visa-free status when electronic passports become standard in Taiwan.

    And yes, it does say ROC on the front, just much smaller than Taiwan. It used to not mention Taiwan at all. Incidentally, their money still doesn’t mention Taiwan anywhere, but also doesn’t have any pictures of Mao.

  31. Jade, those 40 French aren’t so surprising. The French community in Japan is pretty large by the standards of other non-English speaking European nations and well organized. Their numbers started to rise sharply during the 80s as companies sent expats to service the food, wine, fashion, cosmetics, hospitality and luxury goods markets. The slightly creepy Tokugawa mura in Mejiro has always been predominantly French. Backpacking French tend to turn up in bars & restaurants and there’s a hard core who work on stalls or street pitches outside major events. In finance, AXA, SocGen, Crédit Lyonnais and BNP all have a roster of expats while French mathematicians are also a mainstay at a number of global investment banks.

    Incidentally, I do find it interesting to see people taking the time to think about the cabinet in terms of who has which portfolio. It’s almost as if it might actually matter now under a DPJ administration.

  32. Yeah, I think per-capita the French have had by far the highest number of Japanofiles in all of the West since around the Meiji Restoration.

  33. When you look at population compared to number, the big surprises, I think, are Canada and New Zealand. Canada has almost twice the American number per capita and is culturally uniform in many ways (especially, I think, the way that young people relate to Japan) despite a whole lot of despites – number of Japanese Americans Vs. Canadians, number of Korean immigrants, etc. As for Kiwis, maybe they are just quicker on the make.

    Re: France – massive interest in Japanese culture among French academics as well. They have some excellent committed Japanese Studies stuff (little exchange or translation into English, however, the Germans do better on that front) and major French intellectuals like Foucault, Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard have all written on Japan with varying levels of lucidity.

  34. Attempt to edit first para there turned part to nonsense – point is Canada and the US are basically the same but the US has more East Asians, what are these Canadians up to?

  35. Incidentally, my comments with those stats are written on the fly as I translated the official excel file, so my surprise at France was largely as I was still thinking in terms of Koreans and perhaps East Asians as Tokubetsu.

  36. Given that Koreans are frequently described as the “Irish of Asia”, I was more surprised to see only 3 Irish in the list above.

    I wonder whether the zainichi Koreans are more likely to marry westerners than Japanese citizens. “International marriage” is trickier to count because, by definition, a zainichi Korean marrying a Japanese national is classified as an international marriage. I only ask because I have a vague feeling, completely lacking in any supporting evidence, that the average zainichi Korean has better English skills than the average Japanese citizen.

    Although most Japanese companies will deny using the infamous “Black Book” when recruiting today, there’s no doubt many did use it so Western firms often made more attractive employers for zainich Koreans. That makes one environment where couples would have met.

  37. “As for Kiwis, maybe they are just quicker on the make.”

    NZers tend to be overrepresented in Japan in all sorts of areas when you do per capita calculations. I think we have the highest number of JETs on that basis, for example. When you are stuck at the bottom of the world, bombarded by television programmes from elsewhere, its natural that you would want to get out and experience the “world” for a year after school or university. Britain used to be the main attraction (I blame Coronation Street) but Japan is a fairly convenient (it is a direct flight, and discounting Australia and Singapore, I believe it is the closest developed nation to New Zealand as the crow flies, despite the fact it takes 11 hours to get there), safe place to go and do a bit of work for a year. And Working Holiday visas, the JET programme and the MEXT scholarship make it all the more easier to stick around longer.

    Or maybe we are just quicker on the make.

  38. Another surprising point – all of South America is less than half Canada. Guess there aren’t many Zainichi in Aichi.

    Yet another surprise – reasonable sized Vietnamese community in Japan but not on the list at all.

  39. “Guess there aren’t many Zainichi in Aichi.”

    Actually there are.Nagoya is the Pachinko’s home town.

  40. Kanagawa has sizeable Vietnamese and Cambodian communities,but they came here in the 80’s as “Indocinese Refugees”.

    The stats lacks many things.For example what’s been represented as “Chinese” are Chinese with Korean or Mongolian ethnic origin.There are about 20000 Inner Mongolians living in Japan.I don’t have the number on ethnic Koreans,but their numbers are far bigger.

  41. “Kanagawa has sizeable Vietnamese and Cambodian communities,but they came here in the 80’s as “Indocinese Refugees”.”
    You know, I’ve never met a single Vietnanese person in Japan who wasn’t a ryugakusei. I should go check out the Vietnamese area some time and have some pho.

  42. I’ve often wondered whether zainichi Koreans are more open to/interested in dating foreigners. Two of my handful of girlfriends in Japan were zainichi….

    Also, regarding the letting foreigners vote issue, is it just me or is there not really a stark Pro DPJ / Anti LDP breakdown?

    In the runup to the election I looked at those profiles of the candidates where they asked them all the same 5 or so questions, and I noticed that many DPJ said they were against it, while many LDP said they were for it?

    What would be the major factors in influencing a politician’s view on this issue?
    Is it more complicated that just a Traditionalist, Conservative versus Internationalist, Liberal viewpoint?

    I also think allowing dual citizenship would be the best thing to do in this case.
    It would also deal with the problem of all the illegal dual passport holders, children of Japanese and foreign parents who didn’t choose one citizenship but continue to hold both passports.

  43. While the DPJ has significant progressive elements, I don’t think that they can exclusively be defined as “Internationalist Liberals”. They have plenty of old guard and even a few stubborn Nanking truthers who don’t really care about the past so much as looking tough on China. The reasons why I like the DPJ is that they mix progressives, former socialists, pragmatists, realists, and old guard conservatives together. This speaks to the possibility of more complex national dialogue between different positions. With the LDP it was a dialogue between the conservative and the more conservative (with an occasional pow wow about what ideas to raid from the left to buy votes).

  44. Interesting comment from Kamei on TV Asahi:

    亀井静香金融相は27日、テレビ朝日の番組で、自身の提案した借金返済猶予策の検討が銀行株の売りを誘っていると指摘されたことについて、「私が言ったから株が下がるほど脆弱(ぜいじゃく)な銀行は、銀行業を営んでいる資格がない」と述べた。金融相は銀行への幅広い監督権限を持っており、あいまいな基準で銀行の「資格」を論じる発言が適切かどうか、議論を呼びそうだ。

    “If a bank is so weak its stock price falls on account of something I say, maybe it isn’t fit for business”.

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