Author: Joe Jones

Shinzo Abe, barbarian-defeating shogun?

Now that we’ve completely trashed Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s political qualifications, it’s time to look at Shinzo Abe, the new Chief Cabinet Secretary and Minister of State for Taking Over After Koizumi, shown here in all-out “I’m gonna be a world leader someday!” mode.

Like Koizumi, Abe is a popular guy. Also like Koizumi, he enjoys ruffling feathers, whether it’s advocating a tougher defense policy or visiting Yasukuni Shrine. He is often described as “hawkish,” although I think that word is a bit loaded. He’s certainly confrontational, though: his fame comes from negotiations with North Korea over the abductee issue, in which he refused to take much crap.

Like Aso, he has a political pedigree, although it doesn’t go too far back. Abe’s father Shintaro Abe was Secretary-General of the LDP and served in the Nakasone cabinet back in the mid-80’s. His maternal grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was Prime Minister in the late 1950’s and younger brother of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Kishi and Sato were both rags-to-riches stories, so Abe’s political lineage ends there.

He started out at Kobe Steel after college, then worked his way into the bureaucracy and became his father’s secretary during the elder Abe’s tenure as Secretary-General. After his father died in 1991, he ran for the empty seat representing Yamaguchi Prefecture, won it, and slipped from the administration into the government.

The Chief Cabinet Secretary position, a combination of press secretary and chief of staff, gives Abe an excellent platform to become even more well-known to the people (many CCSes have gone on to become prime ministers, most recently the late Keizo Obuchi). But he shouldn’t need too much help: he’s already way ahead of the field in opinion polls. Abe has been getting some blogger support too: Lord Curzon is a longtime fan, for one.

Koizumi is using his great political capital to give the country a choice between a hard-ass and a wack-ass. This Yomiuri writer says it Japanese-style:

Koizumi, by including possible successors in the Cabinet, intends to let them compete with each other to come up with ideas and efforts for reform, a decision that suggests the prime minister is grooming an heir to inherit a shogunate named “reform.” … Koizumi, in his reshuffle, made it quite clear he wants this shogunate of reform to be inherited by Abe.

The choice is pretty obvious; hopefully the obvious choice will be made, so Japan doesn’t end up with a prime minister who’s obsessed with “floppies.”

CAVEAT: It could be one of those dark horses, too, like finance minister Sadakazu Tanigaki. But Abe is who just about everyone seems to want.

Another airport in Tokyo?

Narita has expanded as far as it can go. Haneda, already the busiest airport in Asia, can’t go anywhere but further into the bay. Tokyo will eventually need a third airport, or so we’re told.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, with Ishihara’s personal blessing, wants to use Yokota Air Base, a U.S. Air Force base in west Tokyo, for civilian flights. That seems somewhat unlikely now, since the base is going to have expanded duty as the Air Self-Defense Force’s command center (protests be damned), on top of its existing role as headquarters for U.S. forces in Japan.

The other option is to build offshore. Several sites have already been proposed, most of them in Tokyo Bay, except for one site off of the Kujukuri Beach on the Pacific coast of Chiba (obviously a bad idea; spoil a nice beach with an airport that’s even farther from Tokyo than Narita?!).

Is the third airport really necessary? After all, Narita just had to cut its landing fees to stay competitive. I think it all has to do with the fact that the Kansai region will have three airports as of next February. Ishihara just doesn’t want his half of Japan to fall behind.

London has five airports and is getting along just fine. That doesn’t mean that more is necessarily better. Berlin is in transition from three airports to just one. Maybe Tokyo will someday admit that Narita was a dumb idea, and run all of its flights from a humongous future version of Haneda, acres and acres of concrete sprawling out into the bay.

Taro Aso: the future of Japan?


Prime Minister Koizumi’s new cabinet is in place this week, and one of the apparent front-runners to succeed him is this interesting fellow, Taro Aso, now Minister of Foreign Affairs.

We’ve already talked about some of his more asinine comments: that burakumin shouldn’t be in government, that Japan is one race, that Korea was better off under colonial rule, that floppy disks are the future, and all that.

But there’s more to Aso-san than just knee-jerk right-wingery. Let’s look at his colorful past:

  • Aso’s father, Takakichi Aso, was a big businessman: he owned a large cement company, Aso Cement. He later entered the Diet and was buddies with Kakuei Tanaka, the Nixonian prime minister of Japan who spent half of his life amassing political capital in Niigata and the other half split between running the LDP from the shadows and fending off prosecution for corruption. (Tanaka’s daughter Makiko is the short-lived foreign minister who called Bush an asshole.)
  • Takakichi’s wife (Taro’s mother) was Shigeru Yoshida’s daughter—Yoshida being the postwar prime minister who set up Japan’s foreign and domestic policy for much of the Cold War era.
  • Yoshida’s wife’s father was Nobuaki Makino, a Meiji-era diplomat and politician; Makino’s father was the famous samurai Okubo Toshimichi.
  • Back to Taro Aso himself: he represented Japan in the shooting events at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, while still president of the cement company he inherited from his father (he gave it up to run for office in 1978, and now his brother runs the company).
  • He was appointed Minister of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications in 2003, and Koizumi apparently likes him, because he’s survived two subsequent cabinet reshuffles.

Now, he’s certainly qualified to be prime minister given the generally low standards that have been accepted historically: take a look at Koizumi’s predecessor, Yoshiro Mori, who greeted Bill Clinton by saying “Who are you?” and went on to screw up the Buddhist rites at Keizo Obuchi’s funeral later that day. Part of me wants Aso to become prime minister because there’s an excellent chance he’ll produce all sorts of hilarious Mori-esque gaffes that will make great blog material.

On the other hand, I love Japan too much to subject its people to this man’s leadership. His gaffes are not silly and laughable like Mori’s, but dark and pitiful, likely to kill what few good relations Japan enjoys with the rest of East Asia. Hopefully the LDP will not be foolish enough to elevate him to the top post; maybe he’s just a foil to make Shinzo Abe look better. We can only hope.

The future of China (or, exactly what is realist?)

That Tom Barnett interview I mentioned is creating some dissension within our cousin blog Coming Anarchy.

The authors of CA (correction: two of them), as you might know, are fans of Barnett, but bigger fans of Robert Kaplan (hence the title). Barnett and Kaplan are divided on how the U.S. should deal with China, and their divide really represents two views that are fighting for prevalence in Washington.

Kaplan’s view, which is more in line with official Defense Department policy since the Cold War (and also gets lots of nods on the Japanese right), is that China is an emerging military threat that the U.S. has to contain with ships, airplanes, and missiles. Barnett’s view is that the U.S. has to become partners with China, as the economies of the two countries dictate, rather than let political concerns screw up the countries’ mostly-beneficial symbiosis.

Which view prevails will necessarily determine the future of U.S. policy toward Taiwan. A Kaplan view means that the U.S. has to defend Taiwanese sovereignty at all costs, as a roadblock to Chinese ambition in the Pacific. A Barnett view leads to the U.S. maintaining the status quo in Taiwan until the two countries can be united without force, either through incorporation in a democratic China or as part of a larger EU-style Asian community.

It hurts to admit this, because I’ve been a Taiwan supporter for some time now, but Barnett has a good point. Is it worth it to antagonize China when the U.S. is dependent on China and China is dependent on the U.S.? Wouldn’t it be easier if both countries could focus resources on their own problems, rather than needlessly breathe down each other’s throats? Do we really need to be bracing for World War III right now?

These are all tough questions that Bush and Rumsfeld should be asking themselves. Perhaps the best answer is to do as Barnett advises: maintain the status quo until China and Taiwan have evolved to the point where they can discuss their differences without threatening to lob bombs at each other. I think this is more likely to happen if and when we see closer business ties and more transparent democracy on both sides.

Tom Barnett interviewed on C-SPAN

C-SPAN’s podcasts are awesome in general. While taking a long walk home today (thanks, transport workers!) I listened to Florida congressman Tom Feeney interviewing The Geopolitical Man himself, Thomas P.M. Barnett. The hour-long talk touches on a number of issues and goes in depth on China and Iran; very interesting stuff.

For those of you who enjoy this, a DivX version of Barnett’s full lecture on “The Pentagon’s New Map” is floating around some BitTorrent sites. Also, check out the NewsHour podcast, which lets you get your dose of Jim Lehrer and talking heads any time of day.

Makiko Tanaka is amusing

I’m binging on rotten.com tonight, and came across the following brief anecdote in their profile of President Bush (scroll to bottom):

17 Jun 2001 – Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka returns to German Town High School in Philadelphia, where she studied for two years as a high school student. During a conversation with her former classmates, Tanaka gives her concise assessment of President George W Bush: “He is totally an asshole.”

I offer a cash reward to anyone who can find audio or video of this.

Conspiracy theory time! Albright and Kim

Lord Curzon’s post at Coming Anarchy about Hu Jintao’s trip to North Korea reminded me of this shenanigan:

Is is just me, or is there WAY too much resemblance between the two of them? I submit that it can be explained by any of the following theories:

  • Kim and Albright are alien beings, sent to our planet by an extraterrestrial race with an eye for messing with geopolitics.
  • Albright is a clone created by North Korea’s secret genetic engineering laboratories to infiltrate the Clinton administration and make it unwilling to go after rogue states.
  • Albright and Kim are both descended from an unspeakably evil overlord, who may or may not also be responsible for Alan Greenspan.

On a more serious note, living in Philadelphia makes me really hate organized labor. If the President can break up airline strikes, why the hell can’t he break up mass transit strikes, which wreak so much more havoc on people’s lives? I mean, if Bush stepped in and forced the transit workers to go back to work, Philadelphia would go red in 2008, no further questions asked.

Separating shrine and state: why you shouldn’t expect a court to stop the Yasukuni visits

Article 20 of the Constitution of Japan says that “freedom of religion is guaranteed to all. No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority… The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity.” Article 89 further states that “no public money or other property shall be expended or appropriated for the use, benefit or maintenance of any religious institution or association, or for any charitable, educational or benevolent enterprises not under the control of public authority.”

Like the First Amendment in the United States, these rules are just full of fun! If you think about it, they could make the Emperor illegal. (I don’t actually agree with this notion; it’s just one interpretation that could be drawn.) But they won’t make the Emperor illegal, nor will they make Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine illegal… and even if the visits could be considered illegal, the courts aren’t going to stop them! More detailed explanation after the jump.
Continue reading Separating shrine and state: why you shouldn’t expect a court to stop the Yasukuni visits

In the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma

Every day it’s some other city/state/country/faction/nominee being destroyed. It figures that Broward County, where I grew up and lived through a hurricane and a tropical storm, was smacked silly by Hurricane Wilma.

One of my friends from high school sent over some photos from our neighborhood by the beach. You can see the crazier shots here.

Addendum: I just read that a geisha is overseeing the restoration of power. This post was Japan-related all along! Who knew?