Author: Roy Berman

Gen. Tamogami Toshio, Motoya Toshio, and Abe Shinzo

Note: I have followed up this post on November 21st, and then again on December 1st.

The publication of an essay denying Japanese aggression in the Pacific before and throughout the WW2 by Japan Air Self-Defense Force Chief of Staff Gen. Tamogami Toshio (pictured below) could have led to another major international diplomatic incident. This seems to have been curtailed by his immediate firing, and a reaffirmation of the Government of Japan’s official stance of acknowledging Japanese aggression.

General Tamogami Toshio

The essay was published on the website of APA Group, a large construction and real estate conglomerate best known for scandals involving inadequate earthquake proofing and falsification of records, as the grand prize winner of an “essay contest.” (The essay can be found on the award page, in both Japanese and English. Oddly, none of the lesser prize-winning essays are available.)

Almost all of the news coverage I have seen reports simply on the contents of General Tamogami’s essay, the fact that it was a contest, his prompt dismissal, and some half-hearted complaints about the essay from overseas (clearly headed off by the rapidity of his firing), but aside from this article at Mainichi virtually nothing about the contest itself. My first reaction was to wonder what the background story here was.

Naturally I started poking about online. I’ll start with what the Mainichi story had to say about the contest:

Watanabe etc. on the selection committee

According to the APA Group web page, essays were solicited for the purpose of “steering Japan towards a correct understanding of history as an independent nation”, and a prize of ￥3 million (Note: around $30,000 USD) was awarded as the grand prize. The head of the selection committee was Sophia University Distinguished Professor Watanabe Shouichi, a conservative commentator. APA Group CEO, Motoya Toshio, writes essays on historical perceptions under the pen name Fuji Seiji (藤誠志).

Mr. Motoya does not simply write essays under this pen-name, but actually publishes them in the APA corporate newsletter, Apple Town (“Fresh Information For Your Best Life”). He has also published a number of books under his own name, which you can order through the APA website, most notable “Modern History The Media Doesn’t Report on: Postwar History is an Argument over Nuclear Weapons”, for which he has a promo page on the APA site. (There are also a couple of books written by his wife, Motoya Fumiko CEO of APA Hotels.) Incidentally, another of Mr. Motoya’s books, “Business is Romance”, appears on a “Japanese National Bibliography” page on the National Diet Library website.

As you can see from the above screen capture of the contest website, the essay contest actually appears to be a promotion for his book. In fact, the grand prize is self-aggrandizingly named the “Fuji Seiji Prize Award”, after Mr. Motoya’s pen name. Although APA Group is a publicly traded company and not a family business (I believe this is the case, but I am not 100% sure, so I would appreciate someone checking), CEO Motoya is not only using the corporate website and magazine to promote his right-wing political agenda, but may also very well be using corporate funds for the contest prize money.　According to this blog post, the book is also being promoted and sold in APA hotels.

At or near the bottom of the sidebar present throughout the entire APA Group website (some pages have other links below), there is also a link to an external political organization run by Motoya, the “Kanazawa Friends of the Komatsu Military Base.” (小松基地金沢友の会) The purpose of the group, according to a statement from Motoya on the front page is “get the entire citizenry of Japan, in which there is yet a shallow understanding of the importance of national defense, to understand that a balance of power involving military deterrent leads to international peace,” and to “support the Komatsu Base, which covers the entire Sea of Japan region, which is close to such countries as Russia, China and North Korea.” Googling a few sample names from the members list produces what would be expected: old men from Ishikawa Prefecture involved mostly in business, and one LDP Diet member who had held a minor position in Koizumi’s cabinet.

The website is located on a domain which appears to be independent of APA Group, at jasdfmate.gr.jp (Japan Air Self Defense Force Mate at the Japanese secondary .gr domain for volunteer groups). They also appear to be hosted at different locations, as the traceroute path is significantly different. However, the WHOIS database indicates that the contact person for both websites is a Nishikawa Harumi (西川 治美), who according to the apa.co.jp WHOIS entry is an employee in the Business Section of APA Co.,LTD. and according to the jasdfmate.gr.jp WHOIS entry is a “Clerk” for “Air Self-Defense Force in Komatsu, Kanazawa Mate.” Ms. Nishikawa has been listed as the contact person for the sites since at least 2001.01.16 and 2000.03.21 respectively, when the contact information was last updated. The shallow attempt at separation of private form corporate breaks down, however, when the JASDFMate site lists the contact email address as office@apa.co.jp. You too can join the group, and go on their various activities-such as tours of the base-for a mere ￥10,000.

“Modern History The Media Doesn’t Report on” was published on April 18 of this year, and a combination publishing celebration party and birthday party was held in early June, which is commemorated at this page on the APA site. This page contains some videos which were screened at the party, the third of which finishes off with a list of the party’s sponsors. The list is long, but contains quite a few names of note. Some of the ones that jumped out at me were (in order of appearance):

  • Asao Keiichiro (DPJ Shadow Defense Minister)
  • Abe Shinzo　(former LDP PM)
  • Ikeguchi Ekan (Shingon-shu leader)
  • Koh Se-kai (Former Taiwan representative to Japan, Taiwan independence activist)
  • Ko Bunyu　(Japan-resident Taiwanese independence activist and writer, darling of Japan’s far right)
  • Dewi Sukarno (Japan-born former wife of Indonesian dictator Sukarno)
  • Tamogami Toshio (just-fired JASDF chief)
  • Hatoyama Kunio　(LDP politician, currently Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications)
  • Bobby Valentine (Former MLB baseball player and manager, current manager of Japan’s Chiba Lotte Marines baseball team)
  • Jose de Venecia, Jr. (Speaker of the House of the Philippines)
  • Mori Yoshirou (Former LDP PM)
  • Watanabe Shouichi (Sophia U. Distinguished Professor of English and right-wing commentator, and head of the essay committee)

According to this Sankei article on the party, over 1500 guests were in attendance, of which several dozen were thanked by name in the video.

In this photo of the party (again, from the APA page) you can see General Tamogami was not merely a guest at the event, but actually addressing the crowd. This was just under a month after the contest had been announced, on May 10. According to the above-linked Sankei article, Tamogami jokingly referred to himself as a “controversial figure” and said that:

After the war, speech arguing to defend our country was suppressed, but speech that was anti-Japan or badmouthing Japan was free. As long as the fundamental problems of security are not dealt with, it is impossible to be ready to protect this country in the manner it deserves.

This is a reference to constitutional revision to eliminate or revise Article 9-Japan’s famous pacifism clause. Essentially, the grand prize winner of an “essay contest” was a speaker at an event which was both the launch party for the book the essay contest was promoting, as well as the birthday of the author, expressing essentially the same opinion later given in that essay.

Tamogami and Motoya actually had a political association dating back some time, at least to a “Wine no Kai” (Wine Party for Discussing Japan)documented in Motoya / APA’s own magazine. (Click here for PDF of the article, originally copied from the APA web site.) In this photograph you can see Tamogami , Motoya, Hatoyama Yukio (one of the leading hawks in Japan’s opposition Democratic Party, which differs little from the permanent ruling LDP on substantial matters, his family name ironically means “Dove Mountain”) and his wife, as well as Sankei Journalist Oshima Shinzo.

Wine no Kai 2004
Wine no Kai 2004

I am actually slightly unclear whether the article text is a summary of the discussions had at the party or simply yet another of Motoya’s essays, but it is probable that the participants at least agreed with the ghist of it. The article concludes by stating that “the statement that ‘Japan must absolutely not equip itself with nuclear weapons’ is absurd.” Japanese nuclear armament seems to be one of Motoya’s main issues.

Motoya has apparently hosted a number of annual sessions of the “Wine no Kai,” including a session the following year attended by not-yet Prime Minister Abe Shinzo.

Wine no Kai 2005
Wine no Kai 2005

That’s Abe sitting there in the middle, flanked by Motoya Toshio, with the horrific grimace and weirdly out of place striped shirt, and Mrs. Motoya Fumiko, wearing one of the silly hats she is famous for. PDF of the entire article is here.The article contains nothing nearly as inflammatory as the previous year’s call for nuclear weapons, but I would like to share this brief and bewildering excerpt.

A certain Japan-born Korean said that “The Japanese value respect. Japanese culture is excellent on the inside. But I shed tears when looking at today’s Japan.” The lazy attitude of young people is particularly offensive. Korea still has a military draft system, and although I am not saying that Japan should revive militarism, I will say that the draft system should be introduced. They would not need to serve for two years, but let them live for a year in a group to teach them rules and endurance. If you invite a young person today to say “let’s go drinking” they refuse saying, “that’s OK.” In the old days, they were happy to get an invitation from an elder.

Abe and Motoya are reputed to have far stronger links. Although it seems to have been rarely discussed in the mainstream media (keep in mind that Japanese newspapers keep articles online for a very short time and I am not actually going so far as to check archives), it has been repeatedly claimed on blogs (most notably Kikko’s Diary, but also many smaller ones) that Motoya was vice-chair of Abe’s political support committee known as the Anshinkai, (安晋会, J-Wikipedia article). The name “Anshin” is a pun derived from part of Abe Shinzo’s name, which also sounds like the Japanese word for “safety.” neither the existence of Anshinkai nor Motoya’s membership in it has ever been publically acknowledged, but the above photograph of the “Wine no Kai” is often cited as evidence of both.

One blog wrote in February 2, 2007, that “mentions of Anshinkai have finally started appearing off-line as well,” indicating that this story actually began in the blogs before being taken up by the offline media, in a pattern considered to be generally un-Japanese. Another blog, on the same day, has a roundup of weekly news magazines (traditionally these magazines and not daily papers is the place for news that is more based on investigation or rumor) which had recently mentioned the Anshinkai, including Shukan Post, Shukan Bunshun and Shukan Asahi. The blog says that Shukan Post had been the first to report on Anshinkai, in February 10, 2006, alleging a connection with the Livedoor scandal.

Another blog, from January 31, 2006, has some more information on the Livedoor connection, notably that HS Securities VP Noguchi Hideaki, who committed suicide after falling under suspicion, was director of Anshinkai. The same article contains a dizzying chart of connections between various persons, groups and companies, which does not include Motoya/APA but does include another interesting name – HUSER (Human User Company). Huser had been involved in a construction inspection scandal, seriously enough so that President Ojima Susumu was actually called to testify before the Diet, where he admitted to meeting with Abe Policy Secretary, Iizuka Hiroshi.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this increasingly long post, APA Group is now infamous for their involvement with a similar scandal. I don’t want to spend more time on this, so I recommend you read the good English coverage of at Shin Fukushige’s blog (note that Adam commented on this post.) The CEOs of both Huser and APA are allegedly members of Anshinkai, and there has much much suspicion that Abe and his people deflected as much heat as he could. The connections between Motoya and Abe are strong enough that Kikko titled one January 2007 post “APA Group is Abe Group.”

As I write this, the US 2008 election results are coming in and I want to wrap this up so I can concentrate on that, so let me summarize briefly.

Motoya Toshio is a very successful construction and real estate entrepeneur, with extreme right wing views, an obsession with political leaders and celebrities (he brags about having met a wide variety of famous people, starting oddly with Castro), and an otaku-esque fascination with military things (he also brags about having taken a test flight on a fighter plane). Having built his company into the massive APA Group, he used his company’s publicity apparatus to promote his political ideas, and his significant financial leverage to support Japanese politicians supportive of his militaristic agenda. He appears to have also used those political connections to promote large business projects, and when his company became embroiled in a serious construction inspection scandal, he also turned to his political allies for help.

Combining his attraction to both power and military, he invited ASDF General Tamogami Toshio into his circle, bringing him to the Wine no Kai and to address the launch party for his latest right-wing tract. Motoya then had APA sponsor an essay contest promoting his book-possibly an illicit use of corporate funds-with the grand prize awarded to Tamogami , in a decision I suspect was actually arranged by Motoya personally, with the “selection committee” only choosing the lesser prizes. Motoya was probably hoping that Tamogami , who had a history of making controversial public statements and escaping serious censure, would be able to step up and continue the main-streaming of right-wing militaristic views, but his gamble failed. His friend Abe Shinzo was no longer Prime Minister, having perhaps spent too much of his political capital defending Motoya’s APA Group and Huser during the earthquake proofing inspection scandals, and Aso’s government was just not interested in risking blow-back by defending a general who had so egregiously violated the rules on political speech by uniformed officers and the supremacy of civilian leadership. Fukuda Yasuo had worked to improve relations with China and other neighbors following the Abe administration, and perhaps newly appointed Prime Minster Aso Taro, despite his right-wing views and his own well-earned reputation for making gaffes decided to take the pragmatic route and declined to protect Tamogami .

Foreign workers

Right now I am translating an agreement relating to a fairly expensive sounding construction project somewhere in Japan, which contained the following rather interesting clause.

As the official language of the construction project shall be Japanese, competent interpreters and personnel will be assigned as needed to the worksite and offices, so as to avoid obstacles to ordinary communication or directives.

An uncannily accurate prediction

I just finished reading the book Sketches From Formosa, a memoir by the English Presbytarian missionary Rev. W. Campbell, D.D., F.R.G.S., Member of the Japan Society in 1915. This is one of many wonderful facsimile reprint editions of old books concerning Taiwanese history (in both English and Japanese) published by the Taiwanese historical publisher Southern Materials (南天), which I picked up in their Taipei store. Towards the end of the book he gives his impressions of the Japanese takeover of Taiwan and their policies, and in that section (p. 325-6) was the following passage concerning Japanese efforts to eliminate opium use in Taiwan:

Those who favoured the gradual method of extinction felt that there were serious objections to an immediate adoption of the root-and-branch way of going to work. For example, they said-as many Medical Missionaries have also affirmed-that the latter course would entail unspeakable misery on the opium-smokers themselves, and that the enactment of stringent laws in such circumstances would necessitate a fleet of armed cruisers round the Island to prevent smuggling, with Police establishments and Prison accomodation on a scale which simply could not be hoped for.

Doesn’t this sound like a pretty good description of our current failed drug war policies, from a 1915 perspective?

Internet installation in Japan

I just moved this past Sunday from a crummy and tiny, but cheap and decently located apartment into a less convenient but far, far bigger and nicer actual house. NaturallyＩwanted Internet access ASAP so I placed an order for DSL the following day. Japan is well known for excellent Internet service, particularly for low priced and extremely fast (as in 100mbps) fiberoptic service, but fiber is only available for an apartment if the building has first been wired. Therefore, like the first time I lived in an apartment in Japan (2006-7) DSL was my only option.

Setup of DSL takes almost exactly one month. First you place the order, then a couple of weeks later the modem is delivered by parcel, and then a week or two after that the installation guy comes from NTT to check your line and flip on the service. If, as in most apartments, there is already an NTT phone line, this is really all they do-and yet it still takes an entire month for someone to come and do it-and this is not due to a particular backlog, but because of a set four-week schedule.

Now that I’m in a house I can get fiber, which is way, way faster than DSL, for the same basic price, and includes a deal with 5 months free and some cash back in a few more months. I put in the order on the 20th, 10 days ago, and was given an installation appointment of October 3, or about two weeks from the date of order. Today the installer guys came by to do the outdoors portion of the work.

So, why is it that installation of a fiber optic line to a house can be accomplished two weeks from the date of order, while DSL takes four weeks, despite the fact that the fiber installation is multiple orders of magnitude more expensive and time consuming?

Interview with the Japanese PM

BBC reporter Chris Hogg has a great first person account of what it was actually like to interview PM Fukuda.

The reason, I am told, is that here the politicians do not actually matter. The country is run by the bureaucrats – the middle managers.

Scripted interview

I was at first a little sceptical of this claim, until I went to the prime minister’s office to interview the previous incumbent, Yasuo Fukuda.

The problem with these kind of encounters is that Japanese civil servants are always terrified that their man might put a foot wrong. They try to leave nothing to chance.

Continue reading Interview with the Japanese PM

Language continues to be as much of an issue in Taiwan

5:26pm, 7 December 2007. Image from blog.taiwan-guide.org
5:26pm, 7 December 2007. Image from blog.taiwan-guide.org

Rectification of names by the new administration of the Taiwanese (ROC) government continues. The blog David on Formosa managed to get several snapshots of the old slogan over the entrance to the square surrounding Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, which was a reference to CKS’s chosen name for himself (Zhongzheng), and then followed up a few months later with some photos showing that the Hall itself had in fact been returned to its original name (i.e. CKS Memorial Hall) after a brief period of renaming as Democracy Memorial Hall under the Chen Shui-bian administration. As a comprimise, the KMT Ma Ying-jiu administration accepted keeping the new name of the square, which today is still labeled 自由廣場 (Liberty Square), while returning the old name of the Hall itself.

During my recent 3 week trip to Taiwan, I kept meaning to stop by the Hall, but simply never had the time. I did notice, however, the new “Liberty Sqaure” signs while driving past it. I also happened to be in Taiwan around the time that Taiwan Post, former Chunghwa Post, was again being renamed to Chungwha Post. I actually passed by one post office which just said “______ Post”, with a big empty space where the first word of the name should be. Unfortunately, my camera was in my bag at the time.

At the same time, there has apparently been another controversy over whether to use the name Taiwan or China, this time in a particularly comical place-the nation’s bird watching association.

The renaming of BirdLife International’s Taiwan chapter from Wild Bird Federation Taiwan to the Chinese Wild Bird Federation has caused an uproar among some of Taiwan’s bird lovers, with the founding president of the Wild Bird Society of Penghu, Lin Chang-hsing (林長興), saying that he will call for members to resign from the Chinese Wild Bird Federation.

Apart from refusing to pay yearly membership fees to the Chinese Wild Bird Federation, Lin said he would invite fellow bird enthusiasts to set up a new federation for wild birds using the words “Taiwan” or “Taiwanese.”

There are also at least two more serious developments that have made the news recently though. First is a decision by a Geneva, Switzerland court declaring that Taiwan (ROC) “is an eligible plaintiff in the case on the grounds that it possesses all the elements of statehood and that its government holds and effectively exercises sovereignty over its territory.” While I believe that this does not necessarily have any effect on formal diplomatic recognition by the Swiss government, it certainly seems like it could open the way for it. And most significantly, the court simply recognizes that Taiwan/ROC is a state, without particularly caring what it is called, or about anything related to the “one China” issue. This seems to mean that the Swiss court has effectively opted for dual recognition of China/PRC and Taiwan/ROC as separate and independent states. As a further wrinkle, the actual case involved a lawsuit filed by Taiwan/ROC against the ISO (International Standards Organization) “emanding that the organization correct Taiwan’s designation from Taiwan Province, China to Republic of China (Taiwan) in the ISO 3166 country codes list.” While the current administration certainly has no desire to force the ISO to change the designated name to a simple “Taiwan”, there seems to be no reason why it would not be possible. If Taiwan/ROC prevails in their lawsuit against the ISO, it would open the door for a future DPP administration to request a name change from Republic of China (Taiwan) to simply Taiwan.

And finally, in a move which ideologically could be considered as pro-China, but in practical terms is a victory for simple common sense, the government has finally declared that Taiwan will standardize Mandarin Chinese romanization on Hanyu Pinyin in 2009. Unlike in the PRC, Taiwanese themselves simply do not use Pinyin, and it exists on signs solely for the benefit of foreigners. While the cacaphony of mutually incomprehensible romanizations throughout Taiwan do have a certain charm, the fact that the same name or word may be romanized upwards of a half-dozen ways throughout the island is doing no favors to the visiting (or even resident) foreigner. Ma implemented Hanu Pinyin as an official system during his term as mayor of Taipei, and so this move is far from a surprise. It might be a minor victory for the pro China side in Taiwan’s culture war, but as a practical matter this is simply a good idea.

Oh, and on a more tangentially related note, it appears that the US has dropped Taiwan from the proposed list of visa waiver countries. I guess they didn’t want to piss off one of their largest creditors during the economic meltdown.

“War and Japan: The Non-Fiction Manga of Mizuki Shigeru”

The web journal Japan Focus just published a translation of one of Mizuki Shigeru’s short manga pieces, entitled “War and Japan“, with a brief introduction to the man and his work written by Matthew Penney. One of the most famous and important manga authors in Japan, Mizuki Shigeru remains surprisingly obscure abroad, even among ardent manga fans. English translations of his most popular work may exist, but I have never even seen any. As Penney’s profile of Mizuki Shigeru (who, incidentally, is still alive at the age of 86-over 60 years since losing his arm to an explosion on a south Pacific island in WW2) makes a point of saying, “Mizuki, who unlike most prominent revisionists actually experienced the horrors of war firsthand, sees no contradiction between a love for Japan and its traditions, and a willingness to look honestly at the nation’s war history.”

Mizuki is in fact best known for his work involving Japanese folk spirits (or faeries or hobgoblins or monsters- the Japanese term youkai is a bit hard to translate directly), which despite having a generally comic tone do also occasionally deal with the horrors of war, and also received much acclaim for his truly excellent 8 volume Showa-shi (History of the Showa Period), in which he uses pages of pure historical explanation (all in manga form, of course) to frame the primary narative of his own life throughout the entire Showa period, which began around the time of his birth and ended as he was approaching pensioner age. Although covering the entire 62 years of the Showa period, Showa-shi focuses most heavily on his childhood, when he developed his lifelong fascination with youkai and folktales, and on the WW2 period, when he was the sole survivor of a bombing attack in the South Pacific island of Rabaul, lost his arm, and after the war’s end very nearly stayed behind in the native village that had nursed him back to health.

Showa-shi may be considered the capstone of Mizuki’s career. It is not his last work, but does form a synthesis of themes from throughout his entire career. Although it is his youkai manga that he is mainly known for, he had actually spent a chunk of his early career writing WW2 comics for the rental manga market, which at that time was a market publishing original material.

As it so happens, just last week I picked up one volume of a newly published series which reprints Mizuki Shigeru’s war stories for, I believe, the first time. Japanese books can have maddeningly scant publication history, however, so in fact the copyright page says only that this volume was first published in 2008, without specifying in detail the publication history, or even clearly labelling the original year of publication! Despite this annoying flaw, the book is great stuff. Labelled “comics for thinking about war and peace”, this particular volume is his stories of the air war. Much of the art bears little resemblance to Mizuki’s trademark style, instead opting for a sketchy grim style, particularly for the chaotic air combat scenes.

I haven’t yet had a chance to do more then flip through, although i did just read the first story -“Cockroach”, in which a Zero pilot named Yamamoto is shot down, captured by the Allies, kills a guard almost accidentally and then escapes only to discover upon his return that Japan had surrendered. He is arrested as a war criminal, without really understanding why, escapes from the jail in Japan, and then is finally executed-the last to be executed as a war criminal by the Allied military. In the final panel, as his weeping mother is handed a wooden box containing his ashes, she cries “my son’s entire life was just like that of a cockroach running about and hopelessly trying to escape.” Although the story is clearly anti-war, the ambivalence towards the war crime trials and criticism of winner’s justice presents a viewpoint difficult to sum up in the simplistic left/right paradigm that is all too often employed when discussing Japanese views of World War II.