I speak, of course, about Kobe Airport, the latest boondoggle in Osaka Bay. I was in the area this weekend and I decided I would hop over for a visit on Sunday.
What a mistake. Continue reading They call it “Marine Air” because you have to swim to get there
Atsushi Onita, ex-wrestler and member of Japan’s Upper House of parliament (Liberal Democratic Party, Proportional Representation) has publicly encouraged Taro Akebono, Sumo wrestling’s first non-Japanese Yokozuna, to make a run for a seat in next year’s Upper House election. Since retiring from Sumo entirely in 2003 to take up a career as a professional wrestler/kickboxer, Akebono (born Chad Rowan and raised in Hawaii) has seen his respectability drop quite a bit, not least because he keeps losing his big matches. However, it’s certainly possible that enough people will vote LDP to make him the first American Diet member. Daily Sports reports:
Akebono: Run in the Election!
Onita Calls on Akebono to Run in Next Year’s Upper House Election at LDP Headquarters in Nagata-cho“Let’s light a fire under Nagata-cho!” (NOTE: Nagata-cho = Japan’s version of Capitol Hill) — Atsushi Onita (48), LDP Upper House member and self-described professional wrestling/fighting sport analyst, held an emergency press conference in Tokyo on Feb. 14 at the LDP Headquarters in Tokyo to make a “love call” for Akebono (36), the former Sumo Yokozuna and [naturalized] Japanese citizen, to run in the Upper House election next July. Onita elevated Akebono to the level of “the savior of professional wrestling” and even unilaterally offered to initiate him with a no-rope barbed-wire electric-explosive death match (Onita’s trademark). A national crisis may arise if a grand battle unfolds in a Diet-floor-turned-wrestling ring.
Onita, at a press conference the same day announcing the release of his new single, “FIRE!!” (released Feb. 15), started off, “The savior of professional wrestling is Akebono. I would like to hand over the catch phrase ‘FIRE’ that the pro wrestling world gave birth to and have him become the momentum for wrestling’s development and revival.” (NOTE: Listen to Onita’s band here by clicking the music note. “FIRE!!” does not seem to be up on the site yet. His music is surprisingly mellow for a guy who made a living throwing people into exploding barbwire!)
Certainly expectations are high for Akebono, who is taking the major wrestling groups All-Japan Pro Wrestling, NOAH, and New Japan Pro Wrestling by storm, but by “momentum for development and revitalization” Onita is referring to entering politics.
Onita (who is known as “the charisma of tears“) explained, “While enlisting the aid of politics, I would like him to carry out ambitious reform of professional wrestling. If Onita, Hiroshi Hase (Lower House, Ishikawa 1st District, another wrestler-cum-LDP Dietman), and Akebono come together then [we could put our heads together]” He then bluntly stated, “I want him to run in next year’s Upper House election. Only through overcoming that battle can he become the savior.”
The retired wrestler had scathing remarks for Akebono’s wrestling partner, Riki Choshu, “He’s training him normally, but normal just isn’t good enough. I want to initiate him with an Onita-Akebono no-rope barbed-wire electric-explosive death match,” proposing a subversive method of training.
Onita expressed full confidence in the recommendation, saying, “It’s OK, I don’t select people the way Takebe does,” referring to the controversy over LDP Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe’s strong endorsement of (now reviled) Takafumi Horie in the 2005 election. Onita says he wants to take Akebono to the Diet member meeting house to negotiate as early as next week.
Go for it, Akebono! I’ll get Mrs. Adamu to vote LDP if you run. Or better yet, run on a DPJ ticket!
Some background:
Japan has something of a tradition of professional wrestlers, actors, authors, athletes, and so on, in politics. Wrestling legend Antonio Inoki (who once fought Muhammad Ali and got knocked out and hospitalized by Hulk Hogan) formed the Sports & Peace Party in 1989 and became the first wrestler Diet member (PR). Recently, the Great Sasuke (JT, reg. req’d) made international headlines when he ran (and won) a seat in the Iwate prefectural assembly despite refusing to take off his wrestling mask.
Continue reading Akebono to Diet? – it’s not what you think
(Part 1, in case you missed it, was about companies.)
Anyway, there’s a provision in the Japanese Civil Code related to a certain class of contract (委任 “mandates,” in case you care). The article simply says:
This type of contract may be terminated at any time.
Looking this up in the unannotated English version, I was surprised at how simple it seemed to be. Hooray for civil law!
A little while later, I looked up the same article in the annotated Japanese version of the Code, a big honkin’ book which links each article of the code to relevant court cases that further define its meaning. Here’s what I found:
This type of contract may be terminated at any time.
– – – NOTES: (1) When the terminating party has entered the contract for profit, this Article does not apply. Judgment of the Supreme Court of Judicature, [some date in the 1910s I didn’t bother to write down]
My response was something like the 50’s TV Dad below:
Note to self: Save this picture; you’re going to want to use it in a PowerPoint someday.
I ran across this while perusing the Federal Government’s job website. I think i might be a little underexperienced with a cleaver for this one, but I know somewhere out there, someone will see this and think to themselves, “I am so qualified for THAT!”
MEATCUTTING WORKER / MEATCUTTER
Salary Range: 28,028.00 – 44,265.00 USD per yearJob Summary:
Consider the rewards that this challenging opportunity may provide. In this position, you may supervise, lead, assist, or perform work involving cutting, trimming, and removing bones from meat and preparing and processing fish and poultry. This includes cutting meat into steaks, roasts, chops, cutlets, ground meat, and other small cuts, using powered equipment such as meat saws, slicers, grinders, and hand tools such as meathooks, knives, saws, and cleavers. A great opportunity is just a click away ? apply now.
And, if Japan ain’t your thing, how about beautiful Guam?
MEATCUTTING WORKER
Salary Range: 10.20 – 19.48 USD HourlyWork Schedules: May be part-time ( 16-32 hours per week ), intermittent ( work on an as-needed basis ), or full-time ( 40 hours per week ).
Major Duties: The work involves cutting, trimming, and boning meat, fish, and poultry using hand tools and operating power meatcutting equipment. Receives instructions on work to be done and the tools and equipment that will be needed. Through day-to-day assignments, Meatcutting Worker becomes skilled in standard meatcutting techniques and broadens knowledge of established methods of processing assigned cuts.
Qualifications: To meet the screenout for this position, applicants must show they have the ability to do the work of Meatcutting worker without more that normal supervision. Examples of experience that would indicate this ability is Basic knowledge of the muscle, seam, and bone structures of different kinds of animals, the ability to learn methods of processing meat when given detailed instructions; and skill in using hand tools such as knives, scrapers, and handsaws.
Education Requirements: There are no minimum education requirements for this position.
“Basic knowledge of muscle, seam and bone structures of different kinds of animals?”
I wonder what kind of people this type of job attracts? Are there people out there who aspire to this kind of work because they are actually passionate about muscle, seam, and bone structure?
I am not poking fun (well, not too much anyway) but am genuinely curious. I never even knew “meatcutter” was a job title, but as of 10:01 am EST on 02/17/06 there are nine meatcutting jobs available with the Federal Government alone. Has anyone out there ever done this type of work and would be willing to share their experiences in the comments section?
Horse racing in Japan (Keiba) is a government-sponsored gambling powerhouse. Other lucrative state-owned gambling venues in Japan include Keirin (bike racing, “Welcome to sports cycle race “KEIRIN” in the world to which Japan gave birth.” < - THANK YOU, machine translation!) and Kyotei (boat racing, the brainchild of war criminal and would-be Nobel laureate Ryoichi Sasakawa).
When I was going to high school in Japan, I often spent Saturdays with my host father as he played the horses. He’d read the horse racing newspaper, call in his choice to a bookie on his cell phone, instantly fall asleep, and then wake up just as the race came on TV only to lose every time. He never seemed to mind though — every time he lost he’d just make a kind of Japanese sighing noise and look at the paper again for the next race.
He was a hard drinking, hard smoking gambler who wheeled and dealed in local politics – all attributes that I would normally consider sleazy if he were not also one of the most warm and kindly people that I’ve ever met.
Anyway, back to the point of this post: the Internet seems to be changing this (apparently illegal) bookie system. ZAKZAK reports (and I paraphrase):
Bookies Disappearing as Online Horse Bets Gain in Popularity
Raison d’etre Lost Upon Institution of High-Payout 1st-2nd-3rd BetsThe Japan Racing Authority (which runs Japan’s horse races for the national govt) will hold the first GI race of the year, “Febuary S,” at the Tokyo Race Track. As the races are run, [yakuza-connected] “bookies,” who are officially banned by the Horse Racing Law [but nevertheless prevalent] are quickly shrinking in number. In addition to an aggressive clampdown by police, the benefits of making bets through a bookie are disappearing due to the popularity of purchasing racing tickets on the Internet (on mobile phones etc) as well as the institution of “1st-2nd-3rd” bets with high payouts.
According to a report (PDF) by the National Police Agency, incidents for bookie activities, after peaking in 1992, have decreased 90% since then.
The benefits of bookies were: (1) Most tickets can be bought at low prices starting at 90 yen since management expenses etc are not deducted from sales; and (2) On top of being able to gamble away from the official ticket counters by placing bets on the phone, one can pay after the fact, making it possible to bet without having any money on you at the time.
However, as the authorities strengthened their enforcement of the law, the JRA expanded its services to allow customers to buy tickets on the internet or mobile phones. By 2005, Internet purchases had come to make up 43% of sales. In 2004, the “1st-2nd-3rd” bets were instituted, removing bookies’ raison d’etre.
A senior detective of the Hyogo Prefectural police, who must deal with the [infamous yakuza family] Yamaguchi-gumi in its jurisdiction, comments, “Many bookies made maximum odds of 100:1. Recently 1st-2nd and 1st-2nd-3rd bets have been instituted, and even 100,000 yen tickets. The recognition spread that even buying from the illegal bookies, it was a ‘high-risk, low return’ bet.”
As demand disappears, bookies have started to go out of business. The senior detective notes, “In Hyogo Prefecture, a certain group directly connected to Yamaguchi-gumi that had provided the source of funds for bookie activity has seen its debt skyrocketing currently due to a lack of revenue, placing it in a state of destruction. I guess there’s no longer a role for bookies.”
ZAKZAK 2006/02/15
The comfortable and semi-legal relationship between the government and organized crime in Japan never ceases to amaze me. Well, it’s not just that it’s so comfortable, but also that it’s so open and obvious, and not just in the realm of horse racing (see links).
I mean, the JRA could easily have offered (pre-paid) telephone bets and high-odds betting options long ago, which would have eliminated the need for yakuza bookies.
From a story that ran today in the Financial Times:
“The Livedoor case was expected to lead to criticism of the dark side of Koizumi’s reforms. That is what is starting to happen. It is not just about Takebe anymore,” says Takao Toshikawa, editor of Insideline, a respected current affairs magazine.
Nonsense. Such criticisms are entirely misplaced and such links are forced. If anything, the reforms should be faulted for not going far enough by putting in regulations to prevent the kind of stuff Horie was doing. As the Economist recently put it:
[Horie’s] practices were pretty traditional, but he used them with a speed, aggression and visibility that were new. Many of the things he is known to have done were perfectly legal, such as using after-hours share trading to build up large stakes in target companies, or exploiting artificial liquidity shortages after stock splits. In a properly regulated financial market they would not be. Nor would his accounting have been allowed to be as obscure as it was, whether or not it is proven to have been illegal.
Then we have this from the same FT story:
“We will continue to pursue this aggressively.The LDP is polluted with money that Horie raised by deceiving (Livedoor’s) individual investors,” a DPJ official said.
I am laughing that this guy can even make such a claim with a strait face!
Here are some strange bedfellows for you — anti-reformers who will do anything to link Horie and Koizumi, and politicians who act as though individual investors actually matter and that they actually care about the source of their money.
Kobe Airport, the third passenger airport in the Kansai region, opened just a couple of hours ago. So what’s next? How about a tunnel from Kobe to Kansai?
The “Cross-Osaka Bay Railroad” is envisioned to connect JR Shin-Kobe Station and Kansai Airport via Kobe Airport in 30 minutes, using linear motor cars over the total distance of 36 km. The Kobe Airport-Kansai Airport run will take only 17 min. The cost of the tunnel is expected to be 530 billion yen.
Apparently, this was one of those crazy bubble-era ideas that fell apart after the Kobe earthquake of 1995 and the stagnant traffic numbers at Kansai in the late 90’s. But now, authorities are saying that if traffic at Kansai picks up, the airport may have to go international-only, and this project might be needed to keep a steady flow of passengers between domestic and international flights. Hyogo Prefecture seems to be warming to the idea, but Kobe City and Kansai Airport (perhaps fortunately) think it’s pretty ridiculous.
By the south end of “Big Bird,” the JAL terminal at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, I spotted this:
This is where the Grand Poo-Bahs go to board their airplanes. Have I just found a totally awesome paparazzi perch? Or is this the future I have to look forward to when they elect me Prime Minister?
Ampontan at Japundit had a thought-provoking post on the “Kaeru Hashi,” or Frog Bridge, that was built on central government largesse in Inami-cho, Wakayama Prefecture:
I can’t begin to explain how quintessentially Japanese this entire story is. They’ve managed to use a historical Japanese figure for inspiration, connect him to a unique public works project to gain a little recognition in a cheerful, positive way, and incorporate the Japanese love of wordplay. When I was new to the country, unaware of the extent to which I was affected–or infected–by the sense of fashionable, cynical irony so endemic in the West, I would have rolled my eyes until they slid out of their sockets at the dorky hellokittyishness of this bridge and the people who built it.
After all these years in Japan, however, I’ve come to realize that cynical irony is a dead end street and learned to appreciate the sincerity, simplicity, and earnestness of the emotion behind efforts such as those of the people of Inami-cho. I wish them the best, and if I’m ever in their neighborhood, I’ll be sure to stop by to look at the bridge and buy some vegetables or flowers. I’m sure they’re excellent. You can even see the bridge if you’re just passing through–they built it so that it’s visible from the local JR train station.
People at Japundit were too mesmerized by the hypnotic power of the bridge to respond to my comment, so here it is for my MF peoples:
You seem to present two possible interpretations of the Kaeru Hashi: cynical-ironic dismissiveness or appreciation for the earnestness of the people’s efforts.
Perhaps I haven’t spent enough years in Japan, but there must be at least one other way to look at something like this, because I think, with no irony whatsoever, that this bridge is a gaudy and horrible waste of money.
I mean, consider it this way: when you go into the house of a married couple and find that the wife keeps it decorated nook and cranny with frilly lace, pink bunnies, and countless antiques, scented with nostril-burning potpourri, and kept immaculately clean, do you (a) Appreciate the sincerity, simplicity, and earnestness of the emotion behind the woman’s efforts; or (b) Feel sorry for the poor schlep of a husband who has to put up with such tacky interior design (and probably isn’t allowed to sit on the couch)? I for one would choose (b). This bridge and other such projects look as if the federal government gave a team of domineering housewives with bad taste a million dollars to waste on whatever silly civil engineering project they could come up with.
That million dollars could have been put to much better use than yet another bridge. The problem is that the funds these towns get are tied to programs like the euphemistic “Self-conceived self-conducted Regional Development,” so they are forced to actually build something. If the federal government were truly interested in revitalizing these small towns (instead of padding the wallets of construction companies), they could have steered the money toward, just for example, scholarships to regional universities or maybe even incentive programs for industries.
The problem isn’t so much of different “worldviews” between the Japan and the “West” but rather one of the corrupt central government exploiting the small towns for its own benefit. It’s funny you call this post the “Great Leap Forward” because these types of federal programs actually do resemble China’s great leap forward in that they force local governments to perform economically unsustainable activities. The towns aren’t starving, at least, but without true economic development they are facing a slow death – depopulation. Koizumi’s “Trinity Reforms” are supposed to end the cycle of addiction to public works that afflicts the outlying regions of Japan by putting more tax revenue in their control, but prospects for their effectiveness are moderate at this point.
I have been digging marxy’s blog hardcore lately, and his latest posts have inspired a few lengthy rants from me. Since I am so very proud of myself for actually having written something, I’ll repost them here.
Today we will look at whether there can be a viable opposition to Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has, with only one brief (but significant) hiccup in 1993, ruled Japan since 1955 thanks at least partly to CIA funding.
First, marxy’s post, a reaction to Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback:
Academics are always convinced that the rebirth of Japanese politics is right around the corner, as if the DPJ will suddenly become a viable second party. But check the demographic breakdown: Japan’s most educated white-collar workers are thoroughly apolitical and the working classes depend even more now on LDP pork barrel projects and protection for their job security in the post-manufacturing era.
The One-Party Japanese State is here to stay, but perhaps Japan can at least cut the American leash in the future, right? Unfortunately for the Pacifist Japanese masses, the LDP only presents two options: remilitarize with a nod to past Imperialist glories or maintain a Japanese pseudo-pacificism under the American protectorate. Politics could offer a third way, but thanks to the gifts of U.S. foreign policy, they don’t have that here.
And my reaction, slightly edited for readability:
While I don’t count myself as one of those people who thinks that Japan is always just about to turn the corner, if you look at the elections that have taken place since major electoral reform was carried out (switch from multimember election districts to single-member) have shown that future LDP control of the government is far from certain.
There is no way to tell how involved the CIA is in Japanese politics right now (though I can more or less guarantee you that the top leaders of Japan have regular meetings with CIA officials). Also at this point, I don’t think that the LDP has any trouble raising funds on its own, and whatever slush funds the CIA set up for it have probably already been laundered somewhere.
But it is a fact that the DPJ had been gaining seats progressively in each election since its formation in 1998, so much so that it only required the defection of 18 or so LDP members in the Upper House to defeat the postal privatization legislation (though 30 eventually did rebel), which led to the General Election in September.
That election led to a huge victory for the LDP, but that victory was notable first for American support of a very different kind (Bush’s PR firm) modern PR techniques and for the types of voters it attracted to the LDP — TV-watching urbanites, the same people you (more or less rightly) dismissed as being apolitical. The LDP achieved this by having a charismatic leader with great hair, limiting the scope of debate by staying on message (postal privatization!!!), and orchestrating a riveting drama pitting the reform-minded LDP (and cute new “Koizumi children”) against the vested interests represented by the postal rebels and (somehow) the DPJ.
Remind you of US-style elections a little? Competing for constituents based on policies and theater is vastly different from the traditional way for the LDP to run an election, which was basically to round up its traditional support bases (as you quite eloquently described) and be done with it. The bad thing is the LDP played the new game to its advantage, but the good thing is that, in theory, anyone could do it, even the DPJ (which at least tried – they had a US PR firm of their own, it just happened to be caught unprepared for the ultra-effective push by the LDP [the ineffectual slogans “We won’t give up on Japan!” didn’t help either]).
Unfortunately, while the election system has changed, other aspects of Japan’s political landscape – the LDP’s close relationship with big business and the bureaucracy itself- have not. Why is this important? Well, one can see a telling example in the DPJ’s “counterproposal” to the LDP’s resubmitted postal privatization bills in October 2005. The counterproposal was a miniscule 11 pages compared to the LDP’s 500-plus megalaw.
This just goes to show that the DPJ very simply does not have the technocratic expertise to make policy, which is something the Japanese public understands. The LDP (well, the *governement*) postal privatization bills were formed after months of intense discussion and debate that involved the greatest minds in Japanese policy both in and out of the bureaucracy. The DPJ (or any other party for that matter) could not even begin to hope for such access because, for better or worse, there is no reason for bureaucrats, academics, academia, or even the Japanese people (it can be argued) to work with a party that can’t get things done. It’s a vicious cycle that will probably continue more or less unabated until the next time the LDP gets booted from power.
