Category: Current Events

Chocolate low-malt beer makes me sad

As a beer drinker (though I am really liking wine these days), this announcement was truly shocking:


I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — what a sad state of affairs! If I saw this at the store I might be forced to buy it for the novelty value, but apparently it’s only being offered online. Oh well.

This new chocolate low-malt beer (happoshu in Japanese) makes me sad, mostly because of the implications of the company’s decision to make chocolate happoshu instead of chocolate real beer.

What started as a clever way to get around a tax hike in 1994 has today resulted in low-malt happoshu and no-malt “third beer” gaining recognition among the Japanese public as cheaper, viable alternatives to the real thing. In my own life, it is typical to see housewives at the local Ito Yokado buying dinner with a cheaper beer alternative, either for the husband or to drink together (I do a lot of the grocery shopping).  How did things come to this?

According to the National Tax Agency, beer has long been Japan’s drink of choice. As far back as 1970, twice as much beer was consumed as Japanese sake. But for a long time, Japan has had a 40% tax on beer sales, higher than other advanced nations (UPDATE: in 2006 it was lowered slightly but remains high). This was never a problem when Japan’s economy was growing, but a tax change in the post-bubble year 1994 triggered events that would transform the local convenience store beer cooler:


Japan’s alcohol tax system divides beer-like malt beverages into four categories based on malt content: 67% or higher, 50 to 67%, 25 to 50%, and less than 25%. An alcoholic beverage based on malt is classified as beer if the weight of malt extract exceeds 67% of the fermentable ingredients. Since Suntory‘s introduction in 1994 of Hop’s Draft, containing 65% malt, a market has emerged for low-malt, and recently, non-malt beer substitutes.

With alcohol tax revenues decreasing as a result of happoshu’s popularity, the Japanese government eventually raised the nation’s tax on low malt beers. In 1996, the tax for products containing 50 to 67% malt was raised to that of beer. Brewers followed suit by lowering the malt content of their products. Today, most happoshu contains less than 25% malt, putting it in the lowest tax category of low-malt beer. In recent years, Japanese brewers have released dozens of brands in attempt to increase their market share. Many of these are marketed as more healthy products, with reduced carbohydrates and purines. Another trend is to use unmalted barley, such as in Sapporo’s Mugi 100% Nama-shibori.

Beer-flavored beverages collectively dubbed “the third beer“(第三のビール, dai-san no bīru) by the mass media have been developed to compete with happoshu. These alcoholic products fall under categories not yet as highly taxed. The third beer beverages either use malt alternatives, or they are a mix of happoshu and another type of alcohol. When comparing 350 ml cans, the third beer brands can be 10 to 25 yen cheaper than happoshu.

Effect on total consumption

These new, less tasty types of beer have grown in importance over the years. Third beer sales overtook happoshu for the first time in 2008, amid a record bad sales year for the beer and beer equivalent industry as a whole. Together, happoshu and third beer sold almost 90% as many cases as real beer (226 million vs. 256 million). In a matter of years, Japan may be drinking more loophole beer than the real thing. The bad sales were attributed to to price hikes (due to high commodity prices in the first half of 2008) and a general shift among consumers away from beer to other options or no drinking at all (due to being too old or a part of the supposedly vice-free younger generation).

Over a longer term, consumption of beer peaked in 1994 at 7 million kiloliters and fell 53% by 2006. The combined beer + happoshu + “other alcohol” numbers went from 7.09 million kL in 1994 to 5.9 million in 2006, a dip of around 18%. from the peak.

However, according to the tax authorities, overall alcohol consumption peaked in 1996 and fell 9.2% by 2006. It is clear that the decline of beer etc. was the biggest drag on the total, as no segment of the industry stepped up to take beer’s place. Beer’s share of total alcohol consumption declined from 73% in 1994 to just 66% in 2006. While shochu and liqueur (mostly chuhai aka shochu “alcopop”) and wine grew over that period (and sake, whisky, and brandy actually declined significantly), there is still nothing approaching beer.

Effects on drinking behavior, conclusion

The rise of happoshu came amid a major recession for the Japanese economy and the first instance of deflation for a developed economy in the postwar era. Just as the 1990s saw the rise of 100 yen stores and Uniqlo discount apparel, these near-beers are the product of downward price pressure and a relative impoverization of a wide swath of Japanese consumers.

This dual taxation appears to have created a similar dual structure in how people drink their beer. According to What Japan Thinks, while around three quarters of those surveyed drink at home, the overwhelming drink of choice was Happoshu: “over one in six of the total population drink happoshu almost every day!” So while a minority will drink beer or other alcohol, it’s clear that my observations of housewives at Ito Yokado aren’t just coincidence — as far as I can tell, the justification for drinking happoshu is that it’s cheap and tastes just good enough to be had with dinner.

The existence of these choices isn’t by itself a bad thing. I am not aware of the tax scheme in the US, but liquor stores are filled with nasty alternatives to good beer (some happoshu brands are much better than Schlitz, just to name one example). The only thing that angers me is that the tax policy has pushed the beer companies to pursue a decidedly low-quality product line in order to avoid their tax bills, to the point that it dominates their marketing such that even their novelty products are happoshu. Could it have been possible to negotiate an overall lower tax on beer that would maximize both quality and tax revenue?

Ultimately, the tax wars over beer ended up hurting everyone involved, concludes a helpful summer 2008 report by Shigeki Morinobu, a former tax regulator who was personally involved in the process between 1993-97. Annual tax revenues from beer and derivatives fell from more than 1.6 trillion yen in 1994 to 1.1 trillion yen in 2007, an enormous drop of 32%. The beer market has shrunk significantly, as detailed above.

Morinobu, in translation and with my full-throttled agreement:

And what about the consumers? The tax debate resulted in low-malt beers overflowing the store shelves. The flavor of beer-type drinks grew worse and worse, which constitutes perhaps the biggest factor behind the trend away from beer drinking, especially prominent among young people. Seen this way, it is clear there are no winners in this war over beer taxation.

In Germany, anything with less than 100% malt cannot be considered beer. Japan, too, should return to the root of the problem and recognize that creating good beer will increase beer’s overall consumption volume and in the end boost national tax revenues. This summer, I prefer to drink 100% malt, real beer.

“Successful entrepreneur” offers free video on how to make money… obviously not a scam

This “press release” for “infinite cash secrets” is datelined from my hometown.  Google helpfully sent this to me in the form of a News Alert. Looks like since I left Somers has become a hotbed of multi-level marketing scams:
Shawver has achieved his online success by using the principles found in a program called The Infinite Income Plan.

“The Infinite Income Plan allows members of our team to consistently earn $5,000-10,000 dollar weeks by combining its state of the art back office with it’s vast array of cutting edge tools, with even more advanced and state of the art tools we provide to our team,” according to Shawver.

Shawver recognizes that just being handed a plan doesn’t mean that people will put that plan into action, and if they aren’t willing to put some time and effort into it, they won’t succeed.
 

How far does the economy have to tank before we are all Nigerians?
 
On a related note, I am totally in love with this site Skeptoid, a podcast (with transcripts) dedicated to debunking pseudoscientific junk like Reiki and homeopathy. While the site is generally a gold mine (see my favorites on how to argue with a creationist and the myth of peak oil), most relevant to the topic at hand is his take-down of pyramid schemes called “Bend Over and Own Your Own Business.” To wit:
 

Here’s a typical way this works. You see an ad in the paper or on the Internet promising financial freedom, owning your own business. For some fee, say $500, you can become a authorized sales agency for XYZ Company, which sells timeshare condominiums or some other product or service. In exchange for your $500, XYZ Company will provide you with qualified leads, and you are free to pursue those leads however you see fit. Call them on the phone, knock on their door, chase them down on the street and make dramatic flying dive tackles, do whatever you can do (at your own expense, of course; you are self-employed), and hopefully get some sales. You, of course, do not have any timeshare condominiums yourself, XYZ Company does; so you need to spend a portion of the money you earned from the sale to have XYZ Company provide the product to the customer. Everything works out swell for everyone. The customer got his timeshare; you earned a profit; and XYZ Company made a sale. So what’s the problem?

Well, your friend Bob was applying for a job at ABC Company at the same time you were selling your old record albums to raise the $500. Bob was given a nice office at ABC Company, was freely handed the same list of leads that XYZ Company made you pay for, and he proceeded to make phone calls on ABC Company’s phone bill until he made a sale. ABC Company paid him a handsome commission, deducted nothing from it, and Bob went home for the day, secure with his employee benefits package. Bob is not only $500 richer than you, he incurred no costs of his own, and ran no risk of being poor since most salespeople like Bob are paid base salaries.

But I understand why you don’t want to turn green with envy. After all, you have your freedom and are self-employed! Bob is not, Bob has to answer to his boss; and that’s a lifestyle you don’t want no matter how nice of a BMW Bob gets on a company lease. Your friend Red feels the way you do. Red is an independent sales rep. He sells products from various companies, and earns a nice commission on every sale. He comes and goes as he pleases, and answers to no man. But when you ask Red how much he had to pay each of his companies for the business opportunity, he looks at you like you’re from Neptune. Red explains “You don’t pay companies to be their sales rep, they pay you.”

And now you see how you’ve been taken advantage of. XYZ Company has sold you on becoming their sales agent, working at your own expense and at your own risk, and also managed to take $500 from you for no good reason. If you wanted to be an independent sales agent, fine; you could easily have gone and represented any of the same companies that Red sells for, and not paid them a dime.

Japan as a model for American prison reform?

The Washington Post has a very interesting article on Senator James Webb (D – VA)’s campaign to reform US criminal justice and prisons. Webb seems to be among the few senators who actually realizes how broken the US justice system is, with its obscene incarceration rate and often stiff penalties for minor violations. This is all to his credit, and I hope he succeeds in achieving some level of reform, but this is not the part of the article that caught my attention. Here it is:

Somewhere along the meandering career path that led James Webb to the U.S. Senate, he found himself in the frigid interior of a Japanese prison.

A journalist at the time, he was working on an article about Ed Arnett, an American who had spent two years in Fuchu Prison for possession of marijuana. In a January 1984 Parade magazine piece, Webb described the harsh conditions imposed on Arnett, who had frostbite and sometimes labored in solitary confinement making paper bags.

[…]

In his article about the Japanese prisons, Webb described inmates living in unheated cells and being prohibited from possessing writing materials. Arnett’s head was shaved every two weeks, and he was forbidden to look out the window.

Still, Webb said, the United States could learn from the Japanese system. In his book, “A Time to Fight,” he wrote that the Japanese focused less on retribution. Sentences were short, and inmates often left prison with marketable job skills. Ironically, he said, the system was modeled on philosophies pioneered by Americans, who he says have since lost their way on the matter.

I must admit that I know absolutely nothing about the history of prisons in Japan, and for that matter embarrassingly little about the history of prisons in the US. How much are Japanese prisons really modeled after American theories? Certainly the Japanese court system tends to give out shorter sentences for at least certain types of crime, but is there any truth to the idea that inmates leave with job skills? I could easily imagine that an ex-con in Japan is even more stigmatized in the job market than one in the US.

IIjima Ai’s meaning to Taiwan

The mysterious death of former porn-star turned memoir author and TV celebrity IIjima Ai has been big news in Japan. I wouldn’t normally mention something like this due to lack of really caring much, but I was alerted to a rather interesting twist in a comment by Taiwanese TV Journalist Michella Jade Weng at Michael Turton’s blog. Weng linked to an a Mainichi article explaining that IIjima’s death has been unusually big news in Taiwan for a surprising and fascinating reason. I’ll give a translation of most of the article below.

Due to the import of adult videos starring Ms. IIjima in the early 90s when Taiwan was democratization and the opening of society were proceeding, Ms. Iijima became a “symbol” of freedom of expression and culture. The [December] 25th edition of China Times, one of Taiwan’s big four newspapers, had a front page article above the fold article which, along with showing a photograph of Ms. Iijima, stated that Iijima Ai “became the common shared sexual dream of Taiwanese men born in the 1960s to 1970s.”

Note that China Times now has a special feature section on their website, under the amusing folder name of “sexgirl.” UDN, another of the big four papers, also put together a special feature on Ms. Iijima, describing her as “a memory of all the men of Asia.”

Assistant Editor of China Times, Zhang Jing-wei, explained this treatment by saying “The period when Ms. Iijima was active overlapped with the period when Taiwanese politics and society were opened up.　We were not trying to be funny at all, and decided that Ms. Iijima’s death has social significance.”

In 1987, Taiwan’s 38 year period of marital law ended, and restrictions on cultural expression such as newspaper publication and songs were lifted. The Japanese adult videos that began pouring into Taiwan in the 1990s were considered a symbol of social liberalization.

Weng also reports that her editor explained it in more direct terms. “In addition, she was the common link between nearly all men born in the 60’s and 70’s, because almost all of them hid in their bedroom and watched her videos at one point or another.” Including her editor.

How different, really?

Thomas P. Barnett says the institutionally entrenched bureaucracy in federal agencies is more powerful than the leaders who take over for short terms when we elect new politicians.

There is the assumption that it’s the political appointees who run things or change things or are the real power players in DC. My experience has always been that the real power in DC is the persistent class of senior bureaucrats just below the political level. The appointees typically last about 12-to-18 months, getting up to speed for most of that period and–maybe–having some actual impact if they’re quite focused in their goals. Otherwise they come and go, leaving nary a trace. They may think they run things and we may hold them ultimately responsible, but the truth is they’re more powerless than powerful.

The dominance of the bureaucracy over the elected officials and their direct appointees has been a mainstay of just about all English-language coverage of Japanese politics going back decades.

With discussion that Caroline Kennedy may be appointed to replace Hillary Clinton’s soon-to-be vacated senate, many people (such as in this piece  by Glenn Greenwald or this one by Nicholas Kristof, who also suggests an alternate and more qualified woman) are pointing out that dynastic succession is at an all-time high in American politics. (As an aside, I think I’ll take a policy in the future of never supporting any dynastic candidate. I was disgusted in 2000 when GWB made it to the nomination based on no other qualifications than his father. I was disgusted when Hillary Clinton won her seat based on the political influence of her former president husband, which is one of the reasons that led me to prefer Obama early on.) Joe Biden tried to get his son to replace him, Jesse Jackson Jr. is a leading candidate in Illinois (to be fair, his father wasn’t an office holder so it’s more of a celeb issue than legacy per se) and Greenwald points out that “at least 15 current U.S. Senators — 15 — with immediate family members who previously occupied high elected office.”

In Japan, legacy politicians are such a fact of life that the standard Japanese language Wikipedia template for Diet members actually has a field to list how far back their political dynasty goes. Here’s one example, listing a third-generation legacy.

And finally, the American financial crisis is being repeatedly compared with the Japanese crisis of the 1990s, and any number of sources are pointing to Japan’s response as either a model to follow or a model to avoid like the plague. And overnight, blatant state corporatist control of industrial policy ala MITI has gone from anathema to conventional wisdom.

All of which raises three possibilities.

A) Differences between the American system and the Japanese system have been historically exaggerated.

B) The systems are becoming more similar.

C) Current similarities are being overblown.

Comments?

Chomsky on 911 Conspiracy Theories

I don’t even remember why I stumbled across this on youtube, but it’s quite good.

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His thoughts on this issue are almost 100% the same as mine, which I discussed some time ago as part of an off the cuff essay I wrote on conspiracy theories prompted by, of all things, checking up on the history of GPS.

Where will all the eikaiwa teachers go?

I have decided to cross-post a comment I made on the “Jason’s Random Thoughts” blog. He wrote a post laying out the decidedly grim options for unemployed eikaiwa teachers who want to find a way to stay in the country by working outside the eikaiwa industry.

Comment by Adamu:

You seem ready to blame the decline of eikaiwa on the financial crisis, but while a decline in personal consumption will not help struggling schools, people began writing Nova’s obituary back in mid-2006. Put very broadly, there is an excess supply of eikaiwa teachers here and demand has clearly peaked and is now falling off. The adjustment of supply to meet the real demand is no doubt painful for a lot of the workers, but at the same time the years of easy money produced some very bloated companies, NOVA probably the worst among them. Now only the best schools will survive but in the end consumers will be better off.

For years, those involved in the Eikaiwa industry took it for granted that the Japanese public was a money-well, always willing and eager to sit in front of a white face and pay him to speak in his native tongue. But the industry has changed and teachers can no longer dip into the well. Having eikaiwa as a free ride may have been a good opportunity and life experience for many, but in the end I don’t think it does people or society at large much of a service. You are paid to act as a human tape recorder without much in the way of skills, and the service itself is about as effective as weight-loss clinics (a good tool for the motivated minority but a ripoff for everyone else). Now that you dont have that job anymore you are seeing just how content-free the job was. You mention experience working in a foreign environment, but I saw no clear description of any real practical experience gained.

This was an interesting essay, but maybe you should have been honest with your readers and written “Am I Prepared” instead of “Are YOU Prepared”. It would have given much more focus to the essay since you offer advice willy-nilly to a group of people that probably has a very diverse array of skills and experience, while you are you and actually “know your strengths” and weaknesses. And as someone who’s obviously very candid, your readers probably have a lot to gain by following your experiences.

You make a fairly thorough assessment of the prospects for a former Eikaiwa teacher who wants to stay in Japan at all costs but have little skills or experience to offer. But the prospects sound REALLY grim. Looking at what is out there, it is obvious that there is FAR greater opportunity to be had back home rather than struggle as a gas station attendant in a foreign country. Far from “taking living in Japan to the next level” these options seem singularly unambitious and really pretty sad. I hope you can aim higher.

First I would like to ask — is being in Japan at all times forever an end in itself? And even if you do want to be in Japan for the long term, how could you ever be satisfied working at the functional equivalent of a janitor just because it’s in a country you like? For the short term you may need to make ends meet, but sweet Jesus you have got to think bigger.

It seems like getting sent home might be a blessing in disguise for you just so you won’t have to slave in jobs that are even more dead-end than teaching English. Now might be a good time to stop and think about your real strengths and weaknesses as a person, not just as a “gaijin.” And besides, being away from Japan geographically doesn’t necessarily mean cutting ties altogether. The Japanese Internet is huge and allows you to access basically the full spectrum of culture and discourse. While you are off pursuing self-development you can keep track of the Asahi or even the Family Mart website if that’s your thing.

On his blog, Debito has posted his advice from 2001 and it still basically holds, though the examples could be updated. Ken Worsley from Japan Economy News is an interesting case of someone who turned from English teaching to entrepreneurship, but the clear thing distinguishing him from many is that he’s quite talented. There just is no escaping that.

It is interesting to see that positions like convenience store clerk, gas station attendant, and even electronics salesman are now open to foreigners, even American-looking white guys. That phenomenon was all but non-existent seven years ago.

Nice to see you mentioned translation, which is a much more viable option for the people you are apparently writing for (it also happens to the job I do “in a regular office building”). If your language skills are tight enough you can make decent money as a translator, even if you just do it freelance (though IMO 2-kyu is pretty worthless. You need much better than 1kyu to be successful). Employment agencies like Tempstaff can help you with details of what you need to do to land that kind of work. Of course, the driver of translation demand is somewhat connected to that of eikaiwa — it depends on Japanese people having sub-standard English skills. If somehow the Japanese education system gets it right, the demand for translation might fall as competition among translators rises.

I also have to seriously doubt whether “hundreds of thousands” of people have really been fired from eikaiwa schools and face the decision of whether to stay or go. Government statistics seem to show that the number of teachers at private-sector language schools peaked at 15,000 or so, and the numbers now are somewhere just under 10,000. NOVA only employed 4000 teachers and it once boasted that it was the biggest employer of foreign nationals in the private sector. Add to that number the JET program, which accepts about 5,000 people each year, meaning that at any given time there might be as many as 20,000 on JET contracts (though in reality it is probably far less). Then there are the local school district ALT programs and unregistered English teachers/schools, but I don’t see the number topping 100,000. If you want to talk six figures, maybe it would be more accurate to say the decline of the eikaiwa industry has forced hundreds of thousands worldwide to reconsider even attempting a career teaching English in Japan, not to mention future generations for whom it will be basically out of the question.

Still more on Tamogami

Following up on my initial report on November 4 and an update on November 21, here is yet more information on the Tamogami Toshio affair.

Most important is today’s Asahi front-page article, which is the best media confirmation so far of my initial hypothesis on the entire Tamogami/APA link, which readers may remember was as follows:

Combining his attraction to both power and military, [APA CEO Motoya Toshio] 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.

Adam spotted the Asahi article and forwarded it to me, and provided a summary in the comments of my previous Tamogami post.

Apparently, several of the contest judges were really miffed at how Motoya ran things… Of over 400 entries, the company only sent the four-member panel 25 for the first round of anonymous scoring. Motoya himself was apparently on the panel (though APA did not list him as a judge), and he gave the top score to Tamogami’s (anonymous) essay while giving low scores to all the others. In the second round of judging, the names and profiles of the contestants were revealed and the judges met to discuss the winner. Three essays, including Tamogami’s, had the same number of points. Motoya apparently proposed that they just give the prize to Tamogami and award a kind of tied-for-second prize to the others. None objected.

Apart from Motoya, the judges named in the report:

Shuichi Yamamoto, a former Diet member’s secretary and current legal scrivener and guest lecturer in Okayama Prefecture.
Nobuaki Hanaoka, conservative commentator
Kazuo Komatsuzaki, President of (Yomiuri affiliated) Hochi Shimbun

Apparently the fourth judge was Motoya, but I can’t tell for sure by the way the report is written.

The article also includes direct quotes from two of the judges. Yamamoto said that he “felt there was something unnatural about how Motoya gave low scores to pretty much all of the essays that the other judges gave high scores to.” Yamamoto went on to accuse Motoya directly, saying that “one has to believe that the top essay was chosen to award the prize money to Tamogami.” Komatsu gave similar statement, saying that “Thinking about it now, Motoya must have known all along that it was Tamogami’s essay, and deliberately put it on top.” Oddly, the article makes no mention of conservative commentator and Sophia University English Professor Watanabe Shoichi, who is described on the APA web site as head of the judging committee.

The article certainly does make it sound as if Motoya was one of the judges, although I do not believe any previous source has acknowledged his direct involvement. Naturally there was no comment from APA for this article. Considering that even the Inspector General’s Office of Legal Compliance of the JSDF is investigating the possibility that Tamogami encouraged his subordinate officers to enter the contest, and the fact that Tamogami and Motoya had a relationship stretching back a decade when Tamogami was commander of the very same Komatsu air force base that Motoya runs a civilian support committee for, it seems very likely that the entire essay contest was in fact staged.

There is even speculation that the conspiracy goes even deeper than I suggested in my initial post. According to the Japan Times on November 20, in an article which also presents many of the connections I had pointed out previously:

Hirofumi Hayashi, a professor at Kanto Gakuin University and an expert on modern Japanese history, pointed out that Tamogami may have landed the top post because of his close ties with Toshio Motoya, head of hotel and condo developer Apa Group, who had connections with then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a staunch nationalist.

Is it really possible that the Motoya connection could be that strong? Could Abe have actually been persuaded to promote a known militarist to the head of the JASDF based on the recommendation of an ultra-rightwing activist?

Another professor, Kotetsu Atsuhi (whose published books include one on relations between the civil government and military in modern Japan), was quoted by the Japan Times as saying “Mr. Tamogami went out of control and his act was close to a coup.” In a Mainichi debate column he gives a more detailed statement, which reads in part:

In the final paragraph of the essay it is written that the SDF needs to return to a position of independence, away from the eternal dependence on America. This adds up to the “Asian Monroe Doctrine” that Japan had before the War. For Japan to have singular hegemony in Asia, they thought that they had to secure their own sources of raw materials and military equipment, without depending on America or Britain, and the fact that this spread to the financial and political spheres as well is one of the factors that opened the road to war. I am horrified  to think that there may be a desire for this in today’s uniformed officers.

The article also contains an opposing quote from right-wing historian Hata Ikuhiko, in which he says:

Compared with the pre-war system, things are effectively controlled in Japan now. Today, you do not hear the uneasy discussion of a coup de’etat that you did 20 or 30 years ago. If the defense minister and prime minister, who is the Commander in Chief, do their jobs properly then the SDF should not be able to run wild and take hold of political power.

The two problems with this statement are that A: following the Tamogami affair there actually ARE people (Koketsu for a start) mentioning the danger of a coup, and B: Prime Minister Abo Shinzo was the one who appointed Tamogami to his job in the first place. On the other hand, Tamogami’s prompt dismissal following the uproar over the APA essay demonstrates the current effectiveness of civilian control. And although current PM Aso Taro did promptly dismiss Tamogami, he is well known for having a similar view of history.

(Incidentally, Hata’s essay calling for the restraction of the Kono Statement acknowledging Japanese responsibility for comfort women is among those offered as a free download by the so-called “Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact”, which publicizes the Japanese right-wing historical revisionist agenda in English, and includes such people as Watanabe Shoichi and Japafilic Taiwanese Ko Bunyu on its board.)

Whan now-PM Aso was CEO of his family firm, Aso Cement Company in 1975 (he was CEO from 73-79, see here), they published an official corporate history which closely matches the views of Tamogami and Motoya. As described in a FEER article by Mindy Kotler (head of DC’s Asia Policy Point, known for her testimony on behalf of the US House resolution calling on Japan to apologize for comfort women, and William Underwood, a specialist in the history of Japanese WW2 era forced labor):

The “Aso Fights” section of the book states that top U.S. leaders had detailed knowledge of Japanese military plans prior to Dec. 7, 1941. Japan was purposely allowed to strike the first blow, in this telling, so that “Remember Pearl Harbor” could become a rallying cry for Americans. Like Gen. Tamogami, the Aso historians conclude that “this cleverly united American opinion for war against Japan.”

Aso Mining then became a “kamikaze special attack production unit,” according to the book. “People like Korean laborers and Chinese prisoners of war filled the void” in Kyushu’s coalfields as Japanese miners left for military service.

Despite having fired Tamogami, he and Aso are still ultimately on the same side in the history wars, along with former Prime Ministers Mori and Abe, at the very least. (Tamogami has been quoted as saying that “former PM Abe and former PM Mori also support my philosophy.)

While Prof. Koketsu’s coup reference may be a bit exaggerated, there have been a number of comparisons made with the February 26 incident of 1936, a failed coup in which “a group of young radical Army officers led some 1,400 troops under their command on a attack on the Prime Minister’s residence and other buildings in Tokyo, killing Home Minister SAITO Makoto, Finance Minister TAKAHASHI Korekiyo, and Army Inspector General of Military Training WATANABE Jotaro.” As has often been the case in Japanese military coups (such as the Meiji restoration), the young officers claimed to be fighting in the name of the Emperor, but when it was clear they lacked his support the rest of the military put down the revolt. This 2.26 Incident was famously orchestrated by “young officers” of the Imperial Way Faction, which was an unofficial grouping of hardcore rightist officers within the military, who called for a “Showa Restoration“-evoking the Meiji Restoration – in which the military would purge government and society of degenerate left-wing elements and re-institute traditional values based around militaristic Bushido.

The Imperial Way Faction was largely based around the philosophy of Araki Sadao, a rightist officer who ascended to the position of War Minister in 1931, after having served as Inspector General of Military Training, and began publically promoting the  “Imperial Way” in a September 1932 news conference. Although he was forced to retire from the military following the failed 1936 coup, he was apparently not accused of any direct involvment and was allowed to become Minister of Education the following year, a job which allowed him to promote his militaristic agenda in the civil sphere.

Although the names “Tamogami” and “Araki” have as yet only appeared appeared together in a handful of obscure Japanese blogs, I do sense some concern that Tamogami could be (or at least could have been) an Araki-like figure. I strongly doubt anyone is particularly worried that Tamogami himself was plotting a coup, but rather a lot of people are worried about the influence he may have had on subordinates, as represented by the dozens of JASDF members under his command who submitted essays to the contest. Then, does this mean that people should be worried that the 94 who served under Tamogami and submitted essays will be a “young officer” vanguard of the Heisei Restoration armed uprising circa 2012?

This is another pretty farfetched scenario. Japan today is a very different country from the one it was in the 1930s, with a decades-long popular antiwar attitude that few could have predicted in the 1930s. Shifting back towards that level of militarism would likely require both a generation of re-education and a massive shift in the international balance. But the militaristic right wing is thinking long-term. They have been pushing their version of history increasingly hard recently, but despite much of the media coverage has actually not been very successful in altering public school education. And yet, the general attitude towards the revision of the Japanese constitution’s famous war-renouncing “Article 9” seems to have gone from being an absolute impossibilty to being undesirable but perhaps only a matter of time.

Some time in the next several months Japan will hold a general election, in which it is very possibly that the opposition Democratic Party of Japan will take power for the first time. This would be a stunning defeat for Tamogami’s supporters, however many of them really exist. Despite political apathy, most of Japan still firmly believes in national pacifism, and if the LDP falls from power it will likely be in part due to Tamogami.