Curzon has alerted me to an upcoming TV project (source unknown):
Beat Takeshi to play war criminal Hideki Tojo in TV drama
Wednesday 15th October, 05:29 AM JST
Comedian and film director Beat Takeshi, 61, will play the role of class-A war criminal Hideki Tojo in a special TBS drama titled “What the War Meant.” The drama will document three months before the Pacific War between September to December in 1941, featuring the political confrontation between politicians and ministries in the decision-making process.
Tojo was not only prime minister but ran several different ministries at the same time during the war.
The broadcast date has not yet been decided, according to TBS.
My reaction? I will just repeat what I told Curz:
I have been let down so many times by promising-sounding Japanese TV (live-action Barefoot Gen, CHANGE, any political commentary show) that I refuse to get my hopes up for this. Unless they go over the top to try and lionize Tojo (or make him out to be a violent thug typical in Beat Takeshi films*) I am sure it will be watered down crap with low production values. The effect of the piss-poor standards is especially jarring and insulting when they try and tackle serious issues.
But I will keep my eyes open.
*Just imagine a scene of Tojo choking Prince Konoe half to death for acting like a surrender-monkey!
Congratulations! His blog has been absolutely indispensible reading as I try and get my head around the economic crisis. He didn’t win the prize for blogging but I have the suspicion the prize was intended by the Swedish central bank as an endorsement of his views on the crisis.
Now I feel the need to play catch-up to understand the work (PDF) that actually earned him the prize!
Japan Probe had an thoughtful post on one of Japanese TV’s more prominent fortune-tellers:
Last night, TV Tokyo aired a special warning viewers about disasters that are bound to hit Japan in the next few years. They included:
A cholera outbreak will come from the sea and kill 5,000 Japanese between now and 2011
Famine will hit Japan and thousands will die of starvation between now and 2011.
In 2011, water shortages will lead to global war, and Japan will participate in the conflict.
The predictions were made by Jucelino Nobrega da Luz, a Brazilian con artist. Instead of giving viewers background information about how Jucelino is a fraud, TV Tokyo found experts and spun their explanations about there being “a possibility” that outbreaks of disease and famine could occur into supporting evidence for Jucelino’s claims.
Here was my comment in response:
My stomach churns each time I see this man on TV. The most sickening display was when he claimed to know where Lindsay Anne Hawker’s killer was hiding out. The rawest form of exploitation of an unsolved murder, and there wasn’t even a token disclaimer to let viewers know the man is completely full of it. I guess a dead foreigner is easy since she has so few friends inside the country. He and all the fortune tellers on J-TV have no place outside the most fringe areas of daytime TV infomercials but no they get prime time booking and complete reverence and respectability.
Someone said the appearance of this man on Japanese TV was not a Japan-specific issue, but while it may be true that other countries have bad and even harmful TV, what has it got to do with Japan? Of course this man’s respectful treatment on Japanese television is hugely relevant to Japan…
The Japanese people are bombarded with a massive amount of false and dishonest TV images depicted as non-fiction, and it is not limited to fake psychics (for example, is it any wonder that some people were willing to believe that Asahara Shoko was a messiah with the ability to levitate when he used to BE one of these respected figures on J-TV?).
With so much disinformation in their lives can it be any wonder that many people never find their way to the realm of rational debate over national issues of importance?
The Aso government has indicated plans to use the upcoming emergency G7 finance ministers summit to urge the US to adopt a Japan-style capital injection of troubled banks. The Nikkei backs up this position in an editorial: “The US and Europe must press the need for an injection of capital [into failing financial institutions] to assuage financial uncertainty.”
Of course, the US will probably have little choice but to inject capital anyway (the UK is already doing something similar), so Aso’s advice might simply be a ploy to try and take credit for something he had nothing to do with.
Marginal Revolution is, in my lofty opinion, the best blog for following all the antics. It’s written by a couple of econ professors who normally talk about curiosities (similar to Freakonomics), but lately they’ve been doing a great job of consolidating (and generating) economic commentary on the various implosions and bailouts going on.
The Conglomerate is giving some of the best coverage from a legal perspective.
If you want something on a higher level, read Calculated Risk, which is what all the bankers have been reading (especially now that they have nothing else to do).
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?
While the financial turmoil has largely outcrowded domestic political news today, the reaction to Taro Aso’s speech to open the Diet session was one of pure, ecstatic excitement among some media outlets (except for the killjoys at the Asahi of course). Just to give you a taste of the ebullience, let me quote the Nikkei:
Let’s hear the Ozawa’s response to Aso’s unconventional speech
Prime Minister Taro Aso gave his first policy speech at a joint session of the Diet. The speech was unconventional — not only did he harshly criticize the DPJ’s actions in the Diet, he questioned the DPJ on issues such as the passage of the fiscal 2008 supplemental budget. The speech took the form of a declaration of war against the DPJ and gave the strong impression that the decisive battle of the next Lower House elecion is near.
It was almost exactly one year ago that former PM Fukuda gave his own first policy speech, in which he took a more relaxed stance as he called for dialogue with the opposition parties to deal with a Diet in which separate parties control each chamber. .Aso’s speech was a shart contrast, and we look forward to hearing DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa’s “response.”
The PM flatly stated that the DPJ’s handling of the last ordinary Diet session “had a consistent attitude of putting politics first and the people’s lives second or third.” He then went further, noting that the DPJ should put forth rules for forming consensus and questioning, “Is the DPJ ready to do that?”
… For the PM himself to use his policy speech to question the opposition parties’ handling of Diet affairs is extremely uncommon.
…
PM speeches such as the opening policy speech typically take care to mention all the policy initiatives of the various ministries. But Aso eschewed this in favor of a fresher Aso-style address. His determination to take the mantle of administration was clear.
They go on to moan about a lack of specifics and hoped to see them in his party’s election manifesto. They had not a word to say about how his speech was almost totally inappropriate — the point of opening the Diet session like that is so the government can explain itself, not the opposition parties (as the Asahi notes, the tactic may be to try and dissolve the lower house using DPJ intrasigence as an excuse)..
But they have a point. I watched the speech, and when you can hear him over the jeers of the opposition party Aso actually sounds like a human being. The mere fact that he spoke as if there was some life left in him was what made it truly unconventional and no doubt got the media’s attention. It might not save him come election time, but Aso should be proud that he gave one of the best speeches in recent Diet history.
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.
Aso’s appointment of arch-conservative Shoichi Nakagawa as both minister of finance AND minister of state for financial services might seem, well, natural to the uninitiated. They’re both financial, aren’t they? For his part, PM Taro Aso has called the decision “more functional than dealing with [financial issues such as the Lehman bankruptcy] separately.”
Functional it may be, but I have my doubts that moving financial regulation back to the finance ministry will prove productive. Independent, prudent, and transparent financial regulations are part of what has allowed Japan’s financial sector to reap the benefits of late 90s deregulations and attract a base of foreign investors. That Japan has escaped the worst of the recent financial meltdown is a testament to the Financial Services Agency’s competence to regulate without the guiding hand of an all-powerful finance ministry. The Nikkei editorial board shares my concerns and has called any aims at reuniting fiscal policy with direct finance industry oversight “extremely problematic.”
As FujiSankei Business-i explains, the initial decision to separate financial administration and law enforcement was taken in 1991 when Nomura Securities was found illegally compensating clients for stock investment losses. The Financial Services Agency was created later as the stand-alone financial industry regulator when the finance ministry itself saw its credibility devastated by corruption scandals. Currently, financial matters are divided thusly: FSA/SESC are the finance industry regulators, the Bank of Japan is an independent entity responsible for maintaining liquidity and monitoring inflation, and the finance ministry, as keeper of the treasury, has a more limited direct role and keeps an eye on exchange rates and participates in international meetings.
The arrangement appears to work well, except it is partially incompatible with international norms. The G7 meeting of finance ministers, for example, is attended only by Japan’s finance minister, despite his portfolio not extending to financial industry regulations (at the top of the current agenda). Predictably, an anonymous source in the finance ministry welcomes this turn of fortune as it represents a possible restoration of powers, regardless of Aso’s insistence that he chose people based on their dedication to “national interest” and not their ministry’s interest.
In his first post-appointment press conference, Nakagawa gave a somewhat muddled explanation mentioning that while he understands the debate of 10 years ago, fiscal and monetary policy are “two sides of the same coin” and should be handled together in “delicate” times such as these.
As I mentioned above, on the face of it this doesn’t even look that bad. But getting financial regulation out from under MOF’s thumb has been an important step forward to achieving more normal financial services in this country. The ministry of finance was for decades the symbol of Japan Inc, the comprehensive term for the elite consensus that sustained Japan as a development state. But those days are over, and Japan has been in the process of adopting a more “mature” economy, a part of which was the creation of the FSA.
I have not made a comprehensive review of all the new government’s comments, but so far I have seen zero justification except the need to have someone responsible for financial industry regulation at the G7 finance ministers meeting. I hope they keep it limited to that.
The FSA has established a reputation as tough but fair in the minds of the industry and the new administration, if it does get a chance to govern, would do well to respect that.
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.
