Category: Current Events

Notice from the State Department on Thai Coup

Got this in my inbox today. It pretty much describes the situation on the ground… which is to say that nothing much has changed since before the coup except some businesses were closed yesterday and the rest of the world seems completely shocked:

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT – THAILAND

1. This Public Announcement is being issued to alert U.S. Citizens traveling to and residing in Thailand to the recent military coup in Thailand. This Public Announcement expires December 19.

2. On September 19 a military group calling itself the Council for Democratic Reform Under the Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM) seized control of the Thai government and declared martial law. The CDRM banned any political gathering of more than five persons. The CDRM also banned the hoarding of goods or the increasing of the price of goods of any kind. The CDRM announced it will appoint a civilian government within two weeks as the first step to returning the country to democratic government.

3. The military deployed troops around key government facilities and other strategic locations, but there is little visible military presence elsewhere. There have been no indications or reports of any violence at this time.

4. Road traffic throughout the country continues to flow normally, although at reduced volumes. Public transportation is in service and all airports and most border crossings appear to be operating as normal. There have been reports of difficulty crossing the border with Burma at Mae Sot and Ranong. Americans who are scheduled to fly into or out of Thailand in the coming days are encouraged to contact their airline to ensure that the flight schedule has not been changed.

5. Given the fluidity of the current situation, the Department of State advises all American Citizens in Thailand to continue to monitor events closely, to avoid government installations and any large public gatherings and to exercise discretion when moving about.

And so on. Meanwhile, the Washington Post has managed to make the situation in Thailand somehow all about the United States:

Ideals and Realities Clash In Bush ‘Freedom Agenda’

At the United Nations lectern this week, President Bush hailed the spread of democracy. “From Beirut to Baghdad,” he said, “people are making the choice for freedom.” Yet even as he spoke, tanks were rolling through the streets of Bangkok as a military coup toppled the elected leader of Thailand, who at that moment was in New York for the U.N. session.

Should the president be held accountable if General Sonthi decides to overthrow the government? No kind of pressure or engagement by the US would have made any difference.

Oddly enough, Thaksin was seen by a lot of people as enough of a tyrant to warrant a coup, as a more sensible WP article illustrates:

“Democracy has won!” said an ecstatic Orathai Dechodomphan, 59, a tailor and Thaksin opponent who joined hundreds of people handing out roses to soldiers near the army headquarters. “Thaksin tried to steal power and did not respect our king. He never would have left on his own. What happened yesterday is our first step toward recovering a real democracy.”

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who was seen by many here as having effectively allowed Thaksin’s removal, endorsed Sonthi, appointing him the official head of a new governing council charged with creating “peace in the country,” according to an announcement televised nationally.

Sonthi is close to the king, and there had been speculation that the monarch played a role in the coup. Sonthi dismissed those suggestions Wednesday, telling reporters: “I am the one who decided to stage the coup. No one supported me.”

It was an odd situation. The Prime Minister refused to step down in the face of massive “people power” protests that attempted to exert pressure on him outside the electoral system. They claimed that he had basically bought support among rural districts, making it impossible to simply vote him out. And when the king specifically told Thaksin to step down, he said he would only to reemerge as a “caretaker” prime minister between elections.

In such a quagmire, I can understand the Thai people’s relief to see a military that is seen as respecting the king put the conflict down without bloodshed. But Thai people can’t rely on benificent rulers forever. The king is old and his successor might not be as skilled at negotiating compromises that keep the country running smoothly, and there’s no guarantee that a future military coup will be so keen to talk the talk about democracy.

The Nation, an English-language Thai newspaper, stresses the cost of this coup:

Military intervention in a democratic system is always a “bad habit” that may stick if we once again allow ourselves the illusion that this will be the last time this dose of strong medicine is required to cure a serious disease.

Even if the first declaration from coup leaders sounded uncharacteristically apologetic (“Forgive us for the inconvenience caused”), once a political precedent of such proportion is set, it invariably stays. True democracy means never allowing coup leaders the excuse to stage their next exercise, even if they say they are sorry for their previous one.

In other words, if we can’t devise an effective system to get rid of a despot through constitutional means, that means we haven’t really graduated beyond the basics of democracy.

To end on a lighter note, there’s a Sgt. in the Army who has admitted involvement in the possibly staged assassination attempt on Thaksin about a month ago. How he can wear a knitted hat in freaking Thailand I don’t know, but he looks good in it nonetheless:

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Flipper is tasty

Looks like I might have something new to order on the next trip to Tsukiji:

Occurring annually from September to April, the dolphin hunts are regulated by the Japanese government and conducted by groups of fishermen who herd hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dolphins and small cetaceans into shallow bays by banging on partially submerged rods that create a sonic barrier. The dolphins are then corralled into nets and dispatched in a brutal manner: speared, hooked, hoisted into the air by their tails, and finally eviscerated alive. The methods, say researchers, result in a long and painful death for these intelligent marine mammals.

The Japanese government has made the unsupported claim that the animals compete with local fishermen for limited supplies of fish and that the drives are in fact a means of pest control. Also, the “Act for Dolphins” consortium maintains that, in spite of the fact that the hunting of dolphins and use of their meat has waned in popularity, the government is actually encouraging the public to consume more dolphin meat; in addition to human consumption, dolphin meat is also used as pet food and fertilizer.

I know I’m supposed to be outraged, because dolphins are “intelligent” (read: cute), but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to take a nice bite out of some iruka sashimi.

And Kan begat Shintaro…

Where does Japan’s new neoconservative overlord Shinzo Abe come from?

We’ll start in Yamaguchi Prefecture. By the late 19th century, one of the most powerful families in the area was the Abe family of sake and soy brewers. A child named Kan Abe was born into the family in 1894, but instead of hanging around vats, he decided to go to Tokyo and study law at the Imperial University. Upon his return to Yamaguchi he became mayor of the family’s village, and then entered the Diet.

Also in the area lived two other affluent families, the Kishi and Sato families. One of the Sato patriarchs had been among the Choshu samurai who overthrew the shogun, and so he had served as governor of several areas of western Japan in the late 1800s. The families entered a merger of sorts when Shusuke Kishi married into the Sato family and adopted their name. As Shusuke Sato, he sired three sons: Ichiro, Nobusuke and Eisaku.

Ichiro joined the Imperial Japanese Navy and became commandant of a naval base in China, resigning shortly before World War II broke out in the Pacific. Nobusuke was adopted by the Kishi family (which had no male heirs), studied law in Tokyo, became Hideki Tojo’s commercial advisor, got through the purges under Douglas MacArthur and became Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. Eisaku also studied law in Tokyo, administered the railways during the war years, became prime minister from 1964 to 1972, and won a Nobel Peace Prize.

Meanwhile, Kan Abe’s son Shintaro Abe joined the navy during the war, graduated from the University of Tokyo afterward, and worked at the Mainichi Shimbun in Tokyo. It was here that he met Yoko Kishi, the daughter of Nobusuke Kishi (a cabinet minister at the time), and decided to marry her. Not long after their marriage, Kishi became prime minister and Shintaro Abe was appointed as his secretary. He went on to serve in many senior cabinet posts through the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in an appointment as Director-General of the Liberal Democratic Party from 1987 to 1989 before his political career ended due to old age and the Recruit Scandal.

So Shintaro and Yoko Abe had three sons. The eldest married a prominent businessman’s daughter and has lived a relatively uneventful life. The youngest was back-adopted into the Kishi family and now has a political career as Nobuo Kishi. And then there’s the middle kid, Shinzo Abe, who as of next week will be the 90th Prime Minister of Japan. Fear him, because he wants to kick your ass… as soon as the constitution is amended to allow it, of course.

Military coup seems to succeed in Thailand

After months of urban protests against Prime Minister Thaksim, who somehow pulled off the feat of being both a rural populist and a pro-business billionaire, the Thai military has stepped in and declared an interim government. In typical Thai fashion, the military waited until the PM was out of the country, in New York to deliver an address to the UN General Assembly, and declared personal loyalty to the King.

You can read about it in the BBC, The Independent, or any other newspaper in the world. Try Google News for the latest.

Probably the best place to follow the story is the English language Thai daily, The Nation. As of right now, the other English Thai daily, The Bangkok Post, is offline.

I was just in Thailand myself a couple of weeks ago, and co-blogger Adam is currently there in his girlfriend’s apartment. He is not currently online, perhaps because the government has suspended Internet connections. This is just idle speculation though, I really have no idea what’s going on. While there is little reason to be concerned for his safety, today’s appointment to have his air conditioner repaired seems very unlikely to be kept. Coincidentally, his girlfriend is currently in Japan on a job interview, and was I believe scheduled to return to Bangkok today. Hopefully I’ll hear a report from one or both of them some time today.

Update: Adam is back online, and I was right about the air conditioner repairman not keeping his appointment.

I find this editorial from The Nation pretty interesting. Just a couple of weeks ago the paper was demanding Thaksim’s resignation and accusing him of engineering a false assassination attempt against himself to shore up his flagging support, but they are still firmly against military intervention to remove him from power.

Ideally, the likes of Thaksin should be rejected at the ballot box or through public pressure in the form of peaceful protests. The problem is most people did not believe both options available to them would succeed in removing him from power. To many people the military coup against Thaksin may be a necessary evil.

But make no mistake, the seizure of power, albeit one that was achieved without the loss of lives, is nonetheless a form of political violence that is incompatible with the democratic aspirations of the Thai people. Democratic aspirations will live on even as the Constitution has already been abrogated by the coup leaders.

The spirit of democracy that undermined Thaksin’s apparent omnipresence will now shift its watchful eyes to the coup leaders.

Latest headline from The Nation:
“PROFILE: GEN SONTHI BOONYARATGLIN
Meteoric rise to POWER”
Following the coup, General Sonthi has so much POWER that it needed to be in all caps.

Ambassador Schieffer: Beef trade resumption “day of celebration” … really?

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U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer, right, is all smiles as he tries out beef bowl with his wife Susanne, left, at Yoshinoya in Tokyo, Monday, Sept 18, 2006. Japanese queued up before a downtown Tokyo fast-food chain on Monday as the restaurant began offering the first servings in more than two years of a popular rice dish topped with American beef. (AP Photo/Pool)

Something tells me he didn’t have to wait all night.

The US coverage of the return of US beef has something of a relieved/celebratory feel to it:

Sept. 18, 2006, 1:48AM
Japanese Line Up for American Beef

By YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

TOKYO — The U.S. Ambassador was among customers thronging a major Japanese fast-food chain Monday to savor the return of a popular rice dish topped with American beef that was off the menu for more than two years due to mad cow fears.

“It was great. It was well worth the wait,” U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer said after eating Yoshinoya D&C Co.’s “beef bowl” with chopsticks.
Click to learn more…

Japan and nearby South Korea banned American beef in December 2003 because of fears about mad cow disease. Japan eased the ban in July, and South Korea earlier this month.

Mad for U.S. beef, herd heads for Tokyo eatery
POSTED: 9:22 a.m. EDT, September 18, 2006

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — Hundreds of people lined up at a central Tokyo restaurant on Monday to savour a dish not tasted for more than two years — “beef bowl” made with U.S. meat.

Some Japanese had even camped out overnight outside a popular branch of fast-food chain Yoshinoya, which resumed sales of its famed specialty following the July lifting of a government ban on imports of U.S. beef.

The ban was imposed in December 2003 after the discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, forcing Yoshinoya to drop its flagship dish of braised beef and onions marinated in soy sauce and laid on top of rice.

Hardcore fans had shunned the “beef bowl” when it was made with Australian beef because the meat was too lean.

As happy as I am to see Yoshinoya back in action, I don’t really see the reopening of beef trade a cause for consumers to celebrate, especially in the US. The flap over beef could have served to make the US consider whether its own testing standards were protecting consumers, but that never happened. The US government is shamelessly pro-business and the media is just not interested in covering FDA topics unless they involve a scary new drug that kills a tiny amount of people.

If you ask me (and you did) the US put way too much pressure on Japan to lift this ban in a relatively small export market (2 billion dollars a year in sales in Japan compared to 40 billion in premium revenues for US insurance companies). The dangers of mad cow are real and every country has to be careful. For the US industry to rush to political solutions (which as an industry supported by massive subsidies is their bread and butter) to the point of getting the president involved and threatening sanctions that would violate WTO rules rather than trying to reassure consumers only harms the United States’ image and makes the beef industry look bad as well. The compromise, which is basically that Japanese inspectors will be able to look around US slaughterhouses to ensure that no spinal tissue is getting into beef headed for Japan, seems satisfactory, but I would have liked to see a little more – perhaps a more constructive attitude toward testing from the American side – maybe not universal testing like Japan, but something more than self-regulation would be nice. Unfortunately, the US saw quick resumption of the status quo as more important than building consumer trust, and I think they’ll suffer for it.

Gyudon BACK at Yoshinoya for one day

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Residents of Sakae-cho, Ushiku City, Ibaraki Prefecture line up in the middle of typhoon-induced rain for this one day only offering of their flagship beef bowl “gyudon” product now that imports of US beef have resumed. Security guards were on hand to maintain order as previous limited offerings have resulted in violence from disappointed latecomers.

There are no such reports of crazed ojisan as of yet, but hopefully our correspondents in Japan will have some news for us later this evening.

According to Asahi, Yoshinoya will offer gyudon from the 1st through the 5th of October and November before restoring their flagship product in December on a daily basis for a limited number of hours per day.

asahi 091806 gyudon.jpg

Sankei reports that some gyudon fans waited all night for their chance at luscious beef in a bowl. I’d gladly do the same. Unfortunately there are no gyudon in Thailand, not even cheap knockoff gyudon. Decent katsudon though.
sankei 091806 gyudon.jpg

Is the DPJ just the LDP with a cooler logo?

Marxy made a good comment on my last post:

Anyone weirded out that Japan’s opposition party is all ex-LDP members who are out of the majority? I am sure the official policies are different, but seems more like a reorganization of sports teams than ideological conflict.

Sure it looks like a rearranging of chairs since most of the party’s leaders herald from the former Tanaka faction of the LDP. But actualyl the DPJ is made up of more diverse groups since politics in Japan continues to be dominated by building up relations with interest groups (outright bribing of voters is pretty well nipped in the bud as of now). But I think that the current election climate and the media/public’s expectations are forcing the parties to compete for public support.

Party President Ichiro Ozawa, Supreme Adviser and ex-PM Tsutomu Hata, Diet Affairs Chairman Kozo Watanabe, Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama, and former president Katsuya Okada all hailed from ex-Tanaka/Takeshita faction, rebelled against LDP after PM Shin Kanemaru was arrested for receiving 500 million yen from Sagawa Kyubin, whose credit was abused by the yakuza to take out loans, went in a million directions forming new parties (mainly conservative Shinshinto and liberal Shinto Sakigake) before most of the small breakaway parties combined into the DPJ.

But it’s not *all* ex-Tanaka faction!

Seiji Maehara – Joined Nihon Shinto (a “progressive party” started separately from the LDP by Morihiro Hosokawa, a former Tanaka faction upper house member)

Naoto Kan – formerly of minor left-wing party Socialist Democratic Federation, joined Shinto Sakigake (a 1993 breakaway of the LDP led by younger liberal minded Diet members such as Hatoyama) before winding up in DPJ.

And then there are the intra-DPJ factions. While factions supporting former LDP members are most powerful, there is also a good number of factions based on former membership in leftist parties.

The mix makes for a center-left ex-LDP led but still somewhat divided party that can result in some watered down policy positions such as their weak response to the postal privatization issue (DPJ was hemmed in by ties to labor unions) and constitutional revision (large range of opinion within the party).

So, a political party that’s run by a conservative and divided internally along factional lines? Sounds a lot like the LDP right? But what you have to consider is that the DPJ was formed in the aftermath of the 1955 system. Accordingly, the politicians involved inherited themselves (career, politicians with stable and often inherited support bases), blocks of interest groups (labor unions, professional associations, religious groups, etc), and the social/economic state that the 1955 system left Japan in.

After confidence in the LDP crumbled in 1993 and a non-LDP cabinet came in, the election rules were changed to make it possible for an opposition party to take over and also for elections to be won on a combination of interest groups getting out the vote AND campaigning on the issues as opposed to interest groups alone. The idea (credited to Ozawa no less) was to allow for a two-party system since people weren’t going along with the one party state, presumably. The spectacular stumbling of the 8-party opposition coalition led to the resurgence of LDP coalition governments, however, and put the 2 party vision on hold until the DPJ rose in status.

The hodgepodge makeup of both parties reflects the conflicting election strategies they need to take. The horsetrading that brings in wildly different politicians under the same fold is necessary to build a large number of entrenched supporters. But at the same time the party needs to pull in the unaffiliated voters with strong policy proposals. Right now I think both parties are better at the former than the latter.

The media of course like the idea of two clearly denominated sides fighting for the right to govern. And as a result the editorial tone when talking about the DPJ tends to focus on the question “what does the DPJ have to do to win?” rather than “does the DPJ deserve to win?”

So slowly both the LDP and opposition have had to find ways to deal with the growth in public interest in the election process that the rule change brought about. In 2003 or so it was Manifestos that helped the DPJ, and in 2005 it was Koizumi’s sophisticated PR techniques that wooed voters. The DPJ is going all out to make itself look smarter and better able to govern than the LDP this July and I believe that is what the election will turn on.

Will Abe last past July? Depends on the DPJ

Two disparate sources provide some good perspective on Abe’s upcoming premiership:

  • Morgan Stanley’s Robert Alan Feldman lays out the possibly dangerous prospects of an Abe government based on the concerns of domestic and foreign investors. Domestic investors, as can be expected, have the most informed opinion and are most concerned about the following: Regardless of his campaign promises, Abe will likely not have Koizumi’s political wherewithal to push reform efforts, for the most basic reason: “Unlike Koizumi, Abe is not a maverick. Abe has yet to prove to the satisfaction of investors that he will say no to vested interests, instead of saying that he will say no.” It also won’t help that Abe is boring (lacks “Koizumi’s sound-bite style” which is effective in selling policies to the people). Second, the Abe government might not last long if his party does poorly in next July’s upper house elections. Two major issues that have a good chance of hurting the LDP are worsened relations with China (pretty likely), or if Abe caves in to demands for increased pork spending in the rural areas (also likely… Feldman sees this as sure to backfire since more spending in this era of disastrous fiscal debt might not do much for the rural voters but will almost certainly anger urban unaffiliated voters which have proven a decisive voting bloc recently). The fall of the Abe cabinet could result in the “frightening scenario” of “a return to the revolving door prime ministers of the 1990s” which was perhaps one of the biggest reasons behind that decade or so of stagnation. Unfortunately, Feldman’s conclusion seems only to support the most frightening scenario since his recommendations are unlikely to be followed: “In the end, I believe that both foreign and domestic investors need to see clarity of message, strong personnel choices, concrete policy agendas with legislative deadlines, and a focus on issues that will help Japan continue allocate resources efficiently.”
  • Kikko (of Kikko’s Blog fame) gives us an idea of how the media works with those in power to convince the public to accept Abe, a potentially controversial candidate for prime minister due to his hardline stances on China etc. She rejects the idea that the public supports Abe, a claim repeated over and over by the Japanese media. Public opinion polls used to prove this popularity she claims are complete fabrications. As a counterpoint, she sites a Yahoo poll that has the public supporting Foreign Minister Taro Aso, with Abe coming in a distant third. According to Kikko, there’s no way the Japanese public could support Abe, a man “riddled with suspicion” who is accused of ties to the Yakuza, the Unification Church (which he recently sent a letter of congratulations to a mass marriage conducted by the church in Japan… Kikko’s big beef with the Moonies is their practice of aggressively selling overpriced goods with “spiritual value”), who abuses his power to help his wife meet Korean actresses, who allegedly helped the Ushio Corporation, which is run by the father of Abe’s sister-in-law, invest in the Murakami Fund (started by a former Finance bureaucrat who is now alleged to have used his political and business contacts to engage in massive insider trading), who lied about studying abroad (claimed to have studied politics for 2 years at USC but actually took 6 courses over 3 semesters, 3 of them ESL classes), and who supports building not only offensive war capability but also nuclear capability for Japan’s military. In her assessment, the major media, especially the Yomiuri Shimbun (she calls them an “LDP PR rag”), are simply lining up to flatter the next leader so they can continue their close ties. She notes that domestic coverage of Abe tends to leave out his international image, as reported in Newsweek and Time, as a potential political weakling and dangerous provocateur of China.

    • The event to watch will be the July election. If Abe really screws up, then he might be in trouble. The question is, though: How can he screw up?

    I have to wonder how important the China issue will be. China is less keen to use the Yasukuni card these days (as noted by Robert Angel at Japan Considered) since they’ve seen they aren’t really getting anywhere with it. Abe, for his part, has never promised he’d go. There are certainly other ways for him to destroy relations with China, but for now things actually seem to be improving. And anyway, people actually seem to support Abe when he takes strong stances against Japan’s neighbors.

    And structural reform has gotten a huge amount of bad press since the Sept 2005 election. Horie and Murakami were strung up as poster children for the dark side of the new Japan, a scandal involving faked earthquake safety documents was blamed on Koizumi-style deregulation, and a national debate over the breakdown of income equality is making further reform look less sexy by the day. Abe’s platform so far is to push growth policies ahead of reform, led by a program to offer “second chances” to companies that have failed. As the Asahi reports, the bureaucrats have listened to his proposal (or was it the other way around?) and have “brazenly” come up with “second chance” programs that would actually increase respective ministries’ budget outlays. He still talks the talk about fiscal reform, but the stars are aligning against it and it’s doubtful he’ll try anything that would risk good relations within the LDP before July.

    So if Abe is likely to remain strong on the biggest issues, then how can he screw up? What Feldman never mentioned was that for Abe’s LDP to lose the election the electorate would have to cast its vote for the opposition DPJ, making that party’s election strategy a key factor. The party recently reelected president Ichiro Ozawa and is attempting to present a united front leading into July.

    Ozawa has taken the unusual tactic of trying to convince some of the anti-postal privatization LDP members who were ousted from their old party to join the DPJ camp. Some of those former lower house members were extremely influential in their home districts, making them attractive candidates since they are electable. As a result, the LDP has had to consider taking them back themselves since they want to avoid losing their slim majority in the Upper House. The DPJ wants these people because they can win elections some of the directly-elected seats that represent Japan’s 47 prefectures. Ozawa believes that if he can win a majority of the 73 such seats that are up for grabs then his party can take control of the upper house, so getting a shoo-in candidate makes the party’s job that much easier.

    On the issues, the DPJ has been pushing policies to close the “wealth gap” and emphasizing the close links between the LDP and the bureaucracy, claiming that the latter is controlling the former and watering down attempts to slash spending through such initiatives as privatizing government-run organizations, moves that the DPJ supports.

    Given Abe’s popularity, especially in national security, it might be tough for the DPJ, which has been weak on international issues, to convince the electorate to support them in a time when North Korea scares the bejeezus out of people. Additionally, the DPJ remains divided on the constitutional revision issue, which Abe is set to give priority early on in his term. If they aren’t able to effectively participate in the debate, the the DPJ may once again look too incompetent to be elected.

    Heizo Takenaka to leave politics after Koizumi steps down, but who could possibly replace him?!

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    Japan Times reports on Takenaka’s announcement, which came at a post-cabinet meeting press conference:

    Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Heizo Takenaka said Friday he will retire from politics when outgoing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi steps down Sept. 26.

    Takenaka, a 55-year-old professor-turned-lawmaker, said he decided to quit politics because his job had been to assist Koizumi’s economic reforms.

    But what I didn’t see reported in English was news of who will take Takenaka’s proportional representation seat in the Diet. You see, members of the upper house who were elected by PR don’t represent a specific district, so there’s no runoff to replace people who quit or die. Whatever party the person leaving belonged to gets to select the replacement.

    In this case the LDP had a Ms. Shinobu Kandori at the top of their waiting list from when she ran in 2004. Kandori (41) is a former Judo star who went on to become a veteran and former CEO of Japan’s Lady’s Legend Pro Wrestling. Sometimes knows as “the strongest man in ladies’ wrestling”, her accomplishments in the ring include the distinction of being among the few female wrestlers to defeat a male wrestler (eat your heart out Andy Kaufman!) in an effort to break down the barriers between men’s and ladies’ wrestling. She was also a participant in the first-ever women’s version of anything-goes kickboxing called L-1. Outside the ring, she made waves by becoming the first female freelance pro wrestler, choosing to negotiate matches from outside the company. Her profile on her agent’s website lists her main hobby as gambling.

    A Jan 2002 interview places Kandori’s legendary 1986 wrestling debut against Jackie Sato as the event that destroyed the image of female wrestlers as objects of adoration (“idols”) (Ed: corrected translation). Known for her brutality in the squared circle, Kandori specializes in chain deathmatches and no-holds-barred fights. Her theme song is “All We Are” by female-led hair metal band Warlock (watch and listen here on Youtube!). She considers herself a pioneer for women in wrestling, which her record no doubt backs up. Few before her in ladies wrestling had the muscular body of a Judo champ, which allowed her to try some new things like fighting men. Her goal as a leader of ladies wrestling was to make the sport more organized and to raise standards of who can become a wrestler.

    But now she’s got some big shoes to fill. Her official blog doesn’t have much on it yet since the announcement just came out yesterday, but I wouldn’t count on seeing any more pictures of her chugging tomato juice from now on:

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    In case you were wondering what she’ll be bringing to her new job as a public servant, Wikipedia has an indication: Her unsuccessful political campaign in 2004 earned her criticism after she bluntly stated that she “honestly, like, [doesn’t] get this Iraq issue.” She also reportedly never made her mandatory social security payments, claiming that as a pro wrestler she never learned how to live in normal society. “The system is just too hard to understand,” she explained. “We have to change it.”

    Thing is, the LDP actually sought Kandori out to exploit her fame (much like they tried to do with Horie), so in part she can’t be blamed for making such inappropriate comments. She’s just being honest, and if that’s good enough for the LDP, then it’s up to the voters to decide whether she deserves a Diet seat, right? Well, sort of. They voted her out, but now she’s back in on a technicality.

    But just in case you thought Ms. Kandori lacked ideas, take a look at this brilliant campaign tactic from 2004:

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    Translation: “Lend me your strength! It’s the million-person arm wrestling campaign”

    Yes, the woman who once destroyed the door of Korakuen Hall’s green room in a fit of anger will join the ranks of Atsushi Onita (profiled before on this blog and whose official Diet secretary got in trouble earlier this year for kicking a rival wrestler in the face… and he apparently has beef with 26-yo Taizo Sugimura, another LDP Diet member of questionable merit) and the legendary Antonio Inoki.

    Something tells me she won’t be offered any of Takenaka’s cabinet posts, but she might make a more pretty good Gender Equality minister.

    UPDATE: Her other nickname is “Mr. Ladies’ Wrestling.” See that fact and a sweet action pose here.

    ‘Peeping’ Economist Arrested Anew In Groping Case

    From Nikkei:

    TOKYO (Kyodo)–Economist Kazuhide Uekusa, once a well-known TV commentator who was convicted of public indecency by trying to look up a 17-year-old girl’s skirt at a Tokyo railway station in 2004, has been arrested on suspicion of molesting a 17-year-old female high school student on a train in Tokyo, police said Thursday.

    …

    On the train, the girl, a second-year high school student from Kanagawa Prefecture, raised her voice and said, ”Stop it,” and she and two other passengers seized Uekusa and handed him over to policemen who were alerted and waiting at Keikyu Kamata station.

    In April 2004, Uekusa was arrested and indicted for trying to look up a girl’s skirt on an escalator of the Japan Railways Shinagawa Station in Tokyo by using a small mirror. He was a professor at Waseda University at the time.

    He pleaded not guilty but did not appeal after the court convicted him and fined him 500,000 yen. His mirror was confiscated as part of the punishment.